Life is all about choices… or is it? Is free will just an illusion or is there an immaterial, moral dimension to our experience, to reality? Are we really free? And if so, how should we make the most of that freedom and make the best choices? Is there a shortcut to optimising our decisions by consulting some fortune-telling God? Watch this video to find out.
500 years ago Martin Luther kick-started the Protestant Reformation with his own 95 theses posted in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. Much has changed in our world since then, and Martin Luther’s protest was a significant moment in improving many things.
But there’s still a lot left to protest about. I’ve chosen my own 95 points of protests about various social, environmental and religious issues relevant to our world today.
The same revolutionary Jesus Christ who literally restarted how we count history 2017 years ago promised He would come back to earth and restart history again.In today’s modern Western world atheism is popular. On the surface, it solves several problems:
But taking on an atheistic worldview introduces a plethora of new, more fundamental problems:
The present popularity of atheism reflects our current obsession with advances in the physical sciences, technology, wealth accumulation, and freedom to do as I please.
Once these obsessions wear off, and I don’t think it will take many more decades, I predict a fundamental shift away from atheism.
As far as I understand it (and I admit my understanding has limits), an atheistic worldview is an entirely physical/material worldview. In this worldview, everything behaves in a deterministic way. Every effect has a cause. Even chaos theory recognises determinism, just that due to the limits of human observation the approximate present does not determine the approximate future.
Let’s just imagine, for a minute, that the human powers of measurement and observation approached perfection. Or if not human, then something somewhere had that ability. And all physical mechanisms were perfectly understood. Then the future state of everything could be perfectly predicted, including your and my choices, assuming that consciousness was a part of the material universe and conformed to physical laws.
Therefore in a materialist (atheist) worldview, everything is known or determined (even if humans do not yet have insight into the future). There is no freedom. No choice. Just the illusion of it. It is in this (atheist) worldview that I have to conclude that my choices are pointless, that there is no free will, and that everything that was going to happen is already determined. The script is already written.
Atheist William Provine understood that human free will cannot exist as one of five fundamental consequences of naturalistic evolution.
Yet we experience what we believe is freedom of choice, free will. As I have written previously, that freedom is awesome! Atheism cannot adequately account for it. Perhaps we need to reconsider theism, even though, I agree, accounting for a future-knowing God and free will also presents challenges to our human powers of reason.
Perhaps the new atheists of our day do not yet understand the problems created by choosing not to believe in God.
An atheist meme on the internet in the wake of the Paris attacks caught my attention. An image compares the biblical character of Samson with modern day terrorists such as the suicide attacks of September 11.
Atheist meme: Samson’s final act compared to that of the 9-11 hijackers.
Samson’s final act was to literally bring the house down on about three thousand Philistines, killing them all as well as himself.
On face value, the stories seem analogous. Yet is this really just a cheap shot?
Popular Western culture regards Canadian John Gallagher as a hero for dying a couple of months ago in similar circumstances to Samson. Gallagher was fighting ISIS in Syria.
I say similar because this may well be a better modern-day parallel for Samson when considering the back story to Samson and the Philistines. Could it be that Samson was just as much a hero as John Gallagher?
But the greatest hero of the Bible was Jesus, who died Himself that others may have life.
Looking more closely at the story of Jesus, He actually took on a known ‘terrorist’ (i.e., traitor) in Judas into his inner circle. Not for His own benefit. His inclusive tolerance cost Jesus His own life.
Jesus’ embracing of Judas is in stark contrast to the closed-minded, closed-hearts and closed-borders stance of many professed Christians towards Muslims today.
Perhaps a better parallel image for terrorism in the Christian Bible is the following, which shows Jesus as the innocent victim of treachery worse than that of Australian teenager turned ISIS suicide bomber Jihad Jake.
A better comparison between the Bible and terrorism. Jesus took on a known traitor in Judas leading to His own betrayal and death. “Jihad Jake” is regarded by his parents as a traitor for joining ISIS prior to his death in Iraq as a suicide bomber.
Arguments for and against atheism invariably tackle the philosophical and epistemological problem of whether one can know that something doesn’t exist in the universe even though one’s knowledge of all things in said universe is extremely limited.
