Answering Dawkins Part 2

Yesterday I offered my answers to some stated questions on famed atheist Richard Dawkins' website for secularism. Yesterday's post examined questions about free will, morality and meaning.

Today is the second installment, and the questions again come directly from Dawkins' website:

Purpose. Do teleological concepts play a useful role in our description of natural phenomena?

Epistemology. Is science unique as a method for discovering true knowledge?

(Skipped question on Emergence and reductionism) 

Consciousness. How do the phenomena of consciousness arise from the collective behavior of inanimate matter?

The question pertaining to purpose is more familiar to the rest of us as, "Why am I here?", and is strangely universal across humankind. The fact that we ask the question suggests, to me at least, that legitimate grounds exist  for our inquiry; that in fact, there really may be a 'why' element to our existence.  After all, do we ever ask about things that are completely unfamiliar and unknown to us?  We may ponder the plausibility of  life on other planets, because we observe life here, and its requirements, and are naturally inclined to wonder if those far away worlds might also be hospitable to life.  But this musing presumes that the possible life we contemplate will be recognizable to us as life, that it will be in some small way similar to what we know to be life. It will be familiar. I believe that all of our inquiries about 'unknowns' are  fixed in the familiar, even if quite distantly, thereby making them not so much unknowns, but rather as yet undiscovered, unexplored prospects.

So when we inquire as to our purpose the question stems from a context that is vaguely familiar to us, as if nearby, though not yet grasped.  It is familiar to us because it is coded by our maker into our very being.  Romans 1:19 says, "...since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

God uses creation, from the tiniest, complex component of a microorganism to the vastness of the cosmos as a universal language that points to his own existence and primacy, that we might observe nature and look for the source of its genius.  We are here primarily to be loved by God, and to know and love him, and by extension, his creation.

Epistemology. Is science unique as a method for discovering true knowledge?
Now there's a word I don't throw around on a weekly basis.  Basically, epistemology asks 'How do we know what we know is right and true?', and 'by what   avenues do we obtain knowledge, and are they valid?'

It is peculiar that the question on Dawkins' website is qualified with the adjective 'true' before the word knowledge. Because science is limited to the five senses, it is only interested in one kind of knowledge and it presumes that this one variety of knowledge represents the sum of all knowledge to be had, and anoints it as 'true' knowledge.

Yet consider civilization.  We tend to think of it as buildings and infrastructure and order and economy. But in reality, the civilized world exists because of an invisible and immaterial quality known as Integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing - the promised and principled thing, even at the expense of damage or peril to the doer.  The global economy is built upon words, written and spoken, that promise to repay borrowed monies.  If one day every corporation, government and individual with outstanding loans suddenly said, 'Nah, I'm not going to repay that debt', we witness total economic collapse and failure. Lending would cease, and each person, government or corporation would have only its own existing capital to work with. Economies and civilizations are built upon words, because words convey intent, and intent must be coupled with integrity, or we are left with just so much alphabet soup dancing on parchment.  Promises are down payments on integrity.  I am unclear as to how science could study a promise. And yet, the promise is a powerful 'thing' that is unseen, untouchable, unheard and unknown, until made good on. Up to that point it is merely believed.  And after that point, it is no longer a promise, but a fact.

Trust is another means of obtaining knowledge. We trust (rightly or wrongly) the words of others.  We trust their experiences when they witness events. Without this source of knowledge, life in the courtroom would be very dull and inconclusive. Scientists trust the words of other scientists, even in the absence of repeatable claims. Much of evolutionary science is by consensus, and highly subjective extrapolations are made with the best of intentions.  The Bible is God's revelation of himself,  written using human minds at God's own urging. It has been given to mankind as an unchanging record of who he is, and how he has interacted with humanity throughout history. Much of the Bible is a retelling of real people's personal experiences with God. Through their recorded experiences we obtain knowledge.

So while it is true that science seeks knowledge, it does not necessarily seek the truth.

