Questions of Faith
Questions of Faith – by Dr Harold Coop
This section on theology is for those approaching or exploring the faith and its intellectual challenges. Topics so far covered are
* Science and Faith
* The Problem of Suffering
Science and Faith
Sometimes people, thinking of attending church, hesitate to do so because they have genuine intellectual difficulties and feel that without answers to these, faith can never be a possibility for them . They fear they will have to leave their questioning, perhaps even their brains behind, to embrace or even explore the Christian faith. Given the bizarre views of some Christians, that’s not surprising.
But it’s important to realize that there is a whole world of intellectual Christianity that includes some of history’s greatest thinkers and modern scientists. In such a complicated subject dealing with mankind’s most profound problems, it’s essential not to throw it all out because some things are difficult or absurd, any more than we would reject medicine because it is complex and sometimes errs. Our brains can get us more than half way to belief in God (theism), and the journey is exciting and empowering. Some sceptics have degrees in their own subject, but in religious thinking remain at a much lower level.
They have never explored the deep thinking found in a church library. And I believe atheism leaves far more un-answered questions than does theism.
Intellectual challenges to our faith appear from time to time, but rather than walk away from the debate, Christians should consider these questions and seek answers. There is plenty of material available in our church library or in Christian bookshops. However, as in any library, works will range from the profound to the simplistic, so some guidance is helpful.
In his latest book The God Delusion, Oxford professor Richard Dawkins asserts that even reasoned moderate faith does great harm, since, for him, allowing any form of belief without scientific proof helps fundamentalists to flourish. You can read some chapters on the internet at www.richarddawkins.net , and there is much debate on the web.
On the internet you can also find a response to this book from Professor Terry Eagleton, Professor of English, Manchester University: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html and one from a scientific/biology point of view by Prof. H.Allen Orr, Rochester,U.S.A. at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19775 . Scientists Alister and Joanna McGrath ‘s book of reply is called “the Dawkins Delusion”. Its first author was an atheistic biophysicist but is now a leading theologian. He identifies all the flaws and deficiencies in the Dawkins arguments, which now irritate even his fellow atheists.
Perhaps the best concise reply comes from
Dr F. S. Collins, Director of the huge Human Genome Project: www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/collins.html (or Google Collins pbs org).
This distinguished scientist is now the major opponent of Dawkins in the U.S.A. His recent book, “The Language of God” expounds the evidence for belief, drawing on his expertise in genetics.
Questions tossed into the debate are:
- Belief in a loving god isn’t compatible with so much suffering in the world (perhaps our oldest and most intense challenge.)
- Church history is full of evil, either done by Christians or in the name of Christianity. (Dawkins exploits extreme and multifactorial cases)
- In science, the big bang theory, together with mechanistic evolution, have finally abolished the need for God. (They haven’t. Science has nothing to say about the “why”, nor about the cause of the big bang.)The complexity of DNA and biochemistry are equally mechanistic, and are the final nails in religion’s coffin.
- All these things demonstrate that miracles are impossible. (They don’t, as the detailed book “In Defence of Miracles”, edited by Habermas, explains. This is a very complex subject)
- All religions claim the truth, so it’s likely none is true.
It’s perhaps best to look first at the international attack from some scientists on religion.
The interview with Collins describes his journey of faith, as a thinking scientist , believing that science and faith must not be incompatible. (I agree with that ; if they disagree, then either the science or the faith must be wrong.)
Not surprisingly, he draws heavily on the influence of C.S Lewis , one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. His book “Mere Christianity,” is the most read theological book in the history of the world, apart from sacred texts like the Bible of the Koran. having been an international best-seller for 50 years No other book of that type has that record.
This is because its brilliant first 3 chapters explain from first principles that for understanding the “why” of life, the moral law is more important evidence than science is. If we use science for this question we’ve picked up the wrong tools.
Some scientists have calculated tremendous odds against the stupefying complexity and remarkable physical “coincidences” of our situation having evolved by chance. Scientist Dr Jeff Tallon explained this lucidly and convincingly in an article in the New Zealand Herald recently. A similar calculation was done in the book “Human Destiny” by Le Comte du Nouy, in the 1940s, and is still discussed on the internet.
Others disagree. Are we an insignificant by-product? As you read this, a million nerve cells from each eye feed information to a hundred trillion nerve cell junctions in your brain. The number of possible ways of connecting them is greater than the number of atoms in the universe. Some people think the stupefying complexity of the universe implies a designing creator.
