The Perspective We Take to the Quetion of God, (part 1)

 

            I never argue to prove to the existence of God anyway, but to demonstrate the rational nature of belief. Arguing to prove that God exists [1]gives one an unnecessary burden because since God is beyond our understanding there’s really no way to prove there is a God. Nor should we want such a thing because that would mean that God is subject to our calculations. If we can make God an object of our observations we have demoted God to the level of being a thing in creation. The potential for such arguments depends entirely upon the assumptions we are willing to make and the perspective from which we view the marital supporting the arguments. The point here is that our presuppositions govern the way we see to answer the question of God and the proper presumptions are philosophical and not scientific; we must do philosophy to answer the question of God.

            The modern view of physical law understands “law” as more or less a metaphor. Even though text books still speak in the language of law the popular understanding among “scientific thinkers” is that laws of physics are merely descriptions of the universe and how it seems to be behave. The language of law is a hold over from the early days of the Greeks and the Christians, from philosophy and religion. Things have changed radically in the years since 1997 when Smolin’s words were first published but they still summarize the issue:

Even now that science has been severed from its religious roots, the idea that the laws of nature have an ideal and unchanging character have continued to be a central part of its basic world picture. For this reason it may seem strange to us if someone suggests that the laws of nature might be as much the result of contingent and historical circumstances as they are reflections of some transcendent eternal logic. But this is exactly the idea that I’m going to propose here. If we are willing to give up the idea that the laws of physics, or at least the parameters that measure the masses of the particles and the strengths of the forces, are fixed and immutable, we will see that new possibilities open up for understanding…[2]

While Stephen Mumford wants to exclude both simple regularity as law or Ayer’s concept of statements as laws. Statements summing up the nature of law must be made. If patters are found in nature then we know regularities exist. These things have their place in discussion of law that doesn’t’ mean that’s what law reduces to. In characterizing the “lawless” view point he tells us: “The world contains just a series of events on this account. Sometimes we find a patter in the series but according to well known Humean arguments, there is nothing that has made the pattern. The pattern has just occurred there is no necessity in nature.”[3] Howard Sankey edits an anthology, Causation and Laws of Nature, which is billed as “Australasion” studies, Australian and Asian studies in history and philosophy of science, in which he demonstrates a controversial distinction between Hume’s empiricism as the limitation of the mind’s perception vs. the assumption of mind independent reality.[4] The Humean view is that laws of nature/physics reduce to “phenomenal regularities,” in other words, the billiard balls; all we see is one stop and the other start, we don’t see causes, our understanding is limited to what we observe and that’s all. We observe a regularity we can describe but we can’t observe the reason for it. The counter to this view, in Australasian studies is the “realist” view that holds to the assumption of mind independent reality. Alan Chamlers’s article “Making Sense of the Laws of Physics”[5] while Brian Ellis leads the scientist essentialist contingent.[6]

            What we find is that there is still a lot of discussion about what the laws of physics and nature are, what makes them, and it doesn’t all reduce to description with no attribution to a framework or a “higher” set of “rules.” It depends upon what part of the world you are in as to how this all plays out. While in America laws of physics and nature are seen as purely descriptive.[7] There is a distinction between laws of physics which are rules of understanding physics, such as Newtonian laws, and laws of nature which are more a creation of philosophers and more general. Santo D'Agostino, who is an accomplished physicist and mathematician complains about text books that give the impression that mathematical equations really tell nature what to do.

If you really believe that a scientific law tells a physical system how to behave, what happens when there is a historic change of perspective (a “scientific revolution”)? One can end up tied up in mental knots. Imagine saying in the 19th century that a physical system “obeys” Newton’s laws of motions, only to have to revise your opinion in the 20th century in light of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Do you now say that the same system “obeys” the equations of relativistic mechanics, and only approximately “obeys” Newton’s laws? Or do you say that you were wrong in your earlier statement, but now you’ve got it right; this is problematic, because how do you know you’re right? What if there is yet another revolutionary change in perspective? I find this awkward.[8]

This laves us with two views battling it out for supremacy in the area of modern thought about the nature of natural and physical laws. It’s the “scientific essentialists” or those who posit something like prescriptive laws that tell the universe how to act, vs. the Hume crowd, those who just see physical law as a description of the way the universe seems to work and don’t both bother to explain how or why. Both sides represent modern science; both are stocked with atheists, theists, deists, and so on. In thinking about the nature of natural and/or physical law as a potential indication of God’s reality, both sides have their problems.

            The scientific essentialists (the prescriptive law side) have the problem of explaining how disembodied laws can just “exist” somewhere (where that is we don’t know) outside of a mind. To explain that one must dirt over to the other side in saying “it’s not really law.” “Law” is just an unfortunate choice of terms. It’s a bit more than that. Award Wining Physicist Paul Davies points out the traditional view of transcendent laws is just a hold over from the seventieth century monotheism with God removed. As Davies said, “Then God got killed off and the laws just free-floated in a conceptual vacuum but retained their theological properties,”[9] It seems that “law” is not just an unfortunately choice but a hold over from the older concept that the order and regularity we see is the result of a mind that created it to be orderly, the use of the term law is atp because it refers to the command of that mind that created it. This of course raises the question “why does it have to be God?” Even to ask this question is to invite theological issues and open to the door to theological questions. To open the door to theology is to invite physicists to show their ignorance of theology.

Steven Weinberg plays theologian:

QUESTION: Over the past decade, many physicists have been making an association between their science and "the mind of God". What do you think of this association being made?

MR. WEINBERG: It makes me nervous when physicists use the word "God" loosely, as talking about the laws of nature as the mind of God, or even Einstein's famous remarks about God playing dice with the cosmos. I think mostly they're just using the word "God" in the metaphorical sense.

By "God" most of them simply mean the laws of nature, the principles that govern everything. And, well, there's nothing wrong with the metaphor, I suppose, but the word "God" is charged with so much meaning, it carries so much historical freight, and I think one ought to be careful about how one uses it.[10]

Since we don’t know Weinberg’s theological education level it is entirely possible that his understanding of theology is not up to par with his understanding of physics. It’s possible that he thinks God has to be a big man on a throne with a white beard (and he has to be literally a male). This is just another example of physicist playing theologian because he assumes that knowing physics means he knows it all. God need not be male, need not have a white bread, need not be anthropomorphic and need not even be “personal” or ‘sentient.’ Any transcendental signified is by definition (top of the metaphysical hierarchy) God. Thus the idea of disembodied laws making things happen and having no explicable origin of their own is not an alternative to belief in God, it may well be a belief in God. It is an alternative to belief in a theistic God. Moreover, that side also has a problem proving how laws could exist outside a mind.

            The descriptive (Humean) side has a similar problem. Similar because as the recourse to the prescriptive side is to lighten up on the concept of a law, so the fact of description results in the obvious point that what is being described is very law-like order. Davies statement above was in response to a reaction against his statement that science required faith. He was deluged with “letters to The Times, pointing out that the order we perceive in nature has been explored and tested for more than 2,000 years by observation and experimentation. That order is precisely the hypothesis that the scientific enterprise is engaged in testing.”[11] The order is always there, it dependable enough that glider pilots and roller coaster makers can risk the lives of their passengers on it. There surely must be some point to the never ending scientific testing, that point must be something along the lines of placing confidence in the findings at some point. Nor is it the case that the predominant school has always been the Humean or descriptive. If look at the history of science references to the transcendent law idea are much more prevalent than are the descriptive side. For example Whitehead writes about it as though no one would dare question the omnipotence of physical law:

We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... science which is employed in their development [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical cassation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved. [12]

It hasn’t been that long that the descriptive side was strong. It seems also that it’s just an ideological take on things because what is being described is order. To make a philological position on the nature of the order, even if that position leaves it up for grabs, is a metaphysical move and thus in the sense that imports metaphysics into science its basically an ideological move.

