The Elimination of Suffering

The other day, a friend asked the time-old question “Why does God allow suffering?” to which multiple people responded with their various opinions on the subject. One individual responded with an argument of contrast. That is, suffering exists to show beauty through contrast. So, if suffering shows beauty, why do we speak of its eternal end with regards to heaven?

My (roughly edited) response was as follows:

The things we cannot, by their definition, conceive of are the very things we are being asked to put words to. If we acknowledge the existence of and attempt to describe such persons and places, it is and must be the loosest of metaphors. For all we know is our experience. All we know is ourselves. The impossible illustration without imperfection or brushstroke is the task at hand.

Is their suffering in heaven? Although it is, by definition, a place where “no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, and no mind can imagine what God has prepared,” then truthfully logic fails to some degree to argue. We are told by scientists that physical laws and constants may theoretically vary from universe to universe, yet we cannot conceive of an existence outside of our context. Any attempt to imagine a world in which these forces are different becomes automatically contextualized by our own for understanding. It is similar with ideas of heaven. We create a world in the looking glass. A world that is the same, yet different and idealized; like a work of fiction gives flesh, tension, and movement to a philosophy.

Please note, I am not suggesting heaven is some alternate universe or post-universe, because the timescale one would have to operate on to suggest such a thing does not account for the probability of extinction for the human race or the billions of years it would take for even our own sun to expand into a red giant and consume the earth (and still the universe would continue). But I am speaking of the incapability of man to conceive of what he has not experienced without shaping it as something he knows. We must anthropomorphize personality and we must shape metaphors to understand a world outside our own.

It does not prove its existence in anyway. A “restoration” or “rebirthing” of existence with the elimination of things like disease ignores the fundamental nature of such things. Disease is not demonic or malevolent. Disease is essentially packets of data doing, like a microscopic, simplified, and unconscious form of “us”, their best to procreate efficiently. What you call disease, is them hijacking you to help them. So is this part of refinement? The elimination of any creation deemed unfit to be of aid to the human being? Or is this rebirthing in essence the capstone of creation in its elimination of continued creation (and procreation)? Is it the sustained final chord in grand culmination of the symphony?

For myself, with my doubts and questions, it has often been a question reduced to what I know in the here and now. It is a question of suffering reduced in the here and now. I can seriously hope for such a final note, but may my uncertainty drive me to take hold of the here and now, both in light of that hope and in respect of the possibility that this will cease and be the only life and experience any man gets, and thus, to responsibly strive that each man’s suffering is lessened.

Bio: Josiah is a graduate of North Central University in Minneapolis, MN. His thirst for knowledge is only surpassed by his thirst for coffee. Thus, much free time is spent in the quest for the next fix.

Oceans of Faith: A Glimpse into the Mind of Doubt

While I continue working on my [S]instinct series, I figured I would post something to fill time.

I don’t know if it’s of any benefit to anyone, but, if you’re curious, here is a glimpse through the clouds into the mind of doubt. I wrote this during my senior year at NCU. Perhaps it will help you understand the questions of your friends, perhaps it will help you in the midst of your own questions.

Whatever it does, I wanted to publish it because I was happy with how it turned out. Interested in hearing any feedback.

This wide ocean of faith is difficult to swim in. The mind begins to clamber, to tread water, to seek a foothold in some ounce of land. The depths seem impenetrable and dangerous, the heights, unattainable. With no land in sight, I am left afloat. I do not know what manner of thing might punctuate the silence, punctuate the loneliness, or punctuate this time-stretching dread. What might live in the icy depths beneath? What might live in gray skies above? Am I seen, or am I truly alone? This water, black, both keeps me alive and signals my possible fate. This wide ocean of faith is difficult to swim in. The doubt and fear like icy temperature cloud my mind. Am I alone? Will no one come to my rescue? Will no one give me light? Where is the hope? Surely, my faith is strong, I’m swimming in it. But where is the hope? “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and evidence for things unseen.” “Blessed are they who believe and have not seen.”

This situation I am faced with is the same which faced Peter. This water can be walked on or drowned in. The same water that holds him up might also silence him.