Consciousness.  How do the phenomena of consciousness arise from the collective behavior of inanimate matter?  

The question seems to be asking, "How do mindless atoms manage to collect themselves  into arrangements capable of asking questions such as "why are we here?".

They don't, is the short answer.  Does anyone seriously look at a printout of computer code and think for a moment that the order and meaning inherent in the code is the product of random chance? Don't we intuitively know that a human being skilled in the language of computers organized the code into coherent strings that would be cogent to a computer?  And yet we want to look at a DNA molecule and attribute it to chance. So, who is this Chance guy? Chance is not a being, nor is it even a thing. Chance is a no-thing.... or we could shorten that to nothing. It is one of those things that science would be ill-equipped to study, because it is precisely what hasn't yet happened. It stands in the gap between two or more outcomes, ready to take credit for whichever one prevails. Chance is nothing.  Human beings, on the other hand, are really something.

Consciousness is the awareness we possess of our own existence. It facilitates our reaching beyond our own physical confines to obtain knowledge through inquiry - scientific and otherwise.  With it we examine our place in the cosmos as we think contextually and contemplate the effect of our behavior on others. In so doing, we exhibit an integral part of our humanness: our conscience. Without a conscience, our ability to perceive the existence of  good and bad, of right and wrong, does not exist.  Do away with conscience, and integrity is not possible. And as integrity goes, so goes civilization.

Answering Dawkins

On his website, "Innovating for a Secular World", iconic atheist Richard Dawkins posits the following:

"We would like to understand how to construct meaningful human lives in a world governed by the laws of nature. Some specific questions include:
(And I am including only the first three in this installment).

Free will. If people are collections of atoms obeying the laws of physics, is it sensible to say that they make choices?

Morality. What is the origin of right and wrong? Are there objective standards?

Meaning. Why live? Is there a rational justification for finding meaning in human existence?


Well, just for fun, I will offer some responses.

To the question of free will. His question includes a premise which is exclusionary: "If people are collections of atoms..." Using an unproven premise as the platform for the question negates the question, in my opinion. It is no longer pure inquiry, but rhetoric. The answer is, of course, if we are nothing more than a collection of atoms, we are mindless slaves to the laws of physics and free will is not even a notion we are capable of contemplating.

To the question of morality. He asks about the origins of right and wrong. By asking the question, he seems to be implying these two benchmarks 'exist', though to do so they must, by definition, exist outside of the scope of the natural world, since the laws of nature are what they are. Period. They are neither good, nor bad.

How can qualities such as 'right' and 'wrong' exist in a cosmos spawned by chance and governed by heartless, value-neutral natural laws? Answer: right and wrong do not even exist in such a place, because they are immaterial. The laws of nature act upon the material world. Ideology is not self-existent in nature. Humanity exists in a fallen state, i.e. not as designed, and with a propensity for wrongdoing. Yet God has not abandoned us in our fallenness, but has revealed, literally manifested, his nature perfectly in Jesus. He tells us in Micah 6:8 what we are to be about, "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

His morality follow up question is "are there objective standards?" (for right and wrong). Well, what is a standard? A 'standard', according to Merriam-Webster.com,  is "something considered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison; an approved model."  That definition, at least, is fraught with subjectivity.  'general consent'... 'basis'... 'comparison'...'approved'....  In the purely secular realm of scientific naturalism, just how much tolerance is there for such speculative reasoning?  None, one would think.  I would have supposed there could only be objective standards in such an environment.

Dawkin's list then moves on to the question of meaning. 'Why live'? he asks.  In the secularists' realm, that's a good question.  It is perhaps best answered by asking about the ramifications of death, not for the deceased, but upon those who 'loved' them. Why are we more grieved by the death of a child than by totaling our car?  Are not both just collections of atoms, held in temporary arrangements in the space-time fabric?

