Assumptions about the Christ event

In the midst of our debate about objective language and the law of noncontradiction TP questioned some of the assumptions he believed I was making in determining that a Christ event is necessary in order for our universe to be consistent if the moral law was real. I thought it best to touch on them in a new thread so that we can try and come to a understanding before we move to the final issue in our discussion which is the reality of the moral law. I’ll take the questions one at a time.

IF moral law is real

Of course this is an assumption on my part at this point. I have yet to make my case for the reality of the moral law and have repeatedly pointed out that my argument is conditioned on that very thing. We will have plenty of time to discuss this when I do I’m not sure why you keep bringing this up. Have patience.

I would point out that you have not given any positive evidence to support your contention that moral law is not real as of yet and remind you that the vast majority of people through out history have held my position in this matter. This is true even among Atheists. Even if I fail to convince you that the moral law is real you will still have to concede that your denial is based only on your own minority opinion and not on some objective standard.

IF moral law is directly tied to the physics of our universe.

To this I would ask, do you know of any Natural Law that is not tied directly to the physics of the universe? This is the case with physical laws and mathematical laws and even logical laws. At times quantum events appear to defy natural laws like the law of causation the fact that we notice this and offer explanations for it is proof that we expect natural laws to effect the physical universe.

Law that has no physical effects is not a law at all according to our definition. Wouldn’t you agree?

IF moral law requires a balance to be maintained.

It is not the moral law that requires a balance it is consistency. Every apparent violation of natural law must be compensated by an equal and opposite compensation.
If you see a decrease in entropy in one part of the universe it must be compensated by a corresponding increase somewhere else.
If you see an apparent violation of the laws of gravity by a rocket it must be compensated by a corresponding expenditure of energy from the engine.
An apparent violation of natural law with of no corresponding compensation is impossible in our universe. Remember our definition of natural law
Law: a statement of a “scientific” fact or phenomenon that is invariable under given conditions

IF said morality balance can only be obtained by punishing a willing innocent?

A compensating sacrifice must be innocent for the same reason that a rocket does not compensate for its own apparent violation of the law of gravity by falling to earth. The energy that is needed to compensate must come from a source that is not itself an apparent violation of the natural law.

In the same way to force an innocent to compensate for another’s wrong is itself an apparent violation of the moral law so it cannot compensate for said violations.

IF only law giver(s) can qualify as a willing innocent.

Since you will not agree that that the law of non contradiction must apply to the cosmos I understand why you have a hard time understanding this qualification.

I agree that if the cosmos has no requirement to be consistent with itself then a compensating sacrifice has no need to be the lawgiver that does not enforce his own law. One of the downsides of this refusal to use logic universally however is that you will never know if the lawgiver himself is just. You will only know that the observable universe is. I believe that is too high a price to pay to maintain total relativism but to each his own.
If on the other hand we have historic proof that the sacrifice was also the Law giver himself we suddenly have real important information about the Cosmos as a whole and not just the observed universe.

IF there is only one law giver (not a plurality or even a democracy).

For the purpose of our discussion it does not matter how big the legislative body is, only that it’s federal representative is in the end responsible for the laws it creates. Once again if we decide that it does not matter that cosmos is consistent with itself the requirement that the sacrifice also compensate for the unjust lawgiver no longer holds.
In a radically relativist world whether or not the sacrifice is the Lawgiver becomes a Historic question rather than a philosophic or scientific one.

All that is necessary in such a world is in that that the sacrifice be willing innocent and have a proper relationship to the violator being compensated for.

Peace

Moving on
After much thought I’ve decided to move on even though TP and I have not come to an understanding as to my last post. I will only ask that comments about the necessity of a consistent cosmos as we’ve defined it or on the objectivity of definitions be appended to my last post so as not to distract from the argument in this one.
Keep in mind at this point we are still assuming that the moral law is real.

Premise two part two

One of the chief goals of science is the explaining of apparent violations of natural law
The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain the origin and diversity of species with out a violation of natural laws Darwin saw them. The discipline of quantum mechanics came about because of certain anomalies observed in the behavior of electrons. Recently scientists have postulated dark energy to explain the fact that distant stars seem to violate natural law by appearing younger than would be predicted by the expansion of the universe would predict.
Explaining apparent violations of natural law is nothing new for science. It’s what science does. And the consistency problem stands out like sore thumb in this regard. We see apparent violations of moral law everywhere it appears that the innocent are constantly being prosecuted and the guilty prosper.
No one can deny this especially TP who has been know to call God petty and bemoaned the hypocrisy of the United States. Not to mention calling folks like Behe snake oil salesmen. If the moral law is real (something I will address in my next post) then these apparent violators should not exist. Yet not only is evil (as we have defined it) allowed, it flourishes in our universe.