Bio: Josiah is a graduate of North Central University in Minneapolis, MN. His thirst for knowledge is only surpassed by his thirst for coffee. Thus, much free time is spent in the quest for the next fix.

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Gallery Request: Doubt

The last post inspired an idea in me. I know not many people read this, but perhaps if anyone does and feels so inspired, share this idea with a friend.

I would like to do a theology and art gallery post not created entirely by me or drawn from my internet browsing. Thus, I turn to you, the masses.

I would like to see/read what you might create on the subject of faith, questioning, and doubt. These can be photographs, graphic design, typography, sketch, painting, poetry, etc. Once these are created, email them to me at phoenixrenovatio@gmail.com

I’ll give about a month timeline for submission. Once these are submitted, depending on response, I’ll post them (or the best of them) here for [my small audience of] people to see/read.

Obviously, if no one responds, this is a fruitless post and nothing will be posted in one month. If this is the case, in one month, I request you forget this was ever written. But here’s hoping!

[Image submissions should be in .jpg or .png format. Text submissions should preferably be in .doc or .docx format.]

Why I’m Still a Christian

I don’t talk about it much, but for roughly a year of my life I was a closet atheist. Honestly, I really wish that I could say that this era of my life ws a dark and hopeless time for me and that God came through and that blahblahblah! However, I would be lying.

At the beginning of my journey I would have to say yes it was a dark time for me. This was because of the overwhelming nature of my ‘conversion’. There was an entire lifestyle change around involved and I had no idea where to even begin. But I bypassed this entire phase of the journey and just sort of faked my way through the Christian subculture. In some regards I had to. My job(christian retail) sort of had a prerequisite of being a Christian. There was also the fact that I couldn’t bare the social ramifications of this desicion. I had watched too many people cast out of Churches and other Christian circles to be ignorant to what would happen. Looking back, being a Closet Atheist wasn’t the best route.

Ya live and learn, right?

After the initial shock, I felt a bit of a freedom. No, not the freedom to do whatever I want without consequence. But the freedom to explore and think for myself rather then what dogma has told me. Whether a Christian, or any person for that matter, likes it or not there is a required willful ignorance when there is the adoption of a belief system. As an atheist I felt that I could very much walk past questions that would put my understanding of life and the universe into doubt. It was like being a little kid at Christmas!!!

On the flip side of this with my admission of atheism, and the subsequent freedom I felt, there was the risk of discovering and returning to religious belief.
Well here I am today. A Christian. What went wrong?

The short answer? Though some would disagree, you don’t need to get me drunk in order for me to express that I don’t know everything. I am human. I do only see through two eyes, two ears, and I’m a slave to this thing called language. Being a human is quite limiting. You can’t even fly!

Ironic that it was in fact doubt that led me back to faith.

The doubt was in logic itself.

If the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise teaches us anything practical, it’s that what works naturally on paper might not be what experience shows us.

What I had experienced prior to and throughout my year of atheism was thing called love. Not our overrated sensual feeling of love, or even an altruistic methodology (though this certainly has it’s placement). However, what I saw was the teaching of loving your enemies. I couldn’t rap my head around the revolutionary action within this statement that Christ made. Bestowing value upon those whom we by all rights shouldn’t have an value ascribed to them at all, and then acting upon that value.

Something inside of me cracked at this point.  I still could not give myself a good logical reason as to whether or not God existed. However, there was something beautiful about Jesus. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it.

After a while of grappling with this, I came to a place where I wanted to follow this way of life.

I’m not looking here to provide an objective proof for God and try to convince you as to why you should follow Christ too. I am well aware here of the subjectivity of this answer. All that I find within this is hope and I choose to be faithful to that hope. Perhaps that is the heart of faith. Not a certainty within the language which you ascribe to, but the faithfulness to that which you are longing for.

I’m still not quite sure of semantics ascribed to the Christian religion, but the heart of the matter is beautiful. I think I’ll take my chances with Christ.

