You live in a city of three million people. One day, in the mail, you receive an invitation to go to a certain address on a certain date to attend a banquet. The banquet is being presented by the richest, most influential, most powerful, most important person in your city. You’ve never met the person nor had anything to do with him but, for a reason you can’t quite explain, you RSVP that you’ll attend. When the date comes around a limo pulls up in front of your residence. The driver escorts you to the vehicle and closes the door. While driving down the street you notice something strange. The sidewalk is littered with what looks like discarded invitations. Could it be that lots of people were invited and some turned it down? At any rate, as you arrive at the place of the mystery invitation you notice that other limos, hundreds of them, are bringing other people and dropping them off as well. While many had obviously rejected the invitation, you’re certainly far from being the only one who has accepted the offer.
You go up the stairs of the mansion and walk into a grand entryway. Your coat is taken by the doorman and you, as well as others who have just arrived, are ushered into a huge banquet room. Drinks are being served so, while Waiters are bringing stacks and stacks of food to the tables, you decide to relax and mingle with the crowd.
Soon someone asks, “So what brings you here?” As you begin to describe the curious invitation you overhear other people describing the same scenario.
The question, “So what brings you here,” is relevant since there is no obvious common denominator to the crowd that is gathering. Some are old. Some are young. Some are obviously wealthy professionals while many, maybe most now that you look around, seem destitute, homeless and perhaps mentally ill. The large number who still seem to be wearing their prison garb is a bit unsettling. Some of those walking in are men, some women. Some have come alone while others have brought their spouse and children. The only thing that everyone seems to have in common is that the owner of mansion is the one who issued the invitation and then went out got them.
=====
Ok, enough of that. Here’s the point. That is what it’s like to become part of the family of God. Evangelicals, I think, put way too much emphasis on stuff like, “I accepted the Lord,” or “I came to Christ when . . .” or, “I got saved after . . .” These type of comments, while accurate to a point, make it sound as though we Christians had something to do with our salvation. In point of fact, when we come together to worship our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ, the common denominator, the only common denominator, is that God gave you and others in your situation an invitation.
He called you.
He got your attention.
He drew you to Jesus.
It was all God, from first to last.
For no reason other than His decision to do so, Creator God called you and relatively few other people, out of the general population, to become part of His family of believers. On the other hand, He says for us to tell others, even those that have thrown their invitations away, that the invitation remains open until our dying breath, or until the return of Jesus, whichever comes first.
=====
It’s as if the whole population of the world has been filing through some gate and God, at His discretion has been plucking people from here and there to go one direction while the majority continue filing down the path they’ve been on since birth.
This causes some people to ask, “How could a loving God condemn billions of people to hell?” That may be a good question but a better question is this. “Why would God take billions of people who deserve to be in hell and save them, at His own expense, for eternal salvation in heaven?” The rebellious cannot complain of hell because they are in fact guilty of rebellion. The saved cannot boast because they have done nothing to deserve salvation.
This choosing, this plucking, this “calling out” has nothing to do with who you are or what you’ve done. It has nothing to do with your gender or race or wealth or disposition.
The reasoning for the invitation may or may not become known at some date in the future but for now the only reason you have become part of the family of God has been His grace, His mercy, His calling, His choosing.
So if you’re ever sitting in Church and get asked by someone, “So what brings you here?” Remember, the answer is God - only God. Whether or not you’re saved at that point is a non issue because your being there is no accident.
It’s His house, His banquet, His invitation.
Monday, January 31, 2011
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
Darwin
In reality that is true. A dozen irreducibly complex systems operate within our bodies, systems that stand no chance of having been created by naturalistic evolution. But those who are philosophically committed to a material universe arising from nothing by nothing, those who are philosophically committed to life emerging unaided from non life, Darwin’s true statement is simply ignored as they press on with their absurd, incoherent faith system.
Darwin
In reality that is true. A dozen irreducibly complex systems operate within our bodies, systems that stand no chance of having been created by naturalistic evolution. But those who are philosophically committed to a material universe arising from nothing by nothing, those who are philosophically committed to life emerging unaided from non life, Darwin’s true statement is simply ignored as they press on with their absurd, incoherent faith system.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
“Don’t Worry Be Happy”
Remember that song from a few years back? If I remember correctly the writer killed himself.
Actually that’s not the point of this post. I saw a thing today where Oprah (20 Important Questions - CNN)is telling people to be careful so they don’t worry needlessly. That’s good advice. Like the saying goes, “Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” Problem is, Oprah tells people to not be worried about stuff that Jesus says they should be worried a great deal about - like hell.
Jesus spoke about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He warned people about hell more than He encouraged them about heaven. Jesus knew that in just a few years after He was tortured to death (“If they hated Me they’ll hate you also.”), many of those who followed Jesus would be sawn in two, pulled apart by horses, crucified, burned to death, run through with swords and spears, lose their jobs, be thrown into prison and on and on. This is a pattern that continues with increasing ferocity up to the present, and then He says, “Don’t worry about this. Don’t worry about those who can kill the body. What you should worry about, is the fact that when history comes to an end, those who have refused My offer of forgiveness will be cast into hell for eternity, where the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever. That is what you should be worried about.”
Atheists rail against talking about hell because they say it’s manipulative. Ya, manipulative like telling people to get out of a burning building, like telling people to stay off of ice on the river that’s too thin to support their weight; like telling people to jump down the escape chutes of a crashed and burning plane, like telling your child not to play in a busy street, like telling people to not have unprotected sex. Pure manipulation - Pfft!
Functional atheists like Oprah tell people, “Don’t worry about hell. Be happy!”
THAT, in my mind is the worst kind of manipulation.
According to Oprah and her millions of enlightened followers, as long as “your heart is right” (whatever that means), God will welcome you with open arms. Neither atheists nor Oprah explain just how right a person’s heart has to be, or according to whose scale of rightness we must adhere. One thing they’re sure of, it isn’t Creator God’s scale of rightness that we need to pay attention to. On the other hand, it’s probably fair to say that atheists, Oprah and every last one of her followers believe that for us to reach our spiritual goal (whatever that is) our hearts must be at least as right as their hearts. That’s why Jesus the Christ and the religion that bears His name are rejected by atheists, Oprah and her followers. After all, Jesus is the only religious leader who has or ever will proclaim with absolute clarity that none of us, not a single person on planet earth is right enough to be acceptable to God in our natural state.
I mention Oprah not because she is overtly evil. In fact Oprah’s enormous resources have allowed her to do tremendous good for many, many people. People would say and I’m sure that she would agree, “Her heart is right. Oprah means well. She tries to do the right thing.” No, the reason that I mention Oprah is that while there are relatively few professing atheists in the world (those who truly believe there is no God), there may be a billion or more what I call Functional Atheists - those who live as though God, as He is described in the Bible, does not exist. Functional atheists believe that God’s desires for us are no more relevant for our lives than those of the next door neighbour. It is my belief that Oprah has singlehandedly turned more people away from Jesus than any other spiritual leader perhaps in all of history. She has done this by assuring her followers that they are correct in what they already want to believe, i.e., Jesus is not the Way, the Truth and the Life. Millions of people trust Oprah. Virtually all American news magazines were unanimous in the opinion that Oprah’s influence elected President Obama. Because people trust Oprah, because they believe in her, so to speak, she has been able to convince people that their personal quest for “salvation” and their individual ideas about how to deal with their sin and guilt are just as valid as any other spiritual path that humans have invented. In her own words, and in direct opposition to the teaching of Jesus, “There are many paths to God.”
Now of course, for Oprah and for anyone else whose lives reflect the fact that they’ve rejected Jesus as Lord, this type of thinking is understandable. In fact it can and should be expected. Whether it’s Thomas Jefferson who needs to justify screwing his female slaves by cutting out all descriptions of miracles in the Bible or whether it’s someone else needing to justify living common-law with h/her current person of interest, denying the authority of the Bible over one’s life is a requisite first step. Convincing others to follow along in the simple-minded belief that large numbers of like-thinkers have the power to magically turn something from wrong into right is the next step.
Of course, the idea that we’re all on the same road to God or that there are many paths to God is ludicrous. Jesus said, “If you do not believe that I Am who I say I Am, you will die in your sins.” The answer to the question, “Was He right?” is not in the same category of questions like, “What is the most pleasing thing in life?” or “How would you describe the perfect holiday?” The answer to the question of Creator God’s existence is of the same order as the answer to the question, What is 2 + 2? The answer will either be right or it will be wrong. Period!
. If God has revealed Himself to us, as Jesus said that He has, and
. If God has provided a path of belief that is intended to lead us to Him, again as Jesus said that He has, and
. If our very salvation depends on us following the path that has been laid out for us by Creator God, as Jesus said that it does,
. Then other paths or alternate paths can only lead us away from Creator God, and not to Creator God.
To know what Jesus taught and to then deliberately choose to follow Buddhism or Native Religion or The Secret or anything else instead cannot and will not place you on the same path to God as Jesus directed.
There are several thousand answers to the questions, What is God like? and How can we know Him? Some of those answers will be closer to correct than others in their understanding of Creator God. However, one thing is certain, there is only one correct answer to, “Is Jesus the Way, the Truth and the Life?” and not just any old path will lead you to the correct answer.
Jesus has said that He is the only way by which salvation may be known and He is either correct or He isn’t. Jesus of Nazareth is either telling the truth or else He is a liar of grand proportion. Either He is the One through whom your sins can be forgiven or He isn’t. No other religious leader has made the type of claims that were made by Jesus and no other religious leader has provided the confirming evidence that Jesus provided so that we may fairly and logically believe His claims.
A decision must be made, and according to Jesus there are eternal consequences to how we answer His question of “Who do you say that I Am?” Jesus may be many things to many people but one thing He isn’t. Jesus is not ‘sort of important.’ If He is correct in what He taught, then what you do with Jesus is the most important decision that you will ever make.
So, are you going to believe what Jesus says about Himself and salvation, or are you going to believe what Oprah says about Jesus and salvation? Either Jesus is correct or Oprah is correct. It can’t be both.
Actually that’s not the point of this post. I saw a thing today where Oprah (20 Important Questions - CNN)is telling people to be careful so they don’t worry needlessly. That’s good advice. Like the saying goes, “Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” Problem is, Oprah tells people to not be worried about stuff that Jesus says they should be worried a great deal about - like hell.
Jesus spoke about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He warned people about hell more than He encouraged them about heaven. Jesus knew that in just a few years after He was tortured to death (“If they hated Me they’ll hate you also.”), many of those who followed Jesus would be sawn in two, pulled apart by horses, crucified, burned to death, run through with swords and spears, lose their jobs, be thrown into prison and on and on. This is a pattern that continues with increasing ferocity up to the present, and then He says, “Don’t worry about this. Don’t worry about those who can kill the body. What you should worry about, is the fact that when history comes to an end, those who have refused My offer of forgiveness will be cast into hell for eternity, where the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever. That is what you should be worried about.”
Atheists rail against talking about hell because they say it’s manipulative. Ya, manipulative like telling people to get out of a burning building, like telling people to stay off of ice on the river that’s too thin to support their weight; like telling people to jump down the escape chutes of a crashed and burning plane, like telling your child not to play in a busy street, like telling people to not have unprotected sex. Pure manipulation - Pfft!
Functional atheists like Oprah tell people, “Don’t worry about hell. Be happy!”
THAT, in my mind is the worst kind of manipulation.
According to Oprah and her millions of enlightened followers, as long as “your heart is right” (whatever that means), God will welcome you with open arms. Neither atheists nor Oprah explain just how right a person’s heart has to be, or according to whose scale of rightness we must adhere. One thing they’re sure of, it isn’t Creator God’s scale of rightness that we need to pay attention to. On the other hand, it’s probably fair to say that atheists, Oprah and every last one of her followers believe that for us to reach our spiritual goal (whatever that is) our hearts must be at least as right as their hearts. That’s why Jesus the Christ and the religion that bears His name are rejected by atheists, Oprah and her followers. After all, Jesus is the only religious leader who has or ever will proclaim with absolute clarity that none of us, not a single person on planet earth is right enough to be acceptable to God in our natural state.
I mention Oprah not because she is overtly evil. In fact Oprah’s enormous resources have allowed her to do tremendous good for many, many people. People would say and I’m sure that she would agree, “Her heart is right. Oprah means well. She tries to do the right thing.” No, the reason that I mention Oprah is that while there are relatively few professing atheists in the world (those who truly believe there is no God), there may be a billion or more what I call Functional Atheists - those who live as though God, as He is described in the Bible, does not exist. Functional atheists believe that God’s desires for us are no more relevant for our lives than those of the next door neighbour. It is my belief that Oprah has singlehandedly turned more people away from Jesus than any other spiritual leader perhaps in all of history. She has done this by assuring her followers that they are correct in what they already want to believe, i.e., Jesus is not the Way, the Truth and the Life. Millions of people trust Oprah. Virtually all American news magazines were unanimous in the opinion that Oprah’s influence elected President Obama. Because people trust Oprah, because they believe in her, so to speak, she has been able to convince people that their personal quest for “salvation” and their individual ideas about how to deal with their sin and guilt are just as valid as any other spiritual path that humans have invented. In her own words, and in direct opposition to the teaching of Jesus, “There are many paths to God.”
Now of course, for Oprah and for anyone else whose lives reflect the fact that they’ve rejected Jesus as Lord, this type of thinking is understandable. In fact it can and should be expected. Whether it’s Thomas Jefferson who needs to justify screwing his female slaves by cutting out all descriptions of miracles in the Bible or whether it’s someone else needing to justify living common-law with h/her current person of interest, denying the authority of the Bible over one’s life is a requisite first step. Convincing others to follow along in the simple-minded belief that large numbers of like-thinkers have the power to magically turn something from wrong into right is the next step.
Of course, the idea that we’re all on the same road to God or that there are many paths to God is ludicrous. Jesus said, “If you do not believe that I Am who I say I Am, you will die in your sins.” The answer to the question, “Was He right?” is not in the same category of questions like, “What is the most pleasing thing in life?” or “How would you describe the perfect holiday?” The answer to the question of Creator God’s existence is of the same order as the answer to the question, What is 2 + 2? The answer will either be right or it will be wrong. Period!
. If God has revealed Himself to us, as Jesus said that He has, and
. If God has provided a path of belief that is intended to lead us to Him, again as Jesus said that He has, and
. If our very salvation depends on us following the path that has been laid out for us by Creator God, as Jesus said that it does,
. Then other paths or alternate paths can only lead us away from Creator God, and not to Creator God.
To know what Jesus taught and to then deliberately choose to follow Buddhism or Native Religion or The Secret or anything else instead cannot and will not place you on the same path to God as Jesus directed.
There are several thousand answers to the questions, What is God like? and How can we know Him? Some of those answers will be closer to correct than others in their understanding of Creator God. However, one thing is certain, there is only one correct answer to, “Is Jesus the Way, the Truth and the Life?” and not just any old path will lead you to the correct answer.
Jesus has said that He is the only way by which salvation may be known and He is either correct or He isn’t. Jesus of Nazareth is either telling the truth or else He is a liar of grand proportion. Either He is the One through whom your sins can be forgiven or He isn’t. No other religious leader has made the type of claims that were made by Jesus and no other religious leader has provided the confirming evidence that Jesus provided so that we may fairly and logically believe His claims.
A decision must be made, and according to Jesus there are eternal consequences to how we answer His question of “Who do you say that I Am?” Jesus may be many things to many people but one thing He isn’t. Jesus is not ‘sort of important.’ If He is correct in what He taught, then what you do with Jesus is the most important decision that you will ever make.
So, are you going to believe what Jesus says about Himself and salvation, or are you going to believe what Oprah says about Jesus and salvation? Either Jesus is correct or Oprah is correct. It can’t be both.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Isn’t That Interesting?
I saw a thing on Joel Osteen on CNN. I don’t know much about the guy. I’ve never heard one of his sermons, never read one of his books nor have I ever seen an interview with him.
What I have seen - over and over - are atheist responses to Osteen. You see Osteen is rich. Really rich. Whether he’s a fraud / huckster or someone who’s been financially blessed by God, I don’t know. All I know is that he’s rich and for a Christian to be rich, atheists have only one response - “Jesus told you to give all your money away.”
