The Proper Place of Science

Here in The West, we have a love affair with science. It’s completely understandable; science has spread prosperity to an unprecedented level, it has put men on the moon, given us the means to feed the whole planet, created the microwave, and allowed us to carry excessively tiny telephones with us wherever we go. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of science has caused many people to place it on pedestal and rely on it for every answer. For so many, an answer provided by science no matter what the subject, is wrongly valued far above answers provided by its sister disciplines of philosophy and theology.

Science is a tool and like any tool it is good for some jobs and absolutely useless for others. Science can’t explain the deepest questions that we have asked ourselves over the centuries: “Why are we here? (Not “How did we come into being,” which it might be possible for science to answer, although even that answer has so far eluded scientists, but rather “WHY, or for what purpose, are we here?”). Science can’t explain consciousness, kindness, morality, or even free will.

Here are two classic examples of the limitation of science:

1. A brain surgeon knows a great deal more about the physical brain than I do, yet he has absolutely no access to my mind. He knows nothing about my innermost thoughts, he can’t discover them by looking at my brain, and he can’t tell what I’m thinking about, or what makes me happy, sad, worried, or elated through any scientific means available to him.
   
   
2. (Credit to Philosopher Brian Magee for this example):I am sitting in a room, when the human body sitting opposite me rises out of it’s chair and then moves across the room to a table. On the table it locates a small silver box, out of which it removes a cigarette which it places in it’s mouth. Upon completing this action, the body proceeds to light that same cigarette.
   
   I, and anyone else who observes this action, immediately understand that that person desires a cigarette, even if we have never experienced such a similar desire ourselves before. However, if we try to explain this sequence of events in scientific terms, those of atomic motion and chemical reaction, this sequence suddenly becomes totally incomprehensible.

Science is very limited in its ability to explain the universe around us. It is only a tool, and a flawed tool at that as philosophers David Hume and Thomas Kuhn have so brilliantly pointed out. Yet, it remains the best, most important tool we have for explaining the natural world. That is all. Only what can be examined physically and measured quantitatively and qualitatively is available to science. Everything else falls into the realms of Philosophy or Theology.

You’ve probably heard an atheist say that “science has proven that miracles can’t occur.” This is complete rot. By definition science is the study of order and patterns, usually in the natural world. Miracles, by definition, are events that go against the natural order and established pattern of the world. In other words, miracles are forever outside the realm of science. Trying to explain genuine miracles with science is a little like trying to gauge an individual’s wisdom with a tape measure. It’s the wrong tool.

Science is necessary and useful, but it by no means has the last word (or often any word) on the most important aspects of human life – meaning, morality, love, selflessness, consciousness, or rationality; and the list goes on and on. For each of these areas we need the separate but equally useful tools of philosophy and theology.

Women in Government - An Affront to God?

In my post In Defense of Deborah I pointed out that adherents to “Biblical Patriarchy” claim that God commands that all positions of authority whether in the home, the church, or any form of civil government, be held by men at all times regardless of the circumstances. In his article Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate?, posted on Vision Forum, William Einwechter writes:

“…as creation establishes the headship of man in the civil sphere by means of man being created first and the woman being created for man, so the law of God sets the headship of man in the civil sphere by means of the stated qualifications for civil rulers.”

Einwechter makes this claim by appealing to several Old Testament (OT) passages for support:

1) The creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:18-24; I have already answered Mr. Einwechter’s arguments from the creation story in my last post, “Biblical Patriarchy from Creation?”

2) Jethro’s council to Moses to set up judges under him to handle common problems and disagreements:

“Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens." – Exodus 18:21 (NASB)


3) Moses’ restatement of Jethro’s advice in Deuteronomy 1:

'Choose wise and discerning and experienced men from your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads.' – Deuteronomy 1:13 (NASB)


4) The laws given for the kings of Israel (whenever they should happen to come along):

"When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,'…He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. – Deuteronomy 17:14,17 (NASB)


In looking at these passages, Mr. Einwechter notes that the pronoun in each of them is masculine. He correctly points out that these words are gender specific, unlike the word ‘man’ from the creation story which is the gender neutral ‘mankind.’ That the pronoun is gender-specific is particularly meaningful to Patriarchists as they believe that it communicates a God-given requirement of male-ness for all positions of authority.

