A Response to "Why I Am Not a Christian" (4/4) - Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

This is the last post in a series of four with the intention of discussing an essay by Richard Carrier entitled Why I Am Not a Christian. In his essay, he presents four reasons why he does not believe in the Christian God. I'll dedicate one post to each of these arguments. Each post discusses one of his four main points:
#1: God Is Silent
#2: God Is Inert
#3: The Evidence Is Inadequate
#4: Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

The fourth reason Carrier says he is not a Christian is that Christianity predicts a very different universe from what we actually observe. He suggests that the universe that we inhabit looks exactly like a universe should look if there were no god.

Right out of the gate, Carrier reveals one of his presuppositions that I think leads to this conclusion:

For a loving God who wanted to create a universe solely to provide a home for human beings, and to bring his plan of salvation to fruition, would never have invented this universe, but something quite different.

Carrier's starting assumption is that of God's purpose for creating the universe - that God created it solely to provide a place for us to live, and to bring about His "plan of salvation". As I've described in the first three posts on this topic, this is short-sighted. Of course, this universe was created to provide us a place to live, and He is in fact carrying out his plan of redemption. But these are not His only (or even primary) objectives. Carrier leaves out the key ingredient: free will.

If you haven't yet read my first post dealing with Carrier's essay, you should do so before continuing. It deals with the apparent fact that God values our free choice enough to allow us to choose to reject Him; to choose to spend eternity separated from Him.

I have chosen to use the words of Kenneth Miller to complete the rest of this post. He says it better than I could, anyway. I apologize for the long quote; if this bothers you, pretend they are my words. I believe every one of them.

Here are the last few paragraphs of his book, Finding Darwin's God, (with a few of my edits):

Science in general, and evolutionary science in particular... reveals a universe that is dynamic, flexible, and logically complete. It presents a vision of life that spreads across the planet with endless variety and intricate beauty. It suggests a world in which our material existence is not an impossible illusion propped up by magic, but the genuine article, a world in which things are exactly what they seem. A world in which we were formed, as the Creator once told us, from the dust of the earth itself.

It is often said that a Darwinian universe is one whose randomness cannot be reconciled with meaning. I disagree. A world truly without meaning would be one in which a deity pulled the string of every human puppet, indeed of every material particle. In such a world, physical and biological events would be carefully controlled, evil and suffering could be minimized, and the outcome of historical processes strictly regulated. All things would move toward the Creator's clear, distinct, established goals. Such control and predictability, however, comes at the price of independence. [This is the world Carrier says Christianity predicts, but...] Always in control, such a Creator would deny his creatures any real opportunity to know and worship him - authentic love requires freedom, not manipulation. Such freedom is best supplied by the open contingency of evolution.

If he so chose, the God whose presence is taught by most Western religions could have fashioned anything, ourselves included, ex nihilo, from his wish alone. In our childhood as a species, that might have been the only way in which we could imagine the fulfillment of a divine will. [This is why, as Carrier describes, early Christians (and todays Creationists) believed in ex nihilo creation.] But we've grown up, and something remarkable has happened: we have begun to understand the physical basis of life itself. If a string of constant miracles were needed for each turn of the cell cycle or each flicker of a cilium, the hand of God would be written directly into every living thing - his presence at the edge of the human sandbox would be unmistakable. Such findings might confirm our faith, but they would also undermine our independence. How could we fairly choose between God and man when the presence and the power of the divine so obviously and so literally controlled our every breath? Our freedom as his creatures requires a little space and integrity. In the material world, it requires self-sufficiency and consistency with the laws of nature.

Evolution is neither more nor less than the result of respecting the reality and consistency of the physical world over time. To fashion material beings with an independent physical existence, any Creator would have had to produce an independent material universe in which our evolution over time was a contingent possibility. A believer in the divine accepts that God's love and gift of freedom are genuine - so genuine that they include the power to choose evil and, if we wish, to freely send ourselves to Hell. Not all believers will accept the stark conditions of that bargain, but our freedom to act has to have a physical and biological basis. Evolution and its sister sciences of genetics and molecular biology provide that basis. In biological terms, evolution is the only way a Creator could have made us the creatures we are - free beings in a world of authentic and meaningful moral and spiritual choices.