This apparent inconsistency is equivalent of the Double Slit Experiment except it does not require special equipment to observe. The evidence for inconsistency is everywhere that is why the so called problem of evil is such a popular argument against theism.

TP suggested that the only way the cosmos maintained consistency is by being inconstant in much the same way that refrigerators generate heat when keeping things cool.
If this argument is true its reverse is necessarily true namely the only way the Cosmos can allow inconsistency is to compensate with the death (nonexistence) of equal corresponding consistency.

This is what happened in the Christ event. A consistent entity was killed (subjected to nonexistence) to compensate for inconsistency and thus inconsistent entities are allowed to continue exist in our universe.

This a constant theme in the Bible here are a few examples
From 2nd Corinthians
For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
And from Hebrews
But now once at the end of the ages, he has been revealed to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

I could go on but I hope these will suffise.

It’s important to note that just as when a refrigerator generates cold by producing heat an inconsistency canceling Christ event must have certain characteristics. I will share a few to give you an idea what I’m talking about.

1) It must have consistency equal to or greater than the inconsistency to be cancelled. (A small increase in heat will not produce a large amount of cold)

2) It must have a real connection with the phenomena to be canceled. A increase in heat will not cool any thing off unless it is connected in some way

3) The Christ event must be part of the same observable reality as the inconsistency it cancels out. A temperature increase in one location can not be known to cool another are unless we can observe it.

I anticipate much discussion resulting from this post and I’m not sure exactly what direction that discussion will take so I believe I will leave it here and wait TP’s reply. I realize this is a very incomplete picture so feel free to ask for clarifications of my position as needed.
I would only request that if you can think of another way besides a Christ event to cancel out apparent inconsistency you present it here so that we can evaluate it as well.

Peace

Premise two-- part one

2) If the moral law is a real (and it is) and the Christ event did not happen the cosmos is inconsistent with itself.

This premise is really just a restatement of the so called problem of evil in terms that will apply to the scientific neopantheism of folks like Tippler Primrose and TP along with what I hope to show is the only possible solution to the dilemma.

In this formulation of the problem consistency equals goodness and evil is defined specifically as a violation of natural law and the Cosmos is God.

Since this premise is so controversial I will split it into three posts and take it backwards In this post I will deal with the consistency problem after that I will take some time to show that only the Christ event will satisfy as a solution and finally I will endeavor two show that folks like TP are themselves being inconsistent when they deny the reality of the moral law.

The importance of definitions

I believe it is obvious that if the moral law is real the Cosmos appears to be inconsistent (as we have defined it) let me elaborate
We see apparent violations of the moral law all around us every day both in ourselves and in others.

A natural law that is not valid at all times and all places is not a natural law (again as we have defined it).
Or to put it more precisely

To say that X(a law) is not X(invariable under given conditions) is clearly a contradiction and therefore inconsistent. (Once again see our agreed upon definitions)

Since we have already agreed the Cosmos will do what ever is necessary to be consistent we are left with a dilemma. Is the inconsistency in the natural laws that we see all around us inherent in the cosmos itself so that the cosmos itself can not determine that violations of the natural law have occurred or is the Cosmos powerless to prevent them when they happen? If the cosmos is unable to determine a violation has occurred or if the Cosmos is powerless to prevent violations of the natural law when they occur our first premise (The cosmos will do what ever is necessary to be consistent with itself.) is clearly false. As a consequence science and life itself for that matter would be impossible.

Takeing a cue from earlier pantheism (Buddhism) TP has suggested that any violations of the moral law we think we see are only apparent and not actual. Good and evil are mere illusions.
This explanation seems at first glance to have merit and allow us to escape our consistency dilemma. However the statement “Good and evil are mere illusions” is itself a statement of moral imperative equivalent to “apparent Evil is not Evil” and “Apparent Good is not Good”that is accourding to TP not always true (I will elaborate on this point further when I discuss the validity of the moral law.)

I believe the problem with the tactic of claiming that all good and evil are illusions comes into focus when we remember that we have defined evil as violations of natural law (any natural law will do.) If the moral law is real then violations of it are violations of natural law. According to our definition murder and a perpetual motion machine are equally evil.
We live in a world where evil is endemic.
We have only three options to deal with the apparent evil we see everywhere as far as I can tell.

