Tag Archives: God

Einstein’s Judeo-Quaker Pantheism

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I recently came across a fascinating website, Einstein: Science and Religion, which I hope you will find time to peruse.  The website, edited by Arnold Lesikar, Professor Emeritus in the  Department of Physics, Astronomy, and Engineering Science at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, contains a collection of Einstein’s various comments on religion, God, and the relationship between science and religion.

Einstein’s views on religion have been frequently publicized and commented on, but it is difficult to get an accurate and comprehensive assessment of Einstein’s actual views on religion because of the tendency of both believers and atheists to cherry-pick particular quotations or to quote out of context. Einstein’s actual views on religion are complex and multifaceted, and one is apt to get the wrong impression by focusing on just one or several of Einstein’s comments.

One should begin by noting that Einstein did not accept the notion of a personal God, an omnipotent superbeing who listens to our prayers and intervenes in the operations of the laws of the universe. Einstein repeatedly rejected this notion of God throughout his life, from his adolescence to old age. He also believed that many, if not most, of the stories in the Bible were untrue.

The God Einstein did believe in was the God of the philosopher Spinoza. Spinoza conceived of God as being nothing more than the natural order underlying this universe — this order was fundamentally an intelligent order, but it was a mistake to conceive of God as having a personality or caring about man. Spinoza’s view was known as pantheism, and Einstein explicitly stated that he was a proponent of Spinoza and of pantheism. Einstein also argued that ethical systems were a purely human concern, with no superhuman authority figure behind them, and there was no afterlife in which humans could be rewarded or punished. In fact, Einstein believed that immortality was undesirable anyway. Finally, Einstein sometimes expressed derogatory views of religious institutions and leaders, believing them responsible for superstition and bigotry among the masses.

However, it should also be noted that Einstein’s skepticism and love of truth was too deep to result in a rigid and dogmatic atheism. Einstein described himself variously as an agnostic or pantheist and disliked the arrogant certainty of atheists. He even refused to definitively reject the idea of a personal God, believing that there were too many mysteries behind the universe to come to any final conclusions about God. He also wrote that he did not want to destroy the idea of a personal God in the minds of the masses, because even a primitive metaphysics was better than no metaphysics at all.

Even while rejecting the notion of a personal God, Einstein described God as a spirit, a spirit with the attribute of thought or intelligence: “[E]very one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” In an interview, Einstein expressed a similar view:

If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.

Distinguishing between the religious feeling of the “naïve man” and the religious feeling of the scientist, Einstein argued:  “[The scientist’s] religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

While skeptical and often critical of religious institutions, Einstein also believed that religion played a valuable and necessary role for civilization in creating “superpersonal goals” for human beings, goals above and beyond self-interest, that could not be established by pure reason.  Reason could provide us with the facts of existence, said Einstein, but the question of how we should live our lives necessarily required going beyond reason. According to Einstein:

[T]he scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other.The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. . . . Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. . . .

To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.

Einstein even argued that the establishment of moral goals by religious prophets was one of the most important accomplishments of humanity, eclipsing even scientific accomplishment:

Our time is distinguished by wonderful achievements in the fields of scientific understanding and the technical application of those insights. Who would not be cheered by this? But let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.

Einstein’s views of Jesus are particularly intriguing. Einstein never rejected his Jewish identity and refused all attempts by others to convert him to Christianity. Einstein also refused to believe the stories of Jesus’s alleged supernatural powers. But Einstein also believed the historical existence of Jesus was a fact, and Einstein regarded Jesus as one the greatest — if not the greatest — of religious prophets:

As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. . . . No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus. . . .No man can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that his sayings are beautiful. Even if some them have been said before, no one has expressed them so divinely as he.

Toward the end of his life, Einstein, while remaining Jewish, expressed great admiration for the Christian sect known as the Quakers. Einstein stated that the “Society of Friends,” as the Quakers referred to themselves as, had the “highest moral standards” and their influence was “very beneficial.” Einstein even declared “If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker.”

