The Geekorium

Just a quick update. I’ve wanted to write for a while because I have a lot of questions spinning around in my head. The problems are - I have no time to think, and the thoughts are so large and complex that I cannot hold them together for a long enough time to write them down.

So this is just to document that I’m still thinking over all the questions I have. I’m still hoping for a message from God. I’ve been following discussion at the Dilbert Blog - or at least the parts that pertain to my questions, and Scott Adams puts into words some of the same questions that have shaken my faith. At the same time, I have talked with people of faith and been to the funeral of my wife’s grandmother - stirring the old feelings of belonging and satisfaction I had being a part of the church.

You might think the answer is obvious, and from day to day I flop from feeling either that religion is silly, or that I wish to return to it. My confusion is great, and I don’t see an answer in sight.

I am not an atheist! I say this because I am about to link to an article that makes a few excellent points about common Christian arguments. Before I give you the link I want to stress that I am not saying that I am an atheist, or that there are no reasonable arguments for Christianity - only that some don’t hold up to scrutiny, and you must know what won’t be convincing to me if you use it as an argument.

Look on this as a way to improve your ministry…

OK, enough disclaimers. Read this article before you argue with me:
How Not to Embarrass Yourself in an Argument With an Atheist.

A quick intro to where I currently stand on spiritual matters. Read this before my other posts.

I was born and raised in a Christian home. My father was a pastor so I know a measure of the bible, and some theology too. I’m not an expert, but I know what the bible says and I studied it for years as a part of my daily life.

Being a Christian was a part of who I was. I felt there was no other way I could be. I had never officially had that repentant ‘moment’ that other people say they had - that day that they say they turned their life over to God - as I always felt I was God’s child right from the moment I was born. Of course there were times when it seemed hard to follow, or I rebelled, but never for long, and I always returned to God. In those times, I never truly doubted I would return, and I always accepted that it was my sin and my choice that had led me off the ‘path’.

This makes me sound like I was a typical wayward teen, but I really wasn’t. I wanted my parents to be proud of me, and I wanted to be the type of guy that others would look to and see Jesus’ love. So all my sins were internal or petty - selfish anger, pride, lust - never anything particularly obvious to an outside observer. That isn’t to say that I didn’t recognize these sins as sins - I did - I asked God regularly to forgive me for them, to take them, to teach me to be better.

Despite this though I guess I arrogantly assumed that my sin wasn’t all that great, and for the most part - I was doing OK.

But the biggest part of Christianity was a bit more elusive.

In my mind, the thing that separated Christianity from all other religions was this: that God wanted a relationship with me. No other religion I know of declares that God wants more than good deeds and happy thoughts. It is distinct and unique.

I’m telling you my thinking primarily for you to understand that I get it. I get Christianity. I understand that it’s not about rules and regulations.

What I rarely (if ever) felt was that God was interested in me. I believed that if I truly knew God I would feel it. To the very core of my being. I knew other people who knew it. My parents knew it. Why didn’t I feel it with the certainty and conviction I thought that I should? That is - just saying I was a Christian and reading the bible and going to church left me wanting more.

A few times I think I felt it. A few clear headed moments when I felt my sin, or felt so emotional about God I thought I could burst. But I’ll make a confession - being slightly sceptical about some things - I couldn’t help but wonder if the times I felt that way were due to lack of sleep, or any number of other more earthly factors. I’m not going to dismiss them all, but there was never a pivotal defining time I could say - “I have felt/seen God, and I know He is there.”

Instead, I took it on faith. My faith helped me when I couldn’t see God. Instead of my experience, I used my parents, my church leaders and my friends as sources of God’s work in the world. And I thought “that’s not too shabby, nice going God”. And it wasn’t too shabby. My family and friends are all great people, who care deeply about one another, and care for the earth, and care for strangers - not a slouch among them.

