Is Belief in God the Same as Belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Have you heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?  This thought experiment is supposed to show that belief in God is just as silly as believing  in a pasta-based supreme being.  However, when you look carefully, the comparison falls short pretty quickly.

Here's a short video clip from a recent apologetics class entitled "Science, God, and Knowing" where I look at the question of the Flying Spaghetti  monster.  Once you apply a little rational thought, you can see that the FSM cannot compare to the explanatory power of the Christian God when answering the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

The Inspiration of Scripture

What does it mean to say the Bible is "inspired by God?"  We hear of musicians being inspired to write a song or artist's inspiration behind a painting.  Is biblical inspiration the same thing? In a word, no.  The Bible means something very specific when it claims to be inspired — it means we hold the actual words of God in our hands. If we're going to be precise, we need to know just what is meant by the Biblical doctrine of inspiration. The doctrine of divine inspiration entails the concepts that:

• Every word of the Bible in the original writings are breathed and motivated by God.
• Specific divine knowledge must be given to man since man is flawed.

If God did not provide His instruction and guidance for us, then humanity would be left to guess what the true nature of the world is. But because we're flawed, our understanding of reality would be drastically different.  As C.S. Lewis famously argued in Mere Christianity, "A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line." Builders can build a house, but if they have no objective frame of reference, the house will never be true and plumb. Thus the doctrine of inspiration is a key one, for it tells us not only about God and how we can please Him, but also about our world and even ourselves.

But what exactly does inspiration mean?

1. Scripture is God breathed (theopneustos)

This is the key understanding of scripture as presented in II Timothy 3:16-17: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

This means that God is the cause of scripture, a concept we know as Divine Causality.  J.I. Packer says "Scripture is not only man's word — the fruit of human thought, premeditation, and art — but also equally God's word, spoken through man's lips or written with man's pen.  In other words, Scripture has double authorship, and man is only the secondary author." Basically, God chooses and prepares men beforehand to write exactly what He wants to communicate.1

2. Scripture is given through prophetic agency.

 In other words, it is supplied to the writers by the Holy Spirit.  This is made clear in 2 Peter 2:21 where Peter writes, "No prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."

However, this concept is sometimes confused. People think the biblical authors were no better than a printing tool used by God, but that's not the case.  They did not fall into trances and emanate pithy sayings as is the claim in some other religions. Although the inspired word is truly God's word, God chose people to compose the Bible, using their own voices. You see, the Bible isn't some sort of divine dictation. God knew each person's personality and thought process, and prepared each to write the things He wanted using their own individual styles.2

The best example I can offer is this. Think of a master painter who knows exactly the picture he wants to paint.  He has many different brushes that he uses for different purposes: a coarse brush for rough textures, a thin brush for fine lines, and a wide brush for bold strokes.  In the master's hand, the brushes do just what he wants. The final work is the picture he wanted to paint, but with the characteristic of each brush showing through.  In a similar way, God uses different people with their own personalities, vocabularies, and experiences to produce the different books of the Bible — all with the end result being the exact message He meant to give us.3

References

1. Packer, J.I. "The Inspiration of the Bible." from The Origin of the Bible, Philip W. Comfort, ed.(Carol Stream, Il.: Tyndale House, 1992) p.31.

2. Esposito, Lenny. "What Does It Mean that God "Inspired" the Bible?" The Apologetics Study Bible for Students. (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishing, 2010). 1312.

3. Ibid.

Holding to a Rational Belief

Photo By *christopher* 

Has someone ever told you that you should never try to tell someone else their faith is misplaced? They claim faith requires no proof; believing is the opposite of using facts and evidence, and since faith is a personal choice the underlying theology really doesn't matter much. Faith brings comfort to a person, but his comfort could be different than yours, so his faith is legitimate for him as much as yours is for you. This kind of thinking is why many people feel that everyone is entitled to believe as they choose.

Now, I agree that all have the right to their beliefs. But defining faith in this way misconstrues what the concept of faith is all about. The claim that "all faiths are simply a choice and are equally valid" really translates to "all faiths have an equal claim to truth and there's no way to discern whether any of them are true or not." That's just not the case. For example, I don't think anyone today would give Greek mythology serious consideration as a true belief. But how do we know that Greek mythology isn't a viable religion? Because we use reason and evidence to see that its claims about how the world works are unsupportable. They are internally inconsistent and externally incoherent with what we know about the world.

