Why, and what am I trying so hard to control? Is life experienced, so dangerous? Well, evil likes to repeat itself in the beholder. Unforgiveness, that awful degeneration of soul and psyche. Sins punished to the third and fourth generations, Family Feuds, Tribal Feuds, International Feuds.
But not all experiences, I think. Forgiveness. Upright and charitable lives propagating over a thousand generations. Celebration of Family. Reconciliation. Compassionate Aid, that wonderful freedom from those confines of the inadequate self, when the sacred self is recognised by simple virtue of its’ inclusion.
Walking home that May day, I had no idea of a cognitive issue. Though there was that chat with Stig at the Stag Night months earlier. Someone (named Stig) had asked if I could identify my obsessions. I’d told him “maybe thinking”. The conversation was still there of course, somewhere in the weave of thoughts I would not let go. Maybe I hadn’t resolved the thing yet. Maybe that was why
“God. I feel as if something is holding me back”
“Stop Thinking”
“Eh?”
But that wasn’t the “Why” at the time. The only ‘why’ in my mind was, well, “Why?”
It had come out of nowhere. Stig at the Stag held no more presence for me than any of all the facts in my world. I wasn’t thinking about it. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I was born in the Rotunda hospital in Dublin either, but Stig at the Stag happens to be the only thing I can think of that could have spawned the imperative:
“Stop Thinking”
It was just there, perfectly at ease within my mind, yet seemingly not born of it. It came with a sense of worship and it came with a sense of a non-pervasive other, who belonged in me, beyond me, yet not assenting to my state of being, and my instinct got up from its’ cushion of laurels to lie with them offered outstretched. But, “Why stop thinking?”
And, so many reasons to keep thinking. Surely it’s the basis of intelligence? But not even that. It was… well, I really don’t like the idea of something physical, such as a thought that I can physically express, not making sense. So where did it come from? I know my own mind, though. Aside from lucid dreaming (which I fearfully avoid while being somewhat ridiculously proud of the fact that it has happened to me) I think I’m good at sleeping on problems without actually going to sleep. Let’s not dismiss that Stag Night conversation just yet.
Let’s argue it out.
Me: “It still doesn’t fit”
You (but really just me again): “What doesn’t?”
“Usually, random as they might be, I find thoughts to be, on closer inspection, very unlike that prayer I had, boringly linear in fact.”
“Ok… I was rather rotund as a baby.” “Why did I think that?”
“Because… you were born in the Rotunda hospital of course!”
“But then why did I think of the Rotunda hospital earlier?”
“Only because it wasn’t relevant” “That’s what you wanted! … When I pray, I don’t say, ‘oh, please God respond with something ridiculously irrelevant!’ …”
“I can give you an example..”
“What.”
“Well, you gave me one. Random thoughts come when you pray”
“What… oh, but.. what? No! Now you’re just being a f*ing Question Beggar. Is that the only example?”
“Prayer’s just a different way of thinking. It’s how you access random thoughts like that”
“So how come I only sometimes get thoughts like that when I pray? And how come they always turn out to be right?”
“Maybe they’re not as random as you think.. Or, scrap that! Maybe they’re more random than you think.”
“So, whatever. Maybe I’m wrong? Is that all you’re saying?”
“You’ve been wrong before. Remember déjà vu?”
I once dreamt I was in a wool shop with my mother. It felt like it was going to happen, so I kept it in mind to test all those other ESP moments. And, one day it came true! I ended up in a wool shop I hadn’t been in before and it matched the one in my dream. “Already seen”, I thought, in French. Though, some of the details are a little fuzzy. For example, I’m not certain the lady in the shop was quite the same, but she was definitely middle aged in both dream and reality, and very, very interested in knitting.
Ha. You get the idea. But it did make me wonder for a while if there wasn’t something to that whole déjà vu thing.
But there came another dream. It felt similar. I was in a four-man rowing boat when the boat fell over and ditched everybody into the water. The next day at the rowing club I told my friend (named Chaz) about the dream. We decided to brave the four-man anyway but it didn’t keel over.
And would you believe it, I got déjà vu again just now. Like I remembered writing all this before. In fact, just before I got the déjà vu feeling I was reminded of something similar I wrote once. Then I tried to remember what I was writing right now and BOOM. Déjà vu. That probably means I am tired and should go to bed.
As far as I know, studies of déjà vu indicate that it is sometimes a coincidence of circumstances and maybe always an overlap of long-term and short term memories. Illusion can be easily found in the realm of the mind.
“I remember déjà vu.”
“So you remember your dreams? Aren’t they random?”
“Yes. So you have another example, but it’s still not like prayer.”
“No, or surely it would be called prayer. But that’s not my point. You like to make sense of things. People look for meaning in dreams too, but there is scientific evidence that dreams involve the product of chaotic brain activity. You don’t easily accept the dreams as random, because you’ve evolved to connect everything together logically. Yet chaos always exists”
“So, let me get this straight. You observe physical movement in the brain having a finishing point that purely physical insight can only observe rather than determine. You assume that no other method can do so either, and conclude that any assumption that it could be determined by any other method is false? Your assumption is the same as your conclusion”
“No. Not quite. Physical insight can observe something here: the underlying laws that give rise to chaos. Thus it proves that chaos must exist. So it is able to explain why you will get random thoughts, and it is also able to explain, based on observation of that strong human compulsion to find the relationship between one concept and another, why you derive meaning that lies outside physical reality.”
“Well.”
“Yes”
“That’s a relief!”
“A relief?”
“I was afraid that spiritual decree would lose all meaning in a physical world that was self-determined. Thankfully, it turns out that physical laws determine that the physical world cannot be self-determined in every way (when there is a high sensitivity to initial conditions). So spiritual decree can be different from physical reality without contradicting it!”
“…”
“So no one can show that ‘God is dead.’ Theism is possible.”
