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发帖数: 6300 | 1 Stepping Toward a Personal God With A Wallet and a Dollar
Yesterday I described a simple illustration I used with my father to make
the case for theism using a wallet and a dollar (you’ll probably need to
read that article to make sense of today’s blog). The point of the object
lesson was to establish the inadequacy of naturalism in describing the
origin of matter and life in the universe. But this first step in the
illustration simply made the case for theism. The first argument I offered
with the wallet and the dollar could easily apply to any number of theistic
worldviews, however, including pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, deism or
monotheism. Even if we are convinced that the first appearance of life in
the universe is best explained as the result of a ‘First Cause” Creator
God from outside the natural realm, this still leaves us several options as
to the nature of this God. Is this God personal? Isn’t it possible that the
God who formed matter from non-matter and life from non-life may simply be
some kind of impersonal force? After all, many world religions would suggest
this is the case. I wanted to extend the illustration for my father to
explain why I believed in a personal God.
I told him I believe this creator God is a personal God based on His ability
to decide. I asked my dad to examine the wallet again. What happens, I
asked, if I simply let go of the wallet? What forces are felt by the wallet?
I let go of the wallet and it immediately dropped to the ground. Why did
that happen? Why didn’t it just float for a minute and then drop to the
ground when gravity decided to act on it? Why don’t we ever see that happen
? You and I already know the answer: gravity does not decide when to act.
Gravity is an impersonal force, and the effect of an impersonal force is
felt the minute the force enters into the environment.
If we were floating around in a zero gravity environment (an imaginary room,
for example) and we then inserted the force of gravity into this room, we
would all immediately be pulled to the floor. The effect of the gravity is
felt the minute gravity enters the room. That’s the way impersonal forces
work. They can’t decide whether or not they will activate their effect.
Their impact is felt immediately; the minute the force enters the room.
Gravity doesn’t enter the room and say, “Not yet, not yet, not yet… OK,
now!” Gravity cannot decide when its effect will be felt. It cannot decide
when it will act. The ability to decide whether to act is a characteristic
of personhood. The ability to move and act freely as a result of a conscious
independent decision is a characteristic of free agency. It is a
characteristic common to persons, not impersonal forces.
What does this tell us about the force responsible for creating the universe
? Well, if it’s an impersonal force, it can only be as old as the universe.
In other words, the minute the impersonal force existed, its creative power
was felt, and all space, time and matter also began. Remember our gravity
example: the minute gravity appears, you feel its power. In a similar way,
the minute an impersonal creative force appears, we would then observe its
power in the creation of the universe. This means the impersonal force would
only be as old as the universe created as a result of its existence.
But if that is true, we have a dilemma. If the creative cause of the
universe is only as old as the universe itself, then we must ask the obvious
question: “What caused that force to exist?” Whatever caused the cause of
the universe; this would then be the more powerful cause we would want to
identify. Do you see the problem here? A true and singular first cause must
be eternal by definition. In a very real sense, we innately know the cause
of this “caused universe” must be some kind of eternal, uncaused, first
cause with the ability to decide. Whatever caused this universe, it did so
as a decision, and this ability to decide gives away the fact the first
cause of the universe is a personal force.
I told my dad I believe personal theism is true because the first, uncaused
cause of the universe was able to decide as a personal agent. About eight
minutes into the conversation, I was able to make a case for theism and
personal theism, but this still left us with a number of theistic options.
My father, a committed atheist my entire life, married his second wife over
forty years ago. She became a Mormon and together they had six children all
raised in the LDS Church. The argument I made so far with the wallet and the
dollar could also be used to make a case for the god(s) of Mormonism. It
was important, therefore, for me to take one more step with my illustration
to explain why I believed the personal God who created everything in the
universe was, in fact, the Christian God described in the New Testament. I’
ll describe this last step in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, here’s a
video I created to take the second step in this process:
http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/stepping-toward-a-personal |
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