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I consider myself a layperson, and no trained expert
on most things, but I do know the difference between logical and illogical.
There are of course people who make a rule of claiming there are no rules, but
they are a minority. Most people, like myself, can see that A plus B always
must equal C.
For example, when a detective approaches a crime
scene, he (or she) looks for clues. When the clues fail to match the assumed
account of the crime the most logical explanation is taken as the best.
Suppose a woman has one cat in the house. The house is
locked all day and only the cat is in the house. No other pets enter or leave
the house all day until the woman comes home. When she comes home she finds a
pot plant knocked over and paw prints on the floor. What is the logical
explanation?
A man leaves his car parked outside the house at the
top end of a sloping driveway. In the morning he finds his car at the bottom
end of the driveway and his red letterbox knocked over. There is red paint and
a scrape line on his car. It is logical to conclude that his car has struck his
letterbox during the night – perhaps because the brakes failed and the car
rolled?
A car does not release its own brakes, so we have some
possibilities. The man may have failed to make sure the brakes were on full,
or, someone else may have released the brakes. Bit by bit the process of logic
narrows down the probabilities until we come to the correct conclusion.
Anyone who reads an Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes
will notice how the criminal is betrayed by a logical exclusion or inclusion of
facts. The human mind is constructed to perceive logic, and to use it
efficiently. One of my favourite detectives is Adrian Monk. He constantly
amazes his police friends with his logic, yet when he tells them what he is
thinking they often say “How come when I look at the same thing I don’t see
what he sees?”
Just one example of how Monk worked. On one occasion
he entered a room where a crime had occurred. A woman lay dead on the floor.
Monk noticed that the woman’s chair had been lowered so the assailant could use
her computer. He logically deduced that the assailant must have been taller
than the woman. He noticed that the window cord had a twist in it and logically
deduced that the assailant must have used the cord to steady his rifle barrel.
From this he deduced the man’s height and because of the cord-twisting feature
assumed the man had had prior military training which was unique to a certain
military division. By simple logic Monk deduced many useful things about the
assailant, and it is interesting to note that without logic a huge number of
crimes would never be solved.
Logic is a subject which has been studied and written
about for thousands of years. It is by no means a simple subject, and there are
many variants and opinions and counter-opinions about the definition of what
exactly logic is. There are also many different types of logic and there are
many schools of thought about the many different types of logic. It is by no
means a simple subject, once one starts to dig into it. From what I have read,
it is clear that no matter what anyone says about logic, there will always be a
detractor who suggests an alternative point of view!
Going back to the cat in the house illustration again,
there may be several different conclusions possible, except none of them fit
the facts.
There may have been another cat in the house? No,
there were no other cats. The woman checked the house thoroughly and found no
open windows no gaps, no holes for a cat to come or go by.
The pot plant may have knocked itself over, and the
paw prints may have been an accidental effect, caused by the soil spilling? No,
this is impossible. Soil cannot do that.
The pot may have already been knocked over days before
the woman left the house? No, the woman is a fastidious house-keeper. She would
have seen the mess.
When all the alternatives have been excluded there is
only one possible conclusion. That is the most logical one. This is the kind of
logic I enjoy.
Using similar logic I will try to present, in simple
layman’s terms, five different approaches to the subject of God. Readers are
welcome to have their own opinions about my logic of course. For those who like
to deconstruct everything none of my logic will satisfy them, but then, it is
some people’s habit to endlessly deconstruct everything. For them, in the end,
everything means nothing, so I cannot see much point in following that line of
reasoning. I prefer to stick with what we usually call “common sense”.
In the case of Monk in the room with the dead woman,
he might have looked at the body and thought: “If she sits at that computer
desk, why is the chair so low. She is too small to be comfortable in such a low
chair. Perhaps someone else has adjusted the seat down? Perhaps the assailant
used her computer before he left the room?” A quick check of the keyboard
reveals fingerprints – not the woman’s fingerprints - same for the mouse. Now
we know the very letters the assailant used, as well as his approximate body
size. We also know he is literate, and intelligent enough to use a computer. If
he sent an Email we might find it in the outbox or deleted items. If he emptied
the deleted items a deep search of the hardrive might reveal his words, as well
as the person he sent the mail to. And so on.