But relying on others can be a difficult thing. 1 Peter 3:15 says:

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.<a href=“http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=67&chapter=3&verse=15&version=31&context=verse” title=“NIV verse at Bible Gateway”>1 Peter 3:15 (<a href=“http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=31” title=“NIV information”>NIV)

I felt that I may have been able to fudge it if anyone asked, but I never felt I had the answer. I may have said “I have hope and joy because I know God loves me”, but I feared that if anyone pressed me, I couldn’t convince them that they needed God too. And it became kind of important to me that I should have the answer. So I read some books on creation vs. evolution (and those sorts of things) so that I might have more ammunition to refute the claims of science. And I prayed for God’s presence to fill me. And asked for God’s love to show through me.

But besides a few nice people telling me that I was a decent guy, I never attained that status that some people have of “amazing person of God”. Obviously I was doing something wrong, or God had chosen not to speak to me. Let me aside here for a moment and say ‘Some of you can point out my mistakes at this point, but don’t yet please’ - I realise that my ambitions at this time in my life may have been the problem. Regardless, I wanted to really know God, but found that I couldn’t do it.

Let me explain with an analogy. If you aren’t a Christian, the analogy may not work, but for those of you who are - go on, click and read, and then come back.

OK, so I couldn’t get God to show himself to me - but I still kept going on faith. Years passed, and I thought I was getting closer to God. I got married, and I thanked God for his blessings. A year passed, and life was good. Then my wife got ill. We knew fairly soon that it wasn’t life threatening, and we even hoped she’d get better reasonably quickly. Lots of people have ‘Chronic Fatigue’ and get better in 1 or 2 years. We were hopeful.

But as time went on, I discovered more about how Mil was feeling. She hid it well, but she was in constant pain, and couldn’t do anything that she wanted to do any more. She had to stop going to bible studies - but I kept on without her. She soon found it difficult to wake up for church

• so I kept going alone. One by one, all the things we hoped for our first few years of marriage fell away, leaving Mil bored, alone, and hurt. Leaving me angry, frustrated and tired.

I kept it up for a while. And I thought that maybe it was in God’s Plan^TM^. But the illogic of the situation started to eat away at my faith. I thought, how could this be in God’s plan? To allow pain and suffering on someone I love? How could any future benefit outweigh the damage that has been done to our faiths, our friendships and our plans? I still had a glimmer of hope (still do honestly) that it could all work out for the best. It all happened slowly over time, but I put it into words one morning after a particularly bad night. That postwas the first I wrote.

My frustration has become the seeming pointlessness of it all. For years I thanked God for the wonderful things He’d done - hooking me up with Mil, surrounding me with friends, getting me into jobs and courses I wanted. I even thought my first IT job was a gift, and apologized for doubting him the times he didn’t get me jobs I thought I wanted. That sleepless night though, I wondered if we give Him too much credit. If God cares about those little things, why wouldn’t he care about these big things, or things bigger still - hunger, war, poverty? Maybe care is the wrong word, I’m sure I’ll be told that God does care. What I mean is - why not act?

So here I am.

I want to believe. I want to go back to how things were for us. Even with Mil uncured, I could still believe that there is a purpose to everything (see Games and the Meaning of the Universe for how I could understand).

But now it will take more than just reading my bible. I still pray occasionally. Maybe they are selfish prayers, but I pray that God would reveal Himself, or cure Mil, or just let me know in some way that He cares. I don’t want to dictate the terms of how He might do this, but it’d have to be obvious. And when I don’t pray, I try not to think about it. Science has given me a viable reason not to go running to God when things don’t make sense, and the world makes more sense to me now as a mindless machine. Again, I want to be wrong but…

And the future? I want to get God’s attention. I want him to notice that I’m not on His guest list any more and come looking for me. I guess in a way, the parable of the prodigal son is not a comfort for me, because I don’t feel I ignored my Father, but that he ignored me. And if I can’t get His attention, I’ll keep living my life. One day, these questions will cease and I won’t bother looking at all. Alternatively, this testimony will have a sequel - and I’ll tell you how I came back to God. I know which outcome my loved ones will be praying for.

