#1 -
Tonight I began reading through Genesis again. I came once again to the story of Noah. This is not a kid's story. It is about the destruction of all flesh because of the evil of humanity.
God saved a remnant. Noah was found to be a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah and his family alone survived. Untold numbers, including many, many animals perished.
To me, this is a reminder of our need to share the Gospel. This is a reminder of the sinfulness of man. This is a reminder that God's wrath is real. This is a reminder that I deserve destruction. This is a reminder that God has provided a way. This is a reminder that God's way is the only way.
Could God really mean it that Jesus is the only way to the Father and that all other ways lead to death...? Could God really have meant that everyone was going to perish except Noah and his family?
#2 -
In reading Genesis, I am comforted by the genealogies. I am comforted by the detailed lists of years of how long people lived. I am comforted by the specificity of detail about dates for when things happened in regards to the flood.
This - like the Gospels - are told in such a straightforward fashion, without any evident literary flourishes, and it is so earthy, so linked to details that we find no theological use for, other than they happened to note them. I am not one of those people who look into the Bible and expect to find some secret code or secret messages hidden within layers of meaning. I think God wants to communicate truth, that he is able to, and that he has created us with the ability to receive truth. Will we continue learning? Will we exhaust the Bible's treasures in our lifetime? Not likely! But the digging we must do is not a gnostic kind of digging.
It seems so plain to me that the genre here is history, and if I take seriously what the text presents me with, I am presented with a sovereign God of holiness and love. My faith drinks in the fact that the God presented in the Scriptures is powerful enough to bring me the Scriptures as he wants to. The Holy Spirit does a confirming work in my heart.
And he does it in genealogies of all places! How awesome! And it is precisely because I couldn't throw them into a pot and boil up a theological argument that I like them. They contain an air of mystery, but not one that flies into myth, one that humbly sinks its roots into the earthy ground of real people who just wanted to keep a family history.
As I read some of the details about Noah, I can easily imagine that Noah may have recorded some things, knowing that he and his family were the only link to a prior humanity. I can imagine these records being passed on to people and God bringing these records into Moses' hands as God inspired the writing of the Pentateuch.
I think basically I am just in a mood right now in which I am thankful for the Scriptures, and I want to spread that feeling around. What a treasure!
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Renovation of My Heart
This summer I made up a list of books to read. Some of you may have taken a look at that list. I have been in many facebook discussions with one of my friends, Austin, who recently proclaimed to the facebook world that he has become an atheist. Prior to that, in January I had taken an agnostic friend with me to Passion. In regards to these friends and conversations, I have spent a lot of time reading apologetics. I believe I must be able to give reasons for the hope that is within, and I want to be prepared when friends ask me questions or when they attack my faith. A lot of the books on my list have grown out of these discussions. I have planned to read a lot of apologetics.
Apologetics is a good thing. Blind faith does not glorify God. It says more about your raw willpower than about the object of your faith. If I ask, why are you a Christian, and your response is, "just because I believe", or "I take on it blind faith", you have done nothing to distinguish your God from any other god. It would be like saying you closed your eyes and just picked this one. How happy would your wife be if, when asked, you said you just closed your eyes and picked one. If asked, why do you love her, you should have a good response.
Faith should not be divorced from reason, but faith centered only on apologetics misses the point. If all I did was read apologetics and argue with atheists, I would be entirely missing the point. I would be neglecting to enjoy the Reality - the Person - that I am arguing for. I would be standing at the door inviting people into a house that I had neglected to really live in and make a home of.
All that to say, I am making some revisions to my reading list. I have moved one book to the top of it. Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard. I have been surprised afresh at the sinfulness of my heart and at my ability to be easily angered, to resent, to indulge, to be prideful, to be impatient. My heart continues to need rescue. I have revised my list to attend to issues of my heart.
Dallas Willard very recently died, and his legacy has been a good one. He was a professional philosopher and author of some quality books on the spiritual life and on discipleship. He did not feel the necessity to churn out a book every year, and the books that he has left are worth reading so far as I can tell. I recommend them.
I like reading Dallas Willard because he reads differently than some of the other authors I frequent. He is not Calvinist, and it seems like a lot of the more modern authors I read, like John Piper and Tim Keller and Francis Schaeffer, are Calvinist. He, like CS Lewis, is a refreshing change of pace. I am glad to be alive and hopeful for what God has in store for my life when I read any of these authors, and that is my feeling now as I am reading this book.
I am two chapters into the book. I am trying to force myself to go at a slower pace to actually digest what I am reading. I wanted to use my blog as a forum to write into my own words some of the insights I am gleaning. I hope you are helped...
____________________________________________________________________________
1. In order to properly care for something, we must understand it. If I am going to properly care for a dog, I must know something about dogs and perhaps about this particular dog, what it is like, what its needs are, what its habits are. If I want to live life well, I need to grow in my knowledge and understanding of what a human is and who I am in particular. The heart is at the center of who I am, so I need to grow in my understanding of the heart.
2. Many of the things we attempt to do to fix ourselves are shallow attempts. They aim at our outer behaviors, or maybe they even get deeper to aim at specific things we think. But we need to aim at the heart, which is really the control center of our selves, the deep-seated place from which we act.
3. Our actions indicate our heart. If we blow it, we are the sort of person who blows it. This is a painful realization. Our actions indicate the sort of people we are. What is within comes out.
4. Humans are complex and have the following aspects: thought, feeling, choice, body, social context, and soul. Redemption will involve a rescue and proper ordering of all these aspects.
5. Our world today teaches us to live from our feelings. We are accordingly at the mercy of circumstances that produce certain feelings that control our actions. This is a type of bondage that Christ would free us from. For freedom Christ has set us free.
6. "Passivity was for the Israelites, and it is for us one of the greatest dangers and difficulties of our spiritual existence. The land promised to them was one of incredible goodness - "flowing with milk and honey," as it is repeatedly described. But it still had to be conquered by careful, persistent, and intelligent human action, over a long period of time. In the beginning of the conquest of the Promised Land, the walls of Jericho fell down, to make clear God's presence and power. Welcome to the Kingdom! But that never happened again. The Israelites had to take the remaining cities through hand-to-hand warfare, though always still with divine assistance. What was then true of the Promised Land of the Israelites is now true of individual human beings who come to God." (Willard)
More to come...
Apologetics is a good thing. Blind faith does not glorify God. It says more about your raw willpower than about the object of your faith. If I ask, why are you a Christian, and your response is, "just because I believe", or "I take on it blind faith", you have done nothing to distinguish your God from any other god. It would be like saying you closed your eyes and just picked this one. How happy would your wife be if, when asked, you said you just closed your eyes and picked one. If asked, why do you love her, you should have a good response.
Faith should not be divorced from reason, but faith centered only on apologetics misses the point. If all I did was read apologetics and argue with atheists, I would be entirely missing the point. I would be neglecting to enjoy the Reality - the Person - that I am arguing for. I would be standing at the door inviting people into a house that I had neglected to really live in and make a home of.
All that to say, I am making some revisions to my reading list. I have moved one book to the top of it. Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard. I have been surprised afresh at the sinfulness of my heart and at my ability to be easily angered, to resent, to indulge, to be prideful, to be impatient. My heart continues to need rescue. I have revised my list to attend to issues of my heart.
Dallas Willard very recently died, and his legacy has been a good one. He was a professional philosopher and author of some quality books on the spiritual life and on discipleship. He did not feel the necessity to churn out a book every year, and the books that he has left are worth reading so far as I can tell. I recommend them.
I like reading Dallas Willard because he reads differently than some of the other authors I frequent. He is not Calvinist, and it seems like a lot of the more modern authors I read, like John Piper and Tim Keller and Francis Schaeffer, are Calvinist. He, like CS Lewis, is a refreshing change of pace. I am glad to be alive and hopeful for what God has in store for my life when I read any of these authors, and that is my feeling now as I am reading this book.
