Answering the Big Questions of Life

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/bigquest.html ^ | Sue Bohlin

[DittoJed2]

Answering the Big Questions of Life

Sue Bohlin

Sue Bohlin is an associate speaker with Probe Ministries. She attended the University of Illinois, and has been a Bible teacher and conference speaker for over 25 years. She serves as a Mentoring Mom for MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers), and on the board of Living Hope Ministries, a Christ-centered outreach to those wanting to leave homosexuality. She is also a professional calligrapher and the webservant for Probe Ministries; but most importantly, she is the wife of Dr. Ray Bohlin and the mother of their two college-age sons.

One of the most important aspects of Probe's "Mind Games" conference is teaching students to recognize the three major world views--Naturalism, Pantheism, and Theism--and the impact they have both on the surrounding culture as well as on the ideas the students will face at the university. Because we come from an unapologetically Christian world view, I will be presenting the ideas of Christian theism, even though Judaism and Islam are both theistic as well.
In this essay I'll be examining five of the biggest questions of life, and how each of the world views answers them:

Why is there something rather than nothing?
How do you explain human nature?
What happens to a person at death?
How do you determine right and wrong?
How do you know that you know?(1) Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

The most basic question of life may well be, Why is there something rather than nothing? Why am I here? Why is anything here at all?
 
Even Maria Von Trapp in the movie The Sound of Music knew the answer to this one. When she and the Captain are singing their love to each other in the gazebo, she croons, "Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could."
But naturalism, the belief that says there is no reality beyond the physical universe, offers two answers to this basic question. Until a few years ago, the hopeful wish of naturalism was that matter is eternal: the universe has always existed, and always will. There's no point to asking "why" because the universe simply is. End of discussion. Unfortunately for naturalism, the evidence that has come from our studies of astronomy makes it clear that the universe is unwinding, in a sense, and at one point it was tightly wound up. The evidence says that at some point in the past there was a beginning, and matter is most definitely not eternal. That's a major problem for a naturalist, who believes that everything that now is, came from nothing. First there was nothing, then there was something, but nothing caused the something to come into existence. Huh?
Pantheism is the belief that everything is part of one great "oneness." It comes from two Greek words, pan meaning "everything," and theos meaning "God." Pantheism says that all is one, all is god, and therefore we are one with the universe; we are god. We are part of that impersonal divinity that makes up the universe. In answering the question, Why is there something rather than nothing, pantheism says that everything had an impersonal beginning. The universe itself has an intelligence that brought itself into being. The "something" that exists is simply how energy expresses itself. If you've seen the Star Wars movies, you've seen the ideas of pantheism depicted in that impersonal energy field, "The Force." Since the beginning of the universe had an impersonal origin, the question of "why" gets sidestepped. Like naturalism, pantheism basically says, "We don't have a good answer to that question, so we won't think about it."
Christian Theism is the belief that God is a personal, transcendent Creator of the universe--and of us. This world view showed up on a T-shirt I saw recently:
"There are two things in life you can be sure of.
There is a God.
You are not Him." Christian Theism answers the question, Why is there something rather than nothing, by confidently asserting that first there was God and nothing else, then He created the universe by simply speaking it into existence. The Bible's opening sentence is an answer to this most basic of questions: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." How Do You Explain Human Nature?


Another one of the big questions of life is, How do you explain human nature? Why do human beings act the way we do? What it really boils down to is, Why am I so good and you're so bad?
During World War II, a young Jewish teenager kept a journal during the years she and her family hid from the Nazis in a secret apartment in a house in Amsterdam. Anne Frank's diary poignantly explored the way she tried to decide if people were basically good or basically evil. Acts of kindness and blessing seemed to indicate people were basically good; but then the next day, Anne would learn of yet another barbarous act of depravity and torture, and she would think that perhaps people were basically bad after all. After reading her diary, I remember carrying on the quest for an answer in my own mind, and not finding it until I trusted Christ and learned what His Word had to say about it.

