CAN WE REALLY JUDGE GOD?

 

 

Judging requires knowledge and the wisdom to apply that knowledge. To have wisdom is also to recognize the limits of our knowledge. Consequently, I recognize that I do not have the knowledge to tell my dentist how to do his job. Instead, wisdom directs me to check the reviews and recommendations before choosing a dentist.

We might have great knowledge in one area, but pride can mislead us to believe that we have great knowledge in other areas. Cornelius Hunter gives us an example:

·       “The feeblest of designers,” writes [evolutionist] Steve Jones, “could improve [the structure of the human eye].” This and other examples, says Jones, show that complex organs are “not the work of some great composer but of an insensible drudge: an instrument, like others, built by a tinkerer [the evolutionary process] rather than by a trained engineer.” (Hunter, Darwin’s God, p.83.)

 

Jones admits that if the world is the product of blind evolution, then it should reflect the imperfect work of “the feeblest of designers.” However, if the designer of the world is the perfect, omnipotent and omniscient God, then His workmanship should reflect perfection.

 

Can we recognize perfection when we see it? Let’s just take the human eye, whose design Jones so glibly disparages. If perfection is judged by what the eye can do—how it functions, repairs itself, and integrates harmoniously with the rest of the body’s systems—we should be awe-struck. How the eye converts light waves into millions of chemical-electrical impulses, sends them off to the brain in organized, instantaneous, sequential patterns which are then reconstructed by the mind, drawing upon memory and other centers of learning, before converting the data into the substance of decisions, goes far beyond what we can understand and anything human technology can create, let alone mindless processes. It is these visual impulses that enable us to make fine distinctions among a myriad of similar faces and to make thousands of precise decisions whenever we ride a bicycle.

 

When do our eyes mislead us? When do they give us incorrect data? Who has invented something superior to the eye so that he would pluck it out and implant his own invention? Rather, let us compare our eye with what unintelligent natural forces fabricate. Have natural forces ever collaborated to produce anything of complexity and functionality? Has gravity ever written poetry? Has a hurricane ever recited Shakespeare, or has it ever called out your name? Has electricity ever painted your portrait or told you, “I love you?” Have the tides ever written your name on the sand? Instead, it can be persuasively argued that unintelligent forces have never produced an object with the appearance of intelligent design. It’s like throwing paint on a canvas and expecting to eventually come up with the Mona Lisa. 

 

Does nature reflect the workmanship of the “feeblest of designers”—evolution? According to Cornelius Hunter, “bats map out objects as small as mosquitoes by sensing the echoes of their own squeaks,” hardly the workmanship of a “tinkerer!”

 

·       “[Fish] use underwater electric fields either passively or actively to sense objects around them including other fish. The details of such systems would fill books. Anyone familiar with today’s sonar or radar systems knows the immense complexity inherent in such systems: the problems of sensing the echo in the presence of the transmitted signal…Yet the bat’s detection abilities are superior to those of the best electronic sonar equipment.” (Hunter, pg. 72)

 

Then consider “the rattlesnake with heat-sensitive (infrared) sensors to image its prey at night.” Or consider the owl “with ears tuned to different frequencies, to better track its prey” (Hunter). Somehow, these systems are perfect enough to keep their owners from going hungry. In fact, the evidence in favor of an intelligent Designer is so striking that:

 

·       “Amherst College astronomy professor George Greenstein (a pantheist or something similar), [writes], ‘As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency, or rather Agency, must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially created the cosmos for our benefit?’” (Henry F. Schaefer, Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence, p.62.)

 

Do these wonders represent evidence of perfection and a Supreme Designer? If their design and construction represent more than just chance, then the only Candidate left standing is God. Can the skeptical judge build a case against ID?  Steven Jones has claimed that the human eye is so flawed that natural random causation can easily explain it (but can random causation explain anything?). However, even if he could assemble from scratch something better, along with a mind that can accurately interpret and reconstruct its millions of impulses each moment, he faces many other obstacles:

 

·       Proving that his creation does not have hidden costs, for instance, by undermining other systems along with various other long range costs or tradeoffs.

 

·       Demonstrating that mindless forces, if they exist, can even construct and assemble these structures.

 

What do these considerations have to do with the challenges against God’s righteousness? It is claimed that if God is all-powerful and all-loving, He should have created us without the possibility of suffering and death.

Let’s put aside the possibility such beings could have possibly been “naturally” created. Let’s also set aside the question of whether our forces of science are actually natural. Instead, let’s just look at the question of the hidden costs – the long-range consequences – of creating such beings who live timelessly without suffering any consequences.

 

Is it possible that deathlessness or painlessness might negatively impact God’s blessed plain for humanity? Wouldn’t this make us like lepers who cannot experience pain? It is only later that they will suffer the consequences.

 

How can the skeptic investigate eternity to see the consequences? To judge God, he would have to have knowledge of the big picture of eternity. Perhaps suffering and death are necessary to prepare us for eternity:

·       So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. (2 Corinthians 4:16–17)

 

Can the skeptic discount this? No! We lack knowledge of the big picture, apart from the little that the Bible reveals. Therefore, if the skeptic is going to bring any charges against God, he needs to see the big picture – eternity! Consequently, Jones is like the 1^st grader who wrongly judges his teacher for not teaching math correctly. If the first grader lacks the necessary knowledge to bring a cogent charge against his teacher, perhaps we are in the same situation when we attempt to discount God’s righteousness.

 

However, we cannot leave our analysis at this point since the skeptic will ask:

·       Well, if you admit that you cannot judge God, what basis do you have to believe in your God?

 

Admittedly, there is much that goes far beyond our understanding. However, there is much that we do understand. Perhaps we should be likened to children who do not understand much about their parents plans but have learned and experienced parental love and care. These children also know about the will of their parents – the results of pleasing and displeasing them.

Jesus has proved Himself to me in many ways. He has purchased me with His own blood, and I am thrilled to belong to Him and to serve Him with every fiber of my being.