I am two chapters into the book. I am trying to force myself to go at a slower pace to actually digest what I am reading. I wanted to use my blog as a forum to write into my own words some of the insights I am gleaning. I hope you are helped...
____________________________________________________________________________
1. In order to properly care for something, we must understand it. If I am going to properly care for a dog, I must know something about dogs and perhaps about this particular dog, what it is like, what its needs are, what its habits are. If I want to live life well, I need to grow in my knowledge and understanding of what a human is and who I am in particular. The heart is at the center of who I am, so I need to grow in my understanding of the heart.
2. Many of the things we attempt to do to fix ourselves are shallow attempts. They aim at our outer behaviors, or maybe they even get deeper to aim at specific things we think. But we need to aim at the heart, which is really the control center of our selves, the deep-seated place from which we act.
3. Our actions indicate our heart. If we blow it, we are the sort of person who blows it. This is a painful realization. Our actions indicate the sort of people we are. What is within comes out.
4. Humans are complex and have the following aspects: thought, feeling, choice, body, social context, and soul. Redemption will involve a rescue and proper ordering of all these aspects.
5. Our world today teaches us to live from our feelings. We are accordingly at the mercy of circumstances that produce certain feelings that control our actions. This is a type of bondage that Christ would free us from. For freedom Christ has set us free.
6. "Passivity was for the Israelites, and it is for us one of the greatest dangers and difficulties of our spiritual existence. The land promised to them was one of incredible goodness - "flowing with milk and honey," as it is repeatedly described. But it still had to be conquered by careful, persistent, and intelligent human action, over a long period of time. In the beginning of the conquest of the Promised Land, the walls of Jericho fell down, to make clear God's presence and power. Welcome to the Kingdom! But that never happened again. The Israelites had to take the remaining cities through hand-to-hand warfare, though always still with divine assistance. What was then true of the Promised Land of the Israelites is now true of individual human beings who come to God." (Willard)
More to come...
Friday, May 24, 2013
Pi, Fractals, and Reality
I am a math teacher. (At least, I have been.) And I think that math gives us a fascinating lens through which to examine and understand our world.
What is a circle?
A round thing, you might say. If you were my student, I would press for a better definition. What makes a circle different from an oval? Both are round. If you are intelligent, or if you simply remember the definition... a circle is the collection of points that are equidistant from a given center. It involves the idea of a fixed radius.
Have you ever seen a circle?
Yes, you may say. Duh, you may say.
Pardon me, but I think you have not. No circle you have ever drawn is perfect. Close maybe. Perhaps very close. But they are still approximations.
Well, if I can't, the computer can, you might say. Not so fast. What the computer projects onto the screen is a grid of pixels. It is, and someone might be able to correct me on this, something like a square grid. At least, as I press my face towards the screen, that seems to roughly be the case. The computer probably gives a good approximation, better than we can do by hand, yet it is still an approximation in the end.
How many points comprise a circle? Infinitely many. Supposing the computer could draw a true circle, how long does it take to calculate the location of infinitely many points? If it could locate and draw a billion, billion, billion, trillion points in a second... it would still take an infinite amount of time. Dividing infinity by a finite number still leaves you in a lurch.
Supposing you had a perfectly steady hand and a mind for drawing perfect geometric figures, would you even be able to see the circle you had drawn? A circle is a curved line comprised of points. How wide is a point? It has no width, or height, or depth, or breadth. A point is simply a location. No thickness, weight, nothing. But in order to draw a point on a piece of paper, you draw a dot. But for you to see the dot, the dot has to be extended in three dimensions. The dot itself is like a tiny, colored-in circle, which we would recognize as a two-dimensional figure. But it actually needs a little bit of height, too, a third dimension, however thin, for the ink or graphite to pop off the paper, to be distinct for our eyes to see it. The dot, then, is not a point. It is a way that we have decided is convenient to graphically represent a point.
What we would draw as a circle and recognize as a circle is not actually a circle. It is an approximate representation of a circle.
Are circles real?
I would say yes. We do have a definite idea of what a circle is. We didn't simply make it up. We recognized it. We recognize it pressing its way into reality, though the physical world can never quite give it to us without some slight bit of stretching or pulling, some slight bit of approximation, some slight bit of deviance from the ideal that we now have within our minds.
We could do the same bit of mental gyration for any number of things. Geometric objects especially. Take a straight line, for example, and start asking questions about it.
We wouldn't need to stick merely to geometric figures. What about negative numbers? What about formulas like the quadratic formula? What about...?
Lots of math is being done now that is beyond my current ability to comprehend. A lot of what is being done has no obvious correspondence to something in the real world. Complex analysis, for example deals with imaginary numbers. What is an imaginary number? I cannot hold an imaginary number of things in my hand. (Certainly, on occasion, it turns out that advances in pure mathematics will turn out to have physical applications in the real world. Though I can't hold an imaginary number of things, imaginary numbers are powerful tools in things like digital signals processing, which some of my friends from Tech can attest to.)
Is my idea of a circle a real thing? Is my idea of the number 8 a real thing? Is my conception of the quadratic formula a real thing?
This really is the type of question Plato was seeking to answer in his Platonic Forms.
The idea of a circle does seem to be a real thing. The mathematical structure behind the quadratic formula does seem to be a real thing. I say this because they do not seem to be things that we were free to make up as we wished. To pick a simpler example, 2+2=4. That is true whether or not I want it to be true. That was true before there were human minds around to comprehend its truth. The Chinese were not free to discover that 2+2=5... unless 5 were really a symbol that meant what we mean when we say 4, (assuming 2 and + and = still mean the same thing). Though different peoples might use different symbols, they are referring to the same underlying reality that is simply true.
I conclude, then, that there is an objective nature to mathematics. It is what it is. Mathematicians are discoverers. They are not writers of fiction. They are not symbolic conspirators. They have gotten in touch with things that are really there. They have quite definitely stumbled upon this true idea of a circle that we have never actually met in our experience of the physical world.
Mathematicians have gotten in touch with something that is really there. But where? If not in the physical world, in our minds? Yes, these mathematical truths are in our minds. But they were there first. It seems that they were somewhere already, embedded in things, awaiting for our minds to pick up on them, to discover them. So they are not merely in our minds.
The existence of these ideas is not a physical existence. Again, you can't hold them in your hand. And they appear to be timelessly true. 2+2=4 was around before we were. And it is not going out of style tomorrow. And any aliens who show up on my doorstep tomorrow are bound to agree.
What a can of worms! What a thoroughly disconcerting notion for the pure naturalist, the devoted materialist!
In math we have found a multitude of non-physical, timeless things that have an objective reality. And they are things that the human mind is suspiciously well-suited to grasp and explore.
________________________________________________________________________________
I actually started writing this entry to explore the following analogy, and I got a little sidetracked by circles...
Consider pi. Pi is an irrational number. That means it cannot be written as a fraction of two integers. There are infinitely many such irrational numbers. Take any irrational number and add 1 to obtain another irrational number. And now you have a quick and easy way of producing infinitely many of them.
Not being able to write pi - or any other irrational - as a fraction means also that its decimal expansion will admit no repeatable pattern.
Pi derives its existence from the idea of a circle. Consider that a calculation of pi from any drawn or observed circle in the physical world is going to be an approximation... because those circles are not exact. But for an exact circle, pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter. This ratio holds for any size circle.
Pi, then, is firmly anchored in the idea of a circle, and it proves its usefulness in our world because of how often "circles" pop up. Pi is what it is, and I cannot wish it any different, and it will never go out of style. It will always be what it always has been. It is a non-physical, timeless constant woven into the fabric of reality.
