The materialist's dilemma

                                                        THE MATERIALIST'S DILEMMA


The problem with the eternal universe
The splendor of the night sky invites speculation about the origin of the universe. There have generally been two different views on the subject.  The first can be called the materialist view, which says that we don't know how the universe came to be - most likely it was always here.  The second could be called the religious view, which says that it was brought into existence by a higher power.  Until recently, both views were equally probable, and neither provable.  But something came along which upset the balance in favor of the religious view.  The new Hubble telescope allowed astronomers to see into distant galaxies, almost out to the beginning of time.  New radio telescope long baseline technology allowed them to measure the exact distance to beacon stars in those early galaxies.  They measured both the distance and the speed of travel and they discovered that the universe is expanding outward in all directions.  Running the calculations backward, they theorize that the universe began from a point source consisting of tightly curved space, less than the size of an electron, at infinite or near infinite temperature.  For some reason, 13.8 billion years ago, this curved space instantly unwound, like a spring, releasing neutrinos, axions, accelerons, and other exotic cosmic particles.  As the expansion continued, photons, electrons, protons, neutrons and hydrogen atoms were formed from these basic particles.  Gravity eventually compressed hydrogen to form stars.  Some stars were gigantic and massive enough to form heavy metals in their interiors.  When these exploded, the heavy metals were scattered throughout the universe, to eventually become picked up by planets.  Earth, in particular, has a disproportunate share of heavy metals and is the densest planet in the solar system.

In astrophysicist Hugh Ross' book "why the universe is the way it is" he explains that all mass, energy, space and time are now on the cosmic surface of the universe. (1)   There is nothing left in the center, not even space or time.  Scientists say this universe will not collapse on itself again, it will continue it's expansion.  Soon, the earliest galaxies, furthest away from us, will recede from us faster than the speed of light and we will no longer be able to see them visually or by means of radio telescopes.

Mathematics cannot extrapolate backward any earlier than the big bang because there was no earlier.  Time itself began with the big bang; therefore the situation beforehand is undefined.  The best explanation for this event is the one given in Genesis.  Sir Isaac Newton believed that no sciences were better tested than the bible, but his successor Steven Hawking doesn't agree.  In his popular book, "a brief history of time", Hawking postulated an oscillating universe which expands, then contracts until there is another big bang, and so on. (2)   He reasoned that this had been happening forever - the universe creating itself over and over.   Thus there is no beginning to anything and no need for creation or a Creator.  However, since he wrote that book, astronomers have discovered that the universe is "flat" and not in any such cycle.  It is going to die a heat death, expanding outwardly and getting thinner and thinner until all matter evaporates.

In recent years the evidence for the big bang theory has been accumulating rapidly, and no counter evidence has shown up.  Thus the materialist's idea that the universe has always been here has been shattered.  Even without the big bang theory, logic would have told us that there is a logical problem with the view that the universe has always existed.  The second law of thermodynamics contradicts this idea.  Since everything eventually wears out, if the universe were always here, then it would already have worn itself out infinitely long ago.  

Materialism is seriously threatened by this discovery.  It can't say the universe always existed, and it can't logically claim that the universe created itself out of nothing since this would violate the laws of causality.  The proof of the creation is displayed in the night sky to any who wish to look.  In the poetic language of the book of psalms we have this quotation:

"The heavens proclaim the glory of God.  The skies display his craftsmanship.  Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known.  They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard.  Yet their message has gone throughout the earth and their words to all the world" psalm 19:

The problem of uniqueness
By an odd coincidence, just at the time we humans came on the scene and developed the science to do so, it was also exactly the right time to view the earliest galaxies out to the beginning of time and thereby directly measure the age of the universe.  Humans couldn't have been here any earlier because the universe wasn't quite ready for us, and if it were a little later, we would have missed the view window.  It's also fortunate that we live in a dark, protected part of the Milky Way making it possible for us to see long distances.  

Scientists are puzzled about something else.  They say that the universe seems to have "known we were coming".  They say this because the entire universe has to be exactly the way it is, exactly the age it is, with exactly the correct mass in the right places, to allow a very brief period of time for human life to develop on a single protected planet.   The universe is extremely hostile to any form of life - except it seems, in this one galaxy, in this one small place, at this particular time.   Here are some things that would have prevented life on earth:

• If the earth had more or less water (earth has the exact right amount of land mass and water for life)
• If the water did not exist in three states, liquid, gas and solid
• If the earth's size was smaller or larger
• If it's mass were smaller or larger
• If it had more carbon (earth has very little in comparison to other planets)
• If it didn't have a large moon to pull the continents out of the water
• If it didn't have a circular orbit at the right distance from the sun to keep the temperature within safe limits (circular orbits are very rare)
• If the axis weren't tilted just a little to allow seasonal changes over the entire planet
• If it didn't have a molten core generating a magnetic field to intercept the sun's ionic bombardment
• If it didn't have oxygen to shield against the sun's ultra violet rays
• If it had not been pummeled by the late heavy bombardment four billion years ago to get rid of the excess water and to drive excess sulfur deep into the earth's core.
• If the other planets didn't also have circular orbits sweeping through space at exactly the correct distances from the sun
• If the outermost planets were not massive enough to intercept and block matter from hitting the earth
• If the sun was bigger or smaller, younger or older, hotter or cooler
• If it didn't have the correct mix of hydrogen, helium and other elements
• If the solar system was not in the most protected part of the milky way galaxy with minimum cosmic radiation
• If the milky way did not have exact spiral arms indicating the absence of giant stars or a collision with another galaxy
• If the gravitational constant was not tuned exactly to allow both expansion and star formation
• If plank's constant and other physical constants were not exactly the value they are  
• In particular, the universe is so sensitive to the gravitational constant that if there were one dime's worth of mass missing at the start, the universe could not have formed any stars.  

