Re: How can we know there is a God?
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 7:36 am
So, why do I believe?
There are a few different reasons, and I can't really tell you when they coalesced, but I can tell you where they are today.
First, let me say that I value reason and intellect as much as anyone here. I've only said, "Because the Bible says so," when talking with other believers (and that's only when there's no better answer), and never in a million years would I expect that statement to carry weight with a non-believer. Furthermore, the Bible says what it says for a reason, one we can usually deduce (contrary to popular belief, Yahweh typically wants us to know why things are the way they are), so to even end a discussion with a fellow believer on, "Because the Bible says so," is deeply unsatisfying to me.
It's precisely because I value reason, intellect, and what is observable, that I find it inconceivable that one can look at our world, at the universe, and not see design and purpose. The vortexes that twist the galaxies across the vastness of the cosmos find kin in the twisting of our DNA. The finely tuned mechanism that is the universe demands that we look for a creator. We do not expect an earthquake to alphabetize a library, but we insist the greatest explosion of energy the universe has ever, and will ever see, arranged atoms into matter, matter came together to form stars, stars took hold of rocks to form planets, planets took hold of gasses to form atmospheres, atmospheres condensed to form into vapor, vapor condensed to become rain, and rain wet the face of a world to create life.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not more ordered cities when we threw a fraction of this power at them.
A billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion times this chain of events could have gone wrong, should have gone wrong, but didn't. And at it's apex? Man. The only creature in the universe capable of looking up and seeing the design, seeing the purpose, and gasp at the wonder of it all because it was made for us. Who else could it have been made for if not the only being gifted with the ability to perceive and appreciate it?
Some people say religion closes the minds of men. I'm sorry but I must respectfully say it is the atheist who lives in a world gone dark. They see only the watch. Theists see the hand which wrought it and presented it to us as a precious gift.
It is therefore only just we show our gratitude and follow the user instructions.
Second, I agree with Voltaire when he observed that if God did not exist it would be incumbent upon us to invent Him. Morality separated from the divine is (to borrow from Benjamin Franklin) two wolves agreeing it is just to eat the lamb. No one argues that a moral law of some sort doesn't exist, we all feel it in our bones that it does. We feel righteous indignation when we perceive we've been wronged. Or when a wrong is visited upon another. But it's the particulars that we disagree with. Additionally, what that wrong is, or who can be wronged, changed with the times.
It wasn't long ago a signification portion of America believed there was no moral quandary to be had with one man owning another. If we even granted that said man was indeed a man, we even concocted reasonable-sounding excuses to brush away any lingering objections. "They find true happiness in the work," some might say.
But to others they were less than even that, mere property, and less valuable than heads of cattle.
An adult man taking a young boy as a lover wasn't obscene. It was part of becoming a man.
And what god was invoked to justify Germany moving to take Europe? Or Mao to decimate his one people? Or America entering into Vietnam? I am reminded time and again how religion fuels war, but when I look at the wars across history I find few truly waged for the glory of a god.
Zeus may have brought the victory, but it was a general who got the statue.
Should all the gods die it is foolish to believe war goes with them.
What does this have to do with morality? Everything. We see throughout history that moral codes change a little less quickly than the fashions. But just a little. Morality becomes shaped by philosophies, politics, even climate. As these conditions change so do moral codes. We, for example, look back upon the Victorian age as rigid and oppressive and snicker. Most people end the observation there, satisfied that their moral code is far more enlightened.
But is that the correct lesson to draw? Why was the Victorian period as rigid as it was? We find the answer if we look a little further back and observe the libertine attitudes that preceded it. The people of Victorian England were quite convinced that things got a little out of hand and now they were living in a more enlightened age.
They saw themselves not as oppressed. But progressive!
Untethered from a divine anchor, unmolested by the shifting passions of men, moral law cannot exist because what men wish to be right and moral shifts with concerns, fears, and passions of the day. Moral law, if it is to be meaningful, must exist beyond the opinions of those it is meant to guide. If it is not, well then, you tell me who wins the football game when the referees are competing against the players?
Moral law must be beyond all men if it is to be of use to men. Untouchable. Absolute. Hewn from stone.
And for that to truly be possible we must, to get back to Voltaire, invent God if He didn't already exist.
TL;DR Points 1 & 2: I cannot look at the precision of creation and be intellectually honest and conclude there was no guiding hand. Moral law must be untouchable by men and if a divine creator doesn't exist then any code men create is merely the opinion of the age, destined to change in the next generation.
So, that's my intellectual argument for theism in a tiny, slightly cracked, nutshell. Everything I've summarized above keeps me grounded when my heart is raging.
Because there was a time I was very, very angry and came close to calling myself an atheist. But those two points above, things I knew to be absolutely true and factual, wouldn't let me. Not the Bible. Not the church. Not a still small voice.
