Category: Apologetics

Does God Exist?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

Does God Exist?

“For as bats’ eyes are to daylight so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the Most obvious of all.” Aristotle

Some of you might think that the question “does God exist?” is an extremely hard question.  However, it only seems tough if you are thinking in the unreal world of theoretical science or philosophy.  Now, by unreal I do not mean fictional.  By unreal, I mean a world outside our five senses, i.e. a world we cannot see, taste, hear, smell or touch; a world very much like the one religious folks call heaven, but of course without a God.  However, in the real world of our sense’s God is a self-evident truth.  A self-evident truth is a truth, which is tacitly known by all men, who are in their right mind, living in the same world that had not had their reasoning impaired by false theories, ideology or rebellious passions.

If the existence of God is a self-evident truth; what evidence would one expect to find in the world to support this hypothesis?  Would we not expect to find some kind of universal spirituality or awareness that there is something which transcends the physical?  What do we find when we look at the world?  Well, we find religion and faith in some form in every culture in the world, even in those which have put forth a great effort to destroy it, such as those societies controlled by atheistic communism.  Even in those societies, faith and religion seem to be  resistant to these attacks.  This just adds strength to the argument that God is a self-evident truth, which is very hard to eliminate.  Because it is self-evident and a very part of man’s nature, if you suppress it, it will just break out in another form[1].  Although the universality of religion and faith may not in itself prove that God is self-evident, it is what one would expect to find if there is a God, and it is consistent with the idea that God is a self-evident.

In addition, scientific evidence is mounting, that supports the idea that humans are hard-wired to believe in a God, which would explain the universality of religion and morality.[2]  In other words, it seems that humanities very nature is to have faith in a deity and this is the very thing we would expect to find if God created man with a share of his  consciousness.  This innate awareness of the divine also supports and is consistent with the hypothesis which affirms that God is a self-evident truth.  It would strongly suggest that atheism is not natural or innate and is a doctrine, which is socially created and propagated by the indoctrination of a secular culture, whose beliefs have been twisted by a denial of human nature and its creator.

Besides all of this, would not one expect to find in a world that was created by an intellectual force, to consist of order and design?  And when one looks at the world that is exactly what one finds.  Does not design, demand a designer?  Does not the creation itself point to a creator and designer?  Is not design in the cosmos itself, a self-evident truth, at least to those that are in their right minds?[3]  Though all of this does not prove the existence of God beyond question, it does add credence to the God theory.

Why So Many Unbelievers

Some might raise the objection, “If the existence of God is self-evident, why are there so many who do not see it?”  Jesus said, “some people have eyes but do not see.”  Here, Jesus is simply saying that some do not have the will to believe.  Humans tend to believe what they want to believe and to see what they want to see.  Because of this, they are often blinded by their presuppositions.  Moreover, sometimes over exposure deadens ones sensitivity to a  concept We are often actually oblivious to our senses until they are impaired in some way.  We seldom think about our vision or of our eyes until something threatens our sight.  When we look out a window, we  often don’t see the glass, unless we focus on it.  The reason being that 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 many modern men is that they are too focused on things and therefore, are not able to ‘see God’. Through their neglect, they have lost their ability to sense and see God.  However, just because a blind man cannot see, it doesn’t mean that sight does not exist.

What is Self-Evident Truth?

When talking about self-evident truth we are talking about a tacit knowledge or impulse, which seems to move our intellect to certain beliefs and behavior.  It can be individual or corporate.  In the realm of morality, it is an expectation or a sense of the way things ought to be.  It is the instinct to order the world that we live in; it is a sense, of “I ought to do that” or “things ought to be this way,” which all men everywhere have.  It has been called by numerous names in different cultures.  It has been called the Dao or the Tao in the east, the Greeks called it the Logos, the Hebrews called it wisdom, the Americans call it common sense, in philosophy, it is the first principles or natural law.  Our founding fathers called it self-evident truth.

It is this impulse that compels us to look for a cause of all things and ask the question “why?”  This impulse has been codified by science into the law of cause and effect.  If followed to its logical outcome, it will take us to the foundation of all truth.  It takes us to a beginning and to something outside of ourselves and because it is the beginning, it is a something, which is the source and catalyst of all things, but in itself, is not a thing nor does it have a cause.  This causeless entity cannot be named or classified and is what some theists call God.  Of course, the word God is a title and not a name.  When Moses confronted this entity and asked its name its reply was “I am.”  In other words, you cannot name me for I stand above all things and outside of all categories of human language.

