Of Prayer and Pride

Recently, a friend and I made a prayer pact: We decided to pray for a certain length of time each day and to hold each other accountable to the pact. I faithfully honored the pact every day - until yesterday, when I forgot to pray for the required length of time. When I first realized that I had forgotten, I became somewhat frustrated with myself. Then I began to think about why I was frustrated with myself.

The reason my friend and I had decided to make our prayer pact was obvioust enough: Having faith in the power of prayer, we wished to be consistent in daily prayer in spite of our cluttered schedules. My objective (and my friend's) was a stronger prayer life - nothing more. And yet it quickly became clear to me that I was not frustrated with myself because I had failed to meet this objective. After all, my prayer life had become more consistent as a result of my pact; my one day of "insufficient" prayer, though unfortunate, did not seriously hinder my walk with God. On the contrary, I was frustrated with myself because I had not met the terms of the pact, because I would no longer be able to tell myself that I had fulfilled the pact - because, in my quest for righteousness, I had left no room for grace.

The problem was not that I was striving to pray more consistently, or even that I had made a specific, potentially "legalistic" pact with my friend. The problem was that I cared about being righteous for the sake of thinking of myself as righteous, rather than caring about righteousness for righteousness' (or, better yet, Jesus') sake. The problem was that I was more worried about demonstrating to myself that I was a man of prayer than I was worried about actually being a man of prayer.

My mistake reminded of this quotation from J.B. Phillips' When God was Man:

"The 'good' man, the man whose god is righteousness, has as his life’s ambition the keeping of rules and commandments and the keeping of himself uncontaminated by the world. This sounds admirable; but, as the truth of Christ showed, the whole of such living, the whole drive and ambition, the whole edifice, is self-centered. That entire process of effort must be abandoned if a man is to give himself in love to God and his fellows. He must lose his life if he is ever going to find it."

For me, an admirable enough pursuit - prayer, of all things! - became a self-centered means of proving myself to myself, of earning my salvation. I had been pursuing righteousness so that I could avoid my need for grace, so that my faith could rest in my own good deeds and not in Christ's redeeming sacrifice. Of course, when I made the prayer pact, I was not consciously attempting to pray my way out of a need for grace; but that is what happened nonetheless.

The culprit, unsurprisingly, was the great sin, pride. And there is an important lesson here, I think, for all of us. In my experience, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who do not think they need forgiveness and those who do not think they can be forgiven. We can identify the former as the "self-righteous souls" - the souls out of touch with their own sins - and the latter as the "self-pitying souls" - the souls out of touch with God's amazing grace.

Interestingly, the self-righteous soul and the self-pitying soul are not that different, for self-righteousness and self-pity are both manifestations of pride. It is pride that reassures us that we have no need of grace, that our sins are minor or justifiable, that we are actually quite good people (and certainly better than him or her); and when we do (inevitably) stumble and fall, when the truth of our sinfulness becomes inescapable, when we can no longer pretend that we have it all together, it is pride that tells us that it is too late, that nothing can be done, that we are eternally stained and unforgivable.

Notice how these two superficially different attitudes are both fundamentally egocentric in nature. The self-righteous soul cares not at all (or very little) that his good deeds please God or benefit his fellow men; he cares only that his reputation with others - and with himself - be preserved. The guilty soul cares not at all (or very little) that his sins have injured God; he cares only that he can no longer think of himself as good, that he has toppled himself from his own imaginary pedestal. The self-centeredness evident in both cases is the hallmark and calling card of pride.

Pride convinces the self-righteous soul that grace is beneath him and the self-pitying soul that grace is above him. Both are wretched lies, but they are not lies that are easy to spot; the devil is too cunning for that. No, these lies can only be discovered if we are on the lookout for them - rather like the moonwalking bear.

If we are willing to catch our pride in the act, we will, of course, succeed. ("Seek, and ye shall find" goes for sin, too.) After all, pride is plenty common, and it can be found virtually anywhere - as I recently learned, even in prayer. Unfortunately, the first step with pride, as with alcoholism, is admitting we have a problem - and this we are not always willing to do. If we are courageous enough, however, to resist our pride - to pray for humility, to seek advice and correction, to submit to others, to confess our sins, to search out our hearts, and to cast off our façades - then the Scriptures are clear: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up" (James 4.10).

Fish Tank Post: Balance

Here it is.

Fish Tank Post: Magic

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Communion: December 13, 2009

It was my honor today to provide the Communion message at church. Per the request of a friend, here is the written-down version of what I said:

"Hi. My name is Joseph Porter, and I am a sophomore at Harvard College. I’d like to share briefly about some of what the cross means to me.

How many of you guys are stressed out about finals right now? I know I am; I have three in the next week. It’s tough, isn’t it? When I’m studying for a final and I’m lonely and it’s three in the morning, it’s hard to feel like God loves me. I’m literally too tired to feel loved by God.

Of course, finals aren’t the only thing that can make it hard for us to feel loved by God. There are times when we can be too hurt to feel loved by God, too depressed to feel loved by God, too outraged to feel loved by God. There are times when we can want nothing more than to cry, to forget, to escape, to scream, Why? Why did my girlfriend break up with me? Why did I lose my job? Why did my husband die in Iraq? Why does my kid have cancer?

I think about some of the things I have seen happen to people around me. I remember when I was seven years old and I found out that I was leaving the United States and all of my friends and everything I knew for a different country. I remember crying and asking my mom if I could hang out with my best friend one last time. I remember crying when I visited an orphanage for children with cerebral palsy. Their bodies were stunted and they were crying for their mothers, and I just couldn’t bear it. Why? Why should I trust You, God? How can this suffering all be worth it?

God could have just given us a point-by-point answer to these questions. He could have simply said, 'Trust me, it’s for the best. My ways are higher than your ways; it’ll all work out.' But He did something much, much better instead: He gave us His Son.

Why should we trust God that it will all be worth it? My answer is the cross. The cross, to me, says this: 'I love you, and I know that you are suffering. So am I. I know that you are wounded. So am I. I know that you are broken-hearted. So am I. How do you know that I love you? This is how you know: Jesus Christ laid down his life for you.'

What’s crazy isn't that an all-powerful God would let mankind suffer. What’s crazy is that an all-powerful God would let Himself suffer. That is why the cross is the ultimate proof of God’s love; as John 3:16 famously says, 'For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.'

As many of you know, Jon and Rachel were engaged yesterday, and Jay and Alex were engaged just a couple weeks ago. Because of all the recent engagements, I’ve been thinking about what it means for the Church to be the Bride of Christ.

Let’s fast forward to Jay and Alex’ wedding. (I’m going to pick on Jay since he’s my cousin.) It’s a beautiful day outside, Jay’s in a nice tux; Alex is wearing a beautiful white dress. Alex walks up to the altar and Jay begins his vow: 'I, James, take you, Alexandra, to be my lawfully wedded wife: to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, but not for worse; for richer, but not for poorer; not in sickness, only in health.' That’d be a pretty pathetic vow. (Hopefully Jay realizes this.)

We all know that that’s not how marriage works. The beauty in a marriage vow doesn’t come from the commitment to someone for better; the beauty comes from the commitment to someone for worse, for poorer, in sickness. The beauty comes from the commitment of the lover to suffer for the beloved. And Jesus is the most reckless lover in history. Romeo doesn't have anything on Jesus. Because Jesus committed to his Bride when doing so meant dying on a cross for his Bride.

There will be times when life will seem hopeless and unfair, when the pain will feel unbearable, when we may want to hate God or to plead with Him: 'My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?' When those times come, remember that Jesus was there, too. Jesus felt the same way. And he endured all that pain and all that God-forsakenness simply because he loved us.

On August 23, 2006, I was baptized into Christ in Davie, Florida. I became Christ’s bride, and this was the vow made to me:

'Your present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in you. I am for you; who can be against you? Who shall separate you from my love? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things you are more than a conqueror. For neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate you from my love.'

As we prepare for Communion, let us remember that vow and that love."

Fish Tank Post: Water and the Spirit

Here it is.

My Guest Post on Cloud of Witnesses

Chris Reese was cordial enough to allow me to write a post on his blog Cloud of Witnesses. Here it is.

Fish Tank Post: One Thing You Lack

Another Fish Tank post.

