Posted by:
blackholesun
(
)
Date: December 15, 2011 01:11PM
(Warning – this is a long winded theological rant. Read at your own risk)
I think there are some common misunderstandings about the claims that theism makes (in the monotheistic Western tradition). Discussions between atheists and theists often go nowhere because neither side really understands what the other is saying. None of what follows below is particular to Christianity, instead it applies more broadly to the ‘God of the philosophers’ as we Mormons were taught. It’s possible to be a theist and not to hold to any of the revealed religions like Christianity or Islam. It’s possible to be a theist and believe that God is known through reason not revelation. And none of what follows is meant to be an argument for the existence of God. It’s just meant to clarify what theists usually mean by God.
1) The term ‘God’ in classical theology has a particular meaning that rules out almost all the various gods that humans have at some time worshiped whether it be Zeus or the Elohim of Mormonism. What makes God God in classical theology is the characteristic of aseity or self-existence. By definition, so to speak, God must be uncaused or unconditioned by anything else or it would not be God. God would be the only thing that has the property of aseity which is a way of saying that God is the source of all other existence – space, time, energy, the laws of physics, you and me. So to ask ‘who created God then?’ is to misunderstand what is meant by the term God. God is precisely that entity for which that question makes no sense.
2) Some try to argue (ala Dawkins) that if God created our complex universe then God must be very complex and in need of an explanation himself. Again, this is a misunderstanding of what theists mean by God. In fact, in classical theology, God is perfectly simple in the sense that God is not composed of parts and so cannot be broken down into simpler components. God would be the end of the explanatory chain, like how strings in string theory would be the most fundamental reality so that the question ‘what are strings made up of?’ has no answer.
3) The so called First Cause argument for God’s existence does not necessarily require a beginning to the universe. Theoretically the universe could be eternal and God still be thought of as the First Cause in the sense of the most fundamental explanation or causal entity. For example, biological phenomena are based on the laws of chemistry which in turn are derived from the laws of physics. So when I see a an animal move a limb I may say that the limbs move because of the biological properties associated with nervous systems and muscles, which derive from the chemistry of cells, which in turn derive from the fundamental laws of physics. So the laws of physics (if we want to think of those ‘laws’ as real causal entities) are the primary cause of what we observe in animal behavior, even if the biological/chemical/physics phenomena are simultaneous.
4) The universe does appear to have a beginning in the standard Big Bang model of cosmology. Space, time, and energy all came into existence at the Big Bang singularity. Our best current estimate for the age of the universe is on the order of around 13.7 billion years. Now there are various theories out there that try to argue that our Big Bang was not the beginning of everything that exists, like eternal inflation or colliding branes, but for now those theories are just speculation. A theist is perfectly justified in taking the existing empirical evidence and the prediction of general relativity that the universe must have begun in a singularity at face value, and to hold that the universe did have a beginning just as theologians have been arguing for two millennia. As the astronomer Robert Jastrow (who was not religious) wrote in reference to the Big Bang model: "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."
5) There seems to be a common belief that every new discovery of science is a blow against the idea of God and pushes God further and further into the shadows. The whole ‘God of the gaps’ thing. And granted there are many religious believers who feel that their God is indeed threatened by scientific progress. But this again, in my opinion, is based on a misunderstanding of what is meant by God. God wouldn’t be hiding in those aspects of reality that have yet to be understood by science. God would the meta-explanation – why science can explain at all and why is there even something to explain. God is equally to be found in those things that we understand, like general relativity and evolution, and those things that we have yet to understand. God would be the reason for why our world is intelligible to us in the first place. When early scientists like Kepler and Newton discovered the laws that govern planetary motion, they didn’t see that as proof against the existence of God – The planets move in ellipses around the sun therefore there is no God! The attraction between two bodies is inversely proportional to the square of their distance hence belief in God is a delusion! – but rather as evidence for a divine mind that gives the world its rational form. They didn’t see it as abolishing the metaphysical need for a creator. Every scientific discovery that further demonstrates the intelligibility and order of the cosmos can be seen as supporting and confirming a theistic worldview. That’s part of the reason why modern science arose in a thoroughly theistic society. The scientists of the early modern period believed that there were laws to discover in nature because they believed in a divine lawgiver. The scientists of the early modern period believed that it was possible for humans to understand those laws because they believed that we were created in the image of that divine lawmaker. Even most of the early Greek thinkers who laid the foundations for a scientific worldview believed in some sort of divine mind that gives shape and form to our world and that in some way we participate in that divine mind since we are rational animals. For the atheist it’s really just a matter of good luck that the world turned out to be orderly and rational, or that we humans, with our limited minds that are a product of blind evolutionary forces, is capable of understanding the universe at its deepest and most abstract levels.