Category: Apologetics

Atheism, Natural Law and Self-evident Truth

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics

Atheism, Natural Law and Self-evident Truth

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also big bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. Rom 2:13-14

The natural law[1] of God is found everywhere you encounter man and is self-evident to any man who is in his right mind. It has been called a number of different things throughout the world and history. It has been call the Tao (the way) in the Orient, the Logos by the Greeks, wisdom by the Hebrews, self-evident truth by the founding fathers, and the first principles of philosophy or the cosmic order by the Europeans. It has been codified in every culture under heaven and is the bases of all values and morality. Of course, this impulse is stronger in some than others.[2] Some have hardened themselves to it to the point that the voice or impulse is very weak. However, this is abnormal and recognized as such. We call those who have a deficit of these impulses fools, idiots, and morons. Those who have no understanding of it we call psychopaths and label them as being mentally ill. The reason is that we recognize that this condition is totally abnormal. We tacitly recognize what is normal, which is a self-evident truth made known among all men by the cosmic order. For the sake of brevity, in this article we will call this phenomenon the Tao.

We find natural law or the Tao in every culture. The variation of Tao in different cultures comes from the culture filters, which mediate the values and principles of the cosmic order. Therefore, in each culture the Tao is colored by the mediators of the culture in which it is observed. These mediators work like sunglass, which protects the eyes of one looking at the sun, but at the same time can distort it. Jesus spoke of this when someone asked Him why God allowed a man to divorce his wife. He said it was because of the hardness of this man’s heart. In this He was telling the people that they could not bear looking directly at the sun. In other words, some cultures and men are simply not ready for all the implications of the natural law of God or Tao. So God speaks to them through mediators who filter the Tao.

If an unbeliever is a moral person, he himself is the evidence of natural law (principles) or self-evident truth (common sense),[3] for he does by nature what is in the law of God, even though his philosophy ultimately denies the cosmic order of the supreme truth and good. Even in his denial his reasoning cannot escape or silence the moral impulse to do the good and seek the truth. This impulse is so strong in some that it can actually drive one to madness. In conforming to this impulse, the unbeliever shares in the grace of God that comes through the wisdom of God which is known tacitly by all men.

Like the religious person, the atheist may interpret the impulse for the good to be a sign of his own goodness and therefore, falls under the illusion of self-rightness as do some religious people. This illusion of rightness, which is a perversion of the moral impulse, will further his alienation from God as it does the religious person and will reflect the very spirit that atheists hate in religious people, i.e., self-rightness. Self-rightness is nothing more than spiritual pride and is one of the most subtle hindrances to the moral impulse. It distorts one’s view of natural law in the religious individual and unbelievers.

What about the amoral atheists? The unprincipled unbelievers are no different than the amoral believers. They will both pay the price of breaking or ignoring the cosmic order. God’s moral law is much like His natural law. If one breaks the law of gravity enough times, it will catch up to him, and he will suffer some negative consequences. The same is true if one breaks the moral law or natural law. He will suffer loss, e.g., health, relationships, respect and such. In essence; one does not break the law. It breaks him, and he will suffer loss.

Because conformity to the Tao (the truth) is a prerequisite for a person being happy, anyone can experience happiness who does the truth and lives by the principles (wisdom) of God. If the unbeliever’s life is in more conformity to Tao than a believer’s, he will most likely be happier than a believer. I personally know an atheist who found one of the secrets of happiness in the Bible and started to practice it and found that it made him happier. At the same time, I know some religious people who have just enough religion to make them miserable.

[1] Self-evident truth or natural law can be weakened or even denied by people accepting an ideology or philosophy that is contrary to reality. Common people often refer to those in academia as having no common sense. In saying this, they may be more correct than they think.

[2] Self-evident truth is experienced corporately and is akin to a social consciousness. It is close to Freud’s group consciousness.

[3] The words and concepts of law and self-evident truth have been so neglected in Western culture that their meaning has been lost or distorted. One the best books on this concept is C.S. Lewis’s book, The Abolition of Man.

The New Atheists

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics

 

The New Atheists

“I was at this time of living, like so many Atheists or Anti-theists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.” C.S. Lewis

Who are the new atheists?  Unlike the traditional atheists of the past, the new atheists are a movement loosely organized around a host of websites and celebrity leaders.  They are very evangelistic and spend a large amount of time and money[i] propagating their faith, which they vehemently deny is a faith, though their movement seems to be increasingly taking on the characteristics of a religious cult.  Their purpose as a group seems to be to destroy faith in God and all religion, which they believe is evil.  So in essence, they believe they are angels of light, taking a message of freedom to the world, a freedom from a faith, which they believe poisons everything.  However, are they really angels of light?

The new atheists seem to be nice guys like any group which has little power.  However, when given power as in Russia and China, atheists behave no better than any other group or maybe worse.  In fact, they have the propensity to use force, especially state power, to spread their ideology and oppress others.  In other words, they behave very much like the thing they hate, i.e., organized religion.

