Is Christian theism consistent with modern science? -- singletrack1 vs. Vinnie

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This thread has been set up for a formal debate between singletrack1 and Vinnie who will debate the following question:

Is Christian theism (belief in a Creator-God with omni-attributes who specially designed the universe and the earth for life) consistent with the modern scientific understanding of the known universe?

singletrack1 will argue for the affirmative position and Vinnie will argue for the negative position. The debate will tentatively have 3 rounds and posts will be submitted concurrently, per the parameters (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?p=2605424&postcount=31).

A Peanut Gallery (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=132908) is set up in the Existence of God(s) forum for the rest of us to comment on the debate.

Good luck to both participants!

- NS, FD Moderator

[Stumpjumper]

Greetings Vinnie and members of Internet Infidels.

My purpose in this debate is to show that the existence of the Christian God is compatible with the findings of modern science. I do not intend, at least in this opening post, to use formal arguments for the existence of God; I merely plan to show how Christian faith and the Bible are consistent and compatible with the world we inhabit.

God is Love and Love is Free

"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." 1 John 4:16

God’s love is a humble, self-emptying love. This divine kenosis was seen on the cross and can be seen in the very world that we inhabit. God has given humankind life through evolution and purpose and love through life.

“Love by its very nature can not compel, and so any God whose very essence is love should not be expected to overwhelm the world either with a coercively directive power or an annihilating presence. Indeed, an infinite love must in some ways absent or restrain itself, precisely in order to give the world the space in which to become something distinct from the creative love that constitutes it as other. We should anticipate, therefore, that any universe rooted in an unbounded love would have some features that appear to us an random and undirected� (God After Darwin, John Haught p.112)

It is the nature of love to give more love and not overwhelm those with whom you share your love. “If you love someone, set them free.� True love requires freedom; and sometimes that very freedom can lead to pain. Many times those whom one loves will follow wayward paths. Love would require us to nudge our loved ones in the proper direction but not force that direction upon them. Forcing our will upon those we love rarely leads to positive results and undermines the very loving relationship that is shared.

God allowed and continues to allow humanity to make our own decisions. By allowing this, things can go wrong. But it also allows us to transform the challenges we face into creative, purposeful experiences. Purpose is a gift and not one to be taken lightly. Many times as we use this gift of purpose to transform our challenges and circumstances beauty will emerge. The beauty that we have created is real; but so is the ugliness that was transformed.

The gift of purpose requires a gift of freedom and the purpose of freedom is to create the same for others. It is through this freedom that we find our salvation. Jesus thirsted on the cross and he thirsted for souls. He counted all the wayward sheep and all the prodigal sons and none were lost. The call of a Christian is to live for the glory of God. A Christian’s life should not be determined driven quest about preaching the word and keeping track of how many souls you have saved. It is living our life the best way we can and doing what we do well and doing it for the glory of God. In the word of Richard John Neuhaus: “Souls are saved by saved souls who live out their salvation by thinking and living differently, with a martyr’s resolve, in a world marked by falsehood, baseness, injustice, impurity, ugliness and mediocrity.�

The very salvation Neuhaus speaks of requires freedom. It is freely given and freely accepted. Pure unadulterated acceptance requires reciprocating the love that was given. A self-emptying love was offered and that love requires that we empty ourselves of our vices such as selfishness, greed, pride, and lust and live for the love of God. Jesus emptied himself in his life and death as did Mary who became the first disciple by forsaking her needs and lived only in the glory of God’s grace.

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!� (Phillipians 2:5-9)

Jesus said that the “greatest love is shown when man is willing to lay down his life for his friends.� (John 15:13) Salvation consists of this kind of greater love and it can only be given and accepted freely. It is not required that humans lay down their lives to achieve this love. Only the acceptance of the realization that once we experience such a love we would be compelled to value our loved ones and love more than our own life.

God’s love for humanity as shown through the life and death of Jesus Christ is a mysterious and incalculable love that meets the world on our terms. It is a humble love that meets us in the randomness of our everyday life. It is a love that made itself defenseless even unto the death of a crucified man. The very randomness and struggle of the evolution of life that created humankind can be seen in the life and death of God incarnate. These parallels are consistent with a universe and life that has as its origin an infinitely compassionate Love.

The Big Bang as an Infinite Contraction

This divine love created our cosmos not as an overly powerful prime mover but as a humble contraction guided by self-giving love that required an evolutionary unfolding of the divine future. An unrestrained display of omnipotence would leave no room for growth and no room for a love that would call itself other.

The rabbi Isaac Luria who lived during the fifteenth century in the holy town of Galilee contemplated the primordial emptiness that is the source of our universe. That emptiness was called ayin. Long before the scientific theory of the big bang, Isaac Luria described the creation of the universe: “The absolute nature of this emptiness is so pervasive that nothing else but it can exist. In order for something to become manifest, a seismic contraction of emptiness in on itself had to occur, creating a space in which Divine emanation was possible. Following this immense contraction, God’s first cosmic act was the emission of a single ray of light. This beam pierced through the void and then expanded in all directions. Think of it as God’s first breath exhaling into the abyss after eons of slumber and filling it with His divinity. This is how the universe was born.�

The God that created that divine emanation is not Aristotle’s prime mover, not Spinoza’s impersonal God, and not the God of the philosophers; it is the God of Abraham that shows his self-emptying love through the creative unfolding of the cosmos and life and his humble intervention of the Christ event. The kabbalists named this God “Ein Sof� which means no boundaries. When asked if God is a person, Alvin Plantinga answered “God is not less than a person�. Indeed, God transcends all ordinary sorts of reality. His infinite nature is not quantified mathematically but it means simply that God’s nature violates all of our categories of definition. It is this in categorical love that required the cosmos to unfold in the manner in which science explains.

Evolution and a Focus on the Future

In the biblical view of the word, “God� is defined before all other definitions as “future.� Karl Rahner described God as the “Absolute Future,� and many biblical texts relay the view of a future oriented belief and a focus on eschatology. The entire biblical view of faith is future oriented. Faith is hope for things yet to come.

“Rahner argued that we can know of God by attending to the movement of our knowing itself towards its objects. Reflection on this reveals that our thinking always reaches beyond its immediate objects towards a further horizon. Hence, the movement of our knowing, and the ultimate goal towards which it reaches, can be grasped only indirectly (or "transcendentally") as our thinking turns back on itself. Rahner identified the elusive and final "term" of this dynamism with God and contended that the same movement towards God is entailed in freedom and love.� (Karl Rahner: A Biography by Robert Masson)

Biblical writings focus upon the future and the Kingdom of God that is to come. God is the future; the past in inconsequential. Scientific thinking focuses too much on the past and it uses the past as a prediction of the present. But, the present was the future of the past. If one focuses too much on the past one will never expect or experience anything truly new. Yet, evolution produces complexity and organisms that did not preexist and would not be expected by materialism. Theistic evolution provides a metaphysics of the future and can express what is real and what may be to come. Materialism by definition can only express what is identified as matter. Matter, of course, can be combined in any number of arrangements to constantly produce diverse arrangements through evolution. But there is no underlying being or reality behind such arrangements. Materialism will only be able to describe what consists of matter; which is lifeless atomic and sub-atomic particles.

But, matter does not equal reality. Reality is matter and life; but, it is also subjective experience, feelings, love, and goodness. Subjective experience such as consciousness can not be fully tied to physical or material processes in the brain. There is a reality that exists not explainable by materialism. This reality is what we experience in our everyday life. It is the reality that appreciates beauty in nature, art, and music. It is a reality that is irreducible, difficult to express with words, and is constantly drawing mankind forward.

Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit paleontologist, described the God of evolution as a god who pulled the world ahead and towards the future in comparison to Aristotle’s prime mover who guided or pushed the world and life from behind. Teilhard described this God as almost completely Omega and primarily concerned with the future. This is the God that evolution requires and it is a God that is motivated by love. An Omega God would primarily be a pulling force drawing new and complex life towards itself. Not surprisingly, the feature most obvious about macro-evolution and the feature that caught Darwin’s eye is the emergence of novel life. Without the emergence of new life evolution would not exist. Yet, materialistic evolution can not fully satisfy the reason behind why matter has a tendency to evolve towards complex phenomena such as life, mind, and spirit.

This explanation of God is not provided to fill a gap but as part of a metaphysics that allows all the data of the contingent universe to be evaluated and properly identified. In particular, it is a metaphysics f the future that can quantify and expect emergent phenomena such as novel life. Materialism would be unembarrassed by the absence of complex phenomena such as life, mind, spirit, and consciousness. Instead of a fall from past perfection; we are constantly evolving and becoming a new creation.

Unfortunately, the Western religious mindset has been ineffective at accepting the fact that evolution can produce a perfection that has not already existed. Evolution produces complexity and organisms that did not pre-exist. From a mind-set heavily influenced by Platonic philosophy and a metaphysics of an “eternal present�, this emergence of new life should not be expected and should not be allowed to invade our present and perfect past. Natural selection ensures that it is generally the fittest that survive but there is no material force that compels the fittest to some times be more complex. Materialism can supply no reason for why life exists at all and thrives in so many environments. Life seems compelled to live, multiply, and at times evolve greater functional complexity over time. An Omega God drawing life towards itself would explain why these facts occur even while the past may at some times appear random.

Neither a materialistic view of life which would require an emphasis on the past to explain the present or Platonic philosophy with its focus on the eternal present, can provide a metaphysics of the future that is required by evolution. Daniel Dennett has argued that all we need to do to explain how evolution happens is to “reverse engineer� present life and uncover the deterministic laws of nature. But this focus on the past to explain the present precludes any focus on the future. Yet the possibilities and situations that produce the opportunities for evolution arrive from an ever dawning future. It is the future that provides the impetus and it is what accounts for the emergence of novel life. True novelty can not be uncovered by “reverse engineering� the present and simply following the step by step change of matter over time. It is this intrusion of the future into our presence that allows novelty to arise rather than simply being the outcome of a deterministic past.

As a point of clarification, I do not mean to imply that a more highly involved life form need be more complex. Nor that homo-sapiens are more highly involved than the bacteria that infect us and can lay claim to the most complex biology. Obviously, we can not. I simply mean to show that evolution can produce complexity and life forms with intelligence but without a metaphysics of the future that should not be expected.

The Bible is The Literal Word of God

Biblical literalists are emboldened by the following verse: “All scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.� (2 Timothy 3:16) The operative word here is inspiration or its Greek root theopneustos. Theopneustos means inspired or “God-breathed/blown and is used elsewhere as a claim to divine origin of dreams. So it is something God caused but it does not specify the manner of causation. It is inaccurate to use the fact that scripture is “inspired by God� to argue that it should be read literally and that it is inerrant. Dictation is not the only manner that writings could be inspired and it is rarely argued that God inspired scripture through that manner. Paul, whom is attributed as the author of 2 Timothy, was quite liberal with his use of Old Testament scripture. In most of his quotations of scripture, and there were 89 in all, Paul was quite liberal with the wording of the original text and many times reworded the scriptural quote to suit his argument. Many times his rewording would drastically alter a literal reading of the original.

