Reply to Adrian Barnett on Atheismby
Dmitry Chernikov
Many of the objections to theism below are typical of atheists, and they are interesting enough to warrant a response. My advice to the author and to everyone is to assume the attitude of "faith seeking understanding." Re: It's a BIG place. 1. "If the Earth was destroyed tomorrow, the universe would neither miss us nor mourn our passing. Would you notice one grain of sand missing from the beach?" This statement is self-evidently false, and insofar as it is true, it is trivial. It is false because men are part of the universe and they do miss and mourn their family members, friends, colleagues, etc. who pass away. Now it is true that, say, the planet Jupiter is unlikely to mourn one's death on account of its not being alive, but it is doubtful that anyone would actually claim otherwise. 2. "The Milky Way itself is an insignificant speck. Our solar system is an insignificant speck within that." A theist may object that man's specialness is in no way affected by the fact that his home planet is not located in some "prominent" place in the universe. If God is omnipresent and omniscient, then He is surely aware of human beings regardless of where they are. Earth is a comfortable place to live; how is it important which part of the universe it inhabits? Further, why must the "center" of the universe be defined as the location of its largest stars or galaxies? What is so special about size? Just because elephants contain more protoplasm than humans does not make them more valuable to God than humans. Why, then, can the "center of the universe" not be defined as the seemingly only place where there exists intelligent life? Finally, the vastness of the universe need not detract one from the importance of man. Just as for a theist the greatness of God is a reason to be humble but not full of angst about one's own alleged "insignificance," so the universe, imposing though it is, need not humble one beyond the right reason. Remember also that a single individual is more "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Ps 139:14) than any galactic system. Re: The Pointlessness of Prayer. 1. "God, being omniscient and omnipresent knows what you are feeling every second of the day anyway, probably better than you do. He knows all your problems, concerns and desires before you do. Why should you bother to spell them out to him?" Further, we might add, God is unchangeable, and so is His will. How can my prayer alter what He has decreed? Now remember that God likes to act through secondary causes. He bestows upon His creatures the dignity of causation, so that the will of God is done via the free actions of human beings. God likes to exalt His subordinates. Thus God allows humans to share in his providential governance of the world through their intellect and will. Further, God has from eternity ordained that certain events be brought about by His intervention only when people explicitly ask for it. In so doing God gave us the power to make things happen simply by uttering words, just as He did when He initiated the Big Bang. It is to that end, that is, of sharing God's power, that petitionary prayer is offered. Aquinas believed that "we need to pray to God, not in order to make known to Him our needs or desires but that we ourselves may be reminded of the necessity of having recourse to God's help in these matters." Finally, there are at least four kinds of prayers, symbolized by the acronym ACTS: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication. Barnett's objection does not apply to the first three kinds. 2. "It could even be argued that your problems are a direct result of god's will - part of his Divine Purpose for you, to test your faith or build your character. Surely, to question that purpose is almost blasphemy?" On the one hand, we should say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Ps 139:23-24) and "My son, when you come to serve the LORD, prepare yourself for trials." (Sir 2:1) On the other hand, in the Lord's prayer we say "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." Here we pray not that we may not be tempted but that we may not be led into temptation by consenting to it. We do not say, Deliver us from trials, but from evil, since victory in trials brings crown to saints, and therefore trials are good. Another idea is to ask God to spare us those temptations which we will be unable to overcome. "No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it." (1 Cor 10:13) and "Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone." (Ps 71:9) Finally, if we are being tried, then we can wish for the end of the trial to arrive as quickly as possible. Again, that's where prayer comes in. 3. "They pray to god asking him to directly intervene and alter a person's life. They effectively want god to temporarily remove someone's free will." God moves the will; he does not remove it. A movement of free-will is always required to assent to God's grace. Re: Free Will and Omniscience. 1. "If God knows exactly what I am going to do on 10th July, 2030, then how can I do anything other than that?" Many fatalistic
arguments rest on an elementary confusion in modal logic, viz. the
necessity of the consequence versus the necessity of the consequent.