They also represent the narrowest of belief systems, which a person can have, for they must reject  every religious belief system and argue for a total materialist world view.  In contrast, the Christian faith believes that it is the true and the most complete faith; but it also believes that there are many truths to be found in other faiths.  The new atheists are truly narrow people, and their thinking is one-dimensional and resembles the thinking of a fundamentalist religionist.  It is not surprising that their superstars resemble the TV evangelists.

They also share in other characteristic of religion, which is judgmental attitude and a critical spirit. Atheists embrace a naturalistic world view which, if they were being consistent, would eliminate all morality and all moral judgments.  Yet we find them making moral judgments on religious people all the time.  In fact, one of their spokesmen has recently published a book in which he even sets himself up as the moral judge of God.  The book is entitled God Is Not Good.  However, the title is misleading, for most of the book is about the failures of religion over the last few thousand years.  He seems to have missed the obvious observation that religious people are just people and people do bad things when given too much power, like the atheistic Communists of Russia and China, which he conveniently overlooks.

Because the new atheists believe that their unbelief is grounded in science, they have the tendency to elevate science to a place it ought not to hold.  For many atheists, science seems to be like a religion, which they guard as the fundamentalist religious person would guard his holy books.  This is understandable since atheists believe that science is proof of their ideology. Of course, the truth is that science does not support their faith and any true science would be the first to test and challenge any human knowledge, even atheism.  True science dictates that doubters doubt their own doubts. This might suggest that atheists are even poor skeptics.

To the new atheists, science is the proof that there is no God.  Yet the consensus of science is that science proves no such thing.  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.”  If this is the consensus of science, why do the new atheists keep appealing to science to justify their atheism? And why do they keep propagating the very opposite of the consensus of science?

However, no matter what the consensus is, the new atheists continue to line up behind the rebel scientists who want to use science to prove their atheism.  This simply means they are either ignorant or dishonest.  It is also strongly evident that science has little to do with making people atheists.  To read more on what makes people atheists read my paper “The Making of a Fundamentalist Atheist.”

Are the new atheists angels of light[ii]?  I don’t think so.  I personally think they are a group of people who are very angry at an existence, an existence, which to them seems meaningless and without purpose.  The only meaning in life, which they can find is to be free from anything that might restrict their appetites and to convert people to their way of viewing life.  My response is, “No thank you.”  A life without limits and meaning is not worth living.

[i] I have often asked the new atheists where they get their funding for the organized efforts to support their evangelism.  I have never received a response.  However, I believe it is highly possible that some of their funding comes from Communists like George Soros.  The Communist Party of the United States has funded attacks on religion for a century.  They know that America will never become completely Communist as long as it is religious.

[ii]  An honest unbeliever, Dr. E. Wengraf once confessed, “Every piece of anti-religious propaganda seems to me a crime.  I surely do not wish it to be prosecuted as a crime, but I consider it immoral and loathsome.  This not because of zeal for my convictions, but because of the simple knowledge, acquired through long experience that, given the same circumstances, a religious man is happier than the irreligious.  In my indifference and skeptical attitude toward all positive faith, I have often envied other men to whom deep religiosity has given a strong support in all the storms of life.  To uproot the souls of such men is an abject deed.  I abhor any proselytizing.  But still, I can understand why one who believes firmly in a saving faith tries to convert others.  But I cannot understand a propaganda of unbelief.  We do not have the right to take away from a person his protecting shelter, be it even a shabby hut, if we are not sure we can offer him a better, more beautiful house.  But to lure men from the inherited home of their souls, to make them err afterward in the wilderness of hypotheses and philosophical question marks, is either criminal fatalisms or criminal mindlessness.”

 

 

Miracles and Science

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Science

Miracles and Science

By its very nature, atheism must appeal to science as a basis for its unbelief, for without science, it would have little intellectual ground for its beliefs. Of course, most knowledgeable people know that science cannot prove God’s existence or disprove it.[1] At best, science can only offer a naturalistic way of looking at things. This raises the question: Are miracles contrary to nature?

Einstein once said there are only two ways of looking at the world—everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle. At first, I did not quite know how to take Einstein’s statement. Then I realized that for Einstein, time no longer mattered. He had found the eternal now through his theory on relativity.

You may say, “Okay, what has this to do with miracles?” It has a lot to do with miracles if miracles are in any way connected to time, which I believe they are. But before pursuing that thought it is important for us to clarify the word miracle.

I have had a number of atheists tell me that the difference between science and religion is that the latter believes in miracles and science does not. However, I do not believe that assertion is true. There are two miracles which both science and religion claim to have a belief in, though they may not call them miracles. It is the creation of the universe and the beginning of life.  I say this because these events happened one time; they fall outside of natural law and are beyond a reasonable probability. Remember, to be consistent atheists must conclude that nature and its laws did not exist at the time of the creation, since they were specifically created by “the big bang,” just like the rest of nature.

Just by the observation of nature no one can explain how nothing could be turned into something; and no one can explain how something could turn into something else without a miracle. Of course,  there are many who believe that they have explained these extraordinary changes, but we need to remember that the explanation is not the observation, and the explanation is not the evidence.

