The Second Premise: God is Intelligent

In a Christian's spiritual walk with God, there is a need for complete devotion. At the same time, such dedication is not to be given lightly and thus must be facilitated by the intellectual assertion of God's worth and in determining that, the three basic premises that must first be tried and found true: that God is real, intelligent, and loving. This article is dedicated to the affirmation of God's intelligence. First, however, it must be realized that in this case intelligence does not simply mean the ability to reason, but to reason on a divine scale with a complete knowledge and understanding of all things and unfailing intellect. That is the intelligence that the Bible speaks of and that is the intelligence that I should hope you my dear reader will soon conclude is in the nature of our Lord.

Additionally, the reader should be aware that in this essay, the points made in "The First Premise: God is Real" will be taken for granted for these works are to be read as a series and thus allowed to build upon each other. I intend to take no shortcuts in this yet it would be tedious to repeat arguments already made and quite thoroughly discussed.

The first essential component to God's intelligence is absolute and universal knowledge. This, of course, is a fairly simple point since it is already established that the universe could not have been created by any finite force nor any infinite force that was not capable of also affirming morality, thus demanding an infinite being. However, while this may indicate that God would have an understanding of everything, it may still be argued that He could simply started the process of creation and then natural laws sorted the rest out. The problem with such an argument is that in such a scenario the mass and energy of the universe would probably be distributed equally. Each galaxy would have the same amount of solar systems each with the same amount of celestial bodies and each of those would have a uniform mass and chemical composition. This is because an explosion of mass as described by the Big Bang would have (if God stopped at the creation of an super-dense, super-energized particle) experienced no outside influences to make more mass go one way or the other. Without any influences there would also have been no randomness in the subsequent chemical reactions, resulting in a perfectly consistent distribution of chemicals.

Additionally, one may look to Einstein for the expert opinion. The research and contemplation of the man widely regarded as the most brilliant man to have ever studied science led him to believe that there must be a Creator. In all Einstein's discoveries and theories, there is always some equation at the root of it all and if these equations did not work out as they do then the universe would not be able to function. Gravity is the weakest natural force in this universe and yet it holds this same universe together. What if it was stronger? Matter is able to contain an incredible amount of energy but what if it didn't? What use would the sun be then? This endless stream of perfectly coordinated laws convinced the best-known thinker of all time that the universe had to have been carefully composed by an intelligent God.

Finally, there is the matter of life. Not only has science failed to discover any justification for the appearance of organisms as discussed in the previous essay, but it also has found no reason as to why the universe should be so accommodating to it. Water, as a universal solvent, has proven essential to the various processes of living organisms yet there is no reason why it should be so abundant. Nor is there any reason why it should expand when frozen. At the same time, without this trait, ice would sink, thus killing any life below the surface. Floating ice also provides and insulator for the water below the surface, preventing entire lakes, rivers, seas, and possibly eve oceans from completely freezing during winter. Furthermore, in the words of Gerald L. Schroeder, "atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen...along with helium are the most abundant elements in the universe...(and) the only elements that can combine to form the long chains and ring-like molecular structures required for life's processes." These facilitations can hardly be called coincidences, yet they, along with the biochemicals necessary for life, also require an intimate understanding of matter, energy, and the laws of nature.

In debating God's understanding of His creation, it must be also proven (as the reader may have noticed) that God also used His knowledge intelligently. If random chance had no part in the creative process, then God must have at each point been using the previous step to achieve the new one. However, this demonstrates only that God can reason, not that He can reason flawlessly and while there is always the philosophical answer that if God is finite by nature then so is His reasoning there are many who would not be satisfied by so simple an answer. In fact, I must confess that I am among them.

In answer to that last question there is the condition of the world. Such evidence would usually be used by atheists to prove that God does not exist or that if He does He is cruel or otherwise not worth our reverence yet if there is a Creator then everything must correspond with the presumption of His existence. More importantly, within this essay at least, if He is intelligent, it must correspond with the presumption of a divine plan.

