“If You Need Religion to Be Good You Are Not Good”
The statement “if you need religion to be good you are not good” is one of the many convoluted quibbles that the irreligious use to justify themselves, which borders on insanity. It is a meaningless statement and is totally ambiguous. First, because it does not define religion and secondly, because it does not define what goodness is.
The statement also infers that a good person always does the good which they know they ought to do, and that humans know from instinct what is good. Every truly good person knows that they do not always do, what they know is the right thing to do. Every thinking person, who is not allergic to religion, knows that humans learn good from their culture and some kind of religion is a part of every culture.
The quibble assumes that the reader knows the definition of religion; most people do not. This includes the new atheists who fancy themselves as intellectuals. What happens when you define religion as practicing virtue? Let’s replace the word ‘religion’ in the quibble with ‘virtue’, “If you need to practice virtue to be good, you are not good.” It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Consequently the quibble doesn’t define what it means to be good either, and it assumes that everyone knows what constitutes good. The statement assumes that at the very least, some people are inherently good without any training from culture; or devoid of outside instruction and limits being placed on them. In other words, some must be born good and some must be born bad, or all are born good and go bad, or all are born bad and some get better. I do wish that a little quibble could solve this paradox. Alas, it cannot for it is nonsense.
The truth is that if you are self-righteous, you do not need religion to feel righteous because you assume you are righteous (the new atheist). In other words, you lie to yourself, or you have the moral standard of a cockroach.
The statement, “If You Need Religion to Be Good You Are Not Good” is a statement from a self-righteous person making a fallacious underhanded moral judgment on religion and those that practice it. Did I say moral judgment? I thought the biggest sin of the left (atheism being the furthest left you can go) is to make a moral judgment. However, many of them that I know are very judgmental people. They often are a mirror image of the far right fundamentalist that they despise.
Good religion, honesty and reason would teach a person that they are not as good as they think they are. God did not give humanity religion to make men good; he gave it to show us that we are not as good as we think we are. This may be why there are so many self-righteous atheists, because they lack good religion, honest self-awareness and an enlightened moral reasoning. Good religion will always teach people that they are imperfect and in need of improvement.
In this, I am not saying that atheists are not moral people. In fact, the majority that I know seem to be quite moral. However, I don’t know any that were made moral by their atheism. Most inherited their values from their culture as most people do. In contrast, I have seen a number of people who were not moral, become so, through the help of good religion. I have seen huge numbers of people overcome addictions with the help of faith and good religion. I must sadly admit that I have also seen some fairly good people, become very evil through bad religion.
I am truly amazed at people who claim they are atheist and then spent a great deal of their time talking about or even arguing about transcendental concepts like love, justices and truth. Well, not so much about love, but a lot about truth and morality. If there is no God, are these concept not just empty expressions? Why spent the time and effort to try to convince the theist or for that matter anyone that there is no God? If there is no God, is not truth just a subjective term that has no real content? All concepts which I call ultimate concepts e.g. love; truth, justice and beauty have their roots in a belief in an absolute or a cosmic order, which reveals these things to humanity. If you remove the absolute or the ultimate you destroy all the concepts that are built on it. Our founding fathers spoke of these things as self-evident truths[1]. If you reject a cosmic order which reveals truths to mankind you turn truth, justice and beauty into nothing but beliefs and according to atheists beliefs only exist in people’s head and cannot be established in reality. In fact this is one of their favorite arguments against belief in God. It is simple a belief like a belief in a unicorn or spaghetti monster. Is believing in love the same as believing in a unicorn or spaghetti monster.To be consistent with their scientific materialism they would have to say yes. Love is only a biological reaction of chemicals in the brain and has nothing to do with reality or the social construction we humans put on love, i.e. it is an illusion like the belief in God.
When we are talking about ultimate concepts we are talking about the very foundations of human culture and civilization. To take the idea of a deity or a cosmic order out of the equation would mean make up and necessitate the complete remaking of everything, our language, our culture, values, civilization and in essences the very way we think about everything. We are talking about the world of Nietzsche, a world, which has gone beyond good and evil, a world of a mad man[2]. When this is understood the question may change from, Is there a God, to can mankind survive as man without the idea of God? By survive, I do not mean maintaining biological life but rather living in a state of freedom and human dignity. I personally think not. For this reason I believe that atheism is the most dangers and destructive ideology in the world. Of course, many atheists are like Karl Marx who criticized all ideology and at the same time fail to see that he was creating one. The new atheists seem so engrossed in destroying religion and belief in God, that they have neglected to considered what a world would look like without the idea of God?