A Letter About God

This is a slightly abridged version of a letter I sent to a friend of mine in response to a letter she sent me about her atheism. I think it addresses a lot of my central thoughts about the existence of God. Redacted portions are marked by brackets.

"[]

I should begin this letter with a sincere apology for my overly delayed response. I envisioned a proper reply to your letter as a monumental task, and, as such, I was wary to undertake it – not out of unwillingness, but out of fear, lest any response of mine were inadequate. I felt that your seeming eagerness to understand Christianity left me no excuse for failure, should I not convince you of its truths. This fear of mine is unfounded – it is not I, but God, Who can save you – but it exists nonetheless.

My fear is a symptom of doubt – primarily of myself, but also of God. I cannot and should not pretend that I do not doubt []. In a very real epistemological sense, I cannot be anything but an agnostic. I cannot, as you said, 'profess to have all the answers.' I do not know that God exists; for that matter, I do not even know that you – or I – exist. Man's knowledge and reason are so very, very frail. 'Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.' Every which way I turn, I am faced with the unavoidable conclusion that the Truth, whatever it may be, is incomprehensible and absurd. 'Adhuc lates, Domine, animam meam in luce et beatitudine tua, et idcirco versatur illa adhuc in tenebris et miseria sua.'

And yet – despite all lingering doubts – I am still convinced that God exists. Even your objections to His existence strengthen my conviction. You may believe that we are blind because the Truth lies shrouded in darkness; but I, I say that the Truth's light is not too feeble, but too overpowering – that I am blind, not because of its absence, but because of its brilliance. 'The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness hath comprehended it not' (John i. 5).

When I consider this world of sunsets and suicides, of loves and wars, of minds and madness – when I consider the atom or the photon – I cannot escape my impression that beyond our stunted perceptions lies something Transcendent. This world alone is not enough – it cannot be enough – for it cannot explain anything, even itself. And thus, to me, nothing will ever be more unbelievable than the assertion that time, substance, and space arose from non-being and chaos – that there truly is nothing else. (This is what I believe Chesterton means when he says that atheism entails belief in a 'universal negative.') Perhaps we do not understand the Transcendent, but it must exist, it cannot not exist. Reality without it is dead and senseless. There must be something beyond time to explain time, something beyond space to explain space, something beyond causation to explain causation, something beyond order to explain order, something beyond the mind to explain the mind. There must be something which lies beyond our grasp, beyond our sight, beyond our reach, something which itself needs no further explanation or justification – something Transcendent. That is my fundamental conviction. And this Transcendence I call God.

(With this definition of transcendence, I remember the words of M. Whitehead, a mathematician who once taught here at Harvard: 'Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.')

The skeptic may reply (rightly) that what I have said is all well and good – but that I cannot know much, if anything, about this Transcendence. Who are we, we mortal men, to dare to know the source, not only of men, but of reality itself? And the Christian, in a sense, would have to agree. The Christian God is one Whose ways are higher than our ways and Whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isaiah lv. 8-9). As Barth said, 'God is inconceivable.'

Fortunately, we know one terribly important thing about God; we know that He has created us. He has created the universe such that it could support life, and He has breathed into that life His spirit. The importance of these two truths cannot be underestimated. Because I am not a scientist, I will not belabor the details of the first point (which, incidentally, presupposes that abiogenesis itself can be accounted for scientifically), but will leave it to you to imagine all the possible universes that never would support life - universes with different 'laws of nature,' and chaotic universes, with no laws at all. (It is challenging enough for a universe to support stable heavy atoms, let alone advanced life-forms.) Do not forget [] that one of reality's most miraculous features is its orderliness: 'Das Unverständlichste am Universum ist im Grunde, dass wir es verstehen können.' This orderliness and ability to support life, in and of themselves, do not prove anything, but to me, they are very indicative. At the very least, a situation in which a Transcendent being created a universe which just so happened to support intelligent life would be extremely bizarre.

The second point – that man is more than matter – is more interesting, and ultimately much more crucial. And, before I explain its relevance in full, I must first discuss your invocation of emergentism as an explanation of consciousness. Though I intend to address each of your arguments individually later on, I cannot proceed any further without pausing to consider it.

If we know anything, we know that we exist mentally. Cogitamus, ergo sumus. Consciousness is an undeniable fact (though some atheists have, of course, denied it); the question, then, is whether or not it is a so-called 'scientific fact.'

I propose first and foremost that free will cannot be explained scientifically, even if consciousness itself can. Belief in free will is belief in personal causality – belief that physical events can be caused or affected by mental entities, or persons. But science, properly understood, is the study of impersonal causality – the study of how objective, physical states of affairs change according to certain underlying principles. To assert that the mind can have power over matter is to assert something quite remarkable indeed; it defies scientific explanation. It is not at all a solution to say that free will 'emerges' from chemical reactions in the brain. How would personal causality 'emerge' from impersonal causality? How can matter generate minds? I simply do not see satisfying non-religious answers to these questions. (Remember, if free will did in fact emerge from matter and impersonal causality, it would itself become nothing more than an effect of impersonal causality, not a personal cause. In other words, it would no longer be free will. To explain the will is to abrogate it.)

Of course, I do not see how emergentism can explain any aspect of consciousness, let alone free will. The mind-body problem is similar to the is-ought problem; the mind may be completely dependent upon the body (just as 'ought' statements are largely contingent upon 'is' statements), but knowledge of the body alone cannot give an adequate account of the mind. (To borrow an example from M. Nagel, we know a lot about bats, but we know absolutely nothing about what it is like to be a bat. Science cannot give us true knowledge about the subjective mental states of other beings.) Put another way, though the brain may be necessary to explain the mind, it is not sufficient to explain the mind; something more is required. Mental entities are as fundamentally different from physical entities as normative facts are from positive facts. Thus, the fact that mental entities exist is extremely radical for the atheist, who must believe that, after thirteen billion years of matter and energy, the mind abruptly came into being.

But is this fact truly so radical? To answer that question, I first will ask you to consider computers – machines that can process incredible amounts of information and perform tasks far beyond man's capacity, but do not have minds. Their 'artificial' intelligence is in fact non-existent. They are not self-aware; they do not perceive; they are not conscious. Everything about their existence is objective and available to empirical study. There is nothing categorically different about computers with respect to the rest of the world.

There is, however, something categorically different about humans. We are self-aware; we do perceive; we are conscious. Some things about our existence are objective and available to empirical study; but some are not. I cannot see or measure your perceptions, [] only the neural activity which corresponds to them. For all I know (and for all the best scientist knows), you could be a biological 'computer' programmed to act as if you were conscious. That you can perceive the external world and ponder your own existence reveals that you (and all mankind) are categorically different from everything else that has ever existed before. (It is irrelevant to my argument whether or not other putatively sentient creatures, such as gorillas, actually have minds – the difference in category remains – but I will henceforth assume that they do not, for the sake of simplicity.) A few million years ago, a chemical process whose reactants consisted of matter and energy led to products that consisted of matter, energy – and mind. This fact can be nothing less than astounding.

If the honest naturalistic scientist were to hypothesize how 'intelligent' life could have developed, I imagine he would conjecture something akin to biological computers, M. Minsky's 'machines made of meat.' He would probably propose organisms whose brains were so advanced that impressions from the external world – light waves, sound waves, &c. – could trigger neurobiological reactions, which would then trigger behaviors. But he would hardly venture to guess that these agglomerations of matter would somehow become aware of their own existence – that the mind would sprout randomly from mindlessness. A world without minds would be much more concordant with the naturalistic worldview and account of reality – were it not for the fact that minds exist.

But minds, alas, do exist. How are we to explain them? You might answer that, in the future, science will discover some new physical fact which will quickly and simply explain the existence of minds. After all, has not modern neuroscience gone a very long ways toward explaining the mind? My answer would be an emphatic No: It has not moved one inch closer toward explaining the mind. It has, of course, done very well with explaining why the mind behaves as it does, and how the mind relates to the body. But it has not provided one scintilla of evidence to explain why the mind exists at all, nor do I see how it ever could. Our perceptions themselves, after all, are subjective, and thus not measurable. How, then, is the scientist who glories in the objective and orderly behavior of the universe to contend with subjective and inexplicable minds and wills?