Naturalism says that humans are nothing more than evolved social animals. There is nothing that truly separates us from the other animals, so all our behavior can be explained in terms of doing what helps us to survive and reproduce. Your only purpose in life, naturalism says, is to make babies. And failing that, to help those who share your genes to make babies. Kind of makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning, doesn't it?

Another answer from naturalism is that we are born as blank slates, and we become whatever is written on those slates. You might mix in some genetic factors, in which case human nature is nothing more than a product of our genes and our environment.
Pantheism explains human nature by saying we're all a part of god, but our problem is that we forget we're god. We just need to be re- educated and start living like the god we are. Our human nature will be enhanced by attaining what pantheists call "cosmic consciousness." According to New Age thought, the problem with humans is that we suffer from a collective form of metaphysical amnesia. We just need to wake up and remember we're god. When people are bad, (which is one result of forgetting you're god), pantheism says that they'll pay for it in the next life when they are reincarnated as something less spiritually evolved than their present life. I had a Buddhist friend who refused to kill insects in her house because she said they had been bad in their previous lives and had to come back as bugs, and it wasn't her place to prematurely mess up their karma.

The Christian world view gives the most satisfying answer to the question, How do you explain human nature? The Bible teaches that God created us to be His image-bearers, which makes us distinct from the entire rest of creation. But when Adam and Eve chose to rebel in disobedience, their fall into sin distorted and marred the sacred Image. The fact that we are created in God's image explains the noble, creative, positive things we can do; the fact that we are sinners who love to disobey and rebel against God's rightful place as King of our lives explains our wicked, destructive, negative behavior. It makes sense that this biblical view of human nature reveals the reasons why mankind is capable of producing both Mother Teresa and the holocaust.What Happens after Death?

In the movie Flatliners, medical students took turns stopping each other's hearts to give them a chance to experience what happens after death. After a few minutes, they resuscitated the metaphysical traveller who told the others what he or she saw. The reason for pursuing such a dangerous experiment was explained by the med student who thought it up in the first place: "What happens after death? Mankind deserves an answer. Philosophy failed; religion failed. Now it's up to the physical sciences."
Well, maybe religion failed, but the Lord Jesus didn't. But first, let's address how naturalism answers this question.
Because this world view says that there is nothing outside of space, time and energy, naturalism insists that death brings the extinction of personality and the disorganization of matter. Things just stop living and start decomposing. Or, as my brother said when he was in his atheist phase, "When you die, you're like a dog by the side of the road. You're dead, and that's it." To the naturalist, there is no life after death. The body recycles back to the earth and the mental and emotional energies that comprised the person disintegrate forever.

Pantheism teaches reincarnation, the belief that all of life is an endless cycle of birth and death. After death, each person is reborn as someone, or something, else. Your reincarnated persona in the next life depends on how you live during this one. This is the concept of karma, which is the law of cause and effect in life. If you make evil or foolish choices, you will have to work off that bad karma by being reborn as something like a rat or a cow. If you're really bad, you might come back as a termite. But if you're good, you'll come back as someone who can be wonderful and powerful. New Age followers sometimes undergo something they call "past lives therapy," which regresses them back beyond this life, beyond birth, and into previous lives. I think it's interesting that people always seem to have been someone glamorous like Cleopatra and never someone like a garbage collector or an executioner!

Christian Theism handles the question, What happens to a person at death, with such a plain, no-nonsense answer that people have been stumbling over it for millenia. Death is a gateway that either whisks a person to eternal bliss with God or takes him straight to a horrible place of eternal separation from God. What determines whether one goes to heaven or hell is the way we respond to the light God gives us concerning His Son, Jesus Christ. When we confess that we are sinners in need of mercy we don't deserve, and trust the Lord Jesus to save us from not only our sin but the wrath that sin brings to us, He comes to live inside us and take us to heaven to be with Him forever when we die. When we remain in rebellion against God, either actively disobeying Him or passively ignoring Him, the consequences of our sin remain on us and God allows us to keep them for all eternity--but separated from Him and all life and hope. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). But it is a delightful thing to fall into the arms of the Lover of your soul, Who has gone on ahead to prepare a place for you! Which will you choose?How Do You Determine Right and Wrong?