“But, not necessary”
“According to science? No. But then, science does not pretend to know anything about spirituality. In fact, if you already believe there is no spirituality, then you believe that knowledge of spirituality is impossible.”
“Well now you’re being silly.”
“It’s silly because you begged the question to begin with. But to be fair, circular reasoning is impossible to avoid when speaking of a being who invented reason. To look on the inventor you cannot simply look at his inventions. In reaching beyond reason itself, the only guideline you have is that reason is compatible with its inventor, and even that’s only valid if you assume the exercise is meaningful.”
“It’s not.”
“On the flip-side, it makes no sense to deny the existence of an inventor of a world (including the laws that the world is built upon) based on the fact that the world exists.
So with the undeniable, improvable assumption that the mind has some spiritual connection to its creator, we have two worlds. One where the answer to my prayer holds meaning, and one where it doesn’t. The event of an answer is possible according to the rules of both worlds, but in one world it is due to chaos and in the other it is due to something perhaps best described as an ordained journey.
Chaos determines that the space between two points in time cannot be physically predetermined. It is in this gap, this journey, and its choices, that the spiritual kingdom comes to the human mind.”
“You say it is here, but I say that the process is still entirely physical. The order in your choice comes from the physical world while the disorder.. also comes from the physical world. You do know you’re positing a God of the gaps, right?”
“You do know you’re positing a materialism of the gaps? Material law has determined that a gap must exist in which it does not have a voice. Your materialism here is an undeniable, improvable thing.
In fact, I am not saying God or the spiritual mind exists only in the gaps. I’m just saying that the physical aspect of the mind has no say there. I already believe God reveals himself in all of creation (though, well, if anything outside our physical world is assumed to be a gap in our physical world, then the creator of the world has already been condemned to live there).
The concept of having God’s law written on our hearts is very biblical. The law was written on physical tablets of stone, so writing them on our heart may also be a partly physical process. We read the bible because we are physical creatures as well as spiritual, and hope that it will act like the proposed “Stig at the Stag”. But we call prayer spiritual because it is there that the physical world defers to the spiritual”
“And it’s all physically possible. Very tidy. I’m so happy for you in your little big world that I have no need for.”
“Be happy. Because it’s this faith that frees me and since I’m only arguing with myself, it releases you too. I’ve decided. I’m going to stop thinking.”
Well, my argument wasn’t so cohesive at the time. It was closer to, “Don’t want to, but ok”, but the argument always boils down to a pure choice regardless of how detailed it becomes. I took the leap of faith and started saying No to rum(tempted to stop here. more interesting)inations. It was hard, but worked out really well and the question of whether the prayer was illusion became irrelevant. For starters, far from losing intelligence, my thoughts were sharper and my mind more powerfully focussed on reality and any issues at hand. Secondly, I actually noticed what was going on around me. I noticed life.
Thankfully, my circumstances were happy enough to make noticing life a good thing, but mental distractions were replaced by builders. They were working in the house while I prepared for the second interview. The second interview was technical, and I had promised to learn some Open GL. A couple of weeks later, what with the incessant noise and interruption (not to mention trying to get Microsoft Visual C++ configured to work with Open GL libraries) I’d only managed the basics of windows programming and Open GL.
I never applied for the second interview, but then, perfectionism is a whole ‘nother aspect of trying for too much control, which reminds me I still haven’t explained that poem. All right, yes, that is the time, I get the message. Two thousand words, wow! When I could have explained it in sixty one:
Let not mercy and truth forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, and so find favour and high esteem in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths (Proverbs 3:3-6)
A hotel bar in Zurich, a conversation, an atheist banker and his colleague, me. He was surprise at my faith, he said, considering my reputed intelligence. I didn’t say much; just that intellectually I didn’t really know, yet didn’t think certain knowledge of a creator was possible for a creature anyway, though faith found itself welcome in my philosophy regardless and that I also wanted to believe (The mention of either my ability or inability to think has the uncanny knack of derailing my thoughts). Conversation changed, and lead to my dreams (I would love to be a writer) and lead back to my writers’ inspiration, my faith. He pointed out that although he agreed with me that it wasn’t possible to prove God’s existence, it would make for a much more interesting book if I could somehow arrange for the protagonist do so. It wasn’t until weeks later, on a tiny plane headed for Luxembourg, bored, that I seriously thought about how I might approach it.
And then it came to me – the proof! I couldn’t believe how simple it was, how no one had ever followed what seemed to me at the time to be the most obvious line of thought, following from the idea that there is either existence or non-existence, from there through Godel to show the necessity of an omniscient being, then considering that the Prime Mover of Aristotle must necessarily be combined with the omniscient being to become omnipotent, and finally noting that omnipresence follows easily from the other two.
But the question of why no one had thought of it until now troubled me. Was there a conspiracy to keep the proof from people? It was so simple that surely everyone should be aware of it. What if I wasn’t the first person to think of it? The thought of a spiritual conspiracy began growing larger in my head, as simultaneously I remembered I was thousands of feet above the ground, with only a few feet of plastic unconnected to the ground by anything other than what made up the remaining thousands of feet – air. A happy thought – What if everybody who some unknown, malevolent spiritual entities couldn’t distract enough met an unpleasant end before they managed to awaken the world to the proof? But what of the others on the plane? They didn’t deserve to be caught up in this – unless that is, if by (only apparent) coincidence their thoughts were also converging on the proof of God. Somehow we’d all been conveniently placed on the same plane!
But then it turned out to be complete arse, so the plane didn’t crash.
A little neuron that had up until now been spinning around with a bunch of its friends trying to see what all the fuss was about, but couldn’t get a word in to ask – suddenly managed to grab my attention. “Hello, Jim lad” it said. “Would you mind explaining? I don’t really understand.” (Of course, not all my thoughts are brilliant). Apparently this one has been wandering around going down every logical avenue to try and see what is going on, and it still couldn’t make the connection! It’s probably one of those dull, uninspired neurons that I try to discourage because they’re just so boring.