Some may respond by saying that they feel religion is evil and that they are simply trying to do away with evil and replace it with something better. Well I would have to agree that some religion is evil but not because religion itself is evil but rather because there are evil men in religion. However, we again run into a similar problem as above. Without the concept of a God can there be any ground for the concepts of good and evil? If there is no good and evil how could religion be evil? You might reply, because religion hurts people. My answer is, it has not hurt me, what standard are you using to make that judgment? You might say reason. My question is why is your reason different from billions of other people who believe in God and what makes your reason better than theirs? Moreover, how do you know that it is evil to hurt people? Is it evil when my dentist hurts me to fix a tooth? Was it unreasonable for the Nazis to hit children in the head so they could find a cure for head trauma? They seemed to think it was reasonable. You say, no for those children were humans. Without God is there any different between a lab animal and a human being? If you say, there is a different, on what ground do you justify your opinion?
I have had atheists respond by saying that they can create a new morality based on reason alone, which can replace the morality of religion. Of course, there has been other groups that have believed that, like the Nazis and the Communist. The hypothesis of a human created morality raises some interesting questions? Like who are going to be the Angels that create this new morality; Scientists, philosophers or maybe politicians, all of whom would of necessity have to be atheists in order for the foundation of this new morality to be total free from religion. Even then, would this system of morality be free from religion or just a different type of religion? And who would enforce this new morality, maybe the state? I believe I have seen this kind of morality somewhere. I think this experiment was the very thing tried by the Communist in Russia. They even had a church called the church of scientific atheism.
In view of the above thoughts I would think that if a person really was an atheist they would think long and hard about destroying the ideal of God and the way of thinking that accompanies it. What would a world look like without faith in God? Would the idea of truth and freedom survived in this brave new world? If history is any commentary they did not do to well in atheistic Russia or China.
Some will say I cannot believe. When people say this they are often saying that their intelligent is keeping them from believing. No, some of the most intelligent people in history have been believers. The truth is that belief in God is as much a matter of the will as the intelligent. So it is not so much a question of your intellect as much as your wanttoo. It is the human ego, which has blinded many to their motives. We all like to think that our beliefs are correct because we all like to think we are smarter than the other guy.
It would be more accurate for many especially those in the educated class to say that they have been conditioned not to believe by a secular education. If honest, the majority of this class would have to say that their minds have been captured by a materialistic liberal world view, which discourages any other way of viewing the world. They are like a man sitting in a room with a multitude of windows that are boarded up except one. Because, they are so occupied with what is going on outside the one window they have forgotten the other ones, which are boarded up. In fact, some are so excited about what they are seeing out of the one window, that they have total ignored the others to point that some actually say they don’t exist or if they do notice them, they quickly ignore them believing they cannot be as important as the one through which they are viewing the world. I challenge these folks to take a look at their conditioning and realize that there are a number of worlds out there other than the materialistic world of science and western Liberalism.
The first step on the road to faith is to ask yourself what is the real reason for you lack of faith[3]. This step many take some hard work but the true God only reveals himself to those that are earnestly seeking Him i.e. those that work at it. Like many endeavors in life, things may not be equal; it may be harder for some because of their preconditioning to find God. Yet one thing I do know, if you find God too easily you probably have found an idol and not the true God.
[1] The new atheists have little or no knowledge of the concept of natural law and self-evident truth taught in philosophy andtheology. Please note my article “Atheism, Natural Law and Self-evident Truth”. I am not saying that atheist are immoral. I am saying that they don’t know the real reason of why they are moral.
[2] Nietzsche was an atheistic nihilist who preach the death of God. He went mad and died in an insane asylum. He believed that man was evolving into what he called the over man or Superman who through reason alone could live above the old moral codes of religion. His vision was somewhat tainted by two world wars and the moral declension of Western culture. The new atheists believe they are the fulfillment of Nietzsche’s prophecy of the over man. However, they have not reached this state by exceeding the morality of religion, but rather by subverting words and interpreting declension as progress.
Sometimes when I hear people espousing their beliefs, I wonder why anyone would want to believe what some people believe. The other day I was reading a book in which the author was propounding his atheism and a belief system that reduced everything in life to a chemical reaction in the brain. To this person, concepts like love, faith, and hope were nothing more than illusions.
After reading a bit of the book, my curiosity (probably one of those illusions) began to cause a number of questions to arise in my biological illusion maker. My first one was: Is this guy serious? The second one was: Does he live his life on the basis of his beliefs and what does that life look like? Finally, I came to a question that most interested me: Why would anyone want to believe such things?
For the life of me, I have not been able to figure out why anyone in his right mind would want to believe such ideas[1]. I guess someone could appeal to truth and claim that science has proven that we are nothing more than biological entities. However, I believe there are a great number of scientists who would disagree with that proposition. Besides, if we really are only a bunch of chemicals and our thoughts are nothing more than a chemical reaction, can there be such a thing as truth? Would not this belief make the concept of truth just one of those empty God words in the final analysis? Just another Illusion?
It seems like to me that if there is no truth, it would be the prudent thing to pick a belief system that would make you happy or at least create an illusion of it. I once read a book which propounded that the best belief system (illusion) to deal with life and death was Christianity[2]. If you believe you are just a mess of chemicals, you might try Christianity for the pragmatic benefits. However, if you begin to really believe it, you may find your chemistry being changed.
