(Suppose, for the sake of argument.) God created the heavens and the earth … the sun, the moon, the stars, the skies, the land, the seas … the plants, the animals … and mankind. All in the space of six days! (By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.)
How did he do it?
To some it may seem presumptuous even to ask how God went about the business of creation. But mankind is a curious creature. His inquiring mind wants to know. Humans (some of them) thirst for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. That’s why we have philosophy and science and why, today (thank God), we live in a technologically advanced age. The gains in scientific knowledge made since the Enlightenment are nothing short of stupendous.
And now we know.
We now know, for example, that the several references in the Old Testament to God “stretching out the heavens” refer to the metric expansion of space which is a key feature of Big Bang cosmology. We now know that the Universe had its origin in a moment of creation some 13.75 billion years ago.
Let it be said, however, that cosmology is a better example of human ignorance than human knowledge. We’re still in the dark about so many of the fundamentals. Dark matter and dark energy are aptly named. But in other branches of science we know a great deal more. We know so much, in fact, that we can, and do, “play God”. To illustrate this point, here is a recent news headline.
We’ve mapped the human genome. We’ve mapped the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium and run software simulations of the entire organism. We’ve even constructed artificial life (assuming, of course, that a virus can truly be called a living thing), building it from scratch in a laboratory, one RNA molecule at a time. And this is only the prelude to what is to come.
We know how animals (albeit, very small ones) are made. We know how they work. We can simulate them. We can even build them ourselves.
Where am I heading with this? Actually, this post is for my co-blogger, Tim. God made animals, but he also made the human mind. I anticipate that one day we will find out how the human mind is made. We’ll run a simulation of a human mind on the powerful computers of the not-too-distant future.
Tyndale. Myrtred for Translating The Bible into English.
It has taken me several weeks to start writing this 4th part .
I have been stricken with a nasty does of the flu, and also had to take care of my baby boy, whom is likewise afflicted. This affected my ability to focus. And on top of this I have also been pondering how best to proceed , not from lack of material, but how best to systematically present it.
Now that I am over the worst of this Bot, the time for procrastination is over and I will now attempt to build upon the previous posts.
And I must say those previous posts have laid down some very important foundations, and moved the subject onto the heart of the matter.
The difficulty with moving forward is that are at least three main streams of thought which must flow together, and this tests my writing skills.
All hope of keeping this series brief is now in vain.
Those who seek to avoid the just judgment of the Almighty are legion.
They may all attempt divers means of escape, yet they all may be classified as belonging to one club.
The Club of Infidelity.
The members All argue that the Bible ought not to be believed to be the perfect and inerrant word of God.
They attack the existence of God.
They attack the reliability of the biblical claim to be Divine revelation.
And on top of a myriad of other angles, They attack the Moral character of the God it professes to Reveal.
And this series of blogposts is attempting to Defend the character of the God of the Bible, yet it is important to understand that this argument is but one sector of an all round assault on the veracity of the biblical claim to be the infallible word of God.
It is therefore absurd to attempt to discuss this subject of the character of the Biblical Deity in isolation of this greater question.
Now what is both interesting, and very important to appreciate about the above truth is that it separates those who, like myself believe the Bible is 100% reliable, from everyone else.
And thus the Bible believing Christian must be distinguished from those Christians who don’t believe the Bible is 100% reliable.
It is interesting to understand that the attacks upon the veracity of the bible do not merely come from outside the church, ie from atheists and heathens, but that Many/ most Christians have themselves come to accept many of the arguments which undermine faith in the trustworthiness of the scriptures, and thus have join ranks with the atheists and heathen in attacking the Bible believers position.
Furthermore not only do many so-called Christians think the Bible believers position is intellectually untenable, they relish the Idea with as much fervor as the infidel, and for the very same reasons.
Ie They don’t like portions of the scriptures, and seek to justify their rejection of them as authorotive with as much fervor as the infidel.