That sounds like a good argument against positive atheism – one that would allow a reasonable person to be agnostic but not atheist.
However, the response of the atheist is usually twofold:
We know so little of all there is to know. So any argument over whether we can reasonably claim to know there isn’t a God will only go so far.
Sooner or later, it becomes germane to compare other possible options for extra-terrestrial intelligence and/or the origin of life and/or our universe. These are big unknown questions in the scientific community, even if the question of God has been largely classified as beneath modern scientific intelligence.
In contrast to the search for God, these questions tend to be framed toward fitting the epistemological constraints of scientific enquiry. Yet philosophically they are not very much different to the question of whether or not there is a God.
Epistemologically, the germane question is whether everything worth knowing can be found through empiricism.
There are a lot of other epistemological alternatives beyond empiricism.
Naturalism and empiricism look for natural, observable causes. The past removal of superstitions demonstrate the triumph of the scientific method. Modernism thus rejected the use of any other epistemological lenses to view reality.
But adherents to naturalism assume that naturalism has the answer to ultimate reality without actually ever being able to prove it. For example, the scientific method can never discover or explain the uncaused – or original – cause. I believe it will always struggle to provide any meaningful account for the origin of: matter/energy, physical laws, information, life, consciousness, morality and freedom of choice.
Let’s lay aside empiricism for a moment, and use a variety of lenses to evaluate five options for extraterrestrial or supernatural entities. The following table compares the options.
| Lens | Intelligent beings outside earth | Creator God | Multiverse | Loch Ness, FSM, Santa, Fairies | Nothing exists outside of our knowledge |
| Experiential evidence existing? | None of significance | Yes. Significant. Many people report their lives being profoundly impacted by encounters with God. | None | Limited | Not logically applicable |
| Empirical evidence existing? | None, though SETI has tried hard to find it | Not reliably reproducible. Many would also question validity of claimed evidence. | None | None | Not logically applicable |
| Evidence or logic that precludes this | None | None | None | Strong | Yes – we frequently discover that we previously had not observed everything there was to observe |
| Possibility of being able to verify | Strong | From human perspective, weak. From God’s perspective, strong (if He indeed exists). | None, insofar as our current definitions go | Strong (i.e., to verify absence) | Impossible |
| Logical / philosophical case | Neither strong nor weak | Strong (see below) | Neither strong nor weak | Weak | Weak (see above) |
| Hypothesis of its existence lends itself to scientific enquiry | Yes | No | No | Yes, to the extent that one can be convinced that these don’t exist. | Yes, though frequently disproved |
| Utility of this belief | None so far | Pascal’s wager suggests significant | Limited | Negative | Negative (stops enquiry) |
| Moral consequence if proven true | Unknown: potential for catastrophic conflict or synergistic benefit | Humans have a responsibility to their Creator | None | None | No change |
| Life’s meaning & purpose | To the extent that they were not involved in our origin, limited. | Profound (to the extent involved in our origin) | Limited | None | None |
| Life’s origin | Unknown | Fullest and most complete answer available, acknowledging a possible follow-up question of “what caused God?” | Would take the search for the ‘uncaused cause’ a step further back | None | None |
| Life’s destiny | Unknown: potential for catastrophic conflict or synergistic benefit | Full and complete answer | None or limited | None | None |
| Votes for this | A few key thinkers such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Paul Davies, Carl Sagan. | Almost everyone until around 150 years ago. Still majority of world, and significant portion of current thinkers, leaders & scientists | A few key thinkers such as Stephen Hawking and even Richard Dawkins to some extent. | None | None (in its purest form, though some objectivists & empiricists, as well as subscribers to scientism & logical positivism come close) |
| Plausibility that this extra-terrestrial being exists but would hide itself (at least in our lifetime) | To be determined once identified. On current knowledge, plausible. | Plausible, even necessary based on Great Controversy meta-narrative | By logical necessity | Relatively implausible | N/A |
| Motivation for acceptance | Search for answers to limited carrying capacity of planet | Love of God awakens response of love in our hearts. OR: fear or selfish desire to escape suffering. | Philosophical pursuit of answers. | Emotional sentimentalism and/or fear | Desire to maintain status quo |