The explanation for the mind must come from the Transcendent – from God. And the knowledge that the fountainhead of all existence somehow imbued us with minds should be very unsettling for the deist (whose deity merely sets things into motion). It leads inevitably to a question that has dogged man's steps since the psalmist posed it to God three millennia ago: 'What is man that Thou art mindful of him?' (Psalm viii. 4)

We must keep in mind three central facts when answering this question: first, that men, because we have minds, are categorically different from all other creation; second, that the first fact cannot (as far as we know) be explained by science; third, that God, in some way, must have taken special interest in the affairs of men. The third fact, which follows from the first two, is the most essential. And in light of these three facts, our picture of God becomes much more theistic and much less deistic – in a word, much more Christian. The deist's account of God becomes sorely wanting. As someone Who has taken an interest in people, how could God Himself not be personal (or 'super-personal')? If we know from our own existence that the mind itself is an active agent, how can we then reduce the Transcendent to some inert, slumbering 'force' less self-aware than a child? It is not enough to say, as the deist does, that God caused the world to exist and then retreated to His chambers – for that does not explain men as persons, only as biological automata.

If the deistic God cannot explain men as persons, how much less can He explain them as moral beings! You yourself have admitted how insufficient non-theistic accounts of morality are. Your morality, if it does not come from God, is nothing more than an evolutionary instinct. As powerful as your moral and æsthetic convictions may be – and I know that they are powerful – they cannot be anything more than chemical accidents unless an active, personal, and moral God has imbued us with them. Could God have created men who seek the good and the beautiful if He Himself were not in some way good and beautiful?

We live in an orderly world, a personal world, and a moral world. And I simply do not see how the neo-Platonist's or deist's δημιουργός can properly account for a world such as ours. There is too much light in this world – even in us, whose hearts and minds are dark – for me to believe in anything less than Light, pure Light – not some half-conscious nightmare or impersonal agent (How can an agent be impersonal or inactive?), but in Light itself, not lesser than I, but infinitely greater. 'Deus lux est et tenebrae in Eo non sunt ullaeq' (1 John i. 5).

Ah, but you may say, 'What is Light?' What do I mean when I say that? And truly, my words are but a shadow of the reality. 'Die Worte tun dem geheimen Sinn nicht gut, es wird immer alles gleich ein wenig anders, wenn man es ausspricht, ein wenig verfälscht, ein wenig närrisch.' Even ignoring linguistic limitations, the conceptual difficulties that arise when attempting to describe that which is, by definition, beyond conception are considerable. It is unrealistic to except a full understanding of God; God cannot and should not be limited to our fallible thoughts.

And so we proceed by intuition; the line between thinking and feeling is blurred; and we become swayed, not by arguments themselves, but by impressions – subtle, emotional, or subconscious reactions to complex, contentious, and charged issues (such as religion and politics). These impressions affect us profoundly, especially with regards to what standards of proof we demand. I cannot ascertain the substance of your past and present impressions concerning religion, but I hope that you will consciously evaluate your religious impressions, as I have sought to evaluate mine. In particular, I hope that you will not misunderstand the philosophical God I have hitherto defended – a God who, though similar to the Christian God, is not necessarily identical to Him.

You will notice that my belief in God is significantly grounded in my impressions about Christianity (and, to a lesser extent, my negative impressions about deism and atheism). To a certain extent, this is inescapable, because it is difficult for us to separate the person of God from the idea of God. (Indeed, I believe it is impossible to extricate impressions from our mental processes, nor do I see that it would be productive to do so.) For a long time, I believed in the idea of the Christian God without acknowledging Him as a person. Mlle. L'Engle said, 'Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God Himself.' At some point, my belief that God existed became a conviction that God was beautiful – and even Beauty. It will be a useful enterprise for you to ponder the person and idea of God separately.

Unfortunately, you will notice that I cannot prove the idea of God. In this letter, I have sought to demonstrate that the idea of a Christian God is plausible – much more plausible, in fact, than any alternative. Such a demonstration does not technically constitute a proof. But my endeavor here was not to prove to you the existence of the Christian God, but to enumerate both my rational arguments and my more nuanced impressions concerning Him. Every which way I consider the matter, the Christian God (or theistic God) becomes more and more unavoidable. During those times in my life when I would have desired to leave Christianity, I could not bring myself to believe in its falsity. I could not do away with God, and the thought of doing so terrified me; like M. Geisler, I did not have enough faith to be an atheist. I cannot say that my arguments for the existence of God are 'sufficient,' because I do not see how we can determine what are sufficient grounds for believing something. All I can say is that I have considered the matter quite carefully and remain convinced of God's existence.

Nonetheless, you apparently are not convinced – and you have raised some compelling objections to the existence of God (or at least to the necessity of God's existence) which now demand my attention.

In your letter to me, you mentioned a question asked by many men before you, a question which drove M. Russell away from theism: Who created the Creator? If God explains the universe, whence God? Furthermore, you stated that my position could not explain the universe any more than yours could.

My first response is that is not logically possible for a perfect explanation to exist, because justification cannot be a closed system. I have mentioned the Münchhausen-Trilemma to you before, and I will quickly restate its ideas here. For us to know any truth with certainty, we must have justification for believing it – but to know the justification with certainty requires further justification. It is easy to see how perfect justification then becomes impossible. (I always think of Todd Anderson's words in Dead Poets Society: the truth is rather like a blanket which cannot cover everything up. If you try to cover up one thing, you uncover something else.) Chesterton put it more eloquently: 'Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.'

With regards to your initial question about who created the Creator, I would only note that God, as a being Who exists beyond time, would not require a cause or a creator in the same sense that spatiotemporal entities themselves would. (This entire line of thought was broached tangentially when I discussed the Transcendent.) Everyone is forced to believe in something uncaused; the real question, then, is, What sort of thing could be uncaused? I can only conceive of an uncaused entity if that entity exists beyond time. And thus God is a much better candidate for the uncaused than anything else, especially that singularity of matter and energy with which the world began.

Another issue you brought forward was whether or not agnosticism was cowardly. I mostly agree with your Socratic formulation of wisdom: 'The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.' (Of course, I prefer Solomon's version in the ninth proverb: 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.') I hope you see that I have attempted not to exceed my philosophical reach; as M. Whitehead said, 'The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.'

I should begin by clarifying my own position on the matter. First, it is important not to conflate statements of belief with statements of knowledge. Agnosticism is a position about knowledge, not about belief; thus, as I have mentioned before, agnostic Christianity is not an incoherent or inconsistent view. Second, describing agnosticism as cowardly or brave is not entirely reasonable; agnosticism as such can exist for a multitude of emotional and intellectual reasons.

However, I still believe that many (if not most) agnostics are simply unwilling to acknowledge what their true beliefs are in the matter. Almost all the self-proclaimed agnostics I have met are atheists, whose beliefs have never struck me as brave or humble. In contrast, I have found that true Christians are very humble – much more so than agnostics and atheists, for the humility of the genuinely devout stems from lifelong submission to God. (So you know, I would not number myself among these devout yet.) Concerning this humility, I can only echo M. Muggeridge's words: 'Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell.' If I were to name the primary impetus behind atheism today, it would be pride. In my opinion, emotional (and spiritual) factors such as pride are a main influence upon someone's willingness to believe in God. (In your letter, you wrote that your political beliefs were in your 'character.' Religious – or irreligious – beliefs are hardly different.) But this entire argument about agnosticism's bravery implies that we have direct control over our beliefs, which you know from your own experience to be untrue.

Is my appeal to God an 'appeal to the unknown,' as you suggest? I know of no argument that can preclude or falsify unknown alternatives, and so, in a sense, I am defenseless against this claim. I can only say that science, in my view, could never explain itself in the same sense in which God can. Science is not some mystical force that marches irrevocably toward the Truth; it is a collection of our interpretations of data about how reality changes in time. And our interpretations, though often meticulously refined, are inevitably human and limited to a specific set of statements about reality. For example, science cannot answer Leibniz' question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' (I could name several other questions which science cannot, and almost certainly can never, answer.) You contend that my God is a 'God of the gaps' used to explain phænomena that science cannot yet explain. I would counter that my God is not merely an explanation for scientific phænomena, but also one for science itself. For all these reasons, I do not believe that your faith in science (which Lewis called 'mellontolatry,' or worship of the future) is entirely warranted.

