More on the Supernatural

There are some comments worth reading that were recently published at the bottom of my post on the Root of My Agnosticism, including a response from me.

Since I like to keep record of what I've written, I'm posting my response to Amanda's comment here:

Perhaps I was a bit unclear in my reasoning regarding a few of the arguments for God's existence.

My discussions of the "Moral Argument" were intended to comprise a rejection of it. I listed Ravi Zacharias' claims as those with which I disagree. I will grant that an absence of God does change the way many people look at Law, Hope, and Meaning. Nonetheless, a human desire for absolute law, hope for the future, and meaning to our lives does not necessitate God, as RZ seems to argue in the linked sermons and in his book Can Man Live Without God. This amounts to wishing God into existence because he would be the last piece of our law/hope/meaning puzzles. I reject the argument as wishful thinking.

My point about the cosmological argument was that the very concept of causation depends entirely on the meaning of time. The foundation of the cause/effect relationship is removed when time cannot be used as a descriptor. With space and time unequivocally linked since Einstein, there is no meaning to the phrase "before the beginning of the universe." To describe what happened before the universe ( e.g., to describe the cause of the universe) is to describe what happened before time. Again, you cannot have a concept of "before" without the concept of time. Thus, the cosmological argument dissolves into meaninglessness as soon as you begin to describe the cause that existed before the universe.

Now to the teleological argument. You mentioned that you "cannot believe that such intricacy came out of chaos in the way that philosophical evolution mandates." This is one where, I must admit, I do not have a firm answer. I am an engineer professionally and academically (BS, MS, working on a PhD). The only means I have of understanding complexity is through deliberate design. However, the field of biology works with different materials (life), leverages different design influences (natural selection, mutation), and has only one metric for success (survival through reproduction). While I am not fully convinced of these mechanisms' ability to create the living complexity around us, I am not a biologist; I am putting a lot of thought to this now. Aside from evolution, the question of abiogenesis - a completely separate field of thought - must also be considered.

However, I recognize that my position - and yours - amount to a logical fallacy: the argument from personal incredulity. Just because we do not currently understand how something could happen does not mean that it did not occur. To claim that life neither sprang from non-living elements (abiogenesis) nor gradually shaped itself into the natural world as we know it (evolution) simply because we do not understand how it could have happened is not a strong argument. Thus, to find a more satisfactory answer, I am seeking, reading, and pondering.

In short, I do not think we are on the same page with respect to your concluding points 1-3 in your final paragraph. The arguments - moral, cosmological, and teleological - break down into wishful thinking, misapplied logic, and a mystery, respectively. So, hope for a successful argument for the existence of God does lie in the argument from miracles alone, unsupported by the others listed. The others are wrong, inconclusive, or do not lead to God.

The reliability of the Bible is an enormous field. Questions include: Was it reproduced and translated correctly from the original autographs? Did the various councils of Christian fathers (e.g. Council of Nicea) make the correct choices in determining the cannon of scripture? Does it describe historically verifiable events correctly? These are all important, and very well addressed by the references you mention. However, this does not address where I am stuck.

For the sake of brevity, let's grant that the Bible we have is exactly what was written by the original authors, all the books included in it are exclusively the correct ones with no omissions, and that it is generally accurate in describing testable historical events ( e.g., city locations, who was a ruler and when, wars, etc.). This still does nothing to establish a precedent to believe the Biblical authors when they make claims about the supernatural. Fallacies could have been correctly reproduced throughout history in a document that records a mostly accurate secular history of events interwoven with tales of the supernatural. Just because the book was reproduced correctly does not mean that what is being reproduced is true. Just because the book describes wars and rulers to within reasonable limits of accuracy does not mean that when it begins to describe the supernatural, we should believe it on these points as well.

A review of my original post reveals my position that the supernatural can only be understood through experience. We have two means of acquiring knowledge as human beings: reason and experience. The supernatural is something that by definition defies reason -- the only explanation for the supernatural is something outside the reasonable, natural world. There does not exist a process rooted solely in reason that can have us understand the resurrection of a dead man. Thus, I make the case that experiencing a miracle is the only means by which we can acquire knowledge of a miracle or supernatural event. Having not experienced the miracles - including the resurrection of Christ - I claim that there is no means through reason that one can gain knowledge of them, and thus belief in them. Therefore, I do not believe in the supernatural, having neither experienced it nor been given reason to believe in it.