From Suppose that God knows that on July 10th, 2030 Barnett will go to the drug store. Suppose also that Barnett has the ability to go the drug store or not to go the drug store on that day. If Barnett were to decide not to go the drug store, then God would have eternally held a different belief than the one he actually holds. Different contingent propositions would have been true and God would have known them. God foreknew what Barnett would in fact do, not what he must do. He is free not to go to the store; but he will. What is impossible then is that the conjunction of God's belief that Barnett shall do a and his failing to do a. But this in no way refutes the claim that if he were to refrain from doing a, God would have believed otherwise. Notice that there is no causal relation between a true contingent proposition and God's believing it. "Barnett will go to the drug store on July 10th, 2030" becomes true on that day, but it does not backwardly cause God's belief to be true. The relation is of counterfactual dependence of the past on the future and is therefore merely semantic. The "influence" exercised by Barnett's choice over God's prediction is not a retro-causal influence, but rather the supplying of the truth conditions for a future contingent proposition known by God. Very often theological fatalism is reducible to logical fatalism, which is no more defensible than the former kind. It is certainly true that the future cannot be changed any more than the past can; what will be, will be. But this in no way implies fatalism. For we need to distinguish between modality taken in the composite sense and one taken in the divided sense. The following is false: (there exists x)(x is Barnett & ◊(x will go to the drug store & x will not go to the drug store)). But this is not: (there exists x)(x is Barnett & x will go to the drug store & ◊(x will not go to the drug store)). (Of course, this account is not uncontroversial. Aquinas held, for example, that God's knowledge is the cause of things known by God, if His will is joined to it. He writes, somewhat mysteriously, that "For if things are in the future, it follows that God knows them; but not that the futurity of things is the cause why God knows them.") At any rate, the problem of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge with human freedom is one of the most difficult in philosophy, and we cannot hope to settle it here. 2. "If something is infinite, as are the possible motions of your hand, then it cannot be known completely." God knows the infinite not by enumerating part after part, for in such a way the infinite cannot be known, but by containing it simultaneously in its entirety. A note on the preposterous "counter-argument" that "God can know all your actions, but he chooses not to, to ensure that you have free will." That is quite impossible for two reasons: one, because God is simple and thus cannot compartmentalize His knowledge, and two, because the perfection of God demands nothing less than that He by one act comprehend all things by His intellect and that all knowledge about creation pre-exist in Him. 3. Can an omniscient being reason, think or learn? How could it? Could such a God be said to be intelligent or aware, or even alive at all in any sense we understand? Omniscience reduces God to a clockwork toy at best, and an impossibility at worst. God's knowledge is intuitive and eternal not discursive and in time. He sees all things in one thing, which is Himself, and similarly, the effects of all causes in Himself as their cause. Hence God sees all things not as one after another successively as we do but together as a whole. God cannot learn nor reason in the way that we reason. But the point is that He does not have to. It should be clear that God's way of knowing the whole in Himself is superior to our way of knowing of bits and pieces and one event or proposition causing or implying another. Therefore omniscience does not "reduce" God but exalt Him. Perhaps Barnett's idea is that an omniscient and omnipotent God cannot be alive. Life in this world amounts to overcoming obstacles, fighting the ever-present entropy or the forces of death and decay, whatever their source. Life is becoming. But in Mises's words: The state of absolute perfection must be conceived as complete, final, and not exposed to any change. Change could only impair its perfection and transform it into a less perfect state; the mere possibility that a change can occur is incompatible with the concept of absolute perfection. But the absence of change – i.e., perfect immutability, rigidity and immobility – is tantamount to the absence of life. Life and perfection are incompatible, but so are death and perfection. This is a false dilemma. Contra Mises, we can say that perfection is perfected being in act. And God is pure actuality. He is His own act of understanding, His own goodness, and whatever else is predicated about Him. Life therefore does not entail change (see also the next question). Further, we can imagine human life in the absence of any evil at all. It is possible to be confirmed in goodness in heaven, to know the fullness of truth, and to feel no desire to sin. Heaven, it seems to me, is a place where nothing is dragging you down. Another possibility is that Barnett believes that God's foreknowledge of His own actions implies that God does not deliberate. He just knows what He is going to do, and hence neither reasons nor intends but is like a robot playing out a script mechanically. For example, if God knows at t1 that He will do a at t3, then at t2 it is not possible for God to refrain from doing a at t3. To counter that, we can ascribe to God a single eternal and timeless act of deliberating and willing to begin a certain course of temporal