God Doesn’t Waste a Tear
The pastor at my old church used to frequently say that “God never wastes a tear in your life.” (That’s tear as in salty water from your eye, not tear as in a rip in your jeans.) His point was that all of the bad things that happened to you, can be turned around and made to serve a good purpose in God’s plan for the universe.
This is definitely true in my life. I was pretty miserable in grad school, reaching a very low place psychologically. And yet, as awful as that was, in retrospect I’m glad I went through it, because now I’m equipped to help other depressed people much better than if I had been happy-go-lucky my whole life. I view it as God dipping me down into a pool of despair to learn how to swim in it, but then yanking me back up when He saw I was really in danger of drowning.
I have lived a fairly sheltered life, relative to most of the world’s population, so I obviously do not have the credibility to speak for others. But I have seen footage of people surviving massive earthquakes or tidal waves, where their families get wiped out, and they come out saying, “God is great.” So I think that everyone has the ability to bounce back from these terrible experiences, even though they seem unbearable to people on the outside.
Naturally this observation isn’t an argument for the Christian worldview; you could just as easily pose the obvious question, “Why would a loving God let all this bad stuff happen?” I’m just saying that if you already believe on other grounds, it gives you incredible strength and endurance.
No matter what you have done, or what has happened to you, you can renew your life by accepting Jesus. Look at the conversion of Saul. He literally persecuted Christians. So in any “proper” system of morality and justice, that kind of guy should go kill himself when he realizes the truth of what he was doing.
But of course that’s not at all the “proper” response, in the Christian worldview. Saul became Paul and one of the greatest evangelists and promulgators of Christian doctrine in history. The author of those epistles needed to be an expert in Jewish law, and he needed to be utterly fearless. Knowing what he had done, and seeing that God rescued him from his error and gave him a second chance, allowed Saul to become Paul and do just that.
When I was an atheist, it was for intellectual reasons. I simply thought I could “prove” that belief in God was irrational.
But I know there are many non-believers who say, “Even if there is a God, he would want nothing to do with me. The things I have done are unforgivable.”
That is simply false. If you will accept the truth, if you will admit the obvious that this universe–not only the billions of stars but also the intrinsically fascinating and unexpected properties of abstract mathematics–was created by an intelligent Being, then it’s not that much more of a leap to realize that He knew full well every awful crime you were going to commit before you were even born.
And He has designed a beautiful path of atonement, not because you need to earn your salvation–it’s free–but because He knows you need to “do something” to help make up for, and make sense of, your previous life.
Think of it like this: At our high school every year they had the corny DARE anti-drug campaigns, when they’d ask us to sign pledges saying we wouldn’t drink that weekend etc. (I used to hate it because I didn’t drink but refused to sign on principle, whereas a bunch of kids signed the paper and got hammered that weekend.) The only speakers that the kids actually listened to, were people who came in and explained how their lives had gone off the rails because of drug and alcohol abuse. Since those people were for real, they actually had credibility and might have steered some of the students onto a safer path.
I guess you can bounce back so long as He doesn’t kill you first. What a nice guy.
To ardyanovich:
If you actually read the Old Testament, you’ll find that no matter how much seasoning and testing God puts His people through, He NEVER kills them.
But it’s your “What a nice guy.” comment that bothers me. God is loving and “nice” to the world – you know, offering them a chance at life eternal and all – but you’re treading on awfully thin ice when you start challenging the God of the Universe.
So God never killed anyone, eh? I’m no biblical scholar, but I do know about some flood that Noah escaped. Presumably that flood killed many innocent people which were either to young to make the decision to follow Noah or had never even heard of God or the bible. If that’s not murder, no wonder you think God is such a great guy.
Also, we can’t challenge God? So no matter how bad he’s behaving (like letting the Holocaust and slavery take place) we’re not supposed to question his intentions? This god of yours sure seems quite authoritarian, no? Seems like he could just let us all into heaven to start with and avoid all that ugliness (or “testing” as you folks like to call it).
I believe the pain I endured for many years was of my own making. When I had my moment of clarity of what a mess I had made of things, I was ready to die. It was at that point that God knew I had had enough. I visualize myself teetering off a cliff and Him pulling me back to safety. I see He must have had a grin on His face knowing I was almost ready for Him during all that pain. Today I have no “problems.” He takes everything I hand to Him. Someone wrote, “Don’t tell God how big your problems are, tell your problems how big your God is.”
Nice post! Thanks! It reminds me of the article in CT in which Colson discusses atheists who came to faith. Some of them admired the changes that took place in peoples’ lives. They called it a miracle they couldn’t ignore. Francis Collins (head of the human genome project) said that he first became interested in Christianity while doing his residency work. He met many people who had great strength in the midst of terrible tragedies and they were all Christians. He wondered if he could have such strength, so he began searching for the source of their strength.
If I could plug Feser’s book “The Last Superstition” again, it has made me realize again how easily accessible the truth is and to what great lengths people have gone to suppress it. Humanity is so fundamentally dishonest about the core issues of life, such as the existence of God, that nothing short of terrible disaster will cause most people to end their rebellion and seek the truth. And even that doesn’t work a lot of the time.
But which nations are experiencing the greates numbers of people coming to Christ? China and Iran, two nations that went through hell for decades.
Christianity is not a theory it is a faith. To portray it as “truth” is dishonest. How do you know that the Jews aren’t right, or the Muslims? If there was an objective truth out there I would find it hard to ignore.
There is nothing wrong with having a belief in god or being spiritual, but to feel the need to make everyone else think the same as you do when there is NO evidence to prove your claims is morally disgusting.
Roger, metaphysical beliefs aren’t matters of opinion. To say, “God exists” or “Jesus is Lord” is not like saying, “Vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate.” The latter claim is subjective and can be different for different people. But the first two claims are objective statements about reality. They are either true or false. I believe very strongly that they are true. I might be wrong, or my notion of God might be mistaken and maybe the Muslims are right (or maybe Christopher Hitchens is right), but for Christians to refer to their beliefs as “truth” is no more morally repugnant than for me to say Greenspan caused the housing boom is the truth. There are Keynesians out there who disagree with me, but at least one of us must be wrong.
Roger,
I think you may be confusing truth with facts. Facts are objective, and can be falsified via the scientific method. If something is True, it doesn’t necessarily follow that there is objective proof. many times people say “i have faith” when they mean “i think what i believe is true, but i am not sure.” this is not the faith that Christians profess to have. Christians (and i would guess other religious people) claim to have had a “spiritual revelation” or something similar; a subjective but real experience which confirms there belief in God. To them, Christ being God is as true and evident as gravity, or the ground beneath their feet. When they say “Christ is the Truth” etc., they are not trying to force their opinion onto others; they actually believe that Christ is God just as much as they believe New York is a city in the U.S. You may rebut, “ah! but i can prove to you that New York exists, all you have to do is go there in a car or bus and you will see.” A Christian might retort, “ah! but i can prove to you Christ exists, all you have to do is pray to him and repent of your sins and you will see.” Both scenarios involve witnessing (trying to get the other person to believe New York or Christ exist.), and both scenarios involve an action that must be performed to see the truth (Driving to New York or praying to Christ). the only difference is that New York exists in the material world and can be felt with the 5 objective senses, where as Christs revelation is sensed with the spirit; a sense that you might deny exists.
to austin christian:
So God never killed anyone, eh? I’m no biblical scholar, but I do know about some flood that Noah escaped. Presumably that flood killed many innocent people which were either to young to make the decision to follow Noah or had never even heard of God or the bible. If that’s not murder, no wonder you think God is such a great guy.
Men at the time of Noah were killed because “every inclination of [their] heart[s were] only evil all the time.” (Genesis 7)
I don’t contend that all those who reject God recieve worldly troubles in return or that all those who accept Him recieve success here on Earth. In fact, the point of Mr. Murphy’s post is quite the opposite – God allows His people to experience trying times that His strength may be on display in saving them from that situation. When God struck people down, it was not to experience some murderous joy, but to exact punishment for sinfulness – an authority He, as Creator, has.
But my intention is not to prove God just by human standards, it is to acknowledge Him as what He is – the Lord and Ruler of the Universe. God’s ways are not our ways, and I’m content with that. As a student of Economics, I try to explain human decisions and interactions with human reasoning. But as someone who has experienced God in my life, I understand that He cannot be explained with human reasoning.I do not have to understand everything about God to understand how indebted I am to Him.
I sincerely hope that you will keep your heart open for when God reveals Himself to you; handing Him the reins to your life will allow you too see like I have what a great “guy” He is.
Men at the time of Noah were killed because “every inclination of [their] heart[s were] only evil all the time.” (Genesis 7)
Even the children huh? That’s hard to believe.
ardyanovich, It’s really funny to read atheists make moral claims against God. Any philosopher worth his salt knows that morality depends upon there being a God. Comic book atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins don’t understand that, but all of the great atheist philosophers did. And if God does exist, then whatever he does is moral because he made us and owns us. He can’t murder people, because he is our owner and creator. God can only kill people and he does so out of judgment. Only people can murder because we can’t own each other in the same way that God owns us. God has every right to bless or dispose of his creation as he sees fit. We don’t have that right.
As for God killing children, would he be more compassionate to leave them alive without parents to care for and feed them? I doubt it.
So you’re truly prepared to say that someone without belief in God is completely incapable of any ‘morality’ as you define it?
I find your definition of morality rather terrifying, if in fact that is the case.
What prevents you from murdering children at your local preschool? A belief that only God can dispose of His property and would punish you? Or a belief that violence (with murder being the ultimate case) is, in all cases beyond self-defense, morally wrong?
I can’t imagine fear of an abstract punishment from an omnipotent father figure being my absolute moral compass. You’re either relying on the word of a religious leader to interpret “God’s” will, or you’re relying on your own interpretation of what you perceive of as His will. Either case I think has dangerous potential outcomes.
That’s a typical atheist knee-jerk reaction. In fact, I never said anything like that atheists cannot be moral people. As with most atheists, you find it really difficult to be honest about opponents arguements. So you tell me, is possible for atheists to be moral because I have found through experience that they tend to be very dishonest people, especially in debates about morality.
The theistic argument about morals is that atheists cannot derive morality logically. Of course they can crab onto Christian morals and claim them for their own. They don’t want to be kicked out of polite society, so they arbitrarily grab whatever morality is popular at the time so they will fit in. But the great atheist philosophers, such as Pete Singer of Harvard today, have demonstrated that real morality is not logical for atheists, only arbitrary.
You say morals have no logical basis without Christianity from which to derive principals, and yet you fail to extend this point in the slightest. Which points do they borrow, why are they uniquely Christian in origin, what aspects make them inseparable from theology?
Is Christianity specifically the originator of morality? Or do you mean theology in general? Clearly a great deal of Christian morality is derived from Judaic teachings, so I feel as if you’re treading into chicken/egg territory. If Christians ‘crab onto’ Judaic morality, from whom did the Jews ‘crab onto’ for theirs?
Perhaps the best rebuttal for you is the most widely known moral code. Even Jesus himself requoted it.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
‘The Golden Rule is a fairly concise definition of a core moral code and almost certainly not divinely inspired (at least not by a Christian divinity).
Gee, then why doesn’t God drown all the orphans that are currently in the world? I guess orphans these days are more self-sufficient, eh?
I don’t think giving sarcastic responses to them is going to win anyone over. If UN workers at Haiti shot some orphans at point blank range, and said they were doing them a favor, I think we would all agree that was murder.
Naturally things are a lot more complicated when God controls everything and so even a “natural” death is due to His will, but I’m just saying an atheist is not going to be persuaded by your argument here.
I’m not here to prove that God doesn’t exist. I know I cannot prove that just like I can’t prove that that my lamp isn’t the ruler of the universe. What I am trying to understand is why religious people think God is such a great being. Whenever something bad happens nobody ever says God is messed up for doing that, they always make excuses for him that they wouldn’t make for anyone else. That bothers me. That’s it.
Oops sorry I thought you were the guy making the orphans point. I.e. I was responding to the guy who said God did the orphans a favor by drowning them too.
But since he wasn’t being as sarcastic as you were, my whole point was useless.
So anyway, sorry for “correcting” you, I thought I was telling a fellow Christian to try to be more tolerant.
Bob, these statements whether or not they are true to you, do not accurately describe the universe and its history. The age of the earth, the process by which it was created, and humans evolving into our present form over millions of years. If you can acknowledge that your truths are fundamentally unable to describe the physical processes in the universe then I will take back my “morally disgusting” comment.
Also does your comment about the Muslims and Hitchens mean that even though Christianity is true to you, you will admit that there is a possible you are wrong and there is no god?
BTW thanks for the response!!!!! I know you are very busy.
Roger, I don’t want to get into evolution etc. But for your big question, yes, I admit it is possible I am wrong and there is no God. I hope you also would admit it’s possible you are wrong about this very important question.
