Does the Creation of the Universe Imply the Existence of God?

“Is there a God?  I don't know. 
Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?  I don't know.”

Edward Abbey

God, the Creator

This post will consider the question of God himself.   As discussed in the first post of this series, the question of belief in God first requires a definition of God.

The traditional Christian view is that God is omnipotent; omniscient, infinitely good, and above all, interested in Mankind.  Traditionally, God is believed to be Creator of all things, Sustainer of all things, Redeemer of Souls and Judge of all people.   This post will consider God as Creator of the Universe. 

This image by the infra-red JWST shows the earliest known galaxies in the Universe, 

younger than galaxies imaged by the Hubble telescope.

God as Creator

Of all the arguments for the existence of God, the idea of God the Creator seems the most compelling.  The universe exists.  Science is clear that the universe began in a discrete moment of Creation about 13.8 billion years ago.  At that moment, in a flash of pure energy, all of the matter, energy, forces and dimensions of the universe, including space and time, expanded from a single infinitesimal point.  Scientific theory and astronomical observation agree that the Big Bang event occurred; that discovery and proof is one of the greatest achievements in the history of human thought.  And for all of the complexity of the scientific story, it is amazingly similar to the much simpler account in Genesis: “God said, ‘Let there be light.  And there was light.’” 

If Creation occurred as a distinct event, doesn’t that imply a Creator?  Perhaps it does.

To me, the fact of Creation is the most reasonable of all arguments that God exists.  But what kind of God is implied by this moment of Creation, and what is humanity with regard to God, the Creator of the Universe?

Further Evidence of a Creator:  The Fine-Tuning Problem

Recent thinking in physics and cosmology gives further credence to the idea of a Creator.  There are physical constants which govern the forces in the universe and which bind matter together.  These constants form a set of parameters which allow matter to exist, allow atoms and star systems to form, and allow you and me to exist to contemplate these questions.  It turns that the values of these constants are necessarily very specific.  If any of these constants varied from their known values by even a tiny amount, then the universe would not be filled with molecules and galaxies, but might be filled with ionized plasma or pure energy, or perhaps some other dimensionality of space.  Physicist David Deutsch calls this the “fine-tuning problem”. 

One branch of modern physics deals with the fine-tuning problem by invoking the idea of the multi-verse – an infinity of universes encompassing all possible values of the fundamental physical constants.  Our universe, in this view, is not special.  We are simply one of the universes in which matter, life and bloggers can develop.  We are writing about it because life in this universe is possible.  In this view, our existence simply represents survivorship bias, not a specially constructed universe.  We are writing about the fine-tuned universe because life is only possible in the fine-tuned universe.  The problem with this interpretation is that there is no evidence of other universes.  In the absence of evidence, whether we believe that the universe was purposefully designed for life by a Creator, or is simply a random occurrence is still a question of personal preference.

Does the Existence of a Creator Validate the Traditional Concept of God?

Some philosophers argue that the evidence of a Creator proves the existence of Judeo-Christian God, omniscient, omnipotent and good.  A good example of that thinking can be found in Jim Holt’s interview with Oxford professor Richard Swinburne, in Holt’s book Why Does the World Exist?, chapter six.  But does that necessarily follow?

Does the act of Creation necessarily mean that the Creator is also omniscient, able to foresee all details of Creation through time?  I don’t think so.  The Creator may have started something with no idea how it would turn out. 

Does the act of Creation give the Creator omnipotent powers to intervene in what has been created?  Again, I don’t think so.  In our own earthly endeavors, we sometimes start something which is beyond our ability to influence or control.

And does the act of Creation demonstrate that God is good?  The Gnostic religions provide an interesting interpretation of Creation, which casts doubt on whether the Creator is necessarily good.

Gnosticism is a set of religions which developed in the second century, drawing on a variety of earlier sources, including early Christianity.  Gnostic belief holds that there are two levels of reality, a lower, corrupt physical reality, and a higher, perfect spiritual reality.  This aspect of Gnosticism may derive from the teachings of Plato, who lived six hundred years earlier.  According to Gnostic belief, the physical world was created by the demiurge, a lesser spiritual being than God.  Because the physical world is intrinsically corrupt, the being that created it is also believed to be corrupt.  The demiurge is sometimes considered to be Satan. 