At last count, there are over 900 variables that need to be fine tuned to make any life possible.  The odds against this are trillions of trillions times greater than the total number of atoms in the universe.

Scientists have given this oddity the name "the anthropic principal".  This is causing most astronomers to move toward the idea of a creator, and away from strict materialism.  Steven Hawking, who is a theoretical physicist, still insists that there is a physical and mathematical explanation for everything and that a creator is not required.  He has come up with two more theories:

(1) The first is the idea that there may be an infinite number of universes, each one with an infinite number of different cosmological constants; an infinity of infinities so to speak.  Thus this combination would occur an infinite number of times and no longer be unique.  This idea may solve the problem of uniqueness and the anthropic principle, but it still requires a creator for all these universes.  In fact it requires continuous creation since each universe must wear out.    

(2) His second idea is that mathematics and physics created the universe, therefore no need for a creator.  Isaac Newton also believed in the mathematical nature of the universe but came to the opposite conclusion; that it proved the existence of an intelligent creator.   Hawkins’s second theory doesn't address the anthropic principal, which shows that the universe, against all possible odds, has been finely tuned in such a way as to make life possible.   This process can not have happened accidentally; it must have been intentionally done for a purpose.  Purpose and intention are not qualities found in mathematics and physics; they are found only in living, sentient beings.

The problem of life, nature, and the second law
Having a universe that had no way of creating itself and which, against impossible odds, brought about a unique life supporting planet is not the only problem.  There is a huge problem with the origin of life.  Life is a higher order of creation which succeeds and builds upon previously created matter.  It is basically matter following physical laws, but it is very highly organized matter.  The problem is that there just are no forces in the material world that can organize anything, much less living organisms of amazing complexity.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Natural forces always hammer, pummel, disrupt, and randomize things - they create disorder, not order.  This observation has been codified into a law called the second law of thermodynamics.

The extent of disorder or randomness in a system may be expressed by a property known as entropy.  The second law is an unbreakable law that says that entropy always increases; that is disorder and randomness always increase.  It is sometimes called "heat death".  Left to itself, the cup of coffee always cools down.  If you mix two containers of hot and cold water you have immediately randomized the hot and cold molecules and have made the energy unavailable.  You can't unmix the molecules again into two containers, one hot and one cold.

The second law, in action, gives time its direction.  If a movie shows a broken glass assembling itself, we know the movie is being played backwards.  If we compare two photos of ourselves separated by thirty years, it is obvious which photograph is later.  Time is measured by decay - the cuckoo clock runs down, the cesium atoms of an atomic clock decay.  Everything runs down and wears out; stars burn out; living organisms decay and die.  If a cell is punctured and its contents leaked out into a test tube, the ingredients will never combine into a living cell again.  Humpty Dumpty never re-assembles himself.  The deck of cards when shuffled doesn't resort itself.  Nature randomizes everything down to the lowest level of organization and energy level.

Because natural forces cause disorder, they always end up destroying organisms.  As C.S. Lewis says, nature is not about creating living organisms; it’s about killing them as quickly as possible. (3)   "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shall return" is an accurate statement of the second law.  Forces of nature, such as lightning, gravity, heat, cosmic radiation, and so forth, can't assemble cells and life forms from base matter, but they can disrupt cells already assembled.

In fact, there isn't any constructive force or self organizing principle in nature, nor can there ever be.  Such an organizing principle would contradict the second law.  If the second law were not universally valid, we would live in a universe of fantastic self created structures, constantly and randomly popping up everywhere.  No life form could ever survive such a chaotic environment because there would be no prediction possible (4).  The second law acts as a damping factor which prevents creative chaos, while allowing for an orderly universe which slowly wears itself out.  All life forms bow to the second law, but humans additionally reason it.  If a magic wand is waved over a cup of water and it starts to boil we don't think the second law has been suspended; we immediately look for slight of hand.

Thus, in addition to a finely tuned universe and the anthropic principle, materialists have the problem of "where did all these life forms come from?"  They shouldn't be here.  By definition nature couldn't have generated them if we define nature as the entire set of physical forces which can act on matter.  With the exception of crystal formation, what we see when force meets matter is erosion.  The reason that we don't immediately see life as naturally impossible is due to our peculiar perspective.  We observe life all around us and we ourselves are alive.  We are surrounded and immersed in it; our bodies are made of billions of living cells, populated by billions of bacteria, and we have a brain which can reason, and by inference, discover truth.  We have become so used to the marvels of life that we hold them to be perfectly natural and we seek natural reasons to explain it.