Authentic science is based on the scientific method, which states that in order for a phenomenon, occurrence or event to be a true scientific fact, it must be observed and one must be able to reproduce it.  There also must be a means, by which at least an attempt can be made to falsify it.   Neither the creation of the universe, nor the creation of life was observed by anyone living today or in recorded history.  These events cannot  be reproduced either, which puts them outside the arena of science and into the sphere of speculative philosophy or religion. It all comes back to the metaphysical or religious question of why there is something instead of nothing. [2]

 

Now here’s the astonishing parallel. Both religion and science believe in the miracles of creation (something from nothing) and in the evolution of life (something turning into something else).[3] The only difference is the time factor. One believes in fast miracles (religion) and the other in slow miracles (science). Either fast or slow, both of the above fits into the category of the miraculous.  I know that religion does not like slow miracles, and science does not like fast miracles, but remember what Einstein taught us?  Time is relative.

To us humans we have an awareness of time, but it means nothing to the deity, unless when dealing with humans. For that matter, time also means nothing to the animals. There is no evidence that animals are conscious of time.

By now I am sure that those who believe in scientism[4] are about to blow their tops.  Well, let it blow; it may help you to get into your right mind. Your right mind is the mind that can discern the difference between facts and the interpretation of facts, between the data and the explanation and the difference between science and philosophy. Blowing your top may help you get rid of your fuzzy thinking about existence.

So, what have we learned? We have learned that when talking about a metaphysical phenomenon, occurrence or event like the creation of something out of nothing; i.e., things relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses, both science and religion appear to believe in some of the same supernatural events. One of those events is the creation of something out of nothing, a phenomenon which is completely outside of nature and space-time as we know it.  However, we find both religion and science telling us  that something changed into something else. Within religion, it is God turning the dust of the ground (star dust) into life, and within science, we see a similar idea, but a lot slower (evolution).

Some of you science buffs are probably saying, “Wait a minute. The big bang theory, science’s creation story, is backed up with facts.”  Well, if there is evidence for the big bang theory, the same facts could prove that God created the universe ex-nihilo, out of nothing. The only difference is that instead of referring to God, scientists call the Alpha a ‘singularity which is a convoluted description of the infinite, the nothing or unknown. No matter what you call it, it sure looks like a miracle. It is something coming from nothing. By far, this must be the greatest miracle of all. It even tops one being resurrected from the dead, which is another example of something changing into something else, and nothing becoming something.

When someone tells me they cannot believe in miracles  but at the same time tell me they can believe in the big bang theory and evolution, I have to wonder if they either misunderstand miracles or the big bang theory and evolution. The statistical probability of the big bang and life coming from non life and then evolving undirected to its apex in mankind is just unbelievable. Yet, many believe in both. Why is it so hard for these folks to believe that God did it? Could it be the conditioning of an atheistic and secular culture?

I know nature has its laws and that some believe they are never suspended or superseded by an outside source. However, from my perspective, a miracle is not the deity suspending natural law, but simply speeding nature up or slowing her down to serve His purposes. So, a phenomenon, occurrence or event in my thinking is a miracle, whether it happens swiftly or slowly. When Jesus turned water into wine He was simply speeding up what nature does with the help of man s every season, in turning grapes into wine.

When Jesus healed people, it was always  instant and complete demonstrating  His power to speed up the natural healing process. When he calmed the storm he was not overriding nature’s laws, but simply speeding them up. Storms always pass given enough time. However, sometimes God gives them a little nudge. I think some scientists might call this the ‘butterfly effect’.

Nature never changes its mind on its own, for it is quite dumb. In fact, it is mindless. It is totally controlled by cause and effect in itself. It needs intelligence outside of itself to speed it up sometimes, as when Jesus turned water into wine. I know a lot of people have a problem with this, but it happens on a small scale every time humans exercise their will. When I hit a cue ball on a billiards table, I have set into motion the natural law of cause and effect.  The laws of nature take over until one of my friends reaches down and quickly removes one of the balls or the cue ball. My friend’s action, which came from his will (mind) has changed the game.

In essence, the game was started by a will and it was changed by a will every time the players interacted with the billiard balls. The game did not create itself nor did it start the game all by itself.  The game is the effect not the ultimate cause, nor is the game the maker of the rules for the game.  If the game has rules, there must be a rule maker and one of the rules of the game is that the creator of the game can speed it up or slow it down or for that matter, do anything he wants thereby changing the rules of the game or the game itself. Of course, the expression speed up or slow down are completely irrelevant to the Uncreated One who is outside space-time. However, He does seem to respect our finiteness and accommodates the failure of our language to communicate His reality, i.e., His game.

For those wishing to pursue the subject of miracles, I would suggest that you begin with C.S. Lewis’s book on miracles and The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton. Both books will give you plenty to think about.

[1] 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.

[2] Note: The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton. . The ultimate question is why they go at all; and anybody who really understands that question will know that it always has been and always will be a religious question; or at any rate a philosophical or metaphysical question.

