“Who Am I?” Project 6 - Maximalist Divine Creation

Having made a case for why I think Divine creation is the most rational explanation for where everything came from, there are still lots of other questions to ask, most notably, what did God create?  This is really the most ultimate metaphysical question.  Metaphysics, contrary to what you will find in many bookstores, is the philosophical exploration of reality as such, or what some call the really real.  This is easily the philosophical topic on which I have spent more brain power than any other.  This hardly ensures that I have anything interesting to say on the matter.  It just means that I really like to think about it.

Before answering the question of what God creates, however, there is a prior question that I want to explore: how much did God design whatever was created?  It might seem like this is a ridiculous question to ask.  How, after all, could we possibly discern the details of God’s handiwork?  I am not sure we can.  However, I am sure that almost everyone who talks about God has weighed in on this matter, and I think that some answers make much more sense than others.  Finally, my answer to this question helps to explain the second part of my answer to the question, “Who am I?”  That second part claims that I am an accident.  I was not planned or designed by God.  So let’s see why.

As I have already demonstrated, I like exhaustive disjunctions.  These rational divisions of territory help me wrap my mind around ideas and sort out which ideas seem more plausible than others.  In this case, I want to consider three ways that God can be said to design, or plan, what is created: maximally, moderately, or minimally.  My preference is for the last option, but I want to explore the first two options before explaining why I like the third.

A maximalist understanding of Divine design is a deterministic understanding.  On this view, everything that happens in the world is part of God’s design.  It is striking how many people affirm this, even while they behave as if they don’t believe it.  If everything happens by God’s design, it makes no sense to get upset when people seem to wrong us.  Imagine your significant other saying, “Baby, I didn’t cheat on you.  That was all part of God’s design.”  Of course, you might reply, “That’s fine, baby, and me kicking you out of this house is also part of God’s design.”  None of that makes any sense, and it exposes the obvious problem with thinking everything that happens is part of God’s design: our very identities disappear.  We become animated beings in God’s animated movie.  We become a version of Spongebob Squarepants.  Spongebob does not decide when to laugh, or flip crabby patties, rather, he is animated to do so by the creators of the cartoon.  Similarly, in a world of maximalist divine design, we do not choose when to laugh, love, hate, follow or break rules, or anything else.  We, like Spongebob, only seem to exist.

Some will counter that God “allows” things to happen that are part of the design, and so we can have a sense of human agency due to the parts we play in moving that design along.  However, this claim is always paired with the idea that God will intervene to prevent things from going too far off from the planned unfolding of events.  God is here a kind of editor, intervening in the world to keep the design moving forward.  On closer inspection, however, this is no different from the more robust version of maximalist divine design for one simple reason: we cannot tell when God is editing the course of events and when God is letting things unfold.  The “God as editor” position claims that God makes sure the story will more or less unfold as planned.  Yet, if we cannot spot a difference between absolutely everything happening in accordance with God’s design and things more or less happening in this way, then there really is no difference between the two positions.

I think people affirm one of these two positions for two reasons.  First, they think that God would somehow be less of a God if God did not have all of the power in reality.  People do not want to disrespect God, so they assume that God is in control of everything.  This is a very confused position that I will consider at length later. Second, given the vulnerability of our lives and the seeming randomness and injustice of how events unfold in the world, it helps some people to believe that there really is a plan behind what seems like really scary chaos, uncertainty, and patent unfairness.

Yet, what we gain in comfort we lose in our understanding of a God that anyone should hope exists.  A God who has scripted everything in the world is to blame for everything, as well.  I do not need to list the horrors and the evils throughout history to make clear that I would want to have nothing to do with a God who made all of those things happen (not that I could anyway unless that God scripted “me” to do so).  In addition to the evils of the world, sin would also be an illusion where everything is part of God’s plan.  I cannot act against God if God is making me act the way I do.

So, while we certainly should not pretend to know exactly what God did in creation, I think we can conclude that we have no good reason to think it was some kind of maximalist design.  We are then left with moderate design and minimalist design.  I will consider moderate design next.