What do Miracles Prove?

Various religions rely on miracles as a justification for their validity. In Christianity perhaps the key miracle is Jesus' resurection from the dead, although many other miracles were and are used to confirm teachings and make converts. Here I am not questioning the validity of the miracles -- I'm assuming they are true miracles. My question is: Given someone does a miracle, does that prove that what that person teaches is true? That happens a lot in the Bible; someone does a miracle and then everyone believes what that person teaches. Is that a reasonable response of the people?

If someone can do miracles at will, like healing people, then surely that demonstrates that the person has power (or at least access to a power) that the rest of us don't. But does having power imply that someone speaks the truth and is not deluded in his beliefs? Surely not; plenty of people have extraordinary powers and at the same time lie or are deluded. Well, one might reply that supernatural powers like healing people at a command only come from God, and God only gives them to people who are truthfully representing him. But where do all those qualifiers come from? First how do we know it is only God who bestows miracle-working powers? If one assumes God gives these powers, then it does not take much to assume other supernatural beings might give those powers as well. Second, even if the miracle power can be shown to be from God, how do we know on what basis God gives that power? The Bible says all earthly authority is from God, and if so then God bestows it on plenty of unpleasant and untruthful characters. He could equally well bestow miracle-working powers on charlatans.

Miracle workers tend to conflate power and truth as a way to gain credibility for their teachings. However power and truth are very different things, and power does not imply truth. If one seeks truth one is not going to be convinced by dogmas or doctrines that are justified by miracles.

God wants a relationship with you... and you better not say "No"

One of the main ways I have heard Christianity advertised is as follows: "God is not interested in your good works etc., rather what he wants in a relationship with you. He sent his son to die on the cross so that you could be reconciled to him. Accept this gift, have faith in him, make him your lord, and you will have a relationship with him that surpasses relationships between spouses." The second part is sometimes omitted, but generally implied: "But if you don't accept his offer, then you will be condemned as a sinner and sent to spend eternity in hell." Actually this second part, even more than the first, is what spurs evangelism to save the lost by telling people about this relationship offer.

The question I have is this: Is this relationship offer really a good and honorable thing as is generally presupposed by Christians? At first it sounds like nothing could be better. An offer of a perfect relationship, free of the defects that haunt human-human relationships, including the fact that it lasts not only through this life but through eternity. One would be a fool to turn down such an offer. But let me bring out the aspect that disturbs me through a parallel analogy:

There is a handsome, eligible bachelor, son of the governor and the wealthiest man in the land. Now he happens to meet a peasant girl, and falls in love with her. He makes her this proposal: "Come marry me and I will pay all your debts, take you away from menial labor, dress you in the finest clothes and give you all the luxuries you could want on top of my love. But if you refuse, then I will see to it that you are fired from your job, barred from future employment in the land, your home will be repossessed and you will live in abject poverty for the rest of your life." Surely, no matter how wonderful the benefits he offers her if she accepts, one would not call this a good or honorable proposal. Rather, wouldn't one condemn it as just the opposite: a malicious act that takes advantage of his wealth and her low position to virtually force her into a relationship irrespective of her wishes? The honorable thing, and the only action if he truly loved her, would be to treat her well even if she refused his offer of marriage. So isn't God guilty of this same crime if he sends people to hell who refuse his offer of a relationship?

One response to this is to say that the analogy is mistaken in that the peasant girl was already in a terrible mess, and the rich man was offering to save her from it, not to actively punish her himself if she refused his proposal. Well, I'm not sure if this objection is valid or not, and I will consider this question in a later blog, but for now let's accept this revision. Let's say that the woman has been convicted of a terrible crime and is scheduled to be hanged, drawn and quartered the next morning. Now the rich man comes to her in jail and says: "I love you deeply and want to marry you. If you accept this marriage proposal then I will use my influence to have you acquitted and freed. But if you don't accept, then I will leave you to your fate. (Also in the future if after accepting my proposal you reject me, then I will make sure your charges get reinstated)." Well again, doesn't this conditional offer demonstrate that the man's love is not deep and pure? If he truly loved her he would have her freed whether or not she accepted his marriage offer.

So I conclude that this relationship offer from God is not really an outflowing of sincere love, but due to it's conditional nature is rather primarily self-seeking and unconcerned about the human fate. I am surprised it is used so frequently by Christians despite this huge flaw -- I suppose either the conditional nature is glossed over, or else the conditional aspect is justified by various means. But it seems pretty rotten to me.