Bob,
If my answer to the question was “no god does not exist”, I will admit it is possible I am wrong. However my answer to the question has been and always will be ” I don’t know” therefore I spend little time thinking about it, other than to try and figure out why others do.
One of the big problems for me is acceptance of both evolution and the “Cambrian explosion.” It is not a reasonable position. Of course not everyone has the same motives for believing in evolution, but the importance of this construct to humanists, the left, libertines, etc., cannot be understated. They do not want to allow for the possibilty of a creator so they have to cling to the old faith or the best explanation regardless of how problematic it becomes. They would rather not admit that we cannot honestly explain the mechanics of the naturalistic processes because that would reopen the possiblity that the Bible is true. And that would bring back the old morality. After all, we have spent the last two centuries trying to get away from Christianity and the awful societal structures it led to, haven’t we.
Robert:
I had a very different impression of the ‘real’ presenters our friendly State anti-drug propagandist paraded before us…. I found it to be classic selective observation bias – drug use is bad, these people used drugs and had bad results, therefore if you use drugs you will have bad results.
We certainly didn’t have people like my father who drink very occasionally and experimented slightly with drugs in college – we wouldn’t want to suggest people could make their own decisions and behave responsibly.
I don’t find it necessary to describe belief in God as irrational in order to justify my being an atheist. I find religion distasteful chiefly for two reasons; a) it is a form of collectivism that embraces and exalts a central human authority b) worldly manifestations of religion fail to adequately explain natural phenomena that we can explain with science. (creation myths and so on)
If your book fails to explain how the earth was created, or the process by which creatures evolved – and my Reason (which is supposedly a gift from our Creator) tells me the proffered stories contradict what I observe – what conclusion shall I draw? Deny my Reason? If it is inadequate to let me interpret the world, how can I assume it is adequate to interpret between competing ‘words’ of God?
The question isn’t whether God exists… I can accept that you and I have opposing viewpoints on that topic. The question is how His existence tangibly effects our day-to-day lives. If believing that Jesus is Lord makes you a kinder and more generous person (and I have no reason to believe otherwise 🙂 ) then it is certainly not something I wish to condemn or discourage. If your beliefs lead you towards mysticism – the Earth is 6000 years old, dinosaurs did not exist (?!), evolution is a lie, and so on – well I would have to ask why those opinions (based upon Faith) are more valid than say, believing the Earth is flat, or that demons and monsters inhabit the High Seas.
I believe that our understanding of the Physical Universe (whether a product of random Chance or Divine Intervention) increases as our species ages – as our understanding increases it necessarily requires us to periodically reconcile new observation with outdated dogma.
a) it is a form of collectivism that embraces and exalts a central human authority
Some religions do and some don’t. Protestant Christianity does not.
b) worldly manifestations of religion fail to adequately explain natural phenomena that we can explain with science. (creation myths and so on)
Evolution adequately explains the universe only if you insist on being completely ignorant of the competing science. As most evolutionists, I’m certain you will refuse to even consider the opposing science ( of which there is much) out of fear that it might destroy you faith in evolution. On scientific ground, evolution is junk science. It’s exactly like the “science” of euthanasia popular before WWII to which all scientists adhered.
But even if evolution were science, it could not disprove the existence of God. Science deals with the material world. God is not part of the material world. All that scientists can can say is that they can’t find God in the material world so he must not be part of the material world. If a world outside the material world, or even another dimension to this material world exist, then science is impotent to say anything about it at all. It becomes a matter of philosophy.
And why do you put scientific knowledge on a pedestal? It has nothing whatsoever to say about the important issues of life. Sure, it has increased our wealth, which is nice, but it has done nothing to improve society by say reducing crime or drug use or domestic violence. And most of the world still lives in starvation poverty. In other words, science has done very little to answer the most important human questions. It can’t even provide a decent moral system. It’s tempting to say that the advances of science are trivial compared to the important human questions.
I will admit that Protestantism in many practices is perhaps the least collectivist of Christian theologies. That’s like saying Kabul is the most advanced city in Afghanistan.
You use the word science, but I’m not sure it means what you think it means. “Science” opposing evolution, as in the theory that we’ve formed based upon fossil records, genetic experimentation and tedious observation, is not science by any definition of the word. It is not evidence based, it is not falsifiable, it does not adjust to contradictory evidence. It’s conclusion is present in the hypothesis.
I also never suggested that science could be (or should be) used to ‘disprove’ the existence of God. I said that we’re capable of observing the physical world and our chosen theologies shouldn’t demand that we ignore those observations.
Science has nothing to say about the important issues of life? How someone has lived on this planet in this century can say that without irony is completely shocking to me. How can you believe in a God that created the entire universe and not be impressed by its majesty and appreciative of our ability to perceive it’s nuance and mystery. To explore living cells, examine distant star systems, electronically visualize the brain’s thoughts in progress. Surely nothing of value from any of these.
And it certainly has reduced crime and violence – by margins that prior to the 20th century would have been unimaginable. By nearly every measurable standard we live in a safer, cleaner, and friendlier society than any other that has ever existed on the planet. This is almost entirely due to scientific progress, liberal democracies, and free association. It has virtually nothing to do with organized religion – which only involved itself
And yes, much of the world still lives in starvation and poverty. You might notice these areas tend to be the most dogmatic, religious, and primitive. The places like Uganda which still want the death penalty for homosexuality. Surely they’re not your examples of places that exalt technology and progress?
The parts of the world that embraced reason and modern science have experienced unprecedented advancement and progress in an astonishingly short period. To suggest otherwise is simply to ignore the evidence surrounding you, perhaps something not unfamiliar to you.
“Science” opposing evolution, as in the theory that we’ve formed based upon fossil records, genetic experimentation and tedious observation, is not science by any definition of the word. It is not evidence based, it is not falsifiable, it does not adjust to contradictory evidence. It’s conclusion is present in the hypothesis.”
You only advertise your ignorance of the subject. Creation science is half a century old and made up of real PhD’s with degrees from top schools who correct the junk science of evolution. A good example is Dr. Walt Brown’s book available at creationscience.com. Dr. Brown is a reformed evolutionist who became a creationist because of the science.
“To explore living cells, examine distant star systems, electronically visualize the brain’s thoughts in progress. Surely nothing of value from any of these.”
Again, please be honest. I did not say science has nothing of value whatsoever. I wrote that what science teaches us is trivial in comparison to the great problems of human civilization.
” By nearly every measurable standard we live in a safer, cleaner, and friendlier society than any other that has ever existed on the planet. This is almost entirely due to scientific progress, liberal democracies, and free association. It has virtually nothing to do with organized religion – which only involved itself”
That’s not at all true. What scientific achievement do you credit for reducing crime? And where do you get your evidence? There are no good statistics on crime before WWII, but anecdotal evidence suggests that crime is as bad today, or worse, than in past centuries. And if you include war as a problem, the scientific age of the 20th century was the bloodiest in the history of mankind.
And if you don’t see the connecting between modern Western democracies and Christianity, you just don’t know your history at all, nor the history of science, which many philosophers assert would never have developed outside of the Christian world view. Ask yourself, why did modern science develop in Western Europe, and not in the more advance empires of China and the Ottoman Empire at the birth of modern science?
“The parts of the world that embraced reason and modern science have experienced unprecedented advancement and progress in an astonishingly short period.”
Exactly, and you’re talking about the Christian West. But you give too much credit to science for development. Science didn’t begin to contribute anything significant to economic development until well into the 20th century. Almost all advances in technology until them came from tinkerers and mechanics who weren’t all that well educated but were intelligent.
As Feser writes in “The Last Superstition” you have fallen for the myth that the enlightenment rescued us from the darkness of religious superstition. Its the pop song for atheism, but it just ain’t true. That’s about as bad a history as you can possibly get. Devout, godly men gave us modern science and they could do so because of Christianity’s long term emphasis on reason.
You said this about science ” It has nothing whatsoever to say about the important issues of life.” I interpreted that to mean “Science has nothing to say about the important issues of life”
So literally THE ONLY CHANGE was the removal of “whatsoever” and I’m accused of dishonestly modifying what you wrote? Because you certainly DID NOT write “what science teaches us is trivial in comparison to the great problems of human civilization.”
It’s not surprising you rely on ‘anecdotal evidence’ to support your completely baseless suppositions. There are reams of data about the decrease in violent crime, the decrease in drug & alcohol abuse, increased racial tolerance, and so on. To suggest that precisely the opposite has occurred is borderline lunacy.
Furthermore, if we want to talk about crime and religion, we can look at Japan. A country where 1/5 believe in God, more than 70% have no professed religion, and they have amongst the lowest crime rates on the planet. They also experienced extraordinarily rapid growth once ‘rediscovered’, not by embracing western Christianity, but by embracing western technologies.
Your examples of China’s and the Ottoman’s failures to overtake the West rely on some heavy assumptions, and ignore a great deal about the individual cultural history of the nations. First, just because they weren’t Christian doesn’t mean they didn’t have their own dogma and prejudice to restrain progress. Second, they absolutely were more advanced than Europe for many many years – having developed gunpowder many years prior, developing calculus, preserving the great works of Ancient Greece, and so on. They also developed an impulse steam engine, the sextant, the telescope, and more. Their failings are more indicative of the problems with the nonsensical societal restrictions that accompany religion than somehow a lack of a specific type of religion.
Historical examples of where modern democracy developed also suffer from observation fallacies. Clearly if modern democracies had developed differently, or elsewhere, we wouldn’t be the same people here to talk about them. It also prescribes a great deal of causation to one factor (religion) while ignoring climate, demographics, politics, emigration patterns, etc. If Christianity is conducive to the growth of technology and modern democracy, why not in Africa or South America?
“Science didn’t begin to contribute anything significant to economic development until well into the 20th century.”
This statement is pretty astounding. I hope you didn’t think about it too heavily, because I can’t really believe you believe it.
You’ve managed to completely ignore developments in engineering like the steam engine, the cotton gin, the locomotive, modern sailing techniques (and navigation), not to mention the beginnings of modern vaccinations and germ theory.
“And it certainly has reduced crime and violence – by margins that prior to the 20th century would have been unimaginable.”
Here we have a man unaware of the Holocaust, the Gulag, the killing fields, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki — incredible!
Michael,
There are two people. Person A says New York exists. Person B says it does not. Person A and Person B get into a car in North Jersey and proceed to drive through the Holland Tunnel and end up where…New York City. At this point Person B can still believe whatever he wishes, however New York exists and nothing he says or does can prove otherwise.
Now let’s take the same scenario but instead of New York. let’s say god. There is nothing that Person A can do to prove to Person B that his claims are in fact the truth about reality. You say that in order to realize this truth one must accept that it is true and start praying. That is an unfair standard because for people such as myself, will never believe in anything until they have seen evidence that it exists.
“is nothing that Person A can do to prove to Person B that his claims are in fact the truth about reality.”
There are many things that a person can do to prove the existence of God. You have been deluded into believing that the only truth that exists is what the natural sciences finds. In philosophy they would call that a contingent truth, in other words a truth that could change and therefore is not an important truth. Necessary truth, that which cannot change, is found only in reason and revelation, but I’ll stick with reason for the moment. There are whole libraries of the logical evidence for God. Western civilization and Christianity are founder upon them. Of course, if you arbitrarily determine that you will accept only evidence from natural science, then you have proven that you don’t care about the truth. You only care about maintaining your irrational faith that no God exists because you have rigged the debate in such a way that only your side can win. At the same time, you will accept only the evidence that evolutionary scientists present, so it’s clear that you have assumed your conclusion, so why debate it?
I am constantly amazed at the willingness of Christians to suspend logic when it comes to basic questions. Here’s a real life example I heard from the pulpit not two weeks ago. A couple in the church have a son who lives in Australia and who was recently diagnosed with lung cancer of an extremely aggressive type. The pastor let us all know that we should be praying diligently for his health. He then said the familiar “God has a plan for this.” The next week we learned that the “leading doctor in this area” (has anyone noticed how they are always the leading expert, doctor, etc. in these cases) goes to the – wait for it – the very same church as their son. See, God allows the cancer and provides the best physician to treat it – this works for God’s glory. WTF – that should not pass the laugh or smell test of a first grader.
On a separate note and related to Bob’s recent trip to Haiti. They pulled a sole survior from a builiding in which a few tens or hundreds were killed and survivor says – wait for it again – “this is proof that God loves me.” I guess it is also proof that he hates everyone else.
All the pain and suffering is for some good purpose – spoken by those who are not directly affected or closely related to the directly affected. It is such an out. “My daughter died giving birth to twins.” “I am sorry to hear that. Did you know that God has a plan for that.” Guess what God, stop giving me lemons and commanding me to accept them as lemonade.
I know Christians believe this stuff sincerely but as Jack Nicholson said in As Good As It Gets – “Go sell crazy someplace up – we’re full here.”
Knox, fair enough, and I did acknowledge that issue in my post upfront.
