Examined Christian Faith 'A Watch on the Beach' Part 2.2 What is Christianity

If you found a watch on the beach, would you assume that it just evolved there by happenstance?  I don’t know anyone who would.  However, there are many who claim that everything you see, hear, say and do is just a result of chance, that it all just happened to evolve this way.  So here are just  some thoughts of just a few of the things that just happened to fall into the exact place they needed to for you to exist:

Gravity is roughly 10³⁹ times weaker than electromagnetism.  If Gravity had been 10³³ times weaker than electromagnetism, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.

The nuclear force is 10²⁸ times the strength of gravity.  Had the weak force been slightly weaker, all the hydrogen in the universe would have been turned to helium (making water impossible).

A stronger nuclear force (by as little as 2%) would have prevented the formation of protons – yielding a universe without atoms.  Decreasing it by 5% would have given us a universe without stars.

If the difference in mass between a proton and neutron were not exactly as it is – roughly twice the mass of a electron – then all neutrons would have become protons or vise versa.

The earth is just the right distance from the sun.  Adjust it just 2% and life on earth would not be possible.  Two percent farther and water would freeze, 2% closer and water would evaporate to quickly.

Jupiter is just the right size and positioned in just the right place so that it acts as a large vacuum protecting the earth from comets and asteroids that would otherwise strike the earth.

Earth rotates at just the right speed.  A few percentages slower and the temperature changes between night and day would be too great.  If it rotated quicker, wind velocities would be too great and have destructive effects.

The earth tilts at just the right angle.  If the tilt were greater or less, the surface temperatures would be too great.

The moon is just the right size, so its gravitational pull stabilizes our axis tilt and creates wave activity so that sea waters are cleansed and replenished.

We have just the right oxygen quality in the atmosphere.  If it were greater, plants and hydrocarbons would burn up.  If it were less, animals would have to little to live on.

The earth is just the right size with the right surface gravity.  If it were greater, the planet’s atmosphere would retain too much ammonia and methane.  If it were weaker, the planet’s atmosphere would lose too much water.

The earth has just the right tectonic activity.  If the activity were any greater, too many life forms would be destroyed.  If there were less activity, nutrients on the oceans floors would not be recycled.

The earth’s crust is just the right thickness.  If it were any thicker, too much oxygen would be transferred from the atmosphere to the crust.  Any thinner and the volcanic and tectonic activity would be too great.

The earth has just the right carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere.  If it were greater, we would have a runaway greenhouse effect.  If it were less, plants would be unable to maintain efficient photosynthesis.

In regards to DNA, 1200 to 2000 letters (or bases) are needed to build one protein. The  probability of the right amino acids forming the precise sequence needed to form one protein molecule is 1 in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion (that’s a 1 with 125 zeros behind it).  Yet a minimally complex cell needs between 30 and 500 protein molecules.   However the human genome is three billion letters (or bases) long. 

Really? 'all of this just happened', but not the watch on the beach... talk about faith

This information is contained in the book "Unless I See... Is There Enough Evidence to Believe"  by Patrick Zukerran.  It is worth your time and money to read.

Examined Christian Faith 'TheGreat Divisions' Part 2.1 What is Christianity

If this is where you are picking up at, I would ask that you go back to the first post in this series and begin to read from there.  You will do yourself a great disservice if you begin here.  As I made it clear that in religion, as in everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it.  However if you look for the truth, you may find comfort in the end.  If you look for comfort, you will get neither comfort nor the truth; only a cuddly dog of wishful thinking to begin with, and in the end….  Despair.

So what is Christianity?  There are two major divisions within the human race.  The first big division is between those (the majority) who believe in some kind of God or gods, and those (the minority) who do not.  Now if you are the later (an atheist) you need to persuade yourself that most of the human race has always been wrong about the question that matters most.  However, if you are a Christian, you realize that all the other religions, even the strangest ones, contain at least a small gain of truth.  But do not misunderstand, just as in math, there can only be one correct answer and all of the others are wrong.  Christianity is right and they are wrong, some are closer to being right then others, but they are still wrong.  Again, I get ahead of myself.

The second big division is between those who believe in God and what sort of god they believe in.  All various views can be broken down into two main divisions, those who think that God is beyond good and evil (as best as I can understand this view is held by the Hindus), and those who hold that God is absolute goodness, or righteous (Jews, Muslims, and Christians).  Those who hold the idea that God is beyond good and evil, claim that we humans call one thing good and another evil, but that is only the human point of view.  That the wiser you become the better you are to understand that everything is good in one manner, and evil in another.  Depending upon your point of view.  Thus while we call cancer bad, because it kills people, you could call a doctor bad, because he kills cancer.  It is just a matter of your viewpoint.  Usually people who hold this view also hold the other idea that God animates the universe as you animate your body.  In essence, if the universe did not exist neither would God.  They hold that everything in this world is a part of God.  A person who holds this view of God would say when dealing with a person who is an adulteress, or while walking through a slum “If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this is also God”.  However if you think some things really are bad, and God really is good you cannot agree with any of that, a likely response to them would be “Quit being stupid.’

The Christian idea quite different, they believe that God created the universe like a painter creates a painting, if the paining were to be destroyed the painter does not die; like the architect of a house he is not part of the house, but you know he designed the house.  Christians believe that God created the world, that space, time, hot and cold; all the colors all the animals, plants, smells and tastes are things God created out of his mind.  Yet, the Christian also thinks that a lot of things have gone wrong with the world as a result of humankinds freewill; and that God insists and insists very loudly that we put them right again.  

