Anslem, Nietzsche, Goodness, Nihilism & The Good News

Anselm

I wrote in a  previous post here about how we Christians are responding to the incessant attacks on Christians and our Church. Mostly we respond as victims, the zeitgeist of victimology infecting even us.

I recently read an article by a guy, T L Jernigan ("On Anselm's God & the Virtue of Existing"-Touchstone), contrasting St Anselm and Nietzsche. The ideas here are his, I take no claim to them, only my response to the article.

 Nietzsche we all know said God is dead. Anselm we don’t know so much about. He was the 11^th Century Archbishop of Canterbury. His main thing was to prove the existence of God by combining science, logic and reason with experience and knowledge of the Divine.

He said, God is good, so reality is good. I remember a sermon or reading from awhile ago, that said at each stage of creation, God saw it was good. So what could be better than good?

Anselm: “We believe that you are the thing than which nothing greater can be thought…it is the one thing to have something in the understanding, but quite another to understand that it actually exists…And certainly that than which nothing greater can be thought cannot exist only in the understanding. For if it exists only in the understanding, it is possible to think of it existing in reality, and that is greater.”

Existence is good. It’s great in fact!

Then here comes Nietzsche, who considered existence horrible and horrid. It’s something inflicted on us.

Nietzsche: “Oh wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach; not to be born, not to be nothing.” Jeeeeez, sad to be him.

Life is tough, and maybe some sometimes would like it to end. Augustine thought: “while [the suicidal man’s] error make him believe that he will no longer be, his nature makes him wish for rest, that is to say, an increase in being. It is why, since it is impossible not to love being, the fact that we are must not be a reason for us to show ingratitude toward the goodness of the creator.” (Being and Nothingness) I'll just bet you Nietzsche loved persons and sometimes even life. I would suggest he loved life so much he spent his life trying to understand and explain it. Volumes worth!

Sometimes we just need a break. We need to lie beside still waters. God provides it when we need it. Nietzsche isn’t wanting a rest, he wants it all to end. Nihilism. Would one expect anything else when one thinks God dead? With God dead there is no redemption, no rest, only endless suffering.

Now we live in a Nietzschean world. Euthanasia is good. Abortion is good; what better than to snuff out existence before a soul is aware of it? Suicide is good, we’ll even murder you while telling you you’re committing suicide.

A universe created by goodness, surrounded goodness, inhabiting goodness. We are created in His image, and it is good. I’ll be anti-Nietzschean, thank you very much. I think one of the things that moved me out of Buddhism is that it’s nihilist. From nothing to nothing. Ultimately I couldn’t accept that.  

John Paul II: “…the first and basic good for every creature…All other good derive from this basic good. I can only act while I am. Man’s multifarious works, the reasons of his genius, the fruits of his holiness are only possible if the man-the genius, the saint-comes into existence.”

I came from these ideas in the article heartened, and know that we mustn’t fall into Nietzschean thinking that life is horrible at its base, and it’s best if we snuff it out however we can. Sorry for the sad man, he’s a bad man.

We can’t whine as Christians, bemoan our plight; especially here in the New Amerika where it’s lawsuits, harassment and government suppression and threats, and we aren’t getting slaughtered like in the Middle East, or imprisoned/murdered like in China.

To back into our Christianity with just a taint of Nietzschean nihilism, or defeatism is to exhibit a weakened faith, a not serious belief of redemption. Not a serious knowledge that Life is Goodness and that God will not forsake us, Christ will return, and all we have to do is live scriptural, Spirit-filled lives.

Witness sensibly by showing understanding and talk to people from their perspective using their language, be careful of our words, listen to them (you have two ears and one mouth), be of service. James: “If you are wise and understand God’s ways prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom.” By this way we can take control of the helm and move the ship of humanity back to God, by sharing the Good News.

Magnificent ~ God's Creation

When Scientists Have Solved Everything

A thousand years from now when scientists have solved all the questions that plague humanity, they are finally ready for the ultimate challenge. They elect a representative to address God.

"God, " says the scientist in charge. "You are no longer needed. You served a function in you day, but that day is gone. We can do everything that You can do, so goodbye."

There's is a moment of silence. God asks, "Everything?"

"Yes" answer the scientist, "everything".

"Can you make a human being from dust?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay," lets see it."

The scientist reaches down and digs his hands into the earth.

"Oh no," God says, "Get your own dust."

A Thought for Those That Say ONLY Mind and Reason Exist

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow: "At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Stephen Hawking, writing about the possibility of discovering a unified theory, in "A Brief History of Time": "Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of God."

More poetically, from Annie Dillard (if you haven't read her, you're in for a treat. Highly recommend "Pilgrimage at Tinker Creek", a very influential book in my life.)
This is from "Teaching a Stone to Talk":

"Now we are no longer primitive. Now the whole world seems not holy...We as a people have moved from pantheism to pan-atheism...It is difficult to undo our own damage and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it. We are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind used to cry and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of the earth, and living things say very little to very few...And yet it could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water, and wherever there is stillness there is the small, still voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song and dance, the show we drove from town...What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are they not both saying: Hello?"

If there is no more to existence than existing, do my atheist and rationalist friends contend that there is no meaning in life? If that's true, why do any act of love or compassion? Why isn't murder and destruction just as acceptable as an act of mercy? I ask them, why are humans the only life that is self aware? The rational mind being omnipotent, they should be able to explain this, and our existence.

The Seed and the Universe

We have UFO's and Aliens. We have science fiction with all kinds of beings and monsters. I ponder this, and have for years. I have only hearsay evidence that we have been visited by aliens, and the math for other cosmic outlying beings and civilizations speak against it. The number of binary stars vs single stars that could support life etc. There's an equal number of math equations that argue for other life too. I just need to see and experience it myself; or hear a damn good argument. The physics that have to exist to create and support life have to be just so. I've advocated for years that we, humans on this planet, may be the seed for all civilizations to come. All the aliens and civilizations in science fiction, life following art, will come from us, eventually.

O' good heavens, here we go again, the earth is the center of the universe argument again. Well, not exactly. The Copernican revolution (earth revolves around the sun) is taught that it was revolutionary because Christians thought the universe revolved around the earth. Like most everything taught or believed about Christianity (even among Christians) is incorrect. There is nothing scriptural, nothing in the Bible, that states or infers that the earth is the center of anything.

What is true, is that we humans are a very unique and have a special place in creation. I think God created all the perfect balances to create us, in this unique section of the Milky Way, in this unique solar system, on this unique planet. I don't think it's a matter of serendipity. Think of this; the laws of physics have to be just so to us to exist. The force of gravity has to be at a just so pull. The Big Bang had to be at just a precise moment in time at a particular, exact force. Air has to be at a precise mixture, water has to be just so to be water. One thing different, and we don't exist. Stephen Hawking: "If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it even reached its present size."

All of the heavens, infinite to us; billions of stars, millions of galaxies, infinite nothingness. Yet here we are. "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament show His handiwork." (Psalms 19). The apostle Paul wrote: ""For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and the Godhead, so that they are without excuse". We have mostly nothingness in between particles, yet we see particles behaving in the most strange way. What causes them to act in such a way? To do what we identify as physical laws, when there are so few particles in relation to nothingness, all that space. Even the things we see and bump into is mostly space, nothingness. Yet things are orderly. That takes us behind the physical creation, because those same physical laws that form our existence, contain the moral laws that inform and maintain our human existence, our relationships, how we think, how we perceive. It just builds, doesn't it? This singular, unique creation comes from one Source. Not an accident. I'm convinced we are the seed of all to come. The we are God's special, unique, singular creation, here for a special, unique, singular purpose.