So, upon reflection, the Big Bang and the existence of the universe may suggest the action of a Creator, but there is no evidence that this Creator is the God of Judeo-Christian belief.  The Creator may be good, evil, or indifferent; perhaps even unaware of the existence of mankind’s brief existence on a small planet in an unremarkable galaxy. 

Mankind’s Place in the Universe

For a moment, let’s accept that the Big Bang and the structure of our universe imply the existence of a Creator, and that our universe is deliberately fine-tuned for life, by design.  Let’s consider our place in this universe. 

Hubble Deep Field Image, showing galaxies of the early universe.

The image covers an area of sky equal to about 1/100 of the size of the full moon.

According to current estimates, there are about 100 billion galaxies in the universe.  Perhaps coincidentally, there are about 100 billion stars in the average galaxy.  The number of planets orbiting stars is still unknown, but the recent discovery of over 4000 planets outside the solar system suggests that planets are relatively common.  For a simple calculation, let’s assume that there is an average of 1 planet per star.  This means that earth is one of about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe.

Let’s also consider how long humans have lived on earth, and have had a relationship with God.  Anatomically modern humans first appeared about 200,000 years ago.  Since the earth is 4.6 billion years old, people appeared only in the last 0.000004^th fraction of the life of the earth.  If we take Earth as an average planet, then humans have occupied 1/23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of the available planet time in the universe. 

As I consider the scale of space and time, in comparison to the scale of humanity, I think it is fair to say that whatever the purpose of the universe is, it isn’t about us. 

The Relationship between Mankind and God, and Revelation of God to Mankind.

The current year of the Jewish calendar is 5775, counted from the believed creation of the world.  The Jewish religion is one of the earliest monotheistic religions, and archeology places the origin of Judaism at about 3500 years ago.  One might ask why God waited until 3500 years ago to reveal himself to mankind.  Perhaps we only know of God’s revelation to humans after the development of writing. 

According to some sources, there are an estimated 4200 distinct religions.  Many of those are now extinct, and an unknown number have been lost without record.  There are artifacts and evidence of ritual dating to as early as 35,000 years ago.  Ancient Egyptian religious traditions were already established 5000 years ago, and persisted for about 3000 years.  Many early religions were polytheistic, animistic or related to ancestors.  There is a bewildering variety of traditions about spirits and gods, and customs of worship.  Modern Western philosophy has tended toward monotheism, exemplified by the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, but developed independently by Greek philosophers and by other middle-eastern religions. 

The question is, why is the revelation of God to humans so muddled?  Was the one true revelation of God given to Akhenaten or Zoroaster?  To Abraham or Pythagoras?  To Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius, Zeno, Jesus, Mohammed, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard?  Or to any of thousands of other prophets?  If divine guidance is present, shouldn’t we expect a little more consistency?

Certainly, there is sometimes deep wisdom in the teachings of these prophets.  But it seems to me that it is a particularly human kind of wisdom, filled with contradictions and errors, rather than a perfect, divine revelation. 

The Nature of Reality I – The Multiverse

When we consider the question of whether God is the Creator of the Universe, we tend to focus on the question of God.  But we should also consider the question of what God has created.  What is reality?

Modern physics continues to produce ever-stranger evidence for the nature of reality.  Physicist David Deutsch writes convincingly of the evidence for the multiverse, an infinite series of alternate universes composed of all possible events, down to the level of sub-atomic particles.  Deutsch is the world’s leading expert in quantum computing, and is using these ideas in a practical sense to build computers that work.  By analogy, it may not be absolutely necessary to accurately understand electricity in order to have a glowing light bulb, but it certainly helps.  Deutsch’s working quantum computers give credence to his notions about the multiverse.

If Deutsch is correct about the multiverse, everything that can happen has happened, or will happen.  In such a multiverse, how can good or evil exist?  How does the moral choice of mercy or cruelty exist?  Anything good in one version of reality is matched by something bad in an alternate reality.  What is the role of God in this vision?  As creator, he created all possibilities, and all realities.  But in this view, there is no good and no evil, just endless variation across all possibilities.  And the first criterion of our conception of God – that he is good – is void.

The Nature of Reality II – Is Reality Material or Non-material?

A different problem exists with the possibility that reality is non-material.  Perhaps it should make no difference whether matter and energy and human beings are physically real, or some digital representation.  We might consider God the Great Programmer. 