“I tell you the truth; no one can see the kingdom of God, unless he is born again” (Jesus, the Christ).
[1] This question plagued me to the point that I spent hours thinking about it. I finally put my thoughts down in an article entitled, “The Making of a Fundamentalist Atheist”.
I have found that many new atheists (not the old type) are not true skeptics[1] and in many ways resemble the true believers they so noisily criticize. The majority seem to be ignorant of the things they criticize and often seem to be just repeating talking points from the Internet. If you refute their arguments, they either ignore your response completely or reciprocate with a whole lot of rhetoric,[2] which is an indicator that they really did not understand their own argument to begin with or that they have ignored your response. In this, they remind of me of many of the religious folks they aggressively attack.
One thing that really irks me is the young, white male, college type, who seems to run on a 100% octane of ego. He knows nothing, or at the very best, little, about religion, theology or science, other than the twisted and shallow information he may get through the net. Even so, he blogs on as though he was an expert on the great philosophical questions of life. Many of these young men are not old enough to be experts on anything. As I reflected on this atheist type, the more this nagging question kept coming to mind: Why would young healthy males spend so much time arguing for their beliefs, if those beliefs had not become a faith (religion)? The word religion is a symbol that stands for one’s ultimate concern, and I believe for many of the new atheists, their ideology of unbelief has become their religion without them even being aware of it.
Many of the new atheist types operate from the presupposition that the only true knowledge comes from science, and yet they know little about it. If they truly understood science, they would know that science is mute and neutral when it comes to the question of God[3]. Where is the scientific argument against the existence of God? The truth is, the atheists have no scientific argument or proof that there is no God. What they have are assumptions and assertions that they arrogate as evidence. The majority need some basic knowledge of epistemology. Then they might have an awareness that large amounts of their knowledge is based on presuppositions that cannot be proven. Of course, the same could be said for the theist. However, astute theists understand the source of their knowledge and therefore, understand that the root of their knowledge is faith. In this acknowledgment, they reflect self-awareness and a basic honesty that many atheists do not have about the foundation of their beliefs.
Here is the source of much of the problematic thinking of the new atheist; he cannot tell the difference between the facts and his opinion or interpretation of the facts. This is a problem that all true believers have, whether religious or nonreligious, and yes, most atheists are true believers and think as true believers do, i.e., one-dimensional and concrete. Atheists are the fundamentalists of the secular minded and therefore, are mirror images of the far right they criticize and hate.
Another thing that irks me is the undercurrent of intellectual snobbery that fills the majority of atheist blogs. Seldom do I read a blog or interact with new atheist types without them inferring someway that they are intellectually superior to believers. Therefore, they write as though the fundamentals and presuppositions of their materialistic worldview have been proven and are now a fact that all educated people believe. The truth is that only a small minority of people believe in materialism and even fewer live it out consistently, which is strange for an ideology that claims to reflect reality (note the facts below) 4 For example, I recently had one writer say he, “could not believe in God because nature was a closed system and was the whole show,” i.e., the only thing that existed. This is like saying there is no God because there is no God and there is no God because I believe there is no God. This is an argument from an unprovable assumption that nature is all there is or that it is the whole show. From a scientific perspective, a scientist can say that we only study nature. However, if they add, because that’s all that exists, they are no longer speaking as scientists but rather as philosophers. It is here that it becomes obvious that what most people consider science has a metaphysical basis that is used to interpret the facts. Sorry, there is no such thing as pure science.
The bottom line is this: I wish the new atheists would stop polluting science by bringing it into the mud puddle of their atheistic apologetics. Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God Who is outside nature. In fact, at this time science does not even have the knowledge or tools to prove or disprove the existence of God within nature. For all science knows, Zeus may be somewhere out there in the universe. At the very best, scientists can simply say that they have not found Him. Of course, the honest ones would admit that they do not know what they would be looking for if they were looking for him, it or she, which means if they found it they may not recognize it.
Still another thing that irritates me about the new atheists is their constant attacks on organized religion. They seem to be obtuse to the fact that like anything, religion can be good or bad depending on the men who are in it and controlling it. Unfortunately, the more power any human organization has the more prone it is to corruption; this is true for government, religion and even charitable organizations. This is also true for atheism. When government and atheism were mixed in communist Russia and China, it became more corrupt than the religions it was trying to replace. However, the new atheists continue to try to organize themselves, thinking they are going to be the angels of light who save the world from darkness. We have heard that rhetoric before, and it has always led to tyranny.
[1] The majority of the new atheists do not qualify as true skeptics because of their blind faith in science, reason, and human knowledge in general. A true skeptic doubts everything, even their doubts. I have found in my discussions with atheists that I am far more skeptical about things in general than they are.
[2] The rhetoric is usually in the form of rehearsing the tall tale of undirected evolution, which is based on suppositions and assertions only.