            One more problem with the descriptive side, unless our descriptions are 100% accurate then inclusion of other descriptions broadens the base for behaviors in which we might find the universe engaging. That is to say one might be justified in saying “people don’t grow back new lungs overnight.” That’s just not part of the description. Yet the Catholic saint making miracles recorded that it is in at least one case. So as a rarity sometimes the universe does grow back lungs.  Or one would be perfectly justified in saying “people just don’t come back form the dead.”  Yet that’s not a 100% accurate statement because it’s part of the description of several hundred people in the Vatican achieves that some did come back form the dead.[13] Yet the skeptic will always come back and argue, if nothing else, as did Hume that these events are not to be believed:

a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined….The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that case, there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.[14]

His argument is predicated upon the idea that the laws of nature are stable law-like facts. We have seen that a whole school of thought sees them as nothing more than the compilation of a description of what happens in the world—that description can’t be 100% accurate and it is challenged by those who observe other things. In essence what he’s saying is that we can’t accord these kinds of events as much acceptance as we do ordinary events because we never have before. It doesn’t conform to our observations of the way the universe behaves and thus has presumption against it. That’s just a matter of where you come from. For some, those who have seen such things, they do conform to the way the universe works at times. Of course the real assumption is the natural vs. supernatural origins of the phenomena. All Hume is really saying at that point is that we choose not to value such claims because we have never have before. The principle he says out is self defeating because anything more miraculous would have to be doubted more, nothing could ever established a miracle no matter how good the evidence was. We see this in the words of Hume himself:

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should have really happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of the testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.[15]

The principle is argued against both testimonial evidence of miracle and those directly experienced.[16]  By the power of this premise nothing could ever establish a miracle, they must always be doubted. But upon what basis is it doubted? That is Hume privileges his position as 100% even though we know it’s not?  If one is coming from a tradition where such things are accepted as being within the realm of possibility then they are part of the description. After all to say “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature” either assumes laws of nature (with all their problematic of disembodied law makers) or they are the result of a description of the way the world operates, one that is not 100% and is challenged. While this doesn’t mean that there’s proof for the existence of God or some higher reality, it certainly gives a reason to think there might be. The miracle denying skepticism is basically circular reasoning or question begging. Moreover, we might consider the fact that Hume never had the M scale of Hood to tell him that religious experience is universal when it should not be, or that it has a vast dramatic transformative effect which can’t be reduced or explained away (see previous chapter). How would those facts change the assumptions Hume would make?

            It is understandable that naturalistic thinkers are uneasy with the concept of miracles. So should we all be watchful not to believe too quickly because its easy to get caught up in private reasons and ignore reason itself. Thus has more than one intelligent person been taken by both scams and honest mistakes. By the the same token it is equally a  danger that one will remain too long in the skeptical place and become overly committed to doubting everything. From that position the circular reasoning of the naturalist seems so reasonable. There’s never been any proof of miracles before so we can’t accept that there is any now. But that’s only because we keep making the same assumption and thus have always dismissed the evidence that was valid.

---

[1] I use the term “exist” advisedly as it is a contradiction to my Tillichian view (Paul Tillich) that “existence” refers to contingent things while God Is the ground of being.

[2] Lee Smolin, Life of the Cosmos Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 76.

Preview on Google books.

Smolin Is professor of physics Pennsylvania State Universe, center for Gravitational Physics and Geomeery. He’s contributed several key Ideas to the search for a grand unfied theory of quantum theory, cosmology and relativity.

[3] Stphen Mumford,  Laws in Nature. London, New York: Routledge. This edidtion published in the Taylor &Francis e -library 2004, 8.

Mumford is professor of philosophy at University of Nottingham.

[4]Howard Sankey. Causation and Laws of Nature. Accord Station, Hingham Ma: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Howard Sankey, editor, xi 1999.

[5] Alan Chalmers in Sandey, op cit “Making sense of the laws of Physics,” 3-18

[6] Brian Ellis, in Sankey, op cit, “Caual Powers and Laws of Nature” 19-34

[7] My rendition of things may be a bit slanted. First of all, there are realists in Ameirca and realizing is not necessarily about laws of physics being prescriptive, but I think that may be an implication of it. Realism is very general term that’s used in many different ways by those who claim it’s banner. Essentially it means that the aspects of physics such as slingalruty and the phenomena described in physics are real and actually there, while the anti-realists and other groups have a  large variation on the theme that sees these objects as theoretical the result of verisimilitude; the theoretical placeholders for our calculations, in other words, “constructs.” Just to make things more confusing I know atheists with phsyics degrees who style themselves in the anti-realist camp but hwo mock and riedicule constructivists such as Thomas Kuhn. For documentation on this point and an excellent article on the subject of scientific realism see:

Chakravartty, Anjan, "Scientific Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

[8] Santo D'Agostino, “Does Nature Obey the Laws of Phsyics?” QED Insight Posted on March 9, 2011 blog URL: http://qedinsight.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/does-nature-obey-the-laws-of-physics/  visited 12/18/12

[9] Dennis Overbye, “Laws of Nature, Source Unknown.”New York Times, “science,”  (December 18, 2007)

[10] Steven Weinberg, Interview on PBS, full transcript on “Interview” website PBS. Org. http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/wein-body.html  visited 12/18/12

[11] ibid.

[12] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and The Modern World,. New York: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76

[13] Douffin, Jacqueline, op cit (see previous chapter).

[14] David Hume,  1748 et seq., An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Ed. Tom L. Beauchamp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.86-87

[15] ibid

[16] Michael Root, “Miracles and the Uniformity of Nature,” American Philosophical Quarterly.26 (October 1989) 338-339.

Review: Ingmar Bergman's The Virigin Spring

 
 

Jungfrukällan (The Virigin Spring)
original story by Ulla Isaksson

Max von Sydow ... Töre
Birgitta Valberg ... Märeta
Gunnel Lindblom ... Ingeri
Birgitta Pettersson ... Karin
Axel Düberg ... Thin Herdsman
Tor Isedal ... Mute Herdsman
Allan Edwall ... Beggar
Ove Porath ... Boy
Axel Slangus ... Bridge Keeper
Gudrun Brost ... Frida
Oscar Ljung


Now that I have a DVD player I can review old movies without waiting to see them on tv. I recently got hold of the Virgin Spring, one of my favorite films by Ingmar Bergman, my favorite director. "The Virgin Spring" won the Oscar for Best Foreign film in 1961. Bergman had just established himself as a film maker of international standing a couple of years before with his break out feature "Smiles of Summer Night" 1956 and followed it the next year with one of the finest films ever made (my true favorite) "The Seventh Seal" (1957). "The Virgin Spring" reinforced Bergman's greatness and established him for the 1960s as one of the major film makers of the time.

The film deals with theme of murder, revenge, theodicy. It's a fine commentary on the problem of pain and evil, having belief in God in a world where evil is allowed. The film is set in Medieval Sweden. It's in black and white, as were all of his early films, and thus the big sky effect of black and white is present as we see the glorious countryside of Sweden. The look of the film is totally authentic. The family lives in a rustric compound reminiscent of a fort in the old West. The Father,Töre, played by Max von Sydow ("the Exorcist," the knight in "Seventh Seal") and the mother,Märeta, played by Birgitta Valberg have one daughter, Karin, played by Birgitta Pettersson. She is blong, young, beautiful, playful, spoiled, arrogant. There's another girl involved. I always thought she was a servant, but she may have been step daughter. It's hard to know how much i missed in subtitles, one reviewer says this. But she has dark hair, she is treated as a servant. They fawn over the Blond Karin and give little attention to the dark haired Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom).

