Author: Lyle Duell

Lyle Duell is a christian businessman, minister and author. He is the author of "From Jesus to Religion", which is available on Amazon.

Are There Contradictions In The Bible?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Bible, Biblical doctrines

 Are There Contradictions In The Bible?

“There have been prophets and students who handle the Bible like a child’s box of bricks; they explain to us the design and structure and purpose; but as time goes on things do not work out in their way at all. They have mistaken the scaffolding for the structure, while all the time God is working out His purpose with a great and undeterred patience.” Oswald Chambers

 

The following article is based on the belief that God for the most part, does not give over- whelming evidence or proof of his existence in order to create faith[1].  The norm is that God hides or veils himself to protect mans free will.  God does this so that men might freely enter a love relationship with him without being mentally compelled by overwhelming proof.  God does not like shotgun weddings.

The answer to the question, “Are there contradictions in the Bible?”, would depend on a few things; one’s definition of contradictions and the way one looks at the Bible.  If a person approaches the Bible from a  particular point of view which  carries  certain human presuppositions, one could find what they might call contradictions.  However, from another point of view they might be called anomalies.[2]  One of these determining viewpoints is to approach the Bible as if it was totally divine; absolutely perfect, similar to the way we think of God.  This is the position of the fundamentalists of the 18th and 19th century and it was the view that the skeptics of the enlightenment know and rejected and attacked, and may I add, rightfully so.  It still is the view held by many fundamentalists and the skeptical educated class that criticizes the literalist and the Bible.  The sad thing is that for many in the educated class, it is the only view held and even known by most, making them as one dimensional as the fundamentalists whom they reject.

The problem with a fundamentalist view of the Bible is that it overlooks the Bible’s origin as being both human and divine.  In holding to this view fundamentalists approach the scriptures in a one-dimensional way; they often only look at the outward form and ignore the inward substance.  In my thinking, the scriptures should be viewed much the way we view Jesus, who was both human and divine.  Jesus the man (the outward form) could make mistakes, get sick, and hurt himself.  The Scriptures tell us that in every way He was human but without sin[3].  When skeptics say Jesus was a man they are right, they err when they say he was just a man.

You could say that God was hidden in the man Jesus and revealed himself gradually as God lifted the veil, showing his glory, or divine nature to the disciples.  Case in point is the wedding at Cana where Jesus turns water into wine and the scripture tells us, “He showed his glory.”  His resurrection from the dead was the final unveiling of his divine glory, and his transformation into something other than human.

As Jesus was very much like all men on one level, but on another level he was highly different. For example, when Jesus spoke things happened.  People’s lives were changed and they began seeing things on a new level of awareness.  Using this example the Bible is a lot like Jesus.  On one level (in its outward form) it is like other books.  However, on another level the Bible seems to have the ability to create faith and the power to change lives.  Like many books it seems to bear the spirit of its author, and its authority is based on that Spirit.

The difference between the Bible and other books is the Spirit that it bears; it is the spirit of Jesus Christ and his Father.  Jesus said, “My words are spirit and life.”  If you take the Spirit out of the scripture you no longer have the word of God but simply a book; a book that can do the very opposite of what it was intended to do, i.e. give faith and life to humanity.

Let’s make a comparison study with science.  Science is the study of the physical reality and has developed many theories about reality based on observation.  Most good theories are based on the best known knowledge at the time.  However, we need to remember that knowledge is human, which means it is imperfect and incomplete and is constantly changing.  In science when they come across some inconsistency, which seems to contradict their theory, they do not throw out the entire theory, but they set the irregularities aside and look at  them later, believing that when they have more knowledge they will be able to explain it.  These things set aside are often called anomalies[4].  Anomalies are pieces which seem to belong to the puzzle but at the time cannot be fit in.  When we are putting a jigsaw puzzle together we do not throw out every piece that does not immediately work.  No, we set them aside believing in faith they will fit later as we progress.  We often find that some pieces are so hard to fit we must wait until the very last minute to make them work.

Just imagine how hard it would be to put together a difficult puzzle without the completed puzzle picture on the box as a guide.  Trying to understand the Bible without having a picture passed down by the community of believers, is like trying to put together a puzzle without a picture.  To make things even harder just think if someone had mixed your puzzle up with another puzzle and you had bystanders telling you that there isn’t any picture and you should just give up.  This is exactly what is happing today.  People believe that they can put together the puzzle of the Bible without the picture and then when they get stuck they blame the puzzle (filled with contradictions) or they just quit giving up all hope of understanding it.

One of the views of the Bible that gets people into the puzzle predicament is approaching it with the idea that it is simple or easy to understand.  This idea has been propagated by many fundamentalists who often have an anti-intellectual point of view and other believers trying to get people to read their Bibles.  The truth is the Bible is as simple to understand as the one that it attempts to explain, i.e. God.  Then add the limits of our culture, language and our finite minds and you begin to see the problem.  However, this does not mean that you have to be a Bible scholar to understand it, but it does mean you must be diligent in your study and it might mean that you will have to ask an expert for some help to understand it.

You will not get to know the Bible by just reading it a few times and to be fair to the Bible, I would say that it would be very presumptuous to say that there’s contradictions in it when one does not know it and it author well[5].  Even if there are contradictions, those contradictions would have to be qualified.  One such qualification would be, does the Bible contradict itself or does our interpretation have contradictions in it?  I had one man tell me that he found a contradiction and when we turned to it, it was not God talking, but Satan.  You surely could not call the words of Satan God’s word, yet often in the Bible you find Satan’s words and the words of men mixed in with God’s word, for example, read the Book of Job.  How do you tell the difference? Very simply, know the context of the passage you are reading.  It is only after you know the textural and the cultural context that you are prepared to understand the text.

What does the Bible claim for itself?  It claims to be a sufficient guide to God.  It says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).  In the work of growing and perfecting the soul it claims to be perfect (Ps 19:7).  I believe this because I have seen it in others and have experienced it myself.  When a person accepts the Scriptures as the bearer of God’s spirit the Scriptures will change their life.

We are back to the question, are there contradictions in the Bible?  My response is based on the above; you will find in the Bible what your worldview allows you to see and what you are looking for[6].  If you are looking for God you will find Him.  If you are looking for the human with all its contradictions, you will find that as well.  It all depends on your point of view, disposition and what you are looking for.

[1] In view of this it would be improbable for God to give us a book that is beyond question or criticism. Such a book would rob man of his free will and would in itself become an idol. Faith is like a hunch, a hunch becomes faith when you are willing to act on it.

[2] Anomalies are something that deviates from the norm or from expectations. In science what seem to be contradictions or inconsistencies are called anomalies.  In religion they are called errors or contradictions.  This is one example of the bias of the secular mind.

[3] For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. (Heb 2:17)

[4] All scientific theories have anomalies otherwise they wouldn’t be a theory but rather, a fact.  However, some theories have more anomalies than others, e.g. the theory evolution has far more problems to solve than some theories in physics.

[5] A proper understanding of the Bible only comes to the pure in heart, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”. Therefore, seeking God begins with the heart and not the head.

[6] If you are looking through a dirty lens you will see dirt. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matt 6:22-23).

