Why do some people find it hard to believe in God? Part 2

[notfluffyatall]

I don't think we've quite finished yet

Sorry, just realised I said that anyone asking a 40 y o what set they are in has understood the nature of adulthood - of course I meant misunderstood

I'm probably repeating something from the other thread.

So God is outside the universe and not part of it, yet apparently he can and does intervene in it, from creating it and setting its laws to contravening those laws when wanting to make a point. (This being why the Gospels are so chilling for the average unbeliever - I have in my time spouted things about the great teachings of Jesus, and yet if you actually read the Gospels they are mostly an endless series of unimpressive miracle stories and dialogue that makes Him sound frankly rather like other unpleasant gurus of more recent times who have made people believe that doing whatever they say is more important than anything else, and constantly setting 'tests' in order for their followers to 'fail' them. CF Prince Caspian, which I've just read to ds; why didn't Aslan just show up to the whole group immediately, rather than ask a nine-year-old to convince her older siblings that she'd seen a vision? I've had managers a bit like that - 'Oh ye of little faith!' - and they are a pain when there's work to be done.)

If it's important to ask why, as in the question that science can't answer, then why? why make a universe of which you are not a part and which doesn't resemble you and can only fail your standards? If God is an artist and the universe is his artwork, why include real creatures that can breathe and suffer? I don't demand that Botticelli make his Venus from real human skin in order to find her beautiful and meaningful?

Well, that sounds like a neat get out. But it won't wash.

But...the Judeo-Christian God does not belong to the universe - this God is above and beyond the universe.

If God was above and beyond the universe, and didn't belong to it - we'd neither know nor care. But the Judeo-Christian God explicitly makes himself part of this universe (according to all the Judeo-christian stories). He makes the earth, intervenes.... Especially the Christian incarnation - 'The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us'. Sorry, but the Judeo-Christian God has put himself firmly in the realm of science if that's the case.

Joan, your qu re. why did God create - the only really satisfactory Judeo-Christian answer is 'Because God wanted to.'

But creation not resembling God? No no no - the Christian view is v. different - 'the heavens are telling the glory of God..' So it's not that the world resembles God as a child does her parent, but more as a painting does its artist. Does that make sense?

'Fail God's standards...' can you say what you mean by that? It sounds to me like the edge of a very, very interesting line of thinking - but say what you mean before I go off pontificating!

Grimma - the incarnation - yes. 'Truly God and truly man.' The truly man bit is subject to the laws of nature - so Jesus died when he was crucified, because he was subject to the same physical processes as anyone else. But...'truly God' - not subject to scientific srutiny, because how can it be? As I said, even if you could go back 2000 years to Palestine, a DNA test does not exist that could verify whether Jesus is the Son of God, because 'truly God' is not a physical category in any way. So the incarnation is still, by definition, beyond the realms of science.

'Fail God's standards...' I suppose that's my Protestant upbringing showing As you described Augustine's line earlier on - humans in the raw, as created and born of woman, will always fail, we cannot achieve God's desired end for us on our own, we will be cut down like the grass. God's grace is the egg, if you will, in our soul's cake mix that allows us to rise to full cake-hood. Jesus, I suppose, is the thing that separates the yolk from the white, or possibly the egg-beater [vague mental link to separating the sheep and the goats, or beating the chaff]

Now, of course cake-mixes DO need egg to succeed, they are deliberately created as insufficient in themselves, as the gospel according to Vance Packard tells us, so that us poor little women could feel a sense of domestic Goddessness, a sense of being needed, in adding the egg. But it is possible to dry egg and include it in cake mix; presumably God could have created humans who had the grace of God already included, though probably it would have had to involve some sort of abiogenesis, given all the trouble he had to take over Mary's case. So did he create humans that must fail, and suffer, and sin, in order to be needed? Is God's codependency with us the answer to the riddle of the universe?

Aaaargh. DNA? Seriously? I know you're saying that DNA could NOT tell us that Jesus was the son of God. But it's a dangerous area to tread in. 'And yet, in my flesh shall I see God' - the Resurrection indicates that Jesus's FLESH was immortal. That brings me back to science again. I know what immortal DNA is, scientifically - it is cancer, i.e. completely dysfunctional in the universe. Back to my first post - the whole point of being alive is to die, the universe can only function if things develop, reproduce and die. If the answer to the 'why' question is 'so that we may have eternal life', it is a terrible non-answer that makes NO SENSE.

