Predestination or Free Will?

A friend of mine posed this question: Predestination or Free Will? For me, this was one of my first big stumbling blocks against Chrisitanity as my strong early preconception was that humans must have complete and total free will, yet the Bible repeatedly affirms God’s complete control over everything. We have Ephesians 1:4-6 and Romans 8:28-30 proclaiming unappologetic determinism. God gets to save whosoever it pleases him to save from hell. There is absolutely nothing we can do to avoid hell or choose heaven; it is completley in God’s hands alone. Yet, the oft-sited John 3:16 seemed to me to be saying that God has offered salvation to us, and we have the ability to accept or reject it.

In the end, I returned to my assumption that free will was a requirement for any kind of rational religion. While I could accept the power and authoritiy of God to make whatever He wants to happen happen, randomly earmarking a decidely small minority of human beings for heaven and the rest being sent to hell was not what a moral god would do. The most reasonable answer was that God valued free will over all other possible traits He could have endowed us with. So, it seemed most reasonable that God would only want to be in relationship with those who actually wanted it. Obviously, God would have some influence, whether through people or through some sort of direct action, but, if the word “morality” had any content, then people must ultimately be responsible for their actions, and their choices must be real choices. We can’t be punished or rewarded for something we have absolutely no ability to change. In order to end up with a moral god, I had to have an explanation for the apparent contradiction I saw in the Bible.

God, being omniscient and beyond time, could see how things would turn out. From our perspective, it appears as if God chose everything that happens to happen, but that’s not what is really going on. Though I was only really beginning my study of history at the time of my conversion, I was keenly aware of the odd way in which historical events appear to be predetermined. At any point, people could act in whatever way they want, but they don’t. They have free will to act in whatever manner they so choose, but their circumstances limit some options. The slow accumulation of limitations produces a smaller and smaller number of possible outcomes. Eventually, looking back, it appears that people don’t actually have a choice in the way they act as they are funneled into one, and only one, possible choice. This is the way I imagined God saw the unfolding of our lives. So, I became convinced that we see things as being of our own free will, and God sees things as completely predetermined.

The consequences of that was that at any given time I can choose to accept Jesus as savior, assuming that choice is a credible and known option given my circumstances, yet God has already seen (predestined) my conversion. I am responcible for accepting or rejecting the way that God has prepared for me.

Bible Code Skepticism

After an interesting, but hopelessly short, discussion with a good friend last night on the topic of the so-called Bible codes, he wanted to know why I was skeptical. Basically, it is claimed that hidden prophecies can be uncovered in the Bible through computer-aided statistical analysis. Once a passage of Scripture is laid out in a grid, letters can be read in a crossword puzzle-like grid. Words and phrases can then be read by combining letters along this grid work. Believers claim that codes can be found in distinct patterns referring to the Holocaust, President Kennedy’s assassination, even 9/11. (I found this article interesting because it apparently predicted events that should have happened two years ago: http://www.halexandria.org/dward420.htm.) In essence, believers claim that this represents the “fingerprints of God”.

As I told my friend, I am skeptical. Firstly, I believe that the Bible is given to us by God (what that exactly means, as you may have noticed, I don’t exactly know). That said, these hidden prophecies, if they exist at all, do not necessarily add anything to the awe I feel about the Bible. In some ways, it detracts from it, because, if, as I suspect, these codes are really just artifacts of chance and how the experiment is set up, it makes it appear as if there is really nothing miraculous about the Bible. While I think it is completely possible for God to put these codes into the Bible, I can’t really see why He would if we appear to only be able to decipher messages about the past.

Additionally, the scientific skeptic in me wants to see what other dispassionate (if that is possible) researchers have to say about the topic. A number of credible researchers find fault with the methods, most notably Dr. Barry Simon, PhD. Indeed, the codes have been seriously questioned as early as 1994. I’m sure, if I gave Google a little more time, I could come up with more research to at the very least make me wonder.

Ontological Arguments for God's Existance

Ontology is the study of the most basic or base metaphysical categories. The study of ontology seeks to place categories of reality into simple hierarchies. Therefore, ontological arguments for God's existence are derived from categories of pure logic and a priori reasoning. In this case, they seek to marry what we know with what is real.

There are a number of ways in which this argument for God's existence can be laid out, but I will focus on just a couple. St. Anselm of Canterbury's argument is probably the most famous. Essentially, Anselm's argument can be boiled down to the following:

1. God is a being that which nothing greater can be conceived.
2. Existence in reality is greater than existence solely in human imagination.
3. Therefore, God must exist in reality because if God did not, God would not be a being greater than anything that can be conceived.

Anselm observed that people have an idea of a perfect being, they can imagine a being that is so complete in its perfection that no other perfect thing can compare. How then did such a being come to inhabit human imagination if it did not exist in the first place? It got there because it actually exists. Something that does not exist is somehow lacking in perfection, thus that which nothing greater can be conceived actually exists. It seems to me, and here I agree with Karl Barth, that what Anselm is saying is that God isn't really proven by this argument, but rather that God cannot be denied once we know what He is: the most perfect being.

Later, Rene' Descartes expanded on this idea. He compares the knowledge of geometric shapes and the reality of God, writing,

But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature.

Clearly, as Descartes alludes, there are things that we know cannot exist--such as three sided squares--and there are things we know exist--three-sided shapes called triangles--without really giving it much thought. Because we have a clear understanding of what God is, according to Descartes, we know God exists. In other words, because the concept of God includes, by definition, the perfect goodness of God, God must exist. Because God, "a being subject to no defects whatever . . . [who] cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect", cannot trick us into believing something that is not so and we can trust our perceptions about the world can be trusted--our perceptions of the world includes a perfect being--God must exist.

If this argument is sound, then it really does not tell us much about God in terms of our relationship with that Being. It only says that God is perfect in any conceivable way. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal and entirely good.

Perhaps, that is all we can really say about God.

Another Long Vacation from Blogging

Well, I think I've taken most of this year off from blogging. I've been distracted by a number of things including, taking a good look at the stock market (which I've been 'playing' semi-successfully since February), intentionally taking more time away from the computer, working on various volunteer projects and desperately trying to stay employed. Of course, there's been this little election thing that if frankly annoying the heck out of me. I'm honestly not having much luck feeling like anyone can make a rational choice because the media and the campaigns themselves have made it almost impossible to effectively wade through the bull and deal with real issues. Perhaps, I'll have something more to say about that in the future.

I think I'm in more of a position now to try to re-tackle my "proove God exists" project. I have already pretty much laid out my vision for the criteria for knowing . . . well, anything with a brief overview of my understanding of some basic epistemological issues. Now, I need to start tackling individual arguments.