You assert that you have more 'evidence that science will prove capable of finding solutions than that the Christian God exists.' I will reply with the words of M. Jastrow: 'There is a kind of religion in science, it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the universe, and every effect must have its cause, there is no first cause.... This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control.... Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, what cause produced the effect? Who or what put the matter and energy in the universe? Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions.'

Your 'evidence' for science's ability to find solutions to these problems can be nothing more than inductive reasoning applied to the wrong category of question. And, ironically, science itself has removed what was the linchpin of atheistic arguments until not even a century ago – for science has demonstrated that the world had a beginning. I return to M. Jastrow: 'For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.'

For millennia, atheists founded their unbelief in the knowledge that theists could not prove that the world had a beginning. This past century, science essentially proved that the world had a beginning – and yet atheism did not retreat, but has continued to advance (and even prosper) thenceforth. I ask you to ponder why that is, and to remember that the Pharisees who crucified Jesus were the very same men who witnessed his miracles. M. James spoke of the Will to Believe; the Will to Disbelieve is just as real.

You mention the paradox of the stone (or of the burrito), a quite interesting problem. As far as I can tell, this is the only argument you have advanced which concerns solely the Christian God and not the deistic God; all the others apply as much to the latter as to the former. (The reason for this is that only the Christian God is allegedly omnipotent.) Thus, in my view, the paradox of the stone is the only argument you have advanced that favors deism over theism. If the paradox of the stone can be dismantled, it seems to me that Christian theism is much more philosophically rigorous than deism (whether or not it ultimately is true).

I fear that my initial tripartite response to this paradox was flawed, and I hope that I can correct my errors here. The simplest way to answer the paradox is to consider what God's 'omnipotence,' as described in scripture, actually entails; a quandary for the Christian arises only if scripture attributes to God that which is incoherent. But there is no reason to believe that the idea of omnipotence as espoused in scripture connotes the ability to violate logic; thus, the paradox of the stone is irrelevant. To illustrate this point, consider that scripture says that God cannot lie (Titus i.2); as you can see, the Bible itself asserts that God is technically 'bound' by some 'law.' God's omnipotence, then, signifies only complete dominion over nature and all active powers, not over 'logic' or 'morality.' Obviously, this sort of omnipotence is perfectly compatible with logic. Because neither 'logic' nor 'morality' is active in any sense – in fact, it is questionable whether they exist as anything more than descriptors of other entities and actions – God's being 'bound' by them is not troublesome at all. Essentially, the paradox of the stone depends upon an anachronistic understanding of omnipotence.

You observe next some potential flaws in my argument based on what you called the 'statistical unlikelihood of human life evolving,' referring also to multiverse theories related to this issue. Note that I was not employing the argument from 'statistical unlikelihood' as an argument for the existence of God (though I believe that it could function as such when conjoined with other arguments); rather, I was invoking it to answer the separate question, What is the nature of the Transcendent? I believe the fact that the Transcendent brought into existence a world which could support sentient life is extremely telling. ('Who knows what other life forms could have developed if gravity were GM1M2/S3?' From what I have read, scientists are able to simulate alternate universes with an impressive degree of precision. Of all the possibly universes that could exist, very few can support stable atoms, let alone stable multicellular organisms.)

Apparently, you are under the impression that I said multiverses could resolve the flaws in my argument. On the contrary, few things could be more damaging to this aspect of my argument than the existence of parallel universes. (This is one reason scientists have postulated the existence of parallel universes; in a way, they provide a much more comforting and "scientific explanation than deism or theism.) Of course, I see no reason to believe that parallel universes exist or could exist, nor do I see how we could ever directly observe universes which never intersected ours.

Finally, you propose some of Ayn Rand's idea of man as an alternative to Christianity. Though this does not directly pertain to the main purpose of your letter or my response, I feel it necessary to comment on Mlle. Rand's views. You write, 'Her characters have been described as "flat," but I view them more as super-humans, the ideal you strive to achieve. You don't need to see or know anything besides the ideal, because that is your only goal.' Then, you quote Rand herself: 'Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.'

Perhaps her characters are ideal; but even if they are, they represent an ideal which we cannot achieve. Perhaps man's natural estate is an upright posture; but even if it is, man has fallen and cannot bring himself to rise again. Perhaps our minds should be intransigent; but even if they should be, they most certainly are not. You say that Rand's characters are super-human. I say that they are not human at all; they are machines. Humans are weak and stunted and far too often evil – our hearts are hearts of darkness. Humans are those whom Mlle. Rand regards with contempt.

I propose, as an alternative to Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, the twisted and rent body of Jesus Christ. Should man remain upright? Perhaps – yet Christ hung low and limp upon the cross. Should we remain unflinching and uncompromising and 'intransigent'? Yet Christ became obedient to Death, even death on a cross (Philippians ii. 8); 'and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth' (Isaiah liii. 7). Let Rand proudly boast all the more, yet Christ's words upon the cross were broken: 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' (Matthew xxvii. 46) Let her conquer the world with her strength; Christ shall conquer the world with his love.

God help us [] if we are called to save ourselves; I know that I cannot. The truth is that the ideal is far, far greater than anything Rand ever devised: the ideal is perfection itself, Love itself, Jesus himself. And the miracle is that we can draw closer to this ideal, not merely when we rise, but even when we stumble. For my God has promised this to me: 'My grace is sufficient for thee, for My power is made perfect in weakness' (2 Corinthians xii. 9). Mlle. Rand may keep her philosophers, kings, and giants. Christ will call the weak, the poor, and the downtrodden – the human.

Everything fades []. People die or move away; old friendships sputter out; our aging memories cheat us of our pasts. Things change. There is so much death in the world – physical death and spiritual death. Every lie, every burst of anger, every selfish act: with every sin, something – trust, innocence, beauty – dies. Something dies, and it cannot quickly be restored. Something dies, and you and I are powerless to do anything about it.

But God is not. And because of God, I know that Death itself shall die; <'for Love is strong as Death' (Song of Solomon viii. 6). All the earthly deaths that encumber and surround us will one day be utterly forgotten. Jesus' sacrifice will triumph over all of them; he will swallow up Death forever (Isaiah xxv. 8). <'God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away' (Revelation xxi. 4). 'Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us' (Romans viii. 18). And thus, we can boast: 'Where, O Death, is thy victory? Where, O Death, is thy sting?' (1 Corinthians xv. 55) For 'the last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death' (1 Corinthians xv. 26).

Aquinas is reported to have told another monk that all his works seemed like 'straw' compared to what he had seen. And as I conclude this letter, I know, like Aquinas, that my words cannot do justice to that beautiful Truth which has consumed me; I can only pray that the thoughts expressed herein will draw you closer to it. [] I ask you to look beyond my words; seek the hidden meaning. Do not be swayed by the Beauty without first being swayed by the Truth – but do not forsake either lightly.

'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known' (1 Corinthians xiii. 12).

[]"

The Irony God

"If God exists and Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true."

Most people would agree with that statement, as a general rule.

But I wouldn't.

For it is entirely possible that God conceived Christianity (and humanity) as nothing more than a practical joke, a hoax, a lengthy absurdity which we have (futilely) worshiped as profound - that God is, as Voltaire said, "a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." It is entirely possible that we will come to Judgment Day and be told that Life was merely a spectacle, a game. (In our postmodern society, many of us wouldn't be that surprised.) It is entirely possible that God is a liar and charlatan Whose "love" for us was actually nothing more than depraved knavery. This metaphysic I cannot disprove.

The point of this hypothetical "Irony God" (whom we almost never acknowledge or consider) is not to mock God or Christianity.

Let us consider the nature of the proposition. I am positing a theistic God who gave us the Bible and then allowed Jesus to be raised from the dead. In other words, I am positing what all Christian apologists try to defend.

Based on evidence alone, the Irony God is just as plausible as the Christian God. In other words, when it comes to rational inquiry, to the empirical Pursuit of Truth, we are left at an unseemly dead end. Reason cannot give us an answer; what can?

Trust.

Christianity asks us not just to believe in God, but to trust in Him. At some point, it asks us to stop treating God as an interesting hypothesis and to start treating Him as a Father.