The film opens with Ingeri calling upon Oden to help her. She is pregnant and is treated with disdain because the child is out of wedlock. She resents the spoiled girl and even smuggles a frog into her lunch to torment her. In calling upon Oden Ingeri is doing something forbidden. Christianity has already taken root, (about thirteenth or fourteenth century). The family are Catholics and they are honored to supply candles to the church for the mass. The daughter is sent to take them. She must go by horse and it takes a whole day's journey. The dark haired girl is sent with her to keep her company. The two are angry with one another and Ingeri is feeling sick so she is left behind at a bridgekeeper's hut. Karin goes on my herself. The bridgekeeper (Axel Slangus) Worships Oden, and the Ingeri recognizes the signs of human sacrifice in his hut. She escapes his grasp just as he puts the moves on her for sexual favors. But she has to leave her horse. She escapes from him into the woods on foot, and walks to try and catch up to the other girl.

Meanwhile, Karin has ridden on a ways as is spied by three young beaggers. Two are probably early twenties and one is a small boy. They stalk her for a bit and finally come down from their vantage point in the hills and meet up with her. She is playful and likes to lure danger so she has no care about going with them off the road intot he hills to eat lunch. By this time the other gril catches up and spies them out from the same vantage point the beggars occupied earlier. As they eat the frog pops out, the one Ingeri hid in Karin's lunch. The beggars are angered and think she is making fun of them, but they were up to no good anyway. They rape Karin as Ingeri watchs from the hill top. They finally kill her with a crushing blow. The boy has no real role in the rape or the murder, but he has no choice but to go along anyway.

We then cut to the parents house. It is dark, they are sitting down to dinner. They are worried, but Karin has does before apparently, stayed out all night and found people to stay with until morning. There is also a chance she could have stayed in the church. The father isn't worried, the mother is beside her shelf, but the father calms her. Three beaggers show up at the gate. They seek shelter for the night, giving a story about how the drifted down the north, times are hard, they lost their farm, the night will be brutally cold. Tore gives them permission to sleep in the hall. Its' a viking house so they have a central "great hall" where they all eat, and individual bedrooms in little huts around the great hall united by causeways. They take the two men and their young boy in and show great compassion and understanding. They are allowed to eat with the family and the father says they can talk about work the next day. As the mother retires for the night, one of the beaggers, who more or less acts as spokesman, (Allan Edwall) tries to sell her a garment claming it had belonged to their sister. It is a blouse of exceptionally fine craftsmanship, gold in color trimed in blue.

The mother recognizes at once this the very garment she dressed her daughter in that morning, but of course the three have no idea they are in the girls very home!Birgitta Valberg accomplishes one of the most skillful acting jobs I've ever seen. At the same time she is filled with anguish and rage, but she know she dare not give away a single trace of recognition. So she just stares saying nothing as though she is considering the offer. The man prattles on with lies about his sister's life and what a fine dress it is. After a long moment, we can see the skill of the actress, both rage and cover up at once; she forces out the words "i must show it to my husband...I will give you an answer in the morning." She takes the blouse, locks them in for the night with an outside bolt, and goes into her own suit. She thrusts the dress under her husband's nose. He stares sleepily not comprehending for a moment the significance. The woman explains and bursts into tears. There is even a drop of blood on it.

In the exquisite Bergmanesqe Fashion, Tore builds he Angst as he wirely climbs from the bed, fills himself with resolve and then proceeds to prepare to act. He takes his sword, goes to outside to the great hall to make sure they are bolted in. Then he finds Ingeri sobbing under the stairs. She explains how she witnessed the murder. So Tore tells her to prepare a bath. A Bath? Of course, what else would a good Viking do before avenging his daughter's murder but take a sauna? He wrestles a tree out of the ground, a birch, and cuts off its limbs. Takes his Sauna and whips himself with the birch branches. Then he dresses and calls for the butcher knife. The girl brings him a huge knife. He goes to the great hall, and observes the three sleeping. He looks at their things and finds the rest of Karin's clothes and even a candlestick. He goes back over to them, wakes them up and begins the slaughter. The one closes to him falls almost at once. The other, the one who tried to sell the dress, fights better. He disarms the father and they fight hand to hand, but Tore chokes him to death with his bare hands. He then picks up the boy and throes him against the wall has hard as he can, in a gesture that would make any professional wrestler proud. The boy is killed immediately. The father sits staring at his hands, the mother cradles the dead boy sobbing.

The whole family and several servants lead a mournful procession back to the spot where the murder happened, led by Ingeri. There they find Karin's naked body lying in the dirt. The mother cradles her as she had the boy, the father sits of to the side staring at his hands and shouts at God, "you saw! you saw this! why didn't you stop it!??" He looks at his hands and says "what have I done!" He remorseful that he too became a murderer. Then in a totally surprising move, the jumps and declares that "I shall build a church on this site, a shrine to the Virgin!" They pick up the body to bury her and spring of water rushes up form the ground, like some miracle right out of a medieval tale. The fathers blind leap of faith in the face of adversity and doubt has brought forth a metaphor right there on the screen; the Spring is a metaphor of hope, also a personification of nature (as though weeping for the girl) and confirmation of faith.

The Virgin Spring Is a powerful film, loaded with existential angst, Bergman's trademark. It illustrates for us the power of narrative. Even tough this is not a bible story it illustrates perfectly why the Bible depends so much on narrative. It is only through narrative that we can have carthorses. By entering into the story through the story telling device we experince the anxiety the dilemma of faith and doubt and the sense of bewilderment, and we move through the emotional crisis and feel that we have gained something from taking this journey with the characters. It's one of the oldest literary devices there is. No one uses it in film more expertly than Bergman. The issues of theodicy can only make sense when seen through the drama of in context of real human lives. This is why I call my theory of the free will defense "Soeteriological drama." It's not a stage production for God's pleasure, but reflects the true drama of life as people struggle with their problems and try to comprehend good and evil pain and suffering. Berman's father was a minister, and even though he was an atheist, he had a fine sense of modern theology in the Keirkeggardian form. This film is an excellent gateway to undertake a journey of Carthorses through the problem of theodicy.

see my tribute to Bergman on the occasion of his death Greatness has left the planet, Ingmar Bermgan dies.

Possible Worlds, Possible Calvinisms and The Solidarity of God

 

 

 

 

 Some time ago I did a post called "Is Jesus suffering the Mechanism for Atonement?" In that post I argued that it is the participation of Jesus in humanity and in death that expresses God solidarity for humanity. It's the acceptance of that solidarity through repentance and commitment to righteousness through Christ that creates the grounds of forgiveness. So that would mean that the reciprocal nature of solidarity is actually the mechanism. Not to leave the resurrection out in the cold, it's the Hegelian sublation of hope through resurrection that actually puts the energy into the process of atonement, but that comes after the act of atonement. Sublation means moving up word through a stair step process of dialectic. The Resurrection has a dialectical structure. One source through which we can understand this is Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God. Although I can't pin it to a page number, 187-274 spell it out. (see the book on Amazon).

....In contrast tot this view a reader called 'Renegade Gospel makes a comment to that post that gives me the basis for some thinking on this issue:

 

Renegade Gospel said...