There are other places where scripture is described as the “word of the lord.� Many times after a reading of scripture a pastor will say, “This is the word of the lord.� This view of scripture echoes from the prophetic books such as Isaiah. But it needs to be noted that the Bible contains many different types of literature; very little of which is prophetic. The problem with inerrancy is that its proponents use circular reasoning to prove the inerrancy of the Bible. The conclusion is decided and determined by the premise. Any evidence for contradictions in scripture is ruled out by the premise of the enterprise. Proponents of inerrancy rely heavily on deductive reasoning to prove their case. God is perfect; God inspired scripture; the inspiration of a perfect God would produce a perfect book. Therefore, no contradictions or errors in scripture can exist.

But is this true? Can we only learn about God and the Bible through deductive reasoning. As a point of fact, one actually reads and learns from the Bible inductively. One first starts with a particular book such as Matthew and from that reading formulates and opinion about the Bible as a whole. Then the Bible as a whole will speak for God. For an accurate exegesis, one must view a passage in its context and as one part of a whole.

In the words of Origen: “One must allow the whole Bible to speak for itself, whatever a single text may seem to say, for when the Bible speaks it speaks for God who inspired it.� In his early years, Origen studied under a rabbi and learned the pharisaical approach to scripture. This led Origen to develop what we generally call an allegorical interpretation of scripture. Origen believed there were three levels of meaning for any individual passage which can be applied concurrently. Those levels were the literal meaning, the moral application of that passage to the soul, and the allegorical or spiritual meaning. All of these levels are combined in understanding the mysteries of faith. Long before the time and natural genius of Charles Darwin, the Garden of Eden had an allegorical meaning and it is up to man to discover that meaning.

So in our modern age what is to be made of these allegorical passages and stories. It seems apparent that Biblical narratives only tell their story by looking at the world with them instead of reading the narratives and then looking at the world and searching for evidence of that lost paradise. These narratives are the work of men who recording the acts of God. These men had one foot in the present and one foot and two eyes peering into the future. They are peering into the future from a lost and confusing present and they see their God in that future.

Scripture was given to guide us towards that future and we must use the whole of scripture; we should not pick and choose. We can and should look for the allegorical meaning of a passage first because all scripture was written to relay a message.


In the Garden of Eden story it never says why Adam and Eve sinned it only states that they did sin. Well what was the sin? Was it really eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge or was it something more complex. Why was the story written in such a way? If good could have come from eating the fruit of that tree, God would not have forbidden the action. The knowledge of right and wrong is a good thing and something God would not have forbidden

The real "fall" was an overreaching for a different kind of knowledge. The Hebrew word yada which means “to know� is the root word for knowledge. Yada is an all-encompassing verb. It is meant to signify that to have knowledge of good and evil is to reach for universal knowledge. It is showing that man is reaching for the power to define what actually is good and what actually is evil. In the Garden of Eden, and in many situations since the writing of that mythical story, humanity was aspiring to be like gods by defining what is good and evil. Adam and Eve were collective humanity in that story and humanity has followed their lead many times since its writing. Humanity has been unbounded by the truth with which it is presented and many times has aspired to create its own truth. Whether the field is science, philosophy, morality, or sociology, to name a few, humanity has been striving to create its own truth; to rewrite the rules of life and many times with devastating effects.

Peter Atkins the Oxford physicist stated that search like this: “When we have dealt with the values of the fundamental constants by seeing that they are unavoidably so, and have dismissed them as irrelevant, we shall have arrived at complete understanding. We are almost there. Complete knowledge is within our grasp.�

The story of the Garden of Eden should not be read as a warning against studying and learning more about the world and the universe in which we inhabit. It is not a story that forbids scientific research. It does not command us to stand firm against stem cell research, exploring the galaxies, or the natural origins of life. It is a story that warns us that complete knowledge is never within the grasp of mere mortals. It is a warning that we should not create our own truths and decide for ourselves what is good and evil. Creating our own rules for life can lead to immediate negative consequences. We do not judge the truth; the truth judges us.

In the garden, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. They shared an innocent love. In the act of reaching for universal knowledge they made their existence and their love infinitely complex. Love need not be complex it only needs to be free. The story about Adam and Eve also displays this aspect of love, true authentic love. It is when we turn from the love that is freely given, and by necessity freely accepted, that we encounter the complexities of our existence. Part of what being created in God’s image means is that we are able to appreciate the beauty of the world and appreciate God’s love. We have deserted our paradise, a simple and humble admiration of true goodness, and, like the Prodigal son, gone wandering in a distant land away from the Father.

The Christian Soul

Many people ask what is a soul and how could God give humanity a soul when we were not specially created. Humanity is the result of a great chain of events; we descended from earlier creatures, many of which are now extinct. So when did God decide to intervene and give each of us humans a soul? Or rather was Divine intervention not necessary for the acquisition of a soul.

A soul is the self separate from the physical body. The western view of the soul is heavily influenced by the dualistic thinking of Platonic philosophy. Yet, modern science and research on the brain and cognition will tell us that the mind is very much dependent upon the body and our physical makeup and brain chemistry. This dualistic version of Plato has all but been refuted by modern science. Our mind is very much dependent upon matter. The evolution of matter produced our mind which in turn is capable of accessing a higher level of consciousness which impacts upon our soul. Perhaps we were just the first species on our planet that had enough evolution, the proper attributes, and enough intelligence to access a level of consciousness to experience God.

If our metaphysical view is future oriented we will see that evolution occurs because matter is being drawn towards God who is approaching the universe from an “always elusive future.� Guy Murchie, a science writer, views our planet as the ideal “soul school.� Murchie writes that of all conceivable environments earth is the “most educational.� All sorts of life thrive in all the diverse environments that one will encounter on our planet. It was this diverse and sometimes challenging environment that produced our species and challenges our soul. The emergence of our soul may be directly tied to evolution; but, that does not mean that it does not outlive our mortal body.

“In personal death we would not break our bonds with the universe but instead enter more deeply into relationship with it. Death, of course, is a natural occurrence, one that seems to go hand in hand with evolution, and therefore one to which we must submit passively. Yet from the personal center built up by all the relationships we have had to others and to the natural world during our lifetime, we can freely transform our dying, [Karl] Rahner believes, into a radically personal passage toward deeper participation in the universe.� (Haught p. 161).

Christian teachings include a “bodily resurrection.� That simply means that our death does not totally separate ourselves from matter. In Rahner’s view, “Whatever man knows about God he knows by knowing the world.� God means above all else “future.� Our physical death may simply be just one more step in the evolutionary process that is bringing that future about.

Humanity in a Vast Universe

It is often argued that our size and location in this vast universe is so inconsequential and haphazard that there must be no God that truly created and cares for humanity. If you add up all the stars in the Universe it would roughly be equivalent to every grain of sand on all of Earth’s shores. Consider what those beaches must seem like to an ant and how that ant must think it impossible for anything to visit all those shores. Yet, humans have mapped out all the far shores of our little world. We may feel inconsequential and overwhelmed by the size of the universe that surrounds us, but God has told us that we are important. Life like us was intended even though not specially created in a single day.

Modern physics tells us that the universe follows set laws; yet it remains unpredictable. To paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould: “If you were to rewind the history of life and restart millions of years ago, there is almost no chance humanity would re-emerge at all.� So our universe may be unpredictable but that does not mean it cannot be reconciled with meaning. This randomness, in the view of many, is incompatible with an omnipotent God. The diversity and evolution of life is an unpredictable process, but so is the winner of tonight’s lottery. Even though the winner is known beforehand, someone will win. That is the nature of the lottery. The nature of our universe and our world is that it will also produce winners; humanity has been drawn toward God.

However, we should look at our existence from a different point of view. The alternative to a Darwinian universe would be a static universe in which God would intrude upon all aspects of our life. God’s overwhelming existence would be fully present on the sidelines of our playing field. Yet our God is a God of love. Love requires freedom. The very freedom that so fuels the Problem of Evil is necessary for humanity to share authentic love with each other and God.

However, a perfect God can be experienced in our imperfect world. We met this God in the garden and we can experience Him in our home. “Divine power is not unilateral – the more one party has the less there is for the other. Rather, God shares: in organisms, power is mutual, flourishing, empowerment, symbiosis; the whole does not flourish unless the parts are thriving. But this is messy business and does not result in the well-being for all creatures all the time – how could it? If the body of God is billions of different species and individuals, each one with a desire to live, there will inevitably be many that do not survive or flourish.� (Intimate Creation).

The one reality is God. Since our God is a God of love, “evil� does not exist. All that lives is dependent upon God; “evil� does not depend on God it is simply a perversion of the Goodness that is God. I do not mean to argue that we do not experience tragedy in our material life; I only mean to suggest that it is God and not evil that is in charge. God is in charge because God is the ever dawning future which we are constantly evolving towards. Our past may seem haphazard and random, but God is the future.

Shalom,

Singletrack

[Vinnie]

Greetings and salutations to all. First, I would like to say thank you to singletrack1 for agreeing to discuss this topic with me. I hope it proves stimulating, challenging and most of all, educational for both of us. Also I would like to thank the Secular Web for graciously providing an appropriate venue for formal discussion. Finally, thank you to the moderators who volunteer and work hard to make it all possible.


Overview of the Debate

My opponent is going to be defending “theistic evolution� which means my opponent grants the accuracy of modern science. Now modern scientists do disagree on a number of issues but they agree on many more such as the following: that evolution happened, that the earth is very old (4.6 byo), big bang cosmology, the antiquity of the universe (15 byo) and the gargantuan size of the universe (billions of light years). Now there are of course different big bang models, and different mechanisms for descent with modification in the available scientific literature. The arguments I will put forth do not prioritize any specific big bang model or evolutionary mechanism over any other. I wish to use consensus views of modern science and where necessary, I will defend the veracity of these issues.

Science and religion generally operate under separate domains but sometimes these distinct fields of study intersect. I think in the case of an omnipotent and omniscient designer-God who designed the universe for life, science and religion do clash with one another.


SECTIONS

1. An Argument from Prayer.
2. Laplacian Theology
3. Natural Evil.
4. Irreducible Complexity
5. Design Flaws in Nature



Argument From Prayer

The veracity of religious statements such as “God has a plan for you� are not capable of being ascertained by modern science. Establishing the truth or falsity of this short statement is not feasible since any state of affairs is consistent with this view. If life is good God the provider is praised, if life is terrible we take comfort in that its all part of God‘s plan. No matter how bad or good things can get, the simple statement that “God has a plan� is beyond verification or falsification. This of course does not mean you can’t “reason� to this position through other beliefs and arguments.

While most religious statements operate outside the realm of scientific investigation and are therefore predicated solely upon the prior reasons given for holding to them, there is at least one aspect of religious life that science can discuss and that is prayer. Christian theism is virtually universal in its belief that God answers petitionary prayers. As Jesus said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." (Matthew 21.22, Mark 11) In the Lord’s prayer where Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, an act of petitioning God is obvious: “give us our daily bread�. Also relevant are Mark 9:29, Jesus’ petition in Gethsemane, Luke 1:13, 22:32, John 17, the disciples in Acts 1 (Judas’ successor if found via prayer), Romans 15:31, Paul petitioning for the removal of the thorn in his flesh and so on, ad infinitum.

