Labyrinth (1984)

It’s not fair! But what is your basis of comparison? When sixteen year old Sara’s baby brother is kidnapped by The Goblin King and she sets out on a quest to retrieve him, she finds that the rules of the Labyrinth aren’t just as she expected them to be. Jareth, The Goblin King, has magic powers, allies, and servants all dedicated to upholding his plan for Sara and her brother at any cost. When Jareth moves time to shorten the period before Sara needs to rescue her brother, Sara immediately complains that it isn’t fair. Jareth responds, “You keep saying that. I wonder what your basis of comparison is.”

There’s a certain sense in which life isn’t fair. When we see that life has been unfair, particularly when we see that life has been unfair to us or to those that we are close to, we tend to rebel. Yet we recognize that there seems to be a force beyond us that is just as interested in fairness as we are. In some cultures, they think of a mechanical karma that works blindly. Some envision a blind merchant that delicately balances the deeds done by someone against the deeds done to that person. My personal experience has caused me to doubt that what’s behind it is mechanical or blind.

More importantly for this post, it isn’t like Jareth either. It isn’t a being interested in living up to our expectations. It isn’t trying to fulfill some sense of what we want or expect. Jareth is The Goblin King, and he is basically a god within the confines of the labyrinth, but he is far removed from the monotheistic God of the New Testament that does right.

Sara is given an opportunity: keep chasing her baby brother, and possibly end up in an oubliette or bog forever, or put her brother out of her mind and live a blissful life. This is the problem with some post-enlightenment concepts of God: they’re more like Jareth than Yahweh. One of the points that I think gets lost in our modern discussions about God as the most powerful being in the world or the creator of the world or the one that gives order and purpose to the world is that there are no requirements that powerful or the creator or organizer be good. That’s why I think the Moral Argument should be emphasized more in Christian apologetics and popular theology. I want to see more cases where I know for sure that the God that a theologian or apologist is discussing is in fact Yahweh and not Jareth.

On the Death Penalty

I never really got to know my paternal grandfather. It’s okay, I ended up with two absolutely fantastic grandfathers on my mom’s side as a result of my grandmother remarrying. I can’t say that I missed my paternal grandfather. And by all accounts, there wasn’t much to miss. I remember being in my early twenties, and an older gentleman was standing behind me in the checkout at the local Safeway. He heard the checker address me as “Mr. Kennedy,” and asked if I knew “Old Tom.” I almost told him that I didn’t, until a flash reminded me that it was my grandfather. We talked for about five minutes outside the Safeway. He struggled not to speak ill of the dead. I wanted to tell him it was okay: there was very little he could tell me that would surprise me.

I only have two memories of him when he was alive. The first was an Independence Day celebration. I don’t remember exactly how old I was. I’m pretty sure I was under seven. I was playing with a kid I had never met and would never see again at the local festivities. He had candy cigarettes and bubblegum cigars. Both sides of my family were pretty down on tobacco, and I had no idea why people would get that kind of candy for their kids. Still, it was candy, and I wasn’t about to turn down candy. Then I noticed my father talking to someone. It looked deep and serious, the kind of conversation I knew better than to interrupt. A few minutes later, my dad came to me and introduced me very briefly to this man. He said it was my grandfather. I didn’t want to challenge my dad in front of this stranger, but I knew this wasn’t Grandpa Allen or Grandpa Francis. It wasn’t my Great Grandpa Don, and Great Grandpa Clifton was dead. I wasn’t sure who that left. When I asked my dad about it later, he explained that it was his father. That was the day that I realized that I had two grandfathers on my mom’s side, and that this was a bit strange.

The other memory was when I was thirteen. We went to an old tractor show. My dad was beside himself looking at the old equipment. There was a blacksmith shop that kept me entertained most of the day, and a booth with a whole bunch of old McDonald’s Happy Meal toys when the blacksmith took his breaks. Then my dad took me and my brother to meet one of the founders of the tractor show: his father, Tom Kennedy. We said hello, shook hands uncomfortably, then as soon as the stranger was making excuses to get out of there, I was eager to get back to the blacksmith shop.

The next fall, my grandfather was murdered. Any chance to get to know him was forever lost. I went through a brief period in my later twenties and early thirties that I wished I had access to him. I’ve struggled with emotional regulation my whole life. Tom Kennedy tore his family apart through his anger and drinking and getting into fights at bars. I wondered if he could give some insights that would help me. Then I discovered that I have a vitamin deficiency: 1500 mg of slow release niacin every day and I am a much more pleasant individual. My grandfather obviously never discovered that about himself, and there’s no way to know if my problem was his problem. In either case, he probably had no wisdom to offer. Still, it would have been nice to hear that from the man himself, but I was robbed of that opportunity.

The man that killed my grandfather was tempted to fight the charges. The evidence was overwhelming, but what did he have to lose? Maybe his lawyer could find a technicality and get all the evidence thrown out. Then the prosecutor decided to go for the death penalty. That was when the plea bargaining began. Every time he’s up for parole, my family gets a letter and is given a chance to contest it. Along with the letter from the prison, we also often get a letter from the man. I read the last one. He decided at the last minute not to seek parole. It was a change of heart based on a conversation with his minister.

My grandfather struggled to find peace in this life. I hope that he will find the peace in the next life that evaded him in this life. From the letter we got and what I’ve heard, the man that killed him has also struggled to find peace in this life. I similarly hope that he can find peace in the next life if he never finds it here. I think of myself as a hopeful universalist: there’s no one actual person that you can point me to and I will say that I know for sure that I want them to end up in Hell for eternity. Even so, the scriptural and philosophical arguments in favor of Hell being necessary are compelling enough to me that I doubt Hell will actually be empty.

If my grandfather’s murderer is going to find peace in this life, I’m glad he wasn’t executed. He’s dangerous, and I don’t think we will ever have the kind of certainty it would take to release him into society. My grandfather wasn’t his first violent act, and may not even have been his first murder. He’s been denied parole a few times because he was involved in violence inside the prison that could have been fatal to others. It would take more than his say-so to convince me that he’s all better and ready for society, and he’s lost so much trust that it’s even hard to find a safe way to test him to see if he’s become trustworthy yet. Despite all that, if he can find peace in this life, I want that for him. It’s better for all of society if we all remain open to helping each other find peace, truth, and community, no matter what they’ve done.

It’s also worth thinking about all the people for whom new technology or procedures have ultimately proven to be innocent. In some cases, we’ve found this out before the execution. In other cases, we don’t find out until after they’re dead.

