Response to atheist questions

A couple days ago a good friend of mine (who is an atheist) posed some questions for me. My answers came out so long and felt so delicious and pertinent and I have chose to repeat the main body of it here.

These were the questions:
(1) What do you mean by "God"?
(2) Does it have distinct characteristics?
(3) Are those characteristics justified?
(4) Are those characteristics internally consistent?
(5) Are they consistent with the world?
(6) Are they consistent with your feelings?
(7) Are feelings a reliable way of knowing?
(8) Is there a reliable way of knowing?

(1) What do you mean by "God"?

Well first of all, it is impossible to know God completely. We know what he has revealed and proven to us; we conjecture about other qualities of God. First and foremost the most fundamental thing in the universe is God. God is not contained by the universe, he created and contains it. Any sort of absolute truth, any sort of dependable reality you seek is God. Good and evil/bad are defined as things which are in accordance or dissonance with this fact: God exists. He is infinitely powerful, all-knowing, present everywhere, unchangeable (though he acts differently in different situations), and perfectly loyal to his own glory (as he ought to be) and is justified in being so. He is the only being in the universe that gets to be self-congratulatory.

(2) Does it have distinct characteristics?

It would probably be helpful if you elaborated on what you mean (especially your next question about how these characteristics are justified). However, I will do what I can.

As mentioned in the last question, he’s omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and unchanging. He’s also omni-benevolent (all-good), but that’s rather a moot point considering we defined goodness based on God anyway.

a) He has millions of characteristics because he is an infinitely complex being, and we only know a few of them. He is more complex than a human personality, and can be thought of as a composition of multiple personalities (the father, son, and holy spirit). One way to express his many qualities is through names. God has many names, including things like Jehovah-jireh (God will provide), the Lamb of God (Jesus paying for our sins), and the Counselor (the holy spirit). He possesses all of these qualities simultaneously and never acts in contradiction to one in favor of another (e.g. his justice vs. his mercy). This may seem blatantly incorrect – please let me know and I’ll explain if you wish (or look at my blog posts regarding free will). All of his qualities are perfect in quantity and quality, work together perfectly, and he has the perfect/complete number of them.

b) There are two qualities which I think deserve specific mention – his holiness and his love. His holiness simply means that he is far greater and different than everything else in the universe. He is unique and worthy of praise. This is why he can want his own glory – he deserves it. Second is his love. Love has been defined in many ways, but I think the best is that of making selfless actions for the benefit of another. In this sense God is necessarily love and many if not all of his other qualities are bound up in love, for anyone’s benefit (including Gods) is defined by goodness, which is defined by God. The best thing that can be done towards a person is to direct them to the ultimate good, which is God, and as God always glorifies himself, all his actions are loving. This is not such a cold thing as it sounds for again, truly the best thing that can be done for a person is to direct them to God. If they can only focus on God when their stomach is full or have been touched by the gentleness and kindness of God, then love entails such kind acts.

(3) Are those characteristics justified?

I assume that you mean ‘can you justify your belief in those characteristics?’. From here I could take the discussion two ways – I could go on to support the existence of God himself or support the existence of his characteristics. I guess I’ll do both at least briefly.

a) There are so many realms of study that can be used to support Gods existence – cosmic physics, subatomic physics, humanities/sociology (human tendencies and desires), archeology/history, biology, psychology, perceptions/metaphysics, the consistency of the bible, explanatory power, practical usage, miracles, and personal experience are the ones that have come to mind so far. Many of these I claim may independently prove the existence of the supernatural, God, and even the Christian God. Some of the science I have already described. You can see my blog for ’16 arguments for the existence of God’ or ‘TSM’. TSM is my term for arguments based on the limits of timespace and matter complexity. If you wish to dive into these let me know and we’ll go there, but I think two areas in particular are worth mentioning – personal experience and miracles. For personal experience please see section 7, but for miracles keep reading.

bi) Miracles are an entirely different matter. I believe they still happen today. I think I performed one myself, actually. I prayed for a man who’d been hurt by the church and by all appearances wasn’t a Christian. He’d been experiencing debilitating stomach pain for the last three months so I prayed for healing. Four days later I spoke with him and he said the pain was gone. Because he was a nonbeliever, I assume no bias, and because the pain was debilitating and going on for 3 months, I see no placebo effect or medical coincidence.