My mind said my heart was full of crap.
And now things get... involved (as if they weren't already!).
I've seen evil. Real, true evil. I can't watch films like Paranormal Activity because it hits far too close to home. It's real to me. As real as the room I'm sitting, and the laptop I'm writing.
Since I was a child I've seen things. But only ever darkness. In fact it's one of the items on my list I plan on talking to Yahweh about when I meet Him. I've been threatened, mocked, held down, menaced... It seems my family has a little history with the demonic.
My mother told me a few stories. Some were benign, like a refrigerator door opening and closing on its own. Others, a little unsettling, like when my oldest sister was a little girl and told my mom there was a black dog in her bedroom talking to her. There was one time she got out of the shower and heard and woman talking to the family dog. The dog yelped in pain and when she investigated the dog was simply cowering in the corner.
I think the worst I ever had it was when a friend was visiting and we were playing Shadowrun 2nd Ed. (my first RPG). He knew that I could sense things. Indeed I walked through his his before and called out locations that felt... off. He confirmed weirdness there. Is family was fairly emotionally abusive. Pretty such his father was an alcoholic.
Real good fodder for darkness. I saw a a few things at his house, a dark figure in his bedroom once. But what really stands out to me was this one day I was over at his house and it was just us there. He had this life size T-800 cardboard standee in his bedroom off in the corner.
We went outside to muck around as high schoolers are wont to do, but I needed to run back into his room to grab something. I open the door and T-800 is standing right there to greet me. When we left it was several feet away from the door and the way it was positioned could have only been there, as close as it was to the door, if someone held the standee with one hand while closing the door with the other as they left the room.
But, like I said, there was no one else in the house.
Anyway, I meant to talk about the worst thing that happened to me. So, yeah, playing Shadowrun, sticking it to the corps, when I see a black undulating mass float into the room. I jump up and flee several feet back. My friend is a little concerned now and I tell him what I see. He doesn't see it.
I have never felt such hate in all my life and it was coming from this thing right at me. Then my friend said his arm suddenly felt cold, and it was beginning to hurt. Something had touched him.
So we ran.
My mother and I once chased a demon through our house. That was actually kinda cool. Stuff had been going on, and I let her know. Being the head of the household she had spiritual authority over the house, so she rebuked it. And it ran. We couldn't see it, but I could feel it. It made its way into the basement and I couldn't sense it. I thought it was gone. My mom said she got the distinct impression it wasn't over and that she shouldn't stop rebuking it. The moment she started back up the thing popped back onto my radar.
I didn't know they could hide!
Saw glowing yellow eyes in the darkness leading into the basement once. That was a thing.
Another night I was being tormented, voices for the most part, and was told in no uncertain terms that if I told my mom she'd be killed. So when I went to her room and saw a wavy mass in front the door I opted to go into the other room, curled up into a ball, and wept.
A short time later she called out to me very forcefully. She told me a voice told her I needed her right then and woke her.
There's more, but you get the gist. Mostly it was voices and presences. Like once I was staying at my grandparent's home, it was night, and I was walking from the kitchen to the living room and got the distinct impression I was being followed. I beat feet to the couch (where I was sleeping) and bravely spun around. Nothing was there, of course. Then something changed.
You've been in a crowded room, right? You don't really need to see people to get a sense that they're there and where they're at. It was kinda like that.
The room came alive. It felt as though I had walked into a room full of people and they were all staring at me. Except I couldn't see them. And they didn't care for me.
By this time I was pretty adept at rebuking... though I did make a panicked phone call to my aunt before doing that. The room emptied with a howl.
That was a new one to me. I had seen demons do one last little trick in protest before leaving, but howling was new.
Keep in mind I'm giving you the entertaining highlight reel. Most of the time it was terrifying presences, black figures, voices, and a lot of unmanliness on my behalf.
It went on like this well into my twenties. My wife was there for it too. Then I met a man who had answers to larger theological inconsistencies I saw in mainstream Christianity. I wept when those pieces fell into place. Later he was laying on hands and asked for people who needed deliverance to come up. I did.
Mind you this was several years after I went to the pastor of my old church and told them what was going on and I didn't want to see that stuff anymore. He kindly informed me his church didn't believe that sort of stuff happened. And off I went.
So I'm in the deliverance line and the nice man asks me what did I need deliverance from. "I see things," I replied. He didn't so much as blink (I later heard him tell a story where he had a possessed man float three feet into the air right in front of him, so my comment really wasn't impressive in the scheme of things) and put his hands on me and broke the curse.
More or less things have been quiet since then. I get things once in a great while, but before where the dial was at 11, the speaker just sorta flickers at a 1 once in awhile. And I think I know why...
Anyway, that's my tale. That's why I believe what I believe.
And maybe now you can see why I get a little intense and, admittedly, monochromatic in my posts.