The point is Monk might have started with an “if” as
he sifted through the clues. Each “if” was a premise which he then tested, and
if the evidence matched the premise he then had a logical step towards finding
the assailant.
Problem Number One.
There are people, called atheists, who say there is no
God. But is it logical to say this? One bit of evidence which contradicts the
claim is the problem of evil. (By “evil” we mean suffering, sickness,
disasters, and all those horrible things which land on humanity) In terms of
Mr. Monk this would be like saying that just because there is a dead woman on
the floor with a knife stuck in her back, there is no need to conclude someone
stabbed her. It just happened that way, by accident. There is no assailant in
fact, and therefore no crime.
To be logical about the claim that there is no God, we
would need to follow the claim a bit further. Logically, if there is no God,
then there is no such thing as evil. Nothing is evil, and nothing is good. It
just happens to be this way, and we must not put any of our subjective feelings
into it. When we see in the news that a thousand people have been killed by an
earthquake we should not feel sorry for those people. When a fire destroys a
house, or a flood wipes out a farmer’s livestock, we should just shrug and say,
“Well it happened, but it wasn’t really a disaster, because there’s no such
thing as a disaster.”
The fact is we cannot make a value judgement about
things being “good” or “evil” without drawing them from some solid basis
outside of ourselves. We cannot say something is good or bad from ourselves,
because we are not absolutely reliable. We cannot get our value judgements from
other people either, because since when are they absolutely right all the time?
Nature cannot give us a value judgement, and the universe is silent. Where else
can we turn for a solid base of value other than some supreme being outside our
mortal lives, a Being called God, who defines “good” and “evil” for us?
The atheist cannot call anything either good or evil,
because for him these are just subjective value judgements. To be absolutely
logical, an atheist must not feel any sympathy for people who are sick, robbed,
injured or sad. He must not resist crime, or feel any anger if he is
mistreated. His universe is empty. There is no God, so all value judgements
must be totally subjective. As soon as an atheist allows in a tiny amount of
pity, or appreciation, or anger over some injustice, he is moving away from his
logic. He is becoming illogical (or inconsistent).
The problem is, atheists always contradict their
claims. They (generally speaking) love their children, are faithful to their
wives, care about their community, respect their friends . . . and show great
sympathy when others are hurt. They say there is no God, yet they live as if
there really is a God. Monk would find this illogical behaviour rather
puzzling. He would look at the woman with the knife in her back and say, “You
cannot tell me this woman stabbed herself. The evidence points to a second
person!” In the same way, you cannot say there is no God because the evidence
points the other way. If there is no God, there must be good and no evil. It is
illogical to claim otherwise.
Problem Number Two
There is no such thing as suffering. This may sound
very similar to the first problem, and it is related, but it has some
difference too.
When I was quite young I remember hearing about a
woman who lived near to our house who believed that there was no such thing as
sickness. My mother heard that this poor woman was very sick, so she took some
food to the woman’s door and knocked. The woman opened the door a crack and
told my mother that all was well, and thank you, and could she please go away.
The sick woman did not want my mother so see her. She closed the door, rather
than admit or reveal that she was sick. She denied her sickness, even though
she was really full of it. (This attitude to sickness is common to Christian
Science and some Eastern religions)
The premise from which the deniers of sickness work
starts with the idea that sickness is an illusion. The Hindu religion calls the
whole physical universe ‘maya’, which means an illusion, and it includes the
human body. All suffering is therefore not real. Our minds make us think we are
sick, so to be free of sickness all we have to do is train our minds to not see
sickness when it comes along. Christian Science teaches that sickness will
vanish when we refuse to acknowledge it.
Monk would approach it like this: “You say this woman
with the knife in her back is not really dead? Her heart is not beating, her
back is bleeding, she is not breathing . . . are you saying this woman only thinks
she is dead? I’m sorry my friends, but the evidence points the other way.”
Human experience is very good at teaching us reality.
When we fall over and graze our knee, we feel pain, we see a wound, and we wait
till the scar has healed over. These are real things, not illusions. They can
be measured, photographed, and tested. We know they are not illusions because
we hurt. True, there are some people who imagine all sorts of things which they
say are wrong with them, and these hypochondriacs insist needlessly on numerous
medicines, but for most of us we know when we have a cold, or a broken leg or a
bruised arm.