[3] Religious people need to remember that God did not make man out of nothing. He formed him out of the dust of the earth or you could say star dust. In this God changed man from one thing to something else. How He did it is debatable for no one was there watching. It could have been fast or slow.

[4] Scientism is an expression used by some to designate a group of people who have made science into a religion.

The Magical Twins-Science and Magic

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Science

The Magical Twins

“Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages; the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.”[1] C.S. Lewis  

I was reading C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and ran across the above excerpt, which sparked the question as to how science and magic are similar. Of course, raising such a question will immediately cause indignation on the part of those who are involved in scientism, i.e., those who have made science into a religion or ideology. These folks believe that science is above reproach and criticism, which is itself the very proof that they have accepted it as an absolute in their lives. Absolutism is one of the characteristics of a religion, not science, at least real science. Authentic science is a body of knowledge that is constantly changing and expanding. One way it expands is through falsification and criticism. When a belief system is closed to these things, it can no longer be called science; it must be called scientism.

One of the things that science and magic have in common is that they both have magical dust, which we might call fairy dust. Fairy dust is magical dust that makes magical and unbelievable things happen. The magician can throw fairy dust on something and make it appear or disappear with a bang and a lot of smoke, which keeps the audience from seeing what is going on behind the scenes. The audience believes because it wants to believe in magic and the skill of the magician at creating an illusion. However, there are always a few in the audience who seem to have x-ray eyes that see through the illusion.

I know some are getting a little curious as to what the fairy dust of science is. Well, it is the fairy dust of time. When some scientists have a problem with explaining and justifying certain theories, they simply sprinkle some fairy dust of time on it to make it work. For example, when evolutionists came up against some very large problems of not having enough time for their theories to work, they simply sprinkled some of their fairy dust of time on the theory and made it work. When it came to the origin of life and the huge problem of probability, they simple used their fairy dust and say that with enough time anything is possible, even life coming from non-life. Now, that is a greater miracle than having someone resurrected from the dead. The more astonishing thing is that these folks tell us they do not believe in miracles. However, they do believe in fairy dust.

We have some magicians, or should I say scientists, who now are saying that, given enough time, something can even come from nothing. Now, this is the ultimate magic trick, for if the big bang created space-time, it means that there was no fairy dust (time) before the big bang or the beginning of the universe. So what we have is a rabbit being pulled out of a hat without any fairy dust. How could this be? You cannot work miracles without the fairy dust of time. Well, when you run out of fairy dust, there is only one thing to do; create a brand new kind of fairy dust. The new dust is call necessity dust. This dust is only used when you run out of fairy dust and any or all reasonable answers. Necessity dust is made up of convoluted and nonsensical theories which have the appearance of intellectual vitality but in actuality is nothing more than nonsense. However, it often works if the audience wants to be deceived.[2]

In recent years science has run out of time in this universe. In other words, they have run out of fairy dust when it was discovered that the universe had a beginning. The time in our universe can only be stretched so far for it has a beginning and an end. So what can they do? They must make some more fairy dust. Now, that is a tall order. How in the world can you make more fairy dust of time? Well, like most magic, you dream it up. You make another universe or a multi-verse. Remember the story of Peter Pan. Peter lived in Never Never Land. Then there is Alice, who lived in Wonderland. Both worlds had an abundance of fairy dust. The big question is, can the scientific imagination create another worlds or universes to get more fairy dust to prove their theories? I think the answer is yes, for they have come up with a multi-universe theory (string theory) which does not have one shred of scientific evidence to support it. Yet, it is embraced by a consensus of scientists. However, its creation is a matter of necessity. For without it there is no more fairy dust, which means everyone wants to believe in it whether real or not. For what in the world would we believe in if we ran out fairy dust? Maybe God? Of course, science got rid of the God of gaps[3] and replaced Him with fairy dust. So now, where shall they go? Never, Never Land or maybe Alice’s Wonderland?

Some will charge me with being anti-scientific. However, I vehemently deny this charge. What I am against is pseudoscience that claims to be science and the men who abuse science, making it into something it is not. I especially am against those who attempt to use science to prove that there is no God and in so doing, subvert true science to support their unbelief.

For those true believers in scientism, let me challenge you to read Lee Smolin’s book, The Trouble with Physics, which is an objective view of the string theory.[4] I read Smolin’s book after writing this paper and found his book to confirm much of my thinking about the string theory and other new theories of modern science. The book is worth reading solely for its in-depth study of the history of the string theory.

[1] Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man

[2] In 1996, American physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper loaded with nonsensical jargon to the journal Social Text in which he argued that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. You can read the paper on the internet. When the journal published it, Sokal revealed that the paper was in fact a spoof. The incident triggered a storm of debate about the ethics of Sokal’s prank. However, the truth was that the debate was about whether or not it was right to show how easy many scientist are deceived.