Of course these things cannot be replicated - no more than you can replicate an earthquake, an artists inspiration, or the United States decision to go to war in Iraq. However they can be experienced, recorded in some fashion, and retold.

bii) I typed “medical miracle evidence” into google and the second thing I found was this http://www2.wspa.com/lifestyles/2009/apr/23/medical_miracles-ar-17589/ Feel free to dig around on your own. This one showcases Bill Pitts, a man of faith diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer who was released to spend out his last days in peace but is now clean of cancer. It also cites statistics of prayer and faith increasing the likelihood of miracles and health. A second one http://www.doxa.ws/other/Miracles.html has many examples and is reasonably rigorous with a number of the miracles (including resurrections), though I admit few are as concrete as I could hope. As I sit here at the computer, my mother related that she went through a period of life working on floor 9 East in the general neurological department of the St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center (now Regions Hospital). During this period she seemed to have the gift of healing, praying for a number of people and seeing some healed. For instance the ER sent her floor a patient whom they did not expect to live through the elevator ride to the department. Immediately after praying for her, the patient’s erratic heartbeat returned to normal and she got up and began to make her own bed. The next day the lady walked out of the hospital independently.

(4) Are those characteristics internally consistent?

Yes. That’s the reason I’ve been so interested in free will/problem of evil stuff. If you have any specific questions or inconsistencies you see, feel free to point them out.

(5) Are they consistent with the world?

Yes, that kind of falls under general apologetics (arguments for the existence of God, the Christian faith, and various theological points). If you see any specific inconsistencies (like the problem of evil), feel free to point them out.

(6) Are they consistent with your feelings?

I don’t have many feelings. Do you mean ‘are they consistent with your personal spiritual/emotional experiences?’ Yes, I suppose. At first I was going to say that they didn’t support each other much, but didn’t contradict. Then I was going to say that they agree inasmuch as my emotional experiences (which I was going to say are not purely fact and logic) can be compared to the qualities of God. But perhaps this explains it best: the most consistent method of putting me into a happy condition is to be reminded (by myself or something else) of the properties of God. It is not an easy connection. Admitting that you are not the center of the universe, being unselfish, accepting help from another is not easy. In facts it’s extremely difficult- arguably the most difficult thing for a human to do- impossible to do without God. However, being reminded of the facts of God, how I am not God but yet God is so for me, so allied with me, so passionate about relating to me, that it’s comforting anyway….. this brings me so much peace I could die on the spot and not give a pennys care either way.

(7) Are feelings a reliable way of knowing?

Over time I have been driven to accept that most Christians believe God based on personal ‘emotional‘ experience- and I’m not certain whether this is a bad thing or not. Here I refer to not fickle emotions generated by circumstances, not desires of the heart, but of impressions and feelings that seem to be so different from the self that they ought to come from outside of the self. See, that’s what we claim (or I claim) we experience, and it’s actually the only thing that might be capable of communicating absolutely reliable truth. Nearly every other piece of evidence or reasoning falls away when we consider that we could all be inside the Matrix (thought honestly it’s so hard to conceive of something that does not exist in timespace that TSM might still convince a lot of people that God must exist, even outside the Matrix). Someone’s personal experience may be of such a quality that they are certain it could not be produced by anything other than God or some supreme being much greater than themselves. If you are familiar with Rene Descartes method of doubt (Meditation on First Philosophy), stage II describes how he can be certain that he is not alone in the universe by the fact that he perceives things that are greater than he himself could create. This is somewhat similar to the Christian experience, where they might argue that what they have experienced is so independent of themselves and anything they could create that some other force must have given it to them- namely God. At this stage it only proves a supernatural being- nothing more (and even then, of course, only for the person who has experienced it).

Again, should this be our primary method of knowing that God exists? Eh. I guess so. In the end in heaven God won’t be showing us how the universe proves he’s true. I mean….. he’ll be sitting right there. We’ll experience him, love him, etc. But as I may have said before, every conceivable method you can imagine supports God, every division of science and such supports God if not proves him (well, yes, people think evolution and the big bang are proven theories, that’s an entirely different story.) Just pick one.

(8) Is there a reliable way of knowing?

a) Hm...I wonder what you mean by reliable? Again, for all we know we could be in the Matrix. ...? What is strong enough to constitute reliable to you? Do I think I know for certain? Eh..yes. Based on the living presence of God in my heart. I guess I shouldn’t be sorry that’s the answer, but it is. It is, after all, the only sure way of knowing considering the Matrix...