I have lot of concerned and loving people in my life who have come to my site hoping to get an insight into my life and how I am handling the pressures of an ill wife, and the gradual erosion of my faith. It is an easier thing to be able to say “check out my website”, than to speak about things face to face, partly because when I do I find it difficult to explain what I mean when I say that I need proof of God’s existence.

It’s also easier to respond to the gist of a series of comments in one post than to answer each one, because the irrational part of my brain wants to argue with everyone, and say I am right and you are wrong and start something akin to a Christian/atheist debate, where neither gives ground and each argument makes the other side more convinced they are right.

Instead, I wanted to clarify a bit what I’ve said in earlier posts about my faith, and why I feel I need proof of God’s existence.

One of the things I should say straight up is that I actually need two things.

1. Proof God exists;

2. Proof that He cares.

I could rewrite that second one to be: Why does “God’s Existence” make any difference?

If I could be given proof beyond a doubt that God is a real being, it would change me. I always felt that the existence of God should have an amazing effect on my life. I thought it was my fault that it rarely did. But the presence of an all powerful being (if proven) should cause undeniable change (either terrified fear, or uncontrollable joy). If you agree follow along.

That is what the effect should be with incontrovertible proof. The effects of such proof are all around. Many people have been given such proof (real or imagined) and have devoted their lives to God. However the rest of the world does not receive such proof and falls somewhere else - in a place where they either deny the existence of God, or begrudgingly admit that He could very well exist, and so perhaps they should do something about it. If you haven’t established, I fell into the latter group. I felt that God could be there, but without the first kind of absolute proof, had to make do with my own faith - which is weak at the best of times.

I’ll pause for a moment and say this: some can take our very existence as absolute proof, because it is inconceivable to them that something came from nothing. I can almost share that faith. The problem is that in this age, there are explanations of how something can come from nothing. This doesn’t prove the opposite of course, but simply makes not believing a possibility.

So without absolute proof, what does one need to keep faith alive? I would argue that one needs to feel that God cares. If nature or anything else can only get me to the point that I concede the possibility that God exists, I need something else as well. That is why I want to know that God cares. If God cares, then His existence matters to me. In the absence of absolute proof, a caring God is one that I will believe in despite any evidence or argument to the contrary.

I’m not speaking clearly here I realise, and I’ll attempt to clarify. In a murder trial, you must have proof that A) a crime was committed, B) that the person on trial did it. You do this with evidence. Without a picture of the suspect holding a severed head, the evidence must take on a more subjective nature. You show the knife, you show the scene of the crime, and you establish that the suspect had motive. Then the jury takes that evidence and says “Yes, in all likelihood the suspect is guilty” or “No, we’re not convinced that that is sufficient evidence to prove anything”. At the moment, I feel like the deliberating jury. I have Exhibit A: ‘the universe in its mind boggling complexity’, and Exhibit B: ‘a lot of people who claim to have seen the accused’. But I don’t know the character of all the witnesses - only a couple of them. And the prosecution have witnesses who claim to have seen other gods, or not seen any god at all. As a juror, I need to know what God’s motivation is. Only then can I say “Yes, even without absolute proof, I know He exists - because the arguments stack up. All the little evidences point to one big conclusion”.

I have had a number of conversations with friends who have tried to convince me that the evidence of God’s motivation can be found in the bible. The issue with this is the bible’s credibility as evidence. The bible was written over thousands of years by multiple people, but some evidence contradicts the claims made by the authors, and other evidence contradicts what has been said about the authors. For example, it’s generally taken by most scientists that the earth (more or less as we know it) was something that took many many years to happen. It has been said that this doesn’t preclude the existence of a God, but it does bring the first couple of chapters of Genesis into question. And if Genesis is read as a metaphor, I then struggle with the exact point where the bible begins actually telling history as it is. Where this leaves me is with the bible ‘beginning’ at best somewhere about the middle of the prophets, and at worst perhaps the beginning of the new testament.

With even a small cloud of doubt about the validity of the bible as unquestionable truth, I begin to wonder what else isn’t true, and what other stories may be embellished.