You can find the complete answers to atonement in a kindle book called Renegade Gospel The Jesus Manifold by Jamey Massengale.
1. God is the creator completely soveriegn
2 My separation from God is due to my knowledge of good and evil because i use it to judge god i.e. why do the innocent suffer etc. is an accusation in interrogative format.
3 If God is omniscient I cant do other than what God KNEW i would do before He created me and He created me as He did; therefore God is responsible for my sin
4 If God is responsible for my sin then God should die for my sin
5 In Jesus God did die for my sin or Jesus as god died for all sin ( which is by the way the ultimate statement of soveriegnty, where God says in essence “I do it all” cause effect and resolution.)
6 However Jesus the man did not sin nor was He under original sin so He didn’t deserve to die, but being God as man, now by the rule of equity, all men are equal to God, syllogism: Jesus is a man and all men are human therefore Jesus is human and Jesus is God therefore all men are in Jesus equal to God in their HUMAN/GOD rights.
7 Therefore since only God as the “potter” had the rights of life, liberty, and property; and since Jesus transfers to all humans like Himself those rights, we don’t need a law saying by fiat “thou shalt not kill”, because all men now have the right to life; I know I violate that right if I kill a man. Thereby the law is fulfilled in right-eousness, or “the having of the rights of God”.
That’s it in a nutshell and it explains a lot of ambiguous statements Paul makes. I haven’t quoted much scripture for brevity’s sake but I find the Jesus manifold completely supported from genesis to revelation. It affirms the homoousion, it satisfies the complete taxonomy of sin(ontologic, deontic, and relational), and it satisfies all of Abelard’s criteria: 1. it’s logical 2. It’s not arbitrary if God is omniscient, therefore actions are predestined, and love demand’s it to satisfy the human cry of injustice. 3 It’s intelligible being stated capable of syllogistic treatment in plain unambiguous language. The implications to a multiverse for an omniscient God require He know everything in all possible universes, this single incarnation would then only be required in this one to satisfy it’s precise constraints, as it exists within the multiplicity of universes in God’s consciousness.

I apologize if the first part is ambiguous as to the idea of multiverse. Only in science fiction and thought experiment is a multiverse with divergent timelines considered. This universe has the timline it does because of physical constraints that cannot be changed if human life is to exist as it does(see Anthropic principle). There are approximately 20 such constraints that are so precise the universe would cease to exist as it does if they varied even one plank measure. Those multiverses actually possible would be defined by changes in those constants. Therefore there can be no other universe which would value the atonement as this one does(anthropically); however these constants do not forbid interactions at the quantum level, and may derive their stability from these interactions. In that case the incarnation in this universe has it’s meaning only in this universe but would have implications to all other possible universes.

7:35 PM

I'm not trying to put RG on the spot or to attack his views or make him feel put upon. His comments have made me thing about certain things. 

....First of all I reject the premise that would make God the author of my sin. If that there true it would be completely unjust that anyone is punished for sin. Then it comes from a Calvinist presupposition  which means it's totally unjust anyway, since predestination is unjust. Secondly, I reject the deterministic conclusion based upon God's omniscience.  This does not make God responsible for my decisions. It also doesn't determine my actions in such a way as to eliminate the possibility that I would change my mind. Even if it did that wouldn't mean the original decision is not mine alone. If God observes all from a timeless perspective he would know about any mind changes, but that wouldn't prevent my mind changes. Just knowing the final deicsion doesn't prevent free will in choosing it. Our choices are finite and they are made so by the finite number of years that we live. Being finite that means we have only so many mind changes we can make. God can know about them all that doesn't make them impossible. For example I know that William Barrett Travis drew the line in the sand at the Alamo. That doesn't mean I am the author of his decision to do that. If I knew nothing of the Alamo Travis would still have drawn the line.

.....Secondly, consider the statement: "In Jesus God did die for my sin or Jesus as god died for all sin ( which is by the way the ultimate statement of sovereignty, where God says in essence “I do it all” cause effect and resolution." I fail to see why we need a demonstration of God's sovereignty if we make the Calvinist deicsion to base all theology on that concept in the first place. I also fail to see how Jesus dying for all sin is both cause and effect, unless of course it means that Jesus committed my sins, which would eliminate the talk of him not sinning. That would have to be the logical conclusion to "I do it all." If Jesus committed my sins why do I need salvation? The problem is Calvinism, it does not make sense. It seeks to set up God as the badest bully on the block and just arbitrarily feiot in his goodness despite total absolute injustice. It makes a lot more sense to think of God in Weslyan terms. 

....Mind you, Jurgen Moltmann, the guy I refer you too above, in fact the role model from where I took my view of God's Solidarity--is a Calvinist! He's not the kind of Calvinist we see on Message boards. He's not a TULIP guy. He's more of a Barthian style Calvinist. So I am not against all forms of Calvinism. It makes more since to think of us as responsible for our own sins and God as expressing solidarity through the taking the consequences for them even though he's not guilty of them, and when he doesn't have to.

....When  he says: "The implications to a multiverse for an omniscient God require He know everything in all possible universes, this single incarnation would then only be required in this one to satisfy it’s precise constraints, as it exists within the multiplicity of universes in God’s consciousness." Are you confusing possible worlds with multiverwse? The explanation about multiverse is one reason I think he/she may be confusing possible with multivariate. Possible worlds are infinite and the are not actual.Yes to be God God must be in all possible worlds and he must therefore be the creator over the entire multiverse. But possible worlds are not actual worlds and the criteria for their possibly is that they conform to divine necessity not vice verse. They do not constrain the nature of God, God constrains their nature. If God is just in one possible world he must be just in all possible words. If God is in solidarity with humanity in possible world he must be so in all possible worlds, not because the worlds make it so, because God is just and God is in solidarity with us. Christ's atonement is a perfect example of solidarity, it is participatory in that he had to participate in life with us as one of us to make it work. Humans die unjustly. Dying as a human and being in solidarity does not necessity God's authorship of my sin.

 

New War Between Science and Religion? Or Old New Athiest Refusal to Admit Defeat?

 from 1960 Hollywood version of Inherit the wind: three of my favorite actos:
Harry Morgan in background. Spencer Tracy as the Clarence Darrow figure 
(Henry Drummond) and FrederickMarch as the 
William Jennings Bryan figure (Matthew Harrison Brady).


....Mano Singham writes a guest editorial for The Chronicle of Higher Education, "The New War Between Science and Religion." Singham has some academic credentials, he is director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education and an adjunct associate professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University. His article bemoans the fact that The Academy of Sciences is openly making room for religion and accepting the existence of religion as a domain beyond the level of scientific investigation:

The former group, known as accommodationists, seeks to carve out areas of knowledge that are off-limits to science, arguing that certain fundamental features of the world—such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the origin of the universe—allow for God to act in ways that cannot be detected using the methods of science. Some accommodationists, including Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, suggest that there are deeply mysterious, spiritual domains of human experience, such as morality, mind, and consciousness, for which only religion can provide deep insights.
Prestigious organizations like the National Academy of Sciences have come down squarely on the side of the accommodationists. On March 25, the NAS let the John Templeton Foundation use its venue to announce that the biologist (and accommodationist) Francisco Ayala had been awarded its Templeton Prize, with the NAS president himself, Ralph Cicerone, having nominated him. The foundation has in recent years awarded its prize to scientists and philosophers who are accommodationists, though it used to give it to more overtly religious figures, like Mother Teresa and Billy Graham. Critics are disturbed at the NAS's so closely identifying itself with the accommodationist position. As the physicist Sean Carroll said, "Templeton has a fairly overt agenda that some scientists are comfortable with, but very many are not. In my opinion, for a prestigious scientific organization to work with them sends the wrong message."

....Just a couple of problems with this take on things. First of all labels those who are wise enough to understand that more forms of knowledge exist than just scientific knowledge as "accommodation" is like accepting the Marxist label of all those who have not joined the party was "obstructionist" or the label of all those who dont' want to do it Stalin's way (which means other communists) as "revisionists." Who are these guys accommodating? The enemy of course. Just in using the term this self professed "new atheist" has drawn the battle lines. What's pathetic is the fact that he's not describing a new war he's describing a new peace, but clearly he doesn't want peace. It seems that the world of science has reaches a point where they are willing to accept religion as an area beyond their domain and to strike up a new peaceful co-existence. But the new atheist can't have this. Religion is the enemy it must vanquished and driven out of existence. Any attempt at understanding is mere accommodation, selling out. His rationale:

Those of us who disagree—sometimes called "new atheists"—point out that historically, the scope of science has always expanded, steadily replacing supernatural explanations with scientific ones. Science will continue this inexorable march, making it highly likely that the accommodationists' strategy will fail. After all, there is no evidence that consciousness and mind arise from anything other than the workings of the physical brain, and so those phenomena are well within the scope of scientific investigation. What's more, because the powerful appeal of religion comes precisely from its claims that the deity intervenes in the physical world, in response to prayers and such, religious claims, too, fall well within the domain of science. The only deity that science can say nothing about is a deity who does nothing at all.

