C1: Conversations with Glen – March 2002 (Glen’s
comments are in bold black print. I hope
I’ve done them justice in summarizing our many emails.)
Mike,
Thank you for taking
the time to read this email and hopefully taking the time to respond to
it. I'm on a crusade of sorts and
am hoping you can help me. You see, I am an atheist to the core. However, I'm trying to understand why such a
large percentage of the world believes in God. So far as I can tell there
are several possibilities for this.
1. God exists, but he hates me and wants to see
me suffer in hell. (see John 12:39,40, John 10:11,26,
Matthew 11:25,26, Acts 13:48, Romans 9:19-24)
2. Most
of the world is insane
3. I'm
insane
4. There
may be other possibilities that I haven't thought of as well.
I have come up with a challenge for the God of
Christianity to help me determine which of the above is true. Maybe you can
help me find flaws in this challenge? It consists of four statements,
then my challenge.
1. God
loves all of his creatures and does not want to see any of them punished or go
to hell.
2. The only way to avoid being punished or going to hell is to believe in and
love God.
3. God is omniscient and knows what it will take to prove his existence to me
in a way that I can understand and accept.
4. God is omnipotent and is capable of doing whatever it takes to prove his
existence to me in a way that I can understand and accept.
Challenge: The only way I will be willing to believe in
and love God, and thus avoid being punished or going to hell, is if he proves
his existence to me in a way that I can understand and accept. Either God proves himself to me in which case
I will then believe he exists, or he doesn't in which case I will continue to
believe that he does not exist.
Consider the consequences, however, if he
does exist yet does not prove himself to me so that I will believe in and
consider loving him. God will have shown at least one of the following is
true:
1. That he does not love me. If he loved me then he would accept my
challenge as an opportunity to bring me into his grace.
2. That he wants to see me punished. Since I will not love a God that
does not prove himself to me then it follows that if God does not prove
himself to me that I will not love him, and therefore, by his rules, I will be
punished. However, since I gave God the opportunity to prove himself and
he chose not to, he must want to see me punished.
3. That he is not omniscient. Maybe God doesn't know what it will take to
prove his existence to me.
4. That he is not omnipotent Maybe God doesn't
have the power necessary to prove his existence to me.
5. God made me incapable of loving him. If that is the case then I am the
equivalent of the proverbial rock that God made that he could not lift.
Some scripture does indicate that this is a possibility, but then that
contradicts the statement that God wants all his creatures to love him. Surely
an intelligent God would not want all his creatures to love him and then deliberately
create some that were incapable of doing so. I suppose it could be an accident,
but would that mean God made a mistake?
As you can see, this is an important issue. The favor of your response is requested.
Thank you again for your time. Glen
Glen.
I updated my
book-on-line with an extensive answer to your questions. See, http://www.nasamike.com/main/book/b4.htm. But first let me suggest that You do believe in a God (ie a
First Cause, Who alone is eternal). I suggest that what you are really
asking is whether or not that First Cause is personal
If God can
think, then He is personal. That said, let's get into what might be His rationale for our
existence.
I agree that no one can be held
accountable for responding properly to something that is not logically
understandable. Therefore, if we are
obligated in any way with respect to God, we ought to be logically able to
understand the details.
Nasa Mike
Interesting ideas - not quite the answer to my question, which literally was "why doesn't God come to me and say, 'hello', such that I'd know it was God?" But it's not the first time my question hasn't been addressed and probably won't be the last either. You said, “ Even though we die, yet He can give us individually everlasting life in heaven with the angels, if we individually choose to have a relationship with Him. (emphasis added)”
Here we get back to my original question. Where is
God and why hasn't he said, "hello", to me in a way that I will
understand and accept? I'll be friends with God if he comes by and says,
"howdy". But he hasn't yet. Does that
mean I'm stubborn? Maybe it also means God is stubborn too (assuming he
exists). [I can see it's going to
be fun discussing these issues with you. Also, I'd like to thank you
for responding to my original email so quickly. The others I sent the question
to haven't even acknowledged me yet.]
p.s. I'm not a Christian so
putting my answer in the Questions from Christians
section isn't appropriate. Perhaps a new section titled Questions from Atheists
is called for here?
p.p.s. I've considered your suggestion
that I believe in God as first cause and decided against it. Yes, this Universe
exists. Does that mean something created it? Maybe. It
could have created itself just as easily. Since both options mean that
something created itself (either the Universe or the creator - if any) I opt
for the Universe doing the job as an impersonal God.
God cannot intervene against our free-will or He will violate the
demo. Hence, He does not chat with you
as you'd like.
However, in heaven that's exactly what God will be doing - conversing with all of His created beings one-on-one via His Image, Michael.
