Weblog of a Christian philosophy student

Why can't God just forgive sin?

2011-12-17T22:24:00.000-08:00

People sometimes ask: why can't God just forgive sin? Why did Jesus have to die on the cross for us?

My answer to this would be that there are two kinds of forgiveness, one of which is a lot more 'powerful' than the other, and God needed to use this second, more powerful kind of forgiveness. Moreover, giving this kind of forgiveness required Jesus to die on the cross.

How so?

Imagine a thief who keeps stealing some guy's stuff - let's say John's stuff. John is so nice that whenever the thief steals from him, he forgives the thief. But the thief never changes his behaviour. John can forgive the thief all he wants, but it doesn't stop the thieve from stealing. Forgiving the thief doesn't make the thief a better person.

John's kind of forgiveness could be called the first kind.

The story shows that John's kind of forgiveness doesn't do that much. John's forgiveness won't make the thief stop stealing, it will only prevent John from seeking justice and might also relieve some emotional tension from his anger. John's kind of forgiveness won't change the thief's behaviour.

If God's forgiveness is like John's forgiveness then God's forgiveness won't change people's behaviour. If God's forgiveness is like John's forgiveness then we'll act in heaven the way we do on earth. This could lead to heaven having such things as people really disliking one another, splits between different groups, cliques, and so on. Not really a great picture of heaven.

The Christian idea is that to solve humanity's problems, God needed a more powerful 'second' kind of forgiveness - one that changes behaviour. That's the kind of forgiveness you need to really deal with humanity's issues.

See Col 2:13: "You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins."

The Bible says that when God forgave us He managed to change our behaviour as part of the forgiveness. Our sinful nature was 'cut away' by God's forgiveness, although we will still fight against it until Jesus comes (Gal 5:17).

Imagine John forgiving the thief with such 'power' (somehow) that the thief decided never to steal again! That would be similar to the second kind of forgiveness.

So how does it work?

The Bible says that the mechanism for God's more powerful kind of forgiveness must involve Jesus dying for us (Matt 26:39). I'm not too clear on the details of how it works, but I suspect it involves some kind of exchange between sinners and Jesus. 1 Peter 2:24 says, "He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed", in Romans 6:6, "our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ", and in Gal 2:20, "It is no longer [my old sinful self] that lives, but Christ lives in me".

Why didn't God only make people who would follow Him?

2011-11-21T22:26:00.000-08:00

God knows everything, right? So God knew who would choose not to follow Him and therefore who would go to hell. So God could, clearly, have prevented a lot of suffering by simply not creating those people. But God didn't.

How does one respond to this issue?

What I would say is that if it was that easy for God to solve the problem, then God would do so, based on verses like these:

1 Tim 2:3-4: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."

Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'"

2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his word, as he seems to some, but he is waiting in mercy for you, not desiring the destruction of any, but that all may be turned from their evil ways."

Matthew 23:37: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, putting to death the prophets, and stoning those who are sent to her! Again and again would I have taken your children to myself as a bird takes her young ones under her wings, and you would not!"

Turning to philosophy, what I might conjecture is that God can make us knowing everything we'll do, but not use that knowledge to make or not make certain people.

Creating a person could be a bit like flipping a coin that will come up 50/50 heads or tails. You can't make it go heads or tails. So just like I can't make a random coin toss always come up heads, God can't make people who will always choose a certain way.

However, unlike flipping the coin God *does* know everything about us before we are born. So in that respect what we have here is something very unlike flipping a coin. God knows but this knowledge is not 'actionable', God can't avoid making the people who will choose badly.

This is venturing further into speculation but it might be that once a soul exists God knows everything about it, including how it will choose in all possible situations. So once God guarantees that a soul will exist, God knows everything about it. However, without making the soul there is nothing can God know about it, because the knowing is based on that soul actually existing - not merely potentially existing. Because before it's created there is not a potential set of choices, there is actually no set of choices at all, because you need a real person to have a potential set of choices to look at, not a mere idea of a person.

(I found this answer interesting as well).

Classifying sin

2011-10-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

One of the problems that people can have with Christianity is that what is considered sin sometimes doesn't resonate on an emotional level. So, for example, sins can be things like murder, rape, and assault, but people often include within sin many minor things, such as wasting one's time, being silly, liking certain kinds of music, etc which don't feel particularly wrong or evil.

There is a problem with sins that do not feel very wrong (or wrong at all). This problem is that a Christian, in that situation, sort of has to force themselves to repent and to act like something is wrong, but they themselves do not actually feel it is really hurting anyone and so they cannot really make themselves feel, rather than think, it is wrong.

I believe this could be an influence that motivates Christians to give up their faith, because people get tired of saying things are evil or sinful when they don't actually feel those acts hurt anyone.

Here are some interesting verses written in Psalm 119 about this issue:

18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
27 Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works.
33 Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end.
 34 Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
73 Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.
125 I am your servant; give me discernment that I may understand your statutes.

The psalmist prays specifically for understanding of God's laws, to see why they are right or how they make sense. So the psalmist is praying not to follow God's law out of an iron sense of obligation, but to follow it because they can say, 'I can actually agree with that command, I can see how that makes sense and is the right thing to do'. Then they can feel the rightness or wrongness of a command because it makes sense.

So it seems that it's important to be able to rationally see how something is a sin if you say it is a sin, and for many people that means tracing it to some kind of harm - self-harm, harm of others, or harm of God.

So one conclusion is that some things we consider sins may actually not be sins, and we are being too hard on ourselves, because we cannot trace it back to a rational basis. A verse that relates to this is from 1 Corinthians 4:6, where people in the church had been adding to what the Bible said:

"Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other."

Another conclusion is that we can trace it to a rational basis after thinking about it a lot, and this will help us do it joyously rather than from inexplicable guilt, e.g. "I can see now how that action might be harmful in some way and why I shouldn't do it".

God's suffering

2011-09-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

One thing that distinguishes Christianity from other religions is that in Christianity God is supposed to have experienced the evil and suffering that humanity experiences in everyday life. Jesus is supposed to be God in the same way that you are you, and I am myself (John 10:30, Mark 2:5-12, John 14:9). This means that although God hasn't taken away evil and suffering in this life, God has experienced a pretty broad range of evils and sufferings, which, I suppose, is more comforting than if it wasn't the case.

The fact that God has suffered from the things that we go through means that God can more easily have empathy for what it's like, having been in our situation. God knows exactly what we're going through. God's ability to emphathise with our situation reminds me of John 11:33-5: "When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who were crying with her, he was deeply moved and troubled. So Jesus asked, "Where did you put Lazarus?" They answered him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus cried."

An interesting aspect to God's suffering is whether Jesus on the cross experienced more than purely anguish at his situation and physical pain. When Jesus "bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Pe 2:24), did this involve more than being crucified? One analogy I have heard about this is that you can imagine humanity's sins like a big pool of black sludge, and then this is somehow collected and poured onto Jesus on the cross.

If so, then Jesus' crucifixion involved much more than the anguish of his situation and physical pain. It also involved the pain of carrying humanity's sins, which could be quite horrible. Carrying all of humanity's sins would be an act on a massive scale. It is also an act with a terrible nature - we don't know what it feels like to carry someone's sins, but it could be really horrible. Perhaps it is the most painful experience anyone can go through. And maybe Jesus was also spiritually separated from the first member of the trinity in some way while it happened (Mark 15:34), which could be quite awful for God to undergo.

Suppose this is correct, then perhaps God is the one who has suffered the most in the history of the world.

This is a very surprising idea. Normally when we think of suffering we don't see God as an example of the miseries in the world. We might imagine a starving child in Africa, or someone with terrible chronic pain, or a victim of horrible evil. But, actually, according to this reasoning God is actually the person who has suffered the most in history. God's story is a good example of what it means to live in a world of pain and evil.

Is God pro-Western?

2011-09-02T23:53:00.000-07:00

A while ago I had a conversation with a Chinese friend who is not a Christian about Christianity, and one thing she felt was that Christianity seems to be a mainly Western religion, and we discussed whether most people in heaven will be Westerners. Western people throughout history seem to have had the best chance to hear the gospel and therefore perhaps an implication is that God prefers Westerners?

There are various ways that one could take to answer this point. For instance, in Revelation 7:9 God emphasises His inclusiveness:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

But I think it is interesting to reflect on how the future may be very different to the past. It's possible that by the time Jesus returns, Christianity will have become a much more significant presence in the East and South of the world compared to its North and West. Some statistics on its growth in the East-South from here say:

"In 1900, Europe and North America accounted for about 85 percent of the world's Christians. By 2050, that number will have shrunk to about 25 percent.

During the same period, he said the number of Christians in Africa have, well, skyrocketed seems too tame a word. In 1900, there were 10 million; in 2000, 363 million. By 2015, Jenkins expects 500 million. And, by 2050, he predicted that Africa would become the first continent to have 1 billion Christians. Put another way: One of every three Christians in the world will be African - and that's not counting the Africans who will have moved to the United States or Europe."

…"But by 2025, as Europe continues down the road of secularism, "Africa and Latin America will be jostling each other for (that) title," Jenkins said."

And from here:

"By 1949, out of an estimated population of 450 million, there were just over 500,000 baptized Protestant Christians. Anonymous internet columnist Spengler speculated in 2007 that Christianity could "become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now."
The current number of Christians in China is disputed. The most recent official census enumerated 4 million Roman Catholics and 10 million ‎Protestants. However, independent estimates have ranged from 40 million to 130 million Christians."

As this is happening, Christianity is suffering in the West. When people from non-Western cultures come to the West they sometimes assume that everyone is Christian or that the West is essentially a Christian society. This impression is way off base, although somewhat less off base with America which is quite a religious society. The West is now a post-Christian culture where church attendance and rates of serious Christian belief is dropping overall. From here:

"Ireland is not an exception. Every major religion except Islam is declining in Western Europe, according to the Center for the Study on Global Christianity at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. The drop is most evident in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, where church attendance is less than 10% in some areas."

So I would say that there is evidence that the proportion of non-Westerners versus Westerners who are Christian is steadily growing, so much so that some commentators say that Christianity will become a mainly non-Western religion within our lifetimes.

A second important point on this is that it's only recently in human history that there have been billions of people living at any one time. See this chart.

In 1000 AD there were 275 million people alive, in 1650 - 500 million, in 1800 - 1 billion, at 1930 - 2 billion, which has skyrocketed to 7 billion now, with 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2025.

This matters because, to use a thought experiment, if 90% of Christians are Western in AD 1000 when there are 275 million people in the world, but 60% of Christians are non-Western in AD 2100 when there are 9+ billion people in the world, then which group has more Christians when you compare the two times? Obviously, the non-Western group would have more Christians by a massive margin, even though 60% is less impressive than 90%.

This indicates that if the population of the world keeps getting larger, and Christianity completes the shift from a very Western-associated religion to a South or Eastern-associated religion, then more non-Westerners will have been Christian in history. Evidence from demographic changes can support this general view.

So, in conclusion, it doesn't matter what the proportion of non-Western versus Western Christians are because, according to the Bible, God 'does not show favouritism' (Romans 2:11). And someone from every ethnic/cultural/linguistic group will go to heaven (Rev 7:9). But I think you can reasonably believe that at the end of history Christianity will not be considered a mainly Western religion.

Mental illness, the Fall and stigma

2011-08-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

I am studying Social Work (now) and in my social work class last Friday people were discussing the stigma against mental illness and how it comes about. Usually it comes about when people blame people with mental illness for their behaviours, for example, they might think to someone with depression, 'Why can't you just be more positive?' In this view, someone is responsible for being mentally ill because it does not get better due to the bad choices that person is making.

I was reflecting on this stigma and I believe the idea of the Fall really takes away this stigma. In the idea of the Fall, there's an idea that because of our separation from God suffering has come to humanity in many random ways, without regard to justice. For one person it could be cancer, for another person a physical disability, for another person a natural disaster, there are diseases, etc. I think obviously it could also manifest in a chemical imbalance in the brain, or generally something being wrong with the brain so that it suffers from unavoidable problems which can only be relieved through physically correcting that problem, like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc. So the mental illness has a physical cause and you cannot change this by an act of will.

If the Fall can damage every area of our lives, including our brain, then something normally under our control could be physically taken away, for example, our mental equilibrium. So being mentally ill is more like e.g. not having an arm because of an accident at work rather than being incompetent at helping yourself.

So I would say that viewing the Fall as having the power to mess up every area of our experience should help Christians relate to mentally ill people without a stigma.

Why is God not more obvious?

2011-07-22T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is a speculative theology article that should be taken with a grain of salt, as it stands outside what the Bible says, but I think it raises a couple of interesting questions...

If you believe that those who die outside the age and state of accountability (e.g. children, mentally disabled people, etc) go straight to heaven (which is quite a popular view), then you reach the interesting conclusion that possibly half of all people who have ever lived will go to heaven. Why? Because somewhere approaching half of all people who have ever lived have died before reaching adulthood throughout history (source), as children and babies (more if you include before birth). Before modern times, the infant mortality rate was very high. Say that those who never hear the gospel have a chance to go to heaven and that figure increases a lot.

Moreover, in the thousand year reign after Christ returns, mentioned by the Old Testament prophets and in the Revelation of St John, almost everyone will come to know Christ (e.g. Isa 11, Isa 65:17-25). That includes potentially quite a lot of people going to heaven, perhaps billions, given no war, very little suffering, no disease, very long life spans (Isaiah 65:20), and presumably no involuntary infertility.

Combine this with the 'age of accountability' theory and you end up with a lot of people going to heaven, perhaps 2/3rds or more of all people who will live, given a third to half of all people in this age plus almost everyone in the age to come.

An interesting aspect to this train of thought is that on this view most people who go to heaven get there without much, if any, testing or trial of their faith, as CS Lewis suggests in the Screwtape Letters. Thus, God only allows a small proportion of the people who will go to heaven to be tempted and/or to suffer for a long time.

If so, then heaven isn't such a narrow gate. It's a pretty wide gate, seemingly contradicting Matthew 7:14.

But perhaps it is both a narrow and a wide gate. The key thing is, it's a narrow gate for us, for us who are in this present age, who have reached the age and state of accountability. For people in other ages, or in certain states, it is not narrow at all.

So why are we here then? Why are we, this minority, tested so much when most of the saved aren't? Isn't that unfair? What is going on?

One possible reason is that the vast majority of people that God creates accept God's gift of eternal life without much reflection or struggle, but there's a small minority of people who only respond to the gospel in a less-than-perfect situation. Most souls don't need to be led to accept Christ through negative reasons such as e.g. perceiving a lack of meaning in their life, etc, negative reasons which are common in testimonies among Christians today. But for others, maybe God knows that they are like the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), wherein experience of life without God is the key factor that leads them to accept God.

So what does God do? God puts those people into this world, where God pretty much lets people do their own thing.

Perhaps, in this theory, if we, the 'problem cases', had started off in the happy world, then we would, for some reason, have wanted to be our own masters and rule our own fate, in a place of our own apart from God. But in this world we have learned such things as to reject sin although we do sin, how much we need God, that God is rightfully ruler as well as helper, that life can lack meaning without God, and so on. We perhaps wouldn't have ever realised this stuff if we had started out in the 'happy world'.

Thus, God, in His infinite wisdom, saw that being in this world was key and that's perhaps part of the reason why this stage of history exists.

In conclusion, I suggest that this speculation could help to explain why God chose to make two stages of history, and why God has given so much free reign to people in this world and decided not to broadcast His presence in a 'fireworks-like' display.

Secondly, I suggest that, with some assumptions, one can find that altogether most of the humans that God creates might make it to heaven although heaven is a narrow gate for people in this world in an accountable age/state.

Is God's forgiveness conditional or unconditional?

2011-06-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

I was thinking the other day about how a lot of people think that God's forgiveness is conditional because God only forgives people who want His forgiveness or ask for it. But I'm not sure this is entirely correct.

You could say that there are two kinds of forgiveness: conditional and unconditional.

They can be shown in this way: suppose a superior decided to make your life really difficult in your workplace and started being passive aggressive or even somewhat abusive towards you. Conditional forgiveness is that you'll forgive them if they stop bothering you, making your life hard, and so on. Unconditional forgiveness is that you'll forgive them even if they decide to be even more difficult towards you and don't care at all whether you forgive them.

What is God's forgiveness more like according to the above analogy?

If God's forgiveness is conditional, then people have to deserve or earn God's forgiveness in some way before they get forgiven. So God would be like someone who won't forgive a person if they won't stop their bad ways. Therefore, if God forgives us conditionally, then we have to 'step up' and get our act together before we get forgiven.

If God's forgiveness is unconditional, then we don't have to earn God's forgiveness in any way before we get forgiven. The forgiveness would always be extended, whether we wanted it be or not. Whether this forgiveness actually reconciles us to God would depend on whether we wanted to have a relationship with God.

Under the unconditional view, our relationship with God is more like a damaged friendship when one side wants to reconnect with the other side, but the other side doesn't want to at all. That is, I might want to talk to someone again, but nothing will happen if that person actively avoids me. And so the break, or split, continues, maybe forever. And, as you can probably guess, hell would be that broken connection lasting for an eternity, where someone doesn't interact with God in any way forever.

To continue with this view, you have to see the warnings in the New Testament not to do bad stuff as saying that people who do bad stuff don't really want to have a genuine relationship with God, rather than, 'If you do bad stuff, God will take away His forgiveness until you stop', broadly speaking.

Here are some verses on this:

Eph 2:1-5: "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved."

Col 2:13: "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,"

Fatalist attitudes and the Bible

2011-06-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

The Appointment in Samarra

Death speaks:

There is a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to buy provisions from the market and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, "Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.

She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city to avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me."

The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, "Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?"

"That was not a threatening gesture," I said, "it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

This short story, The Appointment in Samarra, is a story about fatalism. The world it describes is one where people cannot avoid their fate or situation in life. A practical implication could be that people therefore should not try to avoid their fate. You could call this attitude the 'fatalist attitude'.

The 'fatalist attitude' has an opposite attitude, which is a sort of 'can do' attitude, where you can really do quite a lot. In fact, both attitudes could probably be put on opposite ends of a scale relating to one's level of passive acceptance of one's fate or situation in life.

Both attitudes have good and bad aspects.

A good side to the 'passive acceptance of one's fate' attitude is that it helps people be content with what they have and not worry that much. Why not be content with a situation that you can never change? And why worry about things you can never affect?

On the negative side, this attitude encourages passivity and to ignore ways in which we can make a real difference to our and other people's lives.

The good side to the 'can do' attitude is that it's a hopeful attitude, and hope, the emotion, makes people happier. Another good aspect is that maybe you can do something about your situation and your 'can do' attitude will encourage you to try.

A bad side to the 'can do' attitude is that it might morph into worry if you start thinking that you can affect or control problems that you simply can't, instead of passively accepting that certain things are outside your control.

Here are some verses that relate to this discussion from the Bible:

Proverbs 19:21: "You can make many plans, but the LORD's purpose will prevail."

Proverbs 20:24: "The LORD directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?"

Psalm 32:8-9: "The LORD says, 'I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Do not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control.'"

Phil 4:6-7: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Matt 6:25-34: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

1 Peter 5:7: "Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."

At first glance, the Bible seems to be endorsing a fatalist attitude, but I'm not sure that it is. It's not really about fatalism, it seems, so much as, e.g., a child accepting that their parent will take care of their needs. That is, it seems to relate more to trust than passively accepting one's situation in life. The Bible is saying we should not worry because God will take care of our needs and us.

But I also believe that Jesus does give us a bit of practical advice and encourages us not to try and control things that we simply cannot in Matthew 6:27: "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" This could be interpreted as saying that, for example, suppose one has a general anxiety about the length of one's life, this anxiety will not practically allow one to control matters so that one's life is actually longer. Perhaps Jesus is practically recommending a touch of fatalism as an antidote to worry, but only about things we certainly can't affect.

Discussion on the religious instinct

2011-05-29T18:02:00.000-07:00

This is part of a discussion I had a while back with someone about why humanity seems to have a deeply set religious instinct…

If you take your own conscious experiences and compare it to inanimate matter, or the actions of a person and compare it to how inanimate objects behave, then it seems like there's not just one kind of thing out there - inanimate matter - there's possibly two fundamentally different kinds of things, because the former stuff seems so different to inanimate matter.

Because it seems like there are two fundamentally different things in existence, it becomes in some sense rational to suppose that inanimate matter comes from the other thing rather than the other thing comes from inanimate matter - possibly because they're so different and there's two options. Although I'm not exactly sure how this intuition about it being 'the other way around' happens.

Yeah, that's the rub, your intuition that it is the other way around. Why would you assume that to be the case when we can observe that matter exists regardless of whether or not it has the property of consciousness, but you do not observe the existence of consciousness without matter. Not to say that it is not a possibility, an immaterial self dependent consciousness but why assume it, since it leaves the question unanswered as to how does matter emerge from the immaterial?

Ah, so we observe that this 'other kind of stuff' - consciousness - seems to be dependent on matter, but matter doesn't seem to be dependent on consciousness, and matter seems to have come first, so you'd assume that matter comes first.

But there's still the issue of how consciousness/the subjective seems to be a fundamentally different kind of thing to matter, regardless of those two considerations. So, I guess, it's an easy thing to think of at least, for anyone, I mean, you just switch it around, matter=>mind becomes mind=>matter; it's very easy to do. So that helps it always be an option on the table, I believe, and maybe there being only two options gives it some additional reasonableness; I'm not sure how that works.

Two important issues are: as far as our observations go, matter seems to have come first, and, two, how can matter possibly emerge from an independent mind?

But they're not too powerful as objections, I believe. Our observations wouldn't include seeing mind come first if it did come first. And it's not like we ought to know how mind originates from matter because we're so smart, I mean, it also makes a lot of sense we wouldn't know how it does, or have any idea how, even if it was true.

How is there free will in heaven?

2011-05-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Is there free will in heaven (or rather the new heavens and new earth)? How can the people in heaven be free if you know they will always do the right thing for an eternity?

Here is an answer I like to this question, that involves a certain view of evil.

In traditional Christian theology, evil is an absence of good like cold is the absence of heat. Evil is not an independent thing, but exists only because good exists and sometimes there is not much good in a situation. So evil is a lack of empathy, a result of a person not processing things morally.

For practical example of this, suppose someone wants people to treat them well, but they are really rude to staff at restaurants and other places. If someone could make them feel the pain they cause others for no reason, then this person would change their behaviour because they wouldn't want to be treated in this way. So their bad behaviour is actually the result of them not being consistent with their own principles in terms of how they want to be treated. In general terms, this shows how evil is not being truthful about how one's actions affect others in ways one's own self would not like (assuming someone endorses the Golden Rule, that is).

So if evil is something like this, then in heaven God has solved evil by making us completely truthful, through Jesus taking our sins (1 Pe 2:24). Because we are completely truthful, we can never choose to be evil because we will always be aware of how we would like to be (ideally) treated.

We will be unable to do evil in the sense that you, the reader, are unable to find it desirable to rob banks or murder people - that is, you are free to do it, but you can't do it because you can't be tempted by it. It's an inability to find something a good (or 'truthful') idea rather than any sort of physical inability.

Can some beliefs be immoral to believe and what does that imply?

2011-05-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

Are some beliefs immoral? Imagine someone who believes that certain people are sub-human. We would react to that person as having an immoral belief.

What about a dictator who believes that people who disagree with him are evildoers opposed to everything good, and that they are comparable to murderers who need to be put in prison?

So it seems that some beliefs can be immoral, and not just true/false.

If some beliefs are immoral, then this shows people have some control over what they believe. It indicates that people are not helplessly tossed here and there by their beliefs. Otherwise how can any belief be immoral? You can't criticise someone for something that they have no control over.

This does not show that people can choose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, but I think it does show that there is something we can control about our beliefs.

Although it's possible that people can't choose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese because it goes against their self-interest completely. If someone decides that the moon is made of green cheese, then that person is choosing to let go of their sanity to some extent. It's a crazy belief. Maybe we can't choose to believe the moon is green cheese because of a strong desire not to get rid of our sanity?

It might be that we always have a desire for our beliefs to reflect reality and, although we can choose to a degree what we believe, we won't very willingly choose for our beliefs to be insane. So, because we want our beliefs to reflect reality, we won't exercise our power to believe the moon is cheese. But, in theory, we have quite a lot of power to affect what we believe, but this power is hidden, or protected, by our desire to be accurate in our beliefs.

Moral contributions from the Bible

2011-04-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

Has the Bible made important contributions to the development of morality? Here are three areas:

1. The Bible has been positive influence regarding the idea that everyone is equal. From an evolutionary perspective, the idea that every person is equal in a really fundamental way seems a bit hard to find. But in the Bible we read:

Acts 10:34-5: "Then Peter replied, "I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right."

Romans 2:11: "For God does not show favoritism."

Gal 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

The image of God is equally given to everyone (Gen 1:27).

2. Another area that the Bible has had a large positive impact on is the idea that doing unto others involves really caring about people who are hostile towards oneself and forgiving people who don't deserve forgiveness (although I note that not everyone would agree with these values). Normally when we think of 'doing unto others' we include in that the idea that we should be able to get revenge on people who wrong us, an instinct that comes easily. But Jesus says that really 'doing unto others' involves loving your enemies, praying for people who persecute you, and forgiving those who wrong you (Matt 5:44, Matt 6:15, Luke 10:27). Also, God has given us an example of forgiveness to follow (Matt 18:33) and that is that God tries to forgive everyone, using the only way possible (Matt 26:39), even though we have not earned God's forgiveness and weren't 'owed' Jesus' sacrifice. This is a surprising moral insight or argument from the Bible.

3. Another interesting moral concept from the Bible relates to a way of distributing social status in a community that accepts, loves, and honours every single person there. If people follow it carefully, it completely sidesteps certain unhappy problems with social status and people seeking social status. Jesus says that the greatest person in a community should be the greatest person because they serve everyone else. While the person who is least should be the person who is least because they are served by everyone else (Matt 20:26-8). It's an ingenious system for keeping pride in check and making sure every member of the community is honoured, that a lot of people wouldn't have thought of without the Bible.

The theoretical and practical problems of grace

2011-04-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

Suppose two people are having a conversation about tennis matches between the world's best tennis players and one person asks, "But what would happen if someone got to the Grand Final and instead of playing properly, they just stood on the court, with their arms frozen to their sides, and span around again and again? What would happen then?"

In a way I believe this is like asking, "What would happen if God saved someone and they decided they didn't really like God and wanted to live a life lacking in empathy?"