If we are merely a digital representation, it is more plausible that Creation is all about us.  Perhaps a forest is only a statistical model, until a person walks into it.  Perhaps leaves on a tree are only a blur, until we put on our glasses to see individual leaves.  Perhaps the stars were only diffuse light, until the invention of telescopes, and distant galaxies only shapes that approximate the gravitational aggregation of matter into stars.  If so, our very history may be suspect.  We may have been created yesterday with our memories pre-formed.  People who deny evolution sometimes approach this idea, when they say that God planted fossils in the ground as a test of our faith when He created the world 6000 years ago. 

But I have to ask why God would be so deceptive.  If we take the idea that we are special further, perhaps humanity lives on the only inhabitable planet – all the rest may be illusion.  It is solipsism for a species.  Perhaps other races, other people are also illusion.  Perhaps God is only concerned with you, the reader, and I am an illusion typing this blog post.  And the Great Programmer created the illusion of a philosopher to invent the word solipsism for this situation. 

Conclusion

I believe that the idea of solipsism is absurd.  I believe in the physical reality of the universe, the reality of the people around me and in the truthfulness of my senses and scientific instruments.  I do not choose to believe that God would be deceptive towards mankind, in creating illusions of any kind. 

Belief in the physical reality of the universe, in the scale that we observe, leads me to believe that mankind is a small part of the universe.  Mankind has existed for an infintesimally trifling part of the space and time in the universe; I don't think it is all about us.  Mankind is not the greater purpose of Creation, whatever that may be.  The existence of Creation may imply a Creator, but the Creator does not necessarily conform to the Judeo-Christian concept of God -- infinitely good, omniscient and omnipotent.  The Creator may be good, evil or indifferent to mankind; capable of intervention in the world or not.  The Big Bang is perhaps evidence of a Creator, but that Creator does not imply the existence of the Judeo-Christian God.

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References:

Jim Holt, 2012, Why Does the World Exist, 320 p.

David Deutsch, 2012, The Beginning of Infinity, 496 p.

Alan Lightman, 2013, The Accidental Universe, 176 p.

Richard Preston, 1996, First Light, 275 p.

Regarding the Power of Prayer, or Did the People on the Titanic Forget to Pray?

"Oh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue,
And they thought they had a ship that the water couldn't go through,
But the good Lord raised his hand, and said that ship would never land.
It was sad when the great ship went down."
                                                Children's song "Titanic"

“Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
                                                Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Prayer is an important facet of belief in God, particularly from the interventionist view of God.  Personal testimony regarding the power of prayer is quite common.  Many people deeply believe in the power of prayer, and believe that they have observed response to prayers in their own lives.  Occasionally, a post circulates on Facebook like a chain letter, urging friends to type “Amen!” if they believe in the power of prayer.  And thousands of “Amen” responses follow.  Guideposts and other religious writings are full of stories of prayers answered – a recovery from illness, a lost relative found.  A quick Google search lists stories of answered prayers: “Money Owed”, “Lost in the Mountains”, “Locked Out”, “My Broken Foot”, “Glasses in the Ocean”, “Class Ring”, and so on.  There are many stories of prayers answered, for life problems, large and small.

But what about the converse?  What about prayers that are not answered, especially in circumstances more dire than a lost pair of glasses?  Why would God choose to answer a prayer to find a pair of glasses, but neglect to save people from natural or man-made disasters?

In essence, does anyone suppose that the people on the Titanic forgot to pray?  

When Jews fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem were besieged by the Romans at Masada in 74 AD, and ended the siege with a mass suicide, does anyone think they didn’t pray? 

When Mongols attacked the religious center of Vladimir, Russia in the 1300s, about three thousand Orthodox Christians took shelter in the cathedral and were killed there, in front of the icons.  The cathedral still stands, and you can walk on the same floor where they were slaughtered. Does anyone think that they forgot to pray? 

Does anyone believe that Jews ordered into gas chambers during the Holocaust didn’t pray? 

When Nazis systematically lined up and shot 120,000 Ukrainian Jews, Roma, Russians and families of resistance fighters at the ravine called Babyn Yar in Kyiv, does anyone think they didn’t pray? 

