"5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God" - DAY 46

Day 46 – the argument defined

If the ultimate canvas against which the cosmos is painted is not personal like we are, then we are very much like fish out of water. 
                                                        –GREGORY A. BOYD

Suppose you and I are invited to a friend's house for coffee and dessert. Upon entering, we are escorted into his dining room and asked to have a seat. Seconds later our friend returns from the kitchen with three cups of freshly brewed coffee and three slices of homemade chocolate pie. He informs us that he prepared the coffee and pie in his kitchen just before our arrival. If he is telling the truth, you and I can look at the drink and dessert before us and know in part what his kitchen is like. Even without stepping one foot into it, we can be certain that it contains an oven or microwave, because the first bites of pie we put into our mouths are warm. We know that it has a refrigerator to keep the cream in our coffee cold and the eggs in the meringue topping fresh. We also correctly assume that the kitchen has utensils to stir coffee with, pans to pour chocolate filling into, and spices that give flavor to both. Every characteristic of the coffee and chocolate pie must be explained by the kitchen in which they were made. In fact, if the pie is hot and our friend tells us his kitchen has no heating appliance, we would say to him that it cannot be a product of his kitchen alone.

Now suppose that you and I attend a banquet that evening. As we converse with people at our table, we find that we have several characteristics in common. We each have "a mind that is self-aware and rational, a heart which is free and can love and which is, therefore, morally responsible, and a soul (or call it what you will) which longs for meaning and significance." Just as sure as we described the pie as warm and the coffee as spicy, we determine that everyone at our table has these traits: reason, morality, and purpose. 

We then turn our attention to the guest speaker at the banquet. He introduces himself as an atheist and begins to explain his view of the world. During his speech, he quotes existentialist atheist Jean-Paul Sartre: "It is meaningless that we are born; it is meaningless that we die." Then he quotes atheist Sigmund Freud: "The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence." He goes on to express the unanimous opinion of atheists by describing the universe as irrational, amoral, and purposeless. 

When he is finished and the floor is opened for questions, you stand to your feet and begin to speak:

Sir, this afternoon I enjoyed coffee and pie prepared in my friend's kitchen. The pie was warm and the coffee spicy, so I knew that the kitchen had to have warmth and spices within it. I knew that anything that came from his kitchen must be explained by it. But what you are telling me tonight about the universe is just the opposite. I am surrounded at my table by men and women who are rational, moral, and purposeful. That we are all products of nature and nature alone you boldly proclaim. Then you turn around and say that nature itself, the “kitchen” from which we are made, has no reason or morals or purpose. You are claiming that nature has produced humans with characteristics it does not itself possess. How, sir, is this possible? If nature has no reason, morals, and purpose and humans do, doesn't it mean that these traits must have originated somewhere else than nature? Doesn't this prove that something other than nature is out there, that a supernatural world exists? Doesn't the existence of these personal traits in a world considered devoid of them demand the existence of God? 

You then sit down, having just voiced my fourth argument for God's existence, what I call the Argument from Human Characteristics.

 

Daily Quotations 

Gregory A. Boyd and Edward K. Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic, 56.

Ronald Hepburn, in Antony Flew and Alasdair, New Essays in Philosophical Theory (New York: Macmillan, n.d.), 140.

Ernest L. Freud, ed., Letters of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth, 1961), 432.