POST #12: Randomness, what does it say about purpose?

ran’dom•ness, noun, a lack of order, purpose, cause, or predictability; proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.

de•sign’, noun, the purposeful or inventive arrangement of parts or details.

I am currently reading Random Designer by Richard G. Colling. (I will be offering a review here soon.) Colling owns up to the seemingly oxymoronic nature of his own title in the first chapter. According to the definitions above, randomness implies a lack of purpose, while design implies purposefulness. Can randomness ever be “by design” without ceasing to be random? Can randomness be purposeful? In this post, I will explore these questions and invite your comments. In future posts, I will further develop the prospect of randomness in evolution/creation, and the theological possibilities suggested by randomness.

Randomness is the linchpin of naturalistic evolution. A continual stream of apparently unguided genetic mutations form the potential raw material of gradual change demanded by the Darwinian model. Only an extremely small percentage of these mutations actually result in useful adaptations that offer improvement to the species. The great majority are neutral in effect, and some are damaging. This vast pool of mostly inconsequential mutations yielding only rare adaptive changes gives rise to the notion of randomness as the driver of evolutionary processes.

But does such a view of randomness (which I accept) necessarily translate into purposelessness? Can randomness be intentional? Can randomness be teleological (that is, can it serve a long-range purpose)? Can randomness be a tool to generate desired effects which would be unattainable otherwise? The answer to all these questions is yes!

This has been, and promises to continue to be, a politically charged election year in the United States. And in the ever changing fortunes of the candidates, we have been reminded again and again of the power of the unofficial poll. Just this morning I read that both John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani are likely to drop of their respective party’s nomination races. In each case, their decisions seem to be guided by the poll numbers in states which will vote next week. Polls may be useful, but their accuracy and usefulness hinge on one very essential polling principle: random sampling. Because a relatively small number of potential voters are actually polled, and the results are extrapolated to predict how the full electorate is likely to vote, polling organizations recognize that their sample of voters must be random. Randomness is a necessary tool to accomplish a desired purpose. Poll takers thus go to great efforts to ensure randomness.

Or consider the example of random number generators (RNG). An RNG is a physical device, and/or computer based program, which is designed to do just what the name implies: spit out sequences of numbers that are genuinely random. In cases where absolute randomness is required, an RNG is sometimes more difficult to design than one might think. Random number generators are used in applications where unpredictability is desired such as in cryptography, statistical sampling and, of course, in gambling. So again we can see that the principle of randomness can be planned, intentional, and purposeful.

Back to the title of the book I’m reading: Random Designer may not be as self-contradicting as it at first appears. Perhaps an Almighty Creator, able to accomplish his purposes in any manner he chooses might use randomness as His tool of choice. But, we may well ask, is it even possible for a sovereign God to leave things to chance? In Ecclesiates, Koheleth puzzles over such questions. In 3:1 through 17 he sees all that happens as falling in line with the timings and eternal purposes of God. Yet in 9:11 he observes that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, and he laments that all is governed by chance. Koheleth seems content to live with the paradox; he offers no sure sounding logical solution.

When I consider the possibility of randomness in the purposes of God, my thoughts range far beyond arbitrary genetic mutations and adaptive changes in species. I’ve considered how randomness may function beyond evolution in the purposes of God. It may be His tool of choice to accomplish desired ends attainable through no other process. God may even now be using randomness.

As we move forward in this series of posts, we will discuss some possibilities about why God may be doing just that. We may discover how randomness provides meaning and texture to existence. We may find that randomness offers relevant answers to some very troubling questions about life, and about God. But first, in the next post, we will consider a common assumption: that randomness implies atheism.

Have you considered the possibility of randomness in the purposes of the Creator? Or does it seem impossible to you that a sovereign God could or would allow randomness to function in his Creation? Please comment ...

Book Review: Relics of Eden

Whether believers are comfortable with it or not, biological evolution is an issue that is not going away anytime soon. As the very strong case for common descent settles down upon the church in the coming years, many will be deeply troubled by it’s implications. To dismiss the issue as inconsequential ignores the impact it will have on the faith of many. The head-in-the-sand approach of many believers who refuse to study the question, choosing to hold on to their long-held beliefs strikes me as dangerous. For this reason, I am suggesting to my friends who wish to be informed on this subject this book, Relics of Eden by Daniel J. Fairbanks.