Those who ask from science a final argument, an ultimate proof, an unassailable position from which the issue of God may be decided will always be disappointed. [Stephen Carrier included.] As a scientist I claim no new proofs, no revolutionary data, no stunning insight into nature that can tip the balance in one direction or another. But I do claim that to a believer, even in the most traditional sense, evolutionary biology is not at all the obstacle we often believe it to be. In many respects, evolution is the key to understanding our relationship with God.

-Kenneth Miller in Finding Darwin's God [pp. 285-291] (bold emphasis and bracketed text mine)

So it looks like the universe in which we find ourselves (the one described by the current scientific consensus) could be a necessary ingredient for God's plan to create beings free to choose to love him. What does that imply for the Creationist who rejects the scientific consensus of cosmology, biology, and geology? Must they also reject free will? Maybe not, but I have to agree with Miller, the Creationist's god is a weaker, marginalized version of the true Christian God.

A Response to "Why I Am Not a Christian" (3/4) - The Evidence is Inadequate

This is the third post in a series of four with the intention of discussing an essay by Richard Carrier entitled Why I Am Not a Christian. In his essay, he presents four reasons why he does not believe in the Christian God. I'll dedicate one post to each of these arguments. Each post discusses one of his four main points:
#1: God Is Silent
#2: God Is Inert
#3: The Evidence Is Inadequate
#4: Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

The third reason Carrier says he is not a Christian is that the evidence for Christianity is inadequate. A scientist through and through, Carrier uses the scientific method (or a form of it) to investigate the claims of Christianity. The basic argument takes the following form:

Christianity claims A.
If A is true, we would expect to observe B.
We do not observe B, we observe C.
Over and over again, Christianity's claims fail this test.
Therefore, Christianity is false.

He doesn't stop there; he also presents a parallel argument:

Naturalism claims X.

If X is true, we would expect to observe Y.

We do observe Y.
Over and over again, Naturalism's clams pass this test.

Therefore, Naturalism is true.

It's important to note that this approach is exactly how science studies something that is not directly observable: If the theory is true, each piece of evidence checks and supports the theory. The data is cumulative; no single piece proves the theory, but as each piece is added, predictions can be made about what further evidence should show… Every time the theory makes a correct prediction, (and does not make incorrect predictions) the more confident we are that the theory is correct.

In my previous posts on this essay, I have quoted snippets of his essay to present his argument in his own words. I'm not going to do that this time, for one simple reason: I think he is right.

Let me make myself clear; I think there is very little evidence for the existence of God from a scientific perspective. Anyone who seeks to determine the existence of God by looking for "evidence" will probably come up empty, over and over and over again.

The problem is, a large portion of Christians insist on subjecting their religions beliefs to this type of scientific scrutiny. This is most striking in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. I'll save discussion of ID for a future post, but the topic at hand brings an important issue to the surface:

Science and religion are separate ways of knowing; they address issues in separate domains. Therefore they can only provide answers to questions from within their prospective domains. In other words, science and religion provide answers to different types of questions.

The insistence that we must use science to address the claims of religion (and vice versa) is an overstepping of the boundaries of both ways of knowing. The late biologist Stephen J. Gould was a strong proponent of this separation, saying in his paper Nonoverlapping Magisteria:

"The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly."

Although Gould was an agnostic, he understood the limits of his science. Unfortunately, it seems that people outside Christianity understand the proper roles of these two ways of acquiring knowledge better than Christians themselves. Don't get me wrong; science and religion will always provide clarity and inspiration across the border in both directions. In reality, the border is not easily defined, and there is a portion of inquiry which requires input from both science and religion. The majority of questions, however, lie squarely within one of these two domains.

Do Christians really need science to legitimize their faith? Do you really want to hand over your cherished beliefs to the authority and scrutiny of science?

The reality is that the nature of science is intrinsically atheistic. It operates under the assumption that the physical is all that exists, regardless of whether or not the scientists involved believe in the supernatural. This is by necessity because science can only study reproducible phenomena. God's will and action are inherently unpredictable, and therefore inaccessible by scientific inquiry.

Robert T. Pennock in a great paper on the subject, says it another way:

[A] characteristic of the supernatural... is that it is inherently mysterious to us. As natural beings our knowledge all comes via natural laws and processes. If we could apply natural knowledge to understand supernatural powers, then, by definition, they would not be supernatural. The lawful regularities of our experience do not apply to the supernatural world... The same point holds about divine beings--we cannot know what it is that they would or would not do in any given case. God works, they say, in mysterious ways.

If science shouldn't be used to defend the existence of God, what are we to do? How do we convince the world that they are in need of a savior? How do we convince them that Jesus is truly the Son of God?

