Of God and Dice

When Albert Einstein was first presented with Max Plank’s theory of quantum mechanics—that the behavior of particles at the subatomic level is not completely predictable—he rejected the idea out of hand.  Before the quantum theory was postulated, the underlying assumption behind science and the scientific method was that the universe and everything contained therein was completely orderly and predictable, which caused Einstein to quip: “God does not throw dice!”

I don’t claim to know much about quantum mechanics, but I can draw one conclusion from Einstein’s reaction, together with many other things he said:  Einstein believed in God.  To be sure he was more of a deist—not believing in a personal God who involves Himself in the affairs of men—but there was no question in his mind that there was an intelligent deity behind the creation of the universe. 

We Hold These Truths…

President Obama’s recent faux pas did not get much coverage in the media (At least as far as I know.) Actually, it didn’t even get too much coverage on right wing talk radio or Fox News either. In case you have not heard it, he left out some pivotal words in his speech before the Hispanic Caucus, when he attempted to quote from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed […] with certain inalienable rights: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Now I am not here to make hay about the President’s omission of the key words “by their Creator”. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was just an innocent mental blip, or perhaps it was the speechwriter’s fault and the President was just following the teleprompter. I will not even attempt to draw any conclusions about his motives or what the omission might reveal.

The Wind Blows on the Road to Damascus and the Road to the Zoo

I was very pleased to get some feedback to one of my previous posts, Reasonable Faith, from a commenter named Steve. His comments were honest, thoughtful and thought provoking. You may read Steve's comments in their entirety by clicking on the hyperlink, but here is a snippet.

That you opened this blog entry with a discussion of Paul fits very well with a long standing notion that I have had about what it might take to convert me to Christianity…. [An] experience akin to what Saul/Paul had on the road to Damascus might be sufficient to provide the impetus to convert me and cause me to begin to evangelize. If I had a personal encounter with Jesus as Saul/Paul did, I might change my name from Steve to Pteve and go out to tell the world of what I had experienced. It would appear that Saul/Paul did not come to Christianity by the use of thought and reason, but rather by a spiritually overwhelming and even physically altering (loss of eyesight) experience that was entirely unsolicited but evidently radically transformative. Am I less deserving than Saul/Paul? Who knows? But I can say in all honesty that after many hours of prayer, meditation, and "opening" myself to the presence of God that absolutely nothing of His presence has been made known to me. After many hours of reading and contemplating the Bible, I have not had one iota of insight afforded me that might begin to compel me to believe in Jehovah or Jesus.

How is it that people come to faith? How is it that some do and some don’t? It does not seem that there are particular demographics that are necessarily more prone to faith. Educated or uneducated, rich or poor, sophisticated or unsophisticated, each group has within its ranks people who accept and embrace the Gospel, and people who don’t. Why?

"Everybody Must Get Stoned!"

As mentioned previously, I have been spending a good bit of time trading comments with atheists at an otherwise Christian blog called “If I became an atheist”. In the latest round of debate, I attempted to challenge the atheist basis for morality if we are nothing but cosmic accidents that will eventually die and turn to fertilizer. This eventually got sidetracked (I am not sure how) into challenges about the consistency of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Specifically, the Old Testament appears to command practices which seem barbaric from the standpoint of our 21st century moral sensibilities. Even more problematic, many Old Testament commands seem to be downright repudiated in the New Testament. As one commenter named Gandolf put it, the law of Moses included provisions for stoning people to death. Is that still valid? And if not, did God change His mind?

Reasonable Faith

In my previous post, I mentioned my adventures of sparring with atheists at other blogs. Like most Christians, I am typically accused of having a blind and unsubstantiated faith, suppressing reason, and not really “knowing” for sure, but rather “believing”. Below is an edited compilation of my responses:

****************************************

I am not insane, most excellent Festus. What I am saying is true and reasonable. The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner. (The apostle Paul, during his defense before Festus and King Agrippa; Acts 26:25-26).

I guess I am in good company if I am accused of not being completely rational in my beliefs.   The apostle Paul, formerly know as Saul of Tarsus, a learned man of letters, zealous Pharisee and persecutor of Christians, was famously converted and dedicated the rest of his life to preaching the faith he once tried to snuff out.  When these activities got him into trouble wth the authorities and he made his defense before kings and governors, he was accused, among other things, of being out of his mind.  His famous response quoted above is instructive.

Apologia Italiana

I mentioned in a recent post that most of my cousins in Italy are generally on the far left of the political spectrum. Many of them also happen to be self proclaimed atheists (No necessary connection, by the way). Unfortunately, it seems to be quite common among Italians of my generation—the forty to fifty-somethings. When I mentioned to a friend back home that most believers in Italy are found among the older and the younger generations, he very adroitly pointed out that atheism has difficulty thriving for more than a generation or two. Life happens, and belief in God mysteriously revives by the next generation.


