Can a Case be Made for a Deistic Christian God?

[Daidalos]

Hello all, first post in quite some time, but I assure you, I've been present, quietly lurking and biding my time...

First of all, let me preempt any complaints pertaining to the somewhat Pink-Harpish title of this thread, but I felt cutting to the chase would make things clearer. Additionally, allow me to sheepishly extend my most heartfelt apologies towards those who cringe at the very thought of another God-thread. I feel your pain. Now, to the business at hand:

As I said, I've been reading the boards even though I haven't posted in a couple of months, but the recent religion-thread inspired me to revisit some old ponderances of mine, mostly regarding the nature of God, time and choice. Then, a possible implication of these stray thoughts suddenly struck me, and I've been working them out in my mind for a few days, and I figured I would invite others to critique my thinking or offer any suggestions or contributions on the matter.

I recall from past discussions I've enjoyed with theists such as Al Moritz from GMG that some Christians (many theologians, I'd wager!) conceptualise of God as a timeless entity, unbounded by the usual constrains under which we lowly mortals suffer. As such a being, God would not see our reality as a slide show, or even a sequential development of causes and effects connecting past and future; no, God would see our reality – space, time, all of eternity throughout all of the universe, in all of its permutations – as one construct. In essence, what we perceive of as time would only be a different coordinate to God, a necessary dimension to properly describe the universe.

Now, since God is furthermore alleged to have created this construct we call the space-time continuum (or "reality"), the question arises how He* interacts with out world. Intelligent Design Creationists maintain that God intervened at certain occasions to nudge the direction of His creation along a particular route (to create us and the bacterial flagellum, it would appear). As Al has previously remarked, this is a petty view of God as a designer who is too incompetent to create a universe to bring about what He intended that He must meddle all the time to make everything work. If God is to be considered worthy of the name, He would never act out of necessity, only choice. Therefore, it follows that every time God interacts with us, it not because He needs to do so, but that He chooses to do so.
*For convenience's sake, I shall refer to God in the masculine

Here, at long last, the preamble is over, and the title of the thread can be addressed. Can a case be made for a deistic Christian God**? It seems to me, with all the aforementioned in mind, that even a God that chooses to "interfere" commits an act of redundancy which could have easily been corrected for much, much earlier. Certainly, a being with God's abilities would never have to resort to step in Himself, and it would be most flamboyant and unnecessary of Him act in our world at all.
**Or for that matter, a Muslim or Jewish God.

Before you take offense at that, allow me to elucidate exactly what I mean with what I said above. My scenario posits a timeless God, as described in the fourth paragraph, and a God that is both omniscient and omnipotent. He would have the ability to foresee any event, and enforce His will irrespective of the circumstances. At the moment of Creation, God would therefore be capable of fashioning a universe to bring about exactly what He wanted; He would be aware of any deficiencies of a faulty design, and would be able to know exactly where He would have to step in and fix things. There could not possibly exist an eventuality that He did not see or prepare for.

Consequently, what we would regard as "acts of God", would not be God interacting with us, but rather the logical development of His master plan, from the beginning of time. The universe unfolds just as He predicted and intended. This point appears to me to be indisputable, since an omniscient God would by definition know of everyting, and an omnipotent God could do anything; accordingly anything He made would be just as He desired. The need for intervention would evaporate completely. And this brings us back to the original question: is this god, which to me is functionally identical to the Christian God, in fact a deistic, hands-off kind of god? All interactions would be nothing but illusions, and no "laws of nature" would have been violated.

I realise there are a number of quirky consequences of this, which I would like to briefly cover before you get an opportunity to point them out.

This situation again resurrects the venerable argument from evil. If God knew of everything when He made the world, surely He must have seen the suffering the act of creation would bring about. Since God would have the choice to create or not to create, would not God be responsible for all the evil in our world? You may counter with "free will", but consider, God could with 100% certainty KNOW how events would unfold. To use a mythological example, He would have foreseen Satan's treachery and Adam and Eve's fall from grace far, far "before" He created the universe. Yet, He made everything just as He intended.

I must admit, I have never found that "free will" really solves this dilemma, even as far as the conventional, interfering God of Christianity is concerned, as far as I understand it. God still possesses His knowledge, way in advance of the tragedies to come, and He does not seek to prevent them, and any future remedy would only serve to highlight His original failure. The world MUST have been what God intended, because He knows everything and He can do anything. And, as Christians often say, God is also perfectly good. Taken as a whole, this strikes me as a most jarring contradiction, one that I feel has not been resolved by any argument I have seen put forward.