I think Jesus gave us the answer in John while he was praying with his disciples:

"My prayer is not for them [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me." John 17:20-21

Here Jesus prays for unity in his church, a church consisting of true believers; true followers of Him. Francis Schaeffer, in his book The Mark of the Christian, calls this "the final apologetic", explaining that according to John 13, to be one with God (and therefore show the world that Jesus is God) means to show love to other believers and also to non-believers:

In John 13 the point was that, if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he is not a Christian. [But in John 17] Jesus is stating something else which is much more cutting, much more profound: We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus' claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.

I have already written this post three different times, each ultimately ending up in my virtual trashcan. I just couldn't make sense of why, if there really is very little evidence of God's existence, do I still believe He exists? This morning in Sunday School, our teacher read the quote above from Schaeffer's book. It cut deep into my heart, and I remembered something I wrote in my journal several years ago, when I first wrestled with atheism. I was just coming out of the lowest point of my life, and I wrote these words:

"The love of these people [my Christian friends] is the only reason I still have any faith left at all."

The love I felt from the people close to me was the only thing I had left; it was the rope that kept me from falling headlong down that cliff. It really is the final apologetic.

Should we have answers for the issues Carrier brings up in his essay? Of course. But this should not be our primary defense. Instead, our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ will show the world that there really is something different, something real about our faith. It will show that Jesus really is the Son of God.

Schaeffer, in another one of his books, summarizes this entire post:

“[W]ithout true Christians loving one another, Christ says the world cannot be expected to listen, even when we give proper answers. Let us be careful, indeed, to spend a lifetime studying to give honest answers. For years the orthodox, evangelical church has done this very poorly. So it is well to spend time learning to answer the questions of men who are about us. But after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.” Francis Schaffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, pp. 164-165

A Response to "Why I Am Not a Christian" (2/4) - God Is Inert

This is the second post in a series of four with the intention of discussing an essay by Richard Carrier entitled Why I Am Not a Christian. In his essay, he presents four reasons why he does not believe in the Christian God. I'll dedicate one post to each of these arguments. Each post discusses one of his four main points:
#1: God Is Silent
#2: God Is Inert
#3: The Evidence Is Inadequate
#4: Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

His next argument is equally simple: God is inert. The argument goes like this: God is all powerful. God is a loving God. Things exist in the world that a loving, all powerful God would do away with if he could. Therefore, God does not exist.

Here it is in his words:

It's a simple fact of direct observation that if I had the means and the power, and could not be harmed for my efforts, I would immediately alleviate all needless suffering in the universe. All guns and bombs would turn to flowers. All garbage dumps would become gardens. There would be adequate resources for everyone. There would be no more children conceived than the community and the environment could support. There would be no need of fatal or debilitating diseases or birth defects, no destructive Acts of God. And whenever men and women seemed near to violence, I would intervene and kindly endeavor to help them peacefully resolve their differences. That's what any loving person would do. Yet I cannot be more loving, more benevolent than the Christian God. Therefore, the fact that the Christian God does none of these things--in fact, nothing of any sort whatsoever--is proof positive that there is no Christian God.

This is certainly a difficult problem, one that I have struggled with for a long time. One does not need to watch the news very long to realize that the world is not the way it should be. A couple years ago my mother-in-law passed away from colon cancer. She was an awesome person - she loved God with all her heart, even in the midst of her illness. I remember attending church with her in the final months of her life, when the effects of her cancer and chemotherapy were really starting to become obvious. As we sang, (I don't remember the song) I remember turning to look at her. She was standing, eyes closed, olive green arms outstretched, praising her heavenly Father. My wife was at her bedside when she died. It was not a peaceful death. Why would God do this to someone with so much faith, someone who loves him so much?

It reminds me of a poem I have sitting in my quotes list (I can't remember where I got it) that sums up the problem in a rather poignant way:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-- Epicurus

The problem of evil is, in my opinion, the most compelling argument against the existence of God.

Job surely would have something to say: He asked this question, and demanded that God answer him. And answer him He did:

Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm:
"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
"Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?"
Job 40:6-8

And it doesn't stop there; God unleashes a barrage of Who do you think you are? and Who are you to question me? that would make any man shrivel up into a speck of dust.

Just to be sure Job didn't think these questions were rhetorical, God ends his assault with:

"Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!" Job 40:2

Job's answer:

"My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes."
Job 42:5-6

So, according to the book of Job, the appropriate answer to the problem of evil, and why bad things happen to good people is: Who are you to question God?