As far as being amazed at our willingness to suspend logic etc., I think it’s no more sloppy than your citing the parents of a kid who gets cancer, and a guy pulled from a building, and then seamlessly say, “spoken by those who are not directly affected or closely related to the directly affected.” Presumably the parents were affected by it, and the guy was good friends with at least some of the people in the building who died.
I also mentioned that in my post. I am not saying, “Everyone in the world who had something awful happened, I’m here to tell you there is a plan for that, so suck it up.” No, if you go back and reread the post, I specifically said that the bad stuff in MY life makes sense to me now, and I do not feel bitter about it. So I’m hoping that people who had much worse can do the same, and I see evidence that people with strong faith can in fact do the same.
So anyway all I’m doing in this reply is saying that I urge you not to dismiss 30-second sound bites from Christians as proof that their position is dumb, anymore than I would dismiss your position because of its internal ‘contradiction” (where 2 out of 3 of your examples didn’t support your big objection).
Again, I would like to point out the dishonesty that pervades atheism. Knox takes a single incident and makes it stand for all of Christianity. Does he think we can find no similar examples in atheism? We could provide thousands of such examples, but no it would be dishonest to do so.
As for the irrationality of the cancer situation, yes, individual Christians are often irrational. It is popular to believe that we have no free will and that God causes everything that happens, good and bad. But that is not Biblical Christianity. How about discussing what the great Christians of the past, such as Thomas Aquinas, taught, and not what the weakest members of the community think?
In Biblical Christianity, evil things like cancer are the result of God’s judgment against mankind for our rebellion against him. God does not pull our strings; we are not puppets. God distanced himself from mankind and this world and let things follow the laws of nature and human nature. But that judgment also has a merciful side. He intended it to persuade us to give up the rebellion and rejoin him. Clearly it is not enough because most people don’t end the rebellion even in the worst circumstances. Christians continue to suffer the same consequences of the initial rebellion even though they have surrendered for a variety of reasons given in the Bible. But God does break into the world and respond to prayer, sometimes performing miracles. And he can bring something very valuable out of suffering.
Thanks for the response Bob. I was raised in a Protestant background and have attended church for forty years and still continue to attend even as an atheist with my believing spouse and children. The point about how Christians respond to people with tragedies in their lives – using the “its part of God’s plan” or “this will work to God’s glory” is a an out because the real response should be “I don’t understand why your son who is a believer is struck with aggressive cancer and a loving God should not make his followers go through this therefore I have to question whether he loves us or not.”
I know we are all part of a fallen world and that nonsense argument. I guess that really begs the efficacy of believing in God to begin with. After all, if believers and non-believers suffer in the same manner – what’s the point of believing? It is the reverse of Pascal’s wager.
I just think that falling back on cliches about God’s will is not ultimately a satisfying explanation for pain, suffering, perseverance or “miracles” like providing doctors in just the right place at the right time. God gets the ultimate benefit of the doubt in all things – there is a doctor who is the best and cures the cancer, there is no doctor or nothing can be done – both work to God’s glory. In statistical analysis we apparently regress all the variables against each other and get a perfect correlation – therefore we explain nothing.
Lastly, if God knows all outcomes he is powerless to change them. If he can change them then he doesn’t know the outcomes. How can we square the omniscience/omnipotence circle?
Actually, really lastly – I came to my atheism following a very long struggle with my faith. I read George Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God before I went to graduate school and battled with its argument and others over the intervening years. I finally had to admit that I had a faith in reason and not God.
“a loving God should not make his followers go through this therefore I have to question whether he loves us or not.”
The Bible explains why God allows Christians to go through the same suffering that non-Christians do. In part, God uses suffering to make us more like himself. He wants to improve our character. In part, God wants people to love him for who he is. But we simply can’t understand everything about God or he wouldn’t be God. You are setting up your own criteria for determining if God loves you. If God doesn’t end all suffering and pain, then by your definition he doesn’t love you. But did you eliminate all suffering and pain from your children’s lives as a loving father? I would suspect you had to disciipline them a few times, force them to go to school and do homework. Does that mean you didn’t love them? No, you demonstrated your love in that you wanted them to grow up to have certain knowledge and character that you considered important. The analogy doesn’t carry over exactly to God’s relationship to mankind because the suffering is much worse in some cases, but the principle is similar. And God demonstrated his love for mankind in the person and sacrifice of Jesus. And the Bible is full of other references to the ways in which God demonstrates his love.
Humility is required for a relationship with God. Setting up your own standard and insisting God abide by it is not humility and God makes it clear he is no man’s servant.
So what is an atheists answer to suffering and evil? Atheists don’t have an answer because suffering and evil are religious concepts. Suffering is necessary for evolution to take place. Evolution happens through massive death. Defective organisms need to die in order to not contaminate the gene pool. So what we call suffering is really a good thing that benefits the species. And evil doesn’t exist, because what we call morality is nothing but a coping device that gave some of us a leg up on survival in the past but means nothing today. The Christian response to suffering and evil may not totally satisfy, but is it worse than the atheist one?
“if God knows all outcomes he is powerless to change them.”
I’m sorry to be rude, but that’s pretty childish thinking. God can know all outcomes because he doesn’t exist in time and space. You’re trying to shoe horn God into your materialist philosophy. God is not part of the material world of time and space. Even Aristotle understood that. God knows all outcomes because he knows all things. Again, a parent/child relationship provides insight. As parents can predict the outcomes of their child’s behavior because they know the child well and they know a lot more than the child, so God can know all outcomes because he knows the universe he created very well. And God can change whatever he wants to in the universe because he is all powerful.
“I read George Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God before I went to graduate school and battled with its argument and others over the intervening years.”
Did you read anything else, or did you struggle with Smith’s book using nothing but the limited knowledge you picked up in Sunday School? The latter is how most Christians lose faith. Many Christians have a crisis of faith at some time in their lives, usually it happens at the age we go to college. Until that point, we rely on the faith of our parents or someone else we respect. Our faith is based on an appeal to authority. But in our late teens or early twenties we start needing our reasons for continuing to believe. For me it was in college. But I didn’t struggle with just the limited knowledge that I had attained up to that point. Frankly, by the time you finished college, your depth as a Christian was pretty shallow. It is in most people. And your knowledge was very limited. I went on to read the great atheist philosophers like Nietzche, Camus, Sartre, etc because I wanted to know what the best atheists had to say. Then I read Christians like Francis Schaeffer and CS Lewis. In my mind the latter two had the best arguments. Later I discovered many great Christians who could shame atheists with their reason and knowledge. I found atheists to be very shallow.
If you care about the subject at all, and it appears that you don’t since you haven’t done anything since leaving college, I would recommend you start with Feser’s “The Last Superstition.”
Knox,
It sounds like you are an honest man, and your questions are quite good. Those little pithy, tired cliches that you hear from many church goers bother me too.
Would you by chance tell me about your conversion experience to Christianity? Was there ever a time in your life when you were thoroughly taught the Gospel, thought you understood the essence of the story, and believed it? If so, I am sincerely facinated, since you may be one of those persons that the New Testament writers describe as having “fallen away” from the faith. I would love to examine your spiritual path away from the faith since good case studies in soteriology are rare, and sometimes people are not honest about their experiences. You seem like the kind of guy who is ready to open up.
Absolutely. I am still searching for answers and am continually disheartened by the unwillingness of many believers to either question or provide answers that don’t devolve into personal attacks, the impugning of the questioner by engaging in guilt by association or a simple “I don’t know.” For example, fundamentalist in these posts refers to Dawkins and Hitchens as dishonest – that may or may not be true but perhaps a citation or example would help prove and explain the accusation? It just seems to me to be patently dishonest to not a) acknowledge weakness in an argument or b) attempt to actually engage someone in a discussion rather than resort to cliches, ad hominens, etc.
“The details of my life are quite inconsequential.” But here goes, I was raised in a Baptist home – not Southern – by a father who came from a Christian home and a mother who became a Christian after marriage. My mother has been involved in Bible Study Fellowship as a leader for over 30 years. My father has been in positions of church leadership for years – Elders, Deacons, etc. I was baptized at age 10, considered myself a born-again believer and I am thoroughly familiar with the Gospel and the claims of the Bible.
When I was around 21-22 (currently 40) I kept seeing books on atheism in the Laissez-Faire Books catalog. I bought, as I said before, George Smith’s book on atheism but didn’t read it for a while. I picked up to read it and felt that I was committing moral error. After I read the book and realized there were a lot that needed explaining I inquired of many believers as to the questions I had – some of which are in these posts. For example, the omnipotence-omniscience question, free will, and many others. I only came out of the atheist closet last year after 17 years of struggling – and I continue struggling – with questions of faith.
I find people like fundamentalist ultimately demeaning and not adhering to the commandment to love your neighbor. After all, fundamentalist assumes that, when I say I struggle with these issues, that I am lying, ignorant (willfully or otherwise), evil or maybe all three. Not true. I ask questions that are legitimate and deserve legitimate consideration and answers.
For example, in Matthew the text says that the tombs rolled open and the saints roamed the streets of Jerusalem. Is it completely unreasonable to ask for historical records – outside the Bible (that is self-referential fundamentalist) to back up this claim. Certainly, Jerusalem was packed with people duirng Passover and no one – again for emphasis – no one recorded the occurrence of zombies, ghosts, or however the formerly dead are referred to as walking the streets of the city. Surely, somebody would have written something the equivalent of “was in Jerusalem for Passover and all of sudden dead people were wandering the streets.”
BTW I find many things in Christianity to be absolutely positive and wonderful. I heard William Lane Craig say once that the only problem with Christianity is Christians. While I find that funny and true to a point I have to say that there are many humble Christians who say flatly “I don’t know but my faith is stronger than the requirement for answers.” That is honest, heartfelt and I can accept that. What I can’t accept is the “even Aristotle said that” kind of argument that fundamentalist engages in. I ask a serious question and the immediate appeal to authority – without explanation – is supposed to suffice to shut me up. I don’t think so. I find people like fundamentalist scary – they have no sense of either irony or humor.
“God can know all outcomes because he doesn’t exist in time and space.”
I hate to be rude as well but how can you possibly know that? God is the creator of the natural law but is not subject to it. I see. This answers the question “could God make a stone so large that even he couldn’t lift it?” As humans gain more and more knowledge of the way the universe works and is structured the less and less we need the God explanation to “fill in the gaps.” As many atheists say the God we have left is just that – the God of the gaps. I admire you making an effort to elevate God from being the minimal explainer of those things we don’t know but ultimately I am not satisfied.
I love how the assumption is I have a “Sunday School” understanding of God and how you assume I read one book and haven’t “done anything else since college.” Thanks for “misunderestimating” me. No, to the contrary as I said above I read it and other things and continue to do so. For example, I just finished two Lee Strobel books – let me cut the chase – he doesn’t provide any decent answers either. Same is true for C.S. Lewis and others. I really have grappled with these issues and I just disagree with the faithful. I am not angry about it or anything else – just amazed at the credulity and gullibility of some. No offense. But resorting to the Bible as “proof” is amazingly self-referential and actually not very effective. For example, there is no historical proof of the Exodus as laid out in the Old Testament and no proof that the Romans required persons to return to their town of origin to register of the Census as laid out in the New. Just ahistorical backfilling throughout both Testaments in many, not all, cases.
“I hate to be rude as well but how can you possibly know that?”
Through logic. It was Aristotle’s conclusion as well. It’s what’s called a necessary truth. For more detail, see Feser’s book.
“he doesn’t provide any decent answers either.”
That’s not accurate. Strobel and Lewis provide excellent answers; they simply don’t pass your criteria for answers. I have read both and many others and think their arguments and evidence are ironclad. What for you would constitute good evidence? If you’re like most atheists I discuss this with, this will be the end of the discussion because you will now realize that there is no evidence that you would accept.
“I am not angry about it or anything else – just amazed at the credulity and gullibility of some. ”
What amazes me about atheist writers, especially guys like Dawkins and Hitchens, is their blatant dishonesty.
“But resorting to the Bible as “proof” is amazingly self-referential and actually not very effective.”
I don’t know anyone who does that and never have read anyone who does it. Who are you referring to?
“there is no historical proof of the Exodus as laid out in the Old Testament and no proof that the Romans required persons to return to their town of origin to register of the Census as laid out in the New.”
So why do you assume that the NT documents are false? They are historical documents and therefore evidence. And there are many other historical documents that support the Gospel histories on enough points that we can be confident that they are accurate on historical events for which there is less support.
“And it certainly has reduced crime and violence – by margins that prior to the 20th century would have been unimaginable.”
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. The “God of the gaps” was a criticism originated by intelligent Christians to warn less intelligent Christians not to make such dumb arguments. This argument does not lay a finger on any serious Christian thinker.