In this world there is something
else going on, ie the Sin Drama that I
explained. Until this issue is resolved there is neither perfection nor
happiness in heaven. There is "war" in heaven. Again, if the demo is to successfully resolve
the War in heaven problem, then God must impose certain restrictions on Himself
as it plays out. As I said, free will of
the players is paramount and must not be violated, because the question of free
will is the root cause of the need for Proof and the Sin Drama.
This is the rationale: God knows the ultimate outcome, because He
has seen it play out in previous creations – remember how long He has been
around and what He must have been doing all that time. Yet, God does not know how His free-willed
beings will individually choose along the way.
(See the analogy to the ultimate chess computer in section 6e ). These beings are learning as they make these
choices and the audience of angelic beings are
learning as well. The human players are
learning to “Trust God” while the angels are learning the nature of sin.
Mike, you also said, “The scenario requires Him to create a surrogate universe of
humans, a little lower than the angels, who would elect to sin and then pay the
eventual consequences, while all the angelic beings watched and learned all
about evil.”
This implies that God wanted Adam and Eve to sin and in fact
designed them that way. It also implies that humans are like bacteria in a petri dish - or maybe monkeys in a cage
is a better analogy. There are some interesting Garden of Eden
implications as well where either God lied to Adam and Eve about eating from
the Tree of Knowledge, or had fully expected them to eat from it - in which
case, why punish them?
God is not
punishing anyone. That is a Medieval concept
based on guilt and fear. God lays out two choices,
relate to Me or hide from Me. Yes Adam was made from the dirt
(symbolizing that he was made with the design that would perish over time, eg via bacteria). God had His salvation plan from
before He created Adam. These facts indicate that indeed God knew Adam
would sin, ie choose to try to know evil by doing
evil.
Yes,
that is the reason for creating Adam in the first place, when He already had
superior angelic beings.
Yes, this is an experiment,
where God knows the end results already. The angelic beings need this
demo to learn about evil.
Yes, this Earth is very much
like a petri dish. It was indeed made in the
Image of the pre-existing angelic universe and we in the image of angels.
This universe of ours is a temporary creation, designed for the purpose of
resolving the free will issue that always leads to sin and unhappiness until it
finally ends in self-destruction. With
this creation, God is going to enable His free-willed beings to finally live
happily ever after in the angelic universe (the perfect kingdom of heaven) as
He originally intended (see sections 6c and 6f).
I have some questions about your bullets under
item 2 in your response:
The First Cause wants “companionship” so He creates thinking beings, who He can communicate with via thought.
1) Why would a perfect being want
anything? Doesn't that imply less than perfection?
Even perfection does not
eliminate boredom.
God is all alone in His
universe. I believe He creates
intelligent beings for companionship. He
created situations for them to experience and to relate to Him about. He does this without violating their free
will. If all He wanted were robots, He
would have made more grass. Free-willed
beings generate infinitely more experiences than robots. God can keep them alive by thinking of them
and yet not pull their strings. They are
and must be free to make their own choices.
Free willed beings cannot remain perfect unless they understand
both good and evil. They can be created perfect (without sin), but they
must learn about evil to know they are choosing good. They can learn about evil either by doing
evil (sin) or by watching others do evil. The wages of doing sin are
eventual death via self-destruction. God
must set up a scenario where the angelic beings He created can learn about evil
without doing evil.
The scenario requires Him to create a surrogate
universe of humans, a little lower than the angels, who would elect to sin and
then pay the eventual consequences, while all the angelic beings watched and
learned all about “evil”.
2) This brings up the question, "Why didn't God just give his angelic companions the knowledge of evil?" with a counter question of, "How did God learn about evil?"
Robots could know evil by design. Free-willed beings must choose good over evil, therefore they must "learn" evil
Free willed
beings cannot remain perfect unless they understand both good and evil. They can be created perfect (without sin),
but they must learn about “evil” to know they are choosing “good”. If God just created them with the knowledge
of evil, He would be violating their free will to learn of it themselves. That is because this “knowledge” must be a
collection of their own experiences as consequences of their own independent
choices, so they can relate to them. If
God just gives them those experiences, then they were never free to acquire
those experiences. I think this Plan of God’s is the kind
of perfect and total solution that our eternal God can accept. Why contrive something less, when He has
eternity to do it right?
“Good” consists of all that enhances
life, while “Evil” consists of all that is self-destructive.
God knows what works and conversely what does not
work, because He has learned this by watching the consequences play out to
their final end in previous scenarios. Therefore God knows both
"good" and "evil" and yet He has never done evil. I wonder
if God can actually do good or evil, since there is nothing outside Himself to act on.
Everything He “does,” happens in His mind, so I contend that He
inherently learns by watching, not by doing.
3) This
one I still don't get.
Robots could know evil by design. Free-willed
beings must choose good over evil, therefore they must
"learn" evil. God knows what works and conversely what does not
work. Therefore God knows both "good" and "evil".
You're saying
two distinct things.
1. No free-willed being
can know evil without learning about it on their own.