Now Einstein’s various pronouncements on religion are scattered in multiple sources, so it is not surprising that people may get the wrong impression from examining just a few quotes. Sometimes stories of Einstein’s religious views are simply made up, implying that Einstein was a traditional believer. Other times, atheists will emphasize Einstein’s rejection of a personal God, while completely overlooking Einstein’s views on the limits of reason, the necessity of religion in providing superpersonal goals, and the value of the religious prophets.

For some people, a religion without a personal God is not a true religion. But historically, a number of major religions do not hold belief in a personal God as central to their belief system, including Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. In addition, many theologians in monotheistic faiths describe God in impersonal terms, or stress that the attributes of God may be represented symbolically as personal, but that God himself cannot be adequately described as a person. The great Jewish theologian Maimonides argued that although God had been described allegorically and imperfectly by the prophets as having the attributes of a personal being, God did not actually have human thoughts and emotions. The twentieth century Christian theologian Paul Tillich argued that God was not “a being” but the “Ground of Being” or the “Power of Being” existing in all things.

However, it is somewhat odd is that while rejecting the notion of a personal God, Einstein saw God as a spirit that seemingly possessed an intelligence far greater than that of human beings. In that, Einstein was similar to Spinoza, who believed God had the attribute of “thought” and that the human mind was but part of the “infinite intellect of God.”  But is not intelligence a quality of personal beings? In everyday life, we don’t think of orbiting planets or stars or rocks or water as possessing intelligence, and even if we attribute intelligence to lower forms of life such as bacteria and plants, we recognize that this sort of intelligence is primitive. If you ask people what concrete, existing things best possess the quality of intelligence, they will point to humans — personal beings! Yet, both Spinoza and Einstein attribute vast, or even infinite, intelligence to God, while denying that God is a personal being!

I am not arguing that Spinoza and Einstein were wrong or somehow deluding themselves when they argued that God was not a personal being. I am simply pointing out how difficult it is to adequately and accurately describe God. I think Spinoza and Einstein were correct in seeking to modify the traditional concept of God as a type of omnipotent superperson with human thoughts and emotions. But at the same time, it can be difficult to describe God in a way that does not use attributes that are commonly thought of as belonging to personal beings. At best, we can use analogies from everyday experience to indirectly describe God, while acknowledging that all analogies fall short.

 

Omnipotence and Human Freedom

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Prayson Daniel writes about Christian author C. S. Lewis’s attempt to deal with the problem of evil here and here.  Lewis, who suffered tragic loss at an early age, became an atheist when young, but later converted to Christianity.  Lewis directly addressed the challenge of the atheists’ argument — why would an omnipotent and benevolent God allow evil to exist? — in his books The Problem of Pain and Mere Christianity.

Central to Lewis’s argument is the notion that the freedom to do good or evil is essential to being human.  If human beings were always compelled to do good, they would not be free, and thus would be unable to attain genuine happiness.

One way to illustrate the necessity of freedom is to imagine a world in which human beings were unable to commit evil — no violence, no stealing, no lying, no cheating, no betrayal.  At first, such a world might appear to be a paradise.  But the price would be this: essentially we would all be nothing but robots.  Without the ability to commit evil, doing good would have no meaning.  We would do good simply because we were programmed or compelled to do nothing but good.  There would be no choices because there would be no alternatives.  Love and altruism would have no meaning because it wouldn’t be freely chosen.

Let us imagine a slightly different world, a world in which freedom is allowed, but God always intervenes to reward the good and punish the guilty.  No good people ever suffer.  Earthquakes, fires, disease, and other natural disasters injure and kill only those who are guilty of evil.  Those who do good are rewarded with good health, riches, and happiness.  This world seems only slightly better than the world in which we are robots.  In this second world, we are mere zoo animals or pets.  We would be trained by our master to expect treats when we behave and punishment when we misbehave.  Again, doing good would have no meaning in this world — we would simply be advancing our self-interest, under constant, inescapable surveillance and threat of punishment.  In some ways, life in this world would be almost as regimented and monotonous as in the world in which we are compelled to do good.