....In the first line we can see the problem, the typical atheist understanding of religion ideas as "explanations." everything is science to the worshipers of scinece (scientism) the only possible form of knowledge is scientific knowledge; thus they can't see understanding supernatural as experience they see it as an attempt to explain natural phenomena. If that were the case it would make sense to see science as constantly expanding and taking over the real of SN. But the fact is the term SN was not invented as an expatiation but as a reference to an experience.[1] It is about the experience known as "mystical" which more often than not is understood as an experience of divine presence. The fact of it is he sees science as constantly expanding and taking away all the territory and crowding out the SN because he doesn't see the SN as having any basis in reality becuase it's not derived by means that he and his side control. That can't acknowledge any basis to it because to do so they would have to accept the notion of the validity of other forms of knowledge. He here pulls a bait and switch:
....In setting up a straw man argument he quotes what he terms a spurious argument" by NAS, the arguemnt is "many scientists and theologians have written about how one can accept both." But then in answering the argument he reduces it to "But the fact that some scientists are religious is not evidence of the compatibility of science and religion." That wasn't the argument, the argument was that both scientists and Theologians write about how both can fit together. So it's not just an argument by association that he reduces it to, but that intellectual content goes into proving the compatibility, a content that he doesn't even acknowledge let alone try to answer. He says: "As Michael Shermer, founder and editor of Skeptic magazine, says in his book Why People Believe Weird Things (A.W.H. Freeman/Owl Book, 2002), 'Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.'" That's just a means of dismissing the intellectual content without examining it. Some atheist guy says "this this stuff is no good but smart people are adept at making it seem good," so that means I don't have to investigate it now. That does not relieve us of the responsibility to investigate the contest becuase it totally side steps the issue "if they are smart why do they believe it in the first place?" Besides all of that why should we allow the atheist to set the definition and tell us "this is wired stuff." He wants 3% of the world population to tell 90% "your ideas are the wired stuff." Not by any stretch of the imagination can this be possible.
....Religion is a hell of a lot more than just an intellectual proposition. It's a way of life, it's culture, it's all our most cherished aspirations, self understanding, and sense of meaning in reality. Putting God concept in the "wired" category is reducing God to the status of being a thing in the universe. It's making God out to be just another thing added to the universe. A single piece of baggage that can be ejected as easily. That's necessary for the reductionist who has to see all reality as being one thing,that one thing is him, what he can control with his mind,[2] or what he gains the illusion of controlling because he's rented out his brain to the thought police to be used as they see fit, thus making him a small part of the controlling apparatus of all human thinking and understanding. The idea that this evil enemy that made him the ting he hates most (himself) is a real damper on this single reality that blows his illusion of control. Why should we assume that the standard is the atheist view so that departure from it is the "wired idea?" If the New atheist are as brilliant as they want to believe they are how do we know they aren't the "smart people who believe wired things?" Why Should we allow them to set the agenda? Especially when their views are represented by 3% of the population and belief in God is represented by 90%?[3]
....He spends the rest of the time trying to draw analogies between the Scopes Trial and the new situation. That's just circular reasoning because it assumes the standard is already set as the new atheist's view point and all opposition to that view is relegated to the category of "wired stuff" and put in with Scope's view. The problem is Scopes was a creations and we are not talking we are talking about scientists. We are not talking about just scientists who believe in God we are talking about both scientists who are willing to accept that belief can be a both valid and beyond scientific scope even if they don't believe in God, and Theologians and other believers who accept the value of science but still understand their faith as compatible with that value. To the New Atheists they are accommodating the enemy but to the rest of us they are the normal people because they represent over 90% of everyone. In that we also see another value to the concept of scientists who believe in God, not just that they do, not just that there's a content they have to talk about, not just that they are smart and they believe in something, but that they don't accept New Atheism as the standard of human rationality. They don't want to set the bar according to New Atheist ideology and the represent the majority of the scientific community (if the NAS is really the great hallmark of science that atheist have argued in the past that it is). It seems in reality that there's a new peaceful co-existence bewteen  science and religion not a new war. New Atheists want to go back and fight the old war again, re-living a victory they can't match now, trying to pretend that all religious belief is on a par with the Mathew Brady character form Inherit the Wind.


 Sources:

 [1] My article on the truemenaing of supernature has appeared both in this blog (see "the Original Christian Concept of the Supernatural,"August 15,2012 URL:http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2012/08/normal-0-microsoftinternetexplorer4.html ) and on my webstie The Religious A prori. URL: http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-empirical-supernatural.html
[2]Richard H. Jones, Reductionism: Analysis and the Fullness of Reality. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2000, 39. Google books online preview:
URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=sUgnio874NUC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=revolution+against+reductionism&source=bl&ots=RfQNUal7yQ&sig=Wputdv-lWVTdRJ0lJem2hrXHKZI&hl=en&ei=rWusTp3zG4risQLZzKXdDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
[3] Metacrock, "How Many Atheists Are there?" Doxa: Christian Thought in the 21st Century, Online Resource, URL: http://www.doxa.ws/social/percentage.html

What is Theology Good for?

 

 Here is an example of why one needs to read a lot of theology before one deems to criticize it. Let's take the op in the thread that titrated this as an example: thread by Skylurker about "what is theology good for." (from CARM)

Theology: The study of the nature of God and religious belief.

this is his definition of what he thinks theology is about. There are two definitions of theology that are used by 99% of people int eh field, one is the old one the other is the modern one.

The old one (Anselm) Faith seeking understanding!

The main reason that one is disliked is because it makes theology a matter of concern only for the believer; it would have us think that theology is just the faitful trying to understand their faith.

New version: (John Macquarrie) Participation in in and study of the content of a religious tradition.


That's very different from faith seeking understanding becuase "participation" doesn't necessarily require faith and it opens it up to a much greater field of inquiry than just "seeking to understand faith." Yet both are very different from the study of the nature f God and religious belief, becuase

(1) leaves out the need to seek understanding

(2) it leaves out the need to sort of problems with faith

(3) leaves out a social scinece understanding of the tradition

(4) it's basically limits theology to doctrine alone.





Sky:

The latter "religious belief" seems like a worthy field of study but as i like to maintain more of a sub-field of anthropology or human psychology. 

 

 

a sub field of anthropology would be limited to academic objectivity and leave out the need to answer for the faith. It would also mandate certain approaches that would totally limit theolgoians form most of what they do. While there is a form of thought connected with theology called "anthropology"is' not the 19th century social science that grew up around the work of Malinowski and August Compt.

limiting theology to academic anthropology would kill the entire discussion. that's the only way atheists can shut it up. that's the little nasty trick the brain washers have set you to work on, destroy the confidence in technological answers so that the ignorant little nay sayers will be undisturbed in their character assassination of the faith.

Sky:

The former "nature of God" is the question for this OP. Have they made any progress?

 

 

 

that question asserts that there's some quasi scientific answer they have to come to. As though God is impersonal force like magnetism and we have to understand it in the say way we understand scientific things. there no reason to think this way. this nothing more than an extension of the reductionist dictum that one thing can exist that's the realm of knowledge that we control.

Can someone list the major important products or achievements of this field of study? Any general consensus? 

 

 

trying to treat faith like a commercial product. Unless it has some pragmatic end that can be empirically demonstrated, like better gas mileage or fewer cavities then there's no justification of even considering it. that's nothing more than the comoditization of knowledge and the scientfication of reality.

why should there be such a hard cash value to something before it's worth considering? What's the cash value of Shakespeare? What hard tangible product does Beethoven produce?

