Last Blog ... at least for this year!

I'm not sure why, but I just can't let this year close without a parting comment. Maybe it's a numbers thing--I want to hit 20 for the year. I've already exceeded the 2007 total, although posts-per-month is down.

Anyway, here goes the final thought for the year...

We were talking a while back about whether the things that happen to us are caused by God, allowed by God, or just happen without God's involvement in any way. I think your beliefs in this regard have a lot to do with what you think God is like, and how much you've thought about where your beliefs lead you.

If you believe things happen to us without God's involvement, and perhaps without any special interest on God's part, then I think you don't believe in the God of the Bible. God is clearly portrayed in both OT and NT as being actively involved in creation. The stories of Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Paul, Peter, and countless others show that God directly influenced their circumstances and that they were not surprised by this.

The other two possibilities are a bit more difficult to deal with if we are to be honest. The problem is that some of God's attributes are not easy to reconcile with each other and our experiences. God is all-powerful (omnipotent), meaning that God can to anything that can be done. God is all-knowing (omniscient), so the smallest detail is not overlooked or forgotten. God is also the definition of love, loves us, and wants the very best for us.

The problem this causes is we have difficulty answering the question, "Why do bad, unpleasant, downright nasty things happen to us?" God surely knows they are happening, could take action to prevent them, and loves us. So why do they happen? It actually matters less whether God actively causes them to happen or passively allows them to happen. In either case they happen because God intends them to happen. I actually prefer the active explanation because I think God is in direct control of all of creation, not just some portion.

I think our difficulty with this question comes from our unspoken belief that we're at the center of the universe. From that viewpoint, good things happening to us are good and bad things are bad. But maybe there's another viewpoint. Maybe we're not the center of the universe. Maybe it's good for bad things to happen to us. I don't claim to understand how or why that might be so, in fact I find it appalling that God could want it that way.

I'm left with the belief that God is good and loves me more than I can imagine. I don't see how having bad things happen to people is "good", and I guess I'm OK with that. God is God and I'm not.

A Thought I Can Call My Own?

Have you ever come up with an idea you thought was truly original? It seems to me that this has happened to me more frequently than normal in the past few months. The problem is, the Internet stands ready to show me how unoriginal and outdated my "original" thought actually is. Even this potentially-original blog topic has been endlessly discussed (for example, here, here, and here). There's even a seven-step process to have your own original thoughts.

Of course, this is not an Internet phenomenon. Have a look at Ecclesiastes 1, especially verses 9 and 10:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Wow, talk about a lack of originality! My "novel" topic was discussed thousands of years ago. It's almost enough to make a person surrender to the sound-bite mentality of our modern world. Almost.

We don't spend enough time on any one topic to really think deeply. Most of our understanding of things is superficial, even of the important issues of our day. How many people in this country spent more than 15 minutes thinking about how they were going to vote? How many Christians have thought much about abortion, euthanasia, war, salvation, predestination, the nature of God, or any of a dozen other thorny issues? Not enough of us discipline ourselves to make the time required for deep thoughts.

Paul warned Timothy about this tendency in us in 1 Timothy 4,

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

So, I guess I'll continue to search for my original idea even though I know it is unlikely to exist. The purpose is the looking, not the finding.

Laminin - Gimme a Break!

I threatened to write this post last week, but resisted fearing it would be just another rant. I can't resist it any longer so please don what ever flame-retardant materials you use while surfing.

As I was preparing for the lesson, I came across the suggestion to use this video by Louie Giglio. The reasoning was that it illustrated the point that we are sustained and supported by Jesus, the Living Water. The video describes a molecule called "laminin" that forms a major part of the supporting structure of our cells. It's sort of a "scaffold" on a molecular level. He then goes on, in dramatic fashion, to reveal the shape of the molecule. It looks like a cross. A quick Internet search will turn up dozens of links to this topic. This basic building block of our bodies is cross-shaped, and this is a sign of the divine in us because Jesus dies on a cross.

What a load of trash!

It's ideas like this that give Christians the reputation of being fanatical wackos. (Just check out the Wikipedia talk page for laminin.) There's nothing spiritually significant about the shape of a cross. It's not a magic shape. Attributing spiritual meaning to the fact that laminin is mildly cross-shaped is the same as concluding that waking up at 7:47 one morning means that God wants me to fly somewhere. We are very good at seeing patterns and reading meaning into them, even when there is no meaning.

