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Publius's avatar

"If God is real, there’s a better than average chance that he cares what human beings believe about him. The problem is, there’s no way to check your answers."

Steve, thank you for sharing this. I see a lot of myself in this post, in the questions that you are asking. I am reminded of paths that I went down after the breakdown of my first marriage, when I lost all faith for a time, trying to make sense of my broken life. I think for those with an intellectual and mystical bent, especially those who have experiences that seem hard to cohere into a consistent world view, the idea of what is effectively a form of gnostic perennialism (the idea that all manifestations of faith in the world point, at their heart, to the same hidden God, for those with eyes to see) is always going to be attractive. From a certain perspective, even within more small "o" orthodox expressions of the Christian faith (I cannot speak with any deep clarity or knowledge outside of these traditions) such a statement even has a hint of truth about it: the essence of God is hidden, is too big to comprehend, we are given our material human frame in time and space because the ontological reality of existence is too big for us to comprehend as we are now, and the truth of reality's Creator breaks out (fractally, if you will) within all aspects of the created order, even within religious traditions which (may) owe their origin and allegiance to the demonic because the glory of the truth of existence cannot stay hidden and even the demons serve the Master of all in their disobedience.

But within this heuristic, I think we see the seed of why this position is not going to help us in the end. The vision Arjuna receives of Krishna, whatever it represents (I tend to think it represents a half truth at best, but that is another matter), is not something within which he can reasonably abide. What is needful is not just Truth in an absolute ontological sense (though the human yearning for this Truth is real and good) but a subjective, individual, and personal version of this Truth that touches us and reaches us where we are, in the particularities of our own story. Back in my teens my younger self wanted, I think, to figure out a way to touch the Absolute essence of what I have come to recognize as God the Father, unmediated. I now think that's impossible, a fool's errand born of youthful pride (in fact, for me at least, what it represented was the creation of an idol of my pride, which had become my true god). As you say, Christianity is worth a special look because it posits the God who sacrificially inserts himself into the affairs of man. While perennialism tries to weave this story into some semblance of the "dying god mythos", it never seems to fit very well, being too encumbered by historic particularity and (what is worse) an appalling degradation and humility.

I say all of this just to note that, at least for myself, I struggled for a long time trying to meet God in a way that was bound to result in failure. Your quote that I provided above got me thinking in this direction. Your first sentence seems entirely correct to me, but I wonder based on the content of your second sentence, where you suggest that there is no way to check your answers, whether you may have found yourself struggling with something similar? In an abstract sense you are correct, there is no way to create a proof whereby the veracity of any given theological claim can be measured. But I don't think this has ever been the sense via which humanity, whether in the Christian tradition or any of the other traditions you referenced, have experienced the divine (or, quite frankly, how we have ever experienced ourselves). Visions are great, insofar as they go, but they may be entirely beside the point--I may have once had a relatively minor such experience, but frankly it ultimately didn't do much for me one way or the other. What has been surprisingly useful is dwelling on the particularities of my own story--the things I lost, the people I've hurt, the undeserved pain I've seen, the undeserved blessings I've received, the punishments I've been given that turned out to be blessings, and the utter powerlessness I experience when I consider my place in the fabric of creation--and meditating on this while meditating on the the experience of Christ as recorded in the Gospels. The fruits we glean when we approach this process seriously and faithfully, I think, that actually can be tested, and either found true or wanting, as we incorporate them into the particularities of our lived existence.

Again, your point is taken: Lewis's argument is (frankly) not that good as a logical argument (though it does seem to correlate reasonably well to the evidence born via the historical record as we currently understand it), and there is such a grab-bag of competing cosmological dogmas to choose from. And you could probably take the methodology proposed above, apply it to the prophetic figure of another world faith tradition, and yield something via the endeavor. But you're not a cosmic being approaching this as a rational mind separate from the system. You are an individual historical person, born in a particular place, in a particular time, to particular parents, inculcated in a particular tradition, who has made particular choices. We only experience anything as a particularity, and it is to the history of our actual existence that we owe allegiance, wherever it might lead. So the question is, what approach is most likely to allow you to wrestle with the issues that lie at the heart of your pain (at least insofar as you are able to perceive them, this is an unending well)? Whatever else it might be, I doubt the path of the universalizing myth is likely to yield much fruit.

I have rambled too long, but I would urge you to focus in on what meaning there is to be found in the particularity of your experience, and to take care when considering the apparent profundity of the perennialist myth. I wish you well in your travels, both on the road, and into the depths of your soul.