The main cause of this Christian Apostasy is that they have succumbed to the ‘Logic’ of the rationalist attacks on the trustworthiness of the scripture, and character of the God it describes.
What more this Rationalist skepticism is what hold sway in most of the centers of learning.
Bible believing Faith as I hold has been in retreat for over a century, and with the progression of atheist Materialism there has been a century of Anti-biblical rationalism so that my type of faith is now very rare in Academia, and very unpopular in general.
By shear force of numbers my position is today considered ‘Unenlightened’, Backward, and Barbaric… especially by contemporary Schooled Christian Intellectuals.
And of course the ‘Educated’ will always peer downward at their pitiable ‘uneducated’ fellows like myself.
Thus it is against the weight of the world that my faith must contend, and It is in a pond of utter contradiction and confusion which I must swim.
Why do I bother?
Because to my mind nothing less that the whole Christian faith is at stake, and the hope of Salvation via the Gospel as well!
All this, in my mind hangs upon the veracity of the Bible and it’s accuracy in respect to the character of God.
And to Defend the faith I must thwart the False dichotomy that Faith and Reason are opposites.
Accepting this false dichotomy Academia seek to present my bible believers position as mere superstition… and imply reason, (and all the arts of Learning) are squarely on their side.
And so it is under this incredible weight and ferocity with which faith in the trustworthiness of the Bible is assailed, that has caused the majority of Christians to surrender it, and to even go on the offensive… on the side of infidelity. And by doing this they will today swear by Heaven they are doing Gods work and are defending Christianity… from the block heads like me who trust the Bible!
Thus it may be thought the height of arrogance and futility on my part to dare defy such a universal army!
For Christs sake Tim Nobody believe the Bible anymore!
Not even the Christians are on your side!
Surely Tis a display a suicidal Fanaticism!
A testament to the impregnability of superstitious Ignorance!
Modern evolutionary Psychologists might reason that I, (along with most of the most the Religious whakos of the ages) suffer a deranged mind… a collection of perversely stupid genes…etc
Satan laughing spreads his wings.
It was by getting Adam to doubt God’s character and word, that he convinced his to disobey God and bring Death and separation from God upon himself and his offspring.
It is in the wisdom of apprehending this fundamental error that I refuse to abandon those precious pages which introduced me to my God and Saiour!
I stand upon the Rock!
I defy the Storms of infidelity.
Though the tempest Roars, my position is not moved.
My reputation means nothing.
What matters to me is my testimony to my Children, friends and loved ones, and that when I stand before my God that in some measure my life has made a difference for truth, righteousness, and salvation of the lost.
Though many ‘Credentialed’ fellows will attempt to smear me as being Anti-intellectual …anti-schooling, and therefore dismiss me with a wave of the hand… that is more a testament to their utterly caged minds, and vested interest in maintaining the charade that their schooling gives them a status above ‘rude amateurs’ like myself rather than a valid criticism. It is an Ad Hominem attack, and certainly is not a rebuttal.
I know the power of the rationale which underpins my faith.
It is powerful enough to endure every Fiery dart of Satan and infidelity.
It is my deepest hope that I can transmit this wisdom onto my children, and anyone else who seeks to know God.
“I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” 1 john 2:14)
“Let God be true and every man a Liar” Saith I. (Rom 3:4)
“And he [Abram] believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness..” Gen 15:6
“ Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away” (Mat24:35)
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed; Rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2vs15)
The word of the Lords are pure words,as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever” (Psalms12:6,7)
“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:” (1 Peter1vs 19)
“ Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
(2Tim4vs2-4)
In this series I can only present a tiny fraction of the Biblical doctrine about trusting Gods word over Atheist Rationalist doubt, I hope it is sufficient to cement my contention that the moment the Bible is believed to be 100% true that this will force many Christians to re-evaluate their faith in respect trusting in the goodness of God…in spite of the apparent difficulties involved with believing a Good God could destroy the world by flood, or condemn the wicked to eternal damnation.