Mr. Einwechter writes:
“God set for the essential qualifications for civil magistrates for all people and for all time when He spoke through Jethro to Moses…The word “men” chosen by the Holy Spirit in both of these texts is the Hebrew, gender specific word for a man.” (emphasis added)

I think this makes the Exodus 18 passage do far more work than it was ever intended it to do.
The first thing that must be pointed out is that Mr. Einwechter goes well beyond the Biblical text and good Biblical exegesis in making the claim that it was God himself who selected the precise wording of Jethro’s comments, i.e. God “spoke through Jethro to Moses.” Actually, if you read the whole the passage you see that Jethro makes an entirely different claim about his words:

Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. – Exodus 18:19 (TNIV – emphasis added)

The simple truth is that Jethro offers Moses his advice on how he should handle the burden of leadership over the Jewish people and articulates a desire for God’s blessing on whatever path Moses chooses to follow. Nothing more. I am not claiming that Jethro’s advice was not wise or even that it was not inspired by God, however the Bible never makes this claim. It is good advice from a wise and apparently Godly man; let’s leave it at that.

The second point that must be made is similar to the first; even if these words are spoken by God through Jethro, they come in the form of advice that Moses could choose to follow or not. They are not a command. To claim, as Einwechter does, that this advice from Jethro, along with it’s repetition in Deuteronomy 1, constitutes a law of God regarding civil leadership stretches this passage to the breaking point. Let’s be serious. God was not shy about supplying the people of Israel with very specific laws pertaining to everything from the criminal justice system to the daily washing of various body parts to the proper way to prepare foods, yet He choose to rely on advice from Jethro to communicate His will regarding civil leadership? To quote John Stossel, “Give me a break!” The passage reflects wise counsel, and I often wish that we had leaders who fit that mold, but it’s hardly a command.

The third point is that the actual use of the word “men” in Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1 may be culturally bound. For Moses and Jethro to refer only to men when contemplating a candidate for leadership would be completely in line with their culture, which was genuinely patriarchal (not the warmed-over modern interpretation of patriarchy of Vision Forum and others). Think about it. Even today, in a culture that could hardly be called patriarchal, except by the most hardened feminists, we still tend to use masculine pro-nouns when talking generally about the people who hold positions of authority. In the same way, only more so, it would never have occurred to Jethro to even consider a woman for any position of leadership at all.


The forth passage that William Einwechter cites as establishing God’s “essential qualifications for civil magistrates for all people and for all time” is Deuteronomy 17:14-17. About this passage Mr. Einwechter writes:

Furthermore, the directions that God gives concerning the establishment of a king in Israel requires that a man, and not a woman, be chosen (Deut. 17:14-20). The king was to be a “brother,” and he was not to “multiply wives to himself.” Clearly, a man is in view here.

To that I say: Yes, a man is in view here! Or maybe we should say that 44 men are in view here. As “The Lawgiver” and a prophet of God, Moses knows that in several hundred years the people of Israel will demand a king. Armed with this foreknowledge, Moses gives several basic laws by which those kings should abide (although none of them did). Far from making strictly male leadership a command for all people for all time, Moses’ failure to acknowledge Queens in this short set of laws only recognizes that Israel only ever had kings over her for as long as the nation existed. This is a fact of history, not a command.

The final point that needs to made is about the nature of the Old Testament Law itself. Even if we actually did find commands for male-only leadership in each of these passages, the Church is no longer under the Old Testament Law and the obligations that come with it. Such commands would no longer apply to us. The laws given by God through Moses to the Jewish people were for the governance and blessing of the religious theocracy of Israel that God established.