For these reasons, I find the “free will” argument for the existence of evil largely persuasive when it comes to explaining the existence of evil committed by human beings.  I can even see God as having so much respect for our freedom that he would stand aside even in the face of an enormous crime such as genocide.

However, I think that the free will argument is less persuasive when it comes to accounting for evils committed against human beings by natural forces — earthquakes, fires, floods, disease, etc.  Natural forces don’t have free will in the same sense that human beings do, so why doesn’t God intervene when natural forces threaten life?  Granted, it would be asking too much to expect that natural disasters happen only to the guilty.  But the evils resulting from natural forces seem to be too frequent, too immense, and too random to be attributed to the necessity of freedom.  Why does freedom require the occasional suffering and death of even small children?  It’s hard to believe that small children have even had enough time to live in order to exercise their free will in a meaningful way.

Overall, the scale of divine indifference in cases of natural disaster is too great for me to think that it is part of a larger gift of free will.  For this reason, I am inclined to think that there are limits on God’s power to make a perfect world, even if the freedom accorded to human beings is indeed a gift of God.

Miracles

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “miracle” as “a marvelous event occurring within human experience, which cannot have been brought about by any human power or by the operation of any natural agency, and must therefore be ascribed to the special intervention of the Deity or some supernatural being.”  (OED, 1989)  This meaning reflects how the word “miracle” has been commonly used in the English language for hundreds of years.

Since a miracle, by definition, involves a suspension of physical laws in nature by some supernatural entity, the question of whether miracles take place, or have ever taken place, is an important one.  Most adherents of religion — any religion — are inclined to believe in miracles; skeptics argue that there is no evidence to support the existence of miracles.

I believe skeptics are correct that the evidence for a supernatural agency occasionally suspending the normal processes and laws of nature is very weak or nonexistent.  Scientists have been studying nature for hundreds of years; when an observed event does not appear to follow physical laws, it usually turns out that the law is imperfectly understood and needs to be modified, or there is some other physical law that needs to be taken into account.  Scientists have not found evidence of a supernatural being behind observational anomalies.  This is not to say that everything in the universe is deterministic and can be reduced to physical laws.  Most scientists agree that there is room for indeterminacy in the universe, with elements of freedom and chance.  But this indeterminacy does not seem to correspond to what people have claimed as miracles.

However, I would like to make the case that the way we think about miracles is all wrong, that our current conception of what counts as a miracle is based on a mistaken prejudice in favor of events that we are unaccustomed to.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “miracle” is derived from the Latin word “miraculum,” which is an “object of wonder.” (OED 1989)  A Latin dictionary similarly defines “miraculum” as “a wonderful, strange, or marvelous thing, a wonder, marvel, miracle.” (Charlton T. Lewis, A Latin Dictionary, 1958)  There is nothing in the original Latin conception of miraculum that requires a belief in the suspension of physical laws.  Miraculum is simply about wonder.

Wonder as an activity is an intellectual exercise, but it is also an emotional disposition.  We wonder about the improbable nature of our existence, we wonder about the vastness of the universe, we wonder about the enormous complexity and diversity of life.  From wonder often comes other emotional dispositions: astonishment, puzzlement, joy, and gratitude.

The problem is that in our humdrum, everyday lives, it is easy to lose wonder.  We become accustomed to existence through repeated exposure to the same events happening over and over, and we no longer wonder.  The satirical newspaper The Onion expresses this disposition well: “Miracle Of Birth Occurs For 83 Billionth Time,” reads one headline.

Is it really the case, though, that a wondrous event ceases to be wondrous because it occurs frequently, regularly, and appears to be guided by causal laws?  The birth of a human being begins with blueprints provided by an egg cell and sperm cell; over the course of nine months, over 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and other elements gradually come together in the right place at the right time to form the extremely intricate arrangement known as a human being.  If anything is a miraculum, or wonder, it is this event.  But because it happens so often, we stop noticing.  Stories about crying statues, or people seeing the heart of Jesus in a communion wafer, or the face of Jesus in a sock get our attention and are hailed as miracles because these alleged events are unusual.  But if you think about it, these so-called miracles are pretty insignificant in comparison to human birth.  And if crying statues were a frequent event, people would gradually become accustomed to it; after a while, they would stop caring, and start looking around for something new to wonder about it.