What I was positing before isn't Christianity at all. Christianity says that God loves us and cares for us, as a father would. (And how many children have doubted their fathers' love?) This claim cannot be directly verified or proved. It is, in fact, an intensely personal claim.

It comes as no surprise to me that many people who analyze Christianity "objectively" often reject it - not because Christianity is incompatible with objective analysis, but because we cannot even begin to comprehend Christianity's claims without first seeking to understand its heart. Christianity is so bold as to say that rational inquiry is not and cannot be enough; can it then come as a surprise that those who would reduce it to rational terms deny it?

People are Christians, not (mainly) on the basis of philosophy or science, but ultimately on the basis of trust. They trust God, not as a theory, but as a person.

God does not ask us to prove His existence (although, from my own philosophical perspective, I do not see how He can be denied); He asks us only to trust Him.

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And do not rely on your own understanding.
Acknowledge Him in all your ways,
And He will make your paths straight."

- Proverbs 3:5-6 (NET)

This, of course, just begs the question: Why should we trust God?

We must answer that question for ourselves.

The Myth of Freethought

(Just remember: The problem isn't thinking for yourself, but thinking that your thoughts are somehow special or better than everyone else's.)

I recently saw an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that greatly amused me. The episode's name was "Authority," and it focused largely on a sound engineer who was campaigning against conformity and submission to authority under the slogan "No Sheep!". During the episode, he holds a rally in Manhattan that (predictably) attracts a huge crowd. The entire mass of people, goaded on by his exhortations, begins to chant, "No more sheep! No more sheep!" The irony of the situation is completely lost upon them.

Oftentimes, people operating under the guise of individualism, uniqueness, and anti-authoritarianism are the most unoriginal people you will meet. By striving to reject society's standards, they define themselves by society's standards. They tend to cluster around people who think the same way - just like everyone else does.

This phenomenon would be relatively harmless if it restricted itself to bad art, fashion, and music. (All three are prime media through which people distinguish themselves in the most superficial form possible.)

However, recently, this counter-cultural sentiment has gained such popularity that it has itself become the culture. Modern Western culture might be more individualistic than any other culture in history. (The roots of this cultural trend lie in the Enlightenment, during which intellectuals proposed a new chief principle of morality and politics: individual freedom.) We say things like "Be yourself!" or "Find the real you!", quoting Thoreau and other "freethinkers" (yes, pot-smoking transcendentalists count) in an absurdly shallow attempt to find meaning in life. I am reminded of Margaret Mead's quip, "Always remember you're unique...just like everybody else." The vast majority of today's self-styled individualists or non-conformists are deceiving themselves.

Of course, any exaggeration assertion of self-empowerment and individualism comes at the expense of traditional culture, thought, and morality. Individualism has penetrated past its inchoate aesthetic manifestations to worldviews and philosophies; postmodernism, deconstructionism, and other systems of thought all spring from its same tainted fountainhead.

The influence is most apparent in what is called "freethought," the proponents of which we call "freethinkers." The implicit assumption is that freethinkers have liberated themselves from the shackles of convention and tradition which so encumber the rest of us poor saps. (This is evidence, in my opinion, that religion's modern-day trials can be much better ascribed to a rejection of collectivism than anything else.)

People are wary and weary of organized religion, of being told what to do or what to think. (Of course, blindly submitting to authority - groupthink - is never a good thing, and religion, like any good thing, can be manipulated by individuals to their own gain.) Today, "religious" is a dirty word; "spiritual" is much better. When Nietzsche said God was dead, he really meant God was old-fashioned.

(Incidentally, the idea that organized religion is not personal may be selectively true, but it is by no means universally true. For true practitioners, I would think religion is an intensely personal experience.)

But the label "freethinker" is a complete misnomer. Freethinkers are generally just as influenced by their individualistic society as the pious are by their religious upbringing. Neither group can claim any greater objectivity, rationality, or "freedom of thought"; neither worldview is unique in any way.

The decision to adopt a particular religion can be just as personal and independent as the decision to be a "freethinker." There have been "freethinkers" for millennia, and most of them have thought along very similar lines. "Freethought" is just a new word for pride.

By all means, be fair and honest in intellectual pursuits - but don't pretend that your thoughts are better than other people's thoughts, or that new thoughts are better than old thoughts. (Chances are, the "new" thought has already been proposed and discussed centuries ago.) Rejecting, not acccepting, those assumptions is the true sign of intellectual freedom.

Fides et Scientia: Part 1

It is an objection I often hear: Can you prove God exists?

I often wonder what exactly that means. The word "proof," despite all its connotations of absolute certainty, has subtly different shades of meaning.

In mathematics or logic, for example, a proof is (ironically) fullproof - if you accept the initial postulates, which cannot themselves be proved. In law, however, "proof" is merely a measure of how convinced a judge or jury is of a certain charge. The phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt" comes to mind (begging the question of who, exactly, is reasonable).

So can we prove God exists? Probably not in the former, purely logical sense of the word; God is far too abstract, and logic far too indefinite. (I would argue, however, that there are very strong arguments for the existence of God set in a logical setting.)

There are also difficulties with the latter, "legal" sense of the word. Whether or not someone is convinced of God's existence will very much depend on how they weigh and evaluate the "evidence," which will very much depend on their emotional reactions to the idea of God. Brilliant men have both worshiped and rejected God, based much more on their predispositions than on any empirical evaluation. As Pascal said, "People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive." (That being said, after reading extensively on this issue, I have never seen any useful alternative to God proposed that was not itself God in some form. We all eventually must worship something.)

In short, there is no clean, magical proof that will supersede a person's desire not to believe in God. The Will to Disbelieve (to reference William James), as it were, can be just as powerful as any religious devotion. It is, in fact, itself a religious devotion.

But is a formal proof necessary to believe in God? Do we require formal proofs for all the propositions we accept? Not at all!

Consider this question: "Can I (Speaker for the Dead) prove that my father is not a murderer?" My response: "How could I?" When I am at school, my father could hypothetically be anywhere; when I am asleep, my father could hypothetically do anything. (If this were insufficient, he lived thirty years before I was even born!) The simple truth is that I cannot.

Does this mean I believe my father is a murderer? Does it mean that I remain "agnostic" on the issue, saying I can never know? Not at all. What it means is that absolute certainty - proof - is not necessary to accept a proposition. (If it were, we could not accept anything.)

(The argument could be made that my belief in my father's innocence is based more in emotion than in reason. But the mere fact that we are emotionally prone to accept certain ideas says nothing about the actual validity of those ideas. The truth is that we can never extricate emotion from our reasoning process, try as we might. Though it may be true that belief in God is "wishful thinking," it is also true that many non-theists "wish" God did not exist.)

Likewise, the idea of God - encompassing morality, aesthetics, metaphysics, human emotion, spirituality, fate, and many other sensitive topics - cannot be treated as a mathematical syllogism which can only be accepted if empirically proved.

Am I lowering the standards for belief? If proof is not required, can we not then believe anything?

No. That proof is unnecessary does not imply that evidence is unnecessary (or nonexistent).

Consider the commonly held proposition that all life evolved from ancient simple organisms (a keystone of Darwinism). This proposition is not merely a scientific one, but a historical one; it is a statement about past events. To prove it empirically would be impossible, requiring knowledge of every genotypic mutation of every species - ever. Nevertheless, it is almost universally accepted within the scientific community, because the extant set of data (which falls far below the standard of "proof") is sufficient for them.

Why should God's existence be held to a higher standard?

(Here, I have not addressed evidence for or against God's existence. My thesis is only that no empirical, absolute proof is required to believe in God. Such a standard, in my opinion, merely evidences the personal need of some to avoid God at any cost.)

The Problem of Infinity: Our Paradoxical Reality

(Note: Everything here defies what I was taught in Calculus. Thus, it could all very well be completely wrong.)

How do you define 0?

Obviously, there are a few different ways. The simplest I can think of is to define it as the result when a number is subtracted from itself (x - x = 0). But 0 is much, much more interesting than that; 0 is also the reciprocal of infinity.

Why is that interesting? Because infinity is not truly a number, but an abstract concept. Therefore, 0 is not only a real number, but also an abstract concept. (Of course, numbers themselves are abstract concepts...) Therefore, 0 is not only that which is non-existent; it is also that which is infinitely small.

