In my previous post, I was talking about how the arguments for God from natural theology only rise to the level of deism (or so it is claimed), and do not bring one all the way to theism, much less to any specific God, like YHWH. But this morning, I was thinking about how it would be quite the coincidence if the God of the Abrahamic religion didn't exist and yet these philosophical arguments were sound.
I'm not aware of every creation story there's ever been, but I have read or heard a lot of them. In just about all of them, they presuppose that some things already exist besides the creator. Hardly any of the stories go all the way back to the beginning of everything. They explain how things were made out of previously existing stuff or circumstances. None of the gods in most other religions are anything like the God of the Abrahamic religions in the sense of being this being who stands completely apart from the natural realm and brought it all into being.
If the typical philosophical arguments for God are sound, then they cohere much more nicely with the God of the Abrahamic religions than they do with just about any other god of any other religion. I say that provisionally because, as I said, I'm not aware of all creation stories.
That, by itself, isn't enough reason to think the God of the Abrahamic religions is one and the same with the God of the philosophers. After all, it's possible there's a deistic God and all religions are made up. But it is good reason to look into the Abrahamic religions, I think.
Consider this, though. The idea of the Abrahamic God was already around before all these philosophical arguments became wide-spread, which means belief in the Abrahamic God did not originate from these arguments. It arose independently of the arguments. That means if those arguments are sound, and the God of the philosophers actually exists, then it would be a huge coincidence if people happened to invent a God that resembles the actual God in so many ways. It seems more likely that the God who exists actually revealed himself to people, and that's how they came up with the Abrahamic God. The Abrahamic God is the God of the philosophers.
Let me see if I can put this another way. According to both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, God created everything that came into being, and that includes everything on earth and everything in the heavens (Genesis 1:1, John 1:3). Colossians 1:16-17 puts it like this: "For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." That sort of absolute exhaustive creation only exists in the Abrahamic religions as far as I know, and that's precisely the same sort of God you get from cosmological and teleological arguments. The God of Abraham is also absolutely sovereign, autonomous, and authoritative (Daniel 4:35, Psalm 135:6), which is what you get from the moral argument. If the God of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments actually exists, then either he revealed himself to the Hebrews or else they made an extraordinarily lucky guess when they made up YHWH. After all, they didn't come up with YHWH through cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments. They either made him up and got lucky, or God made himself known to them.
So I don't think the arguments from natural theology are merely sufficient reason to look into the Abrahamic religions; they are sufficient to strongly suspect that at least one of the Abrahamic religions is true. It's just a matter of which one at that point. It's Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.
2 comments:
In just about all of them, they presuppose that some things already exist besides the creator.
Ahem:
"...The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters."
Granted, my knowledge of big bang cosmological models is more shallow than I'd like, and limited primarily to the level of book-length popularizations. But in none of those models are there pre-existing water oceans being separated by solid crystal firm-aments.
In response to the above comment, I must say that that section is supposed to be poetry -- that is, much of the first bits of Genesis are not supposed to be read as a well-reasoned, scientifically rigorous explanation of the history of the universe.
By the same token, just this line of reasoning also invalidates the line of thought you laid out in this post, Sam. I feel as though the strength of my faith lies in the truth of virtue that I see portrayed through Jesus. I believe because I subjectively see it as good. I understand that there is value in reasoning about God, but I think you end up robbing Christianity of it's spiritual impact when it becomes as simple as arguing for a logical truth. Goedel's proof for the existence of God is interesting in terms of an exercise in symbolic logic, but is otherwise empty.
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