Today the order has changed. Jews and Gentiles alike are no longer under the Old Covenant, but are under a new Law, the New Covenant established not between God and nations, but between God and those who love Him and follow His Son, Jesus. If Jesus had come to establish a political kingdom He would have done it. Instead, He came to establish his Kingdom, for the moment a spiritual Kingdom, made up of people from every creed, nation, and race on Earth.


As this is true, we find the commands for Christians regarding civil government to be few, indeed they can boiled down to the simple statement “Obey the civil authorities.” This sums up Jesus statement regarding tribute to Caesar in Matthew 22:17-21 and Paul’s statement regarding civil obedience in Romans 13:1-7. For the Christian it no more difficult than that. No statement about qualifications and certainly none about gender. What does this tell me? That God has allowed Christians to make their own choices on civil leadership issues, tempered by Godly wisdom.


Am I saying that we should expect numerically equal gender representation in positions of authority? I am not. I believe that God has generally provided men and women with different strengths and abilities that offset each others weaknesses. God has made men in such a way that they will take on the rigors and demands of authority far more naturally than women. However, by acknowledging that I am not saying women can never or should never take on roles of authority. History has shown that there exist great women who have skillfully and effectively taken even the highest positions of authority and held those offices with such grace, dignity, and efficacy that they brought honor to the position and to those over whom they held authority. Is this the normal order of things? It is not, but just because something is not normal does not make it illegitimate or unbiblical.

William Einwechter’s position on women in civil government may look impressive and Biblical at first glance, but when you compare his interpretation with the actual passages he cites and the rest of scripture, his case falls apart so completely that there literally is nothing left for him to hang his argument on.

Biblical Patriarchy from Creation?

Now that I’m done defending Deborah the big question is whether the Bible teaches anything like “Biblical Patriarchy” at all. I’ll come right out and say that I don’t believe such a teaching can be found anywhere in scripture, at least in the form in which it is presented by Vision Forum. As with my last post, I will mostly be citing verses and arguments as posed by William Einwechter in his article “Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate?” found on Vision Forum’s website.

The Biblical Patriarchist begins his case by going all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. The creation of Adam and Eve as related in Genesis 2 is the Old Testament backbone of the doctrine. In this chapter’s account Adam is created first and spends some length of time with the animals in the garden before God observes that, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him," at which point God places Adam into a deep sleep and removes the rib from which He fashions Eve.

In writing about this story, Mr. Einwechter says,

“The text of Genesis 2:7 and 2:18-24 teaches us that man was made first, and then the woman was made to be man’s helper and companion. The Bible instructs us that this order of creation was by God’s design, and that it establishes the positional authority of the man over the woman in regards to authority and leadership.”

Einwechter and others of this point of view make much of two elements of this chapter: 1) that Adam was created first, and 2) that the text reports that God said, “…I will make a helper suitable for him.” They say that the creation of Adam chronologically prior to the creation of Eve illustrates a natural order of positional authority of the man over the woman. Furthermore, God’s statement in Genesis 2:18 that Eve was created for Adam reinforces this illustration from the natural order of creation. It seems to me that one needs to come to the text of Genesis 2 with this presupposition already in place to get this message from the story.

If we consider the whole creation text of Genesis I think that we find an authority message dramatically different than that in Biblical Patriarchy. There are only two passages which relate the creation of Adam and Eve themselves: Genesis 1:26-27 and 2:7, 18-22. In Chapter 1 of Genesis God states His intention for mankind to exercise dominion over all creation:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. – Genesis 1:26-27

Einwechter ignores this passage, however, I think it’s interesting to note that here, the first time human authority is presented in the Bible, both the man and the woman share equally in it. The word ‘man’ that appears in this passage is the Hebrew word ‘adam’ (transliterated), which is a generic word for mankind. God states His intention that man, or mankind, should rule over all creation. To make it perfectly clear that God includes all people in this sweeping declaration of authority and not just males the passage ends with the description, “God created man [mankind] in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.” While it may not contain an explicit teaching on male and female authority, I would say that, if anything, it communicates the equality of the man and the woman, not the authority of the man over the woman.