I read Relics of Eden (Prometheus Books, 2007) upon the recommendation of my friend, Gordon Glover. Fairbanks, writing from his perspective as a research geneticist, lays out in layman’s language some of the basic building blocks for reconstructing the history of life on our planet from DNA. He proceeds to give the reader an overview of what DNA tells us about the interrelatedness of species. I found the book easy to read, and informative. Some of the early chapters (as he develops the building blocks of genetic understanding) are somewhat technical. But the payoff comes as he demonstrates how these bits of information are used to paint a remarkably consistent picture of our past.

As I have said elsewhere, I consider common descent to be undeniable in the face of DNA evidence. Either humans share a common ancestry with all living things, or God went to a great deal of trouble to make it look that way, right down to the tiniest details of our DNA. If evolution did not happen, then the Creator is a trickster and a deceiver, and all science is rendered meaningless. Relics of Eden powerfully confirms this understanding (Fairbanks describes the mounting evidence as “spectacular”). But the trail of DNA science does not stop there. Comparative DNA is like an accurate time clock, giving us strong clues regarding the “when” of various evolutionary events. This growing treasure trove of information is also being used to reconstruct the great human migrations across our planet, and to do so with a precision which has never been possible for the anthropologist before. And perhaps most significantly, DNA science today is able to trace the history and development of various diseases, and offer up new ways of combating them. It is ironic that so many who resist what DNA is telling us about the history of life are more than ready to accept the great medical advancements of our day which are based upon the same science. Modern medical science is built upon the evolutionary model.

The final two chapters consist of an appeal to both sides of what Fairbanks characterizes as a false dichotomy: that somehow faith and reason cannot co-exist. Without detailing his own beliefs, Fairbanks makes it clear that he is a man of faith who believes in God as Creator. He appeals to those who choose to perpetuate psuedo-scientific creationism and Intelligent Design to reexamine the evidence, and lay down their battle-axes. I say, “Amen!”

Book Review: God's Universe

In the last few months, a number of wonderful books have crossed my desk, and I wish to recommend some of them to you. The first of these is Owen Gingerich’s God’s Universe.

Owen Gingerich is a Harvard Professor of Astronomy and the History of Science, Emeritus, and a life-long Mennonite, a combination I found interesting. As a Bible-believing Christian, his books often deal with the interface of faith and science. God’s Universe (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), is his most recent offering.

The first chapter is a response to the prevalent scientific understanding known as the Copernican Principle, and its corollary, Mediocrity Principle. Gingerich takes exception to “Mediocrity”, arguing for the unique place humankind may occupy in the Universe, and citing evidence of purposeful design, though the design for which Gingerich advocates is not the same as Intelligent Design. This becomes more clear in the second chapter, entitled “Dare a Scientist Believe in Design?” He is careful to distinguish his view of design from that being asserted by the Intelligent Design movement. On pages 68 - 69, we writes,

Whether we look at the nature and abundance of the atoms themselves or the remarkable ratio of electrostatic to gravitational attraction or the many other details of our physical universe, we know that without these design features we would not be here. In a word, I believe in intelligent design, lower case i and lower case d.

But I have a problem with Intelligent Design, capital I and capital D. It is being sold increasingly as a political movement, as if somehow it is an alternative to Darwinian evolution. Evolution today is an unfinished theory. There are many question about details it does not answer, but these are not grounds for dismissing it.

Indeed, in the ensuing pages, Gingerich expresses substantial agreement with Steven Jay Gould’s assessment of evolution as being fact. So, how might design express itself in the seemingly random processes of Darwinian evolution? Gingerich answers with his own questions on page 70:

Are mutations blind chance, or is God’s miraculous hand continually at work, disguised in the ambiguity of the uncertainty principle? Or we could be more subtle, and ask whether God designed the universe in the first place to make possible the catalysts and unknown pathways that enable the formation of life.

As for design in cosmology, Gingerich devotes several pages to the fascinating studies of Fred Holye, the late British astronomer who, despite his own development of the overwhelming likelihood of design in the cosmos, remained an atheist his entire life. For me, these pages were worth the price of the book.

