Dr. David F. Watson…..writing about divine agency, the idea that God does things. 10/23/25 on Substack…a keeper
“Jonah Goldberg is a media personality who uses his critical thinking skills far more often and effectively than many of his peers. I’ve always appreciated his analysis, even when I haven’t agreed with him. Call me crazy, but I like reasonable people. In the highly competitive world of the attention economy, reason, nuance, and fair play are more often than not trampled by jingoistic rage-baiting. This doesn’t help anyone except the conflict entrepreneurs, but it does keep the dopamine flowing. Goldberg is also one of the hosts of the GLoP Culture podcast, which hits my own quirky sense of humor in just the right spots.
On a recent episode of The Remnant podcast Goldberg interviewed political scientist Charles Murray, who has become a reluctant believer in God. Murray bases his belief on several forms of evidence, including the cosmological and anthropic arguments. Put a bit too simply, the cosmological argument is an attempt to answer the question, “Why is there something instead of nothing?” The existence of creation testifies to the existence of a creator. The anthropic argument takes a similar tack. Its proponents hold that the conditions necessary for human life are so particular and unlikely that it is unreasonable to understand them as random. They must have been put in place by some intelligence.
To demonstrate the anthropic argument Murray employs the following analogy (not original to him): imagine you were put before a firing squad consisting of a hundred sharpshooters, and they all miss. The chances of this happening are so minuscule that one would be compelled to surmise that the sharpshooters had missed by design, that some order came to them instructing them to miss. The chances that our universe would exist in such a way as to support the development of human life are as unlikely as all the sharpshooters missing. It stands to reason that a particular order has been imposed upon the universe from the outside.
Some opponents of the anthropic argument will counter that we can account for this unlikely set of circumstances by positing a multiverse. In other words, a multitude—even an infinity—of different universes exist, and the one in which we live just happens to possess the characteristics necessary for human life to emerge. Innumerable other universes exist that don’t possess these characteristics.
The multiverse explanation has always struck me as special pleading. It requires at least as much faith to believe in an infinite multiverse as it does to believe in God. After all, we have no access to other universes. Their existence is entirely theoretical. It reminds me of the TV show Finding Bigfoot in which the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO) crew would find a crude shelter in the woods or bark removed from a tree. They would then posit that these phenomena must have been caused by bigfoots (yes, that is the plural form of “bigfoot”). In the absence of the accumulation of other compelling evidence, however, I am not willing to say that bigfoots exist, nor am I inclined to get on board with the multiverse theory.
Additionally, the multiverse theory violates Occam’s Razor, the principle that arguments that unnecessarily multiply entities are weaker than those that do not. In other words, simpler explanations are, as a rule, preferable to more complex ones if both can account for the relevant data. Belief in a single creator is far simpler and more elegant than belief in a multiverse. Finally, the multiverse theory may theoretically account for the existence of human life, but we’re still left with the problem posed by the cosmological argument: Why is there something instead of nothing? Where did the multiverse come from?
Murray is a theist. In other words, he believes in the existence of God. He also believes there is considerable evidence for the reliability of the New Testament documents. He will not, however, affirm the Nicene Creed. When Goldberg asked him why, he said he gets hung up on the resurrection of JesusThat is too tall of an order for him to affirm, at least at this time.
Murray is clearly a very smart guy, so I feel like I must be missing something. It strikes me, though, that he has already assented to the notion of divine agency. In other words, he believes that God set up the universe with both purpose and precision. Why, then, is it so hard to believe that the same God might raise Jesus from the dead? Raising someone from the dead seems like child’s play compared to creating an entire universe.
Once you open the conceptual door to divine agency, all kinds of things are possible. It’s possible for God to create a universe that will support life. It’s possible for God to call a particular people out of all the nations of the world to be a holy nation. It’s possible for God to deliver this people from slavery in Egypt, and for him to raise up judges and prophets to guide them in the ways of faithfulness. It’s possible for God to become flesh in the womb of a teenage virgin in a backwater province on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. It’s possible for this God-man to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, teach us about God’s kingdom, and live a sinless life. It’s possible for him to take our sins upon himself as an atoning sacrifice. And yes, it’s possible for him to rise from the dead after three days.
It’s possible for this same God to abide with you in the power of the Spirit, to change your heart and make you into the person you were always meant to be. It’s possible for you to discover your calling in life and serve God in faithfulness. A great deal more is possible as well. Once you begin to believe in a God who is an agent, it’s all possible—even immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine.”