actions. Once made up, God's mind cannot be changed. Therefore, God's decisions are not like human decisions in this sense, which makes His foreknowledge compatible with His own freedom. Re: Has God Committed Suicide? The idea here is that God, being omniscient, is bored to death. Is this true? Now God is perfect and infinite. He loves His perfection and He comprehends it (Himself) fully. His "time" or eternity is thereby spent in contemplation and enjoyment of His own perfection. He is not bored; he is perfectly fulfilled and happy in Himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 2. "How can a mere human come up with anything that God would ever be interested in hearing." True, no human can give or add anything to God. It is God who wants to communicate his goodness to creatures. Goodness diffuses itself; that is, the better and happier one is, the more he is willing to do good to others. In other words, it is the nature of love to give itself away. And it is because of His overflowing goodness that God created the world. Re: Big Bang and Infinite Regress of Causes. 1. "What caused God to initiate the Big Bang?... There must be an infinite number of thoughts, reasons and decisions leading up to God deciding to initiate the Big Bang, and it is impossible to traverse an infinite line of reasoning..." This is very easy to counter. God possesses freedom of the will, which means that He created the universe of His own free choice. If human beings can initiate actions without "an infinite line of reasoning," then why not God? 2. Quoting Quentin Smith on the insufficiency of the natural processes for the formation of the universe as we know it: It has been countered that God could intervene in his creation at the big bang singularity and ensure that it explodes in a big bang that has the laws and physical conditions that lead to the evolution of intelligent life. But this response is implausible, since this would be an irrational way to create a universe with intelligent beings; there is no reason to create a singularity that requires immediate corrective intervention to ensure the desired result. Smith is mistaken in his denial of the possibility of interventions. For it is not the case that the conditions of nature after the Big Bang were such as to be set to produce outcome A, and God miraculously intervened to put universe on the right track by producing outcome B. The point is that nature was too unspecific and therefore capable of producing any number of different outcomes. Unguided natural causes were fully compatible with the formation of the stars and planets, but they were also compatible with no stars and planets at all, as well as with only those planets that could not support life, or with a variety of other stellar constructs that would look very much unlike our actual universe. The designer may have been needed to choose among these possibilities. Nature had the freedom to result in many different things. The designer had to constrain or limit that freedom so that natural laws could produce something definite and what God desired. Smith himself admits as much by mentioning the "probabilistic tendency." And it is hardly proper for him to speculate how the probabilities were distributed in the beginning of the world. Even if an occasional miracle was necessary, that alone is surely not a case for God's incompetence. But how, it might be asked, did God intervene? Did He simply move particles of matter around or impart energy to them? According to William Dembski, such a designer is "problematic for science. The problem is that physical mechanisms are fully capable of moving particles. Thus for an unembodied designer also to move particles can only seem like an arbitrary intrusion." An alternative is to have the designer inform matter or produce novel information within the universe. This can be done with arbitrarily small amounts of energy, just as a large truck can change direction with a small turn of the steering wheel. Ultimately, creating information can be done by not expending any energy at all, e.g., by working with non-deterministic processes on the quantum level. There a designer may choose to actualize one possibility by precluding the other. Re: Pascal's Wager. 1. "It is better to live your life as if there are no Gods, and try to make the world a better place for your being in it. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, He will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in Him." God is pleased with faith. One can earn more merit by believing in God and doing good deeds than by simply doing good deeds. Of course, it is possible to misinterpret this state of affairs wildly. It is not faith that saves a person, as it is written, "Even the demons believe and shudder." (Jas 2:19) Faith is just one of many virtues; it is not even the most important one – charity is, and one can love and worship God as known by natural reason alone as, for example, Descartes does at the end of his third Meditation; so why single out that particular virtue as somehow guaranteeing salvation? It is not true that people without faith are necessarily doomed and that people with faith are necessarily saved. It is not even true that for any given pair of a believer and an unbeliever the amount of glory earned by the former will be greater than that earned by the latter. Once again, faith is just one of many virtues. Further, it is certainly true that atheists are people, too. They don't mistreat their pets, at least no more than (Christian) believers do. But the crucial problem is that they are limited to their natural capacities. They cannot be uplifted into divine heroic virtue by God's grace. Thus without faith they are ignorant. Without hope they are prone to despair. Without charity they