A Letter to a Liberal about the Muslim Faith

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Liberalism, Religion

A Letter to a Liberal about the Muslim Faith

(please read the footnotes)

I would like to share a correspondence that I had with a person about a number of issues pertaining to Islam and the liberal[1] Western response to it. I have found it difficult to find a general expression that would tell the reader where that person was coming from, e.g., liberal, conservative, or progressive. So, let me just give you some facts about her.  She is middle-aged, white, middle-class, well-educated with at least a Master’s degree and not overly religious. These are the facts. It is my opinion that she is probably a conservative liberal in her political and social philosophy.

Our correspondence began when I sent her a well-documented article (by someone else)on the violence committed by some of those who claim to be Muslim. The article was tasteful with full documentation which was beyond question. In response to my letter, I received a short, curt reply[2] which simply compared what the article showed about the numerous acts of terrorism committed by those affiliated with the Muslim faith with two acts of violence done by Christians in the United States. Of course, it was completely overlooked by the person that the two acts of violence by so-called Christians had nothing to do with their religion and the acts of violence were not done in the name of God. The following is my response to my middle-class, white American conservative liberal:

“You said you were surprised that I would tolerate what you call ‘that stuff.’ Well, I’m equally surprised how tolerant you seem to be of the Muslim religion. Would you be as tolerant if it were the Christian religion doing the killing and suppressing  people’s rights around the world? I did note some prejudice toward Christianity in your short remarks[3]. I also noted a judgment made without any evidence on what you call ‘that stuff.’ Now is that tolerance? If a man is wrong, tell me how he is wrong, and I will consider the evidence. To belittle someone’s thinking by calling it ‘that stuff’ would presuppose that you have a great number of facts to back up your opinion. I would sincerely be interested in seeing those facts. I’m very much into facts.

I would like to refer you to the meaning of tolerance in the dictionary. Tolerance by its very nature includes a negative judgment on the subject in view. I tolerate people who I disagree with, yet because of other principles or considerations, I remain in a relationship with them. A good friend of mine is a womanizer, and yet I tolerate him hoping he will change through my influence on him. The time might come when my tolerance wears thin, and I tell him to take a hike. Today when people use the word tolerance, they have taken the idea of a negative judgment out of it, which means that what they’re talking about is no longer tolerance but something else. If you can articulate what that something else is, please let me know (sincerely). When it comes to Muslims, I can tolerate some easier than others. My level of tolerance depends on their level of commitment to their faith, that is, their prophet and their book. I’ll say more about this later. (If you are reading this and fancy yourself as a progressive, I really would like your definition of tolerance. My friend never answered.) 

I personally have done a good deal of research on the subject of Islam[4]. My conclusion is that it is a bad religion. Therefore, I have an obligation to speak out against it. However, I still tolerate the Muslim people in the true sense of the word. I wish the Muslim people only the best, which would entail their deliverance from their bad religion. As a true liberal America, I do not tolerate the Muslim prejudice and hate speech toward the Jews or other religious groups, nor their practice of polygamy, as well as much of their cultural view of women in general. Their lack of tolerance for religious freedom and free speech borders on that of the Nazis and Communists. I have little tolerance for such behavior. On the other hand, I can tolerate and even agree with some of their religious beliefs, traditions, and culture and at the same time disagree with them on other things. Tolerance does not mean that one has to pretend that you accept everyone’s beliefs as equal to your own. This includes religious beliefs. In order to do that, you would have to be a complete relativist and a perfect egalitarian. I am neither.

From your remarks, it seems that you believe that Muslim terrorism is a small isolated problem similar to that of Tim McVey and Waco. I’d have to agree that Waco was an act of terrorism, but I’m not sure who the terrorists were, the cult or the government. I respectively disagree with your comparison of Tim McVey, Christianity, and Muslim extremists. There is absolutely no comparison to a few acts of violence committed by a handful of men in a small cult, with what is happening throughout the world by the hands of thousands of Muslims, possibly hundreds of thousands or even millions. If you’re worried about offending people, I would worry about offending Christians with that comparison. You cannot point to one predominantly Muslim country where Christians and Jews are not being persecuted  by Muslims. In India, they seem to like to target Buddhists and Hindus as well. By the way, this information is suppressed to a large degree by the media in the West. It would make an interesting intellectual pursuit to understand why the media is so blind to the violence of this religion. Could it be a progressive ideology that blinds them to the fact that pluralism is nothing more than a myth? Of course, the media and academia were blind to Hitler and the Communists, as well.

In fact, the only places that have true religious freedom are Western Europe and the United States, countries that have been influenced by Christianity and classic liberalism and have not yet been brought under the spell of atheistic communism and Islam. I say this to point out that freedom is rare and should be protected from all that would destroy it. It is quite obvious that the common denominator among the nations where people are persecuted for their religious faith and speaking out for freedom is where either the majority is Muslim or the oligarchy is atheist. There is every reason to believe that when the numbers of Muslims or atheists reach a large enough number in any country, persecution of other religions and beliefs will start. In Europe where Muslims number 15% to 20% of the population, people are already being intimidated by threats of death if they speak out against Islam. There’s no reason to think it will not happen in our future. In fact, at their present birth rate Muslims will be one of the biggest political groups in the country by 2050. Some estimate the number as high as 40 to 50 million.

I have read the Koran and found the flaws in Islam are not so much in its followers as in its founder and its holy Book. There are at least 100 verses in the Koran telling Muslims to kill the people of the Book (Christians and Jews)[5]. These passages have been softened in some English versions of the Koran. Mohammad himself was a polygamist, pedophile[6], and a terrorist (of course, you may try to excuse this on cultural grounds). To say this in any Muslim country publicly would cost me my life[7]. For a Muslim to build bridges with Christians and Jews, it would involve them denying their own Holy Book and their prophet. Now that is a real possibility. We have an example of this happening with numerous Christians who deny much of the New Testament because of the secular brainwashing they have received in our public schools. I personally don’t think the Muslim community is going to buy into that brainwashing; one thing that I respect about Muslims is the level of their commitment to their faith. I based the above opinion on the fact that they have not assimilated into Western culture in Europe.

Let me also point out that there is a huge difference between Christianity and the Muslim faith. In Christianity, the flaw is with the followers and not with the leader (Jesus) or with the message of the book (New Testament). However, the very opposite is true of the Muslim faith. The flaw is not only in some of the disciples or followers but rather with the prophet and the revelation (the book).

Let me hasten to point out that I am no more friendly toward some Christian sects than I am toward some of the Muslim sects. The Calvinists of the Middle Ages were a mean lot and some Roman Catholics did some harm during the Inquisition. However, most of this abuse has been greatly embellished by atheists and secular folks to bring reproach on Christianity. I would also say that most organized religion is a form of idolatry, and I include the Christian religion. Therefore, I have very little love for most organized religion. Jesus said the truth will set you free. He did not say that religion would set you free. All religions should be watched for abuses; this includes the Christian religion. One sect of the Muslim faith, the Baha’i is a very peaceful religious sect, and I can fully tolerate their beliefs and would, from a human point of view, grade their religion as being good. However, they have been viciously persecuted by their own Muslim brothers in every country where they exist.