Then there’s Genesis 9:6 “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” (Corrected King James Version) The “for” in this is something I still believe very strongly: we are all made in the image of God. Yet there are interesting, compelling exceptions to this command. Cain killed his brother in cold blood out of jealousy, yet went free. (Genesis 4) Israel established cities of refuge for those who had committed manslaughter. (Numbers 35:22-28) So even in scripture, it’s not as hard and fast as all that. God’s heart seems bent towards reconciliation, even if there are practical concerns like the safety of the people and the attack on the image of God.

There’s a point of difference between slaying and manslaughter. (Just to set a dichotomy.) When a manslaughterer kills another human, there’s a sense in which the person is not the target, he’s just collateral damage. The manslaughter was not the goal: it was criminally careless action or inaction that resulted in the death of another person. The example in Numbers 35:23 works well: someone is out laying stones for a building or road or whatever and toss some over a hill, then walk over and see that they’ve killed some guy that they’ve never met. Should he have checked to make sure there wasn’t someone there before throwing rocks there? Absolutely. Did he wake up that morning saying, “I hope someone dies today?” Absolutely not.

When they slay someone, it’s different. Then they really do wake up saying, “I hope this person dies today, and here’s how I’m going to go about helping to ensure that this happens.” Even within slaying someone, there are still two categories. There is what for these purposes, I will call “homicide” and “murder.” These aren’t used as legal terms, I just need words to make the distinctions I’m talking about. In a homicide, killing someone was the intent, but it’s because they fail to see the image of God in them. In a murder, killing someone was the intent, and it’s because they saw the image of God in them. For example, if someone was breaking into a home repeatedly, in order to protect their family and/or possession the homeowner might lay in wait and respond with deadly force. They see the intruder as dangerous, chaotic, and wrong. They don’t want to kill another person, but this person is a threat. That’s a homicide. It might be justified, or it might not, and we will come back to that.

In sharp contrast is the person who sees a debt collector coming. There’s a lot to say about the culture of debt manufacturing as a means to power which will have to wait for another day, but laying all that to one side for now the debt collector either is or directly represents someone that helped at one point. The indebted needed them at one point. Now that it’s time to pay back, the indebted wants to find a way out at any cost. They lay in wait and slay their debt collector. Even though this might be a moment of fear or anger analogous to the home invader, what is it that they fear? They fear someone who is trying to do right by their own family, someone who previously did right by the indebted, someone who seeks to be helped by someone they previously helped. What’s more, the indebted doesn’t act any differently when they are owed a debt. When they show up at a friend’s doorstep and get turned away, they’re just as quick to list off the dozens of times they’ve helped their friend and point out that it’s time to give back. And if that friend doesn’t, they break the friendship and walk away. And it’s the right thing to do, because that friend is just using them. But now that it’s revealed that they were just using their debt collector, they murder him.

Those of us that live in a post-industrial world have no reason to commit homicide unless we are under direct attack. Police exist for the express purpose of protecting us. (Among other things.) That is, unfortunately, why we need police. There are still people out there who lose sight of the fact that we are all made in God’s image. A law without a punishment is really just a suggestion. The suggestion that they not break into their neighbor’s house when they’re cold, that they not take their neighbor’s food when they’re hungry, and that they not kill their neighbor when the neighbor tries to resist just isn’t a compelling suggestion to some people. When you add, “Or you’ll go to jail where you’re locked down full time,” it still isn’t compelling to some people. And these people are a danger to their neighbors.

Have you ever wondered why we’re able to afford police? It hasn’t always been the case. In ancient times, only the fairly wealthy could afford to have guards for their lands and families. As societies would form, one thing that is pretty universal is that the more people you have the more excess time you have. This is straightforward algebra: if each farmer can produce enough food to feed three people in an average year and there are rolling famines every seven-ish years, then a society of three hundred needs pretty much everyone farming or the next famine will be really bad but a society of three thousand can afford to have a small cohort of military officers and administrators and entertainers dedicated to other things. The urban societies of ancient Egypt and Roman created police forces that were extensions of the military. They could be called into service when needed for either function.

Agricultural societies didn’t have the spare manpower for these forces, though. If someone was going to be detained long term, it was at the personal expense of the one detaining them. And even the urban cultures didn’t have the kind of leisure among the masses that we enjoy today. The vast majority of the pre-industrial workforce was engaged in food production or distribution. A person sitting in prison was both not producing anything, and consuming. Not only the person detained, but also the people detaining them. When a famine did hit it was less impactful on an urban society than an agricultural society, but only because they kept the vast majority of the population working most of the time.

In this kind of world, it’s easy to see why the ancient world needed execution. The ancients were facing a difficult choice. That meal that you feed to that murderer might be the meal you need when the next rolling famine comes along. The price of food is a matter of supply and demand, and we can kind of plot this in economic terms. When the famine hits, the price of food goes up. How steeply it goes up will depend on how much food is in the stores. In a pre-industrial society, there’s maybe two years worth of stores. The price of food will climb very sharply. Feeding a non-productive murderer is going to cause that to climb even faster. They’ll watch young children die because they run out of food in the stores. That store would have lasted longer if they just didn’t feed so many murderers. They knew that there were going to be a small number of innocent people who ended up executed, but there were going to be a lot more innocent children that starve. That’s why prisoners that could be rehabilitated in the ancient world were put to work by their jailers: as productive prisoners, there was less danger of them eating food that would later save another.

The industrial revolution changed everything, though. Food production started to employ so many fewer people that it disrupted the economics of the developing world for centuries. Some people think we’re still trying to sort out what to do with the “excess population.” On the one hand, now we can afford police. On the other hand, sometimes they’re the problem rather than the solution. As much as we complain about the price of food at the grocery store, the number of people that are leaving their nine to five job to farm at home because it’s less work for more production is vanishingly rare. Without getting into the discussion of how to fix it or who should fix it, starvation in the industrial world is the result of human factors, not rolling famines.

What that means (in hyperbolic terms) is that in the ancient world, feeding and housing the convicted but possibly innocent meant that the price of a meal’s worth of vegetables would triple in price at the next rolling famine. Executing them meant that the price of those same vegetables only go up by half. In the modern industrial world, feeding and housing all of these potentially innocent victims causes our morning coffee to go up by ten cents.