“Well you see” I began…
“No” it said, “I don’t.”
“Yes, but if you listen you’ll know. Aagh, I’m too frustrated to think now!” (These boring thoughts always have a habit of making it so hard to think.)
“Right. So there’s either existence or non-existence, ok? And not everything in existence can be logically derived from the rest of existence, cos of what Godel says. So the bits that can’t be derived must come from somewhere else, but they can’t come from non-existence because, well, it doesn’t exist. Apply Godel’s theorem to anything other than absolutely everything that exists, and obviously the bits that don’t fit in the system could be derived from somewhere else. But in this case, there’s nowhere else to derive them from.”
“”
“But you’re still not really using anything more than Godel – no stoke of added genius – just applying it to all existence. And you already know that’s silly. If you’d proven that everything actually had to be derived then you wouldn’t even need Godel’s theorem in the first place.”
“Oh yeah. I knew that already. But for a moment there it seemed… sigh … anyway come to think of it, who says the choice is only between existence or non-existence? What about potential existence? After all, probability isn’t just the result of chaos. It’s just as fundamental as causality is at the quantum mechanical level, at least from what we can see now.”
“Mm, I can see where you’re coming from. That would have been a much cleverer argument against what you were saying. But you’re still clearly an idiot since it took a no-brainer to prove you wrong” said one of the neuron’s friends.
“No. Just a trick of the mind. The same thing wouldn’t have happened on the way from Zurich”
“Why not?”
“Well it didn’t, did it (for starters)? And they didn’t give me free wine on the other flight. It’s quite possibly Luxair’s fault. It was only one glass, but taken at a high altitude perhaps it did something to my sense just at the moment I tried to use it. You see?”
And the neuron thought it was possible, and didn’t have the knowledge to decide on how probable that idea was, so being a regulatory type rather than an imaginative, creative, active type, it allowed for the possibility that I wasn’t an idiot.
I mused on.
“It seems Godel simply allows for the existence of truths that cannot be proven, like that a God could be real. But that doesn’t actually prove he’s real.”
And the little neuron agreed that God might exist, and continued to live with my faith, since all it cared about was that I didn’t believe a definite falsehood. Besides, it had found divine inspiration to be fundamentally useful, and modern thoughts are all aware of evolution and how they should hold on to agreeable qualities.
But an evolved feature only becomes advantageous after it actually pops into existence. Or, if you like, a potentially existent object only shows itself to be agreeable to existent objects when it becomes actually existent. Yet if an existent being doesn’t have any part in its own creation, how can it prove it was created in the first place? All it can do is to follow its nature, as though there actually is some authority behind it. And maybe there is, but sometimes one’s nature is wrong, so maybe there isn’t. Or maybe there’re both, but only the good can be an authority over existence since saying something is bad is the same as saying it isn’t agreeable to the rest of existence.
But then, a fundamental paradox is that to agree with the rest of nature you invariably end up having to stop trying to force nature to agree with your survival, and that can be disagreeable to one formed by the natural laws of evolution. Unless either you have no sense of moral outrage against pain and death, or you’re reconciled to something or someone who is greater than nature itself, meaning this is the second false dichotomy in the space of one blog-post and I really have to stop babbling before I’m found out.
You don’t.Trust is only necessary when knowledge is unavailable.There should always be indicators but there can never be proof.For example the phrase, “I trust that I am aware of this sentence” is interpreted as “I know that I am aware of this sentence” and use of the word “trust” in that context may be interpreted as indicating that knowledge is a starting point for trust.
A more useful question might be “What do I know that gives me an indication that I can trust you?”I trust this is what you mean by your question.
For your answer, you can have no scientific proof because I am not confined to a lab and if you put me in one, I assure you the answer to your question will be, “No”.
The intellect has listened to the question monkey.The intellect will now speak.
…
The intellect seems to be stuck for words.How long is it since it promised an answer?I suppose I’ll have to engage my body and soul too.They aren’t too good at arguing mind you but my intellect lacks motivation.Not much of an intellect some say, but I say it’s got character, special character above that of the ordinary man.If only circumstances had allowed it, if only I had been taught to take advantage of my intellect I would have done something extraordinary by now.Yes, I deal in loftier ideas.Not for me the mental difficulties of the man on the street.
Digression: One night going to a party my driver, who doubles as a wife, went down the wrong road in the estate.I looked up and saw the house, brightly lit and full of our friends (including zoomtard and others) before realising that no, this was the wrong place, Curly Dee was turning back and the house was merely full of outstanding, bright young individuals who just happened to be exactly like my own unique group of friends.I suppose there was even a less handsome version of myself in there, beside some gorgeous girl (why do they go out with ugly men?).Perhaps he too tended to make a mountain out of a molehill when it came to getting an answer together on the internet, and subsequently never quite got around to finishing it.Well here is the start of mine and hopefully you will get to the finish (in case you get lost somewhere, I’ve placed the finish is at the end to make things easier).I’m sure there must be a molehill someone else has prepared that you could tackle instead but here goes:
One question raised was what parts of the bible I believe are reliable reportage.Certainly I think the bible is useful as a historical document, but then so is the Iliad, the Vedas, the Koran or any other religious account. It really depends on what you are relying on to tell you.Much of that question’s scope is irrelevant to me so I have chosen to concern myself only with what I personally rely on the Bible to report (a definition of human morality); not what others may rely on it for.Of course the argument may be made that my reasoning is circular: I believe it is reliable since it fits in with my views while these are already based on the Bible, but I hope to show how such ideas are not dependent on the Bible while at the same time defending the evidence for their most unambiguous source -- the teachings and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
With regard to the resurrection QMonkey has made the statement, “When it comes to the resurrection, will you acknowledge that the more significant or unlikely the event, the more evidence we need to believe it”.