When presented with the truth… will they still worship God, or will they be exposed as fundamental Infidels and haters of the Lord God, and instead prefer to maintain their position beside Dawkins and others who call Christ and the Father, Moral monsters?
I know by taking the side of infidelity in attacking the word of God All such Christians have sold the farm. I find their convoluted intellectual wranglings which attempt to incorporate the ideas of infidelity into a bastardized/ watered down version of Christianity to be a pathetic exercise in futility. The Infidels laugh along with Satan at the pathetic Christians who today endorse such things as The Theory of Evolution, and do backflips attempting to suggest things like Noah’s flood were never intended by God to be believed as literal. What these fools don’t appreciate is that they have already abandoned the high ground! The forces of Darkness are advancing.
Only a Revival in Faith in the trust worthiness of the Bible can stop the slide into the abyss.
All right then.
I think I can now get back to business…
Tim Wikiriwhi
One alternative to the atheist amoral world view (see part 1) in which the moral question regarding suffering and death of children is written off as ignorance….. is that there really are objective standards of ‘ought-ness’ in the universe… and that having feelings of injustice are not silly delusions… not mere evolutionary expedients… but valid. Ie that such feelings are an awareness that some experiences and realities ‘ought not to be thus.’
If we accept this second view to be correct, immediately we must ask then how are we to know what is truly moral and what is not?
What is the standard by which we may rightly judge events, actions, and cultures as being Good or Evil… how do we escape mere subjectivity and cultural relativism?
And what about ‘Natural evils’ like floods and disease and distinct issues from Man made evils?
It is this second type of question which most people struggle with, and it raises the prospect that though indeed God may exist yet still he may not be Good at all!
Was the universe created by a malevolent being?
Is God a capricious tyrant?
I want to focus on this second line of questioning today. I will only touch on the Human factor in respect to evil in the world…‘why does God allow men to commit evil actions?’… by simply saying we are freewill moral agents and that as such we are free to live good lives or to be evil… and yet inspite of the apparant ‘licence’ we have to commit evil that I believe that one day we shall give an account… justice will prevail.
Does ‘Shit happen’ because God is not Good?
Aztec Human sacrifice to apease the Gods.
The Aztecs believed The Gods were in fact blood thirsty monsters!
They believed that if they did not satisfy their demand for Blood by plentiful human sacrifices that the Gods themselves would sleight their thirst by visiting them with Natural calamities… famine, Earthquakes, disease, etc.
This is their explanation for why ‘evil shit happens’… Satan is god!
That is a horrible thing to contemplate… and believe!
It actually vindicates monstrously barbaric behavior!
The Aztecs used to prey on their neighbors and feed them to the God’s.
There is a rationale here: either slay people to appease the Blood thirsty Gods… or suffer Plagues, pestilence, and disaster!
Some atheists will argue that this sort of barbarism is representative of religion in general. Ie Absurd superstitions which inspire Evil actions. And while I have already discussed the paucity of the atheist position, I confess that if I thought that Aztec-type rationale and practice definitively represents all religion… I would have never have forsaken Atheism! I could not worship such Monsters!
While I know that belief in a cold and indifferent universe cannot put moral restraints upon Human depravity, tyranny, and barbarism, I also know it does not expressly encourage it! Nor does it postulate a malevolent universe as does the Religion of Mexico.
Important Note: The Idea of Blood sacrifice is a common theme amoung the religions of mankind.
It is very possible this is evidence of an acient common origin from which many Deviations and dark perversions have occured as mankind has spread out around the Globe… drifting into darkness.
This Anthropolocical rationale fits in well with the Bible story.
Thus an original knowledge of Noahs animal sacrifice on Ararat… which pleased God… has been perverted into the abominable Human sacrifice of the Aztecs… and Their Blood thirsty Gods.
I will now argue that such a narrow description of Religion by Atheists as being a universal Evil… is one-eyed and naive. I hope that I can present an alternative description of God and alternative explanation for why Natural calamities fall upon the innocent, the Just, and the unjust alike.