Before we start building bridges, I think it would be good to do some real research and have some real debate on where we are building those bridges to. In the 1930s, many were saying that we should be building bridges with the Nazis and then in the 1940s they were saying we should be building bridges with the communists. If the 30s and 40s proved anything, they demonstrated that Americans are naïve and gullible. We should learn from history to watch ourselves. Bridge building is fine if you mean by it a dialogue. I’ll dialogue with anyone who will speak in good faith and carry on an honest debate, but at the same time I’ll be watching what they do and not just listening to what they say.

Now, in this I am not saying that the Muslim people as a whole are evil. I have a number of Muslim friends who are good people. However, like most ethnic groups and ideological groups, they all tend to support the same ethnic and ideological groups that they are members of.  Most of the Germans in the 30s and 40s were not Nazis and by human standards the majority of them were nice people. Nevertheless, when it came to the war, they supported the Nazis. Most people are like sheep that will follow the leader. Many of the Muslim leaders have a will to power and are evil. Yes, I still believe in evil. Because people are like sheep and follow their leaders, you should not judge a movement, ideology, or a religion by what the average person believes or does, but rather by the foundational beliefs and the goals of its leadership. In the case of the Muslim faith, there are a large number of their leaders who want to destroy the Jews and every other religious faith that will not bow the knee to Mohammad. I personally don’t feel any obligation to tolerate these leaders, to accept them, or to ignore their behavior or speech. To me, this would border on insanity.

It is extremely important for our culture in order to stay free to label and resist any religion or ideology that would rob us of freedom. Just because a group calls itself a religion does not give it the right to be insensitive to the feelings and emotions of others. They may have a right under the Constitution to build a mosque on Ground Zero, but the same Constitution gives those whom their offending the right to protest their building of that mosque. I find it very strange that a religion, which says it wants to build bridges of peace and healing, would be so insensitive that when hearing that 70% of the people don’t want that mosque built there, would not immediately change their plans.

I would invite you to read and study some good books on the Muslim faith before building too many bridges. I purposely did not use the Bible to discredit the Muslim faith because I believe that it is self-evident that Muslim beliefs contradict much of the teachings of Jesus. Please excuse me for any “rambling on” that may be in this letter. I realize there are many other points that I could expound on that would clarify my beliefs on this topic even more, if time would allow. If you cannot tolerate my opinions, I will take you off my mailing list if that is your wish. It is not my purpose to offend or upset people but just to present facts to thoughtful people who may be seeking the truth.”

Following is a list of a few books you might be interested in:

The Hidden Origins of Islam (An academic book that researches the origin of Islam)

Islam and Terrorism (by Mark A. Gabriel Ph.D., former professor of Islamic history at Al-Azhar University Cairo, Egypt.)

The Unseen Face of Islam.(by Bill Musk)

The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (by Robert Spencer.  This book is a critique of the Koran in comparison to the teachings of the Bible and Christianity.)

The Koran (Islam’s Holy Book)

[1] When I use the word liberal I am using it to denote those people that have embraced the ideology of liberalism.

[2] This is a typical response of the liberals I have encountered. Not much content.

[3] Liberals in general have a negative biased towards Christianity. One reason for this is that Christianity rivals Liberalism for the high ground of morals and ethics and is it sole competitor on the stage of ethics and intellectual rigor. In essence, Christianity is liberalism’s chief competitor in the world of ideas.

[4] I do not consider myself an expert on Islam. However, I have read a number books on Islam and the Koran.

[5] Sometimes it is hard to determine who the Koran is referring to as unbelievers. Some Moslems believe that it is only talking about people who attack Islam.

[6] Mohammed married a nine-year-old girl and consummated the relationship. For some this can be justified culturally. I leave it up to the reader.

[7] In contrast Christianity has tolerated attacks on its belief system and its founding documents since the time of the Enlightenment. They have defended themselves not with violence but with intellectual argument.

The Death of Religion

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Atheism, Faith, Jesus, Religion

The Death of Religion[1]

The Christ event, the death and resurrection of Christ, symbolizes many things like the end of the old order and the beginning of the new  “It represented a new way of approaching God and a new and better covenant. However, many fail to see that the first part the equation, the death of Christ marked the end of religion as a way to approach God.  So, we could say that when Christ died, all religion died with him, along with all of its idols.”  In view of this statement, I thought it good to give the readers a working definition of what we mean by religion.

The most common idea that comes to mind when we hear the word religion is one of ceremonial and other worldliness.  However, when we look deeper we begin to see a sense of religion in just about everything we humans say and do.  We see it in our devotion and ceremonialism in regards to our professionalism and nationalism.  Robert D. Brinsnead goes so far as to say, “To be a person is to be religious, because a person is by nature homo religious.”  One man said, “that a man’s religion is his ultimate concern” and we all have an ultimate concern.

We can also understand the word religion in a narrow sense to mean an institution that forms the foundation of a society and gives it the moral fabric that holds it together[2].  Religion as an institution can be created by humans as in the case of the world’s great religions like Buddhism,  Islam, and modern Christianity, or it can be a divinely created religion like ancient Judaism or primitive Christianity.  It can be organized like the great religions around the world, or unorganized like American civil religion or New-Age religion.  It may even take the form of non-religion like atheistic communism, which itself has become a religion.  It is religion in the form of institution that we will be discussing in this article.

From the above we can gather that we can never be completely free from religion in its broadest sense and probably not in any sense of the word.  However, we can strive to be free of bad religion in every sense of the word.  We might say that anything we do or say that does not lead to life is bad religion.

If you didn’t notice, let me draw your attention to the fact that in talking about religion I did not classify primitive Christianity as a religion.  I did this for the simple reason that it is not a religion but rather a way of life.  Jesus Christ never founded an organized religion nor did he intend his followers to fabricate one.  In fact, Jesus’ intent was to destroy religion as a mediator between God and man.  Therefore, primitive Christianity in the first century, like its Lord, stood against all institutionalized religion.  It called upon all men everywhere to cease building the institutions of religion, which is a call for man to stop making idols and to start having a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  The command of God in the gospel is that all men must come out of religion into his Son (II Cor 6:14-18).  This calling out of religion includes modern Christianity, which is a total subversion of primitive Christianity.

In order to understand the degree of this subversion, we must further understand the contrast between modern Christianity and primitive Christianity, the latter we will refer to from now on as the Faith.  We will see from this contrast that the Faith was subversive to all religion and that modem Christianity is nothing more than a total perversion of the true Faith, which we will see has very little in common with religion in any of its form or institutions.

As we begin to observe organized religion, you will begin to see a common thread that runs through all religion.  That thread is that religion is the mediator between man and his absolute.  In some cases, this absolute is God, in others it is an idol.  An idol is anything made by man and exalted by man as his absolute.  This would include ideologies and theological belief systems that have been created to serve him in his understanding of God and reality.  Given time these systems usually are exalted to be absolutes.  When this happens they become idols and men soon found that these systems of belief that were intended to serve and liberate them, have in fact enslaved them[3].  The religious traditions and institutions that he has made to serve him by giving structure and form have become his master.  A modem example of this enslavement to an ideology is Marxism.  First, you have the ideology that was meant to enrich mankind.  Then you have the subversion of it by the followers of the founder.  Then you have the institution that enslaves while claiming to be the perfection of the ideas of its founder.

