Proving God's Existence Absolutely: Our Modern Desire for Certainty

Recently, a lot of talk has been swirling around a series of debates between atheists and theists (mostly Christians) and between supporters of Intelligent Design (mostly protestant Christians as well) and its detractors?

On ABC, the 1990s TV star Kirk Cameron and author and preacher Ray Comfort debated two members of the Rational Response Squad, a group of atheists that try to persuade people to denounce theism.

There has also been talk surrounding proponents and opponents of ID. You can see examples on blogs and on campus news papers and so on.

Supporters of ID and evangelical theists arguing in favor of God, are struggling to wear the mantel of "science" as a way of legitimating their claims. In our time, in large part, "science" is the arbiter of truth. So everybody wants a piece of "science." Just listen to pastor Comfort on ABC. He states the point clearly in his opening remarks when he disagrees with those that say God's existence can't be proven (namely, he seems to be referring to the atheists he opposes on the stage):

I believe God's existence can be proven absolutely, scientifically without even mentioning faith.

What is interesting here is the commonsense belief that "science" is the arbiter of truth. The mantel of "science" can prove God, as the theists see it. And as the atheists argue it, "science" shows that evolution and life can form without God and that God is an irrational and superfluous idea.

There is a similar reliance on "science" to determine legitimacy and truth in our age when it comes to the struggle surrounding ID and its opponents. Opponents are generally supporters of "science"--often they are biologists, chemists, anthropologists etc (or other people in positions with something at stake in the debate) at universities. More significantly, ID proponents also want a piece of "science." They desire the legitimacy the mantel carries. To call ID "science" is to see it as a legitimate way of finding the truth of the matter. To call ID "science" is to hoist it up onto the symbolic platform that "evolution" rests. (A platform, one might add as an aside, that ID supporters are directly challenging by referring to it as "just a theory" and so on.) It is to give ID social significance and weight--I mean, ID would be "science" after all.

It seems that the aim of many ID proponents and evangelical theists is to fashion God into a rationally explicable phenomenon. From the evangelical perspective, I get the feeling that putting God in terms of "science" is seen as an effective way to spread the Good News. That God can be explained by "science" is a symbolic weapon that is strategically valuable for evangelicals. That God can be explained by "science" and isn't just "irrational" and "backward" beliefs is seen a leverage point, particularly among more educated communities. But at the same time, the desire to fashion God into an explicable being is implicitly a reaction to the dominance/prominence of the claims that faith is "irrational" in the first place.

If the "rationality" or "irrationality" of faith is not of significance to you, then its probably the case that being able to explain God with "science" is not all that important either. To some people, God is ultimately an ineffable experience. God is bigger than "science," they might say.

In these debates between atheists and theists, supporters of ID and opponents of the way of thinking, we are seeing a clash between foundationalisms--scientific realism and religious fundamentalism. But one foundationalism is politically, socially and economically weaker than the other. The foundationalism rooted in Scripture is weaker than the foundationalism rooted in the Laws of Reality. For many, Scripture may well be able to account for "science" and account for the features of Reality like the "circular" shape of the earth (as Comfort said), but in the everyday arena, "science" is used to justify God. Implicitly, then, Scripture is incomplete if it alone cannot explain God. In some sense, "science" is a contemporary crutch, a modern foundation on which Scripture can rest.

Pull them apart. These are two different areas of culture that fulfill different desires. One enables us to control and predict the world of things. The other enables us to hope and love bigger and bolder and to go beyond the merely possible.

Balls, Strikes, and Worldviews

After a game of baseball, three umpires were having a beer.

One says, "There's balls and there's strikes and I call 'em the way they are."

Another says, "There's balls and there's strikes and I call 'em the way I see 'em."

A third says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and they ain't nothin' until I call 'em."

Let's look a bit closer at these three different responses for a moment.

One might be referred to as a naive realist. The World Is The Way It Is and he's just trying to match unproblematic words to the things he's seeing out there happening before his eyes.

The second guy might be called a critical realist in that The World Is the Way It Is, but he understands that his seeing the world is perspectival.

The third guy might be called a postmodernist insofar as he understands that the world of things is meaningless until he invests it with significance by naming "strikes" and "balls" and telling a story about who "won" and "lost."

