A Tale of Two Architects

The Ride of My Life: Conclusion

2006-05-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

If God does indeed exist, is it not fair to assume that the feeling I have described for my daughter here is similar to the feeling He has for us? Wouldn't God be willing to jump in front of a train for us? Did He? Why would his love for us be dependent on our love for Him? Is it?

St. Augustine's Confessions is one of the more influential books of all time, and it begins with a prayer. In Chapter II of Book One Augustine speaks to the presence of God throughout "heaven and earth," and states, in effect, that no container could ever contain him. He is present everywhere, at all times. When I drove to my office from the mall that day, I was not hit with a blinding presence or a bolt of lightning, I merely acknowledged that God is present, here on Earth, and in my life. It was time to stop pushing Him away. The further I drove the more I felt the truth of this acknowledgment, and I became more and more excited. I could feel layers of pride washing away. I could feel a burden lifting from my shoulders, and the relief was palpable.

Finally, I pulled into the parking lot of my office. I looked at the window of my office. I put my head in my arms on the steering wheel of my car and started to sob. My experience was quite similar to the experience described here. I cried uncontrollably for what seemed like an hour, but was probably more like a few minutes.

When I lifted my head out of my arms, I was a Christian. God had jumped in front of a train for me, and now I would accept that gift of grace and love Him in return.

On a sunny Alaska day in 1992, a tale of two architects was thus complete.

* * * * *

[One year and ninety-nine posts ago, I started this project with the following statement: "I began adulthood as avowed atheist, and today, 25 years later, I have accepted that God came to this earth in human form to redeem mankind, to offer mankind the gift of salvation. The purpose of this blog is, among other things, to recount the path of these developments, and through an honest recounting, explore issues relating to such a transformation." Having accomplished the expressed purpose of this "tale," this is my last post.

I wish those who have stopped by or followed along the very best, and welcome any thoughts, comments or correspondence at pdspds@gmail.com. May God bless you and your families.]

The Ride of My Life-2

2006-05-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last few days on a family car trip, with my wife and 5-year old daughter.

These kinds of trips allow for the observation of our daughter for extended periods of time. I get to go swimming with her, take walks with her, read books to her, watch her react to new events and stimulus, and see her grow. These trips are like self-imposed signposts that interrupt the continuum of everyday life. I haven't mentioned this before, but my wife and I were married 10 years before our daughter came along, and there was a time when we assumed, alas, that we could not have our own child. Perhaps this makes us appreciate her even more.

This is one way a child teaches the meaning of love: I find that I actually love our child more as each day passes. There must be some limitless quantum of love available to me for her, because every time I think I have "maxed out", a new day comes and she does something more adorable or unique or intriguing (or maybe nothing at all) and I find myself filled with even more love for her than I thought was possible. Perhaps love is a recognition of this evolution of feeling, and a recognition that the word "quantity" does not apply.

Like any worthwhile parent, I would jump in front of a train for this child.

And, like any worthwhile parent, my love for this child is not dependent on her love for me.

The Ride of My Life-1

2006-05-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

After having spent an hour or so in the mall I decided to shut the book and drive to work.

I have mentioned before that C.S. Lewis, one of the foremost defenders of Christianity in the 20th century--certainly in the overall Pantheon of apologists to come from that very first Easter Sunday--once described his coversion to faith in the following way: "In 1929 C.S. Lewis found himself challenged with God’s existence. This important milestone in his conversion journey was reached rather suddenly. As he tells the story, on one occasion during this time he happened to take a bus ride. When he got on the bus he was an atheist. When he came to his stop, he got off the bus believing in God’s existence. Not that Lewis was seeking God. He said he didn’t really want to find him. The revelation about God’s existence was something of a fright to him. He wrote in Surprised by Joy: "Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat." "

In much the same way, God came to me on my ride from a mall on my way to work during an Alaska Spring in April 1992.

I have racked my brain for the precise thought process or "tipping point" on that drive, but must candidly admit that I am at a loss to explain it. I just remember that when I got in my car that morning I was still on the fence, and by the time I got to the parking lot of my office, a fifteen minute drive later, I was not.