Actually atheists use that line on all Christians. It doesn’t matter how much money the person has, the only response an atheist has in h/her repertoire is - “You call yourself a Christian? Bet you haven’t given all your money away! You’re just a hypocrite if you haven’t given away all your money. Jesus said you have to.”
What atheists are referring to of course is the account in Luke where Jesus meets a rich man who wants eternal life - or so he thinks. This man is in fact a good person - as people go. When he tells Jesus that he’s kept all the commandments Jesus doesn’t say, “No you haven’t.” However, there is one thing that the young man hasn’t done and that is, he hasn’t let God have his heart.
You know how atheists implore people, “Just be good for goodness sake,”? Well, that’s exactly what this man has been doing. He’s been keeping rules because he thinks that’s what makes him a nice person. He’s wrong. Keeping the rules makes him self-righteous.
Jesus said, “You still lack one thing.”
If you’re an atheist you’ll immediately think - “Money! He’s got to give ALL his money away and so does everyone else who calls h/herself a Christian.” Pfft!
Jesus said, “Sell all you have, and”
Here comes the point Jesus wanted to make - Are you ready for it?
“Come follow Me.”
Atheists completely miss the point. Keeping the rules (even if giving away money was one of them) isn’t what makes us fit for heaven. We can do all the right things and still be completely wrong. In fact, the rich man could have sold all his things and given all his money to the poor and still not been right with God.
“Follow Me” - is the one thing that was missing from his life.
And that is what is missing from the lives of those who say, “I don’t need God in order to be a good person.” You can be as good as the best person in the world and it wouldn’t count for anything. You can never be good enough to be good enough for heaven.
Out of the thousands that Jesus encountered during his three years of ministry, we are told of only one person - One Person - to whom Jesus said, “Sell all you have.”
Yet, atheists demand that from every one calling themselves followers of Jesus.
Isn’t that interesting?
Now, if atheists said to everyone claiming to be a Christian, get rid of any idol, anything in your life that is more important to you than Jesus, they’d be giving good advice. And, for what it’s worth, being saturated in the values of secular society has caused many of us to put acquiring things and wealth ahead of our commitment to God.
Regardless, another thing that’s interesting about this is that God Himself has made many, many people fabulously wealthy. Re read the Bible if you’ve forgotten. If you’ve forgotten, look at your own life. Yes Jesus said, “It’s harder for a Camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” but, and this is important. Those people who are diligently following Jesus, who really do live by faith while having been blessed by God with financial wealth are being criticised by the very people who refuse to come to Jesus because THEY fear they’ll have to share or give away the very thing they depend on - their money - their wealth - their idol. I suggest to you that it’s the latter (100's of millions of wealthy people who reject God), not the former (100's of thousands of wealthy people who strive to serve God) that Jesus was talking to re: the Camel / needle.
Only God knows at this point if Joel Osteen is on track spiritually. Human nature being what it is, he’s certainly in dangerous territory but that’s between him and his Creator.
What we can know is that atheists are not on track, even as they denigrate those who have been blessed by their Creator.
I think that’s interesting.
What I have seen - over and over - are atheist responses to Osteen. You see Osteen is rich. Really rich. Whether he’s a fraud / huckster or someone who’s been financially blessed by God, I don’t know. All I know is that he’s rich and for a Christian to be rich, atheists have only one response - “Jesus told you to give all your money away.”
Actually atheists use that line on all Christians. It doesn’t matter how much money the person has, the only response an atheist has in h/her repertoire is - “You call yourself a Christian? Bet you haven’t given all your money away! You’re just a hypocrite if you haven’t given away all your money. Jesus said you have to.”
What atheists are referring to of course is the account in Luke where Jesus meets a rich man who wants eternal life - or so he thinks. This man is in fact a good person - as people go. When he tells Jesus that he’s kept all the commandments Jesus doesn’t say, “No you haven’t.” However, there is one thing that the young man hasn’t done and that is, he hasn’t let God have his heart.
You know how atheists implore people, “Just be good for goodness sake,”? Well, that’s exactly what this man has been doing. He’s been keeping rules because he thinks that’s what makes him a nice person. He’s wrong. Keeping the rules makes him self-righteous.
Jesus said, “You still lack one thing.”
If you’re an atheist you’ll immediately think - “Money! He’s got to give ALL his money away and so does everyone else who calls h/herself a Christian.” Pfft!
Jesus said, “Sell all you have, and”
Here comes the point Jesus wanted to make - Are you ready for it?
“Come follow Me.”
Atheists completely miss the point. Keeping the rules (even if giving away money was one of them) isn’t what makes us fit for heaven. We can do all the right things and still be completely wrong. In fact, the rich man could have sold all his things and given all his money to the poor and still not been right with God.
“Follow Me” - is the one thing that was missing from his life.
And that is what is missing from the lives of those who say, “I don’t need God in order to be a good person.” You can be as good as the best person in the world and it wouldn’t count for anything. You can never be good enough to be good enough for heaven.
Out of the thousands that Jesus encountered during his three years of ministry, we are told of only one person - One Person - to whom Jesus said, “Sell all you have.”
Yet, atheists demand that from every one calling themselves followers of Jesus.
Isn’t that interesting?
Now, if atheists said to everyone claiming to be a Christian, get rid of any idol, anything in your life that is more important to you than Jesus, they’d be giving good advice. And, for what it’s worth, being saturated in the values of secular society has caused many of us to put acquiring things and wealth ahead of our commitment to God.
Regardless, another thing that’s interesting about this is that God Himself has made many, many people fabulously wealthy. Re read the Bible if you’ve forgotten. If you’ve forgotten, look at your own life. Yes Jesus said, “It’s harder for a Camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” but, and this is important. Those people who are diligently following Jesus, who really do live by faith while having been blessed by God with financial wealth are being criticised by the very people who refuse to come to Jesus because THEY fear they’ll have to share or give away the very thing they depend on - their money - their wealth - their idol. I suggest to you that it’s the latter (100's of millions of wealthy people who reject God), not the former (100's of thousands of wealthy people who strive to serve God) that Jesus was talking to re: the Camel / needle.
Only God knows at this point if Joel Osteen is on track spiritually. Human nature being what it is, he’s certainly in dangerous territory but that’s between him and his Creator.
What we can know is that atheists are not on track, even as they denigrate those who have been blessed by their Creator.
I think that’s interesting.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Love Was Here First
Most everyone knows that one of the ways that Christians describe God, and one of the ways that God describes Himself is:
God is Love.
Before the material universe existed - there was Love.
Have you given that any thought? I ask because for love to exist, there needs to be “someone” to love. For love to exist there must be an “other” onto which that love is projected. In the very being of God, a self-existent One loves the other aspects of that One. God the Father loves God the Son who loves God the Spirit who loves God the Father . . .. (See John 14).
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
Deuteronomy 6:4
God the Father is infinite.
God the Son is infinite
God the Spirit is infinite
Infinity plus Infinity plus Infinity equals one Infinte Being
We as Christians are to model our love for one another upon the love that is shared within the Trinity.
We as Christians are to model our love for one another upon the love that God showers upon us.
As humans we look at the object of our love and think something like this. “I’m attracted to your smile. I’m drawn to your generosity and your vitality and the way you approach life. I think you’re fantastically physically attractive. I admire your intellect. It makes me feel good to be around you. You make me feel happy and alive and important. Because other people like you it gives me status to be with you. Because of these things and more, I love you.
As the very essence of Love, Creator God looks at us and says, “You’re angry and resentful and self-centred and self-obsessed. You reject My love. You reject My offer of salvation. You disobey Me and choose behaviours that are destructive to your selves, your relationships with others and to the very planet upon which you live. You set yourself up as gods and in some cases, as with atheists, you even deny that I exist.
I give you hands that work perfectly, picking up, turning things off and on, fixing, adjusting, caressing, creating and exploring with exquisite dexterity, yet you use them to harm other humans, to steal and kill and destroy.
I give you mouths with the ability to sound out words, taste foods, sense temperature and texture with extraordinary sensitivity; mouths and vocal cords that can moan, cry and sing, yet you use them to curse and harm and destroy those you claim to love.
I give you eyes that can communicate emotion and explore the majestic beauty of Creation, yet you use them to lust and covet and intimidate and demean.
I cause you to be born in an unimaginably huge and hostile universe on this little jewel of a planet, yet you pretend that everything material came from literally nothing material - without any cause whatsoever.
I’ve given you more food than you can eat; as much money as you need, and a health care system that many cannot even conceive of, yet you refuse to share that wealth with others to the point that 25,000 children die every day from causes that could be prevented if only you weren’t so selfish.
You don’t seem to consider what kind of a person would take all of these gifts and still curse the God who gave it all to them.
You don’t seem to think it odd that you don’t demand an answer from Me as to why I’m so good to you even when you hate Me, ignore Me, reject Me and hate those who love Me.
And yet, I love you. I love you so much that I died for you not after you turned to me for forgiveness but while you were still sinners. I love you so much that I died for you while you were still determined to remain My enemies.”
Yes we are now existing in a point of history where there seems to be precious little love; where even the love of believers seems to be growing cold.
The good news is:
. Love was here first
. Love will remain even after those who fight against love have been removed from the scene.
God is Love.
Before the material universe existed - there was Love.
Have you given that any thought? I ask because for love to exist, there needs to be “someone” to love. For love to exist there must be an “other” onto which that love is projected. In the very being of God, a self-existent One loves the other aspects of that One. God the Father loves God the Son who loves God the Spirit who loves God the Father . . .. (See John 14).
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
Deuteronomy 6:4
God the Father is infinite.
God the Son is infinite
God the Spirit is infinite
Infinity plus Infinity plus Infinity equals one Infinte Being
We as Christians are to model our love for one another upon the love that is shared within the Trinity.
We as Christians are to model our love for one another upon the love that God showers upon us.
As humans we look at the object of our love and think something like this. “I’m attracted to your smile. I’m drawn to your generosity and your vitality and the way you approach life. I think you’re fantastically physically attractive. I admire your intellect. It makes me feel good to be around you. You make me feel happy and alive and important. Because other people like you it gives me status to be with you. Because of these things and more, I love you.
As the very essence of Love, Creator God looks at us and says, “You’re angry and resentful and self-centred and self-obsessed. You reject My love. You reject My offer of salvation. You disobey Me and choose behaviours that are destructive to your selves, your relationships with others and to the very planet upon which you live. You set yourself up as gods and in some cases, as with atheists, you even deny that I exist.
I give you hands that work perfectly, picking up, turning things off and on, fixing, adjusting, caressing, creating and exploring with exquisite dexterity, yet you use them to harm other humans, to steal and kill and destroy.
I give you mouths with the ability to sound out words, taste foods, sense temperature and texture with extraordinary sensitivity; mouths and vocal cords that can moan, cry and sing, yet you use them to curse and harm and destroy those you claim to love.
I give you eyes that can communicate emotion and explore the majestic beauty of Creation, yet you use them to lust and covet and intimidate and demean.
I cause you to be born in an unimaginably huge and hostile universe on this little jewel of a planet, yet you pretend that everything material came from literally nothing material - without any cause whatsoever.
I’ve given you more food than you can eat; as much money as you need, and a health care system that many cannot even conceive of, yet you refuse to share that wealth with others to the point that 25,000 children die every day from causes that could be prevented if only you weren’t so selfish.
You don’t seem to consider what kind of a person would take all of these gifts and still curse the God who gave it all to them.
You don’t seem to think it odd that you don’t demand an answer from Me as to why I’m so good to you even when you hate Me, ignore Me, reject Me and hate those who love Me.
And yet, I love you. I love you so much that I died for you not after you turned to me for forgiveness but while you were still sinners. I love you so much that I died for you while you were still determined to remain My enemies.”
Yes we are now existing in a point of history where there seems to be precious little love; where even the love of believers seems to be growing cold.
The good news is:
. Love was here first
. Love will remain even after those who fight against love have been removed from the scene.
Sceptics
If our Message is obscure to anyone, it's not because we're holding back in any way. No, it's because these other people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention. All they have eyes for is the fashionable god of darkness. They think he can give them what they want, and that they won't have to bother believing a Truth they can't see. They're stone-blind to the dayspring brightness of the Message that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we'll ever get.
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. As it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus' sake, which makes Jesus' life all the more evident in us. While we're going through the worst, you're getting in on the best!
So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4,7-12,18
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. As it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus' sake, which makes Jesus' life all the more evident in us. While we're going through the worst, you're getting in on the best!
So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4,7-12,18
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Supernatural?
The work of the Gospel, the result of the Gospel, the changing power of the Gospel is supernatural.
As countless atheists have said, “I couldn’t become a Christian even if I wanted to.”
Truer words were never spoken!
The Psalmist says, “The fool says in his heart, “there is no God.””
Regardless of whether a person is dull enough intellectually to actually and literally believe that a Creator does not exist, or whether the person just wants to live as though God doesn’t exist and so says there is no God, we all began life as fools. We all lived in rebellion to the idea of being accountable to our Creator. Only by the Grace of God have some of us been called out of our foolishness.
“So you see, it does not depend on a person’s desire or effort but on the grace and mercy of God.”
Romans 9:16
“No one comes to Jesus unless God calls h/him.”
John 6:44
The death and resurrection of Jesus weren’t just historical events. The death and resurrection of Jesus made possible the release of supernatural power capable of changing human lives; capable of bringing about a new creation.
This is in fact the same power that brought the universe itself into being.
This power can take a person who worships only h/herself and turns that person into someone who honours and worships God.
This power can take someone who denies God’s existence and turns that person into someone who tells others how they too can have a healed and forgiven relationship with Jesus.
This power can take someone who is destined for a just and eternal serparation from God in hell and save that soul for eternal blessing in heaven.
“This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you. They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when He told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and His great glory afterward. They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you. And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.”
1st Peter 1:10-12.
As countless atheists have said, “I couldn’t become a Christian even if I wanted to.”
Truer words were never spoken!
The Psalmist says, “The fool says in his heart, “there is no God.””
Regardless of whether a person is dull enough intellectually to actually and literally believe that a Creator does not exist, or whether the person just wants to live as though God doesn’t exist and so says there is no God, we all began life as fools. We all lived in rebellion to the idea of being accountable to our Creator. Only by the Grace of God have some of us been called out of our foolishness.
“So you see, it does not depend on a person’s desire or effort but on the grace and mercy of God.”
Romans 9:16
“No one comes to Jesus unless God calls h/him.”
John 6:44
The death and resurrection of Jesus weren’t just historical events. The death and resurrection of Jesus made possible the release of supernatural power capable of changing human lives; capable of bringing about a new creation.
This is in fact the same power that brought the universe itself into being.
This power can take a person who worships only h/herself and turns that person into someone who honours and worships God.
This power can take someone who denies God’s existence and turns that person into someone who tells others how they too can have a healed and forgiven relationship with Jesus.
This power can take someone who is destined for a just and eternal serparation from God in hell and save that soul for eternal blessing in heaven.
“This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you. They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when He told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and His great glory afterward. They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you. And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.”
1st Peter 1:10-12.
“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. For let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
Amos 5:21-24 -
Amos 5:21-24 -
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
What A Fall!
Imagine having never told a lie - any lie - never!
Imagine having never felt resentment, or bitterness or anger or rage.
Imagine having always loved with pure motives; having never known selfishness.
Imagine having always enjoyed peace and contentment.
Imagine having never been burdened by worry or anxiety.
Imagine always living in wonder and expectancy and joyfulness.
Imagine having never experienced shame, or doubt, or fear, or regret.
Imagine have a healed and intimate and forgiven relationship with your Creator.
Imagine having it all gone in a moment!
What A Fall!
From our vantage point, we sometimes have trouble understanding why Jesus considers the ruin of His perfect Creation, a big deal. For the same reason a fish doesn’t feel wet, we don’t get the horror of evil, and sin and wrong because we are evil. We are sin. We are wrong. Even our best efforts to be good are like used menstrual tampons.
From far, far east of Eden, we have no idea how good it was.
We have no comprehension of what was lost.
What A Fall!
Imagine having never felt resentment, or bitterness or anger or rage.
Imagine having always loved with pure motives; having never known selfishness.
Imagine having always enjoyed peace and contentment.