Basically, infinity, as a concept, is pretty frickin' important.

Mathematics, of course, has incorporated both zero and infinity. In such an abstract system, infinity flourishes; without the concept of infinity, we would not have calculus, God (Who is infinite in many ways), and many other extremely fun things.

The difficulty arises when infinity is incorporated into our physical reality. More than merely incorporating it, we have used infinity to define the beginning of the known physical universe; what is the Big Bang if not the universe divided by infinity?

According to today's accepted scientific theory (which is a pretty useless standard when you consider what "today's accepted scientific theory" meant in centuries gone by), the universe began as a singularity - a point of infinitely small size and infinite density, temperature, and space-time curvature. The size of this point was not merely extremely small; it was, in fact, 0. Regardless of the actual amount of matter and energy present in the singularity, its size, temperature and density would remain the same. Does that make sense?

Think about that for a second. (Eventually stop, because thinking about the universe's being compressed into nothingness should blow your mind.) According to this theory, the universe existed as a dimensionless single point at its beginning (t = 0). Now, of course, its energy, density, and other characteristics are finite. At some time t between t = 0 and t = now, the universe became finite. The question is: When?

The only answer that could possible make sense (to me) is that this transition from infinite to finite occurred instantaneously - but that explanation is just as inconceivable as the question it purportedly answers!

An instantaneous change implies continuous space-time. Continuity is something that is very nice in calculus; in reality, is is nothing short of awe-inspiring and perplexing. (For one, it is hard to reconcile strictly classical conceptions of continuity with quantum tunnelling.) You can keep dividing any interval of time in half and still get an interval of time that is greater than zero. In reality, you can reiterate this process an unending number of times and still have an interval greater than zero.

But wait! Isn't any constant divided by infinity zero? Technically, yes. But don't we define infinity as "the divisor for which the quotient will be 0, regardless of the dividend"? Infinity is sort of like i, which we arbitrarily define as the square root of -1. This does nothing to explain how a number squared can be negative; it only creates an "imaginary" number (Aren't all numbers imaginary?) to fill the void in our mathematical knowledge. We have done the same thing with infinity; we've used it as a plug-in for things we don't really understand.

Though we try to use infinity as a number to express real physical quantities, we should eventually realize that infinity doesn't behave like a number. Divide infinity by any number, and you'll get infinity (That also works with zero...). Add or subtract any number to it, and you'll still get infinity (That definitely doesn't work with zero...).

For me, this means describing the beginning of the universe as "infinite" - in any way - is breathtaking. And we should probably think about it more.

(Also, if you believe in God...a singularity is a great way to get the universe going.)

Worship Is Beautiful

This summer, I traveled to southern Italy and Sicily with my family. While we were there, we were fortunate enough to see dozens of chiese, beautiful and ancient Italian churches.

While we were in Palermo (a fascinating city), we visited the Cattedrale di Palermo (Cathedral of Palermo). Inside, I saw a little old grandmother (I'm taking licentia poetica and assuming she had grandchildren), praying in complete silence. I was fascinated.

Even though I'm not Catholic, I saw something beautiful in that church. I think I would have seen the beauty of the moment in a mosque or synagogue as well, not because I think all religions are created equal, but because the connection between man and God is universal (although it manifests itself in many forms).

This past Sunday (second anecdote, for those keeping score at home), I went to church expecting a normal service. I got what I expected; the service was relatively normal. It began with a rendition of Michael W. Smith's Agnus Dei, a fairly typical (but nice) worship song. During the song, I was looking around and noticed a man in the congregation singing with his eyes closed and arms uplifted.

For whatever reason, something struck me about this man. I'm not sure what exactly it was; I had met him before, and maybe I just didn't expect that from him. (I'm kind of glad I can't pinpoint the reasoning behind this episode; it would feel like unweaving the rainbow to me...)

Regardless, my reaction was simple: I began to cry, first softly, and then to the extent that I had to sit down.

Why do I share these anecdotes? Because I believe there is something beautiful about worship. Reverence - for God, for Nature, or for almost anything - is something we should respect and cherish, because it is something I fear we are losing. Respect is becoming outdated; almost nothing (except for newfangled idiocies like "natural rights") is sacrosanct. "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold..."

Christianity, of course, has been especially hard-hit by this iconoclastic zeitgeist. Just a few centuries ago, the Western World was thought of as Christendom, and the Catholic church (for better or for worse) controlled nearly every aspect of society. Now, popular opinion can often be summarized by Francis Crick's tongue-in-cheek bon mot: "Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children."

I am not by any means advocating ecclesiocracy, or government by the church. (Theocracy, rule by God, is kind of impossible to avoid.) I also agree that Christians are to be blamed for this downfall; if our world is godless, it is because we are ungodly.

But now, a new criticism is being levied against the Christian God. Nonbelievers claim that no truly respectable god would require worship from his creation. After all, the argument goes, why would an omnipotent being "need" the praise of his creation?

Douglas Jacoby's response, in my opinion, is best. It is not God Who needs the worship; we need the worship. God does not want mindless submission, but love. "You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5, NET) What better definition for worship could there be?

Nevertheless, we are perplexed by worship, because we are perplexed by the idea that we should love God. The absence of this ideal - love for God - has affected how we perceive religion, morality, culture, justice, and almost anything else that matters. This absence is, in my mind, the great tragedy of our time (and of all time), because (speaking from experience) I can honestly say there is nothing quite like worshiping, nothing quite like loving God.

From an outsider's perspective, acts of worship (especially the more ritualistic or charismatic ones) can appear superstitious, strange, or superficial. I can understand that perspective because it is often my perspective.

But it should be impossible to deny the singularity and awesomeness of devotion to God, regardless of one's actual religious beliefs. (The best analogy, for the non-religious, would be reverence for Nature.) Any consideration of religion or God must center around the idea of loving Him. The idea that God's desire for worship somehow implicates him as an arrogant or megalomaniacal freak completely belies the passion people of all faiths and all cultures have shared for Him. St. Augustine said, "Our heart is restless until it rest in Thee."

You may not be able to accept that statement, but at least understand it.

(I wonder if any significance can be ascribed to his using a collective heart - "Our heart" - instead of individual hearts...)

The X-Factor: Reformulating the Etiological Argument

I generally would agree with Immanuel Kant's assertion that the existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved. And I doubt the following will convince anyone. However, I still find it important to articulate the logical framework for my belief in God; at the very least, I would hope to demonstrate that God is plausible.

I would consider this argument an expansion of the spatiotemporal etiological (or cosmological) argument. (Big words are fun.) Just as time has a direction, so does truth; truths flow from other truths as events flow from causes.

So it's a sort of synthesis of the cosmological argument and the teleological argument, and can be condensed to one statement:

Unless mathematics and logic alone can prove that the universe must be exactly the way it is, some other determining factor must exist.

From here, the transition from "determining factor" to "God" is mostly one of semantics.

(This is not meant as a formal proof, although it is structured as such. Also, Leibniz basically already thought of this.)


The Physicalist Assumptions


1. An objective physical reality exists.

This is something that would be a bigger problem for postmodernists than physicalists...but it bears brief discussion. Could it all be in our heads? The short answer is yes but. If the universe does, in fact, exist only in our heads, then our heads, at least, are real and exist in a different reality. Although I would contend that our perceptions are often extremely fallible, they are not completely imperfect. And if a simulated reality is all we know, it is reality for all intents and purposes (except in The Matrix).

2. The objective physical reality is governed by the "laws of thought." In other words, truth and reality are rational.

I would think of the "laws of thought" as "natural axioms," propositions that are only true because we cannot conceive or comprehend reality without them. It is not necessary here to enumerate them. Examples would be the law of identity (A is A) and the law of noncontradiction (A and not-A cannot both be true). Notice that it is impossible to prove these laws without invoking them, but it is also impossible to disprove them or even consider them without invoking them.

3. The objective physical reality is governed by the "mathematical axioms." In other words, truth and reality are mathematical.