On the other hand if you want to play that game how about the case value in getting your life fixed up? hard tangible results are all on the believer's side.

less depression
less mental illness
great sense of well being
overcome drug addiction
greater sense of meaning in life
greater sense of self authentication
greater self actualization
greater happiness
greater physical health

Now I am glad there are people exploring this because who knows maybe someday they will make a breakthrough - but so far it seems pretty much like they have drilled dry holes and created elaborate castles in the sky... especially compared to the fields of physical and biological sciences. So chastise me and straightening me out. 

 

 We will get Dupont on it right away. Maybe we can get something on the market before the next quater.

We are not developing a commercial product. faith is an inward journey. Only the individual can measure it's value. you are not going to do that by making bad analogies to a lame and shallow understanding of science.

Bad Prayer Studies: Use Empirical not Double Blind

Atheists don't understand social methodology. They know that "double blind" is the magic word but most of them don't know why. My message here to you today is that empirical studies on prayers are better than double blind. Atheists have been beating the drum for the Benson study which supposedly shows that prayer doesn't work, is even harmful. The control group (not prayed for group) did 1% better than the experimental (prayed for) group, so to them this proves prayer is bad for you. All it really says is that 1% of that group had better outcomes, that could be as trivial as being less flatulent.

There are two reasons empirical is better than double blind in this case: (1) double blind is only necessary when you have an outcome that will be consistently the same such as a drug that always works every time you take it. Atheists try to treat that way and if it doesn't work that way they try to build that into a criticism. It's not goign to work that way, not ever, becuase prayer is about God's will. God never has to heal  he's not a magic genie and we can't command him to work for us. The whole idea of needing a double blind to study prayer is just stupid. (2) The second reason, double blind is not possible for prayer studies. There's always going to be outside prayer. Even if they got all people in the control group to say "Ok all my friends and relatives dont' prayer for me now," there's no way to be sure that some cousin somewhere didn't say "I don't care he needs prayer, study or not study, I'm going to pray for him." Or even someone who doesn't know him who is just trying to be a good person and prays for all the people of the world. I have heard of such people. Billy Graham once claimed that he did that every day. For these two reasons prayer studies should be the double blind it just creates a pretense that they study can't live up to.Atheists will then say that empirical study can't be falsified. It sure as hell can. If there's a prayer and the guy's problem doesn't go away, it's falsified.

We can always expect atheists to be on prowl to mock and ridicule prayer. They really have no choice to but reject it and clutch at straws to keep from believing the thousands of stories that come out every years of answered prayers. They have to reject it. It's only their ideology that prevents their addition that they have no intention of examining the facts. A particular study has been bandied about as "proof that prayer doesn't work." This study is ironic because to accept it's validity they actually must accept the validity of previous studies that show prayer does work. Since atheists are usually pretty dishonest they can't distinguish between different kinds of evidence, so they act as though this one studies disproves even empirical results.
Friendly Atheist
Funny he should mention flaws, because that's going to be a key issue with me. The so called "faults" he's talking about are mainly about the inability to control for outside prayer. The irony is back ten years ago when there were about 14 studies that showed prayer worked. Never mind listing them my page on that has been taken down. It no longer exists I don't remember all of them. They all suffered from the flaw of not contorting for outside prayer. the major athist argument was you can't control for outside prayer. These were all done the same way, double blind and so on. The major atheist argument was that you can't control for outside prayer. Yes in those days the atheists argued that and I argued that you could. I came to see I was wrong years before the Benson study and I dropped arguing for those studies when I got the good Lourdes evidence.The study athesits now run around touting as a disproof of prayer is one that is invalidated by the same argument it depends upon controlling for outside prayer. Rather than understand that if they accept their anti-prayer study they have to drop the major argument against Byrd and Harris and the pro-prayer studies, they try to invalidate the pro prayer studies on irrelevant grounds that basically amount to guilt by association.


Here's the "big study" that disproves all prayer:
also from the article above:

Three years ago, a multi-million-dollar, controlled, double-blind study was conducted to test intercessory prayer.
The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) found two major results:
1) “Intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery without complications.”
2) “Patients who knew they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse.”
Fared worse?! Even I was surprised by that. So were many Christians — this didn’t sit well with them.

This new article from Christianity Today, though, offers a rationalization I’ve never heard before. You can tell they’re really straining to find a silver lining…[this is quoting Christianity today]

Ironically, STEP actually supports the Christian worldview. Our prayers are nothing at all like magical incantations. Our God bears no resemblance to a vending machine. The real scandal of the study is not that the prayed-for group did worse, but that the not-prayed-for group received just as much, if not more, of God’s blessings. In other words, God seems to have granted favor without regard to either the quantity or even the quality of the prayers. By instinct, we might selfishly prefer that God give preferential treatment to those who are especially, deliberately, and correctly prayed for, but he seems to act otherwise.[end quote]

True to his character, God appears inclined to heal and bless as many as possible.

This prefectly rational explanation the atheist calls a "rationalization." Of cousre he does, his ideology demands that he not think reasonably bout it but that he use it to attack. That's what atheism is about. Nothing could be more reasonable. What the quote actually says is that we can't study prayer the way we would a drug in a field trial. The reason the mystical experience studies I use don't make this mistake is becuase they have the sense to study the effects, they don't try to get inside the experience itself. These studies must actually assume that we can control God's will and control for what God does as well as for outside prayer.

What do I mean by outside prayer? The study has two groups, experimental group and control group. You blind the study so that neither the participants nor the researchers even know who is in which group. That way they wont treat them differently based upon expectations. So in this case it means the control group is not prayed for the experimental group is prayed for. Then you look to see if there is a difference. Back ten years ago when I used to argue these studies all the time I was actually rationalizing the answer on the control because I felt it was so important to have studies since atheists are always flapping their gums about no empirical proof. I was rationalizing. It was only latter that I was able to force myself to take a good hard look at the rationalization and then I stopped using the arguments. But the current crop of atheists are not willing to face the honest truth. How can you double blind and say no one in group A will be prayed for? How can you know people not connected with the study aren't praying for them? Their friends know they are sick. How can we be sure no one of them has one friend, or how can we know one guy on the freeway doesn't pray for everyone in the hospital every time he passe it on his way home form work? Christians do things like that. So there's no way to ever control for outside prayer.

Friendly Atheist man wants to pretend its' Christianity today that is rationalizing but look at his own rationalization. He's twisting the facts, as surely as he says Christians do. He has to ignore the problems of controlling for God's will and for outside prayer. He's twisting because the says the pro prayer studies have flaws but he's not begin honest about what they are. He is in a catch 22. He must either give up his study and admit you can't control (his study depends as much on controlling outside prayer and Byrd or Harris did). If he denies the problem and says they can control for outside prayer then he must accept that Byrd, Harris, and at least eleven other studies show that prayer works.*
Friendly Atheist above:

So the fact that the prayers had no effect on the sick? Don’t think about that, say Gregory Fung and Christopher Fung, the authors of the article. Instead, they want you to consider that prayer works because the un-prayed-for people didn’t die a horrible death.
That’s one way of ignoring the evidence when it’s staring you in the face.

What's obvious here is that the concept of double blind prayer study is a problem. Not prayer that is disprove, clearly , it is the ability to conduct a double blind and control for the will of God and outside prayer. One of the major problem with atheists taking this is a rationalization is that they don't know what prayer is about. They think prayer is just for getting stuff if it doesn't get you somethign one time then it doesn't work. This is because they refuse to study about the meaning of Christian theology or to understand what Christianity is about. Since they don't want to know they can't figure out what they are doing wrong with the criticize the wrong end of prayer. Far from disproving prayer this study disproves the ability to study prayer as thought it's a drug that has to work every time.

Friendly atheist:

There’s gotta be a perfect analogy for this somewhere. What comes to mind?

to be honest what comes to my mind first is that you are not idiot. I suppose that would be one of those uncalled for comments that is sure to send Hermit comment the comment box. But he did ask.