When 150 newly elected black legislators were besieged in a Louisiana courthouse by a white militia in 1873, the courthouse was set on fire.  The legislators were massacred as they fled the building.  Does anyone think that they didn’t pray?  

When the Allies fire-bombed Dresden, killing 150,000 German civilians, does anyone believe that the victims didn’t pray? 

During the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centers, dozens of people were trapped on the roofs of the buildings, and suffered from blistering heat rising from the fires below.  There were helicopters within sight, unable or unwilling to land because of the updraft from the fires.  One by one, the people gave up hope of rescue and jumped to escape the heat, falling 1300' to their deaths.  Does anyone believe that they forgot to pray?

The endless horrors of history continue today, both of man’s making and by natural disaster.  And at no point is there systematic evidence of physical rescue beyond what we might expect from random events.

So it goes (with a nod to Kurt Vonnegut) for every disaster or massacre of religious people in history.  For certainly, among the thousands of victims, there must have been many innocent, faithful and devout followers of God, who prayed with all diligence for mercy and protection which never came.  From this, can we conclude that God will ease our suffering, cure an ailment, help us find our car keys, score a touchdown or be on time to an appointment?

Communal Prayer

Another important aspect of Christianity is common prayer.  We pray in church, and we pray at meals.  Prayer brings us together in a meditative moment, and we communicate to each other our gratitude at the good things in life and our joy in each other’s presence.  It can be a good thing.

A common practice in modern American Christian churches is to join together in prayer for members of the congregation and their loved ones who are sick, or in some life crisis, or recently deceased.  I don’t mean to disparage communal prayer.  It is a way of communicating to each other our care, to provide comfort to friends during loss and to build a sense of community.  But I find it odd as a way of communicating with God.  I especially find it odd when people solicit prayer for someone through social media, as though gathering more prayers will somehow prod God into action.   Is that how people think prayer works?  Does God tote up the number of people praying for someone, and answer those prayers ahead of someone alone, without friends, and desperately praying for themselves? 

Is prayer like “Horton Hears a Who” by Dr. Suess, where it is necessary for every Who in Whoville to plead for a response, until the smallest Who’s loud “Yop!”  is sufficient to attract the attention of God?  I don’t think that’s how prayer should work.  If God is all-knowing, all-loving, and all powerful, the smallest prayer should be equal to a million prayers.  And in any case, prayer itself should be unnecessary – God should already know.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the power of prayer is literally survivorship bias, writ large.  Those who survive speak about the power of prayer, and those who do not survive are not heard.   It seems to me that either God’s answers to prayer are incredibly capricious, without regard for devotion, merit, evil or innocence, or they do not exist.  I do not choose to believe in a capricious God.   

There is little consistent evidence for answers to prayer by a merciful, interventionist God.  

Does a Virus Have a Soul?

"You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

--  Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (1994)

Attungauruk

Watercolor by Inupiaq artist Ken Lisbourne, of Point Hope, Alaska.  

The scene shows the funeral of an Inupiaq chief, about 1880.  The soul of the chief rises up to heaven while his         seven wives, elderly parents, friends and Russian Orthodox priest grieve by his gravesite.

The Soul

The concept of a human soul is in many ways central to religion.  The question of whether other living things have a soul addresses the “special” status of humans as the purpose of God’s creation.  The soul is a discrete entity – it exists or it doesn’t exist.  We can’t say that a chimpanzee has 96% of a soul.  But when we look at our evolutionary history or at the range of self-awareness in the human species there is no easily defined boundary. 

Francis Crick (of DNA discovery fame) wrote a book, “The Amazing Hypothesis”.   I only read it about half-way through; I got the point quickly and was done.   In Crick’s view, there is no evidence for an essence of life beyond our physical bodies and minds, and no need for such an explanation of human life.

I’ll start with the question that I asked the teacher in my church confirmation class, when I was twelve or thirteen years old.   “Does a virus have a soul?”  

As I dimly recall, my thinking at the time was that if I had a soul, my parents also had souls.  And my grandparents, great-great-great-great grandparents, to cave-people, to proto-human apes, to early mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, etc.  Where do you draw the line between what living thing has a soul and what does not?

Does a Virus Have a Soul?