We can put this another way.  Life comprehends and uses nature to sustain itself and nature must bend to life's purpose.  However the reverse is not true; nature cannot comprehend, construct or enhance life in any way- it can only weary it.   We simply don't belong here, no life does, not even bacteria.  Or rather we do belong here, but nature didn't put us here.  Humans and nature are siblings which came from the same source at the same time (cosmic time).  Nature is not our mother; she is our brainless and destructive older sister.


The problem with DNA
In spite of the second law, life somehow appeared here, and then advanced from simple to more complex life forms.  We see this in the fossil record.  The method whereby life begets further life of the same kind is now known; it's a complex process of codification called the DNA encoding.  Because of this accurate encoding, once started, organisms can reproduce for a long time until some natural force makes them extinct.  Scientists can even tinker with DNA codes and generate (usually degraded) variants in a species.  But how did nature create or advance the DNA code?  What caused new, more advanced organisms to come about?  If it was caused by an alteration in the DNA code of a simpler, earlier organism, then how could nature change the DNA code in a "positive" direction, toward greater organization and complexity?  Natural forces under the second law would always disrupt the code, causing it to randomize toward dysfunction and death.  There is no path that natural forces could take to create or advance the code.  And yet, this is exactly what we see, codes which were created not once but many millions of times.  The DNA of the simplest organism contains codes consisting of millions of four letter words which make up the code.  Having a DNA code accidentally assemble or "improve" itself is about as likely that having a million different working models of Swiss watches assemble themselves from metal shavings tossed into a large container.

The principal of "natural selection" or survival of the fittest put forward by Darwin only explains how nature keeps a species robust by killing off its weakest members (actually nature is trying to kill them all, but the weakest are the first to succumb).  But the term cannot be used creatively to explain the origin of a new species.  How could randomizing natural forces (snow, lightning, drought, flood, heat, wind, etc.) which kill off weak members of a species, precisely modify DNA to create a new species?  Of course they can't and won't do that.  Given its destructiveness, the only thing we can expect from nature is "natural extinction".

How did the DNA coding scheme come about in the first place?  The only codes we know are created by intelligence.  They contain information.  Information is defined as something true, new and understandable that has been communicated.  The words on this page are in code, hopefully communicating information.  They are not random arrangements of letters.  There is no case we know of in which information did not originate from an intelligent being.  The closest we can come is a computer program that creates an infinite (or very long) sequence of patterns.   But this is a totally artificial process; there are no natural forces that do this.  

Since nature couldn't have done it, that is the forces of nature acting on matter could never have assembled life forms, created DNA, or advanced the code, we are left with only one possibility.   Something "outside" of nature, i.e., not itself subject to natural forces, created the diversity of life forms we see today and in the fossil record of the past.  Other explanations have now and then been attempted, but they have floundered on the basis of no science and no evidence.

The problem of the fossil record
Archaeologists and scientists who are interested in the beginnings of life and its development look to the fossil record to determine what is really going on.   They see that the earliest life forms were simple organisms but that at one point an explosion of life forms came about.   In the Cambrian explosion we see that all the species we have today, except for man, suddenly appeared.  In Genesis it is said that after God separated the waters, he created the fishes, birds and animals.  Lastly he created humans, male and female and put them in charge of every animal.  Materialists have tried to use the fossil record to prove that it did not happen this way; that life advanced naturally without any supernatural intervention.  The problem they have is that the fossil record is not cooperating.  It is not showing the proof that they want to see.  It keeps showing the opposite thing, something called "intelligent design".   Here are some disappointments they have had:

(1) Soup - There used to be a theory of an ocean full of primordial soup.  Lightning striking nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would combine them into amino acids which would fall into the ocean, perhaps into warm and protected areas which prevented the compounds from being dissolved and dispersed by wind, waves and salt water.  Repeated lightning strikes over eons gradually built up a dense soup.  Once there was such a soup, then random motion would combine the amino acids into proteins, then these proteins would randomly combine to form the first elementary life forms, including the DNA encoding for each cell.  Once these were formed, further bursts of energy, perhaps from cosmic rays, would enhance, rather than mutilate, the DNA encoding, changing enough of the code, simultaneously and in an organized manner, to suddenly bring about a new and more advanced species.  

Since this theory repeatedly violates the second law and all the laws of probability, micro biologists don't believe life came about in this way.   No fossil record of a primordial soup was ever found, nor were any scientists able to confirm soup formation in realistic laboratory simulations.  (An attempt was made using electricity and methane gas.  Some complex proteins were actually formed, but scientists now know that the earth's atmosphere had no methane, only carbon dioxide and nitrogen.  The methane experiment turned out to be a laboratory stunt which was later debunked).   In spite of the lack of support from scientists, college textbooks on biology insist that life came from "soup".

(2) Incremental changes - Prior to the soup theory there was the theory of slow evolution which created new species one small step at a time by a process of natural selection.   This theory was tentatively put forward by Charles Darwin, with the caution that the theory would not be valid if it required more than one change at a time.  Darwin was observing mammals, birds, lizards and insects and theorized that they had "adapted" to their environment.  He thought he saw a pattern in similar species which might be explained by gradual changes and further adaptation.   That's as far as he could take his theory.