This subversion and movement away from the founders intentions can be seen equally well in the Christian movement.  The Christian church in its institutional form has watered down and has even subverted the teachings of its Lord to make them and itself acceptable to the masses.  This perversion is often done under the cloak of evangelism and the love of souls.  However, the truth about of the matter is that the institutionalized church loves numbers because it loves power and the status of the numbers.

Subsequently, in order to protect and propagate itself, the institution must also exalt itself to a place of being the sole mediator between its members and their absolute.  It usually also claims the right to invest the authority of mediation on certain sacred people, places, codes, and times.  Thus we have the creation of the distinction between the sacred and the profane.  As long as the institution has control over the sacred, it has a tremendous power over its followers.  It is in this area of distinction between the sacred and the profane that primitive Christianity became hostile to all religion.  For it proclaimed that in the resurrection of Christ, that God had declared all things clean or sacred, for He is the Lord of all things and all people.  In this act of raising his Son, he forever abolished the distinction between the sacred and profane.  Therefore, this act of God is also the abolition of all religion, which raises the question; can one believe in the resurrected Christ and religion at the same time?

We have already made the statement that religion mediates though the channels of sacred people (priests or clergymen), sacred places (temples, shrines, etc.), sacred laws (creeds, theological systems, laws, etc.) sacred times (Sabbath day, Sunday, etc.).  However, when we look at primitive Christianity we see an amazing absence of these sacred mediators.  Instead, we find that there is only one mediator between God and man, and that one mediator is not a religion nor any of its forms of mediation, but rather a man.  “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men.  The testimony given in its proper time” (1 Tim 2:5,6).  If we build on this teaching of the apostle Paul, we must conclude that when Jesus Christ appeared, all religion ceased to mediate the presence of God.  In other words, when Jesus came to life, all institutionalized religion was put to death along with all its forms of mediation.  At least in the mind of God.

It was religion and its laws that judged Jesus to be the accursed one, but God reversed that judgment by raising him from the dead and declaring him to be the just one.  In justifying Jesus in this mighty act of raising him from the dead, God condemned to death all religion, placing it in the old order of things that was done away with through Christ (John 19:7,  Col. 2:13-17).  He also shows in this act that the real intent and purpose of the Law (religion) was to point people toward Christ and to bring them to faith in the perfect revelation of God which is Jesus Christ (John 1:17, Gal 3:23-25).  In restoring Law [religion] to its proper place and fulfilling it by his very presence, Jesus dismantled one of the main forms of mediation of religion.  In religion law rules as the absolute.  In the Faith it is the living Christ that rules and we could go so far as to say that his standard of rule is not a written code but rather the well-being of man (Mark 2:27).  When God raised Jesus from the dead and enthroned him at his right hand, He dethroned all religion.  The living Christ has replaced all religion (a system of law or theology).  To be involved in making new laws, religions, or systems of theology, is to stand opposed to the living Christ.

Moreover, where institutionalized religion rules there must also be a sacred group of people to teach and enforce the law, for the profane or common people as defined by religion, have no right to handle the sacred law.  Thus we have the need for the professional clergy that is set apart for the sacred.  However, when we look at primitive Christianity we find no evidence of a professional clergy that was set apart from other members of the community of Faith.  In fact, we find evidence that would contradict and even condemn any professionalization or sacralization of any group in the Christian movement.  The message we find in the New Testament is that in Jesus Christ all men are equal and have equal access to God through the one mediator, Jesus Christ.  Therefore, the apostle Peter could refer to all believers as priests of God (I Peter 2:9).

In the act of making all believers priests, God has forever done away with a separate or professional priesthood or clergy system.  In his book entitled “The Church” the Catholic theologian Hans Kung says, “all human priesthood has been fulfilled and finished by the unequal final, unrepeatable and hence unlimited sacrifice of the one continuing eternal high priest.  The perfect self-offering sacrifice replaces all cultic sacrifices offered by men; the perfect priest replaces all human priests” (page 469).  In commenting on 1 Peter 2:4, Kung says, “the word ‘priest’ ” occurs again here, not used in the sense of an official priesthood, and not in reference to the one high priest Christ, but applied through him and in him to all believers.  The WHOLE people, filled by the Spirit of Christ, becomes a priesthood set apart; all Christians are “priests”[4] (page 475). In making all Christians priests, God has made them equal and has forever destroyed the religious concept of mediation through sacred groups of men or women.  In this we again see a marked distinction between religion that promotes a sacred group of men and primitive Christianity that makes all men equal before God.

Religion tells us the temple or Holy Place is the place where man will find and worship God.  In religion the temple or shrine is the symbol of the presence of God.  However, when we turn to the New Testament, we find the very opposite message.  In fact, the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was killed for telling religious people that God does not dwell in earthly dwellings made by man (Acts 7:48).  The apostle Paul proclaimed the same message when he visited Athens.  “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples (church buildings) built by hands” (Acts 17:24).

In His polemics with the Pharisees, Jesus contrasted the physical temple in Jerusalem with his own body. In this, he was claiming to be the new temple of God.  No longer would men find God in earthly temples made out of brick and mortar, but now they would find him in a person.  As God dwelled in the physical body of Jesus, He now dwells in the spiritual body of Jesus, which is made up of all that believe in Jesus as their Lord (II Cor 6:16).  This group of people is referred to in scripture as the church.  In the Bible the word church is used to denote a people, never a building.  This is why the apostle Paul could refer to the church as the new temple of God in the new order.  From this it becomes obvious that the only place that God dwells in all of creation, is in the only thing that was created in his image, that is man.  God dwells in our brother and only in our brother.  Therefore mankind and only mankind is sacred.  What we do to our fellow man therefore, we are actually doing to God.  This is why Christians put such a high importance on human life.  This is why we must go to the aid of our brother; for helping our brother is helping God (Matt 25:26).  We that are brothers in Christ should remember this teaching when we begin to tear each other apart in the name of truth.  What truth is more important than our brother?

We also see in religion an emphasis on sacred times.  Both in Judaism and paganism we find a distinct separation between the sacred and the profane in regards to time.  In paganism, the times vary greatly. In Judaism, we find the Sabbath day or the seventh day set apart with a number of additional feast days as the sacred times for the Jewish people.  However, when we turn to the New Testament, we find the distinction between times abolished in Christ.  In the new order in Christ, all time becomes sacred because it all belongs to Christ.  For he is the creator and Lord of all time (Col 1:15-18).

The apostle Paul in writing to Gentile Christians that had been converted out of paganism, exhorted them not to go back to religion by observing special times and days.  “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not Gods.  But now that you know God or rather are known by God how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles?  Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?  You are observing special days and months and seasons and years!  I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you” (Gal 4:8-11).  He goes on to say, “therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat, drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day.  These are a shadow of the things to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” (Col 2:16-17)  Some have misunderstood this passage thinking that Paul was saying that the reality behind the Sabbath was Sunday.  However when we look at the passage in its context we quickly see that the reality behind the Sabbath was not just another or different sacred day, but rather the person of Christ himself.  It is Christ that is the final and perfect rest for the people of God. (Heb 3:7-11).