I don’t remember how my teacher answered the question, but I remember thinking that his answer wasn’t very convincing.  A virus, after all, can be crystallized in the lab like a mineral, then dissolved and continue replicating itself when allowed to infect a cell.  But humanity is in an unbroken evolutionary chain with viruses, and amoebas, starfish and oak trees, horseshoe crabs, moss and lichens.  We share a large percentage of our DNA with oak trees.  So the question, in stealth form, is whether humans have a soul, or whether each living cell has a soul. 

In a traditional view, we would presume that all humans have a soul (although I have my doubts about some of them).  But let’s consider our heredity.  Homo Sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans, presumably they also had souls.   Homo Habilis made tools 1.5 million years ago; perhaps those humans have an immortal soul.  And so on, back through our lineage to our cousins the chimpanzees (98% human DNA) and fruit flies (47% human DNA), wine grapes (24% human DNA) to stromatolites and algae (7 % human DNA).   Where do we draw the line among our ancestors and cousins, between those who possess souls and those that do not?  Can we say that a grape plant has 24% of a soul?

I think this issue is why the topic of evolution is so uncomfortable to Christians.  I think Christians are generally uncomfortable with the idea of sharing heaven with flatworms. 

It is also useful to remember that we are colonial creatures, as much as a stromatolite or coral.  Each of our cells is an individual creature which lives and dies, while only the collective entity has consciousness. Does a cell have a soul?  

Subdividing further to a lower level, each cell lives in symbiosis with mitochondria, which were eaten long ago by the ancestors of our cells.  Mitochondria resisted digestion and continued life, first as a parasite and then as a partner of the larger cell.  Does a mitochondrion have a soul?  What part of a person has a soul?   Also, consider that we are not only descended from apes, but also from viruses.  Various retroviruses infected our ancestors and left segments of DNA which now reproduce with humans.  Some of that DNA is functional and contributes to who we are as humans.  Does the viral part of a human have a soul, and did the viral ancestors of humans have souls?  Did the virus ancestors of humans have part of a soul?

It seems to me that there is a conflict between the idea of the soul as the discrete, eternal entity of human self and our evolutionary history.  Our history shows we are a patchwork of biology.  We are connected in an unbroken lineage to much simpler forms of life.  It is unclear where we should draw the line between beings which have a human soul and those that do not.

The Soul as the Source of Free Will

Perhaps the soul is the unit of life that is capable of judgment, exercising free will and making decisions of right and wrong.  Very well then, but this excludes humans who are born with a birth defect, leaving only the brain stem and lower functions; life, but no possibility of thought or deliberate action.  Can some humans be born without a soul?  Do we conclude that these children of humans are excluded from heaven because they have no soul?  

I know a young woman who is mentally impaired.   The Catholic Church excludes her from communion, because they believe she cannot understand salvation.  She talks, she sometimes works at McDonalds, she calls my wife on the telephone – would anyone say she has no soul?  Although she cannot read, she is compassionate, empathetic and caring.   It is clear to me that she has more of a soul than many others in our midst.

Where is the Soul?
        Plato, in Phaedo, circa 430 BCE: 

            Simmias replied:
            "And is [death] anything but the separation of soul and body? And being
            dead is the attainment of this separation; when the soul exists in
            herself, and is parted from the body and the body is parted from the
            soul-that is death?”
            Cebes answered, “But in what relates to the soul, men are apt to be incredulous
            they fear that when she leaves the body her place may be nowhere,
            and that on the very day of death she may be destroyed and perish-immediately
            on her release from the body, issuing forth like smoke or air and
            vanishing away into nothingness?....much persuasion and many arguments are required in
            order to prove that when the man is dead the soul yet exists, and has any force of
            intelligence."

I'm astonished that our understanding of the human soul has not progressed in over 24 centuries.

The soul is inextricably tied to the idea of self.  The self includes certain essential features, without which it cannot exist: memory, will, self-awareness, thoughts and emotions.  These are the things that define us as a person.  Thanks to these aspects of consciousness, when we awake in the morning, we know we are the same person who went to bed the night before.  Modern neuroscience, using tools like functional MRI, has shown us where each of these capabilities exists in the brain.  This knowledge was also partly revealed through the study of unfortunate individuals who have lost part of the self through some kind of brain trauma.  Dr. Oliver Sacks illustrated these cases in a brilliant series of popular books.  The functional aspect of the self in living people is inextricably tied to specific functional aspects of the brain, without which the self does not exist.  