See the issue is, I always believed that the bible was too fantastic to be anything else but true. I mean - God takes human form and walks among us! - it is amazing. Surely something like that is too good to be true - you couldn’t make that up!

But maybe you can. If everyone in the world who wasn’t a Christian believed the same thing, that God was fictional - strangely enough I’d find it easier to believe. With the small evidence I have I could say ‘the rest I take on faith’ because why would someone make up Jesus? But I see evidence that all over the world, people have created their own religious figures to fill whatever niche there is in their culture. Muslims believe their religion supplanted Christianity, just as Christians believe theirs supplanted Judaism. There is the possibility that one is right and one is wrong, but isn’t that awfully presumptuous?

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell.C.S. Lewis ‘Mere Christianity’ page 56

Forgive me Mr. Lewis for using your words in this way. The issue I see is that Muslims feel the same way about Mohammed. He may never have claimed to be God, but he and his followers have made some fairly bold claims that come close, or else refute the claims that Jesus made. If Christians can shrug these off with a wave of their hands, and Muslims can shrug off Christian beliefs, how do we decide who is right? Both religions are effectively saying that they have the only truth, both can’t be right.

Then there are religions who don’t have a God or head figure. Native Australians don’t follow Jesus or worship God. Are they wrong?

If you accept that the life of Jesus unfolded as written in the bible, you must accept that some pretty amazing belief systems have arisen out of lies or delusions that seemed perfectly reasonable to millions of people just like you. Why are you so certain you are right?

I realise that you may have a perfectly good reason - your faith - and again I return to my original point. I have little faith. I need evidence to build on. I have said in earlier posts that I believe Faith is for keeping belief alive when all these sorts of questions come up. Not having much to start with, none of the ‘proofs’ I can get from other people will satisfy me. Until I see God, or see any evidence that he cares about my life my faith will be small.

Forgive the rambling nature of this post. I have not the mental acumen to craft an argument or hold an idea in my head for so long. I will attempt to clarify in future posts based on your feedback.

Ever heard of a Game called Whizz Ball? There was a game that I played on my Commodore 64 that was frickin’ awesome called Wizball - the game I am talking about isn’t that game. This game is kind of like that old ‘Mouse Trap’ game where you build a complicated mechanism to get a ball from a starting point to an end goal. But this is a ‘kids’ game that has been commandeered by a lot of much older people who have used the game’s inbuilt level editor to make a whole bunch of extra levels. Levels that they subsequently label ‘very hard’. That is to say, levels for kids are few and far between. When I started, I picked out a few easy and medium levels, and found the ones I tried to be fairly simple - a matter of finding pieces that fit the holes on the game board. A few of the harder levels got me thinking beyond this simple matching game. I found I had to start at the end point and kind of work backwards towards the beginning, working out which piece would take my ball to the previous piece I laid.

A combination of these approaches worked until I tried a level that was labelled ‘very hard’. Every tactic I had broke down. I tried every piece I could think of in every conceivable spot that would advance my ball to where I wanted it to go, and failed miserably. I even used the game’s little ‘hint’ feature to start having my pieces automatically laid, but the pieces it laid made no sense. Once I succumbed to my curiosity and watched the computer solve it, I could see how it worked.

The trick is that every piece has certain rules governing the way it works, but every piece also has rules governing what happens to the ball if a piece is laid incorrectly. Normally these negative rules make the ball do undesirable things leading to failure, such as flinging off the board, or bouncing back the wrong way. The author of this particular puzzle had used these negative rules to actually advance the ball instead, making solving the puzzle reliant on knowing the negative behaviours of each individual piece as well as the correct behaviour. At the time I was very annoyed, and cursed the author for their fiendish ways.