The more unlikely the event, the more evidence we require to believe it -- I’ll grant you that half of the statement.The more significant the event, well that is a question of character as well as magnitude -- the significance of a man flying up to his office might appeal to some yet repel others, and for some of us its magnitude depends largely on its relevance to ourselves rather than solely its bearing on absolute truth.Either way, the more significant something is, the more interested we are in whether or not it is true and the way in which it is significant to us alters how we look at the evidence.Here is an interesting statement to explore: By definition, the significance of an event is never less significant than the likelihood of that event.
Let us assume for example that we are Jesus’ contemporaries and do have a lot of evidence that Jesus is sent from God, (you don’t have to believe this assumption is correct, bear with me).Then at least one element of the significance of this is high, the element of likelihood -- it is likely that Jesus is sent from God.We have seen him drive out demons and questioned those who have been healed.Those questioned believe that Jesus is sent from God whereas we wonder why he does not drive evil out in God’s name as a prophet would when instead he drives them out by his own command.He claims that he is in the Father and the Father is in him.Who besides God would have the power to heal the blind, cure the lame and drive out demons?There is one other possibility but we have no evidence for it -- we might say he has authority over demons because he belongs to the Satan, the lord of demons.Yet he doesn’t drive them out in Satan’s name either and it makes little sense for Satan to undo his own work, as Jesus himself points out.Ah but “satan” means “deceiver”.Yet what Jesus teaches and does is solely about loving God and loving others.Is he deceiving people into obeying God?Not so.Perhaps in our view he is deceiving people into disobeying God because he is overturning societies’ structure by his acts and words of love, and we believe that this is a society already based on God’s word.Or is it?Are we really obeying God’s word?Should we listen to what Jesus says?No.He must be from Satan.
At best, this was the reaction of a number of Jesus’ contemporary religious leaders according to scripture, but why would they react to him this way?We can easily speculate this way and that until the cows come home or the messiah comes back.For us however, the circumstances of Jesus’ life and resurrection and the lives and deaths of his followers provide compelling evidence that it is actually happened.If we are to choose between the testimony of those who genuinely face death for their witness (not their belief, their witness) and the testimony of those who don’t, surely we must favour the martyrs from the outset purely on that basis?But after accepting it to be likely on this basis we must continue on and question whether there are other arguments regarding it being unlikely on which we should base our opinions, and these arguments cannot be purely speculative if they are to be taken seriously.
What of his general popularity?He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey with acclaim on Sunday, but he was condemned to death in place of a murderer by the same voice on Friday: that of the people.Is it really logical to say that the general population were open minded about his resurrection?Since the private conspiracy to orchestrate his death become a public affair that a riot-prone people did not object to, surely the description, “clear minded” (concerning post-resurrection opinion) is a little charitable towards those who had already decided that Jesus was not the messiah, despite having followed him passionately a few days earlier?We might say their reaction changed when they saw him held captive; maybe they weren’t so sure now.That makes sense if you assume that they were normal people who like Germans under Nazi rule (to take a far more extreme example), like Christians, like atheists, perhaps even like me or you and in other words like everyone, were quite capable of being lead by forces other than rationality and a good heart.You have to ask how such a “clear minded” person came to believe Jesus was the messiah in the first place.Even some of Jesus closest followers were rebuked for believing that he was to overthrow the Romans.The evidence that we do have shows this was not a culture primarily looking for spiritual redemption, despite their laws.It was cultural and political redemption they fought for.You imagine there were a lot of messiahs around that time, but weren’t they political messiahs?Seeing the messiah in chains made no sense from such a perspective and nor would spiritual salvation (the message of those who reported his resurrection) in the face of physical occupation.I would not base my decision to reject the Gospel on someone else’s regardless of how popular their opinion is.There is no record of anyone having a good reason against it; only for it.At the same time we shouldn’t ignore QMonkey’s parable of the Jews who did not believe based on their intellectual reasoning.It is a good parable but it refutes a gospel that has had a bit of extra implication added to it by our own religious bias rather than the gospel as it has been laid out explicitly.Does the Bible really say that those unbelievers will go to hell?Hear me out till the end and then let me know what you think.
A separate speculation, about ulterior motives in preaching to the gentiles makes no sense at all in the context.Wasn’t Christianity originally viewed as a Jewish sect, sparked by a leader who preached love for enemies never mind gentile allies, and isn’t there an equal focus on Jewish Christians in the new testament?The fall-out between Jews and Christians is reported to be a political one based on the Christians who fled Jerusalem before the siege by the Romans.The only reason to look for ulterior motives would have been if they had not been preaching to the gentiles.It is an inevitable conclusion of the heart of Jesus’ message in every chapter, even if we didn’t have specific reports of him reaching out to gentiles himself, which we do.
It has also been suggested that the Christians had some reason to die for a lie, that Jesus didn’t really come back to life but that they thought there was some more important truth that needed to be passed on.If it was important and concrete enough for them to die for it, why would they not tell us what it was?If they felt it was important enough to die for, surely they felt it was important enough for at least their fellow Jews to die for if they knew it too?If it was a lie, since they stressed the importance of truthfulness wouldn’t the likes of James the brother of Jesus, a devout, strict Jew (who seems to have disbelieved prior to Easter) have eventually confessed?Wouldn’t at least a few of the many eyewitnesses have testified against it, causing a mass rejection of the message?It doesn’t take much to shatter a reputation so a few eyewitness denials would surely do the trick.And we can see that they certainly claimed that Jesus literally rose when we read the earliest accounts, and they must have known whether or not it was true since it happened to various members on multiple occasions, to traumatised believers and avid disbelievers alike.Or wait, maybe they made the whole resurrection thing up because the real truth that they died for was too hard to take, too difficult to believe, too far outside everyday experience?The real truth in my opinion is they showed that they weren’t afraid of death anymore because they knew it had been conquered, but I’m willing to listen to an expansion of this argument if there is one -- perhaps I’ve simply been too unimaginative to think of such a compelling truth.