There is a grandness to it. Because in it we approach the idea of infinity.
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620
8998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117
4502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867
8316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631
558817488152092096282925409171536436789259036001133053054......
If you start walking this road... you will never finish.
Here is a reality that is non-physical, timeless, infinite, simple and yet complex, objectively there regardless of whether we think about it or choose to approach it, hidden within things that we must deal with every day, exerting an undeniable influence on things we must deal with every day, able to be grasped truly, though not exhaustively or comprehensively known.
________________________________________________________________________________
Staring down pi might hold fascination for some, like myself, who enjoy that sort of thing. But fractals are another, more geometric way, of staring down the infinite and experiencing awe at objectively eternal objects...
From some simple equations, Benoit Mandelbrot discovered a set that now bears his name. Fractals are interesting because you can zoom in on them. You will never exhaust them. They are not atomistic. There is not a lowest level of zooming. They are simple, yet incredibly complex... and in them we find a beauty.
Mandelbrot discovered this set. He did not create it. It was there from eternity past and will continue on. The following video gives just a taste of this complexity, this inexhaustible infinity, this beauty...
______________________________________________________________________________
In an earlier post, I did a thought experiment on analogies with time travel. I ended up talking a great deal about the cosmological arguments for the existence of God.
I pressed on the question of why there is something rather than nothing.
Now, I think the question of the universe itself is a different sort of question from the truths of mathematics. I can easily imagine the universe being different from what it is, and I can easily imagine the universe not existing. It is possible, I suppose, that it might just have never gotten started.
But not so, at least as far as I can tell, with the truths of mathematics. It seems like the eternality of the mathematical truths would make them true independent of the universe itself. They are necessarily true, which means that they would be true in any conceivable universe.
But is it off the cards to ask, why are the mathematical truths there at all? Why are they there instead of not being there? Why are they what they are, instead of something else? Why is pi not 3.16?
The Leibnizian Argument calls for an explanation of the existence of anything, either by a necessity of its own nature or in some external explanation. Why then do the mathematical truths exist? We are on the edge of mysteries that probably few in high school math care to think about...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Let me give a brief account of mathematics from a Christian worldview.
There are truths in the world that appear to have necessity. They are not dependent on what we think or do for them to be true. Yet, the only necessary being is God himself. All other necessary truths are grounded in who God is and what he thinks.
Because God is eternal, immutable, unchangeable, we can expect his thoughts on reality to reflect this. Hence, the unchanging nature of math.
The language of mathematics is suited very well to describe our world. Dogs and cats don't do math, but people do. We can do math because we are rational beings created in the image of a rational God. The truths of mathematics are grasped by minds. Yet they are not dependent on any of our finite and passing minds. They were prior to us. But that does not mean that they are wholly independent of Mind or Rationality. They are the outworking of God's eternal Mind.
The infinite complexity of math is a clue that we cannot exhaust the riches of who God is. Because he is infinite, he alone can traverse every digit of pi and every crevice of Mandelbrot's fractal. We will never be able to do this. Though our existence may never end with God, he alone has existed infinitely in both directions of time. He is above and beyond time.
What do we do with all of this? We worship our Creator, and we recognize our creaturely dependence for our knowledge upon his superior knowledge and wisdom.
Though it is awe-inspiring, we dare not worship mathematics or science.
Math is in the same position we are... a creature who exists to point to Creator in our own way.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
What is a circle?
A round thing, you might say. If you were my student, I would press for a better definition. What makes a circle different from an oval? Both are round. If you are intelligent, or if you simply remember the definition... a circle is the collection of points that are equidistant from a given center. It involves the idea of a fixed radius.
Have you ever seen a circle?
Yes, you may say. Duh, you may say.
Pardon me, but I think you have not. No circle you have ever drawn is perfect. Close maybe. Perhaps very close. But they are still approximations.
Well, if I can't, the computer can, you might say. Not so fast. What the computer projects onto the screen is a grid of pixels. It is, and someone might be able to correct me on this, something like a square grid. At least, as I press my face towards the screen, that seems to roughly be the case. The computer probably gives a good approximation, better than we can do by hand, yet it is still an approximation in the end.
How many points comprise a circle? Infinitely many. Supposing the computer could draw a true circle, how long does it take to calculate the location of infinitely many points? If it could locate and draw a billion, billion, billion, trillion points in a second... it would still take an infinite amount of time. Dividing infinity by a finite number still leaves you in a lurch.
Supposing you had a perfectly steady hand and a mind for drawing perfect geometric figures, would you even be able to see the circle you had drawn? A circle is a curved line comprised of points. How wide is a point? It has no width, or height, or depth, or breadth. A point is simply a location. No thickness, weight, nothing. But in order to draw a point on a piece of paper, you draw a dot. But for you to see the dot, the dot has to be extended in three dimensions. The dot itself is like a tiny, colored-in circle, which we would recognize as a two-dimensional figure. But it actually needs a little bit of height, too, a third dimension, however thin, for the ink or graphite to pop off the paper, to be distinct for our eyes to see it. The dot, then, is not a point. It is a way that we have decided is convenient to graphically represent a point.
What we would draw as a circle and recognize as a circle is not actually a circle. It is an approximate representation of a circle.
Are circles real?
I would say yes. We do have a definite idea of what a circle is. We didn't simply make it up. We recognized it. We recognize it pressing its way into reality, though the physical world can never quite give it to us without some slight bit of stretching or pulling, some slight bit of approximation, some slight bit of deviance from the ideal that we now have within our minds.
We could do the same bit of mental gyration for any number of things. Geometric objects especially. Take a straight line, for example, and start asking questions about it.
We wouldn't need to stick merely to geometric figures. What about negative numbers? What about formulas like the quadratic formula? What about...?
Lots of math is being done now that is beyond my current ability to comprehend. A lot of what is being done has no obvious correspondence to something in the real world. Complex analysis, for example deals with imaginary numbers. What is an imaginary number? I cannot hold an imaginary number of things in my hand. (Certainly, on occasion, it turns out that advances in pure mathematics will turn out to have physical applications in the real world. Though I can't hold an imaginary number of things, imaginary numbers are powerful tools in things like digital signals processing, which some of my friends from Tech can attest to.)
Is my idea of a circle a real thing? Is my idea of the number 8 a real thing? Is my conception of the quadratic formula a real thing?
This really is the type of question Plato was seeking to answer in his Platonic Forms.
The idea of a circle does seem to be a real thing. The mathematical structure behind the quadratic formula does seem to be a real thing. I say this because they do not seem to be things that we were free to make up as we wished. To pick a simpler example, 2+2=4. That is true whether or not I want it to be true. That was true before there were human minds around to comprehend its truth. The Chinese were not free to discover that 2+2=5... unless 5 were really a symbol that meant what we mean when we say 4, (assuming 2 and + and = still mean the same thing). Though different peoples might use different symbols, they are referring to the same underlying reality that is simply true.
I conclude, then, that there is an objective nature to mathematics. It is what it is. Mathematicians are discoverers. They are not writers of fiction. They are not symbolic conspirators. They have gotten in touch with things that are really there. They have quite definitely stumbled upon this true idea of a circle that we have never actually met in our experience of the physical world.
Mathematicians have gotten in touch with something that is really there. But where? If not in the physical world, in our minds? Yes, these mathematical truths are in our minds. But they were there first. It seems that they were somewhere already, embedded in things, awaiting for our minds to pick up on them, to discover them. So they are not merely in our minds.
The existence of these ideas is not a physical existence. Again, you can't hold them in your hand. And they appear to be timelessly true. 2+2=4 was around before we were. And it is not going out of style tomorrow. And any aliens who show up on my doorstep tomorrow are bound to agree.