Think of it as a little piece of A Priori evidence you carry around with you all the time. Like a token in Inception. I mean, what better way to know that a person exists than live your life holding his hand?

b) Miracles again are pretty strong evidence – at least of the supernatural. (We believe that sometimes ‘miracles’ can be performed through demonic forces.)

c) I’m sorry this is not a very strong or wholesome answer. Please define your question better and I can answer it better.

Spikeball and other stories - illustrations of salvation

In his 2008 debate at the Oxford Natural History Museum, Richard Dawkins opened by describing how silly and cruel is was of God to kill his own son, putting him through terrible pain, when he could have simply forgiven us our sins without any special action. This, along with the other cruel things God does, seem to be Dawkins main issue with the Christian God.
I'm so glad he brought this up. You see, our sin is actually quite terrible and has real effects. God's not a cosmic loving marshmallow. He loves us and did real, painful things to be united with us forever. We should never put him 'out there' in cloudy neverland.
To bring this idea to greater development (that Christ did have to die for us), I have come up with an illustration/analogy. Please take it and imagine yourself in you place or Gods, adding background and environment, and let this glorious, real, hard part of the gospel truth sink in.

Short logical note: please see section 3 for the philosophical justification for this principle that God must incur pain in order to forgive us.

1) Spikeball
Let us say that you are the son or daughter of a loving parent. But you don't love them back. In your head, He doesn't respect you, He doesn't think you're a man. He's just tolerating you. You're inconvenient. He doesn't think you're beautiful. In fact, why should He care? You aren't. He doesn't think you're worth it. For all you care, He doesn't exist. Actually, you'd prefer that He doesn't. Often you imagine that He's not around, that your wishes are true. - But enough of in your head. He often tries to hug you. He loves you. So you test him. You make yourself look ugly. You get dirty. You get yourself sick and diseased. You run away. Most of all however, put on a vest that is coated with spikes. Touching these spikes is extremely painful. You even get hurt a little putting it on. No way can He touch me now, you think. He'd die, practically if he tried.
But lo and behold, as you sit under a bridge, thinking about how terrible you think he is, how terrible it makes you feel, He finds you. Oh great. Can I never run away? You shrink back a little. His hair and coat are wet, His face haggard from searching. He sees you and his face lights up. He also sees your coat of spikes. His sees and He knows. He knows if he hugs you he will experience terrible agony, possibly die. But you see nothing of this. You look down, sinking within the coat. His eyes are hard and warm at the same time. The next thing you know, he hugs you. You feel the warmth of him around you, his eyes full of love. Spikes pierce his body at every point. He is in terrible agony, but he hugs you harder.
Here now you have a choice, my love. He will continue to hug you all your life. He will continue to die for your sake all your life. There's no running away from that.  But how will you respond? Sink deeper in the darkness of your coat, that shell, the brittle defense against the world. But oh would you break my heart. I ask nothing - I respect you. You are free to run away. But know, dear, I fight for you. Wherever you turn I will be there. All day long I hold out my arms to you. All day long I embrace you, taking in myself the pain of all the barriers you have put up between us. Nothing you can say will dissuade me, for it is true that you are my hearts desire. Nothing you can do - nothing - can make me love you less, for I have made you more worthy than the finest diamond the earth can provide and more. Do you think you can change what I have made? I'm God. I love you. Ask and I will shed your coat of death. Ask and I will give you the keys to the splendid kingdom. Ask and I give you myself. The choice is yours.

Note that to love you without invading and encroaching upon your free will, He cannot remove your coat and must hug you to His pain and death. This is the main point of the story. Naturally it's interwoven with other truth. Funny thing about God and the truth is that's it's kind of hard to isolate one bit of it.