It is not logical to deny suffering. Hunger, thirst,
sickness, pain and inner emotional turmoil are all real. It is good logic to
acknowledge them as such.
Problem Number Three
God is distant and transcendent, so transcendent He is
not moved or touched by anything we humans do. This view of God shows up from
time to time in various ways. He is “the force” in the Star Wars movies, and
the Eastern religions sometimes speak of God as being everything, and the goal
in life is to become one with God, and therefore become nothingness as one
blends with all. It all sounds so mystical and grand, and many people love to
contemplate such things, but is it logical?
Monk enters the room, sees the woman on the floor with
the knife in her back. “Ah, I see it all,” he says, “The knife and the body are
all one. The woman and the room, the blood, the computer, the chair . . . all
are one, and there is no separation between them. No crime was committed here.”
It is all very convenient to push God out of His own
universe, and to label Him “transcendent”. This means He has no say in our
lives. It is like very naughty children trying to lock their parents out of the
house. “Take them away! We don’t want them to speak to us!” The parents would
very much like to discipline and raise the children, but they cannot even speak
to them. They are removed.
Is it logical to push God out? First of all, let us
see it from the point of view of sinners who do not want to be challenged or
punished. Yes, for sinners it is very logical for them to want to remove God.
Criminals want to remove judges. Bad people want to remove policemen. The last
person any bad people want to see is someone who holds them accountable –
someone they have to answer to.
But what happens when a person has just had a great
loss? Or their lover has left them? Or their child has died? Who can they turn
to in the night, as they cry on their pillow? The transcendent God is no help
to them – He is just some impersonal force, a nothingness with no compassion.
For such people a God who loves them, and who can really help is a great
blessing, but if we want to be logical one way, we ought to be logical the
other way too. We cannot have a transcendent God when we are bad, and a
personal God when we are in sorrow.
Furthermore, what happens when we see an outrage? War
and cruelty are outrages. Dictators who kill their own people. Hitlers and
others have won the disgust of millions – but if God is transcendent, and
“wholly other”, this means He has no feelings one way or the other about
outrage. The transcendent God watches with complete serenity as people attack,
hurt and steal from each other. The transcendent God hardly notices when Nazis
send Jews to the gas chambers. Nothing bothers Him. He floats peacefully in His
heavenly peace while people cry out for justice.
Monk would have a problem with a transcendent God. He
would wonder why the police had even bothered to call him to the crime scene.
“Why do you care about this woman?” he might ask, “It’s obvious that the knife
is simply in a different position in the room. It used to be in the drawer, now
it’s in the woman’s back. That’s all. There has been no crime. God is not
interested in this. Don’t call it a murder. Let me go home – I want to watch
TV.”
Real life experience shows us that people care. They
care immensely about injustice, dishonesty and other moral crimes. Is it
logical to suppose that God is so transcendent He does not care? When we are
outraged about some sin, is it logical to think that God is completely unmoved?
I don’t think so. I think our reaction to suffering or injustice is a
reflection of a higher Being’s reaction. If we are angry over sin, how much
angrier is God? That seems to me the most logical approach.
Problem Number Four
God’s power is limited, because He is not really as
powerful as the Bible says.
Most religions and most cultures have this view of
God. They have reduced God or gods, or goddesses, to a lower level, a more
“understandable” level shall we say. The Greeks had a whole family of deities,
all centred on
The idea of a ‘small’ god is quite convenient. If
children could reduce their parents to the size of a mouse they could do pretty
much anything they liked. Mum and Dad’s authority would be diminished to a mere
squeak, and as for corporeal punishment, that would be a joke. The best thing
Dad could do is throw matches, or shake his tiny fist.
If God is small, He is manageable. Mankind does not
need to respect or obey Him. But let us be logical here. If God is small He is
also weak. When there is a hurricane, God cannot stop it. He is useless when it
comes to preventing a flood, or an earthquake. He never intervenes in the
really big disasters because He is almost powerless. Logically, a small God is
no use to us, so while it is handy having Him powerless, and therefore too
small to correct or judge us, we must be consistent and also have Him unable to
help us when we really need help.