What a paradox.  We are surrounded by genuine miracles every day, but we don’t notice them.  So we grasp at the most trivial coincidences and hoaxes in order to restore our sense of wonder, when what we should be doing is not taking so many wonders for granted.

Misunderstanding Manicheanism

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A lot of religions and philosophies are misunderstood to varying degrees, but if I had to pick one religion or philosophy as being the most misunderstood it would be Manicheanism.  First propounded by the prophet Mani (or Manes) in Persia in the third century C.E., this religion viewed the universe as consisting of a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.  God was good, but was not all-powerful, which is why there was evil in the world.  Human beings and other material things were a mixture of the forces of light and forces of darkness; the task of human beings was to separate the light from the dark by shunning evil and doing good deeds.

In modern day America, the term “Manichean” is used disparagingly, as a way of attacking those who see political or social conflict as being wars of good vs. evil.  A Manichean view, it is argued or implied, depicts the self as purely good, opponents as demonic, and compromise as virtually impossible.  A recent example of this is a column by George Will about the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.  Will describes Iran as being “frightening in its motives (measured by its rhetoric) and barbaric in its behavior,” and quotes author Kenneth Pollack, who notes that Manicheanism was a Persian (Iranian) religion that “conceived of the world as being divided into good and evil.”  Of course, Manicheanism no longer has a significant presence in modern-day Iran, but you get the point — those Persians have always been simple-minded fanatics.

Let’s correct this major misconception right now: Manicheanism does NOT identify any particular tribe, group, religion, or nation as being purely good or purely evil.  Manicheanism sees good and evil as cosmological forces that are mixed in varying degrees in the material things we see all around us.  Humanity, in this view, consists of forces of light (good) mixed with darkness ; the task of humanity is to seek and release this inner light, not to label other human beings as evil and do battle with them.

If anything, Manicheanism was one of the most cosmopolitan and tolerant religions in history.  Manicheanism aimed to be a universal religion and incorporated elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The most dedicated adherents of Manicheanism were required to adopt a life of nonviolence, including vegetarianism.  For their trouble, Manicheans were persecuted and killed by the Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim societies in which they lived.

The Manichean view of human beings as being a mixture of good and evil is really a mainstream view shared by virtually all religions.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn has described this insight well:

It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good.  In the intoxication of youthful successes I had  felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel.  In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor.  In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments.  It was only  when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good.  Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and  through all human hearts.  This line shifts.  Inside us, it oscillates with the years.   Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: they struggle with the evil inside a human being  (inside every human being).  It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

This is what Manicheanism teaches: the battle between good and evil lies within all humans, not between purely good humans and purely evil humans.

How Powerful is God?

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In a previous post, we discussed the non-omnipotent God of process theology as a possible explanation for the twin facts that the universe appears to be fine-tuned for life and yet evolution is extremely slow and life precarious.  The problem with process theology, however, is that God appears to be extremely weak.  Is the concept of a non-omnipotent God worthwhile?

One response to this criticism is that portraying God as weak simply because the universe was not instantaneously and perfectly constructed for life is to misconstrue what the meaning of “weak” is.  The mere fact that the universe, consisting of a least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, was created out of nothingness and has lasted over 13 billion years does not seem to indicate weakness.

Another response would be that the very gradual incrementalism of evolution may be a necessary component of a fantastically complex system that cannot tolerate errors that would threaten to destroy the system.  That is, the various physical laws and numerical constants that underlie the order of the universe exist in such an intricate relationship that a violation of a law in one particular case or sudden change in one of the constants would cause the universe to self-destruct, in the same way that a computer program may crash if a single line of code is incorrect or is incompatible with the other lines of code.

In fact, a number of physicists have explicitly described the universe as a type of computer, in the sense that the order of the universe is based on the processing of information in the form of the physical laws and constants.  Of course, the chief difference between the universe and a computer is that we can live with a computer crashing occasionally — we cannot live with the universe crashing even once.  Thus the fact that the universe, while not immortal, never seems to crash, indicates that gradual evolution may be necessary.  Perhaps instability on the micro level of the universe (an asteroid occasionally crashing into a planet with life) is the price to be paid for stability on the macro level.

