Category: Atheism

What is Faith and True Spirituality?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Atheism, Biblical doctrines, Faith, Jesus, Salvation

What is Faith and True Spirituality?

What is faith? In today’s world, most people think of faith as believing in something such as the existence of God or believing some facts about God. However, in the Scriptures it is more often used as a synonym for trust. What is trust? Is it, a belief or an emotion? It’s both; but it is more. It is a spiritual concept similar to hope and love. The apostle Paul speaks of faith, hope, and love and says the greatest of these is love. All three of these concepts of faith, hope, and love are spiritual concepts that are difficult to understand and this should be expected for they are not logical or reasonable. Now, that is not to say they are unreasonable or illogical, but it is to say they are outside the realm of logic or reason. Once a person experiences these concepts, they then become reasonable to that person. In fact, they actually become more real and rational than the material creation.

Like all spiritual truth, faith cannot be explained with objective truth like a math equation. The reason for this difficulty is that the spiritual is another dimension where most men have little or no experience. When we begin to talk about the spiritual dimension, the majority of men immediately think of religion or morality, failing to see that religion and religious people may or may not be spiritual. At its best, religion can only point one toward the spiritual and at its worst, it can become a vaccination against true spirituality. Others believe that being spiritual is being a moral or a responsible person. The Pharisees were some of the most moral, religious, and responsible people who ever existed, but they were not spiritual. Still others believe that being spiritual is being sinless or a nice guy or gal. Well, it’s not. Some people did not think that Jesus was a nice guy. Remember the people in the temple who were selling their wares and Jesus made a whip and drove them out of the temple area? Nice guy?

The question is, “How can we talk about and know something that we cannot experience directly with our senses?” We do it with the use of stories, metaphors, and similes. This is why Jesus often used stories and parables. One of His favorite expressions was “the kingdom of God is like…” Jesus compares the unseen kingdom of God (Reign of God) with a physical and known thing, which His listeners had experienced. In this, the metaphor or simile became a bridge between the spiritual and physical, uniting the two dimensions.

To explain faith, hope, and love or anything that is spiritual with logic or reason would be like trying to explain the color lavender to a blind man. The nearest you could come to it would be to say that it is like silk compared to wool or it is like whispering compared to yelling. Of course, the atheist would say that because the blind man could not see the color lavender, and we could not explain it to his complete satisfaction, it simply doesn’t exist.

There is no doubt that the spiritual is hard to understand, but it is not impossible. As we seek, we must remember the words of the apostle Paul, that in the realm of the spiritual we will always “see through a glass darkly.” However, by contrasting the spiritual with the known, or pointing out their similarities, we can come to know the spiritual to the degree where we are able to say, we understand the things of God. An example of this is found in First Corinthians 13 where the apostle Paul speaks of love and defines it by comparing it with certain behavior and telling us what it does and does not do. Herein he explains it without the use of logic, reason, or a list of objective truths. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (I Cor. 13:2-8).

After reading Paul’s words, I may not be able to explain love logically, but I can surely recognize it when I see it, and I can also recognize the absence of it. This is an example of tacit knowledge or what we might call background knowledge. The more I practice at picking things out of my background knowledge, the more skilled I become at it. We call this skill discernment. It is discernment that allows a person to pick God out of his background knowledge and say, there He is. Finding God in your background knowledge is the first step toward the kingdom of God.

In view of this, we must raise the question of who is spiritual or a person of faith. Well, we’re back to square one. You cannot explain true spirituality with a list of objective facts. Let’s try some comparisons. Being spiritual is like having a close relationship with a friend whom you love dearly. You trust your friend; you believe your friend, and you would do everything in the world not to hurt your friend. You enjoy being with your friend, and you love talking with them. You want to know more and more about your friend. If you hear someone putting him down, it angers you, and you go to his defense. Do you get it? To be spiritual is to be a friend of God. Everything that was just said about a relationship with a friend, we see in the relationship that Jesus had with His Father in heaven. To be spiritual is to be a friend of God and to be like Jesus. You see; Jesus is a living metaphor of what it means to be a friend of God and to be spiritual.

With the help of one of Jesus’ similes, let me give you a tool to help you discern your spirituality. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” There is little doubt what Jesus is saying about the kingdom of God in this verse, but there is something else inferred. What does the passage say about the person who finds the kingdom? Is it not inferred that a person who has found the kingdom is filled with joy, excitement, and enthusiasm about the Kingdom? The question is, are you excited and enthusiastic about God? If not, most likely you have not found the right God or there something wrong with your relationship with God. It could be that your god is too small or maybe you found the wrong kingdom.