[3] “The claim that, given time, science will explain everything is simply the atheist’s version of the God of the gaps. The gaps in our knowledge can be plugged, they say, by future (but as yet unknown) scientific advances; thus the God of the gaps is simply replaced by the future science of the gaps–same gaps, different deity. It’s what philosopher of science Karl Popper called “promissory materialism.” (Who Made God? Searching for a Theory of Everything by Edgar Andrew)

[4] Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has made influential contributions to the search for a unification of physics. He is a founding faculty member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His previous books include: The Life of the Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum.

Science, Religion and Carl Sagan

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Science

Science, Religion and Carl Sagan

 The following is an excerpt from Carl Sagan.  “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.  I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” (Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)

Carl Sagan believed like so many in our culture that science was going to usher in a brave new world.  Well, it has.  It is the brave new world of Aldous Huxley.  One of my questions for Mr. Sagan if he were still alive would be “How can science create in people a love for truth and a desire to find it?”  Science is a methodology for finding truth.  It does not create truth nor does it have the power to create a love for the truth.  It seems we are quickly moving toward the very situation that Sagan dreaded for his children and grandchildren.  Yet we have more science now than ever before in human history and the world is still filled with darkness.  Could what Albert Einstein said be true?  “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

The problem is if science is to remain pure science, it must stay neutral toward good and evil; i.e. morality, and if it stays pure science it has no power to move mankind toward the good.  In fact it has no mechanism to discern good from evil.  Well, you might say it has reason.  My answer is it had an illusion of reason until recently then it demonstrated that humans are not foremost rational beings and are often control by passions, ideology and avarice[1].  This includes the scientists (for you folks that have made them into the new holy men).

Even if science could discern the difference between good and evil with reason, it has no power to move man to desire the good over the evil.  In some cases it may not be rational for some men to choose evil over good.  For instance, would it be reasonable for a man to tell the truth if he was going to suffer loss for telling the truth?  Reason that is not informed by faith in a higher order is like a horse without a rider, wild and unpredictable. It may be gentle or destructive, but it can never be the foundation of right and wrong for the masses.

The truth is that secular humanism with its scientific foundation is crumbing in the west and will most likely take western civilization with it into the abyss of a new dark age.  In all honesty you can be in a dark age and still have your toys, and a man can be a barbarian, even if he has an I Phone[2].

The only reason humanism has enjoyed some success in the past is that it had, as its foundation, a civilization which was created by Greek rationalism and Christian morality.  Christianity is a religion based on historical facts and has always supported reason.  Greek philosophy and Christian morality formed an ideal foundation for the creation of Western civilization.  They are like the Jack and Jill of civilization in that they go up the hill together and they fall down the hill together.

However, secular humanism has picked away on the foundation of Christianity for centuries and has now weakened it to the point where it can no longer support the culture or even its own institutions.  For this reason secularism has diminished a vital part of the foundation upon which humanism and science were built on, i.e. western civilization.  Doing away with Christianity is like a man believing that the way to run faster is to cut ones legs off.  It will be interesting to see what will happen to western civilization in the next few decades and whether Sagan’s prophecy is right[3].

[1] Reason is blinded by ideology and the avaricious passion of those doing science. There is no such thing as pure reason. Pure reason is a fiction created by the enlightenment to move people away from faith and religion. It is the only thing left for a man once he rejects God. If he has the courage, reason alone will only take him to nihilism.

[2] The proof of this is the barbaric behavior of the Nazis towards the Jewish race in Germany during World War II. It was the educated class, which ordered the extermination of Jews.

[3] The most dangerous state in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the power of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuses of Reason (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979), pp. 162-163.

 

Atheism, Natural Law and Self-evident Truth

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics

Atheism, Natural Law and Self-evident Truth

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also big bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. Rom 2:13-14

The natural law[1] of God is found everywhere you encounter man and is self-evident to any man who is in his right mind. It has been called a number of different things throughout the world and history. It has been call the Tao (the way) in the Orient, the Logos by the Greeks, wisdom by the Hebrews, self-evident truth by the founding fathers, and the first principles of philosophy or the cosmic order by the Europeans. It has been codified in every culture under heaven and is the bases of all values and morality. Of course, this impulse is stronger in some than others.[2] Some have hardened themselves to it to the point that the voice or impulse is very weak. However, this is abnormal and recognized as such. We call those who have a deficit of these impulses fools, idiots, and morons. Those who have no understanding of it we call psychopaths and label them as being mentally ill. The reason is that we recognize that this condition is totally abnormal. We tacitly recognize what is normal, which is a self-evident truth made known among all men by the cosmic order. For the sake of brevity, in this article we will call this phenomenon the Tao.

We find natural law or the Tao in every culture. The variation of Tao in different cultures comes from the culture filters, which mediate the values and principles of the cosmic order. Therefore, in each culture the Tao is colored by the mediators of the culture in which it is observed. These mediators work like sunglass, which protects the eyes of one looking at the sun, but at the same time can distort it. Jesus spoke of this when someone asked Him why God allowed a man to divorce his wife. He said it was because of the hardness of this man’s heart. In this He was telling the people that they could not bear looking directly at the sun. In other words, some cultures and men are simply not ready for all the implications of the natural law of God or Tao. So God speaks to them through mediators who filter the Tao.