When God saves someone God's Holy Spirit is supposed to be in them and with them and God and the Holy Spirit are supposed to change, over a long time, people's desires regarding wrongdoing. So if this process is happening, then there should be no way that someone's fundamental orientation should be against God and towards hurting people.

Phil 1:6: And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. (NL)

The idea of someone undergoing this process deciding to abuse grace and embrace wrongdoing is a theoretical problem. It's not a practical problem. Just like in theory people in tennis Grand Slam finals can choose to spin around in circles instead of play, but in practice this is not a problem.

Another analogy might be if someone decided they really wanted to lose weight and someone organised a diet and exercise plan for them that would be really effective. Now, imagine they had the chance to eat chocolate cake every night and never exercise. They can do it, but they would ask themselves: should I, who want to lose weight, really eat these things and never exercise? Compare to Paul:

Romans 6:1-2: Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? (NL)

Paul points out that in theory Christians can do the wrong thing as much as they want and still go to heaven. But in practice, one, God has changed Christians' desires/wants so this is impossible and, two, if you love God and think being nice is a good thing, then why would you decide to ignore God and hurt people?

Does free will contradict the laws of physics?

2011-03-31T22:08:00.000-07:00

People often say that free will contradicts the laws of physics because free will implies a 'garden of forking paths' where you can do A or B. But the laws of physics imply that either history was fixed at the time of the Big Bang or that where chance exists it is merely randomness and probability. Where does that leave free will?

An interesting way of imagining how free will can be compatible with the laws of physics comes from quantum mechanics. The 'Schroedinger's cat' idea gives a good account of it (from Wikipedia):

Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

This article explains a bit more about why the cat is both alive and dead:

The principle of superposition states that if the world can be in any configuration, any possible arrangement of particles or fields, and if the world could also be in another configuration, then the world can also be in a state which is a superposition of the two, where the amount of each configuration that is in the superposition is specified by a complex number.

There is superposition with regard to the Geiger counter detecting radiation, because it's a subatomic phenomena. Therefore, after a while an atom has in some sense both decayed and not decayed, releasing and not releasing radiation. Thus, after a while the cat is both dead and alive.

In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. This experiment makes apparent the fact that the nature of measurement, or observation, is not well-defined in this interpretation. The experiment can be interpreted to mean that while the box is closed, the system simultaneously exists in a superposition of the states "decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat", and that only when the box is opened and an observation performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two states.

Schroedinger's cat illustrates how quantum mechanics seems, at least superficially, to allow for something that sounds like a 'garden of forking paths'. The cat is both alive and dead, two contradictory possibilities exist, and our conscious observation forces reality to 'choose' one. Perhaps our brain has many possible configurations and our consciousness/the soul can make out of them one reality?

But does quantum mechanics apply to the workings of the brain? Some scientists have come up with theories of how it could (link).

So with free will, imagine that until our consciousness/soul affirms a value, e.g., 'I think it's important to be truthful', then the neurons in our brain are simultaneously affirming a 'truthful' brain state and a 'not truthful' brain state. But after the conscious decision is made then the 'truthful' brain state 'resolves' into being - just like the cat is alive or dead only when the scientist looks into the cage and 'forces' an answer.

This type of analysis doesn't explain what free will is, it just indicates how the soul or consciousness might be able to change the brain using free will. (Libertarian) free will's workings would still be beyond our understanding.

I apologise in advance for my scientific ignorance if this idea is fundamentally flawed, but, as others have said, it seems that a genuine free will can be compatible in theory with the laws of physics.

(Edited 5 April 11).

Location heaven versus state of mind heaven

2011-03-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

There's a common perception out there that heaven (or eternal life in the new creation) is just a place. There's a common view that all God has to do to let people into heaven is put them in heaven. And that God doing this would instantly make hell empty.

The Bible also talks about heaven as a state of mind rather than a location:

Romans 14:17: For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,

Psalm 16:11: You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 36:8-9: They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

Luke 17:20-1: Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

In the Bible, heaven and eternal life also involve one's mind or self being deeply and intimately connected to God.

So heaven isn't just about going to a heavenly location in a spiritual dimension, it also involves a state of mind. Judging from the verses above, this state of mind involves experiencing whatever happiness or contentment God feels through being reconciled fully to God.

The question is: how do you get reconciled to God to experience a state of mind heaven? The problem is that our wrong actions (sin) separate us from the kind of closeness to God that is heaven. The Bible's answer to this problem is that God/Jesus Christ "bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" (1 Pe 2:24). This meant God could "[make] [us] alive with Christ" dealing with the problem (Col 2:13) - meaning that although we can't avoid sinning in this life (1 John 1:8), our fundamental orientation has changed.

This analysis says that going to heaven isn't simply a matter of God letting someone into heaven. Intentions, thoughts, desires, and so on need to be different as well, and a two-way loving relationship needs to exist between us and God.

Some thoughts on the argument from apparent design

2011-03-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

I thought I would mention an argument for believing in God which I find quite convincing, an argument for the design of the laws of physics. General arguments for God are important because if God exists, then it's not a big step to Christianity out of other religions, especially with arguments like the one that uses historical evidence to support Jesus' resurrection.

I'll quote part of an article which is quite good on this subject, available here.

...The world is conditioned principally by the values of the fundamental constants A (the fine structure constant, or electromagnetic interaction), mn/me (proton to electron mass ratio), aG (gravitation), aW (the weak force), and aS (the strong force)...

For example, if aS were increased as much as 1%, nuclear resonance levels would be so altered that almost all carbon would be burned into oxygen; an increase of 2% would preclude formation of protons out of quarks, preventing the existence of atoms. Furthermore, weakening aS by as much as 5% would unbind deuteron, which is essential to stellar nucleosynthesis, leading to a universe composed only of hydrogen. It has been estimated that aS must be within 0.8 and 1.2 its actual strength or all elements of atomic weight greater than four would not have formed. Or again, if aW had been appreciably stronger, then the Big Bang's nuclear burning would have proceeded past helium to iron, making fusion-powered stars impossible. But if it had been much weaker, then we should have had a universe entirely of helium. Or again, if aG had been a little greater, all stars would have been red dwarfs, which are too cold to support life-bearing planets. If it had been a little smaller, the universe would have been composed exclusively of blue giants which burn too briefly for life to develop. According to Davies, changes in either aG or electromagnetism by only one part in 10^40 would have spelled disaster for stars like the sun.

etc...

But what about the idea that there are an infinite number of universes? If there are an infinite number of universes, then our laws of physics are nothing special, because they must happen somewhere.

I think there's a really good article, from Discover Magazine, on the idea of the multiverse from the point of view of modern physics, here.

Here's some key quotes about the issue:

...Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life...

...Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a physicist at the University of Texas, agrees. “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident,” he says.

Dark energy makes it impossible to ignore the multiverse theory. Another branch of physics—string theory—lends support as well. Although experimental evidence for string theory is still lacking, many physicists believe it to be their best candidate for a theory of everything, a comprehensive description of the universe, from quarks to quasars...

...Linde’s ideas may make the notion of a multiverse more plausible, but they do not prove that other universes are really out there. The staggering challenge is to think of a way to confirm the existence of other universes when every conceivable experiment or observation must be confined to our own. Does it make sense to talk about other universes if they can never be detected?...

...Rees, an early supporter of Linde’s ideas, agrees that it may never be possible to observe other universes directly, but he argues that scientists may still be able to make a convincing case for their existence. To do that, he says, physicists will need a theory of the multiverse that makes new but testable predictions about properties of our own universe. If experiments confirmed such a theory’s predictions about the universe we can see, Rees believes, they would also make a strong case for the reality of those we cannot...

So basically the multiverse makes sense as a theoretical idea but it has no real evidence for it in an empirical sense.

So where does one go from there?

I guess to some extent it could be a matter of personal taste, God or multiverse. But I have one more thought on the issue.

One of the traditional problems with asserting the existence of God is that it can easily fall afoul of Occam's razor. Occam's razor is the famous scientific principle that says you should not multiply entities unnecessarily.

A practical example of Occam's razor is the belief, 'My friend keeps ordering hamburgers because they like hamburgers', is more parsimonious than, 'My friend keeps ordering hamburgers because they made a bet with someone to eat 500 hamburgers before the end of the year', because the second one has more (and more complicated) entities in it as an explanation.

If you can explain everything with only one universe, then God has problems with Occam's razor. But if the only alternative to God is literally an infinity of other universes, then it's not clear God will be badly affected by Occam's razor. Because 'infinitely many universes' is a pretty big entity to assert, as big as an infinite God perhaps.

So, I would imagine, if you believe that there's a multiverse, then atheism no longer gets to use Occam's razor.

Normally atheism gets an inherent advantage over theism as the default position from Occam's razor. But with the multiverse that inherent advantage is lost, and neither position gets any inherent advantage over the other.

So the atheism-theism debate is then like thinking it will come up heads on a coin toss rather than tails, in terms of overall plausibility.

Why is it so hard to describe heaven?

2011-03-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

Why can't Christians come up with a really fantastic description of heaven (or rather the new heavens and new earth)? Here is my attempt to explain a large part of the reason.

Something interesting about our happiness in this life is that it is very, you could say, 'temporal'. That is, people's happiness experiences a huge issue with boredom. Some people would be happy to live forever as long as they could keep experiencing new things forever, but in polls a lot of people say that they wouldn't want to live forever even if they could do so.

I believe this is because human happiness is not naturally hardwired for eternity. Our ability to be happy cannot sustain us for that long. E.g. it's a relatively common motif in horror stories that someone is condemned to live forever even though they can do whatever they want.

But it's interesting to note that God is probably not at all like this, if any God exists, because otherwise God would have gone completely insane with boredom. In most theologies God is eternal and outside time, and thus God has already lived for an infinite length of time. If God's happiness can't handle eternity, then God would be mad with depression (Isaac Asimov actually wrote a short story based on this premise called "The Last Answer").

And this leads to the conclusion that, because God is naturally eternal or for some other reason, God's happiness is a kind of happiness we have no experience of in this world - apart from through the Holy Spirit's sense of peace, if Christianity is to be believed. This can be indicated, if any God exists, from the reasoning above (unless Isaac Asimov's short story is right!)

Thus I conclude that part of why heaven is such a great place is because we have access to this divine kind of happiness that allows someone to be at peace and contented forever without being insane or something like that.

See Rom 14:17: "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,"

1 Cor 2:9: "However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him""

Psalm 16:11: "You will make clear to me the way of life; where you are joy is complete; in your right hand there are pleasures for ever and ever."

Psalm 36:7-8: "How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your river of delights. For you are the fountain of life, the light by which we see."

Rom 8:18: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

We get this happiness through being connected to God through His Holy Spirit. And this is made possible by Jesus Christ removing our sins when He took them into himself on the cross (1 Pe 2:24).

I believe this is a significant part of the reason why heaven is so hard to describe in a really fantastic way.

Why should we worship God?

2011-02-25T00:33:00.000-08:00

A question that people who aren't Christian often ask is why should we worship God? What right does God have to legitimately want worship from us? Isn't God a megalomaniac for making heaven involve praising Him?

There's an analogy I've started to use a lot to explain why I would want to worship God that borrows from everyday life.

Let's say you have a friend who is an amazingly good person. They are 100% genuine, kind, respectful, trustworthy, dependable, etc. They are generous to a fault, and are a very kind husband/wife who works very hard to support their family. They sacrifice a lot to help others, even people who aren't their friends or relatives.

Now, you would, I suppose, respect them a lot, and this would just be a natural reaction to the truth of the situation.

Now, what if God is perfectly loving (and not just perfectly good but also can't be tempted otherwise), infinite in abilities and knowledge, and is the creator of everything? Then respecting God and putting God at the centre of one's life is not anything different from one's presumed reaction to that friend - it would just be a natural reaction to the truth.

And we say, as Christians, that God really is all those good things, and so worshipping God is a natural reaction to the truth of the situation like respecting that friend is a reaction to the truth.

Jesus' prediction of his second coming, Part 1

2011-02-17T14:31:00.000-08:00

There are two occasions where Jesus is interpreted by some as having said that he will return to the world and usher in the Kingdom of God within the lifetime of his disciples. In this article I want to examine this claim and argue that contextual evidence shows that Jesus plausibly did not say this and would not have been interpreted by those listening to have said it.

In this article I will deal with the passages called the 'Olivet discourse' in Matthew, Mark, and Luke which some have said involve Jesus making a mistake. Here is the passage in full from Matthew's gospel, 24:3-35 (NIV):

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

22 “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. 23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.

26 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
 the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

Some people have argued that 'this generation' in the last sentence must be taken to mean the generation alive when Jesus is speaking, which gives a timeframe for Jesus' return of about 30-40 years.

But I don't think that Jesus would have been taken to be referring to those presently alive with 'this generation' when you read it in context. For example, in the same speech Jesus says that before He returns:

'many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.'

Now, if Jesus thought he would return in about 30-40 years, then there wouldn't be many Christians to deceive, because the whole world would pretty much be non-Christian. Unless Jesus thought that the whole world would immediately convert on hearing about Jesus. But that presumes a level of optimism on Jesus' part that doesn't seem sensible, especially considering how many people rejected his message during his ministry (John 6:66-67).

But one could say that Jesus just thought that other people would claim to be Christ and attract a following like he did.

I guess Jesus could have thought that within a very short time frame, 30-40 years let's say, there would be many people claiming to be Christ. But I feel that this 'jars' a bit as an interpretation because every century or so there would be a couple of people claiming to be Christ, but I think it would be odd to think there would be a large increase in the numbers of Christ-claimants within 30-40 years in addition to the usual number of a couple a century (if I recall correctly).

This site says there were 2 people before Jesus who claimed to be the messiah, 4 in the first century (not counting the emperor Vespasian), 2 in the second century, none for ages, then 1 in the fifth century, etc.

So it's not really all that common.

This is why I think Jesus is speaking, with his 'you', to all Christians throughout many centuries, and not just his disciples, in that section of his discourse.

Then:

'And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.'

'Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.'

What I wonder is how can a small Jewish sect that very few people have heard of spread the 'gospel' message to every nation in the whole world within 30-40 years? How could one sensibly expect that under any scenario? By the end of the 1st century 99% of people had probably not heard of Christianity, let alone been 'preached to'. It's not like preaching to everyone in the world is easy. So assuming that Jesus was a sensible thinker, he must be talking about events much further into the future.

One could say in response that the ancient Jews had a terrible knowledge of world geography and so it makes sense that the first Christians could preach to and become hated by all nations within 30-40 years.

But here is a list of countries that were in the Roman empire at some point:

Portugal, Spain, Andorra, United Kingdom, France, Monaco, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, Malta, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, FYR Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Cyprus, Lebanon, Jordania, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Lybia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Palestine.

Keep in mind the Romans also knew about China, but didn't have much contact with them because the powerful Parthian and Kushan empires lay between.

They didn't know about Japan, Antarctica, and the Americas, and they didn't know about Australia, although Claudius Ptolemy hypothesised there must be a land to connect the east coast of Africa with China, which he called 'Terra Australis' (The Southern Region). But they (people at that time) knew about the other continents: Africa, Europe, and Asia.

So when you read:

'And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.'

'Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.'

And if you assume that people knew about the aforementioned places, which seems quite likely since almost all of them were part of the Roman empire at that time, then is it really reasonable to interpret that was referring to a time span of a mere 30-40 years? Assume also Jesus is a reasonable person.

If you take actual Christian evangelism 40 years after Jesus left his disciples, it didn't cover anywhere near that much territory. It was many centuries before Christian missionaries even got to China.

With regard to the quote about being 'hated by all nations', if Jesus thought he'd come back in about 30-40 years, then who would care that much about Christians and Christianity? I can understand persecution, because occasionally small cults would worry the Romans. But why would first century Christianity with a small number of followers near Palestine be 'hated by all nations because of me'? The vast majority of people and nations would never have even heard of Christianity. And even if they had, they probably couldn't care any less about a small cult in Palestine that was powerless. So this is just puzzling if Jesus thought He would return in 30-40 years. Or he was crazily optimistic, but that's unfair to the Bible's portrayal of Jesus as a reasonable guy.

Now, it's true that Jesus and his followers did have a rough time at the hands of the local government, and so persecution wouldn't have been unexpected.

But Christians were not really persecuted heavily by a secular government until Nero, which was I think in the 60s CE, which is already 30 years after Jesus left, and moreover this is only one government, albeit a very large one, not all governments that were around. Most of their persecution before Nero, in any intense way, if I recall correctly, was from the Jews, only one small nation.

'At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.'

What's going on with the second sentence if Jesus thought He would return very soon? The 'increase in wickedness' must be referring to society as a whole, which influences Christians' love to grow cold. But this seems a little odd given that, at this point in history, life had pretty much been continuing as it had before for thousands of years, only this time the Romans were the people you had to obey. Just something interesting to note (on the other hand, if Jesus is talking about many more years from now it does make sense that values in society could somehow drastically change for the worse).

But maybe Jesus thought that false prophets appearing very soon after he leaves the world would cause a lot of wickedness and his followers to turn against each other?

And yet this is such a short time span for that to happen though, it seems. After 30-40 years Christianity would just be starting up and gathering a small number of followers, and then just as it's starting everything gets really intense. How would we normally read that statement in terms of time?

'So if anyone tells you, 'There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; or, 'Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it.'

If Jesus thought he would return in 30-40 years, then this conversation would presumably only be happening between a small group of followers of Jesus. But it has undertones of being a really significant discussion that a lot of people are having instead of a debate that is happening among 0.001% (or less) of the world's population.

But maybe Jesus is thinking that someone else will come and make use of Jesus' success? That someone will make use of Jesus' movement for his own ends?

But this is a pretty small timeframe to talk about someone making use of Jesus' movement for his own ends, a mere 30-40 years after he leaves.

So with this contextual evidence let's look again at the 'this generation' comment that has caused confusion.

The way we normally use 'this' is to refer to the object close at hand in terms of what we are talking about. For example, if I say, 'This book at the library that I've been talking about is actually by an American author', then even though the book is far away (at the library), it is being referred to with my 'this' because it is close at hand in terms of what I'm talking about.

So, using the contextual evidence, if we look at the generation Jesus is talking about when he says 'this', it seems to be the generation that sees all of these horrible events happen, and is not necessarily the one around now. This is the generation close at hand in terms of what Jesus is talking about.

So I would say that 'this generation' refers to the generation in the future that sees all this end-timey stuff happen, not the generation of Jesus' day, which is an interpretation helped by the contextual evidence.

Where analogies break down with the atonement

2011-02-12T20:59:00.000-08:00

Many analogies have been proposed for the atonement of Christ to help us understand exactly what happened when Jesus died for us.

One analogy about the atonement in particular gets criticised a lot for not making sense, and the criticisms do have a point. This is the analogy where the atonement is likened to an innocent person volunteering to be punished in a guilty person's place in a local court. When you think about it, this implies that the sacrifice doesn't change the guilty person, who is now free, and so maybe he/she wants to go out and commit some more crimes.

There's one thing that this analogy gets really right, which is that the innocent position the guilty person is in afterwards is like the position we are in as Christians. For God considers Jesus to have 'paid' for our sins on our behalf. After accepting Christ people will certainly keep sinning (1 John 1:8), but as long as Christ is accepted, then all of our sins are dealt with. Thankfully, Christians won't abuse this system because genuinely believing that Jesus dealt with our sins necessitates that we will care about what God wants (Rom 6:1-2).

I think the biggest problem with this analogy is that no one would ever support a system for everyday life where an innocent person could walk into a courtroom and take the punishment meant for a guilty person. This is partly because 1) then the guilty person is free to threaten the community, and, 2) they have, e.g. murderous, intentions that need to be changed.

The Bible says something interesting about this analogy in Colossians:

Col 2:13-14: "You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross."

Note how Jesus taking our punishment is combined with our sinful nature being cut away.

As Col 2:13-14 illustrates, when Jesus died for us it was not like an innocent person going to a court and saying, "Put me in prison instead of this murderer". Because when Jesus died for us, Jesus' act of taking our sins into Himself actually cut away our sinful nature.

This does not mean that Christians are perfect; 1 John 1:8 says that "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." But it does mean that something has happened that has dealt with our sinful nature but which which is not 'fully manifested' or 'fully shown' in this life (Eph 4:30).

A modified analogy that better fits with what the Bible teaches (but which also has problems) would be that an innocent person and a murderer volunteered for a strange procedure. The innocent person will be punished in the place of the murderer, but the punishment does something very weird. In the punishment all the guilt and badness of the murderer will be transferred to the innocent person. As a result the murderer will become no different from an average, law-abiding citizen who has never murdered anyone. And they get off scot free because their past self, which committed the murder, is no more. They are fundamentally not a murderer.

This would fit with our sinful nature getting cut away by Christ's death for us, which also we and Christ are happy to have happen.

One conclusion from this is that Christ's atonement for us is not like anything we have experience of in this world. No human process can accomplish this or reflect it accurately. The second is that one analogy that gets criticised a lot by skeptics of Christianity is not actually accurate.

Do we lose ourselves when we go to heaven?

2011-02-01T17:38:00.000-08:00

One concern that a lot of people who aren't Christian have about the Christian concept of heaven is that you have to be a certain kind of person to go to heaven. That is, you have to fit a certain set of personality traits; you have to conform to whatever personality God says you need to have. And these traits won't necessarily be ones that you see as really being 'you'.

One response to this is that you can divide personality into two areas: personality and character, and that improvements in character never betray who we really are, and God only changes character.

Personality is like whether you are introverted or extroverted, whether you like reading, sports, horror movies, video games, etc. Character is whether you treat other people in the way you would like to be treated, i.e., your tendency to do the right thing.

An example of why this distinction is important comes from this thought experiment: if you are an introvert, you would probably feel like becoming an extrovert would 'betray' who you really are as a person, and if God imposed extroversion on you, it would seem a bit like mental slavery, perhaps. But think about this: does anyone feel that way when it comes to changes in character?

I would contend that everyone always accepts improvements in character as being consistent with who they really are. For example, suppose you had someone who was really rude to staff at restaurants and other places, and then someone is rude to them one day and they feel bad about it, so they decide not to be rude to staff any more. Nowhere in this process, it seems, would they stop and say, "Hang on, being more empathetic and treating people the way I'd like to be treated is not consistent with my true self!" It seems that if someone has realised that they ought to relate to people differently, there would be no sense of betrayal of one's true self.

These examples illustrate how the problem is resolved when you say that God changes us in character, not in personality. So when God changes us it's more like someone suddenly realising they should e.g. work on being more honest and empathetic, rather than deciding to become an introvert or an extrovert (a personality issue). And in heaven (or rather the new heavens and the new earth) we will be different because our characters will be perfect, but our personality will stay the same (if we want it to).

This verse seems a bit relevant, 1 John 4:7: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."

Was the atonement obligatory?

2011-01-26T20:52:00.000-08:00

In the book of Romans, 5:7-8, Paul says:

"Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners."

A problem with this paragraph is that if God hadn't 'made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf' (2 Co 5:21), then we would have kept our sin and consequently suffered separation from God when God could have done something about it. In this situation, it doesn't seem as though dying for us is especially praiseworthy, because it seems obligatory for God to step in and save us if He can do so.

But I'm not entirely sure that this analysis is correct.

Take a situation where someone is a very heavy drinker and has made the choice to drink themselves into unconsciousness as often as they can. A family member or friend would be right to feel concerned about the heavy drinker, but are they obligated to stage an intervention and forcibly commit the heavy drinker to some kind of rehabilitation?

On the one hand, if the heavy drinker knows what they are doing, then perhaps the family member or friend should accept the heavy drinker's choice and let them destroy their life. On the other hand, maybe feelings of concern make it right to commit the heavy drinker to rehabilitation. Is there an obligation to do the latter?

What if staging an intervention is very costly to the family member or friend? Suppose that the family member needs to give up his/her life savings to pay for the heavy drinker to be rehabilitated and as a consequence they must accept a much lower quality of life whenever they stop working. Is there an obligation on the family member/friend to arrange an intervention at great personal cost?

I believe that if someone is making a very self-destructive decision, then an intervention may be obligatory if it does not come at a great personal cost, depending on the situation. However, if an intervention comes at a great personal cost, and the person who is destroying their life knows what they are doing, then I doubt there is an obligation.

How does this relate to God and the quote in Romans, though?

It seems reasonable to imagine that before someone becomes a Christian they don't really care that much about the Christian God and don't wish to commit themselves to that God. It's also reasonable to think that before someone becomes a Christian the prospect of an eternity living without God is not a particularly frightening prospect, unless they follow another religion where this is that religion's idea of hell.

This implies that when God saves someone God has to change our desires so that we will not want to go through an eternity apart from, and not giving recognition to, God (Eph 2:1: "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,")

In this respect, God is like someone intervening in someone's life because they think someone is going down the wrong track, when that person doesn't want their help (at that time) and, if someone is OK with the prospect of not being with God forever, knows what they are doing.

The other point is that God had to pay an enormous personal cost in saving us. If God performs a miracle so that you receive $1,000,000,000, then that doesn't really cost God anything even if we really appreciate it. God is all-powerful after all. But Jesus' death for us on the cross is perhaps the only good thing God has done that cost God immensely (1 Co 6:20: "for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.") The cost that God paid was not simply being crucified, but included bearing all of humanity's sins, which may have involved pain and suffering that we cannot imagine. God did it because of the joy He would have in seeing us come to know Him for an eternity (Heb 12:2: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.")

The conclusion is that if you combine 1) someone intervening in someone's life to help them when they know what they are doing and they do not want help, with 2) the intervention coming at a great personal cost, then there is not necessarily any moral obligation to help. This means that Paul is right when he praises God for saving us, assuming our situation fits with (1) and (2).

Defining faith

2011-01-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

Faith is often said to be irrational and to involve believing in things against evidence or without evidence. But let's look at what the Bible says about faith.

Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

2 Corinthians 5:7: "We live by faith, not by sight."

The interesting thing about these verses is that sight, which it talks about, is an unusual type of evidence. Sight is probably the most direct form of evidence that we have. There are many other forms of evidence that are not like this, such as an airplane pilot relying on their instruments rather than what they see outside the cockpit window, that is, indirect evidence.

If these verses were written with this idea in mind, if there was a specific and purposeful mention of sight-type evidence, then 'faith' in the Bible can include relying on indirect evidence.

If 'sight' excludes faith, but other forms of evidence do not exclude faith - less direct forms - then faith is extremely common. A pilot could be said to have faith in their instruments according to this definition. A person could be said to have faith in the reliability of their car, in this definition, if they haven't directly observed why their car is reliable, but rely on the engineers, salespeople, etc.

This would make Biblical faith something that is reasonable, because we rely on indirect evidence all the time, and so it would be a virtue to have Biblical faith in a lot of contexts.

