#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.
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