[3] The US National Academy of Sciences has gone on record with the following statement: “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.” Taken from “Who Made God?:A Searching for a Theory of Everything” by Fay Weldon.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. Heb11:1-3
I often hear people say that science is based on reason and religion is based on faith. After reflecting on this for while I came to the conclusion that science and religion both have a faith component and a rational one.
First of all, let’s look at the thought process that goes on in science. The first thing we find in the making of any scientific theory is a hunch that something is true. This hunch may come from a number of sources. It may originate in the imagination of the scientist or a scientist may stumble on something by accident, which creates a curiosity. It may come through some tacit awareness, which is beyond explanation. We call this tacit awareness creativity or inspiration. Whatever it is, it is the motivation which moves the scientist to the next step of searching for evidence to prove his hunch. When he obtains what he thinks is enough evidence; he is moved to publish his belief publicly. It is at this time that his hunch becomes a theory that the Bible calls faith. It is still a hunch, though, he now has somet evidence to support it. However, at this point the evidence is not enough to turn his hunch into fact.
In science, the hunch stage of an idea is called a hypothesis. In layman’s language, a hunch might be called an educated guess based on tacit knowledge, which would necessitate a strong element of faith. At this level of knowledge there may be little, to no evidence to support the hunch or hypothesis, yet because of the scientists faith they continue on, looking for evidence. If they find enough evidence to support their hunch, then they will publish it for the scientific community to have their hypothesis tested. If the scientific community, through the scientific method, confirms their belief, then the hypothesis is moved to the status of a theory.
What is a Theory? A theory is “a proposed explanation whose status is still conjecture and subject to experimentation in contrast to a well-established proposition that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact”. One of the problems with the idea of a theory is that it is hard sometimes for many people to determine the difference between a theory, and a fact. The main difference is that a fact has a large degree of certitude and the theory still has a faith element in it, though less than the hypothesis.
¶Over the course of time if a theory maintains its integrity, it will then be referred as a law; e.g. the law of gravity or the law of thermodynamics. However, some theories may never reach the level of law because of the number of pieces missing in its explanation of the facts, or the failure of scientists to be able to apply the scientific method to the theory. There are a number of theories that the scientific method cannot be applied to, such as Darwinian evolution, which has elements that must be accepted by faith and can never be proven or disproven by empirical evidence. One of these elements is whether or not evolution is directed by a force in or outside of nature, or it is completely undirected and random.
I think it quite self-evident that science, as in all disciplines of human knowledge, has a faith element in it that is very similar to a faith in God. When a person has a real faith in God, which is not inherited from family or culture, you will basically find very similar steps as we saw in science. We see a hunch or hypothesis that there is something more than nature. The hunch may come from pondering one’s thoughts or the incredible sense of awe that comes through observing the wonders of nature, or a tacit revelation which cannot be explained.
¶The next step is for a person to begin to search for God. Now, it is important to note that at this point the hunch is not what the Bible calls faith; it is still only a hunch. However, as the person begins to look for God and the evidence begins to grow, his hunch starts to grow into faith. His tacit hunch enables him to see more and more of the evidence for God. In this, his hunch becomes the instrument or tool which aids him in his search for God.
¶Sometimes you must believe something in order to see it. For example, scientists believed there were atoms hundreds of years before they could prove their existence. If they rejected everything because they could not see it, they would have never looked for atoms. If they had not believed, they would have never found the atom.
When does a person’s hunch, become faith? Just like the scientist, a hunch becomes faith when it is confirmed by evidence and when it is publicly published. In Biblical Christianity this happens when a person confesses Christ publicly by being baptize or immersed into Christ (Gal 3:26, 27)[i]. As the evidence grows, faith continues to move through the phases of a hypothesis, a theory and then in the certitude of law, which the Bible calls the law of the Spirit of life. This is simpler to the phases of a scientific belief, which is first a hunch, then a theory and then law.
If this is all true why do people believe that science is objective and faith is subjective? First let me point out that the categories of objective and subjective are somewhat artificial. It can be established that all human thought, including science has some subjective elements. The hard and fast difference between science and theology actually came out of the struggle between the philosophers and the natural philosophers. Natural philosophers, whom we now call scientists, wanted to separate themselves from the philosophers who sought the truth by reason alone (in their minds only). The natural philosophers (scientists) believed that the search for truth needed to be proven by observation and experimentation (outside their minds in nature). So, the die was cast for the different ways of approaching truth. In the course of time and because of the great successes of science, science won the day and philosophy had to take second place.
But what about theology? Where does that fit in? Well, on the surface, it appears to be more akin to philosophy than science. However, Christian theology actually is more akin to science for it has an authority outside of the human mind. That outside authority and source of information is the Scriptures, which the faith community accepts as authoritative. Furthermore, the faith community has a set of facts that it can observe and use to develop hypotheses and theories. In theology like science, there is a community where these theories can also be published; where they can be questioned and verified. The different between theology and science is the set of facts they are examining. Science looks at the facts of nature and gives a naturalist interpretation of the facts. The theologian looks at scripture and also gives an interpretation. Both science and theology have rules, or laws, to govern their interpretation of the facts. Science uses the scientific method and theology uses the laws of hermeneutics. Both have laws or principles to limit arbitrary and personal interpretations.