By Through Christ, God has made all times sacred by entering into ALL of time in the person of His son Jesus.  In everything that Jesus did, he did it to the glory of God.  Therefore, everything he did was worship to the Father.  In this, Jesus demonstrated that God is present in all times and activities.  For in Jesus (God with us), God has entered into the very times and activities where Christ was involved.  In this God was telling us that the everyday and ordinary has become sacred.  Therefore, Christians no longer worship God at a particular time or place, for they worship him at all times in everything they do (Col 3:17).  This also means that our work, play and even our rest is worship to the Father, for we see Jesus involved in all of these things making them acceptable to the Father.  Christians do not come together to worship God in the traditional sense but rather to encourage and to exhort one another unto good works, which is worship in its true sense (Heb 10:24-25).  The good works that we do outside of our meetings are the highest form of worship for the spiritually mature.  Putting the emphasis on coming together to worship God in a sacred place at a sacred time is a digression back to religion and a movement away from God.  Note Herman Ridderbos, “Paul: An Outline of His Theology” (Page 481).

The modern church’s emphasis on corporate worship with its ritual, form, and structure is a move back to religion and an effort to take God out of the everyday or ordinary and place him back into the sacred.  Great attention is given to create the atmosphere that will give the worshiper the sense of the presence of God.  This sends the message that God is somehow more present in this religious atmosphere than in the nonreligious everyday.  It matters little whether the religious atmosphere is created by icons, ritual, esthetics or emotionalism; it all represents a return to religion.  When religion does this, it presents God as the totally other, that is, totally removed from the everyday, a God that must be approached through sacred people and sacred places.  However, in the New Testament we see a very human God that draws close to man in the everyday.  A God who has come among his people in the form of a man.  A God to whom all have equal access.  A God that is near and can be called on in any place and at any time.  A God that has hallowed the everyday with his presence.

Moreover, religion makes worship something you do in a sacred place and is directed toward God.  In contrast, when we look at the Faith, we find that worship is something you do in the everyday and is directed toward God through your fellow man.  “And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” (Heb 13:16)  “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27)  From this we can gather that true religion and true worship is something that is done in the everyday and has very little, if anything, to do with what the modern church calls worship.  True worship is loving your brother and sharing the message of God’s love with your neighbor.

From all this, we can conclude that religion, instead of bringing or drawing us closer to God, actually distances us from God.  But if this is the case, how do we explain this phenomenon?  How could a faith that started out as a simple way of life turn into a religion?  How could God be taken out of the ordinary and placed back into the sacred? The answer is that the Christian faith was subverted by religion and human wisdom.  The tracing of the evolution of this subversion is beyond the scope of this article.  However, for those who would like a complete treatment of this subversion, I recommend “The Distancing of God” by Bernard J. Cooke and “The Subversion of Christianity” by Jacques Ellule.  These two books will forever change the way you look upon the Christian religion.

[1] This article may help some to see that religion and faith in God are not the same. A person can question religion without questing the existence of God. In like manner, a person can believe in Jesus Christ and yet reject many aspects of the Christian religion.

[2]  Some of the new atheist type have postulated that religion has nothing to do with shaping the morality of a culture. This position is so ridiculous that it’s not worth commenting on.

[3] These idols can consist of ideologies, pseudo-religions like scientism and political ideologies like nationalism, etc.

[4] Hans Kung

Dogma?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Nonsense, Religion

“Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas.  As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human.  When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality,  when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass.  Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded” C.K. Chesterton.

The world is filled with ideas, and many of those ideas could be classified as dogmas.  Now, a dogma is an idea that has hardened to a point that is no longer thought about but just accepted on authority.  The word dogma is not used as much today, this may be because it sounds too religious for a secular age, which itself has accepted the dogma of secularism.  However, we do have a word or idea that is very close to it.  It is the word presumption.  A presumption is an idea that we take for granted without much thought or for the most part, without any or little thought.

In view of the above it is a self-event truth that all men have and live by dogma to some degree. One thing that can be said about the religious man is that he has accepted parts of his faith as dogma while the secular man is still in a state of denial, believing he is living by reason alone or in some neutral zone free of presumption or dogma.  He has reached the unconsciousness of grass and he glories in it calling it tolerance or enlightenment.

Of course, there are some men who have very little dogma.  Some of these folks fancied themselves as skeptics.  Skeptics claim not to live by or believe dogma according to their dogma. The only dogma that they can believe is the dogma of skepticism.  According to them, you must doubt everything except skepticism.  Then you have the agnostics who believe nothing because they believe that it is impossible to be certain about the truth.  Of course, they are certain agnosticism is true.  We should not leave out the relativist which believes everything and nothing, and that everyone is right except the person that believes others are wrong.  Of course, they believe that the skeptics, and the agnostics are right.  The only person that they do not agree with is the dogmatist.  They do not seem to like people who think they know something which is true.

Out of all of the above, the relativist is the one most likely to be tossed about by every wind of teaching that comes along, for they lack a foundation of truth by which to judge any new ideas.  As it has been said, “a man who believes nothing will believe anything.”  In fact, the relativist really does not believe in objective truth. What they believe in, is personal truth, i.e. truth is what you believe.  What makes it true is that you believe it.  Most of these folks belong to the same cult, the cult of personal opinion.

The relativist are also the most likely to become fanatical and completely out of balance. Many  progressive folks fall within this group always moving forward without knowing which direction is forward; always seeing a cause to give their meaningless life purpose.  To me, the really progressive person is the one that when traveling in a direction that is not working turns around and goes in a different direction, like back.  Of course, if you are a relativist you don’t know which way is back.

It may be time for all of us to ask some serious questions about some of our new dogmas.  Question like, are they really taking us forward or are they simply getting us deeper into the woods.  So, deep that we will never find our way out.  Why not try putting some of your dogmas, or the lack of it to the test?  Start with your religious assumptions using the Bible as an objective standard to judge your ideas.  You do not have to believe it, but simply use it as a source of information to compare your personal dogma with.  You also might try the same exercise politically with the Constitution and other founding documents.  In doing this you might find these source documents truly refreshing and challenging.

 

Does Reason have Anything to do with Evolution?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

Does Reason have Anything to do with Evolution?

The true naturalist, as Darwin, has got to say no to this question.  They’re closed system of naturalism says that reason or intelligent design can have nothing to do with evolution.  For if they were to say yes, it would allow the camel to get his noise in the tent.  However, this leads to another question, if reason or intelligence really has nothing to do with evolution.  How could evolution give birth to reason?[1]  What about when reason gets into the  evolution process by the practice of select breeding?  So, we could say that reason is involved in some evolution because human intelligence is directing the evolution of some species through selective breeding.  What about when scientists messing with genes and manipulating them, could you call that intelligent design?  Reason, directing or influenced evolution.

If human reason can tinker with genes and evolution why is it so far-fetched that super reason can be tinkering with it, designing it and directing it to achieve his goals?  There is only one reason for denying this hypothesis, that being a predisposition of science toward materialism and atheism.  This predisposition, being a built in bias in science toward metaphysics, came out of its attempt to distinguish itself from philosophy.