cannot love as God loves. Or consider, for example, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts surpass the natural faculty. They perfect and lift a person above his nature. Yet none of them can be in someone who does not have grace. But the unbelievers do not have grace; therefore they cannot receive the gifts. Nothing is more precious in life than God's friendship. As the Psalmist writes, "Only goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life; I will dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come." (Ps 23:6) Atheists deny themselves the most sublime experiences that a person can have in this life. Re: The Meaning of Life. 1. "As an atheist, I consider all life to be sacred." This is an interesting assertion. It looks as if an atheist can argue that because there is no immortal soul or life after death, life in this world takes on a special significance and becomes very precious. And Barnett can seemingly turn the question posed to atheists around and ask a believer in God why he should not immediately commit suicide or go on a killing spree to liberate himself or other people from their mortal coils and straight into Heaven. First, against the atheist it is enough to quote C.S. Lewis who wrote this after his wife's death: "If she is not now, she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren't, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared." How can the sacredness of life be reconciled with such a worldview? Second, Barnett contradicts himself by comparing human lives with grains of sand (see above) implying that they are just as important. He should make up his mind as to whether our lives are or are not precious. Third, we should prefer our treasure in heaven to all earthly goods. Physical lives are important, but the spiritual life is infinitely more significant. Life in this world is not a cosmic abortion. It is a preparation for the eternal beatitude. Therefore what is sacred is not life as such but a holy life, a good life and happiness produced by it. Yet for Barnett a good life is no different from a life of wickedness, for all will be made equal by death. Fourth, if by "life" Barnett means "human life," then, as an atheist, he is guilty of speciesism. For why is he privileging human lives as opposed to the lives of other types of animals? What is so special about humans that their lives take precedence over the lives of, say, mosquitos and viruses? "Sacred" or "holy" means "set apart," but set apart how, by whom, and for what purpose? I submit that Barnett cannot answer this in a non question begging way. Fifth, the reason why suicide and murder are such great sins is that we are supposed to make on earth as it is in heaven and thereby prove ourselves to be worthy of the heavenly glory. Although Christ's kingdom is not of this world, that does not mean that the earthly kingdom should be neglected. This is the meaning of life, too: for us to delight in God and for God to delight in us. Re: The Death of Christ. 1. "How was this a selfless sacrifice? He was marched up the hill by a bunch of heavily armed centurions. Was he really saying things like 'No, it's okay, I want to do this. It's part of The Plan, you see.'"? Remember what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels?" (Mt 26:53) 2. "...why was it necessary for Jesus to be killed by the state? Why not just say to his disciples 'Well guys, it's time to say Goodbye.' and throw himself under the nearest chariot? Death is death. Did the manner in which Christ died actually make any difference?" Jesus, being omniscient and omnipotent and all-loving God, could only do the best thing that could in principle be done. That does not mean that Jesus did not have free will; only that he always chose the most efficacious thing under the circumstances. That is why His actions led inevitably to what they led, viz. His death on the cross. When God chose to actualize this world out of an infinity of possible worlds, these events were already fore-ordained. Further, Jesus was also a man, and so He would have sinned grievously had He committed suicide. And in fact, as a man, He did not want to die. That is why He said "My soul is sorrowful even to death." (Mt 26:38) Aquinas puts it this way; that Christ prayed in the Garden: First, to show that He had taken a true human nature, with all its natural affections: secondly, to show that a man may wish with his natural desire what God does not wish: thirdly, to show that man should subject his own will to the Divine will. Hence Augustine says...: "Christ acting as a man, shows the proper will of a man when He says 'Let this chalice pass from Me'; for this was the human will desiring something proper to itself and, so to say, private. But because He wishes man to be righteous and to be directed to God, He adds: 'Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt,' as if to say, 'See thyself in Me, for thou canst desire something proper to thee, even though God wishes something else.'" Perhaps it was not even possible for God incarnate to avoid being murdered. As Socrates says somewhere, "If the perfect man ever lived on earth, you know what they would do to him? They'd crucify him." And this is still the best possible world! 3. "It has never been adequately explained how this death freed us all from sin. If the death freed us from the consequences of sin (hell, or eternal oblivion), it is still unclear as to why it had to happen in this particular way." The key questions here are as follows 1. What changed in the cosmic order of things after Christ's death and resurrection? How did the relationship between God and man become different? What is the precise nature of the Son's gift to us? How, in short, did we benefit? 