What does believing entail? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A surprising statement in this chapter is that Graffin doesn’t like the word natural. He says that in a sense, everything is natural. There are some problems with such a statement. If we don’t know what natural means, what does it mean to say everything is natural? Second, if we don’t know what it means, how could we know that everything is natural? Finally, if you are equating natural with what is real, is that not begging the question?
This is also one reason I don’t speak of natural/supernatural. The terms are too vague. I prefer to speak of material and immaterial or extramaterial.
He also says he has a similar problem with God. If the word refers to something that is everything and everywhere, what purpose does the word serve? First off, the word would likely still have some meaning. Second, that’s pantheism, Patrick!
He then goes on to say that if God is something, it should be observable by everyone, examined, and shared by other people. If this is the standard, then several immaterial realities cannot be real. That would include triangularity, goodness, love, numbers, and even existence itself.
“But I see existence every day!”
No. You see things that exist just like you see good things and you see triangles, but you do not see existence, goodness, and triangularity.
Not too long after this, Graffin says the naturalist worldview says that everything is capable of being observed, experimented on, and understanding. Again then, none of those things I mentioned can exist on naturalism. That is the problem with it.
If there is no destiny, there is no design. There’s only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me.
Graffin, Greg; Olson, Steve. Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God (p. 214). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
This is a problem science has got under naturalism where it denies final causality in denying ultimate purpose. Get rid of final causality and science can’t exist. There has to be regular connection between A and B. I do agree that there is no cryptic will of God for our lives that we are to discover, which will be the subject of soon-to-come blogs.
Standing among those remnant populations, it is impossible not to conclude that we are somehow a part of all this. Some would call this a “spiritual connection”—the sense of being part of some larger web of life. Whatever you want to call it, the feeling is inescapable that we are living among the leftovers of a recent mass extinction. This realization is as emotionally moving to me as, I’m sure, the realization of God’s will was to my great-grandpa Zerr.
Graffin, Greg; Olson, Steve. Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God (p. 232). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I find it fascinating that Graffin so often makes these statements in this book. He says earlier there is no destiny but just life and death, and then says this. It’s like he’s almost there but refuses to take that final look to see if there is something more. It’s tragic really.
In the last chapter, we’ll see what Graffin says about the after-death.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)