Actually, this view has support when you consider how the Bible makes an argument in various places for the Christian life, God's existence, Jesus' claims, moral issues, etc (e.g. Rom 6:2, Rom 1:20, Matt 12:39-40, Rom 5:8).

Who deserves the credit when Christians become better people?

2011-01-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

When someone has been a Christian for a while they should show signs of moral improvement, they should get better at 'Doing unto others.' But does this imply that Christians rather than God deserve the credit for improving themselves morally?

Philippians 2:13 says, "for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

A way of illustrating how God can deserve all the credit comes from the 'objective'-'subjective' distinction.

The objective is what is outside someone's mind, and the subjective is what is going on inside someone's mind.

To put it abstractly, if an objective force changes a person's subjective mind, then you can always say there are two causes to the change. Objectively, the force has changed the person. Subjectively, the person who has been changed will need to see how they rationally ought to be different, or they've been changed into a crazy person who doesn't have rational reasons for doing things. The person seeing how they rationally ought to act differently is the subjective cause of the change.

When it comes to Christianity, once someone accepts Christ then God will start changing that person, as per the Philippians quote, objectively. But who experiences those changes? The Christian subjectively does. So God's objective changes are going to be experienced subjectively as that person looking closer at how they relate to other people and then making e.g. more kind decisions. But the cause of those changes wouldn't, in that case, ultimately come from the subjective. It would come from what God is doing, the objective.

So any time that God affects someone it can always be 'read' as that person becoming better through their own efforts, because God's work will lead to subjective changes within someone's mind. And that person will wake up and suddenly see things they hadn't noticed before, look more at things from other people's perspective, etc. But, actually, the subjective changes that are experienced in those cases are caused by an objective process occurring outside that person's mind, that is, God's grace.

So this is how God can deserve all the credit for improving Christians morally rather than them despite, possibly, no evidence that this is through anything other than that Christian waking up one day and deciding to be more responsible, more kind, etc.

What does it mean for people to be equal?

2011-01-01T02:39:00.000-08:00

What does it mean for people to be equal? There aren't any two people in the world who have equal abilities in every respect. Some people are more intelligent, some people are better looking, some people have more wealth, status or power, and so on and so on. So what does it mean for people to be equal?

Equality doesn't mean that I pretend I'm as fast a runner as Usain Bolt so that everyone is equal when it comes to short distance running ability (Usain Bolt is the fastest short distance runner in history). Equality doesn't mean that I and my friends create a socially acceptable delusion whereby, for the sake of equality, we all pretend that we're as fast as Usain Bolt.

So believing in equality has to include a sensible acknowledgment of differences in people's abilities and gifts.

So if equality doesn't involve pretending that people have equal abilities, then what does it mean?

I think equality refers to the way that you process someone being relatively better or worse at something than yourself. It refers to how you choose to act on the fact that people have different abilities.

I think the Bible gives a good explanation of this view here:

Gen 1:27 "And God made man in his image, in the image of God he made him: male and female he made them" (everyone is equally made in God's image).

Rom 2:11 "For one man is not different from another before God" (because everyone is equally made in God's image).

1 Co 4:7 "For who made you better than your brother? or what have you that has not been given to you? but if it has been given to you, what cause have you for pride, as if it had not been given to you?" (everything we have outside of our own choices is a gift from God).

The Bible makes it clear that every good thing we have that's outside of our own choices we received from God (we also receive grace and the rest of our choices are heavily influenced by what God gave us), James 1:17. And what abilities and gifts we received from God we received not because God liked any of us more than anyone else (as we're all equally made in His image), but purely because it fitted more with God's plan for us to receive what we received.

So if someone is better than someone else because of their choices, then maybe there's a reason for boasting there - unless someone's better choices are a result of God's grace, because then they were a gift from God (grace is a gift offered freely to all). But if someone is better than someone else because of what's outside their choices, then they shouldn't boast about it, because everything outside our choices was given to people without God liking anyone more than anyone else.

This means acknowledging differences in people's abilities as long as that difference isn't used to attack someone in some way. Because you can't attack people based on a gift that you received from someone (in this case God), when the gift wasn't intended to privilege you over them.

A possible solution to the problem of evil

2010-12-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

An easy solution to the problem of evil is just to say that God is not very powerful. That is, God wants to help us with our pain and suffering, but for various reasons just can't.

This is not a very good 'solution' because it undermines our ability to trust God. If God isn't very powerful, then can God save us from our sin? Can this God really guarantee an eternal existence of goodness, contentedness, and peace forever?

But I believe you can rework this 'easy solution' into something that does not undermine our ability to trust God.

What if you limited God's power in a key way? What if you, with surgical precision, cut out aspects of God's power that do not undermine our ability to trust God and yet answer the problem of evil?

How about this: as long as there is sin in the world, there must be evil and suffering. As long as there is sin in the world, God can't get rid of evil and suffering. BUT God can easily and quickly get rid of our sin if we let Him. So God can easily and quickly get rid of all evil and suffering in the world forever if we let Him take away our sin.

If you said this, then you could explain why there is evil and suffering in the world even though God could take it all away in a moment.

You could say for those who aren't Christians, God could take their suffering away in a moment if they let God take away their sin, through Christ.

For those who are Christians, God could take away our suffering in a moment, but then our ability to influence non-Christians to follow Jesus would be 'shut down' as a result, for some reason. Maybe people need to leave this world to enter eternal life? So we could not (effectively?) encourage others to let God take away their sin if God took our suffering away, because the end of our suffering would mean the loss of our ability to evangelise.

Therefore, God can take away humanity's suffering in a moment, but will not do so either because people have not freely let God take away their sin or, alternatively, God has taken away someone's sin, but they need to continue to suffer in order to be able to influence non-Christians to accept Christ (so God can take away their sin).

There's a parable that sort of connects to this issue from Matt 24:24-30:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

In one interpretation of this parable, if God took away the suffering of Christians as soon as they accepted Christ, then, yes, our suffering could go away in a moment, but then we wouldn't be able to influence a whole lot of people to accept Christ as well. As a result some wheat would be 'pulled up' because making eternal life happen so quickly would prevent lots of people from hearing and accepting the gospel.

There are several issues that arise if this idea is pursued.

One big assumption is that evangelism to non-Christians gets shut down if God takes away the suffering of Christians. So you can't get incredibly happy and contented Christians, who are already experiencing eternal life, hanging out normally with non-Christians for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case. Maybe eternal life can't be experienced in the world in which we live.

Another assumption is that God can't evangelise very well if there are no Christians on earth.

Another is: why can't God take away suffering as long as there is evil in the world?

A preliminary answer to this is that although the idea of limits to God's power may make a lot of people uncomfortable, most Christians are on board with the idea that God cannot make 2 + 2 = 5, or make it so that you have never existed and have always existed. So perhaps the idea of a world with sin that doesn't have a lot of suffering in it implies a logical paradox, for reasons we don't know.

I think that reality may have unknown aspects that guarantee evil and suffering while there is sin in the world, which operate in mysterious ways. I can't explain any more of this though - why humanity's sin should generate a hurricane, virus, or earthquake somewhere is inexplicable.

Fourthly, why does God taking away our sin involve free will? But this is not extremely controversial because respecting free will usually makes God sound more loving.

A fifth issue is: how does this relate to God's word?

Not having an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible I can't speak about the general Biblical picture on this point with confidence, but here are some relevant Bible verses:

Romans 5:12-14: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned - for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come."

Romans 8:20-23: "Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us." (NLT)

Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Matthew 23:37: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God's messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let me."

One thing that would be good to get from this idea is that there's a solution to the problem of evil that could make sense given the truth of some assumptions which are not too outlandish.

A discussion about Biblical slavery

2010-12-19T18:33:00.000-08:00

Someone wrote something criticising the God of the Bible for allowing or even endorsing slavery in the Bible, and this is what I wrote in response (which I've edited a bit), which I thought might be worth sharing:

I want to point out that there are some 'ameliorating' factors here.

One is that there was no social security system in Israel back then, apart from having a large family. In the West, we're used to the idea that even if we have no job and no family to live with that everything will still end up OK. But in the ancient near east, this situation may lead to our death. So suppose someone was out of work for a while in ancient Israel, without family or social security, then they would probably starve. So if God allows people to sell themselves into slavery, then there is a kind of social security in that for people who can't get a job as long as the slaves have lots of rights securing their protection from harm etc.

Actually, there weren't supposed to be any poor people in Israel at all because of God's very generous welfare laws (Deu 15:4, Lev 25:35-7). But there has to be a backup plan in case that fails.

Slavery for Israelites was supposed to be voluntary and they are supposed to be treated as "hired workers", i.e. like employees (Lev 25:39-42). They are supposed to work for a maximum of 7 years, and at the end of that time to be released with a generous supply of goods (Deu 15:12-14).

Note though that slaves who were sold to Israel from other nations (in the international slave trade) did not have the right to be released every seven years. But we read in Deut 23:15-6:

"If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. 16 Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him."

Which means that slaves can choose to be free by running away (but not everyone agrees with this interpretation, see here).

Note also that God doesn't endorse the slave trade, because the Bible condemns 'men stealing', i.e. kidnapping to sell into slavery, in 1 Tim 1:9-10.

In terms of protections for slaves, they got to have a Sabbath (Ex 23:12), and in every seventh year slaves had the same right as wealthy people, free people, etc. to the harvest of that year (Lev 25:6).

Moreover, if you killed any slave, then you yourself would be killed under the 'life for life' clause (Gen 9:6). If you inflicted any permanent marks or injuries on a slave, then the slave had to be set free to compensate (Ex 21:26-7). If a slave owner beats a slave without inflicting permanent marks or injuries, but leaves them bedridden for more than two days, laws would apply that punish the owner (Ex 21:23-7). Now, this is still not acceptable, but it's quite different to American slavery.

One view on why slavery exists in the Old Testament is that there is a good reason to have something to provide social security and God compromised with the Israelites so that turned out to be slavery rather than e.g. an income tax and pension system, like in modern developed economies. The Bible says that God let Moses compromise regarding divorce and polygamy (Matt 19:7-8), so God may have allowed this with slavery as well but if and only if it has a strong social security benefit where there is no other way to provide social security.

A good verse on slavery from the New Testament (apart from the one that condemns 'men stealing' for the slave trade in 1 Tim 1:9-10) in the Bible comes from Eph 6:9 which destroys the institution of slavery without actually making it illegal. In Eph 6:9 slave masters are told to "obey [their] [slaves] with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men" when read in conjunction with Eph 6:5-7. This isn't just telling slave owners to be nice to slaves, but is telling them to serve their slaves like someone might serve God, or like people in marriage should serve each other. Doing this would create a pretty weird dynamic in a slave-owning house and would make the institution ridiculous.

Why God can't just forgive sin

2010-12-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

Forgiveness doesn't do a lot of things. For instance, it doesn't necessarily make people better. If I forgive someone for stealing from me, then I won't seek revenge, but it won't necessarily mean they'll stop stealing. So forgiveness won't necessarily make the forgiven person better.

This could be a problem for religious people if you need to be perfect to be with God. If you have to be perfect to hang out with God forever, then it raises the question: how is God's forgiveness going to make people perfect? If my forgiveness doesn't make someone who steals from me perfect, actually they could easily steal again, then how is God's forgiveness going to make a religious person perfect? Maybe the religious person will feel so grateful or remorseful that they'll never do anything wrong ever again. But experience teaches us that this is unlikely...

This is partly why Christianity teaches a type of forgiveness where forgiveness DOES make someone better. When Jesus died for us on the cross, God put our evil onto Christ, as well as the punishment for it. You can imagine all our badness, like a great pool of black sludge, being poured onto Christ on the cross. So "We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives" (Rom 6:6) and in return we will "be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of [our] own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ (Phi 3:9). Luther called it the 'Great Exchange'.

2 Cor 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Isaiah 53:12: "Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Unfortunately, Christians still do the wrong thing a lot because God has decided that what Jesus did for us will be fully manifested at a later date. Until then, "The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions" (Gal 5:7). In fact, in our present state, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8).

Does grammar help us believe in free will?

2010-11-28T22:48:00.000-08:00

Does humanity's instinctive grammar indicate that free will is compatible with God's knowledge of everything?

Consider the words "will" and "must". One use of the modal verb "will" is to "express inevitability" (e.g. accidents will happen) and this is quite close to one use of the modal verb "must" which is to "be compelled by physical necessity" or "be logically inferred or supposed" (e.g. one must eat to live).

"Will" and "must" in these senses are very similar but you can't just have "must". Language needs "will", but "will" is different from "must" in an interesting way. "Will" expresses certainty but implicitly something else could have happened. "Must" expresses certainty but implicitly nothing else could have happened.

For example, you can say, "Sally must go for a walk" and you can clearly see how there is no other option for Sally than to go for a walk. But if you say, "Sally will go for a walk, then you know that Sally will go for a walk, but you don't exclude the possibility that Sally could have stayed at home. There was no "must" about Sally going for a walk - she might not have - it was "will".

So, in other words, our grammar splits predictions into two types: certain predictions where, implicitly, something else could have happened other than what was predicted, and certain predictions where nothing else could have happened other than what was predicted.

So I think that God's knowledge could be of the "will" happen variety and not the "must" happen variety. This would mean that God doesn't know that we "must" choose what God predicts, only that we "will". This helps the idea of free will because it means we don't have to do choose what God predicts, although we will. Think about how that would work for a moment. I'm not clear on it myself.

It might mean that a form of backwards causation happens where God, first, lets us define our character and then, second, His knowledge about that is caused by it happening in the future. So your choice to have a certain character at time 100 causes God's knowledge of it at time 0, rather than your choice at time 100 causes God's knowledge of it at time 100. The choice still causes God's knowledge of it, but it doesn't work from past => future.

Defining God

2010-11-18T23:46:00.000-08:00

One philosophical definition of God could go like this:

You could say that everything we interact with is finite because you can place a limit on it. So your computer screen is finite because it has a limited width, height, number of atoms in the screen, etc. Same for everything else we interact with, of course. Even our imagination is like this. Everything we imagine is limited in at least one way. For example, when I imagine infinity I imagine an object that goes on forever, but that object looks a certain way and thus expresses a limit in the 'drawing' of it.

But what about an 'unlimited' reality where something like e.g. width/height can't exist because width/height expresses a limit? And so on for size, colour, location, dimensions, time, cause-effect, etc?

God is described as without limits in some places of the Bible, and so maybe that idea has something to do with a philosophical definition of God:

Psalm 90:2: Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Psalm 147:5: Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.

1 Timothy 1:17: Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The Bible, after all, does say that God is 'the invisible God' (Col 1:15) and there's only two ways something can't possibly be represented: it's either a metaphor or about a reality where, for example, you can't represent size because size involves a world that deals in limits (hence you can't draw God with an accurate size!) You can't accurately represent something with no limits when you think about our drawing tools.

The problem with this view is that it doesn't convey God's loving personal nature or hardly anything else about God. It's a very abstract and 'irrelevant' God that is described, but at least it talks about God's infinite nature in a way that our reason can grasp at in some way.

Envy

2010-11-12T15:32:00.000-08:00

How does envy 'work'? Where does the emotion come from?

Proverbs 27:4: Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?

James 3:14-16: But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don't cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.

1 Corinthians 13:4: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

Envy is a somewhat unusual emotion in that it has no 'good' aspect at all. For instance, when Aristotle was forming his 'doctrine of the mean', he tried to find a 'good' aspect to every emotion (as part of his system where virtue is between two opposite extremes). E.g. anger is good when it protects the vulnerable. Fear is good when it stops us from being complete idiots. Being trusting is good unless we are too trusting and someone takes advantage, and so on. But he could find no 'good' aspect to envy.

To find out what envy is about we need to look at what condition(s) needs to be fulfilled for anyone to experience envy. That is, what is something that needs to happen before you can experience envy?

There may be several answers, but one answer is not being content.

For example, can you think of any situation where someone is really content about XYZ and also feels a lot of envy about XYZ? For example, suppose that someone was really content about how much money they had and frankly did not care about having more money, because it doesn't matter to them at all - they have enough. Can that person feel envious towards someone for having more money than them, given their contentment about money?

Lack of contentment seems to be a basic condition for envy.

OK, so what do envious people do? They make life difficult for the person who they envy if they can.

Now, why is it that a lack of contentment would 'spill over' into basically having something against other people? How does A. Lack of contentment in any way cause B. Having something against other people?

The answer could be that acting enviously gives the envious person a practical benefit...

But it doesn't seem that envy is a 'strategy' to get what the other person has. For example, if you envy someone who has a lot more money than you, then you probably don't think you'll be able to get some of their money by making life hard for them.

In almost all cases of envy, someone's envy will not allow someone to get, practically speaking, what they are envious about. It will also not make society more equal because one envious person will not make society more equal on their own (however, if everyone was envious, then maybe society would be more equal, but it would be a rather unhappy, nasty sort of equality).

Actually, I can't figure out what selfish strategy envy is part of. Even if someone is a complete psycho, cares only about themselves, and has no good emotions at all, I simply don't know what selfish benefit they can get from envy, and I haven't even talked about how unhappy it makes the person that envies.

But I find it hard to believe that there isn't some kind of selfish benefit to envy, even one that is almost never realised. Otherwise envy is a very peculiar kind of selfish act - a selfish act that does not benefit the selfish person.

A second possibility is that envy is not a strategy but an automatic process. Envy could simply be a result of the brain accepting two or three facts: 1. I am not content about XYZ and 2. Someone has XYZ and probably 3. I will let myself feel envy. In this view, envy is like thinking that Pluto is no longer a planet after you hear the news, just an automatic reaction that can happen if you are not content and see people with what you desire.

Anyway, we can map the process of envy something like this:

I am not content about something => a selfish strategy or an automatic process => I feel envy and feel like I am 'against' the person who has whatever it is I'm not content about.

This may be one reason why the Bible teaches people to be content. In other words, the Bible doesn't teach us to be content to make us docile and passive, but because a lack of contentment causes people to experience envy and makes it harder for us to love other people.

Hebrews 13:5: Don't love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, "I will never fail you. I will never abandon you."

1 Timothy 6:6-8: Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can't take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.

Heaven and hell, some numbers

2010-11-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

There may be Biblical evidence that a lot more people will be with God forever than be separated from God.

First of all, there is the doctrine of the age of accountability (link). This doctrine is that people who die before an age where they can make an informed decision about Jesus automatically go to heaven. This also includes people with a mental disability or some other disability that prevents them from making an informed decision about Jesus (there's 'state' as well as 'age' of accountability).

This could be broadened to include some people who never hear about Jesus or who hear but not in a way that allows them to make an informed decision about Jesus (but if you say this, then there needs to be a reason why God wants us to tell people about Jesus, which is a problem for this view).

If you broadened it in this way, then most people who have ever lived will be in heaven, because until modern medicine the infant mortality rate was about 50% (source) and there have been a lot of people who have never heard the gospel.

Secondly, we must remember that after this age (which ends when Jesus returns) there is an 'age to come', where almost everyone will be Christian:

Isaiah 2:2-4: "In the last days, the mountain of the LORD's house will be the highest of all--the most important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. People from many nations will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of Jacob's God. There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths." For the LORD's teaching will go out from Zion; his word will go out from Jerusalem. The LORD will mediate between nations and will settle international disputes. They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore."

How many people will live in this age to come? Perhaps billions.

Thirdly, the good angels are happy forever and some interpret Revelation to say that 2/3rds of the angels stayed with God (Rev 12:4). Now, if there are billions of angels, then that is a large number of people who will be happy with God forever.

But what about verses like Matthew 7:13-4?:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Maybe this verse is saying that it's a narrow gate to heaven for people who a) become adults that b) can make an informed decision about the gospel that c) live in the current age. That is, our group, where the decision to accept Jesus is fraught with uncertainties and difficulties not present with the other groups. It could be that our group has the lowest proportion of people in that group going to heaven (compared to people outside the age/state of accountability, people in the age to come, and angels). If this speculation is accurate, then it raises the question of why we are in this group!

Looking at the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, Part 1

2010-10-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

Skeptics often object to God's character in the Old Testament, and one event that is often mentioned is God's order that the Israelites conquer Canaan.

As a thought experiment, I thought I would make a list of conditions and see whether people think that the conquest of Canaan would have been OK for God to order if all the conditions I'm about to mention were perfectly fulfilled. This list heavily borrows from an article by someone called Glenn Miller who runs 'A Christian Thinktank', available here.

I admit that it requires turning the dial on the benefit of the doubt given to God up to 11, but it arguably makes sense as Glenn Miller points out. In a later article I might argue for how the Bible can support this interpretation, but first I want to see whether people agree that these conditions would make it OK for God to order the invasion if they were perfectly satisfied. Glenn Miller does a much better job at that than I would anyway.

1. God ordering the Israelites to conquer Canaan is not an act of favouritism towards the Israelites, or 'dis-favouritism' towards the Canaanites. That is, the conquest was supported by God according to an impartial set of criteria that need not refer to any specific group or persons.
2.1 If it's possible for a cultural group to 'earn', somehow, getting forced out of their homeland because of morally bad practices (both as a judgement and as a way of reforming that culture). There are morally bad practices that can do this.
2.2 The Canaanites had extraordinarily bad moral practices. So basically the Biblical portrait isn't a caricature but somehow real. E.g. child sacrifice, sex slavery, if they were a 'war culture' that periodically destroyed neighbouring cultures as well as suffering a lot of internal fights, etc.
2.3 The Canaanite culture threatened neighbouring cultures so much that stopping their raiding and attacks on other groups would have had a huge protective benefit for the area.
3.1 If the Canaanites were given a lot of warnings from God before the Israelites came that their practices were not OK and that they needed to change their behaviour or there would be serious consequences.
3.2.1 If God was willing to cancel the invasion of Canaan if the Canaanites had changed their behaviour based on clear warnings, and...
3.2.2 The warnings were clear, and...
3.2.3 God gave them plenty of time to change.
4.1 If when the invasion happened the Israelites had to offer peace first before attacking a city and it is only on the condition that a city rejected peace that it was attacked.
4.2 If the city accepted peace, then 'tolerable' conditions were placed upon its inhabitants.
4.3 'Tolerable' conditions include a conquered city's inhabitants acknowledging the authority of Israel, paying annual tribute, and being able to be called on to perform works of public service in times of need (e.g. repairing city walls) (see Gill's commentary here).
4.4 Deuteronomy 20:10-16 does not contradict point 4 because God was willing to apply point 4 to the central Canaanite cities and did not do so only because God knew that they would reject any negotiation with the Israelites under the terms above. So God wanted to apply point 4 to them, but God's awareness of how the Canaanites would react made that pointless (see Clarke's commentary here).
5.1 If a city was attacked, almost all of the people who were killed were combatants/soldiers who had chosen to stay and fight...
5.2 Because the Israelites were not to pursue people who ran away and...
5.3 Civilians/non-combatants could easily run away, resettle in another area, and escape the Israelite conquest because of their somewhat nomadic style of civilization and...
5.4 Had plenty of time to resettle in another area and knew for a long time that it would be a sensible thing to do, because they had known for a long time that the Israelites were coming and were given plenty of warnings about their great power and intentions to conquer the land...
5.5 Partly because the Israelite conquest of Canaan was quite slow and gradual, and...
5.6 Civilians/non-combatants did run away. So civilians, or non-combatants, were rarely subjected to violence because they could easily flee and did so.
5.7 Although it's not highlighted in the Biblical verses, this is something that went on all the time 'behind the scenes'.
6.1 If God's purpose was not to kill Canaanites but to drive them out of that area, to push their culture and society out of that area and...
6.2 In fact this is what happened - not genocide but relocation, as reflected in the overall balance of Biblical verses on the conquest and descriptions of what actually happened written after the event in other parts of the Bible, i.e. the Canaanites are still around for a long time afterwards.

So if this is what was going on and you can read the Bible as saying this, then is God in the clear?

The persuasiveness of this sort of defense of God depends a lot on how one judges God. Does one give God a defense or justification as long as that defense hangs together as a coherent idea that could hypothetically be true? Or not make that assumption?

Is belief in God natural?

2010-10-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

Suppose I created a robot to pick up rocks and for some reason gave it consciousness. In that circumstance, it would be OK for that robot to feel an obligation to pick up rocks and have beliefs reflecting that desire, because that's what it's been programmed to do and think. In the same way, if God has programmed humans to believe in a 'divine reality', then it would be intellectually acceptable for humans to believe in a divine reality under that circumstance. We'd just be fulfilling our 'programming', which would make religious belief perfectly fine regardless of other considerations.

But what if such a God doesn't exist? If there's only a 1% chance of such a God existing, then this viewpoint should sound silly.

Yet, it's not silly to affirm this point of view if there's a 90% chance of such a God existing.

So then what are the chances that there is a God who wires religious belief in this way? If it's 90%, then we can easily affirm the point-of-view described above. If it's 50% or a bit less, then maybe we can believe that it applies to us but in a way that leaves room for a fair amount of doubt.

If there's no evidence for or against God, then the principle of parsimony (if you can cut something out of an explanation without losing anything, cut it out) reduces the chance of God existing. But the chance that God exists does not thereby become nothing, because the debate about God is also part of a broader debate: is the realm of subjective experiences (mind) one of reality's accidents? Or something that has a place at the very foundation of reality? The latter idea will always be somewhat appealing to people in some form or other, even if it has no other evidence for it.

Also, a lot of believers would say that looking at the beauty of the natural world and the physical laws of the universe (the 'fine-tuning' argument), arguments from the big bang, other apologetics, etc., gives some evidence for a God. If so, then there would be a higher chance of a 'hard wiring' God existing.

What's the lowest chance that a 'hard wiring' God exists for believers to take the scenario above as seriously applying to humanity? In one study people found a 'reasonable doubt' that someone is guilty of a crime to exist at about a 25+% chance of innocence, given the evidence. I suppose that indicates you can get reasonable people believing in something with a 25+% likelihood that it's true. So if you bring this idea into the discussion, then there needs to be a 25+% chance of such a God existing for believers to take the scenario above seriously on purely rational grounds.

Unknowable unknowables

2010-10-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

There's a quote from former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, from 2002, which gives an interesting insight into the subject of knowledge, although it was criticised at the time as an odd sounding statement:

"There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know."

Donald highlights here three categories of knowing:

1. 'Known known'. Basically, what we know. For example: we know that Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008.
2. 'Known unknown'. Stuff that we're aware we don't know. For example: we don't know how to build practically useful quantum computers and on what specific date some things happened in history.
3. 'Unknown unknown'. Stuff that we have no idea that we don't know. For example: suppose that tomorrow a long lost relative is going to give you one million dollars. It's not like, "I don't know when I'll get the million dollars," getting a million dollars isn't even on your radar. This category is completely 'out of left field' stuff.