Lewis thinks that type of argument, using scientific fact, gets us only so far. He argues that a very complex house might show its creator was complex but not whether he was good or bad. More tellingly, Lewis says we would learn most about the builder of a house, not by examining the building, but by listening to his conversation. And we, the most complex creatures in the universe can look inside ourselves . We are “in the know”.
Right in the centre of us, the supreme creation, there is something strange that isn’t explained by purely mechanistic evolutionary advantage and survival. It’s a moral law, varying a little, but basically universally agreed. . We know some things “without proof”, as surely as we know scientific facts, because our human experience shows us some unchallengeable laws about which science can say nothing
Love is better than hate, truth better than falsehood, courage and self-sacrifice better than cowardice, kindness better than cruelty. It is wrong to torture an adult, worse to torture a child. Where did all that come from?
It’s no explanation to say it is from society’s conditioning for the good of the group , or as some biologists argue, that morals are nothing more than an inevitable behavioral byproduct of evolution.
If I am only an evolved conglomeration of atoms, why should I do, or not do anything , or care about the group? Why should we admire self-sacrifice when the “natural law’ is that the big eats the little? There is a compulsion and sometime a revulsion about the above matters in the paragraph two above this, which is much deeper and compelling than any evolutionary tendency or mere social constructs of convenience. Perhaps, because of what it implies, the word “should” is the most important word in any language. In “Mere Christianity” Lewis argues, in much more detail than I can here, and answers objectors to his original BBC talks.
These things imply something behind the universe, more like a mind than anything else. It is essential to combine God-given reason with religious experience humbly to probe that Mind. Sometimes the reason and the love central to all religions get omitted.
Apart from his unfair comparisons and distortions of Christianiyt, Dawkins has set the wrong frame of reference for the debate. Lewis says it is only religion that can, and must , deal with facts of our nature, unexplained by science. We can’t understand those facts by denying them, nor by using the wrong tools of investigation.
We can find answers to the other challenges in 3 inexpensive books by Lee Strobel, an American pastor. With a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School, he was an award-winning legal journalist with the Chicago Tribune.
His books are best read in order, The Case for Faith, The Case for a Creator, and then The Case for Christ; all published by Zondervan. The 3 books retail at about $12 each, CS Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” at $25. All are in our library.
The first Strobel book deals with the first two questions in my paragraph 4, and with doubt, and the balance of intellect and faith. The second deals with many matters of science, including the intelligent design debate (which has a spectrum of beliefs within it). The third examines evidence of biblical scholarship and authenticity.
Strobel makes easy reading, writing in a journalistic style. But unlike some authors, he expresses the counter-arguments powerfully, and tackles them fully and fairly (and, e.g., on suffering, he writes from experience, in the slums of Chicago and Calcutta). He interviews the best theologians, philosophers, and scientists he can find. It is a fascinating privilege to sit at his side in these testing conversations. These three books are the best and most systematic concise summary of the modern debate that I’ve seen, and are easy to read.
Some chapter headings are:
From “The Case for Faith”:
Since evil and suffering exist a loving God cannot.
Since miracles contradict science they cannot be true
Evolution explains life so God isn’t needed
It’s offensive to claim Jesus is the only way to God
Church history is littered with oppression and violence
I still have doubts so I can’t be a Christian
From “The Case for a Creator”
(Strobel is not a fundamentalist 6-day creationist but examines evolutionary theory in detail with refreshing honesty. This book is 427 pages, with numerous references)
Doubts about Darwinism
Where science meets faith
The evidence of cosmology: beginning with a bang
The evidence of physics
The evidence of astronomy
The evidence of biochemistry
The challenge of DNA and the origin of life
The evidence of consciousness and the mind
The cumulative case
From “The Case for Christ”
14 chapters covering:
Evidence of eyewitnesses , documentary, scientific, medical, archeological , corroborative and also rebuttal evidence, the missing body, post-crucifixion appearances, etc (397 pages)
In these books you may find answers to most things challenging you or your young people. Your faith and theirs will be enriched by this knowledge.
*Dr Harold Coop is a former eye surgeon, now an artist.
CAN WE BELIEVE IN A GOOD GOD WHEN FACED WITH INTENSE TRAGEDY?
The problem of human pain and suffering, is perhaps the deepest philosophical puzzle of all. Some think it incompatible with the existence of a loving God, or that Christianity has no answer, so is disproved. No one has a complete answer, but to my mind that doesn’t prove either of the above conclusions, nor that the Christian explanation is not the best one. Perhaps a description of that, necessarily brief, will help some people.