2. What was God's reason for permitting the original order to endure until the incarnation? 3. Why was the incarnation necessary and sufficient to remedy the original design? 4. How was the change accomplished? One idea that we should discard at the beginning is that "Christ came with the gift of grace." This implies that grace was not bestowed before the incarnation, which is absurd. Without grace no one could do good or be virtuous, but clearly, there were saints in all parts of the world long before Christ. The Holy Spirit has always been at work. So this cannot be it. (It is true that faith is imparted by grace, and it is only since the Incarnation that the articles of faith as we know them now could be formulated. But other kinds of grace were surely given even before Christ.) The reality, it seems to me, is this. Before the incarnation sins were forgiven solely at the discretion of the Father. There was no law in place that said that a sin would be forgiven if the sinner performed certain actions. The Father had complete authority and full power to condemn any human being, any saint, at His pleasure, for no one is without sin. Nothing could guarantee that one would go to heaven. Moreover, although the Father could forgive sins, being holy, in practice He did not. Why? Because the Father is omnipotent and infinite and bound by no laws in His government of the world. Why should He before or after the creation have obligated Himself to grant any sinner the Kingdom? What could compel Him to limit Himself in such a way? And the answer is, nothing at all. Man was entirely at God's mercy. Now God created man and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He bid him to decide of his own free will whether he wants happiness or misery, and if the former, then how to attain it. The Kingdom, however, was His to give and His alone. But then the Father did the most remarkable thing. He told His Son, in effect, "I agree to bind myself until the end of time with a new law that grants to each wayfarer forgiveness of sins under appropriate circumstances. If you, my Son, want this law to be enacted, then you must prove it. If you love them, merit the law for them. If you love them, show it. Become one of them. Then, although love will still be the reason for giving mercy to men, nevertheless, forgiveness will now be accorded to all by justice, by right. Well? Do you love them?" (Of course, this understanding was there from all eternity, and it is unlikely that the Father would have created the world had He not known that the Son would say yes.) Not even the Son, though He was God, could receive anything from the Father without having to earn it. Thus it is clear that it was not so much the Father who gave us His beloved Son, but the Son who chose of His own free will to give Himself to us. His sacrifice was necessary because only God the Son could by His actions bind God the Father, and it was sufficient because the Father in eternity agreed to it. Why did it have to happen then and not earlier? The traditional answer is that it was the time of God's own choosing. But we can speculate that the environment in which the Christian church would grow had to be carefully prepared by God. And that was no easy task. Why did the Father need the Son's request? Because the Father's love is different from the Son's. The Son loves us each unconditionally, exactly as we are. The Father loves us only insofar as we are good. (That is why only Christ and Mary could go to heaven solely on their own merits, having never sinned.) So the Father wills to us temporal goods but not necessarily the eternal good. It is only due to Christ's intervention that He granted us His inheritance. Thus the incarnation had two effects: 1. The glory and the Kingdom are awarded to men according to a law, and 2. The power to judge each person, to forgive sins, and to bestow glory now reside with the Son, Who alone is willing to do this job (the Father as Creator had the original bundle of rights over the world and could transfer some of them if He so wished). That is Christ's gift to us: the law of forgiveness that if we obey it will open to us the gates of heaven. 4. If Jesus is God, then how do we know he really suffered? Is it possible to inflict physical pain on an immortal, omnipotent entity? Jesus was both God and man, two natures in one person. Hence as a man He did feel both physical pain and emotional sorrow. 5. "If Jesus is God, then how was it a sacrifice? He only had to spend a few days 'dead', then it was back home to Heaven. A few days in the underworld can hardly have been a big deal for an eternal, omnipotent deity, can it?" It was the supreme sacrifice, because Jesus, "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." (2 Phil 2:6-8) To be sure, Jesus was rewarded by the Father amply for what He did, but this does not mean that He did not suffer. And for God to agree to suffer for our sake, given His dignity, is an enormous sacrifice. 6. "If Jesus had it all planned from the start (if you believe in the older prophecies), then it certainly was not a sacrifice. He must have used his God-Magic to manipulate events and ensure that the crucifixion occurred. This would include making Judas betray him." From "it was all planned from the start" "it was not a sacrifice" does not follow. Barnett's objection seems to be that God wanted to be crucified and thus influenced the historical events in order to attain that end, which is, to say the least, odd. But the objection misses the possibility that this was the best possible outcome despite the fact that God did the best He could, given His purposes vis-à-vis the world and given our responses to Him. And after all that, still the Son of God was going to be murdered. Judas betrayed Christ out of his own free will. 7. "If Judas had not given Jesus a big ol' smacker, would nobody have known who he was? Had he been preaching, healing and overturning tables with a mask on, so that the only way in which the 'great multitude' who came for him could recognise him was through Judas' kiss?" A reasonable conjecture is that some of the soldiers and priests who came to arrest Jesus did not know who He was, even though many others did. Jesus was a public figure, but evidently not everyone had seen Him. Re: The Intelligent Design Theory. 