What a can of worms! What a thoroughly disconcerting notion for the pure naturalist, the devoted materialist!
In math we have found a multitude of non-physical, timeless things that have an objective reality. And they are things that the human mind is suspiciously well-suited to grasp and explore.
________________________________________________________________________________
I actually started writing this entry to explore the following analogy, and I got a little sidetracked by circles...
Consider pi. Pi is an irrational number. That means it cannot be written as a fraction of two integers. There are infinitely many such irrational numbers. Take any irrational number and add 1 to obtain another irrational number. And now you have a quick and easy way of producing infinitely many of them.
Not being able to write pi - or any other irrational - as a fraction means also that its decimal expansion will admit no repeatable pattern.
Pi derives its existence from the idea of a circle. Consider that a calculation of pi from any drawn or observed circle in the physical world is going to be an approximation... because those circles are not exact. But for an exact circle, pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter. This ratio holds for any size circle.
Pi, then, is firmly anchored in the idea of a circle, and it proves its usefulness in our world because of how often "circles" pop up. Pi is what it is, and I cannot wish it any different, and it will never go out of style. It will always be what it always has been. It is a non-physical, timeless constant woven into the fabric of reality.
There is a grandness to it. Because in it we approach the idea of infinity.
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620
8998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117
4502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867
8316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631
558817488152092096282925409171536436789259036001133053054......
If you start walking this road... you will never finish.
Here is a reality that is non-physical, timeless, infinite, simple and yet complex, objectively there regardless of whether we think about it or choose to approach it, hidden within things that we must deal with every day, exerting an undeniable influence on things we must deal with every day, able to be grasped truly, though not exhaustively or comprehensively known.
________________________________________________________________________________
Staring down pi might hold fascination for some, like myself, who enjoy that sort of thing. But fractals are another, more geometric way, of staring down the infinite and experiencing awe at objectively eternal objects...
From some simple equations, Benoit Mandelbrot discovered a set that now bears his name. Fractals are interesting because you can zoom in on them. You will never exhaust them. They are not atomistic. There is not a lowest level of zooming. They are simple, yet incredibly complex... and in them we find a beauty.
Mandelbrot discovered this set. He did not create it. It was there from eternity past and will continue on. The following video gives just a taste of this complexity, this inexhaustible infinity, this beauty...
______________________________________________________________________________
In an earlier post, I did a thought experiment on analogies with time travel. I ended up talking a great deal about the cosmological arguments for the existence of God.
I pressed on the question of why there is something rather than nothing.
Now, I think the question of the universe itself is a different sort of question from the truths of mathematics. I can easily imagine the universe being different from what it is, and I can easily imagine the universe not existing. It is possible, I suppose, that it might just have never gotten started.
But not so, at least as far as I can tell, with the truths of mathematics. It seems like the eternality of the mathematical truths would make them true independent of the universe itself. They are necessarily true, which means that they would be true in any conceivable universe.
But is it off the cards to ask, why are the mathematical truths there at all? Why are they there instead of not being there? Why are they what they are, instead of something else? Why is pi not 3.16?
The Leibnizian Argument calls for an explanation of the existence of anything, either by a necessity of its own nature or in some external explanation. Why then do the mathematical truths exist? We are on the edge of mysteries that probably few in high school math care to think about...
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Let me give a brief account of mathematics from a Christian worldview.
There are truths in the world that appear to have necessity. They are not dependent on what we think or do for them to be true. Yet, the only necessary being is God himself. All other necessary truths are grounded in who God is and what he thinks.
Because God is eternal, immutable, unchangeable, we can expect his thoughts on reality to reflect this. Hence, the unchanging nature of math.
The language of mathematics is suited very well to describe our world. Dogs and cats don't do math, but people do. We can do math because we are rational beings created in the image of a rational God. The truths of mathematics are grasped by minds. Yet they are not dependent on any of our finite and passing minds. They were prior to us. But that does not mean that they are wholly independent of Mind or Rationality. They are the outworking of God's eternal Mind.
The infinite complexity of math is a clue that we cannot exhaust the riches of who God is. Because he is infinite, he alone can traverse every digit of pi and every crevice of Mandelbrot's fractal. We will never be able to do this. Though our existence may never end with God, he alone has existed infinitely in both directions of time. He is above and beyond time.
What do we do with all of this? We worship our Creator, and we recognize our creaturely dependence for our knowledge upon his superior knowledge and wisdom.
Though it is awe-inspiring, we dare not worship mathematics or science.
Math is in the same position we are... a creature who exists to point to Creator in our own way.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Romans 1:18-25, ESV)
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Bahnsen on Where to Start
"The Christian's final standard, the inspired word of God, teaches us that 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge' (Prov 1:7). If the apologist treats the starting point of knowledge as something other than reverence for God, then unconditional submission to the unsurpassed greatness of God's wisdom at the end of the argumentation does not really make sense. There would always be something greater than God's wisdom - namely, the supposed wisdom of one's intellectual starting point. The word of God would necessarily (logically, if not personally) remain subordinate to that autonomous final standard. The situation is pictured well by C.S. Lewis: 'The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock... The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God is in the Dock.'"
(Greg Bahnsen in Van Til's Apologetic)
(Greg Bahnsen in Van Til's Apologetic)
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
My Soul's Prayer
My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God. (Psalm 42:2)
God, in the midst of our busy-ness, in the midst of our difficulties, in the midst of our doubts, in the midst of our discussions, in the midst of our Christian living, in the midst of our relationships, in the midst of our duties, in the midst of our joys, draw us near. Do not let us forget that you are most important. Do not let us forget your love. Do not let us forget your cross. Do not let us forget your grace. Do not let us forget our need for you. Draw us mightily and bind us to your heart. Grant repentance where our hearts have been hard. Grant obedience where we have chosen ourselves over you. God, help me to value you over every other thing. Help me to worship you as supreme.
God, how can I live apart from you?
God, what wisdom do I have of my own? None.
God, how could I repay you? I cannot.
God, I place my trust in you. I trust you for my eternity. And I trust you for tomorrow. And I trust you in this moment. Your sovereign hands are hands of love, and you hold me unshake-ably, and you are a strong refuge for me when my heart quakes. My trust in you, O Lord, is well-placed.
God, strengthen me to do your will for your glory. Strengthen me and keep me dependent on your Spirit for my fight against sin. Strengthen my trust in your Word. I am weak. Lord, you are my strength.
God, pierce my heart with longing for you. Awaken my soul to cry for you. Do not let my heart sleep. Do not let me slumber when I might enjoy your presence. Banish apathy from my heart, and banish laziness from my hands and feet. Bid me to come to you. Bid me to run to you. Bid me to come, and give me ears to hear your call. Give my heart a desire to run that it did not have in its deadness. Thank you Lord for giving me life, abundant life, and may your Spirit help me to keep from wasting it. Lord, my life will be not be waste if it is kept in your sweet Presence. Oh, Lord, that I might know you more. I would know anything less, if I might know you more.
Grant that these prayers would issue from a believing heart in sincerity. I offer these prayers in Jesus name. Amen.
God, in the midst of our busy-ness, in the midst of our difficulties, in the midst of our doubts, in the midst of our discussions, in the midst of our Christian living, in the midst of our relationships, in the midst of our duties, in the midst of our joys, draw us near. Do not let us forget that you are most important. Do not let us forget your love. Do not let us forget your cross. Do not let us forget your grace. Do not let us forget our need for you. Draw us mightily and bind us to your heart. Grant repentance where our hearts have been hard. Grant obedience where we have chosen ourselves over you. God, help me to value you over every other thing. Help me to worship you as supreme.
