There is an ongoing PBS TV series (also several books and also a website) called "Closer to Truth".
It is hosted by neuroscientist Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
He's featured in one-on-one interviews and panel discussions with the cream of the cream of today's cosmologists, physicists, philosophers, theologians, psychologists, etc.
on all of the Big Questions surrounding a trilogy of broad topics - Cosmos; Consciousness; Meaning.
The trilogy collectively dealt with reality, space and time, mind and consciousness, aliens, theology and on and on and on.
Here are a few more of my comments on one of the general topics covered, God Almighty.
Does God Make Sense? God of the Old Testament says "Thou shall not kill".
It's one of the Ten Commandments.
God of the Old Testament is a mass murderer, Big Time (for example Noah's Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tenth Plague, and Pharaoh's Army).
So we have a 'do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do' God.
God doesn't exactly set a good example.
This is a God of the double standard.
Does that make any sense? Can God Face Up To Evil? We've nearly all seen, read or heard about the desperate plight of the Christians in Iraq who have been forced by the ISIS (or the self-proclaimed, egotistical, and so-called Islamic State) to convert to Islam or else flee for their very lives leaving anything and everything behind them.
The other alternative was capture, torture and execution by the Islamic militants, and many Iraqi Christians have suffered that fate too.
In the histories of the world, this is just the most recent of hundreds of persecutions of those who put their belief, faith and trust in God.
The Big Question is, what is their God doing about all this? Why isn't God smiting their Islamic persecutors? Is God afraid of Allah? Perhaps God's unsaid message here is along the lines of "I don't give a damn about you; don't come to me with your problems.
If you want the Islamic fanatics smitten, do it yourself.
" So much for a caring, loving, merciful God.
It's either that of course, or, the more obvious alternative, which is there is no God to lend a helping hand to the faithful and His believers (and no Allah either for that matter).
So the entire dispute is a religious nonsense.
Of course this isn't really about religion (Islam versus Christianity) rather it's all about the Islamic State achieving political power.
How Should We Think about God's Existence 1? Before one can think about God's existence, it would be helpful to have first established that God exists.
I can think about a teapot orbiting the planet Neptune, but my thoughts would be taken a bit more seriously if I could first establish that there was a teapot orbiting Neptune.
Christianity, be it the extreme right wing variety of fundamental evangelism or the more middle-of-the-road varieties, is based on one and only one thing - that God exists.
Yet they never, ever, offer up any proof, or even evidence of that alleged 'fact' except to endlessly and endlessly quote the Bible - a very suspect document IMHO.
From the pope right on down the theological line to your local vicar, no proof, even evidence, is in the offering.
If I accuse someone of something, say murder, then the burden of proof is on me to show beyond any doubt that that someone is guilty as charged, not on that someone to prove anything to the contrary.
In like fashion, if someone claims that God exists and has certain attributes, then the burden of proof is on that person to prove his or her claim.
How Should We Think about God's Existence 2? When thinking about, or believing in God's existence, at least on a national level, there appears to be a contradiction.
Now the United States is a very religious (in God we trust) nation and no doubt multi-millions of American citizens pray each day to God Almighty on behalf of the collective to keep America safe and smite America's enemies.
Yet, America has absolutely no faith that God will actually go to bat for America.
The USA doesn't seem to base its foreign and defence policy around God.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor America's response wasn't to let God sort out the Japanese, rather America mobilized it's military forces and sorted out the Japanese themselves.
In fact, I don't believe any Christian nation actually expects an all-powerful God to actually act directly on their behalf, yet that makes for a far more taxpayer friendly foreign affairs and defence option.
What this really suggests is that they believe in God but have no faith that God will actually strut His stuff on their behalf.
Nowhere is that more obvious then with respect to Israel.
Israel is God's chosen country and the Hebrews or Israelites are God's chosen people.
Yet when crunch comes crunch, it's the Israeli military that kicks butt.
The Jewish people can believe in God until the cows come home but that belief didn't amount to a hill of beans during the Holocaust.
Even Muslims don't rely on Allah to smite the infidels - they'd much rather do that themselves! So, a nation's belief in God is widespread.
Belief that God will actually get up off His throne and do things for believers in Him at that national level is pretty much a non-starter.
That's a contradiction IMHO.
Considering God's Existence? Something is screwy somewhere! Has anyone really stopped to consider how crazy this notion of God's existence really is? Consider this brick inscribed with the following: "Hypothesis: There exists a supernatural deity who created life, the Universe and everything.
There is however no hardcore supporting evidence far less proof that this supernatural deity really exists other than life, the Universe and everything exists.