I can respect the ancient emperor looking down at his people and saying, “I’m pretty sure he’s guilty of murder, but I could be wrong. If I don’t kill him and those like him, though, I could find myself watching children die in the next famine. One innocent might die today, but if I don’t uphold these policies many innocents will die at the next famine. I wish it could be different.” It’s much harder to respect the modern voter that is saying, “I’m pretty sure most of the people this policy will kill are going to be innocent, but there are going to be a few innocent people that die for it. Unfortunately, the alternative is that I pay ten cents more for my morning coffee, so those innocent people are just going to have to accept that I’m sorry.”

I would love to see someone that enjoys economics actually run the numbers for both the pre-industrial world and the modern world about how housing these people actually impacts our economy. For simplicity, ignore the legal, just stick to housing and food for the criminal and the guards. If we were to return to an attitude of either execution or employment for all our criminals, what would that do to the economy? Let me know in the comments of my blog if you’re aware of such an evaluation.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to hope that our world can find better and better ways to help those who have been convicted. If they’re innocent, I hope we can find them justice and set them free. If they’re guilty, I hope we can help them to find peace and truth and stability in this life. If our efforts to that end fail, I hope they will find peace in the next world.

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1997)

One of the ways that we can be sure that a teacher in fiction is giving good advice is that those who follow it have things work out in the end, and those that do not follow it have things fall apart in the end. It’s not the only way that a storyteller has to tell us that a teacher was right, but it is one valuable tool in the story teller’s tool belt. There’s also a valuable discussion to be had about how realistic that is. Even if it’s not realistic, it’s how we interpret stories anyway.

That’s one of the clues that Yoda gave Luke good advice when he advised him not to pursue his friends to the Cloud City when they were in danger. Even though he does manage to rescue Leia, Han Solo is frozen in Carbonite and Luke loses his duel with Vader and narrowly escapes with his faith barely intact and his body badly injured.

In the story, Yoda gives good advice because he is connected to the Living Force. He is able to see which course will lead to prosperity and peace for all, and which will lead to ruin and pain. When Yoda speaks, he speaks for the Force. Those who know Yoda know that this is true about him as well. No one questions Yoda’s advice because they know that he is deeply rooted in the Living Force. It’s exactly that attribute that means the Empire wants him dead. The Emperor doesn’t want someone that can tell people the path to prosperity and peace if that path will interfere with his own pursuit of power.

What if they have it backwards, though? What if the writing process at Lucasfilm is to have Yoda’s opinion settled by some random process, but then the storytellers will manipulate the story such that whatever advice Yoda gave was right? If the roll of the dice that day had resulted in Yoda telling Luke to go rescue his friends, then it would have been Vader that was running scared and confused at the end of the movie instead of the rebellious youth. To put it another way, within the Star Wars universe, what if instead of Yoda saying it because it’s right, it’s right because Yoda said it?

There is an ancient paradox about God called the Euthyphro dilemma that gets to exactly this question about God. To summarize the question briefly, is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it’s good? There are a lot of really good answers to this. My favorite answer is that it’s like a magnet. Does the magnet attract metal because it’s magnetic, or is it magnetic because it attracts metal? Both: being magnetic is attracting metal. Ultimately I don’t think it matters, though.

Some people have a vision of God that makes the answer that God simply orders what is good. For these, God is the most powerful agent and it’s a good thing he turned out to be just. For others, God decided what’s good and bad, and rewards and punishes according to his whim. Still others like myself see God as something more akin to the magnetic field, and goodness and evil are just strong and weak points in that field. On an entirely practical level, how you respond to good commands is still the same: you obey them.

On Fire Hydrant Parking

Have you ever thought about what it would be like if people were allowed to park in front of fire hydrants? Think of all the places in your life this would open up a few more parking spaces: the mall, the grocery store, the school, maybe even in your neighborhood. One more space right up close, where the action is.

On the downside, fire crews would need to move the vehicles that were parked inconveniently for their purposes, and they wouldn’t have time to be gentle about it. Parking in front of a hydrant would be taking your car’s life into your hands. How often does that happen, though? On a per-hydrant scale,  it would probably average less than one problem per decade. I know of hydrants that haven’t been accessed other than routine maintenance for my entire working memory of more than thirty years. So why are we restricting parking around them?

In some situations it gets even worse. At my son’s school, when I’m dropping him off in the morning or picking him up in the afternoon, there’s a hydrant right near the doorway he comes out. If I park there, I have every intention of getting my car out of the way if I see a firetruck coming. I’m almost never out of my car for more than six minutes. So why is it such a big deal and worthy of a fine if I park there while I wait for my son?

Well, for one thing, my battery could go out. I could drop off my son, jump back in my car, turn the key, and hear the distinctive clicking that indicates the battery just doesn’t have enough juice to turn over the engine. If that happens, all my intentions about scurrying out of the way when I see a firetruck don’t really mean anything. That’s the biggest reason we have these rules. No one plans on their battery running out. No one wants to be blocking the way when the firetruck could be coming. But it happens anyway.

The funny thing is, if we didn’t have a rule about it, then we wouldn’t ever think about it. It’s so rare that a building actually catches on fire that we would all just park there and be really upset when the fire crew smashed our car or when our building burned down because the fire crew was smashing someone’s car. That’s one of the things that rules like this are supposed to do for us. (Leaving to one side how good at it we are and aren’t.) We have one central planning committee that sees what kind of problems have been or could be and then make rules to stay out of those problems. There are periodically fires at buildings, and so we have hydrants installed and set up parameters pertaining to the parking parallel to these particular plumbing pieces. We don’t have to look too hard to find instances where this has gone off the rails, but in general this seems to work out for us. Putting the responsibility on every person to think of everything that could possibly go wrong and in particular every worst case scenario doesn’t work out.

This does lead to a conundrum, though. As long as there are rules, we will need rule-breakers. That’s why Heaven needs to be a place without rules. It needs to be filled with people that follow the rules. It needs to be led by people who make fair and reasonable expectations and understand when exceptions are important. But here’s the thing: there will be some sort of analog in Heaven for the fire hydrant that needs to keep the parking clear. Except there, it won’t be a rule. There won’t be a ticket for parking there. But if you’re the kind of person that will park there knowing that it could lead to problems, you won’t be allowed into Heaven. Those that put their short-term gain above the community’s long term good are not the kind of people that God is looking for.