One of the big questions in life is, How do you determine right and wrong? Steven Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show one day. He asked the studio audience to close their eyes and point north. When they opened their eyes, there were several hundred arms pointing in wildly different directions. Then Mr. Covey pulled out a compass and said, "This is how we know which way is north. You can't know from within yourself." He used a powerful object lesson to illustrate the way Christian theism answers this big question in life.

Naturalism says that there is no absolute outside of ourselves. There is no final authority because space, time and energy are all that is. There is no such thing as right and wrong because there is no right- and wrong-giver. So naturalism tries to deal with the question of ethics by providing several unsatisfying answers. One is the belief that there is no free choice, that all our behaviors and beliefs are driven by our genes. We are just as determined in our behavior as the smallest animals or insects. Another is the belief that moral values are determined from what is; the way things are is the way they ought to be. If you are being abused by your husband, that's the way things are, so that's the way they ought to be. Even worse is the concept of arbitrary ethics: might makes right. Bullies get to decide the way things ought to be because they're stronger and meaner than everybody else. That's what happens in totalitarian regimes; the people with the power decide what's right and what's wrong.

Pantheism says that there is no such thing as ultimate right and wrong because everything is part of a great undifferentiated whole where right and wrong, good and evil, are all part of the oneness of the universe. Remember "Star Wars"? The Force was both good and evil at the same time. Pantheism denies one of the basic rules of philosophy, which is that two opposite things cannot both be true at the same time. Because Pantheism denies that there are absolutes, things which are true all the time, it holds that all right and wrong is relative. Right and wrong are determined by cultures and situations. So murdering one's unborn baby might be right for one person and wrong for another.

Theism says that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and absolute right and wrong. We can know this because this information has come to us from a transcendent source outside of ourselves and outside of our world. Christian Theism says that the God who created us has also communicated certain truths to us. He communicated generally, through His creation, and He communicated specifically and understandably through His Word, the Bible. We call this revelation. Christian Theism says that absolute truth is rooted in God Himself, who is an Absolute; He is Truth. As Creator, He has the right to tell us the difference between right and wrong, and He has taken great care to communicate this to us.

That's why Steven Covey's illustration was so powerful. When he pulled out a compass, he showed that we need a transcendent source of information, something outside ourselves and which is fixed and constant, to show us the moral equivalent of "North." We are creatures created to be dependent on our Creator for the information we need to live life right. God has given us a compass in revelation.How Do You Know That You Know?

This question generally doesn't come up around the cafeteria lunch table at work, and even the most inquisitive toddler usually won't ask it, but it's an important question nonetheless: How do you know that you know?
There's a great scene in the movie Terminator 2 where the young boy that the cyborg terminator has been sent to protect, is threatened by a couple of hoodlums. The terminator is about to blow one away when the young boy cries out, "You can't do that!" The terminator--Arnold Schwarzenegger--asks, "Why not?" "You just can't go around killing people!" the boy protests. "Why not?" "Take my word for it," the boy says. "You just can't." He knew that it was wrong to kill another human being, but he didn't know how he knew. There are a lot of people in our culture like that!

Naturalism, believing that there is nothing beyond space, time and energy, would answer the question by pointing to the human mind. Rational thought--iguring things out deductively--is one prime way we gain knowledge. Human reason is a good enough method to find out what we need to know. The mind is the center of our source of knowledge. Another way to knowledge is by accumulating hard scientific data of observable and measurable experience. This view says that the source of our knowledge is found in the senses. We know what we can perceive through what we can measure. Since naturalism denies any supernaturalism (anything above or outside of the natural world), what the human mind can reason and measure is the only standard for gaining knowledge.

Pantheism would agree with this assessment of how we know that we know. Followers of pantheism tend to put a lot of value on personal experience. The rash of near- and after-death experiences in the past few years, for example, are extremely important to New Agers. These experiences usually validate the preconceptions of pantheistic thought, which denies absolutes such as the Christian tenet that Jesus is the only way to God. The experiences of past- lives therapy have persuaded even some Christians to believe in reincarnation, even though the Bible explicitly denies that doctrine, because personal experience is often considered the most valid way to know reality.