| Motivation for rejection | Difficulty of identifying | Desire to avoid responsibility for our choices. Perceived impossibility of verifying and thus desire to dispel false hope or fear. | Impossibility of verifying | Desire to dispel false hope or fear | Desire to explore, discover |
| Aligns with these components of experiential reality | Limited. Some observed phenomena that currently do not have better explanations | Aligns with our observation that matter, life, consciousness, morality, love, altruism and free choice all exist. Aligns with the difficulty (i.e., impossibility) of establishing deterministic explanations for experiential phenomena. | None | Almost none. From perspective of children, Christmas presents align with the story of Santa. | If we continually repeat previous experience, yes |
| Related phenomena that would prove difficult to explain otherwise | UFOs, to a very limited extent. (I.e., almost none.) | Many: consciousness, life, freedom of choice, fulfilled prophecy. Also growing scientific evidence that aligns poorly with naturalism. (See Ashton, Lennox, etc) | The existence of our universe (not that the multiverse theory is the only option here) | Almost none. | History repeating itself; “Nothing new under the sun” |
| Observed phenomena that this fails to explain and thus is weakened by | Fails to explain a lot of things but is not weakened by any of these omissions | Experiential phenomena such as suffering and evil can be difficult to reconcile with a loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Creator. There are also some scientific discoveries that, at face value, appear to contradict the typical account of a Creator God. E.g., natural selection, evidence for the Big Bang, the geologic record | Fails to explain a lot of things but is not weakened by any of these omissions | Agency of known mechanisms to account for Christmas presents etc. | Constant discovery of new knowledge |
| What lost if turns out to be true | Unknown: perhaps some freedoms? | Independence and autonomy (perceived) | Little – maybe Uniqueness | Little – maybe safety | Hope for discovering more ‘out there’ |
| What gained if turns out to be true | Unknown: perhaps some opportunities? | Infinite eternal happiness | Little? | Little – perhaps realization of children’s fantasies has some value? | Removal of fear of the unknown |
| What lost if turns out to be false | All the money poured into SETI | Little – maybe hedonistic pursuits | Little? | Little – maybe children’s fantasies squashed | Opportunity to discover more |
| What gained if turns out to be false | Unknown: perhaps some freedoms? | Independence and autonomy (perceived) | Little – maybe Uniqueness | Little – maybe safety | Hope for discovering more ‘out there’ |
Under the “Creator God” heading, there are a number of possible options for which deity. At the high level of this comparison, this should really only be a comparison of theism to atheism.
If there is a Creator God, it would be plausible that there could be multiple interpretations/perspectives of His character and attributes. That need not weaken the case that such a Creator God exists. Especially if it is assumed that the Creator God gives freedom of choice based on love. If he/it were a coercive god, then any argument against the existence of such a deity would be more compelling on the assumption that he/it would be more likely to coerce everyone to form uniform perceptions of who he/it is.
My belief in God is that He is a love personified – the opposite of coercive. This may be reflected in some of my entries under the “Creator God” column in the table above.
The only gap in the above analysis, according to the modern scientific mindset, is the lack of consideration of empirical evidence. But since when is empirical evidence the only way to knowledge? Modernism gave way to post-modernism precisely because of the overwhelming realization that there are other valid epistemologies.
Coming back to empiricism, though, I will let the words of John Lennox assist in wrapping up my blog post. Having systematically exposed the weakness of the empirical claims of atheism of Richard Dawkins et al, he concludes:
In conclusion, I submit that, far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise itself is validated by his existence.
Inevitably, of course, not only those of us who do science, but all of us, have to choose the presupposition with which we start. There are not many options – essentially just two. Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second.
So I conclude, then, that the case for a Creator God is the strongest of the above options. (I have made five options to help demonstrate the comparative utility of theism and futility of atheism, but they can be boiled down to the two that Lennox presents.)
Theism wins easily, in terms of utility, risk management & opportunity maximization, and philosophical/logical coherence. And, according to Lennox, empirically, to boot.
Try the varied epistemological approach for yourself, using the above table as a starting point if you wish. I’m curious to see how my framework withstands scrutiny and critique. Are there elements that are wrong, arguable, incomplete or missing?
