Monday, November 9, 2009

Introducing International Hot Tub!

My friend Andy Snyder and I are starting a new series here on Draw Nigh in which he and I will debate the existence of God. The title I have (unilaterally) chosen for this series is International Hot Tub. Allow me to explain:

Andy and I have been friends for about 12 years, since I joined a punk band he helped start called Craig's Brother. Since then, he and I have been in two other bands together, Too Bad Eugene, and Thrush. Thrush practiced at my parents' house and after practice we would often hang out in my parents' hot tub (in a totally platonic and hetero way). As Andy and our drummer Kyle started questioning the Christianity of their upbringing, and actually belief in God in general, this topic began to be a dominating theme of our hot tub conversations. These hot tub sessions ended up outlasting the band. But now, alas, I have moved to Scotland to pursue my possibly deluded understanding of God and the hot tub has gone cold...

This series is intended to internationalize and digitalize the hot tub. We want to open our discussion up to others to participate so we will basically start the debate over, which is pretty much what we did every time we got in the hot tub. Please join in with comments if you resonate with either position, if you want to further an argument, or if you think both of us are missing something.

Andy will go first sometime in the next day or so and then I'll post a response in the following couple of days, and then we'll proceed back and forth this way until we feel like stopping. Though both of us have a background in biblical and theological studies, we're aiming to keep this readable and understandable for anyone no matter what their background. Neither of us intend to make our entire case all at once; hopefully we'll build through the ongoing discussion to our full arguments over time. The reason for this is that I think it would put a lot of people off to read a comprehensive argument from either one of us all at once, so we'll try to make it like a live debate, keeping our opening statements and responses to reasonable lengths. Maybe we can get some of the other guys in the band to chime in once the conversation gets going. I can just picture us all in our underwear, I mean bathing suits, drinking Pacificos and getting philosophical. Ah, memories.

So get ready for some lively discussion. Round 1 coming soon.

12 comments:

  1. Do you have any profound thoughts on this particular research? I realize in some respects they are claiming causation when they should only be observing correlation (it may have been the reporters error for not knowing the difference). Just curious to what the theological response would be for studies such as this.

    http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/new_page_2.htm

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  2. Hi ., thanks for the link.

    First, I'm not a scientist and I half agree with the last statement of the article, that this is a question for scientists and not theologians. Second, the phenomenon, if verified, would serve as evidence neither for God's existence nor non-existence; it would only tell us something about humans, not God. Third, I reject out of hand epistemological determinism; no meaningful conversation can take place if anyone is hardwired to believe anything. I'm open to the idea of some people having a neurological tendency to believe or not believe something, but not that they are neurologically determined to do so. Fourth, and probably most telling, I couldn't help but notice that the article is 12 years old and the idea doesn't seem to have emerged from obscurity and tentative statements into the broader world of acknowledged academia.

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  3. But why can we not combine science and God? Because Descartes and the catholics? Personally I am more of the interactionism between genes, enviroment, and our actions within the enviroment (still allows for meaningful conversation). I don't think there are too many people out there that believe we are strictly hardwired. There have been a few follow up studies since then. Also, how old a study is does not discredit it. You are making an inference when there are possible confounding factors to the study not being popular. I thought it was an interesting read none the less. I relize it doesn't prove God's ness but it is kind of crazy how we are hardwired to experience such an abstract concept as God, no? It could possibly be this study is absent from mainstream academia due to the fact it is hard to get a grant for research that will not produce money later on...also keep in mind reporters muck up a lot of these studies. And what world of academia? Just the stuff you personally have heard of on the news? I'm sure there are plenty of studies we are both unaware of that doesn't mean they are less significant.

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  4. Ah, so you have changed your name from . to ,. I see. Well, blog commentator formerly known as ., thanks again for your thoughts. Of course we can combine God and science in the sense that the same person can have an understanding of God and an understanding of the natural world He has created. The problem is when you confuse the appropriate methods of investigating the created world (natural science) as also appropriate for approaching knowledge of God. Science on its own can tell us nothing about God; only God can tell us about God, which he has done in Jesus Christ. Now, of course once we know God according to his own Self-revelation in Christ, then by all means we may proceed to understand his creation as it reveals itself under the investigation of science and coordinate that knowledge with our knowledge of God. And here, they may be some interesting findings about how God has made us with some potential for belief, but this potential can say nothig about Him. We cannot begin with an investigation of our created selves and arrive at a knowledge of our Creator.

    To say it another way, my problem with this article is that it assumes beliefin God is fully explainable on neorological/societal terms. This illegitimately presupposes either God's non-existence or revelational passivity, ie God takes no active role in revealing himself to humans but relies on their inherent potential to perceive him. The Gospel of Jesus Christ claims that no inherent potential in humans can bring them to knowledge of God; we must be reborn, our minds must be remade, ie God must actively make room for himself in our thinking which is not previously there. As I said before, there may be detectable phenomena going on at the neurological level that might have a legitimate place in describing what is going on, but it cannot be presumed to exhaust what is going on. That is like saying I found the part of the brain that deals with the visual perception of elephants and I can therefore explain the phenomenon of humans seeing elephants solely with reference to the human subject, ignoring, and thereby presupposing the non-existence or irrelevance of, the existence of actual elephants.

