AJ Roberts's Theology of Nature

Hi @AJRoberts, thanks for sharing your post “Reveling in Revelation.” I was particularly struck by this passage:

I see God’s revelation in nature as explicit in every new scientific discovery. I think Dr. Hardin sees it as more implicit in the order and law-like governance of all of creation. I agree it is seen in the order and law-like governance—in God’s sustaining and providential processes of secondary causes—but it’s more than just that.

Initially I would say I agree with you that God reveals himself in every new scientific discovery, but only to the extent of “order and law-like governance.” It’s surprising to me that you think it is more than that. For example, what would be the explicit revelation of God found in the discovery that the Higgs boson exists and that it has a mass of 125 GeV?

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@dga471
Just got round to reading @AJRoberts piece. My own take on this is that one needs to think of “natural revelation” in supra-scientific terms. That is, rather than look for some piece of information about God in Higgs boson (which is the business of science) we’re gradually building an holistic understanding of the meaning of what he has made.

This was Goethe’s approach to science - contemplating a plant to see the unity of its “meaning” instead of dissecting it to analyse its parts. But a less esoteric example is, perhaps, an aficionado of Mozart, or Yes, or John Coltrane. You buy all their records, and find something new about the composer or performer’s soul in each one. But you’d be hard put to it to say “The 2nd Horn Concerto revealed X about Mozart”, because that’s not how meaning and understanding work.

Equally, that music lover will have a different kind of knowledge of him than a historian sifting through all the documents concerning his life. Pre-scientific theologians appreciated this, seeing each creature as a reflection of a small facet of God’s character, but not necessarily in a propositional way.

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But in order to rationally justify your holistic understanding of God (after all it is an understanding, not merely a feeling or emotion), you would still have to resort to using propositions, and I would ask what led you to pick certain propositions over others. To justify that you would have to point to certain examples, in the same way that a Mozart aficionado could point to certain moments, melodies, or chord progressions in Mozart’s music to explain at least part of their reactions to his work. Otherwise I think your understanding would be subjective and personal, instead of something inherent in nature itself.

We are part of nature. Just because something is subject and personal does not necessarily mean it isn’t true or warranted.

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I agree that subjective doesn’t mean untrue or wrong. Religious experiences are subjective, yet everyone is encouraged to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But subjective means that one cannot rationally discuss it nor demonstrate that whatever you experienced is inherent in nature itself. One person could claim that physics reveals that God is Triune, while another could say that it reveals God is Unitary. The only way we can ground the discussion is by resorting to propositions and pointing to specific examples that prove or disprove them. Similarly, even though religious experiences are subjective to a certain extent, one can judge them by comparing them to Scripture - which is expressing their perceived content in terms of propositions.

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I’m not sure that is how it works:

None of Plantinga’s arguments are inconsistent with what I say, I think. Certainly, you can accept the proposition

  1. God reveals himself in nature

as a rational, basic belief. But then I would want to know what is being revealed about God in nature. What qualities, characteristics, or actions of God are being revealed in nature? @jongarvey argues that the details of the revelation are non-propositional. Assume that is true. Then we would not be able to debate the details of those revelations. One person could adopt the following proposition as a basic belief:

  1. Physics reveals to us that God is triune.

and another could adopt the following proposition as a basic belief:

  1. Physics reveals to us that God is unitary.

Each person could be rational in their basic beliefs, but they wouldn’t be able to talk to each other. Am I missing something here?

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Or in the case of Islam, we can spend billions of dollars in security systems for airplane safety.

Recall that Science can fly you to the moon, Religion can fly airplanes in buildings. Subjective religious experiences can be harmful to mankind.

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I think that’s an unfair quote…science also helped to build those airplanes that are flown into buildings. You cannot make a comparison between science and religion in such a simplified way.

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My point was not about science, my point was that all religious experiences that people have are not the positive, rewarding experience that it appears to be for you. Religious experiences can be deadly, inhuman, create intolerance and injustice, all in the name of the very same God that you believe in.

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I don’t disagree. Religion encompasses such a vast variety of beliefs, experiences, practices, and communities that there are going to be good and bad parts of it. Critiquing “religion” as a whole is similar to critiquing “culture”, “civilization”, or “ideology” - it’s too broad to critique in a general way.

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My only point is that beliefs can harm. For some, including you, Dr. Swamidass and the others here, beliefs are used for good in the world. But that is not universal nor confined to one religion or faith. I think that you would agree that great harm has been done and continues to be done “in the name of God”.

I certainly agree. I don’t think it tells us much about God himself though, other than that many people like to claim him for their own, false and mutually contradictory purposes.

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I am certain that those nineteen hijackers believed in a good and merciful God that would reward them in heaven for being martyrs for God.

OK. What is your point? I already agreed with you that some beliefs about God are harmful and/or false.

My point is how can you be so certain that your beliefs are really what God wants you to do? Today their are 1.5 billion devout Muslims who pray five times a day to the same God as you. Don’t you think that if God was listening to the 7.5 billion prayers a day that a loving and merciful God would tell a few hundred million Muslims to stop with the beheadings and other savagery?

On a lighter note, God hasn’t even told Ken Ham yet that his Ark Encounter is not helping Christianity much at all.:grinning:

It is rare for me to be certain about what God wants me to do. There is no foolproof way, as God isn’t an answer machine nor a scientific object that we can study. But there are ways that I try to be a little more certain. I pray to God every day and hope that He reminds me to change my course if I’m going astray. I compare my convictions with Scripture, as God’s Word cannot contradict each itself. I share my spiritual life with other believers and ask for their opinion.

For now, the conviction has gradually formed in my mind that God wants me to finish my PhD in physics as best as I can. God wants me to appreciate His glory and majesty in the experiments that I do. I have chronicled part of how I got there here. I don’t know if afterwards, God wants me to continue in academia, industry, or go to an entirely different field. Having faith in God and living one’s life according to His will is a continual journey. It’s never finished, and I certainly don’t have all the answers.

I certainly agree that God’s ways are sometimes unknown, inscrutable, and even frustrating. Why doesn’t God just get rid of all evil and suffering straight away? Why doesn’t God grant my prayers right now? Why doesn’t God reveal himself and remove all doubt from me? The Bible tackles this problem head on, in the book of Job. And yet even Job doesn’t get a rationally satisfying answer about why he, a righteous man, has been allowed to suffer so terribly and unfairly. He does, however, realize that God’s purposes are way too unfathomable for him to justifiably raise this complaint.

This is not a comforting answer. But despite all the suffering and frustration with the world, I think there is something interesting about how God has allowed us to wrestle with that question itself. Instead of making everything agreeable and pleasant, he’s given us a choice: to keep wrestling with these difficult questions, as Job did, or to turn away from him instead.

This is why I think faith is fundamentally about our personal response to God: do we want to go on the journey, or not? That choice determines the rest of our outlook on life - everything afterwards is just rationalization. And for me I still feel drawn to God even as I encounter questions, frustrations, and doubts. I don’t know why. You can try to explain it with my background, my desires, my thoughts - but there have been plenty of people in a similar situation who have chosen otherwise. So it just is.

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How do you know that you are not just talking to yourself?

As I said, there is no foolproof way, Patrick. I do not know for sure. There can always be other explanations. But I choose to believe. I tried to explain that in my previous post. Did you even read the whole of it? I did not write that lightly.

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I read to the whole thing and it is an honest representation of your beliefs. Your beliefs seem to serve you well. And they bring purpose and meaning to your life. Nothing wrong with that.

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