The Great Circle of Life.

Though the existence of God is the foundation of all truth, there are lesser self-evident truths or what we could call common sense truths which all point to, and are dependent on, the well-spring of ultimate truth, which is the uncreated first cause.  One such truth is the metaphor of the great circle of life.  That is the story of birth (beginning), growth or maturity (ascent), then declension or death (descent), followed by rebirth or resurrection, whose cycle has been observed and experienced by every man in every age since the beginning of human consciousness.

The self-evident truth of the great circle of life is that it points to the fact that everything has a beginning and an end[4].  It cries out that everything begins with God the great designer and ends with God who is the goal and foundation of all creation.  The circle did not create itself.  It had to have a beginning and its cause has to be empirically adequate to explain it.  The only empirically adequate explanation is God.  The great circle tells us that everything is given birth in the mind of God, then it comes into what we call reality, where it begins to grow and mature.  It then it reaches a point where it begins to decline and then dies.  Then finally it experiences rebirth or resurrection into a different form of existence.  God as the uncreated one is the beginning and end of this circle.  In this, all of life and nature becomes a metaphor that points to God as first cause and creator of everything[5].  Therefore, God as first cause is the foundation of all self-evident truth and He Himself is the self-evident truth.  His self-evident existence is the foundation on which the law of cause and effect has been built on, which says that every effect must have a cause, equal to, or greater than itself.  This circle is imprinted on the human psyche as a need for a first cause, which is great enough to explain itself and all things.  To deny this circle is to deny human nature and even intelligent consciousness[6].

Self-evident Truth and the Founding Fathers

As stated above, our Founding Fathers believed that the existence of God was a self-evident truth, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator…”.  The fathers started with what they call the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, which infers that there is a creator and that his existence is self-evident.  If there is no self-evident creator, there can be no self-evident truth or common sense of any kind.  But, according to the Founding Fathers, there is self-evident truth.  Therefore, in their thinking, there must be a Creator that is as self-evident as himself.  I bring up the Founding Fathers not because their faith proves the existence of God, but rather to show that these brilliant men understood that all thinking had to have an ultimate foundation to build on, and that foundation had to be conscious and intelligent.  Otherwise, there would be no foundation for human reason, to reason from.

However, naturalists contradict all of these ideas when they try to tell us that things go or move from the lower (primitive) to the higher (complex).  They tell us that consciousness came from unconsciousness and life from the nonliving and that something came from nothing.  In this, they deny the existence of God along with the idea of all self-evident truth and the universal law of cause and effect.  To try to justify their belief system, they must take us to the unreal world of theoretical science where they attempt to turn their assumptions into facts.  Of course, for the unbiased person science is neutral when it comes to the question of the existence of God.  In fact, The U.S. 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.”[7]

In order to further justify themselves, naturalists tell us that things were different at the beginning, which no one would disagree with, however, was the law of cause and effect different?  If so, where is the proof?  They then say, without one shred of evidence, that in the beginning the right nonliving stuff came together with some other nonliving stuff by accident, almost miraculously, to form life and consciousness.  They say this even though they claim not to believe in miracles or consciousness.  What faith!  It is not surprising that when they propose this hypothesis they seldom give the mathematical odds[8] of this happening, which would make  their theory harder to believe than the God hypothesis.  From all of this, it does seem that it takes a lot of faith to be an unbeliever.

In saying that the greater comes from the lower; that life comes from non-life and consciousness from non-consciousness, they must invert the cosmic order of things and discard the law of cause and effect to be able to proclaim that the greater came from the lesser.  Yet, in the real world, we see the lesser coming from the greater, the seed from a tree, the boy from the man, the machine from the human.

