Click here for the first part of this series: How Do We Know God is Real?
What does “better” mean?
The better of two competing entities, objects, or proposals is the one that comes closer to some particular ideal. “Better” implies a “best”—even if the best is something we have never seen and cannot name. To illustrate using an everyday object, a washing machine that meets our capacity requirements is better than one that does not, but one that meets our capacity requirements and features styling we find attractive is better still. All of the movement from good to better to better still implies a “perfect” washing machine toward which this continuum is oriented, even if that ideal can only be approached but not attained.
Living is better than not living along just such a continuum, because one’s sense of what is highest includes the dynamism that comes with life. Truth is also better than falsehood, because the highest-quality thing would be unencumbered by lies. Each reasoning human being has ideals of what is good and right that extrapolate toward “highestness” in this way—that is, toward a model for what is perfect or best. We don’t think about this ideal directly, and we cannot imagine it because we ourselves are imperfect. However, the ideal, or at least our sense of its direction, serves as the yardstick by which we make our determinations.
This is true even of seemingly subjective points such as our favorite color. We might all have different favorite colors and we might each change our favorite colors according to our moods, but each of us nevertheless agrees that certain colors touch us in ways that are better than certain other colors. Measurements such as these could not be made unless there was some standard for comparing life vs. unlife, truth vs. falsehood, or my reaction to one color vs. my reaction to another. There is a model, in our thoughts or in our spirits, that we use in order to judge—in order to favor certain things and avoid or discourage other things.
One might argue that this standard for determination is actually something mundane. We human beings simply seek our own happiness, or our own physical comfort. This is true as far as it goes. However, even if all of human life and human choices were this simple, still these conditions would point toward ideals. There is some “perfect” happiness. There is some “perfect” comfort. It would be impossible to make relative measurements of “better” along these continua as well, unless there was a “best” to use as yardstick. And these “bests” surely exist. We use them, after all. So given that the ideals exist, where do they exist?
The answer is that the ideal, any ideal—an ideal of perfect justice, beauty, truth, or even happiness—must exist outside of the material world. It cannot be found in the material world, because nothing perfect can be found here. Everything we find in the material world could still be better than it is. That is, everything here falls somehow short of an ideal that, as we have already seen, is also real.
So (to build on the arguments in Part 2): Assume that somehow you do think thoughts. Assume, furthermore, that this act of thinking actually is just random, and you are entirely comfortable with the notion that selfhood is an illusion—that in fact we have no autonomy and our thought life is just the result of cascading collisions. If so, these cascading collisions seem to be making evaluations with reference to a standard that does not exist in the material world.
The problem with this should be clear. The material world is all that there is—or so goes the argument. The argument further asserts that all that we see and all that we experience are fully self-created, the result of meaningless random events. So how could random collisions give rise to something immaterial? Specifically, how could colliding particles create referential standards of value that do not exist in the realm of colliding particles?
Plenty of people try to assert that there is no ultimate perfect being. But they undermine their argument through the very premise of arguing. Is the notion of the absence of God a “better” intellectual construct? Atheists would say yes! But if so, then what does “better” mean—and what does that meaning imply? All of us are leaning in the direction of something that is ultimate and perfect during every single instant through which we are aware and making choices in the world.
Next: Welcome to the Nulliverse
What does “better” mean?
The better of two competing entities, objects, or proposals is the one that comes closer to some particular ideal. “Better” implies a “best”—even if the best is something we have never seen and cannot name. To illustrate using an everyday object, a washing machine that meets our capacity requirements is better than one that does not, but one that meets our capacity requirements and features styling we find attractive is better still. All of the movement from good to better to better still implies a “perfect” washing machine toward which this continuum is oriented, even if that ideal can only be approached but not attained.
Living is better than not living along just such a continuum, because one’s sense of what is highest includes the dynamism that comes with life. Truth is also better than falsehood, because the highest-quality thing would be unencumbered by lies. Each reasoning human being has ideals of what is good and right that extrapolate toward “highestness” in this way—that is, toward a model for what is perfect or best. We don’t think about this ideal directly, and we cannot imagine it because we ourselves are imperfect. However, the ideal, or at least our sense of its direction, serves as the yardstick by which we make our determinations.
This is true even of seemingly subjective points such as our favorite color. We might all have different favorite colors and we might each change our favorite colors according to our moods, but each of us nevertheless agrees that certain colors touch us in ways that are better than certain other colors. Measurements such as these could not be made unless there was some standard for comparing life vs. unlife, truth vs. falsehood, or my reaction to one color vs. my reaction to another. There is a model, in our thoughts or in our spirits, that we use in order to judge—in order to favor certain things and avoid or discourage other things.
One might argue that this standard for determination is actually something mundane. We human beings simply seek our own happiness, or our own physical comfort. This is true as far as it goes. However, even if all of human life and human choices were this simple, still these conditions would point toward ideals. There is some “perfect” happiness. There is some “perfect” comfort. It would be impossible to make relative measurements of “better” along these continua as well, unless there was a “best” to use as yardstick. And these “bests” surely exist. We use them, after all. So given that the ideals exist, where do they exist?
The answer is that the ideal, any ideal—an ideal of perfect justice, beauty, truth, or even happiness—must exist outside of the material world. It cannot be found in the material world, because nothing perfect can be found here. Everything we find in the material world could still be better than it is. That is, everything here falls somehow short of an ideal that, as we have already seen, is also real.
So (to build on the arguments in Part 2): Assume that somehow you do think thoughts. Assume, furthermore, that this act of thinking actually is just random, and you are entirely comfortable with the notion that selfhood is an illusion—that in fact we have no autonomy and our thought life is just the result of cascading collisions. If so, these cascading collisions seem to be making evaluations with reference to a standard that does not exist in the material world.
The problem with this should be clear. The material world is all that there is—or so goes the argument. The argument further asserts that all that we see and all that we experience are fully self-created, the result of meaningless random events. So how could random collisions give rise to something immaterial? Specifically, how could colliding particles create referential standards of value that do not exist in the realm of colliding particles?
Plenty of people try to assert that there is no ultimate perfect being. But they undermine their argument through the very premise of arguing. Is the notion of the absence of God a “better” intellectual construct? Atheists would say yes! But if so, then what does “better” mean—and what does that meaning imply? All of us are leaning in the direction of something that is ultimate and perfect during every single instant through which we are aware and making choices in the world.
Next: Welcome to the Nulliverse
