From looking up nerdy pick-up lines online

Yes, yes I did.  Inspired by KR's post on my Facebook wall.  Some were just lame, some were not PG-rated.  Here are a few of the ones that made the cut!

"I wish I were adenine so I could get paired with U."

"You're so hot, you denature my proteins" 

"Wana form a synapse with me and exchange neurotransmitters?" 

From KR's Facebook wall post

"You must be a good benzene ring because you are pleasantly aromatic."

The Problem of Evil

So far, in my two previous posts, my faith epiphanies confirmed my previous perspectives on basic religious principles.  This is the point of contention which really bothered and frustrated me.  Why?  Because this argument is so logical and rational, so easily defended, that I couldn't even really convince myself to ignore it.  We were assigned a philosopher to defend for our class debate.  Go figure, I was assigned J.L. Mackie, an atheist.  HA!  One thing's for sure... preparing and participating in the debate was interesting...

Problem: God is wholly good and yet evil exists.

Premise 1: Good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can.

Premise 2: There are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do.

Therefore, a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely.

Therefore, it is irrational and incompatible for evil and a good omnipotent thing to exist simultaneously.

Therefore, because evil exists, God must not exist.

Take a minute to process that.  Done?  This argument is so straightforward, I couldn't come up with any legitimate, non-faith-related counterargument to this.  Here, let's try, with my defenses in line with the thoughts of J.L. Mackie.  These are real counterarguments that theists would use to justify the presence of evil in the world.

Counterargument:  "We're only human.  We're not supposed to know all the answers." Yes, I agree with that, personally, but to a philosopher in the middle of a debate, that sounds a lot like a cop-out, an indication of surrender.  This one is too weak of an argument.

Counterargument: "Evil must exist in the world in order to bring about good."  Doesn't that limit God's omnipotence?  If He's capable of doing anything and everything, why can't he create good without creating evil?  Also, this would only be justified IF and only IF there was just enough evil to balance out the amount of good, but that is not the case.  There are some evils that are just evil; some even create even more evil (i.e. a large percentage of sexual assault victims go on to perpetuate the cycle).  

Counterargument: "Evil is due to human free will."  So basically, God created Man, then it's a free-for-all after that?  Does this mean God has no control of His creation?  Does that mean the creators of the atomic bomb are innocent of the slaughter in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Why couldn't God create people who always choose between different degrees of good instead of having the possibility of choosing evil?

What do I think?  I really don't know.  This is the one argument I couldn't contend.  This question has always been the one to leave me speechless.  Why do bad things happen?  Does this weaken my faith?  I left that debate victorious yet broken.  Why was it so easy for me to argue in defense of an atheist?  That really bothered me and left me frustrated; I was shaken up.  It's like I'm looking at a data set, and there's one point that deviates from the rest.  Of the topics discussed in class, this was the only one I failed to truly gain a concrete opinion on.  Do I have answers now?  No, not really.  The problem of evil is a sensitive subject that I'll need time to reflect upon.  Maybe I'll revisit this topic sometime in the future.  As of now, what I do recognize is my anxiety and frustration at being unable to reconcile the idea of a theistic God and the existence of the problem of evil.

Divine Providence and Human Free Will

The theistic God is described as omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and benevolent (all-loving).  If God knows everything from beginning to end and if He created everything, how does this reconcile with the idea of human free will?  It's a very interesting topic to me.  Has everything been predestined and predetermined, and are we only living in the illusion of free will?  Are we really free?

J.R. Lucas suggests open theism, that the future is open, not closed.  God is like a "Persian rug-maker who lets His children work at one end while He does the other" and when His children make mistakes, His skills are so great that He "adapts the design at His end to take into account each error" they make.  God's will is not necessarily a blueprint, set in stone.  The universe is not static but dynamic, as vague possibilities are continually crystallizing into reality.  Things are only unchangeable once they have passed from the present into the past.  God oversees everything coming into being, and because He created each one of us, He is aware of our flaws and the errors we are likely to make.  God loves His children and instilled an intrinsic value on our desires and opinions; He tries to cater to us.  And God's awesome providence is not diminished because not everything happens as planned, but His grace is amplified because He makes good come out of situations when it might not have seemed possible.