Knox,
I hope you did not think I was labeling your problems with Christianity as uninformed. As I said, I think some of your questions are good ones, since I also wrestled with many of these same issues for years. My question to you is simply whether you ever believed the Gospel, and what it was that you understand to be the Gospel story. Please don’t think I’m diminishing your personal study of theology. I’m not. It truly sounds like you have conducted a genuine inquiry into the faith, and reject it on percieved rational grounds, but I am curious about whether you ever accepted the Gospel story as a fact, and were moved to pray for God’s foregiveness.
Yes. See above.
I’m very reluctant into entering this discussion, but I somehow feel compelled. Beware, the following is very, very long. And I didn’t spend very long editing it. And it is mostly directed at fundamentalist, but I welcome any criticism (assuming anyone bothers reading this).
Fundamentalist,
Please, stop lumping all atheists together as smearing, hostile know-nothings based on your anecdotal experiences with them, and then getting upset when atheists lump all Christians as irrational because of their interpretation of the Bible. Can we call for a ‘no collectivization truce’ here?
On to your points:
“On scientific ground, evolution is junk science.”
You can disagree with evolution, but you cannot call the theory that has contributed so much to drug and vaccination theory as ‘junk’.
“A good example is Dr. Walt Brown’s book available at creationscience.com.”
Dr Brown has a PhD in mechanical engineering; not geology, on which he bases his hydroplate theory. This is why many geologists find numerous problems with his theory, not least of which is the proposition that a sphere of water could have ever existed under the Earth’s crust.
“Ask yourself, why did modern science develop in Western Europe, and not in the more advance empires of China and the Ottoman Empire at the birth of modern science?”
I must now call you on your ignorance of history. From medicine alone, the Chinese had already discovered most of what was to be discovered by the Europeans during that time, having identified and having cures for smallpox, diabetes, goiter, and various deficiency diseases, well by 1200 AD, and most before Jesus was born. Many of these discoveries were not made by Westerners until well into the 19th and 20th centuries (some even won Nobel Prizes for their rediscoveries), when Chinese civilization was at its lowest, and most authoritarian and collectivist, point.
Mechanically, the Chinese had working compasses, seismograph, gunpowder, petroleum, and even manned flight while the glorious Europeans were burning witches and people reading the Bible in English in the dark ages.
While I know very little about the Ottomans, I will say that the Islamic Caliphate also discovered much of modern math hundreds of years before the Europeans. By 1200 AD, the Muslims had already developed modern arithmetic, geometry, and calculus, hundreds of years before Pascal, Newton, and Leibniz. And they had based it all on Indian mathematics, which predated them hundreds of years prior!
“Devout, godly men gave us modern science and they could do so because of Christianity’s long term emphasis on reason.”
No. As I have clearly shown, you do not have to be a Christian, or even have a Christian society, or even have any knowledge, pretense, history, or understanding of Christian history or theology, to get modern science. The Chinese had many of the supposed ‘modern’ inventions, including cures for diseases, hundreds of years before Christ.
“So what is an atheists answer to suffering and evil? Atheists don’t have an answer because suffering and evil are religious concepts.”
No they are not. Suffering is long term pain and deprivation. Evil is a grossly immoral thing. Causing a group of people to suffer is evil. A moral thing is something that promotes the long-term survival of a society. There, I have defined suffering and evil in a context of morality without the need of explicitly or implicitly invoking god or Christianity or any religious scale.
In a previous post, I recall you brought the issue of some Middle Eastern tribes [and Arctic ones[ that abandoned their young girls when the going got tough. You asked how an atheist can describe their actions. Allow me: abandoning young girls is an immoral action, because it is not in the long-term survival interest of the tribe. In the future, there will eventually be less females in the tribe than that which is required to sustain the tribe’s population. This will lead to a dwindling gene pool and weaker offspring.
If you choose to come back with, “what if they abandoned little boys?” While ultimately they would face the same fate, the tribe may last longer in this instance as the women would learn to hunt. However, hunting was a man’s game for a reason: because of its many dangers, fatality rates were high. And I’ve already discussed the ramifications to a tribe with a fast-dwindling female population.
So I have also denounced child abandonment as immoral on reasoned, atheistic grounds. Can we please rest this argument?
“Suffering is necessary for evolution to take place.”
Nonsense. Evolution takes place through random mutation and natural selection. Every birth is subject to random mutation. Most random mutations are entirely benign, meaningless, and invisible. If a random mutation occurred that wasn’t meaningless or invisible, and contributed to the life of the organism, then it is subject to natural selection. If the random mutation has perceived negative effects, it will be selected against, meaning the mutation carrier will not mate, either through the conscious choice of others, or the self-destruction of the organism itself. If it is a positive mutation, then the organism is more likely to mate and procreate. If it is lucky, its offspring will have the same mutation. [NB: a mutation is any change from the previous generation.]
“Evolution happens through massive death.”
This is categorically wrong. Evolution happens through massive birth.
“Defective organisms need to die in order to not contaminate the gene pool. So what we call suffering is really a good thing that benefits the species. ”
I have already demonstrated this reasoning is false.
“The Christian response to suffering and evil may not totally satisfy, but is it worse than the atheist one?”
Christian response: God allows evil and suffering on purpose, to give you character.
Atheist response: People are responsible for their own evil actions, and must be dealt with appropriately. Suffering can happen at the hands of nature, through famine or natural disaster, and people are free to help those they feel are in need.
So it is at the very least no better.
“God can know all outcomes because he doesn’t exist in time and space.”
I can accept this premise entirely within a materialist philosophy: that of multiple universes, where some being could technically have all these powers. However, I am not convinced by the evidence.
In closing, I will assume the daring position that it is not necessarily religiosity or atheism or scientism or statism or communism that is the danger to humanity, but rather collectivism in general.
“You can disagree with evolution, but you cannot call the theory that has contributed so much to drug and vaccination theory as ‘junk’.”
You’re right. I can’t. But the theory of evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with the science of genetics, drugs or vaccinations. The theory of evolution has contributed absolutely nothing to our understanding of any field or to its advancement. Remember that Mendel was the father of genetics and he was a devout believer and opponent of Darwin. Evolutionists ignored Mendel for decades because of his opposition to Darwin, but were forced to go back and learn from Mendel in order to advance genetics. And genetics provides the best evidence that evolution is junk science.
“Dr Brown has a PhD in mechanical engineering; not geology, on which he bases his hydroplate theory. This is why many geologists find numerous problems with his theory…”
Dr. Brown’s book is an encyclopedia of the best work in creation science. Check the footnotes and you’ll see that. Not all of the information in the book is by or about him. And does it surprise you that evolutionists find numerous problems with his theory? Of course they will. But are they correct? I have read some of his critics and as usual find that they are attacking straw men for the most part. The few serious criticisms he answer quite well.
“From medicine alone, the Chinese had already discovered most of what was to be discovered by the Europeans during that time…”
I dont’ understand what you’re trying to say or how you disagree with me. I wrote that at the time of the birth of modern science in Europe, China and the Ottoman Empire were much more advanced than Europe. You seem to agree with me on that. My point was that China and the Ottoman’s stagnated at the time that modern science was developing and took off in Europe. How do you explain their stagnation with our advance? And you have to admit, that the science of the Chinese and Ottoman’s was not modern science. It was qualitatively different, which is one of the reasons that it did not advance while the science of Europe did.
“No they are not. Suffering is long term pain and deprivation. Evil is a grossly immoral thing. Causing a group of people to suffer is evil.”
Your statements are tautologies. What you don’t offer is a logical reason for the concepts to exist among humanity. And your idea of long-term survival is arbitrary. Others may have a different idea of what constitutes long term survival.
“In the future, there will eventually be less females in the tribe than that which is required to sustain the tribe’s population.”
You think the people who murder baby girls are stupid? They don’t kill everyone of them. They’re smart enough to keep a few around for breeding purposes, like cattle. So in your ethics, as long as they keep enough baby girls for long term survival, it’s moral to murder the surplus baby girls.
“Evolution takes place through random mutation and natural selection.”
And how does natural selection work? It works through survival of the fittest. The least fit need to die. They must not survive or they contaminate the gene pool. And if they die without procreating, they don’t live to collect social security. They have to die young. Starvation is evolution’s most important tool.
“Evolution happens through massive birth.”
So no animals ever died and no species ever went extinct? Of course not. You can’t avoid massive death and suffering for evolution to work.
“Atheist response: People are responsible for their own evil actions, and must be dealt with appropriately. Suffering can happen at the hands of nature, through famine or natural disaster, and people are free to help those they feel are in need.”
No, thats the Christian response to suffering. You did not provide an atheist explanation for why humans consider suffering to be evil, or why we even have categories of good and evil in our vocabulary. You simply stole the traditional Christian response to evil and labeled it atheist. And you refuse to acknowledge the logical conclusions of atheism. I can understand why. If atheists follow the logic of atheism to its logical conclusion, it’s very ugly. Go read some of the great atheist philosophers who tried. Read Pete Singer. Pete does a fairly good job of trying to be consistent with his atheism. Most athesits, like yourself, find those conclusions repulsive and so steal from theism as if philosophy were a cafeteria.
“I can accept this premise entirely within a materialist philosophy: that of multiple universes, where some being could technically have all these powers.”
That’s interesting because I have often thought of the spiritual world as something like a fifth dimension, though not a parallel universe. BTW, the whole point of inventing parallel universes in physics was to provide an escape from the necessity of God to which modern physics was heading as a result of increasing knowledge. Anyway, back to dimensions, it’s easier to think in terms of 2 and 3 dimensions. If we exist in a 2D world, we will understand some things about a 3D world, but no all. And much of what someone who exists in the 3D world will seem miraculous to those in the 2D world. For example, a being in the 3D world would be able to leave the 2D world at any point, travel through 3D space and re-enter 2D space at a different place and time. To the 2D world, it would seem as if the 3D person had vanished from one place and instanly appeared at the other.
“…the danger to humanity, but rather collectivism in general.”
And where did modern collectist ideology begin? It began with atheists. See Hayek’s “The Counter-Revolution in Science”. Also see Feser’s “The Last Superstition” and “The Twilight of Atheism” by McGrath. Modern concepts of liberty began with the Late Scholastics (theologians), as the Mises Institute has demonstrated many times.
PS, Evolutionists would love for us to forget about euthenasia. Unfortunately for them, we theists keep resurrecting it. Before WWII, euthenasia was all the rage among the intellectuals and the top scientists in the world. It became public policy with family planning clinics which promoted abortion among the poor and minorities. The idea was that we can help evolution along by protecting the gene pool from the poor and minorities. Euthenasia died only after Hitler took it to its logical conclusion and people were repulsed by it. But atheism and evolution can provide no logical reason why Hitler was wrong. He was being very consistent with his atheism, something which most atheists refuse to do.
Thank you for your response. I really appreciate it.
“But the theory of evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with the science of genetics, drugs or vaccinations.”
Yes it does. In genetics, allele frequencies are determined mostly by natural selection. Evolutionary theory has contributed to the knowledge of antibiotic drugs, and live vaccines. Mendel is the father of genetics, but as I understand it, his theory was married with Darwin`s to give the modern understanding of genetics.
“The few serious criticisms he answer quite well.”
I am genuinely interested in his response to the criticism that a spherical layer of water cannot exist under the crust of the Earth, as well as his feelings on radiometric, incremental, and luminescent dating, and geochemistry in general.
“I dont’ understand what you’re trying to say or how you disagree with me.”
Your question was, “why did modern science develop in Western Europe, and not in the more advance empires of China and the Ottoman Empire at the birth of modern science?” To which my response was that so-called ‘modern science’ had already existed in China for centuries, including including knowledge of some technologies and medicines that were not known to the West until well into the 20th century.
“How do you explain their stagnation with our advance?”
Again, while I know very, very little about the Ottomans, I do know that at the exact same time of the industrial revolution and scientific revolution in Europe, China was going backwards into a state of massive war and collectivism. This is why they stopped advancing and the West steam-engined ahead, if you’ll pardon the pun.
“What you don’t offer is a logical reason for the concepts to exist among humanity.”
I’m sorry, I thought it was implicit in my post, but I’ll try again: Acts that are deemed to be predicated on wanton destruction are conceptually defined by humans as “evil”. To move away from tautology, I believe this is so because it is against the self-preservationist trait found in all humans, and most other successful organisms as well. When people are murdering, this is seen as a threat to the tribe, and by extension the species. The same for suffering. I hope this is satisfactory.
“You think the people who murder baby girls are stupid?”
Exactly the same way I think politicians and central bankers are stupid.
“They’re smart enough to keep a few around for breeding purposes, like cattle. So in your ethics, as long as they keep enough baby girls for long term survival, it’s moral to murder the surplus baby girls.”
No, they’re not smart enough. There is no way anyone can know what “enough baby girls for the long term” is; that would require both prescience and omniscience. May I humbly suggest you re-read Hayek’s Fatal Conceit?
“And how does natural selection work? It works through survival of the fittest. The least fit need to die. They must not survive or they contaminate the gene pool. And if they die without procreating, they don’t live to collect social security. They have to die young. Starvation is evolution’s most important tool.”