There are a few different reasons, and I can't really tell you when they coalesced, but I can tell you where they are today.
First, let me say that I value reason and intellect as much as anyone here. I've only said, "Because the Bible says so," when talking with other believers (and that's only when there's no better answer), and never in a million years would I expect that statement to carry weight with a non-believer. Furthermore, the Bible says what it says for a reason, one we can usually deduce (contrary to popular belief, Yahweh typically wants us to know why things are the way they are), so to even end a discussion with a fellow believer on, "Because the Bible says so," is deeply unsatisfying to me.
It's precisely because I value reason, intellect, and what is observable, that I find it inconceivable that one can look at our world, at the universe, and not see design and purpose. The vortexes that twist the galaxies across the vastness of the cosmos find kin in the twisting of our DNA. The finely tuned mechanism that is the universe demands that we look for a creator. We do not expect an earthquake to alphabetize a library, but we insist the greatest explosion of energy the universe has ever, and will ever see, arranged atoms into matter, matter came together to form stars, stars took hold of rocks to form planets, planets took hold of gasses to form atmospheres, atmospheres condensed to form into vapor, vapor condensed to become rain, and rain wet the face of a world to create life.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not more ordered cities when we threw a fraction of this power at them.
A billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion times this chain of events could have gone wrong, should have gone wrong, but didn't. And at it's apex? Man. The only creature in the universe capable of looking up and seeing the design, seeing the purpose, and gasp at the wonder of it all because it was made for us. Who else could it have been made for if not the only being gifted with the ability to perceive and appreciate it?
Some people say religion closes the minds of men. I'm sorry but I must respectfully say it is the atheist who lives in a world gone dark. They see only the watch. Theists see the hand which wrought it and presented it to us as a precious gift.
It is therefore only just we show our gratitude and follow the user instructions.
Second, I agree with Voltaire when he observed that if God did not exist it would be incumbent upon us to invent Him. Morality separated from the divine is (to borrow from Benjamin Franklin) two wolves agreeing it is just to eat the lamb. No one argues that a moral law of some sort doesn't exist, we all feel it in our bones that it does. We feel righteous indignation when we perceive we've been wronged. Or when a wrong is visited upon another. But it's the particulars that we disagree with. Additionally, what that wrong is, or who can be wronged, changed with the times.
It wasn't long ago a signification portion of America believed there was no moral quandary to be had with one man owning another. If we even granted that said man was indeed a man, we even concocted reasonable-sounding excuses to brush away any lingering objections. "They find true happiness in the work," some might say.
But to others they were less than even that, mere property, and less valuable than heads of cattle.
An adult man taking a young boy as a lover wasn't obscene. It was part of becoming a man.
And what god was invoked to justify Germany moving to take Europe? Or Mao to decimate his one people? Or America entering into Vietnam? I am reminded time and again how religion fuels war, but when I look at the wars across history I find few truly waged for the glory of a god.
Zeus may have brought the victory, but it was a general who got the statue.
Should all the gods die it is foolish to believe war goes with them.
What does this have to do with morality? Everything. We see throughout history that moral codes change a little less quickly than the fashions. But just a little. Morality becomes shaped by philosophies, politics, even climate. As these conditions change so do moral codes. We, for example, look back upon the Victorian age as rigid and oppressive and snicker. Most people end the observation there, satisfied that their moral code is far more enlightened.
But is that the correct lesson to draw? Why was the Victorian period as rigid as it was? We find the answer if we look a little further back and observe the libertine attitudes that preceded it. The people of Victorian England were quite convinced that things got a little out of hand and now they were living in a more enlightened age.
They saw themselves not as oppressed. But progressive!
Untethered from a divine anchor, unmolested by the shifting passions of men, moral law cannot exist because what men wish to be right and moral shifts with concerns, fears, and passions of the day. Moral law, if it is to be meaningful, must exist beyond the opinions of those it is meant to guide. If it is not, well then, you tell me who wins the football game when the referees are competing against the players?
Moral law must be beyond all men if it is to be of use to men. Untouchable. Absolute. Hewn from stone.
And for that to truly be possible we must, to get back to Voltaire, invent God if He didn't already exist.
TL;DR Points 1 & 2: I cannot look at the precision of creation and be intellectually honest and conclude there was no guiding hand. Moral law must be untouchable by men and if a divine creator doesn't exist then any code men create is merely the opinion of the age, destined to change in the next generation.
So, that's my intellectual argument for theism in a tiny, slightly cracked, nutshell. Everything I've summarized above keeps me grounded when my heart is raging.
Because there was a time I was very, very angry and came close to calling myself an atheist. But those two points above, things I knew to be absolutely true and factual, wouldn't let me. Not the Bible. Not the church. Not a still small voice.
