Fuzzy science Mike

One of the podcasts that I really enjoy listening to is Ask science Mike. At the moment he is doing a speaking tour in the United States, to promote his new book Finding God in the Waves - which I like by the way.

In his most recent podcast he is as interesting,  witty, thought-provoking and yet fuzzy as ever as he does a live show from Portland, Oregon.

Atheist question, would God exist if we didn't? He "thinks" no. He hopes, comtemplatively and mystically, "yes". The reason for this apparent dissonance is because there are ways of understanding and experiencing and expression that cannot be explained by empiricism. I have a feeling that Mike might need to de-fuzzy a bit what he describes as "existence". At one point in the Portland show, he clearly states that Superman and Batman don't exist. Not "don't exist in the real world", they simply: "don't exist". What about his psychosocial models? Do they exist? What about the inexpressible mystical experiences? Do they exist? Does his memory of what happened to him on the beach exist? Does my idea of Batman exist (in my mind and in millions of minds)? Surely the answer is "yes" to all these examples? The problem then is that there are things that exist - most things in fact - that exist about which no-one has any idea, like each individual blade of grass in the field or photon of light that goes anywhere except towards our tiny planet. God, according to Mike's confessed pantheistic definition of God, cannot exist without the universe he sustains.

Funnily enough, and I would be surprised if he knew it yet as he probably is not as insanely interested by the Trinity as me, this role reversal has been attempted in theology quite a bit already. In recent times, various theologians have attempted ways of understanding the Trinity or the cross of Christ in such a way as to make God dependant on his creation and its failure - even on man's sin. People have asked the question: is God essentially a saviour, or did he incidentally become one when his creation got itself into a pickle? There is then a popular current that says yes, voluntarily so, God has submitted himself in a sense to a state of dependence on what he has made. Science Mike's conclusions are remarkably in sync with that Trinitarian movement.

He speaks with surprise at his popularity among Calvinists. He really is not a consistent Trinitarian though, so I'm not sure what he is criticising when he says that "God who sends his son to be murdered as a sacrifice to himself, and that sacrifice is himself to himself", when the alternative of incarnational love sounds like a pure, no-distinctions modalism! A couple of times in the past, he has attempted an answer to his audience about the Trinity which does not come close to satisfying me that he is really engaging with it - except that it is mysterious, and mystery is good. For instance, in this episode he states (4'20" approx.) that "God is a [one] being" (my emphasis), yet when discussing the Trinity elsewhere, I have heard him go to a completely different extreme and say that God is three beings. To be honest, I don't think he knows what he really thinks about the Trinity, which to be fair, is probably the position of most folk.

Answering a question about Otherness: I didn't like the way he dealt with this. Followers of this blog know that I love distinction, the ultimate one of which is that between the Father and the Son. If there is no space between those two, then there is no room for love between them. It is love that binds persons distinct in their personhood together. But all too quickly, because of our experience of conflict through difference and intolerance of difference, Mike wants to immediately go for pure unity. He cites research done on even the most introverted of folk, who must have contact with others, as we are social animals. This research is only half the story, however. We are also made for distinction. Fusional relationships have been shown in the social sciences to be harmful in child-parent relationships to the child's sense of autonomy and responsibility.

Finally a hilarious moment in this episode that made me laugh out loud: Science Mike prayed as a kid Satan would accept Jesus into his heart. Solved problem of evil! Actually, that reminds me of when I was a kid and my parents taught me about the existence of the invisible Satan character, and I threw him a punch! Great how as kids we already want to kick evil in the teeth.

Key notions defined series: 11. Mystery

Having completed my main review of the New Testament (and some Old Testament) texts, cataloguing almost 500 passages, I am "celebrating" that milestone by publishing a part of the paper that helps me in the weighing of these texts, which is currently entitled Chapter 2: Key Notions Defined. It is also an opportunity for me to tidy up these definitions. Here is the next one:

Mystery

Things can be defined as a mystery OR mysterious. But what is the difference? If something is described as A mystery, then there is something fundamentally ungraspable at its very core, a bit like an endless work-in-progress because nobody can really agree on what this mystery actually IS at its very heart. Even if people consistently acknowledge some phenomenon that is worthy of acknowledging and probing, they shift between imprecise language and depend on inadequate analogy. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity or the two natures of Christ might qualify very well.
If something, however, is to be described as merely mysterious, then mystery may not be at the very core of the phenomenon described.

Jimmy needs to get a flight to Detroit. He has the precise fare needed for a bus and a train to the airport. If Jimmy misses the last bus that would get him on time for the last train to the airport that would enable him to catch his flight to Detroit, then – according to this definition – it would be more fitting to describe his on-time arrival in Detroit as mysterious than A MYSTERY. It is not an unresolvable mystery to its very core that Jimmy made his flight. We can come up with alternative scenarios that meant that Jimmy got lucky.

What does it mean to say that God is one and tri-personal? It’s a mystery! I confess it now annoys me somewhat if, when a believer’s set of interpretations no longer holds together, they just play their joker card, and declare their belief to be a “mystery”. You can’t beat that card! Even the apostle Paul plays it that way, right? So some feel they can do this with authority because of how Paul speaks of mystery.

This way of understanding mystery is mistaken because mystery, exegetically, is about God’s inclusion of the gentiles, not about irreconcilable inconsistencies or contradicting points of view. According to the definition above, gentile inclusion is actually more mysterious than A MYSTERY because we do not see this inclusion as incomprehensible to its very core.