Similarly, we can look at today's different faith systems and see that they cannot all be true since they make competing claims about how the world works. As an example, the monotheistic faiths such as classical Judaism, Christianity and Islam claim that there is a God who is distinct and separate from His creation, while pantheistic faiths such as Vedanta Hinduism or the New Age hold to the idea that all is God. Now, one or the other may be true, but they certainly cannot both be true at the same time. Therefore, any faith that teaches all ways to God are equally valid, such as the Bah'ai faith, holds to a logical contradiction and can be dismissed simply as being illogical. It simply doesn't match the way the world works.

Now, I'm not saying that faith is unnecessary or that reason can do all the work. I am saying, though, that any faith that forces you to deny reason is a faith not worth holding. Christianity is a faith built on evidence: historical evidence of a real event. Of course it requires faith, but we can investigate its claims on the basis of history to see whether they stand up. Mormonism, for example, also makes claims about historical events, but they are unsupportable. If the things claimed in the Book of Mormons are demonstrably false, then it follows that Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God and we have good reason for not believing Mormonism to be true.

I think it's a mistake to lump anything with a "religion" or "faith" tag into a category marked untestable. There certainly are ways we can make informed judgments about what we believe. That's why Paul tells us "examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good."

Being reasonable or rational means holding on to true beliefs. So, if someone questions of whether it's rational to be a Christian, that means we need to talk about whether Christian beliefs are true—which requires honest inquiry. To not check out the claims of Christianity when they very well may be true would be a very irrational thing to do.

How Can God be Without Beginning or End?

Yesterday, I featured an article by famous movie reviewer Roger Ebert where he tells of his growing disbelief in a personal God since his childhood. It began early in elementary school as the young Ebert had increasing difficulty wrapping his head around the concept of an eternal God:

I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? And then I thought of all the stars in the sky: But how could there be a last one? Wouldn't there always have to be one more? Many years later I know the answer to the second question, but I still don't know the answer to the first one.

As kids are wont to do, Ebert first chose to ask a favorite nun about his conundrum, to which she answered, "That is just something you have to believe. Pray for faith." This was a terrible answer, and Ebert acknowledges that it was inherently unsatisfying, even to a second grader. "Then I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith."

As I had written in my last post, the inability of a nun to answer his questions is what set Ebert on the road to disbelief. It should serve as a warning to parents, pastors, and Sunday School teachers that it's never too early to inject apologetics into childhood instruction.  There are good answers to questions such as these, and they can be couched in such a way that even young children can understand.

Let's take the idea of a God without beginning or without end. In his article, Ebert writes, "I'm still struggling with the question of how anything could have no beginning and no end." If I was instructing the young Roger Ebert I would have simply pointed to a drawing of a circle and I imagine a conversation going something like this:

Lenny: "Roger, can you point out the corner in this circle?"

Roger: "But there is no corner."

Lenny: "Why not? Why isn't there a corner."

Roger: "Because it's a circle. Circles don't have corners!"

Lenny: "You're right! As soon as you have any shape that has a corner, it is no longer a circle. A circle must by definition not have corners, right?"

Roger: "Yes."

Lenny: "OK then.  Can you also see since there is no corner to the circle that every point on the circle is exactly like every other point?

Roger: "Um. Yes, I guess that's true."

Lenny: "Good. So if every point is equal with every other point, then the circle really has no starting point.  Lines have starting and stopping points, but lines are also broken. They can be in many different shapes. Unlike a line, a circle must have all points equally connected to be a circle. That's what makes it a circle and not an arc. A circle is a shape without a beginning point or an end point, yet the shape still exists.

"God has properties which define him in the same way a circle has properties which define it. A circle cannot have corners and a circle cannot have a starting or stopping point and be a true circle. In the same way, God is defined as someone who can exist outside of time; He is someone who has no starting or stopping point because you must be limited by time in order to have that. But it no more illogical to believe in a God who has no beginning or end than to believe in a circle that has no beginning or end."

I would hope that this would be sufficient to show any youngster that while the concept of an eternal God may be difficult, it is not an illogical belief. There are other examples, such as abstract objects like numbers, which can exist outside of a temporal realm. For example, the concept of "three" wasn't invented but recognized, though the symbol that represents the concept was created. One can have a set of three of something, like laws or properties that exist eternally, before time begins.