I firmly believe that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that we continue to exist from moment to moment because God actively wills us to exist. However, I don't think that a particular oddly-shaped molecule is a "message from God."

Failure to Communicate

I've been out of the country for the last week or so. During the meetings I attended I was watching how people interact in a presenter-attender situation. I'm sure you've all been part of a situation like this. One person is presenting information as the rest of the group listens, asks questions, and discusses the topic.

The thing I noticed was how often the communication between two people simply didn't work. These were all highly-educated professionals who were trying hard to both transmit their information and understand what was being transmitted to them. About half the time when one person would ask a question the other person would misunderstand the question completely and answer some other question (at least that's what I inferred from the disconnect between question and answer). Sometimes the questioner would accept the answer and things would move on, and sometimes they would ask another question that was related to the first. Only rarely did the two of them figure out on their own that a communication failure had occurred. Most of the time someone else would point out the disconnect.

I wonder how often this happens when we try to communicate the gospel message to others. It's perfectly clear to us what we're saying, but half the time the other person simply misses the message completely. They shake their heads and figure we're ignorant fanatics, we walk away concluding their hearts are hardened to the gospel. In fact they didn't hear what we said and we didn't notice.

The Nature of Reality

According to the dictionary, metaphysics is "a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being." So what does this have to do with living as God wants me to? Well, it's at the very base of the chain of reasoning that leads me to be concerned about God and what he might want of me.

I can't bring myself to believe something unless I'm convinced it's true, even if believing is more convenient or profitable. Blaise Pascal made an interesting argument like this for belief in God called Pascal's Wager. He argues that you should believe in God because it's a better bet. If you believe in God and you're right, you win big, If you don't believe in God and you're wrong you lose big. If God doesn't exist, then it makes no difference whether or not you believe. Since the worst outcome of belief is the same as the best outcome of unbelief, it's a better bet to believe. There are lots of issues with his argument, but in any case I can't make myself believe on this basis.

For me, truth matters. To live as if God existed even if perhaps he doesn't is dishonest. That isn't to say that I can always identify the truth without error or uncertainty as you'll see later. It does mean that attempting to find the truth rather than making a useful choice is important to me. For some people, this isn't an issue. They can simply believe without a lot of soul searching and contemplation. I'm not wired that way.

The specific "world-view" questions that need answers before making any "life-view" progress are:

1. Does anything exist?
2. Does God exist?
3. If God exists, what is his nature?
   

The answers to these questions will have concrete consequences. They provide the reasons for the decisions I make about how to live my life. I think we all have answers to these questions even if we've never actually asked the questions.

1. Does anything exist?

Yes. Although, as far as I know there is no way to prove this. A little reading on the topic of "existence" leads me quickly into realms of thought I can't even follow. Reading some of the essays on the philosophy of The Matrix makes it pretty clear that nobody has figured out how to prove anything actually exists.

That's not to say I'm going to simply toss a coin, pick a position, and move on. I am a realist. According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independently of how humans take it to be. Unless this is so, none of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or false independently of what anyone might think. This seems to me to be an obvious truth, and the alternatives seem contrived.

2. Does God Exist?

Again, my answer is yes, and again, I don't think it's provable. C.S. Lewis makes a great run at the topic in Chapter 4 of Mere Christianity. In the first few chapters, Lewis argues that God exists because we all seem to have a very similar set of things that we consider to be "right." He asserts that this must be because there is an "absolute" or objective right, the source of which is God. This is known as Normative Morality and I believe it to be a strong argument.

3. What is God's nature?

To answer this question we will ultimately need to go to the Bible and encounter God personally, so I'll be back to this topic again. For now, there are some of basic questions that seem to be taken for granted by many Christians. One was asked in one of Plato's dialogs called the Euthyphro. In this dialog, Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is something good because the gods will it, or do they will it because it's good?" Is morality higher than religion or vice versa? I believe the answer is found in the nature of God. God is good. In a sense , God defines goodness. Goodness is God's nature, so both are absolutes.

Here are some of the links on metaphysics I have used:

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  
• Wikipedia on metaphysics
  
• Philosophy Pages
  

Ethics, Who Knew It Was So Complicated?

On my daily commute I have recently started into a recorded book entitled, Ethics: A History of Moral Thought (having finally grown tired of my SciFi addiction). At about the same time, I started into my umpteenth re-reading of C. S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity, which also opens with a careful look at something Lewis calls the "Rule About Right and Wrong."