God's Presence-3 (cont'd)

2006-05-04T05:22:00.000-07:00

I woke up on Saturday morning on a mission to find More Than A Carpenter, and to start dissecting it once again. My wife was in Europe, and, although I had some minor details to attend to at work, I had the entire day to devote to the task at hand. I also had a slight hangover to contend with, as I had been out with a couple of pals far too long the night before.

After breakfast, I went to the fairly meager bookshelves of our apartment for the book, and couldn't find it. The more I looked for the book, the more disappointed I became, so, after a time, I went to local bookstores to buy the book. No luck on the first or second try. Finally, I went to a mall with one of "B. Dalton" types of bookstores in it, and purchased a copy. By that time, I had spent almost two hours looking for the book, and was anxious to at least take a look at the Introduction.

So, there I sat on an uncomfortable bench in the middle of a crowded mall on a busy Saturday morning, ice skaters playfully circling the mall's ice rink, cheesy Muzak tunes playing overhead, shoppers walking to and fro, and I read about the reasons why someone might reasonably believe that Jesus died on the Cross and later rose from the dead.

More Regarding More Than A Carpenter

2006-05-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

A fair summary of More Than A Carpenter can be found here.

The concepts and arguments addressed by McDowell's book are, de facto, updated by a man named Lee Strobel, and resources regarding Strobel and his books can be found here.

God's Presence-3

2006-04-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

It had been almost six years since I had put More Than A Carpenter back in the bookshelf.

In those six years, I had finished law school, moved to Alaska, and almost died surfing, hunting, and mountain climbing. I was a proud atheist, but was never quite been able to shake the idea that "something" cannot come from "nothing." More important, I had met my wife-to-be, who was a Christian, and we had married less than year before at the time I picked that book from the shelf once again. Given the circumstances of my childhood, I saw for the first time what thinking Christians acted like, and, given my father's death some years earlier, I was blessed with a new father figure in my life, my father-in-law.

My new wife was to take a trip to Europe for a few weeks to meet her sister in April of 1992. My work situation was such that I was able to take a few days off, and while she was off in Europe, I had it my head that I was going to "figure out" the whole Christianity thing once and for all.

Whither Atheism?

2006-04-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite readers of this blog sent me an email not so long ago questioning whether I ever really was an atheist, as recounted in these pages. The question was not intended to question my integrity, but more (I think) to explore whether I ever truly left the "fold," so to speak.

In truth, I have never considered this question before, and the reader may have unwittingly or very cleverly asked me to address one of the most intriguing but complicated issues in Christianity, i.e, the issue of grace. Rewinding the events of my "atheist years" in my mind, there is little doubt that I sure felt like an atheist. In fact, during those years, I really didn't think the subject of religion was worthy of any mental effort, let alone the time it would take to reject it. Certainly, I was willing to offer snide remarks and other Inside Baseball remarks dismissive of God, but I really do not think they were a veil for some lingering belief in God.

This view is supported by the fact that, on a specific day in April of 1992, I really did experience the classic "conversion" that nonbelievers throughout the world experience when they accept that God's Son came to earth to restore His relationship with humanity. No, I did not run up and down the aisles of a church or start speaking in tongues; I simply surrendered my pride and gave in to God's grace.

In the next few weeks, I am going to focus on how this happened that day, and try to describe what happened on that day. And then I will completed the purpose set out for this project, and, I hope, will have done so to the glory of God.

Guest Post

2006-04-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

For those of you scoring at home, I have a guest post up over at The Gnat's Trumpet.

Family

2006-04-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

My mother's birthday was April 15th, so I flew to Michigan to be with my brother and sisters last weekend. The weather cooperated and Lake Michigan was sparkling. It was a nice time to see what remains of my family, to reminisce, and to get used to our status as orphans.

We celebrated Saturday night by going to dinner at the place we often took my mom, we went bowling, and we capped the evening with a visit to a "dive" bar that might have even given my father some pause. The feel of the evening was easy and pleasant. We shared stories in between lame attempts at strikes, we shared inside jokes, and some very questionable Karaoke was imposed on the audience of the bar--not by me, of course, as they had no Hank Sr. on the playlist.

We almost forgot why we were getting together. I cannot recall having such a time with my own flesh and blood. My mother would have been proud of us, I think. The old man might have been proud too. I have heard all my life that there is no substitute for family. In the last couple of months, I learned what that phrase means.

Caricatures No More-2

2006-04-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

The next blow to my caricature of Christians came when I began to occasionally attend church.