God, how can I live apart from you?
God, what wisdom do I have of my own? None.
God, how could I repay you? I cannot.
God, I place my trust in you. I trust you for my eternity. And I trust you for tomorrow. And I trust you in this moment. Your sovereign hands are hands of love, and you hold me unshake-ably, and you are a strong refuge for me when my heart quakes. My trust in you, O Lord, is well-placed.
God, strengthen me to do your will for your glory. Strengthen me and keep me dependent on your Spirit for my fight against sin. Strengthen my trust in your Word. I am weak. Lord, you are my strength.
God, pierce my heart with longing for you. Awaken my soul to cry for you. Do not let my heart sleep. Do not let me slumber when I might enjoy your presence. Banish apathy from my heart, and banish laziness from my hands and feet. Bid me to come to you. Bid me to run to you. Bid me to come, and give me ears to hear your call. Give my heart a desire to run that it did not have in its deadness. Thank you Lord for giving me life, abundant life, and may your Spirit help me to keep from wasting it. Lord, my life will be not be waste if it is kept in your sweet Presence. Oh, Lord, that I might know you more. I would know anything less, if I might know you more.
Grant that these prayers would issue from a believing heart in sincerity. I offer these prayers in Jesus name. Amen.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Some Thoughts in Response - #1
What place should personal experience have in a sensible discussion about faith?
I think that you should be able to give more than personal experience if you really want to convince someone that your belief is true, if you want to convince them that they also should accept that belief. I am a Christian. I should be able to say why, and if I am in a discussion with a Muslim, I should be able to say why I am a Christian instead of a Muslim. If we both just say, "This works for me in my personal experience," then we are at a standstill.
This is not to say that personal experience is entirely beside the point or unimportant. The Christian faith - and I am assuming many other faiths as well - would put great weight on personal experience. It would be central. Christianity says that knowing Christ is the most important thing, being in a loving relationship with Christ is the most important thing. This aspect is certainly subjective, but if I am in a sensible discussion with someone checking out Christianity, I would want to talk about what it is like each day, what Christ means to me, how his Spirit helps me practically to get through. This is the good stuff.
There is more to the Christian faith than arguing with people who don't believe it. If that's all it was, it would be rather pointless. It would be like trying to convince people to enjoy a home with you that you have neglected to actually enjoy yourself. God, if he exists, is far more than someone to know true things about. He is a person, someone to enter into relationship with. As a Christian, then, my main business ought to be that relationship, and then, on occasion, I must enter into dialogue with people who don't know the power of that relationship. On those occasions, I must give reasons for the hope that is within me. Quite naturally that will involve both subjective and objective elements.
Subjectively I should be able to give a testimony of what God has done in my life and what difference he makes to my everyday life. If I am to give a reason for the hope that is within me, I can talk about reasons, but it is not beside the point to discuss the nature and quality of that hope, what it is like to have and enjoy it.
Objectively I should be able to give an intelligent response as to why I am a Christian, instead of other things. I would give arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral motions argument. And seeing the plausibility of theism, I would then argue from historical evidences for the reliability of the resurrection of Jesus.
What if my conversation partner is not persuaded? That is perfectly okay. Everyone is free to believe what they want, and I think that if God exists, he wants it that way. He does not compel belief or compel obedience, but he wants people to freely enter into that relationship with him. The Christian conception of God is not one of coercion but of love.
If my conversation partner is not persuaded, I should honestly attend to his doubts and try to examine them for myself. I should not shut myself off. But if I actually know God, that knowledge should not be dependent on whether or not there are atheists who doubt. If I know my brother, I would not find a stranger's doubts about whether I had a brother very convincing. At rock bottom I should still be able to say, "But I know him." For plenty of people, me simply saying this with conviction might be enough. And for others, I may need to take them to my facebook page and show them a picture. And for others, there may be no way to prove it to them because they think the facebook picture is faked, and even if I showed them my brother, it might just be an actor hired to play my fake brother.
There are good reasons for believing. But your presuppositions will affect the way you see the evidence. No one is neutral when they come to it. If you are firmly atheist when you start to look at the evidence for theism and Christianity, there is a pretty good chance you will remain atheist. If you are firmly Christian when you come to look at the evidence for atheism, there is a pretty good chance that you will remain Christian. That is not to say that the search is impossible or fruitless, but it is to say that we should pay attention to our presuppositions and the effect that they will likely have on our search.
In Christianity our present experience of God is subjective. God is, according to the Christian faith, a Spirit. Knowing God, then, is going to have to be different from knowing my brother. I can't put God in a test tube and hand him to you, and I can't show you a picture of him. But Christianity differs from many other religions and many other philosophies in saying that God did take on flesh and become physical, objectively entering into history. The truth of Christianity hangs upon the historical truth of the resurrection. If it could be shown that the resurrection were not true, then Christianity would be exposed for a sham. Historical investigation, then, is in order, and this is more objective than relating personal experience, but historians still cannot escape their presuppositions; they cannot escape their skin.
If you think God is possible, reading the Bible or considering the historical evidence for the resurrection will look a lot different than if you don't think God is possible.
There are other trails to chase, but I think I will end on that for now...
I think that you should be able to give more than personal experience if you really want to convince someone that your belief is true, if you want to convince them that they also should accept that belief. I am a Christian. I should be able to say why, and if I am in a discussion with a Muslim, I should be able to say why I am a Christian instead of a Muslim. If we both just say, "This works for me in my personal experience," then we are at a standstill.
This is not to say that personal experience is entirely beside the point or unimportant. The Christian faith - and I am assuming many other faiths as well - would put great weight on personal experience. It would be central. Christianity says that knowing Christ is the most important thing, being in a loving relationship with Christ is the most important thing. This aspect is certainly subjective, but if I am in a sensible discussion with someone checking out Christianity, I would want to talk about what it is like each day, what Christ means to me, how his Spirit helps me practically to get through. This is the good stuff.
There is more to the Christian faith than arguing with people who don't believe it. If that's all it was, it would be rather pointless. It would be like trying to convince people to enjoy a home with you that you have neglected to actually enjoy yourself. God, if he exists, is far more than someone to know true things about. He is a person, someone to enter into relationship with. As a Christian, then, my main business ought to be that relationship, and then, on occasion, I must enter into dialogue with people who don't know the power of that relationship. On those occasions, I must give reasons for the hope that is within me. Quite naturally that will involve both subjective and objective elements.
Subjectively I should be able to give a testimony of what God has done in my life and what difference he makes to my everyday life. If I am to give a reason for the hope that is within me, I can talk about reasons, but it is not beside the point to discuss the nature and quality of that hope, what it is like to have and enjoy it.
Objectively I should be able to give an intelligent response as to why I am a Christian, instead of other things. I would give arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral motions argument. And seeing the plausibility of theism, I would then argue from historical evidences for the reliability of the resurrection of Jesus.
What if my conversation partner is not persuaded? That is perfectly okay. Everyone is free to believe what they want, and I think that if God exists, he wants it that way. He does not compel belief or compel obedience, but he wants people to freely enter into that relationship with him. The Christian conception of God is not one of coercion but of love.
If my conversation partner is not persuaded, I should honestly attend to his doubts and try to examine them for myself. I should not shut myself off. But if I actually know God, that knowledge should not be dependent on whether or not there are atheists who doubt. If I know my brother, I would not find a stranger's doubts about whether I had a brother very convincing. At rock bottom I should still be able to say, "But I know him." For plenty of people, me simply saying this with conviction might be enough. And for others, I may need to take them to my facebook page and show them a picture. And for others, there may be no way to prove it to them because they think the facebook picture is faked, and even if I showed them my brother, it might just be an actor hired to play my fake brother.