Some Hard Questions

This leaves them with some hard questions.  Why is life not coming from non-life now?  Why did it even happen in the first place?  Why is there something and not nothing?  Do you know, there was a time when some scientists did claim that life was still coming from non-life, then another scientist definitely proved that they were wrong[9].  However, it does seem that with all of the knowledge and technology available, scientists could reproduce the effects and duplicate what happened in the beginning, yet they have not.[10]  In all of this, atheists must take exception to or ignore the natural order of cause and effect, which says the lesser must come from the greater or equal.[11]

Furthermore, how could order come out of disorder or chaos?  Who or what put everything in order?  The atheist will respond that the laws of nature brought about the order.  But how could a mindless universe come up with the laws of nature?  Where did the laws of nature come from[12]?  If there are no laws of nature, how could human reason know anything about nature beyond what our immediate common sense experiences tell us?  Reason does not work well with chaos; it needs order and laws to make inferences.  Reason has forced the materialist into the corner of randomness and chaos wherein they must deny any design in the universe, for to do so would leave the door open for God.  So, they must deny the self-evident truth that there is design in the universe.  Design is so self-evident that some will admit it, then quickly add, “it only appears to have design.”  So, it appears to have design but it does not actually have it?  This is like saying  that something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, is not a duck.  Many are blind to self-evident truth, but not that blind. Here, they reflect the words of the apostle Paul, “Claiming themselves to be wise without God, they became utter fools instead” (Rom 1:22).

Of course, there are ways that one could justify this upside-down way of looking at nature.  By far the easiest way would be to stand on your head or maybe you could deny that consciousness is superior to unconsciousness?  This could be plausible, because some men’s consciousness reminds me of a rock.  However, even those men can pick up a rock and move it, thereby demonstrating their superiority to it.  The rock in and of itself can never be the first cause and the man who moves the rock can’t be devoid of life and intelligence. Intelligent life is always the prime mover.

One might also argue that consciousness is an illusion and makes an appeal to the subatomic level as real reality.  But again, that would seem to undermine the validity of human reason.  If our senses cannot know reality, how can we trust our reason?  In denying reasonable consciousness, the naturalist undermines the very reason he is claiming to stand on.  If there is no consciousness, but only a swerving mass of atoms, how could they trust their brain or reason to deny the existence of God?  Darwin himself being a naturalist had doubts about mans power to reason correctly.  He said in a letter to a friend “with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.  Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”[13]

In all of this, the atheist and naturalist must go against the cosmic order that is set forth in the real world of our senses and they must opt to see everything through the assumption and belief system of naturalism which blinds them to the self-evident truth of God, and many other truths.  It leads to believing that consciousness came from the lesser unconsciousness (lifeless matter)—that life came from lifelessness.  Could you say that atheism is the natural way or the self-evident way of looking at things?  I think only if you are living in another world, a one dimensional world created by the schemes of men.

[1] Unfortunately, the case can be made that when suppressed it will break out in the form of addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex and the occult.

 [2] Infants are hard-wired to believe in God, and atheism has to be learned, according to an Oxford University psychologist.  Dr Olivera Petrovich told a University of Western Sydney conference on the psychology of religion that even preschool children constructed theological concepts as part of their understanding of the physical world.  Psychologists have debated whether belief in God or atheism was the natural human state.  According to Dr Petrovich, an expert in psychology of religion, belief in God is not taught but develops naturally.  She told The Age yesterday that belief in God emerged as a result of other psychological development connected with understanding causation.  It was hard-wired into the human psyche, but it was important not to build too much into the concept of God.  “It’s the concept of God as creator, primarily,” she said.  Dr Petrovich said her findings were based on several studies, particularly one of Japanese children aged four to six, and another of 400 British children aged five to seven, from seven different faiths.  “Atheism is definitely an acquired position,” she said.  The Age July 2008 by Barnet Zwartz. www theage.com.

[3] Some atheists will argue that the universe only has an appearance of design, but in reality it doesn’t have any design.

[4] The majority of scientists now believe the universe had a beginning (the big bang theory) and that it will eventually end or run down (law of thermodynamics).

[5] God created all things.  It is another question to ask of how he did it; fast or slow.

[6] Many atheists like Sam Harris have reached the point where they are beginning to deny intelligent consciousness.  This is the logical end of atheism and naturalism.

[7] Taken from “Who made God?, Searching for a Theory of Everything” by Fay Weldon Edgar Andrews

[8] The calculations of British mathematician Roger Penrose show that the probability of a universe conducive to life, occurring by   chance is 1 in 1010123.  Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind, 1989; Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny,  New York: The Free Press, 1998, p.9

 [9] There was a time when some scientists believed in spontaneous generation, however, this theory was disproven by Louis Pasteur when he established beyond a shadow of a doubt that spontaneous generation is impossible under present day conditions. Even if science were to create life in the laboratory, it would only confirm that the lesser comes from the greater. For such an experiment would show that it took consciousness to arrange the elements to make life.