It is self-evident that faith is a key element in the pursuit of all human knowledge. I had a friend tell me he could not even eat his wife’s stew without faith. Not only is faith the beginning of all pursuits of knowledge, it is also the thing that keeps people motivated in their quest for knowledge; once on the road faith turns into hope. It may be the hope of a religious faith or the hope of discovering a new scientific truth, but when analyzed it is simply faith.
[i] In Gal 3:26, 27 the apostle Paul speaks of faith and baptism as synonymous with one another. In Paul faith is born in an outward action and is more than a subjective thought.
I once had a young man tell me that he wished he could believe in God. As I listened to him, I felt he was looking for a formula or method to create faith. Well, I wish I had a method, but I do not believe there is any scheme for creating faith. If you know of one please let me know. Faith is a mystery. However, it is not a total mystery.
One thing I do know is that hope is the beginning of faith and without it, faith does not stand a chance. In essence, you must want to believe that there is a God along with all of the implications that come with such a faith, i.e. you must have a will to believe.
If I am right the place to begin for the atheist, or for that matter anyone who is seeking faith, would be to ask oneself “do I really hope that there is a God?” Now, if ones hope is real, it would seem that it would lead to an earnest and diligent search for the true God. Anything less than this kind of search will never lead to the true God. One of the spiritual laws of the universe is that a half-hearted search will never find the real God. Unfortunately, this means that most religious folks do not know the true God, for the majority has never searched out God with their whole heart. The majority have inherited faith from their family or their culture. Now, in itself there is nothing wrong with inheriting your faith. One of the purposes of family is to pass along to the next generation the wisdom of their elders. However, second hand faith may not be good enough to whether the storms of life.
As said above, the true God only reveals himself to those that seek him intensely. A vital part of this seeking is an openness to obey him no matter what the cost. Many who seek him do not find him because they have something in their heart, or in their life that they are not willing to give up. They are like the very religious young man who asked Jesus about God; he was content until he was told that he had to give up his wealth and follow Jesus. When Jesus told this man that he must sell everything and follow him, Jesus was simply trying to raise the young man’s self-awareness and help him to see the real problem with his faith; he loved his riches more than God.
I believe the truth is that the majority of people actually hope there is no God, at least, not the God, which Jesus spoke about. However, to justify their ineptness toward this force, they reduce it to something that they can manage, like the God of the Deist or a God that resembles Santa Claus, thus we have religion. In this, religion is unbelief in the form of belief. Others simply ignore this force and suppress their awareness of it into the recesses of their minds. There it remains until they are forced to think about it because of some unpleasant experience like sickness, death or by the prodding of some babbling seer, which they quickly dismiss as a fanatic.
Then there are the so-called atheists, who are somewhat more honest than the above. These folks cannot play the game of the religious man or the indifferent man; they must justify their rebellion and unbelief by denying the very existence of God. They then can claim reason itself, for their unbelief. Some actually believe that reason alone forces them not to believe in God. In this clever move, they deny any personal responsibility for their unbelief, which is a new twist to the “devil made me do it” excuse. Right, it is no longer the devil; it is now reason. However, in reality, they are like the others, in that they seldom understand the real reason for their indifference and in their case, unbelief. They fail to see that their reason is the handmaiden of their will and it is their will, which hinders faith. Every counselor who works with addicts knows that the will controls reason. It is a myth of the Enlightenment that men can know something by reason alone. I guess they could if they wanted to but the truth is they don’t want to and they do not want to know, that they do not want to know. In this, we see the truth of what the seer says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
All of this would suggest that honesty along with hope would be a key ingredient in one’s search for God, not so much honesty about the existence of God, but honest about oneself and your own search and journey. In this, you must face your authentic self before you can face the true God. The real question is not, does God exist, but rather the question is; why do you not want to do God’s will?
It would seem that the way to faith is to start hoping that there is a God and start living as if there is one. Stop arguing with God and start listening. Ask God to change your will, not your mind, for it not your mind that is hindering faith. The reason you cannot wrap your head around God is because He is either too big or your head is too small. If it were purely a mind problem, there would be no intelligent believers and there would be no smart addicts. Therefore, the beginning place of faith is not to question God, but to question yourself. God is not on trial nor is his existence. No, it is you who is on trial and the question is, “will you find your authentic self”? This is not an easy task for creatures who are prone to believe lies and illusions. Good luck on your journey, it is not easy or comfortable.
It seems that when you ask a naturalist a ‘what’ or ‘why’ question they usually respond with a ‘how’ answer in return. Then they assume that they have answered your question. An example of this practice is to propose the question; what is reason and why is there a concept we call reason? Now, the truth is that the naturalist cannot answer either of these questions. Therefore, they will respond with a lengthy and complex argument of how reason evolved through a process of natural selection[1], which they seem to think is a satisfactory answer.
