All posts by Richard

Ayn Rand, Demonic Possession, Humour, Intelligent Design

Objectivism is a form of demonic possession

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I’m going to go out on a limb here … I think Objectivism is a form of demonic possession.

Satan’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist.

Rand’s greatest trick was convincing mental cripples that they are the epitome of rationality.

There’s a connection.

Consider what Jesus says about the devil: “Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!”

Do you ever get the impression, talking to Objectivists, that they simply don’t hear what you say? I certainly do. A lot of it comes down to Rand’s penchant for pernicious redefinition. Rand twisted words like ‘altruism’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘selfishness’, ‘concept’, ‘good’, ‘right’, ‘reason’ and ‘existence’ and so on, beyond recognition in some cases. Pernicious redefinition is tantamount to lying.

Again, there’s a connection.

Satan loves cults. It is of the nature of cults to put in place mechanisms that make it easy to join and difficult to leave. Cults almost invariably have strong contempt for the intellect, human intelligence, and any attempt to think independently.

Do you ever wonder why so much scorn is heaped on “philosophers,” “academics,” and “intellectuals” around here? I argue that Objectivism is a cult here and in several places here.

Satan loves Objectivism. As a matter of fact, my first exposure to Objectivism was the potted, plagiarised version that Anton LaVey tried to rebrand as Satanism.

If you think you might be insane, you’re probably not. Denial is a hallmark of true madness. It’s also Satan’s calling card. Reason is an Objectivist’s only absolute. But how many Objectivists are up-to-speed with even the basic elements of critical thinking? Not many, if any. Check out the total lack of interest in the virtues of rationality on display here. “Check your premises,” said Rand. But most Objectivists don’t know what a premise is. They don’t know that ‘valid’ is a technical term in logic. They don’t want to know about reason, and they particularly don’t want to know what Hume said about the limits of reason.

Denial, delusion, dishonesty … all the tell-tale signs of demonic possession, and all on flagrant display here. Like a skilfully coded Trojan, Objectivism’s first target is its host’s defences against infection. Objectivism quickly disables the mind’s rational faculty, often to such an extent that an Objectivist will mistake a mantra for an argument.

Hatred, vilification and scapegoating of Christianity are further conspicuous Objectivist traits … Satan’s near. If you don’t believe in demonic possession … think of Objectivism as an insidious mind virus.

Atheism, Ayn Rand

Was Ayn Rand a Satanist?

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There’s a quotation doing the atheist rounds. It is purportedly due to someone called Stephen F. Roberts.

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.

I contend that we are both monotheists. I just believe in one more god than he does.

In an article in the New Statesman, Ciarán Hanway explains that he’s not a man of faith … he’s an atheist. The article is titled I believe in one less god than monotheists…. Hanway explains

Let’s start with the basics. What does “Atheism” mean? It’s a word derived from the Greek word “theos”, meaning “God”, and the prefix “a-“, meaning “without”. An atheist is someone without a belief in god. It is as simple as that. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not a belief system that tells me how to behave or what to eat. It is a simple statement of my lack of belief in God. I could be a fascist, a communist, a monetarist, a narcissist.

… or a rock, or a puddle, or … Rocks and puddles are things without a belief in god. Indeed, rocks and puddles are things with no beliefs at all.

Monotheists reject all other gods but their own. I just happen to believe in one less god than they do.

Ayn Rand was an atheist. She “just happened” to believe in one less god than I do. I believe in the existence of God … but I also believe in the existence of Satan. If Ayn Rand literally believes in one less god than I do, she must believe in Satan … but not in God. So … Ayn Rand is a Satanist!

I leave it as an exercise for the Objectivist reader to identify the flaw(s) in my argument.

Consciousness, Free will, Freedom, Meta-ethics, Philosophy of Mind

Problem?

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A couple of days ago, columnist Joe Bennett concluded his column in The Press by telling us

I’m going to spend the afternoon finding out how I’ve chosen to enjoy myself.

You’re about to find out that you’ve chosen to read on to see what on earth Joe Bennett was talking about. Here’s the start of his column.

But first an apology. A month or so back a gentleman emailed me about something I’d said on the radio. He wrote, and I quote, “free will is a childish delusion”.

“Scoff,” I wrote back. “Pooh pooh. I have free will. My free will is writing this email. Without free will we are automata.”

Since then, however, I have been on a wee journey and I would like to retract my scoff and pooh pooh. But I have forgotten the gentleman’s name and deleted his email.

So if you’re reading this, sir, sorry. You were right. I was wrong.

The change of mind followed last week’s column about the mutiny of the body.

In response I got several emails directing me to some neuroscientific research. It seems that neuroscientists have been nibbling at the idea of free will for years without telling me.

For example they attached electrodes to people’s skulls and then asked the people to click a computer mouse at a moment of their choosing. The boffins found that when people decided to click the mouse, their brain had already begun the physical process of clicking. In other words, the decision to click had been made before the people realised they’d made it. The click was already going to happen.

