11. Philosophy, Round 2

I understood my philosophy professor’s opinions. He was an atheist: he believed there was no meaning behind the universe or the lives of men. Yep, I understood his opinions fine – well enough to know they weren’t as solid as he insisted. But of course, as the teacher, he ultimately decided which direction our class discussions went. Bottom line? He was always right, and I was always wrong. If you know people like that, you understand what unenjoyable arguments can result.

I’m not the most self-confident person in the world but I’m not so weak that every disagreement hurts me. Doctorate or no doctorate, my professor was another imperfect human and my faith is strong. I often did a poor job of defending myself in class but I knew my position was right. The people who told me I should write papers pretending I agreed with the professor had a point, but I refused to sell God out. Some things are too important to mince words over. Having gotten a C+ on my first paper, I handed him my second with this in mind.

When it came time for these papers to be returned, I almost expected to see a bad grade on mine. I was curious to see how he would justify giving me anything less than a B. I had carefully covered each requirement listed on the assignment sheet. My paper was as long as it was supposed to be, I used enough quotes, I cited page numbers, and I watched my grammar. I put a lot of time into it, went over the assigned topics, and even worked in some deep thoughts.

Despite my mental preparation for a letdown, I was angry when I saw the amount of red covering my work. The grade I had (supposedly) earned: a C. Throughout the essay, sentences and entire paragraphs were crossed out. We were dismissed once we had our papers, so I stuffed the mistreated thing into a folder and left.

When I got back to the dorm and took a minute to read over my professor’s comments, I got pretty steamed. At the end he had scrawled half a page about how my essay was “peculiar,” about my problems with putting everything out of order, about the amount of ink I had wasted on lengthy rhetoric. He emphasized the fact that I had not really answered the question at all, and criticized the lack of support I showed for my thoughts. I tried to look at my writing as objectively as possible... and still found few criticisms that made sense.

So my introduction made him mad – I suppose real philosophers mustn’t use introductions. And how does one perfectly good paragraph need to “get to the point,” while the next equally reasonable paragraph is “sketchy?” Since most of the class did poorly (few of us agreed closely enough with the professor’s views to receive the grades due good philosophers), we were given a week to revise our papers and hand in new versions. For those who missed on the first try, he told us, the best we could get on the rewrite was a B.

My friend Dan had gotten an A on the paper with his first try. He was a comparable if not more mature Christian than I, felt exactly the same as me and got just as torn up in class discussion. However, Dan had figured out how to do well on these big papers without selling out. Instead of trying to be philosophical as the professor told us we should, he wrote straight from his notes.

Dan’s paper was a well-worded version of the theories we had discussed, combined with repetition of the “conclusions” from our class arguments. I followed suit for my rewrite – this was, in fact, busy work and not a serious assignment as I’d first thought. The professor didn’t expect our opinions; he wanted his own opinions reworded and spit back out. My second attempt was a dumbed-down, chopped up copy of the original. It got a B. More summarizing and less thinking somehow equaled better philosophy.

Something was particularly troubling about the way my faith-based opinions were attacked, and after much wrestling I got my brain around it. When someone asks “what if…?” in the name of doubt, the academic elite call it atheism and consider it a sophisticated, respectable position. But when someone uses “what if...” in support of God, they are discounted as narrow-minded and gullible. An arguing atheist’s main weapon is this spin that is too often overlooked.

Another trick I noticed was that I immediately became a bad philosopher any time I “retreated” to faith as an explanation for something. “God did…” was unsound but somehow “evolution gave us…” was above question, solid as a rock. And even if evolution were false it wouldn’t matter, because whisking away God was the task at hand (if need be, evolution could be doubted once He was out of the way). Philosophy, we were taught, means doubting everything. Real intelligence means knowing when to stop.

There was little stopping in PHL 111. Anything and everything were doubted for doubt’s own sake. Because it was difficult to argue in support of God, for a third of the semester our professor tried to help us realize that the intelligent route through life is disbelief. Never mind that defending the atheist position was as difficult, because remember: atheism was not the stance being attacked. I won’t deny there’s a point where you have to take a step back and ask yourself if what you believe is really true. But why must God’s existence always be approached hypothetically?

I think it’s healthy to question the things we believe. Faith that can’t hold up to logical questions is not faith worth keeping. If Christianity didn’t make sense, I wouldn’t be a Christian. I’m too pessimistic and quite frankly too smart to believe in something that merely sounds nice and is not the Truth. Sooner or later, each of us must make up our minds. If Jesus were not God, and had not risen from death, his apostles (a pathetic, depressed, terrified bunch on the night of His trial) would not have given their lives spreading his Good News. You and I would never have heard of Him.

It frustrates me when people say they are Christians, but then make sure to sound politically correct by covering with “but I don’t think other religions are wrong.” Do you believe – to quote Jesus – “no one comes to the father, but by me,” (John 14:6, Revised Standard Version) or not? A wishy-washy faith doesn’t seem to me like faith at all. The Bible says that reliance on Christ is the only way to salvation, not a shiny ideal to follow when that’s the kind of mood you’re in.

I know God exists. I believe the Bible is his instruction manual for human life, and that its words are true. I know Jesus of Nazareth was sent to cover for the sins of each and every one of us, and that He was resurrected following his execution... would Rome have let anyone think this had it been otherwise? I believe that God created the earth, human decisions are to blame for the problems we see today, and all of this amazingly fits together as only God’s plan could.

