by AdamHat

Created on: February 21, 2009   Last Updated: March 23, 2009

A Critique of Providential Design (Faith) in Regards to the Observable World (Fact)

As a preface, consider the following hypothetical situation: One day, while in prayer or solitary meditation, an image and voice of the God of your particular faith appears before you, indisputably and beyond all doubt. God requests a favor of you but being only of human understanding you fail to grasp the Complete Knowledge required to fully comprehend why this favor is necessary. As a faithful follower and believer in the Lord, do you then without further question fulfill His task? What if the task itself undermines your basic human conceptions of morality? What if it's murder? - In the past two thousand years, human understanding has expanded exponentially in the areas of science and philosophy (among others). The Heavens became space, the world round, and the seasons, predictable. Beyond, the invisible became visible, and the unknown, known. Later, in the eighteen-century came an explosion of thought that would change the way the world functioned indefinitely: the Enlightenment. Perhaps the greatest minds of all time finally concluded a concept that had been noticed, yet often neglected, in previous centuries: the natural world in which we live is bound by specific patterns that are both observable and within the range of human understanding. The knowledge, acceptance, and application of these patterns provide limitless advances and the ability to predict accurately into the future. Therefore, regardless of religious belief, there is a quintessential demand to acknowledge the observable world from our human perspective and decipher with the utmost clearly every discernable pattern.

Although philosophers such as Locke ("All knowledge comes from sensation") and others paved the way to contemporary thought, there remains a lingering notion among a great population of the world that continues to believe that a Divine Power regulates the patterns of the world. The latter thought, gives allowances for the human mind to misperceive and doubt the known patterns of the world as seen in this poem excerpt by a Puritan, Anne Bradstreet entitled Upon the Burning of Our House: Then, coming out, beheld a space The flame consume my dwelling place. And when I could no longer look I blest His name that gave and took, That laid my goods now in the dust. Yea, so it was, and so twas just. It was His own, it was not mine.

Bradstreet, as a faithful Puritan, believed in the Doctrine or Providence.

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