There is much more debate about the underlying theory of mathematics, probably because much of mathematics is far less intuitive than foundational logic (although logic might not be intuitive either). Regardless of the controversy surrounding the philosophy of mathematics (That, ladies and gentleman, is sarcasm, by the way), I also do not know anyone who would contest this assumption. In other words, people might argue about why 2 + 2 = 4 is true, but they do not argue about whether or not it is, in fact, true.

4. The objective physical reality behaves in an orderly manner.

For obvious reasons, I doubt any physicalist would disagree, because this assumption is the foundation of science. It could be rephrased, "Given fixed physical conditions, a system can only behave in one way." (This is somewhat related to determinism.)

Think about how science works: you measure something under certain conditions, and then formulate a theory based on the assumption your experiment is repeatable. What do you call someone who does the same thing twice and expects different results each time? Insane.

1-4. An objective physical reality exists and behaves in a predictable and orderly manner. It is governed only by the laws of logic and mathematics.

I added the "only" to indicate the true claim physicalists make, that no knowledge, existence, or meaning exists outside logic, mathematics, and physics.

This could be restated this way: Except for the principles of mathematics and logic, everything exists within the closed system of physical reality.


My Counter-Assumption and Its Implications


5. The physical universe is governed by the principle of sufficient reason and is not solely contingent on the "laws of thought" and the "mathematical axioms."

Mathematical and logical truths resist any exterior explanation; that is why they are considered to be "self-evident." The same is not true for purely physical truths. Almost by definition, they require an explanation; otherwise, they are indistinguishable from magic.

It is impossible to imagine a world without the law of identity, but it isn't impossible to conceive of a world without special relativity. Thus, the structure of the universe (insofar as we understand it now) is completely arbitrary; it is independent of mathematical and logical truths. I know of no one (yet) who has ever attempted to derive the universe's structure from pure mathematics and logic; to me (and seemingly to everyone else), it seems impossible. Even assuming we were to identity the Theory of Everything, that theory itself would not depend solely upon pure mathematics and logic; otherwise, mathematics and logic themselves would be the Theory of Everything! And I know no one so audacious as to make that claim.

To illustrate what I mean, consider that we have both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries. The universe is (supposedly) non-Euclidean; why isn't it Euclidean? Has it not arbitrarily chosen a non-Euclidean geometry for itself? Could a Euclidean universe not exist that would satisfy mathematics and logic? I'm not saying this is the best example, but it illustrates the variability in what the universe could be. After all, physicalists tacitly admit that the universe could exist in many different forms when they advocate the multiverse theory.

Therefore, by the physicalists' own admission, what the universe is must depend upon something else: the X-Factor. It cannot depend on mathematics and logic alone, because they allow for an infinite number of different universes. Therefore, there must be some other explanation for why the universe behaves the way it does. (Remember that a Theory of Everything would only explain how the universe fundamentally behaves, not why that is how it behaves.)

If physicalists argue this point, then we must wonder why a random universe (such as ours) would appear and then cease to behave in a random manner. To deny the existence of the X-Factor is to attribute the X-Factor's properties to the universe itself. This is not a scientific statement; this is arbitrarily excluding physical reality from the principle of sufficient reason.

Thus, the X-Factor exists. At the very least, it is impossible to reject the possibility of its existence without invoking the universe as the X-Factor.


Possible Objections


1. What if the universe isn't orderly, but random? Quantum physics could indicate the universe very well is random. Can't randomness be explained by the multiverse theory?

The implications of randomness should be striking to the physicalist. (Note that randomness should not be confused with unpredictability or imprecision of data.) Imagine, if you will, a Lamborghini's appearing in your driveway. Imagine concluding that it came there for no reason whatsoever; that doesn't make sense. Randomness is worse than magic; instead of appealing to an unknown power, randomness appeals to no power at all. Randomness is chaos, and it should be unacceptable to physicalists.

(David Hume, a non-religious rationalist, said, "Chance is only our ignorance of real causes." Charles Darwin, who needs no introduction, said, "I cannot look at the universe as a result of blind chance." And we all remember Einstein's famous - and paraphrased - statement that "God does not play dice.")

What about the multiverse theory, which posits an infinite number of universes encompassing all possible physical realities? First of all, the multiverse theory merely pushes back the question; instead of asking why the universe is the way it is, we merely have to ask why the multiverse is the way it is.

And because these universes would (hypothetically) be parallel, it would probably be impossible to prove their existence. In other words, the multiverse theory is much more a religious than a scientific claim.

2. What if "physical laws" can be derived from mathematical and logical truths?

If this were true, mathematics and logic would become the proverbial Theory of Everything. But even if this were true, some physical truths would remain arbitrary. The amount of matter and energy in the universe is the most obvious example. There must be some explanation for why we do not have a little more or little less matter and energy. Our physical reality must depend on something besides logic and mathematics.

And as I said before, no one has even attempted to identify the Theory of Everything with first-order logic and mathematics.

3. Isn't this just the kalam cosmological argument?

I am not (necessarily) invoking the cosmological argument here. Before the Big Bang theory was accepted by the scientific community, physicalists argued that the universe was infinitely old, and that there was an infinite regression of spatiotemporal causes (thus leaving one infinitely removed uncaused cause). Now, of course, many would prefer to invoke an infinite regression of causes preceding or simultaneous to the Big Bang - but this isn't about spatiotemporal causes themselves, but the causes of truth. (I do, however, have one friend who invokes creatio ex nihilo in the physicalist sense.)

4. Why are only mathematical and logical principles independent of the principle of sufficient reason? Why are physical principles not included?

Physics consists merely of observations of our universe, while mathematics and logic are independent of our universe's structure. Physics very much depends upon the nature of the universe, and so "physical laws" are only descriptions and interpretations of data. F = ma depends very much upon how the universe works, but A = A does not. To say "The universe is the way it is because of physics" and "Physics is the way it is because the universe is the way it is" does not make sense. (What a horrible sentence.) The two are codependent. So physics requires an explanation because reality requires an explanation.

5. Why can't the universe itself be the X-Factor?

This is, in my opinion, the most difficult objection to counter. But it is still very surmountable.

Physicalism, in my mind, implies a closed rational system in which how the universe works can be explained by physics, mathematics, and logic alone. But this closed rational system is inherently flawed, because it cannot explain the system itself.

So any claim suggesting the universe needs no explanation or self-created is itself a non-scientific or religious claim.

I have heard the argument made that, because of Occam's Razor, the X-Factor (God) would be an unnecessarily complex entity to invoke. It would be one too many assumptions. However, historically, the existence of an uncaused Truth has been much more intuitive than the existence of a finite, self-causing universe. It seems much more reasonable to invoke an uncaused ethereal, abstract entity than a universe of quarks and bosons that spontaneously came into being.

We would have to posit a universe which first existed beyond spacetime, in a random flux of nothingness, and then arbitrarily created itself. In doing so, it would become temporal and orderly. Does that really make sense?

In short, the two alternatives I see are God...and magic.

But I don't know...

Innocence: The Lost Virtue

Innocence is generally misunderstood in our society. We often refer to it in the legal sense of lack of guilt, but it is much, much more than that. It is life unmarred, unblemished, uncorrupted - pure - untainted by sin or the world. It is not ignorance or naïveté, but purity of mind, motive and heart.

Innocence is beautiful.

Yet today, beauty is not equated with innocence at all; instead, beauty has become sensualized and sexualized. Ask a man what he wants in a woman, and he'll probably name (or at least think) a body part. (Just think of some of the words we use to describe women: curvaceous, hot, sexy, steamy, etc.) Women have been reduced from human beings to objects for sexual and physical pleasure. (This is an issue I consider to be much more important to feminism than abortion rights or even, in all honesty, voting or employment rights. Of course, I'm not a woman...)

I am not writing this because I believe this objectification of woman is sinful or immoral (although I do). I am writing this because I find this new image of women tawdry and unappealing - not because it is wrong, but because it is ugly.

I will not pretend that this brazen sexuality is unattractive on a physical level; we are, after all, animals, and we respond to sensual cues - sight, smell, sound, and touch, and taste - as any other animal species would. I am not attempting to deny the importance or beauty that exists in physical appearances. But intellectually - spiritually - I am appalled and saddened by this desire to flaunt, this animal drive unmitigated by modesty or propriety.

(By the way, the blame lies much more on the men who encourage and worship the behavior than on the women.)