Imagine having never been burdened by worry or anxiety.
Imagine always living in wonder and expectancy and joyfulness.
Imagine having never experienced shame, or doubt, or fear, or regret.
Imagine have a healed and intimate and forgiven relationship with your Creator.
Imagine having it all gone in a moment!
What A Fall!
From our vantage point, we sometimes have trouble understanding why Jesus considers the ruin of His perfect Creation, a big deal. For the same reason a fish doesn’t feel wet, we don’t get the horror of evil, and sin and wrong because we are evil. We are sin. We are wrong. Even our best efforts to be good are like used menstrual tampons.
From far, far east of Eden, we have no idea how good it was.
We have no comprehension of what was lost.
What A Fall!
“Our view of reality is like a map . . . If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.”
M. Scott Peck
Over the decades I've tried several means of trying to find my way in life, and it's been my experience that only - ONLY - Jesus provides for an accurate location finder and guide out of this mess.
M. Scott Peck
Over the decades I've tried several means of trying to find my way in life, and it's been my experience that only - ONLY - Jesus provides for an accurate location finder and guide out of this mess.
Monday, January 24, 2011
How Lost Can We Possibly Get?
Over at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-bakker/finding-jesus-in-drag_b_812159.html Jay Bakker gives a heart warming story of attending a Drag Queen Show where Jesus' love of sin (not sinners but sin) was supposedly in evidence.
“Jesus would be here if He were alive today. Jesus hung out with the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the sinners ... " He then launched into a three-minute speech about how Jesus loved everybody without judgment.”
Translation, Jesus loved it when people cheated others by tax gouging. Jesus told people, “God made you a prostitute so celebrate being sexually disoriented.”
And then this beauty - "Jesus loved everybody without judgement?" Are you kidding me?
Jay says, “I saw people hungry for the love and truth of Christ.” Sadly they wouldn’t be getting that truth from Bakker. Jesus may well have been at the Burlesque Club but it most certainly wouldn’t have been to help people celebrate their sin. Jesus, out of love for sinners, came to call people OUT of a life of sin and to a life of righteousness.
If you want to know the answer to the question, “How Lost Can We Possibly Get?” just follow the leading of Jay Bakker.
“Jesus would be here if He were alive today. Jesus hung out with the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the sinners ... " He then launched into a three-minute speech about how Jesus loved everybody without judgment.”
Translation, Jesus loved it when people cheated others by tax gouging. Jesus told people, “God made you a prostitute so celebrate being sexually disoriented.”
And then this beauty - "Jesus loved everybody without judgement?" Are you kidding me?
Jay says, “I saw people hungry for the love and truth of Christ.” Sadly they wouldn’t be getting that truth from Bakker. Jesus may well have been at the Burlesque Club but it most certainly wouldn’t have been to help people celebrate their sin. Jesus, out of love for sinners, came to call people OUT of a life of sin and to a life of righteousness.
If you want to know the answer to the question, “How Lost Can We Possibly Get?” just follow the leading of Jay Bakker.
“Like all other scientific theories, Darwinian evolution must be continually compared with the evidence. If it does not fit the evidence, it must be reevaluated or abandoned - other wise it is not science, but myth.”
Biologist, Jonathan Wells
To embrace naturalism, one has to believe the following:
. Nothing produces everything
. Non-living, inanimate, inorganic gases evolve to produce life
. Randomness and death produces fine-tuning
. Chaos and death produces information
. Unconsciousness and death produces consciousness
. Non-reason and death produces reason
The evidence in support of these suppositions amounts to exactly zero.
Yet, the people who believe this say they believe only things for which there is evidence!
If, what atheists propose is true, then universe began with dead matter and out of that came something that thinks, feels, believes and comprehends; all that from materials that do not possess those qualities?
Materialists do not have nor will they ever have an explanation for how this happened because it is impossible; it did not happen. Nevertheless, materialists are forced to ignore this fact and press on with their absurd belief system.
They must believe this because they refuse to follow the evidence.
They must believe this because they have left themselves no other option.
Biologist, Jonathan Wells
To embrace naturalism, one has to believe the following:
. Nothing produces everything
. Non-living, inanimate, inorganic gases evolve to produce life
. Randomness and death produces fine-tuning
. Chaos and death produces information
. Unconsciousness and death produces consciousness
. Non-reason and death produces reason
The evidence in support of these suppositions amounts to exactly zero.
Yet, the people who believe this say they believe only things for which there is evidence!
If, what atheists propose is true, then universe began with dead matter and out of that came something that thinks, feels, believes and comprehends; all that from materials that do not possess those qualities?
Materialists do not have nor will they ever have an explanation for how this happened because it is impossible; it did not happen. Nevertheless, materialists are forced to ignore this fact and press on with their absurd belief system.
They must believe this because they refuse to follow the evidence.
They must believe this because they have left themselves no other option.
Why Trust Them?
Sceptics insinuate that by believing the writers of the New Testament we are believing liars. Well, to black hearts, things do indeed look black. But that is not that way these authors “feel.”
“God tested us thoroughly to make sure we were qualified to be trusted with this Message. Be assured that when we speak to you we're not after crowd approval - only God approval. Since we've been put through that battery of tests, you're guaranteed that both we and the Message are free of error, mixed motives, or hidden agendas. We never used words to butter you up. No one knows that better than you. And God knows we never used words as a smoke screen to take advantage of you.
With each of you we were like a father with his child, holding your hand, whispering encouragement, showing you step-by-step how to live well before God, who called us into his own kingdom, into this delightful life.
1 Thessalonians 2:3-5,12
“God tested us thoroughly to make sure we were qualified to be trusted with this Message. Be assured that when we speak to you we're not after crowd approval - only God approval. Since we've been put through that battery of tests, you're guaranteed that both we and the Message are free of error, mixed motives, or hidden agendas. We never used words to butter you up. No one knows that better than you. And God knows we never used words as a smoke screen to take advantage of you.
With each of you we were like a father with his child, holding your hand, whispering encouragement, showing you step-by-step how to live well before God, who called us into his own kingdom, into this delightful life.
1 Thessalonians 2:3-5,12
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Hockey Tournaments
Went to a hockey tournament for my ten-year-old over the weekend. There's something about driving three hours for a game that takes only one hour to play that doesn't seem quite right.
Back to regular posting tomorrow
Back to regular posting tomorrow
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Darwinism - Dead In The Water
Atheists of course have committed themselves to promissory materialism (we don’t have an answer today but I have faith that there will be a material answer at some point in the future) and its extravagant and unfulfillable claims that the origin of both the universe and life itself had a natural cause. “The Cambrian explosion, in which a dazzling array of new life forms suddenly appears fully formed in the fossil record, without any of the ancestors required by Darwinism - is powerful evidence of a Designer.
The reason: this phenomenon would have required the sudden infusion of massive amounts of new genetic and other biological information that only could have come from an intelligent source. The fossils of the Cambrian Explosion absolutely cannot be explained by Darwinian theory or even by the concept called “punctuated equilibrium,” which was specifically formulated in an effort to explain away the embarrassing fossil record. When you look at the issue from the perspective of biological information, the best explanation is that an intelligence was responsible for this otherwise inexplicable phenomenon. According to Darwinism, new biological forms are created from mutations in DNA with natural selection preserving and building on the favourable ones.
But if DNA is only part of the story, then you can mutate it indefinitely and you’ll never build a fundamentally new body architecture. So when you encounter the Cambrian explosion, with its huge and sudden appearance of radically new body plans, you realise you need lots of new biological information. Some of it would be encoded for in DNA - although how that occurs is still an insurmountable problem for Darwinists. But on top of that, where does the new information come from that’s not attributable to DNA? How does the hierarchical arrangement of cells, tissues, organs, and body plans develop? Darwinists don’t have an answer. It’s not even on their radar.
Paleontologists now think that during a five-million-year (or shorter) window of time, at least thirty-five of the world’s forty phyla, the highest category in the animal kingdom, sprang forth with unique body plans. In fact, some experts believe that all living phyla may have originated by the end of the explosion. Before then, life on Earth was pretty simple - one-celled bacteria, blue-green algae, and later some sponges and primitive worms or mollusks. Then without any ancestors in the fossil record, we have a stunning variety of complex creatures appear in the blink of an eye. For example the trilobite - with an articulated body, complicated nervous system, and compound eyes - suddenly shows up fully formed at the beginning of the explosion. And this is followed by stasis, which means that basic body plans remained distinct until now.
The big issue is where did the information come from to build all these new proteins, cells, and body plans? For instance, Cambrian animals would have needed complex proteins. Where did the genetic information come from to build those four hundred amino acids required for lysyl oxidase, for example, a very complicated molecule? This would require highly complex, specified genetic information of the sort that neither random chance, nor natural selection, nor self-organization can produce.
Geneticist John F. McDonald has called this “a great Darwinian paradox.” the kind of mutations that macroevolution needs - namely, large-scale, beneficial ones - don’t occur, while the kind it does need - large-scale mutations with harmful effects or small-scale mutations with limited impact - do occur but terribly infrequently (According to Dennett - Once in 500 Trillion copyings). Keep in mind that these mutations would have had to occur by random chance, since natural selection can’t preserve anything until it confers a positive benefit on the organism. The problem is that the odds of creating a novel functional protein without the help of natural selection would be vanishingly small. There’s really only one explanation that accounts for all the evidence. In any other field of endeavour, it would be obvious, but many scientists shy away from it in biology. The answer is an intelligent designer.
Once a Creator is allowed as an explanatory option, even one of the Cambrian explosion’s most vexing features - its so-called “top down” pattern of appearance - is efficiently explained by intelligent design. Darwinism predicts a “bottom up” pattern in which small differences in form between evolving organisms appear prior to large differences in form and body plan organisation. Instead, fossils from the Cambrian explosion show a a radically different “top down” pattern major differences in form and body plans appear first with no simpler transitions before them. Later some minor variations arise within the framework of these separate and disparate body plans. This has completely stumped Darwinists. Others have tried to explain it away by proposing big leaps of evolutionary change - the “punctuated equilibrium” idea - but even this can’t account for the “top down” phenomenon. In fact, punctuated equilibrium predicts a “bottom up” pattern; it just asserts that the increments of evolutionary change would be larger. Yet if you postulate intelligent design, the “top down” pattern makes sense, because it’s the same pattern we see in the history of human technological design.
Once you allow intelligent design as an option you can quickly see how it accounts for the key features of the Cambrian phenomenon. No other entity explains the sudden appearance of such complex new creatures. No other entity produces top down patterns. No other entity can create the complex and functionally specific information needed for new living forms. No other explanation suffices.
Evolutionists are still trying to apply Darwin’s nineteenth-century thinking to a twenty-first century reality, and it’s not working. Explanations from the era of the steamboat are no longer adequate to explain the biological world of the information age. Darwinists are under some sort of epistemological obligation to continue trying. We should not be looking for only the best naturalistic explanation but the best explanation, period. And intelligent design is the explanation that’s most in conformity with how the world works. The information revolution taking place in biology is sounding the death knell for Darwinism and chemical evolutionary theories. The attempt to explain the origin of life solely from chemical constituents is effectively dead. Naturalism cannot answer the fundamental problem of how to get from matter and energy to biological function without the infusion of information from an intelligence.
Stephen C. Myer, in conversation with Lee Strobel - “The Case for Creation”
The reason: this phenomenon would have required the sudden infusion of massive amounts of new genetic and other biological information that only could have come from an intelligent source. The fossils of the Cambrian Explosion absolutely cannot be explained by Darwinian theory or even by the concept called “punctuated equilibrium,” which was specifically formulated in an effort to explain away the embarrassing fossil record. When you look at the issue from the perspective of biological information, the best explanation is that an intelligence was responsible for this otherwise inexplicable phenomenon. According to Darwinism, new biological forms are created from mutations in DNA with natural selection preserving and building on the favourable ones.
But if DNA is only part of the story, then you can mutate it indefinitely and you’ll never build a fundamentally new body architecture. So when you encounter the Cambrian explosion, with its huge and sudden appearance of radically new body plans, you realise you need lots of new biological information. Some of it would be encoded for in DNA - although how that occurs is still an insurmountable problem for Darwinists. But on top of that, where does the new information come from that’s not attributable to DNA? How does the hierarchical arrangement of cells, tissues, organs, and body plans develop? Darwinists don’t have an answer. It’s not even on their radar.
Paleontologists now think that during a five-million-year (or shorter) window of time, at least thirty-five of the world’s forty phyla, the highest category in the animal kingdom, sprang forth with unique body plans. In fact, some experts believe that all living phyla may have originated by the end of the explosion. Before then, life on Earth was pretty simple - one-celled bacteria, blue-green algae, and later some sponges and primitive worms or mollusks. Then without any ancestors in the fossil record, we have a stunning variety of complex creatures appear in the blink of an eye. For example the trilobite - with an articulated body, complicated nervous system, and compound eyes - suddenly shows up fully formed at the beginning of the explosion. And this is followed by stasis, which means that basic body plans remained distinct until now.
The big issue is where did the information come from to build all these new proteins, cells, and body plans? For instance, Cambrian animals would have needed complex proteins. Where did the genetic information come from to build those four hundred amino acids required for lysyl oxidase, for example, a very complicated molecule? This would require highly complex, specified genetic information of the sort that neither random chance, nor natural selection, nor self-organization can produce.
Geneticist John F. McDonald has called this “a great Darwinian paradox.” the kind of mutations that macroevolution needs - namely, large-scale, beneficial ones - don’t occur, while the kind it does need - large-scale mutations with harmful effects or small-scale mutations with limited impact - do occur but terribly infrequently (According to Dennett - Once in 500 Trillion copyings). Keep in mind that these mutations would have had to occur by random chance, since natural selection can’t preserve anything until it confers a positive benefit on the organism. The problem is that the odds of creating a novel functional protein without the help of natural selection would be vanishingly small. There’s really only one explanation that accounts for all the evidence. In any other field of endeavour, it would be obvious, but many scientists shy away from it in biology. The answer is an intelligent designer.
Once a Creator is allowed as an explanatory option, even one of the Cambrian explosion’s most vexing features - its so-called “top down” pattern of appearance - is efficiently explained by intelligent design. Darwinism predicts a “bottom up” pattern in which small differences in form between evolving organisms appear prior to large differences in form and body plan organisation. Instead, fossils from the Cambrian explosion show a a radically different “top down” pattern major differences in form and body plans appear first with no simpler transitions before them. Later some minor variations arise within the framework of these separate and disparate body plans. This has completely stumped Darwinists. Others have tried to explain it away by proposing big leaps of evolutionary change - the “punctuated equilibrium” idea - but even this can’t account for the “top down” phenomenon. In fact, punctuated equilibrium predicts a “bottom up” pattern; it just asserts that the increments of evolutionary change would be larger. Yet if you postulate intelligent design, the “top down” pattern makes sense, because it’s the same pattern we see in the history of human technological design.
Once you allow intelligent design as an option you can quickly see how it accounts for the key features of the Cambrian phenomenon. No other entity explains the sudden appearance of such complex new creatures. No other entity produces top down patterns. No other entity can create the complex and functionally specific information needed for new living forms. No other explanation suffices.
Evolutionists are still trying to apply Darwin’s nineteenth-century thinking to a twenty-first century reality, and it’s not working. Explanations from the era of the steamboat are no longer adequate to explain the biological world of the information age. Darwinists are under some sort of epistemological obligation to continue trying. We should not be looking for only the best naturalistic explanation but the best explanation, period. And intelligent design is the explanation that’s most in conformity with how the world works. The information revolution taking place in biology is sounding the death knell for Darwinism and chemical evolutionary theories. The attempt to explain the origin of life solely from chemical constituents is effectively dead. Naturalism cannot answer the fundamental problem of how to get from matter and energy to biological function without the infusion of information from an intelligence.