 [10] In 1953 the Miller-Urey experiment created some of the chemical ingredients that are found in basic life forms. However, the scientists’ claim, that they had done this by reproducing early earth conditions, has been proven false. Plus, it is basically a false presupposition that they created life. A few of the building blocks of life is not life. A few bricks are is not a house. Even if science were to create life in the laboratory, it would only confirm that the lesser comes from the greater. For such an experiment would show that it took consciousness to arrange the elements to make life.

 [11] If super consciousness is a necessary cause of consciousness, and the law of cause and effect states that the cause must be greater than the effect, then the presence of consciousness necessarily implies the presence of super consciousness. The presence of super consciousness, however, does not imply that consciousness will occur. The same could be said of life. If life is a necessary cause of life, then the presence of life necessarily implies the presence of super life.

 [12] I had an atheist answer this question. His answer was that the laws were always  there .i.e. eternal. So, we can believe in eternal laws that control and govern the universe, but we cannot believe in an eternal God or an eternal law giver. It seems that as long as we believe in a mindless first cause the atheists are happy.

[13] Darwin’s quota: Letter to William Graham, Down (July 3, 1881), In the life and letters of Charles Darwin including an Autobiographical Chapter, edited by Francis Darwin (London: John Murry, Albernarle Street, 1887), Vol. 1, 315-316.

Religion Poisons Everything Or Does It?

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

Religion Poisons Everything Or Does It?

In the August first edition of The Harvard Gazette[i] an article appeared entitled “Gods in the Details” in which Prof. Joseph Henrich demonstrates that faith and religion is more than a bunch of taboos and superstitions as propounded by most atheist.

His study seems to be indicating that religion was one of the key factors in unifying people in large civilizations and in building a base for their morality. Of course, it has been known for a long time by historians that whenever a civilization stopped believing in their gods they soon sunk into depravity and ceased to exist. It seems now that this has been verified by evolutionary psychology that many in the atheistic community will have to change their rhetoric that religion is worthless and poisons everything.

This study seems to support the idea that religion has contributed to the creation of morality and unity in large civilizations. This, at least on the surface seems, to be indicating that the atheist position that reason alone can create morality and ethics is simply an oversimplification of religion and morality.

[i] The Harvard Gazette is a free on-line newsletter.

A Short letter to a Materialist

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

A Short letter to a Materialist

  I have often had materialists[1] tell me that” there is nothing in nature that requires a supernatural explanation per say. My reply to that is, I might as well say there is nothing in nature which requires a scientific explanation[2]. Nature has no requirement to understand her.  You can put any  interpretation on her; you wish and she will not protest a bit.  Moreover, who says that everyone must look at nature or anything else through the narrow lens of our present human knowledge and the way some atheistic scientists constructed reality?[3] Their whole narrative is based on the assumption that there is no God, which they cannot prove any more than the theist can prove the existence of God. Both start from an assumption and then build a whole world view around that assumption[4]. One big difference is that the believer can still be open-minded enough to do science in his world view while the atheistic scientists are total blind by their materialism to anything outside of their narrow way of looking at things.

Read very carefully the below quote. It is extremely telling about people assumptions and the power they have over a person and groups of people. You also see there a man who I would say is a true believer in science-ism, although a weak form of it, because he knows much of it is false. However, he does admit that his faith is based upon an assumption that materialism is true.

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural.  We take the side of science in  spite of the patent absurdity  of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our   prior adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.”[5] 

[1] A materialist is a person which believes that everything is made up of matter and denies the existence of spirit. Thus denying the supernatural.

[2] Read my article “Rocks on The Ground” http://wp.me/p5pJxI-lTw  at lyleduell.me

[3] I feel no intellectual compulsion to view all of life from a materialistic point of view. When you force reality into a closed ideological system as materialism you will surely distort reality. I also have chosen not to believe in Materialism for pragmatic reasons and my mind is closed to it. As William James would say “I am dead to it”. There is simply no life in that world view.

[4] If scientists that are believers and scientists that are atheist wish to argue and fight about the existence of God that’s fine but both sides must admit that they are debating as philosophers and not a scientist.

[5] Richard Leonine, “Billions and Billions of Demons”, New York Review of Books 44, no. 1 (January 9,1997) 28-32 . Lewontin teaches biology at Harvard.