We can see this in a lot of ways. My favorite example is the parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25:31-46. Those people that go out of their way to help the vulnerable are elevated. But there are other ways, too. When you recognize this concern, you see it in the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11 and the man stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath in Numbers 15:32-36. These are people who tried to join God’s congregation with the goal of personal gain, then tried to push the rules just to get ahead of those in the church. It makes sense of Jesus criticizing the Pharisees for failing to uphold the more important laws while requiring others to keep the minutiae of the laws in Matthew 23:4. Knowing the reason for a rule is important to deciding which rules can be suspended and when. And parking in front of a fire hydrant just to be a few steps closer to the door isn’t a good reason to suspend that rule.

What about you? What are some of those little rules that you are still willing to break just to gain a short term benefit? Upon reflection, do you see it as selfish? Are you going to work to improve on that?

On Entropy

I had a plugged up sink in my bathroom the other day. It happens: my pipes are old and I have kids. What I’ve been told by people that know more about it than I do is that as we wash our hands and stuff, the dirt and grime accumulates in the pipes, and eventually this closes up, then the water moves more slowly. So slowly that it takes all night to drain the sink from full.

But I grew up on thirty acres of forest. I’ve seen how creeks work in the wild. Water runs down the creek and pulls dirt and grime away. The creek does this so efficiently that it will even widen out. The creek carries dirt away. The pipe fills up with dirt. But the process is the same: water passing through.

There is a principle in physics called The Third Law of Thermodynamics. The idea is that as time goes on, the certainty of the start state becomes lower and lower. The lower certainly about how near a state is to the beginning is called an increase in entropy. Often, this is described in terms of disorder increasing. “Disorder” is a word that will cause some physicists to cringe, though. Some high entropy states feel to our senses to be very ordered.

If we start with sand in a box being blown around by the wind, we can tell that the state is very near the set-up state if all of the sand is in the corners. If the sand is fairly evenly distributed along the box, it’s less clear if that’s how the box was made or if it got there after a bunch of wind blowing the sand around. So the sand spread evenly is the higher entropy state. But there’s a sense in which the sand being spread even feels more ordered. So we can’t really rely on our understanding of what feels ordered for this.

But as I sat under my house, stabbing a plumber’s snake up the pipe, trying to dislodge a plug, it occurred to me that a pipe doesn’t really obey this principle. It obeys the feeling of the idea. I can absolutely get behind the idea that the plug represents disorder. These pipes are meant to flow water away from my sink. That they fail to do this is disordered. But I actually have a very good idea how far along the process it is. It’s at the end of the process.

In order for entropy to apply, what I would really expect is for the dirt and grime to reach a point of equilibrium. Maybe not exactly half-way full, but functionally half-way full. A place where dirt and grime are carried away and deposited at the same rate. As the pipe plugs, pressure should go up a little, and it should draw more away.

I also realized that this isn’t the only thing in life that works this way. As our bodies age, forensic biologists actually have very little difficulty picking a random organ and estimating the age of the individual. Of course, some are more reliable than others, but if you give them ten hearts the chances are high that they’ll estimate the age within about 2% on seven of them.

Now, I’m not really suggesting that these are instances where the Third Law of Thermodynamics is broken. There’s more nuance to the Laws of Thermodynamics than just that. Someone with more practice calculating entropy could probably explain the reason that filling up the pipes is really an increase in entropy. But here’s the thing: if it worked more the way that feels intuitive to me (that the pipes fill halfway and then lose as much as they gain) then those that run the calculations would find a way to make that work, too. In that world, it would feel more consistent, though.

Even when a more consistent application of entropy would seem to imply something more convenient than our real world, the world chooses the least convenient interpretation to be reality.

Actually “least convenient” isn’t quite right. There are a lot of ways that entropy could be much harsher. But the way entropy works is the way that requires morality. If my pipes had filled part way up and then stopped, then I wouldn’t have needed to give up two weekends climbing under the house, tearing apart pipes, and running metal through the remnants to restore function to our bathroom sink.

It’s the same thing with a towel. If you dry off and leave a wet towel on the ground, it will get moldy. If you hang it up stretched out, then it will dry and be mostly fresh again in a few hours. Putting effort into planning a project has long been known to reduce the overall cost of the project. At every turn, giving more of ourselves to something early always makes it better. And this law is more consistent than even the Laws of Thermodynamics.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

I’m going to start with something controversial: I don’t care if God created us. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This movie is one of the best written movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The stakes were high, the morals were good, and the effects were believable. Normally, The Guardians of the Galaxy represent the light hearted corner of the MCU with lots of slap-stick and other low-brow humor. This movie completely broke that pattern. There are a few jokes, but mostly this movie is very serious and dark.

The primary villain in this movie is The High Evolutionary, a variant of Kang the Conqueror. The High Evolutionary creates entire worlds in an effort to pursue perfection. One of his creations made for the purpose of understanding how to control the development of his products was Rocket Raccoon. Once he was done with Rocket and the other animals he made at the same time as Rocket, he set out to destroy them. Later, when he created his perfect race, he found out that they were less than perfect, and destroyed the entire population of a planet.

If we listen to the arguments behind a lot of Christian apologetics, we would be forced to conclude that The High Evolutionary was totally within his rights to destroy a planet of living, breathing, loving, thriving creatures just because he made them and they no longer pleased him. As their creator and owner, he had absolute authority over their destiny. This is because most Christian apologists use some form of the Cosmological Argument for God. They say that God made us, and therefore God can do whatever he wants with us.

Wouldn’t the same apply to the High Evolutionary, though? He made Counter Earth and everything on it. Wouldn’t that mean he’s well within his rights to destroy it and everything on it? Isn’t The High Evolutionary effectively the God of Counter Earth?

This is the part of modern American Calvinism that I have a problem with: the idea that “God has the right to damn us to Hell for no other reason than he made us.” If God made us and then picks bad people for Heaven and sends better people to Hell, God is wrong. If I thought that God was doing that, even if I still thought he was wrong, I would say that he was wrong.

The High Evolutionary has the power to make any of his creations live a life of luxury and ease. Instead, he destroys them. And that’s wrong. He’s not a god. He’s a devil: feigning God’s power for his own glory.

One of the problems that I think modern apologetics suffers from is the perception that we believe in a God that is just like The High Evolutionary except that he doesn’t have a physical body. Whatever he tells us to do is okay because he’s the one that made us. Whatever he does to us is okay because he made us. Whomever he saves is okay because he made us. Criticism of God is out of bounds just because he made us.

Rocket criticizes his creator, and Rocket is the one in the right.