Bio: Nate is a Starbucks Barista typically found on his off time at his Starbucks reading, writing poetry, and talking with various passerbyers. He also loves tobacco in most forms, has anarchistic leanings, and creates shoegaze when he is alone at home. Currently pursuing his lifelong dream of being a bum.

Why I Won’t Take You At Your Word

Simply put, because you’re wrong. Well, you might be…

This thought was inspired by thinking on why I started questioning. All the questioning was started by my research on atheist perspectives. Why did I research atheist perspectives? Because I won’t take you at your word. So many Christians believe they understand why it is people are cynical, jaded, anti-religious, and atheistic. Ray Comfort, the “good news” bearing evangelist I struggle with most, has a whole shtick about how it is simply so they can live whatever way they like through the absence of absolute authority and judgment for their actions. I’m sorry. That’s not what I discovered. (But, more on that later.)

To me, taking you at your word on an experience or another’s feelings/views does not accomplish what it could. When we take something in, we form a perspective, digest it, and process it. If we tell that to someone else, it’s like the mother bird re-feeding her chicks the worm she was early enough to get; good, old, tasty, processed opinion. Compare drinking city water to drinking spring water. City water is run through systems to purify it from impurities and dirt, fluoride is added, it’s given a good mixing, pumped through pipes where it picks up trace amounts of metal, and comes out your chrome faucet into your glass for consumption. Spring water flows straight from the ground. It’s not as “pure” as the city water in one sense, yet if we’re comparing the two, one is far closer to the source of what natural water tastes like. Why was it I won’t take you at your word? That’s right, because you might be wrong…

Do I want processed opinion, Mama Bird? No. I form a perspective when I hear something. We all do. So, if I take you at your word, I form a perspective on your perspective on someone’s perspective. That’s not a perspective at all. That’s like trying to see around a corner without peeking. Sure, the source of the perspective is tainted too, but if what I am trying to achieve is understand that perspective, it’s far better for me to go to the source.

Back to the atheists.

So, they just want to live their amoral life without judgment? Then why are they so hard on the injustices of the world? If they believe there is no morality, why do they advocate the secular humanist perspective of understanding social morality? They believe right and wrong exist as evolved elements of society for the benefit of our survival. Imagine if we were murderin’, fornicatin’, and thievin’ all the time! Society wouldn’t stick together because our selfish need for survival would be infringed upon. So, there are ideas of social morality that hold us together and we must act within these. In this way, a culture can be wrong in their way of morality. The idea of this morality is to benefit the group in its entirety. If we stone a girl because she was raped in an Islamic country (one of the social injustices many times commented upon), we do not benefit her survival, nor the survival of the group. It is viewed as injustice. Immoral.

The idea that I can live my life how I want if there is no God is illegitimate to the atheist. You can live your life how you want as long as you don’t infringe upon the survivability of the social group or other individuals.

They don’t believe in God because they are unwilling to see the evidence of Him all around them? Well, unwilling might be an alright word. I might actually understand it as the evidence can be explained to go either way. I see no reason that nature MUST show a gaping hole where God’s finger fits so that He can miraculously fiddle with His clockwork. Does He? As a Christian, I say yes. Must He? Debatable. However, when you get back to questions like origins, the big complaint of atheists is against creationism and intelligent design. The agenda, to them (and me), is not science but an attempt to force a gap open where God fits. If we can eliminate the possibility something can naturally come from “nothing” (a relative term because energy is everywhere), then obviously it came from nothing with the spurning of an intelligence. However, trace this line back far enough, even if we were designed intelligently by aliens, they were intelligently designed by something else, aka God. Yet, having studied evolutionary theory and genetics for 2 years as a result of this quest, I think I have begun to understand how it works. Are there questions and holes in things? Sure, not large ones. (You want a transitional fossil? There are plenty. You want a species in transition, you misunderstand transition. All species are in transition. There is no end goal of evolution. Humans are not the final product of primate evolution. Even we are still evolving.) Does that make the whole thing untrue or possibly wrong? Only if the study of theology makes God not fully true and possibly wrong. Try that paradox on for size. Intelligent design has its own holes…they just choose to fill it with “Goddidit”. The question for the believer becomes, can God do it without leaving loose ends that prove He did?