I recently had a wonderful opportunity to brush up on my rusty Italian and at the same time engage two of my Italian cousins (whom I will call “P” and “M”) on the subject of atheism vs. theism. It all started when cousin P. posted a link on Facebook with a quote from Margherita Hack, an Italian astrophysicist and popular science writer.

We atheists believe we should act according to conscience based on moral principle, and not because we expect some reward in paradise.

What is your drug of choice?

I am currently reading a book by Alister McGrath called The Twilight of Atheism. It is a somewhat heavy but worthwhile read that traces the philosophical underpinnings and history of atheism, including its meteoric rise in the 19th and 20th century and—as the title of the book suggests—the beginnig of its decline. I will not attempt to synopsize or otherwise do justice to the book in a single post (To be honest, I am not finished reading it!), but rather focus on two of the fallacies pointed out by McGrath:

1. The assumed tension or enmity between science and faith;
2. The notion that belief in God or theism is the natural result of man’s fear of death and desire for immortality

Scientific discovery through the ages has advanced precisely because of theistic thinking, as scientists have investigated on the assumption that an ordered world and consistent universe flow from a First Cause and Ultimate Controller of the laws of natures. It was not until Darwin’s Origin of the Species suggested the possibility of a natural evolution of man without a divine agent that there arose a perceived tension between science and faith. But this tension was not necessary. Darwinism merely suggested a theory of natural history that differs from literal interpretations of the Genesis creation accounts, but that is nothing new. Theologians as early as Augustine were careful to point out centuries before Darwin that Genesis need not be taken literally.

Dilemma

I think I need to change my profile. Maybe. Maybe not. As any of my extremely limited number of readers knows, I make no bones about coming from a Christian perspective. I also mention that one of my passions is apologetics and I even quote one of my favorite verses on the subject:

"But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." (I Peter 3:15)

I still try to live by that verse, but the “gentleness and respect” part sometimes gets me into trouble. Whether I am talking religion or politics, the views I hold are usually not mere preferences but rather convictions. So it is a challenge to avoid getting too passionate or argumentative. This is why I prefer blogging to spoken debate. While alone at my computer keyboard, I can take a deep breath, gather my thoughts and calmly put together a reasoned discourse while perhaps sipping a glass of wine. I then read it over several times and say a prayer before clicking on the “submit” or “publish” button.

Christian and Atheist Bloggers Abound

I started this site sometime last fall and, until recently, I could probably count on the fingers of one hand how many people actually read it. While the site is not devoted exclusively to Christian apologetics, my first post explicitly devoted to that subject [Apologia] seemed to provoke a modest spike in readership, as indicated by the site meter. I also received three unsolicited friendly comments from fellow Christians who are otherwise total strangers to me. One of them, who goes by the pen name of Makarios, has a very impressive blog dedicated exclusively to Christianity and apologetics. Not only is his writing more prolific than mine, but he is head and shoulders more knowledgeable. My hat is off to him.

The Cosmological Argument

I fully expected my cousin Mat to respond to my last post [Apologia] with some thought provoking observations and questions, and I was not disappointed. To a duplicate post on Facebook, he responded:

Dawkins has gone above and beyond the call of duty in his writing. As the burden of proof lies on the claimant, the religious community is responsible to offer proof of God. It is not the secular community's job to disprove him/her/it. Even if Dawkins lacked any of the evidence cited in The Blind Watchmaker, et al, one would have to remain agnostic (and, further, atheistic) toward religion in order to call themselves intellectually honest, because the only proof that religion offers is faith.

Mat has used this argument elsewhere in other posts at Men of Reason and Down with Absolutes. It is an interesting argument, but I am afraid it does not hold water. With all due respect to Mat, it seems to me to be the atheist’s ultimate artful dodge. In effect, the argument goes like this: “You are the one who came up with this God business, so the burden of proof is on you. As for me, I don’t have to prove a negative; i.e., that God doesn’t exist.”

Perhaps so, but the atheists, especially those who appeal to the sciences as the ultimate and only authoritative source of knowledge, have an even greater burden of proof. They need to explain the origin of the universe, and this has left them in a precarious position. As my good friend, Gordon Leidner states at his website Created Cosmos:

Today's scientists go to extreme lengths and propose some of the most fantastic theories in order to keep God out of the equation. In many of these theories, they are trying to create SOMETHING out of NOTHING.