Christian Theism says that while human reason and perception are legitimate ways to gain knowledge, we cannot depend on these methods alone because they're not enough. Some information needs to be given to us from outside the system. An outside Revealer provides information we can't get any other way. Revelation--revealed truth from the One who knows everything--is another, not only legitimate but necessary way to know some important things. Revelation is how we know what happened when the earth, the universe and man were created. Revelation is how we know what God wants us to do and be. Revelation is how we can know how the world will end and what heaven is like. Revelation in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way we can experience "God with skin on."

Naturalism's answers are inadequate, depressing, and wrong; pantheism's answers are slippery, don't square with reality, and wrong; but Christian theism--the Christian world view--is full of hope, consistent with reality, and it resonates in our souls that it's very, very right.
Notes
1. These questions are taken from James W. Sire's book The Universe Next Door (Downers Grove, Ill.:InterVarsity Press), 1977.

[DittoJed2]

Goodnight Mr. Paine. Not taking that bait tonight.

[tpaine]

Tough to hook bottom feeders. Best to net them.

[AndrewC]

You guys are great at backslapping, but short on the logic of defining actions.

Yep, the red preceding statement looks like an assertion to me.

[OWK]

That may be good and well from a personal standpoint, but it is a question that most folks need an answer to.

The want of an answer, is not sufficient grounds to just make one up. I am content with "I don't know".

Evolution/Atheism, by removing the Creator from the course of events has ended up with a huge Creator-sized hole in their theory that none of their naturalistic explanations can touch.

The theory of evolution does not propose an answer to the question of the origins of the universe. Only the progressive development of species, suggesting natural selection as a model, and random mutation as an engine.

You don't get something from nothing in the natural world at all. Even if there are protons, those are SOMETHING.

I'd agree. You don't get something from nothing.

And anything complex requires a creator.

So who created the creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

I think you get the point.

You object to simplistic explanations of "something from nothing", so long as no one applies them to your Giant Invisible Bearded Guy.

For what it's worth... I find all scientific explanations of the origins of the known universe to be remarkably unsatisfying. But that doesn't mean I find assertions that it was created by a Giant Magical guy who gets really peeved if you do not properly genuflect and grovel before him, any more satisfying.

Demands for groveling and genuflecting sound to me like the worst traits of a man, and not the best traits of a God.

And the personal coming from impersonal matter?

I find the question of "nothingness to matter" to be as yet unanswered.

I don't find the question of "matter to man" all the puzzling.

And the idea of an objective basis for morality?

Not at all puzzling.

Sad point of view.

There is nothing sad at all about the fact that you will serve to nourish microbes after your death. The fact that you wish for, or even yearn for a magical mystery place for you to go after you die, where the floor is made of fluffy marshmallows, and butterflies are everywhere, and everyone is perfect... won't make it so. It is a wonderful fantasy, and these fantasies bring comfort to many... but fantasies they are.

It isn't objective.

Yes, it is.

It may be rationally derived, but it is derived from human beings preference and opinion- subjective elements which vary from person to person, group to group. As such, morality changes as society changes. There is no stable objective moral code in atheism.

The axioms (foundational truths) upon which I established the aforementioned moral code, do not "vary from person to person". That is what makes them axioms.

And I find it equally curious, that you assert your God as the source of the only one true and "objective" moral code, even while the guy halfway round the world asserts some Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed God as the source of the only one and true "objective" moral code.

And yet the codes are different.

And the only thing separating your advocacy of a Giant Cloud Walking Bearded Guy as the author of the only one and true morality, instead of a Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed guy as the author of the only one and true morality, is the fact that you happened to be born here, instead of there.

Had you been born elsewhere, you'd even now be attmepting to convince me of the truth of some other God.

And what is reality?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested by observation. As such, reality does not include Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guys, and Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creatures.

How do you test what reality is in order to know that reality is "real"?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested and its existed demonstrated by observation. An entity for which existence can be demonstrated, is real. An entity for which existence cannot be proven, does not qualify for recognition as "real". An entity whose very nature (God for example) is asserted to exist outside the domain of our ability to test (Magical Heaven for example) is arbitrary.