The small God view is also handy for people who want
to manage their own lives and run the world without Him. People who think
Darwin’s theory was correct like to think that perhaps a small God is out there
somewhere sort of guiding evolution, but never really interfering with what
people do. They like to think that God is a benevolent, kindly Being, who wants
everybody happy, but always keeps his nose out of our lives. It is a bit of a
nuisance having such a useless God, because it means He often fails to help us
when we need it, and He constantly loses battles when He struggles against
cruelty and chaos, but if we want Him to be limited, logically, we must follow
through. He cannot be small and also very powerful at the same time.
If Monk was asked for his opinion, he might say:
“Well, it’s a shame that the woman died, but there was no way God could have
prevented it. He is not strong enough to stop really determined criminals, and
besides, He might have been stabbed too! I don’t blame Him for staying out of
this.”
Is this really the sort of God we need? A weak, small
God, who has limited power? Suppose we asked a mother, whose child has just
died in her arms, if she is happy with a God who is so limited in power He can
only watch helplessly as the loved one passes away? The evidence does not
support such a view. There must be some other explanation. Logically, God
cannot be small and weak. He must be something else. The logical path leads
away from a weak and small God, but where does it lead?
Problem Number Five
God created evil so we would learn how to be good.
Monk enters the room again, sees the body on the floor
and turns to the chief of police. “See this? What a wonderful lesson! Now we
see the consequences of stabbing people in the back, let us all go home and
remember never to do this ourselves!”
Of course there is a little bit of truth in Monk’s
words. We can learn from evil how to be good, but it is a challenge to
logic to think that God would actually create evil just so we could
learn something good from it. And when you think about history, all the
millions of people who have suffered and died because of evil, isn’t it about
time the wonderful lesson was ended? Haven’t we learned it by now?
Logically, if God created evil, then He must have evil
in Him too. This makes God a strange mixture of good and evil, because you need
good as a contrast to evil otherwise you can’t define evil. (White needs black,
so white appears as white. Black needs white, so black appears as black.)
Take the logic a little further. If God created evil,
then all evil that Man commits is actually coming from God. If God is the
origin of evil, then all the evil we commit is attributable to God. Sure, we
can take the blame for our own actions, but we can also say, "God put the
evil there in the first place." Like a child who is caught stealing
sweets, he can blame Mum for putting the sweets in a jar within reach, and also
giving the child sweets in the past, thus making them more attractive to her
taste.
Take another logical step. If God is evil then what
Christians say about redemption and salvation is nonsense, because what is God
saving people from? He cannot save us from evil if He is evil too. He cannot
save us from suffering if suffering is caused by evil. It is illogical
therefore, for Christians to try and eliminate evil from the world, because God
put it there.
If God created evil, then it must logically be OK for
people to be evil.
Once again Monk is called to the scene of the crime.
He looks at the woman lying dead on the floor: “It was a shame she had to die
so brutally, but there you are . . . what can we do about it? That’s life!”
As soon as we say God created evil, we open the way
for all sorts of illogical conclusions. The most illogical (in my view is the
crucifixion of God’s only Son Jesus. Why would God go to such trouble to pay
the price for sin if sin was part of Himself? What was the point of Jesus
teaching us to obey God and be good if God was also evil? Why would God judge
the world if sin were part of His own nature – surely He should judge Himself
too? When Jesus died on the cross did that signal just a stop-gap measure, to
help reduce evil but not to pay in full the price for it?
The Biblical Solution.
The Bible supplies the only logical solution to the
problem of evil, and it does so with simplicity.
The Bible tells us that God is good. He is both good
and all-powerful. His power and wisdom and goodness are part of His nature
which is pure love. So where did evil come from? Did God create it as an
afterthought? No.
The Bible reveals God to us this way. He is the First
Cause for creation, that is He is the origin of all things. Genesis gives us a
summary of the creation, and adds that when He was finished creating the
universe he pronounced it “very good.” No blemishes. No sin. No evil. No
suffering, or death or decay. It was a universe which operated under different
laws. It was a supernatural universe, designed to last forever, perfect,
flawless, utterly fantastic.
But God created a being similar in some ways to
Himself, and gave this being free will. This made the being a Second Cause. If
you can grasp this you will understand the logic of what happened next.
