You have to hand it to theologians for their typically brilliant explanations of biblical events. Here is a fine example of Anselm’s explanation for the division of good and bad angels in Heaven and Hell, respectively.
In On the Fall of the Devil (De casu diaboli) Anselm extends his account of freedom and sin by discussing the first sin of the angels. In order for the angels to have the power to preserve rectitude of will for its own sake, they had to have both a will for justice and a will for happiness. If God had given them only a will for happiness, they would have been necessitated to will whatever they thought would make them happy. Their willing of happiness would have had its ultimate origin in God and not in the angels themselves. So they would not have had the power for self-initiated action, which means that they would not have had free choice. The same thing would have been true, mutatis mutandis, if God had given them only the will for justice.
Since God gave them both wills, however, they had the power for self-initiated action. Whether they chose to subject their wills for happiness to the demands of justice or to ignore the demands of justice in the interest of happiness, that choice had its ultimate origin in the angels; it was not received from God. The rebel angels chose to abandon justice in an attempt to gain happiness for themselves, whereas the good angels chose to persevere in justice even if it meant less happiness. God punished the rebel angels by taking away their happiness; he rewarded the good angels by granting them all the happiness they could possibly want. For this reason, the good angels are no longer able to sin. Since there is no further happiness left for them to will, their will for happiness can no longer entice them to overstep the bounds of justice. Thus Anselm finally explains what it is that perfects free choice so that it becomes unable to sin.
It was inevitable that the opening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a film starring former Nixon writer and game show host Ben Stein, would revive the Intelligent Design (ID) debate in the U.S. A quick search of Google News shows what film critics think of this film. And websites like Expelled Exposed show what atheists think.
The more I think about ID, the more it seems to be an inevitable reaction to two modern realities, science and technology. The evolution of science and technology is causing the extinction of older, less scientific beliefs and methodologies, like Biblical creationism and faith healing, for example. Because of this, those who hold less scientific beliefs and practice less scientific methodologies are being forced to either change their beliefs and habits or become essentially less fit to survive.
When I listen to Stein in the Expelled trailer, his words seem laughable to me. From the handful of reviews I have read, many people feel the same. I find his words laughable because, at the beginning of the trailer, he admits that he is equating ID with religious belief, while at the same time trying to resolve it with science. It’s like he just doesn’t get that religion isn’t science and never will be.
It also astonishes me that Stein is so grossly ignorant about evolution. He seems to think that evolution is a completely random process. And he jokingly (I think) equates it with causing life to exist from mud and lightning strikes. Why has he not learned about evolution before critiquing it or becoming a spokesperson for those who do? No, it must be the same old story. He has simply ignored the facts and presumed that his religious beliefs remain intact.
From what I have learned, I can confidently conclude that evolution is a fact of life. Evolution is life. Life evolves. If religious beliefs are incompatible with evolution, then those beliefs are wrong. Or, perhaps, they are misunderstood. We are imperfect creatures, after all.
I hear a lot of comedians make fun of religion or God, but I’ve never heard one focus solely on that topic, and surely for good reason, like staying employed. Anyway, here are a few jokes, silly or otherwise, that I thought of last night on the way home:
When God said, “Let there be light,” who was he talking to? “Let there be light! Oh, wait, there’s nobody here. Shit, where’s the light switch?” Pause. “Oh, yeah, there it is.”
Have you ever wondered why it took God six whole days to make everything? He can do anything, but, for some divinely inspired reason, it took 144 hours to make the Heavens and the Earth. Really? I think God is lazy. I think he’s a slacker just like the rest of us. He probably plays World of Warcraft.
I don’t really believe in God, but, sometimes, just for fun, I like to pray for impossible things. I like to say stuff like, “Dear Lord, please keep Kenny alive.” Or, “Dear Lord, please help Pinocchio stop lying.” “Better yet, please turn him into a real, live boy. But not Jewish. He’s had enough problems with his nose.”
If we cannot know everything, then can we know that something that seems impossible is, in fact, impossible?
Richard Dawkins says that we cannot be certain that God does not exist, only that this is very improbable. However, it seems to me that the very definition of a deity is inherently self-contradictory. For instance, any conceivable god is, by definition, supernatural and the supernatural is a self-contradictory concept. A supernatural being exists outside the laws of physics, but it is impossible to know this without also knowing that physics cannot possibly explain the supernatural part of the deity in question.
In other words, without being supernatural, yourself, it would be impossible to know that someone else is supernatural. So, while it might be possible for a being to be supernatural–assuming that eternally defying the laws of physics makes any sense–it is impossible to know this for certain.