I am influenced by my own horror of the idea. To live eternally? it is a nonsense, a darkness, an insult to the universe. Aaaargh.

at all those cakes, Joan!

It seems that the implication there is that God needs humans in order to be complete as God. That's not what I believe, which is why I think the only satisfactory answer to 'why did God create?' is not that God needed to but that God wanted to. If you believe (as I do) that God is complete within the Trinity, then creation becomes an outpouring of grace. Like a really happily married couple who don't need to have a child to create love between them - they love each other to bits already, and the child is the freely-chosen outpouring of their love. That, I'd say, is the nature of the Trinity.

THe nature of humanity - well, that's another question. Augustine would say that it's in the nature of humanity to sin. I must stress that he is not the totality of Christian doctrine! So, extending the couple-child analogy above, would it be loving for a couple to programme their child to do whatever they wanted? (Let's face it, it's a tempting prospect!) Most loving parents want children to become their own people - to be free - and to use that freedom to love well. Maybe it's somehow inevitable that people turn away from God, so that if and when they turn back, it's truly free choice of love. I don't know, really - need to think about that some more! Really interesting question. What do you think?

Oh dear Joan, just read your rather dark post about cancer. I must go in a mo but just to say:

That's Job you're quoting there, 'in my flesh'.... I'd question the use of Job in the context of the incarnation. Really interesting & beautiful quote, but needs v. careful thought and handling.

Everlasting does not mean 'going on forever.' Really not. It's such a difficult concept for us to grasp as we are time-bound, but...God is outside time. Heven is beyond time. The category of 'time' will be obsolete in heaven. What that will feel like I don't know yet - maybe we get a glimpse of it in those 'timeless' moments when we are so absorbed or taken up by something that time seems to melt away....so nothing to do with 'going on for an infinitely long time', because as I say, the category 'time' will be obsolete.

What do you think?
I think all these difficult questions evaporate if you reject the hypothesis of the sort of god you imagine. (Joan perhaps can come up with a better cake-based answer).

So the incarnation is still, by definition, beyond the realms of science.
Nope. You're defining things to suit yourself. If you believe in an interventionist, incarnate God, then all earthly manifestations (if they existed)are up for scientific scrutiny. And if that part doesn't pass muster, why should anyone give credence to the rest? You can have your god beyond the realms of science if he's a deist first-cause, light the blue touch paper and stand well back type of entity, if you want, but you can't have it both ways.

Grimma, I am not re-writing Christian doctrine here. The Nicene Creed, of 325CE, says 'we believe in...Jesus Christ...being of one sunstance with the Father...who...came down, and was incarnate and was made man.'

So, according to this definition, which became the definition of Christian orthodoxy, Jesus is 'of one substance with the Father.' Whatever the Father is 'made of', Jesus is made of too.

And...this Jesus, the one who is of the same substance as the Father, was made man - during which tme he did not stop being of the 'substance of the Father.' There are streams of thought that say that, eg, Jesus wasn't really a human but only seemed to be so (particularly popular idea in the early centuries), or at the other end of the spectrum, that Jesus was fully human but not God (more popular in the 20th c.)- but these have been rejected consistently by mainstream Christian teaching that says that Jesus is fully God and fully man.

So when I say that the divinity of Jesus can't be tested scientifically, it's the 'substance of the Father' that I'm talking about - because 'God is not an item in any universe.' This is totally mainstream Christian doctrine, not me as some weird crackpot genius revisionist!

Maybe this is where Dawkins' logic fails at the first hurdle. He says in his preface that 'God is a scientific hypothesis' - but that statement is completely divorced from any historic understanding of God in Christianity, so the hypothesis that God is a scientific hypothesis does not hold water in mainstream historic Christianity. It might hold in certain other religions, I don't know - I'd imagine mainstream Muslims would be horrified by the idea of God as a scientific hypothesis too (although I can't speak for Muslims, obv).