This reminds me of my former youth pastor's explanation of free will, the shoebox analogy.  Take a shoebox and poke one hole on opposite ends.  Place obstacles in the box (i.e. a puddle of water, sand, soil, a twig, etc.) and allow an ant to enter through one of the holes.  Now watch the ant try and make its way to the other end.  The ant can freely choose to take any route, left, right, straight ahead, even in circles.  Once in a while, when the ant is completely off track, you can take a stick and coax it to go in the right direction.  Eventually, the ant will reach its destination, regardless of the path it chose to take.  

I think this is an awesome perspective on God's grace and will for our lives.  There are certain events which He has predestined for us, but along the way, He caters to our desires and allows us to make our own decisions.  He oversees everything, every decision, every moment in our lives, but allows us to make mistakes, even though He foresees our mistakes.  This does not take away from His benevolence, that He allows us to fall and hurt.  On the contrary, it is a reflection of His incredible benevolence that He, who is capable of creating humans without free will, would rather grant us this privilege than have us live a fully automated and predetermined life.  This idea resonates with the title of this blog, "A Beautiful Mess."  It is comforting to know that even though I am a flawed creation doomed to make mistakes, God is able to transform this "mess" into something beautiful.  And in His infinite power and knowledge, even these mistakes ultimately contribute to the fulfillment of His will.

Teleological Argument (aka the Watch Maker Argument)

Spring 2010 is over, and summer is here!  Right on time too, since we were all pretty much at the edge of our sanity!  It's not cool that I haven't blogged in such a long time, especially since very many thoughts have been circulating my mind.  It's time to unload!  As I've mentioned in my previous post, I believe it was part of God's plan that I took Philosophy of Religion this past semester.  I've been in the midst of a crisis in faith for about a year now, and this class forced me to confront my own philosophies and perspectives about faith and religion.  It's really been an eye opening experience--and a painful and frustrating one too, at times!  Many posts to come...

Let's start off with William Paley's teleological argument...

Imagine this.  You're on an island that has never before been inhabited.  As you're exploring, you find a little machine, a watch, in the sand.  You're not sure what it is.  It might even be broken or have missing parts, and you might not know what it does or how it works.  Either way, you look inside the little device and see tiny gears and parts that somehow work together for it to properly function.  Because of this, you are able to conclude that there is intelligent design behind it, that someone must have made it.  Therefore, there must be a Watch Maker.  

Now let's apply this theory to the universe.  The universe is an extremely complex machinery, made up of very, very many smaller "machines" capable of functioning independently.  Because of this higher-order intricacy displayed by and observed throughout the universe, we are able to conclude that intelligent design is involved.  Therefore, there must be a Universe Maker.  And because the mechanisms of nature clearly surpass that of any man-made machine, it can be concluded that the Universe Maker is greater than human.

I believe that science analyzes and explains phenomena which religion only mentions.  For example, according to Genesis, God spoke and the universe was born.  Similarly, scientists hypothesize the Big Bang theory marked the beginning of the universe.  Both were sudden events with a clearly marked point of origin.  What if God's command was manifested through the Big Bang, which created the universe?  Also, according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, nature favors chaos and disorder.  It takes a conscious, energy-requiring effort to bring order.  This is obviously true.  A glass of water always makes a mess when someone knocks it over; it is never the other way around.  This never happens in reverse, with the spill spontaneously returning into the glass.  (ha, I wish!)  Someone has to consciously clean it up and use energy to do so.  Since this is true, that nature favors chaos, a machine made up of various components could not have simply resulted from a random arrangement of parts which occurred by chance; it must be a product of intelligent design!

It's a well-known fact that I am a true nerd, to the core.  I've oohed and aahed at the mechanisms in organic chemistry, biochemical pathways, and the intricate processes of the human body.  (I've actually made a few posts about it before, here and here.)  Learning about all this, especially within the context of biochemistry and philosophy, is just absolutely mind-blowing.  Every time I learn a new pathway, a new process, I have to stop and take a few moments to truly admire the wonders of it.  It really is amazing, I can't stress that enough!  I understand that not very many people have the interest or the patience to learn about science in such great detail, but those who do cannot deny the innate intricacies of these systems.  This cannot possibly arise from chance, or  even evolution, alone.  This stuff is the focus of my career, my profession, and my greatest interest.  And because I know so very many examples of the intricacies of nature, I cannot dispute that the universe reflects intelligent design.  And for me, above anything else, this proves that my God, my Creator and Intelligent Designer, truly exists.