 

 

 

Against Reason, Systems and Idols

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Modern Myths

Against Reason[1], Systems and Idols

 “Reason is what I believe, those that disagree with me are therefore, unreasonable.” Everyone

  I have noticed that very reasonable and intelligent men differ widely on a large number of issues.  All seem to cling to the idea that their view is reasonable and the other side is unreasonable[2].  This would seem to point to the possibility that the problem may lie in the concept of reason itself.  Of course, to examine reason is like asking an eye to see itself.  When reason looks at reason, it does so through a dirty lens, and this brings us to the place to begin our investigation of reason.

In my contemplation of reason I came up with a number of answers as to why reasonable men disagree.  One of the most obvious is that some men are contentious and simply enjoy fighting and arguing.  Of these men you could say, they love controversy because it gets their intellectual juices flowing and therefore it has become like a drug; they have become addicted to arguing and debating.  They actually enjoy fighting with words and ideas and to them life would be boring without a good fight going on.  These people are often blinded to truth by their love for the fight.  Their real goal is not the truth but to win the argument[3].

The human ego needs to be addressed when discussing reason, for when we use reason to examine reason it is like looking at yourself in a mirror.  However, it is not just any mirror.  It is like the magical mirror of the step mother in Snow White.  The one that hung on the wall and was asked, “Mirror, mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all?”  Of course, the mirror called reason would be asked who is the smartest of them all.  The egotism of reason is a very subtle form of intellectual pride that hides itself in “a search for the truth.”  A search  for the truth that can lead to intellectual pride, belittling of others and name-calling akin to; they’re stupid, morons, imbeciles, etc.

Moreover, the thing that we call reason is often captured and locked up by the idols or systems we create in our minds.  Reason then becomes a slave to the system, serving and supporting the system.  The explanation for this, is that reason works best when things are concrete, and systems make ideas that should be fluid to become concrete.  This is why many so-called  intellectuals believe that they can capture the truth and put it into their system.  However, the truth is that you cannot capture the truth by any system or ideology, no more than you could capture a great river in a tea-cup. This is the first lesson you should learn in reason 101, i.e. reason has her limits and one of those limits is that she cannot be put into a closed system and still be reason.

Still, another lesson taught by true reason is that reason does not necessarily reign, nor is it the chief element in the state of mind that we humans call intelligence.  In fact, reason that has been captured by a closed system can make you quite miserable and very narrow minded.  True reason is happy to share its place with the imagination, the will and the emotions[4].  In other words, it knows when not to be reasonable.  It knows that it is finite and it is not God.  A lesson that many who fancy themselves as philosophers and intellectuals should learn.

What happens when reason forgets that she is not God? Well, she will attempt to storm the very throne of God and pretend to be God.  In this, she becomes what the ancients called an idol.  We could conclude from this that the building of systems is nothing more than modern man’s building of temples for the idols of the human mind.

When reason alone looks for God, she is not searching for God with a capital G, she really is looking for a god that she can manipulate and place in her system or her temple of idols.  Of course, for some any god that they might find is too finite and small for their system, so they simply make their system the absolute while throwing God out of the temple.  In this, the human mind becomes a workshop for making idols and its greatest tool is the thing we call human reasoning.  If you do not believe me check our history[5].  What you will find is that reason will lead into a system, the system evolves into a movement, as the intellectual wins and captures lesser men in their systems, then the system and movement will harden and become an ideology or a school of philosophy.  In this, the ideology becomes the absolute (idol) that the mass man blindly follows.

Those who work in this factory of idols are the so-called intellectuals among us; mere men who really believe they understand the universe or at the least they pretend to.  They are usually very intelligent, are fast thinkers and talkers that amaze and entertain the mass man with their knowledge.  Many of these intellectuals serve as priest in our temples of human reason (universities).   The chief characteristic of these people is not the level of their intelligence but rather that they are ignorant of their own ignorance and have the ability to dress their systems up as science and convince the masses that it is the truth with a capital T.  Once the systems are formed and made absolute, the priests will call on their slave of reason to justify their systems.

In all this, we see so-called   reasonable men disagree, and reason is demonstrated to be a slave of the human will and all of its rebellious passions.  Surely reason is a dirty lens that darkens as much as it enlightens. Remember that as much evil has been done in the name of reason as by religion. In fact when religion does evil its practitioners say it’s reasonable.

This raises the question, have you been captured by an intellectual, a system or idol?

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

[1] I am not against reason, but rather the abusive of reason and exalting it to the place of God.  Reason is the gift of God, but like other gifts from God (sexuality) she is often terribly abused and taken to extremes.