Loads of people have seen Mary (or Elvis or aliens or whatever) appear to them but is this really comparable?Loads of people are insane but we don’t use that as a general argument against a specific eyewitness in a court case.There are large differences between such cases and the one I’m defending but there is no point in exploring this unless we are shown a good comparison between the evidence for each to begin with.A claim must stand or fall on its own merit and not on comparing it to another claim when the two have only one particle in common.
Then there is the statement that someone would never come back to life under the circumstances reported.QMonkey, this statement is born out of everyday observations and so I make the point that we are not trying to convince anyone of an everyday event.You make the point that we have learned that our universe must follow certain laws which would be broken by this event, and I argue that the universe was not brought into being by these laws since the rules themselves exist only within the universe/multiverse/whatever; so the everyday laws do not determine the entire universe and every event within it; something else does.You object that at this point we have both gone beyond our intellectual capability and such questions would be better left to the likes of Gödel, so I agree with you and rephrase what I am saying: just because something happens a certain way according to human experience doesn’t mean it must always happen that way, especially if we have evidence of an exception.It merely means it almost always happens that way.Your statement that it hasn’t happened might be equivalent to Einstein saying that God does not play dice after Bohr outlined the exception to his everyday scientific experience.Maybe there is a deeper law that lead to the exception of Jesus’ resurrection, and maybe this law leads to our everyday reality just as quantum mechanics leads to the macrophysical reality where God does indeed refrain from lowly gambling.And dare we consider the possibility that the deeper law of the resurrection might open our eyes just as the deeper law of blackbody radiation has done for scientists?Perhaps it is a pity we couldn’t possibly prove God’s existence by scientific experiment, but in the absence of this ideal we can at least follow the reasoning that underpins science.Let’s neither accept nor deny the resurrection based on intuition.
So you have already decided there is no God and I have already decided there is one, and naturally we will both then be guilty of circular reasoning, but if you decide that there is no God and find it difficult to (logically) explain away the resurrection by using any other objection, try deciding that there is a God and see if this fits the picture a little better.Where an argument seems perfectly balanced between two self contained yet contradictory world views, I suggest that if one of these views turns out to be even slightly more probably contradictory to its world than the other, the logical outcome is that we believe the alternative.It is quite reasonable to explain events only by what we know, but it is unreasonable to continue in that vein when an event cannot be explained within our set of knowledge.Since reason has served humanity so well, let’s not just throw it away simply because of personal preference, whether that preference is one of many poorly based beliefs or whether it is a belief that what now appears to be reasonable is untrue.So by all means keep trying to find a reasonable explanation for the resurrection from within an atheistic framework if you like.I realise that there are many more unsaid questions that unfortunately I will not have time to respond to, admittedly not even to my own satisfaction.
So much for our discussion on unlikely the core claim of Christianity is, but its compound significance has yet to be addressed.We made the point at the beginning that significance varies from person to person, so in order to narrow the field we will look at what specific characteristic Jesus Christ intended to target.I’ve lifted just a few verses from BibleGateway.com to avoid corrupting the message by my own interpretation, but this theme is repeated again and again by Jesus to the extent that it must be considered central.
Mathew 5:3
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Mathew 21:
28“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
29” ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
30“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
31“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.
Mark 2:17
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Luke 18:9
9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other menâ€â€robbers, evildoers, adulterersâ€â€or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Imagine a humble atheist who regards himself as something far less than a heartbeat in the life of the universe; just one expression of glorious nature.Yet this atheist has a sense of good and evil, perhaps not gained in his eyes through the consumption of fruit at the bequest of a snake, but if it was caused instead by some scientifically posited factor in the origin of his species, the end result remains the same.Imagine he lives his life in perfect accordance with his morals.Well then the gospel has no significance for him, but if cultural and biological evolution has seen fit to give him a body that often disagrees with his mind, putting him in the same category as me, he will find it impossible to follow his moral code.So what?Well morality is at this point useful for the propagation of his genes, which is tantamount in his opinion to his life’s purpose.We can see that his failure to live up to his moral standard must be a matter of concern for him, so he should stop “sinning” in order to achieve his deepest desire to fulfil his purpose.Even if he just falls down on just one point of morality he is a lawbreaker because he has broken one law.And the converse must now follow from that statement if he lives in a logical universe, that he is now a lawbreaker so he is a person who breaks this law.And from this follows a number of crushing implications.
The whole of his moral system must now lose its authority, since has been shown to be fallible.
He will keep breaking the law again and again, because he is (by self-definition) a lawbreaker, and a lawbreaker is one who breaks the law.
Of course, psychologically he may not understand things in such a clear, structured way, but his psychology will ultimately obey these logical implications so that any solution to his problem would be quite significant.The inadequacy of his own self-made authority and the impossibility of acting the way he wants will manifest itself adversely, and whether he sees the problem as stress, existential angst, a desire for security or routine, a search for meaning or any of endless other neural journeys, the underlying logic we have induced forces him to keep committing the same unsavoury act or thought again and again.When there is no solution within a closed self-defined system, the only alternative is to open the system; to add another dimension, if you will.
Of course at this stage you know where the thread of my monologue is heading (where I want it to, and you can’t anything about it because you can’t edit this website. Ha. Ha. Ha!):He wants something to override his self-definition, something that he cannot control and therefore can’t predict, but something that is not chaotic (chaos cannot create moral justice) and therefore something that must have a nature of its own to determine his own.Yet why not turn to the universe for rescue?We already know that this gets him nowhere, since his philosophy is already materialistic and the trouble is that he knows already how this philosophy has defined him to be a law-breaker (remember that this is a general philosophy -- any philosophy of materialism that attempts to be moral should offer this dilemma to its adherent..)Perhaps his philosophy is correct but does not enable him to change.What he needs is another nature to define him, and since he knows he is defined by the universe, the authoritative character must clearly have defined the universe already.The idea of such a character being in some ways human seems preposterous, but remember that theologians who study the characteristics of God (eg J.J. Packer in knowing God) deduce from his infinite nature that these characteristics are simply known to us because of our relationship with him and that there is far more to him than we could ever know.An ultimate creator must by definition be far more than human (a thought that discourages exclusivity and promotes cultural diversity) but humans are only capable of knowing God as such.
