by jimwalton » Sun Nov 02, 2014 10:25 am
All right, let me try to tackle this from another angle—hopefully the angle of your inquiry that will address your concerns. The blessings and curses of God in this life are not quantifiable in such a way as to be able to make scientific inquiry into them to discern what the "average" is (scientifically) or that God is performing "more than the average." Such effects are not always scientifically observable, and certainly not able to be isolated for controlled studies. It seems that maybe you are wondering something like this:
1. The Bible claims God blesses and curses people in this life above what average statistics would reveal.
2. If God does not exist, blessings and cursings in this life will fall into somewhat random and average patterns.
3. What we see in life is somewhat random and average patterns of blessings and curses.
4. We have every reason to question the existence of God or the veracity of the Bible.
Am I sensing your position accurately? The problem is that #2 is a non sequitur, #3 is not scientifically verifiable by controlled studies, and therefore the whole argument is a correlative fallacy. The syllogism you seem to be proposing is:
1. If God does not exist, blessings and cursings in life will be no different that what we call good and bad luck.
2. The blessings and cursings in life are no different than luck.
3. Therefore God does not exist, and the Bible is fallacious.
This is a logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent." It's invalid because the conclusion can be false even if #1 & #2 are true. Instead, it's more accurate to state as follows:
1. If God does not exist, blessings and cursings in life will be no different that what we call good and bad luck.
2. The blessings and cursings in life are no different than luck.
3. No conclusion is possible. We don't know if God exists or not.
The first premise is, of course, not provable. You agree with this because you're not talking about "all the time". It's possible that God can exist but not bless or curse above or below averages. What's pretty much true is that God can bless or curse in whatever pattern or non-pattern he wishes. In actuality all it would take is ONE example (not a statistical majority, or even a statistically significant minority) to prove that he "blesses" or "curses" in general. The Bible records several examples of blessings and curses, and since the same Christians who believe that God does bless and curse also believe that the Bible is the accurate record of the activity of God, it is not inconsistent for them to believe that God DOES bless and curse, though this gives them no assurance that he will do so at any predictable time or rate. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Most Christians will affirm that they have no way of knowing whether or not God will bless or curse in any particular situation, and most of the ones that won't affirm that are operating under faulty theology that I have no desire to defend.
We know that God acts in this world didactically, not empirically. Causation (of any kind) can't be measure empirically without fully isolating variables and replicating results. Revelation ( = being told by God) is the only way we know ANYTHING about what God is like or how God acts. Generally, when we affirm something as a blessing or curse, this is not on the basis of an absence of physical/biological efficient causes, but on the belief that God works by means of those causes. In other words, we believe that there are blessings and curses in this life ONLY because we first believed in a God who blesses and curses.
If obvious (more than the average) blessings and curses were set forth as an argument for the existence of God, it would be a disastrously weak argument. The truth is, Christians (aside from the health and wealth preachers whom I don't pretend to defend) don't believe that there is any particular assurance of blessings or curses in this life. If anyone could manage to prove that even ONE incident, ever, in the history of time, occurred as a particular blessing or curse from God, and NOT from some other cause, it would prove that God exists (or existed at that point in time). I have no idea how one could possibly go about proving this, however, so I will admit that the argument, while technically valid, is practically useless.
You seem to think, and I'm assuming here, that either God isn't involved, or he's blessing and cursing at a rate he specifically calculated to make it look like the average. But I'm not convinced these are the only two options. Christians believe that God does what God will do according to the will of God, which is not contingent on anything that anyone else does. This is a corollary of a divine attribute called Aseity. Christians who know their theology should already affirm this.
You seem to think that the lack of "more than the average" is significant of something. Initially, at some point, we receive a description of God and what he is like. We hear that he is powerful, kind, loving, merciful, cares for us, answers prayers, blesses, curses, etc. We hear this and we get an idea of what we can expect to experience in light of such a God. Then we go out and experience life and none of what we expected happens. At this point, we have a choice to make. Either the definition we received of God was wrong, or our ideas about what that description meant was wrong, and one of the two must be abandoned. The true disciple will abandon their conceptions and try to develop a better understanding of the God of whom they have been told. Everyone else will look for a new god who will either give them what they want or, as a consolation prize, at least fall into line with their self-generated conceptions.
As I hear it, your conception of "God blesses and curses" is "people who believe in God should be blessed at a rate better than random chance would predict." You KNOW that this is not how a Christian understands blessings on this earth, because you SPECIFICALLY SAY that you're not talking about **all the time**. You have also observed that this conception does not bear out in reality (of course it doesn't). So now this is the question you need to ask: What use do you have for a God who will not bless and curse on this earth?
If your answer turns out to be "none at all," than nothing I (or anything in Christianity) can say can help you. We do not serve God because we get things from him. God cures our sins and makes us like him, and that has nothing to do with blessings and curses in this life, which are things that can't be empirically measured. Why does God not make his existence self-evident (in this case by obvious blessings and curses)? What is the significance of God blessing and cursing if it's not recognizable as a pattern, not any different of what would happen randomly, and if it doesn't manifest his existence? Theology can answer all of these (some more clearly than others), but these discussions are really only apprehensible after divine existence is established; you can't really debate the character and behavior of something that doesn't exist.