Slow evolution is promoted heavily and it is the only theory taught in public schools.   The theory says that birds evolved from flying lizards, flying lizards from walking lizards, walking lizards from fish, and so on down the line to the earliest amoeba.   If one species looks similar to another, it is said to have evolved from the other, or to have a common ancestor in the tree of life.   The direction of evolution is based on an evaluation of which is the more advanced of the two.  Birds are considered more advanced than lizards for some reason, and so they are assigned a place higher on Darwin's tree of life.  The death blow to slow evolution was the discovery of the Cambrian explosion in which all the species we have today suddenly appeared.   There is less than one million years from the late heavy bombardment to the Cambrian explosion.  This is by far not enough time for evolution to do a job which scientists guess would take, not millions of years, but many billions of years.

It's hard to see how gradual change could happen as there seems to be no method of implementation.  For a lizard to develop wings it would take generations of small changes, one change at a time; maybe something like this:

• A significant portion of one generation develops bumps in its back, for some reason.   
• In succeeding generations, the bumps gradually break out through the skin into tiny wings, slowly getting larger until they can support the weight of the lizard.
• Succeeding generations would show the front legs getting gradually shorter a little at a time until they disappeared all together.   The lizard would begin standing on its hind legs.
• Succeeding generations would show the bones of the creature becoming more porous to lighten him up in preparation for flight.   
• Further generations show the nose of the creature gradually turning into a beak.  
• As the front legs shortened, the rear feet of the lizard begin to hook into claws so that it can eventually perch on a tree limb.   

There are several problems with this:

(1) The first problem we see is that these in-between stages are terrible handicaps and that nature would quickly dispatch such monsters.

(2) The second problem is that such changes, if nature would allow them, would have to simultaneously happen to millions of individuals so that there would be a chance that some of these variants would survive and be able to find each other for mating.  This indicates a highly coordinated effort which we know from the second law can't possibly happen in nature.

(3) The third problem is that not a single in-between life form has ever been found in the fossil record.   Species appear suddenly, but none are partially complete; they are all robust, efficient, and self reproducing until they suddenly vanish.  

Astonishingly, materialists don't seem to be bothered at all by this lack of evidence; they simply assert that the fossil record is incomplete.  The missing species must be there; they just haven't been found yet.  This is an amazing, backward reasoning statement for a scientist to make.  If a theory becomes outdated based on new evidence, or if no evidence is found for an old theory, the true scientist is happy to look for another explanation.

There is nothing "wrong" with the fossil record; it was neither faked nor concealed.  It shows actual historical events.  If there were in-between species, there would be many of them situated in the same strata in which the completed species were found.  In fact, because the changes have to be very small, there would have to be very many of them; far more than normal species.  In the example above, there would be not only walking and flying lizards; there would be lizards with tiny wings, with slightly larger wings, with shortened front legs, with very short front legs, with semi-porous bones, with partial beaks, and so on.  The in-between species would fairly choke the fossil record with their numbers.  And yet, none are found, not one.

How did it happen?
Actually there is a simple answer to the problem, but the materialist will not like it.  The answer is this:  if a species is overcome by a change in the environment and is facing extinction, it opens a hole in the ecological system making room for a possible substitute species.  A creative intelligence could use that opportunity to design a new species for the slot better adapted for the changed conditions.  The same is true if there is an empty biological slot that had never before been filled.   A new species could be designed that would fit neatly into the existing system; adding beneficial features, and harmonizing with everything else already in place.  Perhaps that's why birds came about - because they fit in, and because they added beauty and song to the world.  This indicates that the designer, whoever or whatever it is, has a good eye for art as well as utility.

Mutation
Since we don't see any in-between species, new species must have come suddenly, as a mutation.  A female member suddenly gave birth to an offspring with its DNA different enough to constitute a complete new species.  For animals, it would have to happen at least twice to produce a male and a female.  If the mutation can happen twice, then it could happen a thousand or a million times.  And this is what we see in the fossil record, a sudden appearance of a new species, not in a confined space, but over a large geographical area.

As we have seen, nature could not have engineered such intricate changes.  There is no question of the second law being violated since no natural force can operate as if it were intelligent.   Instead we must look for deliberate "slight of hand".  Someone or something came in nature's back door and added something to the conception process.  This change shifted the DNA code in a desired direction to create a viable mutation.   When it did happen, it must have been well thought out, taking into account the current DNA structure and the totality of the ecolological subsystems surrounding the birth.  In other words, this intelligence must be highly informed as well as extremely deft.  

The miraculous invasion of nature by something outside could be short lived; physics, chemistry and natural selection could be trusted to fill in the blanks afterward.  Nature is momentarily invaded and must accommodate herself, as she always does, to life.   In this case the invasion we are talking about is also from life, except that it is life coming from outside the system.  Nature neither knows nor cares where this particular invasion originated; she only knows that she must bend to life's new demand.

The mutant births would only have to happen once in each female so affected; thereafter, the births could be normal.  After all the goal is to create a new species, not to completely replace the old one.  For lizards, the females would simply lay the eggs containing the DNA for the altered species.  For mammals, the mothers would take good care of the mutants until they were weaned.  Thereafter, the mutants would reproduce after their own kind and quickly fill the ecological slot for which they were designed.  