There were numerous similar experiments. They all suggested that when we think we decide to do something of our own free will, our consciousness is merely catching up with a decision that we have already made. We are rationalising after the fact.

We are deluding ourselves into thinking we are in conscious control of our actions. It’s a nice, consoling delusion, but a delusion none the less.

Problem? Well, yes! If we have no free will, we have no moral responsibility for our actions.

No free will means that Christianity is a nonsense.

No free will means that Objectivism is a false religion.

No free will means that “not my problem” doesn’t cut it.

I’ve known of the experimental results to which Bennett refers for the past 15 years or so, ever since I read Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. 15 years later, I still have no rejoinder.

Dennett takes us to a very high mountain and shows us all the sciences of naturalism and their splendour. “Everything you want … you can have,” says Dennett.

Easy Listening, John

Space Cadet

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An ex-girlfriend once sent me a card. She wrote on the envelope, “To my space cadet.” Naturally enough, she meant it in the nicest possible way!

I was talking to someone the other day, who was not a Christian as such, but who was well familiar with the Gospels, who described John as a “space cadet”. That struck me as very apt! Absolutely, the Gospel of John is “space cadet” material. It’s completely mind-blowing, in fact. And, naturally enough, my favourite Gospel!

Here are some very apt words from the Gospel of John the Space Cadet.

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you… If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you… because they do not know Him who sent Me.” (NKJV)

“These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them.” (NKJV)

“I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.” (NKJV)

“Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.” (NKJV)

Book of Enoch, Genesis, Old Testament, Theism

Genesis 6:1-7

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When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” (NIV)

ASS, Censorship

RIP Lady Liberty

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RIP Lady Liberty.

Blair Mulholland has the background to this story. Yesterday, New Zealand’s “freedom of expression”, a right supposedly protected by our Bill of Rights Act, was involuntarily euthanased after a long battle with the big C.

Ruling: Jesus doesn’t heal cancer

A church billboard proclaiming that “Jesus Heals Cancer” has breached advertising standards by suggesting the church can offer something other churches cannot, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled.

Tributes pour in from around the blogosphere. Here is New Zealand’s #1 libertarian, Lindsay Perigo, true to form.

Jeezy doesn’t cure cancer … I suppose it would be an affront if he were to. Cancer is presumably Gobby’s work? To heal it would be an act of rebellion against one’s father.

“In all seriousness,” said Perigo on an earlier occasion, “who doesn’t value freedom of speech will lose it.” Are we to suppose, then, that denying a church’s right to express the view that Jesus heals cancer is no great loss?

It’s hardly news that New Zealand’s #1 Objectivist thinks that Christians are scoundrels. Has he forgotten that it was such that H. L. Mencken had in mind?

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Freedom of speech is foremost among the “rights and privileges of British subjects” bestowed on all New Zealanders by the Treaty of Waitangi. In the nineteenth century, the British prided themselves on valuing eccentricity over conformity, on untrameled freedom of speech. Thousands of New Zealanders went on to give their lives for this freedom. We should rage, rage and rage again against anything which threatens its demise.

I know. I’m being premature and uncharitable. In fact, I’m confident that Perigo’s imminent press release will blow the Advertising Standards Authority to kingdom come. And, really, I suppose, I should practise what I preach.

Hell

Final Doom

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This is the last in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

We humans know instinctively that needless suffering is bad. When we have a sick or injured animal, we have it put down, because we do not want to see them suffer. We feel grieved when we hear of people dying slowly of cancer, and are upset by images of starving people on television. We know that the boy who pulls the wings off flies is cruel—recognising that even flies should not have to suffer needlessly.

If we, as seriously flawed humans, know that we must alleviate suffering, how much more will God, who is all-good and all-perfect, prevent the suffering of His creatures? If we shoot a horse with a broken leg, or put a wounded cat to sleep, how could God tolerate the eternal torment of humans?

We know that a person dying of cancer should be given pain relief—to withhold morphine would be inhuman. Suffering in this situation may only continue for weeks or months—but even this would be intolerable for us. How could God, then, withhold “pain relief” for those in hell, whose suffering does not last for months, but for trillions and trillions of years, and on into eternity?

We may, conceivably, tolerate the eternal suffering of what me might call “truly wicked men” like Hitler and Pol Pot—but Evangelicals imagine that all those who have not made a personal, conscious decision to “accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour” will be thrown into hell forever. This means that otherwise moral people, who are non-Christians, will be eternally tortured.

If I were to burn my daughter with cigarettes or poke out my son’s eyes with a pencil, I would be arrested and sent to prison. Even the most irreligious of people would find my behaviour to be obscene. Yet this is precisely what many Evangelicals believe about God, who is portrayed as One who inflicts torture on a truly massive scale—eternally afflicting His children. If, as a defence, I said that I burned my daughter and blinded my son because I was holy, and my righteousness demanded that I punish sin, people would be repulsed. An act of brutality would not be a manifestation of righteousness, but of unrighteousness—not of holiness, but of terrible evil. Yet Christians say that hell exists because God is holy, and His righteousness demands that He must punish sin.