Stephen C. Myer, in conversation with Lee Strobel - “The Case for Creation”
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
“No one has ever seen a quark, and we believe that no one ever will. They are so tightly bound to each other inside the protons and neutrons that nothing can make them break out on their own. Why, then, do I believe in these invisible quarks? In summary, it’s because quarks make sense of a lot of direct physical evidence. I wish to engage in a similar strategy with regard to the unseen reality of God. His existence makes sense of many aspects of our knowledge and experience: the order and fruitfulness of the physical world; the multilayered character of reality; the almost universal human experiences of worship and hope; the phenomenon of Jesus Christ (including His resurrection). I think that very similar thought processes are involved in both cases. I do not believe that I shift in some strange intellectual way when I move from science to religion. In their search for truth, science and faith are intellectual cousins under the skin. Religious knowledge is more demanding than scientific knowledge. While it requires scrupulous attention to matters of truth, it also calls for the response of commitment to the truth discovered”
Polkinghorne - Mathematical physicist - Cambridge
As we can see from the determined path of atheists, materialism is clung to in spite of a profound lack of evidence; atheism is clung to in spite of the fact that evidence points toward Creator God and away from naturalism.
Atheism is not a scientific stance.
Atheism is a deep and desperate philosophical and spiritual desire to ignore one’s accountability to our Creator.
Polkinghorne - Mathematical physicist - Cambridge
As we can see from the determined path of atheists, materialism is clung to in spite of a profound lack of evidence; atheism is clung to in spite of the fact that evidence points toward Creator God and away from naturalism.
Atheism is not a scientific stance.
Atheism is a deep and desperate philosophical and spiritual desire to ignore one’s accountability to our Creator.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
A Search For Truth
I have a relative who says she just can’t find a Christian Church where she feels comfortable.
“I feel as though I don’t fit anywhere.”
. It doesn’t occur to her that the search for truth does not begin with the assumption that one is already in possession of the truth.
. It doesn’t occur to her that she will never fit in a Christian Church when what she believes to be true is diametrically opposed to what Jesus the Christ taught.
For example, Jesus taught:
I Am the Way,
I Am Truth,
Real Life and Real Living are found in no One but Me
No one will ever come to the Father except through Me.
This woman believes that any and all religions will lead to acceptance with God as long as one is sincere in h/her believes. If Jesus taught the former while she believes the latter, of course she is not going to find a “fit” in a Christian congregation.
Her solution? She’s going to take a class in Comparative Religions.
Translation: “I’m going to pay someone to teach me what I already believe, i.e., no one religion has a corner on truth.” It would be far cheaper if she just joined a Baha’i congregation. She’ll eventually reach that point. Why put it off?
After having taken this class, there are several possibilities regarding what conclusion she might arrive at. One thing that any of us can know for sure is that while all the religions she learns about might be wrong, they can’t all be right.
There can’t be One God (Christianity) and 5,000 gods (Hindu).
There can’t be Creator God (Christianity) and god is creation (Pantheism)
There can’t be Jesus is God (Christianity) and Jesus is not God (Islam)
There can’t be Creator God (Christianity) and no god (atheism)
I’ve come to believe that while we can’t know beyond ALL doubt, we can know beyond a reasonable doubt which belief system is more likely to be correct than the others.
Let me explain:
. On a table before us are six stacks of literature explaining six different religions.
How can we know which religion, if any, is correct and which are in error?
. On a table before us are six Rolex watches produced by six different companies.
How can we know which Rolex is genuine and which are counterfeit?
. On a table before us are six fifty-dollar bills produced by six different machines.
How can we know which fifty-dollar bill is genuine and which are counterfeit?
. On the table before us is a mathematical problem for which six students have produced six different solutions.
How can we know which solution is the correct one and which solutions are wrong?
We know that not all religions (including atheism) can be correct in what they teach.
Like the religions, we know that not all the Rolex watches are the real deal.
Like the religions, we know that not all the fifty-dollar bills are genuine.
Like the religions, we know that there is only one correct answer to the math problem.
Right off we know that atheism / materialism is wrong. We don’t know what existed prior to the Singularity BUT we do know what didn’t exist. Matter and Energy did not exist prior to the Singularity and that is why we know that there was NOT a material cause of the universe. Our choices for a cause are limited.
1) Either Matter is eternal - or The Creator of matter is eternal
2) Since Matter can’t be eternal, nor can Matter bring itself into existence -
An Eternal Immaterial Creator brought matter into existence
3) Either inanimate, inorganic matter produces specified, formulated, complex, coded information for the production of life - or
An Intelligence (and only Intelligent Agents have ever) produced specified complex coded information such as is found in DNA / RNA that produces life.
4) Either Matter produces a life of meaning and context and purpose - NOT! - or
Creator God produced a life of meaning and context and purpose.
. Any philosophy that believes that matter is eternal or that the material infinite exists in any form, or that there can be an infinite regress of cause is wrong - period. So much for atheism.
. Any philosophy that believes that everything material can come from literally nothing by nothing is wrong - period. (Now THAT’S a belief in magic!) So much for atheism.
Second, because we know that matter WAS created, out of nothing, multi god religions are wrong for there can be only one Greatest Conceivable Being > Occam’s Razor.
Third when we consider the attributes of what the Creator must have possessed to bring about the universe we observe, we arrive at a Creator that is (timeless, immaterial, eternal, infinite in power and knowledge etc.) exactly the same type of Creator that is described in the Bible. This description of the Creator is arrived at, not from the Bible, but from logic.
We know that to identify the genuine Rolex watch, the real fifty-dollar bill and the solution to the math problem, we must go to the creators, the originators, the producers of the genuine article to know which is genuine and which is counterfeit.
If my relative wants to find a Church that will agree with what she already believes, that will happen sooner or later. If however she wishes to discover Truth, then she must go on a journey that requires openness of mind and self-honesty.
I believe that God, in the form of Jesus, came and lived among us to show us the Way. He came to prove to us that He is Truth. Jesus proved by His life and His actions that eternal Life will not be found in anyone but Himself.
If you genuinely compare the person of Jesus and what He taught, with ANY religious figure from ANY other religion, while you might not like what He taught, I think it will become clear that Jesus is leagues ahead of any of the other religious leader in His explanation of life as you observe it.
Unlike Mohammed, Jesus was not a paedophile.
Unlike Buddha, Jesus did not reject his wife and children to go in search of truth.
Unlike the thousands of Hindu gods and goddesses, Jesus is grounded in history.
Unlike any other leader of a major world religion, Jesus said,
“If you have seen Me, you have seen God.”
“If you knew Me, you would know My Father, the One who sent Me”
“He who hates Me, hates My Father also”
“I and the Father are one.” The word that Jesus used for “one” means, one in essence.
You can reject any religion, including atheism and if you are wrong, nothing major or significant happens to you.
If you reject what Jesus taught and you’re wrong, you’ve got a problem of eternal proportions.
Don’t take this lightly. Do your utmost to discover as much as you can know. Don’t be afraid to use science for science itself points to Creator God.
“It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.”
Physicist Paul Davies
“I feel as though I don’t fit anywhere.”
. It doesn’t occur to her that the search for truth does not begin with the assumption that one is already in possession of the truth.
. It doesn’t occur to her that she will never fit in a Christian Church when what she believes to be true is diametrically opposed to what Jesus the Christ taught.
For example, Jesus taught:
I Am the Way,
I Am Truth,
Real Life and Real Living are found in no One but Me
No one will ever come to the Father except through Me.
This woman believes that any and all religions will lead to acceptance with God as long as one is sincere in h/her believes. If Jesus taught the former while she believes the latter, of course she is not going to find a “fit” in a Christian congregation.
Her solution? She’s going to take a class in Comparative Religions.
Translation: “I’m going to pay someone to teach me what I already believe, i.e., no one religion has a corner on truth.” It would be far cheaper if she just joined a Baha’i congregation. She’ll eventually reach that point. Why put it off?
After having taken this class, there are several possibilities regarding what conclusion she might arrive at. One thing that any of us can know for sure is that while all the religions she learns about might be wrong, they can’t all be right.
There can’t be One God (Christianity) and 5,000 gods (Hindu).
There can’t be Creator God (Christianity) and god is creation (Pantheism)
There can’t be Jesus is God (Christianity) and Jesus is not God (Islam)
There can’t be Creator God (Christianity) and no god (atheism)
I’ve come to believe that while we can’t know beyond ALL doubt, we can know beyond a reasonable doubt which belief system is more likely to be correct than the others.
Let me explain:
. On a table before us are six stacks of literature explaining six different religions.
How can we know which religion, if any, is correct and which are in error?
. On a table before us are six Rolex watches produced by six different companies.
How can we know which Rolex is genuine and which are counterfeit?
. On a table before us are six fifty-dollar bills produced by six different machines.
How can we know which fifty-dollar bill is genuine and which are counterfeit?
. On the table before us is a mathematical problem for which six students have produced six different solutions.
How can we know which solution is the correct one and which solutions are wrong?
We know that not all religions (including atheism) can be correct in what they teach.
Like the religions, we know that not all the Rolex watches are the real deal.
Like the religions, we know that not all the fifty-dollar bills are genuine.
Like the religions, we know that there is only one correct answer to the math problem.
Right off we know that atheism / materialism is wrong. We don’t know what existed prior to the Singularity BUT we do know what didn’t exist. Matter and Energy did not exist prior to the Singularity and that is why we know that there was NOT a material cause of the universe. Our choices for a cause are limited.
1) Either Matter is eternal - or The Creator of matter is eternal
2) Since Matter can’t be eternal, nor can Matter bring itself into existence -
An Eternal Immaterial Creator brought matter into existence
3) Either inanimate, inorganic matter produces specified, formulated, complex, coded information for the production of life - or
An Intelligence (and only Intelligent Agents have ever) produced specified complex coded information such as is found in DNA / RNA that produces life.
4) Either Matter produces a life of meaning and context and purpose - NOT! - or
Creator God produced a life of meaning and context and purpose.
. Any philosophy that believes that matter is eternal or that the material infinite exists in any form, or that there can be an infinite regress of cause is wrong - period. So much for atheism.
. Any philosophy that believes that everything material can come from literally nothing by nothing is wrong - period. (Now THAT’S a belief in magic!) So much for atheism.
Second, because we know that matter WAS created, out of nothing, multi god religions are wrong for there can be only one Greatest Conceivable Being > Occam’s Razor.
Third when we consider the attributes of what the Creator must have possessed to bring about the universe we observe, we arrive at a Creator that is (timeless, immaterial, eternal, infinite in power and knowledge etc.) exactly the same type of Creator that is described in the Bible. This description of the Creator is arrived at, not from the Bible, but from logic.
We know that to identify the genuine Rolex watch, the real fifty-dollar bill and the solution to the math problem, we must go to the creators, the originators, the producers of the genuine article to know which is genuine and which is counterfeit.
If my relative wants to find a Church that will agree with what she already believes, that will happen sooner or later. If however she wishes to discover Truth, then she must go on a journey that requires openness of mind and self-honesty.
I believe that God, in the form of Jesus, came and lived among us to show us the Way. He came to prove to us that He is Truth. Jesus proved by His life and His actions that eternal Life will not be found in anyone but Himself.
If you genuinely compare the person of Jesus and what He taught, with ANY religious figure from ANY other religion, while you might not like what He taught, I think it will become clear that Jesus is leagues ahead of any of the other religious leader in His explanation of life as you observe it.
Unlike Mohammed, Jesus was not a paedophile.
Unlike Buddha, Jesus did not reject his wife and children to go in search of truth.
Unlike the thousands of Hindu gods and goddesses, Jesus is grounded in history.
Unlike any other leader of a major world religion, Jesus said,
“If you have seen Me, you have seen God.”
“If you knew Me, you would know My Father, the One who sent Me”
“He who hates Me, hates My Father also”
“I and the Father are one.” The word that Jesus used for “one” means, one in essence.
You can reject any religion, including atheism and if you are wrong, nothing major or significant happens to you.
If you reject what Jesus taught and you’re wrong, you’ve got a problem of eternal proportions.
Don’t take this lightly. Do your utmost to discover as much as you can know. Don’t be afraid to use science for science itself points to Creator God.
“It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.”
Physicist Paul Davies
Purpose of Suffering
“We don't want you in the dark, friends, about how hard it was when all this came down on us in Asia province. It was so bad we didn't think we were going to make it. We felt like we'd been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally - not a bad idea since He's the God who raises the dead!
2 Corinthians 1:8-11
2 Corinthians 1:8-11
Monday, January 17, 2011
Ricky Gervais and Theology
I just saw a thing where “funny man” Ricky Gervais, at the Golden Globes thanked God for making him an atheist.
While obviously more desperate for attention than anyone previously realised, that’s actually pretty good theology - eg. Romans 9:16, 22-24
I mean, it’s not excellent theology.
It’s not spot on theology.
But it’s adequate for the dull of mind and the slow of thought; the ones with ears that refuse to hear and eyes that refuse to see.
While obviously more desperate for attention than anyone previously realised, that’s actually pretty good theology - eg. Romans 9:16, 22-24
I mean, it’s not excellent theology.
It’s not spot on theology.
But it’s adequate for the dull of mind and the slow of thought; the ones with ears that refuse to hear and eyes that refuse to see.
Fools Call It Magic!
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hand. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” Psalm 19:1-5
Instead of thinking that life can be explained via materialism, the people that fools derisively call bronze-age goat herders have explained, 4,000 years ago that studying nature and considering how matter came into existence can actually lead us to discover the Creator of matter and energy.
And really, anyone who has given "origins" serious thought without allowing a secular bias to override their ability to follow the evidence will come to the same and obvious conclusion.
. Our mathematically precise universe has been created in such a manner that it becomes clear we were meant to discover the origins of our universe.
. We have been placed in the best place in the universe for just such discoveries, making it obvious that we were meant to discover the origins of our universe.
. Human existence has come at the absolute best time in the history of the universe for making these discoveries, just as though we were meant to discover the origins of our universe.
And that is why Paul says in Romans Chapter 1 that NO ONE is without excuse in knowing that God exists:
“Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - His eternal power (omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent) and divine nature (Immaterial, Eternal, Spiritual, Personal) - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”
As the song we sing in Church says,
“God of wonders beyond our Galaxy
You are Holy, Holy
The universe declares your majesty
You are Holy, Holy”
Instead of thinking that life can be explained via materialism, the people that fools derisively call bronze-age goat herders have explained, 4,000 years ago that studying nature and considering how matter came into existence can actually lead us to discover the Creator of matter and energy.
And really, anyone who has given "origins" serious thought without allowing a secular bias to override their ability to follow the evidence will come to the same and obvious conclusion.
. Our mathematically precise universe has been created in such a manner that it becomes clear we were meant to discover the origins of our universe.
. We have been placed in the best place in the universe for just such discoveries, making it obvious that we were meant to discover the origins of our universe.
. Human existence has come at the absolute best time in the history of the universe for making these discoveries, just as though we were meant to discover the origins of our universe.
And that is why Paul says in Romans Chapter 1 that NO ONE is without excuse in knowing that God exists:
“Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - His eternal power (omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent) and divine nature (Immaterial, Eternal, Spiritual, Personal) - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”
As the song we sing in Church says,
“God of wonders beyond our Galaxy
You are Holy, Holy
The universe declares your majesty
You are Holy, Holy”
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Who Do You Think You Are?
The answer to that depends entirely upon whether you believe we are a soul inhabiting a body or simply, as Francis Crick once described, “No more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
. If what he says is true, then consciousness doesn’t really exist. The “I” that you contemplate throughout the day does not exist.
. If what he says is true, then there really isn’t anything resembling free will. The choices that you think you make are simply reactions to stimuli.
. If what he says is true, it’s an illusion to think that you are aware or are able to pay attention to what’s going on inside of you.
The renowned “Father of modern neurosurgery,” Wilder Penfield, has performed thousands of operations on patients with epilepsy. With electrical stimulus he could cause patients to move their arms or legs, turn their heads or eyes, talk or swallow. Patients would respond to these actions by the doctor with comments like, “I didn’t do that. You did that.” The patient thinks of himself as having an existence separate from his body. An existence that involves the ability to choose and decide.
To examine this phenomenon further, Penfield would electrically stimulate the proper motor cortex of conscious patients to make one of their hands move. He would then tell them to decide to use the other hand to keep the stimulated hand from moving when the current was applied. The patient would seize this hand with the other hand and hold it still. Thus, one hand under the control of the electrical current and the other hand under the control of the patient’s “mind / soul / essence / conscious self” fought against each other. Penfield, himself a staunch materialist was forced to say that we have not only a physical brain but also a nonphysical reality that is able to interact with the material brain. To expect the highest brain mechanism to carry out what the mind / soul / essence / conscious self commands is absurd for a materialist.