In the third chapter, “Questions without Answers”, Gingerich suggests that when it comes to the “why” questions, religious belief offers up better answers than unbelief. While Gingerich presents a strong case that contemplation of the universe can be more meaningful and coherent if it is viewed as the work of a transcendent designer, he readily admits that metaphysical assumptions may lead one to such a conclusion. In the end, these assumptions are more matters of the heart than the reason, as the closing Pascal quote suggests: “The heart has its reasons that reason does not know.”

This little book (just over 100 pages) is easy to read, and it is a wonderful primer to science and faith, randomness and reason, design and purpose. I recommend this book to my readers.

I'm back ...

Though I only gave it a somewhat veiled remark, one of the chief reasons for my hiatus from blogging was a disturbance in my own church fellowship. I help to lead a small fellowship of 50 or so believers here in Toledo, Oregon. When my friends here learned (from my own mouth!) that I consider common biological descent to be undeniable, and that I am open to Darwinian evolution, which seems to be the most likely theory to explain common descent, many were deeply troubled. It resulted in a crisis in our church life, and in a number of important relationships.

It has become clear to me that many of my friends either do not understand what I am doing here on this blog, or they suspect that science is somehow leading me away from Biblical faith. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

Evolution is a very small piece of the larger picture I am trying to develop here at “OutsideTheBox” But it is the piece that results in the strongest reactions among my friends. As I reenter this arena of writing, and interacting with you, I wish at the outset to submit to you once again what I am trying to accomplish here, and how evolution fits into the bigger picture.

Some of my friends are offended or deeply disappointed with me. Others are undisturbed, but unconvinced. A handful (mostly those who have read Francis Collins or Gordon Glover) find themselves in agreement with me. But there are others who have indicated that they just "don't care about this issue." That is, it matters little to them whether we got here by special creation or by natural processes. I must say that, as an isolated question, I am right there: it doesn't matter to me either. I frankly hated biology in school. Evolution is not some little hobby horse of mine. (I am far more interested in physics.) But here is the deal. I find that all of the scientific findings of the last 100 years play in big to our understanding of Scripture and theology. And I find that very few evangelical theologians and church leaders of our day have taken notice of this salient fact.

Not many people realize that after he came to his remarkable and earth shaking understandings about gravitational fields and the laws of motion, Newton spent the last years of his life thinking and writing about his favorite subject: theology. But this has not been true for the 20th century leaders of science such as Einstein, Bohr, Hubble, or Dirac. What changed? For many centuries, believers drove the engine of scientific discovery, and the engine was fueled by their love of the Creator. And with each new revelation of natural truth, they would go back and adjust the theology of the church as needed. The exploration of our cosmos and natural phenomena was seen as a doorway to deeper and more accurate understandings of God. Of course, these adjustments were always in line with the written revelation, although often a change in the way we read and understand scripture was necessary. Science was helping us to “rightly divide the word of truth.”

But with the near wholesale rejection of Darwin at the turn of the 20th century, a new course was set. We deeded over nearly all of science to the secularists. The church, as a whole, paid little attention. And certainly, faith no longer drove science.

My main interest is today, as it has always been, theology ... knowing and understanding God and his ways. And ultimately, not theoretical theology, but theology that filters down into the every day life of the believer. I study as I do because I want to make sense of my life and my world. I study science because it profoundly informs my theology ... it helps me to see what God might be up to in this world as he forms his Kingdom though people of faith. 

Evolution is a very small part of this picture. But evolution does imply some things about the possible place of randomness in the workings of God. Evolution does suggest some strong possibilities about how God may have chosen, and may still choose, to operate through natural processes. Evolution may have some extremely profound things to say about an ages-long battle between the powers of death and the Power of Life! 

But I am even more interested in things like Big Bang cosmology and what we have discovered about entropy in the last 40 years. Nothing in recent science touches upon theology more than this! It effects our doctrines of salvation, atonement, etc.; it profoundly effects eschatology; it effects the prayer of the church; it effects how and why we do what we do in the world. I am deeply interested in Einstein's relativity and how that impacts Newton's laws of motion, and how that, in turn, speaks to theological determinism (an expression of ultra-calvinism.) Newton left us with a world in which the very laws of physics strongly endorsed determinism. Einstein changes all of that. But even more, quantum physics changes all of that. Quantum physics may just be God's delayed message to us late-day people that the stage of this life, and the ultimate battle with evil, has not been rigged ... indeed, could not have been rigged.