Why, then, would it be wrong of us to criticize God? This is where I started: it isn’t because he made us. Just as a thought experiment, imagine that Jesus really is God, but that he didn’t make us. I say that he would still be above reproach. For the same reason that Rocket Raccoon owes his loyalty to Peter Quill and not The High Evolutionary: Peter Quill has done right by Rocket, taught Rocket to do right by others, and saved Rocket when the raccoon was in danger. Peter Quill is God to Rocket Raccoon despite coming into his life later, and The High Evolutionary was Satan to Rocket Raccoon despite having made him and shaped him from birth.

The High Evolutionary becomes jealous when Rocket surpasses him in accomplishments. Jesus doesn’t. Much to the contrary, Jesus says that we his followers will do greater things than he did without the slightest hint of concern about it. (John 14:12) That’s what makes Christ God: he always does what’s right, even when it’s hard for everyone else.

This is why I think that Christian apologists would do much better if they focused on the Moral Argument rather than the Cosmological Argument. To be clear (because I know someone will try to twist my words) I do believe that God created us, I just don’t care. I don’t think that gives God the right to hurt us for his own pleasure.

The thing that gives God the right to hurt us “for his own pleasure” is what he is by virtue of the Moral Argument: he is the defining substrate for goodness. If God is enjoying torturing someone, it’s because it is good to enjoy torturing them. They are the kind of person for whom regular rules of respect do not apply for some reason. When Peter Quill exposed the grotesque figure of The High Evolutionary, it was humiliating and demoralizing for the villain, and Peter enjoyed it, and it was just fine to enjoy exposing and humiliating such an evil person. If God is our creator, but not the moral substrate, then the moral substrate still decides what’s right and wrong for God, the same as it decides that what’s best for The High Evolutionary was disgrace and shame at the hands of his own creations and his enemies.

This is why I’ve stopped depending on the Cosmological Arguments for God. I don’t care if God made us. I care if God is moral. If God made us and he is morality itself, I will worship him. On the other hand, if the god of creation and the God of morality are different, I will worship and serve the God of morality. Which would you serve?

What Does it Mean to Love God?

We love God because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19) But what does it mean to love God? Can an atheist love God? It would seem not, since he that comes to God must believe in him. (Hebrews 11:6) But have you ever heard an atheist say that they just believe in one fewer god than the monotheist? The atheist that says this doesn’t really understand the difference between monotheism and polytheism. The polytheists of the Roman days felt that monotheists like Jews and Christians were more akin to atheists than themselves. This is because the nature of the polytheistic gods is substantially different from the God of monotheism. Personally, I kinda wish we had different terms for the monotheistic God and polytheistic gods.

But, why? Why would both polytheists and Christians count the Christian as more similar to atheist than polytheists? If there were a movement to restore both true polytheism and early monotheism to their previous glory, would modern atheists side with monotheists of the first centuries or the polytheists?

We do have modern atheists that do try to kind of revive polytheistic practice. Or at least in theory. Some of these get tied up in movements like Wicca, others try to be wholly independent. It’s kind of strange. When you look at a lot of ancient polytheistic systems, once they start to mix with philosophy they often start to move towards monotheism. There are various reasons for this: the idea of two equally all-powerful beings who compete for supremacy doesn’t really make sense. Even when you look outside the classic Abrahamic faiths, Platonism was tending towards more monadist or monotheistic thought in the first few centuries of the Christian era even before the rise of Christianity. (Maybe I’ll start calling the Christian God the Christian Monad just to upset everyone. While there are differences between the Platonic Monad and the Christian God, they’re not overly relevant for the current conversation.) Similarly, Hinduism has had strong growing Monotheistic or Monadist thought centers. This has led some to the conclusion that monotheism and monadism are more advanced and accurate expressions of theology and philosophy than polytheism in the same way that Germ Theory is the more advanced form of medicine than Miasma Theory. Not everyone is convinced. There’s also people who argue that monotheism and monadism are the religious thoughts most associated with the most primitive people, too. So that’s an interesting web for someone else to untie. At any rate, whether it’s more advanced or more primitive, there is a tendency for deep, philosophical, well studied theology to tend toward the common understanding of a single, all powerful, moral arbitrator who created and maintains the universe.

So with that in mind, how much do we have to get right about God to properly love him? Is a Neo-Platonist Monadist that sees the Greek and Roman deities as analogies and reflections of The One and uses the unity of mankind to guide his charity and goodwill “good enough?” What about the Christian that has memorized the Bible and uses the teaching he finds there to justify hoarding his food stores as the community around him experiences unprecedented famine and starvation?

This has been a difficult nut for the church to crack since Justin Martyr. To me, it seems there are three corners. In one corner, there are those that believe that if you have joined the right church and celebrated the right sacraments, everything else is just extra. In another corner, there are those who think that if you accept the right dogmas and believe them strongly enough, everything else is just extra. In the last corner are those that think that if you do enough morality, then everything else is just extra. Most views on how you love God are going to be some mix of variations on these.

Each of these three have their scriptural and philosophical strengths and weaknesses. I think there’s an error in discounting any one of these three completely. It’s also rare to find someone who has thought this through deeply and backed themselves into one of the three corners completely. For me, the final answer lies not so much in what you’ve done as in who you are. When I say to have faith, I’m not talking about subscribing to a series of theological and historical facts. That doesn’t then render the theological and historical facts useless. When I say to obey God, I’m not talking about a list of rules. That doesn’t mean the list of rules is pointless. When I talk about performing the sacraments, I don’t mean that it matters which recipe or holiday cycle you follow. That doesn’t mean that you can do it without a recipe or a holiday cycle.

So let’s take each corner in turn and give its strengths and weaknesses. You should belong to the right church. Christ tells us that his church built upon the rock of his choosing will prevail against the forces of Hell. (Matthew 16:18) God has set the orders of authorities within his Church. (1 Corinthians 12:28) It is Christ’s church which will be put above all things in the end. (Ephesians 1:20-23) Past that, don’t you want to be a part of the solution rather than the problem? Don’t you want to surround yourself with people that love good and are repulsed by evil? However, the parable of the wheat and tares strongly implies that the church isn’t going to be easy to identify. (Matthew 13:24-30) Further, even the Apostolic Church under Paul and John had erroneous people teaching heresy and evil. (Revelation 2:20) And even if the Apostolic Church didn’t have errors, the modern church is hopelessly split into dozens of entities, each claiming to be the one and only church.