Evolution in the form of a narrative seems to be the catchall explanation for all of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions. This seems to have replaced the ‘God of the gaps’ explanation used by some theist’s. In other words, if you cannot explain the ‘what’ or ‘why’ of something, the answer will be spun as an evolutionary tale; that will be the total explanation and nothing more needs to be said. Spin the tail and the gaps are filled.
However, is answering any of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions with a ‘how’ explanation (or a narrative of its evolution), really an answer? Or is it simply begging the question by explaining how a thing developed. The truth is that evolution created nothing and therefore, it cannot ultimately explain the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of anything.
Some might appeal to natural selection, however, for natural selection to work, something had to exist to be selected from. You say random mutations created the selections. But do mutations really create anything or do they simply change things. Did not something have to exist first, in order to be changed? So we have entered the black hole of infinite regression where life came from nonlife and nonlife came from nothing. The theories of natural selection and random mutations is an attempt to answer a how question of how living things change and again it has nothing to do with the ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions.
This way of skirting or begging the questions of what and why is even true of some of the most basic questions of existence. What is man and why does he exist? The Naturalist will answer invariably by answering the question with a narrative of the evolution of man, which is equal to changing the question from a ‘what’ and ‘why’ question to a ‘how’ question. By Using this method, everything is explained by the process of evolution. The story in itself becomes the evidence. The truth is that science cannot give us a sufficient answer as to ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of man[2]. They can tell us how our bodies are formed and even what they are formed out of, but this does not answer the questions of what is man or why does he exist. The only way for the naturalist to answer these questions with science is to embrace total reductionism, which of course naturalists and atheists must do to stay consistent with their belief that there is nothing but matter. Everything must be reduced to lifeless unconscious matter. The only alternative is for the naturalist is to quit asking the why and what question altogether, which is exactly what many of them have done.
The truth is that when it comes to ontological questions[3] science is mute and cannot speak. If its members speak, they must speak from another discipline than science. Ontological questions are questions of philosophy and religion.
[1] If man needs reason to survive, how did he survive long enough to acquire it?
[2] Science is the study of nature as a closed system. It does not have the tools or language to study things outside of nature. Therefore, it cannot ultimately answer the why questions without morphing into philosophy.
[3] Ontological questions are questions that deal with the origin and meaning of existence, the study of which belong to the discipline of metaphysics, which is made up of philosophers and theologians.
“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
I once had a man compare believing in God to believing in unicorns or a spaghetti monster. His augment is that he never saw a unicorn, so he does not believe in them, and because he has not seen God he could not believe in Him.
It is not uncommon for people to say they cannot believe in God because they cannot see Him. However, it seems to me that humans believe in a lot of things they cannot see. In fact, some of the most important things in life are things we cannot see such as love, joy, and hope. Yet, we believe in them and we believe they are real. We believe in the wind and the force we call gravity, and yet we do not see them. All we see and feel are the effects of them. We believe we see light but do we? In essence, we believe in these things not because we see them but rather because we experience them.
The truth is that sometimes we must believe in order to see. For example, if scientists did not believe in atoms, they would never have found them. There were natural philosophers (scientists) that believed in atoms 2500 years ago. They had no way to see them, but they had a hunch they existed and they began a long search to prove their hunch. Even to this day, no one has actually seen an atom, all we can see is a trail of one or a computerized image of one, yet we believe they exist. In like manner, if scientists did not believe that there was life at the bottom of the sea, they would not have found the incredible life forms that they have found recently. They actually found creatures that are more unbelievable than unicorns.
If humans believed in only what they could or have seen they would believe very little. The truth is we believe as much in what we have experienced as what we have seen. Things like love, joy, and hope are not seen but most of us have experienced them to some degree. Of course, sadly, there are some who have not experienced these things. However, their lack of experiencing these things does not prove they do not exist. We could say that experiencing something is just another way of seeing or knowing. In spiritual matters, we call this the Seeing Eye, “blessed are the poor in spirit for they will see God.”
Spiritually minded people often speak of their experience with God. In the Bible, men speak of having visions, dreams or hearing a quiet voice. I do not think the majority of us will experience God this way or have a burning bush experience like Moses, but I do believe we all experience God to some degree though we often fail to recognize it. We need the Seeing Eye and the hearing ear of faith.
We all may not hear the voice of God directly, but all can hear the echo of his voice when we sense that we were created for the stars and in our longing to explore. We hear it in our love for life and our disdain for death. We hear it in the universal need for meaning and self-esteem. We hear it in the human cry for justice. We hear it in death as well as life. In death, we hear the voice tell us that we are not God. In life we hear it say that life is moving to completeness.
If you are seeking God, go to a quiet place and drop all your worldly beliefs. Remember, it is these beliefs that keep you from seeing. Truth is often found through subtraction not addition. Then think of your life and see if you can see God at work in it and in the lives of those around you. Ask God to open the eyes of your heart that you might see Him and hear His voice. Jesus promised that those that keep asking and seeking would find.