There are good reasons for believing. But your presuppositions will affect the way you see the evidence. No one is neutral when they come to it. If you are firmly atheist when you start to look at the evidence for theism and Christianity, there is a pretty good chance you will remain atheist. If you are firmly Christian when you come to look at the evidence for atheism, there is a pretty good chance that you will remain Christian. That is not to say that the search is impossible or fruitless, but it is to say that we should pay attention to our presuppositions and the effect that they will likely have on our search.
In Christianity our present experience of God is subjective. God is, according to the Christian faith, a Spirit. Knowing God, then, is going to have to be different from knowing my brother. I can't put God in a test tube and hand him to you, and I can't show you a picture of him. But Christianity differs from many other religions and many other philosophies in saying that God did take on flesh and become physical, objectively entering into history. The truth of Christianity hangs upon the historical truth of the resurrection. If it could be shown that the resurrection were not true, then Christianity would be exposed for a sham. Historical investigation, then, is in order, and this is more objective than relating personal experience, but historians still cannot escape their presuppositions; they cannot escape their skin.
If you think God is possible, reading the Bible or considering the historical evidence for the resurrection will look a lot different than if you don't think God is possible.
There are other trails to chase, but I think I will end on that for now...
My Summer Reading List
No particular order...
1. Reasonable Faith (William Lane Craig)
2. Christian Apologetics (Norman Geisler)
3. Bonhoeffer (Eric Metaxas)
4. The Constants of Nature (John D. Barrow)
5. The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins)
6. The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis)
7. Miracles (CS Lewis)
8. The Bramble Bush
9. Team of Rivals
10. The Resurrection of the Son of God (NT Wright)
We'll see how it goes...
1. Reasonable Faith (William Lane Craig)
2. Christian Apologetics (Norman Geisler)
3. Bonhoeffer (Eric Metaxas)
4. The Constants of Nature (John D. Barrow)
5. The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins)
6. The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis)
7. Miracles (CS Lewis)
8. The Bramble Bush
9. Team of Rivals
10. The Resurrection of the Son of God (NT Wright)
We'll see how it goes...
Monday, May 20, 2013
Analogies Involving Time Travel
Suppose the following.
You are sitting eating breakfast. There is a racket outside. You check to see, and a DeLorean has pulled into the driveway, and someone hops out. Much to your surprise, it is a future version of yourself, aged about forty years! The elder you walks up to you and says:
"I am you from the future. Take this." You hand yourself a blue notebook. "Keep this safe. Do not write in it or alter it in any way. Within it are the keys to time travel. You must study and work to understand this book. Remember this date. You must come back to this exact time to perform this task as your future self. Do not tell anyone about this. If this technology gets out, who knows what will happen? There would be no way to control it, and it could destroy the world. Do you understand?"
You nod your head, jaw-dropped. The elder-you hops back into the DeLorean and zips to who-knows-where and who-knows-when. You go eat some lunch.
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Analogy #1 -
Imagine the assurance and motivation of getting a glimpse at your future self. If you knew that one day you would be a brilliant concert pianist, and you were able to get a sneak peak at it, you would be motivated in your practices. You would know that, no matter how difficult, there would be a payoff in the end.
If you knew that you were going to invent time travel, you would be very engaged in your science classes, and you would have great confidence.
Spiritually, God's Word gives us a peak at our futures. It tells us that we will be forever with our Maker, that we will worship him with increased capacities, and that we will have good things to do in a renewed world. In that world we will be totally free from sin, decay, and heartache. It will be awesome.
According to Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus is the in-break of our future hope into the present. Our hope is a resurrection hope, and we believe Jesus has already had that resurrection, that he was the first-fruits of what is to come. We have been given a sure word about our future and hope, and our present life with all its difficulties is a growing into what we will become, a growing into who we really are.
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Analogy #2 -
The experience of being visited by your future self would be like experiencing a miracle.
This experience would come to you as a bending of the rules of the universe as you understand them. Time flows in one direction, and we experience it that way, and you just can't go backwards and forwards and visit other versions of yourself. This isn't common place. It isn't the way the rules work.
Seeing a future version of yourself must have been sort of what it was like for the disciples to see Jesus alive again. What a shock! They knew, just as well as modern people, that dead people don't get up again. But when you see it with your own eyes... you adjust. You are humbled a bit about what things must happen and what things mustn't happen...
How would you react?
I am reminded of Scrooge as he is visited by Marley's ghost. He initially has the bravery to talk back to the ghost and explains him away as a bad bit of mustard. He is experiencing the ghost and disbelieving in him at the same time.
I imagine that many people would take a visit from their future selves as a bit of trickery, as a hallucination, as a bit of bad mustard...
If there is more to the world than the naked eye can see, what sort of evidence could convince you of this? Would the evidence be able to overcome your desire to offer alternative explanations?
I think that gullibility and skepticism are twin dangers. Too many, afraid of one side, fall off the other in the quest for truth.
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Analogy #3 -
Why does the blue book exist?
How old is the blue book?
The way I have presented the scenario would seem to introduce a very interesting loop. The book seems to be infinitely old. Because the future-you had already had it for about forty years, and he inherited it the same way from another future-you that had used it for forty years. Presumably, without the existence of this blue-book, you would never had discovered time travel. Perhaps no one would have.
To maybe tweak the scenario to avoid the presence of a physical book, imagine that the future you sits down and has a long conversation with you about the necessary details you will need to work out the theory of time travel. So there is a nugget of information that gets transferred. Continually. You can't put a start date on it because it is eternally in that loop. You get it and pass it along to yourself... who will pass it along to yourself. Ad infinitum.
But why does this book, or why does this knowledge exist in the first place?
It seems a little like cheating. You get something for nothing. No one ever had to do the work of discovering this knowledge, but it has brute-forced its way into this loop. Implausible. At least unexplainable. Unaccountable.
You can explain the mechanics of how you got the book, but ultimately you cannot explain why. And the how is not terribly satisfying once the existential question of why begins to gnaw at you.
Consider an analogy from this blue book to the universe itself.
Why does the universe exist? Why is there something instead of nothing? How is there something instead of nothing?
It is logically, metaphysically, common-sense-ically absurd to think that something literally came from nothing uncaused and for no reason. The way that the Big Bang has traditionally been espoused points back to a singularity of time and space, a pointed beginning to the Whole Show. Before the Big Bang, there was no time. There was no space. There was nothing. In all honesty we cannot even fathom nothingness because we probably think of the darkness and the vaccuum of outer space. But an empty vacuum is actually not nothing; it is still, at least, an empty something. Oh what a conundrum!
Christians and other theists have traditionally put forward different versions of something known as the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. These arguments rest upon the absurdity of the claim that something comes from nothing. Let me reproduce two versions:
The Kalam Cosmological Argument -
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument -
1. Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
5. Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God.
The difference between these two different explanations is that of cause and reason. What caused all this? Why all this? Not necessarily identical questions.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument digs into our mechanical understanding of things. The cause. Number 1 in the argument seems to make intuitive sense, and there are no known counterexamples in our verifiable experience. We do not see things popping into existence willy-nilly. We see the existence of humans, and both evolutionists and creationists alike feel the need to give a cause. Their very names are grounded in this reality. They both realize that things don't just pop into existence. If they did, it would be nice for a money tree to grow suddenly and unaccountably in my back yard. Sadly, this will not occur.
The second premise in the Kalam argument takes as its evidence both philosophy and science. The philosophical arguments - which I will for brevity's sake skip for now - conclude that an actually infinite number of things cannot exist, even though the idea of the infinite can. This premise in the Kalam argument does not rest solely on philosophy, but also on science. The science - through study of things like background radiation - pushes us to see that there was a beginning to things.