I expected the preachers to be clownish types, attempting to pick my pocket with combination of guilt, bribes or threats of hell. Instead, they generally left me alone. I was impressed by their commitments, but I was most impressed by the persons whom these preachers served.

It has almost become a cultural cliche for some to speak of "Sunday morning" Christians, i.e., those who go to church on Sunday mornings and sit piously smiling at every word the preacher says, and who then run home to yell at their children and kick their dogs. I have never really run into such people in the churches I have attended. Most of the people at met at the time I am discussing, when my faith in atheism was faltering and my caricature of believers was melting, were just decent people. Most such people I meet nowadays can be described this way as well.

Decent people who sometimes had doubts about their faith.

If you ever get a chance to talk to a Rand follower (i.e., an Objectivist), ask him is he has any doubts. My guess is you will hear that he has none. Then ask him how an Objectivist society would finance the world's strongest and most needed military--in an age where mass murderers fly airplanes into skyscrapers-- without taxes, because, you see, Objectivists consider taxes to be immoral. You will hear crickets chirping, or, if you get an answer at all, you hear something akin to a punt to the "legal philosophers," or vague references about a lottery.

Christians punt once in a while too, and I learned that the honest ones sometimes have their doubts. The fact is that everybody punts once in awhile. And everybody should be willing to admit the occasional doubt. That, as I have mentioned before, is part of the drill.

Caricatures No More-1

2006-04-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

One of the sources of comfort for me during my wilderness years was the view that most Christians were idiots. I distinctly remember making fun of them generally, and held a special contempt for their lack of intellectual honesty and curiosity. The Pat Robertsons of the world were a source of glee for me, because I could use them as a template for all believers, and thereby dismiss all issues of faith.

Then I met and started dating the woman who would become my wife. When I first met her, she was finishing her master degree in English Literature. She did not have much interest in arguing matters of faith with me, but she knew Shakespeare, the Romantic poets, and much of literature far better than I did and do. Her life was largely one of intellectual honesty and curiosity. My precious caricature started to wilt just abit.

As I write this, my wife is in the midst of her doctoral dissertation, all while raising the greatest blessing of our lives, our 5 year old daughter.

At about the same time I started dating this woman, I met her father. His educational pedigree was something most would aspire to, but that was the beginning and the more formal part of his commitment to intellectual honesty and curiosity. In his spare time, I learned that he read extensively about philosophy, military strategy, and was a savant about the American Civil War. My caricature took another hit, a hit compounded by what I was learning about the man's daughter.

As I write this, my father-in-law is in the first year of a 10-year reading program involving the Great Works of the Western world. He is 80 years old.

For me, the erosion of this caricature of Christians took some time. By the time I married my wife, the caricature was like an ice sculpture at a wedding reception, at the hour of midnight, its broad features still recognizable, its narrow base precarious, standing in a puddle of water, with little sparkle left.

I was beginning to feel uneasy about this.

"In Remembrance of Me"

2006-04-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

Easter approaches.

To Christians, the meaning of Easter is fundamentally one of triumph, because, as our Apostle's Creed states, "on the third day" Christ rose again. Easter is in many ways thus the linchpin of Christianity.

I have always been especially struck, however, by one particular aspect of Easter Weekend, and that is the end of the Last Supper. More particularly, I have always been struck by the simple phrase which concludes each of the elements of the Last Supper, where Christ states, "do this in remembrance of me." No great theological debates or civil wars are invoked by these words, just the bare injunction "do this in remembrance of me." And, as A.N. Wilson's brilliant book, How Can We Know? demonstrates, this instruction and this hope has animated believers, without interruption, for roughly 2,000 years.

One day, when my faith in atheism was wobbly, like a loose tooth, I went to church with my new wife. That Sunday was a Communion Sunday. As the pastor walked the congregation of probably 200 people through the elements of Communion, he paused, and he looked out on the crowd. He said "Christ died for all of us, but he would have died for any of you. He would have given His life just for you." This was probably the first time I ever paid any attention to the words of the Communion.

Then he looked at me straight in the eye, on the far side of the church in the middle of the crowd, and he said "And all that He really asks in return is 'do this in remembrance of me.'"