The better method of "proof" for prayer is empirical evidence. Prayer is something that can be studied empirically in terms of result so we don't need double blinds. There are no controls on them anyway so they can't be good double blinds. Empirical is better because it's there, if you have the evidence its' obvious. There's another atheist argument, one that says we just look at the good stuff and ignore the misses, that's "hit rate."

The problem here is it doesn't take into account empirical miracles and it doesn't consider the complexity of variables. In other words you don't need the hit rate because you are not dealing with something that is supposed to happen every single time. You are dealing with a will that can decide case by case if it wants to work or not. If scientific studies on particle accelerators had a theory about sub atomic pascals having minds of their own there would be no way to study them and no one would have evdience for the existence of any of them. Its' only when we can assume a stable situation that we can study it. That's why we have to go case by case. If a cause violates what we know nature on it's own produces then, and only then, do we have reason to believe there's really evidence of answered prayer. God goes case by case deciding if he wants to act. So we must go case by case deciding the chances of this or that happening according to probability. The variables are far too complex to ever expect to be able to analyze the outcome short of something that really challenges our understanding of how nature behaves.

A leg is broken. We pray, we x-ray, the leg is not broken anymore. Within a half an hour the leg went from broken to not broken, this is something nature just doesn't ever do in our experience. That would be empirical evidence of a miracle. It would require a double blind. It wouldn't even try to control for anything because it doesn't have to. The only thing it would control for is making sure the X-Ray is not a fraud. I don't now of a case this dramatic but I do know of several that are close enough that they count as evidence of prayer working. The scientific study of miracles at Lourdes, France, the shrine to Mary of the Catholic chruch is very good. The ruels are strict and they are administered by major medical researchers of Europe.

Be sure and see my miracles pages on Doxas as I have some good evidence of healing for Lourdes and also other Catholic miracles, as well as good protestant miracles.  See also my article that summarizes an article medical historians who analyze Lourdes and find that there are real healing that can't be explained. See also this blog for article on Douffin's book of medical historian looks at Vatican archives. She found 400 examples of resurrections going back to the middle ages.

Under the weather

Sorry to my readers but I am not with it today. I have a cold. I'll post on Wednesday.

The Evolution of the God Concept (part 2)

,,,,The assumption that humans are projecting their own attributes is no more supported by the facts than the idea of progressive revelation. It could just be that our conceptions of God have to grow as our understanding of reality grows. How could Stone Age people start out understanding God in terms of quantum theory or transcendence in relation to the space/time continuum? As our understanding has grown our conceptions of God have become more grandiose, they have kept pace with our understanding of the nature of the universe. How could it be other wise? We can’t understand what we have never experienced or that to which we have never been exposed. New psychological research has indicated that children don’t have to understand God’s attributes by first understanding human attributes, but become able to distinguish between different kinds of agents at an early age (six).[1] We might still limit our understanding to our own experience of mind, yet as thinkers we are capable of conceptualizing beyond our own experience. This is born out by research which shows that people often have two understandings of God that conflict, especially in relation to ceremonial uses, they can anthropomorphize when explaining belief but recite doctrines they don’t understand when called upon to state beliefs.[2] That research pertains to Christian children but research has shown the same disparity with Hindus.[3] The real argument against the projection theory has to be the data discussed in the chapter on supernatural, the “m scale” studies by Hood that show universal nature of religious experience. If the concept of God is just the result of psychology how could it be that psychology is universe to all cultures and all times? It is true that the human mind is universal to humans, but it’s also the case that religion is thought of as a cultural phenomenon. The projection idea would be more than just a universal aspect of the human mind it would have to be the product of culture as well because it’s tied to specific cultural ideas of God. Yet all the mystics are having the same experiences regardless of their doctrine.

            Moreover, a positive transformative effect is tied to the experiences that indicates that something more fundamental than just cultural constructs is at work.

Examples of transformative effects

Sullivan (1993) (large qualitative study) The study concludes that spiritual beliefs and practices were identified as essential to the success of 48% of the informants interviewed.[4]  A study by Loretta Do Rozario of the religious practices of the disabled and those in chronic pain, the study demonstrates that religious (“mystical,” or “peak” experience) not only enables the subjects to cope with the trials of the challenges but also provides a since of growth even flourishing in the face of adversity.[5] The study methodology is known as “hermeneutic Phenomenology” it uses both intensive interviews and biographical essays. The Wuthnow study used questionnaires and the sample included 1000 people in San Francisco and Oakland. He asked them about experience of the transcendent, 68% of those experiencing within a year said life is very meaningful. While 46% of those whose experiences were more than a year old answered this way, that life was very meaningful. 82% of those experiencing within a year found they felt they knew the purpose of life, and 72% whose experiences were more than a year old. Only 18% and 21% respectively of those who had not had such experiences felt they cold say the same things.[6]

            Naturalistic assumptions about religion theorized it was explanation for natural phenomena. Linked to magical thinking because they assume it’s primitive and superstitious. Its real origin is found in the actual experiences and their transformative effects. The transformative effects are what links religious orientation with a concept of God. The sense of exercising God or “the divine” with the transformational effects has to be more than just projecting anthropomorphism since it takes us beyond our understanding and into a real that we can’t even express; yet the noetic qualities of the experience that impart meaning and significance to the events indicate that something real and larger than ourselves has been experienced. If we are projecting human qualities we have at least found, through religion, a way that those qualities connect us to come inherent meaning in life. It’s more likely that this something beyond ourselves. The sense that the power is beyond us is often part of the experience. This is a basic aspect of the definition of spirituality.[7]

            Over the last forty years or so the idea of a brain chemistry solution to the concept of God has become fashionable. Scientific research demonstrates a connection between the concept of God and certain aspects of brain function. This has led many theorize a totally naturalistic origin for the God concept.[8] Contrary to wishful thinking along these lines the association between thoughts about God and certain kinds of brain function is no proof that the concept of God originates totally within the brain as a side effect of brain chemistry. First, since we now understand that brain chemistry has to play a role in the communication process there should be no surprise that we find this association between God concept and brain chemistry. We find the same association between any two ideas. This is not proof that the idea of God is purely a side of brain chemistry any more than it is a proof that the ideas of mathematics are purely the result of brain chemistry. Secondly, the notion probably stems from the assumption of skeptics that God is supernatural and brain chemistry is natural and never the twain shall meet. As we have seen in chapter (on supernatural) that term was coined to describe an experience which is toughly a part of naturalistic life. Supernatural describes mystical experience, which we know is a very real experience.

            The idea that ties to brain chemistry are disproof of supernatural assumes that religious experience is seen as a miracle or something is wholly removed form naturalistic functions. This is merely a fallacy. As we discussed in chapter six (on supernatural) God created the natural, God is present in the natural, God is able to use the natural. The idea that the concept of God grows out of an accident or misfiring of brain wiring is merely a fallacious assumption. The probability is totally against any kind of “misfire” producing such an astounding sense of personal growth and transformation of life. Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili, after many years of research, specifically rejected that assumption; Newberg cited the realization of religious experience as a reality that connects us to the ultimate.[9] “the mind is mystical by default.”[10] What he means by that is that the same physical processes that carry messages from the body to the brain and make reality meaningful to us would have to be involved regardless of the reality of the external causes. God would have to use the chemical processes of our brains to communicate with us, and if God is real than that’s he made us. The view point that sees religious experience and belief as genetic adaptation is really missing the point about the nature of evolution. As Lee Kirkpatrick points out the simpler concept is the more evolved. Rather than evolving an elaborate structure such as religious experience to deal with anxiety, why would the human brain not just evolve an efficient and simple mechanism for coping with stress?[11]