Imagine you were one of the two miners trapped alive in the Beaconsfield mine collapse. You sense that rescue may be near. You perceive faint glimpses of communication from the outside world.
But your mate plays down your optimism as blind faith and misplaced hope. He takes a purely evidence-based empirical view of your shared new world, trapped almost a kilometre underground. From his perspective, one of his colleagues is already dead, and there’s insufficient reason to believe anything other than imminent demise through further collapse, starvation or exposure. He tries to convince you to give up hope of rescue.
Sounds like Richard Dawkins arguing for atheism, doesn’t it?
My adaptation of the Beaconsfield tragedy is hypothetical. Both Todd Russell and Brant Webb were, in fact, optimistic believers in their developing rescue as it unfolded. Their optimism helped them to survive their ordeal.
But my imagined scenario highlights the futility of arguing for atheism. Atheism, if true, offers no hope relative to its alternatives.
Theism, if true, offers unlimited hope, love and happiness.
Atheism offers no satisfying solutions to the deep questions of life – its origins, meaning, purpose or destiny.
Why expend energy articulating ideas that extinguish hope, meaning and purpose?
Perfect love allows freedom to believe that faith in God is futile. It even allows freedom to promote those beliefs, no matter how dark and sad they may be.
But why promote darkness and sadness over light and happiness (see John 1:1-14)?
Part of the answer is that the common picture of God has been so badly distorted from reality so as to make atheism attractive in comparison.
Like the erroneous doctrine of eternal hellfire. That one piece of distortion makes the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin look like child’s play. And God an absolute tyrant.
There are many more deceptions about God’s character, too. Their chief source? Ironically, the Christian church.
Back to my imaginary scenario at Beaconsfield. The trapped miner arguing against hope for rescue may have had good reason to mistrust the rescuers based on past negative experience. And that would make his pessimism more understandable, though still not justifiable.
How? Let’s follow my imaginary scenario just a bit further. Imagine that in the weeks leading up to the Beaconsfield mine collapse tragedy, your pessimist miner friend had tried to improve safety standards and culture at the mine. But the mine safety manager’s response was to show a blatant disregard for personal wellbeing. Instead he pursued vindictive vendettas for the purpose of his own career development. Under this scenario, his pessimism entirely makes sense!
But the good news is that God is love (1 Jn 4:8)! Just as the rescuers at Beaconsfield were actually working for the best interests of the trapped miners, so too God is good! In fact, perfectly good.
He truly does have your best interests uppermost in His heart and mind (Rom 5:8). When you realise the depth of His love for you, your life will make perfect sense (Jer 29:11). Your happiness will be unlimited (Jn 10:10, 15:11).
Atheism has gained increasing and widespread acceptance since the French Revolution a couple of hundred years ago. There are a lot of things right about atheism’s ‘correction.’ Atheism is a reasonable reaction against the excesses of the church.
Interestingly, atheism wasn’t the answer to preventing the needless bloodshed perpetuated by institutionalised religion. In its first few years the French Revolution was just as bloody as the Church to which it was reacting.
Why was atheism not able to provide a completely satisfying answer to the ills of religion?
Human nature has a habit of taking an issue and simplifying it down to slogans that address only one end of the tension. Australia’s former PM, Tony Abbott, has a penchant for such “three word slogans” such as:
There are virtuous principles, good values, and undoubted truth behind elements of each of those slogans. But they clearly ignore a whole different set of principles, values and truths that quickly neutralise any enduring appeal or significance of such three word slogans.
Could it be the same with atheism and religion? Does “There are no gods worth having” eventually ring hollow?
Election cycles quickly take care of political over-reach. Political leaders’ own parties can even intervene earlier – just ask Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd, and Julia Gillard. Political leadership changes tend to provide correction back and forth from one extreme to the other with only an occasional centrist refreshment.
Could it be that we have done the same in the area of religion and atheism?
Throughout history there have been many pendulum swings, over a variety of issues:
The above examples demonstrate that some pendulum swings can be fast; some exceedingly slow. A single pendulum isn’t always going to swing back to the exact same spot it came from last time. The cliché is true: history does tend to repeat itself, but the pattern can be irregular.