If an unbeliever is a moral person, he himself is the evidence of natural law (principles) or self-evident truth (common sense),[3] for he does by nature what is in the law of God, even though his philosophy ultimately denies the cosmic order of the supreme truth and good. Even in his denial his reasoning cannot escape or silence the moral impulse to do the good and seek the truth. This impulse is so strong in some that it can actually drive one to madness. In conforming to this impulse, the unbeliever shares in the grace of God that comes through the wisdom of God which is known tacitly by all men.

Like the religious person, the atheist may interpret the impulse for the good to be a sign of his own goodness and therefore, falls under the illusion of self-rightness as do some religious people. This illusion of rightness, which is a perversion of the moral impulse, will further his alienation from God as it does the religious person and will reflect the very spirit that atheists hate in religious people, i.e., self-rightness. Self-rightness is nothing more than spiritual pride and is one of the most subtle hindrances to the moral impulse. It distorts one’s view of natural law in the religious individual and unbelievers.

What about the amoral atheists? The unprincipled unbelievers are no different than the amoral believers. They will both pay the price of breaking or ignoring the cosmic order. God’s moral law is much like His natural law. If one breaks the law of gravity enough times, it will catch up to him, and he will suffer some negative consequences. The same is true if one breaks the moral law or natural law. He will suffer loss, e.g., health, relationships, respect and such. In essence; one does not break the law. It breaks him, and he will suffer loss.

Because conformity to the Tao (the truth) is a prerequisite for a person being happy, anyone can experience happiness who does the truth and lives by the principles (wisdom) of God. If the unbeliever’s life is in more conformity to Tao than a believer’s, he will most likely be happier than a believer. I personally know an atheist who found one of the secrets of happiness in the Bible and started to practice it and found that it made him happier. At the same time, I know some religious people who have just enough religion to make them miserable.

[1] Self-evident truth or natural law can be weakened or even denied by people accepting an ideology or philosophy that is contrary to reality. Common people often refer to those in academia as having no common sense. In saying this, they may be more correct than they think.

[2] Self-evident truth is experienced corporately and is akin to a social consciousness. It is close to Freud’s group consciousness.

[3] The words and concepts of law and self-evident truth have been so neglected in Western culture that their meaning has been lost or distorted. One the best books on this concept is C.S. Lewis’s book, The Abolition of Man.

Turning Nothing into Something

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics

Turning Nothing into Something

Does Evolution Explain Life and the Universe?

 

“It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for and admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything” C.K. Chesterton, “Thomas Aquinas : The Dumb Ox. 

Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something and nobody can get an inch closer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. However, this is exactly what many atheists attempt to do. They think they have explained existence by explaining evolution[1]. However, they have a number of large problems. (1) They must first prove that Darwinian evolution is a science. If they believe that science is made up of knowledge, which comes from following what is known as the scientific method, the study of deep time evolution might be something other than science.[2] (2) Let’s assume they prove that evolution is a science. Then they must prove one theory of evolution[3]. That is, they must prove that evolution is not directed from outside of nature, which is impossible. (3) Then after proving 1 and 2, they must show how evolution of any kind proves that there is no God. What if the deity just created everything and just threw dice and left the creation to work out its own evolution? If this were the case, there would be no trace of design in the universe or evident for God. This would be the God of the deist, but surely would not rule out the existence of a God.

In actuality, after all of this work, all unbelievers would have done is prove that they have the ability to come with a story of how something changed into something else. They still have not proven that God does not exist or how something came from nothing. In fact, all they would have proven is that they have shown how someone could imagine how something could turn into something else. Of course, the same imagination could come up with what would seem a reasonable explanation of how a horse could become a unicorn or how pink flamingos could become pink elephants, given the magical ingredient of enough time and the human imagination.

Though their explanation does not prove evolution or that God does not existence, they have demonstrated the power of the human mind and imagination, and the gullibility of the masses. Humans have the ability to create whole systems of thought, which to some degree actually shape reality for them who believe them. These systems of thought are called myths by some. In a vulgar sense, myths are thought of as stories that are not true. However, in a broader sense, they are stories on which cultures are built and reflect the values of people. Culture is first; then comes the myths that support it. I believe a case could be made for Darwinian evolution to be a myth or a story, which came out of a pantheistic and a materialist culture that began to emerge around the Renaissance and continued to gain strength up to time of the Enlightenment.  The myth was strengthened by a capitalistic system, which preached the survival of the fittest and a new atheism that was strengthened by the decline of Christian morality and a decorative corrupt church. The proof of this can be seen by the overwhelming quick acceptance of Darwinism without one shred of scientific evidence.  It seems, to be somewhat obvious that the culture of the 19th century prepared people for the new evolution myth of creation.

However, remember that the explanation is not the data or the evidence. Spinning an explanation may prove that one is intelligent and that one may have kissed the Blarney Stone, but it proves nothing else without hard cool facts. This is true of believers and unbelievers, both are experts at stretching the facts.