When you boil it all down, what people most value in life, the thing that imparts meaning to their existence, is relationship. We treasure our relationships above all else, and the love that is cultivated within them. When death terminates a relationship, and our love can no longer be given to, and received by, the one we love, we are left devastated, crippled by a gaping wound in the heart. This is not the happenstance result of evolution. It occurs because we are made for relationships, first and foremost with God.  Our very propensity for relationships is a reflection of God's purpose for us, that we might experience His unfailing, unflinching, unending love in relationship with him.

"Meaning" and "life" are co-dependents living under the shelter of love.  Death stings because of the damage it inflicts upon the living.  Mere atomic bundles do not suffer the way human beings suffer in the soul when a loved one dies. Period.

When he further asks, "Is there a rational justification  for  finding meaning in human existence?",  I must ask, what is rational? And who gets to define meaning?  Rational in this context must refer to making a logical argument for or against the idea of meaning, but an argument is nothing but a hypothetical set of contexts and premises, because if they were already proven, there would be nothing to argue about.  So what choice does an argument have but to follow the laws of nature? And it seems to me that things go all Darwinian at that point, survival of the fittest, etc.  That's where meaning must be found, if it exists at all, in the naturalistic worldview.  Meaning is equated with surviving long enough to pass along ones genes. That would seem to me, at least, to be the epitome of meaningless.

Next time I will offer answers to a few more of Mr. Dawkins questions.

The Last Tomorrow

What would you have done differently, had yesterday been your last day?

I think the question has two answers, based on two different premises.

Premise one is that you had no knowledge that tomorrow would not come.  You lived yesterday as if today was lurking around the corner, replete with its own set of pending circumstances ranging from problematic to exhilarating. So you trudged through the day, naively jettisoning its hours off into the past like prayers from a Tibetan prayer wheel.

Its what we do with Tomorrow.  We treat it as if it were a faithful dog that will come at our beck and call, reporting dutifully, awaiting our command.

But Tomorrow has its own Master.

What would you have done differently, had yesterday been your last day?

Premise 2 allows that we know today is our last day, that we have already contemplated our last tomorrow.  Finis.

How might you live differently today, knowing tomorrow will go on without you?

God knows our tendency to rely on tomorrow as either our helping hand, our excuse, our hope, if not all three simultaneously at times.

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.'  Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.…" (James 4:13)

We are not guaranteed tomorrow. What we really know is that today is our last chance to make a difference, both in the lives of others, and in our own. And there are realizations to be made before our last tomorrow.

"You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart."  Those are the words of God as spoken by the prophet Jeremiah (29:13). To seek Him with all of our heart is to let go of some things that obscure our view of Him. Like pride.  He is not far from the humble, not far at all. In fact... He's right there.

Jesus said, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (Mt 11:28). Who are the humble among the great collective of humanity? Is it not those who stagger and struggle under the true weight of the human condition. The spiritual condition is the human condition. We labor and struggle under our imperfection.  God is the standard of perfection written on our hearts, which is why we are able to speak in terms of superlatives at all... we innately know they exist, somewhere, in some form and are  grieved by our incompetence at fulfilling them.

Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter into it." (Luke 18:17)  The station of children is one of  vulnerability and inherent lack of authority, which is the human spiritual condition before God. As adults gain status and position, whether in a community or a corporation, in academia or a body politic, they grow more and more detached and insulated from the consequences of social vulnerability - which can serve as a window to our spiritual vulnerability. Eventually they are propped up by the accolades and kudos of the icons of influence in their respective field, making dependence upon God, indeed even recognizing the existence of God, increasingly difficult.

Jesus said in Matthew  7:7 , "Ask and it will be given to you;seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you."  The truths of God await  our discovery, we just need to look.

Today might be a good day to begin.

What is Reality?

If you were to ask random people on the street, 'What is reality?', what answers might you expect?  It is instructive to mull over these expectations, to get your thoughts geared up for  the reality track.

