God's Thumb
We were in York yesterday, one of our favourite places, and our 'capital' in some respects: there's a bit of a thing where we live about putting 'Yorkshire' as the county because for ceremonial purposes we are (whatever that means!) even though we have our own local authority...confused? I am. Anyway back to the more serious (you know me) story.
There was some sort of Roman celebration going on, you know, historic reenactments and suchlike, this on one of the main pedestrian thoroughfares through the centre. Well, on this same stretch there was a guy on his soapbox (literally and metaphorically) about his saviour Jesus Christ. Oh the irony of it!! He was mid-flow through saying something like 'look at your thumb, how amazingly well it works with your hand - could this have happened by chance? Of course not!" etc. Here's what I would have liked to have shouted (apart from 'are you part of the Roman celebrations?') to this well intentioned young man who reminded me so much of me not so long ago, if I'd believed it would have done any good (and if I 'd had the quick tongue and courage enough):
'Excuse me, sir. You say that we have such an amazing thumb that it could not but have been designed by a most superior designer. Am I right?...well it's just that I was thinking, does this designer himself, or itself, have a body of sorts? ... [insert his probable answer about God having a spiritual body] ..well, I'm assuming that God's body must be much more amazing and perfect than our own, right? ... now let us say that there is a part of God's body that we can call a thumb - it may not look anything like a thumb, if God can 'look' like anything at all, but let's say God has some spiritual appendage which serves some purpose similar to a thumb? ... Could I then ask, if our bodies are so amazing that they must have a designer - take for example the thumb - then how is it so that God's spiritual body - including his amazing 'thumb' - does not need a designer, even more so in fact, it being so much more perfect than ours? I will give you your perfect reply, which is that God is the 'first cause' or prime mover, and that God (only God) does not need a designer, he answers the whole 'chicken and egg' puzzle which I have pointed out to you. I would then like to paraphrase Daniel Dennett and ask, how come the rules apply to me, but when you talk (about God) they do not apply? It's like playing tennis with somebody who insists they are allowed to remove the net on their serves, but who requires that the net be firmly in place when their opponent serves! I submit to you that requiring a designer of all things only adds to the complexity of a complex universe, it does not explain anything - it leaves more to be explained. You imagine that the universe is like a pyramid which was built from the top down, the first stone hovering mysteriously over all that it built below it, and we cannot question how that can be so. At least evolution suggests that life arose from the bottom up, slowly and surely, until now - does this not seem to make more sense?'
...and stuff to that effect, said better by Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett & co. One such '& co' is Edward Tabash, who gives some excellent arguments against God's existence here. I repeat what I said above, which is that God leaves us with more to explain than he does explain (by existing). One such missing explanation is the existence of suffering and evil in the world. If you posit a God, you must supply an answer to this, otherwise God is not good, or not great, or not all knowing (you know how the reasoning goes). Jehovah's Witnesses and other Christians say that we are, as a species, being subjected to suffering 'for our own good' or for a good reason, in order that our future may be happy and free from such suffering. A metaphor used in a witness publication compares it to a parent allowing his or her child to go through the suffering of a medical operation in order that their future may be improved.
OK - to (an imaginary) hell with that metaphor. Tabash makes a point I've often made, about God's terrible lack of communication. A parent would explain to their child everything that would be about to happen to them if they were to undergo such a serious medical procedure, in fact they would explain to the child (in a way the child could understand) that something was wrong, what that something was, and how the future would be so much better for the child after the painful operation. Of course, this would be interjected with lots of hand holding, hugs and other demonstrations of affection. The child would feel loved, would know why their parent was putting them through this - because they loved them. They would willingly subject to the operation because their parent knows best and has their best interests at heart. A picture from the book 'You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth' by the Witnesses, which shows a child being wheeled into a hospital operating theatre (if I remember rightly) having his hand held by his parent(s?) is way off the mark - surely we all feel this, this terrible knowledge, even if we don't admit it (to ourselves): there is no one holding our hand, individually or as a species. But hey that's OK, because there's no child, hospital or operating theatre either! There's just a bunch of pretty confused people who are trying to make sense of a lonely universe as best they can, with or without that ultimate absent parent in the sky.
Ah, what a Freudian slip - I can't stop thinking of God as absent, missing: but how can something that was never there be missing? Do I miss the Earth's second moon? I do miss God though, the presence of that thing in my life as invisible and yet as tangible as hope, as comfort. I can't seem to fill the hole that God left in my brain -but only by realizing that God was the hole that he left, wholly empty and non-existent, can I proceed (I'm still learning) to fill my brain, my life with the valuable things of this our only world, love and learning the prime things amongst them.