[2] If you want to see a circus go to YouTube and watch the intellectuals argue and debate the issues. All claiming to be reasonable and the other side unreasonable.

[3] “Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.  You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned” (Titus 3:9-11).

[4] The best worldview that encompasses these three parts of the human psyche is Christianity.

[5] The truth about intellectual can be seen in Paul Johnson book “Intellectuals”. He concludes his book by saying “What conclusions should be drawn? Readers will judge for themselves. But I think I detect today a certain public skepticism when intellectuals stand up to preach to us, a growing tendency among ordinary people to dispute the right of academies, writer and philosophers, eminent though they may be, to tell us how to behave and conduct our affairs. The belief  seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that skepticism”

The Decline of Organized Religion

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Religion

The Decline of Organized Religion

I have noticed that many of my atheist friends on the net seem to be gloating that organized religion in the West is on the decline.  I suspect that some of them who have a high opinion of themselves even imagine that they are influencing its decline.

Let’s, for the moment, assume that religion is declining just as some of the new atheists seem to  believe.  This would, out of necessity, cause us to ask the question “Why?”  Could it be, as some of the new atheists assume, that humanity, at least in the West, is more educated and getting smarter?[1] I have doubts that education has had  little, if any effect on the decline of organized religion or even on the true number atheists.  Their growth could be contributed more likely, to a ‘coming out of the closet’ rather than any actual growth.

There has always been a large number of unbelievers in organized religion, especially when the religion is the dominant cultural religion and it has become socially and economically beneficial to pose as a believer.  It’s easy to come out the closet when you live in a culture that believes nothing.  If this is the case then I personally, as a believer, am thankful to the new atheist for helping us rid ourselves of the chaff within the Christian faith.  However, I really don’t think that this is the case.

One huge contributor to the decline in organized religion and other social organizations is the transfer of  the dependence of poor people on their faith community and other social organizations to their dependency on the state for all of their needs.

Personally, it’s hard for me to see anything very positive about this transfer of power.  The only result is that the poor have lost their moral compass, and the state has gained more power over them thereby expanding their power over the entire population.  On the other end of the economic spectrum, the wealthy and business class no longer have to demonstrate their goodness and honesty by going to church, although many still go to church for what they call “net working”; to sell their wares.

All of this has little or nothing to do with the level of intelligence of people living in the West or the new atheist movement, both of which I believe are a part of the declension and decay of civilization.  One mark of a declining civilization is its loss of faith in its gods or religion.  This loss of faith many not be causal but it does go hand and hand with the death of civilization and is a sign of a decaying culture.

The churches like all social institutions in Western culture are losing membership and this is not something to be gloating over for the reason that people are becoming increasingly isolated from each other, which in turn gives the state more power.  This is one of the factors  contributing to our loss of freedom.  Taking religion out of the public square is not the separation of powers, it is the enthroning of state power without any organized resistance.  This is why dictators and tyrants make it their goal to eradicate religion as soon as they gain power.  Therefore, most tyrannical governments support atheism.

In addition, the creation of democracy and the rise of individualism also can give rise to an anti-authority mindset, that also can cause a decline in any authoritative organization.  So, it is not surprising that organized religions, which have an authority structure, are declining the most in democratic societies.  This would include mainline Protestant and Catholic churches which have an authoritative structure.  Independent churches which are more democratic in their structure are maintaining their membership and even growing in membership.

Again, we see that the increase of knowledge seems to have little to do with the decline of religion and the rise of atheism.  The rise of atheism can be traced much more easily to social and psychological[2] reasons then to any level of education.

[1] If people are getting smarter why is there a decline in philosophy students which seems to be corresponding with the decline in religion?

[2] Note my article on “The Making of a Fundamentalist Atheist” and “Prerequisites for Atheism” at: lyleduell.me

Michio Kaku: Is God a Mathematician?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

One of the most respected scientists of today says he has found evidence of the action of a force “that governs everything.”

The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku claims to have developed a theory that might point to the existence of God. The information has created a great stir in the scientific community because Kaku is considered one of the most important scientists of our times, one of the creators and developers of the revolutionary String Theory which is highly respected throughout the world.

To to come to his conclusions, the physicist made use of what he calls “primitive semi – radius tachyons “.

Tachyons are theoretical particles capable to “unstick ” the Universe matter or vacuum space between matter particles, leaving everything free from the influences of the surrounding universe.