Now, for some sort of baseline, let's go to the dictionary.  Dictionary.com defines reality, in its philosophical context, as:   

(Philosophy)   
a. something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
b. something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.
6.   something that is real.
7.  something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent

Now it is likely that, if you actually were to follow through and do random street interviews, a high percentage of the responses would not be a, b or number 7.  Good chance that number 6, 'something that is real', could surface with some frequency.  Another possible frequent response might be, "does it matter?".  Time will tell.

For me, the real question seems to be, "Is reality real, or is it just a perception that has been formulated, predicted and subsequently projected for retrospective interpretation based upon the combination of inputs from our sensory and neuro-chemical apparati?"  Is Reality an objective or a subjective entity? My premise is that it cannot be both, or contradictions would arise.

In our everyday life, we tend to make use  of some common, generic parameters with which we triangulate a reality. For instance, someone might describe their immediate reality as:  "I am married, have 2 children, a career at Apex industries, college fund started, yearly family summer vacation, member of the garden club and actively engaged in a church family.  I am surrounded by a small  circle of close friends, which is ringed by a larger more distant  set of friendships. My spouse and I plan on raising our kids to become responsible citizens equipped to make good moral choices. They will probably attend college, get married, and at some point we will have some healthy grandchildren to spoil."  

Inherent and unstated elements of reality are, "I live on planet Earth, a small planet in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is one of several hundred billion galaxies known to exist in the universe. Earth is, so far, unique in its ability to support life, and as a higher life form, I am able to contemplate questions such as, 'What is reality?' "  

The scenario outlined above is sort of a middle class American template, and certainly the specifics will deviate from those named above, but probably some similar benchmarks will be entered into the equation defining  our construct of reality. 

When we scrutinize our reality construct, though, we notice some things.  What we attribute as framework in our reality are some very plastic, dynamic elements and characters. This reality is largely defined by and highly dependent upon, relationships.  There is nothing static or fixed about the reality matrix we grow attached to, and yet we begin to embrace it and meld with it as though it is overtly reliable.

And so we strive and labor and pour ourselves into creating a reality that we find decent and nice and secure. We start believing that we can, in fact, generate a reality for ourselves and our loved ones. 

And then we are totally, utterly shocked and derailed when the phone call comes. "Mr. Smith? County Sheriff's Department.... there's been an accident. Can you get to the hospital to identify the body?"  Or when the husband comes home from work one evening and announces to his wife, "I just don't love you anymore. I am moving out. I want a divorce."  Or when the once happy child enters the doldrums of adolescence and finds his salvation in drugs, alcohol, and dismally dark music, until finally he quits  school, happy to mooch off of his parents for food and shelter, but otherwise consumed with disdain for them while  simultaneously engrossed with his own,  rarefied view of reality, and his very significant role in it.  And of course there's always that ridiculous projection of the collective mood of human beings around the globe: the stock market. Who hasn't seen their college fund decimated lately?

So, is reality real? Shouldn't something with as grandiose sounding a name as REALITY be a little more reliable, a little more rock solid and enduring,  underpinned by something other than the capricious moods and whims of both chance and man?    

The first definition from Dictionary.com under the philosophy heading is "something that exists independently of ideas concerning it." So back to our example, the happy marriage, the two children, the college fund and the successful launching of the children into independence suddenly become mere myth, a simple projection of what we desire. Because as we've seen, the happy marriage was in transition, the happy children were in transition, the stock market was in transition. Even money is not real in the sense of possessing any inherent power implied by the number stamped on its face. The practical, inherent value of currency is better assessed by the heat it releases when burned on a cold winter's night.When our reality triangulations predict outcomes which then fail to materialize, disappointment ensues. We are very prone to living our whole lives in the future tense, as though all that we do is an investment in some future outcome which we can make into a reality if we practice due diligence. And yet every single element of what we tend to esteem as reality is hinged upon frail, finite carbon-based life forms possessed of limited knowledge and free will, and eager to execute the latter. 
To recap: Because we believe we can guide our ship toward the shores of particular outcomes, we tend to think of reality in terms of compass points, time and rate of travel. We believe that what we have constructed around us is real, firmly anchored to some unseen bedrock reality, existing with a high probability of persistence, owing in part to our own due diligence. As building blocks of this construct, we point to any of our collection of 'real' things and 'real' relationships, and deploy them into our reality equation.