Miracles are not infrequent throughout the Bible. Jesus was a miracle worker and his disciples were also said to be miracle workers. The basis of Christianity, according to Paul, is contingent upon an historical miracle. Further, just about all Christians today believe in a God who works miracles and they think God answers prayers. I do not deny the general validity of prayer in religious life. In fact, prayer has actually been shown to have some health benefits. It calms the angry, relieves the stressed out, gives the down-trodden hope. So what then is my problem with prayer?

Christian theism clearly believes in the miraculous and believes God answers requests through prayer. Prayer that is explainable through placebo, socialization and relaxation is never distinguished from miraculous, nature-defying answered prayer by the Bible or most modern theists. Modern theists believe in a God who heals at a distance in light of intercessory prayer. This means that an evaluation of double-blind prayer studies can either verify or falsify a central belief of modern day theism. What we are looking for is a “healing� that cannot be relegated to the realm of socialization, relaxation and/or placebo because such healings are explainable by naturalism as well as supernatural theism. Double-blind studies attempt to test the accuracy of distance healings via prayer. But before looking at some double-blind studies we shall examine one peripheral issue for the sake of thoroughness.


Personal Claims to Miracles

People often claim to have experienced miracles first hand. How do we explain these? For this debate I do not need to. The evidence for such miracles is always anecdotal, non-repeatable, usually private and has to be accepted or rejected based upon personal testimony. This is not science by any stretch of the imagination. I do not doubt the genuineness or sincerity of most of the claims but they simply do not stand as scientific evidence. Neither do claimed alien visitations or people saying “the psychic knew everything about me.“ Further, most answered prayers are not “miraculous� in scope. They are usually explainable by probability and statistics, relaxation, placebo, socialization and coincidence. That is why in places such as Lourdes, Epidaurus and Benares we find crutches but no prosthetic arms. When dealing with personal testimony its best to appeal to Hume’s maxim: “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.� But as noted, for this debate this type of anecdotal, non-scientific evidence will not suffice so we can leave it for another day.



Double-Blind Prayer Studies


One of the most popular was Byrd’s study where 383 patients were part of a randomized double-blind prayer study (I have the PDF) . Byrd writes, “Analysis of events after entry into the study showed the prayer group had less congestive heart failure, required less diuretic and antibiotic therapy, had fewer episodes of pneumonia, had fewer cardiac arrests, and were less frequently intubated and ventilated. Even though for these variables the P values were <.05, they could not be considered statistically significant because of the large number of variables examined.�


Byrd’s study found no statistically significant results granted the large number of variables. Six of twenty six monitored fields showed statistical significance and of these six, most were of borderline statistical significance. Later three more categories (days in hospital after entry, days in CCU after entry and discharge medications) were added and no improvement was found in them between the control and prayer group.

The positives results in the six categories were as follows: 5% fewer patients needed diuretics, 6% fewer needed respiratory intubation and/or ventilation, 7% fewer needed antibiotics, 5% fewer suffered cardiopulmonary arrest, 6% fewer developed congestive heart failure, and 5% fewer developed pneumonia. Most of these six categories were border-line for statistical significance as well. In other categories such as “mortality�, “Major surgery before discharge�, “readmissions to CCU� and so forth, no statistically significant differences were found. Is God primarily concerned with things such as ventilating patients and reducing antibiotic use in the CCU?


Byrd tried to overcome this statistical limitation by using two new methods which were successful in favoring the prayer group over the control group but the interconnected nature of these six significant fields was never accounted for. As Byrd writes, ““I used two methods to overcome this statistical limitation: incorporation of the outcome variable into a severity score, and multivariate analysis. Both of these methods produced statistically significant results in favor of the prayer group.�

As Gary Posner objects, “But was this lack of significance truly "overcome"? One must note the interrelationships among these six categories: for instance, the development of congestive heart failure automatically leads to the need for diuretics; the development of pneumonia automatically requires the use of antibiotics; and the development of either would likely increase the risk of developing the other, of requiring intubation or ventilation, and of suffering cardiopulmonary arrest. Thus, the development of any single complication may automatically lead to a cascade of other complications and therapeutic interventions that cannot be considered independent events, rendering the significance of Byrd's data highly doubtful.�

Also, as noted above, Byrd’s multivariate analysis leads to the conclusion that God is primarily interested in things such as ventilating patients and reducing antibiotic use in the CCU, not things such as mortality, major surgery and so on. God’s manifestations in response to petitions from his followers are rendered so marginal as to approach insignificance.

Byrd’s study is not the only one undertaken. The Mayo Clinic Proceedings in December 2001 contained the findings of a study entitled: "Intercessory Prayer and Cardiovascular Disease Progression in a Coronary Care Unit Population: A Randomized Controlled Trial." The study involved 799 patients and its conclusion was informative: “intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit." (I have the PDF file if wanted).



How Strong Are The Prayer Studies?

I do not believe the issue is absolutely closed at this time. My deep feelings are that “it’s a dead issue� but science largely rests upon testability and repeatable experimentation. I am all for the employing of more double and triple-blind intercessory prayer studies.

These prayer studies do have limits and each recognized them. Do we count only Christian prayers or all theists? Pure control groups can never be achieved granted the outside variable of family and friends who prayed for the patients and those theists around the world offering general well-being prayers. The fact is that in both the control and prayer groups people were praying. The prayer group presumably had more on average. If five intercessors were assigned to the prayer group then each patient had x+5 prayers while those in the control had x. The letter X represents the number of prayers each person already has due to family members, friends and general prayers on average.

So a crucial point of using a double blind prayer study to demonstrate problems with Christian theism is that “more prayer = more likely to be answered.� This can of course be denied as being so for two reasons: 1) the key criteria for answered prayer is “God’s will�. That is what matters, not the number of people praying. 2) It is theologically problematic to suggest that God “favors the side with more troops� as God knows two equally sick patients both need as much help regardless of which one is prayed for by outside observers.

The second reason is accurate but it undercuts petitionary prayer itself as we are forced to ask why the hunger of a child starving should be predicated on anyone’s prayer life to begin with? Healing at a distance type prayers are rendered valueless but continuing this line of thinking would leave us in a theology debate.

As for the first reason, this is of course incorrect. In Matthew 18:19-20 Jesus says "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." Notice how the statement begins with “again� which suggests repetitive teaching on this by Jesus. As noted above, Mark 11 and Matthew 21.22: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." Luke 11:1-11 also reinforces this as Jesus tells a parable about it. Se also the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18.

So we do have very good grounds for Biblically accepting that “more prayer translates into more likely to be answered.� This certainly doesn’t require inerrancy of any sort as it’s a clear and persistent teaching of Jesus according to the gospels. This means we expect to see more positive results for the prayer groups. I do not believe we have at this time. No statistical health benefits have been found at this time. I think to form very rock-solid conclusions we still need larger trials and more studies but at this time, preliminary double blind prayer studies have been generally negative for theists despite the positive press they receive. Statistical significance is most-definitely lacking.

Pointing out a lack of statistical significance in prayer studies isn’t even necessary. If God answers prayer, why, in the 799 patients studied above (Mayo) and in the 393 studied by Byrd, are there no instances of miraculous total healings recorded? As Jesus said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." (Matthew 21.22 and also Mark 11 and this is reasserted several times). Why didn’t many or some patients spontaneously heal? If God answers prayer as the Bible and most all Christians claim, these tests should have captured numerous examples of this shouldn‘t they?

In Byrd’s study all were born again Christians, whereas in the Mayo study theists were more diverse. At least in the former we expect significant examples of healings less mortality and so forth. It is not found. Of course the small sample size might prove grounds for objection. Both studies mentioned total about a thousand people for simplicity and this (1,000) is only a tiny fraction of the population (7,000,000,000). Yet against this it must be noted that God is supposed to be omni-benevolent and therefore, 1,000 or 373 test subjects should be overly adequate statistically since the value and health of one loved one should not be contingent upon world population size. The parable of the single lost sheep comes to mind.

In so far as virtually all Christian theists believe in a higher being who miraculously answers our prayers for healing, they are mistaken. No such being appears to exist and modern science seems to have relegated the power of an omni-benevolent and omnipotent deity to the realm of socialization, relaxation and placebo.





Laplacian Theology

Premise: God is not bound by quantum uncertainty or indeterminacy. I take it that an omniscient, omnipresent deity knows both the position and momentum of quantum particles. In a similar manner, God’s forecasting prowess is not limited by chaos. Modifying Lorenz’s famous statement we can say, “God knows if a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil is going to spawn a Tornado in Texas.�

What would happen if we knew the complete state (every particle) of the universe at one time? We could predict everything that would happen in the future and every event that had transpired in the past. God is said to have designed the universe. He fine tuned its parameters and physical laws. Outside the possibility of human free agency (and only if you are an open view theist) , God knew exactly what would transpire as this “super intellect was monkeying with physics�.


Evolution is often called “random and blind and open to chance�. This may be the case in one very limited sense but its not the truth of the situation. Evolution works under clear and definable physical, chemical and biological laws. In this sense it is certainly controlled and guided by immutable principles. God, if we view him as designing the universe and all its physical constants knew exactly what biological systems would evolve and when they would. No supercomputer can come close to God’s processor (a Pentium Infinity) and no human can avoid chaos and indeterminacy but God the omniscient and omnipresent being can and does. God is a Laplacian deity. He knew, as a simple matter of calculable and predictable physics and mathematics that the dinosaurs would be largely eradicated by an meteorite impact exactly when they were when he was fine-tuning the constants of the universe. Chaos and quantum uncertainty cannot be applied to an omnipresent and omniscient entity. This view has significant repercussions for theism as a whole.



Natural Evil.

Science has shown that nature is red in tooth and claw. Death and decay have been part of life since the beginning. Furthermore, we have natural evils such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Many cultures have sought to explain away the problem of natural evil. In Pygmy culture, when bad things happen its because the forest is sleeping. That is why these people of the forest will sing and dance around fires so loud--to wake the forest which protects and sustains them. The forest is their life and their deity.

In many other myths the origin of misfortune is often attributed to the whims of divinities motivated by human emotions such as jealousy, anger and sexual desire. In Egyptian mythology havoc was created on earth when Seth murdered his brother Osiris out of jealousy. Greek mythology also has a similar view of how evil and sickness and death were brought into the world. They were caused by the struggles of supernatural beings. In this case it was Zeus and Promethius and most of us know how the story ends---with the opening of Pandora‘s box which released evil into the world. Other myths abound (Shononi, Maori, Polynesian, etc) with similar views.

In Christianity we have the fall. Humans were originally placed in a garden paradise but after being bamboozled by a talking snake, the first couple consumed that forbidden fruit and the rest is our painful history. Many other cultures have views of a time of innocence.