1. "Who is to say that the Creator is still around?" As Peter Kreeft writes in his exposition of the kalam argument, Remember that we were seeking for a cause of spatio-temporal being. This cause created the entire universe of space and time. And space and time themselves must be part of that creation. So the cause cannot be another spatio-temporal being. (If it were, all the problems about infinite duration would arise once again.) It must somehow stand outside the limitations and constraints of space and time. Further, if we assume that God is immutable (which can be proven independently), then it is obvious that God must be eternal, as the former property entails that God cannot change by going out of existence. Eternity here means "the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life"; in other words, God is timeless. 2. "Why just one Creator? Why not two, or a dozen, or a million?" This question pertains to the unity of God. The simplest argument in favor of God's being One is to note, first, that God is perfect and contains within Himself the infinite fullness of being, a superabundance of life. In fact, His existence is not a lucky accident of some sort; His being is so complete that it includes His existence as His very essence. There is no distance in God between His essence and His existence as there is in creatures. Thus if there were two or more gods, they would have to differ by something, such that what god A has god B does not have. Each god would therefore have a privation of some kind. But that implies that his perfection would not be complete. He would lack some reality that his competitors possessed in order to be different from them. But this is impossible. Hence God is One. God's unity can also be shown from His simplicity. For if there were many gods, then they would differ according to some addition or diminution in each. But that means that they would have to be composite, which is contrary to what is presupposed in our argument. If it is objected that there may be several identical gods having the same nature, then the answer is that that, too, is impossible, since God's is His own essence and His own existence. Humanity is not man, but Deity is God. 3. "It is an unjustified leap to assert that there was a single creator, and that creator must therefore be God as described in the Bible." The God of the philosophers turns out to be remarkably similar to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. On the contrary, here reason and revelation go hand in hand. 4. "What reason is there to think that a Creator is even remotely interested in human beings, or any other specific form of life?" God's interest in humans is part of the very definition of the term "theism." First, we must find out whether God is good; and second, whether He has love. Goodness. All things in desiring their perfection desire God Himself as the efficient and final cause of all things. What they desire is likeness of God, because the perfection of an effect consists in its likeness to the causal agent, and God is the cause of all that there is. Now that does not mean that bread seeks to be like the baker, but still a cause is a thing exerting itself, having its influence or imposing its character on the world. The cause cannot give its effect what it itself does not have. That is, the effect reveals the nature of the cause, however imperfectly it does so. (Note that this doctrine of effects resembling their causes is not some sort of primitive medieval idea of conservation of energy. It is a metaphysical principle.) So God is good, because all desired perfections flow from Him as from the first cause. Love. Not everyone in the ancient world believed that God must have a will. Consider the Aristotle's idea of God as the final cause that draws all things to itself. God attracts creatures by operating on intelligences and appetites that adopt God in some sense as their end. God is therefore like a magnet that itself does not act but pulls things to itself. The only way by which he accomplishes things in the world is by being a cause of movement and change of the things within it, while Himself remaining unmoved. Aristotle's God thus differs from the Christian God by not having a will. The former does not act voluntarily. Further, since for Aristotle the universe is eternal, God did not will it into existence. According to Aristotle, God is chiefly a knower whose object of knowledge is himself. He does not will things to happen. We can agree with Aristotle that God is end of all things. But Christians also think that God has a will. Aquinas writes that "From the fact that God has understanding, it follows that He has a will. Since good apprehended in understanding is the proper object of the will, understood good, as such, must be willed good. But anything understood involves an understanding mind. A mind then that understands good, must, as such, be a mind that wills good." In other words, one must will what one knows to be good, lest the good never comes into existence but remain a mere wish. And since God's knowledge is perfect, he is infallibly attracted to the supreme good. "The more perfect the act of understanding is, the more delightful to the understanding mind. But God has understanding and