After conducting the tests, Kaku came to the conclusion that we live in a “Matrix”.

“I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence”, he affirmed. “Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore.”

“To me it is clear that we exists in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.”

 

What is Atheism? A Metaphysical Answer.

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

What is Atheism? A Metaphysical Answer.

Is atheism simply the lack of faith in a deity, or is it more?  In reality it is both. For many atheists it is simply a lack of faith in a deity, but for many others it is the foundation of a worldview which shapes the way that they look at the whole of reality.  As a worldview it borrows from ideologies and philosophies to form a hodgepodge foundation of the ‘philosophy of non-belief.’

This philosophy of non-belief has as its center the denial and dislike of authority, which in the end can only lead to anarchy of the worst kind.  In fact, all anarchists are atheists however all atheists are not anarchists.  We could also say of atheism that it is the highest degree of human alienation and rebellion against authority and especially the ultimate authority which is God.  We could also say it is the worst distortion of the religious impulse in man, for in the end, it makes the image of God (man) into God, which is the highest form of idolatry.  It promotes man as God, or at the least it makes him think he is God; for only a god could know that there is no God in the universe or outside of it.

Some will retort that atheism has nothing to do with religion or God.  However, at a metaphysical level it is the anti-image of God whose image it needs for its very existence.  It is, therefore, nothing more than a distorted reflection of that which it denies.  This is what Nietzsche meant when he said “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss with gaze back into you”

It’s distorted reflection of religion is seen in that it possesses a number of the attributes of religion[i].  Most religion has as  its main attribute, a sin message and a salvation message.  And what do we find when we look at the new atheist’s movement, we find a sin message.  The sin is religion and your freedom and salvation will come when you accept the good news of the gospel of atheism.  Like most religion, the new atheist’s movement also has their evangelists; those who spew out a steady diet of doubt and hatred of religion as they preach to their true believers who are mesmerized by their leaders ability to turn words and flaunt their intellect.  You know, kind of like the TV evangelist who promotes their brand of religion every Sunday on the television[ii].

The true source of much, but not all atheism, comes from a hidden rift with authority[iii] which is then easily redirected by clever men towards God.  In other words it comes more from one’s disposition than from their intellect.  This is why we see atheism increasing when people feel oppressed by poverty, authority and social alienation.  I believe that an analysis of the French Revolution and also the Communist Revolution would clearly demonstrate this.  Atheism, for those with the right disposition is nothing more than a hidden rebellion against authority which they feel is oppressive[iv].  However, for it to be organized, as it was in the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution, you need a group of sophists and opportunists who can promote and direct its anger.  Of course, the new atheists have these opportunists in the three horsemen of their movement; Hutchinson, Harris and Dawkins.  All of which have become millionaires selling their books to the herd that follows them.

So we could say that the source of much atheism begins with the seeds of the things that form one’s disposition.  These things can range from genetics to early child development[v].  Of course, we cannot totally dismiss the intellect.  However, the intellect has much less to do with it than most atheists would like to admit to. In this I am not saying that disposition pre-determines one’s beliefs or behavior.  But it does predispose us towards certain behavior and beliefs

[i] In Russia the atheist communist even had a church that they called the church of scientific atheism.

[ii] It is important to notice that the old atheist type lacks these attributes of religion. Making it something different from the new atheist movement.

[iii] The mass man is angry about his place in life and holds the authority responsible.

[iv] This is why so many of them are angry and militant. They fundamentally believe that all authority is oppressive.

[v] Many of the new atheists seem to have a problem with their fathers, which they tend to project on a deity.  Though I freely admit that I personally have done no scientific study of this.

An Argument from Size

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

An Argument from Size

Once I had an atheist tell me that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.  Now, this may or may not be true, but it does demonstrate something about a number of atheists that I know.  It demonstrates  the inconsistency in their thinking for they say they cannot believe in a God  that they cannot see, for which they point out that there is no scientific evidence. And yet they believe that it is likely that there are alien life forms in the universe, which they have not seen nor do they have any evidence for their existence. I’ll grant that this may change at any time, however, for now it is the truth based on current knowledge.