Yet now we actually know the cause of these natural evils and Christian theists who (correctly) drop the fall need to account for the problem of natural evil. Science has shined a light upon nature. Diseases are not caused by demons or an angry divinity, but by viruses that have been around for billions of years. Hurricanes are not caused by angry ocean gods or evil spirits, but are a natural part of the created order. They exited long before humans inhabited the earth. The universe was designed by a Laplacian deity to harbor destructive hurricanes and deadly viruses. Sickness, death, pain and suffering was not caused by consuming a piece of forbidden fruit, they have been a part of the natural world since its inception--just waiting for self-aware beings who not only feel them but can comprehend their significance.

Science has outlined the causes of earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and plagues. They are a part of the created order and must be deemed “specific designs� of God who created the universe and its contents. Christian theists such as my opponent have (correctly) dropped the fall but this trades one set of problems for another. There is an obvious problem here and as we see, many cultures invented myths to try and explain it away. What I find interesting is that so many human cultures have had problems with the nature of God’s world. Something didn’t seem right or explainable to them. God specially designed the world to occur as it does yet most humans have thought there was something wrong with it!

So the question is, does an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent creator deity design a universe for life in such a way? The answer would appear to be no. God is responsible for every natural disaster that has ever occurred. In fact, he designed them to occur by fine-tuning the laws of the universe as he did. He designed the recent and tragic tsunami, he designed earthquakes that have devoured cities, he designed the weather to produce recurring tornadoes, hurricanes and floods and nature to hold diseases which all together have killed millions if not billions of people since the origin of man. These things were here long before humans. They are a part of God’s created order--that thing which Genesis deems “good�.

So either God is not all good, God is not all powerful or God is not all-knowing. Science does not leave much--if any--room for contrary thinking on this issue.


Cosmologocal Theology

Modern day science has discovered two facts about our reality: the universe is old, billions of years old. The universe is large, billions of light years large. The Universe's age is fifteen billion years old (that is a lot of candles!). The Universe's belt size measures 15 billion light years. A light year is six trillion miles (6,000,000,000,000). That's pretty damn big. We aren't even an atomic blip on the universe's radar we are so small. The earth itself might not even be an atomic pebble on the universe's radar. The sun might just barely be one.

So if an omnipotent and omniscient designer sets out to design a habitat for advanced life, why does he produce a design where it take 11 billions years for life to form? Shouldn’t an omniscient designer be a little more expedient? Eleven billion years is just plain overkill!

In addition to the time problems, if an omnipotent and omniscient designer sets out to create life on earth why does he design one with so much wasted and empty space? Lets take an astronomy tour:

This tiny pebble we live on in is a tiny ball in comparison to the largest planet of our solar system. The colossal king of our planetary neighbors, Jupiter, finds itself 318 times the size of earth. The great red spot of Jupiter is larger than the entire earth! But Jupiter itself is a speck of dust when compared to the gargantuan dimensions of our sun which possesses a diameter of 865,000 miles. Our sun which seems so huge is but a speck of dirt amidst our 100 million light year galaxy with hundreds of billions of other stars. A light year is almost 6,000,000,000,000 miles. Multiply that by 100,000 and you get 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles! That's 600 quadrillion miles! That number is everything but understandable to us yet the galaxy itself is minuscule in comparison to the universe as a whole. Our galaxy is only one of hundreds of billions if not trillions of other galaxies spread throughout our universe. Between all these galaxies is nothing but dark and empty space. If you think a galaxy like the milky way is huge, it is entirely dwarfed by the size of empty space separating it from its billions of neighbors who are generally equally spread themselves.


Theists would have us believe all of material existence was created and designed for us. But as Stephen Hawking noted, the whole tide of modern science stands against the anthropic principle, “We have developed from the geocentric cosmologies of Ptolemy and his forbears, through the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo, to the modern picture in which the earth is a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies in the observable universe. Yet the strong anthropic principle would claim that this whole vast construction exists simply for our sake. This is very hard to believe." [aBHoT, p. 130]

Will an omniscient designer end up with spare parts, wasted materials and invent something which takes far longer than necessary to achieve its goal?



Irreducible Complexity

Those who argue, like Behe for irreducible complexity have a further problem. The universe has expanded naturally, stellar evolution occurs naturally, planetary formation occurs naturally and life itself can form naturally. IDers claim it is too improbable for life to have developed by chance, not that it is impossible. This means in a universe where God set everything up to run itself (from the diurnal cycle to tides to universal expansion to stellar evolution) life failed and needed to be jump started.

I.D. proponents believe God specially designed and fine tuned the universe for life but the universe was not sufficient to produce life on its own. God had to tinker with his inadequate design. They may claim this was the goal from the get go but this is not the most expedient means of doing so that we would expect from an omnipotent and omniscient creator as a redundancy is evident.

Furthermore, how can they claim “the universe’s constants looks designed for life� but also claim “the universe is inadequate at producing life� or “life is so improbable as to be impossible�? The universe’s principles cannot be claimed to appear fine tuned for life if they led to a state of affairs such as our planet where life arising on its own is so improbable as to be impossible. This would mean the universe would appear to be more fine-tuned to not form life than the opposite view. Design views and especially intelligent design proponents often contradict themselves. I do not believe my opponent embraces the I.D. movement however, and I only mention this to be thorough since a great number of theists do accept this view.


Design Flaws in Nature

So God is behind evolution? Evolution generally has no “endgame� even if God did and knew where evolution would go. Because of a lack of endgame thinking, continued evolution has led to significant number of design oddities and flaws in nature. One of the most commonly known instances is the human eye which was “designed“ basically backwards and upside down. Oddly enough the human eye is often the victim of the incredibility fallacy. “I can’t conceive of how something so complex with so many parts could evolve by chance.� The eye is practically deemed an “irreducible complexity� by some theists. This is far from reality. The human eye did not miraculously materialize out of thin air. It is part of a very ancient process that gradually developed into the current human eye . It all began with a simple eyespot which turned into a recessed eyespot to a deep recession eyespot and so on. It went from a few light sensitive cells reporting important information about an important light source (the sun) to the complex product we see today and it did so at least twelve times independently in nature.

We can expect a flawed product from evolution which has no “ultimate endgame�. Therefore, if we believe God used evolution to create us and admit that yes, for all practical intents and purposes the human eye serves it purpose we are left with less of a problem. Less being the key word which still indicates some problem, however. The difficulty lies in accepting that an omnipotent and omniscient being would design a system so that his prized possession--the apple in Daddy’s eye--- would contain an example of a design flaw in nature.

We do not expect an eye that is built backwards and upside down with a blind spot to be the end result of an omniscient and omnipotent designer’s ultimate plan for us. Naturally such a being should be capable of designing a system that produces humans without an upside down and backwards eye. Evolution might not ultimately plan for the future, but an omnipotent and omniscient Divinity should. Why should we expect anything less than perfection and optimal design from an omniscient and omnipotent designer?

There are a number of other well known design flaws in nature. Evolution works wonderfully for all intents and purposes but it still does not look like the workings of an omniscient and omnipotent entity for the simple fact that it produces flawed products--the human eye being one example.



Summary

Scientific prayer studies, while having some inherent limitations and still being in their infancy, have shed some light on one aspect of theism. Healing at a distance type miracles through intercessory prayer, which the vast majority of theists believe in, come up empty on an evidential scale. No scientific evidence has been found for an spontaneous healing as well. Modern science has restricted God’s power to the realm of socialization, relaxation and placebo. There may be crutches at Lourdes, but there are no prosthetic arms.

Evolution has enormous power to gradually create very complex and advanced systems but it has no endgame and builds things on the basis of existing material and structures. This has led to a number of design flaws in nature. It is difficult to ascribe a process which leads to a backwards and upside-down human eye to an omnipotent and omniscient designer.

Science has explained natural evils as a basic part of life on this planet. They were here long before humankind. To combine two popular myths that describe the origin of human suffering and misfortune: non-literalist Christians who leave the garden of Eden have opened Pandora’s box for themselves. God is not limited by the butterfly effect or quantum indeterminacy. God is a Laplacian deity and this means when he fine-tuned and designed the nuts and bolts of the universe he was creating every natural disaster that has ever occurred. God knew as a simple matter of cause and effect that a devastating and tragic tsunami would occur in 2005 and that he was its direct cause. The world cannot be the product of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent deity.

For our current cosmological picture of the universe I end this first installment with a waxing poetic quote from Carl Sagan:

“One of science’s alleged crimes is revealing that our favorite, most reassuring stories about our place in the universe and how we came to be are delusional. Instead, what science reveals is a universe much older and much vaster than the tidy, anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. We have found from modern astronomy that we live on a tiny hunk of rock and metal third from the sun, that circles a humdrum star in the obscure outskirts of an ordinary galaxy, which contains some four hundred billion other stars, which is one of about a hundred billion other galaxies that make up the universe, and according to some current views, a universe that is one among an immense number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. In this perspective the idea that our planet is at the center of the universe, much less that human purpose is central to the existence of the universe, is pathetic.�

Vinnie

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

The next two concurrent statements will compose Round 2.

[Stumpjumper]

Greetings Vinnie and other members of our online zoo. :wave: In this second portion of our debate, I will attempt to counter Vinnie’s claims that modern scientific understanding of the universe and our world has proven that the existence of an Omni-max God is impossible. I simply plan to show that our view of the universe, our world, and life is consistent and compatible with a creator God. Furthermore, I feel that what we see in our universe is what would be expected from a God who is motivated and driven by self-emptying love.

The Effectiveness of Prayer

God is above all else a God of love. Prayer studies look for favoritism from God directed towards those who petition to God for healing from some dreaded illness. Firstly, there is no way to determine if recovery from cancer is the result of answered prayer or a positive reaction to chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Prayer studies based in a clinical setting look for a positive correlation between the amount of prayer and the amount of healing. A valid prayer study would require control of all relevant factors yet it is impossible to determine what contributed to the healing or lack thereof of specific patients. Also, many Christians will pray for the healing of others. Even if a specific patient may not be actively praying for healing, that does not mean that no one is petitioning God for the healing of that patient’s illness.

In addition, this view of petitionary prayer undermines the real purpose of prayer. The true purpose of prayer is to express a desire for communion with God, “I desire not your gifts but you.� The real purpose of prayer is to give thanks for our blessings, repent for our transgressions, and seek communion with God and His healing grace when we are hurting.

A view of prayer as an act of petitioning God to intervene into our lives and create personal wealth or other fulfill some other personal desire violates our very concept of human freedom and free will. This human freedom has produced a complex and creatively chaotic world that is in no way deterministic. This is a world in which changes in ourselves and in our reactions to our circumstances bring about future change. It is a mysterious future that we are ever lovingly being drawn towards and in many ways we have as much power as God does in bringing this future about.

Christian theism is virtually universal in its belief that God answers petitionary prayers. As Jesus said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." (Matthew 21.22, Mark 11) In the Lord’s prayer where Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, an act of petitioning God is obvious: “give us our daily bread�.

I will affirm that Christian teachings state that God answers prayer. But should God answer all our self-centered prayers simply because we ask? Or should we do as Jesus teaches in the Lords prayer and pray that “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven�. It is God’s will and Providence that gives us our daily bread and delivers us from evil, not our selfish desires that bring those actions about. We are taught against praying for our own self-centered concerns:
“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.� (James 4:3)

Christian theism clearly believes in the miraculous and believes God answers requests through prayer. Prayer that is explainable through placebo, socialization and relaxation is never distinguished from miraculous, nature-defying answered prayer by the Bible or most modern theists. Modern theists believe in a God who heals at a distance in light of intercessory prayer. This means that an evaluation of double-blind prayer studies can either verify or falsify a central belief of modern day theism.