My mind said my heart was full of crap.
And now things get... involved (as if they weren't already!).
I've seen evil. Real, true evil. I can't watch films like Paranormal Activity because it hits far too close to home. It's real to me. As real as the room I'm sitting, and the laptop I'm writing.
Since I was a child I've seen things. But only ever darkness. In fact it's one of the items on my list I plan on talking to Yahweh about when I meet Him. I've been threatened, mocked, held down, menaced... It seems my family has a little history with the demonic.
My mother told me a few stories. Some were benign, like a refrigerator door opening and closing on its own. Others, a little unsettling, like when my oldest sister was a little girl and told my mom there was a black dog in her bedroom talking to her. There was one time she got out of the shower and heard and woman talking to the family dog. The dog yelped in pain and when she investigated the dog was simply cowering in the corner.
I think the worst I ever had it was when a friend was visiting and we were playing Shadowrun 2nd Ed. (my first RPG). He knew that I could sense things. Indeed I walked through his his before and called out locations that felt... off. He confirmed weirdness there. Is family was fairly emotionally abusive. Pretty such his father was an alcoholic.
Real good fodder for darkness. I saw a a few things at his house, a dark figure in his bedroom once. But what really stands out to me was this one day I was over at his house and it was just us there. He had this life size T-800 cardboard standee in his bedroom off in the corner.
We went outside to muck around as high schoolers are wont to do, but I needed to run back into his room to grab something. I open the door and T-800 is standing right there to greet me. When we left it was several feet away from the door and the way it was positioned could have only been there, as close as it was to the door, if someone held the standee with one hand while closing the door with the other as they left the room.
But, like I said, there was no one else in the house.
Anyway, I meant to talk about the worst thing that happened to me. So, yeah, playing Shadowrun, sticking it to the corps, when I see a black undulating mass float into the room. I jump up and flee several feet back. My friend is a little concerned now and I tell him what I see. He doesn't see it.
I have never felt such hate in all my life and it was coming from this thing right at me. Then my friend said his arm suddenly felt cold, and it was beginning to hurt. Something had touched him.
So we ran.
My mother and I once chased a demon through our house. That was actually kinda cool. Stuff had been going on, and I let her know. Being the head of the household she had spiritual authority over the house, so she rebuked it. And it ran. We couldn't see it, but I could feel it. It made its way into the basement and I couldn't sense it. I thought it was gone. My mom said she got the distinct impression it wasn't over and that she shouldn't stop rebuking it. The moment she started back up the thing popped back onto my radar.
I didn't know they could hide!
Saw glowing yellow eyes in the darkness leading into the basement once. That was a thing.
Another night I was being tormented, voices for the most part, and was told in no uncertain terms that if I told my mom she'd be killed. So when I went to her room and saw a wavy mass in front the door I opted to go into the other room, curled up into a ball, and wept.
A short time later she called out to me very forcefully. She told me a voice told her I needed her right then and woke her.
There's more, but you get the gist. Mostly it was voices and presences. Like once I was staying at my grandparent's home, it was night, and I was walking from the kitchen to the living room and got the distinct impression I was being followed. I beat feet to the couch (where I was sleeping) and bravely spun around. Nothing was there, of course. Then something changed.
You've been in a crowded room, right? You don't really need to see people to get a sense that they're there and where they're at. It was kinda like that.
The room came alive. It felt as though I had walked into a room full of people and they were all staring at me. Except I couldn't see them. And they didn't care for me.
By this time I was pretty adept at rebuking... though I did make a panicked phone call to my aunt before doing that. The room emptied with a howl.
That was a new one to me. I had seen demons do one last little trick in protest before leaving, but howling was new.
Keep in mind I'm giving you the entertaining highlight reel. Most of the time it was terrifying presences, black figures, voices, and a lot of unmanliness on my behalf.
It went on like this well into my twenties. My wife was there for it too. Then I met a man who had answers to larger theological inconsistencies I saw in mainstream Christianity. I wept when those pieces fell into place. Later he was laying on hands and asked for people who needed deliverance to come up. I did.
Mind you this was several years after I went to the pastor of my old church and told them what was going on and I didn't want to see that stuff anymore. He kindly informed me his church didn't believe that sort of stuff happened. And off I went.
So I'm in the deliverance line and the nice man asks me what did I need deliverance from. "I see things," I replied. He didn't so much as blink (I later heard him tell a story where he had a possessed man float three feet into the air right in front of him, so my comment really wasn't impressive in the scheme of things) and put his hands on me and broke the curse.
More or less things have been quiet since then. I get things once in a great while, but before where the dial was at 11, the speaker just sorta flickers at a 1 once in awhile. And I think I know why...
Anyway, that's my tale. That's why I believe what I believe.
And maybe now you can see why I get a little intense and, admittedly, monochromatic in my posts.