Another objection to what I have said is a bit trickier to deal with. Perhaps I have fallen prey to the same narrow definition of time as all the others, and I have pigeonholed God in the process? Just because we perceive an arrow of time, there is no reason God must; why must the "intervention" occur at the beginning of time, as we know it? God doesn't see time as we do, what does it matter if an intervention occurs at this instant, 2000 years ago, or even a trillion years in the future? The universe is one construct of space and time, after all, and no single coordinate, regardless of its value, is the most important.

My response to that would be that it invalidates all questions pertaining to God and time. We could not speak of the universe acting according to rational laws absent divine meddling, because at no point during the universe's evolution could God not have step in. Furthermore, it completely discredits any attempts to suggest an elegance to the universe, made with self-contained and consistent laws, because the beginning of time is no more privileged than the end of time, or even anywhere in the middle. The God of processes (e.g. evolution) would not be a coherent concept.

A third concern of my scenario would be the question of miracles. If one believes that the acts of God occurred as recounted in the Bible, water to wine and so on, it could still be accommodated with my Deistic Jehovah; it would simply fall under the category of supremely improbable events. My view? Chalk the miracles up to secondhand accounts and embellishments that were coloured by superstition to begin with, but I digress...

Now, I would be most grateful for any comments, critiques and suggestions. Can a Case be Made for a Deistic Christian God? A Christian God who does not interfere, at all, after He creates the world. Is it heresy, lunacy, madness? Punishable by excommunication, incineration and damnation? Or, much worse, perhaps I'm not nearly as original as I had thought! It might be utterly mind-numbingly boring in its commonness! Perish the thought!

Some final comments: I'm still an "atheist" (or agnostic, depending on one's definition), and despite having read the most recent, well-articulated arguments on the other thread in favour of belief, I remain unconvinced of God's – any god's – existence. Priorly, I have argued for the problems of discussing God by invoking ephemeral, seemingly sophistic, definitions, and drawing any conclusions as it relates to the "transcendent" based on tricks of language. As far as those things are concerned, my "beliefs" have as of yet not been shaken, but I hope I'm not far gone enough to not be amenable to persuasion. I offer these thoughts not to provoke, or even argue for any far-fetched possibility, only to explore the shape ideas can take if you contort them just so. And anything which would focus the debate can only be seen as a good thing, and I hope to do just that.

[The Six]

When I was young I was far more certain that there was a God. I do not know whether it is because one is more easily influenced by one's parents when young or whether life's events have made me less sure as to why a God would inflict such pain on the world. A lot of pain, I know, is inflicted by Man upon himself, or upon his fellow Man. But some, like the death of a child (an event both my brother and I have experienced), one can hardly blame on another person.

In a way it now seems cosy and warm to be enveloped in an all-seeing God as Heather, for example, is. On the other hand I know from my youth that strongly believing, as I did when David died, doesn't really help to ease one's situation or one's grief. So it is only from the outside that the believer seems to have it cushier than the non-believer. Heather's grief for the loss of her mother also demonstrates that to those who read her blog.

The thing that is most peculiar about my comparatively recent uncertainty is that I find it fairly easy to believe in a God and pray to him for someone if they in turn believe. When they don't believe it is harder for me to ask God's help. My oldest and dearest of friends, needs my prayers at the moment to help kill off any cancerous cells that may be floating around threatening him but prayer (and the faith needed for it) are hard to come by. Partly, it seems, this is because he lacks faith.

Dr. House were performing a differential diagnosis on “anxiety,” rambling would be the first symptom written on the dry-erase board. In my case, anxiety-induced rambling usually happens when I am attempting to converse with a woman I find attractive. In especially acute attacks, my rambling begins to sound like the dialogue in a Jane Austen novel. Much to my own chagrin, I tend to use phrases like “would that you were amenable to my ardent affection” and “how diverting it must be to tarry in the presence of such loquacious interlocutors.”

Now, Moses is already married to the lovely Zipporah (whom he met at the well) so he doesn’t have to worry about accidently quoting Pride and Prejudice in conversation. Rather than rambling in the presence of women, Moses’ anxiety leads him to ramble in the presence of God. No one could fault him for being anxious. After all, the people of Israel have been grumbling about the good old days in Egypt ever since they stepped on the far bank of the Red Sea. The daily delivery of manna and quail and the water gushing from the rock don’t seem to have curbed their discontent. And just last week, they melted down all their jewelry to make a nice, little pet god, which, of course, broke one of those pesky commandments. Needless to say, Moses has his hands full. Add to all this the anxiety caused by a heart to heart with the LORD, and Moses breaks down into an acute rambling attack.