The creation tale and explanation of Darwinian evolution can never be proven by science, using the scientific method. Moreover, after all that work of trying to prove it, one is still not any closer to explaining how something came from nothing and all one has for his effort is a hypothetical explanation  how something changes into something else. On top of that, one has to deal with respected scientists like Henry Gee, who would say that much of one’s explanation of deep time evolution comes more from the imagination of men than true science.[4]

Let me close by saying that my beef is not with science or even evolution[5], though I must admit that I personally do not believe it to be a science as physics is a science.[6] My problem is with many atheists, who use science and especially the theories of evolution to attempt to prove that there is no God. Evolution is a “how” question and really has little to do with the question, “Is there a God?” I will grant that if evolution is true, it may tell us something about God, but what it would tell us is that He is great beyond our imagination, and I do not see how this would help the atheistic cause. If Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, the atheist still finds himself in deep water. For it would take more faith (something they hate) to believe that this complex system of nature came about by sheer luck than to believe it was directed by God.

[1] By evolution in this article I mean the system, which teaches that all life came from one common ancestor in deep time and can be explained by natural selection and mutations, apart from any direction from outside of nature by a deity.

[2] Some philosophers of science have argued that evolutionary explanations of past events are not scientific because we cannot test them in the way laboratory scientists test their hypotheses.  This challenge raises genuine questions about the scientific method.  Evolutionists respond that to apply the methodology of physics to any historical science is to miss the point that an empirical study of such questions must adopt different standards.  The situation is complicated by the fact that some biologists support the attack on evolutionism, not because they endorse creationism, but because they feel that evolutionary relationship cannot be studied scientifically.  Peter K. Bowler  Evolution-The History of an Idea  Page 369

[3] There has are a number of different theories of evolution.  The debate on evolution and its mechanism has raged in the scientific community since Charles Darwin.

[4] Henry Gee  Deep Time Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution.

[5] I have been asked if I believe in evolution. My answer is I believe in change that can be proven by the scientific method, which is barnyard evolution, which can be observed by all men and evolution, which is demonstrated in a laboratory. I do not believe in deep time evolution for it unknowable and is based on speculation,  an often a over active imagination.

[6] The study of Darwinian evolution could fall under the discipline of history.  However, even here there is a huge problem, for much of data is prehistoric.  That  means before history was recorded, which means it would have to be based on reading into the facts your imaginational opinion biased on your preconditioning,  If you had any facts, the meaning of the facts would have to come from some other source than one’s imagination even to be called history much less science.  Evolution might make a fine story, but it would not qualify as history any more than the movie “The Planet of Apes.”  The study of barnyard evolution which can be observed, gets much closer to science than Darwinism or prehistoric evolution, because the scientific method can be applied to what is going on in the barnyard or the laboratory. However, laboratory study in evolution includes a consciousness and intelligence manipulating nature, which many raise a question of their true reflection of the natural process.  This kind of science proves nothing of what happens in nature under its own accord.  What it proves is the intelligence can manipulate nature to small degrees.  If intelligence can manipulate nature to small a degree, what could super-intelligence, i.e., God, do?

Is Faith in God Reasonable?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics

Is Faith in God Reasonable? 

In many cases, faith is the most reasonable thing you can embrace.  Say that you were climbing a large mountain and it grew dark.  Now suppose that because of the difficulty of the climb that it would be impossible to retreat off the peak at night.  The problem worsens when you learn from your radio that a storm is coming that would make the conditions hopeless to survive the night.  As you huddle on the mountain waiting for death, you remember a story told by an old man in the camp the week before.  He had mentioned that there was a hidden outcropping of rocks that forms a small ledge just below the summit and off the ledge was a small cave that one could go into to escape the weather.  He said it was marked by a small pile of rocks just a short distance beneath the summit.  However, to reach it you must jump down about ten feet, which is a large first step.  Now here is the problem.  It is dark, and you have found the marker.  However, you cannot see the ledge because it is dark.  The jump requires a leap of faith based upon the testimony of the old man.

In view of the conditions, is the leap reasonable or is more rational to be pessimistic and do nothing?  Would it be logical not to make a choice?  It seems that to both the pessimist (atheist) and the indecisive (agnostic),  a leap of faith is not the reasonable thing to do.  Both would have to choose to die on the mountain.  In this case, not to choose is to choose.  It is to choose death over the possibility of life.  What I am saying is that in some circumstances, the reasonable thing to do is to act on faith.  Sometimes reason tells us that it is not time to use reason.  In some cases, moving forward in faith is the most reasonable thing you can do.

Once the disciples of Jesus were listening to the Master, and when they turned around the crowd was walking away murmuring that they just could not believe what the Teacher was saying.  When the Teacher saw the despair on the faces of the disciples, He asked them, “Are you going to leave too?”