Thoughts on Heaven

For at least the last two millenia, many have longed for a better life than was their lot here, and have taken consolation in the anticipation of achieving this in heaven. But what do we mean by "heaven" and is it really a meaningful hope? Here are some of the Christian components of heaven:

• Free from pain and sorrow
• No death or (permanent) harm to individuals
• Free from evil and evil actions
• Full of God's love and care for us
• Full of happiness and joy
• It is a nice place to live
• Lots of pleasures and riches ("streets of gold")
• Continual worship of / interaction with God

The question I have is: Is this a satisfying place? Is it really somewhere one would want to go? At first blush one would say "Of course". But what about the issue of freedom? Is there freedom in heaven? That is, is there freedom to do what we want to do, to think what we want to think, to pursue what we want to pursue? If there is not freedom all of these "pleasures" are pretty meaningless. It's like being locked in a jail with all the luxuries one could want, except the freedom to direct one's own life.

By freedom I mean one's life is not determined or prescribed by someone else. I think of it this way: imagine oneself as a point in a high dimensional space, where each dimension is a possible action or thought one could have. Certain dimensions are constrained, and we cannot move along those: for example one can't punch a fist through a concrete wall, nor can one factor a 50 digit number in one's head. Being free means having a rich set of unconstrained dimensions along which one can choose to move or not to move. In this sense being alive, being human, and being free all have the same meaning. That is why prison is a punishment -- it takes away a large portion of one's life.

Now back to heaven. The idea of no death, pain, sorrow, or permanent harm actually takes away a lot of freedom. One cannot take risks as one knows that nothing really bad can happen to oneself. Heaven must be very carefully padded to prevent someone falling off a cliff and dying, (or equivalently people's bodies are indestructible). It must be like living in a grand phantasm. One is not free to fully experience it, since that freedom would involve possibility of harm and death.

No sorrow eh? So that means one cannot do anything that would emotionally hurt another person. One can't be rude, one can't be too forward, one can't be withdrawn, and so forth. There are innumerable things one is not permitted to do in case they hurt someone. Or perhaps people aren't hurt emotionally by anything. But surely feeling loved and feeling hurt are two sides of a coin -- if one can feel loved, then surely one will feel pain if this love is cast asside. So in heaven either we are devoid of emotions, or else we are constrained by lots of rules to prevent hurt emotions.

Perhaps one would reply that people in heaven will be good and will always choose the good path and think the right thoughts. But that is saying people's lives are prescribed not to proceed along certain dimensions. That is much the way in which a manufacturing robot would be programmed to operate. Surely lives like that are empty shells. The problem with heaven, like communism and other utopias, is that it fails to take into consideration freedom.

Can a Scientist Believe in Prayer?

What do we really want when we ask God in prayer for something? Say we ask God to heal someone or to protect someone from harm or to give someone wisdom etc., what are we expecting him to do? Well, let's assume that the world progresses along according to its natural mechanisms (things fall when we drop them, etc.) which we seek to describe using physics or science in general. In these requests we want God in some way to change the state of the world from what it would otherwise be, given this natural unfolding of physics. That is, we want God to intervene in this world and perturb its physics.

The key point is that there is a significant difference between getting God to do something and getting a person to do something. A person is a physical being and when he or she acts no laws of physics are broken; his/her actions are all within the system and perfectly describable by physics. But God is not material and hence outside of the natural physical interactions. If he does something that changes the state of the world from what it would naturally be, he must by definition be breaking the "laws of physics," i.e. temporarily changing the natural mechanisms that govern physical interactions.

One reply to this is to claim that God governs the universe and all physical interactions, and hence he can do as he wishes without breaking anything. Well given this claim, the question then is whether God has himself set up mechanisms or rules (which I was calling natural mechanisms or physical laws) that determine the outcome of physical interactions, or if he decides every time two atoms get close how they will interact. The incredible success of physics at describing nature strongly points to there being a consistent set of interaction mechanisms. So whether these are God governed or not, God must break them in order to answer someone's prayer.

Another reply: due to quantum mechanics, given the state of the world at any time, there are many possible outcomes. Prayer asks for God to select a particular outcome of the possible ones. In this way surely it wouldn't be breaking physical laws, but it would still be influencing the world. However, the problem with this is that while there may be many possible outcomes, their likelihood is governed by a probability determined by the wave function. This statistical probability is part of the physics of the system. If this probability is changed by fixing the outcome, then the physics is also changed.

