There is no doubt about it, when you think about the fact that we exist in a universe that is adapted for life, that the fact that we do is a bit strange, unlikely, even. In terms of physics, which is where more of this sort of thinking springs from, the basic strengths of the forces need only have been a little different and the universe as we know it, and hence, presumably, life, could not have come into existence.
There is a need for considerable caution here,
of course. We do not know why the physical constants which determine the
strength of the forces in the universe have the values they do. Nor do we know whether
there are a huge number of universes, and we just happen to be in one with this
set of values for the forces and hence life can come into existence and observe
them. It gets, in short, complicated.
A simple response is to say that if the universe
is such a finely tuned machine, it must have a tuner; if the universe is such a
well-designed machine, it must have a designer, and hence determine that the
simple existence of the universe is evidence for the existence of God. Some
people accept this, of course, and some people do not. In a sceptical age we
perhaps need rather more.
A God of traditional theism is eternal, omniscient,
omnipresent, omnipotent, perfectly free and perfectly good. This God is,
therefore, unlike anything we know about through any other means. God is not a
human agent, or a human like agent. The designer God, the God of the fine-tuned
universe is known by analogy with human designers. This God is inscrutable. We
have no reason to suppose that this God will favour creating humans, or a
human-friendly universe, over any other universe. Why should such a God care
about humans or indeed, life? Indeed, what would ‘caring’ look like to such a
being?
An alternative would be to propose a god like
those of ancient Rome, where the deities have human attributes. You could argue
that some aspects of the Christian God, particularly in the Hebrew Bible and be
partially characterized in this way. Such gods seem to be ruled out by modern
science, however. The God of Christian faith is not a human-like ‘superagent’
able to create a universe but with otherwise human-like attributes.
A modification of these views is to hypothesise
that the designer God is defined as the God that designs the current universe.
If the other ideas are a response to the facts of the existence of the universe
and life within it, this one seems an even more desperate attempt to rescue
some sort of God of the philosophers by special pleading.
The problem here seems to be, in fact,
specifically about the ‘God of the philosophers’. That is, the discussion
centres around what, exactly, a human (or set of humans who ponder these sorts
of things) can say about God. Philosophers, when thinking about God,
specifically rule out revelation and incarnation; that is they discard anything
related to the Bible and its evidence for God, and about the life, ministry,
death and resurrection of Jesus. This may well be true of philosophers working
in the realms of other faith traditions as well, but I have no idea.
The problem with the God of the philosophers,
from the position of someone with faith, is that their god is a fairly bloodless
and rather pointless individual. The criticisms of this god are valid: and
omniscient, omnipotent and so on god would be totally alien to a human. How and
why should a human worship, or even care about such a god, unless that god was
malevolent and would strike the human down for not doing so?
Even if such a deity existed and demanded
worship with menaces, they would not approach the deity of Christian faith. It
is a rather strange fact of life that, often it seems, non-believers and even
the odd philosopher seem to prefer the God of the Old Testament (broadly read
as a God of vengeance and awesome power) to the God of the New Testament of
love and humility.
Reformed Epistemology attempts to read the
world from the other end of the telescope. If we can intuitively know of God,
then we do not need to prove the existence of God and all these other
considerations fall away. We can, according to this account, suddenly ‘see’ or ‘know’
God through a flash of insight. We do not need to argue our way towards the
existence of God. In philosophical language knowledge of the existence of God
is properly basic, in the same way that ‘2+2 = 4’ is properly basic – it is not
something that you really need to prove. The God of the philosophers is a deity
you argue to, and you can argue about the foundations of your argument.
We have little or no experience of
super-beings, a God who can create the universe and life is certainly one of
them. But what if that God decided to reveal themselves to us? After all, by
hypothesis, God is free. That does rather beg the question as to why this
otherwise inscrutable God should choose so to do, and that is a question which
we cannot answer. Why God should choose to create a universe, life and humans
whom He loves is not a question we can answer. After all, we might think we can
answer the question as to why the cat chooses to sleep at my feet for an hour
or two a day, but I doubt if we really can. Her choices are alien even though I
can observe them directly.
The point here, of course, is that the God of
the philosophers is a lop-sided God. If God is the God of traditional theism, then
He is inscrutable, unless He chooses not to be. In which case we need to take
the evidence of the Bible, of revelation and incarnation seriously, even though
it cannot be subject to the same sort of scientific enquiry that the universe
can be subjected to.