" But from that 'what if' brick, humans have constructed a house of cards, or bricks, the size of Buckingham Palace.
Never have so many constructed so much out of so little, from religious texts and resulting tens of thousands of interpretations of those; to an entire nation (the Vatican); to entire cultures that revolve around that one tiny brick; to infrastructure worth billions upon billions of dollars.
So one tiny 'what if' brick of an idea has spawned a multi-billion, even trillion dollar industry.
There's over-the-top and then there's Over-The-Top! If you remove or negate just that one brick a significant part of human 'civilization' collapses in a heap.
Someone had to have been the first to say what a fantastic idea it was that was so inscribed on this one theological brick, only perhaps one had better delete the words "hypothesis" and the sentence starting with "There is however no hardcore...
".
And now most of human society dances to this person's tune.
Like I said, there's something screwy somewhere! Arguing God from Consciousness? ["Closer to Truth" contributor] J.
P.
Moreland argues that consciousness cannot be an emergent property from physics and chemistry.
Consciousness is fundamental from the get-go, from the moment of the Big Bang, the creation of the Universe.
The only thing that can create consciousness is consciousness and the only conscious being that can explain the creation of consciousness is God.
Okay, that's one point of view, but Moreland cannot prove that consciousness cannot arise from physics and chemistry, only state that he doesn't believe that it is so.
However, listening to him, he seems to be expressing factual material, not personal opinion.
I personally think that consciousness can arise as an emergent property from the laws, principles and relationships of physics and chemistry, but I express this as a matter of personal belief.
IMHO, consciousness is not a fundamental property of the cosmos that always has been and always will be.
Arguing God from Morality? Is there any historical evidence that humanity exhibited any lesser a degree of morality or ethics before God and monotheism came on the scene? If so, I'm not aware of it.
Is there any archaeological evidence that prehistoric humans, be they Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, or the Neanderthals (and related human species) were any less moral and ethical in their behaviour based on what can be interpreted from the fossil record relative to modern humans who have been exposed to God's morality? If so, I'm not aware of it.
Is there any zoological evidence that our modern primate relations (chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, etc.
), and presumably also our ancient primate ancestors, are or were any less moral or ethical in their intra-species dealings than modern Homo sapiens? If so I'm not aware of it.
In fact one could make a solid case for the exact opposite.
I think primates are far more moral in their intra-species dealings relative to the human species.
In short, I see no evidence that 'modern' humanity that has been exposed to God/Jesus (via the Bible and theologians) and of course monotheism are any the more moral or ethical in their behaviour than any member of the ancestral human tree or other primate species who have never had the 'pleasure' of that exposure.
There appears to be no correlation between God, level of moral behaviour and mankind past and present (and primate-kind too).
Arguing God from Moral Law? ["Closer to Truth" contributor] J.
P.
Moreland argues that "There are several features of morality that are best explained if there is a personal God that is the origin of morality".
In other words, moral laws require a moral lawgiver and thus morality cannot be explained by evolutionary naturalism.
Moreland further argues that if all humans are equal, that only makes sense if humans were created in God's image.
A trilogy of points need to point out Moreland's bovine fertilizer.
How any theologian can argue that God is a moral God is beyond me.
Such pontification requires the author to either be ignorant of the extremely immoral behaviour of God as described in the Old Testament, immorality that makes those Islamic State extremists seem downright saintly in comparison, or else has conveniently overlooked that document.
All humans may be equal, but they are not equal in the eyes of God.
Firstly, according to the Bible, God is the God of Israel.
God is not the God of anywhere else in the world, just Israel.
The Bible uses the phrase "God of Israel" over 200 times.
God has His "chosen people" and they aren't Australians or Americans or Russians or Chinese or the Japanese either.
Further, God most certainly did not treat everyone equally according to Old Testament texts.
I mean Noah and family got a lot better treatment from God than those forced to sink or swim.
The entirety of the Old Testament reeks of God's favouritism.
Evolution explains morality quite nicely since morality can be observed in the animal kingdom.
I can cite a personal example.
I have two cats.
They absolutely hate each other.
I can count on there being several cat-fights a day.
However, there are certain occasions when there is a mutual truce in force.
No cat will attack the other cat when the other cat is eating, going to the bathroom, or sleeping.
Some sort of moral code is in play under those circumstances.
There are many examples of animals coming to the aid of other animals.
One case I can cite is a cockatoo tangled up in some wires.
Other cockatoos brought the tangled bird food.
It had a happy ending when humans came to the rescue and freed the bird.
Stories of dolphins protecting humans from sharks are legendary.