Now, I believe this is probably the best and only way for us to respond when life becomes unfair. But on second look, I think there is more to this story.

As I explained in my last post, God created us to love him. Real love is not forced, not compelled, and does not arise from obligation or fear of punishment, it is freely given by an individual who makes a choice to love. In order to bring this kind of love about, God had to give his creation the choice to love Him. This was a risk, for sure.

Part of loving God is obeying Him. A lot of the evil in the world arises from human beings exercising their free will, disobeying God. Creatures that are free to love must be free to choose. This could explain evil that arises as a result of human beings, but what about natural disasters? Hurricanes, earthquakes and floods surely are not the result of free will. Why doesn't God stop natural disasters?

I think it is entirely possible that the natural laws that govern the behavior of tectonic plates and tropical storm systems exist because they are just the sort of laws required for the existence of beings with free will. C.S. Lewis made this same suggestion in his book, The Problem of Pain:

"Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you will find that you have excluded life itself."

As Lewis continues, he almost appears to be answering Carrier's objections point-for-point, he describes the world that Carrier suggests is "the way it should be" and points out that this type of world is intrinsically incompatable with a world in which free will exists:

We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of... [our] abuse of free will... at every moment: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void... Not even Omnipotence could create a society of free souls without at the same time creating a relatively independent and 'inexorable' Nature."

Carrier, in his essay, actually comes pretty close to answering his own question in a way that might satisfy Lewis:

The only possible exception here is when a loving person is incapable of acting as he desires--either lacking the ability or facing too great a risk to himself or others--but this exception never applies to a God, who is all-powerful and immune to all harm.

I think Carrier has it right: God is "incapable" of granting free will without also allowing evil to reign in the world where that free will exists; the two go hand-in-hand. It is similar to asking the question we have all heard: Can God create a stone so big even HE can't lift it? Or can God make a round square? These are nonsense questions because they ignore the nature of things; All squares must have four sides, it is nonsense to think of a round square. Likewise, all beings with free will must exist in a universe with both natural and human evil.

Finally, a somewhat more satisfactory answer lies again in the consequences of free will, and in God's purpose for his creation. A lot of people look at the world as if God created it as a playground for people. Any time we are inconvenienced, any time our pleasure is cut short by some natural event, they think that the world has somehow fallen short of the "way things should be." However, this assumes God's goal is to make us happy, or at least to give us pleasure. What if his goal is to change us?

I asked my wife why she thought bad things happen to good people, and one of her answers was exactly this; "Well, bad things help us change." I think she is exactly right.


In any case, I'm sure it will always remain in my mind as one of the most difficult for any Christian to answer. Perhaps we might learn from Job's experiences and come to peace with the fact that a completely satisfactory answer is intentionally beyond our grasp.



Next, I'll tackle Carrier's third objection to Christianity: The evidence is inadequate.

A Response to "Why I Am Not a Christian" (1/4) - God Is Silent

A while ago, I encountered an essay by Richard Carrier entitled "Why I Am Not a Christian". When I first read it, the old doubts reignited, the ones I experienced years ago when I first read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.

This is the first of four posts with the intention of discussing the essay. Each post discusses one of his four main points:
#1: God Is Silent
#2: God Is Inert
#3: The Evidence Is Inadequate
#4: Christianity Predicts a Different Universe

Before I continue, let me answer the question you may be screaming at your computer monitor right now: Why on earth am I reading something like this?! Well, as I have said before, I want no part of a faith that is based on ignorance. If I cannot read something like Carrier's essay without filling my heart with doubt, than something is wrong with my faith. I'd like to ask you: Can you read his essay without doubt creeping into your heart? If not, what does that say about your conclusions about God? I want (as Os Guinness describes) an "examined faith, unafraid to doubt". I believe it the only way to "know God more certainly, and enjoy God more deeply." (again Guinness)

God is silent


Carrier's first objection to Christianity is that God is silent. He rejects faith in Christ because God does not communicate with mankind in a way that an all-powerful being should:

The Christian proposes that a supremely powerful being exists who wants us to set things right, and therefore doesn't want us to get things even more wrong... It should be indisputably clear what God wants us to do, and what he doesn't want us to do... Yet this is not what we observe. Instead, we observe exactly the opposite: unresolvable disagreement and confusion [about what he wants us to do]. That is clearly a failed prediction. A failed prediction means a false theory. Therefore, Christianity is false.