It seems odd and a great shame that, esp as an Oxford man, he didn't make better use of his theology colleagues before launching into his attack on 'religion'. His lack of understanding makes his arguments very weak - I have read on a bit and keep finding myself saying, 'Nooo....you've got it all wrong....that's not what Christians believe....!' He seems unaware of his own suppositions about the type of 'religion' he's attacking, which makes his arguments very unsophisticated, very precocious. He might be a good scientist but he is a terrible theologian! If I were attempting to write a science book (ha!!!! as if!!!!) I would certainly want to talk to a few scientists first and make sure I've got my thinking right!

Well to be honest Holo, this thread is a bloody good indication that no two theists 'believe' the same thing so to criticise Dawkins' for his criticism is a bit disingenuous.

You've got as far as the preface - the preface, not even the meat of the book which explains where he's coming from - and you're not only misquoting what he actually wrote but you're also making all these assumptions about his lack of understanding and what a terrible theologian he is. He may very well be a terrible theologian - I don't think he would claim otherwise - but on present evidence you're rubbish at reading thoughtfully and evaluating arguments. Do you put this little rigour into evaluating the Bible?

What he actually wrote was "...the 'God Hypothesis' is a scientific hypothesis about the universe..." and as such that's not an unreasonable thing to say. We have evidence that the universe exists. There is a lot of evidence that it either began, or at least massively changed in form, 13-odd billion years ago. One hypothesis for this beginning is the Big Bang, of which there is a fair amount of supporting evidence. A variant of that is that the Big Bang wasn't just one event, the universe follows a cycle of expansion and contraction. Another hypothesis is that an Abrahamic God created the universe. Another is that Eurynome had sex with a giant snake and then gave birth to various other gods and goddesses who created the earth and the universe between them.

Each of these are hypotheses about where the universe came from and why it's here. Each of these can have the scientific process applied to them to see if we can work out how likely each hypothesis is. That's what Dawkins meant which you will hopefully understand when you make it past the preface and actually start thinking about what he's saying rather than jerking your knee at every misread sentence.

As to whether he's specifically writing about a specific brand of Christian God, or Muslim God, or an interventionist god versus a non-interventionist god etc, he does cover all that in the book.

What do you mean, NF? Not sure I follow your logic there...Also not sure how useful the term 'theist' is there. Muslims and Christains are theists, but no, of course we don't believe the same things about God.

What I am defending here is the historical, mainstream Christian belief regarding God, which is best summarised in the Nicene Creed (although not exclusively so). Of course, by saying that, I have to reckon with the fact that the Nicene Creed doesn't cover lots of important subjects, like how to read the Bible, or what gender is....so my position is that there is a definite Christian understanding of God, (although individual Christians might not agree with some parts of it, but it is the 'faith of the church') and there are also lots of other issues which it is up to people and communities to thrash through together. Do you see what I mean?

So Heresi, what you do you think he means by 'the God hypothesis'? (bearing in mind that I am not a biblical literalist or a 'creationist' and therefore have no interest in defending any evolutionary theory wrt religion).

Btw Heresi, fair point about reading the whole book! I just couldn't get past the Preface though, as I felt that he as 'setting out his stall' there, and doing so in such a way that he was paying no heed to what Christians actually believe. I had the same kind of reaction last year when I read another philosophy / theology book and on p.1 I thought 'He's working from this particular supposition, and describing Christianity thus...and he is describing it wrong! NO wonder hhe's going to reject it!'

Going back to my completely never-to-happen-in-RL example, if I, as a non-scientist, ever saw fit to write a book disproving science (which of course I wouldn't because that's ridiculous), and defined 'science' on p.1 in a way that no scientist would recognise, how many of them do you think would bother to read on?

If you want to know what Dawkins means by 'the God hypothesis', I suggest you read the relevant chapter in his book. It's the one marked "The God Hypothesis" so it should be fairly easy to find.

Heresi! Sacrasm is the lowest form of wit!

Your logic above with your description of the various hypotheses seems to be implying that the various 'explanations' for the universe are epistemologically equivalent. OTOH I keep saying that it ain't so! The Darwinian evolutionary model provides us with a scientifically plausible theory regarding how the universe developed.

So far so good...the Christian idea of creation mkaes a claim about why the universe is - as I said, the only really Christian answer to 'why make the universe?' is 'because God wanted to'. Which is a different discourse altogehter to the one that examines how the world came to be, and how it developed. This is why your various 'hypotheses' are not epistemologiaclly equivalent - they are not competing for the same territory (well, biblical literalists are, but, as I said, mainstream Christainity does not logically require, or even recommend, biblical literalism). Do you follow my logic here?