Prayer is meant to strengthen our union with God and our trust in His providence and will. I do not agree with the premise that prayer studies are needed to prove the existence of a God that answers our every prayer. Indeed, I would be disheartened if prayer studies were to show that God only provides, heals, and shares His grace with those who actively and ritually seek union with Him. God sheds common grace upon all because God is in all. God is, in the words of poet Mary Oliver, the “light at the center of every cell.� That light is love and not a mild benevolent love but an all consuming fire that sheds light into the darkest corners of the world.

It is this light that reaches out to those who are hurting even though they may not seek help. It is the light that seeks humanity in the shadows where we are lost. Our lost self is as Thomas Merton described: “This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy. My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love –outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.�

The illusion is that only those who ask for healing, peace, self-worth, and purpose in their life will receive such things. Reality and scripture agree that God’s grace conquers all barriers and all of creation is encompassed by and freely drawn closer to God. Prayer is our act of freely and purposely seeking God’s grace and, although He will draw closer to those who seek His union, He never withdraws his love and grace from those who do not ask.

Petitionary prayer is always answered because in the act of praying one’s personal relationship with God is strengthened and deepened and the communion with God that is the basis for all prayer is sought and experienced. In the very act of praying the answer is received. This, of course, does not mean that the answer necessarily involves a miracle only that the true goal of prayer is fulfilled. In James again we are taught: “Come near to God and He will come near to you.�

In the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew there is a deeply insightful story about a Canaanite woman. Just after Jesus was teaching the Pharisees that it is not what goes into a man that defiles him it is what comes out of a man, grumpy Jesus appears in the very next verses. A Canaanite woman approaches Jesus and the disciples on the coast of Tyre. In that day, Canaanites were “dogs.� To Palestinian Jews they inhabited a much lower social rank than Samaritans. Samaritans were Jewish but Canaanites were not to be looked at much less talked to by proper Jews.

So when this Canaanite woman approached Jesus and the disciples to petition for the healing of her child the disciples wanted to immediately send her away. But Jesus addressed the woman and said: “I am sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not right to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to the dogs.� The woman replied “yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters table.� Jesus answered: “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.� The woman’s daughter was healed because of the mother’s faith.

This is a very complex story. First we have Jesus saying that he was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel and then we see that the faith of a gentile in the healing power of a Jewish rabbi has made her daughter whole. Did Jesus, as God incarnate, repent and change His mind? Perhaps, it was that the love of God could do nothing less than move closer to a woman who expressed the same type of kenosis. The most important part of this story is its overtones of an inclusive message and nature of God’s common love and grace for all peoples. This woman faithfully drew close to God and God drew closer to her. This non-Jewish woman boldly approached a unique Jewish rabbi out her self-emptying love for her daughter and it was her faith and love that healed her child. God’s love and common grace is inclusive and can be accessed by people regardless of their religion, race, or sexual orientation. God’s grace does not heal some more than others; common grace sheds light upon the world.

In so far as virtually all Christian theists believe in a higher being who miraculously answers our prayers for healing, they are mistaken. No such being appears to exist and modern science seems to have relegated the power of an omni-benevolent and omnipotent deity to the realm of socialization, relaxation and placebo.

I dispute the premise that a positive result from prayer studies is needed to prove the existence of an omnipotent and omni-benevolent deity. How can such studies take into account the following: God’s will, petitionary prayer from family members of the sick, human autonomy, gradations of illnesses, and a host of other uncontrollable and unquantifiable factors. I will concede however that petitionary prayer never works to help humans live forever and that the effectiveness of prayers for illness is sketchy at best. I am reminded, however, of the joke that goes something like this: An older women lived in a two story house by the river. It was the rainy season and the river started to flood. On the first day the water flooded the streets and was just coming up to her door. She knelt down and prayed to God for help. Just then a man on a rowboat came by and offered to take her to safety and she said “No thank you. God will provide.� The next day the water had moved her to the second floor and she knelt to pray again and this time a motor powered fishing boat offered her a lift. Again she said “No thank you. God will save me.� The third day she was on the roof and after praying a helicopter flew over and dropped a ladder. She again refused and subsequently drowned. At the pearly gates she asked “what gives.� I have been devout my whole life and I prayed for you to save me. God said: “I sent two boats and a helicopter. What the Hell were you waiting for?�

So have we relegated petitionary prayer to placebo and what causes this placebo effect? Andrew Newburg, a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, published two books titled The Mystical Mind and Why God Won’t Go Away after conducting brain imaging studies on meditating subjects. The studies included Buddhists meditating and Franciscan nuns using contemplative prayer. The results were that during meditation and prayer there was, not surprisingly, an increase in activity in the prefrontal lobes which are responsible for will, intention, and our ability to focus our attention.

However, it was also discovered that the activity in the posterior parietal lobe was much less pronounced during the meditative session than before the session. This is the part of the brain that allows us to orient ourselves in space and provides a sense of boundary between humanity or the rest of the world and ourselves. Lowered activity in this area produces a sense of unity or oneness which Newburg terms “absolute unitary being.� Science can show us what our brain is doing while we are praying, but it can not show whether or not God was present at that time. This was observed in Franciscan Nuns as well as Buddhists and if it is truly God that is being experienced then it would point to the premise that God does not favor one group over another. However, it could point out that God’s love is available and common to all and that when we break down the barriers that separate us from others His love is more apparent and accessible.

So does petitionary prayer sometimes work? Yes, in the words of theologian John Hick: “In my opinion it is an observable fact that such prayer does sometimes ‘work’. I do not however see this as a matter of our asking an omnipotent God to intervene miraculously on earth and of his then acting accordingly. I see it rather as depending upon a mental field or network, below the level of normal consciousness, within which we are all connected and through which our thoughts, and even more our emotions, are all the time affecting one another. These influences are usually largely filtered out by the mechanism that preserves our individual autonomy. But when in ‘prayer’, or what Buddhists call loving-kindness meditation, we concentrate upon some particular individual who is in a distressed state of anxiety, fear, anger, despair, etc., concretely visualizing a better possibility for them, this can have a positive effect. Even in the case of bodily distress our thought may affect the patient’s mind and sometimes through this his or her bodily state. And I would suggest – outrageously, from the point of view of the contemporary secular mindset – that quite possibly the thou of whom we are sometimes aware in prayer is a reality, but is what the eastern religions call a deva, a god in distinction from God, or in western terms an angel.�

What is God?

Premise: God is not bound by quantum uncertainty or indeterminacy. I take it that an omniscient, omnipresent deity knows both the position and momentum of quantum particles. In a similar manner, God’s forecasting prowess is not limited by chaos. Modifying Lorenz’s famous statement we can say, “God knows if a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil is going to spawn a Tornado in Texas.�

I reject the label “Laplacian Deity� while affirming that God is omnipresent. Pierre-Simon Laplace in his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities put forth a view of a deterministic universe which included a formulaic history and future. Laplace expanded upon a Newtonian view of the universe and stated that the future can be extrapolated from a minute study of the past and present by using deterministic probabilities. Chaos theory has obviously dealt Laplace’s view of the future a serious blow. The main problem with Laplace’s metaphysical outlook is that when using traditional statistics to determine future events the systems that these statistics are applied upon exhibit a very sensitive dependency on initial conditions (which can not be known to us hence “Butterfly Effect�). Indeed, a single seemingly inconsequential individual event or circumstance might determine the outcome of a future event. Some minute detail as a butterfly flapping its wings might be vital event that determines the future. I will accept that an omnipresent God knows of such events but I reject the notion that God uses such events to probabilistically determine the future circumstances for His creation. Although Einstein stated “God does not play dice with the universe� in some ways God indeed does do such a thing by the very act of creating free moral agents capable of making their own choices and in effect influencing and determining the future.

Outside the possibility of human free agency (and only if you are an open view theist), God knew exactly what would transpire as this “super intellect was monkeying with physics.�

I hold to human freedom and one does not need to be an Open View Theist to make such a claim. Omniscience and libertarian free will are fully compatible. It is the interconnected freedom of God’s creatures that create the reality we experience. Indeed, Chaos theory is alive and well while Laplace’s view of the world was buried when meteorologists attempted to use statistics to give us a weather “forecast�. There are many definitions of omniscience but I have never seen a coherent argument that affirms the argument “knowledge equals causation or determinism�. The fourteenth century Jewish philosopher Levi Ben Gerson convincingly held to omniscience while arguing that God cannot know future contingents because such propositions are neither true nor false and hence logically impossible to know. The statement “I will eat spaghetti for dinner tomorrow� is not true now nor is the opposite statement “I will not eat spaghetti for dinner tomorrow.� It is neither true nor false because the future is determined by my very action. It is my will to determine which of these statements is true. Gersonides held to omniscience but his overall view has been termed Open View Theism.

Two centuries after Levi Ben Gerson, the Jesuit Philosopher Luis de Molina put forth the most coherent and scripturally appropriate definition of omniscience in his “doctrine of scientia media� or position of middle knowledge. Stated briefly: “Future events are not contingent upon God’s knowledge, rather, the converse is true; God’s knowledge is contingent upon future events.� It is termed “middle knowledge� because God has knowledge of all events between what can happen and what will happen. Molina created a scripturally sound definition of omniscience that rejected the predestination or determinism of St. Thomas and Gersonide’s God who has no knowledge of the future. Molina’s middle knowledge was expanded upon by Alvin Plantinga when he stated that God knows all possible worlds and that each free response by a human free agent is a response in one and only one possible world. Because God knows all possible worlds, God knows which world is the actual world. The possible worlds scenario is a rather technical model but it states that God knows exactly what I will freely decide at any time in any circumstance. God also knows the counterfactual decisions that I could make in another possible world; but simply by knowing these counterfactuals and the factual, God in no way takes away the libertarian free will of humans.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines God’s omniscience in this way: “By His providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering al things well. For all are open and laid bare to his eyes, even those things which are yet to come into existence of the free action of his creatures.�

To apply this view of God’s omniscience to Vinnie’s statement: “I take it that an omniscient, omnipresent deity knows the position and momentum of quantum particles.� My reply is that God does know our actions but does not control how human actions affect the course of those particles. Authentic love requires freedom and it is this very freedom that creates the reality in which we inhabit. Scripture and Jewish and Christian tradition hold to free will. Chaos theory actually confirms that a free will choice of a butterfly seeking out the nectar of one flower over another could influence the path of a storm two continents away. This is what we would expect from an interconnected creation of free moral agents.

No human can avoid chaos and indeterminacy but God the omniscient and omnipresent being can and does. God is a Laplacian deity. He knew, as a simple matter of calculable and predictable physics and mathematics that the dinosaurs would be largely eradicated by a meteorite impact exactly when they were when he was fine-tuning the constants of the universe. Chaos and quantum uncertainty cannot be applied to an omnipresent and omniscient entity.