“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'” Luke 16:27-31
It seems that a large number of unbelievers feel that God is unjust for not showing himself in an overwhelming way and then judging people for not believing. The truth is that God has given sufficient evident for his existence, so that all men should believe[1]. However, the evidence is only sufficient, it is not overwhelming. God has never given overwhelming evidence of his existence because that would force men to believe and obey out of fear. If I understand the Bible correctly God wants a love relationship in which man freely enters, not a shotgun wedding brought about by fear.
Therefore, it seems that the real problem is not the lack of evidence which involve the intellect, but rather the lack of a will to believe. Unbelievers could be divided into two different groups of people. Those who to varying degrees are indifferent towards God; we could call this group “practical atheists”. These individuals are everywhere in the world and even in the church. For this group, there is simply no room in their lives for God. This group would include religious people who have what we might call a lukewarm faith; they have a cognitive recognition of a God but not enough faith (trust) to act on it. Next, there are those who are hostile to God and want to prove that He does not exist in order to justify themselves either intellectually or morally[2].
Both groups of unbelievers will say that if they had more evidence of God’s existence then they would believe and act differently. Of course this would be true of anyone, unless they are mentally ill and why would not anyone act differently in the face of overwhelming evidence that there is a God? However, the question is, do they believe and act differently because they have a will to believe and want to obey God? Or did their transformation come out of fear? If they changed out of fear, could you say that they were free? Could they ever be happy living in such a relationship? This raises the question, how can an all-powerful God reveal Himself and at the same time protect the free will of his creation? It seems that the only way He can do this is to hide or veil himself in such a way as to give humankind a choice. Then in freedom, a person could will to believe and obey, and at the same time be free and happy in relationship with God.
When we turn to the scripture that is exactly what we find. We are told that God is a God, who hides himself[3]. Hiding himself gives people the opportunity to serve him out of love and freedom; responding in obedience to the sufficient evidence that that God has given. This response is what the Bible calls faith. True faith is accepting that there is a God, trusting his promises and obeying him. This faith begins with a passion to find the hidden God; this passion we might call the ‘will to believe’.
Now, here is the bitter pill. Most unbelief comes from the will, the rebel passions and the hubris of man, rather than the intellect. In a large percentage of people, the intellect is a much smaller player than they would like to admit. For most, the reason and intellect are called on by the will to justify itself and its rebellion against it creator. This truth is stated in the story of rich man quoted above, that someone coming back from the dead would not convince someone, which does not have a will to believe. They would simply say that it was an illusion. This raise the question, what would God have to do to change a person, which does not have the will to believe?
The atheist says they want more evident under the assumption that the problem is the intellect. However, it is much more likely that their unbelief at least initially was the problem of the will and emotions, i.e. a heart problem. Once unbelief is accepted then ego comes in to support the intellectual unbelief. This is the worst kind of problem, because a person’s intellectual pride locks them into unbelief.
If we are right about the source of unbelief, the begin place to escaping it, is too humble yourself before the creator of the universe and ask for the gift of faith, while seeking God with all of your heart.
[1] Some might raise the objection, if the existence of God is self evident, why are there so many, which do not see it? Jesus said “some people have eyes but do not see”. Sometime over exposure deadens are sensitivity to a thing. We are often actually insensitive to our senses until they are impaired in some way. We seldom think about seeing or of our eyes until something threatens our sight. When we look out a window we will not often see the glass unless we focus on it. The reason being we have given our full attention to the things we are watching outside the window. However, if the window is dirty or has a crack in it we see it immediately. The problem with modern man is that he is too focused on things to see God. Through neglect he has lost his ability to sense God.
[2] Of Course there are others cause for unbelief, which I study in a essay on “The Making of A fundamentalist Atheist”.
[3] Isa 45:15, “Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God and Savior of Israel.
The lawless man is produced by the spirit of evil and armed with all the force, wonders, and signs that falsehood can devise. To those involved in this dying world, he will come with evil’s undiluted power to deceive, for they have refused to love the truth which could have saved them. God sends upon them, therefore, the full force of evil’s delusion, so that they put their faith in an utter fraud and meet the inevitable judgment of all who have refused to believe the truth and who have made evil their play-fellow. The Apostle Paul
Before we can have a rational discussion on the subject of modern myths, we need to understand the terms and concepts we are using. When I use the word myth, I am not referring to something that is false, but rather to a large explanatory story or narrative that gives us some insight into what stands behind the way we view the world. In science they are called models or paradigms. In religion they are called shadows, types, or parables. In essence, myths are large metaphors that we use to talk about the things that we cannot see and yet believe they are there. They are believed to be the truths that point to the truth that stands outside of man’s grasp. All true myths in some fashion and to some degree, depict reality. If this were not the case, they never would have been elevated to the place of myth. With this in mind, we are ready to talk about the great myths of modern man.