I slightly horrified to say I haven't read The God Delusion although it has been sitting on my bookshelf for a good few months waiting to be read. I think one of the things that has been putting me off is that I'll come out of it even more irritated by organised religion than I am already . BUT as I haven't read it I should really test that theory out... I'm reading the preface now!

Holo - tbh having read other books by Dawkins I would be surprised if he is making sweeping claims without backing them up or thinking them through, that really isn't his style, so I hope that reading further will clarify that.

that statement is completely divorced from any historic understanding of God in Christianity, so the hypothesis that God is a scientific hypothesis does not hold

leaving your misquoting aside, why should anyone start from an historic understanding of God in Christianity? Whether it's you personally or the Nicene creed, you're plucking words out of thin air and basing your arguments on them. Well, do that if you want but you can't expect everyone else to meekly say, oh, OK then, we can't examine the idea of God in what we think is a rational way.

Your conception of God may not stand up to scrutiny as a scientific hypothesis - well, so much the less credible. You're focussing on whether the divinity of Jesus can be examined, but any of God's supposed interactions with the material world should be amenable to analysis.

I'd be interested to hear what you think, Bobbin! I will read it too...(but not right now as I should be working!)

Grimma, I'm basing my arguments on historic, mainstream Christian doctrine. I am doing that because I am convinced of the truthfulness of that tradition!

You're basing yours on scientific materialism. I guess because you're convinced of the truthfulness of that philosophical tradition! Mine fails by your standards - but yours does by mine too. For you, natural science is 'Queen of the Sciences', the filter through which all knowledge must pass. I reject that!

Of course we aren't going to agree!

You are defending one belief system, I am defending another. Yours needs defending, as does mine.

Holo - I'll let you know Have you read any of his other books?

No, the Darwinian evolutionary theory gives an explanation, backed with ample evidence, for how life evolved from the earliest forms. Cosmology is the science of the origins of the universe.

The theories I put down as hypotheses for the origin of the universe are equivalent as they all propose ideas for where the universe came from and why it is as it currently is. The "why it started in the first place" question is one that only makes sense for some of them. There may be a human need to find an answer to the "why" but that does not necessarily mean that there is such an answer.

If you assume that there has to be a "why" then your only possible answer for the origin of the universe is a religious one. At that point it just becomes a bun-fight between the different religious beliefs and that's an entirely pointless exercise as such an argument is based on faith, not evidence. That gets you nowhere as it simply boils down to "My god is better than your god".

If you take the position that there may or may not be an answer to "why the universe came about" then you can regard the different possibilities, religious and non-religious, with something closer to fairness and rigour.

All that being said, I'm getting the impression that it's largely a waste of time. When you define your version of God as something that is fundamentally immune to scientific analysis which essentially means you're saying that your version of God is immune to rationality, then all bets are off. You might as well just stick your fingers in your ears and go "La la la, I'm not listening!"

Holo - I'm struggling a bit to see what you are arguing against. From what you have said it sounds like you are saying that you believe in God basically because 'the bible tells you so', and you don't see any point in subjecting either the 'reality' of God or the 'truthfulness' of the bible to scientific scrutiny. You 'know' simply because you believe you 'know', not because you or anyone else can prove it.

tbh if that is your viewpoint, I agree with you (except that I don't believe in God).

I follow your thinking there, Hersi, but...

As I said, I am only intersted in defending the Christian God, who is, by defintion, beyond earthly categories and therefore beyond the realms of science. So from a Christian POV, the only 'god' that is scientific (or unscientific) must be an idol (i.e. belonging to earthly categories). It's not that I'm being obtuse, I'm just following the line of thinking within theChristian worldview. So I'm saying that the very idea of a 'God hypothesis' of any sort, presupposes an idol and not the Christian view of God - so whoever it is that Dawkins is attacking, is an idol (again, I stress that I'm speaking v. much from a Christian POV here).

It sounds to me like you're saying that by starting from the POV that there is no necessary 'why' to the universe, then all forms of knowledge are on an equal playing field - is that fair? Do you want to say any more about the thinking behind that? Still not sure how that works logically...