So, left to itself, I couldn't care less about the competing sciences of origins. Or science in general! But I do care deeply about understanding pain and suffering. I do care deeply about why God watches Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin from the sidelines, and chooses not to intervene. I do care deeply about the "why" of my wife’s life-threatening cancer. And I care deeply that the church learn to respond with better answers to the reasoned objections and questions currently being voiced by the skeptics. For many believers, the stock answers which the church has been offering for hundreds of years are adequate. For me, and many like me, they simply are not. 

This might be hard for my friends to believe, but I am actually not a science buff! I am, as I have always been, a disciple of Jesus and a student of the Bible first and foremost. But I am jazzed about the possibilities suggested strongly by what science is uncovering in God's universe, and how these possibilities impact the way we think about God, how he operates, and what the Scriptures are saying. 

I think about how science informs my understandings of the Scriptures when I consider and pray for my wife, Ginger. I think about how science informs my understandings of the Scriptures as I listen to and try to minister to hurting people (such as Kathy, a recent guest at our fellowship.) I think about how science informs my understandings of the Scriptures when I deal with hard questions about evil and suffering from young people today. I think about how science informs my understandings of the Scriptures when I encounter the arguments of my atheist friends (and many of those arguments would blow most believers I know right out of the water!). And I think about how science informs my understandings of the Scriptures when I consider the coming train wreck for the church when the powerful DNA evidence for common decent finally filters down to be understood by the masses. It will not be a pretty sight. I feel desperately the need to alert my friends. 

Apart from all of that ... I couldn't care less about evolution!

Taking a break ...

I will be taking an indefinite break from blogging. If it is true, as it has been reported here and elsewhere, that 200 million bloggers have quit blogging (more than twice the number of active bloggers), you may count me among them, at least for the moment.

I started this blog with hopes of creating an on-going dialogue with my friends about some possibilities in theology that I thought worth exploration. While many of those friends report that they are regular readers, hardly any have commented. So, in terms of dialogue, blogging has proven to be a disappointment.

This is not to say that I do not appreciate my new fellow blogging friends. I do appreciate your support, your ideas and comments, and your friendship. To Steve, Gordon, Jac, Stephen, and my non-believing friends Tom and Psiloiordinary, I say thank you. I have enjoyed conversing with you, and will likely continue to do so over on your sites.

But my purpose of engaging my own friends has been unsuccessful, and the time commitment is just too great to justify such results. And in fact, these posts have only succeeded in ticking off a number of those friends. So, I will give it a rest.

Thanks for reading!

POST #11: Theodicy, Q & A

My last post on theodicy, in which I propose that this cosmos exists as God’s answer to evil, and as his means of exterminating evil, has caused some consternation (as I expected). Mine is hardly a traditional concept. It is admittedly “outside the box”. Maybe a bit too far outside for some! But as these posts continue, I hope to demonstrate how well it fits Biblical theology, even as it flies in the face of traditional theology. My friend Steve, host of An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution has raised some excellent questions. As I typed out my response, the comment grew to the size of a full post. Here are excerpts from Steve’s comments and questions (italicized), followed by my answers. Steve begins by responding to some comments from Jac. If you want the full context of this discussion, it can be found in the comments section of Post #10.

________________________________________

Hi Jac:

I admit that when Cliff first started discussing these ideas a few months back, I thought it smacked very much of dualism. I don’t think that anymore since I believe Cliff has carefully addressed that concern a number of times. There is a difference in not be able to do something, and choosing not to do it. God is not limited in any way UNLESS he limits himself.... I’m not sure I’d put it in the same language as Cliff, that evil is “difficult for God to eliminate”. I think a more appropriate way of phrasing it is that the ramifications of eliminating evil in one swift blow are worse than allowing it to continue. (i.e. what Jesus said about wheat and chaff) But Cliff & I might be saying the same thing.

So I don’t think dualism is a problem, but I see two other challenges.

