Tuesday, March 20, 2007

• It's just like those miserable psalms, always so depressing.

  So I’m reading William Dembski’s book, Intelligent Design, all about creation and evolution and how we can tell whether something is designed vs. whether it was produced “by chance”. I’m not sure this really gets at the heart of the philosophical problem, but I’m willing to give it a chance.

  I am very interested in the relationship of faith and reason, especially since I find belief very … uncomfortable. I like to know, and as Thomas Aquinas points out, belief is basically a commitment to a person and his testimony that involves both full commitment of the will and the restlessness of unknowing. Belief is not as good as knowing, but in some cases it’s necessary. For instance, I do not know that my doctor is fully qualified to treat me without killing me, but I believe the testimony of the medical board that he is. For me to fully check out the credentials of my doctor would be both impractical and, frankly, impossible: I just don’t have the time to learn all the biology, chemistry, anatomy, etc, that I would need to in order to make such a judgment based on knowledge. So I believe even though I do not know.

  And the restlessness is betrayed by the fact that every once in a while I wonder whether the medical board is worth listening to, or whether they know what they’re talking about. I might watch with interest a 60 Minutes report that showed that some of the members of the medical board were way behind the times and unaware of the standards of more recent medicine, or something like that. But that doesn’t change the fact that every time I go to the doctor I decide to commit my life to their judgment that my doctor knows what he’s talking about.

  And we’re all in a similar case with belief in what God says about himself. The restlessness in which we every once in a while wonder whether God really is like that, or whether we heard him right or at all, or whether he really said that, or whether it’s all a crock, is inherent in belief itself. You can’t get rid of the restlessness. No one can, not even the greatest saint. The whole point of the belief is that you love someone such that you commit your entire self to his or her testimony even though you don’t know.

  Like I said, I don’t like this. I like to know. *sigh* That’s probably a sign I do not love (anyone) enough.

  But I’m way off my topic. I’m reading Dembski’s book and he quotes this atheist philosopher Norwood Russell Hanson, who gives an example of evidence of God’s existence that he would find convincing:

  I’m not a stubborn guy. I would be a theist under some conditions. I’m open-minded. . . . Okay. Okay. The conditions are these: Suppose, next Tuesday morning, just after breakfast, all of us in this one world are knocked to our knees by a percussive and ear-shattering thunderclap. Snow swirls, leaves drop from trees, the earth heaves and buckles, buildings topple and towers tumble. The sky is ablaze with an eerie silvery light, and just then, as all of the people of this world look up, the heavens open, and the clouds pull apart, revealing an unbelievably radiant and immense Zeus-like figure towering over the features of his Michelangeloid face, and then he points down, at me, and explains for every man, woman, and child to hear: ‘I’ve had quite enough of your too-clever logic chopping and word-watching in matters of theology. Be assured Norwood Russell Hanson, that I do most certainly exist!’

  (quoted in William Dembski’s Intelligent Design, p 27)

  All I could think of when I read this was the scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail where God pops out of the cartoon clouds and says “Oh, don’t grovel! If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people groveling.”

  This is God? What a crappy God. Something right out of Prometheus Unbound. If this was God I would believe that he existed, but I wouldn’t believe in him.

    The sound is of whirlwind underground,
      Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
    The shape is awful, like the sound,
      Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
    A sceptre of pale gold,
      To stay steps proud, o’er the slow cloud,
  His veinèd hand doth hold.
  Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
  Like one who does, not suffers wrong.

  Frankly, this kind of god we can live without. It was apparent to the ancient Greeks, like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, that it was false.

  So much of the time atheists are arguing against a very pagan, limited, and incorrect understanding of God which, frankly, many Christians unknowingly accept.

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