Random Thoughts on Faith and Reason
* If nothing else, people who go to church once a week are reminded 4 times a month that there exists Truth with a capital T. That fact alone gives otherwise “simple” people a tremendous advantageous over much more clever atheists who subscribe to modern doctrines that deny this.
* The most important question about reality is whether God exists. People often say things like, “Let’s put aside our religious differences, and discuss issue X on its own merits.” But that’s actually very difficult to do in practice, because people’s differing assumptions on that fundamental axiom (if you will) have huge consequences. It’s sort of like developing Euclidean versus non-Euclidean geometry. Things that are rational and true in a world without any God, are irrational and false in a world with Him. And the reverse holds as well: Atheists consider Christian doctrines one at a time, and each seems not only physically impossible, but also palpably absurd. Yet viewed in the context of the entire Christian worldview, each doctrine fits snugly with all the rest.
* Atheists will sometimes say, “People can’t walk on water / come back from the dead / give birth as a virgin…it’s against the laws of physics.” No they are not! People come back from the dead, all the time. There are shows on The Learning Channel about this. (A kid is ice skating and falls into the lake, he’s legally dead for 30 minutes, blah blah blah.) There is absolutely nothing in “the laws of physics” that says it’s impossible for a guy to walk on water. For one thing, what if it’s frozen? Duh, okay, what if it’s not frozen? Well people at Sea World seem to walk on the water all the time; they trained dolphins. Duh, okay, well what about if it’s warm and there aren’t trained dolphins? Then the laws of physics say… My point is, atheists flippantly overstate the certainty of their position. Another example is when (many of them) say (falsely) that the entire field of biology stands or falls on the theory of common descent.
* When I first read Mises’ magnum opus, I thought it was very odd that he titled it Human Action. I thought “Economics” or “The Market” would have made more sense. Yet the older I get, the more I understand why he did it the way he did. (And say what you will about him–I know there are many non-fans who probably read this blog–but the importance of the action axiom never really struck me until I read this Hoppe essay.) Well, one way of viewing the difference between atheists and believers in the LORD of the Bible, is that atheists see behavior of the physical world, whereas believers see God’s actions. The Christian’s interpretative stance involves “faith” and does not follow from pure reason. Yet by the same token, I will never be able to really prove that other people have consciousnesses the way I experience it. But I sure think the world makes a lot more sense, and I can sure achieve a lot more of my goals, if I interpret bodily motions as human action. (And Christians be careful how you deal with these issues: Yes you do think that a thunderbolt illustrates the will of God, but it doesn’t necessarily mean He’s angry.)