In his first paragraph, Ebert says he has figured out the answer to his question of a last star, writing "I know there cannot be a Last Star, because we know the universe to be curved. At least, that's what mathematicians tell us. I can't form the concept of a curved universe in my mind, but I think I know what they're trying to say." If Ebert can recognize a curvature of space-time makes a last star implausible,[1] then why can't he by that same token acknowledge a First Cause that begins all events? This concept is not "something that falls outside all categories of thought and must be unknowable and irrelevant to knowledge" but can be known to have at least the following properties:

1. It must be outside of space, for it is the reason space exists.
2. It must be outside of time, for it is the reason time exists.
3. It must be immaterial, since all matter is created by it.
4. It must be self-existent.
5. It must have a will in order to will the creation event to begin.

Those properties are specific and most of humanity across history would recognize that description as only fitting God.

I hope Roger Ebert keeps seeking. I would love to expose him to some of the incredible advancements in natural theology that have occurred in recent years, so that he can see the belief in God rests on strong intellectual grounds. But I hope more that other kids who have similar questions would not be shut down with a pat answer of "You just have to believe. Pray to have faith" for that is no answer at all.

[1] Actually, Ebert is premature here.  Olber's Paradox seems to imply that the universe is finite. But even if the universe is curved, it could still contain a finite amount of stars. Cosmologists and philosophers are divided on this issue, but most admit we don't have enough data yet to know what the definitive answer is.

Roger Ebert Reviews a Tragedy: His Search for God

Roger Ebert is probably the best-known of film critics. His column in the Chicago Sun-Times and subsequent television shows were checked consistently by movie buffs to see whether a film would be worthy of their time and money. However, I think the saddest review I've read by Ebert is his review of his own search to make sense of God.

Photo courtesy Roger Ebert

In a column he wrote a couple of years ago, Ebert recounts:

"When I was in first or second grade and had just been introduced by the nuns to the concept of a limitless God, I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? And then I thought of all the stars in the sky: But how could there be a last one? Wouldn't there always have to be one more? Many years later I know the answer to the second question, but I still don't know the answer to the first one."

Ebert loved his religion classes as a child because they would talk about hypotheticals of what counts as sin, how a person is culpable for sins they committed (or didn't know they committed), and all the ramifications of the various scenarios. This approach was to teach Ebert "theoretical thinking and applied reasoning, and was excellent training."  He writes that at about nine or ten "I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind… Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God continued to lessen."

Now, although reticent to label himself an atheist or an agnostic, Ebert completely dismisses the idea of "any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men." He writes:

"I'm still struggling with the question of how anything could have no beginning and no end. These days I'm fascinated by it from the point of view of science. I cannot know everything, but I approach matters in terms of what I do and can know. Science is not 'secular.' It is a process of honest investigation."

Tomorrow I will answer Ebert's question on God, but I want to note a couple of observations today.  First, Ebert's story highlights a very real need for teaching apologetics in the church, and beginning to do so very early. Many Christians and even many pastors today think that focusing on apologetic arguments are a lot of head knowledge when what people really need is teaching Jesus and how to live today.  But look at Ebert's story.  His favorite time learning was when he and his classmates were discussing implications of God and sin, and this was in grade school!  It wasn't too lofty a subject for them, it stimulated them and made them want to know more, so much so that they'd lay on the grass after school and talk about it. Imagine your kids hanging with their friends during play time discussing theological concepts and wrestling with their implications.

Secondly, the lack of knowledge in apologetics by Ebert's teachers and parents were his ultimate undoing.  When asking his favorite nun about the dilemma of God having no beginning, she replied "that is just something you have to believe. Pray for faith."  As you can imagine, it was an unsatisfying. Ebert would then say "I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith." Let me just say that this nun, who I don't doubt had the best of intentions, had a wrong understanding of faith and reinforced in the mind of an inquiring youngster that belief in God is irrational and unworthy of those who wish to think.  Perhaps if she was better trained in some of the great Catholic theologians like Thomas Aquinas her answer would have been correct.

Ebert's parents also were no help.  He says that during his high school years he never discussed his waning belief in God with them, but that makes me wonder if they ever discussed religion at all. As an elementary school boy with big questions about the world, Ebert went to his school teachers. If religion was a comfortable topic of conversation at home, surely he would have asked his parents also.

We as parents and teachers need to learn the answers to these questions and talk about them with our kids. And we need to start earlier rather than later. Elementary school kids have a wonder about the world and how it works, and we should be offering them the greatest truths to stimulate that wonder. Don't simply rely on the kids' Sunday School teaching to inform them about God.  The Sunday School teacher may not know the answer, or may offer the wrong answer. You need to know these answers yourself, so you can pass them along. Otherwise, our kids will think that belief in the God of all reason falls outside of reason, and therefore is irrelevant. And that breaks my heart.