According to Einwechter, the fact that Adam was created first is indicative of an implicit patriarchy, that it “establishes the positional authority of the man over the woman in regards to authority and leadership.” I beg to differ. The wording chosen by the author of Genesis himself in describing God’s sentiments on Adam’s lonely state in Genesis 2:18 communicates exactly the opposite. God asserts that,

“It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."

Mr. Einwechter places the emphasis of this passage on the “for him,” there is a sense of ownership laid over the statement. However, God’s expressed purpose for creating a helper for Adam was so that he wouldn’t be lonely; that he should have someone else with him to share in his work.

Additionally, many Bibles include a footnote next to the word ‘suitable’ which reads “Lit. Corresponding to.” All the Jewish scholarship that I could find agree that the literal rendering of the text using the words ‘corresponding to’ instead of ‘suitable for,’ communicates God’s intention to create a helper for Adam who is completely his equal (see here for example). Eve was not merely Adam’s assistant in the garden, she complimented him and was his companion, and shared equally in the authority God gave all mankind over His creation.

While I do believe that the Bible teaches that male headship in families and in the Church is desirable and normal, Einwechter’s claims that the creation order in Genesis establishes a universal positional authority of man over the woman reads too much into the passage. The words of God Himself communicate the equality of His male and female creations.

In Defense of Deborah

Until recently I have never realized that Deborah, judge of Israel, needed defending. In my mind she has been, like Daniel, one of very few people that the Bible reports only positively about. Silly me.

In the wake of the Republican Vice Presidential Nomination of Sarah Palin, I have discovered a small but vocal subset of Christianity that stands very firmly on what Vision Forum refers to as “Biblical Patriarchy.” This doctrine teaches that there are basically three spheres of influence in the world: The Family (or the home), the (local) church, and civil government. It’s supporters say that in each of these arenas the Bible clearly teaches that female leadership or authority is contrary to God’s order. Given that, they believe that God is better pleased with bad, ineffectual male leadership than even the most capable woman in a position of authority. As a result, some Christians have claimed that they are no longer able to vote for Sen. McCain now that he has selected the female Governor of Alaska to be his VP.

What does this have to do with Deborah? I have serious concerns about the claims of proponents of Biblical Patriarchy both biblically and philosophically. They teach that female leadership is completely unacceptable to God; however, in the fourth chapter of Judges we find an explicit example of female leadership over the Nation of Israel (Judges 2:16) and in a role that God Himself assigned no less. In order to explain this apparent contradiction between Biblical Patriarchy and the leadership of Deborah, the patriarchists teach that her period as judge over Israel was a shame to the men of Israel; they claim that female leadership is a sign of the judgment of God, based on Isaiah 3:12.

Vision Forum published the article Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate? in which William Einwechter presents the doctrine of Biblical Patriarchy. Einwechter attempts to show that Deborah is not a good example of female leadership in the Bible; in fact, he claims she should not be considered a leader at all. I disagree. For the rest of this post, I will be responding directly to the arguments and assertions made in this article.

Einwechter writes:“First, in regard to Deborah, recognize that it would be unwise to cancel out the explicit biblical teaching on the headship of man, the clear statements of the law, the picture of the virtuous woman, and the lament over women ruling on the basis of what took place in Israel in one of the most confused periods in Israel’s history.”

I agree. It can be dangerous and problematic to look at examples of individuals for doctrine, particularly in the Old Testament, as the Bible frequently records peoples’ actions without supplying a judgment as to the righteousness of their actions. The good and the bad are reported together and often judgment is withheld. We should never cancel out Biblical teaching because of a conflicting example. However, if we are careful, we can allow Biblical examples to inform our understanding of Biblical teaching. We can learn things if we examine the text carefully.

