time to choose...
	Home Me Music Italy Religion Volvo Links Japan Rat

This page is dedicated to providing a bit of information about the biggest questions I have had regarding the Christian faith. I was raised in the church, but it wasn't until recently I decided it was time to either create a unique and justifiable reason for believing in Christ on my own, or to abandon the faith all together. The following questions are presented in rough chronological order and contain my own solution where applicable.

1. How to reconcile the biblical age of the earth with it's scientific age.

I always read Genesis with a grain of salt, meaning, I was never taught to take everything literally; including the story of the first humans, Adam and Eve. It wasn't until I talked to a strict creationist that I understood there was another view where people believed the earth was really 8,000-10,000 years old, flying the face of 100 years of science, including various radioactive decay techniques considered very accurate (carbon 14). Confronting the issue, I had to assume two things. First, that we don't know everything about the Bible. I must believe, however, that the form it exists in now is exactly the form God wanted it to be and for me to read, otherwise I would have to question his omniscience. Second, that our scientific knowledge is grossly incomplete, but we have to assume what we do know is fairly accurate, at least until the next major revision (relativity and quantum revolutions). With both those assumptions established, we seem to have this contradiction between sources.

Most of my support and answer comes from believing the Bible was intended to be somewhat figurative and metaphorical in it's nature. Jesus consistently spoke to crowds in metaphors in order to convey a higher point, and I have no reason to believe the same God wouldn't do that in the entire Bible. The second area of support is the relatively vague nature (chronologically speaking) of the description of the first six days. It seems there are two distinct sections, the time frame of the first six days, and the time frame of the rest of Bible. After creation, the rhetoric moves into a much more distinct chronological progression, with specific dates and measurable time lapses. Given this clear difference, it is logical for me to assume the syntax was different for a reason, and I believe that reason was to allow for the open-ended time frame. For whatever reason, it seems to me God designed the description to be vague, and that is why I think it can be reconciled with science's partial reconstruction of creation.

A wonderful and considerablly more thorough explanation of this reconciliation can be found in the book The Science of God, by Gerald L. Schroeder. Although scientifically it contains a few flaws, there are wonderfully concise arguments involving creationism and science that are along the same lines as I've explained above.

2. The problem of evil.

This is the most asked question of secularists and among the most dreaded within apologetics, probably because there is almost no way to answer it well enough to coax someone to one side or the other. I'll do my best to give my justification, which to this day, still remains only partial.

Because I am arguing from the Christian side of the fence, most of my views will lean in that direction. With that said, it seems obvious that one needs to divide evil into two different categories, those directly or indirectly created by human beings and those created by our natural world. Because I believe humans are sinful by nature, it follows that I don't have much of a problem justifying the first type of evil. I think God had to create us with free will in order to cultivate true love for him, and in that process, he had to give us the ability to do evil. In other words, those things that stem from our inherent desire to do evil are from us; we brought them on to our shoulders, and I choose not to blame God for that, despite the fact that he created us in the first place. The ability to choose means the responsibility falls on us, not our creator.

The second form of evil is much harder for me to swallow, and I still struggle with justification. Currently my reason comes in the form of attempting to establish what evil really is. If one can imagine a world where an original sin never took place, devoid of any human evil, I wonder what natural evil would look like. Would it seem to it’s inhabitants evil if several of their villagers were killed off by a lion, or if an earthquake leveled their town? It seems like God in the Bible doesn't make any excuses for events of that nature; in fact, every corner of the Bible is filled with them. To that end, it seems logical to assume there was never any reason for us to consider those natural evils (like infant mortality, disease, natural disasters, etc) evil at all. Where did we all decide that our world should be without hardship and pain? God never seems to say that, and the opposite happens in the Bible. So the real question here is how evil we really consider the pains and inequalities of normal life. The cynic would say they were God's punishment, or that it was proof a loving God didn't exist at all. I choose to believe that God says, "This world is not without pain and hardship, but is the best world possible to fulfill my plan". I won't deny this is somewhat of a copout, but its a religious one, and allows me to believe an all powerful AND all loving God can exist at the same time.

3. Our freedom and God's omniscience.

There is another area of debate between those proponents of free will and those who believe in a deterministic universe (otherwise called predetermination in Christianity). The conflict arises when one considers the apparent paradox between having an all knowing God and our ability to make free decisions (something that seems to deny a God that knows our actions before we do).

My stance on this issue is two-fold. First, I examine the two stances of science. There seems to be some question as to whether or not the universe proceeds on a determinist path or not. Originally, before modern physics, it was assumed that events proceeded on a rather chaotic path, and although there were many aspects of nature that followed patterns (the rising and setting of the sun), there were also many instances where things seemed unpredictable (like the splashing of water or the tumbling of some ridged object). As science progressed, and more rules were developed regarding the nature of the motion of the universe, fewer and fewer things seemed mysteriously unpredictable, causing many to believe that in fact all things proceeded deterministically. Recently, with the advent of modern quantum mechanics, there seems to again be things that proceed chaotically, and as of yet, we do not have the ability to predict them. This is where opinion takes over.