Basically, it’s a quest for honest understanding. I love the logical questions atheists bring up. Most of them are very intelligent and respectable men in their fields. And if researching their work causes me to question, I feel it is possible that it is helping me achieve understanding and see holes in arguments used for so long. If questioning your faith causes it to fail, perhaps it wasn’t strong in the first place? To test arguments and test ways of thinking about God has served to deconstruct and rebuild my faith. Are there things I don’t understand? Yes. Do I use those as “Goddidit” and walk away? That really depends. If God is the gap in explanation, our God gets tinier by the day. When everything is explained, discovered, etc., and when all the gaps close, does God still exist? How do you know? If you’re holding out for the unexplainable miracle to prove God exists scientifically, what if it never comes?

Atheism isn’t unfounded in my mind. It’s simply the opposite spectrum from me. Where they choose to doubt when there is only an unknown possibility God exists, I choose to believe. Where they see the ramblings of deluded ancients, I see an aura of truth. Does this mean we are both right? No. One of us has to be wrong. I’m not a relativist for absolute truth.

So, I will not take you at your word. I will question. I will research both sides. And then if our words line up, we can agree.

The Origins of Evil

Here’s a thought experiment. Not a declaration of doctrine or belief. Just a plain, ordinary thought.

“Where does evil come from?”

This is not a question about “where God is when evil strikes”, but it is a question of origins. Where did evil come from? If God is an all-Good God who created all that is Not-God, did He create Evil?

For many, this question is met with a direct answer of “no, God does no Evil and made everything Good.” Now, there is the argument that everything Evil is simply the absence of Good. However, where does this absence originate?

One could propose the idea that God created this absence, this Evil. Now, you might say this is impossible because this makes God malevolent if He is the originator of Evil. If He is the source of all the pain and destruction in this world, then, yes, He is. But we know He is not malevolent and is diametrically opposed to Evil, so how might He be the originator of Evil?

In order to understand further logic, let us consider the purpose of Evil. There are many verses on this, but one I will highlight is in John 9. This is the story of one of the blind men Christ heals. The disciples are debating why the man was blind. They say, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” To which Christ responds, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

God is in the work of changing the perception of Evil into Good or infusing Good into Evil. If Evil is the absence of Good, then God is in the work of entering the void and manifesting Himself. If there were no Evil, we might never know the true fullness of God’s manifestation. Like salt on a grapefruit, the addition of a little Evil brings about a fuller contrast and fuller understanding of the beauty and goodness of Good.

So, in a sense, the creation of Evil as a nihility of Himself is not necessarily Evil in itself. If God did the act of creation in order to more fully express Himself (as God is not needy for our worship, but in a constant expression of adoration toward that most worthy of adoration; Himself), then it is a better, fuller, and more beautiful creative expression if it is given something to express. If Love is not full without Choice, then without this void of Good, Good is not truly known in its truest nature.

How does this make God un-malevolent? He is still the source of all pain, destruction, chaos, and contempt in the world. However, God did not make anyone Evil, He simply allowed Evil to exist. He risked removing Himself with hope that His creations might fully express Him as the Full Goodness. However, there also exists the choice of the Less Than; less than full, less than Good.

If God did not make anyone Evil, but simply allowed the existence of Evil, He is not the direct source and simply the originator. The direct source of Evil is the one who chooses it; the one who seeks out the Less Than over the Full Goodness. God’s act of creation was to more fully express Himself. If this full expression demands a choice, He charges His creation with that choice. Eradicate the darkness. “Fully express me in the void of me you see around you, this is what I delight in.”

“…learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

Isaiah 1:17

“…but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,  justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,”

Jeremiah 9:24

It is a perfect and Good risk to take for the fuller expression. He does not control the choice, but with every poor choice, a greater expression of Good is made possible.

The Strange Brew of Skeptical Christianity

**Please note: This is not perfectly thought out. It is simply what I have been dying to write for a while now. It is an imperfect summary of where I stand spiritually as of late.