What is God doing in this story? God uses Deborah as both an influential judge in Israel and as a prophetess. He speaks to her directly as His agent for freeing Israel from Jabin, king of the Canaanites. Is it appropriate for her to serve in such a leadership position? Biblical patriarchists would say no, her apparent position as a leader only signifies the extent of God’s judgment on Israel. However, Israel was already experiencing God’s judgment – they were captives of their enemies the Canaanites because they had forgotten the one true God and worshipped other gods. Rather than Deborah as evidence of God’s judgment, Deborah is presented as the agent God used to release Israel from judgment.

Is her example a special case? Does it stand out in any way from the other accounts of the judges in this book? No. In every account related in Judges, Israel does “evil in the eyes of the Lord,” thus they are handed over to their enemies for a period of years, after which God raises up a judge to lead Israel back to Him and free them from their captors. This is precisely the pattern followed by Deborah as well.

Einwechter writes: “The judges during this period were more military leaders or ‘avenging deliverers’ than they were civil magistrates (Judges 2:16-19)”

Mr. Einwechter makes this point because Deborah did not personally lead the troops into battle against King Jabin. He uses this detail to question whether we should rightly refer to Deborah as the judge or if it’s more appropriate to conclude that the actual judge of Israel in this story is Barak. This could be a compelling argument if the role of judge is truly said to be a militaristic position. Let’s read the passage:

Then the LORD raised up judges who delivered [Israel] from the hands of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the LORD; they did not do as their fathers. When the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. – Judges 2:16-19 (NASB)

Does it appear from this passage that the judges were always military leaders, as Mr. Einwechter claimed in his statement above? I certainly don’t find any mention of military leadership or avenging deliverers in this passage. I see nothing in this passage to cause me to ignore the statement in Judges 4:4 – “Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time,” and conclude that Barak was actual the judge if Israel in view here. What I see is a person, the judge, whom God raises up and through whom God affects repentance in the hearts of the people, which leads directly to physical freedom from and victory over their oppressors.

Einwechter writes: “The Song of Deborah and Barak gives some important insight into Deborah’s actual position in Israel.”

Under this statement Mr. Einwechter points out that in Judges 5:7 Deborah claims to be a “mother” in Israel, not a father. He says, “This is significant, given the headship of the father in Israel.” I have to wonder, what else could Deborah have claimed to be? Would it really have been appropriate for her to claim to be a “father” in Israel? Also, the author reads a great deal into a verse that appears to do nothing more than describe Deborah’s simple origins in order to give the glory to God – in essence she’s saying, “Who am I to be used by God to redeem the land and the people of Israel, I’m simply a mother.” She removes the credit anyone might try to give her for the work that was done in Israel and rightfully attributes it to God.

Looking at Judges 5:9, the observation is made that “there were yet governors in Israel,” i.e. the rulers of the tribes, and that this fact invalidates any claim to leadership that could be attributed to Deborah. This is a very strange assertion, as I don’t believe the author would make it about any of the other judges, yet whether these governors were referenced explicitly or not, they were there during the service of every other judge over Israel. The fact that each tribe had its own leadership does not disqualify the judge from being rightfully considered a leader as well.

Another claim that is made about “Deborah’s actual position in Israel” is that in Judges 5:12 “Deborah is exhorted to awake and sing, but Barak is exhorted to arise and ‘lead’.” I’m sorry, but this one is playing a little fast and loose with the text. Mr. Einwechter fails to mention what Barak arises to lead:

Awake, awake, Deborah;
Awake, awake, sing a song!
Arise, Barak, and take away your captives, O son of Abinoam.- Judges 5:12 (NASB)

It can hardly be said that Barak is seen here as the civil leader of the people, but simply as a successful military leader who has taken his enemies captive.

Finally, Mr. Einwechter points out that verse 13 of this chapter “is either a reference to Israel’s victory over Sisera and the Canaanites, or to the gathering of the people to go up to battle; whichever, it does not mean that God has appointed Deborah to the position of civil magistrate.” I might have to give him this one as I can’t say that I disagree. The verse is somewhat ambiguous in each of the Bible translations I looked at, so he could very well be right about this specific verse. However, that really does nothing for or against his case that Deborah was not a civil leader of Israel.