    And I don't mean to be a jerk, but I do study in the theology in a fairly well respected university. We even have, in partication with other Scottish universities, an annual lecture series on science and theology. These kinds of things get talked about. If even the militantly naturalist biologists who would love it if this were true thought it was at all verifiable, I promise a conversation would be going on about it. I'm sure Dawkins and other scientists do, but this just puts us back in the presuppositions argument - science can't get us out of it. As a theologian, this stuff just rolls off my back because it reveals a total ignorance of who Christian theology claims God to be - He who has created all of the cosmos out of nothing and stands in absolute sovereignty and differentiation from it. Science by itself can tell us nothing about God.

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  5. About the elephant, I'm currently looking for the research for you but researchers can actually stimulate the mind of a person who was blind from birth to experiece the color red...I bet if there was some reserach elephants could potentially be visually experienced by the blind as well...that is all well and good that you go to a prestidious school but that doesn't mean you know everything just stuff that is presented at a symposium or lecture once a year.On top of that I bet you are there for no more than 9 hours which is about enough time to present 18 topics? If you haven't heard of it check out TED TV for lectures and current research.

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  6. Ha! I suppose you're right about the symposium stuff. I just mean that I don't just know what I get on TV. I'm sure, by the way, that you'd admit that even if some lab coat could simulate the experience of seeing an elephant in a blind person, that would not explain away the actual existence of elephants!

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  7. No, you are right it would be missing some qualia and is rather artificial, but it is an experience none the less. If one does not experience or sense God how is one suppose to explain God's existance? Is there any way a person with paralysis of the neck down, blindness, defness be able to actually experience God's existance?...I suppose what I am getting at is the ability to know God an innate process or is God developed through sensory experience (not to got plato vs aristotle lol)? maybe a combination of both? (please keep in mind I am simply probing. ...sorry if you find this annoying just throwing stuff out there

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  8. I think I get where you're coming from. There are two questions at play here: in my perception of God, how much and what am I doing vs. what is God doing? The second question is, whatever role I actively or passively play in generating my perception of God, what is the balance of roles of intelligence and sense perception in that process?

    To the first question, I want to say that God actively determines the perception of those who know him through faith in Jesus Christ both by historically incarnating his Word and by presently ministering that Word to us by his Spirit. However, there certainly seems to be some kind of capacity to receive this revelation that differentiates us from rocks and probably ducks. This capacity, I would argue, is first created by God (yes, probably in our distinctively human neurology), but is fatally damaged by our fall into sin and thus even our capacity to perceive God must be restored by Christ in the encounter in which we perceive him. Of course, non of this excludes the possibility of a scientifically detectable module of the brain which is specifically operative in this perception, broken or restored.

    For the second question, I'd push for the coinherence (my favorite Torrance word) of the sensible and intelligible in our perception of God. Certainly there is sense perception, auditory in the hearing of the preached Word, visual in the reading of it or seeing artistic depiction of the gospel events, and touch, taste and smell in the eucharist, baptism, and laying on of hands (probably not taste in these last two). But of course God is not sound waves, ink on paper, bread or wine (sorry if you're Roman Catholic), water or human being (Jesus Christ notwithstanding). God's actively revealing intelligibility as Word and Spirit press through to the individual in these sense experiences making our perception of him a unity of sense perception and reason.

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  9. I believe that there is a god just not a particular god if that makes any sense. No one should be offended of others opinions even if we disagree. I find that having a closed mind doesn't get us anywhere but if it is too open our brain falls out. Has your knowledge of God progressed through the years or are your studies to help confirm what you already knew?

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  10. It seems like you've applied yourself more to the Round 2 comment, so I'll put most of my energy there, which will probably have to wait until tomorrow. For now, if God is infinite, eternal, unoriginate, and the Creator of all things, there can only be one - that is particularity. Talk of closed and open mindedness in the abstract I don't find very helpful. Open minded about what? Are you open minded to my right to be offended at heresy? Are you open minded to the idea that there is One God eternally existent in three persons who has become man for us and for our salvation? Yes, my knowledge of God has progressed significantly through the years, though I have clung in faith to Christ. I find it odd that you would question my growth based on some of the things I've revealed about myself while you remain entirely anonymous.

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  11. I didn't want who I am to influence your responses. Yes I am open to all of that given the proper evidence (besides the bible). My intention was not to offend but to give a more probable chain of events. I apploigize if I have offended you. I was not questioning your growth simply wanted you to express your reflection about your growth. The questions I ask are simply questions I ask myself and I was hoping you could potentially help clear them up for me.

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  12. Ah, it is the Fantastic Mr. Witmer. It is so much more meaningful to me when I know who I'm talking to, especially when its a friend. You totally haven't offended me, you just weren't playing fair.

    Why is the Bible not proper evidence? You've got books written by various others over a period of decades, many of whom have credible claims to have been not just eye witnesses (I understand your beef there) but people who spent considerable time with Jesus over a period of months and probably a few years, and it is backed up by a textual tradition that spans a considerable geographical distance, several centuries and several languages. I suppose the common complaint is that its biased, but that is not an argument at all. That is like blaming witnesses for the prosecution of being in sympathy with the prosecution. If the facts they testify to are accurate, they are obligated to be biased towards them and to bear all the marks of disciples.

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