And I really don't understand it. I don't understand how people have begun to equate sex with love, because to me, there is something inherently beautiful about chastity, purity, and innocence. I really cannot imagine loving someone who did not possess those traits - not shyness, social awkwardness or introversion, but the desire not to have yourself running (naked) through someone else's head. I am talking about the desire to reserve yourself and your body for someone you love. In today's world this requires maturity, conviction and willpower. It is difficult, and I remember my old school's motto: "The Beautiful is Difficult." Any other "beauty," to me, seems easy and cheap.

I admit that I (and men in general) can sometimes be more attracted to someone physically if she is wearing revealing clothing or dancing inappropriately. (For me, though, it's usually nothing more than an annoyance or a distraction - especially when someone who has no business revealing anything does.) But I am painfully aware of the primal nature of this attraction; it is nothing more than lust for a visual image, nothing more than anything your dog or cat ever felt.

And can that truly compare to love? For me, it never has, and I hope it never will. A woman can be physically attractive and pretty - but without innocence, she can never be beautiful. "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman who rejects discretion" (Proverbs 11:22, NET).

The problem is pervasive in literature and in the media. (Consider the fact that Romeo and Juliet hardly knew each other.) We romanticize love at first sight, failing to realize that love is based on so much more than sight. We joke about the fragility of Hollywood relationships, then fall hook, line and sinker for Hollywood love. (Despite the romance and the music, Jack didn't really love Rose.) Consider these lines from Goethe's Faust:

FAUST:

Once a fair vision came to me;
Therein I saw an apple-tree,
Two beauteous apples charmed mine eyes;
I climb'd forthwith to reach the prize.

THE FAIR ONE:

Apples still fondly ye desire,
From paradise it bath been so.
Feelings of joy my breast inspire
That such too in my garden grow.

In the play, Faust falls passionately in love with a young woman named Gretchen (whom, surprisingly, he has never met). However, the exchange above occurs not with Gretchen, but with a young witch (whom, yet again, he has never met). The tragedy, of course, is that Faust corrupts the innocent Gretchen and ruins her life. (She does, however, have a happy ending.)

Our sexual drive is powerful, and with good reason; we ourselves are the results of numerous past sexual encounters. In fact, we even tend to overemphasize our sensual urges; a lot of our problems can be attributed to a collective lust for sensual pleasure from food, drugs, television, and sex. But I believe our desire for true beauty and for innocence can be equally or more powerful.

Innocence is children and in nature is idealized; children wouldn't be cute if they weren't innocent. But the point applies to adults, too; I cannot escape the notion that, in submitting to our culture, we are neglecting our souls for our infinitely mortal bodies.

People at my school sometimes ridicule me for this position. Their response is often one of shock and incredulity, as if I were some sort of asexual freak or ascetic. But I think our society does understand the importance of the word "love," although we often misunderstand it. (For starters, love is much more than an emotion.) And I hope that people can come to the point where they can at least understand my view.

The Myth of Probability

René Descartes once said, "When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to act according to what is most probable." Now, I'm not sure whether or not I agree with that statement, because I'm not sure whether it is in our power to determine what is most probable.


But Wait, What Exactly Is Probability?


But what does probability even mean? The classical definition of probability, according to Pierre-Simon Laplace (yes, that Laplace):

The probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favorable to it, to the number of all cases possible when nothing leads us to expect that any one of these cases should occur more than any other, which renders them, for us, equally possible.

Frequency probability, on the other hand, defines an event's probability as "the limit of its relative frequency in a large number of trials" (according to Wikipedia). Note the "large number of trials." Statistical significance, people! Please! (And the law of large numbers is fascinating, but it can only be proved by testing it multiple times and seeing that it eventually works - in other words, by using the law of large numbers. It basically means that "probabilities are probably true.") Anyway, there's also Bayesian probability, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me (and I'm not the only one).


The Implications of Probability


But back to what Descartes said. My question is simple: When can probability truly be applied to real life?

We apply probability a lot more than we think. In fact, every time we say something is true, we are really saying it has a 100% probability of being true. When we say that the Earth's gravitational pull is (close to) a certain number, we mean (in frequentist terms) that the relative frequency of the limit of that number is 1. We generally assume that time will not effect the probability of certain statements or truths, including scientific propositions; in fact, one foundational truth of science is that accurate results in the past are still valid today. There is a 100% probability the laws of nature do not change. (Or is there?)

In general, I don't really mind this use of probability. It's pretty effective for what it attempts to do: to predict. But the predictive number we assign to a statement does not in the least affect its actual truth value.

Consider the classic example of probability: a deck of cards. Assuming the deck is sufficiently shuffled so that the cards are distributed randomly, the chances of drawing a certain card are 1 in 52, or approximately 1.92%. But that's not really true! That's just the best prediction we can make. The truth is, there is exactly one deck of cards arranged in exactly one order, so there is a 100% probability that a certain card will be drawn and a 0% probability any other card will be drawn. The reality is that there is no chance. As David Hume said, "Chance is only our ignorance of real causes."

This raises another question: Is there irreducible randomness in nature? Is radioactive decay really random, as Schrödinger's cat might suggest? Are there hidden variables? If there are hidden variables, probability is merely a concession either of a lack of data or of an inability to analyze the data. But if quantum mechanics is truly random, or indeterministic, what exactly happens? (I'm asking rhetorically.) How does a physicalist metaphysic (How ironic is that phrase?) explain randomness when science depends upon an orderly universe? Imagine if Newton's second law were "f = ma only at random times." But if the universe is deterministic, from whence (I love that word) do the independent relationships arise?


Probability and Belief


Descartes attempted to apply probability to entire belief systems, and so do a lot of people today. Atheists (who sometimes exalt themselves as "skeptics" or "brights"), in particular, argue that the existence of a god (whatever that means) is exceedingly improbable. (By the way, I don't like to think of things this way. I don't think of atheism as not believing in God and theism as believing in God; I think of them as beliefs in different sets of independent truths, that actually aren't all that different. More on that at another time.) But where are the numbers? How can you evaluate the probability of a god? If God's probability is either 0% or 100% (He either exists or doesn't exist), are we going to say it's at 7.3% or 50.01% or whatever? Should we only believe in God if His probability is greater than 50%?

And what factors affect the probability of God's existence (Yes, I switched from "a god" to "God." I don't care enough.)? That is itself a question that is rarely asked. I'm still not sure how to answer it.

Even assuming that physicalism can explain the entirety of our existence, does that automatically bring God's probability to 0%? Recall that probability requires more than one trial. We only have one trial of the universe, so we can't determine God's probability at all; we don't have enough trials. True probability cannot exist outside the context of a sufficient number of trials. Thus, even in this (hypothetical) atheistic utopia of a universe, God might still exist. His probability would be unknown. Which is why agnosticism makes a lot more sense.

But consider more specific questions. Are the New Testament documents reliable? Can we really assign a number to the probability that they are reliable? Should we assume that every piece of evidence has equal weight? How does this work?

The reality is that people who consider their answers to such questions "objective" are overstating the precision of their arguments. Prominent atheist Antony Flew recently converted to deism because, in his mind, the existence of God became more probable than the non-existence of God. While I'm happy a prominent atheist has renounced atheism (though he's far from Christianity), I still think this whole idea is kind of absurd. At what point did the existence of God top 50%? Which tidbit of evidence did that? Did Flew assign numerical values to the different facts on each side and weigh them up? Or did he just use what atheists rarely admit to using, a gut instinct?

We cannot rationally calculate God's probability. There is no such thing. We can examine evidence, but our final determination will be arbitrary and subjective, even if it is based on objective and truthful information. Which is why people disagree more about this than about whether or not 2 + 2 = 4. (It does.)

Does that mean we should all be agnostic? No! (I don't think so.) It does mean that reason is not the only source of knowledge in this area. And it means that our question should be rephrased. "What is the probability that God exists?" should become "Is God compatible with what we know about reality? Is physicalism compatible with what we know about reality? Are they both?" (That would be interesting.) And finally, we must ask what role pure reason plays in this all. (Hint: I don't think it's 100%.) (Get it? I referenced probability in my parenthetical comment!) (Three parenthetical comments in a row!)

God is more than a hypothesis.