For the atheist this raises a big question.  If a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong?  How could the universe seem to be so cruel, and unjust?  They will spend hours on end debating that very point, instead of asking the simple question that lies beneath it.  How did they get the idea that it is cruel and unjust?  You don’t call a line crooked unless you have some idea of what a straight line is.  What are they comparing the universe to?  If all of it is bad, unjust and meaningless, and they are part of it (so to speak) why would they think it bad, cruel and unjust?  In other words, when I go to the beach and jump in the water, I feel wet (because I am not a water animal); however all of the fish who live in the ocean do not feel wet. 

In the end, atheism is too simple, if the entire universe has no meaning, we should not have found out that it has no meaning.  Just as if there were no light on earth, and therefore there were no creatures with eyes, we would not know that it was dark.  Darkness would be meaningless. 

A great book that is easy to read and understand regarding this subject is "Unless I See... Is there enough Evidence to Believe"   by Patrick Zukeran

Examined Christian Faith 'As Hard as Nails' Part 1.5 - What is Christianity

What is Progress?  Is it forward movement?  Is it change for changes sake?  Is it finishing the math problem first, even if I come up with the wrong sum?  If I began working a math problem and I realized that I was doing it wrong, what would be the correct thing for me to do?  Obviously the sooner that I admit it, go back and start again the faster and further I will get.  Or another way to look at it is if I were driving from one town to another town that was due east of where I started from, but I discover that I am on a road that is taking me north to an entirely different town, progress would be to turn around go back to where I started from and begin my trip anew.  That is what progress is.  

I ended my last post with the idea that in the Moral Law, someone or something is increasingly getting on us for our refusal to do what we should do.  If you were to look at our society today, it is obvious that we have and are making some huge mistakes.  We are on the wrong road.  If that is so, then like a wayward traveler we must turn around, because turning around is the only way to make progress.  

I also have not yet made the case for the God of Christian theology, only that somebody or something is behind the moral law, and that we have reason to be concerned.  We have by examination found two pieces of evidence about this Somebody.  The first is that universe He has made, and as I alluded to in closing my previous post, if we use that as our only clue, then we would have to conclude that He is a better artist then Monet (just look up at the night sky) and that he is also no friend to man (all that space out there is a very dangerous place for humans).  The other bit of evidence we have is that persistent Moral law which He has placed inside of our minds.  It is perhaps a better piece of evidence because for us at least, it is inside information.  

Just like a person, you know more about the person by listening to his conversation then by looking at the house he built.   So from this second piece of information we can conclude that the ‘Someone’ behind the curtain is intensely interested in right behavior – unselfishness, courage, truthfulness, loyalty, honor, faithfulness, kindness.  In that sense, it agrees with Christianity and some other religions, that God is “good”.  Also like I mentioned in closing my previous post, do not go so fast as to assume that God is “good” in the sense of being a cuddly dog, an indulgent, soft, or sympathetic.  There is nothing soft and indulgent about the Moral Law.  It is as hard as nails.  It tells you to do the right thing regardless; it does not seem to care how painful, dangerous or difficult it is to do so.  

If God is like the Moral Law He has placed inside our minds, then He is not soft at all.  Mind you, we still have not determined if God is a personal God, only that He exists.  But so far, all we have been able to conclude is that He is more like a mind then anything else, and may be quite unlike a person.  If God is a pure impersonal mind, then there is no reason to ask for personal allowances, to be let off the hook when you get it wrong.  Because you will not like the answer.  Likewise, if there is a God of the impersonal absolute goodness then it does you no good to decide you do not like him and want nothing to do with him, because there is that one part of you that agrees Him and disapproves of greed, adultery, robbery, etc…

Oh, you may want him to make an exception in your case, but you know at the bottom of yourself that unless the power behind the universe absolutely despises that type of behavior, He cannot be good.  On the other hand, if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate almost all that we do.  

That is the catch 22 we are in, if the universe is not governed by absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the end meaningless and hopeless.  However, if it is, then each and every day we make ourselves an enemy to that goodness.  We hopeless without it and hopeless with it.  God is our only comfort, and our supreme terror; the one thing we need most, and the thing we most want to hide from.  He is our only chance, and we have made ourselves His enemy.  

I hear a lot of talk from people about how they think looking into the eyes of an absolute good God would be fun; they need to revisit that idea; just as Moses looked away.  Goodness is either our great safety or our great danger, depending on the way we react to it; and all of us have acted the wrong way.  

You need to understand that, you need to reread it a hundred times until you finally get it.  Because Christianity simply does not make any sense until you have faced the hard facts I have been describing.  Christianity in the long run brings comfort, but it does not begin there, it begins in the dismay I have been describing.  There is no use attempting to go to the comfort first without going through the dismay.  

Christianity tells people to repent (make progress) and promises forgiveness.  It says nothing to those who do not know that they have anything to repent of, nor do they need any forgiveness.  It is only after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind that law, and you have broken it, and put yourself at odds with the Power, it is then, and not a second sooner, that Christianity begins to talk to you.  When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor.  When you realize your position is desperate, you will begin to understand Christianity. 

In religion, as in everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it.  However if you look for the truth, you may find comfort in the end.  If you look for comfort, you will get neither comfort nor the truth; only a cuddly dog of wishful thinking to begin with, and in the end….  Despair. 

A great book to help you reason the answers to your own questions or those of others is  Handbook of the Christian Apologist,  each chapter tackles subjects like 'Does God exist, the problem of evil, the divinity of Christ, life after death, and objective truth.  Written in a lively easy to follow manner it may be just the book you need to understand some of the questions you or others may have.