            There is also an argument to be made that the relation between brain chemistry and God concept is a good justification for belief in the reality of God. The basis for a hard wired God concept need not be evidence of a “God gene.” It could also be the result of a combination of genes working together (Spandrels), either way the odds are against it happening by total accident. That in itself is a good indication of some pre planning on the part of nature or something behind nature. Again the universality argument comes into play. We can’t assume the universal nature of cultural constructs. It would have to be genetic. The problem is evolution and genes can’t really provide for the content of ideas. They couldn’t really account for the universality of the God concept. Some skeptics have been known to argue that universal behaviors are genetic.[12] These pertain to things like men finding symmetrical faces and women’s figures are more attractive. Those are not the content of ideas, they are just behaviors. That’s not instinct not idea. The universality of the God concept draws upon the content of the idea not just a behavior:

In Western Religions and In Hinduism, the higher Being has been called “God.” In all theistic religions God is perceived as the ultimate, externality (transcendent), the ultimate internality, (immanent), and sometimes both simultaneously. Often, God is not perceived simply as a higher being but in many ways has been described as the ground or substance of all being. Thus, God is not only the higher being but also a state of higher being or ultimate reality. In fact, in the mystical tradition of the Western religions, the goal of the practice of meditation is to become intensely united with God and in so doing to become, in a sense, a part of ultimate reality involving release from the cycle of birth and death.[13]

The content of the ideas is what is universal, as well as the experiences (see chapter six—Hood’s argument and data). The way we as a species experience things can’t be genetically heritable especially when that experience has given rise to the content of an idea. That would be like positing the notion of innate ideas, which was supposed to be abandoned in the enlightenment. Innate ideas are assumed to be planted by God and are seen as the old religious way of looking at things. Innate ideas were assailed and dispatched by John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.[14]

            God was not invented by man and then evolves as a fictional concept, but God reveals himself/herself to man in progressive stages of revelation; our knowledge of God is ever deeper as people continue to seek the infinite. We can see the current result of this progressive revelation in the high state to which the concept of God had developed. The theological concepts we propose, sheer guess work in relation to the actual truth of the Holy, are evolved to a high stage of understanding regardless of their origin around the time of St. Augustine (354-430). The basic concept is that of transcendent reality that form the basis of reality as a whole, being itself, the ground of being. The basic attributes of the concept include eternal (timeless), necessary (meaning not contingent—not dependent upon any prior conditions or causes for its being) the ground of being. The secret to the continuing modernity of this concept is that it is no longer a concept about a guy; it’s an equation. It can’t be a maybe it has to be either a certainty or impossibility. There’s no reason why it should be impossible so it must be a certainty. The real kicker is it’s not about a magnified man or a jumped up state of being human, but with great powers added; it’s about a category. That’s what “being itself” or “ground of being” refers to. God is not another guy, God is not one of many others like itself, God is a whole category of being, a category that functions as the basis of all actuality. God might be likened unto the Hegelian dialectic, a form of logic that works by point counter point rather than a linear progression. In fact one of the major schools of thought about revelation (Barth, Bultmann) saw Biblical revelation as a dialectic between reader and the text.[15]

            This high level of philosophical development in the concept of God has culminated in several major theological ways of understanding God. Of course there’s the Tillich view of God as being itself, or ground of being, that understands God as a category of reality rather than an individual. Then process theology (Alfred North Whitehead), based upon the Hegelian concept of progressive revelation already discussed, this view sees God as di polar; in the potential realm God is unchanging because God is the basis of all potential, in the consequent realm God is moving into concrete being by evolving with creation. What God is doing in that state is bringing into and out of existence actual entities (that’s something like sub atomic particles). This doesn’t see God as stable static unchanging reality as a “society of occasions” like a movie made up of individual moments or frames but played fast creates a totally different illusion that of a moving picture show. Process theology is always unrated in its popularity. It is the most popular modern liberal alternative in terms of understanding God. It also spawned a popularized version called “open theology.”  Then there’s  Jurgen Moltmann’s notion of God working backwards from the future. That doesn’t really deal so much with the nature of God as with his orientation toward the future. The idea is not that time is running backwards but only that God’s position in time is to regard the horizon of the future and understand reality from there back (in other words, God is beyond time he can afford to pick his persective). Thus man is constantly moving toward a future horizon that he never actually achieves, but is already there drawing us on.

            These views are only guesses; the reality is beyond our understanding. That’s the secret of God’s success; he’s not only real but inexhaustible. Our best ideas about his nature are inadequate, yet they are modern they are keeping pace with our scientific understanding. We can quantum theory to understand aspects of God. For example the notion that the energy in the big bang is created in the expansion, it is not eternal, that can be understood by reference to quantum theory which would suspend the Newtonian laws at the singularity. Thus, no conservation of energy, so energy can be created. Or the Trinity might be better understood if we understood if we understood wave/particle duality. Yet these are ideas are bound to some day be lost to history and seem old fashioned. The theologies that spin off of them will no doubt pass out of fashion. Whatever comes into fashion will include a God concept and it will keep pace with human advancement. This is not because man is reinventing a concept he made up, but because there is continually more of God to discover. It’s the actual personal experiential discovery that is the secret to God’s success. There’s always more to be experienced in the each moment, in each life, in each generation.

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[1] J. L. Barrett,  R.A. Richert, , A. Driesenga,  “God's beliefs versus mother's: The development of nonhuman agent concepts.”  Child Development, 72(1), (2001).  50-65

[2] J.L.  Barrett, F.C.  Keil, “Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts.” Cognitive Psychology, 31(3), (1996). 219-247.

[3] J.L. Barrett, “Cognitive constraints on Hindu concepts of the divine,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(4), (1998). 608-619.

[4] W. Sullivan, “It helps me to be a whole person”: “The role of spirituality among the mentally challenged”. Psychological Rehabilitation Journal. 16 , (1993),125-134.

[5] Loretta Do Rozario, “Spirituality in the lives of People with Disability and Chronic Illness: A Creative Paradigm of Wholeness and Reconstitution,” Disability and Rehabilitation, An International Multi-Disciplinary Journal, 19 (1997) 423-427.

[6] Robert Wuthnow, “Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, (18) 3 (1978) 66, see also 176-177

[7] K. Krishna Mohan, “Spirituality and well being, an overview,” The following article is based on a presentation made during the Second International Conference on Integral Psychology,
held at Pondicherry (India), 4-7 January 2001. The text has been published in:
Cornelissen, Matthijs (Ed.) (2001) Consciousness and Its Transformation. Pondicherry: SAICE.

Avaivble on-line through website of Indian Psychology Institute. On-line resource. URL:

http://www.ipi.org.in/texts/ip2/ip2-4.5-.php accessed 3/26/13. accessed 3/26/13

Mohan defines spirutality in terms of “experiencing a numinous quality, knowing unity of the visible and invisible, having an internalized relationship between the individual and the Divine, encountering limitless love, and moving towards personal wholeness” which accords with mystical experience in terms of the M scale. He sites: (Canda, 1995; Gaje-Fling & McCarthy, 1996; Decker, 1993; King et al., 1995; Wulff, 1996). That is also in harmony  with Hood’s understanding of mystical experience, (see chapter six, on  supernatural).

[8] Matthew Alper, The God Part of the Brain, Naperville Illanois: Soucebook inc, originally published in 1996 by Rough Press, 2006, 11.

[9] Andrew Newberg, Why God Won’t God Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. (New York, Ballentine Books), 2001, 157-172.

[10] Ibid., 37

[11] Lee A. Kirkpatrick, “Religion is not An Adaptation.” Where God and Science Meet Vol I: Evolution, Genes and The Religious Brain. Westport: Praeger Publishers,  Patrick McNamara ed. 2006, 173.

[12] Anders Rassmussen, “Universal Human Behavior”Anders Rassmussen Blog, Friday, December 39, 2006.
URL:    http://rasmussenanders.blogspot.com/2006/12/universal-human-behaviors.html

[13] Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experince. Copywright by the estate of Eugene d’Aquili and Anderw Newberg.1999. 3.

[14] John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, Great Books in Philosophy series, 12.

[15] Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation. Maryknoll New York:Orbis Books, Reprint edition, 1992,  84.