Let’s take a step back for a moment.Evolution is a very complex system and there are other useful attributes for genetic propagation besides a sense of morality.Some of these may even conflict with the “God” solution to the moral problem.I can think of one: the desire to take control of one’s environment is useful because those who take control will be more likely to do well (a theory evidenced by the history of civilisation’s successful conquest on society), but this desire cannot be satisfied until one has gained the illusion of being able to identify and understand empirically everything in one’s world.Unfortunately if this is what forms part of one’s motivation for reliance on science alone, it will be difficult to reconcile it with the idea of relinquishing one’s authority to a higher being.This difficulty may be conquered by a rational person who isn’t prone to obsession and willing to find a distinction between his own control and the authority of a greater being, but it may be difficult to find such a subtle distinction while developing it from within the sometimes stormy environment of a human body, amongst one’s peers.
It is interesting to keep this in mind as we read the Bible.I’m reading “A brief history of the human race” at the moment (a refreshingly materialistic account by Michael Cook) and once or twice the historian relies on the bible to build an account of the past.The author, who does not seem to hold pro-Christian sentiments, looks for a reason behind the development of a monotheist creed from the first record we have of it in the Jewish faith.Whilst admitting the lack of evidence from which to build a concrete theory, he points out that a monotheist God is inherently exclusive to those who beg to differ.I don’t know if I’m hitting the thrust of his idea on the head or not as he didn’t spend long on the subject, but while such exclusivity may not benefit today’s global society, it might have strengthened the integrity of a King’s authority in mustering the solidarity of his people to the throne, a factor which would have also helped the prevention of amalgamation of Jewish culture with that of other peoples.In tracing the origins of monotheism he notes that there are many references to other gods in the bible, for example the commandment not to have other gods before Yahweh, while cases of disobedience to this command proliferate.He deduces that the Israelites were not a people of one God despite the efforts of the prophets and moreover, when Isaiah says later that there is no God but Yahweh this marks a change from exclusive worship of one God in an acknowledged pantheon to denial of the existence of any other besides this God.
It seems to me that according to a historian with no apparent calling toward monotheism the Bible may be said to be a biased history, but a history from which we can garner facts nonetheless.I believe I share the bias of the Bible’s writers, who could not always be said to represent their peers (the truth can be quite the opposite).However my own religious bias could hardly be said to begin with the later prophets.The very first account, Genesis describes the world being created by one God, so despite the fact that other gods are acknowledged early on, it seems to assert from the outset the existence of a God who created everything else, which surely infers an ultimate authority upon one God as the creator.It would be natural to assume that if it did make sense to some prophets for other god’s to exist then those entities in turn would be supposed to hold their creator, the creator as God above them as well as their own faithful, so the theology of an ultimate authority has existed from the start despite the fact that its proponents (strangely or naturally?) differed in their understanding of how the world otherwise worked (there was also conceivably a certain pragmatism in relating this belief to their respective cultures).When a prophet wanted to reform his society he would have needed to justify his case by invoking a higher authority to back his cause, even more so at times when the government of his country was against him.In Israel’s history the authority invoked was always the highest (an example also springs to mind from outside Israel: After the French Revolution reason was held to be the highest authority, and this was invoked by the prophets of that time too).We also find out from the Bible that its writers’ opponents also at times invoked the name of Yahweh in order to justify their own claims.We see in its history that monotheism can be exploited by anyone who wishes to justify their cause.Michael Cook is right in saying that monotheism allows for exclusivity, but then it allows for any cause, both good and evil.
Earlier, in discussing the evidence that what Jesus says is true we assumed the authority of reason first and I believe reason should comply with its creator if one truly exists, so this assumption seems natural whether or not I wish to place Yahweh above reason itself.So if what Jesus says is true, does it really offer our humble atheist a reasonable solution?Firstly there is evidence for it.Secondly there is the escape from self-condemnation towards redefinition by a higher Judge, who thirdly need not be limited to a cultural icon but rather is an aspect of the logical necessity for an existence recursively greater than any system, including the universe.Jesus teaches of worshiping God, not using him for your cause; seeking to follow a purely good being, not thinking that you are the one who is good; to be on the side of love, joy and peace, not to think that its authority is on your side.He makes the point very strongly: Those who seek to save their life will lose it, but those seek to lose their life will save it.The atheist must put his own life aside, but in favour of whom or what?One thing is certain, if one puts one’s own life aside in favour of something else, one is acting as though that something is greater than ourselves.We cannot do this with people too easily; the best of people let us down.In fact, nothing in nature can really provide us with enough security to put our desire for control at ease. No religion suffices either because we know that trying to follow a set of rules will set us at odds with what is good when the circumstances from whence the rules were derived changes.And as we have already outlined, no other sense of morality will work forever.What we need is to give ourselves up to someone safe (in the way we need them to be), to relinquish our self-definition to someone who can redefine us.The gospel offers us such a process -- it is called grace.
