Examined Christian Faith 'Christainity-and-Water' 2.3 What is Christainity

I have previously concluded that Atheism is too simple, however a equally simple viewpoint is what C.S. Lewis called 'Christianity–and-water', the view that says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right, ignoring and leaving out all of the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin, hell and the devil; as well as redemption.  Both of those viewpoints are for children. 

The Christian religion may look simple, but it is not.  A child saying a child’s prayer looks simple enough, and it is, if you are content to stop there.  However if you are not, and most of us are not, if you really want to go forward and ask what is really going on, you must be prepared for something much more difficult.  If you ask for something more then a child’s religion then it is crazy to complain when that something more turns out to be not so simple.  

There are lots of people out there who are not crazy or simple, but who have adopted the viewpoint that religion should be simple, and if it isn’t then it is too complicated for them to get their head around. They will say things like there really is a God then He would have made ‘religion’ simple, so that everyone can understand it.  You will however notice that the argument of God making religion simple is missing the point, religion is not something God invented, rather they should focus on God’s statement to us of certain unalterable facts about his own nature. 

Thus reality and religion is complicated, but more then that it is also frequently strange.  It is hardly neat, and is never obvious, nor is it what you would expect.  Look at the universe and find something that isn’t complicated, different, or something that you would have guessed.  Reality is in fact usually something you would never have guessed, similarly that is one of the reasons to believe in Christianity.  It is a religion that you would never have guessed, or made up; it has that subtle twist to it, which most real things have.   You will either stay stuck in the children’s view of religion and the world or you will grow up.  Because the problem is not simple and the answer is not simple either.     

What’s the problem?  A universe that contains much that is obviously bad and apparently meaningless, yet it contains creatures like you and me who know that it is bad and meaningless.  There are only two views that address all the facts.  The first being Christianity, which views the world as a good world gone bad, however we still retains the memory of what it should have been.  The other view is one called dualism.  Dualism believes that there are two equal powers behind everything.  One good, and one bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight a never ending war. 

There is just one problem with Dualism.  The two powers or Gods – the good one and the bad one – are supposed to be independent.  They have both existed from all eternity, neither made the other, and neither of them has the right to call itself God.  Each, one would presume thinks it is good, and the other bad.  One of them likes love, mercy, and forgiveness, while the other likes hatred and cruelty.  If we call one the Good power and the other the Bad power, all that means is that we are agreeing with one of the two at the present moment.  If ‘being Good’ means only joining the side you agree with for no reason, then ‘Good’ can not be called good.   So what we must mean is that one of the two powers is actually wrong and the other right.  

The problem with that is that as soon as you say that, then you have introduced a 3^rd thing behind everything in addition to the two powers or gods.  Some law or rule of good that one of the powers conforms to and the other does not.  Now here’s the rub, since the two powers are judged by this standard, then standard or the Being that made the standard is higher up, then either of them, this being would in fact be the real God.  So what we call good and bad is simply a another way of saying that one of these tow powers is in a right relationship to the ultimate God and the other is in a wrong relationship with Him.  

Lets be honest, who likes being cruel and bad for its own sake, no one craves badness just because it is bad.  There is always a good desire within it, be it money, power, pleasure, safety, love, etc.  all as far as they go are good things.  It is how one pursues them that changes it to evil.  You can be good for the mere sake of being good (and I know some who are), but you cannot be bad for the mere fact of being bad. Ultimately badness is only spoiled goodness, and there must be something good before it can be spoiled.

Put more simply, to be bad the bad power must exist and have intelligence and self will.  However existence, intelligence and free will are in themselves good.  Therefore he must be getting them from a Good Power, A good God; for even to be bad, he must steal or borrow them from his opponent. 

Sounds very much like the Christian viewpoint that the devil is a fallen angel.  The devil is not a children’s story, he is a parasite, not the original.  The powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given in goodness.  All the things that enable a bad person to be evil are in themselves good thing- free will, cleverness, good looks, charming personality, existence itself.  Which is why dualism does not work.

However Real Christianity (not that Christianity–and- water thing) goes much closer to dualism than people want to admit.  Read the New Testament and there is much talk about a dark power.  A mighty evil sprit who is held to be the power behind death, disease and sin.  The key difference is that Christianity holds that the dark power was created by God and was good when it was created, but chose to go wrong.  

Christianity agrees with dualism that the universe is at war, but not a war between independent powers, Christianity believes it is a rebellion, a civil war, and we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the enemy. 

Yes we are in enemy occupied territory, and Christianity is the story of how the rightful king landed in disguise and is calling on all of us to take our part in a great campaign of sabotage.  So the next time you are in church, realize that you are receiving a message from our allies: that is why the enemy is so anxious to keep us from going.  I know that some of you are thinking right now, oh here he goes reintroducing the devil, with horns, hoofs and all.  As far as the horns and hoofs, are concerned, I could care less.  But this much I can guarantee you: 

IF anybody really wants to know him better, don’t worry, if you really want to, you will; Weather you’ll like it when you do is an entirely separate question.  

Try deepening your understanding with a great book by Timothy Keller called The Reason for God

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