2) Alternate mechanisms:
Essentially, to create an illustrative analogy for this principle, all you have to come up with is some way for the lover to get hurt in reaching the beloved. Below I list alternate mechanisms that might focus on slightly different points.
() Spikeball: The original story is sort of a mixture of setting up barriers to God, making yourself unappealing, and hiding.
() Disease: The beloved infects him or herself (or is infected by something else). By hugging the beloved, the lover becomes fatally diseased. This is to show that no matter how terrible you are internally (sinful) God still loves you and will take on the damage of the sickness in order to save you.
() Firewall: The beloved sets up a wall of fire around him/her to dissuade anyone from coming in. The lover nonetheless runs through the flame to win him/her, though badly burned. This is to emphasize any barriers you could place between you and that your lover is hurt and remains scarred from the rescue, burnt. Jesus will still have his crucifixion wounds in heaven (John 20:27 he had wounds in his resurrected body).
() Bus: A man pushes you out of the way of an oncoming bus, being hit and killed in your place. This is to illustrate how he took your just punishment on himself.
() Presidents son: This is a little complicated. The president of the United States has a son who curses the presidents name and hates his guts. The boy runs away and joins some military junta or crazy revolutionary group. You may include that the president searches for him, but that's not the point. Some time later, the son appears before the father with a gun (a traditional black automatic rifle thing). If you wish, the son may be conflicted about whether or not to kill his father and may or may not shoot him at some point in the ensuing scene. The main point is that the Secret Service has perfect right to fill him with holes. Knowing he cannot stop his snipers, the president runs to the boy and wraps his arms around him, taking the bullets instead. This is probably one of the best illustrations of the necessity of death. Naturally a man rebelling against the president and possibly assassinating him must be shot and all parties agree that it is a just thing for him to be shot. Nonetheless, the father kind of bends the rules and takes the hit.

3) Forgiveness
a) What Dawkins misses I think, is the true nature of forgiveness. He equates human forgiveness, which is virtually effortless and regards things that are temporary, with forgiveness for sins, which are committed in contradiction to the very nature of the universe, which is God. When someone commits a wrong against you, you want to hurt them back. In a sense, this is a perfectly natural and right way to feel. However, we are taught differently. This is sort of the difference between the old testament and the new testament (OT and NT respectively) "You have heard it that it was aid 'Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also'" (Matthew 5:38-39). The eye for an eye principle comes from the OT law where truly, in cases where one person injured the other, the offender was inflicted with the same wounds he/she incurred. This is just. However, in the NT, Jesus tells us to not resist. This is because God has given us himself, worth more than life itself. We need not be concerned about ourselves. Rather, we should demonstrate our self-security to the offender in hopes that he/she is inspired to believe as well. We take an opportunity for retribution and pain and turn it into an opportunity to show the love God has for us.
b) Human sin can be forgiven, and we feel in our conscience that it should be. So Dawkins feels that God could simply forgive us too. But see, we can forgive because Jesus already experienced the most terrible punishment imaginable (this is not theologically pertinent but makes sense for poetic license), however, no one died for God, no one can. When we forgive, we give up the right to retaliate (which we don't really have in the first place) because God made the hurt dealt to us OK by giving us something far more valuable. When we sin against God, he DOES have the right to retaliate, and the damage is real and cannot be swept under the rug. When you forgive someone you're saying "I'm OK with the damage you dealt me" because it really is inconsequential compared to eternal life. But when you sin against God, it isn't OK. He IS the eternal life and denying it deserves death. To ignore our sin would be to say that our sin really isn't significant, that killing people is really okay. Is it? No. You can't just contradict yourself. Killing is NOT okay. So instead of punishing the offender you punish yourself. We forgive and give up the right to retaliate, taking on the hurt because we have something greater. God forgives and gives up the need to retaliate, taking on the hurt by Jesus.
c) Does this make sense? Let's make another analogy. Let's say you're a toymaker. You make a toy solider that can walk around. The minute it can move it smashes all your fine china dishes and then heads for you. Do you not have all the right in the world to blow it to bits?
Rebelling against God is serious business. You're violating the law of the universe. Sin is any act or thought that is not in accordance with the fact that God exists. To hurt someone is to deny that they are made in the image of God. To have premarital sex is to say that Gods plan for sex is worse than your plan, that the way he designed it isn't the best, and that it's of so little value that it can be had without any serious commitments. To bring this home to our level is quite difficult because there is very little that we couldn't imagine we shouldn't forgive. Someone hits you, well...you're not supposed to hit them back. But see, in Gods case, you ARE supposed to hit them back. The best I can do is this: for you parents, imagine that a masked man barged into your house and murdered your entire family before your eyes. Imagine how mad you are. I think it would be hard to find a person who would not think you have every right to disembowel the man right there. Bam. On the floor. Pieces everywhere. This is what it's like to sin. You hurt the most important thing to him - his glory (and this is properly the most important thing) - and he is justified in just tearing you apart for it. In fact, he really should. It is not an entirely sinful thing to want to see an evil man punished. You are right to see a murder on death row and approve of it, but along with him you, I, and the rest of us deserve to die the most painful of deaths everyday of our lives as we reject the glorious one who created us.


Until next time -
nbowditch
Glory be to God