God is Never the Answer

March 15, 2005 Posted by Amy HallcloseAuthor: Amy Hall Name: Amy Hall
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I recently watched a debate between Gerd Ludeman and William Lane Craig on the subject of Jesus' resurrection.  In the midst of the debate, Ludemann made a very interesting case against belief in the resurrection.  He simply dismissed the evidence that Craig presented and asserted that it is no help at all to propose the hypothesis that God actually raised Jesus from the dead as the best explanation for the facts at hand.  (It makes it much easier to win a debate when you rule out the opposing position as a possible answer before you even begin!)

Ludemann, assuming his conclusion in his argument, stated categorically that any explanation involving a work of God will do nothing but distract us from what's really going on.  He reminded Craig, “Nobody outside theological quarters is toying with the notion that God is acting or doing something in history.  In scholarship, we have to look for the cause of things.  We have to use the most sober explanation to account for a certain development.”

But this is clearly just foolishness when you think about it.  What is “the most sober explanation” but the one that best explains the facts at hand?  You can't just assert that only answers that don't involve God are possibly true, and therefore Craig's answer that God acted in history is false by definition, regardless of his evidence.  That conclusion is, after all, the very thing they are trying to determine in the debate!

Scientists who are naturalists make this same error when they confuse science (the following of the evidence of nature to the truth) with naturalism (the philosophical belief that there is nothing outside the natural world), claiming that the hypothesis of an intelligent designer of the universe is outside the realm of science, so they must find some other explanation.  However, if the evidence of nature points to the existence of a higher being, then the best explanation (based on science) involves that higher being.  You can't simply cling to your philosophical beliefs, ruling out all other options because you don't like them.

You can see the silliness of this when you imagine a scientist studying nature out in the jungle.  While setting up camp, he stumbles upon a strange artifact covered with complicated writings and drawings.  He is amazed by the design and beauty of the object and begins to devote his life to exploring all of his many theories about how this artifact developed out of nature.  When another scientist kindly points out that obviously a personal, intelligent agent created the artifact, the first scientist disdainfully responds, “My dear boy, I am a scientist.  It is my job to find natural explanations, and that is what I intend to do.  Do not bother me with your speculations of an unknown being, for that is no real answer at all.”

That scientist will spend the rest of his life chasing down an explanation involving the random forces of nature.  We chuckle at his foolishness, and we would do the same with Ludemann if it were not so ultimately tragic.

Related posts:

1. Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?
2. Confusion About Science and Religion – Part One
3. Apologetics: Not Just For Theists
4. The Original Bible Answer Man
5. Confusion About Science and Religion – Part Two
6. The Heart of Intelligent Design Theory

Posted in Amy's Posts, Main Page, Science, Theology