Alternatively, we can conceptualize the order behind the universe as a type of mind, “mind” being defined broadly as any system for processing information.  We can posit three types of mind in the historical development of the universe: cosmic mind (God), biological mind (human/animal mind), and electronic mind (computer).

Cosmic mind can be thought of as pure spirit, or pure information, if you will.  Cosmic mind can create matter and a stable foundation for the universe, but once matter is created, the influence of spirit on matter is relatively weak.  That is, there is a division between the world of spirit and the world of matter that is difficult to bridge.  Biological mind does not know everything cosmic mind does and it is limited in time and space, but biological mind can more efficiently act on matter, since it is part of the world of matter.  Electronic mind (computer) is a creation of biological mind but processes larger amounts of information more quickly, assisting biological mind in the manipulation of matter.

As a result, the evolution of the universe began very slowly, but has recently accelerated as a result of incremental improvements to mind.  According to Stephen Hawking,

The process of biological evolution was very slow at first. It took two and a half billion years, to evolve from the earliest cells to multi-cell animals, and another billion years to evolve through fish and reptiles, to mammals. But then evolution seemed to have speeded up. It only took about a hundred million years, to develop from the early mammals to us. . . . [W]ith the human race, evolution reached a critical stage, comparable in importance with the development of DNA. This was the development of language, and particularly written language. It meant that information can be passed on, from generation to generation, other than genetically, through DNA. . . .  [W]e are now entering a new phase, of what might be called, self designed evolution, in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. . . . If this race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, it will probably spread out, and colonise other planets and stars.  (“Life in the Universe“)

According to physicist Freeman Dyson (Disturbing the Universe), even if interstellar spacecraft achieve only one percent of the speed of light, a speed within the possibility of present-day technology, the Milky Way galaxy could be colonized end-to-end in ten million years –  a very long time from an individual human’s perspective, but a remarkably short time in the history of evolution, considering it took 2.5 billion years simply to make the transition from single-celled life forms to multi-celled creatures.

So cosmic mind can be very powerful in the long run, but patience is required!

A Universe Half Full?

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It has often been said that the difference between a pessimist and an optimist is that a pessimist sees a half-poured beverage as a glass half empty, whereas an optimist sees the glass as being half full.  I think the decision to adopt or reject atheism may originate from such a perspective — that is, atheists see the universe as half empty, whereas believers see the universe as half full.  We all go through life experiencing events both good and bad, moments of joy, beauty, and wonder, along with moments of despair, ugliness, and boredom.  When we experience the positive, we may be inclined to attribute purpose and benevolence to the universal order; when we experience the negative, we may be more apt to attribute disorder and meaninglessness to the universe.

So, is it all a matter of perspective?  If we are serious thinkers, we have to reject the conclusion that it is merely a matter of perspective.  Either there is a God or there isn’t.  If we are going to explain the universe, we have to explain everything, good and bad, and not neglect facts that don’t fit.

The case for atheism is fairly straightforward: the facts of science indicate a universe that is not very hospitable to either the emergence of life or the protection of life, which greatly undercuts the case for an intelligent designer.  Most planets have no life, except perhaps for the most primitive, insignificant forms of life.  Where life does exist, life is precarious and cruel; on a daily basis, life forms are attacked and destroyed by hostile physical forces and other life forms.  There is not the slightest historical and archeological evidence of a “golden age” or a “Garden of Eden” which once existed but was lost because of man’s sinfulness; life has always been precarious and cruel.  Even where life has developed, it has developed in a process of very gradual evolution, consisting of much randomness, over the course of billions of years.  And even despite progress after billions of years, life on earth has been subject to occasional mass extinction events, from an asteroid or comet striking the planet, to volcanic eruptions, to dramatic climate change.  Even if one granted that God created life very gradually, the notion that God would allow a dumb rock from space to wipe out the accomplishments of several billions of years of evolution seems inexplicable.