Butterflies and Diving Bells- One Year Later

2006-03-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a year ago for my friend Pursuit:

"No pun intended, but I think it is time to give Terry Schiavo a rest. If you can't get your mind off this general topic, however, take this Easter weekend and read The Butterfly and the Diving Bell, by Jean-Dominique Bauby. This is a short little book I try to read about every three years or so.

It is the autobiographical story of a man who, in the prime of his life, collapsed and became fully paralysed with the single exception that he was able to blink his left eyelid. His condition was called "Locked in Syndrome." After a time, he was able to develop a communication system with that eyelid that allowed him to write this beautiful book. Ironically, he died just as the book was published, at the age of 43.

Nothwithstanding his condition, Bauby is alternatively witty, charming, sad, and, most important, appreciative of the small things in life, like the smell of hot dogs grilling in the summer breeze. Ironically, by coming down with "Locked in Syndrome," Bauby sheds some of the locked in syndrome he had become susceptible to in his former life.

We all have our butterflys and we all have our diving bells.

For some, the diving bell around our head is politics, and the butterfly fluttering back and forth is faith. For others, the reverse is true. If you are finding yourself with a sense of locked in syndrome, this book is just what the doctor ordered."

I still think there is more to learn from Bauby's situation than Schiavo's.

Painting With Watercolors-3

2006-03-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

Shadows are important element of a watercolor painting. Shadows give a painting a sense of proportion, and a sense of reality. When done well, shadows make a painting look "real". Just as it is difficult to make a painting interesting without light, it is also difficult to make a painting interesting without shadows. You might say shadows are part of the drill.

You probably know where I am going with this, but I will say it anyway: shadows make life interesting as well. Some shadows are darker than others. Some shadows are frustrating, and yes, even God's shadows are frustrating at times. Sometimes, the brighter the light, the darker the shadows.

That too, I am afraid, is part of the drill.

Painting With Watercolors-2

2006-03-22T13:17:00.000-08:00

After completing a sketch, normally, the next step in a watercolor painting is to execute what is called a "wash" of color. One's choice of colors, and how those colors combine with one another, has a significant bearing on the the finally look of the painting.

For instance, in a landscape composition, one would normally create a "finished" look for the sky by combining washes, sometimes waiting for one color to dry and then adding another color over the first, sometimes by allowing two wet colors to combine, and sometimes by combining these two approaches. Clouds tend to look their best when paint is "lifted" from the painting. For example, a most striking cloud can be created by laying a wash of light yellow at the top portion of the sketch and allowing it to dry. After that, a set of blues might then be layered over the yellow. Before before these colors dry, a rag or tissue can be used to dab or "lift" some of the blues off the painting, thus leaving the underlying yellow, with an effect something like this.

What does this have to do with living? If your life has been anything like mine, it is not your experiences in and of themselves that have made you the person you are: it the combination of those experience that make you the you have become. Likewise, a life lived in depth reveals many colors, some of which, athough initially hidden, become interesting, even striking, only when the surface color is lifted.

In this way true art begins from the inside out.

Painting With Watercolors-1

2006-03-20T11:19:00.000-08:00

I have talked about the relevance of watercolor painting to this project before, and now want to expand on this theme abit. I don't claim any great expertise as a watercolorist, but it is a hobby of mine, and I am constantly amazed at how working on a watercolor painting reminds me of life.

As one example of this, I have found that the initial sketch of a painting is crucial to the success of the painting. There is no glory in a working hard on a sketch, but if the dimensions, perspective, or composition of the initial sketch are off the mark, the painter ends up fighting these problems the rest of the painting. Obviously, it is not impossible to end up with a decent painting in spite of a bad sketch, but the process of painting becomes more difficult and the likelihood of failure increases substantially. Other things being equal, the painter should avoid becoming a prisoner of a bad sketch.

What does this have to do with living? A great deal, I think. In life, a person's "sketch" is akin to his temperament, or, perhaps, his childhood experience. These are lines that very rarely can be completely erased from one's life. Especially in the therapeutic era in which we live, "feelings" are considered paramout, and many lives are thus held captive to what turns out to be their temperament, or their childhood experiences.

For the longest time, this was true of me in regards to God. I was too bitter about my childhood to consider the possibility of a loving God "up there." And my linear, left-brained temperament was about as anti-God as it could be.