So this is a serious thing: do we really want the laws of physics to be broken or changed by God so that our desires can be satisfied? Is it possible for me to think scientifically, and at the same time believe in prayer causing physical changes in the world? There are surely many scientists that hold onto both, but if they do it is in separate spheres: the lab vs. personal life. Making this separation is a contradiction that many people are happy to live with. Not only that, this power to break the laws of physics within the reach of everyone is very attractive -- a kind of David vs. Goliath power. But if the world is filled with these outside perturbations, then the goals of physics are a lost cause. If anything does not fit the theory, it is probably God perturbing the world, and there is no point developing a more encompassing theory to describe it. This is opposite to the natural mechanism assumption that has lead to the success of physics. Which is one to choose? Clinging to two contradictory world views is surely dishonest, and a truth seeker would not do that.

Is God Good?

Introduction

Christians frequently proclaim the goodness of God. But what exactly do we mean when we say God is good? We have a general idea of what it means for a person to be good, but do the same or different criteria apply to God? Once we can determine what it means for God to be good, then does he satisfy the criteria? One answer is to ignore the evidence and claim dogmatically that God must satisfy the criteria and so be good. But any religion could do the same with their God. A better way is to look at God’s recorded deeds in the Bible, and determine from these whether or not he is good. This is what I will investigate in this essay.

First let me explain the purpose of my question. Christians hold up God as someone to be worshiped, admired, loved and adored. Why should we have those attitudes and emotions towards God? Is it simply because he is all-powerful and creator? Surely that is insufficient. If he were all-powerful and created us to extract sadistic pleasures from us that should not inspire those attitudes. Say the devil were all-powerful, should we worship him? I would say no, despite the possibility that he might treat us better as a result of groveling before him. For me, the crucial property that God must have before I would admire him is goodness. Without this, worshiping him would be like worshiping whatever tyrant is in charge. This may benefit one, but it is surely a cowardly way to act. Hence, I will seek to understand what good must mean in application to God, and whether or not it does apply.

Human Goodness

Before one can ask if God is good, this term must be defined. I don’t intend to find an exhaustive definition, but I think a rough summary will do. I will start by exploring its meaning in application to a person. A good person demonstrates sacrificial love and care for other people and animals. He is honest, generous and merciful. He is not spiteful, mean or cruel. Goodness is a moral choice: the rejection of evil and pursuit of what is right or best towards others. There is plenty more that can be added, but this captures much of what it means except for a further stipulation that good excludes great evil. Consider the analogy of a doctor that through great effort manages to save the lives of 10 people per week, week after week. Indeed this may be a good man, but then say it was discovered that on the side he was periodically murdering one in a hundred of his patients to acquire their wealth. Even though on balance he is likely doing far more good than harm (saving many more lives than he killed), yet it is unlikely we would judge him as a good person. That is because being good is a high standard that is not compatible with his evil actions. Another interesting aspect of being good is that it never occurs in an isolated individual, but rather it is an aspect of one’s relation to other sentient creatures. If one lived in a universe with no other creatures it would be meaningless to say one is good or evil; one’s goodness is always determined with respect to others.

Divine Goodness

Given that we know that it means for a person to be good, then the question becomes: do these same criteria apply in determining if God is good? First let us look at the possibility that good as applied to God means something completely different than when applied to humans. By this we could mean that God, being so much greater than us, is governed by a completely different set of laws, or we could mean that God’s character is what defines what good means and so God is good by definition. If the first of these is true and God follows a different set of laws or protocols, then in calling God “good” we are redefining what “good” means. But “good” is already defined by common usage, and so it would be better to say God is foo, and define “foo” to be obedience to these higher laws or protocols. Then God is not good, and is something else. Well, consider the second possibility that God’s being defines the meaning of good in the same sense that the platinum-iridium cylinder in Paris defines what a kilogram is. Whatever God is or does is good and there is nothing he could do that is not good since he defines good. This may be useful for judging people, as we could say people are good in so far as they are similar to God. However, if one says God is good, this is a tautology. It is like saying John is John or the 1kg block is 1kg; true but useless statements. If God acted like the devil then he would still be good by definition. This tautological meaning of “God is good” is not something for which we could praise God, and so cannot be what we mean when we say God is good.

Next I will examine the arguments in favor of good as defined by humans applying to God. These include the many, many Biblical comparisons of God’s actions with human actions in which he is shown to be good in an analogous way to humans. God’s blessings on his people, his love for them and his protection of them are the big similarities, and in addition other properties such as faithfulness, truthfulness are what we praise God for when we think of him as being good, and these are exactly what we think of in a good person. In addition Jesus draws a very strong parallel between God’s goodness and ours, often comparing the actions of a good father with the good heavenly Father. One of his comparisons is:

“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?” (Matt. 5:44-46).

Here God’s goodness is seen by how well he treats the unrighteous, and this is held up as an example for us. We see the same criteria for goodness being applied to God and mankind. Another argument in favor of this is that it is compatible with the notion of goodness being an absolute term. If goodness is absolute, then it must apply both to us and to God.