“What a thrill it is, then,” Penfield felt compelled to say, “to discover that the scientist, too, can legitimately believe in the existence of the “human spirit.”
I use the same premise on a frequent basis in counselling as I explain to those requiring significant changes in their lives that, “OUR (meaning our soul / mind / essence / conscious self) brain believes what WE (meaning our soul / mind / essence / conscious self) tell it. If WE want the chemical balance in OUR brains to change then WE must change what WE tell our brains.” There is no location in our physical brain where a chemical exchange, or the firing of neurons will cause a client to believe or to decide one way or the other. That is because believing / deciding / choosing etc. originates in the conscious self (the part that atheists say doesn’t exist), not the physical material organ we call the brain.
Reviewing copious amounts of confirming evidence for a dualistic mind / soul / body, anthropologist Marilyn Schlitz says, “I would take the position of a radical empiricist, in that I am driven by data, not theory. And the data I see tells me that there are ways in which people’s experience refutes the materialist position that the mind is the brain and nothing more. There are solid, concrete data that suggest that our consciousness, our mind, may surpass the boundaries of the brain.”
In a moment of self-honesty an atheist wrote - “Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I am doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or deciding that I am just not worth the effort? No one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer to this. The point is that there is no scientific answer.”
Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse
. If what he says is true, then consciousness doesn’t really exist. The “I” that you contemplate throughout the day does not exist.
. If what he says is true, then there really isn’t anything resembling free will. The choices that you think you make are simply reactions to stimuli.
. If what he says is true, it’s an illusion to think that you are aware or are able to pay attention to what’s going on inside of you.
The renowned “Father of modern neurosurgery,” Wilder Penfield, has performed thousands of operations on patients with epilepsy. With electrical stimulus he could cause patients to move their arms or legs, turn their heads or eyes, talk or swallow. Patients would respond to these actions by the doctor with comments like, “I didn’t do that. You did that.” The patient thinks of himself as having an existence separate from his body. An existence that involves the ability to choose and decide.
To examine this phenomenon further, Penfield would electrically stimulate the proper motor cortex of conscious patients to make one of their hands move. He would then tell them to decide to use the other hand to keep the stimulated hand from moving when the current was applied. The patient would seize this hand with the other hand and hold it still. Thus, one hand under the control of the electrical current and the other hand under the control of the patient’s “mind / soul / essence / conscious self” fought against each other. Penfield, himself a staunch materialist was forced to say that we have not only a physical brain but also a nonphysical reality that is able to interact with the material brain. To expect the highest brain mechanism to carry out what the mind / soul / essence / conscious self commands is absurd for a materialist.
“What a thrill it is, then,” Penfield felt compelled to say, “to discover that the scientist, too, can legitimately believe in the existence of the “human spirit.”
I use the same premise on a frequent basis in counselling as I explain to those requiring significant changes in their lives that, “OUR (meaning our soul / mind / essence / conscious self) brain believes what WE (meaning our soul / mind / essence / conscious self) tell it. If WE want the chemical balance in OUR brains to change then WE must change what WE tell our brains.” There is no location in our physical brain where a chemical exchange, or the firing of neurons will cause a client to believe or to decide one way or the other. That is because believing / deciding / choosing etc. originates in the conscious self (the part that atheists say doesn’t exist), not the physical material organ we call the brain.
Reviewing copious amounts of confirming evidence for a dualistic mind / soul / body, anthropologist Marilyn Schlitz says, “I would take the position of a radical empiricist, in that I am driven by data, not theory. And the data I see tells me that there are ways in which people’s experience refutes the materialist position that the mind is the brain and nothing more. There are solid, concrete data that suggest that our consciousness, our mind, may surpass the boundaries of the brain.”
In a moment of self-honesty an atheist wrote - “Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I am doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or deciding that I am just not worth the effort? No one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer to this. The point is that there is no scientific answer.”
Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Why I’m Not An Atheist
Each year about this time I do this post. Unfortunately, advances in science provide more and more evidence for Creator God and against materialism. That means the post gets longer and longer.
I can say that except for epistemic, experiential, logical, coherent and reasonable evidence for the existence of God, I could be an atheist.
Instead, my belief in God begins with the following observations:
Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we know that:
. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Even if you want to go down the rabbit trail of “Nothing begins. It only changes from matter to energy or energy to matter,” this transition from one to the other always, always, always has a cause. That we consistently observe this to be true is critically important because scientific naturalists demand that nothing can be believed without consistent observation and verification. Every single attempt to promote alternatives to this premise have only reinforced its truth. Therefore, atheists have the highest motivation to accept this premise.
Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we know that:
. The universe began to exist. This was not a transfer of energy to matter or matter to energy. The material universe began to exist out of literally nothing. Because those premises are true and coherent we can know that the following conclusion is also true: The beginning of the universe has a cause. Something that is non-material brought everything material into existence out of nothing.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Matter and energy cannot precede themselves or preexist themselves either physically or chronologically.
The reason that matter and energy cannot precede themselves is because “Coming Into Being” is an essential and objective feature of time. Time did not exist prior to the Big Bang.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Matter and energy do not have the ability to create themselves or bring themselves into existence from nothing or ex nihilo.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Matter and energy cannot exist from infinity past.
Therefore, whatever brought matter, energy, space, time and the laws of physics into existence had to have existed outside of and was transcendent to these entities.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Anything that exists has an explanation of it’s existence, either in the necessity of its own nature (It can’t NOT exist), or in an external cause.
. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is external to as well as transcendent to the universe.
Because that is true:
. Existing outside of time, the Cause is infinite or Eternal,
. Existing outside of matter (which is finite), the Cause is immaterial or Spiritual,
. Existing as the Cause of time and energy, space, matter and the laws of physics, the Cause is immeasurably more powerful than the mathematically precise universe and its exquisitely Finely Tuned constants and quantities.
. The Cause cannot be “scientific” because neither matter / energy existed prior to the Singularity, nor did the laws of physics (i.e., the laws that science has observed and identified), have anything material to act upon or govern prior to Singularity.
. Therefore the Cause of the beginning of the universe is not scientific but Personal. That means that the universe is not Deistic but Theistic.
. The transcendent Cause of the universe is therefore on the order of a Mind.
. That Cause is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. That Cause, is what is normally described as God.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. The universe exists.
. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
Because the above premises are true and coherent, the following conclusion must also be true: The explanation of the existence of the universe is what we call God.
. According to atheism the universe doesn’t have an explanation of its existence. They say that “It just happened. From nothing by nothing” Over a dozen theories and over a dozen more variations on those theories have come and gone in a vain attempt to rule out God as the Cause of a beginning universe. Despite the current scientific knowledge described above, atheists persist in stating that either matter has always existed (impossible) or that matter created itself (also impossible).
Why do they do this? Because, If there is an explanation of the universe’s existence, then atheism is not true. And that is because the only explanation that fits the evidence of how and why the universe came into being is a non material Cause or what we call, Creator God. That is why Richard Dawkins himself has admitted that a good case could be made for the existence of a Deistic God. He ignores the fact that an eternal Cause bringing into existence a finite universe from nothing and the bringing into existence of life from non life brings us to a Theistic Universe.
Actually, I believe that some day there won’t be any atheists. There will be people for God and people against God but there won’t be anyone so foolish and so closed minded as to believe that God doesn’t exist. And, irony of ironies it will be science that will confirm the existence of God.
. Because of overwhelming scientific evidence, most atheists do grudgingly admit that the universe does indeed have a beginning. Unfortunately for atheists, it can be said with absolute confidence that no cosmogonic model has been:
As repeatedly verified in its predictions,
As corroborated by attempts at its falsification,
As concordant with empirical discoveries, and
As philosophically coherent as the Standard Big Bang Creation Event Model.
. Hence, most atheists are implicitly committed to God being the explanation of why the universe exists. This is why I call atheists irrational agnostics.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that: .
The universe cannot be infinite. The Borde-Guth-Vilinkin Theorem proves that any expanding universe must have a definitive space / time boundary, a point of beginning, a Singularity, a point of Creation. The expansion property of Dark Matter ensures that the universe will never, nor has ever contracted and oscillated. It will always expand faster and faster. The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules out the possibility of the universe existing from infinity past. Background radiation, as well as known levels of entropy as well as the expanding universe confirm the truth of the 2nd Law > The universe had a beginning.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:.
It is physically impossible to have an Actual Infinite Series of Things or Events or even moments of Time preceding our today. Nor can we have an Actual Infinite Collection by adding Things or Events or moments of Time one to another to another in order to reach today. This is why we can say with confidence that matter / universe cannot be infinite and that they haven’t always existed.
Imagine units of time as individual books filling a book shelf that stretches infinitely into the past. You could imagine an infinitely long street or an infinitely long rope or whatever, but for this example I’ll use a shelf of books.
While mathematics is able to deal with abstract or theoretical or conceptual or potential infinities, and while our imagination can create an imaginary shelf of books stretching infinitely into the past - sort of - reality holds no such possibility for us.
Time is not imaginary.
Time is not abstract or theoretical or conceptual.
Time is real.
Time is measured in real units.
In a scenario like this, with the shelf of books (units of time) stretching infinitely into the past you could never actually arrive at the first book. Here’s why. In order to reach the last book (what we call today), you had to have the second to last book or yesterday. In order to have the second to last book you had to have the third to last book. In order to have the third to last book you had to have the fourth to last book and so on and so on. In the case of “no beginning,” you could never reach today because you could never reach the “first” day (book) that made possible the second day which made possible the third day . . .. Since the past is made up of units of real time (we say the universe is 14.5 billion years old), in the case of a beginningless past we would have had to pass through or travel through infinite time in order to reach today and that is physically impossible. To reach today, we have to have had a starting point, a push point, a point of beginning, a point of first cause. If the past were actually infinite, we could never reach today because the past would simply extend infinitely into the past. Neither can we, as some desperate atheists have tried to do, arbitrarily pick a set or group or point in real time and begin counting from there. Of course you can do that, but it proves nothing regarding the beginning of the universe.
The fact is, we have reached today so we can know not only that the universe had a beginning, but that time itself had a beginning. Just as a bookshelf stretching infinitely into the past with no beginning would prohibit our reaching today, neither can there be an infinite regress of causes of the universe. That would also prohibit reaching today’s universe. So great a problem is this for atheists that people like Stephen Hawking simply ignore the origin of “previous” universes and says that we didn’t need God to have “this” universe. Pfft!
. The fact is, the infinite exists only as an idea or as a concept. It does not exist in material realty.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that: .
Only in a universe so finely tuned as ours, could we expect observers such as ourselves to exist. Note: Fine Tuning is a neutral secular term in that it refers to constants and quantities (atomic weight, gravitational constant, strong & weak force, etc.) being just right for the existence of intelligent life. That’s in comparison with the huge range of possible values.
In fact, the natural range of possible values is from 0 > 10 ^53 or from
0 - 10,0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000000.
Let’s conceptualized this number as represented by a dartboard. The distance from one side of the dartboard to the other side extends across our entire Milky Way Galaxy. With that in mind, let’s look at the ranges upon which our lives, our very existence depend.
It’s important to remember that the values of these constants and qualities were not something that evolved, or something that “settled in” as the universe aged. These constants were “put in” at the 10^-43 second. As well, you may be interested to note that the constants, quantities and values that are found in our cosmos appear to be unrelated in any way. They seem to be random, even arbitrary. They are independent of each other. However, they do share one thing in common. In fact the only thing the constants, quantities and values of our universe have in common is that all of them, every single one of them are needed to be exactly as they are in order for intelligent life to exist on this planet. While there are several dozen constants and qualities that are known, the most fundamental constants are the Fine Structure constant, the Gravitational constant, the Weak Force, the Strong Force and the ratio between the mass of protons and electrons.
. What scientists, what ATHEIST scientists call an “astonishing coincidence” is the fact that at the Big Bang, the ratio of the strong force to electromagnetism had to have been exactly as it was or else at 10 to -17 seconds after the start of the Singularity, the necessary binding of helium -4, beryllium -8 and carbon -12 would not have occurred and life as we know it would not have appeared.
. The exact number and types of neutrinos at 1 second after the beginning of the Big Bang had to be in place or the expansion rate would have prohibited the formation of our universe.
Think about that!
. If the mass of a neutron were slightly increased by about one part in seven hundred, then stable hydrogen burning stars would cease to exist.
. If the strong force were a long-range force (like electromagnetism or gravity) instead of a short range force that only acts between protons and neutrons in the nucleus, all matter would either instantaneously undergo nuclear fusion and explode or be sucked together forming a black hole.
Pretty lucky for us, huh, that all this just happened by chance?
. If what we call the Pauli-exclusion principle did not exist, all electrons would occupy the lowest atomic orbit, which would make complex chemical interactions impossible.
. If what we call the quantization principle did not exist, there wouldn’t be any atomic orbits, electrons would be sucked into the nucleus and therefore no complex chemistry would be allowed.
. The gravitational constant must be exactly 10 ^ 40 weaker than the strong nuclear force or again, no us. For those that are interested, that’s ten thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion times weaker than the strong force - exactly!
Pretty lucky for us that it just happened to work out that way - prior to Planck time.
A change of only 1 part in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 in the Gravitational constant as well as in the Weak Force would prevent life from existing.
If the density of the universe and the speed of expansion had been off by one part in one hundred thousand million million, again, no life. Remember, these values had to be put in prior to what is known as Planck time; that is, 10^-43 seconds after the Singularity.
The cosmological constant is what drives the inflation of the universe. It is tuned to 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Any variation in either direction more than that and - no universe.
Now, I mentioned this galaxy wide dartboard comparison. This equation gives us a target within our galaxy wide dart board that is less than 2.5 centimetres in diameter. Listen up now because here comes what atheists call the really lucky part. The amount of fine-tuning of the cosmological constant, one that we come upon, according to atheists, by accident is like blindfolding yourself, spinning around ten times and then randomly throwing the dart at our GALAXY wide dart board and hitting the target exactly in the centre of its 2.5 centimetre disk.
Sadly and amazingly, if you’re committed to atheism, this won’t be enough to convince you of anything Super Natural going on so let me use a different example.
The entropy per baryon that had to be “put in” PRIOR to Planck time is 1 part in 10 followed by 1,230 zeros. If that hadn’t been put in at the Big Bang our life supporting universe would not exist. This requires an extraordinarily precise arrangement of mass and energy. To hit this exactly right by accident (as atheists tell us is the case), we would put on our blindfold, spin around ten times, and according to atheists, throw a dart randomly at a UNIVERSE sized dart board and hit the exact CORRECT PROTON.
Atheists will sometimes scoff at this by throwing out the term, “the magic of large numbers.” It’s meaningless but it makes them feel secure in their ignorance. Let me however describe the above equation in yet a different manner. Scientists have described it this way. Imagine an aircraft carrier weighing 100,000 tonnes. If the weight of the ship was balanced to 10 ^ 1,230 it could not be off by more than billionth of a trillionth of the mass of an ELECTRON on one side or the other, or the ship would capsize.
Are you getting this?
Do you still think it accidental?
One more example. It is estimated that the total number atomic particles in the entire universe is 10 ^ 80. Got that? Good. The odds of our universe, even according to atheist scientists, coming into being by chance or by accident is 10 ^ 1240.
Are you SURE you’re getting this?
10^50 is generally accepted, even by atheist scientists, as impossible.
If, by this point your mind isn’t numb with the credulity and gullibility that atheists force themselves to live with, I just don’t know what it would take to get you to throw up your hands and demand that atheists get out of the education business. I mean, just how blind does a person have to be before s/he stops demanding the right to drive the car?
This is not a joking matter any more. Atheist scientists have discovered this information. They know it, but obviously maintaining their bias against a Creator is worth throwing away their integrity. It’s embarrassing. It’s shameful. It should be a crime for them to teach “The Universe As An Accident” to your children.
Because these constants and qualities are independent of and unrelated to each other, as astronomical the odds of any one of them being just right, to find ALL of them being as they are in the same universe, by accident is beyond comprehension.