Sinner or Saint? A Victim of the Eruption of Versuvius.
There was a lot of sin and vice at Pompeii, yet this was true of many other cities too.
Why was Pompeii destroyed? Man, woman, and child?
First, before I get into the main argument as I find in the Bible, I want to say that It is not at all easy to isolate and distinguish what may be deemed to be Natural calamities, from the actions and responsibilities of Man.
Many of the ‘Natural disasters’ which befall us, and have caused Men to blaspheme and shake their fists at heaven, are actually a consequence of human ignorance and error.
Eg. Was It God’s fault that Men Built Pompey at the foot of Versuvius?
Was it God’s fault That the CTV Building collapsed in Christchurch killing hundreds of people… or is the chief blame to be place upon human error and bad design?
Even with things like plagues, floods, and diseases, mankind must take some responsibility for his own foolishness, unsanitary conditions and practices.
How many children suffer and die of Famine simply because of the Lust for political power?
When we realize this, blaming God for a huge percentage of the suffering and death of children, and ‘good people’ is misdirected indignation… He is being unjustly accused.
In the light of such reasoning, is it possible that God is neither indifferent or malicious?
Now we are getting to the Nitty gritty!
What makes many people refuse to believe in a Good God is this final kind of rationale… The apparent indifference of God. In spite of all human folly, and wickedness… ultimately Does not the fact that God allows the good and innocent to suffer still make him responsible for it all?
Why does he not intervene?
To avoid stretching this question out to far I will present the Christian answer to the problem of evil in the world in part 3. I hope to do it with economy, and so I am sure there will no doubt be questions that remain… yet hopefully they will fall within the framework of what I present in the next post.
Why, in this world of ours, do millions of Innocent children suffer and die?
This is a very important and perplexing question.
Without writing a book I would like to touch on a few points.
It is difficult to discuss this subject in a manor which will bring solace to those immediately in the Pangs of grief.
I have in the past made the great mistake of attempting to comfort people whom are grieving, or have been the victims of serious evils with long winded explanations.
That is foolish!
The best thing to do at such times is to simply share their grief with them, and let them know you care.
Only when they are ready to discuss the ‘Why does shit happen?’ question should we deliver our thoughts and beliefs.
I put forward the argument that we are faced with a set of Options from which we *must choose*.
I warn that because Evil is Evil, that even though we may pick the scenario which appears the best, the most rational, we cannot expect to be ‘filled with happiness’. I say we may be able to understand and even find serenity, yet still wish things were different… that evil did not exist.
So why does evil shit happen to good and innocent people and children?
The Atheist will tell you Religion is bullshit!
Ie that The existance of evil clearly proves that no Good God exists.
Many Atheists will say Children die simply because we live (objectively speaking) in an Amoral, Cold and indifferent universe (in which the ‘survival of the fittest’ is said to dictate who lives and who dies).
They say that in such a universe child mortality is not a moral question, but simply a cold hard fact of reality. (Richard Dawkins will tell you ‘Why Questions’ are silly questions!)
They argue that the idea of justice is a silly human/ subjective notion and as such is culturally relative… no one view triumphs as objectively true.
They argue that though we may sympathize with those who grieve the loss of a child as a legitimate cause for sorrow, yet still they maintain that any feelings we may entertain that such deaths constitute an objective moral outrage… are merely childish delusions.
There is no ‘ought’ or ‘ought not’ in a purely materialist reality.
They say everything that happens… from the formation of the Planets and stars, to the tears which flow from a mothers eye are all inescapably determined by the Laws of physics… and only a fool can believe things ought to be different than they are.
I am no doctor, yet the unspoken psychology which underpins the Atheist ‘faith’ interests me.
I think in many cases, the Cold ‘realism’ atheists claim to possess is actually self delusion.
I say many who put forward the above argument are lying, and cant actually live by their own tenets.
Why would I say such a thing?