The interesting thing about Donald's quote and the philosophy it refers to is that most of the time we usually think in terms of 'known knowns' and 'known unknowns'. We don't usually think in terms of 'unknown unknowns' because it takes away all our confidence about our predictions. For example, how can you make a prediction about what will happen in 2011 if you allow for the possibility that the world will end in December? You just can't factor 'unknown unknowns' into your predictions. After all, what, exactly, is the thing you don't know you don't know? And yet 'unknown unknowns' affect the world...

The Bible talks about another category of knowledge, which you could call the 'unknowable' category: something that we cannot even think of or conceive:

Psalm 139:1-6: "For the choir director: A psalm of David. O LORD, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I'm far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, LORD. You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!"

Romans 11:33: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!"

By adding an 'unknowable' category you get this:

1. 'Known unknowable'.
2. 'Unknown unknowable'.
3. 'Unknowable unknowable'.

A 'known unknowable' is a question or an issue that we know we can't ever figure out, no matter what. A famous 'known unknowable' comes from Matthew 24:36:

"However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows."

So we know that Jesus is coming back but we can never figure out exactly when it will happen.

In the secular world, the Continuum Hypothesis in mathematics may be a 'known unknowable' and, in the philosophy of mind, some secular philosophers have suggested that 'qualia' is as well (e.g. Colin McGinn).

An 'unknown unknowable' would include knowledge that God has that the Bible doesn't talk about and which is 'unknowable' to us. The Bible might not mention it because it's not relevant.

When Paul writes: "How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" he must surely be including some things that we're not aware of that are completely beyond us.

In secular terms, this might include mathematics and scientific puzzles we have yet to discover and which we will be disappointed to find out are 'unknowable'.

An 'unknowable unknowable' would be a piece of knowledge that is not only incomprehensible to us, but we also cannot understand what sort of knowledge we're missing out on - and yet it is real knowledge. So, if we can ever identify what 'unknowable' piece of knowledge we don't have, then it is not 'unknowable unknowable' knowledge.

An example of this in the secular world might be what sort of mathematical truths you could find out if you somehow had a computer with infinite processing power that could answer all questions involving the infinite. Because that is impossible, the kinds of things we would find out in that situation are 'unknowable' as well as the answers themselves.

When it comes to God, there might be some things that God knows that are not only unknowable to us, but the sheer concept or idea of that particular bit of knowledge is also unknowable. So it's not like God can patiently explain to us all the things that are unknowable to us, actually God can't even articulate to us some of these unknowable things, even with God's presumably great ability to explain things.

If God's knowledge encompasses all of these categories, and the Bible says it does, then we can be encouraged because of that. We can be confident that God does know what's going on in our lives more than we do (for example, we don't need to worry about whether God is aware of a current problem we have). If these categories exist, then we can also be confident that there are some truths about God, or that God knows, which may not be able to be articulated to us, but which are nonetheless truths.

A God with emotions makes sense

2010-10-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

Is it really a massive assumption to say that God can feel emotions?

It's true that God didn't evolve and has none of the physical components of emotion, like the release of certain chemicals in a brain, etc. That's true. But think about what emotions involve in terms of reason...

Can you feel anger without perceiving that someone has failed to meet an obligation? I don't think that you can. Can you do something on the basis of, "I will treat others the way I want to be treated," without feeling empathy? No - if you incorporate that value into your actions, then that = feeling empathy. Can you feel envy without perceiving a lack in your life? No, you have to perceive a lack in some area of your life to feel envy, etc.

So acting on certain kinds of practical reasons, or reasons to do with action = feeling certain emotions.

When you think about it logically, one would have to conclude that any kind of practical reason could probably be matched to an emotion. This would include emotions that humans have no experience of if you assume that there are practical reasons that humans never relate to but which other species do (uniquely alien or animal emotions).

So a basic emotion, a chemical emotion, like anger is actually an act of practical rationality or exercise of practical reason. In the case of anger: someone not meeting a perceived obligation.

And rationality is something that is very broad and goes way beyond evolution. Rationality is something not even restricted to the physical universe! It is something we could share with robots, aliens, and even creatures outside our universe.

So, at the end of the day, that's why I think that a God who feels emotions makes sense if you interpret emotion as rationality to do with action. Because a God who acts is a God with some understanding of emotion, of what it basically is, even if God's version of emotion is very different to ours.

And, of course, any creator God is a God of action, because God has proved He/She/It acts. Of course, a creator God has created the universe.

Going beyond this issue, a vague 'God who acts', who feels something like emotion, is different from a loving God who cares deeply about His creations, like the Christian God. But I don't see why God having no love is seen automatically to make much more sense than God having love. We probably feel that the existence of a loving God needs more of an explanation than a God of pitiless indifference. But if you, on the other hand, assume that finite reason cannot understand an infinite God, then how do we know an (infinite) God of love needs more of an explanation than an (infinite) God without love? If we can't use finite reason to understand what's going on when it comes to God?

For freedom Christ has set us free

2010-09-24T19:35:00.000-07:00

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." - Gal 5:1.

One of the 'paradoxes' of Christian teaching is that loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves actually sets us free rather than 'enslaves' us.

So what's going on with that? Surely loving your neighbour as you love yourself is impossibly difficult.

I think a key element in explaining why it's not some kind of 'slavery' comes from the Christian view of human nature: that when God made us He made our minds like His mind in many ways (the image of God idea). One aspect of God's mind is that it is love (1 John 4:8). So our minds were designed to be just as loving as God's. Just like God fulfills His nature through love, so do we.

We don't feel our minds are really like this (in that you can be happy without being very loving), but that can be explained as a result of people being able to create their own happiness from contradicting this system, as one of the 'powers' of free will, so we can make our own happiness from other things.

The Christian 'system' gets legitimacy because when we act according to the above described view of human nature we are actually acting according to the original 'blueprints'. Because of the 'blueprint' idea God's desire for us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is not supposed to be this horrible duty we are obligated to fulfill, but, ideally, in some way 'freeing', despite its incredible cost (1 John 5:3).

Okay, this may sound nice in theory, but how does it address the arduous nature of 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'? Why should we beat ourselves up for not following an impossible standard? As the Bible says, it is, after all, impossible to follow even though it's a legitimate standard (1 John 1:8).

One point that Christianity makes is that God just wants us to accept what Jesus has done for us on the cross and doesn't want us to beat ourselves up for failing to keep an impossible, but legitimate, standard that He knows we can't meet (trying to meet it in order to please God would actually contradict the accepting Jesus part according to Gal 5:4). Because of what Jesus has done, we won't need to try hard to follow it one day, but it will, one day, come as naturally as drinking water. I think Phil 3:9 explains some of the mechanics of how this works: "[I have given up everything to] be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ."

One of the disadvantages of sin is that we can't properly imagine heaven

2010-09-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

There are some aspects to eternal life that people often find hard to understand. In this life we get bored and it can be hard to imagine how an eternity doing anything - even living with God - will not get boring if life in heaven is like life now.

Something that should comfort people on this issue is that, in the Christian view, one of the disadvantages of doing the wrong thing is not just spiritual death (being disconnected from God, Rom 6:23) but also that we don't experience the sort of joy and contentedness that God originally intended for humanity and this affects our ability to properly imagine eternal life with God.

Even when we are not suffering in any way it's obvious that there is something 'less than ultimate' about human happiness. And you'd have to imagine that God, it would seem likely, actually enjoys living forever (and in some sense has already lived forever). So we're probably missing something.

Surely whatever we're missing, that isn't as nice as what is the case for God, must be connected to our currently being either apart from or actually separated from God.

So we've always known a quality of happiness less than what God experiences, and this is why we can't imagine properly what life will be like once we experience "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" in the Kingdom of God (Rom 14:17). It will involve experiencing the peace and joy that God has (Matt 25:21). And our inability to experience this happiness now is why people think that eternal life with God will get boring and have problems.

Some good verses on this are:

1 Cor 2:9: "However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'"

Psalm 16:11: "You will make clear to me the way of life; where you are joy is complete; in your right hand there are pleasures for ever and ever."

Psalm 36:7-8: "How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your river of delights. For you are the fountain of life, the light by which we see."

Rom 8:18: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

Just like sin can eventually cause someone to become separated from God, so in this life it causes problems even where there is no suffering.

Why would God allow Satan to do stuff?

2010-09-03T20:34:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons why belief in a devil - a malevolent being who tempts people into doing more bad things than they would otherwise do - is criticised is that it is hard to imagine why God would allow such a being to tempt humanity (another problem of a mind without a body is not as difficult because it's possible there can be bodies that aren't physical in the sense we're accustomed to). Let's re-examine this 'absurdity' from a philosophical point-of-view.

There was a debate on Nightline a while ago (YouTube link) which discussed the existence of the Biblical character Satan. One of the persons in favour of an actual Satan said that she became a Christian because such a character existed, or in a skeptical explanation because she experienced a negative force that acted like Satan (i.e. self-destructive urges in human nature).

I find this statement interesting because it seems that many, many people become Christians because there is a sort of self-destructive or selfish force within people. What sometimes happens is that people's lives are falling apart and they need to make a choice between giving in to the self-destructiveness, and falling into an 'abyss', or giving their life to the Jesus of the gospels. In this way many people decide to do a complete turnaround and commit their lives to Jesus.

I see hence a reason why God might allow humanity to be tempted beyond what would 'normally' occur. A Satan character could magnify and make more extreme the self-destructive impulses within us. A lot of the time this would just be bad. But sometimes, through being forced to make a stark choice between life/death, becoming like Jesus/self-destruction, 'Satan' would actually accomplish the opposite of what is intended (something like, 'Hey, this is what will turn my life around and give my life meaning and purpose').

This seems like a reason for God to allow a 'Satan' to tempt humanity, if that's what it would accomplish. But I think two conditions need to be satisfied from a secular moral point of view:

1. The first condition would have to be that people are being saved from an ultimate separation from God in the process, which is, in reality, a really horrible fate.
2. The second is that this process is the ONLY thing that will cause some people to change their mind and choose to live forever with God rather than apart from God.

Presumably, if there was another way to save someone, then God should employ that way instead.

Looking at the second condition, what's a list of things that often make people want to be with God rather than be apart from Him? Often people are drawn to Christianity by feeling some sort of emptiness, lack of fulfillment, a feeling of hopelessness or pointlessness to life without God, discontent with the whole idea of serving oneself rather than God after seeing the 'bad side' of sin, the idea of perfect relationships in the afterlife rather than messed up ones now, a hope for 'another kind of happiness' that is eternally fulfilling and great, as well as other reasons.

These thoughts are negative thoughts that Satan could easily magnify (i.e. in Satan's desire to make life harder for people). They are also thoughts that tend to encourage a lot of people to follow Jesus and be with God forever (note: one reason why I associate 'follow Jesus' and 'be with God forever' is that it makes sense to me that you could only ever go to heaven as a free gift and I don't know any religion that teaches this apart from Christianity).

So if Satan can magnify these thoughts, and having these thoughts sometimes makes the difference between someone choosing to be with God forever rather than be apart from Him, then does Satan have a useful role? Can God use Satan? It seems so.

So allowing a 'Satan' to do stuff under these two conditions and only if these two conditions are satisfied could make allowing Satan to do stuff an overall good thing, and these conditions make some sense.

Does God help those who help themselves?

2010-08-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

Suppose there's something you're struggling with or you have a persistent desire that hasn't been fulfilled. Can you only depend on God's help if you basically fix the problem yourself, if you "step up" in some impressive way and solve the issue on your own? Does God help those who help themselves?

I find it helpful to think about this whole issue in terms of two general points:

1. Someone once said to me that they didn't fully understand God's love until they had children, because it just crystallised how much God's love for us is not about us doing anything to earn it. Of course, if you have kids, then you basically just want them to do well. You want them to succeed and flourish in life and be happy, and you don't impose a series of hoops or challenges or requirements on that. And you act to bring that about, as far as you can. Now, most parents certainly don't follow a rule: "Parents help their children when they help themselves" in relation to their kids, and we admire and respect that as a part of being a good parent. So the question is: is God worse than most parents? I would certainly hope not. So that counts against "God helps those who help themselves." See for example Rom 5:6: "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners."

2. The other point comes from a joke which illustrates the other side of this. There's a Christian, let's say 'Andrew,' who is having money problems, and he prays to God, "Dear God, if you help me win the lottery, I will be an incredible Christian. I will build a church, give a lot of money away, witness to heaps of people" and so on. But he doesn't win the lottery. So he prays again, "God, I'm at my wit's end. I will do anything for you if you help me win. Please, let me win!" But he doesn't win. So he prays again, "God, what do you want from me? What am I supposed to do or say? I will do anything for you if you help me win!" And then God answers him from heaven, "Andrew, help me out here. Buy a lottery ticket." See for example Psalm 32:9: "'Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.'"

The second point shows that if we pray, for example, to find a job but don't send out any resumes and suchlike, then God literally CANNOT answer our prayer. That could be the case sometimes. But, even if it is, God will try and help us as much as a loving parent would, which goes far beyond helping those who help themselves. Although sometimes God may not fulfill a persistent desire because of greater, at present inexplicable reasons, but we can't conclude from this that He doesn't love us completely, especially when one considers that e.g. God died on the cross for us, which involved, in Jesus taking our sins, more than 'just' being crucified.

Broken free will

2010-08-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

We like to think that we have free will and can decide our own values and to act on those values. But let's say someone's free will wasn't working properly. There are probably a number of ways this could manifest, but what would be the main problem that you'd see if it did happen?

Let's say that I have a certain principle that in certain circumstances people should do XYZ, including me. And that's not a principle I reluctantly accept, but one that I want other people to follow and for me to follow.

A free will that doesn't work properly would be a free will where I'm unable to act consistently on the principles that I hold near and dear. That sort of free will would be like a car that occasionally breaks down for no reason, or a computer that crashes every now and then for no reason. Because a free will like that is a free will where someone is effectively unable sometimes to choose what they have chosen.

Using that standard it seems that possibly everyone has a free will that is broken in some ways, because we all seem to affirm principles that we hold near and dear, and yet no one, unless those principles are very prosaic, can consistently act on those principles 100% of the time. So our free will, if we have it, is broken in some way. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to work in theory, and perhaps the way it was intended to work.

These thoughts were prompted by a reflection on John 8:34-6: "Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.'"

And Romans 7:15: "I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it."

Where does sin come from?

2010-08-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

An interesting theory on where sin ultimately comes from...

God is perfect, but why couldn't He make us perfect just like He is? Where does sin come from?

There's an answer that I find helpful on this issue: because of reason X, which is true in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 is true, only God can be 100% perfect. That is, only God can be a completely perfect being.

Therefore God cannot make any other being equal to Himself in perfection. So God can make beings that are 99% perfect, or 99.999...% perfect, but only God can be 100% perfect. This is a fundamental limit on the nature of reality and God's power, because only the creator, only God, can be completely perfect.

Of course, in reply, it might be said that a computer program can be made to perfectly calculate someone's tax returns, and what about a perfect circle existing? So some types of perfection can be made outside of God, mainly relating, I guess, to something achieving a defined purpose. But only God can be completely perfect in every way. So a perfect circle cannot be completely perfect like God can be completely perfect. I think this makes sense.

So Adam and Eve could be created 99.9999...% perfect, but not perfect like God is. And neither can we.

And from that tiny, tiny amount of imperfection, after maybe billions and billions of years (it doesn't say how long they were in the Garden), Adam and Eve experienced the 'Fall'. And we would have done so in the same position, because we have a tiny, necessary amount of imperfection as well. The Garden was a good situation but, ultimately, it can't work forever.

The only way around it is for God to insert Himself into reality as a created being, with our vulnerabilities, and overcome our 'necessary imperfection' - our ability to be tempted by evil - by being God as well as human.

The way it works for God as a created being is that, for instance, Jesus would never sin in any possible situation because He is God although He was tempted because He is human (Heb 4:15).

Then God-as-a-created being absorbed all the effects of our necessary imperfection - our sin - into Himself on the cross, as a result of which everyone can "be found in [Jesus], not having a righteousness of [their] own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ" (Phil 3:9).

That solves the problem created by our necessary imperfection, which is the way it always led to sin - it's not a problem if you have a goodness which is not your own, but which is Christ's.

Ultimately, God found a way to forever sidestep our necessary imperfection through the cross, in a way that wasn't available in the 'Eden setup', although the Eden setup was 'very good' (Gen 1:31).

Two kinds of infinite

2010-07-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Is there something infinite?
Do you need an infinite to 'start everything off'? Does there need to be an infinite at the foundation of reality?

If the answer to these questions is 'yes', then is there anything that we can conclude about the nature of this infinite? Can we conclude, for example, that it must be a God? Or can it be something like the universe?

Thinking about the infinite, I want to make the case that there are actually two kinds of infinite, that are very different, that could have started everything off. God would be one kind of infinite and an infinitely old multiverse would be an example of the other kind.

The two kinds can be illustrated by a thought experiment. Imagine a chair. Now imagine an infinite number of chairs.

You can't, of course, really imagine an infinite number of chairs. But the idea makes sense on some level.

Anyway, if you could really imagine it, then have you imagined an infinite? Of course, yes, you've imagined an infinite; an infinite number of chairs.

Now, have you imagined something completely infinite?

No. Because although there are an infinite number of chairs, chairs are finite objects.

So there you have a concept that is partly finite and partly infinite. That is, an infinite quantity of a finite thing; chairs.

Can you imagine something completely infinite in every way? Without any finite aspects, unlike with the infinite number of chairs?

Well, just like really imagining an infinite number of chairs, no, you can't. But the idea of a completely infinite thing makes sense.

A completely infinite object would have to contain everything that an infinite should contain, which is, well, 'everything'. But, the thing is, it can't contain everything in a way that splits the infinite into pieces. Then there wouldn't be one completely infinite thing, but two, or three, or an infinite number of infinites, and how can there be more than one of something that contains everything there is? So you can only have one 'completely infinite' infinite and that cannot have divisions and differences within itself. So it has to be an indivisible unity, or continuum. Paradoxically, this means it has to contain everything, somehow, in a way that doesn't allow for differences or divisions. Try to imagine that!

So a completely infinite object has to contain everything in a singular, indivisible continuum, one that doesn't have any distinctions and yet somehow contains everything anyway (so it isn't some content-less 'grey blob').

(Note: presumably, we ourselves don't need to BE the infinite as long as you make an exception: if something within the continuum is caused to manifest real, actual distinctions/differences, then it will stand 'apart' from the infinite while also existing inside it.)

So those, apparently, are the two kinds of infinite you can have.

Now, what, if anything, can we conclude from this?

If the universe, or multiverse, is infinitely old, then the world comes from the first kind of infinite discussed.

If God exists, then the world comes from the second kind of infinite discussed (and somehow the indivisible continuum is a person!)

Okay. Now, do we have any reason to prefer one of these infinites as an explanation of the world to the other?

There isn't any knockdown argument favouring one, as far as I know. But I do think it's a bit neater if the world comes from something completely infinite, i.e. the second kind, rather than something where the infinite and the finite are combined. Because if the universe/multiverse has finite aspects, like a finite number of dimensions, or a finite number of superstring membranes, or suchlike, which it must have, it isn't a 'completely infinite' infinite, and that isn't as, sort of, 'simple' as an idea.

Objective morality

2010-07-23T01:47:00.000-07:00

Atheists and Christians often argue about what makes morality 'objective', and whether you need God for morality to be 'objective'. But what does 'objective' in 'objective morality' mean, exactly? And why is a world without God unable to express whatever it means?

Instead of answering this directly, I'd prefer to imagine a situation that makes morality pack the most 'punch' out of any situation I can imagine.

This is the situation: suppose that humans are made to be perfectly loving towards each other and relate to one another in an 'ideal' way. So it's impossible to really live out your nature without relating to others in an 'ideal' way. That way, even though doing evil can make people happy, no one can really be themselves - who they really are - without relating to others in an 'ideal' way.

This situation would seem to make morality pack quite a punch. So maybe morality is more' objective' if this situation is the case than if it's not. Also, clearly, it's easier to believe this if you're a religious person plus you believe that things have somehow 'gone off the rails' for humanity so that, somehow, no one lives out their true nature in a complete way (at least in this life).

Perspective

2010-07-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

Is there one face or are there two faces in this picture? Two people can see something different and yet they are looking at the same thing.

Sometimes looking at different perspectives on the world can feel like you're looking at this picture, especially regarding different explanations for people's behaviour (as outlined below).

Social sciences point out that in any population of people some are really nice, some people are quite selfish, and most people are in the middle - they are nice if people are nice to them and mean if people are mean to them.

An explanation of this from an evolutionary point-of-view is as follows: if everyone in the group is very selfish then the group will self-destruct. So the best evolutionary 'strategy' is for people to be 'reciprocally nice', or 'conditionally nice'. That way, the group won't self-destruct, but people can secure their own self-interest and thus have a greater chance of effective reproduction. Naturally, evolution has selected for this. And, of course, extreme niceness is explained as either a random 'there has to be a bell curve and naturally people at the nice end', or there's some kind of evolutionary strategy going on there, as well.

Looking at the same evidence, there is also another, completely different explanation (albeit a bit more mysterious because of the 'free will' factor):

Suppose we have free will, and everyone can pick their moral character: really nice, really bad, or in between. On one hand, it makes rational sense for people to be selfish because then they can always pursue their interests. But on the other hand, we don't like being treated in that way, and so we feel bad about it because we feel we should 'Do unto others'. These are the considerations, and based on them, some people freely choose to value extreme niceness, extreme badness, or something in between.

As it so happens, the in between personality, 'conditional niceness', is the perfect compromise between securing our self-interest and 'Doing unto others' a fair bit. So, naturally, it's the most popular 'choice' when we pick and choose our characters. So in every population, through free will, you get a bell curve with some people at either extreme and most people somewhere in the middle, like with the first explanation, above.

As it so happens, this personality - the 'conditionally nice' - is also the most evolutionarily effective. But, actually, it comes through a process involving free will, rather than genetics.

So if you have free will + selfishness makes sense + we feel a moral obligation, then you can explain what we see, and if you use the idea of evolutionary strategies, then you can explain the data as well. So which is right?

The prodigal son story and 'divine hiddenness'

2010-07-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

Why can't we make the decision to be or not be a Christian after talking with God face to face, instead of the way we make that decision now, where God may as well not exist if you don't think about Him/Her/It?

I think a helpful answer to this can come from the 'Prodigal Son' story. This isn't a philosophical answer; it's making an appeal to psychology and a story rather than philosophy.

The Christian view seems to be that if God made everyone accept/reject Him 'face to face', in a completely upfront way, that fewer people would end up with God than through the 'distant approach'.

Does this seem psychologically plausible/realistic?

I think it is psychologically realistic if we're all in a 'Prodigal Son' situation. Here is the story below from Luke 15:

To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.

“A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.

“When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’

“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’

“But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.

If the prodigal son hadn't been allowed to experience life separated from his family, then he would never have ultimately accepted home life and the authority of his father (representing God). It's because he got to experience life separated from his family, and the hardships that caused, and not very good benefits, that caused the son to come back.

So a world where we can reject God from a distance allows us to experience being the prodigal son, and a world where we reject or accept God face to face doesn't (because in a world where God is visible everywhere you can't try things out on your own).

And we are in the situation described in the above story. I think that hell is actually living forever without God, and being able to do your own thing for an eternity (which God accurately warns us will become as painful as fire - see here). And, secondly, God has no way of giving a real and lasting happiness to someone apart from that person being forgiven for everything wrong they've done and them accepting that forgiveness, through 'the cross'

So if the right thing to do in the 'Prodigal Son' story was for the father to do the equivalent of divine hiddenness (with the guy's father letting him run off and do his own thing), and our situation is a replica of the 'prodigal son situation', then divine hiddenness should also be the better option for God to use in this world.

[Edit] Here are some additional notes from a discussion over this post at Revelife which helps to clarify some things.

Someone wrote that everyone knew that the father existed in the story, but nonbelievers don't have a pre-existing relationship with God to reject in this world, making it a bad analogy. I wrote:

Probably the standard Christian answer to this is that, and I admit there's no reason to believe this if you're not a Christian, that the Holy Spirit subconsciously/unconsciously communicates to people who hear the gospel that heaven/hell is like the Prodigal Son situation, and if that person wants to make the choice of the son in that story, then - regardless of their beliefs and whether they think Christianity makes zero sense - God supernaturally makes that person have faith. Some verses on this are:

John 6:44: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day."

1 Tim 2:4: "who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth."

Someone wrote that the prodigal son knew how bad life was without his family, but God can't communicate the full gravity of hell to us when someone presents the gospel. I wrote:

I think we already have experience of what hell is in this life, based on my understanding of hell. People experience a bit of hell when they achieve a lot of pleasure but feel empty inside because they aren't doing anything really fulfilling, or when someone has run out of things to do and is mind numbingly bored. Because I think that hell is being able to go off and do our own thing forever "shut out from the presence of the Lord and the majesty of His power" 2 Thes 1:9.

But it's nonetheless the case that we don't experience the full magnitude of this sort of state of being unless we go to hell.

I believe that God is somehow able to communicate the full magnitude of its horribleness in some way to everyone who hears the gospel, but that maybe people don't believe God, or something happens to frustrate God's plan to save someone that isn't reflective of someone's works.

Someone pointed out that you could still be a 'prodigal son' if God was obviously everywhere. So this explanation doesn't work. I wrote:

The alternative to a 'prodigal son' situation is for God to be present everywhere in the world in a very 'in your face' way. On reflection, I think I agree with you that that would still allow people to not care about God and what God wants, and act out the prodigal son story.

Thinking about it, how it would work is that God would rule His own city and people could appeal to him for protection and stuff, and everyone would know with 100% certainty that God exists and the Bible is true, but God could designate areas of the world where people could go off and do their own thing. So you might have a division of the world into areas that embrace God and 'no God zones'. Based on these cursory thoughts, this is how it might have to be.

If so, then that's all well and good for the people living in the 'God protected' areas, but is that plan giving the people in the 'no God zones' the best possible chance at salvation? If those people have to reject God face to face to get away from God, then I believe it would be harder for God to win them back than compared with this world where people reject God from a distance. If you reject God from a distance God can win you back more easily, given enough time, surely, than doing it face to face.

An odd aspect to free will

2010-07-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

If we have free will, then we have something that has several unusual attributes.

One feature of free will is that it separates the possibility of something from the probability of it.