Leaving that where it stands for now, you should believe in the right dogmas. After all, those who do not believe cannot please God. (Hebrews 11:6) Even if it weren’t about pleasing God, isn’t it better to believe the things that are right and disbelieve things that are incorrect? That said, the demons do believe and it doesn’t do them any good. (James 2:19) As C. S. Lewis said in his Reflections on the Psalms, “Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.”

Leaving that where it stands for now, you should do good things. After all, people will know to glorify God when they see your good works. (Matthew 5:16) We are even created in Jesus for good works. (Ephesians 2:10) Yet no one will be justified by their works. (Galatians 2:16) Indeed, we are justified while we were sinners, not saints. (Romans 5:8)

So where does that leave us? We must belong to the right church, but can’t ever find it. We must believe the right things, but without knowing what they are. We need to do good, but no good will come from it. That is a tidy little paradox. That is, if we’re approaching the question correctly.

Let’s return to a previous point. What is the difference that makes polytheists lump monotheists and atheists in together? And why would monadists get lumped in with us, even when they see many gods?

I know what I see when I look at atheists that sparks kinship against polytheists. The reason that many polytheists hope there are many gods out there to worship is so that they can play them off each other. They learn their genealogies and their likes and their dislikes, their marriages, divorces, and affairs, all in the hopes of better understanding the politics of the unseen. If we know that Zeus and Hera are divorced and jealous over each other, then we might entice Zeus by threatening to give something to Hera. But the Monotheistic God, the Monad, and the Chief God of henotheism, can’t be persuaded by that kind of jealousy. It has no ex-consort to provoke. Of course, there are distinctions between God and the Monad, and between monotheists and atheists. But if I’m choosing who to spend eternity with in a divine city and all I know are the religious association or lack thereof, I’m going to be picking fellow monotheists first, then henotheists, then monadists, then atheists. After that it gets hard. I know that these groups are less likely to try to play politics with the divinities in this divine city. While there are exceptions, those in my list will be the ones most likely to argue over the proper title for our incorporeal, immortal city council is “gods” or “angels,” and then we will judge whether they act morally or not. Those in the polytheist end will argue more over who is related to whom and start jockeying to get a superior position then me by kissing up to the immoral decisions of these rulers. You see, you love the gods the same way you love a corrupt politician: by bribes, flattering, and intrigue. You twist their emotions to suit you, and learn how to manipulate them to get what you want.

Monotheism is different. As Abraham Lincoln once famously said, God isn’t on our side, so all that remains is to be on his side. He can’t be bought, provoked to jealousy, or overpowered into doing anything. He doesn’t need us like the polytheistic gods need their worshipers. He was there before us and will continue after us. He’s even sufficient company for himself, so he didn’t even create us out of loneliness.

Personally, I think this is why religious attitude tends towards the monotheist end. Seeing order and structure in the world, we seek the gods and then try to play politics with them. Playing politics fails over and over. When people realize that you can’t play the unseen powers against each other, this leads naturally to the conclusion that there’s only one or that there’s one at the top they all answer to or spring from or whatever. Even modern attempts at detecting God are political, and that’s why they fail. They start with the statement, “If God really wants…” as if God would ask us for the things he wants. (Psalm 50:12) They are using the polytheistic attitude to try to detect the Monotheistic God.

Have you ever had a friend that is really hard to buy for because they just get whatever it is they want? My dad is like that. He does so much for me that I always struggle when Christmas and his birthday come around. When I get him something, it’s not always expensive and it’s not always useful, but it is always aimed at his particular tastes and interests. That doesn’t mean that I never catch lunch or dinner when we’re out or that there haven’t been a few expensive tools in his metaphorical Christmas stocking. Even if it is expensive and useful, it’s aimed at his interests. The way that I know what my dad’s interests are is by spending time with him, talking with him, and working with him. It’s not the politics of polytheism, trying to manipulate his emotions so he’ll help me. It’s genuine love and interest in thanks for all he’s done.

In stark contrast, I had a friend one time that fell on hard times. I happened to be at a point in my life where I was doing well, and I helped out. He didn’t even have to ask for money. I knew what kind of problems he was having and I was happy to help. As time went on, we spent less and less time hanging out, because he felt guilty about the money he relied on from me. I told him that I was happy to help and that I didn’t want to see a friend fall into hard times if I could help. Over time, he drifted away until the only time he contacted me was when he needed money. At that point, I was less likely to give him money. You see, I had other friends that were spending time with me, talking with me, and working with me. I really knew what kind of trouble they were in. They didn’t even have to ask for money. But by the time he called to request money, all my charity had been given.

It reached a point where he didn’t like me any more, he liked what I could do for him. Sure, he would flatter me and ask about my kids when he called, but I could tell that he was playing politics with me. Eventually, I told him to stop calling.

What we should do is get to know God. We should try to find out what he wants. We should talk to him. We should work with him. When we see God working towards something, that’s what we should work towards. We should do this out of a sense of love and to thank him for what he’s done.

But here’s something to think about: I don’t always get it right when I’m buying a present for my dad. Sometimes I mishear him. Sometimes I get him something only to find that he’s gotten it for himself. I get him the wrong size or style not even realizing what the difference is. But my dad knows it comes from a good place. It’s not like those that try to play him against me or just get him a generic gift. He can forgive me.

Jesus is there to show us what God is like, but we’re going to get it wrong sometimes. But there are two kinds of people. There are those that got it wrong because they don’t actually care. They’re playing politics. They’re doing the thing that they think God wants so that God will get them the thing they think that they want. These people always act surprised when God stops answering their prayers and directing their lives. I’m not. That’s not love, that’s business. Then there are those that get it wrong despite putting the time in and getting to know what God wants. God can forgive that.

So when these two types of people stand at the gate of the Eternal City, one of them only does what God wants because they can get something out of it. They’re going to continue to play politics and try to beat me out of God’s good gifts. They’ll ruin Heaven. Then there are those who do what God says because they want God to be happy. When they get to the Eternal City, these people will only have to hear God say, “That disappoints me,” to stop. They won’t negotiate. They won’t beg. They won’t try to beat someone else to the punch in getting what God is giving out.