To figure out those odds, you would take, say, the Weak Force constant of 1 in 10^100, add to that the gravitational constant 1 in 10^120, add to that . . . and so on for ALL the constants and quantities.
No wonder atheist scientists say that we’re really, really lucky to be here.
Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, We know that the fine tuning of the universe is due to one of the following:
. Physical necessity (it had to be this way and no other way),
. Chance (it’s just a really, really, really lucky accident), or
. It’s the design of an Intelligence beyond anything we have ever experienced.
We know it’s not due to physical necessity. In a secular or natural reality there is no reason whatsoever that ANY given universe has to exist, let alone be a life supporting universe.
Nor is this fine tuning due to chance. The required fine tuning of our universe is so exquisite that an infinitesimal change in any one of the necessary constants and quantities would mean that neither we nor any life would happen. As shown above, the odds against this happening by chance are insurmountable.
Even Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe this happened by chance. He thinks it will be discovered that the constants and quantities have to be exactly the way they are because of their relationship to Dark Matter. So, on the one hand he’s admitting that it’s absurd to think the fine tuning of our universe is accidental. On the other hand, he has no explanation why Dark Matter would have THAT property, why it would exist at all, or how it would come to begin to exist out of nothing by nothing.
. True claim: If observers who exist within a universe are able to analyse its constants and quantities, it is highly PROBABLE that they will observe them to be fine-tuned for their existence.
. True claim: Without a Designer it is highly and extraordinarily IMPROBABLE that a universe exists which is finely tuned for the existence of observers within it.
Some gullible people have been led to think that if the constants and quantities of our universe were different, then other life forms would have evolved. This is simply not true. Floating fanciful theories and hoping that they snag a believer here and there is not by any means good science. “Life” means the ability to take in food and use its energy, to grow and adapt and reproduce. Without the fine tuning that we observe, not even atomic matter would exist, not to mention a planet where life might exist. Among other things the universe would have either collapsed or expanded beyond any ability to congeal. Again, there is no reason to expect that a universe as finely tuned as is our universe should exist by chance, nor is there any need or physical necessity for such a universe to exist anywhere except for the sole purpose of supporting life.
Because the above premises are true and coherent, the following conclusion must also be true:
We do not experience just the appearance of design.
The design we experience is apparent and real.
The design that we experience is from a Designer.
I also believe in the existence of God because:.
If God does not exist, then objective morals, values and obligations (def. below) do not exist.
. But we know from our interactions with other people that objective morals, values and obligations DO exist. We know, and we know absolutely when someone does something “wrong” to us. We don’t have to wonder for one second what our community or society thinks about what the person did to us. We KNOW that we were wronged. We believe that objective morals exist at the moment that we’ve been wronged. So why does that point to God being the source of objective morals?
Just as physical laws are fully realised in the physical world, objective moral laws are fully realised in Jesus and Father God. As I stated before, our daily interactions with others shows we know beyond doubt that objective moral order is as real and independent of our recognition as is the natural order of things. Our perceptions of natural and moral laws are givens of our experience.
. Objective moral Goodness and Obligation are based on God’s character. God’s commands are not arbitrary, for they are the inescapable expression of His Just and Loving nature. And, since our moral obligations are grounded in the Divine commands that come out of His Divine character, moral values and duties do not exist independent of God.
. What God commands or permits is good and what He forbids is wrong, bad, evil, self-destructive.
This is what it means for morality to be objective vs. subjective, selective or relative to the situation. Objective morality is not based on the individual’s character or personality or level of empathy, or that person’s likes or dislikes, sanity or insanity. Nor is it based on the ebb and flow of the community’s likes / dislikes etc..
Why choose God as opposed to you or me or Hitler?
God by definition is the least arbitrary stopping point, the least arbitrary point of final authority. That's what it means for morals to be objective. They have a grounding in a final and ultimate authority.
God doesn’t just exemplify goodness. He IS goodness.
God doesn't just exemplify justice. He IS Justice.
God doesn't just exemplify love. He IS love.
Almost everyone is willing to recognise an ultimate standard of goodness. Choosing the individual as the ultimate standard of good and bad, right and wrong sets up obvious and irreconcilable issues of conflict.
Any moral construct (don’t rape, don’t discriminate etc.) that is "invented" or adopted by mankind and that is truly good for society, will BE good for society because it coheres with an objective moral principle that exists independently. Objective means it is right and true regardless of whether you agree with it or obey it or even know that it exists. Again, “objective” (not arbitrary or relative) because it comes from the Ultimate source of Truth, Goodness, Justice and Love - our Creator.
If man-made moral constructs work across time and culture:
. They will work because they are objectively and ultimately right.
. They will work because they are based upon standards that are objectively and ultimately sound.
. They are objectively and ultimately sound because they originate from the character and command of our Creator who is the ultimate source of Truth, Goodness, Justice and Love.
The Christian base for objective morality is based on Truth. In our interaction with others, when wronged, you and I know in an instant that it's based upon Truth. Because it's based upon Truth it helps in the survival of the collective.
The atheist base for morality is based upon it's “perceived” ability to aid survival. It may or may not work over time and each community or society differs in its views on what aids survival. On atheism, right or wrong will change with the ebb and flow human desire, likes and dislikes, current ideology and the ability to meet our immediate need. As such, at any given time, it may or may not entail truth. For example atheists say that right and wrong is based on a society's or the community's standard. That means that in one community it can be absolutely right to kill a woman just because she has been sexually unfaithful, while in another community it can be absolutely wrong to kill a woman just because she has been sexually unfaithful. On atheism, there is no basis to suggest that anyone is wrong for doing anything. A growing number of atheists agree with this nonsense since it allows them to live as they choose with no accountability to anyone save themselves.
I believe in God because of the following philosophical and metaphysical evidence.
Virtually all philosophers agree that if there is the slightest chance of God existing, then He does in fact exist. Alvin Plantinga has refined Anselm’s argument as follows. He asks, “What is the greatest conceivable being?” Our answer goes past me and you and the Dali Lama and any other "great" human being we can think of and we come to an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being that we commonly call “God” If we could think of something greater than God, then that is what would be called God. We can call it a Mind or something else but it amounts to the same thing ie. The Greatest Conceivable Being That Can Possibly Exist.
Therefore we can know that God exists because:
. It is in fact metaphysically possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists.
. Because it’s possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists, a Greatest Conceivable Being does exist in some possible reality.
. Because of the very nature of a Greatest Conceivable Being, if a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in some possible reality, it exists in every possible reality.
. If a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in every possible reality, then it exists in actual reality.
. If a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in actual reality, then a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in our reality.
Because the above premises are true and coherent, it stands to reason that the conclusion is also true: A Greatest Conceivable Being or God exists.
While all of these scientific and philosophical arguments point toward a Creator and away from materialism, there are a several points of evidence that specifically point away from materialism.
1. The most important point for me is the atheist claim that life arose from non-life unaided. Like everything else that atheists say in regard to origins, this claim flies in the face of all known experience, testing and evidence. The level and degree of formulated, coded information that is required for life to begin and to exist has and always will only come from an Intelligent Source. There are no known exceptions to this known fact. So certain is this fact that atheists are reduced to saying something no less preposterous than “Everything came from nothing by nothing.” And that preposterous claim is, “Inanimate and inorganic gases evolved into life.” That is such an incredibly sad and pathetic statement but what else are atheists to do. Their whole belief system rests upon an absurd, incoherent and ridiculous belief system. Because there is so much evidence supporting the claim that life could and did come about only because of Intelligent Design, I only have room to give you the following sites where you can read more about the subject. I suggest you refer to them in the order they are given here.
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/nothing-did-it.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/atheism-of-gaps.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/es-ka-pay.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/please-read-this.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/which-came-first.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-would-you-choose-id.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/chance-did-it.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/thats-embarrassing.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/last-post-on-chance.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/predestination.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/this-is-interesting.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/no-hammer.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/prove-my-point-much.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/hume-rolls-over-again.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/id-and-ignorance.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/so-correct-me.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/huh.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/still-stupid.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/got-junk.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/sigh-disappointing.html
2. Most materialists truly believe that “Only science is rational; only science achieves truth. Everything else is mere belief and opinion.” J. P. Moreland. “Science is the only begetter of truth.” Richard Lewontin.
Ya - very rational - “Everything came from nothing by nothing.” “Inanimate gases evolved into life.” “Science is the only source of truth” is not only a philosophical statement and NOT a scientific statement, it is a poor and ignorant philosophy because the statement itself cannot be tested by the scientific method. These self-professed intelligent people are making statements that are self-contradictory and when someone is forced to make self-contradictory statements it means their bias and prejudice is so strong that they are willing to operate from an unsupported base.
3. Molecular machines in our bodies are impossible to explain from a Darwinian perspective. They are huge proofs that Darwin and his followers are wrong. “There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” Microbiologist James Shapiro - University of Chicago. These biological mechanisms (Eg. The highly choreographed cascade of ten steps that used twenty different molecular components to clot blood at the site of a wound; Bacterial Flagellum; Cilium; The intra cellular transport system and dozens more mechanisms in our bodies) need all of their various parts in place in order to function. If one part is missing, there IS no mechanism. In reality, you would never arrive at such an irreducibly complex system by a Darwinian process of natural selection acting on random variation. Natural selection only preserves mutations that perform a function that aides the survival of the entity. A partial mechanism would simply not survive nor be retained for long periods of time. Irreducibly complex systems do not perform any function until all the parts are present and working together in combination with one another. Natural selection would not build such an unworkable system. So exquisite are these molecular machines that one genetic scientist has commented, “We must constantly remind ourselves that what we are seeing was not designed.” Like the first point in this section, when you hear such irrational comments you know you are dealing with someone who is working with an absence of evidence and an unsupportable case.
4. Another point that absolutely points away from material evolution and toward design is the Biological Big Bang, better known as The Cambrian Explosion. In this time period we find completely novel body plans that appear in a geological instant. We find a huge jump in complexity of life forms with zero transitional life forms in the fossil record. Massive amounts of new biological information suddenly appears beyond what any Darwinian mechanism can produce, again in a geological moment in time. As one evolutionary sceptic has said, “Just how fast does this evolution have to happen before they stop calling it evolution?” Darwin himself said that natural selection never takes sudden leaps yet we have proponents of such a system trying to tell us that not only has irreducible complexity arisen suddenly and spontaneously. They say that it’s happened spontaneously in many species at the same time in many places around the world.
5. Finally human consciousness is such a problem for materialist that, that they go to one of two extremes. The first is believing that consciousness is a "natural" result of increased thinking capacity - i.e. one day computers, rather than shuffling information, will one day “evolve” a consciousness and even a sense of spirituality. I'm not joking! Darwinists are that foolish! Or, and this is more common, they are reduced to saying that the “I” that we all know exists, is just an illusion; that it does not exist.
Regardless of either option, Darwinists plead with us to believe that we are nothing more than a mass of chemical exchanges and firing neurons even as they display a whole range of personal thoughts, emotions and pseudo arguments when their beliefs in this area are challenged. These people look at the human abilities of self-reflection, art, medicine, the enjoyment of music and say it comes from an illusory direction of will. In fact, they say that self-will is also an illusion. Even though the development of our vocabulary is enormous, our grammar complex and our conversations deep and meaningful, it all comes, say materialists, without purpose or meaning. These atheists look at the human ability to codify language, our unbounded creativity, selflessness, love, the exercising our rational faculties, our ability to develop an argument, follow a line of logic, draw conclusions and frame hypotheses and call it the simple, random and unguided firing of neurons. Our strong spirit of inquiry, our research in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, medicine and physics while noteworthy for some, is nothing of lasting consequence, for all will, according to atheists comes to an absurd and meaningless end. Yearn for meaning in life? It too is of no lasting import. It’s the same illusion that causes us to devote so much of our time to philosophy, theology and ethics. Or so the materialist claims. Atheists say that our religious sentiments and practices and our intense and endless quest for meaning can be traced to some random mutation eons ago.
It’s only the illusion of the “I” that questions not only our origin but also of destiny. It’s only the illusion of the “I” that has a refined aesthetic sense that admires beauty and longs to be surrounded with it. When we cultivate a garden, put flowers in a vase, or hang up a painting, it’s the illusion of the “I” that is expressing a love of beauty and a strong creative impulse. Our poetry, painting, dance, drama and music, our weekly craft groups where baskets are woven, wool is spun, shawls are knit, and photo albums are covered, all this says the ardent materialist is carried out for no particular reason save to follow the command of chemical exchanges.
Reason, language, inquiry, wonder, longing, religion, morality, aesthetics, creativity, imagination, aspiration and humour, to such intangible but fundamental qualities, atheists like Bertrand Russel can only respond, and in the total absence of proofs or evidence, yet driven but a desperate desire to be free from all accountability to one’s Creator, they hope that you will agree, “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and 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 labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction . . . that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried - 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 atheist’s philosophical and powerful emotional reaction to the fact of a universe with a beginning and to the impossibility of life arising unaided from non life shows that we are far, far more than a mass of chemical exchanges, more than mere thinking machines.
And that is why I say:
. Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, and
. Because the cosmological argument shows that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists who is the cause or grounding of reality as we know it, and
. Because the teleological argument shows more than just the appearance of design, and
. Because of the Kalam argument that shows that whatever begins to exist has a cause and an explanation for it’s beginning to exist, and
. Because the moral argument shows that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists who is the cause or grounding of all objective morals, values, obligations and Truth,
. I believe that Creator God exists and that Christianity is the best explanation for the type of world / environment and the cosmos in which we live.
While any or all the above may or may not give you pause for thought, the most important basis for my belief in God lies in a different category. The palpable presence of God in my life, His counsel, His comfort, His correction and guidance, His love and mercy and grace, all of these things are so very real in my innermost being that they compel me to acknowledge the truth of His existence.
I am so very grateful that I have been granted the gift of "Wide-Band Awareness." This is a Gift / ability that is shared and immediately recognised by believers from around the world regardless of race, social stature, gender or intellectual ability. Roughly 95% of the people in the world know at some level that there is more to life than what meets the eye.
For some reason atheists lack this perceptive ability and they live out their existence on earth within a very Narrow Band of Awareness. This condemns them to examining only a very narrow band of evidence as they, like all of us, struggle to make sense of life.
I also believe in God because of the historicity of Jesus. Except for those who exist on the lunatic fringe (eg. those who also deny the Holocaust), the reality of Jesus cannot be denied. In fact, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus cannot be adequately explained away. Something totally other took place when Jesus appeared on earth.
I believe in God because the heavens and the earth declare His handiwork. There is simply no sufficient explanation for WHY the universe began to exist exactly as it did other than “Creator God.” This is not an explanation from ignorance because Creator God is the ONLY conclusion that fits the scientific evidence.
While it's true that atheists have proposed other theories for the "Creation” of the universe, it is not because of any inadequacy in or lack of evidence for the idea of God as Creator. The presentation of alternative theories is only because God as Creator is philosophically unacceptable to atheists.
The type of belief in God that I'm talking about is sometimes called “faith.” But faith is often misunderstood as being separate from reason or evidence. That could not be more inaccurate. For one thing, we are told to love the Lord our God with, among other things, “all our mind.” Second the Bible describes Faith as being “The substance of, the certainty of, the essence of, the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.”
While one’s faith does not find its origin in evidence (the origin is purely from God - John 6:44), faith is clearly supported by evidence, reason, logic and experience. In other words, my Faith in Creator God is anything but blind or uninformed. In my opinion agnostics are the only ones who ‘go as far as empirical evidence will let them.’
Atheists take the next step because of a philosophically unacceptable conclusion to where the evidence points - Creator God exists.
Christians take the next step because of the reality of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Lord of lords and King of kings who lives within their very being. Nevertheless, my epistemic and experiential belief in God is grounded in logic and reason and that is why I'm not an atheist.
In that sense Christian faith can be described as “Choosing to believe the conclusion that the Bible and God Himself through the person of Jesus the Christ has presented regarding the evidence that we have before us.”