Natural selection is a very complicated process. But the basic gist of it is, if you survive birth, childhood, pubescence, and then mate, you have won the evolutionary game. The most important step is mating–if an organism dies or is seen to be struggling at any point prior to mating, it will not find a sexual partner. Evolution cannot happen without reproduction. Sexual attraction is evolution’s most important tool.
Just a point, though: I am not, by any means, an expert in biology. If you truly want a solid understanding of the subject, and I seem to recall you are an educator of some sort, may I, again, humbly suggest that you visit your local (or, if you wish, any) biology department and ask about evolution to a qualified expert? I feel you would find more complete, if not satisfactory, answers there than here-although I’m happy having this debate.
“You can’t avoid massive death and suffering for evolution to work.”
You seem to be confused as to what evolution is. The scientific definition is the change in allele frequencies from one generation to another. Wikipedia defines it as changes in inherited traits from generation to the next. The key being intergenerational changes. For there to be intergenerational changes, reproduction must occur. By definition, death inhibits evolution, and massive death threatens it altogether.
“You simply stole the traditional Christian response to evil and labeled it atheist.”
Given my above response (“Acts that are deemed to be predicated on wanton destruction are conceptually defined by humans as “evil”.”), I wonder if you still feel the same way.
“And you refuse to acknowledge the logical conclusions of atheism.”
I can acknowledge them just fine: atheists can be just as prone to irrational acts of wanton destruction as theists, but atheists will have a harder time justifying them, as no atheist can say, “Hitchens/Dawkins/Darwin came to me in my dream and commanded me to burn down Parliament!” As far as atheists doing immoral things in the name of science: science itself will unequivocally show them that their actions are wrong.
“Read Pete Singer. Pete does a fairly good job of trying to be consistent with his atheism. Most athesits, like yourself, find those conclusions repulsive and so steal from theism as if philosophy were a cafeteria.”
No, I find Peter Singer to be a bad philosopher not because of his atheism, but because of his consequentialist and sloppy thinking. Any man who considers killing his own elderly mother, as Singer has, is no friend of humanity.
Atheists can be subject to many of the same fallacies as anyone else, just like Austrian economists can be subject to bad economics like any other economist–there is nothing inherent in atheist philosophy that prohibits the mind from all fallacious thinking. The difference between atheists and Austrians, and theists and Keynesians, is the specific fallacies they cannot by definition succumb to–in the case of atheism, deification and afterlife fallacies, and with Austrian economists, central planning fallacies.
“That’s interesting because I have often thought of the spiritual world as something like a fifth dimension,”
This was exactly my point. “God” could be some being watching down at us from the fifth, sixth, nth dimension, and would be a mystery to us just as we’d be a mystery to a flatlander. My point was that this thinking is entirely materialist and coherent with the theistic worldview. However, I am not convinced by either explanation.
“And where did modern collectist ideology begin? It began with atheists.”
As I have demonstrated, collectivism is not inherent in atheist philosophy. But it is necessarily inherent in some form in theistic philosophy. However, my basic point is that both theists and atheists can come to understand the follies of collectivism, and both can be susceptible to systematic collectivist thinking.
“But atheism and evolution can provide no logical reason why Hitler was wrong.”
But evolution and science do have something to say about aimless and completely arbitrary decimation of the gene pool, as I have shown. And I believe I have provided an atheistic, non-tautological reason as to why wanton destruction is evil.
And Hitler, as well as most of the Nazis, all fancied themselves as Christians. Gott mit uns, indeed.
“He was being very consistent with his atheism, something which most atheists refuse to do.”
I strive for, and pride myself on, consistency, something which the MSM attacked Rand Paul for. If you believe you see any inconsistencies in what I have posted, I implore you point them out to me.
“science itself will unequivocally show them that their actions are wrong.”
Gene smacks self in forehead.
Of course, I was speaking in the abstract. Science obviously can’t do anything.
My point was about people saying, “look, this [otherwise morally repugnant action] is justifiable, because according to science, X will happen!” Opponents will say, no, according to science, X will not happen at all. And so when X doesn’t happen, it is as if science has showed them wrong.
But ok bad choice of words.
Several Mises Institute people lunge to hand Gene a sharp instrument.
“PS, Evolutionists would love for us to forget about euthenasia.”
I think you mean eugenics, not euthanasia.
“Before WWII, euthenasia was all the rage among the intellectuals and the top scientists in the world.”
“All the rage”? Really? I’d say “more popular.”
“It became public policy with family planning clinics which promoted abortion among the poor and minorities. The idea was that we can help evolution along by protecting the gene pool from the poor and minorities. Euthenasia died only after Hitler took it to its logical conclusion and people were repulsed by it. But atheism and evolution can provide no logical reason why Hitler was wrong.”
Neither atheism nor evolution produce any moral claims at all, so of course they can’t produce the one you want. Whether an atheist and evolutionists is unable to do so is doubtful.
And certainly SOME forms of eugenics are uncontroversial, e.g., telling people who have a high risk of producing a severely ill child that they shouldn’t have children together. The ban on marriages between siblings is a form of eugenics as well.
Sorry for the mutliple posts, but I meant to say eugenics in the post above and not euthenasia. Still, your response to the murder of baby girls keeps running through my mind. If long-term survival is vital to morality, then I guess morality wasn’t possible before the advent of genetics. But that’s a side issue. The main issue is that the murderers of baby girls might be following your morality perfectly if they murdered only the girls from genetically “impure” parents. Unless they’re utterly stupid, they will keep enough baby girls for breeding, but they will be very selective, a la eugenics. And I think you’ll find that is exactly what those cultures do. The baby girls of the wealthy and nobility have nothing to fear, but those of the poor and minorities get slaughtered like sheep.
Oops, sorry, I saw this AFTER the above post.
“Christian response: God allows evil and suffering on purpose, to give you character.”
Ash, it might be good to have the SLIGHTEST clue of what you are talking about before you go pontificating.
I was paraphrasing fundamentalist here.
Ctrl+F “In part, God uses suffering to make us more like himself. He wants to improve our character.”
Thanks for posting this.
“If long-term survival is vital to morality, then I guess morality wasn’t possible before the advent of genetics.”
This is interesting, but I think mistaken. An explicit, comprehensive code of morality may not have been entirely justifiable before genetic theory, but I think those you chose to be immoral in this sense faced the built-in, self-correcting morality of Mother Nature.
“but they will be very selective, a la eugenics.”
All those seeking mates will be as selective as they possibly can. Eugenics, to me, is immoral because of its predication of state-control of mating–that is, central planning. Therefore, collectivism is the true foe again, as opposed to the blank slate of atheism.
You’re really forcing me to think, though.
“An explicit, comprehensive code of morality may not have been entirely justifiable before genetic theory…”
Oh come on, the idea that anything at all can be JUSTIFIED by the truth of evolution is ridiculous. The answer to any such attempt is, of course, “Why should I care about long-term survival?”
First of all, it should have been “…entirely explicitly justifiable…”
But still.
“Why should I care about long-term survival?”
I guess you don’t have to, but if you’re creating a moral code, which as I understand means a code of conduct for a society, I thought it safe to presume that the first principle would be the preservation of that society.
Based on that presumption, I fail to see the ridiculousness of my initial position. But I’ll still try to answer your rhetorical question:
You should care about long-term survival only because you don’t know how long you are going to be living. If you still insist you are interested only in the short-term, I would ask you how short? A month? A week? A day? If the short term is so great, why don’t you shorten your horizons by suicide? I would of course hope that you would at least see suicide as against your interests. But I think this is already way too big a question that I feel comfortable with.
Also please note that in addition to not being a professional geologist or biologist, I’m also not a professional philosopher or theologian or historian. I’m just a punk econ undergrad, trying to make my chops on the internet. Please be kind, as I’m not purposely trying to pontificate or be presumptuous or generally pompous in any way.
Ash,
Are you a geologist?
No, not at all. I’ve just been following the creationist/evolutionist debate for a few years now, and I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit about all the relevant science in the meantime. Enough for an internet discussion, anyway.
You’re right. You have learned well. You are throwing around some pretty good vocabulary.
Do you believe physical reality is eternal?
The most interesting science I read on this was the ‘bubble universe’ theory–where supposedly there is an infinite ‘ocean’ of energy, and our universe is a ‘bubble’ formed from this ocean, and there are other universes, each with their own laws of physics, being formed all the time. I’d just like to point out that I haven’t really looked into this at all–I just read about it once in National Geographic and saw this video here. Again, I haven’t really looked into these ideas, but I don’t see them as self-contradictory prima facie.
Something really interesting I’ve recently discovered. that might be of particular interest to those that question math in economics, is this so-called ‘math-free physics’. The author makes several extraordinary claims, including that the universe is interconnected by electromagnetic ropes, mathematics has no place in physics, and experimentation is not science. The videos, where he tries to debunk the god of quantum physics, are both funny and interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WfydkWLIkk
Knox,
Thanks for the insight into your background. I agree with you in large part. We should all be engaged in truth-seeking, plain and simple. Atheism scares many fundamentalist Christians because many of its arguments are good ones that do not have easy rational answers. Science, and particulary the fields of modern biology and geology are especially troubling for many Christians, since it directly challenges what has historically been taught about the Biblical creation narrative. We could certainly discuss many of these issues, but we don’t have enough room on the blog to work through them all. I’ll be glad to discuss a hard question though.
I want to gently press a particular question again though, since it is at the core of my curiosity about your story. Do you think you ever truly believed the claims made by the Gospel? In other words, do you remember a time when you fully acquiesced intellectually to the story that Jesus of Nazareth was the one Son of God, that he lived a perfect life and willingly died on a cross as a human sacrifice and atonement for sinners, and rose again from the dead? Furthermore, do you remember a time when you finally said to yourself, “I don’t believe this anymore”, and rejected it as being true?
I believed that Jesus was the Son of God, that he was sent by his Father to atone for the sins of all people, fulfilling prophecy in the Old Testatment and providing the one path to salvation through his grace, not earned by works, but given as a gift to humanity by the one, true God to his creation based on his love for us.
I believed that until I was about 25 and then struggled with the questions until I was 40 when I finally admitted to my family – and whoever else has asked – that I no longer believe that to be true although I am open to sufficient argument. The problem with Pascal’s wager is that I cannot make myself believe something to be true no matter how great the outcome will be for me. For example, if someone said that if I only believed X I would receive a billion dollars in gold or eternal salvation but X involved believing a bunch of contradictions, perceived absurdities, etc. I don’t see how I could say I actually believed that – and there was a machine capable of telling the offeror that I was lying with certainty. I know I don’t believe it – and surely God knows that too. I can’t adopt Pascal’s position because it is ultimately not what the God of the Bible wants – faith in him without doubt. (I know about doubting Thomas etc. I am just saying that my “doubt” is disbelief not just questioning and continued belief.)
Ash,
I’m not trying to delve into physical cosmological models so much as simply posing the question of whether or not you are able to surmize from a materialistic philosophy that the “stuff” of physical reality is eternal, regardless of the cosmological model ? My primary goal is to try and lead you down the primrose path and show that at its core, a materialist usually posits a monist model of physical reality that has characteristics strikingly close to a theistic or panentheistic model of God. I know, because as a geologist, this was once my model of choice. It is the God of Spinoza and Einstein, and many physicists over the years. If you have already taken this journey, then my apologies in advance for being presumptuous.
Regarding your broader question: I have no reason to not believe in the law of conservation of energy. So yes, in the broadest sense, I currently believe physical reality to be eternal.
I’m familiar with Spinoza’s God, although only through secondary sources. As I understand it, it is more pantheistic than panentheistic (this I could be wrong about), but more importantly, it is not close to a theistic god–for a theistic god implies conscious intervention in human affairs.
Now, if you don’t mind me asking you one question: do you, as a religious geologist, find the YEC arguments, particularly the global flood arguments, convincing?
Sorry–I’m going to fix something: “do you, first as geologist, second as a religious person, find the YEC arguments, particularly the global flood arguments, convincing?”
No. They are an embarassment to thoughtful Christians!
I consider myself a thoughtful Christian and a YEC who supports the global flood arguments. I would say that KSralla is as ignorant as Ash is about it to make such a statement.
You are very correct in your comment on pantheism. I meant that the God of Spinoza has several aspects in common with a theistic or panentheistic model. Would you like to explore?
I’m willing to be educated on the issue, since as I said, I only know of the God of Spinoza through secondary sources. But I’ll layout my understanding as it relates to theism as panentheism as a start:
The biggest similarity I see is that both, at the end of the day, require an uncaused cause. Either the energy has always been there, or God has always been there. Einstein said something about Spinoza’s god revealing itself in the beauty and harmony of nature–I don’t see how this is different from many creation from design arguments. Not least of which is the ‘intellectual love’ argument, which almost mirrors the theistic, particularly Christian, argument to love God as God loves you.