They say the reasons for their readiness to accept alien life forms are based on the size of the cosmos and probability[1].  However, does not size and probability leave the door open as well to the existence of a God in the vast universe?  Therefore, to make a dogmatic statement that there is no God is  neither reasonable nor logical, or at best inconsistent.  The universe is so vast one would have to be everywhere at the same time and know everything there is to know to make the statement “There is no God.”  The only proper statement that can be made about Gods existence would be, “I am skeptical of it” or “I don’t know.”  However, if one is a skeptic he would have to be skeptical of his  skepticism. This would simply mean that when everything is said on the issue, he would have to confess that he is an agnostic.

Part of the problem with their size argument resides in their concept of God.  As a matter of fact, the size argument tells us more than anything else about the picture thinking of the atheist. It tells us that they have a corporal image of God in their minds. In other words, God is a big man or spaghetti monster somewhere up in heaven, which of course would making him pretty large to have created a universe that is so vast.  Of course, this is similar to the picture thinking of a small child, who may equate God with Santa Claus or a bearded man sitting on a throne in some distant heaven.  It is little wonder for many atheists that a flying tea-pot or a flying spaghetti monster are their favorite metaphor for God.

This is keeping with and explains the fact that I’ve had a number of atheists claim that they rejected God when they were children.  The truth is that most mature people reject the image of God that they had when they were children, replacing it with an adult concept of the deity[2].  In fact, the Scriptures tell us that we should not have any image of God in our minds for God cannot be imaged. Any image of God that a human has in their minds is an image of an idol.

Here is where more strangeness comes in to the mix. Atheists claim that their position of denying the existence of God is not a faith or even a belief, as though theirs was some kind of neutral position, like that of the agnostic.  If a person were to make the statement that they did not believe in alien life forms and in the same breath propound that his statement was not a belief, we would think them mad.  Yet, the atheist seems to think such claims are the mark of genius.  In other words, it is a dogma that cannot be proven, but at the same time it is not a dogma.  What it seems to be to me is either a claim of infinite intelligence on the part of atheist, or a personal faith similar to a religious faith, but it cannot be a non-belief.  That borders on nonsense.

Of course, if you infer that their belief, or whatever it is, resembles a religious faith they go ballistic. Yet their movement is organized like a religion, it has its evangelists like a religion and it has apologists like a religion, it even has a salvation message like religion.  It is saving the world from religion, but of course it is not a religion[3].

Nevertheless, the atheists have a burden of proof to prove why they can go beyond the claims of agnosticism, to atheism.  This burden of proof is not owed to Christians or believers in God, but to reason itself.  There is not enough evidence for anyone to postulate that there is no God, and to insist that they have evidence to prove their claims, border on insanity[4].

The atheist, in order to be intellectually honest, must admit that their claims are based on faith similar to those of religion.  It is here where the believer stands on a higher ground than the atheist, for he knows and confesses that his belief is ultimately based on faith, though it is faith that is not without reason or evidence.  The atheist refuses to face the fact that his unbelief is based on a supposition because to do so would destroy the illusion that his belief is based on reason alone.

One thing that science has done for us, it has given us knowledge of the vastness of the universe. In doing this, it has demonstrated how very little we know about anything.  If we were to put all knowledge into a container that encompasses everything that there is to know about the universe, how much of that knowledge do you think humanity now has?  Would you say, 1% or maybe 5%?  I think if you were to say 1% your answer would demonstrate that you have a good imagination.  Human beings are mere  infants in a vast universe which is infinitely big and infinitely small; which means that no one can claim absolute knowledge based on rationalism.

In the end the size of the universe does not prove or disprove the existence of God.  It does tell us that if you choose to believe in God, your God must be big enough to accommodate the size of the universe.  Of course the problem with most atheists, and most believers, is that their God is too small to begin with.  It is not hard to deny the existence of a small God as the atheist has done, nor is it hard to avoid the commandments of a small God, which most believers have done.  Humanity tends to shrink their gods to fit their intellect and their appetite.

[1] The readiness of so many atheists to believe pseudoscience, is evidence of the inconsistency in their use of reason and basing their beliefs only on evidence. They seem to have a great imagination except when it comes to things spiritual. They have a burden of proof in explaining their inconsistencies. Could it just be simply old bias.

[2] Most mature believers believe that God is pure consciousness or personality diffused throughout time and space or that he is totally other and is beyond man’s ability to form an image of him.

[3] Many atheists refuse to look at the word religion as a broad concept resulting in a narrowly defined definition of religion as organized religion. Of course this is done because of their awareness that their movement has many marks of a religion. In fact arguing over the semantics of the term religion is proof in itself that their thinking has reached the point of being a religion.

[4] Only few make this claim.