Then I was driving in my car. Not straight away, as my life is not edited for brevity like an episode of ‘24’. Anyway, driving along it occurred to me (I cannot remember the chain of thought) that life is rather like that puzzle. My puny brain is always trying to determine the logical outcome of events/thoughts/interactions based on ‘if this, then that’ reasoning. For example my thinking often goes:

The bible says that the world was created in six days. Currently accepted scientific thought says that it took millions of years. If these two ideas are mutually exclusive, then one must be wrong. If the bible is wrong on this matter, how much of the bible can be believed? Where does the cut-off lie - somewhere around Deuteronomy? And if the bible is correct, what are the implications for science? Did God create the universe in six days already looking really old?

Can you follow what I mean about ‘if this, then that’ reasoning? As with the game, I can’t help but look at the pieces I’m given and say, ‘If I put that piece there, then I must put the next piece here.’ What my short experience with this game has got me wondering is: are there facts (pieces) in life that still work when they look broken? That is, if another smarter person were to observe something about the earth that seems to work one way or prove one thing, could they also see how it might be used another way to prove another thing?

I’ll be honest. In my musings, the smarter person is God. Could an infinitely smart God create a world that seems wacky from our view, but makes perfect sense to Him? Apologists and theologians would say yes absolutely, and I’m not going to argue one way or another. I mean only to point out that in a silly computer game with limited rules, there are ways that a designer can bend the rules to make something seemingly broken work beautifully in the end. How much more so could God create a world full of contradictions and inconsistencies that actually makes sense in the end?

That’s some what ifs yeah? Now I’m gonna flip it around, cause I can’t leave a post sounding like I’ve actually sorted out what I think.

The game also got me thinking about evolution. Current creationist and intelligent design arguments go that there are some things in life that are too complex to have sprung up by chance. These things must (the argument goes) have been designed, ’cause their individual parts are useless - only the whole has a point.

What the game kind of helps me understand is how complex things might evolve. Some game parts can be used in ways that they weren’t intended, shoehorned into different roles. Perhaps (perhaps nothing, this is the theory as I understand it) some organisms started with one role, and by chance were grabbed and used by other organisms. This chance happening benefited both organisms, and over time they both lost the other functions that they once performed, settling into their new roles. Overly simplistic explanation - yes, useful explanation - yes.

OK. I’m sure there are many reasons why both applications of this one example are flawed. However, it helps me understand some very complicated ideas, and perhaps it can help others as well. Let me know if it’s useful for you.

This is the station that my train-of-thought has taken me. Join me here and I will fill you in on where I’ve been:

Firstly, I read a short story by science fiction author Harry Harrison. Some of the best science fiction will provoke discussion, and this story certainly provoked me to discussion (with myself). In ‘The Streets of Ashkelon’, an alien race (of the noble savage type) is visited by a Priest and a Trader (just a regular guy). The end result of the story is that in trying to understand what the Priest is teaching, the natives sin - spoiling their natural ‘purity’.

Now the argument of the aliens is that belief in God needs proof. Proof He exists, that He cares, that He is watching. And the priest gives the regular arguments that tend to be given by fictional characters in these situations. That “creation is proof” but that “belief needs no proof - if you have faith”. These arguments are not the point of this post. Better and smarter people whom I admire have argued both sides for longer than I have lived.

What got me thinking though was the insistence of the aliens that they needed proof. For many years I didn’t think I needed proof, for much the same simple reasons that the Priest gave. And for years I had the conflicting idea that I had the proof I needed anyway if anyone should ask - creation. The reason that this idea conflicts is that the proof was really for me. I never felt comfortable with blind faith - although the idea that anything but blind faith produces a sort of logical loop never occurred to me. That is, the two statements cancel each other out: by saying that ‘Creation is proof’, but that ‘Faith shouldn’t need proof’ you are fudging things a little.

Maybe to my credit, I was always looking for that one good moment that could finally give me ‘proof’ that God existed that I could share with the outside world. That it never really came is the reason I have so much trouble with religion now. See, I think I would like some proof after all. Faith isn’t enough to keep me going. I know this puts me back into my logical loop, but frankly I don’t know what else there is. Anyone that says they have pure faith is

1. a better person than I; or

2. lying; (assign to yourself as appropriate).