” it is not close to a theistic god–for a theistic god implies conscious intervention in human affairs.”
Not so! Aristotle’s theism had a God not even aware of the existence of humans.
I don’t know anything about Aristotle–but is that not, by definition, deism, though?
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”-late American atronomer Robert Jastrow
It’s Sunday, and I want to finish up this discussion. In the 20th Century, many physicists with deep intellectual roots planted in the legacy of the Vienna Circle and neo-positivism often realized the troubling similarities between their models of a possible “theory of everything” , and the theistic concept of God. The materialistic naturalist rationally abstracts a physical reality that necessarily contains somwhere within it’s most basic fabric, a kernal of an ontological “supreme being” (little b). Attributes such as imminence, transcendence, consciousness, free will, eternality, and morality can all be argued to apply to a materialistic model of everything, while these same attributes likewise fit most conceptual models of theism. The point here is to suggest that the materialistic naturalist does not stake his claim to the high ground of reason when he takes swipes at the theist model of a Supreme Being (big B), while erecting a pantheistic supreme (little b) being in its place.
I’m pretty sure I just agreed with everything you just said.
Ash: “allele frequencies are determined mostly by natural selection. Evolutionary theory has contributed to the knowledge of antibiotic drugs, and live vaccines.”
You may be thinking about micro evolution, which is the variation found in particular animals, as opposed to macro evolution, the change of one type of animal into another, such as the change of a dog into a horse. Creation science has no problem with micro evolution; it is nothing more or less than the science of genetics. Macro evolution has contributed nothing to the advancement of science.
“I am genuinely interested in his response to the criticism that a spherical layer of water cannot exist under the crust of the Earth, as well as his feelings on radiometric, incremental, and luminescent dating, and geochemistry in general. “
It’s all in Brown’s book. Try reading his book and not just critiques of straw men.
Ash: “China was going backwards into a state of massive war and collectivism. This is why they stopped advancing…”
What does that have to do with scientific knowledge? The USSR was collectivist and has great science. And the Ottoman Empire has similar advances in science as the Chinese and did not enter a similar phase. Anyway, your idea that Christianity had nothing to do with the rise of modern science flies in the face of the history of modern science written by top historians. I’m not resorting to an appeal to authority when I write this. I’m just suggesting that you might change your mind if you read more on the subject.
Ash: “Acts that are deemed to be predicated on wanton destruction are conceptually defined by humans as “evil”.”
You don’t seem to get the point that if humans invent some kind of morality it’s not really morality. You may have a preference for long term survival, but if someone else does not, then your morality doesn’t hold for that individual. Morality must be discovered, not invented, in order to be morality. That’s because it must exist outside of the choice of mankind. No man has authority in the matter of morality over another man. So it doesn’t matter what reason you invent for morality, the very fact that mankind invented it makes it no longer morality but preference. Without God, no morality can exist logically because all morality without God has to be rationalized on a utilitarian basis. You can invent any rationale to act morally that you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that you invented it.
Ash: “There is no way anyone can know what “enough baby girls for the long term” is…”
Simply not true. People have raised cattle and other animals for millennia. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how many you need to keep in order to further the herd. And as I wrote, they are practicing a type of eugenics.
Ash: “The scientific definition is the change in allele frequencies from one generation to another.”
I knew this would come up at some point, and it highlights the dishonesty of evolutionists. There are two types of evolution; creationists refer to them as micro and macro evolution. Evolutionists refuse to acknowledge the differences because it does severe damage to their public image. But any honest person can see the differences. Micro evolution is the change from one species to another. Creation scientists have no problem with micro evolution. They think that all of the species of dogs, for example, came from just one original dog. Macro evolution is the change from one type of animal into another, as from a chimp to a human. There is almost no evidence for macro evolution. Almost all of the evidence offered for evolution in science text books is micro. Then evolutionists claim that the undeniable micro evidence proves that macro evolution is also a fact. It’s the old bait and switch technique that all con men use. When the average person realizes the deception, they become quite angry. And before you tell me that there is no difference, but a continuum of change, remember that much of the chapters on evolution in text books is taken up with excuses for why there is almost no evidence for macro evolution.
Ash: “atheists will have a harder time justifying them, as no atheist can say, “Hitchens/Dawkins/Darwin came to me in my dream and commanded me to burn down Parliament!” As far as atheists doing immoral things in the name of science: science itself will unequivocally show them that their actions are wrong.”
What reason did Hitler, Stalin and Mao give for mass murder? It seems to me that they used science as a justification. Hitler used eugenics. Stalin and Mao used Marx’s “scientific socialism.” There is no escaping the fact that the worst mass murderers in the history of mankind were atheists and used science as justifications for their murders.
“I find Peter Singer to be a bad philosopher not because of his atheism, but because of his consequentialist and sloppy thinking. Any man who considers killing his own elderly mother, as Singer has, is no friend of humanity.”
As you wrote, you are not a professional philosopher. Neither am I, but many professional philosophers would disagree with you. They might suggest that you are letting your emotions cloud your ability to reason.
Ash: “And Hitler, as well as most of the Nazis, all fancied themselves as Christians.”
Another myth loved by atheists. Hitler used religious terms when they suited his purpose, but no NAZI leadership considered themselves to be Christian, at least not traditional Christians. Germans had invented a type of Christianity which traditional Christians called liberalism or modernism, which denied all of the truths of traditional Christianity and was a form of atheism. Some might have clamed to be such Christians.
I have seen a lot of claims regarding Nazi’s as Christians or pagans or atheists and I don’t really know the truth of any or all of those assertions. What I do know is that many Christians say something to the effect that “the Nazi’s were not Christians because no real Christian would act that way” or as fundamentalist says they were not “traditional Christians.”
Once again, Christians have the ultimate out or escape hatch. They are able to claim credit for morally praiseworthy actions but do not have to take the blame for morally onerous activities on the part of Christians. In other words, the good works evidenced by the morally praiseworthy activities of Christians are driven by their religiosity while the morally unpraiseworty activities are driven by “non-traditional” Christian views, etc. Wonderful, you get to have your cake and eat it too. This is one area where I think Hitchens gets sloppy because he wants to attribute to Christianity actions of individuals or groups of Christians qua Christianity. All I want to say is that the reverse is equally as sloppy.
Once again, Knox, you create a straw man to do battle with. No Christian leader or philosopher uses the behavior of Christians to prove anything. But the truth of the matter is that for a person to claim to be a Christian and acting under Christian principles, he has to show that he is acting in a consistent manner with Christian principles as given in the Bible. That’s just common sense. And whether or not Hitler was a Christian or considered himself a Christian is a matter of history; it is a factual error that Hitler considered himself a Christian. And I was responding to Ash’s assertion that atheists couldn’t justify mass murder with science or reason, which is exactly what the great mass murderers did.
The point is that atheists do not have a response to what Hitler, Stalin and Mao did because they have no logical basis for their ethics; atheist ethics are totally arbitrary even if based on utilitarian grounds. Christian philosophers do have a ready answer for why mass murder is mass murder.
BTW, are you going to answer my question: what evidence would you accept for God?
“No Christian leader or philosopher uses the behavior of Christians to prove anything.” Maybe, not but you use the behavior of some atheists to impugh all atheists – is that not logically equivalent. I am a libertarian anarchist and an atheist – I want no state at all yet you would lump me in with Pol Pot – that is hardly fair.
“But the truth of the matter is that for a person to claim to be a Christian and acting under Christian principles, he has to show that he is acting in a consistent manner with Christian principles as given in the Bible. That’s just common sense.”
That is essentially just echoing the point I made. Christians want the “out” – doing objectively evil things claiming divine right is not really acting like a Christian meanwhile objectively doing good is all driven by Christian morals. You can’t have it both ways and you will not grant atheists the same consideration. For example, as stated above you want to blame atheism for the acts of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, et al and I would say that they are crimes per se and not necessarily atheist crimes because there is nothing essential about denying that there is sufficient proof to justify belief and God and exterminating millions of your countrymen in pursuit of some cause. You are not allowed to use that logic to condemn atheists and then fall back on the syllogism to defend whatever version of Christianity you profess. It is all or nothing game.
As I think I made clear in my post I don’t know whether Hitler was a Christian or not and I don’t really care at the end of the day. He was evil regardless of what his beliefs were and that is ultimately the point. Evil can be judged on an objective standard – genocide is evil. Unfortunately, for the Christian there are instances where God commanded just that. How do you extricate yourself from that?
As to evidence for God I am open to anything that doens’t amount to the equivalent of “let’s turn in our hymnals to page …” which is an admittedly humorous way of saying confirmation outside of the texts being judged. See elsewhere here for examples. Essentially, if the “facts” as claimed in the Bible can proven with evidence outside of the Bible then it makes it more correct rather than less.
I will tell you what turns me off in these arguments is the general lack of self-reflectivity and the steamrolling of opposition that takes place in this area. It is so dangerous to ask certain questions that the faithful just go apoplectic – the veins pop in the forehead and they impugn motives, knowledge or say, as I have heard, “if you say you believed then and don’t believe now then you never really were a Christian.”
“doing objectively evil things claiming divine right is not really acting like a Christian meanwhile objectively doing good is all driven by Christian morals. ”
That’s not what I wrote. I wrote that those who act in the name of Christianity must prove that they are acting according to Biblical principles. No one can do evil and at the same time claim to be following the Bible. Just claming “divine inspiration” is not the same thing as following Biblical principles.
“For example, as stated above you want to blame atheism for the acts of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, et al ”
No, I don’t blame atheism. You’re not paying attention to what I wrote. I was responding to Ash’s claim that no one could justify evil in the name of science and I just demonstrated that they have and can because without God there is no such thing as morality or evil. Those are religious categories.
“Evil can be judged on an objective standard – genocide is evil. Unfortunately, for the Christian there are instances where God commanded just that. How do you extricate yourself from that?”
On what grounds is genocide evil? Scientists justified it with eugenics. Just because you find it repugnant doesn’t make it evil. Humans, under atheism, are no more important than animals and we kill animals all the time for food. And as I have written elsewhere, the categories of good and evil don’t logically exist in atheism, so you can’t use them to judge God. As for God’s genocide, which he clearly committed, if he created mankind then we are his property and he can do as he wished with us. God makes it clear that he doesn’t aribtrarily kill people, but does so only in judgement against them for evils they have committed. Even as we have human judges who condemn criminals to death, I would think God has that right as well. The main difference is that his knowledge makes him the perfect judge.
“As to evidence for God I am open to anything that doens’t amount to the equivalent of “let’s turn in our hymnals to page …” which is an admittedly humorous way of saying confirmation outside of the texts being judged. ”
That’s not very honest of you. You have already stated that you read Lewis and Stobel and found their evidence lacking. Their evidence is extra-biblical but it wasn’t sufficient for you. What evidence would you find sufficient, not what evidence would you find interesting?
“Essentially, if the “facts” as claimed in the Bible can proven with evidence outside of the Bible then it makes it more correct rather than less.”
There are whole libraries of such evidence. You simply refuse to read any of it. The very fact that you claim that all of the evidence for God comes from the Bible is evidence that you are extremely ignorant on the topic. Theologians have been providing extr-biblical evidence for God at least since Augustine. I could fill a library with the works, none of which refer to the Bible.
” will tell you what turns me off in these arguments is the general lack of self-reflectivity and the steamrolling of opposition that takes place in this area.”
You mean the way that Hitches and Dawkins act in their books?
Ash: “I guess you don’t have to, but if you’re creating a moral code, which as I understand means a code of conduct for a society, I thought it safe to presume that the first principle would be the preservation of that society. ”
In creating a moral code, one of the main questions you have to ask is “why should anyone care?” And as I wrote above, the very fact that you are creating it makes it a prefernce, not an obligation. If you want to redefine morality as just local preferences, as most ethicists have done, then fine. I’ll have to find another word to describe what philosophers since Plato have meant by the term. Except for the past century, morality has always meant the universal obligation of all men to each other. It had an authority over all men because it did not come from within mankind. But if it comes from outside of mankind, there must be some kind of law giver. If it comes from within mankind it has no authority, no matter how you justify it on utilitarian grounds.
” I no longer believe that to be true although I am open to sufficient argument”
Knox, when you finally came to that point of repudiating your former belief in the Gospel, was it a very sad moment for you, or was it a liberating experience of joy? The reason I am curious is that Reformed theology (my denomination, PCA), and most flavors of Baptist theology, teach that those persons who have been *spiritually regenerated* by God’s grace will possess “justifying faith” in the Jesus of the Gospel, and *cannot* fall away from faith totally and finally. Yet several of the NT writers clearly issue warnings to persons such as yourself who do seem to believe enthusiastically at first, only later to renounce the Gospel. That’s why I am intersted in you as a case study.