a most perfect act thereof... therefore that act yields Him the utmost delight. But as sensible delight is through the concupiscible appetite, so is intellectual delight through the will. God then has a will." In other words, if God did not have a will, then He could not enjoy Himself and nor delight in being God. What is the point of possessing the fullness of truth, if that gives God no joy? There is love in God, because there is will in God. We will that which we love. God's love is best described therefore as "willing good to His creatures." There is love of concupiscence, by which we will a certain thing to ourselves, and such love is not in God, except insofar as He wills Himself to Himself. And there is love of friendship, by which we will good to a friend. That's the kind of love that God has for us. When two persons are united by the bond of charity, they have mutual friendship for each other. (God loves irrational animals neither with love of concupiscence nor with love of friendship, but only as means to our ends.) But there is more to it than just that. For also part of love is the idea of working together for a common purpose, namely the doing of good and the attainment of salvation. There is hence a kind of equality among lovers. We are not God's pets but are rather great and courageous creatures destined to know and enjoy God forever. But if God loves all the things that He made, then He must love those things that are most like Him more than anything else He created. But human beings are made in God's image. Therefore God must love us more than any other thing. 5. What reason is there to suppose that life was intended to exist? Living things obviously do exist, but life could merely be an unintended or unimportant side-effect. It may be that a Creator was only interested in making stars, and everything else is just an emergent property caused by the way the universe is set up. God was interested in making stars. That's why He made them, and He should be proud of His handiwork. But are stars more interesting for God than humans? True, stars do not sin, and God is sometimes exasperated with us men. But the stars are not made in God's image and likeness. Neither can they do good or become children of God. A star cannot become God's friend, unlike you and me. Further, since God is love, and He loves His saints with the love of friendship, it is seemingly the case that we are His wanted children. No one is an illegitimate son or daughter. Everyone is desired and adored. Finally, according to the Intelligent Design theory, life could not have arisen unintentionally as "just an emergent property," without some kind of intelligent guidance. So God, assuming that God was the designer, had to bring us about. We did not simply happen to be as a "side-effect." 6. Life existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years before humans evolved, and the amount of time we have been around is utterly insignificant relative to the age of the universe. ... It seems bizarre (and considerably arrogant) to suggest that it is all here just for our benefit, or purely to ensure that humans came about. The principle of becoming seems to be universal in the created world. Just because becoming can take billions of years to produce what is intended does not mean that it is superfluous. I do not know why God chose to create us in the manner that He did. It does not follow from this ignorance that humans and the human civilization are not the end result of this long process of cosmic becoming. 7. This brings us to the concept of a "Powerful Deceiver" – instead of this Creator being an all-powerful, kind, loving entity, what reason is there to think that it is not, in fact, an all-powerful, evil, hateful entity that sees life on Earth much as a child with a magnifying glass sees ants on a sunny day? Evil and hatred of what is good is a defect, and imperfection, a lack of some good thing that ought to be there. As Descartes writes, God is "a being who possesses all those lofty perfections, of which the mind may have some slight conception, without, however, being able fully to comprehend them, and who is wholly superior to all defect and has nothing that marks imperfection: whence it is sufficiently manifest that he cannot be a deceiver, since it is a dictate of the natural light that all fraud and deception spring from some defect."
Lastly, I want to mention the common atheistic idea that the Christian God is equivalent to pagan gods. There is a likeness, according to Barnett, between "Ganesh, Jah, Yahweh, Allah, Zeus or any of the thousands of others." Nothing could be further from the truth. Pagan gods were within nature; they were a part of the world; the Christian God transcends the created universe. Pagan gods were subject to the same passions that humans were; the Christian God has no passions at all. Pagan gods did wicked things; the Christian God is supremely good. Pagan gods had bodies; the Christian God is a spirit. Pagan gods were not simple nor One nor perfect not timeless nor immutable nor infinite nor loving nor just nor merciful nor omniscient nor omnipotent. The Christian God is all these and more. Pagan gods were not their own existence; the Christian God is His existence. In short, there is no comparison between Yahweh and, say, Zeus. And the evidence of science and philosophy points to the Christian God and not to the gods of the Greek mythology.
January 2, 2006 Dmitry Chernikov [send him mail] is a graduate student in philosophy at Kent State University. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
(A → B), A it does not follow that
I
am sure that Barnett will have other objections. But if so far my
answers have been satisfactory, surely all the other questions can
be answered, as well.