While guys one and two differ by degree, guy three differs in kind from one and two. The difference hinges on epistemology. Words don't simply correspond to things out there in the world, they invest the world with meaning and symbolism.

Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult

A fantastic quote from Michel Foucault, "Practicing Criticism."

A Critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest....

Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gesture difficult.

Relating to Postmodernism: A Rough Typology of Evangelical Positions

I'm going to risk making a typology of relations between evangelicals and "postmodernism." It is not meant to represent a fixed and forever stable arrangement, but a way to help us organize our thinking about the topic and more clearly see where people stand. The borders between types are porous and continually under revision, to be sure.

I suggest that three relations between evangelicals and postmodernism can be made out from the ongoing conversations. Each relation is multidimensional. They consist of at least a value judgement (postmodernism is good or bad, inferior or superior) and a movement (a move toward embracing postmodernism, a move away from postmodernism).*

1) Some Evangelicals reject postmodernism as making no sense and they consider it dangerous to their faith.

In a review of a certain book, one evangelical put it this way:

It is a helpful warning about the dangers of postmodernism. But this explicit warning has a subtext not intended by the writers. This subtext is an urgent cautionary reminder of the dangerous direction that the evangelical movement has taken.

Or a critical blogger's view on the matter. In this quote, he questions the evangelical and conservative credentials of an author known to be linked to the Emerging Church movement:

Here’s a bit more information for you concerning Dan Kimball, and I do happen to think he’s a nice guy, which shows he is actually quite dangerous to the historic orthodox Christ faith we know is the Truth.

These two voices define postmodernism and the faith practices and leadership that are emerging from those conditions as dangerous to more traditional understandings. The relationship they establish is oppositional. The traditional view is seen as superior to the emerging views. There is also a movement to distance, to not genuinely engage or try to understand, but to denounce and dismiss.

2) Some evangelicals are more or less attempting to make sense of this new cultural context that people often refer to as postmodernism. Yet this engagement does not render identity. Rather, these evangelicals continue to be grounded by modern beliefs and faith practices.

One of the more popular voices in this camp articulates his view toward postmodern faith practices and beliefs:

Contemporary evangelicals face the responsibility, not only of becoming conversant with the Emerging Church, but of continuing a conversation about what this movement really represents and where its trajectory is likely to lead. Some of the best, brightest, and most sensitive and insightful individuals from the younger evangelical generation have been drawn to this movement.

Echoing the sentiment of other popular authors, he remains critical:

Yet, "Once we have acknowledged the unavoidable finiteness of all human knowers, the cultural diversity of the human race, the diversity of factors that go into human knowing, and even the evil that lurks in the human breast and easily perverts claims of knowledge into totalitarian control and lust for power--once we have acknowledged these things, is there any way left for us to talk about knowing what is true or objectively real? Hard postmodernists insist there is not. And that's the problem."

Evangelicals speaking from this position seem to cast a more ambiguous judgement toward postmodernism and the faith practices that emerge from it. They are closer to postmodernism than those evangelicals in position 1 insofar as they are willing to engage (though somewhat suspiciously). The relation is one of resemblance. This perspective enables them to see that people expressing postmodern practices are complex and layered, with more or less "hard"/rigorous/consistent philosophies in circulation. While evangelicals in position 2 seem to be more willing to engage, they continue to remain rooted in certain modern conceptions, such as propositional truths and their relevance to their faith. Thus, on certain fundamental issues, there are disconnects between positions 2 and 3. One of the key consequences of this paradigmatic gap is misunderstanding and contention.

3) Some evangelicals identify themselves and their faith communities as "postmodern." Not to conflate all so-called postmodern evangelicals into a coherent whole, there are varying flavors and stripes. In relation to positions 1 and 2, however, these evangelicals find postmodern faith practices and ways of believing to make sense. It isn't simply a relativism of the faith, as those in 1 and 2 argue, but a reconstitution of what it means to be Christian and particularly to be evangelical.

As one postmodern evangelical framed the attraction to this new theology:

Deconstructive theology is an excellent rejection of the evangelical-fundamentalism of their youth and all its ills in the face of a radically pluralist, post-Christendom, post-modern world. Many emerging church folk are allergic to anything that smacks of a.) an intolerant judgmental exclusivism, b.) an arrogant, even violent, certainty about what we do know, and c.) an overly-rationalized hyper-cognitive gospel that takes the mystery out of everything we believe. If I have over-stated myself, forgive me. But I too have felt these pangs in relation to my own evangelical upbringing. Deconstructive theology is an excellent avenue of resistance to all these maladies.