If we accept the first and second premises, logic pushes us to the third premise: the universe has a cause.
This is a not a conclusion that many modern scientists really like. This is not a conclusion that many modern people really like. Let's think out some of the implications of this conclusion...
If the universe has a cause for its existence, that cause must be something other than or outside of the universe itself. The universe can do no causing until it actually exists. It doesn't exist before it exists. It is absurd to think that something can bring itself into existence. This would be the equivalent of saying that the blue book in our example brought or caused or willed itself into existence. Furthermore, if there is a singular beginning to time and space, the cause of the universe must be something outside of time and space as we know and experience it. And it must be powerful enough to cause the universe as we see it. So we have gotten to a powerful, non-physical cause.
Consider how the Leibnizian argument supplements this. Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. We can certainly imagine the universe being different than it is. It does not seem that the universe must necessarily exist. It might not have. So its explanation is not in a necessity of its own nature. In that case, its explanation must be in an external cause. Here we are pressed with the ever-present, ever-powerful question of the child: Why?
I think that the Leibnizian argument supplements the Kalam argument by pushing us beyond a mere Cause to a Mind. Before the beginning, there was nothing. And in the nothingness, there was the Cause. But why did it choose the moment it did to bring about the explosion we call the Big Bang? Why not before, why not after, why not somewhere else? (I recognize even the inadequacy of these questions to grasp the full nature of what was going on.) There was an act of the will. The thing that did the Causing was not something like a law of gravity or a number or something like that. It was more like an agent, a very powerful non-physical Mind, deciding to act.
How do atheists escape these uncomfortable conclusions? There are some different options. You decide for yourself how respectable they seem:
1. Something literally came from nothing, uncaused and for no reason. (The miracle of all miracles.)
2. The universe has always existed. This used to be the popular scientific view. An eternal universe. As cosmology began pointing to the falsity of this fact, we see attempts to keep it in place. For instance, Einstein - to his later regret - fudged numbers on some of his equations in order to have a steady-state universe, one that was not expanding. He did this because he was not pleased with the picture of an expanding universe because he knew that it had to be expanding from something. What he wanted to believe shaped his science in this case.
I think some scientists operate as if, yes, there was an explosion that brought the universe into the state it is currently in. But they do not operate as if it really had a beginning. The Big Bang was just one thing in the history of the universe and it had some state prior to the Big Bang that led up to and caused it. In this case, they conveniently avoid some of the conclusions we have reached, and they avoid the picture that science has recently painted. And they retain belief in an eternal sort of universe. Okay.
3. The third is like the second. A variation. Some scientists put forth theories that make it sound like time can warp around or turn around on itself. They make it seem like there is not a true beginning point. Like time - instead of running in a straight line as we experience it - is actually more like a loop. This way, they avoid the singularity of time and space that the evidence seems to point to.
In this way - and this is what got me thinking on this post in the first place - the universe is like the blue book. It exists as a brute fact, part of a vicious unexplainable loop. There is no explanation internal as to why it would have to exist. There is nothing we have discovered - and there is no reason to suppose that we will discover - an explanation that makes the universe necessary. So why does it exist?
If you avoid a beginning to the universe, you have sidestepped the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but you have done nothing to escape the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument. You may be able to give mechanical how sort of explanation, but you are still pressed with the why question. If the universe exists eternally in a straight line, or whether the universe exists eternally in a loop, there is still the quandary that it didn't have to be and yet is. So why?
4. This is a silly question that I refuse to think about. It isn't a question worth asking. I guess that is one way of avoiding things.
Now what do the Cosmological Arguments do for me personally? They incline my ears to listen. There are good reasons, it appears, to think that there is a Cause and Reason to the universe that is outside the universe. Perhaps... this Cause or Reason might want to communicate with us or give us more than bare existence. Perhaps this Thing that made all this wouldn't be done with all this.
Wait, you may say. Don't you run into the same problems with an eternal God that you do with an eternal universe?
Well, as I see it, you either have an eternal God or an eternal universe. Because if everything is finite, then why isn't the universe already done and gone? Because if everything is finite in time, then there was a time when nothing existed, and then stuff existed, which doesn't make sense.
I would put God forth as the uncaused Cause, as a being who is not contingent by nature, but necessary by nature. If there is anything eternal, it makes more sense to me to believe in an eternal God than in an eternal universe, especially considering the evidence against an eternal universe. I do believe in universal truths that would be true in any universe, such as the rules of mathematics, but if these are universally and eternally true, where are they grounded? Why are they there? Is there some eternal necessity in their nature? I think there must be an eternal Being that exists by a necessity of its own nature, that is the ground of other necessary and contingent things.
How does God reveal himself in the Bible? As self-sufficient, eternal, Creator, the ground of absolute morality and truth. He is the ground of being. He names himself, "I AM." God is the stopper of the infinite regress. He confronts us with his existence. He is who he is. From eternity to eternity. The God of Scriptures is consistent with, yet far richer, than the picture we get using science and reasoning. What then will we do with him?
You are sitting eating breakfast. There is a racket outside. You check to see, and a DeLorean has pulled into the driveway, and someone hops out. Much to your surprise, it is a future version of yourself, aged about forty years! The elder you walks up to you and says:
"I am you from the future. Take this." You hand yourself a blue notebook. "Keep this safe. Do not write in it or alter it in any way. Within it are the keys to time travel. You must study and work to understand this book. Remember this date. You must come back to this exact time to perform this task as your future self. Do not tell anyone about this. If this technology gets out, who knows what will happen? There would be no way to control it, and it could destroy the world. Do you understand?"
You nod your head, jaw-dropped. The elder-you hops back into the DeLorean and zips to who-knows-where and who-knows-when. You go eat some lunch.
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Analogy #1 -
Imagine the assurance and motivation of getting a glimpse at your future self. If you knew that one day you would be a brilliant concert pianist, and you were able to get a sneak peak at it, you would be motivated in your practices. You would know that, no matter how difficult, there would be a payoff in the end.
If you knew that you were going to invent time travel, you would be very engaged in your science classes, and you would have great confidence.
Spiritually, God's Word gives us a peak at our futures. It tells us that we will be forever with our Maker, that we will worship him with increased capacities, and that we will have good things to do in a renewed world. In that world we will be totally free from sin, decay, and heartache. It will be awesome.
According to Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus is the in-break of our future hope into the present. Our hope is a resurrection hope, and we believe Jesus has already had that resurrection, that he was the first-fruits of what is to come. We have been given a sure word about our future and hope, and our present life with all its difficulties is a growing into what we will become, a growing into who we really are.
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Analogy #2 -
The experience of being visited by your future self would be like experiencing a miracle.
This experience would come to you as a bending of the rules of the universe as you understand them. Time flows in one direction, and we experience it that way, and you just can't go backwards and forwards and visit other versions of yourself. This isn't common place. It isn't the way the rules work.
Seeing a future version of yourself must have been sort of what it was like for the disciples to see Jesus alive again. What a shock! They knew, just as well as modern people, that dead people don't get up again. But when you see it with your own eyes... you adjust. You are humbled a bit about what things must happen and what things mustn't happen...
How would you react?
I am reminded of Scrooge as he is visited by Marley's ghost. He initially has the bravery to talk back to the ghost and explains him away as a bad bit of mustard. He is experiencing the ghost and disbelieving in him at the same time.
I imagine that many people would take a visit from their future selves as a bit of trickery, as a hallucination, as a bit of bad mustard...
If there is more to the world than the naked eye can see, what sort of evidence could convince you of this? Would the evidence be able to overcome your desire to offer alternative explanations?
I think that gullibility and skepticism are twin dangers. Too many, afraid of one side, fall off the other in the quest for truth.
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Analogy #3 -
Why does the blue book exist?