I say because very often Atheism is accompanied by a deep hatred of Theism.
Why, I ask, do Atheists on one hand claim Philosophical indifference, while on the other they clearly harbor a passionate hatred against the idea of God?
If you think about it,… according to their own world view… they have no right to such passions. They ought to have serenely surrendered to indifferent, cold unalterable reality!
They have no basis for petty indignation!
Thus it is my contention that their vehemence betrays the fact that they harbor a sense of injustice at the way our world operates, esp when it comes to the suffering and death of children… and this rears itself in hatred towards God, and those whom claim to believe ‘God is Good’.
When Christians like me express faith in a Good God, rabid atheists often betray their acute awareness of objective morality and sense of injustice when they Hatefully retort “How Can you believe in a Good God when there is so much horror and Evil in the world!!! (Its more of an exclamation than a question)
They have let the cat out of the bag!
I say their innate knowledge of good and evil and sense of injustice.. is One of their pet unspoken psychological reasons for choosing Atheism.
Few will admit this… not even to themselves.
They will attempt a justification for their hatred of religion by such arguments as “Religion is the cause of War, and barbaric superstitions… They may quote Voltaire…“Believing Absurdities leads to the commission of atrocities”… yet insodoing they… by their own reasoning are merely expressing their own subjective morality! Ie by denying Objective morality they have no legitimate moral ground to condemn *any Barbaric practices* as they have rendered all morality to mere opinion… and thus by their reckoning their opinions in realty hold no more weight than the Satanist whom thinks raping and sacrificing children is ok.
By atheist logic reality is indifferent to questions of morality.
Thus I argue while it is not impossible for an atheist to be a good, caring, and humane person, it is impossible for a ‘good person’ to live consistently with atheism… they will find themselves appealing to an Objective morality everyday. Thus Atheists like Dawkins are deluding themselves.
If the Atheists are correct. The question is answered, and there is little more to say. Life is brutish and short. You don’t like it? Tuff! *Harden up!* Better to be a hammer than a nail!
‘Honest atheist’ Nobel prize winner Bertrand Russell quote:
“Even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temper of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
The alternative to the atheist amoral world view in which the moral question regarding suffering and death of children is written off as ignorance is that there really are objective standards of ‘ought-ness’ in the universe… and that having feelings of injustice are not silly delusions… not mere evolutionary expedients… but valid. Ie that such feelings are an awareness that some experiences and realities ‘ought not to be thus.’
If we accept this second view to be correct, immediately we must ask then how are we to know what is truly moral and what is not?
What is the standard by which we may rightly judge events, actions, and cultures as being Good or Evil… how do we escape mere subjectivity and cultural relativism?
Ought we to be governed by our sentiments?
And what about ‘Natural evils’ like floods and disease and distinct issues from Man made evils?
I will give you my veiws on this in (part 2,3)
Dishonest Atheists Ayn Rand and Richard Dawkins whom pretend Atheism is not Objectively Amoral and nihilistic. These AntiChrists decieve Millions of souls!
“Blind Leaders of the Blind and both shall fall into the ditch”.
Tim Wikiriwhi 23-6-12
Read more…. >>>>> Part 2… <<<<<
Plus Links to more posts (below) ....
Car Crash
Alan Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954)
War hero, mathematician, the father of computer science and State rape victim.
If you’ve done a Google search today, you probably noticed that it’s Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. Who was Alan Turing and why am I paying tribute to him?
Alan Turing (1912–1954) never described himself as a philosopher, but his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” is one of the most frequently cited in modern philosophical literature. It gave a fresh approach to the traditional mind-body problem, by relating it to the mathematical concept of computability he himself had introduced in his 1936–7 paper “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” His work can be regarded as the foundation of computer science and of the artificial intelligence program.
Here’s British Prime Minister (in 2009) Gordon Brown to tell you a few other things you need to know about Turing. (Thanks to Ian Watson for the transcript of Brown’s apology.)