Conclusion

The biggest problem I see with this argument is this: Let’s assume for the moment that everything he says about Deborah is completely true. He still acknowledges that “She judged Israel only in the sense that she was sought out by the people for advice and judgment in the settlement of disputes because of her wisdom from God.” Even if that’s all she was, does it sound like she conformed herself to Mr. Einwechter’s image a Godly woman:

“According to Scripture, the woman was created to be man’s assistant in his dominion task, to function under his headship, to be a mother and nurturer of children, and to manage her home. These “monumental” tasks require married women to be “keepers at home,” i.e., they are to stay at home to give their full time and attention to the enormously important roles that God has given to them”(quote from a post by William Einwechter titled Sarah Palin and the Complementarian Compromise: A Response to Our Brothers Al Mohler and David Kotter on Doug Philips’ blog at Vision Forum, September 8, 2008).

Even if everything Bill Einwechter says about Deborah is true, was she acting as “man’s assistant in his dominion task?” Possibly she fulfilled this role to Barak, but he was not her husband or her child, which Einwechter would find very problematic. Does she “function under [man’s] headship?” Not at all! She goes to Barak and tells him what to do (beyond the pale according to Mr. Einwecter’s beliefs)! Does she act as “a mother and nurturer of children and manage her home.” She does not! Her children and her home are never even mentioned in the account. Did she act as a “keeper at home,” as he would put it? No. She was out in public, serving people who were not in her family, handing out judgments in disputes that undoubtedly involved men as well as women (completely inappropriate by Einwechter’s standards). Did she “stay at home to give her full time and attention to the enormously important role that God gave her?” As I have already answered: NO! She is out judging among the people, she is telling the military leaders what to do, and traveling with them into battle; certainly nothing those who hold to “Biblical Patriarchy” would condone.

Is it normal for woman to hold a civil leadership position? It is not normal even today, but it was exceedingly rare in the days of the judges. Yet despite its rarity and the passages that Mr. Einwechter uses against such a possibility (which I will address on this blog soon), female leadership certainly has been (on occasion) set up by God in order to accomplish good things, and not simply as a sign of God’s anger and judgment against a people. Deborah is still a prime example of that.

Can God Communicate with Us?

This will be a short one. I hear the objection raised by non-Christians all the time that if God existed, he wouldn't or couldn't have communicated with us. Frankly, I don't understand such arguments, which are so irrational that I just have to shake my head at the person who makes them.

Clearly, if God exists then He is responsible for everything else that exists as well. If God exists then He is responsible for all the matter in the universe, for every physical and natural law, and for life, consciousness, and rationality. To make the claim that God has the power to create everything from nothing at all, but now doesn't have the power to communicate with His creation is a sign of a mind not functioning well. And yet, I cannot count the number of times I have listened to agnostics, and even theists, make this exact claim.

I imagine that this position is taken by people because they have not experienced a personalized communication from God. After all, if He exists and wants us to believe in Him, the best way to achieve this goal would be to throw back the curtain for all to see and announce His presence to the world. Since He doesn't do this, He is either incapable of doing so or He doesn't exist.

The problem with this kind of thinking is glaring. Those who make the argument are assuming that God is just like them, something which actually goes against the teaching of scripture (Numbers 23:19). They assume that God would behave in this way if He could; because that's the way they think they would behave if they were in His place.

Christians believe that God has already communicated the bulk of what He wants or needs to communicate in a little book known as the Bible. The real issue here for most people is not whether God can speak to us, but whether He already has spoken; through the pages in the Bible. But is the Bible reliable? Many people say that it isn't that it's just full of contradictions and errors. Clearly, the Creator God, if He chose to communicate through the pages of a book would have done a better job than what we find in the Bible, or so they say.

We'll take a look at that problem over the next several posts.

So, Where Does This Get Us?