Cats, cockatoos, dolphins haven't read the Bible.
The concept of God and God's [alleged] morality is meaningless to them.
They didn't get their morality from God.
Moreland might argue the existence of God from moral law, but I don't.
God and morality are two words that bear no relationship to each other.
Is God a "Person"? Who needs LSD when you have ["Closer to Truth" contributor] J.
P.
Moreland to twist your sense of reality on its head? In this "Closer to Truth" interview, Moreland notes that God is all-loving and all-just, in total contradiction to what's related in the Old Testament.
Be that as it may...
He states that physics has nothing to do with the fundamental nature of reality rather that falls under the guise of psychology.
Now I would imagine that there would be a whole army of physicists and physical scientists who would take Moreland to task on his disassociation of physics as the ways and means to come to terms with reality.
But, there's also this flaw that there was a interval post Big Bang where there was no life that existed in the cosmos.
No life means no brains, no mind, no sense of identity, no self-awareness, and no consciousness.
If a psychologist were to time travel back to just after the creation of the Universe, they would have nothing to study! There were no humans available to occupy couches in offices or get tested laboratories along the lines that currently are inhabited by psychologists.
Yet Moreland insists that persons are the most fundamental of fundamentals.
Humans are fundamentally spiritual beings who have been given at this point in time physical bodies that try to have a human life; humans are not just minds and physical bodies that try to have a spiritual life.
I really do think that's reality turned upside down.
Is God Perfect? ["Closer to Truth" contributor] J.
P.
Moreland notes some of the various attributes of his perfect God.
God is wise, God is kind, God is gentle, God is just, and God is fair.
Clearly Moreland has not read the Old Testament, a massive oversight given his professional career.
Or if Moreland has read the Old Testament he treats it as a work of mythological fiction.
No matter which way you slice and dice things, God of the Old Testament doesn't have the attributes that Moreland mentions.
Moreland somehow fails to mention genocide and mass murder and an almighty temper as among God's perfect attributes.
I think Moreland is guilty of cherry-picking.
If I were to grade Moreland, well, the word in a nutshell is "Fail".
Does God have a Nature? God's nature regarding the Seven Deadly Sins is revealing.
The Seven Deadly Sins are: vainglory, envy, anger, melancholy, avarice, gluttony and lust.
Now which one(s) can be pinned on God? Well, vainglory certainly applies as God is surely up Himself in no uncertain terms.
He certainly seems to be envious of the other gods never missing a chance to put them down.
There is certainly no doubting god's anger, oft noted as God's wrath or the wrath of God.
I think that God is off the hook with respect to the final four.
Still, God gets sent to the sin-bin on at least three accounts! Does God Mix with Science? Does God mix with science? The very question presumes that there is such an entity as God, and that is not an absolute given.
There is no evidence for God, but at least there is evidence that science exists.
IMHO, the question is asking for a mix between a probable nothing and an absolute something.
Novel Visions of the Divine? Superman is disguised as Clark Kent; Batman as Bruce Wayne, so why not God's alter ego being Santa Claus? Think about it.
Santa is about as all-powerful as it gets lugging presents around for multi tens of millions of kids in just one sack.
That sack must weigh multi dozens upon dozens of tons.
Santa is omnipresent on Christmas Eve, or as close to it as makes no odds.
Of course Santa is all-knowing as the well-known Christmas song testifies to.
Only someone supernatural could slide up and down those chimneys faster than a speeding bullet and where there are no chimneys, waft ghost-like through doors and walls and drink those millions of glasses of milk and eat those millions upon millions of cookies left out for Him without the need to take the time out to go to the bathroom.
He doesn't even need to start dieting the next day! Santa loves little children as only a deity could.
Only a deity could get reindeer to fly and of course all those elves aren't wee-folk but angels just earning their keep.
Santa is immortal.
Santa has that traditional God-like beard and wrinkles.
And only God acting as Santa can afford to give away something for nothing since He can create something out of nothing.
Little children (and the retail trade) worship Santa probably more than God in defiance of God's commandments, yet God doesn't strike them down with lightning bolts or in other ways associated with God's wrath, which makes sense if Santa is just God in disguise.
Finally, why would God play Santa Claus? Well God can't just sit around all day and all night pondering all of those what-ifs and might-have-beens and all those eternals that keep theologians and philosophers awake into the wee hours of the morning.
As Santa He gets something to do to get Him out of the house and into a bit of fresh air and some exercise too and also enable Him to keep closer tabs on His earthly kingdom.
So, a novel vision of the divine equates to God dressing up every year and becoming Santa Claus!