This has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude that characterise the British experience. Earlier this year, I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against fascism and declared the outbreak of the Second World War.
So I am both pleased and proud that thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship: that of code-breaker Alan Turing.
Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely.
In 1952, he was convicted of “gross indecency” – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.
Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I am and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and so many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly. Over the years, millions more lived in fear of conviction. I am proud that those days are gone and that in the past 12 years this Government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality, and long overdue.
But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for this contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out European civilisation for hundreds of years.
It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work, I am very proud to say: we’re sorry. You deserved so much better.
Turing was found dead on 7 June 1954, two weeks before his 42nd birthday, after biting into a cyanide-laced apple. Wikipedia notes that
The logo of Apple Computer is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide. Both the designer of the logo and the company deny that there is any homage to Turing in the design of the logo. In Series I, Episode 13 of the British television quiz show QI presenter Stephen Fry recounted a conversation had with Steve Jobs, saying that Jobs’ response was, “It isn’t true, but God, we wish it were.”
Turing’s work is the foundation of computer science and of research into artificial intelligence. Turing is responsible for the Turing Test (the CAPTCHA‘s big brother), the Turing Machine and (jointly with Alonzo Church) the Church-Turing thesis.
This simple machine can, given a long enough ticker tape, do anything your mind can do—and much more. It’s humbling for some to realise that the human mind is the biological equivalent of a read-write head, a binary internal state, a look-up table and a ticker tape. But that’s all anyone ever is—biological ticker tape. (In fact, we’re all world lines.)
“When you believe in things that you don’t understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain’t the way”
Lyrics from ‘Superstitious’ by Stevie Wonder.
Many People delude themselves about their grip on reality…esp many materialist Atheists… whom love to condemn *Faith*.
They agree with the lyrics of Stevie wonders Song, and pretend they only ‘believe’ in cold facts… things they ‘understand’… yet this is self delusion.
Stevie Wonder was blind within hours of his Birth.
This makes me Wonder if he understands what light, sight and colours really are?
If not, is he being superstitious in believing other people really do posess an extra sence that he himself does not?
The Hadron Collider.
Does Stevie Wonder Believe in Gravity?
How Many people… if any… understand Gravity?
Are we all being ‘Superstitous’ in believing it to be a characteristic of Mass without understanding how this is so?
Perhapse we are!
The Bible says of Christ that… For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (Col 1:16,17)
It interests me to speculate that the quest by Particle Physicists to find the Graviton… is in fact a search for Christ!
(The Un-created Necessary Being… The final destination of the noble quest for ‘the theory of everything’)
What more I am amused by the reality that even if they discovery such a particle that this does not ‘eliminate’ Christ, for Christ then simply may be understood as what imparts the Gravitons nature. Contray to the delusions of folk like Dawkins, such descoveries dont eliminate any so-called ‘Gap for God’…. Theism is not ‘In Retreat’.
The same may be said about the science of the Mind/ Brain in that insights into it’s Electro-chemical processes do not prove the monist denial of the incorporeal inner being as postulated by dualism. Nor does it disprove freewill.
‘Free will’ participates in the formation of Neural pathways, and in the release of neuro-transmitters like Dopamine.
It is false to think that science is proving we are merely ‘Automations’.
That is an assumption. An interpretation of the facts baced upon pre-concieved materialist bias… nothing more.
The Brain is an ‘Interface’ between our incorporeal spirit and our bodies… by which we ‘feel’ our values as physical emotions.
So I laugh at the hypocritical naivety of Atheist Materialists… their vain belief that they don’t live by faith… that they ‘know’ Materialism is true…. that it has been proven!
Socrates about to drink Hemlock
Chærephon, put the question to the Oracle at Delphi, Whether any other man was wiser than Socrates? The answer given was that there was none wiser. Not being conscious of the possession of wisdom, Socrates was perplexed, till at last, after testing the supposed knowledge of many distinguished men, he interpreted the reply of the oracle as meaning that whereas other men thought they knew, he was one of the few conscious of their own ignorance.