We normally think that if something is possible then there's a probability we could give to it happening. For instance, if there's a chance that something will happen at every moment, then eventually it will happen over an infinite length of time. So given an eternity a computer randomly putting letters together will assemble the complete works of Shakespeare, by accident (maybe after 10 to the power of a googolplex years, but eventually...)

Let's apply this thinking to free will and see what happens. Suppose that God made everyone live forever, in comfort and safety, on a planet like Earth.

If we have free will, and have the resources to build a lot of things, then it should be possible for all of us to decide to build a mountain out of books in every year of that eternity.

But does everyone have to build a mountain out of books in an eternity? If we have free will, then you'd have to say no. Because if we have free will, then in each year in that eternity we must be able to reject that idea. So maybe a lot of people won't ever build the book mountain, regardless of how much time passes.

Just because it's possible for everyone to make a book mountain doesn't mean everyone will eventually do so over an eternity given true free will. So with free will a possibility can always exist with zero probability of it happening, given the determination never to do it.

Optical illusions, free will, and omniscience

2010-06-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a picture of the 'leaning tower illusion'. The two towers are really identical, but the brain expects that the second tower will lean more because of the way the brain processes perspective. Because of this expectation, we actually do see the second tower lean more.

It's arguable that we're making a similar kind of mistake when we think that free will is contradicted by God's foreknowledge of how we will choose - we're being misled by the tools we use to predict the future.

How do we predict the future? We can categorise any of our predictions into one of three categories:

1. Pure chance. We can't figure out a pattern. E.g. a coin flip.
2. Probability. You're trying to predict something that's somewhat chaotic but you can still see a pattern. E.g. what teams have the greatest chance of winning a championship.
3. Determinism. Because nothing else is possible. E.g. whether gravity will pull a rock to the ground.

These are the only three categories we know about when it comes to prediction.

For us to know the future with certainty means using category 3 thinking, which is determinism. The way it works is that you narrow down all possibilities so there's only one possibility left, and that's how you know.

So when we think about God predicting our choices we imagine God using category 3, and narrowing down (to one) all possibilities for how we will choose, because it's the only way of predicting something that we know. And it's true, such a thing would take away free will.

But why must God's foreknowledge use category 3? Couldn't God have some other way of knowing stuff, because He's an all powerful God? One that doesn't narrow possibilities down to one?

One idea of how God's foreknowledge isn't in category 3 is that when God predicts our choices He has an 'intuitive' understanding of how people will choose, that's right, but which is never explained 'intellectually'. So God may not know 'because of reason A, B, and C, Sally must go for a walk', only 'in this situation, Sally will go for a walk'. Because God doesn't account for Sally's choice any further, God can know that Sally might have acted differently, because God hasn't explained Sally's choice completely. This is an attempt at a 'non category 3' type of prediction.

So it's fair to say we could be tricked into thinking that God's foreknowledge takes away free will because of how we predict the future. But our techniques for knowing the future aren't necessarily God's techniques.

Another interesting thought on this is that the 3 categories don't apply to free will itself, assuming free will totally contradicts determinism. So it wouldn't be surprising if there's a fourth category of predicting, because (incompatibilist) free will requires another category (of something) to 'work'. This opens up the idea of a fourth category of predicting, as well.

'I'm not perfect' versus 'I am a sinner'

2010-06-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

Everyone will admit that they're not perfect. And this seems to be the same thing as saying you're a sinner (i.e. that you have flaws). But if someone said to you, 'I am a sinner', that would sound like a much more serious and humble statement than 'I'm not perfect'. So what is an explanation for this?

I think the difference is that saying you're not perfect is saying you have flaws, but it doesn't mean that you're actually failing to fulfill your moral obligations towards others. Whereas saying 'I am a sinner' indicates not only that you are not perfect, but also that you're failing to fulfill all your moral obligations.

The difference could be analogised to two different styles of grading. You usually don't have to get a 'high distinction' (A+) to perform decently on an assignment. You can usually do OK with just a 'pass'. Although it may not be as impressive, you're still getting your degree. So, on one view, you can have flaws and still be doing everything you should be doing as a person.

On the other hand, saying 'I am a sinner' implies more of a view where you're not even getting a pass. You're just not meeting all of your moral obligations towards others.

In terms of how each view can go astray, the 'I am a sinner' view can be misinterpreted so that someone thinks of themselves as a pathetic failure (which is bad because the Bible encourages humility and the acceptance of forgiveness, not a complete lack of self-esteem). Whereas the 'I'm not perfect but everything is basically OK' view can lead someone to be unaware of obligations that apply to them (because there are more moral obligations applying to them than they think, e.g. 'don't steal' if they are a thief).

Here is a parable that seems to refer to the two views:

Luke 18:9-14: "Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else. For I don’t cheat, I don’t sin, and I don’t commit adultery. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Two ways we can say God isn't good

2010-06-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

Job 1:22: "In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing."

Job 33:9-12: "You [Job] said, 'I am pure; I am without sin; I am innocent; I have no guilt. God is picking a quarrel with me, and he considers me his enemy. He puts my feet in the stocks and watches my every move.' But you are wrong, and I will show you why. For God is greater than any human being."

There are two ways we can say that God isn't good.

The first way is obvious. We can say the Christian God exists, but that He isn't perfectly good despite what the Bible says. That is, the Bible inaccurately describes God.

The second way of saying that God isn't good can be a lot more subtle. I'll illustrate it using an example.

Suppose that a parent loses their spouse and child in a horrific accident one day. It also happens to be the case that the parents had stopped going to church a few months ago because they had just been too tired to go along, what with everything else that had been happening in their lives (or for some other reason).

Suppose that the surviving parent says 'I completely affirm that God is good. The reason why my spouse and child died is because God decided to punish us for not going to church more often.'

The second way of saying God isn't good can be quite subtle. It happens when someone affirms and sincerely believes that God is good, but when they try to explain suffering in their lives they say something about God that implies He isn't really good.

If we affirm that God is good, then we should not try to explain why God has allowed something to happen in our lives that subtly (or more bluntly) says that God isn't good. Because it just can't be true, and so it will mislead people who believe it. The surviving spouse is right to say that God is perfectly good, but something would be very amiss with God if their terrible tragedy was a punishment for not going to church more often.

Sometimes we can explain why God allowed something in a really great way. Sometimes, after enough time has elapsed, we can look at our life and understand really well why God didn't answer a specific prayer, or frustrated a persistent desire.

But if we can't explain our suffering very well, it's a lot better just to stick to our principles, affirm that God is good, and say 'I don't know why God allowed this to happen', rather than come up with a poor explanation.

There are general truths we can fall back on if we don't know the specific reason why God allowed something to happen. Characters in the Bible that we know God was helping and watching over often went through very long periods where God might have seemed distant and uncaring (like the account of Joseph in Genesis). Plus, humanity's unnatural separation from its Creator ensures some degree of suffering (like a fish out of water). Also, God will honour people's free will, allowing them to do evil to others, or damage their own lives.

Points to remember about the Old Testament laws

2010-06-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

A lot of critics of Christianity argue that there are bizarre Old Testament laws that show that the Christian God is not really good. Without going into any specific explanations of any Old Testament laws (here is a good site for that), here are a couple of general points about all of them.

Something to remember is that Jesus specifically says that the Old Testament laws involved a compromise between what God wanted ideally, and what the ancient Israelites were prepared to accept. Matt 19:8-9: 'Jesus replied, "Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended. And I tell you this, whoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery--unless his wife has been unfaithful."'

Ancient near east culture was so incredibly different to us that they would have considered 'standard' the OT laws we find bizarre. We can find similar attitudes in laws in other ancient near east cultures of the period, and so it was probably what the Israelites were prepared to accept (link). Also, the OT laws are a lot nicer than other laws from that period.

We have to remember what principles the OT law is grounded in. A few great verses are: 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD' (Lev 19:18). And two interpretations from the New Testament, Matt 7:12: 'Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets', and Matt 22:35-40: 'One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."'

So if the rabbis of the Old Testament period thought that was what the law was really about, then there must be something in their understanding compared to ours that modern critics are missing, that enables them to think that. So while the basic principle of 'Do unto others' has remained unchanged throughout the millennia, the social, cultural, historical (etc) context has made it so that ancient rabbis see something in the law that, today, we seem to miss.

Anxiety

2010-05-25T03:27:00.000-07:00

Phil 4:6-7: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

What would have to be true for these verses to be giving good guidance?

I think it would have to be that Christians have almost no control over the major events and occurrences in their life, although it often seems that we do. Instead, God must really be the one in control, who orchestrates the major and many of the minor points of our life. Otherwise worry would be the proper, rational response.

The reason for saying this is that anxiety and worry are always about trying to control something that you believe you have power over, and/or the feeling that it will be awful if you mess something up that you can mess up.

So for example, if I didn't think that I had any control over whether a job interview went well, but I just turned up determined to go through with it, then it stands to reason I wouldn't worry at all about how it would go. It's only if I thought I had it in my power to make or break the interview that I would worry.

Also, if I'm taking an exam that isn't very important then I won't worry either, because I can't mess things up by doing badly. Even if I have the power to do well or do badly, the fact that I don't care how I do on it means I'm not going to try and exert any control over its outcome beyond just turning up and doing it. My lack of concern for control means I won't worry about it.

So it's obvious that anxiety and worry is about control: about believing you can control and affect whatever issue or thing you're worried about.

So for God to tell Christians, "Do not be anxious about anything," God is pretty much saying we have almost no control over the major events of our life, or that they can't be messed up against God's will. Otherwise we ought to try to control these events, and therefore should experience a lot of anxiety and worry as part of that control. Also see Matt 6:24-34 where God says the only things that we should worry about are things that we can obviously and easily affect.

A possible exception to this is that, if we reject what God obviously and unambiguously wants for us, then we can completely go against God's will. But even then God could work around it, and in any case God is assuming in these verses that we won't do that.

Does going to heaven involve missing out on the richness and variety of human experience?

2010-05-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

There's a common perception that going to heaven involves being 'lobotomized'. That it means being turned into a perpetually happy 'machine' where you are unable to express natural emotions like sadness, cynicism, and so on. Meanwhile you are constantly 'high' on love which enables the saints in heaven to care about people and God the way God wants, like a parody of 'positive thinking' gone wrong.

This view is based on a misunderstanding of how the saints in heaven will be different. The entire difference is summed up thus: whereas now we don't treat other people the way we would ideally like other people to treat us, the saints in heaven will. Whereas now we don't follow the Golden Rule perfectly, the saints in heaven will (Matt 7:12).

Jesus (who is God) felt sadness (John 11:33-36), anger (Mark 3:5), cynicism (when justified, Mark 12:14-15), extreme anxiety (Luke 22:42-44). Jesus felt a full spectrum. He felt every emotion that was compatible with treating others the way Jesus would have ideally liked to be treated.

Heaven won't change people so that they can't get sad, lonely, feel grief, pain, feel cynical (as long as it allows for giving people the benefit of the doubt), anger (when justified) and so on. It only means that we will follow the standard above, which goes along with loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. When someone adds something to this then they are in danger of adding something to heaven that heaven doesn't have - this is where the 'heaven involves a lobotomy' view comes from.

So if our idea of heaven involves missing out on the richness of human experience, then either a) following the Golden Rule perfectly means missing out on the richness of human experience, or b) something has been added to our understanding of heaven that heaven doesn't have.

Two kinds of forgiveness

2010-05-04T23:11:00.000-07:00

The Bible describes two kinds of forgiveness, one of which is a lot more 'powerful' than the other.

The first kind of forgiveness works like this: imagine a thief who keeps stealing someone's stuff - let's say John's stuff. John is so nice that whenever the thief steals from him, he forgives the thief. But the thief never changes his behaviour. John can forgive the thief all he wants, but it doesn't deal with the thief's wrongdoing. Forgiving the thief doesn't make the thief a better person.

John's kind of forgiveness doesn't do much. John's forgiveness won't make the thief stop stealing, it will only prevent John from taking revenge or seeking justice.

If God's forgiveness is like John's forgiveness then God's forgiveness won't accomplish that much. It will do something, but it won't really deal with humanity's issues.

The second kind of forgiveness is more powerful because it changes the person who gets forgiven.

The second kind would work like this: imagine that John accepted the thief's apology and somehow took away from the thief whatever it was that made the thief ignore the badness of stealing. So the thief didn't steal again (unless there was some exception that made it OK).

The Christian view is that to solve humanity's problems, God needed the second kind of forgiveness. Otherwise people would keep doing the wrong thing and apologising for it in a never-ending cycle of wrongdoing and forgiveness.

Col 2:13: "You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins."

The Bible says that for God to use the second kind of forgiveness Jesus had to die on the cross for us (Matt 26:39). God made it so that "our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ" (Rom 6:6), and "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). Some kind of 'goodness transfer' happened.

Did God design our brains to enjoy sin?

2010-04-28T00:47:00.000-07:00

God is responsible for the way our brains are designed, and the design of our brains makes us enjoy some things and not others. Actions that involve doing the wrong thing can be enjoyable, although in the long-term they create suffering. So did God design our brains to find wrongdoing (e.g. pride, envy, hatred) enjoyable?

No. Part of the answer is that the way free will works (it seems) is that we have the power to change our brain structure over a long period of time. Free will gives us the power to make certain things enjoyable and other things not enjoyable to our brains (here is a link to a good article on the science supporting this view, click 'show transcript').

So we have the power to change our brain structure against the way God intended our brains to function. An example of this might be someone who occasionally gives in to anger. They start getting angry more and more as they stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. Then they start assuming the worst about people. This process literally changes their brain structure, so the angry person changes their brain into one that 'thrives' on rage and anger.

But this is not the way God originally intended their brain to work.

OK, so why did God design us so that anyone would ever find it a good idea to change their brain structure in bad ways?

Our desire to do this is actually an unintended byproduct of something good. It's important that everyone has a sense of self-interest. If we had no sense of self-interest, then people would forget to eat, sleep, and would do things like walk off cliffs without any fear of death. Our sense of self-interest keeps us alive and enables us to perform very many sensible, everyday actions.

But there's not just 'good' self-interest, there's also 'bad' self-interest. We have various needs and wants (like food, security, shelter) and messing other people around will sometimes fulfill them better. Bad self-interest is e.g. murdering someone if it will make your life easier, or abusing someone to get them to do what you want.

God can't give us 'good' self-interest without making us aware that our life would be easier if we did 'bad' self-interest sometimes, and thus all sin.

For this reason we all change our brain structure to find 'bad' self-interest enjoyable to some extent - like pride, envy, unjustified anger, and so on. Sometimes, those things will fulfill our needs better than being honest. It wasn't in God's original plan for our brain structure but free will gives us the power to do it.

And God had to give us these needs and wants, because if we had no needs and wants then we would be self-contained 'social islands', which is not a better situation.

But isn't there evidence that personality can be influenced by our genes?

Yes, but there's a reason why God made it like this. To start off, there's an important difference between personality and character. Character is about good and evil, personality is about everyday (non-moral) choices. Personality can never be morally bad (when it's defined as choices not connected to moral issues), although it can be 'inconvenient' in some ways.

If God designs much of our personality, then God is not thereby encouraging or enabling us to sin. I think that God gives us certain personality traits to glorify His plan (like if you are an extrovert God may want you to meet a lot of people and encourage them in some way or something, so God designs you to be an extrovert). So there's really no problem if God has a hand in designing our personalities.

If God designed us to have flaws in our character then there is an issue, because that would make God the author of sin. But I don't think there's evidence for this view in the same way there's evidence that our personality is designed partly by God. Studies will show that personality has a genetic aspect, but it doesn't show that with an evil or good character.

Practically, these ideas can be encouraging - we are becoming more like our true selves when we reject the 'dark side' of our nature (Gen 1:27; Col 1:15). We are not betraying 'natural' desires to do wrong, actually we are becoming more like the kind-hearted people God intended us to be.

Would a loving God never judge or condemn someone?

2010-04-20T01:25:00.000-07:00

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" - 1 Cor 13:4-7

1 Corinthians 13 gives a great definition of love. Surely any loving God would fit this description.

And in this description Paul says that love 'keeps no record of wrongs'. So how can Christians say that there is a perfectly loving God who will judge humanity? Surely no one has anything to worry about. A lot of people think that a loving God will never judge anyone.

But what about 'love always protects'?

Consider someone who commits a murder. 'Love always protects', and so the loving thing to do is to protect everyone in the community from future murders by putting the murderer in prison.

Surely many people throughout history have refrained from doing evil because God has said that evil acts will receive punishment, which has protected vulnerable people. If you believe there's a God who will judge you for hurting someone, then you will definitely not hurt them, even if you won't do so for moral reasons.

What if significantly less evil has occurred throughout history because of God's promise to judge? This can't be proved, but it would be a good reason for God to make and carry out that promise.

This judgement is not hell (which is a separate issue). It's a proportionate 'payback' for whatever evils someone has done (Rev 20:12-15). Hell is not the result of a specific wrong act that we do so much as a consequence of choosing not to be with God forever, which means separation from God who is the source of true happiness (a happiness that will never get tedious).

This judgement does not apply in the same way to Christians (Rom 8:1), because Jesus took our moral failures onto Himself on the cross. "We know that the person we used to be was crucified with him to put an end to sin in our bodies" (Rom 6:6), which is fully manifested after we die. But we still have to give an account to Jesus about our life (2 Cor 5:10).

How is God free if He cannot sin?

2010-04-13T17:23:00.000-07:00

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

How can God have free will, and be all-powerful, if He cannot do evil?

I think the answer is that there are actually two kinds of 'cannot':

Cannot 1: 'I cannot throw a rock into space from my backyard'.
Cannot 2: 'I could never rob a bank and kill people. That's evil'.

Cannot 1 is physical impossibility, cannot 2 is the inability to be tempted by something - usually evil. When the Bible says God cannot do evil it's referring to 'cannot 2' rather than 'cannot 1':

Cannot 2 is fine for free will, otherwise no one could make a statement like the one above associated with 'cannot 2'.

So God is 'physically' able to do evil, it's just that He can never, ever find it worth doing. Evil is inaccessible to God because He can't be tempted to do it.

How so? I think it has something to do with the way God can never 'forget' the truth, or be tempted to forget the truth. When we do the wrong thing we often have a period where we 'umm' and 'ahh' about doing wrong in our mind, and then if we do the wrong thing we somehow 'forget' what we should do. We come up with an excuse that doesn't make sense to someone else. Because God is always truthful, He can't be tempted to do that. Hence God is never tempted to do evil.

Is morality relative?

2010-04-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

Is morality relative? Many people have argued that it is. Consider how there have been cultures throughout history that have approved of horrible practices.

But there is an argument that moral differences between cultures are not that deep - even though they seem to be at first.

Imagine that you had to explain to someone how they could do the right thing in every circumstance. One classic answer would be that you should follow the 'Golden Rule'. As Jesus says in Matt 7:12: "Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets." This is a pretty good, short summary of how to be a good person.

One interesting aspect of the Golden Rule is that it's considered an important moral principle in so many (all?) cultures, in one form or another. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, Islam, and of course Christianity (as well as numerous other religions and cultures) all endorsed the Golden Rule (source).

So if there's such widespread agreement on the Golden Rule between cultures, then it sounds like moral disagreements between cultures can't go that deep. They have to pay attention to something like the Golden Rule (whatever they call it).

You could also say that it's hard to imagine any culture rejecting this principle while continuing to talk in moral terms (although you might find the occasional evildoer who rejects it). Why? Because when you think about it, rejecting the Golden Rule seems like rejecting the concept of 'morality' altogether. Let's say you have someone who doesn't care at all about treating others the way they'd like to be treated. Have they come up with an alternative moral system? Or have they discarded morality? It feels like the latter.

If so, then the Golden Rule is really fundamental to any kind of morality, and therefore every culture shares a fundamental moral principle (even if it doesn't look like it on the surface). Perhaps cultural 'moral differences' are more like differences in application and not fundamental principles.

It should also be noted that this isn't a minor thing that cultures have in common - you can do quite a lot with the Golden Rule. The Bible points out that if we wrong someone we'd rather that they not take revenge on us, because revenge is painful (Lev 19:18). The Bible argues that 'Doing unto others' implies you can't hold grudges, which is taking the principle quite a long way.

So if it's like this then how can you get horrible cultural practices? There are two things to keep in mind here. First of all, people can have dangerous false beliefs and that might lead to evil cultural practices. For example, human sacrifice won't really appease the gods. Secondly, what we think is right can be influenced by our self-interest - surely self-interest can affect the views of groups and even cultures as well. For example, if slavery had a big economic benefit for a society then you would probably find people there rationalise it a lot more than if it had no benefit. Same thing with a patriarchy supporting a patriarchal culture.

Either a completely evil or a completely good God

2010-03-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

People sometimes say there are four kinds of Gods that can exist when it comes to goodness. Either an evil God, an amoral Deist God (neither good nor bad), a 'usually nice' God, or a completely good God.

But I actually think there are only two options here: a completely evil God or a completely good God.

Consider this: an amoral Deist God, just like an amoral person, has no concept or awareness of good or evil. A Deist God started the universe off for unknown reasons, and doesn't interfere. It doesn't care whether people are happy or suffer.

An evil God actually delights in evil and inflicting pain on people.

But let's say that the amoral God found it useful to suddenly wipe out humanity, or to inflict pain on people. Then the amoral (Deist) God would do so, because It has no concept of good or evil - our suffering wouldn't be an issue to It.

So the difference between an evil God and an amoral Deist God seems to be this: an evil God has a selfish reason to inflict pain on humans, but a Deist God has no selfish reason to inflict pain on humans. In all other respects, the evil God and the Deist God are the same. Just like the evil God, the Deist God has no concept of (or concern for) good and evil, and always acts to fulfill whatever It determines Its interests to be.

This means that if we feel like believing in a God, we can't believe in a God who is neither good nor bad. A Deistic God who has no concept of good or evil is actually a purely evil God.

So, if there's a good God, then why does it have to be completely good? Can't a good God be a generally nice person but sometimes a 'jerk' to people?

There are two reasons why a good God is probably perfectly good.

The first reason is that to be good at all (in any way) you need to feel that treating people the way they'd like to be treated has SOME importance. So a 'usually nice' God feels treating people the way they'd like to be treated is important to some degree.

But why would a 'usually nice' God value treating people the way they'd like to be treated on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays only (so to speak)? If a God valued treating people right some of the time, then why wouldn't it be consistent? If being good has value then why not go all-out? A God (a superior being without our issues and hangups) should be able to handle that. I.e., 'If I'm going to value treating people the way they'd like to be treated I might as well do it with 100% consistency.'

A second reason is that a 'usually nice' God would have some arbitrary level of flawed goodness, and that isn't a very 'neat' view of things. It's sort of like the 'zero, one, infinity rule' in maths. For example, if you're deciding how many angels can dance on the head of a pin it makes sense to say either none can, one can, or all of them can at once, rather than '57 angels can dance on the head of a pin but if there were 58 then they would fall off'. So it makes sense to say a caring God is 100% caring rather than e.g. '80% caring'.

What is eternal life and why would it be good?

2010-03-23T01:58:00.000-07:00

"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, having seen and done everything there is to see and do, decides to dedicate the rest of his existence to insulting every single living being in the universe - in alphabetical order. It is interesting to note that the Guide points out that those who are naturally immortal are born with the psychological capacity to cope with immortality and would not suffer from this trope; Wowbagger's immortality was thrust upon him by accident, which is why he has such a hard time of it."

-From TVTropes

Douglas Adams' makes an interesting point in the Hitchhikers series about immortality and happiness. He points out that being immortal would actually have a lot of downsides. Although perhaps the first few hundred years would be pretty interesting, eventually it would get tedious.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that humans are not naturally immortal. We are finite beings who live on earth for a short period of time. We get bored rather easily and I suspect we aren't naturally able to cope with eternity.

But even if we never died physically we would still not be eternal in the way that God is. Even if we never died physically and 'continued' forever we would still exist within time. So we could never say that we had actually lived for an eternity, like God can (Psalm 90:2), even if we were immortal.

God is naturally eternal and outside the restrictions of time, so surely God is naturally able to cope with eternity; with living forever. Whatever happiness God has must be an eternal happiness that never gets boring or pointless, otherwise God would not be able to 'cope' with His own nature (and that would be strange).

This may explain why the Bible talks about eternal life (God's plan for humanity) as experiencing God's happiness:

Romans 14:17: For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit

Psalm 16:11: You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 36:8-9: They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

Because God is naturally able to cope with living forever, God's happiness is an eternal happiness that never becomes monotonous. That is, eternal life. So giving that happiness to humans would be giving humans eternal life, a life that is fulfilling and pleasurable for eons; forever.

The only problem is that according to the Bible, failing to do what is right separates us from God strongly enough that God cannot give us eternal life (Rom 6:23). God cannot be that close to sin. That's why Jesus died on the cross for us (Rom 6:6), where God did a 'character swap', exchanging our moral failures for Jesus' perfection, to be fully manifested after we die.

The Christian view of human nature

2010-03-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

Here is a visual illustration of the Christian view of human nature, below. Click on it to see it full size:

(I'd like to note that even though I refer to God using male pronouns, God is not a guy. God has no specific gender, but has chosen to refer to Himself in the Bible using male pronouns. I think that's mainly for two reasons. First of all, using a gender neutral pronoun is a bit awkward ('It created the universe') given the way our language works. Secondly, when God came to earth He chose to be born as a man (Jesus), rather than a woman, and so that probably led to every member of the trinity being referred to as a 'He'.)

How does human nature change in heaven?

2010-03-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

A lot of skeptics have this question about heaven: why won't people in heaven do bad things? Especially when you consider how Christians cannot avoid sinning in this life.

Is it that God changes human nature? Well then why didn't God create Adam and Eve with a nature that wouldn't sin? It doesn't make sense. But what other explanation is there?

So does God prevent evil in heaven by changing human nature?

In one sense yes, in another sense no. The answer lies in what Jesus did on the cross for us.

You could say that humans are made out of two components: a body-brain, and a soul-mind.

People will always have a body-brain (whether physical, spiritual, or glorified resurrected body) and a soul-mind. So in the sense of the 'components' of human nature, human nature never changes.

Is it a problem that the components of human nature never change?

Yes. For some reason God can't make anyone with these components like Himself when it comes to sin. By this I mean, only God can never be tempted by sin (James 1:13). And we're smart enough to know that if we mess other people around then we can often fulfill our needs and wants better. And if God hadn't given us needs and wants then we would be self-contained social islands (not a good alternative).

So how can God make heaven perfect if we're stuck with these components of human nature, and these components lead to sin?

Part of the answer is that human nature isn't the only issue. There is also the issue of our own individual moral characters.