Everyone else that has faith but is willing to admit that they also have their own personal ‘proof’ can join me here in the loop. That my proof evaporates quicker under my own doubts is my own problem - congratulations that yours is stronger.

Now we are getting closer to the starting point of this post. Until now my parent’s, friends, and church’s proof was enough for me. Sharing someone else’s proof kind of helped in dealing with the loop for a while, as my faith was based on a watered down proof that I got elsewhere - making my faith seem to me a stronger faith ( stated-faith minus proof-needed equals actual faith ?). Anyway, now that my faith demands proof, I’m waiting for the sign from God. What this story made me realise is why I can no longer accept other people’s proof.

When other people tell me that this miracle occurred, or that that amazing thing happened I can’t help but be sceptical any more. There are so many people willing to tell you that they have the proof, but no way of knowing who can be trusted. I could trust Joe Regularguy, because he has a website that tells me that Jesus’ face appeared in a bar-stool. But then I might also have to seriously consider David Icke’s theories about shape-shifting lizard men (who knows?!). So the Internet and other popular media might be a little unreliable.

I could trust my family. I could trust my wife. But let me ask you - if the person you trust most in the world began talking about things you couldn’t believe in would you? Even though you trust them and love them? I know that if Mil declared one day that she had been following her horoscope for a month, and every day it came true - I still couldn’t believe it, and why should I trust her more about one set of proofs than another? In truth, she would never do this - part of why I trust her judgement - but honestly, I’m uncertain that I can accept any proof (of God) that I cannot claim to have witnessed myself.

So from this long thought-train I established some definitions. Now these are only my thoughts for today, so if you disagree, don’t berate me for being more than a fool - I’m still learning. I would define faith the same as the bible does - ‘being sure of things hoped for, and being certain of things unseen.’ I would then define religion as ‘those things that are done to prove that faith is not misplaced.’ Maybe this is simplifying things, but think about it. All the rituals of religion couldn’t possibly be done for God’s benefit - and it says as much in the bible. Romans 4:3 ‘What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”’ All our rituals would mean little to God - what he seems to want is belief or faith. It must be man that needs rituals, to remind and to guide. We must need religion to keep giving us the proof we need, when we run out of our own.

I hope God can understand that a little extra proof could help, and if He never gives it, at least understand those of us who can’t dredge it up ourselves any more.

Just when I start to think that maybe we’ll cope, and things couldn’t get any worse then they were before, turns out I’m wrong.

I wake up at four o’clock, and Mil says she can’t move. She needs to have a drink and take a pill, but she can’t make herself move. Maybe I was just over tired, but I was scared - she said she felt paralyzed. And I got up and helped her out. But all the time, I couldn’t help but think:

“Why does it get so hard? Why can’t or doesn’t God do something about this? Is God there at all? If He isn’t, then fine, but if he is, what does it all mean? Why wouldn’t he do something about any of it?”

OK, He won’t help me with my piddly little problems, fine - I’m not that important anyway. But is he helping with bigger problems? No. Not that I can see. Just this last weekend - tens of thousands of people could be dead from MULTIPLE tragedies, wars, earthquakes, hurricanes - in one weekend!’, ‘So maybe he doesn’t do anything about these things for his own reasons - I guess I can live with that too… THEN WHY SHOULD I GIVE HIM THE CREDIT FOR GOOD THINGS THAT HAPPEN? Why should I thank him for sunshine and flowers? Why thank him for Mil? If he doesn’t meddle with our problems, why would he care to meddle with our lives at all?

I want to believe what I used to believe. That at the end of the day, it’s OK, cause God’s in control. But I can’t feel it.

Enough on that…

Mil seems OK now though. She’s sleeping. It’s not unusual to sleep as late as ten, but it’s usually a lighter sleep. Drugs will do that. I’m taking the day off as I didn’t get back to sleep, plus I had so much going on in my head that I had to start this blogging thing. Nothing like perfect strangers reading about your insignificant life to make you feel normal (hehe).