Happily, however, the sketch is merely the beginning of a painting. And, ideally, the sketch is done with a light pencil, not ink.

Vacation!

2006-03-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

I am actually going on one, the first one in quite some time.

Perhaps some fresh ocean air will knock out some cobwebs and bring me back to this blog the cyber equivalent of "tanned, rested and ready" to resume this Tale.

Take care, and thanks for the comments and well wishes of late. They have been most appreciated.

Influences VII

2006-03-11T07:47:00.000-08:00

My Uncle Bill was a part of the Greatest Generation. He served in World War II, and even spent some time as a guard at the Nuremberg trials. He raised a family, paid his taxes, guided his kids to become healthy and happy adults, and was a good brother to my mother. As my godfather, he would come to our lake about once a year and take me out for a day, sometimes golfing, sometimes fishing, even to a real baseball game one time.

My last words to him were "I love you Uncle Bill," and I hugged him. His last words to me were "I love you too." We both meant it. Our exchange was just last week, after my mother's funeral, after he had struggled from his death bed to come to the funeral, after he had conducted himself with dignity in his wheelchair for the better part of the day, and after he had done what I am sure he considered his duty, no matter the physical cost to himself.

On a single day last week, his behavior captured the essence of his life for 79 years on this earth: he sacrificed, he set an example for others, he showed his love for others, and he did what he had to do. He proved himself again to be a singular brother, uncle, and a man.

Yesterday, my Uncle Bill died.

I am blessed that we talked that one last time. I am blessed he was my Uncle Bill.

Influences VI

2006-03-07T07:05:00.000-08:00

I have not said much about my mother on these pages.

She was a beautiful woman who perservered under difficult circumstances. She gave birth to eight children but lost two of them to early deaths. She lived to see her adult children become productive and healed. She lived long enough to enjoy the doting of those same children, her grandchildren and even her great grandchildren. She possessed the wisdom of the plain-spoken. Her perspective was that of somebody who had been knocked around by life, but glad to have come through on the other side. She became the apple of our eye.

My mother died last week, and my sadness is without bounds.

Memory Lane, Avoided

2006-02-27T08:14:00.000-08:00

While retracing some of the steps described here, I decided to take a drive by the house of my first "real" girlfriend. She lived about 15-20 miles from the lake, and the drive is a pretty one, so I thought it might be fun to swing by and see that area again. I hadn't seen her in just under 30 years, and, out of curiosity, I thought it might be interesting to see if she still lived in the same house I visited as an earnest young Sophomore/Junior in high school.

The odds of Robin living in the same house she did in 1978 may seem astronomical, but we are talking about the country here. The odds are lower than one might think.

In any event, as the drive took me closer to her house, I actually started to get nervous. What if she were out in the yard? She I stop and talk to her? Wouldn't that seem strange to her? I decided I would roll with the punches when I got there.

As I drove by her house, it looked exactly how I remembered it. This increased the odds that she still lived there. But there were no cars in the driveway and it didn't look like anybody was home. I was relieved.

About a quarter mile from her house is a bridge that serves, during summer months, as a canoe dropoff for those who wish to take 1/2 day trips down a beautiful meandering river. As such, there has always been a run-down convenience store at the intersection of the roads near the bridge. The store is the size of a large living room in one of the ubiquitous McMansions that litter the suburbs of modern America. Prominently advertised on the store is the availability of hunting licenses and various fishing paraphanalia, and, of course, the great lubricant of rural America: booze.

I decided to stop in. As I was getting out of my car, a sense of panic hit me. What if she works in the store? Will she be embarrassed to meet an old boyfriend while working in this little dump of a store? These are the kinds of questions/excuses extreme introverts make to avoid uncomfortable social settings, and in case there is much question about it, I am an extreme introvert.

So I went into the store. Nobody was behind the counter. I heard voices, even children's voices, in the back of the store behind the walls where customers are not allowed to tread. Now I was really tempted to abort this mission. Instead, I went to the pop cooler. I looked out of the corner of my eye to see if I recognized anybody, walked to the counter and waited for somebody to come out. I was sure it would be my old girlfriend.

Out popped an Elmer Fudd look-alike: 75 years old, pleasant, a hunting cap on his oversized head. "That'll be $1.09. Thank you very much."As I went to push through the door, I asked him whether Robin or her family still lived up the road. "I really don't know, but I don't think so," he replied.