Richard Lewontin (evolutionary geneticist), hints at this predisposition and bias when he says “[The public] take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.” [2]

“So the moral of the story told by a historian of science is at once simple and endlessly complex. Knowledge without prejudice is not possible and neither is social life. Prejudice can be selectively managed and disciplined but it cannot be eliminated. We have to pick out those prejudices that we find intolerable and oppose them as vigorously as we can with whatever resources we can. But we are going to have to do so without a rational master”[3]

It does seem from the above the following things, (1) many in the scientific community have a presupposition bias towards intelligent design in evolution. (2) Intelligent design has been practiced in the barnyard and in the laboratory for centuries. (3) The hypothesis that the processes of evolution or at least aspects of it are controlled by a super intelligence is not contrary to observation and true science. Intelligence has been observed influencing evolution. (4) Many arguments against intelligent design is grounded more in materialistic philosophy than authentic science.

[1] They use reason to explain how evolution created reason and reason to explain evolution. Is this not based on the presupposition that reason can be trusted, which in turn is based on the supposition that a mindless process could create a rational process. Can these suppositions be supported scientifically? Evolutionist will say that nature gave birth to reason through the process of natural selection. However, natural selection presupposes that there is something to select from. If there was no reason in nature how could it be selected by natural selection?

[2] “Billions and Billions of Demons,” page 31 quoted in Never Pure by Shapin, Steven

[3] Shapin, Steven (2010-07-24). Never Pure (p.46, 56). Johns Hopkins University Press. Kindle Edition.

 

The Cornerstone of Liberalism

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Christ and Culture, Liberalism, Progressivism

The Cornerstone of Liberalism

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!  John 8:43-45 NIV.

The foundation of Liberalism[1] is made up of many stones.  However, the cornerstone of the philosophy is the autonomy of the individual.  What do we mean by the autonomy of the individual?  It simply means that the individual is self-governing and to some degree is self-directed.

It may surprise you to hear that the Bible has quite a bit to say about this doctrine of the autonomy of the individual.  In the story found in the book of Genesis, God created man free to make a choice and he also warned man that if he made the wrong choice there would be consequences.  The choices were to governor one’s self and be independent of God (autonomous) or to choose to be self – denying and allow God to govern one’s life.

If we look at the liberal faith through the lens of the story.  Liberalism is nothing more than an organized rebellion against God[2].  Like Adam in the story liberals do not believe God, of course in our age it’s not a matter of believing God, but rather not believing IN God.  However, no matter how you word it, it’s the same old story.  Man , wanting to be independent and free from the authority of God.  In the story Satan deceived man in two ways.  He first convinced man that God’s word was not true and then that God did not mean what he said.  Both of his arguments were attacks on the truth of God’s word.  Based on what I’ve all already said, it only follows that the liberal faith would be attacking God’s word today and even setting themselves up as the judges of God and his Word.  Well, that exactly what we find.

It is the liberal faith that has embraced relativism (the denial that there is any absolute truth) and has led the attack on scripture and on the living word who is Jesus Christ.[3]  In fact, liberals and their siblings[4] despise any authority, but especially anything or anyone that represents the authority of God.  Like their father they hate God and everything that pertains to the true God.  Like their father they know how to subvert language and appear as angles of light to naïve and gullible men.  The apostle Paul says of them “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” 2 Cor. 11:14-15.  Still to this day we have liberals masquerading as Christians for their own purpose or the purpose of their father.

Even from a utilitarian point of view, liberalism has a number of problems, if every person is self-governing and self-directed, what happens when people begin to go in different directions and they then begin to disagree on whom and what should govern?  The liberal answer is that a man’s freedom or self-governing ends where any others man’s freedom begins.  But does this really take care of the problem or does it just raise more questions?  For example who will determine where one man’s freedom ends and any other man’s begins?  The state?[5]  If the state is to determine this, is the individual really free?  What happens if the state defines freedom differently than the individual?  Maybe we should toss a coin?  No, the one with the most power wins and in the modern world that means the state.  Liberalism therefore will always look to the state to determine where freedom begins and ends.  The state then judges the difference between good and evil.  In other word the state begins to determine morality.  Could this be the source of political correctness?  It surely is the beginning of a totalitarian state.

In the story, God creates man and then gives him freedom.  In the liberal system it is the state that defines and gives freedom to the individual, of course, if the state gives freedom, the state can take it away.  If the deity gives freedom no government would have the right to take that freedom away.  This was the thinking of the founding fathers when they said that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” and government was created to protect those rights.  It is quite obvious that the founding fathers were not liberals.  This is the reason why liberals are not extremely fond of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.  They simply don’t believe them.

There is any problem with the liberal faith, which is, who has the authority to define the concept of freedom?  Freedom is one of those elusive concepts that could be defined in a numbers ways.  For the atheist it could be defined simply by the expression “Freedom is doing what I what to do or simply being left alone by the authorities”.  For the Christian freedom would be defined “as being free from self to serve God and others.”

Now liberals, will respond by saying that the state should stay out of defining freedom or liberty.  But if this true, why then do they use the public school to push their liberal faith?  In fact, every time they have a change, liberals use the government and the court system to impose their liberal faith on the American people.  They get away with this because the American people do not recognize liberalism for what it is, a godless religion that is against all other religions.

In the story when man sinned something happened to his nature.  Before the fall his will was directed toward God, after the fall his will was directed to himself.  His will was directed to satisfying his lower nature.  He then began to live not for God, but rather to satisfy his lower nature’s appetites.  The story therefore depicts liberalism, perfectly, for liberalism is nothing more than a high form of hedonism (living for pleasure).  Even, discipline and self-restraint is practiced primarily to extend the ego.

The conclusion is this; liberalism is nothing more than an organized rebellion against the living God.  It is a religion or a philosophy that denies and subverts God’s word.  Therefore, it is sinful for Christians to be involved in liberalism or to support any group or politic party that supports it.

[1] Liberalism is not being nice or compassionate. It is a philosophy that competes and stands in contradiction to the Christian faith. The advanced liberals which often call themselves progressives are liberals who have embraced the liberal philosophy and have taken it to its end, which is anarchy.

[2] The symbol and the height of the liberal move is the French Revolution with its motto “No king and no God”.

[3] Liberals have used the methodology of higher criticism to deny the authority of scripture and to deny the Lordship of Jesus. Note Eta Linnemann Book  “Historical Criticism of the Bible” with the sub-title “Methodology or Ideology? Reflections of a Bultmannian turned evangelical”. Also note Jude 8-16

Harry Blamires book “The Christian Mind” saved me from embracing a liberal view of the Bible.

[4] The two siblings of liberalism are atheism and libertarianism. Atheism is the ultimate distortion of the image of God in man and libertarianism is a secular counterfeit of the Christian faith which in its true state lives above the law.

[5] In the end for the liberal the state becomes God walking on the earth. A good example of this that the state in the abortion controversy ended up determining what is life or non-life. In this Secular liberalism is nothing more than man playing God.

The Burden of Proof and Non-Belief

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

The Burden of Proof and Non-Belief

 About two years ago I became interested in the new atheist movement and began to spend some time reading and contemplating it.  As I got into it, it struck me how much stress the new atheists puts on the question of who has the burden of truth[1] and on their belief that atheism should be categorized as a non-belief and not a belief.  It seemed that the significance they gave to these beliefs in their blogs diverted the attention away from the question of ‘does God exist’ and on to peripheral subjects[2]. At first this puzzled me and then it dawned on me how crucial these beliefs are to their thought system.

