What kind of fellowship can light have with darkness?
The most asked question directed towards religious leaders is not, "Can you prove there is a God?" The question asked even more is, "If God is Love, then why does he allow so much evil?"
The philosopher Epicurus thought he was making a good point when he said, "Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot he is impotent. If he can but does not want to, he is wicked."
Epicurus sounds pretty clever, huh? I know he thought everyone would be pretty impressed with his statement, which I was ten years ago. I call it a "trick of logic" statement, and I'm going to do the same trick he just did, then I'm going to explain to you exactly what we did to mess with your head.
"Either everything came from nothing, and nothing is the source of everything; or everything can't come from nothing, because everything would amount to nothing. If everything is meaningful then it came from something. If everything has meaning then there can't be a logical concept of nothing."
This trick has been done many times in many debates throughout history. It's an easy trick to do, because humanity has a sense of logic that cannot be denied. It's easy to brainwash someone using statements like mine, or Epicurus, because we give the impression that if you believe in one thing then you are a fool, because that one thing you believe in clearly contradicts something else, and that something else is always the exact "opposite" of what we are trying to disprove. This kind of trick reminds me of a quote from a character in the movie Men in Black; "A person is not stupid, people are stupid." A single person can easily brainwash a multitude of people, but that multitude cannot so easily brainwash others into joining their cult, however an individual may be able to, if he or she, is an adequate and convincing enough speaker. You notice how there is a full circle much of the time? This is what happens when someone uses a trick of logic statement, they in some way go back to where they started.
It's not so easy to do this trick if you're starting with such statements like "There is no God," in less the atheist goes back to the "problem with evil," like Epicurus did, and rephrases the statement to something like, "God cannot be, because humanity defines him as Love, so therefore if God is then we should not have a concept of evil." Or something more simple like, "There cannot be a loving God because we have so much suffering in the world."
Before we see the answer to the big question, the question which an atheist always uses to stump the faithful, allow me to state the obvious; something comes from something, and everyone knows that logically when we examine something that is complex we must conclude that it came from an intelligent source. And regardless of how many billions of years (one may assume) went by before the creation of the living Cell, for example, we all should know that it's one hell of a roll of the dice for something that complex to come into being by chance. For example, imagine a car (which is far less complex than a cell), is left in pieces spread throughout a junk yard; we all know it's pretty unlikely that that car is going to someday put itself together by random chance, even if left in pieces for millions of years. And even if the car somehow does come together because of wind and other natural sources of luck over the course of many years, who is going to start the vehicle? So again I reiterate the fact that if we are trying to do the trick of logic statement from an atheist perspective it only works if we judge the existence of God by assuming because we have impiety/evil in the world their can be no "just" God, like Epicurus sought to prove in his statement.
Before their was the technology to study the air we breath, how could we prove to someone that we were breathing air? No one would ask you such a question like "Are you breathing air," because they know the answer as well as you, "Yes, I am breathing, so therefore I am breathing air." But let's assume they did ask you that question, and when you gave them your answer they shot back at you with another question, "How do you know you're breathing air? Can you see it?" You probably wouldn't really know how to reply. I mean what could you say? "I just know, because I can breath." I know this is all stoner talk, trying to look too deep into issues that in reality are not that complex, but this is what you have to do if you don't want to believe in an intelligent designer/God.
What atheists like to always come around to as a valid point is, "Just because we can't disprove the existence of God, doesn't mean that you can ever prove there is God." After seeing all that I have, and studying evolution, biochemistry, microbiology, history, philosophy, and so much more, I say if that is a valid point, then it's the same as saying, "Just because I can't disprove the existence of air, doesn't mean that what you call air is truly air at all. Because I can't see it, and neither can you."
The mathematical structure of DNA is not called the "blue print" of life by accident; it's called the blue print of life, because that's what it is; a design plan mapped out, showing the detailed structure of life. The living Cell is not called "complex", because it's a little complicated, it's called complex because it's far more complex then anything Man has ever "created." The eye did not, in Darwin 's own words, "give one chills," because it was a simple structure, it gave Darwin chills because he could not come up with an evolutionary explanation for something that was as essential as the eye. When an atheist examines all of these wonders with our new knowledge in microbiology they tell the ignorant public that they see no need for a God, and the ignorant public shrugs their shoulders and says, "People smarter than me say they see no evidence of God, so who am I to argue? They know more than I do, and I don't even "care" to understand. Besides it's boring, and I would rather do something else. I already know there is no God, because I can't see him."