Or in the words of another:

Obviously, I feel strongly that the road to inner peace and connection with our Creator is through Jesus. If you are one of the more than two billion Christians in the world, you may feel the same way. But in case you don't.... I'm not going to try to convince you that you can only do these thing if you believe in Jesus--I've seen lots of people try to convince other people about Jesus, and it's rarely successful.

The point seems to be to experience God with others; indeed, to find God in the Other and not just attempt to convert them. The aim is to not assume that we have a Secret, but to recognize that Others can know too. It is about relating to Others, to God and to oneself in a fruitful way. It is about moving beyond the management and confinement of Christ to the religion of Christianity. Evangelicals speaking from position 3 see the possibilities of postmodernism. It enables a liberating break from the foundational and fundamentalist viewes espoused by the dominant traditions articulated by positions 1 and 2.

To briefly conclude the typology, I've argued that evangelicals relate to postmodernism in three ways. Where some view postmodernism with critical skepticism and even fear, others embrace it with open arms. The difference is concrete. The question is how to deal with it. Can we relate to difference? Or must it be converted or excluded?




*On analyzing relations between self and other, I drew from Tzvetan Todorov's The Conquest of America

The Challenge of Relativism, or, The Problem Created by Absolute Descriptions

John Piper writes an apparently compelling essay on the issue of relativism. The piece is entitled: "The Challenge of Relativism."

The essay hinges on a key distinction between two kinds of descriptions.

John Piper makes a distinction between two kinds of descriptions, "daily speech" and Absolute Talk. Daily speech deals with issues like height and weight. These are topics that are measured by "human beings." Absolute Talk, however, deals with issues like "sexual relations between two men." These are topics that are judged according "God's will" as revealed in the Christian Bible.

What warrants these analytical distinctions between daily speech and Absolute Talk and between human standards and God's standards? Is it warranted to divorce the question of sexual relations between two males from the daily speech and deliberation between human beings? Can human beings not decide for themselves about the issue of sexual relations?

Piper does not justify the distinctions he makes between descriptions. He simply asserts them as if they were natural, as if talk of height and weight are naturally topics of daily speech and talk of sexual relations is naturally Absolute Talk. It seems that on some issues Piper is content to flesh out the "context or the standard" people are "using for measuring the truth of the statement," while on other issues he is keen to escape from the finitude of one's time and place.

Perhaps the issue of sexual relations can be decided by human beings, just as the topics of height and weight. Perhaps we should say that all talk is daily speech and no talk is Absolute, even talk of sexual relations between two men. In other words, descriptions are descriptions are descriptions. There is no justification in elevating one description above another. They are all descriptions made by someone in a time and place.

Relativism only makes sense in the context of Piper's essay once the distinction between daily speech and Absolute Talk is made. If no distinction is made, then the problem of relativism ceases to be a problem. Because, as Piper makes amply clear in the opening paragraphs of the essay, daily speech is not relative. The problem of Relativism is dependent on the assertion of Absolute Talk.

"The Challenge of Relativism" is really only a challenge if we insist on positing a divide between our daily talk and some kind of Absolute, non-human description that is Valid in All Times and All Places. If we situate all our descriptions in their contexts and we don't try to elevate some descriptions to the status of Absolute Talk, then the challenge of relativism is avoided all together.

What are they saying?

Some Headlines from Stories about Gozales' Testimony:

Senators Chastise Gonzales

On a Very Hot Seat With Little Cover and Less Support

Gonzales Endures Harsh Session With Senate Panel

Al, the President's Man:Alberto Gonzales is bloodied by his trip to the Senate.

Gonzo-Meter:Al, you're not helping.

Will Bush Stand by Gonzales?

Dead Man Walking Gonzales?

Gonzales' Tremendous Credibility Problem

A Disastrous Day in the Senate

Gonzales Would Serve Justice by Moving On

As tragic as the Virginia Tech shootings are, let’s face it: 32 dead is a slow day in U.S.-occupied Iraq.

Should we not cry for all the dead? Why do we cry for some and not those thousands of others?