The ancient writers (I think) are warning that when someone has been taught all of the theology of the Gospel, and they willingly recieve and study this knowledge, yet later willfully reject it as a truth claim in their own mind and/or publically, then there is really nothing further any person (the evangelist) can do at that point (argument wise), since that person already understands the Gospel story and it’s claims, yet still won’t believe. In other words, the original firsthand claim (about Jesus) made by the Apostles was *the* crucial argument, and when someone decisively rejects their firsthand eyewitness claim, there was really nothing further they could possibly do to re-argue the very cut and dry case in a better, more profound, or reasonable way. In essence, they washed their hands of the responsibility of trying to re-argue the case in more pursuasive language, and simply gave a warning that if someone remained hardened to the Gospel message, especially those who had already been thoroughly taught it, then that rejecting person was not accepted by God, and was subject to none of the redemptive promises of the Gospel.
It was and is really a very simple straightforward claim made by the Apostles. The Apostles simply swore that they were telling the truth, and they were asking people to believe their story about Jesus. Obviously, the Apostles are not still around to make their own case anymore, and their critical claims about Christ are now only found within the cannon of scripture. We both agree that there are no definitive external sources that corroborate the Apostles’ story, so If one omits the Bible as a source for examining the voracity of the Gospel, then I am not sure how someone could still make the claim that they remain “open” to pursuasion.
“The Apostles simply swore that they were telling the truth, and they were asking people to believe their story about Jesus. Obviously, the Apostles are not still around to make their own case anymore, and their critical claims about Christ are now only found within the cannon of scripture.”
The Apostles, I think to many readers and theologians, did not understand Jesus’ ministry when he was alive. I think that the Apostles, and the Jews generally, viewed Jesus as political Messiah sent to restore Jerusalem and throw out the Romans hence the processional on Palm Sunday, etc. It seems to me that the Apostles and others misunderstood Jesus’ mission and that – and this is my interpretation – there was some post hoc theorizing going on which allowed the Apostles to claim the spiritual and divinical mission rather than the political one. I think this is one explanation for the birth story wherein Mary and Joseph have to travel to Bethlehem for the census. No Roman authority ever required that to take place – it would be so disruptive to society as to be unworkable. Again, the Bible says one thing took place with regard to the census and there have been no Roman records, to my knowledge, ever produced to corrobarate the Biblical account. So, again, I think there are post hoc rationales created to justify Jesus as Messiah fulfilling OT prophecy. Further, the “saints” wandering the streets after the tombs open in Matthew is not corrobarated by real time accounts and probably didn’t elicit critical responses at the time the Gospels were written because they were written so long after the events took place.
“We both agree that there are no definitive external sources that corroborate the Apostles’ story, so If one omits the Bible as a source for examining the voracity of the Gospel, then I am not sure how someone could still make the claim that they remain “open” to pursuasion.”
Your point could just as easily used to buttress my claims. Since there are no external sources as to the veracity of the Gospel how can you believe them to be true? I remain open to persuasion because – to answer the first portion of your response – it was with very little joy that I determined I was an atheist. I have the same concerns about death as anyone else – I actually think it takes more courage to be an atheist than to be a believer because the believer no longer has to deal with “death issues” – which is my argument for the existence of religion generally. Humans are rational and are creatures that realize they have an effective lifespan therefore, in a true act of creating a self-centered universe, construct gods that ensure they will live forever. I, too, wish it were so but I have not seen anything that leads me to believe that religions are not man-made and post hoc justifications for certain actions – like genocide as commanded in the OT where God commanded the Israelites to kill everyone including women and children – which, to their credit, the Israelites failed to do.
Ash: “The biggest similarity I see is that both, at the end of the day, require an uncaused cause. Either the energy has always been there, or God has always been there.”
There are two types of causes. One is temporal in which effect follows cause with a lag, such as in time series data. The other is simultaneous, in which the cause and effect happen at the same time. Feser gives the example for the latter in his book “Last Superstition” of a stick pushing a rock. A hand is holding the stick and the mind is making the hand hold the stick which pushes the rock. They all happen simultaneously and if the mind quits telling the hand to hold the stick and push the rock the rock will cease moving. Natural sciences deal with the first kind of cause. Aristotle and Aquinas deal with the second kind of cause. The reason that so many atheists find it “easy” to defeat the “first cause” argument for God is that they assume it’s about temperal cause and not simultaneous cause. The ignorance, or willful deceit, that atheists display about Aristotle and Aquinas’s arguments is astounding. They haven’t defeated the argument because they don’t even know the argument and therefore haven’t addressed it.
Another aspect of the first cause argument is that a cause cannot give something to the effect that the cause doesn’t possess. Therefore, if the universe is nothing but matter, then the things that make up human personality don’t really exist. Those include free will, love, reason, meaning, morality, etc. If we are nothing but robots (and that’s the logical conclusion of materialism) then none of the above really exist; we’ve merely been fooling ourselves because matter as a cause cannot possibly bestow those features on mankind since matter does not possess them.
Ksralla, If you find YEC and flood geology embarrassing, that means you are probably a theistic evolutionist. Now people can be theistic evolutionists and be good Christians, but you’re going to have some real problems trying to achieve a coherent theology. Here’s why:
1) The Bible makes it clear that death and destruction did not exist before Adam’s and Eve’s fall. One verse that mentions it is Romans 8:20. Yet theistic evolution requires billions of years of massive death before the fall.
2) The Bible is clear that God created mankind without flaw and mankind’s rebellion changed the nature of man and gave us a tendency to do evil. Yet theistic evolution says that God made man as he is today and therefore made man a sinner, then condemned him to hell because he is a sinner. And it makes God the author of sin, which contradicts the Bible. This follows because in theistic evolution requires man to be an animal first and act like an animal. In other words, as an animal (say an ape) mankind could kill other apes, steal from them, and have sex with many females and not be judged as immoral because the category doesn’t apply to animals. As long as mankind was still an ape, he was safe from condemnation, but the second the ape became human, God condemned the same behavior. So mankind didn’t rebel in theistic evolution, he merely had the bad fortune of becoming a man.
3) There is no logical reason for Christ to come, die and be resurrected. This is one of the main claims against Christianity by Muslims and Hindus. Mankind’s “sins” don’t rise to the level of condemnation to hell nor do they require any special treatment. God can merely look the other way, as he does in Islam if he wants to. Christ’s coming and death were totally unnecessary and therefore not true. But the Biblical narrative says that man’s rebellion changed mankind’s nature in such a way that Christ’s coming and his death were necessary.
4) Theistic evolution denies that a literal Adam existed, even though Paul says that by one man sinned entered into the world and death by sin. According to theistic evolution, sin did not enter into the world by Adam’s rebellion, but because God created us as animals first then condemned his creation as evil once we evolved to become humans.
“Without God there is no morality.” Really? So by that rationale it was alright to murder, steal, commit adultery prior to the Ten Commandements? If not, then why was God being redundant? I don’t know why I went down this road as the Exodus didn’t actually happen.
“God is the perfect judge.” God condemned people to genocidal violence because they occupied physical space he wanted to give to those he chose. How fair is that? Please no platitudes about he has knowledge we don’t and that other nonsense. If your child came to you and said God told me to kill my next door neighbor because God wanted to give me her bicycle you would rightly be horrified. Why not the same reaction to genocide in the Bible? Do you see how fraught with peril your morality is? God commands = others are valueless or worth genocide. Seriously?
fundamentalist, with all due respect, you would make a terrible lawyer. Argument is not evidence. Finding an authenticated document by an uninterested party attesting to a miracle would be necessary and possilby sufficient. Arguing, as Strobel does, that the Bible is sufficiently self-proving because, for example, the Gospels jibe is ridiculous. Of course they jibe, that was why human beings selected them for inclusion in the cannon. The Gnostic Gospels and other contemporaneous writings were excluded because they didn’t fit the “Jesus as Messiah” scenario.
I would agree with your assessment of Hitchens and Dawkins up to a point. I, too, find them oftentimes very haughty and self-important but my guess is that they get tired of responding to arguments outside science and philosophy and are correspondingly bitter. At the end of the day I think that we both are talking past each other with different vocabularies. I don’t say there is no God – I say there is not enough proof for a God. I think you say that the Bible is proof and is backed up with credible evidence. Again, at the end of the day I think we just disagree.
As a side note there is a general rule in academic debate and that is called charity. It assumes the best take on the argument of the person you are responding too. Claiming that someone is ignorant or hasn’t done sufficient research may be true but for the sake of rational, civil discourse you should assume it is not the case. Likewise, accusing someone of the same is beneath you. I could say that the reason you are so touchy about these subjects is because deep-down you know your beliefs are without foundation – that would be uncharitable. Please don’t assume because others don’t reason to the same conclusion you do that they are some species of ignorance or evil which you choose to define.
“God condemned people to genocidal violence because they occupied physical space he wanted to give to those he chose.”
That’s simply not true. You need to read some background material on the people the Israeli’s conquered. For one, they practiced child sacrifice. As for genocide, on what grounds to you find it evil, other than your own repugnance? As I have argued with Ash, morality is nothing but personal preferences without God. This is not an appeal to authority, but you should know that you disagree with the greatest atheist philosophers, from Nietzsche to Singer, who have ever lived when you try to insert morality into atheism. So you deny the possibility of real morality but turn around and charge God with it.
“Finding an authenticated document by an uninterested party attesting to a miracle would be necessary and possilby sufficient. ”
Who would you considere a disinterested party? Josephus was never a follower of Jesus and he attested to his miracles. So how do people like you respond? They say someone added the passage later. What you have done is put yourself in a position in which no one can ever present evidence that you would have to consider. All you would have to say is that person wasn’t a disinterested party. How are you going to prove that Jesus did miracles except by eye-witness accounts? And yet you claim that the only eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ miracles don’t count because they weren’t disinterested parties. As I wrote before, you will not accept any kind of evidence at all because you don’t want to believe.
“Arguing, as Strobel does, that the Bible is sufficiently self-proving because, for example, the Gospels jibe is ridiculous.”
Clearly you haven’t read Strobel’s book or you wouldn’t be so dishonest about it.
” I think you say that the Bible is proof and is backed up with credible evidence.”
That is not what I have been saying. As with most atheists, you either don’t read my posts before responding or you twist what I have said into nonsense. Is it really that difficult to be just a little honest?
“that someone is ignorant or hasn’t done sufficient research may be true but for the sake of rational, civil discourse you should assume it is not the case.”
You should follow your own advise. The reason I point out that you are ignorant on certain subjects is that you assert things about God and the Bible that are inaccurate. You base your arguments on straw men.
“That’s simply not true. You need to read some background material on the people the Israeli’s conquered. For one, they practiced child sacrifice. As for genocide, on what grounds to you find it evil, other than your own repugnance? As I have argued with Ash, morality is nothing but personal preferences without God. This is not an appeal to authority, but you should know that you disagree with the greatest atheist philosophers, from Nietzsche to Singer, who have ever lived when you try to insert morality into atheism. So you deny the possibility of real morality but turn around and charge God with it.”
Oh, wait – now I get it – they had it coming to them. Rather than genocide why not go in and proselytize for God? THe OT version of the great commission. You talk about contortions – you are off your rocker to justify genocide based on some alleged child sacrifice. And while we are on that subject perhaps you forgot about Abraham and Isaac – I guess because God only ordered him to point of killing his own son and didn’t actually make him do it then God is ok. If God is omnipotent and knew Abraham’s heart why make him go through the process of trussing up his own son and almost plunging a dagger into his heart. Please step down off the high horse and simply acknowledge what I said as truth – God ordered his followers to engage in repugnant, immoral acts which you exempt from categorizing from moral judgment because God ordered them. How do you sleep at night?
“Clearly you haven’t read Strobel’s book or you wouldn’t be so dishonest about it.”
Actually I have and I have the marginila filled volumes to prove it. Once again, you assume something to be true because it means you don’t have to actually respond with honest, sincere answers. Merely assert “you haven’t read it” or “its a dishonest interpretation” and QED I don’t actually have to respond with evidence.
“That is not what I have been saying. As with most atheists, you either don’t read my posts before responding or you twist what I have said into nonsense. Is it really that difficult to be just a little honest?”
Do you believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God? If so, how do you reconcile the factual and historical errors contained within it. If you say it was divinely inspired and men made mistakes in writing it then how do we decide which is truth and which error? For example, if the Exodus didn’t actually take place then how do we justify the Israelite land grab?
“This is not an appeal to authority, but you should know that you disagree with the greatest atheist philosophers, from Nietzsche to Singer, who have ever lived when you try to insert morality into atheism. So you deny the possibility of real morality but turn around and charge God with it.”
I know you can’t be this dense. For the last time, atheism is not a moral code. Atheism is simply the claim that there is no evidence for God. It’s that simple. Anybody who tries to extrapolate from atheism into morality is mixing apples and oranges. Denyinig the existence of elves doesn’t mean the person favors castrating sheep. Do you get it now? One can deny the existence of something – while maintaing that they cannot prove the negative – and that doesn’t necessarily mean they are for molesting collies. Got it?
