Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site topaz.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!hedrick
From: hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: what does it mean to talk to God [a brief attempt at an answer]
Message-ID: <893@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 7-Mar-85 04:46:51 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.893
Posted: Thu Mar  7 04:46:51 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Mar-85 04:24:10 EST
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 92
Xref: watmath net.religion:5886 net.religion.christian:369

Amid the usual clutter of junk in net.religion, I have seen two perfectly
reasonable requests from non-believers.  The first is in response to the
various Christians.  These folks said they believe in God because they talk
to him all the time.  Many readers found it hard to figure out what this
means.  It seemed unlikely that these people were really seeing visions and
hearing voices.  And they couldn't figure out what else could be meant.  I
think it is quite reasonable to expect a bit more explanation.  So I am
going to try to explain what I mean when I say that I talk to God.

I am reluctant to take on this task, because it is primarily the task of the
philosophy of religion.  If any readers are versed in philosophy, it will
become painfully clear that I am not a competent philosopher.  However the
question seems important, and no one else seems likely to try, so I will.
Maybe one of you philosophers can try to clean up what I say.

In order to understand what I mean when I talk about God doing this or that,
you have to realize that my model of the universe does not separate events
cleanly into those that are caused by God and those that happen by "natural
causes".  It seems clear that the laws of the physics do not uniquely
determine what goes on in history.  Even in classical physics, many
different histories are possible, depending upon the initial conditions (or
some equivalent, if you believe in a universe that has lasted forever).
With quantum mechanics, there is of course far more freedom.  I think of God
as being responsible for the specific course that history has taken.  I view
the laws of physics as being similar in kind to the laws of poetry.  The
Author has chosen to follow certain patterns.  But these patterns are not so
rigid as to contrain what he is saying.  Thus I believe that every event can
be looked at from two different perspectives: that of someone tied to the
visible universe, and God's.  From our perspective, the event is tied in to
history, and has the usual sort of causes.  Depending upon the type of
event, these causes may or may not uniquely determine it.  But I also
believe that in his providence, God has either chosen to have the event
happen, or at least to make the universe a place such that the event would
happen.  This is somewhat similar to the "two levels" that other people have
talked about, except that I consider that every event can be understood in
terms of either level.

Now on to communication with God...  There are certainly times when God hits
people over the head, but for most of us, most of the time, communication
with God occurs in the context of prayer.  When I say that "God showed me
X", I think I normally mean that I realized X when I was praying.  If you
want to look at this from the worldly perspective, it could probably be said
that no information actually arrives from an extraterrestrial source when I
pray.  I think most insights could be regarded as coming from one of the
following sources:

  - considering events around me and seeing patterns in them
  - Scripture, particularly meditating on the life of Christ
  - the views of other Christians (or non-Christians, for that matter)

However in my view, God is still responsible.  One can see something like
this even in the case of human teachers.  I have found that it is not always
possible to teach something just by lecturing about it.  Often you have to
find some way of pointing to it.  Socrates is well known for trying to bring
his students to see matters for themselves.  Nevertheless, one would still
say that a teacher of this sort is communicating.  In my view, God has
arranged the world, and our lives, to help bring us to certain insights.  He
has provided Scripture to remove any ambiguity that might otherwise be
there.  Prayer is when I take time to think about things carefully enough
that I can see what God is trying to tell me.  (NB: This is not a complete
description of the role of prayer.  I am completely omitting intercessory
prayer, and no doubt other types of prayer as well.)

There is a danger here that I will be understood as meaning something like
the Deist model, where God sort of sets up the Universe and then leaves man
to make the best of it.  I believe that God is concerned with everything
that happens to us, and that his providence applies from minute to minute.
He *is* trying to tell me something specific.  It is just that normally he
speaks through events around me, through Scripture, and through other
people.

The primary difficulty with this view is that it is not "falsifiable".  That
is, if I claim that God is sending me messages on 100 MHz with frequency
modulation, it is very easy to verify whether this is true or not.  When I
claim that he is sending me messages through the events around me, it is
very hard to prove this true or false.  Someone else can look around and see
no message there.  According to certain philosophers of science, in the
final analysis this means that my claim is meaningless.  I do not have the
space here (or the expertise) to give a complete defense against this
charge.  However to some extent it is based on a naive understanding of the
way science itself works.  Many of the basic ideas of science (e.g.
conservation of energy) are not subject to direct proof or even disproof.
These basic ideas are embodied in a specific theory.  But if that theory is
disproven, it is always possible to add epicycles to it so that the basic
principle continues.  The actual choice among basic approaches is made in
the long run, on the basis of whether it proves useful or not.  If
conservation of energy leads theorists to be able to propose lots of new
experiments, and continues to be able to summarize the results of these
experiments elegantly, we will keep it.  I believe that it is the same with
following God.  If it leads me to new insights about myself and the world
around me, and if it is capable of making sense out of everything I run into
and see in the world, then it is a useful (and hence meaningful) idea.