“Nothing exists beyond what can be measured or observed.” That’s what I used to believe. I got a note from a friend, and a member of the e-mail list, who found himself in a polite argument recently in which he confronted this very assertion.
In other words, the universe is what it is only by accident—or so the assertion goes. It is not that God definitely does not exist. Rather, whether God exists is irrelevant, because no God is involved. We might not know all of the precise mechanisms by which the universe accidentally arose, but that is what happened. The beginning of everything was just a vastly unlikely event that, in a vastly unlikely moment, did occur. Then, over time, the random collisions of particles eventually lined up in just the right way to produce self-sustaining life. Then, over still more time, the random accumulation of circumstances affecting that life gave rise to a machine-building and civilization-building lifeform—us.
In all of this, God has no place in the conversation, no matter what your scripture says. God is not needed. Again: So the assertion goes.
However, my own scripture says that—in this conversation—it is the scripture itself that is not needed. Really. That is: God is so obvious from what we know of the material world that no scripture is required to see him.
Personally, I find this to be a wonderfully self-effacing fact for a scripture to make plan. Using that idea as a starting point (specifically, Romans 1:19-20), I pursued the question of how we can know God is real. I hope you enjoy the argument. You can find the series of posts on that subject starting here.
In a way, though, that argument is beside the point. We all do need our arguments for why we believe in the God we do. We all need apologetics—see I Peter 3:15. Yet back when I believed the assertion at the very beginning of this post, no argument by itself could have shaken that belief. Our beliefs do not begin in the place that argument touches. Our beliefs do not take root in our thinking brains—much as we would like to think this is the case. Our beliefs instead begin elsewhere. In my own case, I had read the gospels before without meeting God in them. I had read them solely as literature. The breaking point in my system of belief came when I made the seemingly small choice to accept helplessness, admit vulnerability, and allow my heart to be changed. God swept in through this space. Only after that did I read the gospels with different eyes.
This is why, even though I have spent paragraph upon paragraph on arguments in this blog and elsewhere, I also know that we should not put too much hope in the weight of our arguments alone. I do not think the weight of just our arguments can reach people. Over top of the arguments of the thinkers, we also need the prayers of the faithful. In the end, it is not the sheep who save sheep. It is not even the lost sheep’s own bleating that saves sheep. A lost sheep is saved when the Shepherd moves.
I was not merely being “logical” when I committed to a godless worldview. In fact, I was not being “logical” in any way. The assertion at the beginning of this blog post actually fails by its own standard. The claim, “Nothing exists beyond what we can observe” is an example of a negative statement—and it is logically impossible to prove a negative. Therefore, this seemingly “logical” assertion is one that cannot be tested by logic.
In other words, it’s not just that my logic was incomplete. It’s not just that I needed to add something else to the structure of my thinking. That was not the extent of it. To cling to and insist upon an assertion that is fully unproveable is a commitment—and a different sort of commitment than we imagine we are making when we presume the cover of logic.
Back then, I was pretending to be logical, though at a deeper level I was holding a particular assumption in a place more sacred than logic. Back then, in other words, I was exercising a faith. I was staking out the bounds of a religion.
In other words, the universe is what it is only by accident—or so the assertion goes. It is not that God definitely does not exist. Rather, whether God exists is irrelevant, because no God is involved. We might not know all of the precise mechanisms by which the universe accidentally arose, but that is what happened. The beginning of everything was just a vastly unlikely event that, in a vastly unlikely moment, did occur. Then, over time, the random collisions of particles eventually lined up in just the right way to produce self-sustaining life. Then, over still more time, the random accumulation of circumstances affecting that life gave rise to a machine-building and civilization-building lifeform—us.
In all of this, God has no place in the conversation, no matter what your scripture says. God is not needed. Again: So the assertion goes.
However, my own scripture says that—in this conversation—it is the scripture itself that is not needed. Really. That is: God is so obvious from what we know of the material world that no scripture is required to see him.
Personally, I find this to be a wonderfully self-effacing fact for a scripture to make plan. Using that idea as a starting point (specifically, Romans 1:19-20), I pursued the question of how we can know God is real. I hope you enjoy the argument. You can find the series of posts on that subject starting here.
In a way, though, that argument is beside the point. We all do need our arguments for why we believe in the God we do. We all need apologetics—see I Peter 3:15. Yet back when I believed the assertion at the very beginning of this post, no argument by itself could have shaken that belief. Our beliefs do not begin in the place that argument touches. Our beliefs do not take root in our thinking brains—much as we would like to think this is the case. Our beliefs instead begin elsewhere. In my own case, I had read the gospels before without meeting God in them. I had read them solely as literature. The breaking point in my system of belief came when I made the seemingly small choice to accept helplessness, admit vulnerability, and allow my heart to be changed. God swept in through this space. Only after that did I read the gospels with different eyes.
This is why, even though I have spent paragraph upon paragraph on arguments in this blog and elsewhere, I also know that we should not put too much hope in the weight of our arguments alone. I do not think the weight of just our arguments can reach people. Over top of the arguments of the thinkers, we also need the prayers of the faithful. In the end, it is not the sheep who save sheep. It is not even the lost sheep’s own bleating that saves sheep. A lost sheep is saved when the Shepherd moves.
I was not merely being “logical” when I committed to a godless worldview. In fact, I was not being “logical” in any way. The assertion at the beginning of this blog post actually fails by its own standard. The claim, “Nothing exists beyond what we can observe” is an example of a negative statement—and it is logically impossible to prove a negative. Therefore, this seemingly “logical” assertion is one that cannot be tested by logic.
In other words, it’s not just that my logic was incomplete. It’s not just that I needed to add something else to the structure of my thinking. That was not the extent of it. To cling to and insist upon an assertion that is fully unproveable is a commitment—and a different sort of commitment than we imagine we are making when we presume the cover of logic.
Back then, I was pretending to be logical, though at a deeper level I was holding a particular assumption in a place more sacred than logic. Back then, in other words, I was exercising a faith. I was staking out the bounds of a religion.