Suffering has been divided into that which is caused by man and that which is not. The former is easier to accept, as a consequence of free will. If God had made us robots, we would not be free to kill or cure, to love or hate. Parents want a loving child, not a robot. If God wanted humans with a capacity to choose to love, we had to have the free will to decide between good and evil options. Only that freedom can result in goodness; no alternative is possible. Goodness and kindness can’t exist without the possibility of evil and cruelty.
And the latter have a purpose in alerting us to the meaning of life. If we say evil and cruelty are unfair or “bad” or “wrong”, this must imply a moral universe and a God behind it. If the universe is completely mechanistic , what is wrong with infinite cruelty? But most people and societies believe that cruelty is wrong. As C.S.Lewis has argued , this universal moral conviction or law tells us something inescapable about the universe.
In addition, if great pain afflicted only evil people, there would be no goodness; being “good” would be being prudent! So if there is a God who took the astonishing step of creating a creature capable of reciprocal love and true choice, evil choices had to be allowed. We must distinguish between what God allows, rather than intends. Thus are allowed the most horrific tortures and wars and human abuses of adults and children, and killing of good people.
If God allows free will, that must allow even the ghastly things done by evil distorters in the name of religion, directly opposite to the principles of love basic to all religions. We don’t abandon medicine, science or the law because of distortions and dreadful things done in their name; we must look beyond, to the true underlying principles.
Suffering caused by natural events or disease is more difficult, though even here, a passion about priorities would mean fewer people in poverty, needing to crowd into earthquake areas or to denude forests. The horrors of disease would be greatly lessened by now, if we had spent all the money for wars on medical research and on education, and administered politically a world as passionately devoted to goodness and kindness as were the saints.
Some complain that a good God should not allow such unfairness in the world.
Could a “fair” world, free of man-made and natural evil, work? As the robber lifted his hand to stab a young mother, would a larger hand come down from heaven to stop him? Would disease affect only people past age 70, and be limited to 10 minutes? And accidents likewise? Poverty would disappear ; all would be rich? It is hard to postulate any physical or mechanical world in which we could have real choice , responsibility and adventure without any possibility of things going severely wrong. Our greatest efforts for good , and our heroes could not exist.
Suffering must be random, and therefore grossly unfair sometimes, to avoid limiting true freedom. The rain must fall on the just and the un-just. Freedom, good and evil are inextricably inter-twined; they’re a package.
Next, we must balance the evil against the tremendous good on Earth. Our world has vast and breathtaking beauty, challenge, and exciting adventures. Our minds can make tremendous discoveries, wonderful art, or and our bodies achieve the glories of sport. But above all, we can love, finding our deepest meaning, and we can marvel at how good some people can be, in the ultimate act, self-sacrifice.
But having said all this, we’re left with a gap. The good sometimes seems only just to balance the evil, it all seems barely to break even. Meeting a parent whose child has cancer, or is going blind, we fall silent – though sometimes because words seem so inadequate in the face of another’s suffering so deep, rather than because there are no answers at all.
So what answers does Christianity offer? We cannot understand everything, but there are lights in the otherwise complete darkness , and they are better lights than any other philosophy offers.
First, with all religions, it asserts that the totality of our situation in our world cannot fully be understood in terms of merely a chance conglomeration of atoms. People sometimes state that “it all just happened by random chance.” There are immense scientific problems with this view, beyond this article’s scope. (See previous article on Science and Faith) In addition, chance can’t explain our understanding of the moral law, and, above all, our certainty of which side we should back, even if we don’t always do so.
We can prove by science that the world is round, but we can be equally sure of other non-scientific things, by experiencing them, never being able to prove them. For example, a clever debater could persuade some that my mother did not deeply love me, that social conditioning, fear of peer criticism, a false belief system etc., all pushed her by mechanical psychological processes into her devoted life. I could not absolutely prove to you otherwise. But I know with certainty that the argument is false – and why? – because I knew her deeply, learnt to trust her, and tested that belief. Christians believe we know and experience the loving personality of God also – by seeking.
There are other things we all experience and can know. Truth is better than a lie, kindness than cruelty, love better that hate. All these things show a moral law outside ourselves. We feel we should follow it even to our disadvantage. That conscience is the thumbprint of our creator. How could it come from random molecules, when self-interest is more profitable? If we did not experience all of those things (good and bad), how could we understand their meaning?
I have argued that there is a purpose and a morality to life because that belief alone enables us to accept there could be a meaning to suffering. We can accept more if we know there is a goal in the end, and that our life is a temporary indication in time of something of far greater significance. In our lives we keep examining minutely the particles in our small beam of light in a dark room , instead of looking along it to the heaven beyond. In this egocentric age, we think this life looks like the whole, so it is our right to be comfortable. How small is our view.