 Death's Door, William Blake, 1805.

Consider the situation of many Alzheimer’s patients.  Degradation of the brain due to age and disease reduces and eventually destroys the elements of the self.  Memory, will, self-awareness, thoughts and emotions gradually diminish and disappear.  We might look at a patient and say that the soul has departed, long before death of the body.  But at what point did the soul depart?  Can the soul disappear in tiny drops, leaving a partial soul behind?  Again, we have the fundamental discrepancy between the theoretical indivisibility of the soul, and the diminished shards we experience in real life.

When the mechanisms of the self shut down, as they must at death, what remains?  Can a soul exist without memory, without will, self-awareness, thoughts or emotions?  When the brain dies, carrying all of the attributes of the self, how can the soul persist?  If we must believe that the entirety of the self is somehow transferred at the moment of death to another, invisible vessel, where is it?  And why should we believe that?  Does this make any sense?

If there is no immortal soul, carrying the self, the good deeds and sins of the individual beyond death, then the traditional ideas of heaven, hell and of God as the final Judge are also void.

Socrates,  in Plato’s Phaedo:
            “And are we to suppose that the soul, which is invisible, in passing
            to the true Hades, which like her is invisible, and pure, and noble,
            and on her way to the good and wise God, whither, if God will, my
            soul is also soon to go-that the soul, I repeat, if this be her nature
            and origin, is blown away and perishes immediately on quitting the
            body as the many say? That can never be, dear Simmias and Cebes.”
            “That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world to
            the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she lives
            in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears
            and wild passions and all other human ills, and forever dwells, as
            they say of the initiated, in company with the gods. Is not this true,
            Cebes?”

I stand with Cebes in response to Socrates and Plato.  The invisible, pure and noble soul does not exist.  Further, the invisible true Hades does not exist; the invisible, immortal, rational divine world does not exist; and the invisible, good and wise God does not exist.

Fin

The Soul Reluctantly Departing the Body, William Blake.

 Death of a Strong, Wicked Man, William Blake.

The Reunion of the Soul and the Body, William Blake

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The reproduction of the watercolor by Ken Lisbourne is used respectfully, but without permission.  I will remove the image upon request.  I hope that inclusion of the image will promote Ken's outstanding work as an artist.

Images of art by William Blake also used without permission.
Langridge, Irene, 1904, William Blake, A Study of His Life and Art Work

http://www.thalasson.com/books/irene-langridge/william-blake/

What is God? And why should we believe?

The question of belief in God first requires a definition of God.  Many of us are familiar with the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and other Christian Creeds; these identify God as Father and Creator of all things, seen and unseen.  Beyond this, the Creeds say little of God except through Jesus Christ, and what we might infer about God from these things: the Holy Spirit, the Church, Saints, forgiveness of sins, physical resurrection and personal immortality.

The traditional Christian view is that God is omnipotent; omniscient, omnipresent and infinitely good.  God is believed to be Creator of all things, Sustainer of all things, Redeemer of Souls and Judge of all people.  In the Christian view, God gave inspired words to guide human conduct to a small number of people at a few rare and particular times, and in the written text of the Bible. 

Theologians and others have grappled with the question of whether God plays an active role in the world, (“the Interventionist God) or whether God created all things, but does not intervene (the Great Clockmaker).  Thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment supported the view that God created the world, gave Man free will, and stood back to watch.  Many of America’s founding fathers believed in this non-interventionist view of God.  In this view, Good and Evil exist in the world as the result of free will on the part of men and angels, but all are subject to God’s judgment after death, or at the end of the world.  The choice to sin or be good is a choice people make during life.  The consequences are not in this world, but in the next.

The Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) framed a special case of the non-interventionist God.  Spinoza viewed all of creation as a sub-set of God.  Spinoza held to a physical sense of reality.  According to commentator Paul So, Spinoza “rejected the existence of Soul, Angels, Demons, Miracles, Divine Creationism, the possibility of Afterlife, Divine Revelation, validity of Prophecy, Biblical literalism, Tradition, Scriptural authority, and last but not least the existence of a personal God.” Spinoza’s view of God is often favored by physicists, including Albert Einstein.  God is not a creator of the world, but rather, reality itself is a part of God.  As such, the question of God seems to be a question of modern physics rather than religion.   Mainstream modern religion has generally reverted to the traditionally interventionist view of God.