The way the book of Exodus structures the conversation we heard this morning makes this rambling difficult to notice. This is one of those instances where the Bible overuses the third-person singular pronoun “he” so that you’re never quite sure who’s talking. Here’s Moses’ first ramble:* “See, you have said to me, `Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, `I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”

And the LORD says to Moses: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

But Moses apparently doesn’t hear this, because he is already halfway into his next ramble:* “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”

The LORD responds: “You have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

I imagine Moses hearing this and slumping to the ground, allowing the full weight of his calling and all of his anxieties to wash over him. He lets the LORD’s words sink in. He shudders at their impact. He looks up, and his next frenetic ramble dies on his lips. Instead, he says, “Show me your glory, I pray.”

And the LORD says, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD.’”

So, after the LORD takes the necessary precautions to keep Moses from overexposure, the glory of the LORD passes Moses by. Moses, safe in the palm of God’s hands, feels the presence of the LORD. Moses’ anxious rambling ceases. Secure in the knowledge that he is in the LORD’s presence, Moses begins his work anew.

These are anxiety-ridden days. The presidential election is heading into the ninth inning. Unemployment is up and home-ownership down. The stock market graph looks like a heart monitor in the ICU. Add to all this the anxieties of work, school, and family, and rambling is going to be the least of our symptoms.

Thankfully, Moses is not the only person with whom God has the kind of conversation we’ve been discussing this morning. Oftentimes, when we come to God in prayer, our minds are already starting the sixtieth lap at Talladega. We just can’t slow down, can’t shift into a lower gear. We get frustrated because our prayer time becomes just another opportunity to review the grocery list and dwell on the need to get the oil changed and wonder how big a hit the investment portfolio took today.

But in our frustration, we fail to realize something. The grocery list, the oil change, the portfolio—these are just as good a place to start as any. Rather than seeing these things as intruding on our prayers, we can see them as entrances into authentic conversations with God. I don’t think God expects us to shut off our anxiety when we enter into prayer. Quite the opposite. God expects us to offer our anxieties as prayer.

Moses rambles about the people and finding favor in God’s sight and the nation of Israel. Rather than addressing any one manifestation of anxiety directly, the LORD speaks to the very core of Moses being: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” In other words, God says, “Moses, you are still going to lead the people. I’m not going to let you off the hook. But, remember, please remember that I am with you, and you can find rest in me.”

When we offer our anxieties to God in prayer, we acknowledge that the sources of those anxieties have power over us and keep us from being the people God calls us to be. But God whispers to the very core of our beings: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Moses continues to ramble. So God reminds Moses of the relationship they share. The LORD knows Moses’ name and Moses hears God speak that special, holy, intimate divine name that the Israelites wrote down but never spoke aloud. In revealing this special name to Moses, God invites Moses into a deeper relationship.

When we offer our anxieties to God in prayer, God gives us the opportunity to notice that God has heard what our hearts have been divulging. Through all our rambling, God is speaking God’s name to us, inviting us to that deeper relationship, in which trust begins to mitigate anxiety.

Finally, Moses stops rambling. He realizes that God is with him, bearing him up as the waves of anxiety crash over him. Moses asks to see God’s glory. All the goodness and the glory of the LORD pass him by. When we acknowledge the anxieties weighing on our hearts, we can begin to hear God speaking peace to us in the midst of those anxieties. And we, too, can settle into the cleft of the rock, rest in the palm of God’s hand, and feel the presence of the LORD pass us by.

There is no logic in that. But I guess logic doesn't enter into religion. Religion is about belief and faith not logic. 'Que sais-je?' - 'What do I know?' - as Montaigne wrote five hundred years ago.

[Daidalos]

Oh my, you confused me mightily with that post.

I wonder, did you write it all yourself? Because I somehow got the feeling you had employed one of those nifty essay generators, I do not know why.

However, I think you said something very interesting in your last paragraph:

There is no logic in that. But I guess logic doesn't enter into religion. Religion is about belief and faith not logic. 'Que sais-je?' - 'What do I know?' - as Montaigne wrote five hundred years ago.

People have employed logic and reason to argue for the existence of gods and the validity of various religions for more than two-thousand years, and several of the believers on these boards have done the same. They readily admit, as far as I can tell, that reason is not the sole motivator for their faith, but it is a factor. I'm interested in this issue only insofar as logic does influence beliefs, where I feel that the implications of faith can be explored. Are you saying that that is a completely futile exercise?