In order to avoid arrogance in our objectively derived subjectivity, let us assume the atheist can find a sense of grace from elsewhere – in fact if it really is a necessary concept for a humble, moral atheist, the fact that they remain functional and atheistic means they must have some other mechanism for dealing with their “fallen nature” (maybe a combination of outside influences like music, other people, nature etc?I think the poet, Kavanagh wrote about being rejuvenated by nature).The mechanism may or may not come so naturally that they do not put a name on it, but I think it must be there.At one point Jesus points out that people will not reach a state where they cannot be forgiven by simply rejecting him, rather they must reject the Spirit who sent him.He still claims that he is the way, the truth and the life and that none may come to the Father except through him, but he says nowhere that he will only allow people who are nominally Christian through him.In fact he actually states that being nominally Christian is insufficient.On the other hand the people who will inherit the earth are quoted as being the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the meek.And it seems it cannot be any other way, because Jesus demonstrated by his own sacrifice that the Kingdom of Heaven is a place where we put ourselves last.Putting ourselves last before humans is dangerous but putting ourselves last before a God who sacrifices himself to save us is another thing.You cannot approach God without putting yourself aside (this is called repentance) and speaking personally, when I do there is such utter joy in leaving behind my bitterness, my worry, my self-consciousness and selfishness, that it overcomes my old beliefs and leaves me with one alone -- worship that carries with it the kingdom of heaven itself.It is something that heals me and I want to do it more to the extent where I would even pass on its infectious life, but certain other aspects of evolution and society can make this difficult for me -- the closest description of exactly what this resistance feels like is pride, a sense of my own richness, and it can be difficult to combat without putting time aside to do so.Anyway, I think the gospel to be very significant whatever the beliefs are of whoever follows it, subconsciously or otherwise.I prefer to follow Jesus too rather than just the Spirit who sent Him, because it anchors the process of grace to someone real.I can’t imagine receiving the same degree of joy if I were not a Christian.I may be wrong.
Taken alone, the likelihood of an event is meaningless -- we will never care unless the event holds significance.The evidence for the gospel is there to be argued about, but at the end of the day it is there.To prove something empirically is to demonstrate something that fits into a closed system, so the only evidence we can have of something outside the universe must either be historical or experienced directly.I have successfully defended the historical evidence for the gospel in my own eyes though I have by no means removed the chance that some potentiality successful attempt to discredit exists (and am in some ways glad that QMonkey is not a qualified historian because I imagine a lot more time would then be required for my defence).The significance of the gospel has also been demonstrated, I think successfully and whether or not there are options that hold the same significance it seems to me that the gospel has more evidence for it than any other solution.To my mind, the option of grace for an atheist must be a vague, instinctive concept that for me lacks the full power of the gospel in my life.But perhaps it works well for him.Or maybe the atheist is actually a girl and it works well for her, not him.I simply don’t know.All I really know is that I’ve finally had the chance to sit down and write what I originally planned to write nine or ten months ago, thanks finally to a relaxing weekend spent in Northern Ireland with my Granny and Granda.Good times, good times.
Once upon a time there was a misunderstanding.It lived a happy little life, wandering between various minds, back and forward, back and forward until one day it noticed that something terrible had happened to it.Every time it visited another, every time it displayed itself before whatever mind it intended to hold under its spell, it had sold itself out for the sake of vanity.“Look at me!” it had cried!“Come!Be enraptured by my beauty and consume me with your minds!”Well, the minds had come, and had eaten, and the misunderstanding was left with a little bit less of itself to share around each time.The misunderstanding is worrying now, striving to fuel itself with peripheral issues and the finite vision of its admirers, but as the haze lightens temporarily one addled mind perceives before it the following scene and flails at the mist desperately.
The reference to science and empirical method was irrelevant when it came to the core belief of the Christians.Whether by scientific analysis or just plain common knowledge, rational mankind has always known (by faith in rationality) that it is impossible for a man to rise up from the dead[1].However we also know it to be impossible for a group of persons to consistently choose to die purely for something they know to be untrue.Unfortunately the “death and resurrection”[2] of Jesus must refute one of these impossibilities.Given that, we must assume that our knowledge/system of rationality is incomplete.That is the central point that this mind sees, so it has reached it quickly to allow itself the liberty of now discussing the matter at leisure without being accused of not getting to the point[3].
As it stands so far the point is quite simple.It can only become complicated when we try to remove one side of it, because then we must consider how logical our attempt is.Rather than wear myself out on outlining such complications when such an outline would probably still be incomplete (being one-sided) I wait in hope for comments.Remember also that it is illogical to weigh one gigantic improbability against another and expect the lower improbability to suddenly become probable.There is no such easy way out.We need something, some scenario perhaps, where one of the impossibilities becomes probable.If more detail is required by any reader in order for them to build such a case I will do my best to give it, because I have favoured brevity over detail in the lazy assumption that readers are already aware of the case.
I shall now go on to describe my own reconciliation of the two opposed impossibilities.One logical route to follow in expanding our rational system is to test the laws by which Jesus lived and died, given that they involve rules derived from outside our knowledge (allegedly from God’s kingdom), and also because since Jesus lived and died consistently by these laws, we might assume for the sake of making progress that the method by which he rose was also consistent with the method by which he lived.We might look to the explanation of the witnesses who gave up their lives as evidence of God’s faithfulness and the truth of their gospel.This is the route Christians take, leading them to repentance by turning from self-focus towards Jesus and God, who forgives them.It is one logical route.
Now I am not about to make a scientific point here, but I find an entertaining analogy in the scientific method:When the rational system known as Newtonian Mechanics was shown to be inconsistent in just one specific case, Einstein’s solution was to make time relative rather than constant. Essentially this allowed us greater freedom by making it possible for the fourth dimension (time) to bow before the Michelson-Morley experiment.Not only that, but with our new idea of relative time we predicted physical behaviour which was later empirically proven.When Einstein’s formalism proved to be unable to fully explain all known physical forces and we found ourselves unable to stretch the constraints of our four dimensions any further, Kaluza and Klein decided that the forces must be derived from outside this system and that the solution would therefore be to suppose another dimension from which our current knowledge could be derived.This worked reasonably well but couldn’t describe the entire range of known forces or their behaviour, and great scientists have since attempted to build a complex system involving many more dimensions.None of these have really been successful so far.String theory, Superstring theory, M-theory, no variant has managed to fit the pieces together so far, nor managed to predict any behaviour that experiment might validate, yet this is the only scientific theory (postulated so far) that looks as though it could succeed as an adequate holistic description of physics.