There was some sort of Roman celebration going on, you know, historic reenactments and suchlike, this on one of the main pedestrian thoroughfares through the centre. Well, on this same stretch there was a guy on his soapbox (literally and metaphorically) about his saviour Jesus Christ. Oh the irony of it!! He was mid-flow through saying something like 'look at your thumb, how amazingly well it works with your hand - could this have happened by chance? Of course not!" etc. Here's what I would have liked to have shouted (apart from 'are you part of the Roman celebrations?') to this well intentioned young man who reminded me so much of me not so long ago, if I'd believed it would have done any good (and if I 'd had the quick tongue and courage enough):
'Excuse me, sir. You say that we have such an amazing thumb that it could not but have been designed by a most superior designer. Am I right?...well it's just that I was thinking, does this designer himself, or itself, have a body of sorts? ... [insert his probable answer about God having a spiritual body] ..well, I'm assuming that God's body must be much more amazing and perfect than our own, right? ... now let us say that there is a part of God's body that we can call a thumb - it may not look anything like a thumb, if God can 'look' like anything at all, but let's say God has some spiritual appendage which serves some purpose similar to a thumb? ... Could I then ask, if our bodies are so amazing that they must have a designer - take for example the thumb - then how is it so that God's spiritual body - including his amazing 'thumb' - does not need a designer, even more so in fact, it being so much more perfect than ours? I will give you your perfect reply, which is that God is the 'first cause' or prime mover, and that God (only God) does not need a designer, he answers the whole 'chicken and egg' puzzle which I have pointed out to you. I would then like to paraphrase Daniel Dennett and ask, how come the rules apply to me, but when you talk (about God) they do not apply? It's like playing tennis with somebody who insists they are allowed to remove the net on their serves, but who requires that the net be firmly in place when their opponent serves! I submit to you that requiring a designer of all things only adds to the complexity of a complex universe, it does not explain anything - it leaves more to be explained. You imagine that the universe is like a pyramid which was built from the top down, the first stone hovering mysteriously over all that it built below it, and we cannot question how that can be so. At least evolution suggests that life arose from the bottom up, slowly and surely, until now - does this not seem to make more sense?'
...and stuff to that effect, said better by Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett & co. One such '& co' is Edward Tabash, who gives some excellent arguments against God's existence here. I repeat what I said above, which is that God leaves us with more to explain than he does explain (by existing). One such missing explanation is the existence of suffering and evil in the world. If you posit a God, you must supply an answer to this, otherwise God is not good, or not great, or not all knowing (you know how the reasoning goes). Jehovah's Witnesses and other Christians say that we are, as a species, being subjected to suffering 'for our own good' or for a good reason, in order that our future may be happy and free from such suffering. A metaphor used in a witness publication compares it to a parent allowing his or her child to go through the suffering of a medical operation in order that their future may be improved.
OK - to (an imaginary) hell with that metaphor. Tabash makes a point I've often made, about God's terrible lack of communication. A parent would explain to their child everything that would be about to happen to them if they were to undergo such a serious medical procedure, in fact they would explain to the child (in a way the child could understand) that something was wrong, what that something was, and how the future would be so much better for the child after the painful operation. Of course, this would be interjected with lots of hand holding, hugs and other demonstrations of affection. The child would feel loved, would know why their parent was putting them through this - because they loved them. They would willingly subject to the operation because their parent knows best and has their best interests at heart. A picture from the book 'You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth' by the Witnesses, which shows a child being wheeled into a hospital operating theatre (if I remember rightly) having his hand held by his parent(s?) is way off the mark - surely we all feel this, this terrible knowledge, even if we don't admit it (to ourselves): there is no one holding our hand, individually or as a species. But hey that's OK, because there's no child, hospital or operating theatre either! There's just a bunch of pretty confused people who are trying to make sense of a lonely universe as best they can, with or without that ultimate absent parent in the sky.
Ah, what a Freudian slip - I can't stop thinking of God as absent, missing: but how can something that was never there be missing? Do I miss the Earth's second moon? I do miss God though, the presence of that thing in my life as invisible and yet as tangible as hope, as comfort. I can't seem to fill the hole that God left in my brain -but only by realizing that God was the hole that he left, wholly empty and non-existent, can I proceed (I'm still learning) to fill my brain, my life with the valuable things of this our only world, love and learning the prime things amongst them.
posted by John Doran-Armstrong at 2:17 PM
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