In order to understand the making of the great myths of modern times, we have to understand the time of the Enlightenment in Europe which gave rise to the great myths of Western civilization. The Enlightenment was a time of great upheaval and change in the thinking of man. The old authorities in every area of life were being challenged and being replaced. Feudalism was being replaced with democracy, magic with science, capitalism with socialism, and faith with atheism.
During this Enlightenment period there was a tremendous effort by the skeptics of religion to move the masses away from religion. To do this, they would have to convince the masses that heaven could be created on earth by man and a transcendent God and a heaven up there was no longer needed. If you recall, mankind had once tried to build a tower to heaven, which ended in Babel[1]. If man could not storm the gates of heaven, he would simply build his own on earth, while shaking his fist in defiance at the God of the true heaven.
However, to storm the gates of heaven and bring heaven down to the earth, mankind would need a huge amount of power; he would need a machine that could replace God. He found his machine in the creation of the modern state.[2] The state would be God walking on the earth creating heaven on earth, a heaven in which the God of heaven was no longer welcomed. In the new myth of the state, it would be God who is banished from the new paradise, not man. In this, we see the birth of the modern state and atheism, which are the two greatest myths of modern time.
In order for the modern state to become a god in the eyes of the majority of people, they would have to believe it had the power to save them and deliver them from the forces beyond their control. These forces would include natural disasters, diseases, the very forces of nature, even death. In order to accomplish this, the state would need to have a mechanism to convince the people that it was their true savior and not religion. It would also need a discipline that could be used to support it. That discipline was found in the new field of science. It is self-evident that science and the state have grown together and are very much dependent on each other.
And since the time of the Enlightenment the state has continued to annex more and more of the scientific enterprise for its own selfish ends, those being ultimate authority and domination. In the last few decades science has been increasingly controlled by the flow of money provided by the state to support its research.
Another great myth of modern man is Darwinism. The thinking of the Western world has been controlled by the concept or myth of undirected evolution since the time of Darwin. In fact, it has become the dominating concept behind most science and thinking in general. For many, the concept is now a self-evident truth. To most, everything is getting bigger and better, moving from the simple to the more complex.[3] Of course, this concept fits well into the ideological concept of progress that was implanted in the midst of the Enlightenment by Christian millennialism[4] and was the foundation on which they built the humanistic project of replacing the concept of a heaven up there with a heaven down here. It also fit well as it supported the ideology of a capitalistic system, which was the prevailing economic ideology during the time of Darwin. Darwinism has always been strongly supported by the ruling class, which maintains its place through the educational system of the state.
You could say that Darwinism was the missing link that the humanist skeptics of the Enlightenment (not science) needed to banish God from the earth.[5] They needed a theory of how things could be explained without an appeal to a deity. So the maxim was created that everything in the new discipline of science must be explained by natural causes without an appeal to a deity. Of course, this sealed the faith of the new discipline of science as the weapon of choice for the skeptics and atheists to support and spread their unbelief or should I say their new belief?
However, true science was not created to banish God from the earth and many of the greatest scientists have been believers.[6] Science as a discipline is the study of nature and has little to say about the existence of a God who stands outside nature.[7] Science can make the statement that it has not found God in nature, which is a statement that theologians could make as well; on the other hand, many men of science can and do say that they see things in nature that seem to point to a deity who had organized all things.
To the thinking person and the person who truly understands science, science explains nothing; it only describes things. It answers the “how” question not the “why” and “what” questions. For example, when it speaks about light, it does not explain it but rather describes the way it behaves. Sometimes it behaves like a wave and sometimes it behaves like a particle, but these are metaphorical descriptions and do not tell us what light is. In fact, if we where to ask science to explain itself, it could not give an explanation without the aid of philosophy; in itself it could only tell us what it does, not what it is.
What are the great myths? They are the myths of the mega state and the myth that it has the power to save, which is the myth of modern science-ism. It is the belief or myth that everything in reality can wholly be explained by the theory of materialistic evolution. Evolution is surely a large part of the circle of existence, but it is not the whole. It may help us with a number of how questions, but it never answers the why questions of existence, and it is the why questions that gives life meaning.
In view of the above, the question must be raised as to how many of the new myths really square with reality and how many of them are simply illusions.
[2] Note: The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford.
[3] This view of evolution is not based on science and is believed by the masses.
[4] The Christian faith believes that everything is moving toward perfection and completeness. This concept evolved in the West into a strong belief in the concept of progress. Without the Christian faith, the question must be raised as to whether or not there are any grounds for a belief in progress.
[5] Of course, true science explains nothing; it simply describes things. When it slips into explaining things, it ceases to be science and becomes philosophy or something else.
[6] To name a few: Nicolas Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein.
[7] The US National Academy of Sciences has gone on record with the following statement: “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.” This was taken from Who Made God?: A Searching for a Theory of Everything by Fay Weldon.
Lyle Duell 