For the past year or so, I will admit, my faith has struggled. It has faced challenges and logical puzzles and the constant process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. I have grown to understand more about the world in which I live through constant research. This study of reason brings me to these constant intersections where I must question whether my faith really contains the answers. I question whether I’m believing in vain in a God with no physical evidence of existence and no absolute psychological need for belief other than a quest for purpose; a purpose which, if all else fails, is a meaningless illusion based on a primitive pursuit of understanding. Most arguments for the existence of God are not hard to refute with a given understanding of psychology, sociology, and biology. Yet, I still believe.

I admit, the idea of faith became difficult when I began to study and reason. It was easier before I started college. Before I understood there were multiple perspectives on things. Before I understood the world was less black and white than I had believed it to be. Had I experienced this outside a Christian context, I am unsure if I would be where I am today. I do not believe I was or am strong enough to make it without any support to return to. The temptation to abandon faith exists quite often in my life.

Yes, I am not sure about the existence of God. I don’t believe I will ever be sure. Yet there is one thing I hope in, and it is this that continues my belief. I place my trust in Christ because I cannot refute his teachings. His teachings call out to everything inside me and challenge me to what I know is a better and greater good than I can know on my own instinct. His teachings are commended by those around the world and of any faith. They are the greatest good. Yet, paired with these teachings come claims of being God himself and commands about right relationship with the Father. If I can believe his teachings, might I have to believe these too? Technically one could argue for the mythological development of these claims being written in by the Gospel writers rather than actually spoken by Jesus himself. The Gospels were not written as histories, but narrative communications of the good news of Christ with specific intention and message. However, those same writers died for what they wrote, and died professing what they wrote. These men were changed by what they experienced. And so it is in these that I can trust and through this trust in Christ. He is the tangible evidence on which my faith is founded.

However, even if Christ fails me, and if there is no God, I will die following him. Because his way of living is so right, I will strive to live like it. And if I reach the end of my life, and there is no ultimate meaning, I will not mind because I will have lived. I will have sacrificed. I will have served and brough worth to my existence. I do not know if there is a God. I do not believe there will ever be discovered concrete evidence. There is plenty of logic that contradicts the idea of believing in a Being which cannot be seen or measured, yet if this makes me a better person by believing it, I will. I will seek to love. I will seek to care. I will seek to serve. And I will seek to bring this satisfaction to others.

I do not follow simply for hope to escape punishment from God if I don’t. I do not follow simply because I was taught this. I do not follow simply because it makes me feel good. I follow because it matches the cries of my soul to do what is right. I follow because it is the ultimate good.

I strive to find answers with my insatiable thirst for knowledge while renouncing ignorance. I strive to work out how this world can mesh with this idea of ultimate good and purpose. I strive to overcome this battle of reason and faith while giving up on neither. I strive to emulate Christ with my life knowing I am imperfect. I strive to live, to dream, and to pursue the best for the community I live in, the dignity of others, and the satisfaction found in this.

One might ask if there is any hope in this way of living? If by “hope” one means “a given understanding that it will all be over and perfection awaits” then my answer would be no. If by “hope” one means “a desire to believe that something exists beyond this life” then yes. My hope is placed in the idea that Christ was right. My hope is that lives can be changed for the better.

Christ is the door for my faith. Through him I accept the multitude of teachings about the God he claimed to be. But I strive to integrate those into my life. I understand right and wrong. However, I approach others from underneath. It is through relationship that lives are changed, not simple interaction. I desire to become a servant to those I meet.

I am Jekyll and Hyde. I am Skeptic and Believer.

Made in Our Image

“The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.”

- Sigmund Freud

This quote wonders about the perception of God. In essence, it points to the questions of whether or not we project onto God the God that best fits our box, our situation, and our ideals?

- How can one person sense direction from God to do something that another person finds uncharacteristic of God? If both are proclaimed “Christians”, are they serving the same God?

- Do we see in God a reflection of our parental relationship?

- Do we create God in our image? Shape him into our culture?

- Do we commit the sin of metaphysical idolatry?

All of these questions then point to this: Is God knowable?