Either

1) The Human mind is not equipped to determine whether an event is or is not a violation of natural law or not and science is impossible because we have no way of predicting the future. Any thing can be expected to happen at any time. Inconsistency rules.
or
2) The moral law is not Natural Law as we have defined it.
or
3) We need to look closer at the Cosmos so we can determine how it can be that an event appears to be evil (as we have defined it) but is not. to resolve the apparent inconsistency and take the cosmos off the hook.

Since I believe option one is unacceptable for both TP and myself. I will concern myself with the other two options in my coming posts.

I hope to demonstrate next that acceptance of the third option makes the Christ event fundamentally necessary.

And finally I think I can demonstrate that the moral law is a real natural law just like the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

If TP will give me a sign I’ll move on

Premise ONE

The cosmos will do what ever is necessary to be consistent with itself.

This premise is simple a rephrasing of an idea that TP introduced at telic thoughts.

Quote:
My modest philosophical suggestion is that a possible purpose of the universe is to do whatever it takes to exist and be consistent with itself.
end quote"

My head hurts just trying to understand the basics of QM and I don’t think that this discussion will hinge on the subtleties of that discipline so I won’t go into detail as to why TP believes premise one is true. TP might want to fill us in on any details that he feels are relevant in this regard.

This sort of thing sounds to my ears to be pantheistic but instead of flowing from ancient Hinduism or Buddhism it is actually based on a sort of scientific neo pantheism that you find in consciousness centered interpretations of Quantum Mechanics like the Orch OR hypothesis.


You will also hear this sort of neo pantheistic statement made in the omega point type hypothesis that you find in such books as Robert Wright’s Nonzero http://www.nonzero.org/and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man The first time I came across this kind of thing was in Tipler’s work the Physics of Immortalalty.

For folks like Tipler and Wright this sort of thinking seems to be rooted in among other things the strong Anthropic principle pared with QM but if we wished to avoid all philosophical baggage we could convey basically the same concept using language flowing from a weak anthropic principal for example we could say

A Cosmos must be consistent In order for us to observe it.
Or
Only a Cosmos that is consistent will contain observers.

As a Christian I prefer to ground axioms of this type in the God of the Bible instead of the creation and I am in lucky because consistency is a major attribute of the Christian God that is according to scripture reflected in his created universe.

119:89Yahweh, your word is settled in heaven forever.
119:90Your faithfulness is to all generations. You have established the earth, and it remains.
119:91Your laws remain to this day, For all things serve you.

This verse conveys the same concept as our 1st premises namely that the universe will be consistent but instead of the Cosmos itself insuring that consistency it is grounded in the faithfulness (consistency) of God. Therefore a Christian might say:

If the Cosmos is not consistent its creator is not faithful and therefore not worthy of worship.

You can see that with a little explanation premise one can be accepted by Christians as well as folks like TP. We have already brought to light hidden agreements between two sides of the culture war and we are just getting warmed up
This agreement does not extend to everyone some nihilists don’t expect to see consistency in the cosmos and in some forms of Monotheism the sovereignty of God is emphasized at the expense of this kind of consistency. In Islam for example God is pictured as being above his laws so that he is not in any way bound by them. Allah is under no obligation to follow natural laws. He does as he pleases.
It is important to note that an inconsistent can’t be trusted anything might happen at anytime in a world like this Science and theology are both impossible.
If we are on the same page and TP has no major objections we will next move to the more contentious premise two.
Peace

modest proposal and invitation to discuss


I’ve recently been involved in an interesting discussion on the Intelligent Design blog Telic Thoughts http://telicthoughts.com/interest-in-quantum-consciousness/#comments
with a bright fellow who goes by the pseudonym Thought Provoker. I have great respect for this person as an independent thinker who is unafraid to follow the evidence where it leads. It appears however, that as is often the case when people as different as TP and myself try to have a dialogue we were speaking past one another and the logic behind my position is still not clear to him. I really want to do everything I can to try and overcome the large cultural divide and explain position so that I can be understood by someone Like TP. So I thought I’d give it another go if he is willing

Who knows our little discussion could help to bring postmodernists and fundamentalists together and bridge the red state blue state divide. And we can learn to live in peace and harmony hold hands and sing politically correct campfire songs. We can only hope. If nothing else I hope to clarify my own thoughts in this matter and have some fun.