Forgive my circumspection, but I do not know where you stand on the question. Was your quip about the incompatibility between logic and religion meant to be derisive, in that religion is foolish due to this, or do you merely say that they are two completely separate concepts that should not intermix at all?

[Joe_Campbell]

Did you write that, The Six? It's very well-written and reaches a satisfying conclusion that leaves me more convinced of its relevancy to this thread than I initially was.

[Florestan]

Just a semantic note. Cases can be, and have been, made for a Deistic God or a Christian God. But a Deistic Christian God is a contradiction in terms, since Deistic and Christian are mutually exclusive.

[Dr. Dread]

Can a Case be Made for a Deistic Christian God?

Are we really going to try to solve this one again? Isn't this a sign of madness?  

[karlhenning]

Good to see you back, Bjorn!

. . . Now, I would be most grateful for any comments, critiques and suggestions. Can a Case be Made for a Deistic Christian God? A Christian God who does not interfere, at all, after He creates the world. Is it heresy, lunacy, madness?

It is none of these; it is simply, as Andrei observes, confused at the outset:

Just a semantic note. Cases can be, and have been, made for a Deistic God or a Christian God. But a Deistic Christian God is a contradiction in terms, since Deistic and Christian are mutually exclusive.

[drogulus]

     Daidalos , I don't understand why you think this display of servility is warranted. Taking offense at ideas like this is nothing more than a demonstration of helplessness before ideas whenever they might conflict with the idea-free zone of personal belief. You shouldn't treat such tactics as though real offense had been given.

     If you think a case can be made for a particular kind of god, then you should make it. Evidently you don't really think that any case can be made by anyone, and you're correct to think that. No investigator has any need for theistic concepts to explain anything real. They just get in the way, clogging the thinking channels and forcing the hosts to concoct elaborate defenses to explain the unexplainable, finally blaming their incapacity on the god and its supposed mysterious ways. What's really mysterious is why intelligent people sit still for this. I'm old fashioned about explanations. If you can't provide one then your idea is no good, and it's no good shifting the blame.

     

Is it heresy, lunacy, madness?

     You appear to be considering ideas based on something other than plausibility. Like, perhaps entertainment value? This is where we differ slightly? First, I expend some effort to determine if there is anything true about an idea, then, if I can't find anything in its favor, I have some fun with all the things wrong with it. It appears you've already gotten past the first step and now want to have some fun scaring yourself with the "possible" implications of the idea being true anyway. This is the principle that governs horror films. You already know these ideas about a Christian Deist god are nutty, singly and even more so in combination. There's something a bit unconvincing about your effort to consider them seriously. Are you trying to offend me?? Not to worry, I don't do that. _0:)

Just a semantic note. Cases can be, and have been, made for a Deistic God or a Christian God. But a Deistic Christian God is a contradiction in terms, since Deistic and Christian are mutually exclusive.

      Omnipotent and omniscient are also logically verboten. Nothing could possibly answer to those descriptions. You wouldn't want to use logic selectively, would you? And you wouldn't want to attempt to justify faith by reason and fail, just like everyone else. No, that would be awful!  *

     _{*That's a metaphorical Devil.}

[Florestan]

      Omnipotent and omniscient are also logically verboten. Nothing could possibly answer to those descriptions. You wouldn't want to use logic selectively, would you? And you wouldn't want to attempt to justify faith by reason and fail, just like everyone else. No, that would be awful!  *

   

There you go again... strawmen clothed in meaningless verbosity.

[karlhenning]

There you go again... strawmen clothed in meaningless verbosity.

Ernie and Eric . . . at least they're consistent   

[Florestan]

Ernie and Eric . . . at least they're consistent   

The cages they built for themselves are narrow and have no windows. How could they not be consistent?

[Catison]

Daidalos,

As other's have pointed out, there is a difference between being a deist and being a Christian.  The deist merely thinks there is some God up there someplace and He (or She) (or They!) interacts with the universe in some way (usually at the beginning).  To be Jewish means you believe in the Torah and other scripture as if it is true (in some sense).  To be a Christian is to believe the former and that Jesus Christ was both man and God, the son of God, and that he truly performed miracles on earth in the past.  To be a Muslim is to believe some of the former (!) and also that the angel Gabriel gave Muhammad a special text called the Koran, which is the word of God.

Now, the theological implications of each of these principles is very different and lead you to different conclusions about God.  But the latter three are revealed religions, in the sense that they start with the revelation from God (through the Bible or other means) as being true.  This is an assumption, and it is not provable.  Once we have accepted one of these assumptions, we can use logic in order to deduce more about God that is not explicitly revealed.