This is where I come at things a little differently than others, though. I don’t know what the uncaused first cause or unmoved first mover wants. In fact, to me, what this is likely to want seems to be power. If we are made in the image of God simply in terms of his ability to exercise power over the cosmos, then the greedy and the dishonest who use their greed and dishonestly to accumulate power might be his people. In contrast, if God is the judge of all the Earth (Genesis 18:25) defender of widows and orphans (Psalm 68:5) judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42) who will judge the world in righteousness (Psalm 96:13) who is good (Psalm 145:9) in short, if the God we worship is the God of the Moral Argument instead of the Ontological or Cosmological arguments, then this is a God who we can make some guesses as to what he would want. This is the God that is Love. (1 John 4:8) And that brings us around. If the God we are seeking to love is Love itself, then the question we’ve really been trying to answer all along is how do we love Love? What does Love want?

Love wants us to be patient. Love wants us to be kind. Love wants us to stop envying. Love wants us to stop boasting. Love wants us to behave ourselves. Love doesn’t want us looking to go our own way. Love doesn’t want us to get triggered all the time. Love doesn’t want us keeping track of every time we are wronged. Love doesn’t want us to get excited about doing wrong. Love wants us to celebrate what’s true. Love wants us to have strength, faith, hope, and endurance. Love wants us to never stop.

Coming back around to one of the first questions: can an atheist love God? Certainly the atheist that says “I just believe in one fewer god than you do,” has an image in mind more compatible with polytheism than what I’ve described here. The one fewer god they’ve chopped off the end of their list is one that I also didn’t believe in. Obviously I can’t speak for every atheist that shares this belief, but the atheist that says it really is objectively good to do good, to love your enemies, to seek the plight of widows and protect orphans and immigrants and the poor is closer to believing in monotheism than polytheism, at the very least as they existed in ancient times. They’re saying to love Love, even if they don’t recognize God there. Conversely, the Christian that depends on the operations of the church to cover over their evil ways so that they can keep doing them by performing the right ritual or saying the right prayer has more in common with the polytheists of old than with true religion as described by Paul, Peter, John, and James. This type will be surprised to find that God was never obligated to observe their rituals, didn’t mind that their neighbor missed some of the sacraments, and will then be asking some very hard questions about why they chose to keep doing what they knew was wrong.

As I read in an old chess book one time, the rest is tactics.

What if God Can’t?

There are some movies that I can’t watch in public. One of them may surprise you: The Incredibles. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s probably still in my top twenty favorite movies and I love watching it alone. I just can’t watch it in public. Similarly, I can’t watch one of the absolute best episodes of my favorite animated series in public, Tales of Ba Sing Se in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Only the most astute among you will have picked up what these two have in common, though.

There is a moment in Incredibles when Bob Par, also known as Mr. Incredible, realizes that his children are in danger and he is helpless to save them. He hears his wife piloting the jet, responding to incoming rockets with, “Mayday! Mayday! India-Golf Niner-Niner is buddy-spiked! Abort! Abort! There are children aboard! Say again: there are children aboard this airplane!” At that moment, Bob thinks his entire family is doomed.

In Tales of Ba Sing Se, we get to see wise, happy, and easy going Uncle Iroh give fatherly advice to a mugger, a group of neighborhood children, and a young mother, all on the way to celebrate the anniversary of the day he lost his own son. Along the way, we hear several alternate forms of the now classic song Leaves From the Vine.

I have what’s called a genetic balanced translocation. In my chromosomes, a small part of the fourth chromosome and a small part of the eleventh chromosome in one of my pairs of chromosomes switched places. This doesn’t really impact me from day to day. All my genetic material is there, it’s just in a different order, and it turns out that doesn’t impact much when the operations of the cell are being carried out. However, when my genetic information gets passed onto the next generation it’s possible – some have even told me likely based on the way things got chopped up – that my children will get one incomplete chromosome without getting the corresponding fix on the other chromosome.

This does have a number of practical impacts. My two sons both had Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome. That means that both of them ended up getting the version of my fourth chromosome that’s missing a piece without getting the version of my eleventh chromosome that has it added on. For my first son, this means cognitive delays, muscular difficulties, seizures, difficulty speaking and eating, fewer adult teeth, and hyper social behavior. My second son wasn’t so lucky. After five months fighting to get him healthy enough to bring home, we tucked him in for the last time. My daughter has escaped the fates normally reserved for my children. She is completely healthy and besides being a little quirky she’s completely normal.

But my son and my daughter know exactly what Daddy wants more than anything else in the whole wide world. All Daddy wants is for his children to be safe. I’m famous among my friends for being appropriately protective of my children, even though most of my friends seem to think that “appropriately” is spelled O-V-E-R-L-Y. My son, now seventeen, gets frustrated when he will tell me, “Dad! I’m okay!” and I remind him that I am the one in charge of deciding if he’s okay.

So with all that, when a movie or a television show has children in danger and parents unable to protect them, that hits just a little too close to home. I’ve already failed to protect one of my children, and I have one more that is very unlikely to outlive me. That kind of story isn’t an escape or a theoretical evaluation for me: it’s real, everyday life. So when I was watching Encanto with my children in the movie theater for the first time there was a moment when I realized what movie I was actually watching. When I realized that Mirabel was going to have to face down the threat to their family miracle and that her parents were going to be helpless to either stop or aid her, I had to look away from the screen and plug my ears for a few minutes. I just can’t watch that kind of movie in public.

I also can’t fly like Superman, walk through solid walls, or pick up a car. I kind of mean something different by that second list than I do that first item, though.

When we talk about God’s omnipotence, there are a lot of questions that theologians toss around. One of the first things settled in the church is that omnipotent doesn’t have to mean that everything that happens is something God wants and everything that God wants automatically happens. There are things God can’t do. The chief scriptural example among them was that God can’t lie. Even when God approves an untruth to enter into the minds of men, he must employ an intermediary to carry that lie. Lying just isn’t a God thing.

From here, the discussion spirals wildly. Questions range from “Can God make a square circle or a married bachelor?” to “Was a flood really the only thing God could think of to rid the world of evil?” There are fantastic answers to all of these in the relevant literature. The basic outline that many have fallen into is that God can do all things that are logically possible. The analogy that I like to use is a little bit mixed. It is a combination of an author and a painter. God is the one writing or painting the universe through all history. This explains some of the things that God can’t do: if I write in a story, “The pig did build a house,” then from the perspective of the pig he built a house. If I then add the word “not” after “build,” from the perspective of the pig he never built a house. Asking the pig why I changed it won’t make any sense to the pig. The pig doesn’t know about the change. From where he stands, he never built a house. It’s never changed. What I say is true in the pig’s world not because I’m weak enough to be unable to lie to the pig, but because I’m so powerful that my statements become true even when they weren’t before.