The reality is We all believe in things which we don’t understand.
Thus those whom refuse to accept a particular tenet of the Bible *Until they understand it* …are kidding themselves as to the rationality of such a refusal. They are imposing an impossible standard, and as such are committing an act of self delusion.
They are not (as they claim) exercising a superior epistemology which trumps Bible believing faith… but via arbitrary whim they simply choose not to believe.
Dont be duped by the modern propaganda that Science has always been in conflict with Revealed religion!
To the contrary I argue thus: By all means continue the quest for knowledge, yet has not the scriptures proven true enough in what can and has already been weighed and measured… so that we ought to consider it trustworthy in those things which are currently beyond our scope of verification?
I believe this to be both a rational approach, and a wise one. It is the very Basis of science…*Faith!*
Faith that The Universe is intelligible because it was created orderly via Divine reason.
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God…”
(Psalm 14vs1)
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”
(Rom 1vs20)
In a purely materialist reality what is music but clatter and din?
How ridiculous it is to assume Jimi’s music is no different from the noise of waves crashing on a beach… merely the necessary outcome of binding physical determinism in a causation enslaved dead/monist reality!
Me: Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8)
C: And that’s supposed to tell me what? That God had legs? God was the creator of the Universe, apparently, so he was around before there was any need for legs, before there even was legs.
I find it hard to get my head around the idea of a disembodied consciousness. I’m pretty sure that my consciousness can’t be disembodied and remain … conscious. As for the mind of God … I have absolutely no idea.
But I reprise this snippet of a conversation to make the point that the label ‘Christian’ makes people assume all sorts of unwarranted things. It gets annoying after a while. I’m not given to angry outbursts and acts of homicidal violence, but please don’t push your luck with, “You’re a Christian, so you must be a socialist!”
Anyway, in an apparent synchronicity, blogger Glenn Peoples posted an excellent post today on something he calls minimalist Christianity. Here are a couple of paragraphs (but do make sure to read the whole thing).
A number of times the Apostle Paul warned first century Christians about getting into foolish controversies over doctrine. This isn’t to say that they shouldn’t believe what they find most convincing about a whole range of things, but they were taking it further, making those things points of contention that threatened to divide the church. When writing to Timothy, a young church leader, Paul urged him no fewer than five times to stay away from – and to urge others to stay away from – unproductive quarrels over such things. But this is what really grabbed my attention recently, prompting this blog post: When Paul was in Athens preaching the Gospel, a number of philosophers asked him to come and speak to them because, here it comes, they wanted to know what the Christian faith was. They were accustomed to examining different worldviews but they had not yet heard of Christianity, so they said to Paul, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean” (Acts 17:19-20). Every evangelist and apologist reading this passage should be on the edge of their seat: They are about to get a bona fide New Testament example of what it actually looks like to sum up the Christian faith. And what does Paul say? I assume that Luke’s record is not intended to be verbatim, and only sums up what he thought was important (which in a way helps me to make the point even clearer). Here’s the whole talk as recorded in Acts 17
Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
Every time I have made this observation, I have been met with almost immediate misunderstanding, so let me labour the point: Nothing that I have said here implies that Christians should believe as few things as possible – or even that it’s a good thing to only believe the bare essentials. I think holding a lot of bad theology is bad for you. It has “knock on” effects into other things you believe and do. When I talk about theology at the blog and podcast, hopefully I make it obvious that I do care about what I believe – and what others believe too – beyond the bare essentials (just as a dietician cares about what you eat beyond the bare necessities needed to keep you alive). There is much growth, intellectually, spiritually and practically, in moving beyond the bare essentials of Christian thought and into the riches of biblical theology. But I have become convinced of this: The acceptance of the Christian faith does not require that anyone shares your convictions (however important they might be to you) on everything you believe that you have found among those riches.
The post in its entirety is well worth reading. Thanks, Glenn.
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 “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.