While I certainly believe God to be both righteous and holy, if hell is an eternal torment of all non-Christians, then God would be neither. He would not deserve our worship but our scorn.

The theory of annihilationism has certain implications, especially for evangelism. Interestingly, the response of many Christians when they hear an annihilationist position is: “What is the point of being a Christian then?” The prospect of an eternal torment in hell is a motivating force for many people to remain believers—if no such punishment exists, surely we are free to eat, drink and be merry, for the worst that will happen is that we cease to be!

But the question must be, what are we saved from and what are we saved to? Jesus offers life, in all its fullness and abundance. We cannot say that if there is no endless torture for unbelievers that “there is no point” in believing. We are believers not because we want to avoid hell, but because we want to have unending fellowship with God, and because we desire the life He offers us. The fact that unbelievers miss out on his fellowship and life is not a reason for us to turn to “wine, women and song”!

Our desire should be to present this offer of eternal bliss to others, so that they too may know God and have fellowship with Him. Evangelism should not be to save people from the torment of hell, but to save people to life. Too often our presentation of the Gospel has been negative—hell has been a big stick with which God will (eternally!) hit people who do not accept Him. Our evangelism is therefore undermined by an inherent contradiction: on the one hand, God loves you; on the other, if you do not believe that He loves you He will torture you forever!

However, from an annihilationist perspective, we may present the love and mercy of God to others, and His offer of eternal life, in a way that does not do violence to the character and nature of God.

The idea of annihilation seems to fit more with what we know of God, as revealed in the Bible: the God who is loving and merciful, and whose holiness compels Him to destroy the evil which He cannot co-exist with. The theory of annihilationism also fits better with what we know of the Jewish context in which Jesus spoke. At the same time, annihilationism remains just a theory (although the traditional view is also just a theory).

Which view most accurately represents what the destiny of the unrepentant will be revealed in due course. In the meantime, we should, at the very least, recognise that annihilationism is, increasingly, a valid evangelical option. In the words of John Stott, annihilationism should “be accepted as a legitimate, biblically sound alternative to [the doctrine of] eternal conscious torment” (Stott 319-32).

John, King James Bible, Luke, Mark, Matthew, Pink Floyd

Jesus, Jesus, what’s it all about?

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The title of this post has been lodged in my head since 1983. It’s the start of the lyrics to the Pink Floyd song The Hero’s Return. The question is essentially the same as one(s) which my co-blogger Tim raised in a comment on another thread.

I would like to know with what urgency do you go about preaching the Gospel of Grace? Is the Gospel the most important truth to you as a Christian? or is being a Christ[ian] merely like being a member of the ‘Rightest’ philosophy/book club?
What[‘s] more….according to your teaching of annihilation… the atheists are right. ie when you die…you die! *That is what they expect* thus what you call Gods judgement is nothing more than what the atheists already expect. Ie it equates to *no judgement* at all.
Me I expect to be judged by the very words of the King James Bible.
For me I can barely sleep at night with concern for the Importance of evangelizing the lost for Christ.
Question: Would you Die for the sake of the Gospel?

According to Wikipedia, the Gospel

is the message of Jesus, the Christ or Messiah—God’s ruler promised by the Scriptures—specifically, the coming Kingdom of God, his death on the cross and resurrection to restore people’s relationship with God, the descent of the Holy Spirit on believers as the helper, the resulting promise and hope of being saved for any who believe and follow Jesus, and through this, a healing of the brokenness of the entire created universe.

But the Gospel is not just a message, it’s a call to action. For me, what’s most important in the Gospel are not its truths but its imperatives.

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (NIV)

There’s a war going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil. (Hadn’t you heard?) Life is the battleground. To become a Christian is to enlist and become a soldier in God’s army.

The first commandment is a call to pledge your allegiance to God.

The second commandment is the battle plan. The details are sometimes a bit sketchy. Which is why it helps to pray

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done … (KJV)

Tim is right that atheists expect to die. After decades of atheism I’ve grown used to the idea of personal annihilation. The hope and promise of eternal life played no part in my conversion to Christianity. Partly for this reason, saving souls seems somehow of secondary significance to me. Of course, an army needs recruits, but it also needs specialists. Some will specialise in recruitment, but we all have different callings.

That’s what I think it’s all about. I’ll add that my views on the matter are subject to change. Of course, the question which is the title of this post wasn’t addressed to me, it was addressed to Jesus. He has the answers (here, here, here and here), and we should defer to Him accordingly.

Would I die for the sake of the Gospel? It’s a bit late to ask that now, I already enlisted!