An Irrational God Is An Authentic God

[Jonah]

If God were "rational", then God would simply be a projection of humanity...and maybe that's all some want.

But the classic God of the Judeo-Christian tradition is Irrational. There is God....and humanity is Not-God.

[GentleDove]

In fact, if the Christian God didn't exist, then rationality wouldn't exist.

I too am confounded by this claim. Is it your contention that God supersedes rationality. If so, then you cannot, by definition, discus the existence of God rationally. If not, then rationality could exist apart from the Christian God.

No, it’s not my contention that God supersedes rationality. I am claiming that God has existed eternally, and His character is rational. His creation reflects His rationality, as a painting reflects something of the character of the painter.

I am also not saying that God is beyond rationality. He is supremely rational and the standard of rationality. According to the Bible, human rationality is a mere reflection of His, and limited by our creaturely status and corrupted by our sin.

Our rationality, therefore, is not the standard by which we may judge God’s rationality; rather God’s rationality is the standard by which our rationality is judged (and even the very brightest of us fall far short of God’s wisdom and rationality).

Every human being attempts to account for or make sense of the world around him. If he denies that the Christian God exists, then he must account some other way for the existence of life, rationality, morality, diversity in unity, and even mathematical concepts.

Humans are really good at finding patterns and attributing intentionality. This trait has served us rather well. However, the honest truth is that we, for the most part, cannot account for the existence of life, rationality, morality and mathematical axioms. Long before we think about the origins of such things, we accept that they exist. When we need to, we invent Gods to explain the unexplained. The Christian god is not any more or less rational than the other supernatural explanations.

I agree that all our thinking is predicated on the existence of rationality. I will try to go into the rationality of other supernatural explanations of God in my response to Jrosemary in the new thread I plan to start.

However, I think humans, apart from the gracious intervention of God, absolutely hate the idea of a supremely rational God of Whom we are not the judge. No one would posit the Biblical God. We would far rather be the pinnacle of evolution which caused rationality, and believe ourselves to possess the supreme rationality in the universe with no One to judge us too strictly and everything we do to not matter very much and be okay, or at least have our good points outweigh our bad points. It is too horribly humbling to be a Christian for anyone to choose it, apart from the grace of God.

(Taking the non-Christian side now) Of course, humans as the supreme rationality in the universe leaves unanswered questions, but who cares? It’s not like we really believe rationality will go away from the universe if we never discover what caused it.

Still it is odd that, for all our rationality, we can’t account for it, something that is so ubiquitous and foundational and of which we are so unjustifiably certain will still exist tomorrow.

However, if he denies the Christian God, then he must

1. look for another religion (which I believe are all self-contradictory, don’t explain human experience, or are otherwise irrational); or
2. embrace atheism, which is irrational because he will be driven to believe that rationality came from irrationality, order from chaos, intelligence from non-intelligence, life from non-life, and morality from non-morality; or
3. arrive at skepticism, that no one can know anything anyway and live with contradictions and just stop thinking about it.

With regard to the above

1. I agree, replacing one irrationality with another does seem pointless.
2. Please support your claims that
   1. rationality did not come from irrationality,
   2. order cannot emerge from chaos,
   3. intelligence is not an evolutionary emergent quality
   4. life did not come from non-life, and
   5. morality is anything more than a useful human adaptation to our environment

It’s self-contradictory, and hence irrational, to believe that one quality causes (or emerges from) its opposite.

[*]Your definition of skepticism is wrong. Skeptics accept that certain things are unknown and perhaps even unknowable, yet we do not necessarily stop thinking about them. The ones who have stopped thinking about them are the ones who believe that they have the divinely approved answers which cannot be questioned. [/list]

But still a skeptic must doubt even logic and truth claims, and must accept that they can never know anything for sure, even rationality. In reality no one can live this way completely in every respect (even Descartes assumed the truth of his own identity when he wrote “I doubt, therefore I am�).

As far as “divinely approved answers which cannot be questioned,� I don’t know what you mean; this whole board is a forum for questioning God and the Bible. Also, I have not "stopped thinking" about things I don't know or don't understand. I certainly do think about those things differently from a non-Christian, though, and rationally.

In attempting to explain the world while denying the Christian God, he’s driven to irrationality. Therefore, the existence of rationality only makes sense if the Christian God exists.

In attempting to explain the world while accepting the Christian God, one is driven to irrationality, the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma, Trinity, the nonsense of calling the substitutional sacrifice a just thing. Therefore, the existence of rationality only makes sense if the Christian God does not exist.

The problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma, the Trinity, the justice (and mercy) of the substitutional sacrifice of Jesus Christ are not problems within the Christian worldview; they are only irrational, foolishness, and stumbling blocks to non-Christians, whose presuppositions do not comport with the Christian worldview.

For example, within the Christian worldview, God is actually, truly rational and is the standard and source of rationality (His character defines rationality and it doesn’t exist apart from Him—there’s no outside standard of rationality by which God can or may be judged); therefore, it doesn’t make sense (within the Christian worldview) to ask if God supersedes rationality. (You can still ask it, of course, it just doesn’t make sense within the Christian worldview, or Biblically-speaking.)

Jrosemary: wonderful post, but you left out Deism.

I'll try to include Deism when I start the new thread to attempt to give an answer to Jrosemary.

[McCulloch]

No, it’s not my contention that God supersedes rationality. I am claiming that God has existed eternally, and His character is rational. His creation reflects His rationality, as a painting reflects something of the character of the painter.

I am also not saying that God is beyond rationality. He is supremely rational and the standard of rationality. According to the Bible, human rationality is a mere reflection of His, and limited by our creaturely status and corrupted by our sin.

Our rationality, therefore, is not the standard by which we may judge God’s rationality; rather God’s rationality is the standard by which our rationality is judged (and even the very brightest of us fall far short of God’s wisdom and rationality).

It seems that a version of Plato's Euthyphro dilemma comes into play here. Is an idea rational because God has decided that it is or is it rational on its own account? If the first, then God supersedes rationality. If the second then God is subject to rationality.

Please support your claims that

1. rationality did not come from irrationality,
2. order cannot emerge from chaos,
3. intelligence is not an evolutionary emergent quality
4. life did not come from non-life, and
5. morality is anything more than a useful human adaptation to our environment

It’s self-contradictory, and hence irrational, to believe that one quality causes (or emerges from) its opposite.

That attempts to address the first two. Please support your claim that intelligence is not an evolutionary emergent quality, that life did not come from non-life and that morality is anything more than a useful human adaption.