What happens when we apply our concept of goodness to God? Indeed we observe the many good and generous things God does, starting from his creation of a beautiful world for our benefit to all the blessings he gives us. Worship songs are filled with praises for these. But there is a dark side to his actions as well. We see God doing or ordering actions that we would term abhorrent. For example after defeating various Canaanite tribes he orders the slaughter of all the women, children and infants (ex. 1 Sam 15:3 “Put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”, and other passages include Deut. 3:3, 7:2, 20:16-17, 25:19, Joshua 6:21, 8:26, 10:28, Numbers 31:17). Even if killing the Canaanites is a punishment for their sins, killing children who haven’t sinned is surely evil and unjust. But that form of punishment is claimed by God, as in Exodus 34:7, “He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” Other examples of abhorrent actions include God actively performing or ordering murders himself, such as the killing of all the firstborn of Egypt to change Pharaoh’s mind. In 1 Chronicles 21:14 God kills 70,000 Israelites for David’s sin. Or consider one of the greatest mass slaughters which God announces in Genesis 6:13, “So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.’” It doesn’t matter that all the non-violent people and children will be killed in the process. It is not only the Old Testament. The book of Revelation is brimming with tortures and punishments ordered by God on huge segments of the world’s population, completely ignoring the fact that innocent children will be among the victims (Revelation 9:1-6). Due to our distance from the events, we tend to consider them abstractly and indifferently. But when I think of my newborn child, and if anyone were to kill her or order her killed for someone else’s wrongdoings, I would never think that person was good. In those events a lot more than one innocent child died. If any human performed these actions, we would hold him with similar reprobation as we would Hitler. Thus, even though God may do many good and generous actions, the great number of evils he is responsible for ones means that God cannot be good.

There are a few responses to this. One is that God is also a judge, and his justice requires his meting out harsh judgments. However, this response does not address the issue in these examples, which is the killing of innocent ones for the sins of others. Surely no one would claim that this is a form of justice, especially when God is perfectly able to punish the guilty ones themselves and spare the innocent. Then perhaps it is okay if God makes it up to the people wrongly killed in the next life? This is saying that evil means are okay as long as the end is good. If one wrongly imprisons someone for five years, then indeed one should make up for it as best as one can, but no matter what the compensation, an injustice has been done and nothing can change that. That is, a good person or a just judge cannot use evil actions or unjust punishments as a means to a greater good, as then he fails to be good or just. Thus a reward in the afterlife does not get God off the hook for evil or unjust actions in this world.

Then perhaps God’s actions are okay because all are guilty of sin, even the babies. The argument here is that justice requires God to do something that looks evil but is really a just punishment. If the action weren’t required by justice then the action would be evil. So does justice require that God kill babies or others who have not done anything different from the rest of humans? If so, then surely justice requires that God immediately kill most of the rest of the human race. If that is not required, then justice did not require God to kill the babies, and so the action was evil.

Another response is captured by the potter and the clay analogy (as in Jeremiah 18:1-6). God is the potter and we are they clay. The potter has the right to do whatever he wishes to the clay; to make a pot and to smash the pot. There is nothing evil about God taking away a life he has made, just like a potter can smash the pot. The problem with this analogy is that the pot is inanimate; there is nothing evil that the potter can do to the clay, but similarly there is nothing good that he can do to it either. If this analogy is used to justify evil actions by God, then it must be taken in full: we are objects at God’s disposal, to do with in any way he sees fit. We have no rights, nor claim to justice. There is no conceivable evil God could do to us, not because we sinned, but simply because he made us as objects and so is fully justified in anything he does to us. One important problem with this arrangement is that if no action against us is evil, then actions towards us do not fall under the “moral” category and so no action towards us is good either. Just as one cannot be evil towards a pot of clay, neither can one be good towards one. If this is the case, then God is neither good nor evil towards us who are pure objects to him. But I think most would hold that we are more than pure objects and God faces a moral choice in his actions towards us. In that case, then from the examples cited above it is clear God has done great and unjustified evils towards many.

Conclusion

To answer the question of whether God is good or not, one can either consult various people’s claims about God’s properties, or one can look at his deeds. It appears these tell very different stories. It is pretty easy to claim that God is good, especially if one is blessed by him, but as Jesus pointed out, it is easy to be good to those one loves, however true goodness demands treating even one’s enemies well. Unfortunately, the Bible details numerous examples of God’s cruelty in punishing people for the sins of others. As argued, these actions cannot be explained through a requirement of justice nor by God’s rights over us. These actions must surely be condemned as morally reprehensible, and so the Biblical God cannot be good.