While the world may seem to be dominated by suffering and evil, there is still the question of why it is not worse. If God is not unerring, then why didn't the Soviets win or the Jews die out? How can it be that so many governments are based on democratic values? Why is slavery illegal? If God makes mistakes then why doesn't it show? Now, there may be many that would say it does show, yet if God has given us free will (and if He hasn't then how is it I even have to make these arguments?) then can it really be expected that crime and oppression would not be inevitable? Additionally, wouldn't the constant monitoring of the physical world required to prevent natural disasters become too much of an influence? If that seems like a flimsy argument then consider that the point of preventing natural disasters would be to prevent injuries and a loss of life or property. Yet there are also times when a focused or small disaster could tip the scales in a war. In such situations, the same principle that usually would demand the physical world to stay calm would instead demand that it be made restless. However, in following this principle, God would interfere with free will. More importantly, if there is a being above this universe and that being is of much the same nature as us (as has already been established) then it makes sense that our spirit (the part of our nature that is most like His) is also above this world and the destruction of our physical bodies. The final conclusion is that death is not the greatest evil to be feared. Furthermore, if there is an unseen, divine presence then there may also be an unseen, divine answer. That is to say, a response to suffering that is largely undetectable through the lense of the material world.

But there is still the question of why the world should be so noticeably worse if God's intellect is not perfect. To understand this, consider space travel. Every launch ever attempted by NASA is preluded by endless analysis by the most brilliant engineers in America. No detail is overlooked. No equation is ignored. Every aspect of the launch is studied again and again until it is finally time for all those mathematicians and scientists and programmers to cross their fingers, hold their breaths, and see what happens. Usually, everything works out fine, but every now and then (and in the case of shuttles in particular the the chances are much more even) something goes wrong. In those cases, there is usually disaster; NASA is very lucky if an error produces only a minor problem.

Now consider that this task (which requires the complete dedication of so many brilliant men and women) is simply the task of traveling through one tiny particle of the universe. Imagine the thought and genius required to create not only that space but also the solar system it is a part of and then the galaxy that solar system is part of and then the universe that galaxy is part of. Every detail at every level would have to be attended to. There would be no room for even the slightest error.

Even worse is the conundrum of human civilization. The celestial bodies at least have some clear rules; people on the other hand can be totally unpredictable. True, the psychology of the masses, empires, and a few other aspects of human society may follow a set of guidelines, but many of those are dependent on other factors within the current culture. More importantly, any change is an opportunity for someone and humans are never as predictable individually as we are in groups. If God were to intervene in the human world without a perfect, unfailing intelligence then there would always emerge some flaw in the plan. Not only that, but any attempts to correct the flaw would also have some flaw of their own. In other words there would be constant cycle of catastrophes, each of them on such grand a scale as WWII, leaving the general peace and democracy within developed nations unlikely at the very least. For instance, in arguing the first premise, the example of the American Revolution as one time when God probably involved Himself in mortal affairs. The revolutionaries were astoundingly lucky in many battles and also quite fortunate to be of English descent since the Spanish crown would have treated them quite differently. Moreover, the Constitutional Convention was filled with heated debate and perhaps even on the brink of failure at some points. In the end it produced a democratic republic that was made up of many compromises and designed to be inefficient. Yet at the same time this government turned out to be the most successful democracy in history. The total failure of nearly all experiments in socialism (the one exception being the early Christian church) and all previous republics proves how difficult and vulnerable to errors any governments based on an ideals is.

Ultimately, what this entire argument comes down to is that the universe requires an intellectually infinite Creator. No law, empire, or other institution founded by finite minds, regardless of their size, has ever shown itself to be impervious to corruption and eventual failure. Additionally, the most successful human efforts or institutions (the Jews, the church, the American Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement, etc.) have all been made by men and women who showed reliance on God. None of this definitively proves the perfection of God's mind, but it does prove that the odds of anything else are quite slim.