The DNA code and its purpose is poetically described in Genesis

"So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird - each producing offspring of the same kind.  And God saw that it was good.  Then God blessed them, saying 'Be fruitful and multiply.  Let the fish fill the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth'.

Transpermia
This term means that life was transported to earth from somewhere else.  Since naturalistic biologists agree that life could not have originated on this planet, they push it outward to other planets or to interstellar space.  The only advantage that other planets have is that we can't see their fossile records and so we are free to speculate about life originating there.  Intersteller space is more of a problem, since astronomers now know from spectral analysis that there is no ammonia in interstellar space from which to form even the most primitive protons.  In desparation, the materialists are now claiming that life must have come from an advanced civilization somewhere out in the stars.   Since this theory violates relativity, they also have to claim that faster than these alians have faster than light space ships.  At this point, they have moved entirely away from science and no one takes them seriously.

Fourth law of thermodynamics
American mechanical engineer Adrian Bejan has been theorizing about an undiscovered law of nature that would somehow over ride the second law.  He says: “This body of empirical evidence forms the basis for a new law of nature that can be summarized as the constructal law.  This ‘fourth law’ brings life and time explicitly into thermodynamics and creates a bridge between physics and biology.”  Again, this is a move away from empirical science to try to explain the origen of life.

A scientific theory or a state religion?
Slow evolution and intelligent design both require a suspension of the second law and supernatural interventions; we are simply going to have to accept that.  So which theory has evidence to back it up?  Which makes more sense?   Intelligent design does not need to assume a faulty fossil record, it does not need to assume partially formed and handicapped in-between species, and it does not require forces of nature to have purpose and intention.  All these assumptions have extremely low probability or are absolutely impossible.  Since intelligent design requires only one assumption, i.e., the existence of intelligence from outside the system, then based on an Occam's razor evaluation, intelligent design wins.  

If intelligent design has more evidence on its side, why is it losing the credibility battle?   First of all, it is not losing the credibility battle among micro biologists.  Each year an origin of life conference is held which is attended by credentialed scientists.  And each year they become more and more dismayed by the mounting evidence against natural forces producing even the simplest of life forms.  At the last conference attended by Dr. Hugh Ross, he reported that a pall of despair hung over the assemblage.  The leader of the forum admitted that if it continues in this way, they might as well give up and accept intelligent design.  

The opposition is not coming from scientists, but from academics.  There is a credibility battle being waged, but it's not a scientific battle, it's a cultural one.  Fifty years ago C.S. Lewis pointed out that most scientists no longer believed in God, and he wondered how much longer science itself would survive this divorce from reality.  It looks as though he was right; science has been conscripted to serve one side of a very old conflict; not a conflict of opposing scientific theories, but a conflict between church and state.  The state needs to have a non-religious explanation because the state believes itself to be separate from the church and therefore asserts that it cannot allow any religious theories in public schools.  Intelligent design, while not itself a religious theory has religious implications, and this is unacceptable to the state.  Proof of this is that the state has had to make it illegal to teach intelligent design in public schools.   The state is endorsing slow evolution because it must.  Scientists have abandoned integrity and as a practical matter are accepting grants from the state to further the state's agenda.  How to solve this problem?  Remove evolution theory from science classes and put it into the departments of philosophy and comparative religions.

The problem of thinking
All of these theories show there is a lot of thinking going on.  So how did thinking itself come about?  Because of our own perspective, we don't see that our own thinking processes are above nature, or we could call it "supernatural".  We are so used to thinking that it only seems natural.  C.S. Lewis points out that if thinking were the result of nature, atoms circulating in our brains due to random electrical currents or magnetic fields, there is no reason to suppose that there are such things as atoms(5).

Nature is non-rational.  Reasoning, being rational, at least part of the time, is therefore seen to be un-natural.  C.S. Lewis says there is a frontier where the natural leaves off and supernatural begins. (6)  This frontier is at the place where reason meets the whole mass of non-rational events, whether physical or psychological.   At the frontier there is a lot of traffic, but it is all one way.  Reason enables us to alter the course of nature, but not the other way around.  Nature is powerless to produce in us any rational thoughts.  In fact, the opposite is true.  If nature (entropy) gets the upper hand, our reasoning abilities deteriorate; if we get a toothache our reasoning stops altogether.

If we define "super" natural as anything that nature on its own could never produce, we see that all the works of man, and man himself, are supernatural.  Just as there should naturally be no life forms, there should be no libraries of organized information, no mathematics, no art, and no artificial constructs.

We encounter the supernatural everywhere we look.  But it's too close to us and we no longer see it as such.  At one time, as very young children, we stared wide-eyed at the strange people and objects around us.  But then came speech, and with speech came labels and abstracted thinking, and we learned to place things in categories; the smarter we were, the more easily we did this.  Little by little the extraordinary became ordinary and predictable.  By the time we graduated from college we were well on our way to becoming opinionated skeptics.