Because of the obscure nature of our discussion and because it combines not only cutting edge science but philosophy and theology as well I thought it best to move it here to this old unused blog space I had lying around. That way we can slowly work through the issues when we have time and not distract from the cool things that go on at Telic Thoughts. Be forewarned I am very busy and Internet chat is not top priority in my life so this might take awhile. I find that I can better get my head around something if I take a thorough but leisurely pace. Don’t you?


since we come from radically different backgrounds TP and I had some trouble in our first encounter with words. Sometimes what I intended to convey was not picked up and I’m sure that my friend felt the same way. Therefore it might be best to carefully define our terms first so that ambiguity or equivocations are kept to a minimum.

Defining our terms

Now for some definitions of terms that are bound to come up and a little commentary as to why they might be important. I have endeavored to use standard dictionary definitions where possible although I have not always chosen the first one

Universe: the totality of all matter and energy that exists in the vastness of space, whether known to human beings or not.

In our discussion I originally wanted to use the more common term universe but as you can see there is no mention of non physical laws in this standard definition.

Cosmos: the universe considered as an ordered and integrated whole

Although less common than universe the term conveys the exact concept I’m looking for. I think TP would approve of this term as well. In this case the cosmos would include physical laws and might include such philosophical concepts as the multiverse.

Consistent: Free of contradiction, containing no provable contradiction

This term is very important for our discussion. A cosmos in which the speed of light was both always constant and always changing would contradict itself.

Real: having actual “physical” existence

I put the term physical in italic to emphasize that I believe something can have real physical existence and not be made of matter. Scientific laws real have actual existence in the sense that they have a quantifiable effect on the rest of reality but are not composed of matter or energy. Although I’m not a materialist I want my argument to make sense to a materialist.

Moral: regarded in terms of what is known to be right or just, as opposed to what is officially or outwardly declared to be right or just

This is the kind of natural law (as apposed to logical or mathematical) that my argument hinges upon. I contend that moral laws are laws in exactly the same way as logical mathematical and scientific laws. I realize that TP disagrees but I believe I can make the case that he is being inconsistent when he does this. I expect to spend a lot of time on this issue

Law: a statement of a “scientific” fact or phenomenon that is invariable under given conditions

In this definition "scientific" simply means empirical and testable. It is important that we distinguish law in this sense from law in the sense of binding or enforceable rule or piece of legislation

Consequence: something that follows as a result

In our former discussion I often used the term penalty to describe the result of violations of natural law and this caused TP some understandable difficulty. He suggested we use the term oscillation. I now think a better word would be consequence.

As in “The consequence of an unstable and inconsistent wavefunction is non existence” or “The consequence of any action is an equal and opposite reaction”

Evil: contrary to natural (logical mathematical scientific or moral) law


We are used to thinking of evil in a strictly human centered sense. It’s important however to understand that for the purpose of our discussion a true statement that violates the laws of logic is evil. The same goes for a true axiom that violates the laws of mathematics. The same goes for a real perpetual motion machine

Christ event: The sacrificial death of an innocent individual that is fully God and fully human at the same time and that is qualified to serve as a federal representative of both parties, followed by evidence for the acceptance of this act.

The theological term for this is the passion of Christ but I think Christ event sounds cooler don’t you agree?

Christianity: The religion that basis its existence on the reality of the “Christ event” and endeavors to explore and live out its implications.

This definition specifically rules out religions based only on following Christ teachings and religions that don’t recognize the deity of Christ. I’m not being exclusive here just trying to be precise as to my definition.


My argument

If TP or anyone else for that matter is willing to engage in discussion here and we can agree to terms I will try and prove the following syllogism. Please note for the sake of clarity I’m interested in discussing with folks that are at least willing to assume sentence number 1 is true.

1) The cosmos will do what ever is necessary to be consistent with itself.
2) If the moral law is a real (and it is) and the Christ event did not happen the cosmos is inconsistent with itself.
Therefore….
3) Christianity is necessarily true.


If I get a responce to this post and if we can agree on our terms. I will address the premises of my syllogism one at a time in upcoming posts

What do you say are you game TP???