Faith is not, as those who fear the idea of a Creator say, believing something even in the absence of evidence. At bare minimum we have a whole universe proclaiming the existence of Creator God. When pressed, honest atheists acquiesce that a Deistic God may well exist, “But that doesn’t prove a Theistic God.” Well, no it doesn’t. For that we have the life, death and resurrection of Jesus who said, “If you have seen Me you have seen Creator God.” Among other historical events, proof of His resurrection comes in the form of:
. The empty tomb
. The dramatic change in character of the disciples
. The rise of the Christian Church
. The conversion of the sceptic and Christian killer Paul
. The conversion of the sceptic and brother of Jesus James
all of these confirming the theistic God as seen in Jesus.
The fact is, faith stems from evidence. Both atheists and Christians have before them the same amount of evidence, and both atheists and Christians believe what they believe by faith.
“By faith we (Christians) understand (choose to believe the Bible’s claim) that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” Hebrews 11:3
“By an even greater amount of faith (everything came from nothing by nothing) atheists understand (choose to believe the implication of atheism) that the universe came into being by natural means even though nothing natural / material existed UNTIL the universe came into being.”
While there have been criticisms of the above arguments, what’s important to note is that a criticism or an objection is not necessarily the same as a refutation.
When an intelligent person willfully abandons reason and begins to posit finite infinities, causeless beginnings and beginningless beginnings, I know that I’m dealing with someone involved in a desperate attempt to avoid a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
When an intelligent person willfully abandons classical historical scholarship and begins to deny known and knowable facts of history, but only as they apply to the person of Jesus, I know that I’m dealing with someone who is confronted with a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
When an intelligent person claims to follow whatever ethical standard is currently in vogue and calls that a reasonable way to live, I know that I’m dealing with someone involved in a desperate, fearful attempt to avoid a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
When someone ignores Occam’s Razor and goes in search of ever more complicated solutions, abandoning one after another, after another, after another, not because of new evidence but because of a need to avoid the conclusion indicated by current evidence, and when that person never returns to a simple solution that coincides with current knowledge and common sense, I know that I’ve encountered an individual who has been confronted with a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
Thanks to advances in science, every year to an increasing degree, we are pointed by science toward the existence of a Supernatural Creator and away from the foolish proposition of materialism / naturalism.
That is why I’m not an atheist.
I can say that except for epistemic, experiential, logical, coherent and reasonable evidence for the existence of God, I could be an atheist.
Instead, my belief in God begins with the following observations:
Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we know that:
. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Even if you want to go down the rabbit trail of “Nothing begins. It only changes from matter to energy or energy to matter,” this transition from one to the other always, always, always has a cause. That we consistently observe this to be true is critically important because scientific naturalists demand that nothing can be believed without consistent observation and verification. Every single attempt to promote alternatives to this premise have only reinforced its truth. Therefore, atheists have the highest motivation to accept this premise.
Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we know that:
. The universe began to exist. This was not a transfer of energy to matter or matter to energy. The material universe began to exist out of literally nothing. Because those premises are true and coherent we can know that the following conclusion is also true: The beginning of the universe has a cause. Something that is non-material brought everything material into existence out of nothing.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Matter and energy cannot precede themselves or preexist themselves either physically or chronologically.
The reason that matter and energy cannot precede themselves is because “Coming Into Being” is an essential and objective feature of time. Time did not exist prior to the Big Bang.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Matter and energy do not have the ability to create themselves or bring themselves into existence from nothing or ex nihilo.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Matter and energy cannot exist from infinity past.
Therefore, whatever brought matter, energy, space, time and the laws of physics into existence had to have existed outside of and was transcendent to these entities.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. Anything that exists has an explanation of it’s existence, either in the necessity of its own nature (It can’t NOT exist), or in an external cause.
. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is external to as well as transcendent to the universe.
Because that is true:
. Existing outside of time, the Cause is infinite or Eternal,
. Existing outside of matter (which is finite), the Cause is immaterial or Spiritual,
. Existing as the Cause of time and energy, space, matter and the laws of physics, the Cause is immeasurably more powerful than the mathematically precise universe and its exquisitely Finely Tuned constants and quantities.
. The Cause cannot be “scientific” because neither matter / energy existed prior to the Singularity, nor did the laws of physics (i.e., the laws that science has observed and identified), have anything material to act upon or govern prior to Singularity.
. Therefore the Cause of the beginning of the universe is not scientific but Personal. That means that the universe is not Deistic but Theistic.
. The transcendent Cause of the universe is therefore on the order of a Mind.
. That Cause is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. That Cause, is what is normally described as God.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:
. The universe exists.
. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
Because the above premises are true and coherent, the following conclusion must also be true: The explanation of the existence of the universe is what we call God.
. According to atheism the universe doesn’t have an explanation of its existence. They say that “It just happened. From nothing by nothing” Over a dozen theories and over a dozen more variations on those theories have come and gone in a vain attempt to rule out God as the Cause of a beginning universe. Despite the current scientific knowledge described above, atheists persist in stating that either matter has always existed (impossible) or that matter created itself (also impossible).
Why do they do this? Because, If there is an explanation of the universe’s existence, then atheism is not true. And that is because the only explanation that fits the evidence of how and why the universe came into being is a non material Cause or what we call, Creator God. That is why Richard Dawkins himself has admitted that a good case could be made for the existence of a Deistic God. He ignores the fact that an eternal Cause bringing into existence a finite universe from nothing and the bringing into existence of life from non life brings us to a Theistic Universe.
Actually, I believe that some day there won’t be any atheists. There will be people for God and people against God but there won’t be anyone so foolish and so closed minded as to believe that God doesn’t exist. And, irony of ironies it will be science that will confirm the existence of God.
. Because of overwhelming scientific evidence, most atheists do grudgingly admit that the universe does indeed have a beginning. Unfortunately for atheists, it can be said with absolute confidence that no cosmogonic model has been:
As repeatedly verified in its predictions,
As corroborated by attempts at its falsification,
As concordant with empirical discoveries, and
As philosophically coherent as the Standard Big Bang Creation Event Model.
. Hence, most atheists are implicitly committed to God being the explanation of why the universe exists. This is why I call atheists irrational agnostics.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that: .
The universe cannot be infinite. The Borde-Guth-Vilinkin Theorem proves that any expanding universe must have a definitive space / time boundary, a point of beginning, a Singularity, a point of Creation. The expansion property of Dark Matter ensures that the universe will never, nor has ever contracted and oscillated. It will always expand faster and faster. The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules out the possibility of the universe existing from infinity past. Background radiation, as well as known levels of entropy as well as the expanding universe confirm the truth of the 2nd Law > The universe had a beginning.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that:.
It is physically impossible to have an Actual Infinite Series of Things or Events or even moments of Time preceding our today. Nor can we have an Actual Infinite Collection by adding Things or Events or moments of Time one to another to another in order to reach today. This is why we can say with confidence that matter / universe cannot be infinite and that they haven’t always existed.
Imagine units of time as individual books filling a book shelf that stretches infinitely into the past. You could imagine an infinitely long street or an infinitely long rope or whatever, but for this example I’ll use a shelf of books.
While mathematics is able to deal with abstract or theoretical or conceptual or potential infinities, and while our imagination can create an imaginary shelf of books stretching infinitely into the past - sort of - reality holds no such possibility for us.
Time is not imaginary.
Time is not abstract or theoretical or conceptual.
Time is real.
Time is measured in real units.
In a scenario like this, with the shelf of books (units of time) stretching infinitely into the past you could never actually arrive at the first book. Here’s why. In order to reach the last book (what we call today), you had to have the second to last book or yesterday. In order to have the second to last book you had to have the third to last book. In order to have the third to last book you had to have the fourth to last book and so on and so on. In the case of “no beginning,” you could never reach today because you could never reach the “first” day (book) that made possible the second day which made possible the third day . . .. Since the past is made up of units of real time (we say the universe is 14.5 billion years old), in the case of a beginningless past we would have had to pass through or travel through infinite time in order to reach today and that is physically impossible. To reach today, we have to have had a starting point, a push point, a point of beginning, a point of first cause. If the past were actually infinite, we could never reach today because the past would simply extend infinitely into the past. Neither can we, as some desperate atheists have tried to do, arbitrarily pick a set or group or point in real time and begin counting from there. Of course you can do that, but it proves nothing regarding the beginning of the universe.
The fact is, we have reached today so we can know not only that the universe had a beginning, but that time itself had a beginning. Just as a bookshelf stretching infinitely into the past with no beginning would prohibit our reaching today, neither can there be an infinite regress of causes of the universe. That would also prohibit reaching today’s universe. So great a problem is this for atheists that people like Stephen Hawking simply ignore the origin of “previous” universes and says that we didn’t need God to have “this” universe. Pfft!
. The fact is, the infinite exists only as an idea or as a concept. It does not exist in material realty.
Because of clear scientific evidence, we know that: .
Only in a universe so finely tuned as ours, could we expect observers such as ourselves to exist. Note: Fine Tuning is a neutral secular term in that it refers to constants and quantities (atomic weight, gravitational constant, strong & weak force, etc.) being just right for the existence of intelligent life. That’s in comparison with the huge range of possible values.
In fact, the natural range of possible values is from 0 > 10 ^53 or from
0 - 10,0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000000.
Let’s conceptualized this number as represented by a dartboard. The distance from one side of the dartboard to the other side extends across our entire Milky Way Galaxy. With that in mind, let’s look at the ranges upon which our lives, our very existence depend.
It’s important to remember that the values of these constants and qualities were not something that evolved, or something that “settled in” as the universe aged. These constants were “put in” at the 10^-43 second. As well, you may be interested to note that the constants, quantities and values that are found in our cosmos appear to be unrelated in any way. They seem to be random, even arbitrary. They are independent of each other. However, they do share one thing in common. In fact the only thing the constants, quantities and values of our universe have in common is that all of them, every single one of them are needed to be exactly as they are in order for intelligent life to exist on this planet. While there are several dozen constants and qualities that are known, the most fundamental constants are the Fine Structure constant, the Gravitational constant, the Weak Force, the Strong Force and the ratio between the mass of protons and electrons.
. What scientists, what ATHEIST scientists call an “astonishing coincidence” is the fact that at the Big Bang, the ratio of the strong force to electromagnetism had to have been exactly as it was or else at 10 to -17 seconds after the start of the Singularity, the necessary binding of helium -4, beryllium -8 and carbon -12 would not have occurred and life as we know it would not have appeared.
. The exact number and types of neutrinos at 1 second after the beginning of the Big Bang had to be in place or the expansion rate would have prohibited the formation of our universe.
Think about that!
. If the mass of a neutron were slightly increased by about one part in seven hundred, then stable hydrogen burning stars would cease to exist.
. If the strong force were a long-range force (like electromagnetism or gravity) instead of a short range force that only acts between protons and neutrons in the nucleus, all matter would either instantaneously undergo nuclear fusion and explode or be sucked together forming a black hole.
Pretty lucky for us, huh, that all this just happened by chance?
. If what we call the Pauli-exclusion principle did not exist, all electrons would occupy the lowest atomic orbit, which would make complex chemical interactions impossible.
. If what we call the quantization principle did not exist, there wouldn’t be any atomic orbits, electrons would be sucked into the nucleus and therefore no complex chemistry would be allowed.
. The gravitational constant must be exactly 10 ^ 40 weaker than the strong nuclear force or again, no us. For those that are interested, that’s ten thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion times weaker than the strong force - exactly!
Pretty lucky for us that it just happened to work out that way - prior to Planck time.
A change of only 1 part in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 in the Gravitational constant as well as in the Weak Force would prevent life from existing.
If the density of the universe and the speed of expansion had been off by one part in one hundred thousand million million, again, no life. Remember, these values had to be put in prior to what is known as Planck time; that is, 10^-43 seconds after the Singularity.
The cosmological constant is what drives the inflation of the universe. It is tuned to 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Any variation in either direction more than that and - no universe.
Now, I mentioned this galaxy wide dartboard comparison. This equation gives us a target within our galaxy wide dart board that is less than 2.5 centimetres in diameter. Listen up now because here comes what atheists call the really lucky part. The amount of fine-tuning of the cosmological constant, one that we come upon, according to atheists, by accident is like blindfolding yourself, spinning around ten times and then randomly throwing the dart at our GALAXY wide dart board and hitting the target exactly in the centre of its 2.5 centimetre disk.
Sadly and amazingly, if you’re committed to atheism, this won’t be enough to convince you of anything Super Natural going on so let me use a different example.
The entropy per baryon that had to be “put in” PRIOR to Planck time is 1 part in 10 followed by 1,230 zeros. If that hadn’t been put in at the Big Bang our life supporting universe would not exist. This requires an extraordinarily precise arrangement of mass and energy. To hit this exactly right by accident (as atheists tell us is the case), we would put on our blindfold, spin around ten times, and according to atheists, throw a dart randomly at a UNIVERSE sized dart board and hit the exact CORRECT PROTON.
Atheists will sometimes scoff at this by throwing out the term, “the magic of large numbers.” It’s meaningless but it makes them feel secure in their ignorance. Let me however describe the above equation in yet a different manner. Scientists have described it this way. Imagine an aircraft carrier weighing 100,000 tonnes. If the weight of the ship was balanced to 10 ^ 1,230 it could not be off by more than billionth of a trillionth of the mass of an ELECTRON on one side or the other, or the ship would capsize.
Are you getting this?
Do you still think it accidental?
One more example. It is estimated that the total number atomic particles in the entire universe is 10 ^ 80. Got that? Good. The odds of our universe, even according to atheist scientists, coming into being by chance or by accident is 10 ^ 1240.
Are you SURE you’re getting this?
10^50 is generally accepted, even by atheist scientists, as impossible.
If, by this point your mind isn’t numb with the credulity and gullibility that atheists force themselves to live with, I just don’t know what it would take to get you to throw up your hands and demand that atheists get out of the education business. I mean, just how blind does a person have to be before s/he stops demanding the right to drive the car?
This is not a joking matter any more. Atheist scientists have discovered this information. They know it, but obviously maintaining their bias against a Creator is worth throwing away their integrity. It’s embarrassing. It’s shameful. It should be a crime for them to teach “The Universe As An Accident” to your children.
Because these constants and qualities are independent of and unrelated to each other, as astronomical the odds of any one of them being just right, to find ALL of them being as they are in the same universe, by accident is beyond comprehension.
To figure out those odds, you would take, say, the Weak Force constant of 1 in 10^100, add to that the gravitational constant 1 in 10^120, add to that . . . and so on for ALL the constants and quantities.
No wonder atheist scientists say that we’re really, really lucky to be here.
Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, We know that the fine tuning of the universe is due to one of the following:
. Physical necessity (it had to be this way and no other way),
. Chance (it’s just a really, really, really lucky accident), or
. It’s the design of an Intelligence beyond anything we have ever experienced.
We know it’s not due to physical necessity. In a secular or natural reality there is no reason whatsoever that ANY given universe has to exist, let alone be a life supporting universe.
Nor is this fine tuning due to chance. The required fine tuning of our universe is so exquisite that an infinitesimal change in any one of the necessary constants and quantities would mean that neither we nor any life would happen. As shown above, the odds against this happening by chance are insurmountable.
Even Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe this happened by chance. He thinks it will be discovered that the constants and quantities have to be exactly the way they are because of their relationship to Dark Matter. So, on the one hand he’s admitting that it’s absurd to think the fine tuning of our universe is accidental. On the other hand, he has no explanation why Dark Matter would have THAT property, why it would exist at all, or how it would come to begin to exist out of nothing by nothing.
. True claim: If observers who exist within a universe are able to analyse its constants and quantities, it is highly PROBABLE that they will observe them to be fine-tuned for their existence.
. True claim: Without a Designer it is highly and extraordinarily IMPROBABLE that a universe exists which is finely tuned for the existence of observers within it.
Some gullible people have been led to think that if the constants and quantities of our universe were different, then other life forms would have evolved. This is simply not true. Floating fanciful theories and hoping that they snag a believer here and there is not by any means good science. “Life” means the ability to take in food and use its energy, to grow and adapt and reproduce. Without the fine tuning that we observe, not even atomic matter would exist, not to mention a planet where life might exist. Among other things the universe would have either collapsed or expanded beyond any ability to congeal. Again, there is no reason to expect that a universe as finely tuned as is our universe should exist by chance, nor is there any need or physical necessity for such a universe to exist anywhere except for the sole purpose of supporting life.
Because the above premises are true and coherent, the following conclusion must also be true:
We do not experience just the appearance of design.
