Rhetoric | A Scientific Approach to Theology
A Scientific Approach to Theology
©2019 2025 Vernon Miles Kerr, VernonMilesKerr.com
Can a supreme being, a creator-god be deduced through observation of reality alone?
An atheist, by the commonly accepted definition, would say, “no.” So we can assume that an atheist has already meditated on all reality currently observable from his or her unique perspective and has firmly resolved all questions of theology by concluding that a creator-god is impossible. A “theist” on the other hand, would also say “no,” because his or her belief is based on the self-defined formula within most holy books. “This is the sole source for knoledge of God.
The fact that this essay is being written is evidence that the author has come to no such conclusion—yet. The title, “A Scientific Approach to Theology,” sets the first rule: there will be no rabbinical splitting of theological hairs based upon competing interpretations of purported written messages from God. We will use the proper noun “God” for convenience since the hypothetical creator would be a person by definition; so “God” will be used for his/her/its name. Also for convenience, we will use the pronoun “he” since a person cannot be an “it,” at least in English, and—for the purposes of the hypothesis—there is no Mrs. God. The question in our subheading, asking if a God can be deduced, is another hint that the author has come to no conclusion. But, in the interest of truth, at the moment, he has the hope that a conclusion can be made before this exercise is over.
In arguing for the validity of scripture, a religious tract once asked, “Would a loving God leave his creation without a manual, a set of instructions and enlightenment concerning his creation?” The reply of this treatise is “But, is the creation itself that very message—albeit a very cryptic and challenging one?”
Before we examine this purported “creation” we should consider our hypothetical God’s personality. As the assumed creator of all that is, we can speculate that God loves that creation. If not, God would wad up the page and roll a fresh sheet into his Smith-Corona. Perhaps he has already done that a few times, who knows? However, the geological record shows that this version of the movie has been running for several billions of years, so we can safely assume that he is happy with the script he created.
The star of this movie is our Earth, since (for us) it is in the foreground of God’s universal creation and something we can observe without resorting to a lot of exotic hardware or technology.
The first observation is that Earth is a planet of war. All life is in a state of war. In the Judeo-Christian view of Utopia there are endless rolling hills of grass
with sheep, goats and cattle being led around by happy, pastoral families. No fewer than eighty-three times, the God of this tradition promised the Israelites “a land flowing with milk and honey”.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/search.php?hs=1&q=flowing+with+milk+and+honey
This phrase seems to imply a pastoral Utopia, a land resplendent with flowers and swarms of nectar-gathering bees— and the peaceful social state that enables the animals to be milked and the bee hives to be hunted out. The promised result of this gift—a land of perpetual peace and order—was conditioned upon the recipients keeping God’s Laws as a Nation. Since there is no evidence, scriptural or historical, that Ancient Israel or any subsequent nation ever did that, the God of scriptures has never had to deliver on that promise.
Even so, the promise of Utopia has continued to draw millions to this religious tradition. How pleasant it has been for humanity to meditate upon such a world. But when we awaken from these interludes of bliss, the real world is still just as disturbing, chaotic and confusing as ever. The confusion comes from the contradictions. For instance, consider the ostensible beauty of a forest meadow and brook compared with its apparent reality as a battle ground between plant and animal species—species whose overwhelming primary imperative is to fondly devour or displace each other. Or take the majestic mountain range, standing so proud and tall, which in reality is being caught in the process of being ground to sand, flattened to a lowly rounded hummock.
But, is our sense of confusion merely a shortcoming in human perception? Is it true that beauty is “in the eye of the beholder”? Is there anything inherently beautiful about a fiery sunset, aside from our human perception? By the same token, is there anything inherently contradictory between the beauty of the meadow and brook and its savage reality—aside from our human perception?
The reality seems to be that the world we inhabit is one that is in a continual-and-total state of warfare. Each species, including our own, is in a battle with every other species— for survival—except in those rare cases where a pair of species enjoy some symbiotic benefit that encourages them to be at peace. But even then, the two of them are now pitted in battle against the rest of the world.
Even down at the microscopic, microbial level, the war rages. At that nano-level, within our own bloodstreams, there is a constant, war going on which arrays our own antibodies and leucocytes against an unending assault by invading microbes and viruses. The stench of death illustrates this. When the body dies, the microbes begin devouring it immediately.
If there were only one word allowed as a synonym for life, it would be “war.” Life is war. Is it surprising then that we as a species are so fascinated by, or even enamored with war, and have found ourselves at war with each other far more frequently than we have found ourselves at peace?
This thought engenders another curiosity: Why are we so willing to war against our own selves while at the same time trying to protect numerous “endangered species” whose internal imperatives would cause them to gladly drive us to extinction—so that they could ascend to our vacated throne of planetary dominance? Why should humans feel a responsibility to end millions of years of natural species-extinctions? It is equally curious that, in recent years, some of us would have chosen to see a society and culture of human beings—such as those whose lives depend upon the logging industry—become extinct, rather than see a Spotted Owl, for instance, become so.
Before we humans awoke with these exalted brains of ours, even in our primitive ignorance we were sane enough to defend our own selves against some other species taking over plants that we needed for building houses or feeding and clothing our families.
This reality—that life is a state of war—must be acknowledged by anyone seeking to reconcile the apparent contradictions in our existence, especially those ostensible opposites like good and evil, or beauty and ugliness, or creation vs. random evolution. One’s belief in a God of Creation is shaky indeed if this reality of on-going natural war is ignored.
Moreover, at first glance this harsh look behind the curtain, by those holding the common romantic view of a benign nature, could be enough to shake their concept of a God of Love. How could a God of Love create a natural world of continual war, from top to bottom? In the Book of Job in the Judeo-Christian scripture, it says that the Angels rejoiced when the Earth was created.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Job-Chapter-38/#7
Were they rejoicing that a world of absolute, continual horror had been created? Or, has the world become something very different from the one over which the Angels celebrated? Did the Earth, created as a Paradise, later become a Paradise Lost when the prototype female human surreptitiously disobeyed a single dietary prohibition by the God of Creation? Like a toddler, she purloined a cookie from the jar then lied about it when confronted with the crime—And this petit larceny resulted in the earth changing from a paradise to a raging jungle? If so, this purported crime happened eons ago, as evidenced by the monstrus carnivores unearthed down through the billions of years of geologic rock strata and it would illogically follow that human beings existed before that. The fossil record does not support that timeline.
If this Earth has ever been anything other than a war zone, its metamorphosis into the present state of war took place in very early geologic times, or more realistically—was actually created that way.
The Hebrew Tanakh tells of God boiling his entire message down to ten simple rules, the first of which is to make no graven image purporting to be God. The expected conclusion is that God cannot be contained behind a stoney surface crafted by humans. But isn’t writing a form of engraving? If a God who created the Universe cannot be contained in stone doesn’t that also imply that he cannot be contained between black leather covers or within the Torah’s ark in a synagogue? The claims of “divine inspiration”of those writings fall short when supported only by the circular reasoning within thousands of pages of the bible itself — and the millions of additional pages of bible commentary and Talmudic writings about those pages as well. These interpretive writings all show nothing to indicate any source of scripture other than human artifice. The creation, on the other hand cannot be disputed. It speaks for itself. It is the Logos, the Word. If God is to be found he must be found in that creative utterance.
The Irrelevance of Material Existence
If the reader is in anguish now, feeling that the concept of a loving God has been quashed, stay tuned.