We have free will, so in theory, heaven could have no evil in it if people just chose not to do evil there (despite our bad track record on earth).

But in practice, having free will doesn't really help things that much. We are smart enough to know that selfishness/evil often makes a lot of sense, and so we can't make ourselves do something like 'be perfect' that is clearly against our self-interest.

But maybe, the problems of human nature could be sidestepped if just one person lived a morally perfect life.

How so?

Well, if one person lived a flawless life with a body-brain and soul-mind, then perhaps God could 'give' their moral character (pattern of moral choices) to others... That would make the human nature problem irrelevant.

If God could just 'give us' a morally perfect character, then we'd still have our human nature, but it wouldn't be a problem because now everyone would have a perfect moral character.

There was such a perfect person, according to Christianity. Although Jesus had a body-brain and soul-mind exactly as we do (Rom 8:3), for Jesus sin wasn't ever a problem. This is because Jesus had God's soul (John 10:36). So Jesus had the soul of someone (i.e. God) who had chosen to never sin from eternity.

We don't exactly know how it works, but Jesus' moral character (pattern of moral choices) can be handed out to others. On the cross our sinful selves somehow died with Christ, and in return Christ now lives in us (Rom 6:6, Gal 2:20). This is referred to as getting a new nature and being a new creation (2 Pe 1:4; 2 Co 5:17).

This world is the 'choosing period', where people decide whether this is something they want. For some reason, God waits until after we die to 'fully manifest' the effects of the 'swap' - but the 'swap' is fully accomplished as soon as someone genuinely believes in Christ (Col 3:3).

So heaven makes sense. We will still have a body-brain and soul-mind, but this time there will not be any problems. Because our moral character has been changed through the cross.

[1] Part of the idea of Adam and Eve is that you can have a body-brain and a soul-mind and nevertheless avoid sinning. I think this is possible because the 'Garden of Eden' situation is one where God protects our understanding of good and evil. So we rely on God's understanding of what to do, whether to get angry with someone, or help someone, for example, rather than our own. The 'Fall' seems to be a situation where people decide to rely on themselves for working out good and evil and to let go of God's protection.

Looking at creation and Romans 1:18

2010-03-05T18:10:00.000-08:00

"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

...The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about."

-David Foster Wallace

I thought of this joke when I was trying to understand what Paul was talking about in Romans 1:18.

Rom 1:18: "For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God."

The joke seems relevant because looking at the beauty of a garden, a forest, a galaxy, animals, the clouds, a sunset, and so on, is stuff that we deal with everyday (and in today's science we see elegant mathematical laws governing the universe). So it's not really that amazing to us. We get used to it. But actually, when you think about it, it's pretty amazing that the world is so beautiful and seems like e.g. a painting with no visible painter.

I think the point in Romans loses a lot of force because we're very used to the world we live in so it's not really that amazing it's as beautiful etc. as it is.

What does the Bible say about suffering?

2010-02-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

It's interesting that the Bible acknowledges the fact that good people are just as likely to suffer and experience an early death as evildoers.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-2: "This, too, I carefully explored: Even though the actions of godly and wise people are in God's hands, no one knows whether God will show them favor. The same destiny ultimately awaits everyone, whether righteous or wicked, good or bad, ceremonially clean or unclean, religious or irreligious. Good people receive the same treatment as sinners, and people who make promises to God are treated like people who don't."

Maybe the Bible is one of the first documents to point out this fact. But on the plus side, good, righteous people are doing God's will in their lives, and they go to eternal life when they die. Whereas evildoers reject being with God forever.

If we trust the Bible we know that God is in control of our lives although it seems like chaotic randomness a lot of the time.

Psalm 32:8-9: "The LORD says, "I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Do not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control."

Psalm 68:19: "Praise the Lord; praise God our savior! For each day he carries us in his arms."

I think the Bible's answer is that because we are currently separated from God (although Christians are technically not, we have not yet come into our inheritance) basically life must involve a lot of suffering (Gen 2:17; Rom 5:12-14). We don't know exactly how separation from God leads to our suffering, but it somehow does. The comforting thing is that genuine Christians do God's will in their lives and go to eternal life (which means no longer being separated from God, see Rev 21:3-4) after they die.

Getting the greatest commandment from the second greatest

2010-02-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

Luke 10:26-7: Jesus replied, "What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?" The man answered, "'You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Almost no one would have a problem with the idea that you should 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' (the Golden Rule). The Bible's way of putting it is that you should love your neighbour as yourself. So the second commandment is pretty agreeable to almost everyone (although no one does it perfectly).

For a lot of people it's the greatest commandment that seems hard to understand. Why should God deserve a lot more love and devotion than a human being? Whereas for humans it's 'love like you love yourself' for God it's 'love with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind'.

I'd like to mention an argument for the Bible's view based on 'virtue ethics' (a school of thought in moral philosophy).

In Christian theology there's something different about the way God makes choices compared to everyone else. In Christian theology God not only does the right thing all the time, He also cannot be tempted to do something wrong. This situation cannot be recreated (for some reason) in God's creations.

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

Titus 1:2 "in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began"

Imagine you lived in a town where there was a person who had this quality. You could always get perfect advice from this person about what to do (from a moral point-of-view).

So there's some sense in the idea of referring our decisions to someone who cannot be tempted to think in an evil way. Whereas the moral advice we give to each other can always be harmed by selfish motives, God's wouldn't (assuming this situation is the case). So making it a rule to always check your decisions with an 'un-temptable' God has a certain logic, assuming you can actually know what this God is saying.

This 'setup' would help you follow the second greatest commandment, because it would protect you from making a moral mistake (for e.g. selfish reasons). It would act as a 'fail-safe' protection for people who can be tempted to do wrong. Doing this successfully would be a great way to honour the second greatest commandment.

And referring your decisions to an 'un-temptable' God sounds a lot like worshipping God if you did it all the time.

If we have free will then why is it so hard for people to change? The 'settling' aspect to free will

2010-02-10T02:08:00.000-08:00

People often point out, if we have free will, then why do we almost always stay the same? Introverts don't suddenly wake up and become extroverts, and evildoers tend not to become saints. As people get older and more mature there is some change, but it's hardly ever a 180 degree personality shift. Yet this should be possible if we have free will.

I think something that people often miss in free will is that it involves a really strong 'settling' ability. Part of free will is the ability not to be constantly 'up in the air' about what you're going to do, but to 'settle' your choices in a certain personality trait. So instead of 'umming' and 'ahhing' about whether to be nice, a nice person can choose to 'settle' their choices in niceness, and an evildoer can 'settle' their choices in evil, so they no longer think about changing. When we choose to 'settle' our choices and not constantly go over and rethink them, those choices become our personality that our friends easily identify (e.g. extrovert, quiet, etc.)

So free will is sort of like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering up snow. We mostly decide what personality to have when we're young, and then at some point we 'settle' into a groove and almost never change - although we theoretically can.

Perhaps free will is a little bit like a train. The front of the train is a person's values. Someone might value bravery, trust, shrewdness, being outgoing, polite, etc. There would be values corresponding to every personality and character trait. Your actions follow after your values like a boxcar after the front of the train (unless you have an unwanted personality trait, somehow). If your values change, then after a long period of time your actions change in response. It may take a while, though. That is how people change.

It should be pointed out that despite the 'settling' aspect to free will, no personality or character can be 'settled' outside of God's grace. If people are saved by grace alone, then personality and character traits (works) can't give anyone an advantage over others when it comes to accepting Jesus, or give anyone a disadvantage there, at any stage. So the only way someone could 'settle' their choices outside of God's grace is by rejecting it directly (Matt 12:31). You can't do such a thing any other way, because works (i.e. personality, character) do not earn (and thus do not block) salvation (Eph 2:8-9; Rom 11:6).

Also, God changes character, not personality. By definition, if something is personality and not character then it is neither good nor bad, but is simply the way someone chooses in a certain 'non-moral' area of their life. God is interested in changing our character, and will use all aspects of a person's personality to His glory in the body of Christ (1 Co 12:13-31).

Four areas of grace

2010-02-02T01:06:00.000-08:00

The concept of 'grace' in Christianity includes more than Jesus taking our sins on Himself. There are at least four areas in a Christian's life that involve grace.

1. Grace in salvation

Matt 26:39: He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, "My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine."

John 19:30: When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Rev 21:6: And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

These verses are talking about the idea of salvation as a gift. If you look at the way Christianity talks about salvation analytically, then it seems to have the following structure:

1) People are unable to treat others in the way that they would ideally like to be treated. It is simply impossible for anyone to do this, and it stops us from entering into eternal life with God
2) God solves this problem on the cross by Himself; we don't contribute at all to the solution
3) If you want to go to heaven you can either trust in your own goodness to get you there, or trust in what God has done for you on the cross. If you trust in the latter, then you will go to heaven

The concept of grace is closely linked to the concept of a free gift that you do nothing to earn. Salvation in Christianity is like this.

2. Grace in accepting salvation

Eph 2:4: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.

Rom 11:6: But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

Let's say you have two friends, neither of whom are Christian, and one of them is arrogant and inconsiderate, and the other is as sweet as an angel. It would be very tempting only to talk about Jesus to the second person. That's because we tend to think that salvation is partly based on works. That is, if you're nice, trusting, considerate, don't think about things too much, and so on, you're more likely to become a Christian. One way of describing this attitude is that salvation is earned by having a good (or convenient) personality.

The passages above contradict such a view. They imply that God cares about everyone so much that He prevents a person's personality and character from getting in the way of their entering the Kingdom of God. God does this so effectively that no one receives an advantage from their personality and character over anyone else when it comes to accepting Christ. How does that work, you might ask? I don't know. But it's what scripture teaches.

3. Grace in producing works

Philippians 1:6: And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

Heb 13:21: may he equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him. All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.

When Christians do things that please God it is because of God's gift of His Son, because God has changed them and worked through them. So they are like a gift in that God ultimately has the credit (glory) for them.

4. Grace in God doing all the protective work regarding the faith of any Christian

1 Cor 10:13: No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Sometimes Christians can think of themselves as superior to those who have left the faith because of problems they have coped with. But this is not a scriptural attitude. No Christian protects their own faith, if the Bible is accurate. God is always the one doing the protecting, whenever someone's faith is being protected. Since Christians do not protect their own faith (according to the Bible) no one can boast about this. Every Christian will encounter challenges to their faith (which is meant to ultimately help Christians if they bear up under it), and the only thing that will keep it is taking the 'way out' that is mentioned above.

Slavery in the Old Testament laws

2010-01-27T01:55:00.000-08:00

Something we need to remember regarding the Old Testament laws is that they involved a compromise:

Matt 19:8: Jesus replied, "Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended."

It would not be surprising if a lot of laws in the Old Testament were similar (for example regarding its acceptance of polygamy versus Jesus' monogamy view). I want to look here at this possibility regarding slavery laws.

Slavery is wrong, but it would have been good for God to make laws related to slavery if a) slavery was going to happen whether God wanted it to or not, because we're talking about ancient Near East cultures, and b) this was the only way of making sure it happened in a relatively just way.

I think this is the thinking behind the Old Testament laws on slavery. So with that said, let's look at whether b) is correct. Is it believable that the Old Testament slavery laws tried to control the evils of slavery, by making them more just than they would otherwise have been?

I've put some helpful quotes here from a really good article on this from Glenn Miller's Christian-thinktank:

"The 'slavery' of the OT was essentially designed to serve the poor!":

Lev 25:35-43: "If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. 36 Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. 37 You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit. 38 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God."

39 "If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. 40 He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41 Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. 42 Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. 43 Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God."

"If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, sells himself to you and serves you six years, in the seventh year you must let him go free." (Deut 15.12) Although this doesn't apply to foreign slaves.

"The Mosaic law contains numerous initiatives designed to preclude someone having to consider voluntary slavery as an option":

"Pentateuchal prescriptions are meant to mitigate the causes of and need for such bondservice. Resident aliens, orphans and widows are not to be abused, oppressed or deprived of justice. When money is lent to the poor, they are not to be charged interest." "There were not supposed to be any poor in Israel at all!"

"But God is a realist (Deut 15.11!); hence He made a wide range of provisions in the Law for the poor [one of which is slavery as a form of debt relief]"

So slavery in Old Testament law was meant to serve the poor, rather than serve the rich.

Some other key verses:

"Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD." (Lev 19:18). The word 'neighbour' should apply to Israelite and foreign slaves, so slaves should be loved if someone wants to honour every part of the Old Testament law.

"However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today." (Deut 15.4). By implication all slaves should have decent living standards.

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property." (Ex 21:20-1, NIV). "If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth". (Ex 21:26-27).

OK, so this doesn't sound too good in places. First of all, it allows the beating slaves as long as you don't injure them so badly they can't get up in two days, and as long as you don't permanently injure them in some way. But it's not as bad as it could be. Apparently 'he must be punished' means that the master is actually executed if the slave dies under the "life for life" clause. Moreover, the rule for being beaten is not that different from what applies to free Israelites:

Ex 21:18-9: "If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."

This is a lot more humane than other societies with slavery, which shows that God possibly acted to bring about a 'moderating' of slavery laws:

"An owner could kill his slave with impunity in Homeric Greece, ancient India, the Roman Republic, Han China, Islamic countries, Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Russia, and many parts of the American South before 1830…That was not the case in other societies. The Hebrews, the Athenians, and the Romans under the principate restricted the right of slave owners to kill their human chattel."

Secondly, isn't it bad that it says slaves are property? Glenn quotes: "Freedom in the ancient Near East was a relative, not an absolute state, as the ambiguity of the term for "slave" in all the region's languages illustrates. "Slave" could be used to refer to a subordinate in the social ladder. Thus the subjects of a king were called his "slaves," even though they were free citizens. The king himself, if a vassal, was the "slave" of his emperor; kings, emperors, and commoners alike were "slaves" of the gods. Even a social inferior, when addressing a social superior, referred to himself out of politeness as "your slave." There were, moreover, a plethora of servile conditions that were not regarded as slavery, such as son, daughter, wife, serf, or human pledge."

So saying that slaves are property wasn't such a huge thing in ancient Near East society as it would be now if someone said you were their property.

We can see God's ultimately honourable intent behind the Old Testament slavery laws elsewhere:

"The entire seventh year of the planting cycle was dedicated to the poor (and servants [slaves])!":

"For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove." (Ex 23.10) "Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you -- for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you," (Lev 25.6)

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God" (Lev 19:10).

So I think one can establish, as I said at the beginning of this essay, that it was a good thing for God to make the Old Testament slavery laws as long as a) because of the hardness of people's hearts there was going to be slavery whether God wanted there to be or not, and b) this was the only way to control the evils of slavery so that it happened in a relatively just way. B) seems to be the case from the points made above.

Do you need the concept of infinity to answer all 'Why' questions?

2010-01-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does anything, God, the multiverse, XYZ, etc, exist? It's hard to come up with a satisfying answer to this question.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant put it this way: "Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer."

In the atheist picture, reality is often taken as a 'brute fact' that we cannot really explain. In the religious picture, God is often taken as a 'brute eternal fact' that also does not need explanation.

Perhaps the ultimate answer to the 'Why' question lies in the idea of infinity. Maybe we cannot understand the answer, or cannot accept it, because of the finite nature of our reasoning.

The finite starts from '0' and works its way up to potential infinity, never reaching actual infinity any more than someone can think of the largest possible number. On the other hand, the infinite is unbounded, limitless - it starts from 'infinity' and ends with 'infinity' - it never changes and has always been infinite.

So in infinite reality you're starting position is the infinite rather than '0'. So you're starting position in infinite reality, in a sense, is that there is 'something'. Metaphorically speaking, this means that in infinite reality the 'default position' would be 'something has always existed' and 'there can be nothing' would be a puzzling thought. But in finite reality, we find the existence of something - like the universe - more puzzling than if there was 'nothing' at all. Why? Probably because we start counting from '0' and can easily imagine a complete absence of stuff, which is not something you find in the infinite.

Christians tend to believe that there is a 'real' infinite out there, outside our heads, and that it's a person - God (as well as whatever else it may be). This is meant to undercut the 'Why' question because the infinite (which in religion can be taken to be a person) is fundamentally different to the finite and it doesn't need an explanation in the same kind of way.

Why are people selfish? Evolutionary psychology vs original sin

2010-01-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

People are selfish. Why? Here are two accounts.

Evolutionary psychology: evolution made us act good, but we are not actually good

There's a big difference between someone acting good and someone being good. 'Acting' good is doing the right thing when there is some kind of selfish benefit to doing it. If people see me help someone out, then they will be more likely to respect me and I'll get a selfish benefit from it. Evolution can explain that very easily. 'Being' good on the other hand is being good even when there is no selfish benefit to you at all - and you know it. Being good is doing the right thing even when you know that gossip, tit for tat, getting something later, is not going to reward you for doing the right thing.

In evolutionary terms, creatures who are good and are not just 'acting' good are at a large disadvantage in passing on their genes. A person who donates money to a charity in front of everyone may get a selfish benefit from it because people will respect them. But a person who gives a lot of money to a charity without anyone knowing will probably hurt their selfish interests. Enough of those sorts of decisions will hurt your chances of reproduction. So evolution works against people 'being' good rather than 'acting' good.

This is why people are selfish in evolutionary psychology - evolution made us act good, but we are not actually good. In evolutionary terms, everything good we do is for the sake of appearances, higher social status, and later benefits (with the exception of kin selection).

Original sin: people have a 'good essence' in the image of God, but we are enslaved to 'selfish self-interest', which comes from being able to reason and think critically about how we could get ahead in life

In original sin, people have a basically good essence in that we are all made in God's image. Just like God is love, so humans were meant to care for each other and God in the way that God does. We have a moral sense that holds us accountable to the way the 'image of God' should act. But we are also pretty clever and we can tell that if we mess other people around then we can get ahead in life. This isn't the way we were meant to operate, but it's true that being selfish can get you ahead in life. So even though we have a good essence, with free will + being able to think of how we could pursue our interests without regard to others = you get original sin.

We have this devious ability to think because everyone has chosen to rely on themselves for knowledge of good and evil rather than God (although only Adam and Eve literally were in such a situation, we would have all made the same choice, so we are all 'in' Adam).

What God wants instead of this situation is for all our moral decisions to be made on the basis of 'faith in doing the right thing', which in practice, we cannot consistently do. In the Christian view, humanity has free will and thinks in terms of 'rational self-interest', which often leads to selfishness - humanity is not made selfish from evolution. Evolution is how humanity was created, but it never gives us a 'free pass' when we do the wrong thing, because it's not why we do the wrong thing. We do the wrong thing because, out of a devious understanding of self-interest, we ignore God's command to do unto others.

Belief in a personal God is quite different from a lot of other beliefs

2010-01-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

Believing the Pythagorean theorem is true will probably not make someone change their life, but if someone believes that the Christian God exists then they have, in essence, no way of not changing their life. Lots of stuff has to suddenly be different. A person has to start reading the Bible, should probably go to church, needs to stop doing XYZ, start doing other stuff, accept that true happiness is found in the actions of Jesus and start conforming oneself to his life, and so on.

If you're an atheist, imagine that God made you have a 100% certain belief in the Christian God overnight and you suddenly woke up and said "I am 100% sure the Christian God exists!" This would probably lead to quite big changes in daily life. Hopefully you would be willing to make them all, otherwise you would experience quite a lot of cognitive dissonance!

It would be hard to objectively evaluate how strong the case is for Christianity if you're not willing in principle to make these changes, should Christianity turn out to have good evidence in its favour. Why? Because you literally can't believe that the Christian God exists (in any real way) without being willing to make these changes. Why? Because a person would experience a great deal of cognitive dissonance if they thought Christianity had good evidence and they weren't willing to change their lives in response, because belief in Christianity = changes to your life. There's a necessary belief => action link. This means that the case for Christianity may be weak, but it's not like you could have decided otherwise if it hadn't been weak - assuming you were unwilling in principle to make changes to your life. This situation makes belief in a personal God different from a lot of other beliefs, which are more 'passive' and have no strong belief => action link.

The gospel for people who are really, really nice

2009-12-29T21:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it can be a bit hard to talk about Jesus to some people because in most of the situations they are in every day, they do the right thing. So when people hear from let's say, a fiery preacher that they are 'liars', 'haters', 'coveters' and other negative stuff they may think 'Well that may apply to some people but not really me'.

How should one think about presenting the gospel to a non-Christian who is an extremely nice, loving, self-sacrificial person who almost always looks out for the interests of others? I believe it has an added degree of difficulty that is not present if you are talking to someone who has done some really awful stuff in their life.

Here are a couple of important points to think about on this issue.

The first is that there are some people who are good enough to do the right thing in most of the situations which they are in every day. But this does not mean that they would do the right thing in really, really challenging situations. So when God looks at such a person, He sees not only that they would do the right thing on most days, but also that if they were put in a really challenging situation that they would fall short and do the wrong thing.

An example of this kind of possibility can be found from the Stanford prison experiment (link). When people do the wrong thing, it's often not that they are 'bad apples' as much as apples that have been put into 'bad barrels'. In the prison experiment, the professor got a group of normal college students together and gave some of them great power over the rest. The nasty results showed what can happen when people are put into extraordinary situations. A similar thing might be going on with the goodness we have every day versus what goodness we would have under a lot of pressure.

So when God looks at us He sees our failures in situations that haven't occurred yet, and which may never occur, but which still apply to us because it's how we would act. We shouldn't be willing to do the wrong thing in these not-yet-occurring situations, but we are. Thus, if you hate someone, you are a murderer in a situation where you have absolute power. If you lust after people other than your spouse, you are an adulterer in a possible situation. If you are tempted to lie, you are a liar in a possible situation. So God sees these potential sins, and thus we can be sinners in a pretty big way but about potential stuff rather than actual stuff.

A second point to remember is that one way you can talk about the gospel is that we are all horrible sinners and so on, but another way is a lot gentler. The point of the gospel was ultimately to get humans to hang out with God and be perfectly happy forever. Happiness in heaven is about experiencing the happiness of God. See Psalm 16:11; 36:8-9, and Romans 14:17 which says: "For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." If someone isn't willing to meet God's standards then it's hard to see how they could have access to God's happiness in the Holy Spirit. It would be hard for that person to live with the Holy Spirit, and for God to live with that person, if they don't want to meet God's standards. So the deal is: not being willing to meet God's standards = you can't experience God's happiness through the Holy Spirit, and so you can't go to eternal life.

God's standard is perfection as shown by the life of Jesus (not our own idea of perfection), and the only way to meet that standard is to accept that you can't meet it and that you need God's help. When Jesus died for us "our old self was put to death on the cross with him" (Rom 6:6a) and "It is no longer I who [faces situations where I cannot avoid sinning] but Christ ... living in me [who faces those situations and will always do the right thing]" (Gal 2:20a). Thus, anyone can meet God's standards because Jesus can do everything related to meeting God's standards in someone who accepts him, and so they don't have to worry about it at all as long as they genuinely trust Jesus.

So the gospel doesn't have to be about how everyone is a horrible, horrible sinner necessarily. Although I think that we usually overestimate how good we are, so maybe we are worse sinners than we think, even the really, really nice non-Christian. Presenting the gospel can be more like, "Well I know you're a really, really nice person, but getting to heaven isn't about being really nice. It's about being willing to meet God's standards, which is a perfect standard. Because eternal life consists in experiencing God's happiness in the Holy Spirit. And you can't experience God's happiness in the Holy Spirit if you aren't willing to meet God's standards, because the conflict between you two will be too great (or something like that). However nice you are, this is a situation that can't be gotten around. So to make it to eternal life you either need to meet God's standard, or accept you can't meet it and that Jesus took all of our wrongful intentions towards others onto himself on the cross."

The 'Salvation' Theodicy

2009-12-23T22:18:00.001-08:00

This is one type of answer as to why God allows people to suffer. A 'salvation' theodicy says that at least some of the suffering in the world is a key part of bringing people into eternal life. I don't think it can be a very complete explanation for why people suffer, but it has something worthwhile to say.

The Bible associates the suffering caused by our disconnect from God with people returning to God and choosing to enter eternal life by giving their lives to Christ:

Luke 15:11-24 'And he said, "There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.' And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate."'

In the 'salvation theodicy' somehow, in a way that we can't rationally explain, this world is the world in which the greatest number of people choose to enter eternal life.

The picture below illustrates a 'magical black box' analogy for God's decision to create our world, click it to see it full size:

Below is an illustration of the possible histories God might have faced in creating our world, click it to see it full size:

It makes sense that if 100 'degrees' of evil gets just one more person into eternal life, then God would choose to make that world. But God can never use immoral means to get someone to choose Him, so there must be limits on how much and what type of suffering can be a part of this process.

God cannot explain His choice of world because He cannot explain His understanding of our choices. Only God knows how someone is going to choose because only God knows how free will really works. So God's explanation wouldn't make sense to us because we'd only be going on what God says, we couldn't 'see' into other people's souls and understand why more people choose to enter into eternal life in this world rather than another, for ourselves. See Matt 24:36, Deu 29:29, and Rom 11:33.

One way of interpreting hell

2009-12-15T18:11:00.000-08:00

Hell is described in pretty awful terms in Revelation, but we must remember that it is described in other places as simply not being with God. 2 Thes 1:9 "Whose reward will be eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength".

I've noticed on forums that it's easier to criticise Christianity if you accept the 'Revelation' view of hell but it's not as easy if you accept the '2 Thessalonians' view.

Maybe Revelation talks about hell in such a terrifying way because doing so will ultimately get more people into eternal life? Proverbs 14:27: "The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death".

But if hell isn't all that bad then the Bible is being a bit deceitful about how awful it is. And if hell is awful, then why would anyone would choose to go there?

I think a good illustration of how people could choose to go to hell, and yet hell involves an eternity of suffering, was given in a Twilight episode called 'A Nice Place to Visit' (quoted from here):

"A two-bit thug, shot to death by the police, wakes up on the far side. Given his life of crime, he is puzzled to find himself in what he takes to be heaven: a penthouse of Pascalian divertissement has been provided for him in which he can sate his every sensuous appetite. The supply of booze and broads is endless, and he can't lose at the gaming tables. But soon enough our man tires of the 'good life' and heads for the door — which is locked. Turning to his host, the thug complains that he'd rather be in the other place. "This is the other place!" the host demonically laughs."

I think if we were forced to live with the happiness we have now for let's say... a trillion to the power of a trillion years, then eventually we would be weeping and gnashing our teeth in pain. The happiness we have now cannot sustain us for that long.