Before Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the subsequent scientific consensus that the universe exploded out of nothingness some 14 billion years ago, the atheist could simply state that all matter and energy existed eternally (which, by the way, defies logic; but we will save that theme for another post). Armed with Darwinism and the now generally discredited "steady state" theory of the universe, atheists needed only explain how life arose out of inorganic matter (i.e., abiogenesis or spontaneous generation, which is still another far fetched absurdity that I hope to discuss in a subsequent post.)

But the atheists had the rug pulled out from under them with the theory of general relativity, a consensus that twentieth century scientists came to most reluctantly. As stated by Geisler and Turek in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist:

It was 1916, and Albert Einstein did not like where his calculations were leading him. If his theory of General Relativity was true, it meant that the universe was not eternal but had a beginning. Einstein’s calculations indeed were revealing a definite beginning to all time, all nature, and all space. This flew in the face of his belief that the universe was static and eternal. Einstein later called his discovery “irritating”. He wanted the universe to be self existent—not reliant on an outside cause—but the universe seemed to be one giant effect.

Thus Geisler and Turek introduce the basic cosmological argument which starts to shatter the foundation of atheism:

1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause
2. The universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore, the universe had a cause.

Despite the efforts of others to dance around such unassailable logic, Einstein knew the implications. Once he got over the initial irritation of his findings and came to terms with their implications, Einstein had yet another source of irritation:

In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views.

Though best described as a deist as opposed to a theist, there is little doubt as to where Einstein stood on the God question:

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.

Speaking of details, there were obviously many other questions and objections Mat raised to my previous post, but I will deal with them one at a time. Stay tuned.

Apologia

I would like to dedicate this post to my cousin Mat, an incredibly intelligent young man whom I highly respect. He has just graduated from high school and will be attending American University this fall. With an intellect beyond his years, he has a promising future. He is also a self-proclaimed atheist and has even created a blog on the subject: Men of Reason. With his nimble mindedness and keen intellect, I have no doubt that Mat can give me a run for my money in a debate, but he is highly mistaken in this critical area.

As indicated on the side bar of this website, Christian apologetics is one of my passions. Back when I was growing up in a somewhat religious household, it did not matter to me whether the things I was taught had any reasonable basis in fact. I just believed them, having no compelling reason to otherwise doubt them. But after I turned twenty and started to understand and personally embrace the Gospel for the first time, it suddenly became more important to know and be able to defend the foundations of the faith. After all, now it was no longer a religious tradition in which I was raised, but rather something personal on which I was staking my entire future. I needed to know that I was not building my life around a fable.

Mat's Blog

[Originally Published at "Down With Absolutes" on March 14, 2009]
Mat,

Congratulations on your new blog, Men of Reason. I have seen many others like it, and I often wonder about their necessity. Really, if you are convinced about atheism, is it all that necessary to propagate it with such religious fervor? If there really is no God, what is the harm of people believing that there is one? While I can concede that some terrible injustices have been perpetrated in the name of God by overzealous people, belief in God and the corollary beliefs that He is just and will hold us accountable for our actions have on the whole made the world a better place. Even atheists have conceded as much. By contrast, my gut reaction to those who wear atheism on their sleeves is “Methinks he doth protest too loudly.”

Why Bother? -- Part II

[Originally posted at "Down With Absolutes" on  November 10, 2008]


It has been quite an interesting discussion resulting from three separate but related posts:

1. "As seen on cars outside Corpus Christi Church in Elsmere" by Mike Matthews
2. "Jesus Christ" by Mat Marshall
3. "Why Bother?" by Leo

I am impressed by the level of thought that has gone into the discussion. I am particularly blown away by Mat, whose formidable synapses keep firing with breathtaking efficiency as he states his case, though of course I disagree with him. There have been some equally thoughtful observations from Dominique, Jonathan Moseley, Steve Newton, Paul Fakowlski and others. A lot of the comments and counter-comments were interesting, but perhaps we were talking past each other because it was not clear whether the subject at hand was (1) the separation of church and state, (2) the validity and consistency of the Bible, (3) church history, (4) the moral underpinnings of our laws and government or (5) whether or not there is any real point or foundation to law and morality if there is no Supreme Lawgiver.

Why Bother

[Originally posted at "Down with Absolutes" on November 5, 2008]


Michael Matthews may or may not have intended to stir up a hornet’s nest on election eve, November 3, 2008 when he posted “As seen on cars outside Corpus Christi Church in Elsmere”. If he did, I was the first to take the bait, which generated a grand total of 22 responses, including a number of thoughtful and some not so thoughtful comments about religion and politics, the founding fathers, and the separation of church and state.