There are unanswered questions in the field of theology. As an author or a painter, does he make it all, or is he writing in a book where statements must follow a pattern or painting on a canvas that won’t take certain types of paint? An example I’ve heard is when mathematicians discover previously unknown mathematics. I’ve heard mathematicians describe it as writing the first page of the book, and then the rest of the book writes itself. I also remember doing a type of painting when I was in grade school where we placed a drop of ink on a canvas and then tilted the paper to roll it around. While I wasn’t that good at it, I had classmates that drew trees, buildings, and landscapes. I was amazed. But they all had little “accidents,” times when the ink followed the contour of the canvas rather than the intention of the artist. The skilled artists could work with it and still accomplish their goals, though.

I find little things that suggest to me that God is in control in the way an author is. I see little pieces of evidence that our world either has had or will have a retcon. Ice floats, even though most solids will sink in the liquid of their same solution. Of course, living within the world, we can explain all of these things in terms of the rules of our world. That’s an element of a good retcon, after all. But it really does feel like our author got to a place where he was written into a corner because all the ice was at the bottom of the water, and so he turned it around for ice, and set the angles of electron orbits to match this new idea. Another thing that feels made up is the nuclear weak force. The nuclear weak force feels like an afterthought just to make nuclear reactions possible. It’s also kind of strange that before about two million years ago, big brains weren’t all that popular in the biological world, and then rather suddenly and kind of in parallel (or at least to the best we can tell) whales, primates, birds of prey, and cephalopods all started getting smarter. Like someone flipped a switch. While we talk about some dinosaurs as being more intelligent than others, our best evidence is that they were struggling to compete with chickens rather than rats and dogs. Then kind of all at once a bunch of different things started getting smarter for no apparent reason, kind of like a chapter break.

This certainly feels like God needs to have a lot of power. I mean, if God can just decide that the orbits of electrons work in a particular way, what can’t he do?

Well, he can’t lie, for one.

There’s a tendency in theology to try to format every answer that answers a question that starts with “Can God…?” so that the answer is “Yes.” I understand that impulse. This is the God that could (presumably) write me out of the story, after all. Then I won’t even be in Hell, I just won’t ever have been.

Let’s do a little thought experiment, though. This is just a thought experiment, it isn’t what I believe and I certainly can’t think of a way to test it. It’s not something that scripture speaks to, though. So at the very least it will stretch our brains.

Some famous person that I can’t currently remember was once visiting a healing shrine. They saw there a stack of crutches from those who had been healed. After examining the stack, they asked, “Why are there no wooden legs?” The implication is that they would believe in God if a person regrew a limb, but not if range of motion was improved. Interestingly, an examination of scripture reveals vanishingly few cases of regrowing lost limbs. There are a few disputable cases: the ear of a scribe, the withered hand, but in each case the image resolution of the story doesn’t give us enough data to determine without doubt that they were a restored amputation. The ear might have been cut through but not off, the hand may have been withered but still whole.

What if the canvas that God is painting on includes the broad strokes of history and physical laws, but does not extend to that kind of level over individual objects. To me, there’s evidence that this would need a heavy helping of nuance. Be that as it may, let’s play that thought experiment out.

One of the first objections I’ve faced when this comes up is that a God with limits isn’t worth worshiping. I deeply disagree. When someone says this, to me it implies a lot about the person’s real intentions towards God. It seems to me that they worship for what they can get. The God that can’t regrow their arm should they lose it is not worth worshiping because they want their arm back if they lose it. I want my arm back if I lose it, let’s be clear about that. I use that arm. But if God can’t do that but he still decides who is good and who is evil in the same way that Gravity decides what is heavy and what is light, then I still want to be on God’s good side. To me, this is the danger in approaching God through the Ontological and Cosmological Arguments. If there are three gods, one of the Moral Argument, one of the Ontological Argument, and one of the Cosmological Argument, and they disagree about what to do, I will follow the God of the Moral Argument. The one raising this objection implies that they would follow the God of the Cosmological or Ontological Argument. That makes me nervous about what they’ll do when there’s an immoral person in charge of the government. This isn’t a logical refutation of their position, but their objection isn’t a logical refutation of this thought experiment either. In this case, I’m meeting an emotional appeal with an emotional appeal.

Then there’s the complaint that this doesn’t fit an established definition of omnipotence. I agree. Maybe our understanding of God’s power is wrong. It’s fine: we’re allowed to be wrong. However, even if we’re not that particular kind of wrong, we might need to modulate how we’re using the word “can’t” here. Maybe this is a “can’t” more in line with my inability to see children in danger before their parents rather than in line with my inability to walk through solid walls. Maybe God could grab another canvas for our universe and start over from scratch, but it would mean giving up on this version of us and he just can’t bring himself to do that. This is well within our current definitions and understanding of omnipotence. We can consider the evidence and figure out what kind of “can’t” is in play here and what all God can and will do in which circumstances.

With those two obvious objections out of the way, this does also kind of explain some things. “Omnipotent” is a word that’s not really used to describe God in the Bible, except maybe in poetry. The God of the Bible consults with angels and sends them to do things and sometimes his own forces are delayed by his enemies. This certainly doesn’t fit with the colloquial understanding of omnipotence, that being that everything God wants he gets without effort and everything that happens is exactly what God wanted. It’s not a problem for more nuanced views of God’s power or nuanced definitions of omnipotence. If we’re committed to calling God omnipotent because of previous commitments, often this ends up meaning that whatever power God has is what we call omnipotent, and so the argument becomes circular. That’s why I’m personally less interested in keeping in line with previous confessions. I would prefer to follow the evidence where it leads. If it turns out that God can cure a snake bite but can’t regrow a severed limb, whether by personal limitation or by processes that bind him, I’m not concerned. I’d rather be honest and see God as he is than be pious and uphold my traditions.

I’ll admit, when we start a sentence with “God can’t…” I get pretty nervous. I’m not overly inclined to multiply examples of things that I don’t think God can do. With that much said, just because someone made me nervous by starting a sentence with “God can’t,” doesn’t mean I won’t end up agreeing with them by the end of the sentence. It also doesn’t mean that I won’t be willing to entertain the thought experiment to see if it matches the available data. While others may feel the need to uphold a particular view of God’s power due to previous confessional commitments, I feel free to follow the evidence where it leads. To me, the evidence implies that God is pretty powerful.