[betty boop]

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested by observation. As such, reality does not include Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guys, and Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creatures.

Hello OWK! How do we explain the reality, universally expressed over millennia, of the human search for Truth? And the equally universal character of that search as a seeking for an ultimate cause that is not contained in or constrained by what we are pleased to call space-time “reality?”

What we might call the human instinct has throughout history sought the ground of human existence and the human condition in an extra-mundane source. The search itself is amply attested to by the historical record. The name that man everywhere regardless of specific culture has given to this ultimate source and ordering principle is God, or the gods. This is an historical fact. As such, it is “real.”

The point is not, as you rather contemptuously put it, whether this God or gods is a “Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guy,” the pantheon of the Olympians, the Great Spirit, or a “Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creature.” The point is that human beings seemingly quite “naturally” have a conception of the divine, extramundane source of the universe and its order that historically has been expressed in different human languages and myths. Yet the several descriptions all refer to the same thing – the God or gods who are not “in” the world of existence. That is a real fact, too.

Further, how do we explain the absolute universality of the idea of the soul? All human historical cultures have recognized the existence of the soul. And all human cultures have recognized the post-existence of the soul, for the human insight has ever been that the soul is immortal. Therefore, after death, it must “go somewhere.” That somewhere has been variously called Heaven, Hades, the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blessed, et al. Or as the Eastern traditions hold, it could be the soul’s post-death destiny is to reenter human or animal existence via reincarnation or transmigration.

The point is, different cultures have different concepts of the destiny of the soul, but all cultures agree that there is a soul, it is immortal, and it has a post-death destiny.

Again, this is an historical fact – i.e., one “tested by observation” and found to be “real.”

Now you want to say that something like 40,000 years of universal human experience and cultural effort has been devoted to the development and maintenance of what you are pleased to call fantasies.

Who is being irrational here – the theist, or the atheist?

For your fantasy interpretation to be correct, then the entire human race has been hopelessly misguided and misdirected for the entire time the species has been here on earth. Only now – only over the past slender piece of historical time going back maybe something like 200 years – only now the human race is finally getting these questions “right” by saying that man has been misguided or delusional over all historical time, because in fact there is no God and no soul? How will you “prove” that supposed fact, OWK?

If the human race has been hopelessly misguided and misdirected by such fantasies on such a vast scale, with such intense energies invested in such fantasies over the vastness of historical time, might your so-called “fantasies” have survival value for the human species?

If not, why would Nature allow man to continue to select for survival fitness using such worthless strategies?

[DittoJed2]

That may be good and well from a personal standpoint, but it is a question that most folks need an answer to.

The want of an answer, is not sufficient grounds to just make one up. I am content with "I don't know".
Hasn't stopped science (i.e., panspermia)

Evolution/Atheism, by removing the Creator from the course of events has ended up with a huge Creator-sized hole in their theory that none of their naturalistic explanations can touch.

The theory of evolution does not propose an answer to the question of the origins of the universe. Only the progressive development of species, suggesting natural selection as a model, and random mutation as an engine.

So you are suggesting that the BIG BANG is not in any way tied to Evolution (billions & billions of years ago, nothing exploded and made soup!)

You don't get something from nothing in the natural world at all. Even if there are protons, those are SOMETHING.

I'd agree. You don't get something from nothing.

A lot of evolutionists (including on these boards) will not say that. They somehow believe that matter ALWAYS existed.

And anything complex requires a creator.

So who created the creator?
The Creator wasn't created, and He is both inside and outside of the natural world. He isn't subject to the laws of the natural world, though He created them. The facts are, in this natural world, we do not see anything that is uncaused in some aspect. Millions of us believe that God was the uncaused cause of everything else. It explains things far better than in the beginning nothing exploded, and it became something, and it rained on that something for millions of years and made soup and out of that soup came complex personal human beings (after millions of years of gradual evolving).

And who created the creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

I think you get the point.
I know what your point is, I just disagree with its premise. God wasn't created. He always was. He can do that because He is beyond the current natural world, and beyond time. It's hard for us to comprehend but that doesn't make it untrue.