The First cause gave the being freedom to choose
whether it obeyed or disobeyed, and as the Bible says the being disobeyed. As a
result God made the being responsible for the consequences. The being could not
blame God for the consequences. God could now judge the being because God was
also the judge.
All the evil in the world flows from the fact that
humans chose and continue to choose to disobey God. (There is an added
complication with Satan and his followers, but they are essentially in the same
place, created, free will agents and also sinners before God) Because we are
free to choose, we can sometimes show outstanding obedience, or outstanding
depravity. Newspapers usually pick up on the depravity part.
Logically the problem of evil is part of being human.
We cannot blame God for it because we choose to disobey God. Right from our
early childhood we have a bias towards sin, as any good parent will know. Even
little children show hate, spite, vengeance, guile, dishonesty, and so on.
Parents never have to teach their children how to be bad! Children who grow up
unchecked become evil adults, drinking in sin and eating evil like hungry
monsters. The continual diet of depravity on TV most nights is all food for
evil hearts as they feast on the blasphemy, murder, violence and cruelty night
after night, actually enjoying things which are offensive to God. Instead of
fleeing such things, they suck it up as entertainment, when they should be
repelled by it. Evil answers to evil, and evil feeds evil.
Logically, if evil is Man’s problem, then the
crucifixion makes perfect sense. God loves us, and wants to save us from
certain death and hell, but He cannot do this from heaven. He has to humble
Himself down to the size and shape of a sinful human (yet without sinning), and
then pay the ultimate price for all sinners.
The Biblical view would come across something like
this if Monk were called: “This woman,” says Monk, “Has been brutally
killed. My heart is deeply pained because of the terrible injustice
of this crime. We must do everything we can to catch the criminal and
bring him to judgement!”
The Bible supplies the best, and most logical solution
to the questions raised.
Yes there is a God. He is wise and wonderful and grander and bigger than we can imagine.
When we look at the stars we see some of His handiwork. Nature abounds with His
marvels. He created the delicate wings of the butterfly, the massive body of
the whale, the mighty ocean, the fragile snowflake, the sunrise and the oak
tree.
Yes suffering is real. God is always moved by the pain and heartache of this world, and He
does comfort us with His promises, and many times with provision. He cannot
intervene in the ways we would like Him to because (a) He is not a small God
who does what we want, and (b) He will not interfere with our free will, but He
does provide many blessings to help. He has also made available a vast wealth
of resources for Man to use, but Man keeps using these resources for greed, for
money, or for war. Mankind can make a huge difference, but Man follows
religion, or philosophy which is opposed to God, so God leaves man to the
consequences of his own rebellion. Apart from ‘natural disasters’ Man is
responsible, and could alleviate most of the world’s suffering, if he so chose.
Yes God is transcendent, but He is also personal. He watches over all His creation, but He also
‘joins Himself to it’. The fact that God became a man and lived among us shows
the incredible commitment which God has towards us. Jesus lived about 30 years,
working, eating, sleeping, walking, washing and so on, from birth, through
childhood, to manhood. He identified with people in His ministry. He devoted
three years to his disciples. He called them by name and ate with them.
When he was finished with that part of His plan, he
surrendered his body to the Romans and allowed it to be nailed to a cross.
There on the cross Jesus suffered intense pain, but what was even worse was the
agony of His soul as all the world’s sin was brought to bear. The sinless Son
of God willingly took our sins and died for us – this is no transcendent God.
This is a God who cares for us more than we care for ourselves!
Yes His power is limited, but only in the sense that He will not reveal his glory to us because
if He did we would be instantly destroyed by it. Skeptical people mistake God’s
great kindness and gentleness toward us for powerlessness. They think that just
because God does not send a bolt of lightning down as proof of His existence
that He is unable to. What these people fail to understand is the true nature
of God. First they put Him in a little box, which is shaped by their own
definitions, and then they throw criticisms at it – well of course they are
right, because they have already defined Him in such a way. But if the Biblical
God is examined, the criticisms just won’t stick.
Yes He created humans,
but they invented evil by themselves. The human race likes to drag God into a
courtroom and put Him in the dock, as if God has to answer to Man! The truth
is, Mankind is in the dock, and God is the presiding Judge.