1) God [at least probably] exists.

2) God is good.

3) You can’t know anything about God.

I realize that 2) and 3) seem to contradict eachother, but I’ve heard several people say one and then the other. Generally what the person means is something like: “You could know something general about God (like God is good, or God is love) but nothing specific.” ie, you might know some very general things about God but you can’t really KNOW God in the detail or personal way that the Bible suggests.

We could explore the rationale behind the idea that God is unknowable (which, IMHO, ends up being faulty upon closer examination) but I wanted to try a different tack today. I imagined this conversation, which was inspired by starting to read John Piper’s Desiring God (available for free online as an ebook):

Me: So, you think God probably exists and is good?

Agnostic: Yeah.

Me: But it’s also your belief that we can’t really know God in any substantial way?

Agnostic: That’s right.

Me: I think that belief is faulty and based on false presuppositions, but would you say that a God who is good would want to give us what is good?

Agnostic: That seems to make sense.

Me: And would you agree that if God is good, then God by definition would not be merely kinda good, but God would be maximally or perfectly good?

Agnostic: Yes.

Me: Would you say it would be good for God to withhold from us what would be most good for us?

Agnostic: No, I wouldn’t think so.

Me: So then, for God to be good, he would have to give us what is most good for us. What would you say would be most good for us?

Agnostic: I’m not sure.

Me: Well, if God is maximally or perfectly good, wouldn’t what is most good for us to be God Himself? If he is maximally or perfectly good, He would want to share Himself with us.

Agnostic: I’m hesitant to say yes, but it’s hard to imagine what would be more good.

Me: So then: For God to be maximally or perfectly good, He must necessarily share Himself with us. For if God did not do so, He could not be maximally or perfectly good, and wouldn’t be God at all! Therefore, He must share of Himself with us, and we have the opportunity and ability to know Him.

Now, someone might then wonder: If God desires to give us what is maximally or perfectly good, whence comes evil? That takes us into the whole other issue of theodicy (study of the problem of evil) but keep in mind that asking “What about evil?” doesn’t invalidate the argument above, it merely raises an unanswered question regarding its ramifications.

An attempt to argue that naturalistic systems of morality are innately inferior to theistic systems:

Any naturalistic morality system is ultimately unjust, and therefore immoral. Here’s why: Human beings rightly crave justice, and any system of morality that is unjust would be by definition immoral. But if there is no afterlife (and therefore no final accountability for a person’s actions), then life itself is ultimately unfair since good deeds will often go unrewarded and bad behavior will often go unpunished. Therefore, only a moral system that includes an afterlife (and by implication, God) where justice regarding a person’s actions can be appropriately meted out can be just. Any moral system that does not is immoral and therefore deficient.

If God can do literally anything and everything, this includes things that are contradictory. Ex, he can make a square circle, or can create something the smells purple. If this is so, there is no problem with God’s goodness and the existence of evil in the world, because since God can do anything, such seeming contradictions should not faze us.

On the other hand, if God cannot do literally anything and everything (as is suggested in the Bible, ex God cannot lie), then this means that there are certain things that God cannot do. Thus, it is at least possible that the existence of free-willed creations (which could freely choose evil) and God’s omnibenevolence (perfect goodness) and omnipotence (all-powerfulness) are not incompatible, since it may not be possible for God to have the former (free will) without the latter (evil) to some degree.

This is part of the argument given in Alvin Plantinga’s landmark (but difficult since it’s written for philosophers) book God, Freedom and Evil … at least, as I understand it. (Short essay based on the book is available here.) He goes into considerably more detail in that book and no doubt with much more precise terminology and philosophical acumen than I have here. Not sure why it suddenly came to mind today, but thought I’d type it out. It makes sense in my own head …

Click the “more” link to view (the embedded video unfortunately auto-plays so I had to add the extra step to avoid it playing every time people came to the site).

I just started reading through John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress (I read part of it for one of my classes, but have never read through it in its entirety) so there may be most posts of this nature in the coming days/weeks.

Skeptic: There is no right interpretation. In fact there have been lots of interpretations over the many years since the Bible was written. Who are you to say you know what the Bible means? We can’t know what it really means.

Christian: So let me see if I understand you correctly. You’re saying that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that there is no salvation without Him.

Skeptic: What? No, that’s exactly what I’m not saying! I’m saying you can’t conclude that, there are many valid interpretations of the texts.

Christian: So you’re saying that there is only one correct interpretation and we should try to find it.

Skeptic: No, no, why are you twisting what I’m saying? You know I’m not saying that.

Christian: Are you saying I am interpreting your words incorrectly?

Skeptic: Yes, you are!

Christian: So, it seems to me that a person could be interpreted wrongly. If that’s the case, then some interpretations about what the biblical authors wrote could similarly be wrong, couldn’t they?

There are no doubt passages of the Bible that are difficult to understand. Perhaps, for some, we will never be sure of the correct interpretation. But most are not so difficult, and even some of the difficult ones are only so because we choose to make them so. As with most things in life, the interpretation with the best reasons to back it up “wins”; we make educated inferences to the best explanation. There ARE correct interpretations of the texts. That doesn’t mean I claim to be 100% right about all of mine, but since I believe there are right answers, and I care about finding them, I will be willing to change my mind if I am convinced otherwise.