1) Where did evil come in the first place? ... Doesn’t the existence of evil outside of the space-time of our universe just push the issue back in “time” (if we can speak of time prior to the big bang)? Don’t we just end up needing the same argument again - i.e. a free-will / free-process argument? What is the benefit to theodicy of having the origin of evil outside of our universe? My questions don’t in anyway address whether your argument is consistent/good (and I know even you say it is speculative), I’m just not sure what the point or benefit is to theodicy. Maybe I'm missing something.

2) I’m really uncomfortable with the implication that the purpose of the universe is the destruction of evil. Maybe you aren’t saying “only purpose”, but it seems to be “primary purpose”. Is this what you are saying? To me this seems very much like we are being “used” by God. And I know we ARE “used” by God (we are his “hands”, “feet”, “eyes”, “ears” on earth helping to bring in the kingdom of God) – but that is different. I think the overriding theme in the bible is the redemption of creation, not the destruction of evil.
________________________________________

Steve,

• In your response to Jac, your framing of the choice God made comes close to my own thinking. We’re going way beyond anything we could know when we talk about the pre-cosmos mind of God. But I conceive of it as something like this: when evil rose up, God might have chosen to snuff it out, maybe only to have it recur again and again ... but that perhaps he devised a plan involving us and this universe which would purge it forever. Whatever he is doing here with us is going to set the whole of the angelic hosts into awe at his wisdom (Eph. 3:10). That verse has always set me on a search for something more dramatic than Jesus dying for my sins and admitting me to heaven (as wonderful as that is!). I mean that these angels have known God intimately for billions of years, and he is doing something through the church (I understand church in this verse to refer to believing mankind of all time) that will demonstrate facets of his wisdom they have never witnessed before! Something very big is happening in the cosmos. My details may be sketchy. They may be all wrong. But I have to believe that we are in the midst of a drama that is beyond anything we have ever imagined! Evil may be a thing difficult to purge forever, but God has devised a plan -- long and involved -- that will do just that. Clearly any theology that sees evil as being once-and-for-all annihilated could hardly be called dualism.

Should it surprise us that God opted not to use his “Iron Fist” to stomp out evil? Is the concept that he would utilize a more “passive” tactic to overcome evil really so startlingly new? Is this not the manner in which we are instructed to overcome evil? Does he tell us to overpower evil? or to turn the other cheek. Does he tell us to use force against evil? or to go the extra mile. He says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) Why should we think that a cosmic battle with evil changes the rules of divine engagement? Is it not at least possible that God tells us to war against evil through nonresistance because that is precisely how he does so? And might it be that this is actually the best way? to let evil run its course, and actually die under the influence of divine goodness, love, and nonresistance ... even a nonresistance that cost the blood of Jesus? Or are these just the wistful notions of a Sermon on the Mount idealism that could have no practical role on a cosmic scale?

• You say Where did evil come from in the first place? and doesn’t this problem just put us right back at square one, with no real theodicy solution other than free-will?

Those are very insightful questions. I have excluded events outside of time and space from my posts, because we have no way of discerning anything about them. But that is a too easy cop-out, and your questions are valid. One possibility, I suppose, is that prior to the drama of this cosmos, there was some kind of balance-of-power dualism, one that will after this cosmic battle come to its final end. But I doubt it. The Bible does tell us about a war in heaven, a rebellion against God’s authority led by Lucifer. But imagine with me that that is exactly what happened, and this cosmos and its process was God’s answer. (The following logic gets very complicated, but stay with me.) We do not need a new free-will theodicy to explain this eruption of evil. In fact, if we surmise that angels do have an inherent power of self-determination, and that Lucifer simply made a horrible choice, note that he did so without a backdrop of evil going on around him. This angelic “free-will” did not require a context filled with natural evil and moral evil, did it? In other words, if your argument is valid (that I have just pushed the “free-will” theodicy argument back 13 billions years) then our present day free-will theodicy arguments make no sense. Why should unthinkably horrible events be a necessary backdrop to ensure genuine free-will, as free-will theodicy implies? If Satan had genuine free will without tsunamis and earthquakes and unthinkable suffering of millions of innocents, why would such manifestations be deemed necessary to validate our free-will?

So no, I do not think I just pushed the problem back to an earlier free-will argument. Or if I did, then the nature of that earlier free-will argument is completely different from the one I have rejected. Still, I have not answered your question, and that is because I believe no answer exists. Our problem of evil is limited to events within our cosmos. We know evil exists. It’s ultimate cause is a mystery, for now. But theodicy attempts to answer the question, “why does it persist? why does God just look on, and take no action?” My thoughts are limited to these questions.