We, as human beings, are highly experiential in nature. We have brains wired for cause and effect. We make associations daily. It is the reason why a person can develop a fear of dogs from one attack. That occurence does not ultimately mean ALL dogs will attack, but that ONE poorly-trained dog will attack. However, the human brain, for its own survival depends upon the association for avoidance of all dogs such that there will not be a repeat occurence. Our preconceptions on morality and the developmental experiences we each independently receive shape the way we define the world. So we tend to interpret supremity in some way and yet also strive to apply the knowability we have been taught to God.  So our experiences with “supreme beings”, which could be defined as how we view our parents in our developmental years, can often times be projected onto other things that carry that association. However, it is nearly impossible to ultimately understand another person’s perspective unless it seems to coincide with your own. Ultimately, our views are subjective to ourselves. So begins a quest for objective and knowable truth.

Yet, can man know anything beyond his own understanding? Can we at all define the indefinable?

or

Would you claim that God acts in ways outside our definition of good? Yes, God is good. But whose definition of good? We believe there are “ultimate goods” in this world, but what about the gray areas? Suddenly, one is faced with a decision with no “good” outcome…what would God do?

If your God cannot work if a dogmatic cog is displaced, have you in essence created an idol? Fixed your idea of God in a mental “stone”? When does this become dangerous? When is it even ok to claim that two people aren’t worshiping the same God? There is only one fundamental difference I see between some of these claims, we, Christians, tend to acknowledge the “same” God as long as we acknowledge the “same” Christ. How far is too far though? When does a perspective become a wrong idea of God? What ideal must be stepped on in order to cross the line? Can we picture God as too loving? Too hard? And how do we know who is right?

This leads to the second quote:

“It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him.”

- Francis Bacon

If, thus, we transpose God into what we are familiar with and fix him in stone by sheer, unconcious habit, can we know God at all in his transcendence? Is the knowability of God a shadow permeated only by the limited, finite light of human experience?

How is it that a man can know God?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”- John 1:1-5

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.” – John 14:9-10

So we believe it is in Christ that the Unknowable became knowable, the Undefined defined himself, and the Transcendent became the inferior. Yet, how far does this go? Really we cannot believe that the ultimate image of God is that of a Jewish carpenter, flesh and blood, a human with characteristics? While the literature of scripture is filled with anthropomorphism, is it wrong to apply this with broad-sweeping generality to interaction with God? Monks of the early church would make it a practice to empty their minds of imagery and thought while praying so as to avoid this metaphysical idolatry. If we picture a man with a beard when we picture God, while we are anthropomorphizing Him, are we not also creating boundaries; an idea of what He is capable and incapable of?

The difficulty of supernatural, infinite transcendency is how abstract it is. It is something impossible for the finite mind to grasp. The danger in this is its use of it as a backdoor out of a philosophical argument.

So what can we see of the Father in Christ? We can see His love, His willingness to step down and take on boundary, and we can see in words what His teaching reveals to us. It is only in this that we can apply attributes to the Father.

Scientific Theology: Rationalism meets Faith

In our Christian walk (or mine at least), there is a constant struggle between rational thinking and faith. At what point do we relinquish a dogmatic belief in the name of something that science continually learns more about? When science is applied to our faith, controversy arises, faith is sometimes totally abandoned, and the strictly dogmatic are tuned out by the rational discoverer as ignorant and irrelevant. These seemingly antithetical forces of thought continually slice at each other, but do they have to?

This thought has arisen because as of late I have been watching my DVD copy of the BBC series documentary Planet Earth. Many times, the people I watch it with will make a comment referring back to the Genesis creation account and I silently hold my tongue. Yes, I tend to take the more controversial position of evolutionary work in the story of history and God’s creation. In the many articles I have read and knowledge I have procured on the subject of things like genetics, mutation, and evolution itself, I find that while it has kinks, it could work. I also feel I have successfully integrated it into my theology as well. But, I hold my tongue so as to avoid debate.