Over the last three posts I have provided three classic cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Over the course of the next several posts I will probably provide you with some more philosophical arguments for God built upon foundations than origins. However, that can come latter. Right now I want to reset just a little bit.

After those three posts you may be saying to yourself, “That was interesting, but what was the point of that? Where does that get us?” If you look back at my original post that begun this topic, you’ll notice that I proposed to examine several points:

1. Is it reasonable to believe that God exists?
2. If such a God did exist, could He communicate with us?
3. Is belief in miracles reasonable?
4. Is the Bible trustworthy?
5. Is the resurrection reasonable?
6. Does the Biblical worldview comport with reality?
7. How does Christianity fare against the other leading worldviews of today?

I believe that those arguments, in part, establish my first point that belief in God is reasonable. I only say ‘in part’ because taken individually they are generally written off by skeptics as mental exercises with little merit. But when presented in groups, especially when you have several arguments which support the conclusion from several different premises, they become far more compelling and more difficult to ignore.

Simply put, the point of thinking about these arguments is that they lead to the conclusion that there must be a being who has the creative abilities that we ascribe to God, based not on passages in the Bible but on reason and observation.

Does this mean that we can throw out the Bible, and follow God solely through reason and observation? Absolutely not. But what it does begin to show is that Christians, whether we know it or not, have good reasons to believe what we believe.

In the next post we'll start examining whether such a God, since it appear probable that He does exist, would or could communicate with His creation.

Why Does Anything Exist?

The final philosophical cosmological argument that I will present here is the Leibnizian Argument. Developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), I find this the most compelling of all the cosmological arguments.
While many people equate this with the Thomist arguments the metaphysic undergirding this argument is completely different. Instead of asking the question “Did the universe begin to exist,” like the Kalam argument, or “Is there a necessary cause,” like the Thomist argument, the Leibnizian asks the simple question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

In my opinion, this line of reasoning makes the most direct observation of all the cosmological arguments; No fact can be real or existent, no statement true unless there is a sufficient reason why it is so rather than otherwise. In essence, why are we here? Why is anything here at all? Since it is far simpler that nothing should exist (seeing that non-existence requires no explanation, whereas existence requires one), why then does so much exist? This is the question for which Leibniz was searching for an answer.

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument:

(1) Something exists.
(2) There must be a sufficient reason or rational basis for why something exists rather than nothing.
(3) This sufficient reason cannot be found in any single thing or in the whole aggregate of things or in the efficient causes for all things.
a. Things in the world are contingent, that is, determined in their being by other things such that if matter and motion were changed, they would not exist.
b. The world is simply the conglomeration of such things and is thus itself contingent.
c. The efficient causes of all things are simply prior state of the world, and these successive states do not explain why there are any states, any world, at all.
(4) Therefore, there must exist outside the world and the states of the world a sufficient reason for the existence of the world.
(5) This sufficient reason will be a metaphysically necessary being, that is, a being whose sufficient reason for existence is self-contained.

At first glance, this argument is harder to follow than the previous two that I posted, however, lets walk through it quickly, and it should become clear.

The first and second points are obvious, clearly something exists rather nothing, and we know that things that exist require reasons for their existence (whether we know what those reasons are or not). Point (3) begins clearly enough, with the observation that the reason for the existence of everything cannot be found in any one thing that exists, or even in the total collection of things that exist.

The sub-points of (3) are where the argument generally becomes confusing; however, if you keep in mind that the sub-points are only there to justify the point that they go with, it may be easier to follow. Essentially, what these points attempt to justify is that the necessary cause (remember the Thomist Argument in the last post) cannot be found in the universe, or in the total collection of things that make up the universe. These arguments don’t look at the reason for any one thing, but ask instead why anything exists rather than nothing. Thus, since the argument concludes that the reason for the existence of anything (and everything) can’t be found with the physical universe we must look beyond into the non-physical world, to find the necessary reason why we, and everything else, exist.

I will leave it up to you to decide what one should call a non-physical, necessary being, who is the reason for everything that exists.