A popular philosophy question: How could a loving, all-powerful God allow suffering? Ok, the world is not perfect. But while we’re asking difficult questions: How could we truly love if we had no ability to do otherwise? Some things cannot be fully answered no matter how smart you’d like to think you are. Love is possible only because we have free will. And suffering, simply enough, is the result of you and I (and the billions before us) misusing our God-given freedom.

Many self-righteous academics would say I am crazy; there is no God, and my faith is an invention to help me sleep easier. In philosophy class, I got to see what the atheist standpoint truly consisted of. Much of it was picky argument starting from a generally accepted – but still human – description of God. A serious philosopher, if anyone, should realize the ridiculousness of expecting God to fit into our comprehension and terms.

Sure, I think God is eternal and omniscient. Nope, I can’t understand how either of these things work, let alone how they work simultaneously. But please, should I think that because I can’t fully understand God, he must not exist? That’s a little shady – I would see more reason to doubt God if I could fully understand him. God is above and beyond our world, and if we suppose him to be Creator of the universe then it’s silly expecting to understand every facet of his power and knowledge.

This was only one of many issues we addressed in PHL 111; most of them were similar, indicating nothing more than shortages in human brainpower. “People pretend there’s a God so they can be happy,” we argued over …wouldn’t it be easier to do whatever I want and pretend it’s ok? “If God made everything, he would have to make himself, and that’s impossible” – it sure is…so what? If you can’t believe God existed before He created the universe, how can you believe the universe existed as an unexplained ‘compressed mass’ before randomly exploding, forming galaxies and planets, and so on?

There is a bigger picture. We’ve messed this world up, but God is watching and working. I do my best to live as God wants me to, referring to prayer and the Bible and fellow believers for guidance. I am far from perfect but God gives me joy, peace, and strength, all things that – even as a college guy – I realize wouldn’t be found in a world without Him. God gave me freedom to choose and then, through Jesus, freedom from my own bad choices.

Take a quick look around, and it’s clear that people make a lot of stupid mistakes. There’s so much we just don’t understand. The smartest and kindest of us fails to always love those around him, and is bound to hurt at some point even the people he cares most about. Yet we stubbornly tangle ourselves up in our own greatness and ideas, refusing to believe in what we can’t understand. God loves you and has a plan that’s bigger than you…period. If we could only grasp that, the rest would make sense.

Assuming science can explain everything is one of several ways out – our hearts tell us we should believe in something, and with science we hope for answers that will not force us to admit defeat. For too many people, this seems to be enough. We can’t believe in God, but we can believe Dr. So-and-Such who’s selling us something less.

Some say science proves there is no higher power beyond nature: nature is random and the universe came to be through the explosion of a mass of supercompressed particles. They insist that we came about by natural selection upon random genetic mutations, imposed on spontaneously appearing cells of life, in an environment able to support them for no reason. Now, these theories may not require a divine Creator, but require just as much faith.

Keeping in mind the definition of the word ‘theory,’ do we even have enough evidence to respect the popular theories for the existence of the universe? Explain the big bang: where the first particles came from, why they were arranged in such a way, why they burst outward and then regrouped into solar systems. Can anyone do that?

Here we’ve got a problem, because no one can answer this without running in broad circles of theory that would require more faith than does my trust in God. Of course, you could fall back on “technology is improving and we will know the answers soon enough,” but you’d still just have faith in theory. Faith is faith no matter what you believe to be behind it.

And what about evolution? Some scientists say early cells developed from lightning striking sea foam, which over time evolved and changed into progressively more complex organisms. The order that we see in natural systems and living things is not really order, just a survival-friendly arranged chaos.

Should anyone be willing to buy that? A universe from an explosion is one thing, but myself and my loved ones and our emotions developed from electrocuted mud? That would mean accepting the big bang (or any similar theory of randomness), and adding a few million more randomly magical events on top…or, spelled differently, faith with a capital F.

I don’t care how many millions of years they say it took or how much halfhearted ‘proof’ they dig up – eyes and blood clotting and a million other complex systems created by luck? Look at us, at the depth of our thinking and the unquestionable existence of deeper stirrings – the human mind and soul weren’t ‘evolved’ from clays and polymers. It’s wildly improbable to the point that even under ideal circumstances, the many hundreds of thousands of chance mutations required would be impossible.

Now, what kind of worldview could result from a theory that we’re animals on a speck of rock drifting out towards nothing? It’s super pessimistic, and justification for people who enjoy thinking there’s no reason not to do whatever they want. Unfortunately for their egos, science and philosophy cannot disprove God – no matter how much more intelligent and rational the doubters claim to be.

The hours of reading and reflecting I’ve done in search of thorough support for my beliefs were caused all but completely by God’s use of my annoying philosophy class. For the first time, my faith was seriously interrogated by people who honestly disagreed. In retrospect, I can understand now how it was good for me. Slowly I’m seeing that we were never meant to be the center of the universe.

I only wish I had been more prepared going in, and could have carried myself better in PHL 111. I saw anger at God, stubborn insistence on knowing everything, and emptiness in the honors students (and instructors) around me who had convinced themselves God is a hoax. I hope my sorry efforts nudged someone in the right direction... it might be encouraging to see a fellow honors student sold on God’s love.

For our stubborn faith, Dan and I were looked down upon as immature, shallow... even sheep. Through it all I tried to show love, confidence, and patience. I did not do any of these three very well but I’m always learning. On that note, I’m sure my wording and arguments must make less than perfect sense. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, More Than A Carpenter by Josh McDowell, and Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe come highly recommended for filling in the gaps…