Their answer was their leap of faith in the midst of despair.  “Where shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”

Maybe you are on a mountain in the dark and in a state of despair.  Maybe the way out is to make a leap of faith in God.  If you do, you will find that it is not a leap into the abyss, but onto the Rock of Ages Who has saved millions of people.  I guarantee that you will begin to see everything differently. LD

 

The Magical Twins- Science and Magic

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Science

The Magical Twins

“Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages; the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.”[1] C.S. Lewis  

I was reading C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and ran across the above excerpt, which sparked the question as to how science and magic are similar. Of course, raising such a question will immediately cause indignation on the part of those who are involved in scientism, i.e., those who have made science into a religion or ideology. These folks believe that science is above reproach and criticism, which is itself the very proof that they have accepted it as an absolute in their lives. Absolutism is one of the characteristics of a religion, not science, at least real science. Authentic science is a body of knowledge that is constantly changing and expanding. One way it expands is through falsification and criticism. When a belief system is closed to these things, it can no longer be called science; it must be called scientism.

One of the things that science and magic have in common is that they both have magical dust, which we might call fairy dust. Fairy dust is magical dust that makes magical and unbelievable things happen. The magician can throw fairy dust on something and make it appear or disappear with a bang and a lot of smoke, which keeps the audience from seeing what is going on behind the scenes. The audience believes because it wants to believe in magic and the skill of the magician at creating an illusion. However, there are always a few in the audience who seem to have x-ray eyes that see through the illusion.

I know some are getting a little curious as to what the fairy dust of science is. Well, it is the fairy dust of time. When some scientists have a problem with explaining and justifying certain theories, they simply sprinkle some fairy dust of time on it to make it work. For example, when evolutionists came up against some very large problems of not having enough time for their theories to work, they simply sprinkled some of their fairy dust of time on the theory and made it work. When it came to the origin of life and the huge problem of probability, they simple used their fairy dust and say that with enough time anything is possible, even life coming from non-life. Now, that is a greater miracle than having someone resurrected from the dead. The more astonishing thing is that these folks tell us they do not believe in miracles. However, they do believe in fairy dust.

We have some magicians, or should I say scientists, who now are saying that, given enough time, something can even come from nothing. Now, this is the ultimate magic trick, for if the big bang created space-time, it means that there was no fairy dust (time) before the big bang or the beginning of the universe. So what we have is a rabbit being pulled out of a hat without any fairy dust. How could this be? You cannot work miracles without the fairy dust of time. Well, when you run out of fairy dust, there is only one thing to do; create a brand new kind of fairy dust. The new dust is call necessity dust. This dust is only used when you run out of fairy dust and any or all reasonable answers. Necessity dust is made up of convoluted and nonsensical theories which have the appearance of intellectual vitality but in actuality is nothing more than nonsense. However, it often works if the audience wants to be deceived.[2]

In recent years science has run out of time in this universe. In other words, they have run out of fairy dust when it was discovered that the universe had a beginning. The time in our universe can only be stretched so far for it has a beginning and an end. So what can they do? They must make some more fairy dust. Now, that is a tall order. How in the world can you make more fairy dust of time? Well, like most magic, you dream it up. You make another universe or a multi-verse. Remember the story of Peter Pan. Peter lived in Never Never Land. Then there is Alice, who lived in Wonderland. Both worlds had an abundance of fairy dust. The big question is, can the scientific imagination create another worlds or universes to get more fairy dust to prove their theories? I think the answer is yes, for they have come up with a multi-universe theory (string theory) which does not have one shred of scientific evidence to support it. Yet, it is embraced by a consensus of scientists. However, its creation is a matter of necessity. For without it there is no more fairy dust, which means everyone wants to believe in it whether real or not. For what in the world would we believe in if we ran out fairy dust? Maybe God? Of course, science got rid of the God of gaps[3] and replaced Him with fairy dust. So now, where shall they go? Never, Never Land or maybe Alice’s Wonderland?

Some will charge me with being anti-scientific. However, I vehemently deny this charge. What I am against is pseudoscience that claims to be science and the men who abuse science, making it into something it is not. I especially am against those who attempt to use science to prove that there is no God and in so doing, subvert true science to support their unbelief.

For those true believers in scientism, let me challenge you to read Lee Smolin’s book, The Trouble with Physics, which is an objective view of the string theory.[4] I read Smolin’s book after writing this paper and found his book to confirm much of my thinking about the string theory and other new theories of modern science. The book is worth reading solely for its in-depth study of the history of the string theory.

 

[1] Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man

[2] In 1996, American physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper loaded with nonsensical jargon to the journal Social Text in which he argued that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. You can read the paper on the internet. When the journal published it, Sokal revealed that the paper was in fact a spoof. The incident triggered a storm of debate about the ethics of Sokal’s prank. However, the truth was that the debate was about whether or not it was right to show how easy many scientist are deceived.

[3] “The claim that, given time, science will explain everything is simply the atheist’s version of the God of the gaps. The gaps in our knowledge can be plugged, they say, by future (but as yet unknown) scientific advances; thus the God of the gaps is simply replaced by the future science of the gaps–same gaps, different deity. It’s what philosopher of science Karl Popper called “promissory materialism.” (Who Made God? Searching for a Theory of Everything by Edgar Andrew)

[4] Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has made influential contributions to the search for a unification of physics. He is a founding faculty member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His previous books include: The Life of the Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum.