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The Faith Shaped Universe

David Berlinski, in his book The Devil’s Delusion, does some nice work on the illusions of militant atheism. One of the atheists he mentions is a physicist named Victor Stenger.

As a follow-up to what I read in Berlinski, I skimmed through one of Stenger’s books. I was struck by the fact that atheists admit their arguments and “proofs” will be unconvincing to theists. After all, they say, that is what faith is – i.e., believing in the absence of evidence. Berlinski does a far better job than I could ever hope to do hoisting atheism on its own petard in the matter of faith, but I’ll touch on it a little perhaps.

Stenger relates that some of his fellow physicists are devout Christians. He mentions a couple by name and indicates that they have looked at the same phenomena, the same facts, the same evidence, yet retain their faith in a Creator. Although I did not see where Stenger explains this oddity, we can make a pretty good guess that, like his fellow atheists, he attributes the continuing faith of theists to some sort of cultural indoctrination.

On the other hand Stenger puts forth the idea that the laws of physics arose from nothing – you know, there was the universe and things were just floating around and after they floated around a while they sort of randomly formed into patterns and then physicists just superimposed the “laws” on the randomness. That may not be quite fair as I did not read in detail, and I really don’t care. What grabbed my attention is the admission by Stenger that most physicists reject his view.

So here we have an atheistic physicist holding a view in contradiction to the majority of his colleagues. Of course, that doesn’t mean he is wrong, but it does mean, in the face of inconclusive evidence -- really no evidence, he holds to his view.

Similarly, as noted above, there are physicists who are not atheists, whether Christian or of some other religion. So are the atheist physicists more intelligent than the theistic physicists? Or, are the theists more intelligent? The answer is probably neither, because it is a matter of faith – unless you want to call having faith evidence of high spiritual IQ.

In Hebrews 11 the writer says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, for those who come to Him must believe that He is” Faith and free will are intimately related. God could certainly make people believe in Him. In fact, this is one of Stenger’s sophomoric arguments which goes something like “God does not love us because He does not make Himself blatantly known”. I suppose Stenger’s children love him because he so orders them and demands that they love him. And those are equivalent situations. Since God is perfect, and perfectly loving, omnipotent, omniscient, etc., a direct revelation of His complete presence – if a human in the physical state could survive it – would give the person no choice except to love God. The trouble is, it would be sort of spiritual rape and God doesn’t do stuff like that.

Any kind of love is only meaningful when given freely and apart from compulsion. In answer to the question of what kind of universe a loving God would create, we see that it would be one like this one. It is a universe where faith is possible and meaningful, where God can be loved freely by those who chose to trust in Him, and where those who refuse to acknowledge Him or have faith can find reasons to harden their hearts.

Weeds in the Wheat

I am not a dualist in the sense of believing that evil and good, roughly equivalent in power, are fighting it out in the world and the outcome is in doubt. Good is by its nature the absolute and evil the derivative. Good can never be conquered by evil, because evil cannot exist apart from Good. The more derived something is, the further it is from the ideal. This is the reason that when a carpenter or craftsman needs several pieces just alike, such as rafters, he cuts one pattern, puts a big ‘P’ on it and uses it to cut all the rest. Every deviation from the pattern introduces more errors and the deviations are multiplied.

This is probably some of the idea behind the noble savage myth. As a primitive man is closer to “nature” than the civilized man, he is less “derived”. The reason the myth fails the test of reality is that it’s not how close to the creation you are that makes you noble, it’s how close you are to the Creator. I have The Journals of Lewis and Clark sitting a few feet away on my bookshelf. Their first hand and generally fair accounts indicate that some American Indian tribes were composed of decent people, while others were a lot closer to the Devil than they were God.

Matthew 13:37-39a He replied, ‘The One who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; and the good seed – these are the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the Devil ...

Jesus is speaking and explaining the meaning of the parable known traditionally as “The Wheat and the Tares”. Tares were weeds which initially bore a resemblance to the grain in the early stages. It does have a rather dualistic feel to it. Jesus sows His people into the world. The Devil sows his people. They battle is out for space in the field. The angels come in and throw all the bad seed into hell and take the good ones to heaven. Who knew the Devil had his own evil spawn available to for planting next door to me?

This parable is probably less troublesome to Calvinists who think there are a whole bunch of people whose reason for existence is to up the occupancy rate in hell. Why waste all that space? My free-will friends used to try to mitigate it by making the field the Church or the Kingdom. They turned it into a parable about how we should not judge anyone in the Body of Christ and just let God sort it all out in the end. Even if I were to agree that “judge not” means you shouldn’t defrock a pedophile priest, I would be uncomfortable using this parable to justify it. That interpretation does violence to the very words of Jesus when He says “the field is the world.” I get the impression that the Lord generally said what He meant and meant what He said.

While I’m not much of a Calvinist, the idea that some soulless bastards are roaming around definitely would explain some things. It has a certain appeal, though the down side is that just because they are soulless I don’t necessarily get to use them for target practice.

Yesterday, as the lovely QP tells us, the Supreme Court gave us a pretty good decision in Heller but the day before they had struck down the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty for child rape. I’m kind of with Charlie Daniels on this, as he says in “Simple Man” – “...just take them rascals out in the swamp. Put ‘em on their knees and tie ‘em to a stump. Let the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest.”

I think it was late last year, a county or two west of here, a nine-year-old girl disappeared. She was found after a week or so. Her little body had been dumped in a hole that led down to a cave. Her step-father and a friend of his were arrested. They had taken the girl while her mother was at work and, after raping her repeatedly, they strangled her because, as the step-father explained, “she knew who we was.” The death penalty is still applicable in their case, but it just doesn’t seem quite fair.

I’ve been shot, though – must I state it? – not killed. It can hurt a lot, but not lots and lots. A guy who coldly murders a clerk during a liquor store robbery can get the death penalty, and that seems reasonable. I’m all for kill ‘em and let God sort ‘em out when it comes to terrorists. That seems fair, too.

What seems fair in the case of these two worthless grab-bags of guano would be to take them to some nice, rocky, hard-packed bare ground on a very hot, sunny summer day. Strip them naked and stake them out on their backs at high noon. Let them stew for one and one-half to two hours. Next, very carefully and slowly slice open their bellies so their intestines are exposed. Finally, unleash a half-dozen or so very hungry Rottweilers.

I am the Martha Stewart of cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a good thing.

Yes, it’s cruel and only a sick mind could conjure up such an idea. But if we would do it consistently, it wouldn’t be unusual, and, as Mushroom’s Maxims point out – it’s cruel and unusual, not cruel or unusual. Thank you, George Boole.

Actually I would be quite satisfied if the perpetrators were executed by lethal injection swiftly rather than being allowed to sit on death row, growing old and wasting tax dollars on lunch meat and pointless appeals.

Apparently the Devil’s weeds will always be among us until the Kingdom does come. Most of them will never expose themselves as tares to society at large. They will fit in and become Hollywood celebrities, lawyers, politicians and professors. We can be confident that, in the end, they will be run through God’s big cream separator and dumped, since they are as tasteless as the blue-john we used to feed the hogs.

Cheap Sunglasses

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable – if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise – dwell on these things. Philippians 4:8

Look at that verse. Turn it around in your mind. Imagine if the Apostle had said, “Whatever is false, dishonorable, unjust, filthy, ugly, and despicable – if there’s anything reprobate and if there’s any complaining – dwell on these things.” Who would want to do that? I know there are the usual suspects – the Obamas, Rev. Wright, and Jimmy Carter. But I’m talking about normal people. Why would anyone want to dwell on the dark, nasty aspects of life?

Being happy is just as cheap as being miserable. They do not charge positive, bright-side people any more at that gas station than they charge bitter Obama supporters clinging to their victim status and their government cheese. No, everything does not go my way, but it doesn’t go my way whether I’m fretting, miserable, and angry, or whether I’m happy, upbeat and peaceful. The only difference is that in the latter case I’m happy and in the former I’m unhappy.

Maybe it’s like people used to say: “My future’s so bright I have to wear shades”.

The world can be a difficult place and our place in it can be uncertain. We do not have all the answers. Perhaps shading our eyes with a little pessimism takes some of the harshness and contrast out of what we see. We use negative thinking to moderate our losses and hurts and failures. If the thing that happens is not as bad as what we imagined might happen, it may be easier to take.

I suppose that would be all right except that our shades also moderate what is good. Meditating on all the ugly keeps us from look for and seeing the beautiful. We have a better option. Instead of wearing cheap, black frames of pessimism, we can rest our eyes upon the eternal. Put on the sombrero of salvation and crank the front brim down a little.

With an eternal perspective, the pains of this world ease. We realize our losses are not permanent. We understand that life has a purpose beyond life. The beauty in this life is a foretaste of its ideal manifestation in the Real. It brings us joy here and now because it connects us with the eternal. Paul’s admonition is to meditate on those things that will fill us with the light and perfection of the Divine.

We need not burden ourselves with falsehoods, lies and deceptions. We can turn off the evening news. We can read great books and listen to good music. We can find truth in the Bible certainly, but also in the Upanishads, The Silmarillion, or Treasure Island. There is purity in music.

And, of course, there are John Wayne movies.

If you wanted to teach a child about nobility, loyalty and redemption you could do a lot worse than to show them Stagecoach. Who cannot see the beauty in Red River, The Quiet Man or The Searchers? Where in all the world is moral excellence seen if not in Rio Bravo or The Cowboys? Where is honor if not in True Grit?

Wisdom's Vindication

A would-be disciple came to Nasrudin's hut on the mountain-side.

Knowing that every action of such an enlightened one is significant, the seeker watched the teacher closely. "Why do you blow on your hands?"

"To warm myself in the cold."

Later, Nasrudin poured bowls of hot soup for himself and the newcomer, and blew on his own. "Why are you doing that, Master?"

"To cool the soup."

Unable to trust a man who uses the same process to arrive at two different results -- hot and cold -- the disciple departed.

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For John did not come eating or drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.


Spiritual truth cannot be received by natural minds. The natural man may see the same things and hear the same things as the spiritually alive, but he does not understand its significance. Logic and reason are useless. The blind cannot be argued into sight. The dead cannot be reasoned to life.

It is not surprising, then, that the flatlander finds fault with the ways and words of those who live in other dimensions. Seeing only in the horizontal he cannot comprehend the motivations or the true being of those inhabiting the vertical. It is rather like my cat watching the neighbor drive by with a stock trailer full of cattle. She recognizes the phenomenon. She’s tracking movement, calculating distance and size, but there’s just a whole lot going on that she can never understand.

It’s not that I have a persecution complex as a Christian, but non-believers tend to judge Christians pretty harshly. I have often thought that George W. Bush’s troubles began when he said that Christ had the greatest influence on him because He had changed his life. The left-wing, mostly godless faction in this country pounced on the statement as indicating that Bush was stupid. Atheists assume that they are smarter than theists. That someone would profess a real Christianity is indicative of moronically low intelligence. Never mind that Bush attended Yale and has an MBA, or that he was fighter pilot, the requirements for which probably include an above average intelligence. He is a Christian so any stick may be used to beat him.

“Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

The older versions read more like:

“Yet wisdom is vindicated by her children.”

Jesus was challenging more than one group when He spoke. He was speaking to the godless, of which there were many in His day, to the activists who believed government was the answer, and to the religious who trusted in the institution of religion. Those who don’t believe in anything they can’t see have always been around. Today they would attribute the miracles of Christ to the power of suggestion. They might try to relate His love, compassion, and self-sacrifice to a mutated gene. I’m not sure how they dealt with it back then but they were just as skeptical and just as cynical. There were zealots even among the Disciples who wanted the Kingdom established through the restoration of Israel. They wanted a son of David to sit on a throne in Jerusalem and they looked to Jesus for that. They hated the Romans and wanted the gentile dogs expelled from their country. Then there were the traditionally religious who loved to look down their noses at sinners thinking they served God while hating their neighbors.

He called the skeptical to consider the changed lives that followed in His wake – the broken are made whole, the blind see, and the dead live. He called the subversives to consider the true nature of the Kingdom – it does not come with observation but it is within you. He called the superstitious to look beyond their dogmas – to see that God dwells not in buildings, that His ultimate temple is the human heart.

So, they crucified Him.

As He hung on the cross, they mocked Him. “If you are the Son of God, then come down from the cross now.”

He died in agony.

“Yet wisdom is vindicated by her children.”

Crossings

“I will go further, Polwarth, and say, I would rather die for evermore believing as Jesus believed, than live for evermore believing as those that deny him.” Thomas Wingfold -- George MacDonald

The context of this statement is that the doubting curate, Wingfold, has been mentored by the dwarf Polwarth (you know this is Victorian literature – there has to be a dwarf). He has dealt to some extent with his doubts about Christianity mainly by studying the Gospels and coming to know about the Christ. Focusing on the four Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, was a favorite theme in MacDonald’s writings. He emphasized knowing Jesus directly and believed the narratives of the Evangelists provided the clearest depiction of the Lord, both in terms of His Person as well as His teachings.

The character is still developing. He does not have the faith that gives him rest. Yet he has seen something that pushes him onward. The life of Christ is a life worth living. Everything else is a shadow, a cheap imitation. While Wingfold does not believe that he possesses that life yet and perhaps does not even know that it is his to possess by faith, he sees that it is real life, true and abundant life. He has seen that, apart from Christ, there is nothing of value.

Jesus asked, “What good is it to a man to gain the entire world, yet lose his own soul?” A soul is worth more than the world. The world is temporary, passing away. The soul is infinite and eternal

Rejection of the world’s value system is a necessity for following Christ. We drop all the accretions of Mammon and take up the Cross. In order to do that one must see the beauty of Christ contrasted with one’s own dark, ugly soul. A traveler must understand that not only is there a wrong road but a right one. Moral teaching is good but alone it is inadequate. A man may treat his neighbor decently yet still possess a twisted soul. We don’t need people who merely act better; we need people who are better.

MacDonald’s curate saw the chasm and he believed there was a Bridge, but he had not yet set his foot upon it to test it.

By contrast there are many who deny that the chasm exists or that it is as wide as claimed. They believe it can be traversed by a mere step or, at worst, a Knievel-like leap. A wise man said long ago, “There is a way that seems right to a man but it ends in death.”

Others admit there is a yawning abyss but have no hope of a bridge. Convinced there is no way to cross, they turn away to find something that will deaden a hopeless existence further.

Wingfold eventually moved forward, tried the Bridge and found it would bear the weight. I was talking to my father a week or two back and he spoke of this same point in his own way. He had come to realize where the road led, saw the promise of Life, but was unsure that it could ever be his. Speaking to his friend and pastor, Dad said, “This will run a man crazy.” The preacher replied wisely, “No. It won’t.” Sunday came and Dad listened to another sermon. A few days later, thinking about some statement the preacher had made, he came to that old Bridge and found it more than adequate for the crossing.

I kind of wonder what the old preacher said. I knew him well myself. Dad can’t remember, but it has been many years. It’s likely that it would not have much meaning for anyone else anyway. Old Jordan probably wouldn’t know either, but he long ago made a different crossing and it may be a while before I get a chance to ask.

Darwin of the Gaps

There is a component to the scientific argument against God that goes like this: religion has been wrong about so many things, and things that religion claimed have been proven wrong by science. Given that some religious claims have been shown to be false, all religious claims will eventually be shown false as science advances.

The first problem with this claim is that most traditional religious teachings of which I am aware make no particular claims about science. The creation stories are not meant to be scientific explanations of creation but are meant to illustrate truths about man, God and the relationship between them. Particularly in the case of the Judeo-Christian Genesis story, the depiction of the process of creation is meant to help us understand the goodness of God, something about His Divine Nature, and man as a special category of the creation. We are told that man was created good and perfect but fell and that God promised to redeem him because the Creator genuinely cares for man and has a purpose for his existence.

Other than the general and -- within the local frame -- correct observation that everything bears offspring after its kind (which we ultimately learn is also a spiritual truth), what statement does religion make about the natural order of things? We are told that man was created from the dust of the earth, just as was every other creature. The difference is that God breathed a spirit life into man and put him in charge of things. Interpreters of religious revelation have from time to time made statements about science but that is not the revelation itself, which says only “in the beginning God created” all that is. The biblical revelation is primarily concerned with a) revealing man to himself and b) revealing God to man. I would question the idea that science has proven any of that to be untrue.

Secondly the theory of evolution is an explanation of how the organisms on the planet have become so diverse, as Darwin indeed titled his work “The Origin of the Species”. With this religious people have no reason to quarrel. All that has been disproved by evolutionary theory is the assertion that each species was created in place, uniquely, just as it exists today. This is similar to saying that science has somehow disproved “my love is like a red, red rose.” Just as no one who understands poetry would claim that a human is really a flowering plant with thorns, so no one who understands the purpose of God’s revelation would think that the earth really was constructed in a single week in 4004 B.C.

Materialists are not satisfied with this, however. The materialist claims that nothing exists except matter and energy, and that all arose, without any reason from some sort of cosmic singularity. As the universe moves from zero or near zero entropy to near infinite entropy in a cold universe, the increasing entropy brings with it increasing degrees of freedom – up to a point. The universe has become, temporarily, less deterministic. For the moment, quantum theory actually works and this allows the organic to arise from the inorganic.

Of course, the materialist can prove none of this. Cosmology has had to add in the twilight zone concept of dark matter and dark energy to get the equations to balance, meaning that – rather than dark matter and energy being real – the equations are probably faulty. But science is pragmatic and will cling to anything that has any predictive value, no matter how localized. Materialists do not know how life began. They cannot create living organisms from inorganic materials. Not only do they not know whether the cat is alive or dead, they cannot even define what they mean by alive or dead in quantitative terms.

“He’s dead, Jim.”

Naturally, that does not stop them from confidently asserting that the answers to the origin of life will be found and it won’t be God.

“42” perhaps?

It is this view that we “supernaturalists” like to call “darwinism”. We use this term specifically to distance the view from legitimate evolutionary theory and natural selection. Darwinism is very much a religious position, though its proponents probably think of themselves as anti-religious. Huxley in his day and Dawkins today see darwinism as a means to usurp God’s place in the universe and replace Him with the impersonal “god of forces” that does not care about man any more than it cares about amoeba. In doing so they attempt to rid themselves of what they perceive as the constraints of religion and moral authority. The anti-God apologists will deny this and claim that we are misrepresenting evolutionary theory. But, again, we are not disputing evolution as such, only the unjustified extrapolations of it.

For this reason we point out the fact that there is much that is unexplained by science and more which will likely never be explained. The materialist, struck at this point, attempts to counter that religion is resorting to a God of the gaps and that science will close the gaps, eventually. For us, of course, there are no gaps. Gaps exist for the materialist looking up, not for the believer viewing things from above. Again, this is why we call it darwinism, for the materialist is actually postulating a “darwin of the gaps” when he says science will explain everything, though it cannot now.