You object to simplistic explanations of "something from nothing", so long as no one applies them to your Giant Invisible Bearded Guy.
Continually referring to the Almighty God of the Universe as the "Giant Invisible Bearded Guy" is trollish behavior. Why can't you just discuss the issue without resorting to insulting the God that many of us worship? He is holy, righteous, awesome, just, and mighty. He isn't some "Giant invisible bearded guy", and I refuse beyond this warning to acknowledge your description of Him as being God until you show some proper respect (if not for God, at least for the posters who love Him).

For what it's worth... I find all scientific explanations of the origins of the known universe to be remarkably unsatisfying. But that doesn't mean I find assertions that it was created by a Giant Magical guy who gets really peeved if you do not properly genuflect and grovel before him, any more satisfying.

Demands for groveling and genuflecting sound to me like the worst traits of a man, and not the best traits of a God.
My God doesn't make such demands, only your characture of God (or Monty Python's). I'm also protestant, so we dont genuflect. If you choose to not worship Him and reject your one way out of Hell which He provided for you out of love, and want to live eternity without Him, He will oblige you.

And the personal coming from impersonal matter?

I find the question of "nothingness to matter" to be as yet unanswered.

I don't find the question of "matter to man" all the puzzling.
At least that's an honest answer without insultes. Matter to man, however, is full of problems for where do you have something that doesn't have the personal information in it needed to make a person suddenly becoming personal? I mean, humans develop from cells that include DNA that is specifically designed to create human beings. You are never going to get some weird malfunction with say the cells in a rock and poof get anything resembling a human being (or even human DNA). Sad point of view.

There is nothing sad at all about the fact that you will serve to nourish microbes after your death. The fact that you wish for, or even yearn for a magical mystery place for you to go after you die, where the floor is made of fluffy marshmallows, and butterflies are everywhere, and everyone is perfect... won't make it so. It is a wonderful fantasy, and these fantasies bring comfort to many... but fantasies they are.
Please stop presenting a condescending characture of the religious views of others. Second, how can you prove they are fantasies? That is an assertion that you can't prove. You can say, I believe you are dreaming or whatever, but that doesn't make it so.

It isn't objective.

Yes, it is.
Nope. Sorry. You have subjective foundational principles. Subjective principles, no matter how many "subjective" folks make up those principles, do not beget objective truth.

It may be rationally derived, but it is derived from human beings preference and opinion- subjective elements which vary from person to person, group to group. As such, morality changes as society changes. There is no stable objective moral code in atheism.

The axioms (foundational truths) upon which I established the aforementioned moral code, do not "vary from person to person". That is what makes them axioms.

Spell out some of these axioms that don't vary from person to person.

And I find it equally curious, that you assert your God as the source of the only one true and "objective" moral code, even while the guy halfway round the world asserts some Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed God as the source of the only one and true "objective" moral code.

I'll put my God against a Hindu god any day in a test for truth, livabability, coherence, etc.,



And yet the codes are different.

And the only thing separating your advocacy of a Giant Cloud Walking Bearded Guy as the author of the only one and true morality, instead of a Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed guy as the author of the only one and true morality, is the fact that you happened to be born here, instead of there.

Had you been born elsewhere, you'd even now be attmepting to convince me of the truth of some other God.

Don't you see how you just contradicted yourself. You just stated that there is some overarching moral code that does not vary person to person and then you gave examples of how human beings moral codes can vary from person to person. Better think on that one OWK.

And what is reality?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested by observation. As such, reality does not include Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guys, and Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creatures.


Did you personally observe Napoleon fighting for the French? Darwin at the Gallapogos? The creation of the earth? You may say, well I see the effect of what they did and their written record bodes true with what I observe- but Christians say the same thing. We may not have actually seen God created the Heavens and the Earth, but we see the effect of His creation. We see it in morality. We see it in the complexity of life. We see it in the tiny palms of a baby. We see it in miracles that occur in people lives (like my dear friend's brother who had been fighting cancer for years and was finally given 2 to 3 weeks to live in March. This after Medical science had done absolutely EVERYTHING [including stem cell transplants] to help him, but then said all they could do was make him comfortable. He went to church within the past week or so. He's in remission. Science gave up. God did not). And what we see and observe meets with God's description of reality. And yet, we are called irrational, dreamers who worship some characture of a person who walks on marshmallow clouds.

