Day 26 – good question, wrong time (II)
A loving God could not possibly be the author of the horrors we have been describing; it is obvious that there cannot be a loving God. –CHARLES TEMPLETON
Imagine that you enter a bakery and notice on one of its tables a three-tiered wedding cake. You marvel at its design, noting it to be one of the most beautiful cakes you have ever seen. Its three cylindrical sections are aligned with such precision that there is no hint of asymmetry. Its snow-white icing is as smooth as the surface of a pond on a calm day. Bordering each section is more icing, strands of pink in a rope-like configuration. You smile as you observe on top of the cake's surface the ornate bride and groom figurines, facing each other as if repeating their vows.
Now imagine that you look around and see that the bakery is devoid of life, save for a small dog lying beside the doorway. Would you, in the absence of anyone in the room, surmise that the wedding cake before you had no baker, that its ingredients threw themselves into three cake pans, baked themselves until done, arranged themselves vertically on the table, and then decorated themselves in so elaborate a fashion? Of course, not! You would assume a baker existed who was responsible for this cake. If you were to ask any question at this time, it would be "Where is the baker?" rather than "Does the baker exist?" The presence of a cake of such intricate design would demand the existence of a baker. This, applied to the universe, is the Argument from Design.
Needing a cake the next week for your son's birthday, imagine further that you leave a note on the table asking the baker to fashion one for the occasion. When you return the day before the birthday, you enter through the same doorway past the same dog and see on the same table a birthday cake you assume to be yours. It, too, is a three-tiered cake with white icing and colored trim, this time blue. It is adorned with seven candles at the top, the words "Happy Birthday" engraved around them.
At first glance you are pleased with the cake, until you step closer and notice the paw prints on its surface. Sometime after the cake was placed on the table, the dog must have raced across it, destroying its perfection. Because of this canine romp, your birthday cake appears to be in some disorder and disarray.
Although no one is present in the bakery, you begin to air your objections aloud. What kind of remarks would you make? Would you begin to scream at the top of your lungs, "There is no baker! The baker doesn't exist!"? No, the disarray of the cake would not cause you to doubt the baker's existence whatsoever. Your remarks would instead be more like this: "What kind of baker would leave a cake unprotected on his table? What kind of baker would let a dog ransack his creation? What kind of baker would allow this to happen?" The disorder evident on the cake's surface would not cause you to question the baker's existence, but it would cause you to call into question the baker’s character.
In the same way, disorder in the universe does not in the least call into question God's existence. Atheists cannot look at the mixture of design and disarray before them and scream, "There is no God! God doesn't exist!" anymore that you could doubt the baker's existence based on the imperfect cake. In light of such imperfection, the character of God, rather than His existence, is called into question. "What kind of God would allow disorder into His universe? Does He not have the power to prevent it from happening, or does He just not care?" These are the type of questions raised by suffering.
Thus, when the atheist points toward an imperfect universe and denies God’s existence, he is running ahead of the group. He is asking a good question ("What is God's nature?") at the wrong time (on the first leg of our journey, when the only question before us is: "Does God exist?"). In effect, he is diverting our attention from the subject at hand. We should encourage him to return to the group and concentrate on the present. He must save his question for a later date.
Evidence of disorder in the universe, it turns out, does not hinder the reality of God. The Argument from Design still stands.
Daily Quotation
Quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, 29.
No comments:
Post a Comment