• You say, I’m really uncomfortable with the implication that the purpose of the universe is the destruction of evil. Maybe you aren’t saying “only purpose”, but it seems to be “primary purpose”. Is this what you are saying?

Yep, that is what I am saying. Shocking? But it may make more sense to you after I have posted more thoughts about how death, resurrection, evolution, nonresistance, the theology of suffering and glory all interconnect to this framework. In my mind, a goal to destroy evil does not exclude nor minimize the stories of the redemption of creation, and our personal redemption, etc. Rather, it adds a layer of purpose and meaning on top of these themes, enriching them and contextualizing them.

Are we just being “used” in this scheme? I certainly don’t conceive of it that way. I see that we are called into a significant and meaningful partnership with God, and with Jesus. It is our choice whether to accept this call. Its a volunteer army!* Part of this calling may be an invitation to suffer for his cause. But God, through our captain Jesus, has already led the way in suffering. We are called to join in with him. And if we do, we are granted to share in the glory of the Kingdom! This is the teaching of 1 Peter, and Romans 8. This certainly elevates our role in the cosmic scheme of things. Traditional theology has taught us to see ourselves as of little count. Pawns being acted upon. A false humility. What I am seeing is that God has given us significance beyond our imaginations. Can he get the job done without me? Yes. But I have (we all have) the amazing potential of actually speeding up the process! (2 Peter 3:3-14). A God who adopts me as his own child, calls me into high service, asks me to join in his suffering, makes me a co-heir with his Son, sharing in his glory ... such a God can scarcely be seen as “using” me.

* An exception might be those innocents who suffer at the hand of evil, and unwittingly play a role in this battle. When they experience the glory that goes hand in hand with their suffering (Romans 8:17-18), I have no doubt they will in retrospect happily accept the role they were given to play out, and not object that they were “used”.

POST #10: Theodicy, a New Approach (Part Two)

In this post, I briefly describe some personal conclusions as to how entropy relates to evil, and thus to theodicy. This post is the most significant of any of my posts to date, and lays a groundwork for many future posts. To my knowledge, these ideas have not been widely tested. I invite you to offer a response, or to question these ideas, and I hope you will do so.

As typical Christian theology would have it, God created a pristine universe and world. From there, story usually goes something like this: at a point in time, evil invades the scene, and corrupts the cosmos, necessitating corrective actions by the Creator, which in turn leads to a judgment of evil at the end of the age. As we bring together current understandings of entropy with Biblical truths, the possibility of a quite different picture begins to emerge.

In part one of this post, we traveled to the end of time, and established a linkage between the fates of evil and entropy in this cosmos. We suggested that this linkage may help us to understand the purposes of a Creator who intentionally created an entropic cosmos, even though it is clear that he considered entropy a provisional aspect of his creation, one from which he hoped (divine hope, of course, is more like certainty!) it would be delivered (Romans 8:18-23). Now I invite you to journey back with me to the dawn of time.

From the still resounding echos of creation (including cosmic microwave background radiation), physicists are today able to piece together a remarkable amount of information about the first second of cosmic history. For example, we are told that entropy began at 10 to the power of -43 seconds after the big bang (for non-math majors, this is an extremely small fraction of a second). For our purposes, we could simply say that God created the cosmos to be entropic at its very outset.

Why would the Creator intentionally subject his new creation to a physical law of decay and death? If the entropic cosmos is as we described in Post #4 , driven at every level by a principle of death and decay, why would a God of Life choose to create a cosmos governed by the law entropy from the very beginning? Why would he build into creation the seeds of its own demise, such that all creation would groan in pain, experience frustration, be bound to decay; and then express that his will from the beginning was to see it delivered from its inevitable entropic end? Considering the linkage between entropy and evil, can we not reasonably deduce that God created this cosmos as he did because of evil, in response to evil, as a way of dealing with evil?

This deduction would suggest that the rebellion of Lucifer and his expulsion from heaven occurred prior to, or commensurate with the Creation Moment, and that this cosmos, driven by death and decay would have been created to house him, and ultimately destroy him and the evil that arose within him. In this scenario, this cosmos would be God’s response to evil, and his plan to contain it and bring it to a final end.