What you, unfortunately, cannot do is claim a belief in the God of the Bible and backtrack from the evil he commanded. Sorry. I know you want it to be so but wanting something and it being true are separate issues. You lose.
Lastly, what have I asserted about the Bible that is not true? Didn’t Matthew say the dead wandered the streets? Didn’t God command Abraham to kill Isaac? Didn’t God order the Israelites to commit genocide? Again, I point out things that are in the Bible and you, for a reason I cannot fathom, want to deny their truth. Oh wait, you looked up the word hermeneutics in the dictionary and want to argue that I am interpreting the texts wrongly. Give me a break.
Knox: “Oh, wait – now I get it – they had it coming to them. Rather than genocide why not go in and proselytize for God?”
Why do assume no one tried to proselytize? If you were familiar with the Bible, you would know that God does not act arbitrarily. He is very patient with people and will endure evil for a long time. Of course, then atheists judge God for not stopping evil, so God can’t win either way. If God killed large numbers of people, it was because he had given up on them repenting of their evil. Again, since God is the perfect judge, he never kills the wrong person, as human judges do.
Knox: “ordered his followers to engage in repugnant, immoral acts which you exempt from categorizing from moral judgment because God ordered them. How do you sleep at night?”
I sleep well, thank you, because I know the truth. Again, just because you find an act of God repugnant doesn’t make it so. You have no logical way as an atheist for determining objective good and evil. Without God, it’s all the same. So you’re doing nothing but arguing in a circle. Strange that you don’t find the massive death in evolution to be repugnant.
Knox: “Actually I have and I have the marginila filled volumes to prove it.”
I have just two choices: either you didn’t read Strobel’s book and are ignorant or you are dishonest because Strobel does nothing like what you claimed above.
Knox: “how do you reconcile the factual and historical errors contained within it.”
I haven’t found any. There are a lot of ignorant atheists proclaiming factual and historical errors in the Bible, but that’s because they don’t bother to read it carefully and understand Biblical scholarship. The Bible has been the most trustworthy guide for archeology of the Middle East that exists.
Knox: “Anybody who tries to extrapolate from atheism into morality is mixing apples and oranges.”
Well I guess all of the great atheist philosophers are guilty of the same. It’s strange that you are the only atheist in the history of atheism who can’t see the connection. There is not a single atheist philosopher who has not written about morality, and all of the great atheist philosophers acknowledged what every philosopher since Plato understood: without God morality doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean that atheists can’t elevate their personal preferences and call them “morality.” It just means they have changed the definition of morality.
Knox: “Lastly, what have I asserted about the Bible that is not true?”
I’m not going to bother to go back through your posts and list every example, but above you asserted that the Bible is full of errors, and that simply is not true.
I think we are both waisting our time here. I humbly submit your response above as proof for the fair-minded to judge who is right and wrong in this debate. I wish you well and if you decide to join the rest of us in the reality based community we will welcome you with open arms. Good day.
Knox,
I wish you well in your pursuit of truth. Obviously, you have thought deeply about many of the important issues and come to different conclusions than me. We could certainly discuss each point in detail, but it looks like that on a couple of points, you are hung up on side issues (IMHO), and each of us has a limited amount of time and patience. The key issue is whether Jesus rose from the dead and actually appeared to the Apostles after his crucifiction. Paul autobiographically claims that the resurrected Jesus in fact appeared to him, to the other Apostles including Peter, and also to as many as 500 people at once. You are correct however, that if there is no resurrection of Jesus, then the Apostles were either confused or charlatans, and the Christian faith is a 2000-year old sham. It’s really that simple. The claims of Paul are textually pristine beyond reasonable doubt. We either believe them or we don’t.
I truly wish you believed. Keep thinking about it, and the best to you and your family.
Thanks. Best of luck to you and yours as well.
Last thing. I don’t think blog posting is an effective vehicle for argument – especially of this variety and I, quite frankly, regret jumping in. I think these issues are so personal that the stakes of the game get raised to the point where no one can admit a point to another. That being said I have to say that you were exceedingly fair-minded and gracious and really exemplify what a Christian should be about – taking people as they are and as you find them and treaing them the way you would want to be treated. Of all the responses on this thread the one most of us should learn from IMHO is the one you set out here in terms of your tone and readiness to acknowledge weaknesses in your own argument. As Lincoln (whom I otherwise detest regardless of his atheism – maybe fundamentalist is right?) said in paraphrase “with charity toward all and animus toward none.”
Fundamentalist,
With all due respect, please stop it. There are several theologically orthodox positions within my denomination (the PCA) which are considered theologically plausible, and do not destroy the orthodox doctrines of redemptive history. If you are interested, please study these:
A. The Calendar Day Interpretation
B. The Day-Age Interpretation
C. The Framework Interpretation
D. The Analogical Days Interpretation
E. Other Interpretations of the Creation Days
I lean toward C and sometimes B.
I have studied all of them. BTW, you are making an appeal to authority, which is a logical fallacy and an academic way of saying you’re being dishonest. If you can find fault with my reasoning, please show me, but an appeal to authority carries no weight with me and shouldn’t with you.
There is a science called hermeneutics, which is nothing but logic applied to the interpretation of literature. In layman’s language, hermeneutics is the guide to honest interpretation. All of your options but A violate the rules of hermeneutics.
Fundamentalist:
Re: macro vs. micro evolution, I’m surprised that you, as an Austrian, fail to see that the distinction between these two concepts is very much akin to the distinction between macro and micro economics–i.e., the difference is only in the scales involved. This is a very imperfect analogy, but perhaps worth considering: micro evolution is the day-to-day growth of a newborn baby; while macro evolution is the different phases a person goes through in their life: prepubescence, adolescence, adulthood, etc.
The problem with creationism in this regard is that it doesn’t define “kind” in a scientific context–if by “kind” it is meant speciation, which seems to be the most likely, then there is ample evidence for that already. Remember, a species is a group that cannot normally breed with members outside of that group.
“What does that have to do with scientific knowledge?”
When the government is going out of its way to kill all scientists and intellectuals, as well as ordinary citizens, as well as ban the importation of foreign knowledge (in this case, the significant advances of steam power), it will tend to retard all advancement of thought and process. Only after the USSR maintained some level of stabilization did it begin to advance.
“Anyway, your idea that Christianity had nothing to do with the rise of modern science flies in the face of the history of modern science written by top historians.”
I never even insinuated this.
“You don’t seem to get the point that if humans invent some kind of morality it’s not really morality.”
I think this is what it boils down to: you believe morality is given to humans from some higher level, while I, and (many, but not all) other atheists believe that morality is innate in not only humans, but almost all other life as well. My point is that the role of humans is to refine and even extract this inner morality, and modern scientific theory I believe can help in that regard.
“Without God, no morality can exist logically because all morality without God has to be rationalized on a utilitarian basis.”
I’ve got to think about this further, but if the only to rationalize that theft and murder are wrong is on a utilitarian level, then I just might be ok with that.
“What reason did Hitler, Stalin and Mao give for mass murder? It seems to me that they used science as a justification.”
It was bad science, though. Science that would have been detrimental and in the worst interests of everyone in the long run.
“There is no escaping the fact that the worst mass murderers in the history of mankind were atheists and used science as justifications for their murders.”
There is no escaping the fact that the worst mass pedophiles in the history of mankind were Christians and used Christianity as justifications for their murders.
Furthermore, I don’t think the German Christians you speak consisted of the majority of Germans. They surely dictated much of the Nazi religious philosophy, but (though I could be wrong about this) the mass majority of those in Nazi Germany, who first voted for Hitler and then supported his policies and then fought for and prosecuted Jew for him were regular Protestants and Catholics. In fact, perhaps the biggest adversaries of the Nazis in Germany were the ‘godless communists’–who, admittedly, were mostly criticizing him for killing the wrong people.
Finally, regarding the first cause: I’ve already admitted that at the moment I know next to nothing about Aristotle. And I will now also admit to near complete ignorance of Aquinas. But are you telling me, that according to Aristotle and Aquinas, that God and the Universe came into existence simultaneously? I cannot say I’ve encountered that argument before.
PS, most evolutionists recognize the divide between macro and micro evolution because of the evidence. Micro evolution is undeniable. The evidence is overwhelming. You would have to be a complete idiot to attempt to deny it. No so with macro evolution. The theory of punctuated equilibrium was developed in order to explain the lack of evidence for macro. And most textbooks on evolution have several excuses (I mean “scientific” explanations) for the lack of evidence for macro. Most evolutionists are not concerned by the lack of evidence for macro, which shows that their belief is irrational. But a few think they have some obligation to provide evidence for macro and the lack of it bothers them. They have no way out except to invent excuses for it not being there and beg for patience because they think that they will find the evidence some day. Others admit the lack of evidence and deny the possibility of ever finding any evidence because they have decided that the circumstances under which macro took place are too rare. But they believe anyway.
“micro evolution is the day-to-day growth of a newborn baby; while macro evolution is the different phases a person goes through in their life: prepubescence, adolescence, adulthood, etc.”
The difference between micro and macro econ is just a matter of degrees; the differences between micro and macro evolution are matters of kind as well as degree. I knew you would fight against the division of evolution into micro and macro because it is devastating to atheism. Macro evolution is nothing at all like the growth phases of a person, which follow micro evolution. Macro evolution requires mutations in sufficient quantities to change one animal into another animal. And don’t laugh at creationists for using the word “kind.” There is plenty of confusion in biology about the families and genus, etc. of animals to fill a comic book.
What would you call the classifications of horse and dog? Genus, possibly? What difference does it make? Creation science has no problem with one species turning into another. It’s nothing but selective breeding, which farmers do all the time. The question that evolution must answer is, is there enough variation in the gene pool to turn one kind of animal into another? The answer is no. So macro evolution requires massive amounts of mutations to accomplish the task and that makes it qualitatively different from micro evolution.
“I think this is what it boils down to: you believe morality is given to humans from some higher level, while I, and (many, but not all) other atheists believe that morality is innate in not only humans, but almost all other life as well.”
No. That is not the difference between us. The difference is that you and other atheists have decided to redefine morality so that your argument automatically wins any debate. If I accepted your definition of morality, I would have no choice but to agree with you. But redefining words is not only dishonest, it isn’t particularly clever either. From the time of Plato until the 20th century, morality meant rules for human behavior that exist outside of man’s will and determination. That is the only way that morality could have authority over all of mankind. In the 20th century, a few atheists redefined morality and gave it your definition. The great atheist philosophers refused to be so dishonest and retained the ancient definition. To be honest, you should give your concept of human behavior a different name, and in the old days it has a name: they called them mores (that should have an accent over the e) in order to differentiate them from morality. Mores are just cultural preferences. And that’s all you’re talking about.
“It was bad science, though. Science that would have been detrimental and in the worst interests of everyone in the long run.”
In your opinion, but not theirs. And if macro evolution is true, then how can eugenics be wrong? It merely helps evolution along by keeping the gene pool pure. No one ever rejected eugenics on scientific grounds; they rejected it on ethical grounds.
“Finally, regarding the first cause: I’ve already admitted that at the moment I know next to nothing about Aristotle. And I will now also admit to near complete ignorance of Aquinas.”
I wasn’t aiming at you with what I wrote about Aristotle and Aquinas. I was pointing out the utter ignorance or dishonesty of Dawkins and Hitchens in the books.
“But are you telling me, that according to Aristotle and Aquinas, that God and the Universe came into existence simultaneously?”
No. Not at all. According to Aristotle and Aquinas, the First Cause must exist outside of time/space. The cause/effect dynamic is simultaneous, not sequential. Aristotle’s argument is that something must be responsible for the universe continuing to exist as opposed to suddenly ceasing to exist. And because effects can’t be their own cause, there must be a sufficient cause to account for existence as opposed to non-existence. It’s not a subject that fits into a small blog post. As Feser writes, anyone can assert that God doesn’t exist. It requires no intellectual skill or knowledge. A three-year old can assert it. But responding to the assertion takes time, effort, study and intellect. If you care about the subject, I recommend Feser’s book as an intro.
“That is simply false. If you will accept the truth, if you will admit the obvious that this universe–not only the billions of stars but also the intrinsically fascinating and unexpected properties of abstract mathematics–was created by an intelligent Being, then it’s not that much more of a leap to realize that He knew full well every awful crime you were going to commit before you were even born”
Ouch! Seems a lack of graciousness for the opposing views from this essay. Oh well.
I think it is great that Murphy has faith, but I do not see any evidence for it, nor do I care to try to convince myself otherwise. But I would admit that faith in a creator makes it easy to find meaning in life.
“you are making an appeal to authority”
Tough.
Well, the brilliance of your response overwhelms me. You mislead me into thinking that you cared about the truth. A coherent logical argument is the most important path to truth. It is far more certain a guide than empirical evidence. If you are aware of the fallacy of the appeal to authority and choose to use it anyway, it advertises that you don’t care about truth but merely want to win an argument at all costs. I expected more from you.