How do you test what reality is in order to know that reality is "real"?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested and its existed demonstrated by observation. An entity for which existence can be demonstrated, is real. An entity for which existence cannot be proven, does not qualify for recognition as "real". An entity whose very nature (God for example) is asserted to exist outside the domain of our ability to test (Magical Heaven for example) is arbitrary.

Okay, so in other words, if man can't know it, it must not exist. It's imaginary. If there is no way for man's technology to say it exists, it must not exist. Yep, science has become religion to some with the scientists as the gods. If they don't say it exists, it doesn't. Seems to lack humility in the extreme.

[tpaine]

How do we explain the reality, universally expressed over millennia, of the human search for Truth?

Why do you feel it needs explaining as being unreal? Thats a 'tar baby' accusation, betty..
Our search for truth is real.

And the equally universal character of that search as a seeking for an ultimate cause that is not contained in or constrained by what we are pleased to call space-time "reality?"

That's your vision betty, not a universal one.

What we might call the human instinct has throughout history sought the ground of human existence and the human condition in an extra-mundane source.

Extra-mundane? Nope. You may search for the mystical, betty. -- I don't.

The search itself is amply attested to by the historical record. The name that man everywhere regardless of specific culture has given to this ultimate source and ordering principle is God, or the gods.
This is an historical fact. As such, it is "real."

The historical facts also point to a search for truth in science.. It is just as real as your search is betty.

______________________________________

The point is, different cultures have different concepts of the destiny of the soul, but all cultures agree that there is a soul, it is immortal, and it has a post-death destiny.

Again, you are simply insisting that your view is historical fact, – one "tested by observation" and found to be "real."
You are wrong. There is no documented consensus of belief in a soul.
Probably, the only real cultural moral consensus is the existance of a 'golden rule' type rationality.

[OWK]

Okay, so in other words, if man can't know it, it must not exist. It's imaginary.

That isn't what I said.

I said that if man can't know it, he cannot claim it as knowledge. (i.e., he cannot recognize it as real). He may theorize about it. He may introduce conjecture. But he cannot recognize it as real.

You may assert your theory of God, and get in line with all the rest of the theories for evaluation.

If there is no way for man's technology to say it exists, it must not exist.

I said nothing of the kind.

I said (and I repeat) that if man may not test a premise against reality objectively, he cannot claim it as knowledge.

Yep, science has become religion to some with the scientists as the gods. If they don't say it exists, it doesn't.

If it cannot be tested and demonstrated, then it may not be claimed as knowledge.

And if what is asserted, is claimed to be beyond the ability to test, then the assertion has no standing. It is arbitrary. I might assert for example, that Mxyplith the Intergalactic Overlord exists, but that he exists outside our ability to test.

Such an assertion would have every bit as much standing as assertions of the existence of God.

They are both arbitrary.

Seems to lack humility in the extreme.

Humility?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the heads up to this discussion!

These conversations are difficult for me precisely because I cannot think of the One I’ve known for about 44 years as hypothetical.

He has made me to be completely different from what I was before I knew Him. I am in Him and He is in me – all the time. I feel His presence continually.

When my eyes read the Bible, the Spirit within me reads the Word. He has answered my prayers faithfully and miraculously. He has brought me through astonishing trials.

I understand things that I shouldn’t be able to understand. When worshipping, I’m lifted up where time, space, proportion have no meaning. I feel His love viscerally and in so great an abundance I cannot contain it.

He has made me so sensitive in the Spirit, that both when my sister and my mother graduated from the mortal realm, I felt them go through me and was given to understand their great joy and peace.

So how could I speak of Him in the abstract? Why would I want to put Him to any test?

To the contrary, I watch the advances in math and science and marvel at the gyrations to deny the obvious. Here's more on my thoughts for any Lurker who may be interested:

Evolution through the Back Door

Origins and Scriptures

[AndrewC]

There is no documented consensus of belief in a soul.

