Why I am a Lutheran Part I: Abstract Deities

In order to lay a foundation for being Lutheran, we must start at the bottom. Without Christ, there can be no Christian denomination, Lutheran or otherwise. Without Judaism, there can be no Christ, for there is no promised Messiah. Without monotheism, there can be no Judaism. Without theism, there cannot be monotheism. Therefore, the first reason I am a Lutheran has to be that there is in the great beyond some abstract deific force. I do not at the point mean to say that there is one god or that there is any god at all in the conventional sense of an active personality.

But why god at all? There are a myriad of differing views, among them atheism which completely denies the existence of a deific force. And among the myriad of differing views, there are even more arguments to support those views. But for the sake of thinking of an abstract deific force, I only care about one: the argument of beginnings.

Let us say that this universe had a beginning point. Some scientists say it was the big bang, others say that the universe has always existed. Theists, however, claim that a god of sorts willfully crafted the universe into form. I am partial to this view, and not just because I am Lutheran--it is one of the reasons that I am Lutheran, not vis versa. How do I mean?

Let us accept the Big Bang Theory for the moment. At the very beginning, all matter in this universe was concentrated into a minute singularity with a density of infinite value. That is to say its practical volume was zero. Due to the amount of stress from gravitic and electromagnetic forces, this condensed matter exploded in a "big bang," scattering its make up across the vast ocean of empty space. Over billions of years, this matter concentrated in certain areas and began to condense into planets and stars and all other sorts of heavenly bodies.

This is an interesting series of events, and given the trillions of stars among the thousands of galaxies, even the low probability of one planet being capable of sustaining life is bound to be fulfilled. If the odds were 1 in 1000000 (and the odds are even less than this), after 1000000 tries, we have reason to expect that at least one of those trials would result in a planet capable of sustaining life. Repeating the trial 1000000 times may not alter the odds of the individual trials (that is to say that if I flip a coin twice, even if it landed heads the first time, it is still 1:1 odds that it will land heads, rather than 2:1 in favor of tails), but multiple trials will carry out the probability.

Thus we have come to this simple conclusion, namely that a planet capable of sustaining life is expected to a rise despite the ridiculous odds simply because there is the given of so many trials. Now that one planet (and there may well be more) is capable of sustaining life, but then we have to say that life arose against all odds (which, given the number of trials that occurred, is still possible) and then that this rudimentary life became, eventually, you and me.

I do not intend here to deny macroevolution--though I do--but I want to go back to the first issue: the inital "bang" that started it all. There is a very simple argument to be made against this, and it is one that we can all appreciate. The classical philosopher Aristotle introduced the concept of the prima causa or "First Cause" (also "Prime Mover") to the world and science through the ages has borne out this concept as an observable and verifiable "law." Newton explained that every action has an equal an opposite reaction, which assumes, of course, that there is an initial action, which will of course cause the reaction. That is to say every action is caused by some other action. (A reaction is an action that will start something else.)

So, we come back to this issue: what is the prime mover of the singularity? What thing caused the matter? One school of cosmology suggests a cyclical universe, which is constantly expanding and the contracting again into a singularity regularly and then re-exploding to create a whole new universe. So for all we know, the universe is a googol years old instead of the customary few trillion. But this begs the question: there must be matter to initiate the cycle. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (Evolutionary answer: duh, the egg; the chicken was the uniquely adapted life form that emerged from the egg of a long lineage of ancestors.) Okay, so there was a singularity before there was a universe. Or was there a universe that condensed to cause the first singularity?

And even given the matter, as if it appeared out of thin air (a bad analogy, as matter is what makes up the air), from whence did the laws of gravitic forces and electromagnetics come? Gravity and electromagnetism are caused by matter, but why is it following this strict pattern, any alteration of which--to the 1/1000000000th of a unit--would cause the universe to collapse from this order into chaos?

The universe is fine-tuned beyond human comprehension. It has not been explained by science. Richard Dawkins, debating Francis Collins in the most recent issue of Time hints at the fabled "unifying theory" that ties all these things together, but there's a catch: this unifying theory is built on the back of the theories under it. In other words, all these laws may be subject to submolecular units called strings (the predominant "unifying theory" candidate today) but these calculations are only possible given that science sees the theories under it. It's a bottom-up function. Take away science's understanding of gravity, and there is no way to unify that physical reality with electromagnetics. And even the unifying theory came first (strictly speaking impossible, given that there would be nothing to unify), where does this universal law come from?

It comes back to a prima causa: there must have been something before the Universe that determined how it would function among the infinite number of ways possible. But you say "wait, wait, then who created this prima causa?" And there is a very simple answer to that: since the prima causa initiated the Universe, it does not necessarily exist within it. And therefore, it is not necessarily bound by physical laws such as the Prime Mover principle.

Wait, that's not fair; it's a cop-out. Why can't the Universe simply be? Again, a simple answer: the universe can simply be, save for the fact that we know there are laws upon which the universe rests. And the universe cannot create its creator. The laws themselves may simply be, but that is more of a cop-out than the abstract deity. Why? Because it does not conform to the rules of science, materialist science, upon which they are observed. Scientists who say "just because" are no scientists. They just stop with no further scientific inquiry because maybe, just maybe, the evidence leads to a place they don't want to go.

Why I am a Lutheran: "Bibi wo soro"--there is something in the Heavens.