Sunday, August 12, 2007

Metaphysical Inevitabilities

The Skeptic maintains a naturalistic mindset, but how successful is he at maintaining this? For instance, he laughs and scoffs, "What evidence do you have for the existence of God? He cannot be detected by natural processes so He must not exist." And so the Believer begins down yet another road of answering the same age old questions, variations of "God made everything, well who made God?" and "Is God so all-powerful that He could make a rock that He couldn't lift?" and "If all things are possible with God, can He lie?" And it seems that as many answers as you provide, there seems to be an endless list of questions, always with the pretense that if someone can answer them all, that the person will consider believing in God.

But there seems to be a point where the Skeptic has had a reasonable number of these big questions answered. (Sidenote: most of these big questions have been answered hundreds of years ago, so I wonder if skeptics have ever really gone out in search of the answers for themselves? I'm sure that many honest skeptics have, but therefore why hold on to the questions when the answers are there?) With the big questions answered, the Skeptic finds himself in an odd position: What reasons do I have for maintaining a skeptic's viewpoint? In the face of evidence, do I reconsider my position or blindly hope for a better overall answer that might support my skepticism?

If all the big questions are answered, and the Skeptic is presented every logical and coherent argument for the existence of God (and the validity of the Christian faith), then what prevent s the Skeptic from believing? Can it be said, therefore that the Skeptic also relies on something beyond the naturalistic worldview that he supposedly espouses? Is there a kind of faith at work in the heart of the Skeptic, a hint of the metaphysical in the tenacity with which he clutches to naturalism? A dogmatic line which he draws in the sand, "I don't care how many good answers I get for these questions, I will simply choose not to believe." Does anyone besides me see the glaring hypocrisy in this untenable position? Christians and theists have been accused of believing in a "god of the gaps," yet the naturalist has no problem postulating beyond his understanding with some sort of "science of the gaps" explanation. "Why do I love my wife? I don't know, but one day Science will even be able to answer that question."

But just for a moment, I would like the Skeptic to consider: If your naturalistic position can be maintained above and beyond every rational explanation counter to your position, then you are operating on a metaphysical level - therefore there is something else out there beyond the physical universe - and what is religion if it is not our attempts to answer the issues of life that stem from this unseen and yet very real part of life?

It could even be argued at this point that questioning the existence of God is in itself evidence for the existence of God, or at the very least for the existence of a metaphysical reality.