All creatures, dinosaurs included, have free will. God does not allow us free choices and then control the minds of our dogs. God did not create based upon probability. God created free willed creatures who are capable of loving each other and sharing in God’s love as well. In the story of the Canaanite woman we see that God is in a sense blinded by His love and grace. He is blinded by the love that He freely gives and expects us to accept freely through faith. Faith is gift that was lovingly given to all and it is when we express this faith in the goodness and love of God that we are using our free will in way in which it was intended. I do not mean that God is blinded in a literal sense only that His actions are guided by love. Jesus called the Canaanite woman a dog but her reaction to that treatment was one of humility and self-emptying love for her child. Jesus responded in kind and it was the faith of that woman in the goodness of God that healed her child. Was Jesus an unjust judge who healed because of nagging petition? I think that rather Jesus did the only thing that someone who is guided by love could do when faced with a love nearly as great as His own by responding in kind. God does not determine the events of the world based upon some statistical formula. Rather God created and sustains the world guided by a chaotic love that produces the reality we experience.

The Free act of Creation and Natural Evil

Science has shown that nature is red in tooth and claw. Death and decay have been part of life since the beginning. Furthermore, we have natural evils such as hurricanes and earthquakes…. In Christianity we have the fall. Humans were originally placed in a garden paradise but after being bamboozled by a talking snake, the first couple consumed that forbidden fruit and the rest is our painful history. Many other cultures have views of a time of innocence.

In my previous post we see that God’s nature is above all else love and that love guides His every action. In the case of “natural evil� God’s nature has led Him to pull back from his creation to give it the space it needs to develop on its own and become something that could be called “other.� We do not live in the world described by the ancients nor a Newtonian universe; we live in an emergent, chaotically dynamic and self-organizing universe. A universe governed by natural law but unpredictable nonetheless. In Christianity we have the story of the fall to explain the world we inhabit. The “fall� however is part of a mythical creation story. It is a story of growing up out of innocence and encountering a world very much different from the Garden of Eden. It is a story of humanity’s desire to return to the innocence of our collective youth but of taking responsibility for our own actions in a world that is marked by death and decay. Above all else it is a story our relation to God. We are free creatures and are able to make decisions that can have profound impacts upon ourselves and upon our relationship with God.

Diseases are not caused by demons or an angry divinity, but by viruses that have been around for billions of years. Hurricanes are not caused by angry ocean gods or evil spirits, but are a natural part of the created order. So the question is, does an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent creator deity design a universe for life in such a way? The answer would appear to be no. God is responsible for every natural disaster that has ever occurred.

“The glory of God is every creature fully alive.� (Irenaeus) I hold to a panentheistic view of God’s relationship with the world. It is a model of the universe and the world as God’s body. It is a view in which we find God in the Garden, in the hospital, and on every winding path we take in our journey through life.

The book of Genesis makes one very general claim: God is the source of all existence and he calls this existence “good�. Looking at this existence through an evolutionary perspective we find a somewhat disconcerting past. An evolutionary picture of reality is marked by death, decay, and hardship. It is a competitive past and a past that shows that the same evolutionary process that produced our bodies and our brains is responsible for cancer cells and by deadly viruses that have been evolving for millions of years. Natural disasters like floods help some of God’s creatures yet destroy the lives and habitats of others. These “natural evils� are a very real feature of a natural process that is responsible for producing humanity. Yet, “evil� should not be considered real. Evil does not have ontological status; it is only recognized in relation to the “good� that God calls his existence and the “Good� that is the very essence of God. In the words of Thomas Aquinas: “The way God is governor of all things matches the way God is their cause.� God caused humanity to be causes as well. If God were to govern alone and all-powerfully, Creatures such as we are would be without a cause and would not have any power to affect the world in which we inhabit. God being loving goodness is drawing humanity towards our shared goal while allowing us to creatively participate in this endeavor. Natural evil then is only apparent as a perversion of the good which is God and is our eschatological goal. “Evil�, be it natural or moral, is only discernible when it is compared to goodness of God and our common goal. The resurrection is so important to Christianity for the very reason that it has shown us that this common goal is attainable and available to all of humanity.

What I find interesting is that so many human cultures have had problems with the nature of God’s world. Something didn’t seem right or explainable to them. God specially designed the world to occur as it does yet most humans have thought there was something wrong with it! So either: God is not all good, God is not all powerful or God is not all-knowing. Science does not leave much--if any--room for contrary thinking on this issue.

God has given life a great deal of freedom and allowed it to evolve at its own pace. Indeed, many would say that we, as living things, are actually co-creators in this endeavor called existence. We find this world not quite right because we are being pulled forward by a force that is quite right and good. The something wrong that we see in the world is only perceivable when compared to an absolute standard of good which is God. God is all good, all powerful, and all-knowing and God is motivated by the self-less and freely offered authentic love that is the driving force behind creation.

Modern day science has discovered two facts about our reality: the universe is old, billions of years old. The universe is large, billions of light years large…… So if an omnipotent and omniscient designer sets out to design a habitat for advanced life, why does he produce a design where it take 11 billions years for life to form? In addition to the time problems, if an omnipotent and omniscient designer sets out to create life on earth why does he design one with so much wasted and empty space?

What would be the appropriate size of the universe for life on earth to feel special? We look out at the stars in distant galaxies and are grasped by a feeling of wonder and awe and the enormity of it all. Indeed we can feel wholly insignificant when we realize that we inhabit a rather small planet in a small solar system in the suburb of the Milky-Way galaxy. Yet, in our hearts we believe we are significant and we are told we are significant by divine revelation. We are significant because we are alive. Material existence was created for life and our life and possibly afterlife is dependent upon matter. One could say that God was patient in waiting for life to emerge on our planet but then God is not bound by time and hence time has no relevance in regards to His actions.

We know from examining the universe that it is governed by natural laws that control all aspects of existence. Is it so difficult to believe that once God set the laws in motion that the universe would expand and galaxies and solar systems would form in accordance with natural laws. If that is the case then we should not be surprised by the “wasted space� if it really is wasted space. Perhaps, all matter in the universe serves some purpose and is part of the common goal of creating life.

The late theologian Karl Rahner sees man as bound to matter and after death he sees man as achieving an “all-cosmic body� as our “bodily resurrection�. Man knows about God from experiencing the mystery of the world. We move ever into mystery without abandoning our sense of a place in the world. Christianity is more than anything else a mystery; it is the mystery of man being drawn towards the incomprehensible facts of our existence and being drawn towards the future which is God.

Our desire to know is unquenchable and the vastness of the universe is a fertile feeding ground designed to help feed this desire. The universe might seem infinitely vast and our place insignificant from our current perspective but if we truly do achieve an “all-cosmic body� as Rahner believes then the size might be just right or maybe even a little too small.

This would mean the universe would appear to be more fine-tuned to not form life than the opposite view. Design views and especially intelligent design proponents often contradict themselves.

You actually make a good point here about a contradiction in the claims of ID proponents. How could we be fine-tuned for life yet life then needed a little jumpstart to create IC micro-organisms? My theology neither requires nor desires any of the claims that ID proponents put forth and I agree most of their claims are inconsistent at best and in some cases (Jonathon Wells comes to mind) willfully deceptive. I believe that our universe exists to create life and would not be surprised if life exists elsewhere within the universe.


So God is behind evolution? Evolution generally has no “endgame� even if God did and knew where evolution would go. Because of a lack of endgame thinking, continued evolution has led to significant number of design oddities and flaws in nature.

Why would we expect God to arbitrarily put a stop to the free process that produced our physical bodies? Perhaps, there is more that we could become and evolution will take us there either through further evolution of our physical body or a continued evolutionary journey after our current bodily life is over. Assuming that the “endgame� must be experienced in our physical body for life and existence to have a purpose is an arbitrary assessment. Assuming that matter has produced our minds and allowed us to access a universal consciousness, then our bodies are simply a vehicle for our cosmic journey. Who is to say that the death of a grandmother and the birth of the 2006 New Year’s baby do not both represent a small step in the evolution of species in particular and life in general. Continued evolution has led to some oddities; but, it is also responsible for our emergence as a species and possibly part of some cosmic journey that we are only barely able to grasp with our “frail and feeble minds�.

God knew as a simple matter of cause and effect that a devastating and tragic tsunami would occur in 2005 and that he was its direct cause. The world cannot be the product of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent deity.

Foreknowledge of our free will choices does not equal willful causation. Archbishop Desmond TuTu recently gave an invocation titled God, help us wipe the tears from your eyes. In Tutu’s words: “The images that we have of God are odd because God -- this omnipotent one -- is actually weak. As a parent I understand this. You watch your child going wrong and there’s not very much you can do to stop them. You have tried to teach them what is right, but now it is their life and they are mucking it up. There are many moments when you cry for your child, and that’s exactly what happens with God. All of us are God’s children. ….Can you imagine what God must have felt watching the holocaust? Watching Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Watching Rwanda? Imagine God watching Iraq and saying, “These are my children here, and they are killing my other children. And I can’t do anything because I have said to them, “I give you the space to be you and that space enables you to make choices. And I can’t stop you when you make the wrong choices. All I can do is sit here and cry.� And God cries until God sees beautiful people who care, even if they may not do earth-shattering things.�

God has given us the freedom to move our lives in the proper direction. That freedom may appear to us as random and careless but that freedom has produced life and love and purpose. It is the very love that is produced by the freedom of our lives that wipes the tears from God’s eyes.

Vote for Pedro,

Singletrack

[StrictSeparationist]

Vinnie, you've missed the deadline for your post in this round. Please have it submitted by Wednesday, the 31st or risk forfeiture of the debate.

[Vinnie]

Free Love

Sorry for the two day delay……

Greetings to everyone reading this and to Singletrack, my sparring partner for this discussion. A few times throughout this debate response I refer to singletrack as “my opponent�. I do not mean anything negative by this or anything like “enemy� by opponent. I simply mean the person who has taken up the opposite side of the debate when I us such language.


Free Love

My debate opponent, singletrack did a good job of laying out his own theology. I actually appreciate his formulation of God as love with a quote from John Haught. In this may lie one of the more valid attempts at explaining the "hidden-ness of God" in the world. In order for us to freely choose God, a being of infinite love cannot over-power us with his presence. But I am not even sure if my opponent was using this line of thought to defend theism against “hidden-ness� charges. It flirted with the issue but left matters unclear. I will respond to it under the belief that is does attempt to address the question of divine hidden-ness. If this was not the goal then my comments can be ignored or either corrected if mistaken.

As fancy and credible as this poetic terminology may sound, the ideology lacks external support, contradicts biblical support and violates common sense. Let’s examine all three problems in reverse order:

Common sense: If I fall in love with a women and want her to love me back I am going to make my affection and love known. Hidden-ness of my love for her is not consistent with me "wanting to be with her". The same for God.

Biblical Support: Sure we only see in part now as one of the most inspiring chapters of any literary work ever composed claims (Corinthians 13) but the Bible clearly says that all men know the truth about God but it is our wickedness that suppresses the truth. This is found in Romans 1. Remember, it is the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. Neither of these propositions is consistent with the "hidden-ness of God". So singletrack may be on to something of a small start for theism with the "overpowering--love route" but its not Christian theism.