Good for her, I thought. And good for me too.

She's Gone

2006-02-25T06:25:00.000-08:00

In her heyday, she looked about like the sailboat in the photo. She had been dead and under a tarp for about 25 years, but now she's gone, the victim of a wrecking ball taken to the garage in which she was sitting and rotting. Another unfortunate discovery on my trip home.

[For context, see here, here, and here.]

Country Boy

2006-02-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back, I watched with rapt attention the PBS series Country Boys.

Although the series was interesting, I couldn't help but think that it just ain't the "country" if (1) you can walk to town or to school, (2) you are offered four years of college on a silver platter, and/or (3) your family life is violence-free. The stories of the kids profiled in the series were compelling, but not as "country" boys per se. The stories were compelling because they presented different snapshots and outcomes from the tribulations of adolescence in this "therapeutic" but violent beginning of the 21st century. The fact that these tribulations were set against the context of a small Kentucky town was incidental, but not integral, to the series.

Today, I was reminded of the series--and many other things--as I retraced some of the paths from my childhood. I am in Michigan for a few days, and decided to rent a car and drive around the lake I grew up on, including the dirt road my family lived on before we moved to the lake. I took a drive along the path my school bus took me each day, and was surprised by how much farmland that bus traversed. I even decided to take a stroll through my old high school, and was saddened to see that not a single teacher or administrator remains from the late 70's.

The overriding impression I had of this trip down memory lane was how "sophisticated" my old rural haunts have become. On the dirt road of our first home, new houses have sprung up--smack dab, no less, in the middle of one of my father's favorite patches of hunting land. Not ramshackle double-wides, mind you, but nice country homes. I inched down a long driveway of a very nice ranch with barns and vineyards, perched on the edge of some land my father used to own. I noticed a deer stand he had built, now fully weather-worn and of no use to anybody. It was like seeing an accidental footprint of his in some old concrete.

Driving around the lake, I was surprised by the "NO TRESPASSING" signs festooned on about every tenth tree, creating essentially the same effect as the owner might create by standing on his land and giving each passerby the middle finger. We are talking about desolate land whose main resources are jackpines and scrub oaks, not oil or streams filled with specks of gold. Nevertheless, from all appearances, "TRESPASS" has become a major social ill in the last couple of decades. I couldn't help but wonder: are these people trying to be jarring?

During the walking tour of my old high school, the primary effect I could not shake was that these kids are getting way too much "support". Guidance and college brochures abounded. Every flavor of self-esteem claptrap peppered the bulletin boards--Stewart Smalley would have been proud. Most distressing of all, the library I worked in my senior year looked exactly the same, and still contained the card catalogue I helped create, with one minor difference: the library barely contained any books. Like Sartre's cigarette, they have disappeared. Perhaps most surprising of all, I didn't see a single kid who looked stoned (not, of course, that there's anything wrong with that...). I may as well have been in a real high school.

No wonder PBS' Country Boys didn't act like Country Boys--there may be no real Country Boys left. Which led me to think: I am glad I was a Country Boy when being a Country Boy wasn't cool.

What Will Be Your Fallingwater?

2006-02-18T17:28:00.000-08:00

Remember: you've only been given one life.

How Great Thou Art-2

2006-02-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

Does the concept of God violate the concept that A is A?

Not if God chose to become a human being.

I can say that the most significant intellectual point that occurred to me in my journey to faith was sentence I just stated above. I distinctly remember driving along the sea in Alaska one day thinking about how hypothetically clever it would be of a god to circumvent the Law of Identity problems discussed in my last post by, well, by stepping into history and by becoming a human being.

If God were to became "human," even if only for a short time, then God has to that extent become definable. As such, A is still A, is it not?

How Great Thou Art-1

2006-02-16T11:40:00.000-08:00

One of the most significant philosophical objections to God has always been that God is not definable. One can talk about characteristics of God, but can one really ever define God?

George H. Smith, a famous atheist, has made this objection the centerpiece of his atheism, and for some time, I was in the thrall of this objection as well. Although I cannot find a Smith quote, the thrust of the objection sounds like this: "Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been described so that a concept of Him was made possible to human thought." *

Does the concept of God violate the Aristotelian "Law of Identity", i.e., the maxim that A is A?

More on this in a future post.