We have only one assurance in life if this is our view of reality: we are assured of disappointment. We are guaranteed a good measure of dissatisfaction, a hearty meal of sadness, and a life lived in the future tense. We are certain to become entrenched in a lifestyle that precludes us from even inquiring about existential reality because we are laboring in vain to create one of our own design. We weave together a tapestry with threads of fragile hopes and ephemeral dreams, and determine to live our lives upon it. But we are completely unaware that our tapestry is but a flimsy mat of dried grasses and chopped straw, set adrift on the great expanse of sea that is the real Reality, the unchangeable and fixed Reality, whose powerful, unseen impulses and upheavals jar us from time to time, calling to us through the mists of our ignorance, imploring us to lift up our eyes from our frail and fading tapestry and behold the one true vibrant Reality, the Creator, who has said,

“For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s;
on them he has set the world. (1 Samuel 2:8)

And again,

"My own hand laid the foundations of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they all stand up together." (Isaiah 48:13)

That same Creator, the  true Reality, has also said,  

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:7-8) Further He declares:

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”   Deut 31:6

Now there's a Reality to carry the ages. An eternal Reality, a guaranteed outcome, the product of the grace of the God of the universe, who has known those hundreds of billions of galaxies since their inception. And while God has known the galaxies since their inception, He has loved you since the beginning of time itself.

But God didn't stop at just making the promise. He guaranteed it, sealed it with the blood of Christ, who chose to serve humanity, to suffer and die for the sins that would otherwise separate us eternally from God's presence.  Christ's resurrection dealt an absolute defeat to Satan's unmitigated death pillaging.  

Christ says to us, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life."  John 5:24

Reality 1.0.  The first, the last, the one true Reality.

And yes, Reality really does matter.

The Atheist's dilemma, Part 1: The Existence of Evil

Tonight at our small group, we watched another segment in this Timothy Keller DVD series titled The Reason for God . It features Pastor Timothy Keller and 6 or so panelists, each either atheist or agnostic , discussing their difficulties with, or objections to, the notion of God. It has been one of the most thought provoking encounters I have witnessed in quite a long time.

Tonight's topic was the issue of why, if there is a God, does he allow suffering and evil. A common, understandable complaint of atheists and agnostics is the issue of a supposedly good and omnipotent God permitting evil and suffering to exist in the world of His own making.  Keller uses the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus's riddle as a launching point for the session:  “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

The question has merit, but its inherent assumptions change the context of the question, namely, how are the terms 'evil' and 'suffering' being defined? Definitions are needed to set some parameters by which we evaluate this dilemma. Looking first at evil, we ask, "What is evil, and is evil personal or impersonal"?

In the Judeo-Christian framework, evil and good are personal, and they are attributes of existent beings. God is the creator of the cosmos and all contained therein. God is also the source of every good and perfect thing. Lucifer transformed himself into Satan by executing the Free Will Option against the good and perfect decrees of God. Evil precipitates in the toxic environment of disregard for God's decrees, and a free will is the only environment in which evil can exist; i.e. it cannot exist in a cow or a rock or a sofa or a painting, but only in the heart of man.

Without the heart of man in which to dwell, evil would have no residence on earth. Humans tend to look at one or two major human ills as aberrant and evil, such as murder, child rape, and torture, and in so doing, we keep the degree of separation between us and God rather small. But when we examine what God has declared to be unacceptable, i.e. evil in His sight, it quickly becomes clear that the degree of separation between ourselves and the Holy God of the bible is vast indeed. Evil is a choice made by the human will in opposition to the decrees of God, which are inherently good (God is incapable of making evil decrees.) Without the heart of man in which to be conceived, evil would have no home on earth, and in order for God to rid the world of evil He would need to rid the world of mankind.

So be careful what you wish for.