These events have created in an interest in ethics (some of you will be rejoicing, no doubt). The Internet being what it is, and this blog (and its readers) being mine to abuse, thus results in you being subjected to a complete patzer's rambling and fumbling into the intricacies of moral thought. Don't say I didn't warn you!

At this point in the journey, I am struck by several thoughts that I hope to explore further in the coming days:

1. I am familiar with the names Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Descartes, and Kant, but yet I actually know very little about what they said.
2. I was surprised to learn how much of our society's concept of right and wrong has been shaped by these men, and how completely hidden their influence is from most of us.
3. The opinions about right and wrong held by many of us, and our justification or explanation of those opinions, are simply inconsistent, illogical, and nonsensical. Why doesn't anyone know this?
4. I was reminded, once again, of how little I am able to remember from one minute to the next. I have a mind like a sieve. Everything passes right through. It's this thought that has motivated this post and the ones that I hope will follow. These are my cheat notes, or my "external brain" for philosophy.
   

So, on to the adventure!

Ethics is the study of "good," which is the thing desired, the goal, the ideal. It's about what is "right" as defined by some law. It's about "ought," or personal obligation.

The first thing we'll need to get a grip on is ,"What is good?" In order to know if something is good or evil, we must have a clear picture of exactly what "good" means. This seems like such an easy question, but turns out to be surprisingly complicated to answer well.

We all seem to know good from evil. Lewis says, "...human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in." But, why is this so? How do we know? Is good an absolute thing (an objective truth), or is it different for each of us (a subjective choice)?

The professor claims our ethics will flow from our metaphysics (the study of the nature of reality), our anthropology (the study of the nature of humanity), and our epistemology (the study of knowledge).

More to come on this one...

Open Source Truth - The Antithesis of Absolutes?

We talked for a minute today about a new religion that developed in the 1990s around the open source idea from the software world. It's called Yoism. Here are a couple of excerpts from Wikipedia (of course!) explaining what "open source religion" is:

Open source religions attempt to employ open source methodologies in the creation of religious belief systems. As such, their systems of beliefs are created through a continuous process of refinement and dialogue among the believers themselves.

Among the first examples of this movement, Yoans (followers of a religion called Yoism) claim that their version of open source religion does not have allegiance to any spiritual guide, rather the sense of authority emerges from the group via consensus.

It seems to me that the issue here revolves notion the idea that "truth" is something that "emerges from the group via consensus." This runs contrary even to our observation of the physical world around us (which Yoans would claim as the basis for truth). The laws upon which the physical world operates are independent of our "consensus" concerning them. The whole scientific establishment is founded on the belief that things like gravity are not dependent on individual (or group) opinions.

To remove the independent source of truth is to remove it's meaning. If truth is something I or we can create ourselves, then it is arbitrary and useless as a guide or standard for behavior. Only the truth I must "discover" not "create" has value. If I must discover truth then it must have been created by something outside of me and more than me.

I come back to what I said earlier, God=Truth. If God is not the source of truth, then I feel no inclination to attempt to abide by truth's dictates.

For more on the topic, check out relativism on C.A.R.M.

Right and Wrong, Absolutely!

This week we're looking at the story in Judges 17 of a man named Micah, and his mother (unnamed, of course). The story is pretty simple:

• Micah steals a lot of silver from his mother (about 100 years wages).
• Micah gets worried about being cursed, and returns the silver.
• Micah's mother praises him and consecrates the silver to God.
• Micah's mother makes an idol of part of the silver and keeps the rest.
• Micah makes a shrine in the house and names his son as priest.
• An itinerant Levite wanders by and Micah hires him as priest.
• Micah decides God will now like him because he has his own priest.

In googling (a verb?) this story I find that there is a consensus opinion and a minority view. The consensus (e.g., here and here) is that Micah and Mom are idolaters or worse, and that this is the beginning of the nation's fall. There is however, a minority view (e.g., here) that would suggest Micah was sincerely trying to do what was right.

Perhaps the question to answer here concerns what is right and wrong. Does the fact that there is some argument in this case mean that there's some doubt? Is there always a right thing to do?

I think so. There is a right and a wrong in every situation. No exceptions. If God is all-knowing, then he certainly knows about the details of every situation I face. He has a preference in every decision I make, and by definition, that preference is what we call "right."

That leaves us trying to decide what's right, but that's a topic for another post!