Because a current issue is the intelligent design debate that is brought to light from recent movies such as Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and the ongoing legal battles in multiple states, I feel it is important, if we are going to debate the existence of God, for our theology to come out of the naive place it has been in. When one reads the blogs of University of Minnesota biology professor, PZ Myers, or the unofficial champion of the new Atheist movement, Richard Dawkins, one finds it difficult to defend the mystic.

So my proposition is this (as cold, harsh, and unbelieving as it sounds), what if there is less magic in the world than we sometimes would like to believe? Science has established the many ripple effects and evidence of their theories about things like the age of the universe and, yes, even evolution. At what point does our dogma succumb to reality? We’ve relinquished the geocentric (earth-centered) solar system theory that was so strongly held in the Dark Ages for the Copernican heliocentric (sun-centered) idea and even that was persecuted by the Church of its day. So at what point does one allow for poetic or allegorical literature to be the new interpretation for something believed so long? I am in no way denying the existence of miracles, but I am arguing that perhaps the numbers are right and the scientific data we have is all true. It does not remove God from the picture, but reveals the tools he may have used, including length of time.

The science of Evolution in God’s plan, taking into account the malevolent nature of Satan, would explain greatly the epic questions of why God created harmful viruses and bacteria, or cancer, or mosquitoes. (For more on this, read the Unfinished Epic linked at bottom)

So, can the Church see Science in a new light? Can the rational mind know God? Or does the problem lie with the inflexible dogma of the Christian mind? Can a Christian accept that the Bible is not written as a scientific work? That, perhaps, the knowledge of what is written did not go past what the writer knew? Just because the knowledge of the Bible is limited, does not make it any less true; simply more focused. It was not written as a textbook, or guidebook, or map. It was written as a letter of communication; as an archive of the interaction of God and Man from Man’s perspective. This is the point that I believe Christians need to understand and hold up if they are to survive the new wave of Atheism; a wave which takes the mass of accrued scientific knowledge about the workings of nature, the psychology of the mind, and the progress of human thought and throws it in the face of what is seemingly irrational, id est the belief in an invisible God based upon “scientific” logic.

Can the scientist recognize that simply because there is a whole, working creation, there is also an orchestrator of probability (for surely that is a miracle itself) and the systems themselves? The fact is, even when science dissects something, it still carries metaphysical quality and intangible existence. Even in light of complete dissection of the biological process of Love, Love still exists. It still has weight. It still has power. Love has incredible impact and influence upon the life of another, yet to break it down removes the beauty of it. It allows us to understand how it works, yet we are incapable to fully grasp its potential and vigor. It is one of the few things which when conjured is inexplicable and even illogical. Yet, does the simple fact that it can be dissected make it any less a whole? No. Therefore, does the dissection of the processes of nature, its creation, its progress, etc. make God any less existent? No. What it does is offset the center of our faith. We can no longer look at the existence of nature as our proof of the existence of God. We may only look to the intricate beauty of nature for a glimpse into the mind of God and trust that some things dissected cannot be fully understood.

This may sound as though I am claiming science as diametrically opposed to God. For if it removes beauty and dissolves wonder, how can it be good? I would pose that we should be no less in awe of the minute intricacy of this world than we are of it as a whole. In fact, it simply adds more wonders for us to be in awe of. The smaller we go, the more we find. Even humans are nothing but conglomerations of atoms, but without knowing atoms existed we could not know their power, their beauty, and be incapable of appreciating simply how complex substance and matter is. Even the largest mountain is made of these smallest of things. If this does not place one in awe of creation, I do not know what does? But if because of one’s knowledge of the atom he loses respect and appreciation for the mountain it makes, I do not believe he looks with appropriate perspective. Science should be viewed as the beautiful discovery of the gears behind the Swiss watch’s tick and time.

Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…”

Further Reading:

- The Unfinished Epic: http://www.uscwm.com/rwi/2%20The%20Unfinished%20Epic%201.pdf

(A wonderful theological theory of integration for Evolution in the Story of God’s Creation.)

- Article: “A New Step in Evolution” http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolution.php

(An article detailing a 20 year experiment with E. Coli resulting in a recent beneficial and what might possibly described as speciating mutation.)