Monotheism and Christianity
How did the universe get here?  How did a planet suitable for life come about?  How did life come about on a sterile planet?  Once it came about, how did life advance from simple to highly advanced organisms, from the simple attention of animals to the scientific enquiries of man?   The religious view maintains that there is something outside and apart from the universe which created it on purpose and is using it to develop creatures like us.   C.S. Lewis states that this thing resembles a mind more than anything else we know (7).    We call this mind God.

So what kind of God are we looking at?
The monotheistic religions hold that before anything else existed, the mind we call “God” existed.  God made the universe as a thing apart from himself, just as a painter makes a painting.  He is outside the painting and he is senior to it because he crafted the painting; the painting didn't make him.   Since he created every bit of the painting, on purpose, to suit his own tastes and design, it is his to do with as he wishes.  There is no portion of it that is beyond his ken or reach.  

Did God create himself?
If he didn't, who or what created God, and the God before that?   This rhetorical question is sometimes used to challenge God's existence.  Logically one God could not create another without some loss of quality or capability.  That is the nature of a created thing, that it is always less than that which created it.  Therefore we agree with the materialist that an infinite sequence of Gods creating Gods is nonsense because it would end up with a God of zero capability.   So the answer to the question is: "no, God didn't create himself - not even once.  And if he didn't do it, neither could anything else!”

Did God always exist?
This question, while not a challenge, contains a reference to time.   Time is a product of the big bang and it is valid only in this universe.  God would not be governed by time or anything else in this universe, any more than a painting or its contents could govern the painter.  In any case, the answer is "yes, God always existed", but we say this knowing that we don't really know what we are talking about.

What is God's nature?  
The materialist claims that man made God in his own image and that he is an imaginary being.  However, the opposite view makes just as much, if not more sense - that man is made in God's image and that we are the imagined beings.  The difference is that when God imagines a thing, it happens.  You might say that God has a very strong imagination.  In Genesis, God merely speaks the word and creation happens.   The early universe was young and compliant.  In one instant after the big bang, the laws of physics and time were fully determined, vectoring precisely to bring about God's imagined universe 13.8 billion earth years later.  Genesis says that God continued to speak after the initial event, separating the water from the land, filling the sea with fishes, and the land with animals.  He completed his work with human beings, his greatest biological creation.  Now that the physical creation is complete, he perfects his work by guiding his beloved creatures along the path of spiritual development.

What is God's mind like?
If we are in his image, then we know that God is conscious, has intellect and will, and prefers one thing to another.  Since we have them, he would also have the positive emotions, such as love, joy, peace, kindness, mercy, patience, understanding, faithfulness, goodness, loyalty, service, justice, Godly sorrow, forgiveness, and yes, righteous anger.  But of course, he would have these in much larger measure, thus God is the most emotionally capable being in the universe; and he acts with purpose.  When he does something, we can assume that it is a purposeful act, since we, with our minds, understand purposeful thought and action as normal functions of an intelligent mind.

What about God's substance? 
As a spirit is God less solid than the universe?  C.S. Lewis points out that God, being the creator, has a more intense reality than his creations.  He would be more "dense" than anything in the universe he created.  Compared to the solidity of his reality, the universe would be like a soap bubble.   If he but touched it, it would vanish.   Perhaps that is why God has to be very delicate about how he interacts with the world and humans.  In the Christian doctrine it is taught that God desired to defeat Satan, sin and death.  He could have done this directly and finished the job once and for all.  But would the world still be here?  Would his mighty will have overridden ours and diminished us still further?  The doctrine says that he chose instead to incarnate in as natural a way as possible and do the work that needed to be done - as a man.   In his wisdom, he supplied just enough divinity to get the job done, interacting directly with just twelve humans, not as an awesome spirit, but as Jesus the man.  

Does God have time for all of us?
How can he listen to the prayers of millions of people at the same time?  As C.S. Lewis says, the sting in this question is in the word "time".  We have a very peculiar way of living, of experiencing reality; we do it one instant after another, and there isn't much of anything real that we can experience in such a tiny moment.   As soon as we pass the present moment we lose the reality of it as it slips into history, and the moments to come are unavailable to us.   We assume that this is the only way to live because we are created to live in this way.

But God is not hurried along in the time stream of this universe (and nor shall we be for much longer).  If we picture our mortal life as a sequence of events along a time line, God would see the entire line drawn on a page.  It's a large page, and there can be many lines on it, one for each thing that has ever existed.  None of these lines move on his page; they are static and he could view them in detail for as long as he likes.  As C.S. Lewis says, God can listen forever to the final prayer of an airplane pilot in the instant his plane crashes.

Does God control everything in our lives?
If God went to the trouble to create us, he would certainly intend that we develop according to a plan he has in mind.  We have not been given the ability to see forward into time, at least not very far.  And that’s probably a good thing because it trains us in faith, it allows for spontaneity and the joy of discovery, and it allows for mistakes and learning.  But God created time and is senior to it.  He can observe the outcomes of all our actions.  He must watch in sorrow the choices we make which he knows will end in disaster, and he watches with joy the correct choices we make.  Whatever we choose, he has a strict policy of non-interference with our free will.  He wants to help us, but he can only meet us halfway; he has to stop when he reaches our will.  He can only offer; we must choose to accept or reject.  He is simply not interested in pulling our strings like a puppet.  God does not want to control our life, he wants to increase the life in us, and that means his gifts are given to us with no strings attached.  Our life, once given to us, is ours to do with as we wish.