2. God knows evil
without having to have learned about it on his own.
Logically putting these
two things together you end up with the conclusion that God is not a
free-willed being. Either that or statement 1 is false in which case God
"could" implant the knowledge of evil in any of his creatures. Just
because they have the knowledge doesn't mean they have to act on it. You
probably have knowledge that would allow you to build some sort of ICBM device,
yet you probably choose not to use that knowledge. I have knowledge of
how to do "evil" things, yet I choose not to use that knowledge.
Again, God has been around forever. He has
had numerous scenarios play out where He creates perfect free-willed beings
only to watch them self-destruct over enormous time spans. All the
while that "perfect" heaven He intended to create has been
unhappy. He knows evil because He has watched it. Sin is the result
of acting on poor choices and over time it gets worse and worse until it
self-destructs. God has not sinned but
He understands evil, ie He understands what is
destructive and why. His created beings
need to learn this as God Himself has learned it, ie
by watching others play out the Sin Drama.
4) I still need proof of God’s existence to believe any of this. You said,
“God cannot intervene against our
free-will or He will violate the demo. Hence, He does not chat with you
as you'd like.“
So God is willing to
let me go on as an unbeliever who will end up not having everlasting life
simply because I choose to ask for proof of his existence rather than go on
blind faith? Also, if God can't talk to me - even if I ask - then how was
he able to talk to Moses, Abraham, Joseph, and all the other folks mentioned in
the Bible? It would seem to me that God had to talk to someone to get
this experiment started. It would also seem that if there are folks out there
(like me) who steadfastly state that until God proves himself they will not
believe in him that God should be willing to listen to and acknowledge their request.
Knowing
God exists is inherent in all of us. We must fight to deny it. What
we do is to choose other gods, who did not create us to put our faith in.
[eg technology, brotherhood
of Man, ET, inner self, spirit guides, masters of the universe,...] Our
relationship with them gets us what we wanted in the end, but not everlasting
life. No problem here. There is no eternal punishing, only getting
what you chose.
Notice from the Bible how God talks to the Biblical figures. No
one around them hears His voice in most cases, only the target, who hears
because he is listening. It happens in their mind via
thought. It is then up to them to "test the
spirits". Is this the real God or some alternate god? They
must sort this out based on the content involved.
Now recognize that even when God was
dramatically clear about His existence, eg with the
plagues of Egypt and parting the Red Sea during the Exodus, etc, still His
chosen people quickly forgot. How is this possible if they actually got
what you are now asking for? It is because they would not listen with
their heart. They found other explanations for those astounding events
and were then able to pass them off as explainable and not indicative of a real
personal God. What a bummer. Where does God go from this point?
Still He must not force Himself on His people. They must be allowed to
make their own choices. I believe that
God has seen this sort of reaction in previous angelic scenarios. Hence, He knows what will happen in our Human
Sin Drama, too. However, these angelic
beings now need to understand that as well, so He is playing it out yet again
for their benefit. If they learn what He
knows about evil, the sin will never rise again.
5) You say, “God is not punishing anyone. That is a Medieval concept based on guilt and fear.”
At least now you've
made Pascal's wager a really easy choice for me. I will continue being an
atheist because I will die either way and will not be punished either way. Besides,
if I did take the wager, who is to say that God wouldn't see right through me
and consider it false belief in which case I'd still "lose".
No problem. Enjoy life now, because
that's all you'll get. Why would you want anything more anyway? You
cannot see a reason to relate to a God Who does not talk back to you a certain
way, so the only god you'll ever know is one who tells you what you want to
hear. Look into the occult. There you'll find many such gods.
The real Creator God does talk to us, but we need to listen - ask the birds and
the beasts and look at the heavens. You'll see the handiwork of this God
at the macro and the micro levels. This is your proof of His existence and you
don't even need a Bible or a religion to realize it. Then talk to Him and
you'll recognize His responses.
I can
see it's going to be fun discussing these issues with you. Also, I'd like
to thank you for responding to my original email so quickly. The others I sent
the question to haven't even acknowledged me yet.
I believe most religious people, unfortunately, have no
clue about much of this. They are simply following their own brand of
passion, "If I believe this with all my
heart, I should be okay in the end". The terrorists say the same
thing. Problem is in telling when you're flat out wrong. The entire
Big Picture must hang together logically and make sense - especially if you are
to believe it with all your heart. I
believe this Big Picture enables us to understand a myriad of otherwise
illogical beliefs, and thus to sort out “truth” from “error”.
The entire Big Picture must hang
together logically and make sense - especially if you are to believe it with
all your heart.
That's for sure. And until
it makes sense I won't believe it.
I did not believe it either until I
saw the fit. God will help you in your
quest and you will find Him when you seek for Him with all your heart.
March 2002
For more on this and a response to any questions, please email any comments to nasamike@nasamike.com