I guess it depends whether religion is like insulin or ice cream. For example, I prefer chocolate ice cream, while you might prefer vanilla, or butter pecan, or strawberry, or … great, now I’m hungry. But regardless of what your favorite flavor is, there’s nothing wrong with choosing one instead of another; it’s a personal preference. If someone told me they liked mint flavor best, I wouldn’t respond by saying “What the heck’s wrong with you?” or “How dare you choose mint instead of chocolate, you big jerk!”

The point is this:
That’s the beauty of ice cream – you can choose what you prefer. When it comes to medicine, however, it doesn’t make sense to choose what you prefer. Rather, it’s essential to choose what heals. It would be silly to choose NyQuil over penicillin simply because it tastes better. (Greg Koukl)

When choosing ice cream, you choose what you like. But when you choose medicine, you choose what heals you. Religion isn’t like ice cream, where you should choose whatever “tastes best”. You need to choose what’s true. The truth is often tough, but that doesn’t mean we should just ignore it and choose what we like.

Jesus didn’t claim Christianity is ‘true like ice cream’. He didn’t say “Come, follow me, it’ll be fun!”. He in fact claimed something very specific, contradicting every single religious (or non-religious) person who lived before him. He claimed that it’s impossible to “earn” our way into heaven, and in fact need to trust in God (who Jesus himself claimed to be in human form) instead of trusting our own failing efforts.

But isn’t that pure arrogance? Isn’t that intolerant? Doesn’t it sound presumptuous for Christians to claim they have “the truth” and all other religions are wrong? Well, only if truth is like ice cream. If someone is dying and needs medicine, you need to give them what will heal them, not what they like best. In the same way, Jesus gives us what we need, and ultimately what is best for us.

There are many different paths, but they don’t all eventually lead to the top of the same mountain. Some veer off to the left and the right; others climb entirely different mountains! And if God is real, truth about God is not like ice cream; it’s like medicine, and only what is true can heal.

A response that I’ve seen is that atheism is not a worldview because it is not a belief, rather it is merely a “default position”. The rationale given sometimes compares belief in God to unicorns or some other such mythical animal, in the sense that unbelief in such things (or anything, really) is the default until convinced (or proven) otherwise.

While I can certainly see the reasonableness of this line of thinking and its general applicability, I wonder if it applies equally well to the question of God. There’s at least two reasons to think in this specific case things might be different. First, the vast majority of people throughout history have believed God (or gods) exist(s), a phenomenon which remains the case today. Should a belief be regarded as a default position when the majority believe the opposite?

And secondly, related to the above, if Richard Dawkins and those who agree with him are correct that human beings have evolved a natural proclivity towards belief in God(s) as some sort of survival/social assistance mechanism, should not belief in God be considered the default position, since we are supposedly “hard-wired” for such belief? Shouldn’t such naturally impelled belief be considered the default? Although I would agree with Dawkins that human beings seem to have an innate proclivity towards belief in God, I would suggest that there is different reason why so many people seem to have an innate awareness of God.

Christian:  The cosmological argument is strong evidence that God exists. If the universe was made, it needs a maker; if it was created, it needs a creator. That creator is God.

Skeptic:  Ah, but this merely raises the question “Who made God?” which Richard Dawkins himself asks in The God Delusion.^* It just pushes the question back one step further.

Christian:  This seems to me to be a category error; it confuses the uncreated creator with His created creation. God doesn’t need a maker because God was never made; He was and is eternally existing.

Skeptic:  That’s special pleading at best, hypocritical at worst. Why is it okay for God to be “eternal, uncreated” but not the universe?

Christian:  Because we have good reasons, both philosophical and scientific, that the universe is not eternal, whereas no such reasons exist to believe that God is so. God is not subject to the same limitations of the material world He created. The cosmological argument proposes not that everything requires a cause, but whatever begins to exist requires a cause; if God did not begin to exist (since there is no reason to believe He did, unlike the universe) He requires no cause.

Skeptic:  Even if we agree that the universe is not eternal, why must its cause be God? Why not some other explanation?

Christian:  Whatever created both time and space must transcend both time and space. Also, there are numerous other attributes which can be discerned about whatever created the universe that imply a personal entity (that is, it possesses volition among other things). So the creator of the universe is an entity which is beyond time and space yet still possesses certain attributes and is personal. This sounds to me a lot like God.

* In The God Delusion Dawkins is attempting to apply the question as a defeater to the design argument (p.109), not the cosmological argument (which Dawkins shockingly dismisses in less than a page). I’ve personally heard it applied more often to the cosmological argument, at least in the realm of Internet banter.

The question “If God made everything, who made God?” is like asking “Who made circles square?” It assumes a self-contradiction: that an uncreated Creator is a created creature. It extends the law about changing things -that every change needs a cause- beyond its limits, to the unchanging Source of change. God does not need a cause, or a maker, because he is not made or changed. He changes other things, but is not himself changed by anything. There is nothing that comes to be in him, nothing that needs a cause for its coming-into-being. (Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 105)

So essentially, Kreeft suggests that the question commits a category error; it overextends the general law that “things that exist require a maker” from the physical, created world, to the non-physical uncreated God.

A further question that may arise: “If God can be ‘uncreated & unchanging’, why not the universe too?” The answer would be that we have good reasons to believe that the universe is not eternal, as per the Cosmological Argument (including at least scientific and philosophical reasons), while no such restrictions would apply to God.