The case for belief in God rests on a contrary claim, namely that order in the universe is too complex and unusual to be explained merely by reference to purposeless physical laws and random events.  It may appear that physical laws operate without apparent purpose, such as when an asteroid causes mass extinction, and evolution certainly consists of many random events.  But there is too much order to subscribe to the view that the universe is nothing but blind laws and random events.  When one studies the development of the stars and planets and their predictable motions, the vast diversity and complexity of life on earth, and the amount of information contained in a single DNA molecule, randomness is not the first thing one thinks of.  Total randomness implies total disorder and a total lack of pattern, but the randomness we see in the universe takes place within a certain structure.  If you roll a die, there are six possible outcomes; if you flip a coin there are two possible outcomes.  Both actions are random, but a structure of order determines the range of possible outcomes.  Likewise, there is randomness and disorder in the universe, but there is a larger structure of order that provides general stability and restricts outcomes.  Mutations take place in life forms, but these mutations are limited and incremental, restricting the range of possible outcomes and allowing the development of new forms of life on top of old forms of life.

Physicists tend to agree that we appear to live in a universe “fine-tuned” for life, in the sense that many physical constants can only exist with certain values, or life would not be able to evolve.  According to Stephen Hawking, “The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and electron. . . . The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”  Physicist Paul Davies writes:

 [L]ife as we know it depends very sensitively on the form of the laws of physics, and on some seemingly fortuitous accidents in the actual values that nature has chosen for various particle masses, force strengths, and so on. . . . [I]f we could play God, and select values for these quantities at whim by twiddling a set of knobs, we would find that almost all knob settings would render the universe uninhabitable.  In some cases it seems as if the different knobs have to be fine-tuned to enormous precision if the universe is to be such that life will flourish. (The Mind of God, pp. 199-200).

The counterargument to the “fine-tuned” argument is that there could exist many universes that self-destruct in a short period of time or don’t have life — we just happen to live in a fine-tuned universe because only a fine-tuned universe can allow the existence of life forms that think about how fine-tuned the universe is!  However, this argument rests on the hypothetical belief that many alternative universes have existed or do exist, and until there is evidence for other universes, it must remain highly speculative.

So how do we reconcile the two sets of facts presented by the atheists and the believers?  On the one hand, the universe appears to allow life to develop only extremely gradually under often hostile conditions, with many setbacks along the way.  On the other hand, the universe appears to be fine-tuned to support life, suggesting some sort of cosmic purpose or intelligence.

In my view, the only way to reconcile the two sets of facts is to conceive of God as being very powerful, but not omnipotent.  (See a previous posting on this subject.)  According to process theology, God’s power is not coercive but persuasive, and God acts over long periods of time to create.  Existing things are not subject to total central control, but God can influence outcomes.

An analogy could be made with the human mind and its control over the body.  It is easy to raise one’s right arm by using one’s thoughts, but to pitch a fastball, play a piano, or make a high-quality sculpture requires a level of coordination and skill that most of us do not have — as well as an extraordinary amount of training and practice.  In the course of life, we attempt many things, but are never successful at all we attempt; in fact, the ambitions in our minds usually outpace our physical abilities.  Some people do not even have the ability to raise their right arm.  The relation of a cosmic mind to the “body” of the universe may be similar in principle.

Some would object that the God of process theology is ridiculously weak.  A God that has only the slightest influence over matter and cannot even stop an asteroid from hitting a planet does not seem like a God worth worshiping or even respecting.  In fact, why do we even need the concept of a weak God — wouldn’t we be better off without it?  I will address this topic in a future posting.

God as Love

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The Greek philosopher Empedocles wrote that the universe was characterized by conflict between two cosmic forces, Love and Strife.  In his view, the universe originally existed in a state of perfect love and unity, with no distinct elements or separate life forms.  However, the force of Strife emerged and began to destroy this unity; separate parts broke off from the whole, forming the elements of matter.  The attractive force of Love exerted its remaining influence by bringing the elements together in different combinations, creating animals and humans.  But these beings were mortal, as the force of Strife gradually pulled the elements apart again, leading to disintegration and death.