Of the ultimate origin of evil, how it came to express itself in Lucifer, we can say nothing. This occurred outside of our cosmos, outside of our space/time dimensions, and must remain a mystery. But if we can deduce from the time line of entropy that the entire cosmos is in some way a response to evil, a complete paradigm shift ensues. The ramifications of such an understanding profoundly impact our understanding of the purpose of creation, the purpose of man, the role of evolution, the role of suffering, and, germane to our present discussion, the problem of evil. It effectively resets the table for the theodicy discussion.

The underlying presumption of Free Will theodicy, the most commonly advanced Christian solution to evil’s riddle, is that man was created by God to glorify him, to obey him and enter into fellowship with him. I have always loved that oft-quoted Westminster Shorter Catechism which suggests that the chief purpose of man is “to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” But this presumption is, in part, responsible for the difficulty of resolving the problem of evil. C.S. Lewis suggests that the persistent existence of evil is a price God considers “worth paying” for free will. But what if the ultimate prize was not having free will spirit beings choose to love their Creator? What if, instead, the prize was the ultimate destruction of evil? And what if the true purpose of man is to co-venture with God in the pursuit of this prize?

We might then see all expressions of evil in a different light. If, in the interplay of spiritual and natural process, it is necessary to let evil run its own course, to be overcome by goodness rather than subdued by a greater power, we could surmise that God’s hand must be restrained. Yes, he allows evil to persist. But the prize is not free will. The prize is evil’s complete undoing. This turns the whole theodicy issue upside down. If it is true that evil must be allowed full expression, and that it must ultimately be overcome not by force, but by the greater power of goodness, we can then begin to see that the best thing a good God can do is to let evil run its course. Of course, we must deal with the fact that evil claims millions of innocent victims in full view of God. But as we will see in a future post, the experience of even these victims of evil is cast in an entirely new light when their sufferings are viewed as a part of the necessary process of destroying the cause of all suffering.

All theories begin with a presumption. Mine begins with this one: evil has posed a more difficult problem for God than we have allowed ourselves to imagine. This will undoubtedly be a troubling concept for many. Christians might find it unthinkable that an omnipotent God could find any task “difficult”. But I am asking you to consider the following possibilities, and to respond with your comments.

I am suggesting that all of Creation exists as God’s answer to evil. I am suggesting that the purpose of God in creating the cosmos was to house and ultimately destroy evil. I am suggesting that God knew from the beginning that evil could not be dealt a final death blow without much suffering under its hand. I am suggesting that God is asking all of Creation to join in paying this price. I am suggesting that, from the beginning, God knew that he would lead the way in suffering, that no one would suffer more. But I am suggesting that even the sufferings of Christ would be incomplete; that the price of evil’s ultimate undoing would include the sufferings of many innocent victims. (The Biblical theme of non-resistance overcoming evil in the end plays into this scenario.)

In fact, many of these suggestions have strong Biblical support. Some have inferential support. But I will not be building the Biblical case for these concepts in this post as 1) this post is already too long! and 2) I would like to hear first from my readers.

I want to finish this post by reemphasizing what I am not saying. I am not saying that entropy is evil. I am suggesting that it is a piece of God’s plan to annihilate evil. And as such it is good. Genesis 1 tells us that God was pleased with every step of his creative work. Five times we read his assessment: “God saw that is was good.” I understand that God’s inclusion of death and decay in his original blueprint was provisional, but purposeful, and that it suited his plans perfectly. (It does appear from Scripture that entropy, death and decay, are tools available to the forces of evil ... that death itself is under the controlling influence of evil in the person of Satan.)

I am not promoting a new brand of dualism, in which good and evil are locked into an eternal “balance of power”. I am not saying that the power of evil is equal to the power of God. Evil, together with death and decay, will be vanquished. Its doom is certain. I am suggesting that the manner in which evil must be dealt with is far more complex and involved than we have thought. I am suggesting that the demise of evil has so far been a 13.7 billion year process, one that we cannot yet fully understand. And I am suggesting that all the out-workings of evil in this cosmos are a necessary part of its ultimate undoing.

Please comment.