Of course there is.

Neanderthal Burial Site

Neanderthal people bury a young man, along with stone tools and bear meat, in this life-sized diorama based on a 70,000-year-old site in France. The placement of tools and food along with the deceased suggests that these people believed in life after death.

[tpaine]

Gee A-Gal, I also watch the advances in math and science and marvel at the gyrations of some to deny the obvious truths of our real world.

So it goes, - aye?

[tpaine]

"The placement of tools and food along with the deceased suggests that these people believed in life after death."


"Suggests" --- I suggest it does not prove a consensus.

[AndrewC]

"Suggests" --- I suggest it does not prove a consensus.

I also watch the advances in math and science and marvel at the gyrations of some to deny the obvious truths of our real world.

[AndrewC]

BTW, "prove" does not equal "documented".

[OWK]

Nor would demonstration of a universal consensus do anything to validate the veracity of a given untestable assertion.

Mxylplith the Intergalactic Overlord would remain arbitrary, untestable, and unknowable, whether everyone believed in him or not.

[betty boop]

Our search for truth is real.

Well then tell me, tpaine, where are you looking for it? It seems clear you haven't consulted human history, culture, or the arts, where the record of the search is amazingly well-documented, and where invaluable insights can be found.

So where are you looking for truth? And how will you know when you've found it?

[OWK]

It seems clear you haven't consulted human history, culture, or the arts, where the record of the search is amazingly well-documented, and where invaluable insights can be found.

Human history, culture, and the arts produce evidence for worship of everything from the Sun, to sacred insects, to volcanos, mountains, wind, weather, trees, and all manner of imaginary hobgoblins.

Why are you willing to dismiss those invaluable insights?

So where are you looking for truth? And how will you know when you've found it?

When it can be tested and verified.

[AndrewC]

I am humored by the arguments. First, there is no consensus. Then, it is not proven. Finally, even if it were a "proven" consensus it doesn't matter since it can't be tested. But it will be tested.

[DittoJed2]

I said (and I repeat) that if man may not test a premise against reality objectively, he cannot claim it as knowledge.
Look at the comments of Tpaine above. AndrewC said that the presence of tools by the Neanderthal grave site suggests that they believed in the afterlife. Tpaine seems to want to interpret the evidence differently. Can AndrewC not claim a certain knowledge since Tpaine subjectively interprets the evidence differently? Let's get a little closer to home. Evolutionary scientists say that the similarity of genetics between a chimpanzee and a human suggests that a human evolved from the chimpanzee. Creationists say that it suggests the same designer. Others may say that it suggests that the chimpanzee evolved from the human being. Who is able to claim knowledge here? It's all subjective in this regard. Nobody has seen a monkey turning into a man, and the few sparse examples of what scientists claim are transitional species are from incontrovertable. Could it be that the entire evolutionary hypothesis is merely human subjectivism in one of its many interpretations? It's taught as a fact. Yet, it hasn't been observable in a laboratory or objectively observed in real life. So is it arbitrary? Science can not take a blank cell and make it evolve into anything close to a personal creature. If something becomes personal, personal material has to be added to
that cell. It doesn't just naturally form. They can take human cells and inject them into cow eggs, but that is adding information to the egg. Nothing, I don't care how many zillions of years you would have, would ever have a cow eventually walk upright , lose its udders, and become a human being. It doesn't have the genetic material to do so. Likewise with chimps, in spite of some genetic similarity (we are genetically similar to cabbage as well, but it isn't our ancestor), they do not have the genetic information within them for macro-evolution to occur. They are chimps. They will always be chimps or some varient species of chimp. Micro-evolution may occur, but not macro and macro has never been seen or demonstrated to be true in a laboratory (types of lily are still types of lily, apes are still apes, humans are still humans). Yet, it is claimed as knowledge.

[tpaine]

There is no documented ~consensus~ of belief in a soul.

There is documented evidence of belief in a soul.
-tpaine-


BTW, "prove" does not equal "documented".
-andyc-

Typically inane idiocy. Never said it did.