External Support: It is claimed that true love cannot overpower but it is not explained why the hidden-ness of God is required for true love to occur? You can love someone intensely and up front with all your being and they can choose to either love you back or not. Further more, God has shown himself---or directly interacted//spoken to many people throughout Biblical history. If this doctrine was true in that true love cannot overpower then God must have violated their free will.

Furthermore, all the predestination language throughout the Bible is also problematic for a “free-love� theology as is being advocated here. I for one, flatly reject compatibilism as a contradiction in terms.

Big Bang
My opponent also quotes rabbi Isaac Luria (15th century Galilee) who supposedly, long before the big bang, described the creation of the universe. Even if his account resembled reality, how many religious Christians and Jews described creation incorrectly? How many different formulations have their been? Pattern-seeking story-telling bipedal primates are bound to get a “hit� sooner or later in their guesswork. This is how psychics can con observers: people ignore the misses and concentrate on the hits. But that this rabbi didn't know what he was talking about is evident in the following quote:
Following this immense contraction, God’s first cosmic act was the emission of a single ray of light. This beam pierced through the void and then expanded in all directions. Think of it as God’s first breath exhaling into the abyss after eons of slumber and filling it with His divinity. This is how the universe was born.�
Undoubtedly this is built off of Genesis 1 where God creates light (unfortunately this occurs after the earth which is awaiting cultivation). But a single visible ray of light was not God's first act of creation after the big bang according to modern science. This is patently false. Luria cannot be faulted, he didn't know big bang cosmology. Those who claim he did are a different story.

My opponents didn’t press this issue at all but did speak of the universe as being created. This has not been demonstrated. As Briane Green recently wrote: "The big bang . . . is a theory . . . that delineates cosmic evolution from a split second after whatever happened to bring the universe into existence, but it says nothing at all about time zero itself. And since, according to the big bang theory, the bang is what is supposed to have happened at the beginning, the big bang leaves out the bang. It tells us nothing about what banged, why it banged, how it banged, or, frankly whether it ever really banged at all." --Fabric of the Cosmos--04 p.272

I am arguing that science and Christian theism are opposed but many theists find strong evidence for God in cosmology today. The Big Bang and the existence of God is quite a popular subject and one I hope we can spend some more time on throughout this discussion. Today scientists do not doubt the big bang occurred. The exact big bang model is very much open for discussion right now though.


Evolution and the Future

My opponent says that “In the biblical view of the word, “God� is defined before all other definitions as “future.�� This is somewhat of news to me. God would more accurately be defined as existence: past, present and future. The ground of being, of all that there is. That is why many theologians believe in the “already-but not yet kingdom of God�.

Biblical writings focus upon the future and the Kingdom of God that is to come. God is the future; the past in inconsequential. Scientific thinking focuses too much on the past and it uses the past as a prediction of the present. But, the present was the future of the past. If one focuses too much on the past one will never expect or experience anything truly new.

The irony of this statement is astounding. The phrase “Biblical writings� carries connotations with it that embody “allegiance to 2,000 year old religious texts�. How does a religion built off of a historic revelation of God in the person of Jesus and events at Calgary not look to the past? How does not only a historic religion such as Christianity, but a historic religion contingent upon ancient texts not focus too much on the past?

If we want to experience anything truly new, are we going to do it by reading, and basing our lives on two-thousand plus year old documents and religious beliefs?

Do not point out the speck in a scientist’s eye while neglecting the plank in a preacher’s. Science has a healthy track record of technological advances in its resume. Its past-probing has paved the way for a better today and hopefully a better tomorrow. It doesn’t simply focus on tomorrow—making inaccurate end time predictions and return time-tables—it ushers tomorrow in through new technology.


Theistic evolution provides a metaphysics of the future and can express what is real and what may be to come. Materialism by definition can only express what is identified as matter. Matter, of course, can be combined in any number of arrangements to constantly produce diverse arrangements through evolution. But there is no underlying being or reality behind such arrangements. Materialism will only be able to describe what consists of matter; which is lifeless atomic and sub-atomic particles.

My opponent doesn’t understand materialism. Life formed on this planet naturally. Life consists of matter behaving under the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. Life is a materialistic product. From Protons, to puddles, to people, to parrots to Pluto---they all are discussable by materialism. Understanding morality, love, desire, happiness and other similar components of our lives is not contingent upon theism.

But, matter does not equal reality. Reality is matter and life; but, it is also subjective experience, feelings, love, and goodness. Subjective experience such as consciousness can not be fully tied to physical or material processes in the brain. There is a reality that exists not explainable by materialism. This reality is what we experience in our everyday life. It is the reality that appreciates beauty in nature, art, and music. It is a reality that is irreducible, difficult to express with words, and is constantly drawing mankind forward.

Life is matter in a certain chemical and physical arrangement. Just as a star is matter in a certain chemical and physical arrangement with forces acting upon it as it obeys physical laws. What my opponent states is largely an assertion. I simply have to ask what is the evidence for this? I thought the whole idea of evolution was simple to complex? Why is there a logical ban on explaining self-consciousness for materialists? We would simply say that it’s a product of our brain development ultimately driven by evolution and natural selection. Simple to complex.

What we probably have here is the classic argument from incredibility: [“I can’t believe how evolution could have given rise to something such as “beauty� or “self consciousness�. We might as well replace “beauty� with “human eye� and become intelligent design proponents!

Materialism can supply no reason for why life exists at all and thrives in so many environments.

No one can demonstrate, ultimately, why there is something rather than nothing. Sure we can claim to be able to explain why but testability is not an option. We can ask the same thing of theists: “Why does God exist?� They may claim he is a necessary being or some such thing but they of course can never demonstrate such a claim and a materialist could as easily say “existence must exist� or whatever he wants and his view is equally as evidenced as the theist’s in this regard---that is to say, not evidenced at all. Rather than force fit things into our preconceived prejudices, sometimes we should be content to say “I don’t know�. The wise person will proportion his or her beliefs to the evidence.

Not having a reason for something is also not adequate in itself to over-turn something. It merely demonstrates that a view is incomplete at present. I do not know of anyone who claims to be able to explain everything. Theists who, as my opponent suggest, are so primarily concerned with the future would be better left tending to difficulties involved with their own perceptive deficiencies in this regard. Fussing over the incomplete knowledge of materialists while their intensely eschatological outlook has them only ‘seeing in part, as in a mirror dimly lit’ until the future is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.



Life seems compelled to live, multiply, and at times evolve greater functional complexity over time. An Omega God drawing life towards itself would explain why these facts occur even while the past may at some times appear random.

My opponent adds in a caveat: “even while the past may at some times appear random�. What this shows is that there is definitely not an exact correlation here. That is what my first installment demonstrated. The universe is far too large and old to be the product of a omni-deity who designed it for life. Now my opponent at least expressed a fraction of an agreement with this when he mentions life as at some times appearing random (meaning it doesn’t look like we think it should).

But my opponent has a problem here. Suppose I have a sandwich in the fridge. I come home and it is gone. Naturally I assume someone ate it or took it or tossed it. Of course I could say “magical elves came and stole it�. This latter view would explain why the fact of my missing sandwich occurred.

So my opponent claims that an omega God explains the desire of life to spread and grow. Sure it could explain it, but does it explain it correctly, is it needed as an explanation? Just because something could explain something is irrelevant. That something has to be required, or at least needs to be testable or evidenced or warranted. That something must also be real or exist. I do not think magical elves exist and I do not see any evidence for God either. Before God can become an explanation of something its existence must be established or God must be defined and shown to be necessary as an explanation for that something.

In the case of life its not made clear that an omega God is needed as an explanation. The conditions are right for life to develop and thrive on this planet. Just as the conditions were right for stellar evolution to occur in our galaxy. Stars form, go nova and reform. I don’t hear anyone claiming stellar evolution requires an omega God.

The theist wants to change everything and invent special importance every time the topic is “life�. First the theist has to justify this transition. That of course requires justifying theism itself since finding transcendent purpose requires a demonstration of transcendence. Theists tend to jump in and assume what they need to be proving—that life is transcendentally special or different from other matter in the universe. I do not doubt that I am different from a star, but I also do not doubt that I am made from stardust. The theist apparently does. You cannot simply assert life is not explainable by materialism while everything else in the universe is. Especially not when we have learned so much about living creatures such as ourselves through the sciences—including the brain and human thought. We can even create life now through cloning. The theist has to explain why we are not stardust, not assume such. The materialist simply believes “stardust� is matter than can “love� if in the proper arrangement.

Also, the increasing complexity of life is explainable by evolution. Natural selection keeps building off of current structures over long periods of times which results in increasing complexity. This is easily seen in something like the human eye which began long ago as a simple eye spot with a few light sensitive cells.

Finally, I went through the universe in my first installment and shows it looks nothing like the product of an omni-deity who designed it for us. Finally, life in the universe is most likely very rare. So the universe does not look like a life-friendly place that is being drawn towards an omega God. Thus singletrack’s statement is empirically false. He at the least needs to be explain away all the wasted space, time and why the inhospitable nature of 99.99999 (keep writing nines till the keyboard breaks)% of the universe. He must also, in this context, demonstrate that his view is tenable: that the universe with all its wasted space, time and inhospitable nature looks like its was created for life that is drawn to an omega God. That is no easy challenge.


The Bible

I knew coming in that my opponent was not an inerrancy advocate and none of my post was geared towards a theism of this variety. I once held similar views. I was a proponent, not of verbal plenary inspiration, but of qualitative inspiration.

I of course disagree with many parts of this section but this is not specifically an inspiration model debate and I have avoided Bible arguments for the most part. I have debated inspiration with a conservative (Robertlw) here on this forum and I would love to move on and do so in the future with a more liberal view such as singletrack’s. Maybe later. Some of this material is not yet relevant. I will discuss the whole section in the future if it becomes necessary, but for now, since the Bible is certainly important to this discussion I would like to pursue one line of inquiry.

I believe my opponent correctly claimed inerrancy advocates use circular reasoning but the irony is that his views are also ultimately circular. Origen was quoted: ““One must allow the whole Bible to speak for itself, whatever a single text may seem to say, for when the Bible speaks it speaks for God who inspired it.� Singletrack also said, “we must use the whole of scripture; we should not pick and choose.� Finally, and importantly, “Then the Bible as a whole will speak for God. For an accurate exegesis, one must view a passage in its context and as one part of a whole.�

Why is taking the Bible as a whole necessary for accurate exegesis? This assumes it should be treated as a whole. This assumes the literary works are God’s word, otherwise, why do we interpret diverse texts in light of one another?

What we have here is Singletrack assuming a canonical dimension to the Bible. The author of Leviticus wrote far removed in time and space from the author of the Gospel of Mark. Claiming that Leviticus speaks for Mark or vice versa is patently false. Imagine going to the public library and quoting Jane Austen and claiming she speaks for Shakespeare. Assuming there is a combined meaning to Mark and Leviticus is also an assumption. Probably not a good assumption at that.