Of course we could just say that, well, God created each force separately, but there was no mention of God in our scientific formulism so far and it therefore seems natural to avoid using God to fill the gaps in our knowledge.In the case of the cross however the idea of God is a major part of the picture.We can’t say that Jesus rose from the dead as a probable result of science.However, His crucifixion and resurrection was already predicted as a solution (badly needed by myself) for mankind’s warped relationship with God, which perhaps fortifies the concept of man’s relationship to God as an explanation for this event.We have a solution from outside our system.God provides the extra dimensionality from which our limited knowledge is derived.God derived the rule that says that man dies and does not rise and God derived the rules that result in the exception.
But coming back to the point (second paragraph), every human is free to come up with their own reconciliation between the rest of their knowledge and the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.I have found only one that makes any sense but it is only desperation that leads me to accept it for my life.[4]I try not to look for miracles that don’t address my condition and thus miss the point[5].In any case if everyone saw miracles in everyday life they would cease to be miracles.If for example people rose from the dead every day there would be nothing special about the cross.On the other hand if only Christians produced miracles they would be known as miracle workers rather than what they really are: bad people who need God’s forgiveness.If you read the bible without bias (probably impossible mind you) you might avoid skipping over the part where Jesus repeatedly offers forgiveness or describes God’s kingdom before giving a sign of what it looks like.These signs were miracles but they are just a stronger way of getting to the point.Please turn to God for healing.
I am now speaking purely from the perspective of one who has faith[6].The real problem is in our heart and Jesus constantly said so, berating the Pharisees for rejecting the spirit who sent him when they misinterpreted his signs and said that they were the devil’s miracles.It wasn’t just the Pharisees who misinterpreted signs.The Greeks thought Paul and Silas were Gods when they saw them perform a miracle and missed the point.Paul and Silas struggled to undo the damage.And at the same time, this isn’t really enough for me.At least they did perform miracles, and often enough that I would sometimes like to see a sign too.But I accept that I have been given enough to go on simply because I am already convinced by the cross.I hear of miracles in other Christians’ lives but why should I be convinced?I have seen God work in my own life but not by supernatural miracles, rather in ways too subtle to use as proofs[7].Miraculous events are too few and far between by nature for us gather empirical evidence on them.Why should I expect them?I have been given enough, and therefore to put God to the test now would be taking a step backwards, defeating the heart of the matter: Relationships are built on trust, and the whole point is to renew our relationship with God.
“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles..”
And so in the same way I try not to let my own “wisdom” interfere with my understanding of God.This is harder for me than not looking for miracles (Deut 6:16). Leaning not on my own understanding does indeed help in making my path straight (Proverbs 3:6) but this isn’t to say that it is illogical for me to believe in Christ.If it were not for the witness of Jesus’ apostles I would have to concede that at best the crucifixion and resurrection was mere symbolism, but it is not so straightforward[8].Their witness challenges me and my faith has been justified by the healing I’ve experienced.It is perfectly logical to believe in the resurrection unless you can find a more likely alternative.So where is faith in this?Just because it is logical does not make it necessary.Faith is in the desperation of a sinner[9] who reaches out to someone above himself, the finite submitting to the infinite.A man of faith knows that faith is not his to lose because he belongs to the greater[10].A man without faith knows that his lack of faith is his to lose if he were convinced enough to wish it so, because he does not yet belong.Nevertheless the convincing is done by God, and faith is still granted by God.If there were no resurrection I would have no basis for my belief, but the resurrection was granted by God and so then is my faith.So too have I been cursed by my fall, been moved to see my need and been redeemed by the cross, all done by God, and I believe that this faith, this destiny is available to all.[11]
[2] Thanks to Zoomtard we can appreciate the validity of historical and other non-empirical events.
[3] Thanks QMonkey for insisting that we cut the cogent contortions out.
[4] Thanks Zoomtard and Jabercrow for raising the point that faith in Jesus should not be purely a result of rigorous proofs.
[5] Thanks QMonkey for raising the question of whether the fact that we don’t see miracles every day has some relevance to whether we believe or not.
[6] Thanks QMonkey for pointing out that some beliefs only make sense from the point of view of someone who does believe.It helps to be clear on where I leave the neutral realm of debate and move into arguments about the consistency of the Christian mindset, which may only reassure the believer.
[7] Uncanny psychological healing gained as a child through prayer, that turn out to mirror the latest thought of psychologists when I am an adult.You might explain this away if you knew the detail but I’m not giving it away.Leaving my financial situation up to God by living with less means than expenses, but on any occasion when I needed money, it came in (just the right amount).Only once did I get money when I wasn’t actually going to be in trouble, and at this time I had decided to make a concerted effort to pray for it anyway.It could be a coincidence though, right, every time?Coincidences do happen.Generally I haven’t been in a position to take such a step of faith in life, but I can’t count the number of times that I have not been able to come up with an answer until I (sometimes quickly, sometimes after exhausting myself) gave up and prayed.These aren’t proofs.They are just a small part of a learning curve in relating to someone who is beyond amazing, who is God.
[8] Thanks to QMonkey for raising the question of what criteria we use for deciding whether supernatural event happened or whether it was mere metaphor.
[9] This desperation should not be used as fuel to suggest that Christians are people confused by subjective emotion.For one thing proper fuel must burn the argument itself rather than casting doubt on the arguer.For another, the desperation is central to our faith (Blessed are the poor in spirit) and if it is a real state and not just something dreamed up, surely it is more logical to acknowledge our wretched nature than to pretend it isn’t there, regardless of any objective explanation.
[11] The availability of the gospel to all must surely stretch the conceptions of many Christians and is worthy of a debate in itself, but I ask that we consider the resurrection argument first, given that it is not in any way a faith based argument even if my solution requires faith.