The Thoughts of Ryan-C

I am now in the 2nd half of this book which is entitled The Reasons For Faith. The 8th chapter is entitled The Clues for God and in it, Keller outlines a few clues that could lead to the existence of God. This chapter does not focus on proving the existence of the God of the Bible, but rather lays the foundation for the conclusions that are to come in later chapters which will hopefully lead to ‘proof’ for God.

It was true, I had always realized it–I hadn’t any “right” to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential buzzing. I was thinking… that here we are eating and drinking, to preserve our precious existence, and that there’s nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.” -Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

This chapter is based off of a few arguments (out of a couple dozen) for God put forth by philosopher Alvin Platinga. The first of which is the Big Bang. Fifteen Billion years ago the universe began with a bright flash from an infinitesimally small point and rather large explosion outward and has been expanding at a rapid rate ever since. This implies that before this moment in time that there was nothing. Personally I cannot believe that the universe created itself out of nothing and sheer fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone or something was able to ‘begin’ it. A logical explanation is that only a force outside of our knowledge of nature was able to do such an act. “Everything we know in this world is ‘contingent,’ has a cause outside of itself. Therefore the universe, which is just a huge pile of such contingent entities, would itself have to be dependent on some cause outside of itself.” And even though this logic doesn’t point to a personal God or even God, it does point to some form of creator, which is a good place to start in Keller’s quest for ‘proof’ of God.

“The odds against a universe like ours coming out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications” -Stephen Hawking

The next idea placed forth is the sheer “fine-tuning” of our universe. Recently in my Astronomy class I have been learning about certain laws of physics and certain universal constants that essentially hold our world together. If these things like gravity, the speed of light, nuclear forces, and the many other did not exist in their perfect and current state, neither would we. The odds of these things coming together to work as they do in order to sustain the universe and life are statistically negligible. I was looking at the cockpit of a 747 the other day (random I know) and was discussing the intense skill it must take to actually operate the plane with a friend. It would very hard if not almost impossible for me to fly the plane and land it on my own without any outside skill or knowledge. There are so many dials to be concerned with and so many factors that come into play when operating a plane of that magnitude. If I were to fly the plane and land it, the people that knew about this would easily jump to the conclusion that I had outside help or knowledge. But say I didn’t, say I managed to figured it out on my own and land it. Odds are there would be a (very) large group of people that would assume I lied and googled it or talked to an air traffic control tower. And to assume I had help is a logical conclusion. Now imagine the universe and all of its factors. If we use the same logic, but on a greater scale it is easy to conclude that there has to be some outside force acting on the universe.

The next section is on the regularity (laws) of nature. Most people don’t often have an objection to these things or find them troubling, but philosophers sure do! (some) Philosophers are troubled that we don’t have the slightest idea of why nature-regularity is happening now and “moreover we haven’t the slightest rational justification for assuming it will continue tomorrow. If someone would say, ‘Well the future has always been like the past in the past,’ some would reply that you are assuming the very thing you are trying to establish. To put it another way, science cannot prove the continues regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith.” People can always say that ‘we don’t know why things are the way they are,’ but it will always be a clue pointing toward (a) God.

I don’t feel like summing up Keller’s next section (on Beauty) in my own words, so I am going to copy it for your reading pleasure. “If there is no God, and everything in this world is the product of (as Bertrand Russell famously put it) ‘an Accidental collocation of atoms,’ then there is no actual purpose for which we were made– we are accidents. If we are the product of accidental natural forces, then what we call ‘beauty’ is nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data. You only find certain scenery to be beautiful because you had ancestors who knew you would find food there and they survived because of that neurological feature and now we have it too. In the same way, though music feels significant, that significance is an illusion. Love too must be seen in this light. If we are the result of blind natural forces, then what we call ‘love’ is simply a biochemical response, inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive….. [some philosophers] are testifying to the fact that even though we as secular people believe that beauty and love are just biochemical responses, in the presence of great art and beauty we inescapably feel that there is real meaning in life, and there is truth and justice that will never let us down, and love means everything…. We may, therefore, be secular materialists who believe truth and justice, good and evil, are complete illusions. But in the presence of art or even great natural beauty, our hearts tell us another story…. ‘Just because we feel something is true doesn’t make it so!’ Are we, however only talking about feelings here? What is evoked in these experience is, more accurately, appetite or desire… We not only feel the reality but also the absence of what we long for…. Isn’t it true that innate desires correspond to real objects that can satisfy them (sex, appetite, tiredness, friendship)?… Doesn’t the unfulfillable longing evoked by beauty qualify as an innate desire?… We want something that nothing in this world can fulfill… This unifiable longing, then, qualifies as a deep, innate human desire, and that makes it a major clue that God is there.”

The rest of the chapter is about the evolutionist’s counter to these arguments through means of natural selection. The logic used by evolutionists is that our thoughts are a product of what will keep us alive and are not necessarily true. Which leads to the conclusion that either they can’t believe their theory (fully), or their theory is seriously flawed (it shuts itself down on the philosophical level). “It comes down to this: If, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tells us about morality, love, and beauty is not real–if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to pass on our genetic code–then so is what their brains tell them about the world.”

I probably butchered that, but if you are really interested, you should be sure to pick up this awesome book.

I most likely won’t be posting a real post for a few days because of tests and 4th of July weekend. But something good will come eventually. I promise. Reviewing something everyday is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Dang you school!