There are obviously fascinating parallels between Empedocles’ philosophy and Christianity in terms of the centrality of love, though in contrast to Christianity, Empedocles viewed cosmic history as cyclic.  But whether we accept Greek philosophy or Christianity, or both, is it helpful in understanding the order of the universe If we think of God as Love?

From a purely scientific standpoint, the notion that particles come together to form larger structures, including life forms, because of love sounds ridiculous.  Do hydrogen atoms really come together with oxygen atoms to form water because of love?  It makes no sense, many would argue, to anthropomorphize mindless matter and attribute human desire and emotion to particles.  However, I would argue that it makes sense to think of love as a broader phenomenon of attraction, with attraction between humans being a highly complex and sophisticated type of love, attraction between animals being a less complex type of love, and attraction between particles being a very primitive type of love, but love nevertheless.

Although it used to be thought that animals had no real emotions, we now know that animals do have emotions, that they are capable of love between their own kind and love of those from other species.  The question of whether insects have emotions is less settled, though some scientists who study the issue argue that at least some insects have primitive emotional responses originating in rudimentary brain structures.

It seems unlikely that there would be emotions in lower life forms, such as cells and bacteria.  However, even though we can’t know exactly how lower life forms “feel,” scientific studies have demonstrated forces of attraction and repulsion even in these lower life forms.  Paramecium will swim away from unfavorable environments (such as cold water), but remain in favorable environments (containing warm temperatures and/or the presence of food).  Egg cells in both humans and animals will exercise choice in determining which sperm cells with which to join, weeding out bad sperm cells from good.  In fact, the human body itself has been described as a cooperative “society of cells.”

Given that forces of attraction and repulsion exist in even the lowest life forms, is it really absurd to posit such forces as affecting even atomic and subatomic particles?  I believe that the general principle is the same, if love is defined simply as an attractive force that brings separate entities together to form a greater whole.  The only difference is that the principle is expressed in a very primitive form among lower forms of order and in a more sophisticated form among higher forms of order, such as animals and humans.

Omnipotence of God

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 Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?   —  David Hume

The passage  above from the Scottish philosopher David Hume succinctly summarizes the reasoning behind the decisions of many to adopt the position of atheism, whether they are aware of Hume or not.  In fact, the challenge posed by this short argument has rarely been answered to the complete satisfaction of many.  Theodicy is the term that has been used to denote philosophies that have attempted to reconcile God and the existence of evil.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is conceived as having the attribute of omnipotence, which is usually defined as unlimited power, the ability to do whatever one wants.  However, this conception of God was not held by many ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, who saw God as being very powerful but not all-powerful.  The Roman physician and philosopher Galen argued that God was limited by necessity and matter — God could not do whatever he wanted, and this conception was different from the Jewish and Christian conception:

This is where our opinion, and that of Plato and all others among the Greeks who correctly deal with the rationality of Nature, differs from that of Moses.  For Moses, it is sufficient to say merely that God “willed” to order the universe in a certain way, and it was done.  For he [Moses] thinks that everything is possible for God, even if he wanted to make a horse or a bull out of ashes.  But we know that is not the case.  We say, on the contrary, that certain things are impossible by nature.  God does not even attempt those things, but from what is possible, he chooses the best to come about.  (On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, quoted in Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition )

In this view, the existence of evil does not pose a problem for the existence of God, because God is not all-powerful to begin with — God is simply very powerful.

In the contemporary, popular view, the conception of God as being less than all-powerful is regarded as blasphemous, ridiculous, or self-contradictory.  However, the notion of limitations on God’s power is found in a number of prominent Christian theologians, including Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Edgar S. Brightman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  In fact, there is an entire school of thought known as “Process Theology,” that conceives of God as being limited in power and acting gradually on the world over time.  This alternative conception of God is not an entirely satisfactory answer to the problem of evil, but I would argue that it holds much fewer difficulties than the popular conception of a God who can do whatever He wants but chooses not to.  It is also superior to an atheism that sees the universe as being composed merely of a set of physical laws and random events with no underlying, unifying, intelligent order.