Why does God allow suffering?
It's obvious that he does, but does suffering have any benefit?  According to the scriptures, God first created the angels as pure spirits, and then he created matter.  Then he did something amazing; he made creatures in which spirit and matter were fused together.  Angels can't experience or really understand physical pain but we can because we are right up against matter.   In addition we experience emotional pain and the distress of living in a world ruled by a malicious spirit.  It certainly seems that we are in a school of hard knocks - the same school Jesus went to.  Could the reason for this be that we are to grow in strength and wisdom?  If so, when we graduate we are going to be spiritually strong in a way that the angles can't imagine.  Bible scriptures indicate that we are being trained to occupy a position in heaven higher than the angels and that we are to judge them.  Much of that training happens right here, but there is an endless amount of time afterward to continue to mature in humility, love, beauty, wisdom, strength, appreciation, praise, peace, thanksgiving, and all heavenly blessings.

But there is another dimension to suffering, one that might take away some of the sting.  It is not only we that suffer, but God as well.  He is intimately connected with us and shares and experiences every moment of our lives.  We are never alone in any of our experiences, joyful, sorrowful, or painful.

Why does God allow evil?
Shouldn't God step in and prevent humans and maybe even animals from doing evil?  We don't know if animals do evil things or not, but we do know that humans do evil all the time in varying degrees.  And what is interesting is that this question shows that humans are naturally aware of, and repulsed by evil, and therefore aware of a moral code, a code that is universally used to criticize, judge, and condemn the wrong actions of others.   Of course when we ourselves do wrong, it is always justified in some way, again proving how strongly this moral code seems to press on us.

It also shows that we think that humans have a choice about doing good or evil.  After all, if we knew that someone had no choice about doing evil, but was compelled to do so by circumstances, such as killing a human or an animal in self defense, then we would render a verdict of justifiable homicide.   So the key to doing evil is making an evil choice when a good choice was available.  

And this brings up another observation that we can make about evil.  In almost every case, the evil thing is a perverted good thing.  Sexual mating by two loving individuals is a soul satisfying experience, but rape is always considered evil.  One drink of alcohol can be considered good for digestion, but getting drunk is not a good idea.  Working hard and saving for the future is considered good, but pushing others aside and taking advantage of them to advance oneself is unkind.  Giving is considered good, but being forced to give at gunpoint is a crime.  And so on.  In every case a person doing evil is violating the moral code by twisting something good into something evil.  Therefore we see that good always has to be present for an evil perversion to exist.  And therefore we have no reason to suppose that God ever created anything but good.  He didn't have to.  We do a fine job of creating evil all by ourselves.

There might even be a scientific way of defining evil.  Life is all about creating more life by organizing nature to support life.  Life, in direct opposition to the second law, constantly and consistently creates order out of disorder.  Plants grow, birds procreate, people clean their houses, wash their cars, bathe their children, grow crops, raise animals, cook healthy meals, and so on.  Since we are talking about a code of conduct, we could define human evil as any act which does the opposite, which increases disorder.  This clearly puts war, pollution, drug abuse, abortion, child abuse, stealing, unfaithfulness, oppression, lying, cheating, neglect, addiction, and so on directly into the evil class.   Again, it is easy to spot the evil as being a perverted good.

One last thing.  Accidents do happen for which no one can be blamed.  A tree falls and kills a child.  Are we to consider the tree evil?  Or gravity?  We understand that these things happen and we don't put them into the category of evil.   Maybe a complaint could be made that God should not have allowed the tree to fall on the child.  But we can't see the child's future or the events that follow the death, and so we don't know whether this is a valid complaint.  On the other hand, we do hear of many cases in which a child is spared injury by a miraculous intervention.  

With this understanding, we can now address the problem of God permitting evil.  It is obvious that for God to prevent people from doing evil things, he must step in and alter the situation in some way.  Since the thought comes before the action, he must actually step in early and prevent a person from even thinking about making a wrong choice.  Since perception comes before thought, and since events come before perception, then God would have to step in even earlier and prevent events from occurring which could be perceived as good or bad and result in a person thinking about making a wrong choice.   Taken to its ultimate foolishness, God would have to put every human into a "safe" box in which no conflicts could ever arise.  This would be an evil thing to do to a human since it would prevent growth and maturity.  So we see that God cannot prevent evil without doing evil himself.  The idea is then seen to be self contradictory and therefore nonsense.  And so the answer to the question is that God permits evil because he permits life, and life requires events, perception of events, thoughts about what is perceived and free choice of action based on thought.