The design we experience is apparent and real.
The design that we experience is from a Designer.
I also believe in the existence of God because:.
If God does not exist, then objective morals, values and obligations (def. below) do not exist.
. But we know from our interactions with other people that objective morals, values and obligations DO exist. We know, and we know absolutely when someone does something “wrong” to us. We don’t have to wonder for one second what our community or society thinks about what the person did to us. We KNOW that we were wronged. We believe that objective morals exist at the moment that we’ve been wronged. So why does that point to God being the source of objective morals?
Just as physical laws are fully realised in the physical world, objective moral laws are fully realised in Jesus and Father God. As I stated before, our daily interactions with others shows we know beyond doubt that objective moral order is as real and independent of our recognition as is the natural order of things. Our perceptions of natural and moral laws are givens of our experience.
. Objective moral Goodness and Obligation are based on God’s character. God’s commands are not arbitrary, for they are the inescapable expression of His Just and Loving nature. And, since our moral obligations are grounded in the Divine commands that come out of His Divine character, moral values and duties do not exist independent of God.
. What God commands or permits is good and what He forbids is wrong, bad, evil, self-destructive.
This is what it means for morality to be objective vs. subjective, selective or relative to the situation. Objective morality is not based on the individual’s character or personality or level of empathy, or that person’s likes or dislikes, sanity or insanity. Nor is it based on the ebb and flow of the community’s likes / dislikes etc..
Why choose God as opposed to you or me or Hitler?
God by definition is the least arbitrary stopping point, the least arbitrary point of final authority. That's what it means for morals to be objective. They have a grounding in a final and ultimate authority.
God doesn’t just exemplify goodness. He IS goodness.
God doesn't just exemplify justice. He IS Justice.
God doesn't just exemplify love. He IS love.
Almost everyone is willing to recognise an ultimate standard of goodness. Choosing the individual as the ultimate standard of good and bad, right and wrong sets up obvious and irreconcilable issues of conflict.
Any moral construct (don’t rape, don’t discriminate etc.) that is "invented" or adopted by mankind and that is truly good for society, will BE good for society because it coheres with an objective moral principle that exists independently. Objective means it is right and true regardless of whether you agree with it or obey it or even know that it exists. Again, “objective” (not arbitrary or relative) because it comes from the Ultimate source of Truth, Goodness, Justice and Love - our Creator.
If man-made moral constructs work across time and culture:
. They will work because they are objectively and ultimately right.
. They will work because they are based upon standards that are objectively and ultimately sound.
. They are objectively and ultimately sound because they originate from the character and command of our Creator who is the ultimate source of Truth, Goodness, Justice and Love.
The Christian base for objective morality is based on Truth. In our interaction with others, when wronged, you and I know in an instant that it's based upon Truth. Because it's based upon Truth it helps in the survival of the collective.
The atheist base for morality is based upon it's “perceived” ability to aid survival. It may or may not work over time and each community or society differs in its views on what aids survival. On atheism, right or wrong will change with the ebb and flow human desire, likes and dislikes, current ideology and the ability to meet our immediate need. As such, at any given time, it may or may not entail truth. For example atheists say that right and wrong is based on a society's or the community's standard. That means that in one community it can be absolutely right to kill a woman just because she has been sexually unfaithful, while in another community it can be absolutely wrong to kill a woman just because she has been sexually unfaithful. On atheism, there is no basis to suggest that anyone is wrong for doing anything. A growing number of atheists agree with this nonsense since it allows them to live as they choose with no accountability to anyone save themselves.
I believe in God because of the following philosophical and metaphysical evidence.
Virtually all philosophers agree that if there is the slightest chance of God existing, then He does in fact exist. Alvin Plantinga has refined Anselm’s argument as follows. He asks, “What is the greatest conceivable being?” Our answer goes past me and you and the Dali Lama and any other "great" human being we can think of and we come to an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being that we commonly call “God” If we could think of something greater than God, then that is what would be called God. We can call it a Mind or something else but it amounts to the same thing ie. The Greatest Conceivable Being That Can Possibly Exist.
Therefore we can know that God exists because:
. It is in fact metaphysically possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists.
. Because it’s possible that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists, a Greatest Conceivable Being does exist in some possible reality.
. Because of the very nature of a Greatest Conceivable Being, if a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in some possible reality, it exists in every possible reality.
. If a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in every possible reality, then it exists in actual reality.
. If a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in actual reality, then a Greatest Conceivable Being exists in our reality.
Because the above premises are true and coherent, it stands to reason that the conclusion is also true: A Greatest Conceivable Being or God exists.
While all of these scientific and philosophical arguments point toward a Creator and away from materialism, there are a several points of evidence that specifically point away from materialism.
1. The most important point for me is the atheist claim that life arose from non-life unaided. Like everything else that atheists say in regard to origins, this claim flies in the face of all known experience, testing and evidence. The level and degree of formulated, coded information that is required for life to begin and to exist has and always will only come from an Intelligent Source. There are no known exceptions to this known fact. So certain is this fact that atheists are reduced to saying something no less preposterous than “Everything came from nothing by nothing.” And that preposterous claim is, “Inanimate and inorganic gases evolved into life.” That is such an incredibly sad and pathetic statement but what else are atheists to do. Their whole belief system rests upon an absurd, incoherent and ridiculous belief system. Because there is so much evidence supporting the claim that life could and did come about only because of Intelligent Design, I only have room to give you the following sites where you can read more about the subject. I suggest you refer to them in the order they are given here.
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/nothing-did-it.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/atheism-of-gaps.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/es-ka-pay.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/please-read-this.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/which-came-first.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-would-you-choose-id.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/chance-did-it.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/thats-embarrassing.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/last-post-on-chance.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/predestination.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/this-is-interesting.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/no-hammer.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/prove-my-point-much.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/hume-rolls-over-again.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/id-and-ignorance.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/so-correct-me.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/huh.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/still-stupid.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/got-junk.html
http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/12/sigh-disappointing.html
2. Most materialists truly believe that “Only science is rational; only science achieves truth. Everything else is mere belief and opinion.” J. P. Moreland. “Science is the only begetter of truth.” Richard Lewontin.
Ya - very rational - “Everything came from nothing by nothing.” “Inanimate gases evolved into life.” “Science is the only source of truth” is not only a philosophical statement and NOT a scientific statement, it is a poor and ignorant philosophy because the statement itself cannot be tested by the scientific method. These self-professed intelligent people are making statements that are self-contradictory and when someone is forced to make self-contradictory statements it means their bias and prejudice is so strong that they are willing to operate from an unsupported base.
3. Molecular machines in our bodies are impossible to explain from a Darwinian perspective. They are huge proofs that Darwin and his followers are wrong. “There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” Microbiologist James Shapiro - University of Chicago. These biological mechanisms (Eg. The highly choreographed cascade of ten steps that used twenty different molecular components to clot blood at the site of a wound; Bacterial Flagellum; Cilium; The intra cellular transport system and dozens more mechanisms in our bodies) need all of their various parts in place in order to function. If one part is missing, there IS no mechanism. In reality, you would never arrive at such an irreducibly complex system by a Darwinian process of natural selection acting on random variation. Natural selection only preserves mutations that perform a function that aides the survival of the entity. A partial mechanism would simply not survive nor be retained for long periods of time. Irreducibly complex systems do not perform any function until all the parts are present and working together in combination with one another. Natural selection would not build such an unworkable system. So exquisite are these molecular machines that one genetic scientist has commented, “We must constantly remind ourselves that what we are seeing was not designed.” Like the first point in this section, when you hear such irrational comments you know you are dealing with someone who is working with an absence of evidence and an unsupportable case.
4. Another point that absolutely points away from material evolution and toward design is the Biological Big Bang, better known as The Cambrian Explosion. In this time period we find completely novel body plans that appear in a geological instant. We find a huge jump in complexity of life forms with zero transitional life forms in the fossil record. Massive amounts of new biological information suddenly appears beyond what any Darwinian mechanism can produce, again in a geological moment in time. As one evolutionary sceptic has said, “Just how fast does this evolution have to happen before they stop calling it evolution?” Darwin himself said that natural selection never takes sudden leaps yet we have proponents of such a system trying to tell us that not only has irreducible complexity arisen suddenly and spontaneously. They say that it’s happened spontaneously in many species at the same time in many places around the world.
5. Finally human consciousness is such a problem for materialist that, that they go to one of two extremes. The first is believing that consciousness is a "natural" result of increased thinking capacity - i.e. one day computers, rather than shuffling information, will one day “evolve” a consciousness and even a sense of spirituality. I'm not joking! Darwinists are that foolish! Or, and this is more common, they are reduced to saying that the “I” that we all know exists, is just an illusion; that it does not exist.
Regardless of either option, Darwinists plead with us to believe that we are nothing more than a mass of chemical exchanges and firing neurons even as they display a whole range of personal thoughts, emotions and pseudo arguments when their beliefs in this area are challenged. These people look at the human abilities of self-reflection, art, medicine, the enjoyment of music and say it comes from an illusory direction of will. In fact, they say that self-will is also an illusion. Even though the development of our vocabulary is enormous, our grammar complex and our conversations deep and meaningful, it all comes, say materialists, without purpose or meaning. These atheists look at the human ability to codify language, our unbounded creativity, selflessness, love, the exercising our rational faculties, our ability to develop an argument, follow a line of logic, draw conclusions and frame hypotheses and call it the simple, random and unguided firing of neurons. Our strong spirit of inquiry, our research in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, medicine and physics while noteworthy for some, is nothing of lasting consequence, for all will, according to atheists comes to an absurd and meaningless end. Yearn for meaning in life? It too is of no lasting import. It’s the same illusion that causes us to devote so much of our time to philosophy, theology and ethics. Or so the materialist claims. Atheists say that our religious sentiments and practices and our intense and endless quest for meaning can be traced to some random mutation eons ago.
It’s only the illusion of the “I” that questions not only our origin but also of destiny. It’s only the illusion of the “I” that has a refined aesthetic sense that admires beauty and longs to be surrounded with it. When we cultivate a garden, put flowers in a vase, or hang up a painting, it’s the illusion of the “I” that is expressing a love of beauty and a strong creative impulse. Our poetry, painting, dance, drama and music, our weekly craft groups where baskets are woven, wool is spun, shawls are knit, and photo albums are covered, all this says the ardent materialist is carried out for no particular reason save to follow the command of chemical exchanges.
Reason, language, inquiry, wonder, longing, religion, morality, aesthetics, creativity, imagination, aspiration and humour, to such intangible but fundamental qualities, atheists like Bertrand Russel can only respond, and in the total absence of proofs or evidence, yet driven but a desperate desire to be free from all accountability to one’s Creator, they hope that you will agree, “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and 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 labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction . . . that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried - 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 atheist’s philosophical and powerful emotional reaction to the fact of a universe with a beginning and to the impossibility of life arising unaided from non life shows that we are far, far more than a mass of chemical exchanges, more than mere thinking machines.
And that is why I say:
. Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, and
. Because the cosmological argument shows that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists who is the cause or grounding of reality as we know it, and
. Because the teleological argument shows more than just the appearance of design, and
. Because of the Kalam argument that shows that whatever begins to exist has a cause and an explanation for it’s beginning to exist, and
. Because the moral argument shows that a Greatest Conceivable Being exists who is the cause or grounding of all objective morals, values, obligations and Truth,
. I believe that Creator God exists and that Christianity is the best explanation for the type of world / environment and the cosmos in which we live.
While any or all the above may or may not give you pause for thought, the most important basis for my belief in God lies in a different category. The palpable presence of God in my life, His counsel, His comfort, His correction and guidance, His love and mercy and grace, all of these things are so very real in my innermost being that they compel me to acknowledge the truth of His existence.
I am so very grateful that I have been granted the gift of "Wide-Band Awareness." This is a Gift / ability that is shared and immediately recognised by believers from around the world regardless of race, social stature, gender or intellectual ability. Roughly 95% of the people in the world know at some level that there is more to life than what meets the eye.
For some reason atheists lack this perceptive ability and they live out their existence on earth within a very Narrow Band of Awareness. This condemns them to examining only a very narrow band of evidence as they, like all of us, struggle to make sense of life.
I also believe in God because of the historicity of Jesus. Except for those who exist on the lunatic fringe (eg. those who also deny the Holocaust), the reality of Jesus cannot be denied. In fact, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus cannot be adequately explained away. Something totally other took place when Jesus appeared on earth.
I believe in God because the heavens and the earth declare His handiwork. There is simply no sufficient explanation for WHY the universe began to exist exactly as it did other than “Creator God.” This is not an explanation from ignorance because Creator God is the ONLY conclusion that fits the scientific evidence.
While it's true that atheists have proposed other theories for the "Creation” of the universe, it is not because of any inadequacy in or lack of evidence for the idea of God as Creator. The presentation of alternative theories is only because God as Creator is philosophically unacceptable to atheists.
The type of belief in God that I'm talking about is sometimes called “faith.” But faith is often misunderstood as being separate from reason or evidence. That could not be more inaccurate. For one thing, we are told to love the Lord our God with, among other things, “all our mind.” Second the Bible describes Faith as being “The substance of, the certainty of, the essence of, the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.”
While one’s faith does not find its origin in evidence (the origin is purely from God - John 6:44), faith is clearly supported by evidence, reason, logic and experience. In other words, my Faith in Creator God is anything but blind or uninformed. In my opinion agnostics are the only ones who ‘go as far as empirical evidence will let them.’
Atheists take the next step because of a philosophically unacceptable conclusion to where the evidence points - Creator God exists.
Christians take the next step because of the reality of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Lord of lords and King of kings who lives within their very being. Nevertheless, my epistemic and experiential belief in God is grounded in logic and reason and that is why I'm not an atheist.
In that sense Christian faith can be described as “Choosing to believe the conclusion that the Bible and God Himself through the person of Jesus the Christ has presented regarding the evidence that we have before us.”
Faith is not, as those who fear the idea of a Creator say, believing something even in the absence of evidence. At bare minimum we have a whole universe proclaiming the existence of Creator God. When pressed, honest atheists acquiesce that a Deistic God may well exist, “But that doesn’t prove a Theistic God.” Well, no it doesn’t. For that we have the life, death and resurrection of Jesus who said, “If you have seen Me you have seen Creator God.” Among other historical events, proof of His resurrection comes in the form of:
. The empty tomb
. The dramatic change in character of the disciples
. The rise of the Christian Church
. The conversion of the sceptic and Christian killer Paul
. The conversion of the sceptic and brother of Jesus James
all of these confirming the theistic God as seen in Jesus.
The fact is, faith stems from evidence. Both atheists and Christians have before them the same amount of evidence, and both atheists and Christians believe what they believe by faith.
“By faith we (Christians) understand (choose to believe the Bible’s claim) that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” Hebrews 11:3
“By an even greater amount of faith (everything came from nothing by nothing) atheists understand (choose to believe the implication of atheism) that the universe came into being by natural means even though nothing natural / material existed UNTIL the universe came into being.”
While there have been criticisms of the above arguments, what’s important to note is that a criticism or an objection is not necessarily the same as a refutation.
When an intelligent person willfully abandons reason and begins to posit finite infinities, causeless beginnings and beginningless beginnings, I know that I’m dealing with someone involved in a desperate attempt to avoid a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
When an intelligent person willfully abandons classical historical scholarship and begins to deny known and knowable facts of history, but only as they apply to the person of Jesus, I know that I’m dealing with someone who is confronted with a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
When an intelligent person claims to follow whatever ethical standard is currently in vogue and calls that a reasonable way to live, I know that I’m dealing with someone involved in a desperate, fearful attempt to avoid a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
When someone ignores Occam’s Razor and goes in search of ever more complicated solutions, abandoning one after another, after another, after another, not because of new evidence but because of a need to avoid the conclusion indicated by current evidence, and when that person never returns to a simple solution that coincides with current knowledge and common sense, I know that I’ve encountered an individual who has been confronted with a philosophically unacceptable conclusion: Creator God exists.
Thanks to advances in science, every year to an increasing degree, we are pointed by science toward the existence of a Supernatural Creator and away from the foolish proposition of materialism / naturalism.
That is why I’m not an atheist.
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