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Dean Cooper's avatar

I'm a computer programmer. Not a theologian (nor a Catholic). Even still I have been considering writing a book on the "proof" of God, as the evidence seems quite overwhelming to me, and yet not many people know about it. I'm talking about the Rare Earth theory promoted by Hugh Ross of Reasons To Believe. He was trained as an astrophysicist and simply pulls straight from scientific journals the ever increasing reasons why it is highly improbable to have a planet like ours. It is especially difficult because it takes billions of years to essentially terraform our planet so we can live here, and that means our planet has to remain stable for several billion years. Each stage of life prepared the way for the next stage of life.

And all that time, you can't have things like the gas giant planets moving into the inner part of the solar system (something that normally happens). You have to have stable tectonic plates, which most planets don't have. You have to be birthed in the inner part of the galaxy to have the elements we do, but thrown out to the correct distance so your system doesn't get sterilized by cosmic rays from the central black hole. On and on it goes, hundreds of criteria that must be met to have Earth. Even if some turn out to not be the case, there are still plenty left to show we are really rare.

We're so rare that you have to bring in a multi-verse to have any chance to get Earth. And once you go there, you're essentially appealing to infinity to make the chances work out in your favor, but then everything becomes possible, which isn't what you want either.

The Rare Earth theory doesn't just show there must have been a Creator who made this possible, but it shows a Creator that is actively involved at each step in the "construction" process. Even more amazing is the implication that He has created the entire universe just to have planet Earth - which implies just to have us. The universe even has to be the size it is or you couldn't have a planet Earth.

In other words, we are living in an age when for the first time in history, man can clearly see just how abundant the evidence is that God made us and put us here for a purpose.

But it doesn't stop there. Hugh grew up a non-Christian in Canada where he knew no one who was a Christian. And yet he reasoned that a god who would create us, must have left a message for us, and so surely one of the holy books of the world should reveal this god. And so he went about studying the various holy books to see if there was anything that showed erroneous views of science. Most religions have clear scientific errors. And then he set aside an entire year to study the bible. Instead of finding errors, his secular mind found things the bible got right time after time. It so stunned him, that he calculated the probability which is astronomical and convinced himself that the bible truly had to be from the God who created the universe.

But then consider all the prophecies from the old testament that accurately predicted Jesus and what he would do. We know for a fact that these were written prior to the time of Jesus because we have the Dead Sea scrolls.

And then you have the Shroud of Turin. It confirms many of the things written about the crucifixion in the gospels and yet even more, it shows an image that science can't duplicate. The scientists who went to study in the 70's, went after they heard that the Shroud contains 3D height information in the image. This is like a scientist hearing you have an artifact from a UFO that that has a property that you know is impossible. You drop everything to study this artifact.

And then you have the symbolism from old testament scriptures that for no apparent reason perfectly demonstrates the gospel story. Think of Abraham, the father of faith, who God asked to sacrifice his son. Or consider Joseph who interpreted the dreams of both the baker and the cup bearer. Why two? He only needed one to tell pharaoh. But the two match the two thieves on the cross with Jesus. One lived, the other died on a tree with the birds eating his eyes out. Or read the story of Jonah, where it describes him sinking to the very bottom of the sea, and sounding very dead. Hmm, dead for three days in the belly of a fish only to be raised back to life causing the city of Nineveh to repent. And Jesus said the only sign the Jews would get was the sign of Jonah. It all fits.

Archeology keeps uncovering more evidence that backs up things written in the bible. But just look at the story of Lot in Sodom. More recent digs at a tel in the Jordan river delta show it was destroyed by an air-burst meteorite that hit around the time that fits the bible. Read the story again and you'll see the angels telling Lot he has to hurry and then dragging him to get moving. They knew a meteorite was headed their way and time was of the essence. And then look at Lot's wife who looked back on the city just as it was hit. That 2000 degree shock wave sent out molten salt and sand that could well have instantly encrusted over her body if she was at the right distance.

Or just pick up a leaf and ask yourself how did it get here? What did it take for that leaf to exist at this time on this planet? Most people have no clue what was needed to happen to get that leaf. Nor do they know how absolutely impossible it is to get the first cell through random chemical reactions. Watch some of Dr. James Tour's videos on YouTube for details on the impossibility of abiogenesis.

Or just look at our perfect moon. It's size alone saved Earth from becoming tidally locked to the sun which would have destroyed all life. And only over the last few million years has it been in the correct position to give us perfect solar eclipses. This is so rare in itself that there are likely few other planet moon systems that have perfect solar eclipses anywhere else in the entire universe. Talk about a sign in the heavens!

Our planet is perfect. Our moon is perfect. Our sun is perfect. Our solar system is perfect. Our galaxy is perfect. Our local galactic group is perfect. Everything is just right and shows beyond any doubt that we were put here on purpose, by a God who has spoken to us through scriptures, and who came in person to teach us and die for us.

And now we can see it. Which means we're here at the climatic last part of the entire story God has been writing. It used to take faith to believe in Him. Now, given the evidence, it simply takes the will.

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