This difficulty has bothered me for a long time. God clearly does not communicate with us in a way that he could. He is all-powerful after all. But the problem does not start there: The Bible describes Him communicating with mankind in a very direct way in the past. In Exodus 3, God speaks directly to Moses via burning bush. So we know it is something that He has done in the past. So why doesn't He do it today?
I think the majority of Carrier's objections arise from a basic misunderstanding of God's relationship to man. Certainly the God that created the universe, the One who counts the stars and calls them by name, is able to grab us by the collar, look us in the eye, and tell us exactly what he wants us to do. But I think this is missing the point. God created us for a reason. He didn't create us to obey him, or do anything for Him. If he did, his communication (or lack of it) with us is certainly puzzling. I believe God created us to love him.
Love is never forced. I know this in a very real way; my two year old daughter has recently stopped giving me hugs. Of course, this makes me sad. Some days I really need to feel her tiny arms squeeze my neck. I could make her hug me; demand that she give me a "squeeze". Sometimes I do just that. But this kind of "love", forced love, is not really love at all. Love is not forced. I believe that God is silent because he will not force us to love him. He gives us hints of his existence and character in a way that only an infinite being can if he wants to reveal part of himself to a finite being without overwhelming that finite being...
Ironically, Dan Barker, in his book Losing Faith in Faith, hit the nail on the head:

It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being. [source]

Well said, Dan. God wants us to love him, not because "if we don't he will send us to hell" or because "if we do, he'll send us to heaven". He wants us to love him because he made us, because he loves us, and because of what he has done for us.
In Miracles, C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: thus surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the renascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would admit. [source]

God somehow, in some way, suspended his sovereignty over our actions and gave us free will. He gave us a choice - He wants us to decide to love him.
Carrier has obviously heard this explanation before. He addresses it in his essay:

Typically, Christians try to make excuses for God that protect our free will. Either the human will is more powerful than the will of God, and therefore can actually block his words from being heard despite all his best and mighty efforts, or God cares more about our free choice not to hear him than about saving our souls, and so God himself "chooses" to be silent.

I think this second option is correct. But here Carrier is focusing only on our free will to hear or not hear God's voice. Although hearing God is important, Carrier neglects to mention another, arguably more important choice we are free to make: how we live our lives. God gave Adam & Eve, and all their descendants, including you and me, the choice between right and wrong; we can choose whether or not to obey. God gave us the ability to decide who will be lord of our lives; Jesus or something else.

This is important, because a holy God cannot spend eternity with a soul tainted by sin. It becomes apparent that God took the ultimate risk: He gave us free will, and in doing so, took the risk that we would reject Him; that our choice would result in eternal separation from Him. I think it was a risk worth taking, because (as I described above) it is the only way real love is possible. So to me, it looks like Carrier is correct; God cares more about our free choice than about "saving our souls". It has to be that way for loves sake.

Carrier has a few more things to say about free will:

Right from the start, [the appeal to free will] fails to explain why believers disagree. The fact that believers can't agree on the content of God's message or desires also refutes the theory that he wants us to be clear on these things. This failed prediction cannot be explained away by any appeal to free will--for these people have chosen to hear God, and not only to hear him, but to accept Jesus Christ as the shepherd of their very soul. So no one can claim these people chose not to hear God. Therefore, either God is telling them different things, or there is no God.

Some Christians put a lot of significance on the Holy Spirit, and understandably so; the idea of God dwelling within us, guiding us and telling us what is right and wrong is very appealing. However, I think Carrier has a good point. If the Holy Spirit is a significant force in guiding Christians, then God is intentionally sowing confusion in His church. The reality is that Christianity has an incredibly diverse array of beliefs, and they can't all be right. The church must be full of misguided people.

The only possible explanation is that the Holy Spirit is not a significant force in the guidance of the majority of Christians. And I am no exception. That's why, when I feel that "inner voice" nudging me in this way or that, I severely doubt that this is the Holy Spirit communicating with me. There is nothing different between me and the hordes of other misguided people sitting in the pew next to me every Sunday. I know this is pessimistic, but I see no way around it.

Either way, Carrier's first objection to Christianity is a reasonable one. Next on the list (and the next one I'll address here) is more serious: God is inert. Here he discusses, among other things, the problem of evil, and asks the question: Why would a good God allow suffering?