After also taking a stab at these issues, my second posted comment ended in an attempt at notching up the discussion to explore the underpinnings of our laws and government:

Mike, let’s take this to a broader and saner level. Can you at least acknowledge that there is a moral component to government, law and politics? We have laws against murder, stealing, fraud, tax evasion and (in most states) prostitution. Why? These laws are based on a commonly held morality for the good of society. Even traffic laws have a moral component to them.

Let me just leave you with a question as food for thought: What is that morality based on?

Jonathon Moseley offered some very insightful comments about our laws being built on consensus stemming from a variety of motivations, including but not limited to the influence of Christianity or other religious belief, as well as practical considerations that would contribute to a well ordered society. But I must go back to my proposition that law is based on some form of morality. Matthews objects to this proposition, calling himself a moral relativist and taking a stab at my deliberately extreme example of even traffic laws having a moral component:

As for there being some morality behind traffic laws, I disagree. When I do 75 in a 55, I don’t think of morality. I realize I’m breaking the law. If I get a ticket, I don’t get pissed off. I just realize I shouldn’t be so cavalier about the whole deal. In short, to me, morals are subjective. What YOU think is moral, I may NOT think is moral.

True enough. But aren’t you already making a moral judgment when you admit that you should not be so cavalier about breaking the speed limit? Why is it cavalier? Perhaps because you are potentially putting yourself and others in danger of serious bodily harm or even death? But if there is no fixed objective basis for morality, why would that even matter? Are you not acknowledging that you have a sense of morality, though it differs from mine?

My question to you is: what is the basis of your morality? Why should we have any morality at all? And what is the moral basis of our laws and system of government?

Let’s start with a familiar phrase from the beginning of our Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…

Actually, if we take that phrase in isolation, I must disagree. Anyone with even the slightest powers of observation will tell you that we are not equal. Some have the athletic abilities and muscular build of Olympic champion Michael Phelps or basketball legend Michael Jordan, while others of us look more like… Mike Matthews. The same can be said with regard to our intellectual capacities, our talents, etc. We are anything but equal.

So what on earth was Jefferson talking about when he said “all men are created equal”? Was he referring to human potential? Hardly. Let’s face it. Some of us just don’t have it in us. Was he referring to human dignity? You might say, “Yeah, that’s it.” But what is human dignity? Dignity according to whom? Well, let’s read the rest of the sentence:

“… that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Therein lies the fundamental difference between the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789. The former had as its foundation a fixed basis of morality in the Judeo-Christian ethic and resulted in a nation that, though imperfect, became a beacon of hope to the world. The latter, relying on a mixture of humanistic rationalism and slogans like liberté, egalité, fraternité, resulted in an orgy of class warfare that filled the town squares with guillotines and the streets with blood.

Before you dismiss the comparison as an over simplification, let me ask the question in a slightly different manner. What is it that gives us the “inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” Says who? Many of you who disagree with me politically still have an inner sense of right and wrong. It may differ slightly from mine, but from where do you get your sense of right and wrong? Why should you bother or care so passionately about human rights, economic justice, promoting the general welfare or saving the whales?

In his very thoughtful post entitled Jesus Christ, Mat answers my point about laws against murder, stealing, etc. being based on morality by stating:

This simply isn’t a precedent. Besides the fact that murder and stealing are prohibited by, surely, every religion and society, there are clear secular cases to be made against them. Murder creates a victim (except for, arguably, when the murder is in response to another murder). Theft, too, creates a victim. Prostitution, tax evasion and fraud all create victims.

But if there is no God, then why should we be concerned about victims? Darwin’s Origin of the Species was based on the premise that life evolved (i.e., improved) on the basis of natural selection, i.e., survival of the fittest. If this is the case, who cares about victims, as long as the victim does not happen to be me? What works perfectly well in the animal kingdom should work equally well for human societies. (Actually, what makes humans so special that we insist on separating ourselves from the animal kingdom?)

Oh, but you protest, we are a well advanced society in a technological age. We have evolved to the point where we are far beyond the natural selection processes of the animal kingdom, and we choose to live in a well ordered society. Well, perhaps the best example of a well ordered society is Nazi Germany. You gotta hand it to Adolf. He took the defeated economic basket case that was post-WWI Germany and turned it into a thriving society, revved up its economic engines, and turned it into a model of efficiency. The trains ran on time in Germany. And it was a perfect model of Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest, as it included in its program the elimination of elements of society that it considered undesirable obstacles to an efficient, well ordered and pure society.

If there is no God, who are we to say that the Nazis were wrong, or that our concern for victims is any better or advanced or noble than their taking natural selection to the next degree? Where did we come up with this silly notion of human rights and dignity?

Why bother?