To believe in God is to believe that infinite good, infinite power and infinite knowledge exist, and co-exist in a single being.  To believe in God, there must be a basis for belief.  There must be something observable and consistent which supports the existence of God.  If we observe contradictions – if we observe that good is not pervasive in the world, we have to question the original premise, the existence of God. 

Plato believed in Good as an intrinsic quality of reality.  Further, Plato believed that the universe had a natural tendency towards Good, something like the natural tendency for entropy to increase in our modern view of physics.  Plato believed that the power of Good is the fundamental reason for the origin of the universe and of its own accord made the world come into existence.

Personally, I see no reason why reality should have any predisposition toward Good or Evil.  I believe that Good does exist, but that it is not an intrinsic force.  Rather, I believe that it is a property of people and their actions.  Good is not an intrinsic property of reality, but is an abstract quality which can be derived independently by anyone, much like geometry or mathematics.  

One of the essential expressions of Good is the Golden Rule:  "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you".  Anyone in society, anyone dealing with other people, or even alien races meeting for the first time, can realize the power in this simple statement.  Each of us can independently realize that we can treat others well or badly.  If we are treated badly, we suffer.  If we treat others badly, they suffer.  If we logically deduce that we should treat others well, in order to be treated well ourselves, the result is the reduction of suffering, and increase in happiness.  To treat others well results in Good.

Good requires empathy, sympathy, care and compassion.  It requires that people behave for the well-being of others and the betterment of all.  It requires the understanding that if people behave according to these precepts, life will be better for all.  And if we would require good in the behavior of people, we should expect no less of God, of Religion, and the institutions of Religion.

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 Apostle’s Creed

We believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary:

Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried; He descended into hell.

The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:

From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead:

We believe in the Holy Spirit:

We believe in the holy Catholic Church: the communion of saints:

The forgiveness of sins:

The resurrection of the body:

And the life everlasting.

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The Calvin and Hobbes cartoon shown above is used without permission, and without profit.  This particular cartoon illustrates the theme of this blog post very well.  If necessary, the cartoon will be removed upon request.

Introduction

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”   I Corinthians 13:11

Introduction

It seems that I grew up in church.  In my childhood, three generations of my family attended church together every week.  I attended Sunday School in the morning, and youth fellowship and choir practice Sunday evening, and sang for services at least once a month.  Sometimes I sang with the adult choir, which met on Wednesday nights.  My grandparents were missionaries and my great-grandparents were missionaries; my uncles and cousins were ministers.  I worked on a Boy Scout religious award for a year, including service hours at the church every week.  I was an altar boy.  I read the bible cover-to-cover by age fourteen. I performed in church music productions and knew every nook and cranny of our old, cathedral-like church.

Here is a photo I called "Empty Church", taken decades later.  This was my usual view, from the altar boy's chair.  

But questions nagged at me for my entire life.  Sometime in my late 40s, I stopped going to church.  At age 60, when I described myself as an atheist to a friend, he asked me to write down my reasons.  This blog is the result.  I will consider various aspects of religion and Christianity, such as the soul, prayer, the Bible, God as Creator, Sustainer, and Judge, heaven and hell, and Satan.   I have a few thoughts about the politicization of Christianity.  Through all of this, I will be considering how religious beliefs align with other things we know about the world from science, experience, and observation.  I will ask some peculiar questions, such as whether a virus has a soul, and whether the people on the Titanic forgot to pray.  I’ll consider the problem posed by Steve Martin: “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”.  I’ll be asking whether religion is good according to my standards of right and wrong.  And most of all, I will ask whether religious belief makes any sense.

I know that religious people are often the happiest people I know.  They often have the clearest sense of family and enjoy the fellowship and affirmation of belonging to a church.  They are able to disregard worries, because they believe that no matter what happens, it will be as God decided.  They have faith that God exists, and that God is good.  So if you choose to read these posts, understand that I will be challenging that belief and that comfortable happiness.

To live in happiness under a falsehood seems wrong to me.   My worldview is now less settled, with the realization that the future of mankind does not depend on an invisible power, but depends on us. 

I have no interest in debate.  I am simply sharing my thoughts, as my friend asked.  I will not read nor respond to comments.