Christians fail to appreciate the individual nature of the Bible's components. Canonization attempts are also very much inadequate. I invite my opponent to change my views here. Until a canonical dimension is demonstrated, claiming "the Bible says" when a Christian is quoting a specific passage from their holy book makes about as much sense as saying "the public library says" when one wishes to quote Jane Austen or William Shakespeare. One should simply reference the individual work, chapter and verse.

Until one can demonstrate that the “Bible� is anything more than a collection diverse books it must not be treated as anything but that. Take, for example, my college English text. ‘The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature’ by Michael Meyer. This is a collection of diverse, stories, plays, poems and so forth. It has a “whole� dimension to it because it was put together with a particular purpose but no one in their right mind would say that Kate Chopin (Story of an Hour, p. 15) speaks for Susan Glaspell (p. 1000, Trifles) or that the trees can speak for the forest here.

The stories inside may have different themes, contradictory views and outlooks and so forth. They were put together for a purpose of course, just as the Bible was. But at least the college text has a narrative or rather a framework linking together the different works into a coherent whole. That is the only thing making the stories a part of a coherent literary product. The Bible is merely a collection of different works with no overarching framework or narrator connecting them save the interpreter. But we are still not even sure why we should be viewing them with wholeness to begin with. I leave that ball in singletrack’s court if he chooses to respond to these points.


The Christian Soul

My opponent stated some of his views on souls but he did not provide evidence for them. I for one lack belief in the existence of souls. I also am not convinced a “soul� is a meaningful term to begin with. I would use the same linguistic arguments against a “soul� as a referring phrase as I would against “God�. A soul may be immediately intelligible as a familiarity with our language, but the concept may be ultimately incoherent. Also I would point out the seeming difficult with singletrack’s view as “A soul is the self separate from the physical body.� How can a soul be a real thing yet be separate from a physical body yet be a part of the physical body at the same time?

If my opponent feels the “existence of souls� is an important topic for discussion in this debate I will be happy to fully elaborate on my above reasoning and would ask my opponent for a definition of a soul and reasons or evidence for the existence of such a thing.


Humanity in a Vast Universe

Consider what those beaches must seem like to an ant and how that ant must think it impossible for anything to visit all those shores. Yet, humans have mapped out all the far shores of our little world.


Fist the comparison of a human in the universe to an ant on earth is probably off by a significant magnitude. I’m not doing the math right now but the problem appears to be far worse than singletrack has imagined. “If the solar system were the size of a table, the Andromedae Galaxy would lie at 10 times the distance to the moon and the most distant galaxies would lie at 60 times the distance to the Sun.�

But imagine if an ant looked around and said, “Hey, this whole earth was designed just for me and my fellow ants. It seems so ordered, it couldn’t have just appeared by chance and life appears ordered. There must be a divine ant-maker who loves us infinitely and created everything for us.� We would be inclined to squish this poor delusional ant and move on.


We may feel inconsequential and overwhelmed by the size of the universe that surrounds us, but God has told us that we are important. Life like us was intended even though not specially created in a single day.

I didn’t get God’s memo and that’s why I am here debating this topic ;) I received some information about claimed memos, but they usually contradict one another and none have held up under scrutiny or shown themselves to be accurate.

This randomness, in the view of many, is incompatible with an omnipotent God. The diversity and evolution of life is an unpredictable process, but so is the winner of tonight’s lottery. Even though the winner is known beforehand, someone will win. That is the nature of the lottery. The nature of our universe and our world is that it will also produce winners; humanity has been drawn toward God.

When an omnipotent and omniscient God designs something for a purpose he doesn’t need to “hit the lottery� for his design to do what it is supposed to. This analogy is not accurate to me either because I believe God knew exactly what would happen.

I actually think QM is incomplete (a VERY accurate statistical approximation of reality) and am not convinced we should not be seeking hidden variable theories for indeterminacy and the like. Either way, even if it is accurate the universe is still largely predictable. Might not be able to predict one particle’s behavior but put a bunch together and that all changes. I don’t believe quantum indeterminacy applies to God because God is omnipresent with every particle and energy//force in the universe at all times anyways.

In the case of Christian theism all my “laplacian theology� stands if not for the simple fact that the Biblical God is described as such an omnipotent being who “knows what we want before we ask.� Before we were formed in the womb God knew us. Also 1 Peter 1:20 where Jesus was chosen before the creation of the world and Ephsians 1:4-5: “4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will�.. I could quote a bunch of—less overt—but none the less predestination supporting passages in the Bible (along with a number of verses advocating free will!). If quantum events are indeterminate, and God can only omnisciently “know all that can be known� then there should, by definition, be a logical ban on exhaustively knowing free willed decisions as well. But this isn’t the case and QM or no, Christian theism does posit a Laplacian deity.

Vinnie

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

The next two concurrent statements will compose Round 3.

[Stumpjumper]

I would like to thank my debate partner Vinnie for participating in this exchange. I have enjoyed the discourse and, although I’m not sure whether we will agree in the end, I appreciate your invitation to dialogue.

Discourse on Freedom

(Critique of Free Love). As fancy and credible as this poetic terminology may sound, the ideology lacks external support, contradicts biblical support and violates common sense.
If I fall in love with a woman and want her to love me back I am going to make my affection and love known. Hidden-ness of my love for her is not consistent with me "wanting to be with her". The same for God.

God’s relationship with humans must be viewed differently from how humans relate with each other. The omnipotence of God requires some freedom between God and his creation (humanity) so as not to smother us with an overly powerful presence. This is the freedom that we see in the process in which we were formed. We were not formed 6000 years ago like mud-pies with the Creator’s signature engraved upon our hardened clay. We were formed through a free process which was guided by love.

Now, God may not force his love and incontrovertible proof of His existence upon us but he certainly is not completely hidden and has shown his affection for humanity in various ways. If it was the case that God was completely hidden, I doubt we would be having this discussion ;). God has revealed himself in our hearts, the Bible, the natural world, and in the life of Jesus Christ.

It is claimed that true love cannot overpower but it is not explained why the hidden-ness of God is required for true love to occur? You can love someone intensely and up front with all your being and they can choose to either love you back or not.

This is a common objection but one that does not fully apply to the kind of relationship that is produced between an omnipotent Creator and the created. So why did God not require us to believe that He exists? There are two serious objections to this line of thinking. Authentic love requires that we choose that love freely and not have it forced upon us. If God forced belief upon us we would not truly be able to freely accept his love and hold a pious faith. God chose to create free moral agents so that we could participate in relationships with each other and God. God’s love and benevolence compelled Him to create and share love with others but forced belief and forced love would violate that goal.

“God desired to love and be loved by other beings. God created human beings with this in view. To make us capable of such fellowship, God had to give us the freedom to choose, because love, though it does have its elements of "compulsion," is meaningful only when it is neither automatic nor coerced. This sort of free will, however, entailed the danger that it would be used not to enjoy God's love and to love God in return, but to go one's own way in defiance of both God and one's own best interest. This is what the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden portrays.� (Alvin Plantinga)

The second objection is in our view of the evidence for God’s existence. God should have revealed adequate and efficacious evidence for His existence. But, it is humanity who is judging this evidence and possibly the fault lies in our point of view. The efficacy of the evidence lies in our eyes and not in God’s revelation. “If you can’t see me standing in front of you in broad daylight, even though your eyes are open and directed at me, the problem is not that I’m somehow mysteriously hidden from you. The problem, instead, is that you just can’t see.� (Kvanvigi) In many ways the problem could also be human density and the fact that we interpret evidence subjectively.

But we do see that God has revealed His presence to humanity in various ways, indirectly in this day and more directly in the past. However, even in the Biblical accounts of God’s direct revelation, humanity still held doubts. In the Old Testament stories of the Exodus even after the Israelites were freed from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and were camped at Mt. Sinai they doubted God and created idols.

In the New Testament Gospels, the disciples frequently misunderstood the commandments and doubted in Jesus. Most of the disciples fled and even Peter (the rock) denied Jesus three times on the night in which he was betrayed. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples were found behind a locked door afraid for their safety. Some theologians have called this doubt and unbelief on mankind the “fall� that is alluded to in Genesis when Adam and Eve disobey God’s command. The story of Adam and Eve could in one way be viewed as a fallen nature and unbelief endemic to God’s creation as a result of the inclusion of freedom. Partly, then, it is this fallen nature that God has reconciled with though the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

On the cross Jesus it is recorded that Jesus recited, at least part but probably the entire, 22nd Psalm. It starts, “My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me? Why do you remain so distant?� Jesus was demonstrating that, although it appears that God remains distant and hidden, God’s love will still set you free. This Psalm was a prelude to the resurrection and shows that even though we may feel forsaken and bereft of God our risen nature will triumph and find peace in Him.

The Bible clearly says that all men know the truth about God but it is our wickedness that suppresses the truth. This is found in Romans 1. Remember, it is the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. Neither of these propositions is consistent with the "hidden-ness of God". So singletrack may be on to something of a small start for theism with the "overpowering--love route" but its not Christian theism.

Luther and Erasmus made this debate famous many years ago. Luther found support in the writings of Paul while Erasmus supported free will with some of Paul’s writings and many other passages in scripture. Luther’s main flaw was that he used, almost exclusively, the writings of Paul to interpret the Bible. As we know from my original post that is an unwise path. We must look at each passage as part of a whole. The Bible, from the very first free act of the mythical Adam and Eve, supports human freedom. We are told in the Gospels that we will be hold accountable for our deeds and accountability is only possible with freedom.

There are some passages, mainly in the writings of Paul like Romans, that deny human freedom and allude to predestination but there are many more that support freedom of the will. Context is very important and it was something Luther did not consider very well. Context includes the text around the passage as well as the historical situation in which the passage was written and the purpose for which the book was written. Some of these are known and in regards to Paul’s writings it must be taken into account that he was attempting to show how God predestined Jesus’ sacrifice to counteract the sin of the world.

This reconciliation was of God’s own doing and not a result of human freedom. It was God’s will that humanity be reconciled and it is this predestination that Paul is writing about. Paul is showing that even though Jesus was crucified by man that it was God’s will that humanity be atoned with the Father. Luther and Calvin, who followed in his footsteps, put far too much weight on those passages that talk against free will and mention predestination.

"God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commandments and precepts. If thou wilt observe the commandments, and keep acceptable fidelity forever, they shall preserve thee. He hath set water and fire before thee; stretch forth thine hand for which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him." (Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Sirach, ch. 15:14-17)

I am arguing that science and Christian theism are opposed but many theists find strong evidence for God in cosmology today. The Big Bang and the existence of God is quite a popular subject and one I hope we can spend some more time on throughout this discussion. Today scientists do not doubt the big bang occurred. The exact big bang model is very much open for discussion right now though.

I do not intend to push the Cosmological argument as proof for God’s existence but I do find some irony in many of the theories against the KCA. Origen is generally considered the first Christian philosopher. One of Origen’s main obstacles was against Greek thought and their view of an eternal universe. Origen synthesized Genesis that stated that the universe had a beginning with the Hellenistic view that the universe was eternal. Origen viewed Genesis as partial allegory in that he did not believe that God created in six literal days. Through an allegorical interpretation which was l