Why can't we perceive God?
If he is so real and solid, why can't we or our instruments detect him?  Well, if you were a sentient painting, would you be able to perceive the painter?   Sometimes you might feel his brush as he touched up your face or hands, but could you perceive him directly in his own reality?  His size and form, his distance from the painting, the power of his hands, his purpose for creating the painting - all of these and a thousand other things about him would be unknowable.  But you could know quite a bit about the painting and about yourself; and you could infer how good a painter he is from the quality of these things.   And one other thing - if he wished to communicate directly with you, he could paint scriptures or text messages into the painting that you could read.  Of course you would have to take the trouble to read them and to relate them to the other things you are able to discover about the painting in which you live.   For those who do study these messages, they tell of an astonishing event; they tell us that the Painter entered his own painting for a little while in order to establish a bond with, and to change the way the creatures in the painting could relate to him.  And so the answer to the question is "no, we can't perceive God directly, but we can know that he is the painter of our lives and that he touches us with an unseen and unfelt brush.   If we learn to stand back and allow the painter to refine our image, we can start to see changes in the painting of our lives which we think would not be there otherwise.

What kind of painting is it?
It's a good painting, vibrant, energetic, absolutely challenging and full of drama - exactly designed for human spiritual growth.  The Christian doctrines teach that the painting is nearly done; we were the last things put into it, and the Painter is putting on the finishing touches.  A little more love, a little more joy, some more tranquility, a touch more maturity in the main character, and our painting will be ready for unveiling.   We shall step out of the painting, fully alive at last, exactly as he imagined us to be before time began. We shall be greeted by him, in his own reality, and all of heaven will rejoice.

Humanist materialism
There is a humane kind of materialism which denies God and glorifies humanity.   Webster's dictionary defines humanism as "a doctrine, attitude or way of life centered on human interests or values.  Esp. a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual's dignity and worth and capacity for self realization through reason".   Humanists are quick to point out obvious flaws in our society and to blame them for the suffering in the world.   They say "if poverty was eliminated and all of man's physical needs were met, all would be well".  They profess to a belief that man is good and that evil only comes from greedy people who cause deprivation.   Their solution is, usually, a super state which distributes wealth equally to all.

The bible teaches exactly the opposite.  There once was a time when all of man's desires and spiritual needs were fulfilled, all except one; the desire for autonomy.   The adversary whispered the lie that humans could run on their own steam and be like God.   What actually happened was that humans disconnected from their spiritual power source and could not find their way back.  As C.S. Lewis says "a new species of human not created by God, sinned itself into existence" (10).  

At the heart of materialism is a rebellious spirit; a huge unwillingness to acknowledge that we are created creatures, given everything, and really worthless on our own.  Would utopia really bring lasting happiness without a widespread connection with God?   It's unlikely.  The adversary would simply twist and bend minds with lies, pump up pride, instill envy, and foster conflict, chaos and carnality.   In fact, we would see exactly what we see today.   For the human fall was the same one that Satan chose, a fall into pride.   God's grace is the same, but we now have something we've added to our character, the pride of self awareness and freedom to choose evil.  According to C.S. Lewis, the cardinal sin of pride is essentially competitive.  In other words, it's not about being pleased that my car is a very good car, or that I have a high paying job.  It's about being pleased that my car is better than yours, or that I am smarter than you are.   All humans have inherited pride as a genetic spiritual deformity.

There is absolutely no quantitative reason for human poverty, except that it is necessary for the existence of very rich people indeed, people with more power, wealth and pride than is good for them.  The humanist is right about the unequal distribution of wealth, but he is utterly wrong about the reason for it.   The more man is glorified, the more pride there will be, the more pride there is, the more separation between people, the more separation there is, the more poverty there will be, and so on in a dwindling spiral of poverty and suffering.

Pantheism
The monotheistic, purposeful God can be contrasted with a pantheistic God which is visualized as an impersonal force permeating the universe, a divine component of the universe, so to speak.  Eckhart Tolle, a contemporary new age spiritualist says that "God is pure being, or consciousness; the unmanifested rising into the world, seeking to become self conscious in humans", and so on (12).  Sri Ramana, a revered saint in India said more pointedly that "god did not create the universe - the universe is simply a manifestation of god's power" (13).   These rarified and abstracted views of an impersonal, perhaps unconscious God lead to the idea that God had no purpose in creating the universe.  If not, then it means that God has no purpose for us either.  

But does the idea make sense?  There is too much intention behind creation to assume a purposeless creation, or an unconscious God.  Starting with the formation of this highly tuned universe, and ending with the beautifully designed solar system and planet earth, we have eons of precise biological developments culminating in creatures like us, intelligent enough to ask about the origins of the universe, discover the DNA code and see to the beginning of the universe's creation.  Given this set of linear outcomes, do we still see God as some kind of idiot savant, creating universes compulsively, with no purpose?  Do we still see him as an unthinking force?  The purposeless or unconscious God is just another way of saying that we came about by accident.  In other words, we are back to the same place as before, with an unsupportable theory of accidental creation.  Neither materialism nor pantheism provides a safe refuge from the fact hood of a purposeful, concerned, and determined deity.


CLR
09/23/2010

(1) "Why the universe is the way it is", Dr. Hugh Ross
(2) "A brief history of time", Steven Hawking
(3) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) "Mere Christianity", C.S. Lewis
(4) (5) (6) "Miracles", C.S. Lewis
(12) "A new earth", Eckhart Tolle
(13) "Be as you are", the teachings of Sri Ramana
(14) "The holographic universe", author to be supplied