I have started reading a collection of essays by Bertrand Russell (called "Bertrand Russell on God and Religion", edited by Al Seckel). There is a lot here, so I will break it into multiple posts.
The first essay is "My Religious Reminiscences" (1938). Reading about Russell's childhood is pretty sad. I couldn't help but think of Ephesians 6:4 "And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." I also thank God that I did not grow up in a country with a state religion (Russell grew up in England, under Anglicanism; and Scotland/Presbyterian). That's just a recipe for disaster.
On page 41, Russell talks about his struggle with the notion of free will, and how he gave up any notion of God when he heard John Stuart Mill quote his brother (James), "Who made God?".
Russell says he had a Bible, he must of not gotten to the second book (Exodus 3:13) "And Moses said unto God, Behold, [when] I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What [is] his name? what shall I say unto them? (14) And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."
God IS
That's it. God was not made, He just is. How does that work? I don't know. You see, God is bigger than us (He measures the universe with the span of His hand - Isaiah 40:12 "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?"). We are not going to be able to understand God, He is just too big to fit in our minds. But we can know what He has revealed to us.
Free will is big enough to deserve its own post.
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5 comments:
god is?
One problem with theistic arguments is when they assert that the universe had to come from somewhere or something, and that something must be god. Something can not come from nothing, according to the argument. Yet, this standard is not applied to god himself. Apparently, the universe can not simply just be, but god can. This is an inconsistency that I see with alarming frequency. Are you making the same mistake?
It is valid to examine the possibility of a universe that "just is". Such a universe would have to be eternal. The eternal universe is disproved by "Olber's Paradox".
You kind of left out the part where is says, "static universe." We've known for a long time that this universe is not static (big bang) so your "disproof" is invalid for what I'm talking about. Further, you still have the same problem. You wish to assert that the universe can not be eternal or come from nothing, so god had to exist, and god just so happens to be the two things (from nothing and eternal) that you say is impossible.
How can the universe be eternal and yet, have a beginning (Big Bang) and end (entropy)?
I didn't say eternality and acausality are impossible, only that it is scientifically obvious that our universe is not so (at least not eternal, the possibility of a causal universe having an acausal source is possible, but illogical).
"How can the universe be eternal and yet, have a beginning (Big Bang) and end (entropy)?"
The "beginning" of the universe is only the point where what we conceive of as this universe and time began. We have no idea what was there before this time, nor is time (in our linear understanding of it) even relevant in that context. That, however, does not mean ex nihilo creation of all the matter and energy that is our universe.
"I didn't say eternality and acausality are impossible, only that it is scientifically obvious that our universe is not so (at least not eternal, the possibility of a causal universe having an acausal source is possible, but illogical)."
Considering that you have no evidence that this is so in regard to our universe, you kind of are saying that. You're basically saying, by edict, that this universe was caused because you don't know how it actually happened, therefore god.
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