There is another interesting take on this in a quote from the science fiction novel 'Permutation City'. In it Greg Egan tries to imagine life as an eternal being:

"The workshop abutted a warehouse full of table legs – one hundred and sixty-two thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine, so far. Peer could imagine nothing more satisfying than reaching the two hundred thousand mark – although he knew it was likely that he'd change his mind and abandon the workshop before that happened; new vocations were imposed by his exoself at random intervals, but statistically, the next one was overdue. Immediately before taking up woodwork, he'd passionately devoured all the higher mathematics texts in the central library, run all the tutorial software, and then personally contributed several important new results to group theory – untroubled by the fact that none of the Elysian mathematicians would ever be aware of his work. Before that, he'd written over three hundred comic operas, with librettos in Italian, French and English – and staged most of them, with puppet performers and audience. Before that, he'd patiently studied the structure and biochemistry of the human brain for sixty-seven years; towards the end he had fully grasped, to his own satisfaction, the nature of the process of consciousness. Every one of these pursuits had been utterly engrossing, and satisfying, at the time. He'd even been interested in the Elysians, once. No longer. He preferred to think about table legs."

The eternal existence of 'Peer' in this quote indicates what our existence might be like if it lasted forever.

Is there another kind of happiness and way of being? According to the Bible there is, which everyone can find in God's presence. Talking about eternal life, Romans 14:17 says "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit". So the happiness of heaven actually involves people experiencing God's happiness. This joy will make us complete and fulfilled forever, in a way that we have never known and literally cannot imagine (1 Cor 2:9: "However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'").

The catch in experiencing God's happiness is that it requires someone to want to live under God's standards, because we get it through the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17) - who is Christ's spirit. Since we experience God's contentment through Christ's spirit, we need to be willing to be 'in' Christ. As Galatians 2:20 puts it: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me". This is how close we need to be to God to experience His happiness. In Christ we can express our personalities however we want minus actions that treat others in a way we wouldn't ideally like to be treated.

And yet people can and it seems would choose to go to the 'hells' described above rather than heaven, if heaven requires entering into a state where we love and serve God with all heart, soul, strength and mind, and love and serve our neighbour as we would ideally like to be loved, which is God's standard (through trusting in Jesus' death on the cross for us).

A visual argument on the nature of God and the infinite

2009-12-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

The picture below is meant to visualise the difference between the infinite and the finite, and thus between God and creation.

Click on it to see it full size

This picture highlights one idea of what the 'finite' is: that the 'finite' is basically about differences/'distinctions' between things. Numbers keep increasing from an original point, let's say -1, 0, and 1. They do so forever. The original point could be thought of as the 'ability' to make distinctions/differences between things. If there are differences, then there can be a lot of numbers to represent those differences.

The same thing applies to finite objects like computers, tables, chairs etc. For example, a computer is made up of a number of parts and each part has a huge number of distinctions you could assign to it, e.g. small, light, electronic, and so on. The idea of a 'location' is essentially a finite concept, where you need to make a distinction between where you are and where you're not.

The infinite is surely different from what I've described above or it seems it would be finite. This picture visualises how the infinite might be different. If the finite is associated with distinctions, then maybe the infinite is associated with 'distinction-less' existence? Perhaps a finite world of distinctions can 'emerge' out of a distinction-less unity, as in the picture. This would imply (although it's hard to understand) an infinite unity that contains everything in a way that doesn't break up the unity into separate parts.

What could that infinite unity possibly be like? Without the finite, there is simply 'oneness', the eternal infinite that stretches from everlasting to everlasting. With no concept of time, place, cause, effect, before, after, and so on, as such are 'distinction concepts'. It is the ultimate 'I AM' - it 'just' exists, from eternity.

If there is such a 'distinction-less existence' underlying the finite, then an interesting conclusion arises. The fact that we are here would imply that this 'distinction-less infinite' is a mind. Otherwise, why would distinction-less existence ever give rise to existence with distinctions, if there was no mind involved anywhere? Because distinction-less existence is so totally unlike existence with distinctions, it makes no sense that it distinction-ful existence would emerge 'naturally' as a natural part of distinction-less existence.

Does this idea of the infinite fit with the Bible? It might. Suppose that the Christian God is this infinite, and that through being infinite God has all the qualities that the Bible gives Him in a way that finite reasoning cannot grasp. Suppose that in a way finite reasoning cannot understand, distinction-less existence has a mind, free will, love, and is a trinity of one person who is three persons. I think it's OK that we don't understand it, because finite reasoning seems very unlike whatever is going on in 'distinction-less existence'. This could be an interesting way of looking at God. But it's important to remember it's just speculation.

A definition of grace

2009-11-24T15:15:00.000-08:00

Christians often talk about how grace means that we don't and can't 'earn' our way into heaven.

Eph 2:8-9: "Because by grace you have salvation through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is given by God: Not by works, so that no man may take glory to himself."

Rom 11:6: "But if it is of grace, then it is no longer of works: or grace would not be grace."

Think about it. What does it mean for salvation not to depend at all on works? Are 'works' involved in salvation if people who don't care about philosophy at all are more likely to go to heaven - because they experience fewer doubts?

Are 'works' involved in salvation if someone is more likely to go to heaven should they be an incredibly trusting person who accepts whatever religious texts say? And if someone who is very cynical is less likely to go to heaven because they automatically doubt religious authorities?

Are 'works' involved in salvation if someone who is very nice is more likely to accept Christ, because following Christ is more appealing to them? Whereas someone who is an arrogant jerk is less likely to accept Christ?

My answer to all these questions is 'Yes'. I've thought about it a lot and I think that if these situations really occur then salvation has to partly involve works. Otherwise being philosophical, being cynical, and being a jerk makes it less likely you will get to heaven = salvation is partly of works.

So where does that lead us?

I think that if grace is completely grace, that this is the right definition of grace:

Grace: free will is involved, God wants everyone to go to heaven, and our personality and character traits don't put an obstacle in our way when it comes to getting into heaven, and don't give us an advantage over anyone else in that area, at any stage.

And yet, I should add, some people don't make it into heaven.

I'd rather not take Calvin's explanation given passages like Eze 33:11; John 3:16; Matt 23:37; 1 Tim 2:3-4; 2 Pet 3:9 and so on.

If you don't take Calvin's route then grace is hard, very hard, to understand from a philosophical point-of-view. I think this makes grace a lot like free will. Which makes sense if grace involves free will.

No one can get very far in explaining how 'can do otherwise' free will works. But we know that we have free will intuitively, we can act as though we have free will, and we could surely know how free will works through the Spirit, as a form of spiritual knowledge (1 Cor 2:12-14).

Similarly, we can know what grace is intuitively (like free will), we can act on the basis that we are saved by grace, and we can know how grace works through the Spirit, as a form of spiritual knowledge. But I don't know exactly how the definition I gave above (plus some people don't make it to heaven) makes sense from the point-of-view of philosophy.

Would a creator of the universe imply a loving God? The 'motivation' argument

2009-11-17T00:55:00.000-08:00

Assume there is a God who created the universe. Are there reasons to believe that 'It' is a loving God?

I think this is an interesting argument that may have potential. One could call it the 'motivation' argument.

The 'motivation' argument says that there aren't many motives that a God could have for creating the universe. There may be only one, because a lot of suggested motives are actually really implausible. This motive is that God is loving, and therefore belief in a creator God leads to belief in a loving God.

First of all, assume that if a God created the universe, then It would have a motivation for doing so.

Here is a list of possible motives that a 'God' might have for creating the universe:

1. Loving God: If God doesn't create then reality only contains one being who is happy - God. If God creates and makes billions of other beings happy, then there is a lot more happiness in reality overall. So out of love, God makes us so that beings other than God can be happy.
2. Amoral God: The universe is like a science project. God makes the universe to create and look at black holes, evolution, and other cool stuff. It watches and observes the universe, and species in the universe such as humanity like in an interesting scientific experiment.
3. Amoral God: God gets bored. God is hanging around in eternity and has nothing to do. So God creates the universe as something to do. It might whittle away some time.
4. Amoral God: God gets lonely, but Its not loving. Or at least, God is not very loving. Creating some other beings that go and do stuff would make God feel a bit less lonely and allow It to 'connect' with other sentient beings.
5. Evil God: God is actually malevolent. Creating sentient life, like humans, allows God to inflict pain and suffering. If God didn't make the world, then It couldn't inflict evil on us, and God couldn't be evil. So God made the universe to make us suffer.
6. Amoral God: Unknown motive. An amoral God could have a motive not on this list, because I didn't think of everything.

I'll go through them and hopefully eliminate all motives except 1 and 6. The conclusion will be that if we have to choose between 1 and 6 we should choose 1 because, I guess, it makes the most sense. This means that if a God did create the universe, then we should guess that He/She/It is a loving God, because it is hard to think of a motive for God to create the universe that isn't a loving motive.

Let's go through motives 2-5. Suppose an amoral/evil God created the universe.

How powerful and knowledgeable is this amoral/evil God? There are two possibilities:

1. An amoral/evil God who knows everything. An infinite God, probably.
2. A very powerful amoral/evil God, but not the most knowledgeable God that we can imagine.

If it's 2 then this doesn't seem like a very 'neat' view of reality. It means there's a God but He/She/It is not the greatest possible God, and it's a bit more appealing for some reason to talk about God in terms of absolutes, like the greatest possible. Also, it would mean that God isn't infinite as Its knowledge would be quite good but not quite the most you can get. But a God who created the universe would probably be a God who is so great that It 'grounds all of existence'. This implies an infinite God (link). So there are two problems with the second view.

So it seems that any God who created the universe would probably be God no. 1 rather than 2. An infinite God, probably.

Now, if the amoral/evil God is no. 1 (infinite) then I do think there is something hard to explain about this God making reality for a 'science project' type of reason. This God already knows everything that It could possibly discover by making the universe. There is nothing that the infinite amoral/evil God can possibly learn. So it makes no sense God would make the universe for that reason. This seem to rule out motivation 2.

What about motivation 3? God gets bored. But isn't it a strange view of the greatest possible being to say It gets bored? It seems that the greatest possible being shouldn't get bored, otherwise It has problems. An infinite God should have so many things going for It that It would not get bored. Motivation 3 implies the second type of God, and that idea of God has problems. This can rule out motivation 3.

Motivation 4: God gets lonely. If God creates because It gets lonely, then it seems God isn't perfect. God isn't complete and happy in Him/Her/Itself. So it seems this God lacks things, and thus It isn't the greatest possible God. So if God is lonely we're talking about no. 2 God rather than 1, which is a view with problems. This might rule out motivation 4.

Motivation 5: God is evil. But looking at the universe, I don't think you can say that God is evil, I think the most you could say is that He/She/It is indifferent. I can certainly think of a lot of ways in which there could be more evil in the world. Such as if God created a billion people every second and tortured them with indescribable pain forever (by the way, hell isn't an example of this because hell is just giving people who want to be separated from God the right to do that). This might rule out motivation 5.

So assuming that a creator God needs a motive to create the universe, and that the creator is infinite, then we are left with motivation 1 (a loving God) or 6 (unknown purpose). These assumptions, which I think are reasonable, lead us to believe in a loving God if we believe that a God created the universe.

Do humans have no right to make a reply back to God?

2009-11-09T00:50:00.000-08:00

Rom 9:20: "But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so?"

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

My belief on this is that we can't really answer back to God BUT this is ONLY because God cannot be tempted by evil. If there's a God who can be tempted by evil then I think we have the right to answer back to them. But if there is really a God who cannot be tempted then if we believe this with our whole heart I think it's appropriate to decide never to answer back. And also, this applies only as long as we genuinely know what this God is really saying/wanting. That part is very important. So provided those two conditions are fulfilled, then yes.

A discussion on whether being infinite = God not needing a beginning, and not being complex

2009-11-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

A lot of skeptics would argue that if the universe needs an explanation for its existence, then God needs an explanation as well. Moreover, God sounds a lot more complicated than the universe, so how did we end up with such a complex God?

From a discussion... other person is in [] brackets

I think one helpful way of thinking about this issue hinges on whether God is infinite. We know that in the finite 'world', any kind of thinking or computing requires a lot of complexity. From a calculator to a human brain, finite intelligence needs to be pretty complex to do stuff. The key is whether 'infinity' brings a whole other group of considerations into play. So for example, infinite stuff doesn't behave like finite stuff. Infinity plus infinity plus infinity equals infinity, but 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. Georg Cantor thought that there might be an 'absolute infinite', a kind of existence without distinctions (like 1, -1, 2, -2, 3, -3) that somehow contained every possibility in its being in an absolute unity. A personification of that reality - God - would be 'everlasting to everlasting' and would know everything without being complex.

[But why can't infinity be complex? If the universe was infinitely old, for example.]

If the universe was infinite in the sense of being infinitely old then it would be infinite and complex. There would be an infinite number of things that have happened in the past. This is one kind of infinite, and seems to create a lot of paradoxes. When we try to imagine an infinite that is built out of finite things then it is a lot like trying to imagine the highest number. It's arguable we can't really imagine it.

Another idea of the infinite tries to treat the infinite as a completely different sort of number or (if you talk about 'infinite reality') plane of existence. In the second approach, by saying that the infinite is fundamentally different to the finite, it does sort of make sense without some of the difficulties of the first approach. The second sort of infinite might help God 'escape' the complexity problem, by making it so that we can't talk about complexity in the usual way there.

The latter kind of infinite is based on a logic that contradicts finite logic (e.g. 1 + 1 = 2) but which makes sense within its own 'world'. So it's a development of an alternative logic that makes sense but which is not like finite logic. For example, the members of a 'proper subset' of an infinite set is as large as the whole set altogether, whereas the members of a subset of a finite set cannot be as large as the whole set, because it is just a subset. So while this criticism applies to the first sort of infinity, it may not apply to the second.

[1 + 1 + 1 = 3 no matter where you are.]

Well, no matter what universe you're in, 1 + 1 + 1 always equals 3. No matter the environment. But if infinity actually exists (and isn't just an idea in people's heads) then in 'infinite reality' 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. Infinity plus infinity plus infinity equals infinity. So assuming the reality of infinity, there can be some very strange stuff going on mathematically.

[Mathematically, perhaps, but not physically.]

But if there is really a God then infinity is not an idea in people's heads but is 'out there'. Infinity could not be contained in a trillion multiverses. It would exist, but would be 'too much' to be contained in physical reality. We could not know it through finite reason except in the most general way.

[God would still need a beginning or explanation for His existence, just like the universe.]

It's always strange to finite reason for something to always exist because finite reason starts at '0' and goes upwards forever (1, 2, 3, 4, etc), from the starting point of nothing. But maybe the infinite 'starts' at the infinite ∞ and never changes, so to God maybe it is puzzling that humans ask why there would need to be a starting point for everything.

[How can God just 'be'?]

If God personifies this infinite world then He is something like a 'distinction-less unity' that encompasses everything, but somehow in a way that doesn't entail differences/distinctions within what He is encompassing. A person like this is 'everlasting to everlasting' because there are no 'distinctions' like 1, 2, A, B, cause, effect, time, in God (or 'infinite reality') that would allow us to talk about a 'beginning' to Him.

(Picture expressing this idea below, click to enlarge)

Did Paul say that the body is evil? The idea of 'the flesh'

2009-10-25T23:40:00.000-07:00

Gal 5:17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Based on verses such as these (and there are a lot) some people have thought that Paul is saying that the body is evil. How could the body not be evil if 'the flesh' causes us to do evil? It sounds like all of our problems will go away once we get a spiritual body that doesn't have the setbacks of our physical bodies. But that makes you wonder why God didn't start humans off in spiritual bodies, and saying that the body is evil seems to go against common sense.

I think Paul is being a lot more abstract than this, and that 'the flesh' is another word for 'game theoretic reasoning'.

Game theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with what the most self-interested option is; what happens when people act purely from self-interest. It just so happens that our reason, the reason of our brain, finds it very easy to understand game theoretic principles (even if most people never hear about game theory). The same reasoning ability that helps us understand 2 + 2 = 4 will also, it seems, be able to understand game theory if it is clever enough.

Because our brain understands game theory so well, we get constant temptations to act from motives of self-interest without properly regarding what the moral point-of-view is. As long as we have a brain, this situation will be the case. Being able to reason means being able to understand game theoretic principles, even if we don't call it such.

I don't think Paul is saying that there's anything evil about the brain or our bodies. He's speaking of something more general and abstract. Any brain, whether physical or spiritual, needs to be able to understand self-interest if it is able to reason. That means any brain, whether physical or spiritual, is probably tempted all the time. So 'the flesh' really refers to the way our reason finds it so easy to think in terms of game theoretic considerations. It's not saying that the body is evil, it's a more general comment on reason that is the case for any conceivable brain.

Does this mean that reason is evil? No, for three reasons. First of all, if people had no reason then they could not exist. To be made in God's image we need to be able to think. Secondly, we share reason with calculators and computers, and they aren't evil. Because calculators and computers don't have free will, they can't be evil, and thus evil is 'owned' by persons who choose wrongly and not reason. Thirdly, the vast majority of the time we use reason for good or neutral purposes, like working out how to help someone, or what to buy. So reason is actually more like a good thing (like a car) which can be used for evil (like driving recklessly) - we wouldn't say that cars are evil because they can be used for evil.

The incarnation, quickly

2009-10-21T14:18:00.000-07:00

Just like humans have a soul because we're made in the image of God, so God (not the image, but the actual God) has a soul. Jesus was God's soul in a human body.

One of religion's most common mistakes

2009-10-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

It's often said by atheists that one of the problems with religion is that it tries to reward people for doing good, when the fact that an act is good should be motivation enough. The Bible agrees with them:

Luke 17:7-10: "But which of you, having a servant who is ploughing or keeping sheep, will say to him, when he comes in from the field, Come now and be seated and have a meal, Will he not say, Get a meal for me, and make yourself ready and see to my needs till I have had my food and drink; and after that you may have yours? Does he give praise to the servant because he did what was ordered? In the same way, when you have done all the things which are given you to do, say, There is no profit in us, for we have only done what we were ordered to do."

If you know that you have a moral obligation to do something, then you should do it because it's right. Whether or not there's a reward is irrelevant to moral obligations. For example, we don't believe that someone who reaches the age of 50 without murdering someone deserves a reward, because obviously it's wrong to murder.

I think that God rewards people for doing the right thing not because it's an arrangement that religious people have with God, but merely because God is a generous person and generous people are generous. In no sense would God reward a religious person, I think, for doing the right thing in any other sense.

This is one of the mistakes that religious people often make: assuming that being loving and doing God's will deserves a reward as if it was not an obligation.

The purpose of religion...

2009-10-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

It's a common belief that one of the main purposes of religion is to help people be good. So one thing that Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, etc., and so on are all doing is that they're basically about making people better people (in all the different ways that they try to do that).

I don't think that's what's going on... or shouldn't be...

Let's say that there's a town somewhere that is trying to reduce crime. So they give a reward of $1,000 if someone reaches the age of 50 without murdering someone. This seems like a rather odd thing to do. Why? Because you shouldn't reward people for doing what they're obligated to do. We're all obligated not to murder people, and so we don't deserve a reward for not murdering people.

Let's say religion is trying to get people to be better people. Is it trying to get people to do stuff that is a good thing that they have no obligation to do? Or is religion trying to get people to do things that are good that they have an obligation to do anyway?

I'd say the latter. Religion tries to encourage people to be nice people. But we should be nice people anyway, regardless of whether religion had ever existed.

And so I don't think religion can really be, or should be, about making people better people. Regardless of whether religion had ever existed, we should have been good people anyway, and so we don't deserve any reward for being good people, wherever our obligations were concerned.

With regard to Christianity, it's purpose is not about making people into better people. Christianity isn't about making people into 'good people', it's about God saving people through the cross, which took away our wrongdoing somehow. It's about God taking away people's bad intentions without needing our help, rather than people getting into heaven because of their own abilities.

Any religion that is about making people better has worthwhile effects when it does so, but it's doing something that people should have done anyway, and so in a strict sense, is redundant. In the case of Christianity, God puts people into a right relationship with Himself for eternity without needing any help from us.

A theory on the relationship between the Fall, and suffering today

2009-09-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

This is a speculative look at a difficult topic: how does the Fall lead to so much suffering today, especially suffering that seems to have nothing to do with free will?

The Bible says there is a strong relationship between the Fall and suffering:

Romans 5:12: For this reason, as through one man sin came into the world, and death because of sin, and so death came to all men, because all have done evil

Here is a theory of how suffering, death, and sin could be related. It has a few problems, but maybe there is something in it to answer questions in a genuine way.

A while ago I was reading an online comic and in it one character was trying to justify the existence of hell. But instead of saying 'God is a God of justice' or 'God gives us the freedom to reject Him' the character said that the reason for hell was something like: 'God will not allow sin in His presence, because He is a good God'. I thought that was an interesting response, because 'God not allowing sin in His presence' because of His goodness would seem to have nothing to do with hell and suffering, depending on your view of hell.

Later on I got into reading about the philosophy of mind and consciousness. Consciousness is what you feel when your brain processes information. Whatever consciousness is, it seems different from our physical brain. It seems to exist in a 'mental world' quite different to the world of e.g. tables and chairs. Debates in the philosophy of mind are about how a 'mental world' arises out of a physical world.

Thinking about the philosophy of mind, one interesting idea is to say that there are two worlds that humans live in: a physical world and the mental world. So instead of trying to figure out how the mental arises out of the physical, you can sort of give up and say that humans are a combination of the physical and the mental and the mental is in its own world with its own rules. The mental is based on the world of God.

You know that phrase 'God will not allow sin in His presence, because He is a good God'? Imagine that in the mental world, either a mind is connected to God or it's not. If it's not connected to God the mind suffers horribly. The problem is that when we do something wrong, God needs to separate Himself from our wrongdoing, and that means that God has to disconnect our mind from His. This means that sinners' minds get disconnected from God, creating horrible suffering, even if physically everything is fine, and there are no diseases, tornadoes, tsunamis, nothing of the sort...

So physically, God can stop any hurricane, earthquake, disease, accident, anything. But God cannot stop pain, terrible, unrelenting pain, if a mind is not connected to Him in the mental world. Because that's what it feels like for a mind not to be connected to God in the mental world: death and pain.

Somehow, if God remained connected to a mind that wants to do wrong, then God Himself would be 'infected' with sin. Or maybe it's not a matter of choice, and God simply cannot be connected to a mind that wants to do wrong. Either way, you can explain how horrifying pain must exist in a world where there are people who do wrong, even though God is perfectly good and all-powerful.

There are a few big issues here:

1) Animal suffering. They don't really do wrong because they aren't morally responsible. Yet there's a lot of suffering in the animal world. The Bible does say that the animals were subjected by God to the pain that humans are under (Romans 8:19-22), but why?

2) So maybe getting disconnected from God causes pain. But it sure seems that viruses cause pain. One way of getting out of this problem is to say that the pain has to be there anyway, and God chooses to make it look like physical stuff causes the pain. This seems a little bit odd and counter-intuitive... God needs to have a reason to make it look like e.g. earthquakes cause pain when actually our mind getting disconnected from God causes pain. God doesn't add to our pain by making it look like it's the result of e.g. diseases, so at least that aspect makes sense.

3) Suffering is a universal fact of life, and there isn't anyone who doesn't experience it. OK, but some people suffer a lot more or less than whatever is 'average'. Why? This remains a bit of a mystery. Maybe suffering gets 'balanced out' over an eternity, assuming a person doesn't have their sins removed by Christ - Luke 6:24?

On the good side, this theory does fit in with Luke 17:20-21, which talks about what the Kingdom of God involves:

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

If suffering happens because our mind gets disconnected from God, then perfect happiness will come when our sins are completely removed by Christ. Because we have never experienced life having our mind connected to God, then this theory explains why heaven is going to be so wonderful, even if it sounds to a non-Christian like it's just a change of scenery. They might ask: what's so great about heaven, just because it looks beautiful? The great thing about heaven is that our soul/mind will be connected to God for the first time, and we will experience life as it was originally meant to be experienced - in union with our creator, feeling the happiness that the image of God was originally meant to feel. We cannot even imagine what this is like - if we could, our mind would not be currently disconnected from God due to sin.

It also explains why no matter how much God helps those who reject what Christ did for them, they must suffer forever if they continue to reject Christ (very reminiscent of CS Lewis' Great Divorce).

In summary, you could say that the theory works like this:

Do we suffer because of a greater good? Yes.

1. Either we are perfect and there is no suffering.
2. Or we are morally imperfect and God becomes evil, because God allows sin in His presence/does not separate Himself from a soul that does wrong.
3. Or we are morally imperfect and there is horrible suffering, but God is perfect and provides a way for us to be free from sin and be truly happy one day (through the cross).

The third option is the best, which is what we see God doing. For the greater good of God remaining free from wrongdoing, we must suffer, assuming this whole system regarding a 'mental world'.

[See comments for clarification]

One interpretation of original sin and the Fall

2009-09-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

One interpretation of Original Sin and the Fall that I like is that there are two kinds of free will that you can have. In the first kind of free will (which we have) you can be a good or bad person in every choice. In the second kind, God protects you so that you will make every choice for good, but you can choose to 'opt out' of this system and have the first kind of free will, where it can be a struggle to be good in every choice.

In the first kind, God lets you know good and evil for yourself, in the second kind, God gives you His perspective on good and evil, ensuring your perfect goodness (Gen 3:1-5).

So Adam and Eve had a kind of free will where they were guaranteed to be perfect, so long as they didn't choose to work out good and evil for themselves. But God left them the freedom to work out good and evil from their own perspective, and they chose to 'opt out' of His protection. That destroyed their relationship with God, because without looking at things from God's perspective it is impossible not to sin if you have the ability to think in terms of selfish interest (Rom 7:18-24).

But why not just redo the whole thing with a different Adam and Eve? And how come we don't get to be in the Garden and decide this for ourselves (isn't that unfair)?

I think that without experiencing sin and evil, eventually *everyone* chooses to 'opt out' of God's protection, because we just don't know well enough why we should let God protect our choices. So we all share in Adam's sin indirectly, in the sense that we are all born with personalities that would have Fallen if we had started off in the Garden (but after our life, we have learned not to want or do that).

Christ's atonement lets us go back to a state where we see people in the way that God does, which puts perfection within the reach of anybody without regard to their former works, achievements, personality and character traits.

Check out Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all". Maybe we could have started off in the Garden like Adam and Eve, but God skipped this so He could set history up in a way that could save the elect (in my interpretation, anyone who God knew would not resist what Christ had done for them on the cross).

Link to some more speculation on original sin and the fall...

Why God can't just forgive sin

2009-09-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Let's say that a guy steals something from someone one day. He realises it's wrong and so he apologises to the owner. The owner is a very nice person so he forgives him.