The only way one can have a conflict between free will and God's omniscience is if they believe the universe is in fact deterministic, which I do. Given that, one also has to accept that humans proceed deterministically as well. In other words, even though we make decisions, each of those are made based on everything we have become up to that point. We weigh the pros and cons before every crossroads (even if it is subconscious), and make a decision based on those conclusions. Each decision we make is simply a reflection of the sum of everything we are, because that is the ONLY thing we have at our deposal to make a decision in the first place. Now enter God. If one believes that God is completely omniscient, then one has to believe he not only know everything about the universe, but also everything about each one of us. But if God knows EVERYTHING about us, then he must have the knowledge to predict what we will decide at each moment, given that what we decide is based on US. So how can we have both?

My answer to that question is rather simple, but it won't satisfy everyone. I believe that knowledge of an event does not necessarily affect that event, or it's freedom to happen in the first place. In other words; God, who exists outside our time, knows everything we are ever going to do in our lifetime, like examining the path of a character in a movie frame by frame, where the entire reel is in front of you at one moment (4th dimensional aspect). Why does his knowledge of our actions affect what we are going to do? We don't know what he is thinking, and as far as we can tell, we make free choices everyday. So if they are free to us, but seem deterministic to God, is that freedom? My answer is yes, for the simple reason that ignorance is bliss. What we don't know doesn't hurt us, and more importantly, doesn't affect our decisions, which preserves our freewill.

If one accepts this point of view, that a great many things become easier, particularly the problem of pre-determinism in the Bible. For a long time, I was plagued by the apparent contradiction between the Bible's statement that people were predetermined but that we were also free to either choose God or not. Now this is no longer an issue, because we can have our cake and eat it too. People can be predetermined in the eyes of God (because he knows everything), but still proceed freely (because we don't know everything). This stance also allows us to maintain the idea of God's omniscience in the face of our free will, as we can no longer "fool" him with decisions we might or might not make.

4. God's activity (or lack thereof) in an individual's life.

Along with my acceptance of determinism as described in question three, I began to encounter another unfortunate side-effect. If the world progresses as it was designed from the beginning, without ever deviated from God's knowledge of its path, how then is prayer (especially that which askes directly for some worldy change) effective at all? For God to listen to prayer and change certain outcomes would violate determinism, and his complete knowledge.

One might argue that God knew from the beginning that those prayers in 2004 would be asked, and he already built into the universe his subsequent response, so when in fact they were asked, he was ready and waiting to proceed as the universe was designed from the beginning.

To that argument I would say fine, however, my original problem still remains. If I know the universe progesses deterministically, and therefore, certain events will unfold as they should in the future (some of which might be prayed for, some might not have); and I also know that God knows whether or not I am going to choose to pray for things or not, then if I choose to pray or don't choose to pray will not affect the universe at all, because my eventual decision to pray or not is built in, and events will proceed in the future according to that decision (which I haven't even made yet!). So what, praytel, is my reason to pray? The universe will progress in one set path whether I choose to or not.

5. Does God have moodswings?

I refer specifically to the change from the Old Testament to the New in the Bible. As many scholars will suggest (an equal number will deny), God seems to change attitudes from the Old to New Testament. The God we know in the Old Testament focuses on law, obediance, and sacrafice in order to be saved. However, the new God as represented by Jesus takes a radical turn in priority; instead focusing on love and faith as the sole "tickets to heaven" for lack of a better phrase.

Why is there this clear change in overall importance when it comes to our relationship with God, seemingly the most important aspect of Christianity in the first place? Why would he choose to change the rules in the middle of the game, and create a huge shift in what people should focus on in order to live as he wants us to? This idea itself wouldn't be so bad in my mind if it weren't for the fact that at the same time, God also consistently claims himself to be the inmovable and unchanging God of all time. Jesus constantly itterates the idea of God's unchanging love for us. The New Testament drives into the reader's head the idea of God's unending and utterly consistant forgiveness of our sins.

Does this seem inconsistent? How can I believe God when he claims unchanging love and forgiveness, but at the same time demonstrates radical changes in the most fundamental elements of our relationship. I'll grant that I'm being overly harsh, and critics would no doubt claim I can not question the "plan" God might have been proceeding with as he moved from the Old to New Testaments. I'll accept that argument, but only to a point. It still seems odd and almost paradoxical to have God that claims an unchanging nature, yet makes a big change in his relation to us at the same time.