Why are these beliefs so important to new the atheists?  My suspicion is that some of them on the top of their intellectual food chain know that human reason can question and deny almost any belief.  Reason can  lead you to doubting your doubts.  So, how do you avoid this?  By simply declaring your thought system as an non-belief, making it immune to doubting and skepticism.  You never have to question it, for how can you question a non-belief?  So in essence, you can be a true believer without believing anything.  Ingenious to say the least.

What about the burden of proof?  Everyone who has dabbled in philosophy knows that you cannot prove empirically metaphysical ideas, you must infer them from facts and the inferences you contribute to the facts.  These inferences can always be questioned and doubted.  The atheist knows that the hard work is not questioning the inferences but creating them.  So, in their discussions with believers most stoop to the level of criticism.  This is why we find very few arguments against the existence of God and numerous arguments against the arguments of the theist, which proves nothing but the strength of the argument.

Some atheists have gone so far as to declare their un-belief as an absolute, claiming to have proven atheism[3], even to the point of criticizing and attacking agnosticism, which is the very state of mind that doubting is grounded on.  The agnostic says I do not know, therefore ‘I should question everything including my doubts’[4].  On the other hand some atheist[5] say you should doubt everything, but not your doubts about the existence of God and of course whatever else they deem as important.  Now I admit that atheism is the more manly and brave position rather than agnosticism, but it’s not the most rational or consistent position, from a doubters (skeptics) and believers point of view.

[1] I have a number of articles on my website about the burden of truth.  The technical definition of burden of truth basically says that it falls on the person making a positive affirmation. However, you can make a positive affirmation on a negative.  Example: there is absolutely no God.  Most reasonable people will admit that this statement cannot be proven beyond a shadow of doubt but the statement itself demands evidence or else it is simply an empty statement.  If not then why do atheists argue about it all the time?

[2] In one exchange the new atheist spent so much time arguing about the burden of proof we never got to the subject of the existence of God.  The young man seemed incapable of simply carrying on a conversation about the question, ‘does God exist’.

[3] Not many will make this assertion.  However, a few are brave enough.

[4] The true skeptic believes that the way to truth is through doubting.  Thus if you stop doubting you close off the source to truth and actually become a believer.  Atheistic absolutists’ are true believers in that they brand their abstract reasoning as absolute, and put their faith in it.

[5] These atheists are true believers, that believe that reason is pure and therefore can be absolute.  Of course reason is never pure and human knowledge never reflects reality totally.

An Exchange with a Naturalist

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

An Exchange with a Naturalist 

The radical monotheists are the true skeptics. When the majority believes in many gods, they believed in one. When the majority is atheistic, they continue to believe in one true God. The human impulse is to deny the true God because of the tremendous tension it bring into existence. Mankind escapes the tension by creating false gods or denying the existence of God. Both are forms of escapism from the true God.  Lyle Duell 

The following is a reply to my article “Does God Exist?” by an atheist and in turn my reply to him. The article was forwarded to him by a friend. I never engaged him personally in correspondence. 

Unbeliever to my Friend:

He (Lyle) states that there is some form of religion, be it shamanism, ancestor worship, etc., in every group of people everywhere in the world. I and most rational people accept this to be true based on years of observation and exploration of even the most remote areas of this planet. All cultures have faith or religion. They all have a sense of right and wrong. They all have a sense of fairness. The question is: What explains this best? Is it the God hypothesis or the naturalist hypothesis? Just to say the condition exists says nothing.

Lyle:

Your friend is right. However, I believe it is more reasonable to expect to find a world filled with morality and faith if you start with a moral God hypothesis rather than a naturalist hypothesis that believes the world is an accident created by irrational and amoral causes. The latter would only seem rational to a person who is irrational or has accepted on faith the dogmas of naturalism. Naturalism is a philosophy, which taken to its logical conclusions, would deny reason, on which it claims to be based. Can you really trust a mind that was formed by a mindless process of natural selection alone? Is it reasonable to believe that reason was created by an unreasonable force or cause?

Though the presence of universal faith and morality does not prove the existence of God, it is exactly what you would expect to find if a moral consciousness (God) had directed the process of the creation of the world.

Moreover, the naturalists have a hard time demonstrating why this spiritual consciousness and morality evolved equally in all humans throughout the world in the same time frame. This phenomenon seems to fit the ideal of revelation more than a naturalistic causation.
Unbeliever to my Friend:

It is here that Mr. Duell misses the mark and uses faulty logic. This does not prove that God is self-evident.

Lyle:

I did not say it proves the existence of God or that He is self-evident. However, it is consistent with a God hypothesis. You cannot prove a self-evident truth to anyone who is dead to it, for the conditioning of his ideology and his disposition keeps him from seeing the truth. These people’s perception has been so distorted by false ideology it would take more than evidence to convince them. You cannot cure blindness with an argument.

Unbeliever to Lyle’s Friend:

It (the existence of religion and morality) merely proves that we are all human and think basically alike.

Lyle:

You have stated the facts correctly, but the facts in themselves do not answer the question of why. Why are we basically alike when it comes to morality and religion? You attempt to answer the question with a narrative or a story of history, which you admit you cannot prove. So in essence, you did not answer the question of why. You attempt to answer a why question with a how answer, which is simply begging the question. The truth is that your atheistic worldview cannot answer the question of why things are the way they are and not some other way. In contrast, the theistic worldview simply says that all men were created in the image of God and therefore inherited his natural characteristics and tendencies from God. Moreover, your how answer cannot even answer the how question, because it is based on assumptions and speculation with fragmented and thin evidence and no proof. So, in the end you must admit that your position is held by faith.

It seems if your thinking is correct, we would think alike on everything; however when we look at humanity we are divided on just about everything. We cannot carry on a conversation with another human but for a few minutes before we start disagreeing. Why do all humans think the same about things like faithfulness, compassion, justice, and retribution if these concepts were created by mindless evolution? And why did all the cultures evolve equally in the same time frame, having all these basic moral elements in them? If evolution is not directed by a consciousness, why did all the cultures in the world develop civilizations with the same basic morality in the same time frame?

Unbeliever:
Man did not evolve with long teeth, sharp fangs, great strength, or great speed compared to other animals. Our secret weapon was to evolve a problem solving brain to better cope and increase our chance to survive as a species.
One downside of a problem solving, thinking brain is that it is always thinking and trying to solve problems or riddles. Think of it as exercising our weapon to make it better, like young animals play-fighting, or cats mindlessly sharpening their claws. When there is no problem to solve, we invent one.  Just consider the number of games and puzzles we have created to amuse ourselves.

When early humans finally evolved this thinking, self-aware brain, they found that they were in an unfriendly, hostile world and likely feeling frightened and vulnerable and unable to explain the mysteries all around them. After witnessing events like lightning and volcanoes, it would seem likely that they would attribute these and other events to creatures much more powerful then themselves, even if these creatures were invisible to them Everywhere on the planet, it is only  human to want to improve one’s lot and chances for survival in this world. What better way to gain some small sense of control than to beseech these powerful beings with offerings and rituals. Thus religion is born out of our own frailty and need for our thinking brains to find some way to influence the forces that seem to be against them. The small odds that things went their way could only reinforce their belief systems because the only other option was to admit that they have no control over their environment or elemental forces at work. Admitting that would be too darn scary, so the belief in supernatural forces would continue until a time when science would begin to answer the mysteries of thunder and flash floods and slowly erode the need for religion.