Then he steals from the owner again. He feels terrible so he apologises again. Because the owner is a forgiving person he forgives him again.

Then he steals from the owner again. He apologises again, and is forgiven again.

Then he steals from the owner yet again. He feels absolutely terrible, and so he apologises and is forgiven yet again.

That's a bad situation to have happen. Even so, the principles in this situation apply to all Christians, and for people of any other religion who have an analogous point-of-view.

How so?

Well, let's say I sin against another person. I recognise my guilt and apologise to God. God forgives me.

Then I sin again, doing the same sort of sin, against another person. So I apologise to God. God forgives me unconditionally.

Then I sin again, making the same sort of mistake, some time later. I realise this and so I apologise to God. God forgives me yet again.

Is there any Christian for whom this sort of situation is not the case?

I suppose it's possible that some Christians can perfectly repent of some sins, but there are a lot of sins that will still remain to one degree or another in a Christian's life (even if most of the time they're only expressed in the head, or in a possible situation that hasn't happened).

So imagine that the thief keeps stealing again and again, and the owner keeps forgiving him. That's awfully nice of him, but does that deal with the REAL issue here? The real issue is that he keeps stealing. It's not a matter of forgiveness, in that hypothetical situation, it's a matter of the fact that he keeps stealing and needs to stop it. Forgiveness deals with the owner not taking revenge, but it doesn't deal with the fact that someone who steals all the time is a thief and needs to stop stealing.

According to the same principle, in this life Christians will never stop sinning against God and other people, even though God always forgives us. God will always forgive us every time that we honestly ask for forgiveness. But does that deal with the REAL issue here? The real issue is that we don't meet God's standards despite God's forgiveness. Because I'll bet that after we ask forgiveness we don't suddenly become sinless. God's forgiveness deals with God taking revenge, but it doesn't deal with the fact that our actions are not up to God's standards.

This is why God's forgiveness outside of Christ is not good enough to save people. What condemns people is the fact that they don't meet God's standards, and thus can't be with God forever. It's not an issue of God taking revenge, it's an issue of the fact that someone who does the wrong thing can't be with God. God's forgiveness means God won't take revenge, but if we continually want to sin, then we're not up to God's standards and can't be with God.

So God can't deal with sin just by forgiving it.

God needed a form of forgiveness that changes the heart of the person asking for it, so that they never sin again in any possible situation (which is what it means to meet God's standards).

But what kind of forgiveness can do that? Certainly nothing that the owner can give to the constant thief he forgives.

The atonement solved this problem, creating an extremely 'powerful' kind of forgiveness. Imagine all of our evil collected together in a pool of black sludge. You could say that in the atonement God poured out all of our evil onto Christ (although Christ never endorsed it) and we received Christ's perfect goodness in return. God 'gave' our evil desires/intentions to Christ in the areas where we sin, and Christ lives in us, acting perfectly, in return (Rom 6:6; Gal 2:20). So Christ in Christians will one day enable Christians to be perfect by doing everything for us in the areas where we currently sin. Christians aren't perfect only because God is waiting until the 'Day of Redemption' to apply this fully to Christians (Eph 4:30). See here for a longer account of how Christ's death takes away evil.

This is a reason why I think Christianity makes more sense than a religion where the solution to humanity's wrongdoing is for God just to forgive sin. Just like a person forgiving a thief who keeps stealing doesn't solve the thief's problems, so God forgiving our sin if we want to keep sinning doesn't solve humanity's problems.

[Edit] Clarification after someone said to me they didn't get it.

Basically, I was saying that forgiveness doesn't do a lot of things. If I forgive someone for stealing from me, then it means I won't report them or plot against them, but it won't necessarily mean they'll stop stealing. So forgiveness won't necessarily make the forgiven person better.

So the cross is a type of forgiveness where forgiveness DOES make someone better. God puts our evil onto Christ, and then the punishment for it is put on to him, and so it is no longer us living but Christ living in us, in return (Gal 2:20). Luther called it the 'great exchange'.

Philippians 3:8b-9a: "for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ"

And 2 Co 5:21 is good also.

Do people do everything for selfish reasons?

2009-09-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

Isn't it true that whenever we do something good we get something out of it? Like pleasure from the joy of helping someone? Does that mean that a good act like helping someone is just another form of selfishness?

The problem with this argument is that pleasure seems to be: "anything that makes an action worth doing to someone". That's how every possible action, good or bad, is a matter of pleasure and therefore (according to the argument) selfishness.

Another way of putting this is that every act requires motivation, and that always means pleasure from doing it.

But wait a second - is this right? Can it really be selfish just to have a motivation? If motivation = pleasure? Seems a bit broad.

I think it's so broad that the argument says nothing. The argument doesn't discover anything empirically but relies on the definitions of 'pleasure', 'act', and 'motivation' to argue.

I would say instead that pleasure in doing something is actually a result of the decision to do that thing (whatever it is). What makes any pleasure selfish or not selfish depends on whether that decision is bad or good/neutral. Once we decide that we want to do something, then we get pleasure from the thought of doing it. So if someone has decided to get pleasure from being really nice, then the pleasure from doing that is selfless, because they didn't *have* to get pleasure from that - they could have gotten pleasure from being selfish. So nice people have done something good for choosing to get pleasure from doing the right thing. That pleasure is not selfish, even though they feel good about helping people, since that pleasure is a reflection of a desire to help people, which is a good thing.

Discussion on what it means to say an 'infinite God'

2009-08-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

I had a discussion on a forum on the idea that infinity = existence without distinctions (as opposed to with distinctions) and whether that's the kind of person that God is. I thought I'd collect the points together in case people are interested in some depth in one promising account of what 'infinite God' means (link to discussion). A summary of the other person's point is in [brackets]. My opening arguments:

1. Take a plain of grass that's infinitely wide and infinitely long. With respect to horizontal location, you cannot find your place on it because it goes on forever in every direction. That distinction has been lost. Maybe the infinite involves the loss of every distinction in a similar way?
2. We can imagine numbers going up and up forever to infinity, but not reaching infinity. For there to be an absolute infinity there must be some kind of radical 'break' with the potentially infinite. But where can we find such a break? Perhaps from an 'existence without distinctions', which contains every possible number 'distinction-lessly'.
3. It explains the infinity + infinity = infinity intuition that we have (you can only get one infinite). If infinity is distinction-less, then you cannot separate a part of infinity from another part, or make another infinity, because there are no distinctions between anything.
4. This theory of infinity could explain how an apparently complicated God is really simple. If God personifies a world without any distinctions, then God must be the simplest thing possible. A leap of faith can let you believe that this entails a conscious, three-in-one God.
5. Explains why there can only be one God - Deu 6:4 (from points 3 and 4).

Thoughts?

1. Take a plain of grass that's infinitely wide and infinitely long. With respect to horizontal location, you cannot find your place on it because it goes on forever in every direction. That distinction has been lost. Maybe the infinite involves the loss of every distinction in a similar way?

[Someone posted: what about Cartesian coordinate systems (wikilink). They could solve this problem.]

I think I know what you mean. Let's say you put a wooden pole into the grass at some random location, then you could tell where you were by looking over your shoulder (let's say) at the pole in the ground. But isn't it interesting that you can only locate yourself because you've created distinctions in the plain of grass, i.e. you've made your area of interest/concern a finite area. If you don't put down the wooden pole (e.g.) then you're lost and there's no way of distinguishing your position from any other. So I would submit that in terms of showing that infinity takes away distinctions it still works as an example, although maybe a better one can be found.

[But you could distinguish where you are from the different blades of grass. And also, this example doesn't work because no plane (of grass or anything else) can be infinite.]

Instead of saying a plain of grass imagine that it's an empty, grey plane, like in a computer program. You can have horizontal locating coordinates if you mark your location in the plane, which is essentially creating a finite space within the infinity. But if you deal with the whole infinity then you've lost SOME information compared to a finite plane. You've lost the ability to say something like 'This plane is 5x5 metres' which you could do if the plane was finite. So on the basis of the fact you've lost information I think that the example does show infinity tends to take away distinctions.

Here's a graphic I made on this (below, click to enlarge):

[Explain the graphic.]

I guess the way God created distinctions out of distinction-less existence is something like placing a pole down in an grey plane that goes on forever in every direction. When you place the pole you've created a finite area within an infinity, and you can then do all the stuff included in human ideas (which are finite). So let's say there's this distinction-less reality, and suddenly God says 'Hey I'm going to allow for the concept of differences between stuff', and then suddenly God has a mathematical toolbox to make the laws of the universe based on finite numbers.

[So what's my argument?]

If there's a tree that's ∞ metres high, then you have a tree but no specific information about what height, because there is no such distinction. But if you have a tree with a finite height, then you have a tree and specific information about the height, which is a distinction. So by analogy, if you carry this process on as the core aspect of infinity, then infinity is distinction-less existence which distinction-lessly contains every possible distinction.

A 30 metre high X has more distinctions as a concept than an ∞ metre high X, because an ∞ metre high X 'holds off' putting a distinction like a specific height as yet (to use anthropomorphic language) for the sake of distinction-lessly containing every possible distinction in that concept.

2. We can imagine numbers going up and up forever to infinity, but not reaching infinity. For there to be an absolute infinity there must be some kind of radical 'break' with the potentially infinite. But where can we find such a break? Perhaps from an 'existence without distinctions', which contains every possible number 'distinction-lessly'.

[What's the difference between potential and actual infinity in this view? There is no difference in contemporary mathematics. Infinity means that you never stop counting.]

This is from the wiki on potential and actual infinity:

Aristotle also distinguished between actual and potential infinities. An actual infinity is something which is completed and definite and consists of infinitely many elements, and according to Aristotle, a paradoxical idea, both in theory and in nature. In respect to addition, a potentially infinite sequence or a series is potentially endless; being a potentially endless series means that one element can always be added to the series after another, and this process of adding elements is never exhausted.

[But ideas have advanced since Aristotle. Actual and potential infinities are now regarded as the same thing.]

3. It explains the infinity + infinity = infinity intuition that we have (you can only get one infinite). If infinity is distinction-less, then you cannot separate a part of infinity from another part, or make another infinity, because there are no distinctions between anything.

[Comment about Cantor's multiple infinities. Cantor the mathematician basically showed that there are an infinite number of infinities. Wikilink.]

Maybe there's appearance and there's a reality behind the appearance that we can't get at. Because of finite reasoning, the appearance will be of multiple infinities, no matter what. But behind the appearance there is a reality of only one distinction-less infinity. You've probably seen this approach elsewhere, it's a Kantian way of answering questions. This argument is circular in terms of establishing the infinity is distinction-less to someone else but internally it would make sense of the multiple infinity thing.

[How do you know this?]

I guess one argument that there's really only one infinity if mathematics shows otherwise, is that when you ask the average person (I remember this from a podcast) almost everyone has an opinion of infinity even though most of them wouldn't know many concepts from 'finite' mathematics. And intuitively we feel that there can't be more than one infinity. I think it's possible that the concept of infinity in our minds is an unconscious concept of distinction-less existence, which everyone has without needing to define it. But then again, if you look at infinity mathematically it appears as though there are lots.

One reason I like it is that a person who 'personifies' distinction-less existence - if that's possible - is truly eternal. That person could be seen as infinitely old - the first and the last. You can't ask where He/She/It came from. He/She/It simply is. That's an attractive concept for God it seems to me.

[But intuition is often wrong; like in the Monty Hall problem. It seems this theory is just speculation.]

The main problem with the idea seems to be that modern mathematics supports the idea of multiple infinities. To get around that, one needs to adopt a Kantian way out, but that is ultimately not going to be convincing to someone who doesn't agree initially.

I guess at the end of the day this is an interesting idea of infinity, that MIGHT be true, and it certainly works well with ideas about God, but in the end is simply not provable. Considering how hard it is to define actual infinity in a philosophical sense, this may not be so bad for the idea, since it is a hard thing to get one's head around, but it can go no further than interesting conjecture.

[Then that's all it can be.]

[Another point: also, the idea of God being distinction-less existence is like saying that God is a square circle. It's logically impossible.]

How so? If you're referring to the difference between distinction-less existence and the concept of a person/consciousness, in the sense that 'Why would such an existence be a godlike person' then that has a decent answer.

The way humans think is in terms of distinctions, so we work out 1+1=2 through distinctions, and the difference between smart and dumb is how many distinctions someone can order in the best way. But if you try to use that kind of distinction-ful reasoning to understand the distinction-less (excepting what I've said above because it's so general) then that's like putting a piece of paper through paper shredder and then trying to read the resulting mess. Distinction-ful reasoning has almost no power to understand the distinction-less, which is why we can't see that a) distinction-less existence is conscious, b) love, and c) a three-in-one God.

That's why we need to relate to God as a person rather than as an intellectual idea.

[I mean in the sense of distinction-less existence being logically impossible.]

Well, maybe I would define it in the sense that e.g. Cantor seemed to believe in an absolute infinite that was God, that 'transcended the transfinite numbers'. However, since I don't know the details I can't really say in what sense this was held as an idea of God/infinity. Cantor did say that the absolute infinite was a distinction-less unity (link). Even to Cantor it was kind of a mystical idea that resolved the paradoxes of infinity in God.

Unfortunately, the fact there appears to be multiple infinities does present an obstacle to this - maybe the Kantian way out works for that...

[Where does Cantor say this?]

It's not directly referred to but I think it's implied in the first one: "it is the single, completely individual unity in which everything is included, which includes the Absolute, incomprehensible to the human understanding."

Also I think we're talking about two different meanings of the word illogical.

2+2=5 is illogical because according to the rules of 'finite existence', 2+2 has to equal 4 by definition.

The absolute infinite is illogical according to the rules of finite existence as well. But this is the difference: the absolute infinite is not in finite space in any way. It's in infinite space. So such illogical aspects do not count against its truth and existence, as it's not in 'finite space', like they do with 2+2=5, which does exist in 'finite space'.

I think the same way about the trinity. If the trinity was in finite space then 3 persons = 1 person would count against its truth. But because it's in infinite space - in the infinite reality of God - then 3 persons = 1 person doesn't count against its truth because stuff might work differently there.

A discussion on free will and the infinite - how does the infinite possess free will?

[What's the difference between saying God is infinite and indefinite?]

From my perspective, I guess one could call distinction-less existence an 'actual indefinite' in that it loses all manner of distinctions/differentiations between and within anything, which is very indefinite. Not sure whether 'indefinite' implies anything more/different though.

I think free will could also go with the idea of the 'indefinite'. The indefinite world is not determined, so free will begins with God and then is granted to humans in a way that finite reasoning can't understand (because the finite by definition is precisely defined and can only act within its predetermined boundaries).

[But does this imply that God = everything and everything = God, if God is indefinite?]

I think God contains all possible distinctions in His being, but I would say that this 'containing' is done 'distinction-lessly', as opposed to God holding lots of individual items in His being. An analogy might be that a container full of chocolates is a 'distinction-ful' containing in that there are lots of individual chocolates in the container. But I think that when God (the distinction-less) contains everything, it's not like the lots of individual chocolates (e.g.). God somehow contains everything in a way that makes it contain 'distinction-lessly', while also having the potential to become separate.

The moral philosophy of Jesus

2009-08-19T01:08:00.000-07:00

Jesus as a philosopher. What are some interesting philosophical insights that could be gained from looking at Jesus' statements? In this post, I will highlight a couple of things that Jesus said that could be interpreted as an interesting take on Aristotelian virtue ethics.

In virtue ethics, the most important thing regarding knowing what's good is what a really virtuous person says. If you want to know what the right thing is, ask the person you know who's the most upright, virtuous person you can find. You shouldn't ask an evildoer whether it is right to do X or Y. Morality is so complicated that this is the best way of figuring out moral issues. You can't hope to figure out morality like 2 + 2 = 4. Morality is a very complicated, tricky thing, and another approach won't really work.

When Jesus is tempted by Satan in the Gospel of Matthew, he gives a very interesting reply to the temptation that sort of goes along with Aristotelian virtue ethics:

Matthew 4:8-10 "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'"

Combine that with these verses:

John 5:30 "By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me."

Matthew 19:16-17 "Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

Jesus identifies God as a being who is so good, so wonderfully upright and loving, that in comparison with God, no one else even deserves to be called 'good'.

I think one can see a bit of a connection between these verses...

Think about it like this: suppose you lived in a town and there was someone in the town who was quite unusual. While everyone in the town is a pretty decent person, this person is something more. This person cannot be tempted to do the wrong thing. When this person thinks about moral dilemmas, you know that he/she will give the right answer, because this person always thinks about the right thing in a clear way. It is impossible to tempt this person with an evil thought.

If you wanted wisdom on any ethical decision, you would always go to this person if you lived in the town. Although we usually make pretty good ethical judgements, the only way you could be really sure, the only way you could be 100% positive whether something was the right thing to do, would be to ask the person who cannot give a morally flawed answer. Whereas you, I, and everyone else can be tempted to see things in a selfish way, this special person must by definition see things in the morally correct way.

If you wanted someone to be the ruler over a society, then if possible, you would pick that particular person. While other people might be good rulers out of the goodness of their own hearts, this 'un-temptable' person would be good out of necessity. Surely, picking that person as a ruler could not go very wrong.

If you think about it like this, then it's easy to see the logic of Jesus' answer to Satan in Matthew 4:10. God is someone who cannot be tempted to do the wrong thing (James 1:13; Titus 1:2). So in Jesus' view, if you're in any doubt as to whether you should do something, there is one person who's answer you can always trust (assuming you could actually talk to Him/Her/It). The answer of a God who cannot be tempted by evil is 100% trustworthy by definition, unlike the answer of someone not like that (although someone else's view might be right as well, it is not trustworthy by definition).

So we see that, if you assume that there is a God who is like the person in the town example, and like the God alleged in the Bible, then there is a certain logic to everyone deferring to this God. Everyone else in all of existence can be tempted to do the wrong thing - even the human part of Jesus (Heb 4:15). Even the angels were tempted at one point according to Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the fall of Satan. But not God - for some reason God, and only God, is impossible to tempt. So assuming that this God existed and this situation was the case, then wouldn't it make sense if everyone listened to what He/She/It had to say? And not only listen, but act accordingly?

If God really cannot be tempted by evil, then serving God like Jesus ("serve Him only") would actually give us our freedom, it wouldn't take it away. A God who couldn't be tempted to do evil would be love. And part of loving people is giving them free will. So we can see that only serving God means being a) free and b) honouring other people's freedom through love.

So if you look at Jesus' views in a 'virtue ethics' way, Jesus essentially says that the person to ask when it comes to moral issues is the only person who can never be tempted. If you follow this person, then the result will never go wrong (assuming you actually knew what God was saying). Given the truth of such a situation, serving this person with 'all your heart, soul, strength and mind' guarantees that the right thing will always be done. Therefore, as Jesus says, you should "serve only" this God rather than yourself or someone else.

God cannot do evil. Does this raise problems?

2009-08-13T03:53:00.000-07:00

The Bible says that God cannot do wrong:

James 1:13 "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

Titus 1:2 "in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began"

Does this raise problems?

Some argue this means that God doesn't have free will. If God cannot do wrong, then how is God free to do wrong?

One response to this argument is that there are actually two kinds of 'cannot':

Cannot 1
Cannot 2

For example:

"I cannot throw this rock into space from my backyard." Cannot 1.

"So you think I should make money by robbing banks? I could never do something like that!" Cannot 2.

I would say that 'cannot 1' applies to physical impossibility. 'Cannot 2' applies to the inability to be tempted by something.

'Cannot 1' applies to physical objects. I cannot throw a rock into space because my body is physically unable to do so.

'Cannot 2' applies to persons, and deals with an inability to find reasons for doing something. Without a reason for doing something, I can't do it. For me to rob banks, I would need to have a reason to rob banks. But robbing banks is evil. As long as I remember that robbing banks is evil, then it's impossible for me to find a reason to rob banks. So I literally cannot rob banks as long as I remember that it's evil.

'Cannot 1', when applied to persons, takes away free will. If someone is put in prison, then they cannot ('cannot 1') go outside. They are not 'free' to go outside.

This is OK when it comes to God. Because 'cannot 1' doesn't apply to God, 'cannot 2' does. Christians think that God, being all-powerful, is physically able to do evil. The issue with God is that God cannot be tempted to do evil.

So the question is: does 'cannot 2' take away free will?

I don't think so. Consider this: as long as someone remembers that it's evil to murder someone, then they cannot be tempted to murder someone. No one could be tempted to murder someone while they were thinking that it's an evil thing to do. Think about it. It's impossible. And yet would anyone say that this being the case takes away free will?

Of course not. Someone doesn't lose their free will because they can't be tempted to murder someone while they remember that it's an evil thing to do.

So 'cannot 2' seems fine for free will, at least in some situations (described above).

And so it seems that God's free will is fine. It doesn't seem to hurt God's free will that He cannot do evil as long as the 'cannot' is 'cannot 2' (note: this analysis might only work with regard to evil).

So why doesn't God make 'cannot 2' apply to humans as well as to Himself?

The reason why God can't do this is that creatures must be able to think in terms of self-interest. This is because finite creatures need something to think with, for finite creatures this means finite reasoning, and the nature of finite reasoning is such that it always thinks in terms of self-interest (e.g. game theory). God can protect us from this 'dark side' to being a creature (as in the Garden of Eden) but the allure to think in terms of self-interest is always going to be there.

So for humans (especially after a 'Fall' like in the Garden of Eden) free will requires the ability to be tempted by evil, because of our self-interested mode of reasoning. But this isn't the case for God, who has a mode of reasoning (not finite) such that He doesn't think in terms of self-interest. We can't even imagine what this is like (Isaiah 55:8).

Answers to tough questions: suffering

2009-08-04T04:18:00.000-07:00

When we see suffering going on in the world, often not connected to wrongdoing, it is hard to see how a loving God exists. Suffering is also pretty random. The traditional Christian answer is that because we live in a fallen world, therefore terrible suffering must happen.

I think there are some gaps in this explanation. Here is my attempt to fill them:

We are mental and physical beings. Mentally, we have a mind which is not the same as our brain. Physically, we have a brain and a body. The mind is based off the brain, but it is not the same thing as the brain.

I think that the mind lives in a mental world that follows different rules to the physical world around us.

I think that one of these 'mental' rules works kind of like gravity. Say you throw a rock up into the air. It will fall down due to gravity. In an analogous way, in the Christian view, a mind is naturally connected to its creator, God, in the mental world. God is the 'super-mind' from which all other minds come, creating this connection.

But in the Christian/Judaic view, if a mind sins then it gets pushed away from its creator, God (in the mental world). Sin pushes a mind away from God sort of like a rock suddenly flying out into space instead of falling to the ground (for some reason).

When a mind is connected to God it feels infinite happiness. It is enjoying what God feels all the time. But when a mind is 'pushed away' from God due to sin, the mind suffers, and loses ultimate happiness.

The stuff I just described only goes on in the mental world. It does not happen physically. So physically, everything can be fine. Someone can be in good health, be having a good time etc., but if our minds are cut off from God due to sin then we must suffer no matter what is going on physically.

God makes our mind getting cut off from God go along with physical suffering, like e.g. a disease. It doesn't have to go along with physical suffering like disease. But whether it does or not, the suffering we must all feel is roughly the same. So God should not be blamed for making this process go along with physical suffering, because the same suffering must happen regardless.

I think this is how saying 'We live in a fallen world' can make sense of suffering, and yet 'God is love' and all-powerful.

Two questions remain:

1) Why does our mind get cut off from God due to sin?
Answer: Because the mind is connected to God, and God simply cannot be connected to a soul that does wrong. It's impossible for such a connection to be maintained, because God is holy. Even though God is all-powerful, God cannot allow sin in His presence (for a reason we may not fully know).

2) Why do some people suffer much more than others?
Answer: I'm not sure, but this argument does explain why there must be horrible suffering... even if we can't explain why some people suffer more than others. This must simply be left unexplained, and so the argument is not complete. But this argument is at least something...

Does sin explain why people don't use their free will that much?

2009-07-29T17:55:00.000-07:00

"Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." - John 8:34-36.

Two interesting facts:

1) We have a very strong, gut feeling that we have free will.
2) It often seems that hardly anyone uses it. Most of the time our personalities don't change throughout our life in very significant ways... we usually choose the same way.

Think about it. If you're an introvert you probably don't feel you could suddenly decide to become a very outgoing person. If you have a short-temper you probably don't feel like you could flick a switch and become very calm in all situations.

Yet we feel we have this thing called 'free will', which should ideally allow us to do what I've just described. If free will is true, then we should be able to change our personality if we feel like it, and choose to do anything physically possible for us. But even though we feel that we have this power, we hardly ever change/use it. The person who starts off liking certain choices will probably stay that way regarding most of them.

I think that the reason why we find it hard to change comes from sin.

How so?

Well to begin with, the greatest commandment is that you should 'love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind'. This is basically saying that we should love and serve God with every fibre of our being.

Now, if you were doing this, it wouldn't detract from your freedom at all. Because God is good, and honours our free will, it would basically mean that you never sin. It wouldn't actually detract from your freedom in any other area, except you would not sin. Your personality would actually stay the same, except regarding the areas where your personality is morally flawed.

Now, if you followed this greatest commandment, you could really exercise your free will. You could always make the choices you know are the best. How? Well, by loving God with such a great love, you would only do what God wanted. So you could say to God 'Today I feel like making such-and-such choices', and God would say 'That's what I want for you then' and you would do it, because you would prioritise God's will with infinite importance.

That would enable someone to easily make whatever choices they wanted (apart from sinful ones) very easily; instantly.

Maybe this is the 'default' setting for the people that God creates in His image. In the 'default' setting we have free will and we use it. If anyone chooses a certain way, it's because that's how they genuinely want to be.

It's ONLY due to our fallen, sinful nature that we get 'locked into' certain choices. So it's ONLY because of our sin that we have the phenomenon where someone is addicted to something and can't break out, and so on. Or someone can't change in a way they want to change. That's not something that 'naturally' comes with free will, but can only come with free will + our fallen nature. That's why it sometimes seems as though people don't have free will even though we all do.

Podcast: How did God become a man?

2009-07-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

Podcast summary:

How did God become a man? First we must look at the image of God. When it comes to being a person, having a mind and intentions, we're exactly like God. That implies there can be a kind of 'crossover' between finite and infinite. An analogy: you could say that our body and brain is on one side of a mirror, and our mind/person is on the other side in a subjective reality. For Jesus the man, the mind on the other side of the body/brain was God in God's reality.

Title: The incarnation
Time: 18:21 minutes
Size: 8.4 MB mp3

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