What will be the popular opposing pendulum swing to atheism, when patience for its failures eventually runs out? I don’t think it’s likely to be a widespread return to narrow-minded dogmatic expression of religious fundamentalism. There may be the odd recruit to ISIS for whom fundamentalism is an appealing correction. But for society at large, we’ve come from there too recently to want that again.
Something that would both oppose atheism and have popular appeal would be a supernatural experiential phenomenon. An observable manifestation of a spiritual dimension would, by logical necessity, neutralise the appeal of a materialistic atheist worldview. It would also be likely to interest or even satisfy someone searching for more out of the vicissitudes of life regardless of their faith orientation.
In fact, it is prophesied in the Bible (see 2 Thes 2:9). True Christianity will soon be threatened not so much by disbelief in the existence of God, but by faith in manifestations from the spirit world that are fundamentally evil.
The world has lost its spiritual discernment, in part because it has largely chosen an atheistic worldview. Without spiritual discernment, any widespread appearance of spiritual phenomena will, of logical necessity, be embraced as enlightenment compared to atheism.
Not all pendulum swings are resolved by coming to rest in the middle position.
The one pendulum swing that we need above all others – without a settling into the middle – is a switch from widespread selfishness (Matt 24:12) to pervasive selfless love (Jn 13:35). The selfishness of our society is evident in such catchphrases as “if it feel’s good, do it.” It is a natural and unfortunate outcome of a Darwinian worldview where survival is for the fittest.
The world has seen one great display of self-sacrificing love, when Jesus Christ came to earth (Rom 5:8). That display sparked a revolution that spread internationally through the early Christian church. But institutionalised religion soon obscured any glimpses of God’s true character into one that looked like a coercive tyrant.
I believe we will see a widespread return (Rev 18:1-4) of this selfless Christian revival (2 Cor 5:18-21) in the near future (Matt 24:14).
Thus there will be two pendulum swings away from atheism. One will be true (Rev 14:6-12), the other will be false (Matt 24:24-25).
The false one will swing from atheism to experience-based spiritual phenomena (2 Cor 11:14-15). The true one will swing from selfishness to self-sacrificing love (Jn 13:35).
The freedom to choose one’s own destiny is a profound element of human existence. It makes love possible.
Love is only worth something because there is another alternative. Love that was automatic or compelled would simply be robotic.
Philosophers have come up with concepts such as determinism, compatabilism and incompatabilism as different ways of dealing with the deep questions arising from the experience of free will. Some of these are attempts to account for reality through a materialistic lens – a naturalistic worldview.
It seems fairly self-evident to me that a materialistic worldview can only account for determinism, not for free will. This poses a philosophical problem. An existential riddle. For the naturalist, materialist and atheist, that is.
Everything we do as humans, everything we are taught, is on the assumption that our decisions matter. That we really do have freedom to choose.
I would suggest that compatabilism has simply been made up, though logically untenable, to deal with the cognitive dissonance created by trying to marry materialistic atheism with freedom of choice.
In the Great Controversy between good and evil, it suits the forces of evil to promote the belief that freedom doesn’t exist. Either that God doesn’t exist (naturalistic determinism) or that even if He does exist, He controls every decision and outcome and that there’s still not freedom of choice (Calvinistic predestination).
But human experience powerfully argues that you really can choose. A trivial example is that you can freely choose whether to alter your breathing pattern right now or not. And that no scientific theory could be devised to accurately predict your choice of breathing pattern, even if all your knowledge, emotions, surroundings, circumstances, and all other relevant factors could be taken into account by such a theory.
If such a theory were to be true, it would remove all motivation to make the world a better place or to pursue personal growth or ambition. Such aspirations only make sense if there truly is freedom.
The fact that this freedom exists is what the new atheist unwittingly tries to take advantage of when he or she tries to persuade others to choose to abandon belief in God.
The fact that this freedom exists also powerfully argues that a powerful intelligence (God) designed it that way. That God loves you enough to give you the choice of whether to believe His claims or not. To serve Him or not. And to love Him back or not.
What will you choose?