Today we are in this period of science eroding the need for religion. The older the country and more educated, the faster the population is turning away from the religious view of the world. In the countries of central Europe, including Italy, the churches have lost so many members that the government has had to step in to preserve the great historical church buildings because there are not enough members to pay the bills. In Germany, if you do not belong and contribute to a church, the state will make you pay a special tax for their upkeep, and still the numbers are declining. In general, the only countries where religion still flourishes are those with extreme poverty because their population is still looking for some small bit of control over their destiny. 

Lyle: 

How could man survive long enough without long teeth, sharp fangs, great strength or great speed, to develop reason? Reason would be, by its very nature, the last characteristic for evolution to produce and yet the naturalist must postulate that it was the first. It seems quite reasonable to believe that man must have developed reasoning more rapidly than evolution could explain.

Science is about distance and measurement. Religion is about meaning and purpose. If this is true how could science erode religion? The reason religion is eroding has little to do with science. Religion is declining mainly because of its abuse of authority and the time that it takes to learn it sufficiently to experience its benefits. This does not set well with a culture that wants instant gratification and results. Moreover, the same erosion we see in organized religion is happening in all civic organizations, government, and even science. These social phenomena are difficult to understand and have more to do with a decline in civilization than the progress of science, e.g., the decline of the family and human relationships in general. People’s respect for science has been on a big decline for the last three decades because of its unfulfilled promises and its embellished claims. This is especially true as government co-ops science and pseudoscience to further its agenda as in communist countries.

Unbeliever:
Now you may ask me how I know all this to be true, as I was not there to witness it. Well, I could say the same to you about your beliefs. Given what we really know as facts after all these thousands of years, what scenario seems the most plausible? Do we finally accept science or do we continue to believe in magic and invisible beings?

You can continue to believe in the veracity of a collection of well-known stories finally written down by desert dwellers during the Bronze Age if you choose to.

Lyle

You know it is true because you accept it by faith. Everything you claim and believe about ancient man is prehistory, i.e., before any written history. I personally see no conflict between real science and religion. The problem comes in when you mix up theories with facts and history with fiction. Moreover, the people of faith that I know do not believe in magic. However, they do believe that there are things that exist, which we cannot see, and I do believe that science believes in a lot of things they cannot see. If you do not believe me, read a good book on theoretical physics.

A note to my Friend

Your friend’s argument is nothing but a tall tale that naturalists have been spinning for a hundreds of years. It is nothing but a narrative put together with little or no evidence. All of it seems plausible only because people have been indoctrinated with it in our school system and universities. Remember, the interpretation is not the observation. They have observed none of the so-called facts of their tale. Yet, they call it science. The conclusion is not the data. The explanation is not the evidence. A narrative like you friend spun proves nothing other than he has a story to tell. It says nothing as to whether or not the story is true. To prove the story takes facts, which the atheist and naturalist does not have and will never have because they are talking about things that are prehistoric. That is before history was recorded. Your friend seems to sense this but is too arrogant to refrain from spinning a yarn whether true or not. You should learn to ask people the question that God asked Adam: “Who told you that?” If you asked your friend that question, and if he were honest, he would have to admit that he got it off some atheistic website or from some college professor, most likely a non-scientist. And where did they get it from? (Note: footnote for more on the tall tale of naturalism.)

To postulate that early man was brutish has nothing to do with the debate on the existence of God. No theist whom I know would maintain that ancient humankind was in general intellectual and civilized. Even today many men are uneducated and uncivilized if left to themselves. However, the brutish picture that modern man paints of ancient man is questionable and equally unknowable. It is a red herring that has little to do with the question, “Does God exist?” Yet the tall tale represents the fallacious arguments and quibbles made by atheists.
Unbeliever
Isn’t it curious how the religion seem so slow to change, even in the face of so many facts,
while scientists and atheists would change and believe in a heartbeat if given a single verifiable fact.

Lyle 

Science does not solely deal with facts; it deals with theories about the facts. If you have noticed, the older a science gets the fewer new theories it has. When it runs the course of easy questions, it will slow down. I am not sure, but it seems that your friend and many other people believe that science has facts that disprove the existence of God. If so, he is wrong. The truth is they have no facts that disprove the existence of God and atheists do not have a good argument against the existence of God. The best they have is the tall tale. What he does have is a high opinion of himself.

Unbeliever
It is the way of science to change instantly when new facts are presented, instead of pining for the old ways.

Lyle

It is obvious this man has not studied the history of science. Whether intentional or not, what he said is a bald-faced lie. It often takes decades or even centuries for science to change its theories. The string theory, for example, has been in style for about 75 years and it’s just recently being set aside by many scientists. Science also hangs onto working theories for a long time even when it knows that it is wrong because it works well in the models that it has created.

Unbeliever

I can’t believe I wasted another afternoon responding to this article. Neither you nor your friend is likely to be influenced by it, but feel free to pass it along to him. All that has transpired here is the wasting of my time, and as you know, without a warm fuzzy heaven to look forward to, time is all the more precious to me.

Don’t expect any but the tersest responses in the future, if any on religious matters.
Yours in music,

Lyle

The Tall Tale

Unbelievers of all types typically use a short naturalistic narrative to undermine belief in God. By narrative I mean a short history of the evolution of culture and humanity. They accomplish this by first running a series of statements about prehistoric earth and man, which creates an unflattering picture of early mankind. The thing that is neglected in their narrative is the fact that most of statements are not based on facts but assumptions with very thin evidence to back them up. These assumptions have four sources: their blind faith in progressive evolution, the concept of progress, a good imagination, and of course the indoctrination of our universities.

One of the biggest problems with this picture is that an informed naturalist believes in evolution, but not progressive evolution. Progressive evolution is rejected by knowledgeable naturalists because it leaves the door open for intelligent design and the existence of God. Therefore, in their thinking, progressive or directed, evolution must be rejected. However, they continue to tell the tall tale as history based on progressive evolution to prove their assumption that there is no God. In this, they borrow from the believer the theory of intelligent design to prove the point that there is no design. In this, they tell a tale that is based on the foundation of progressive evolution, which they believe is not true.

In actuality, when they tell the tall tale, all they are doing is rehearsing a naturist world view or system, while offering no evidence for it and assuming that it is true. Neither do they inform their hearers of the massive number of pages that are missing in their story. Nor do they inform people that the story was created before there was one bit of evidence for it, which means it was not founded on scientific evidence but assumption and a good imagination. Darwin himself admitted that he had no evidence for his theory. Of course, the theory was floating around before Darwin put it into print.

Because the naturalist believes there is only one possible narrative to explain everything, every new fact is forced to fit the tall tale. If they cannot be squeezed into their narrative, they are simply labeled anomalies and set aside.

If there was no evidence for it, where did tall tale come from? Is it a self-evident truth? The problem with that is that those folks that promoted it do not believe in self-evident truth. Of course, the truth is that it is a construct of their imagination. In this, the system or narrative itself becomes the evidence for the system. In other words, if I can build a system, the truth of its premise is thereby established by the system I have created. The possibility that I can build a system on a false premise is ignored. The system is justified by the fact of its construction. They can get away with this story telling only because of the conditioning of the audience, which has been feed a steady diet of it in the school system and in the media. The myth becomes reality in their minds.