A wise parent sometimes lets a child stumble. Love is greater than just comfort. What if suffering helps to teach us something? Sometimes it does. From it arise the most selfless examples of love. Without suffering, there would be no Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King or William Wilberforce, or countless thousands of other saintly people and heroes. It is the main spur to the passion for medical and other research, for self-determination, for reforms, and good politics.
Sometimes only years later, we realise what a period of pain has taught us, how it has made us more sympathetic. The most sympathetic response is often from those who have similarly suffered. Our human family grows closer, as earthquakes and tsunamis show. And often the heroism of the sufferer is more impressive than the railing against God of the observer. CS Lewis asks: If there is a God who has a purpose for us, to develop our very best character traits and knowledge of him, would that purpose be fulfilled by a world in which every day a good time was had by all?
Nevertheless these things still don’t easily justify severe suffering. Some suggest it’s God’s capricious will, or that disease is a punishment, or due to lack of faith (which Job denied). Such views are unChristian, and those who alleviate any suffering do God’s will. If God is truly loving, suffering must be permitted and endured only for a deeper reason.
So, a proposed world with no suffering or free will raises huge problems. Neither is it axiomatic that all suffering is purposeless. But there’s still a gap. We’re not yet satisfied.
We come, therefore, to the profound phenomenon of Jesus Christ with the preposterous belief that God entered this world personally for the love of us. Not only was his teaching, revelation, and example, of a depth which can give us new truths throughout a lifetime, or through centuries, but in addition God became involved in human suffering.
On the cross, Jesus Christ showed that God’s answer was not that of power, (as we would expect), but of suffering, sharing with us anguish to the greatest extent possible. Christ did not explain suffering away. He shared it with us, showing it can have a meaning we cannot yet fully understand. Perhaps we cannot grasp that the good things suffering produces are more important than the suffering itself ,
Human experience confirms that when we are in pain in a hospital bed, we want explanation and understanding, but we most dearly want someone we love, there, holding our hand. The best help in suffering is not an explanation, but a person, who has also experienced suffering.
Christ spoke little in philosophical terms, preferring simple stories with deep meaning. And his unequivocal emphasis was that God loves us profoundly, as shown in his exemplary life, trusting God, and loving people whatever it cost him, even under torture. He said that we also must learn to know God so that we can trust him, and should become like little children.
Children understand enough to ask life’s many questions, and to rail against some hard decisions of their loving parents, but not enough to understand the complex answers and reasons. But they trust their parents’ love.
Here is a later story from New Zealand, which may help explain this principle:
A shepherd’s horse stumbled, and its flying hoof caught and fractured the leg of his favourite dog. The shepherd dismounted, made a splint and tore up a shirt. But he had to bind the twisted leg onto the splint to carry the dog home. In its excruciating blinding pain, the dog frighteningly snarled with intense ferocity. It placed its bared teeth over the shepherd’s hand.
But it did not bite. Somewhere deep in its doggy brain, something told it that even this could not mean it did not trust its master. There must be something more, some meaning beyond this unbearable pain. What made the difference was the love and trust of the person that it had learnt.
Christ told us we can’t know all the answers, but Christians believe it is possible by prayer , reading, and common worship, to learn enough of God’s personality to enable trust.
But there’s a catch. We’ve got to put considerable energy (like “all thy heart and all thy mind”!) into seeking to know God. This requires humility, and the risk of having to change our ways. In this instant gratification, egotistical, television age, those attitudes aren’t selling very well. Each generation thinks it knows more than previous ones, ours most of all. But the world has gone through godless times before, and Christianity has broken many hammers. It is declining in the West, but its growth in Africa and China is phenomenal.
And what of the alternative explanations of suffering? For the atheist, cruelty is purely that; there is no hope of meaning or anything better beyond. He/she may admit purpose in part of the created, evolved world, but, strangely, not in all of it. The agnostic belief is little better, and if you don’t know the reason for existence, isn’t it the most important thing in life to search the minds of the best thinkers and saints to find out?
Many thoughtful Christians believe that, in all these matters, evidence clashes with evidence.
But we believe we can seek and find enough evidence of a loving God to know enough to trust.
Reading:
The first chapter in Lee Strobel’s book “The Case For Faith” is titled:
“Since Evil and Suffering Exist a Loving God Cannot”
Medal-winning and best selling author Philip Yancey’s book “Disappointment With God”
is a sensitive and moving work , worth repeated reading. It addresses honestly the questions :
“Is God unfair? Is he silent? Is he hidden ?”
” God On Mute” by Pete Greig, deals with un-answered prayer.