The Gift of sensation
Most folks divide revelation into only two categories general revelation which includes the truths available to everyone for instance mathematical truths, and special revelation which are the truths not universally available like the Bible. Although this distinction is technically correct it often leads to the grave error of believing that general revelation is objective fact and special revelation is merely subjective faith.
For our purposes I will begin with the contention that all truth is the result of revelation and that all revelation is objective fact. We can think of revelation as a continuum from low to high that begins with the basics that are shared by all animals like the necessity of nourishment for life and then proceeds to things that are revealed to the higher animals like the taste and color of objects then it moves higher in unregenerate man to such things as mathematical truths then even higher to the things that God has chosen to reveal to his Church and finally to the highest truths that only known to God himself.
How Does God reveal truth to his creatures? The most common way is though sensation. I know that there is a computer in front of me because I feel the keys with my fingers and see the monitor with my eyes and hear the hum of the CPU with my ears. Sensation is so commonplace that we take it for granted. But it’s nothing short of a profound miracle.
For one thing how does the physical act of touching keys with my fingers convey knowledge to the spiritual entity that is me? It’s my fingers that tough the keys but it’s my mind that “feels” the keyboard. A modern car has many sensors that record physical data about the environment and feed that information to the cars computer which then makes adjustments according to the program that was installed at the factory but no one would say that the car “feels” anything. The fact that we do is a profound mystery.

How do we know what we sense about the world is true

I’ve often herd skeptics say something like “How do we know that we can rely on what we learn from our senses since we’ve all had the experience of being fooled about what we thought our eyes or ears revealed to us“. This question is fatally flawed because it begins with the creature instead of the creator. It treats our sensations as neutral evidence to be weighed and evaluated by our minds instead of gifts from our creator. What we should ask is “What sort of facts would we expect If God chose to reveal through our senses”.
The answer to this question is obvious first we would expect God to reveal only those things that he designed our senses to receive. Often our senses are deceived when we are using them to do things they were never intended to do like when we strain our eyes to see objects that are clearly beyond our field of vision.
Some times our sense organs are defective for various reasons. Amazingly God has given us the additional blessing of being able to compare one sensation with others. for example we can compare the appearance of an object with its feel. In this way our sense organs are self correcting and verifying. God could have given us just one sense but then we would never be able to trust what we learned from it.
Perhaps we receive the correct information from our senses but our mind interprets it incorrectly but this is not a problem with our senses it is a problem with our fallen rebellious minds.

More later

It’s been a long time coming but I’ve decided to work at doing what I set out to do here at the start. I wanted to begin with a subject that is truly at the center of the challenge that Christians face today the issue of Truth and how we come to know it.

We truly live in a postmodern age. Radical skepticism and relativism have moved from the environment of college philosophy classes to the mainstream of our society. It has now become common to encounter the opinion that objective truth is a myth

Attempts to share our faith in the world often end with statements similar to this “That is good for you but not for me” or “that’s just your opinion”. How should we deal with such responses? How do we make a credible defense of the gospel in the pluralistic environment we live in? More importantly are the postmodernists right? Is truth really relative? How do we know anything for sure?

The answers to these questions are too important to be left to the experts and anyone with a mind is qualified to think deeply about subjects like this no matter their educational background. So I think I will add my small amateur voice to this debate. This is a big subject and vastly more intelligent folks than I have devoted their lives to it. Obviously it will take a few posts for me to explain what I know and don’t know and why. So please bear with me

First off it is crucial to keep in mind that

All knowledge starts with God

This fact should be obvious to the Christian however too often when we begin to explore how we can be sure of the truth of our beliefs we start with ourselves. This is exactly the opposite of where we should begin and I believe it explains much of the confusion and difficulty we find our selves in today.

We look at our limited brain power and we know that our senses have deceived us before so we reason that we are doomed to always have incomplete and biased information and since this is so we assume that we have no objective way to determine if we are being deceived now.

But if we understand that to God all true facts are self evident a way out of this dilemma begins to present itself. If God so chose he could reveal to us truth and we could know it for sure. It’s important to realize that God is under no obligation to do this. He could chose to not reveal reality to us and he would as our Creator still be completely within his rights. Or he could reveal some things to us completely and infallibly and others only in part. It is his prerogative

In light of this it is a great blessing that God sees fit to give all his creatures true reliable knowledge of the world to some extent. This wonderful gift of knowledge is entirely due to His Grace and its end result will be for his glory.

The personification of God’s knowledge is Jesus Christ; he is the Word of God and wisdom of God. Anytime God reveals truth to us his creatures it will in some way be a revelation of Christ. And anytime a falsehood is believed it is in some way contrary to Christ who is truth. This is the case in mundane facts as well are deep doctrinal axioms

It is also important to realize that when God reveals truth to us it is nothing short of a miracle in which the spiritual is somehow joined to the physical. It simply can’t be accounted for by the materialistic explanations of science. In some ways it is a shadow of the miracle that happened when The Word became flesh. The fact that we can know anything for sure is proof of a loving powerful God.

No wonder the world so quick to deny this possibility.

More later