Alright, I'm not going to go through the details to prove to you that there is a God, not on this essay. But before I answer the really big question, I'm going to quote an excerpt from a discussion between the theologian Ravi Zecharia and a college student (whose name is not important enough to remember,) then I'm going to tell you how many scientists perceive God, and then we'll get to the answer.
"Meaningless!" The student stands up and shouts in anger, "Everything is meaningless!"
"You don't believe that," Ravi says calmly before yawning.
"Yes, I do!" The student exclaims loudly. "Everything is meaningless."
"You are saying that, but you don't "mean" that, now, do you?"
"Yes I do!"
"If what you just said is true," Ravi says as he takes off his glasses and begins wiping the lens on his coat, "Then what you have just said could not be meaningful. You can sit down now, because you have nothing to say."
The student sat down at a loss for words...
Ok, now, we know that something comes from something. So who made God then? Good question, huh? Where did God come from? Well the atheist has the same problem when it comes to energy. Actually it's not really a problem at all, because all scientists have no problem accepting the fact that energy is the source of all that is, and without energy there could be nothing. Energy is the only substance that always has been and always will be, having no beginning and no end, kind of like alpha and omega. (We're not going to go into the whole, how do we know there is energy if we can't see it bit.) An atheist may have their faith in energy as the source of all life, giving it no personality, or imagined form, while the faithful call "it" God.
Now the big answer to the big question; (I am assuming this is being addressed to recently converted agnostics now), "If God is Love, then why does he allow so much evil?" Well here are the facts; If God is Love, as more then a few religions say, then logically he cannot be Hate. If God is Just, he cannot be unjust. If he is the Light (this is important now), then he cannot be the Darkness. The answer is there, and it is similar to the whole Ying and Yang idea. It's all the ideas mixed together though.
You see everyone believes in freedom, and everyone wants more of it, even when it's all there for you. Even if humans make laws, you are free to break them if you're clever enough to get away with it, or rich enough. But everyone wants peace on earth as well as freedom, and because people want peace they make laws. So People want perfection, yet they want freedom, but there in lies the paradox. How can one be free without opposites to choose between? And if all was perfect, (a preposterous assumption), then there would be no opposites to choose between, because opposites are defined by extremes. Right and wrong, light and dark, a truth or a lie, love or hate, or to forgive or hold a grudge, to accept, or deny; these are the choices that define true freedom. With there being no choice there would be no sense of appreciation, accomplishment, or peace of mind. Don't you see the idea of perfection is most imperfect? Because all that is negative defines all that is good.
From a logical perspective then, I think the Christians as well as the other major religions have it wrong. Because they say in the beginning there was God, and there was nothing else. Or perhaps they indirectly separate God into two halves, and theoretically science can separate energy into two halves. There is positive energy, and negative energy, and obviously they are opposites, but these absolutes always have been and always will be, because they define each other. I call them quite simply the Light and the Darkness. So if when the religious groups say in the beginning there was only God, and they believe that like energy, God can be separated into two opposite halves then maybe I can agree that in the beginning there was one God.
The positive energy, or the Light, did not create all that is evil, for the Light is supposed to be the source of hope, being what shines through the darkness. The negative energy/ the Darkness is the source of evil; pain, fear, death, and everything that can lead to death, or everything that brings pain to others and the world. Whichever source humanity decides to invest in, or feed the most, will be the force that takes over more. Since we can see both Light and Darkness as two different kinds of energy, then let's look at it from that perspective and realize that for every action there is a reaction, for every negative there is a positive. Don't blame the Light for what comes out of the Darkness, but blame yourself if you prefer the Darkness. Be thankful though that you have the freedom to choose, but understand that if it looks like everything is going wrong around you, the best you can do to help in retaining a balance again is to do the right thing for yourself and those around you. And I guess you can hope, or maybe even pray for the best.
God allows evil because he has no control over the darkness, he can only help us if we choose the Light instead of the Night. The Light and the darkness have both always been, and always will be, and humanity determines which will be stronger in their lives, and the lives of those around them.
"Either God is love and just because humanity has been given freewill; or God is wicked because with the freewill he gives comes the choice to do evil, from which comes the consequence of pain and suffering. If God wants us to be free though, he cannot take away the choice to do what is wrong. For if we did not have the choice to do what is wrong then we would never really be free at all, hence we could never have a sense of accomplishment, or peace when we make the better choice. So in giving us freewill God is Love and Just, and he could never be defined as such in less there was hate and injustice existing opposite of God."
Light cannot have fellowship with Darkness, but one could not be without the other. This course may be all just a game of logic, right?
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