How old is the blue book?
The way I have presented the scenario would seem to introduce a very interesting loop. The book seems to be infinitely old. Because the future-you had already had it for about forty years, and he inherited it the same way from another future-you that had used it for forty years. Presumably, without the existence of this blue-book, you would never had discovered time travel. Perhaps no one would have.
To maybe tweak the scenario to avoid the presence of a physical book, imagine that the future you sits down and has a long conversation with you about the necessary details you will need to work out the theory of time travel. So there is a nugget of information that gets transferred. Continually. You can't put a start date on it because it is eternally in that loop. You get it and pass it along to yourself... who will pass it along to yourself. Ad infinitum.
But why does this book, or why does this knowledge exist in the first place?
It seems a little like cheating. You get something for nothing. No one ever had to do the work of discovering this knowledge, but it has brute-forced its way into this loop. Implausible. At least unexplainable. Unaccountable.
You can explain the mechanics of how you got the book, but ultimately you cannot explain why. And the how is not terribly satisfying once the existential question of why begins to gnaw at you.
Consider an analogy from this blue book to the universe itself.
Why does the universe exist? Why is there something instead of nothing? How is there something instead of nothing?
It is logically, metaphysically, common-sense-ically absurd to think that something literally came from nothing uncaused and for no reason. The way that the Big Bang has traditionally been espoused points back to a singularity of time and space, a pointed beginning to the Whole Show. Before the Big Bang, there was no time. There was no space. There was nothing. In all honesty we cannot even fathom nothingness because we probably think of the darkness and the vaccuum of outer space. But an empty vacuum is actually not nothing; it is still, at least, an empty something. Oh what a conundrum!
Christians and other theists have traditionally put forward different versions of something known as the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. These arguments rest upon the absurdity of the claim that something comes from nothing. Let me reproduce two versions:
The Kalam Cosmological Argument -
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument -
1. Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
5. Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God.
The difference between these two different explanations is that of cause and reason. What caused all this? Why all this? Not necessarily identical questions.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument digs into our mechanical understanding of things. The cause. Number 1 in the argument seems to make intuitive sense, and there are no known counterexamples in our verifiable experience. We do not see things popping into existence willy-nilly. We see the existence of humans, and both evolutionists and creationists alike feel the need to give a cause. Their very names are grounded in this reality. They both realize that things don't just pop into existence. If they did, it would be nice for a money tree to grow suddenly and unaccountably in my back yard. Sadly, this will not occur.
The second premise in the Kalam argument takes as its evidence both philosophy and science. The philosophical arguments - which I will for brevity's sake skip for now - conclude that an actually infinite number of things cannot exist, even though the idea of the infinite can. This premise in the Kalam argument does not rest solely on philosophy, but also on science. The science - through study of things like background radiation - pushes us to see that there was a beginning to things.
If we accept the first and second premises, logic pushes us to the third premise: the universe has a cause.
This is a not a conclusion that many modern scientists really like. This is not a conclusion that many modern people really like. Let's think out some of the implications of this conclusion...
If the universe has a cause for its existence, that cause must be something other than or outside of the universe itself. The universe can do no causing until it actually exists. It doesn't exist before it exists. It is absurd to think that something can bring itself into existence. This would be the equivalent of saying that the blue book in our example brought or caused or willed itself into existence. Furthermore, if there is a singular beginning to time and space, the cause of the universe must be something outside of time and space as we know and experience it. And it must be powerful enough to cause the universe as we see it. So we have gotten to a powerful, non-physical cause.
Consider how the Leibnizian argument supplements this. Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. We can certainly imagine the universe being different than it is. It does not seem that the universe must necessarily exist. It might not have. So its explanation is not in a necessity of its own nature. In that case, its explanation must be in an external cause. Here we are pressed with the ever-present, ever-powerful question of the child: Why?
I think that the Leibnizian argument supplements the Kalam argument by pushing us beyond a mere Cause to a Mind. Before the beginning, there was nothing. And in the nothingness, there was the Cause. But why did it choose the moment it did to bring about the explosion we call the Big Bang? Why not before, why not after, why not somewhere else? (I recognize even the inadequacy of these questions to grasp the full nature of what was going on.) There was an act of the will. The thing that did the Causing was not something like a law of gravity or a number or something like that. It was more like an agent, a very powerful non-physical Mind, deciding to act.
How do atheists escape these uncomfortable conclusions? There are some different options. You decide for yourself how respectable they seem:
1. Something literally came from nothing, uncaused and for no reason. (The miracle of all miracles.)
2. The universe has always existed. This used to be the popular scientific view. An eternal universe. As cosmology began pointing to the falsity of this fact, we see attempts to keep it in place. For instance, Einstein - to his later regret - fudged numbers on some of his equations in order to have a steady-state universe, one that was not expanding. He did this because he was not pleased with the picture of an expanding universe because he knew that it had to be expanding from something. What he wanted to believe shaped his science in this case.
I think some scientists operate as if, yes, there was an explosion that brought the universe into the state it is currently in. But they do not operate as if it really had a beginning. The Big Bang was just one thing in the history of the universe and it had some state prior to the Big Bang that led up to and caused it. In this case, they conveniently avoid some of the conclusions we have reached, and they avoid the picture that science has recently painted. And they retain belief in an eternal sort of universe. Okay.
3. The third is like the second. A variation. Some scientists put forth theories that make it sound like time can warp around or turn around on itself. They make it seem like there is not a true beginning point. Like time - instead of running in a straight line as we experience it - is actually more like a loop. This way, they avoid the singularity of time and space that the evidence seems to point to.
In this way - and this is what got me thinking on this post in the first place - the universe is like the blue book. It exists as a brute fact, part of a vicious unexplainable loop. There is no explanation internal as to why it would have to exist. There is nothing we have discovered - and there is no reason to suppose that we will discover - an explanation that makes the universe necessary. So why does it exist?
If you avoid a beginning to the universe, you have sidestepped the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but you have done nothing to escape the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument. You may be able to give mechanical how sort of explanation, but you are still pressed with the why question. If the universe exists eternally in a straight line, or whether the universe exists eternally in a loop, there is still the quandary that it didn't have to be and yet is. So why?
4. This is a silly question that I refuse to think about. It isn't a question worth asking. I guess that is one way of avoiding things.
Now what do the Cosmological Arguments do for me personally? They incline my ears to listen. There are good reasons, it appears, to think that there is a Cause and Reason to the universe that is outside the universe. Perhaps... this Cause or Reason might want to communicate with us or give us more than bare existence. Perhaps this Thing that made all this wouldn't be done with all this.
Wait, you may say. Don't you run into the same problems with an eternal God that you do with an eternal universe?
Well, as I see it, you either have an eternal God or an eternal universe. Because if everything is finite, then why isn't the universe already done and gone? Because if everything is finite in time, then there was a time when nothing existed, and then stuff existed, which doesn't make sense.
I would put God forth as the uncaused Cause, as a being who is not contingent by nature, but necessary by nature. If there is anything eternal, it makes more sense to me to believe in an eternal God than in an eternal universe, especially considering the evidence against an eternal universe. I do believe in universal truths that would be true in any universe, such as the rules of mathematics, but if these are universally and eternally true, where are they grounded? Why are they there? Is there some eternal necessity in their nature? I think there must be an eternal Being that exists by a necessity of its own nature, that is the ground of other necessary and contingent things.
How does God reveal himself in the Bible? As self-sufficient, eternal, Creator, the ground of absolute morality and truth. He is the ground of being. He names himself, "I AM." God is the stopper of the infinite regress. He confronts us with his existence. He is who he is. From eternity to eternity. The God of Scriptures is consistent with, yet far richer, than the picture we get using science and reasoning. What then will we do with him?
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