I hope that helps.

[Daidalos]

Of course I understand that there is, in principle, a difference between a Christian and a Deistic God, but my effort here was to explore what Deism could entail, and if that gap could somehow be bridged. Specifically, the point of the... interface between God's realm and ours really introduces a few weird things, since God is timeless, and we are not (or are we?).

The point was also intervention, or revelation, and how that really occurs. Does God observe our world from his lofty realm, and when it suits His fancy, does he reach in with his Divine hand to mess up the works? I guess you could phrase it, does God participate directly in the unfolding of events, as time marches forward? The alternative that I suggested meant that we, humans, would see the exact same thing, proofs of God's hand in Creation, or whatever, but those acts would only be natural consequences of events set in motion at the beginning of time. God wound up the clock and let it run, knowing exactly how it would tick. There would be no violations of the laws of nature.

I do not know if I was unclear with my post, but it seems to me as though noone has actually answered my question. At least not to my satisfaction. Maybe I should rephrase myself: Could a god, who sets the universe in motion, knowing exactly what the end result would be, and who deigns not to further meddle with his design, be considered the Christian God, if the result is exactly the same as though the Christian God acted personally in all those instances where miracles occurred?

If you answer no to this question, I think there are some implications of that as well. Did God not know how the universe would develop, when he made the world? In what sense is there a difference, when God interacts with the world, considering His timelessness? And what exactly are the theological consequences of my kind of "Deistic" Christian God, and how would He differ from the one we know and love (or hate)?

Remember, the god that I conceive of is not the uncaring Deistic god, but a god who nonetheless started everything, and sat back. Why did He sit back? Because he had already planned from every contingency, and being God, everything would transpire exactly as He had intended.

Oh, and drogulus, it is not as though I am trying to make a case for a Deistic Christian God, since I have no such belief. Perhaps the title should read, can Deism and Christianity be reconciled? I think the question is an interesting one, and to me the "scary" implications of Deistic Christian God are not restricted to my pet scenario; in my mind, they seem to apply to the "conventional" Christian God as well, and would very much like to see if it can be pointed out where I err on this issue. The idea fascinates me, as simply as that.

[Fëanor]

My advice, Daidalos, don't partronized the religionists.

Take the advice I once read on a 'frig magnet:

Don't try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

[karlhenning]

Happily, Bjorn has no trouble with treating those who disagree with him, with friendly respect.

[Florestan]

My advice, Daidalos, don't partronized the religionists.

Take the advice I once read on a 'frig magnet:

Don't try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

This is insulting in the extreme and I do take a lot of offense. But then again, it's one more proof --- if still needed --- that intolerance, dogmatism and superciliousness are trademarks of that branch of atheism which is abundantly represented here.

[karlhenning]

This is insulting in the extreme and I do take a lot of offense. But then again, it's one more proof --- if still needed --- that intolerance, dogmatism and superciliousness are trademarks of that branch of atheism which is abundantly represented here.

< Dave? You there? >

Quoted for truth.

[Catison]

Daidalos,

Any attempt at analogy is imperfect and any explanation of God is insufficient, but alas we try....

God did not need to create the universe or us, as you have already mentioned.  He did it out of love, so that we might share in His love.  If he would have created us without free will then, we not be really able to love Him, because it would be real.  So we are created with free will.  What that means that we are given control over our own lives and given the freedom to make the wrong decision.  You could say that God could have created the universe in such a way so that, given our own free will and imperfections, we would have made all the right decisions at the right time, but that is a little bit like not having free will at all and we would again not really be responsible for our actions.  So, in what ever way suits you, we do have free will and we are truly responsible for ourselves, even though God is omnipotent and omniscient.

Here are some similar questions you could ask about a different subject.

Do you really need a spouse?  No, a person can survive without marrying.

Is it really possible to marry someone who is forced to love you?  The marriage is meaningless.

Do engaged couples understand there will be imperfections in their marriage?  Lets hope so.

Then why get married at all?  Because we want to share our love in a special way.

If a man is a bad husband, is it his wife's fault because she married him?  Of course not!

This is similar to the thinking about God, although like I said, imperfect.  Perhaps it is helpful.

[Fëanor]

This is insulting in the extreme and I do take a lot of offense. But then again, it's one more proof --- if still needed --- that intolerance, dogmatism and superciliousness are trademarks of that branch of atheism which is abundantly represented here.

My, you're sensitive. 

[Florestan]

My, you're sensitive. 

Est modus in rebus.