How do you get true faith? Jesus said that faith is the work of God. However, it seems to come to those who humble themselves and seek God. It surely does not hurt to read the story of Jesus in the Scriptures. The apostle Paul says that “faith comes from hearing the words of Christ.” There is something about the words of Christ, which tends to create and strengthen our faith. LD

  1. We now know that there are different parts of the brain that perceive different aspects of reality. These parts of the brain can be developed and underdeveloped by use or the lack of use. This corresponds with what the Scriptures say about mankind. In the Scriptures, mans’ being is made up of three parts. He is made up of body, soul, and spirit. It is inferred in a number of Scriptures that the soulish man, that is the man controlled by his soul (governed by his reason, emotion, or appetite), cannot perceive the things of God. It is the man controlled or governed by His spirit that can understand the things of God. That is the man who has developed the part of his brain that perceives God.
  2. (Mark 4:30-34) Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? (31) It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. (32) Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”
    (33) With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. (34) He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.
    (Matt 13:44) “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

More Nonsense of the New Atheists.

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

More Nonsense of the New Atheists.

The new atheists claim that they do not bear the burden of proof in their argument against God because atheism is not a belief but rather it is a non-belief. Right, atheists nor anyone else, is able to prove or disprove a non-belief. Nor can they argue for or against a non-belief. In fact, you cannot even speak about a non-belief other than simply to say, “I do not believe it”. A non-belief is nothing and how can you possibly speak of nothing? However, I know of only a handful of intellectual atheists who are consistent and refuse to speak about the subject of God.

If you are arguing for or against something you are not arguing from a state of non-belief because that is impossible. If you argue, you must be arguing from some other position or ideology than a non-belief. You cannot as, most atheists do, argue against God and then claim atheism as a non-belief. Atheists must argue against God from either naturalism or a materialistic worldview and both of these ideology’s depict a belief system. As soon as the atheist appeals to these ideologies to prove his atheism he shoulders the burden of proof. In other words, the minute the atheist open their mouths using naturalism or materialism to support his atheism he assumes the burden of proof.

In essence, they have to borrow or steal beliefs from other ideologies to support their un-belief in God. If they don’t want any burden of proof, they should simply shut their mouths and not form arguments from either materialism, scientism or naturalism. Of course, this will not happen because the majority of new atheists are filled with beliefs, emotions and appetites by which they feel compelled to justify their beliefs or should I say un-belief. Therefore, they will continue to use the meaningless argument of having no burden of proof to justify their endless talking and arguing about a subject they say does not exist. Nonsense!

The Nothingness that is Something

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

The Nothingness that is Something

What is the nothingness that is outside space-time, i.e. that which was before space-time existed? You might be saying hold on, you can’t speak about nothingness, because nothingness means nothing. Does it? Does not the law of causality say that something cannot come from nothing and that the cause must be equal to or greater than the effect. So, when we say that something came from nothing are we not violating the law of causality? Yes, that is why reason will take us to a something instead of a nothing. And it is science that gives us insight to what this something is like.

What do we know about the nothingness that is outside space-time? If we accept the law of causality, we also have to accept that whatever the universe came from, must be greater than the universe. This tell us something about the prime mover; It, He or She must be extremely powerful. So powerful that It is beyond a humans capacity to understand and articulate. This deduction is based on the fact that anything in which existence came out of, must have had its origin in the prime mover. This means that everything, to some degree, was somehow a part of this prime mover before space-time existed. Therefore everything that exists, existed in Him and came forth from Him in some way.

Therefore, whatever we see or experience in the creation was in some form a part of the prime movers consciousness before the beginning of time–space and this constitutes a part of his nature. The implications of this are staggering. Since we see in the creation a mind, or consciousness, this would necessitate, based on the law of causality, that the prime mover would possess consciousness far superior to everything in the creation, for the creation cannot be greater than the creator. We might refer to the consciousness of the prime mover as super consciousness. What would super consciousness encompass? For one thing, it would include super knowledge. We could say it was all knowing; for the essence of all things was designed, created and made by its consciousness.

On the other hand, nothingness is the void created when something is removed, or it is the absence of something. For example, darkness is the absence of light, darkness in itself is nothingness. In like manner, evil is the absence of good and it is equal to anarchy or chaos. Chaos is the absence of order or you could say the absence of law. The reason the universe is a cosmos and not a chaos is the fact that there are laws that govern it[1].

Because there are laws in the universe we can also know that this super consciousness is principled and creates laws to govern all things. These laws reflect the very nature of the uncreated one. There is no corner of the universe that is not controlled by his laws. This is the reason and the grounds or foundation on which we reason, do science and mathematics. Without the first principle of philosophy, which states that the world is an orderly place governed by principles or laws, there would be no reasoning, science or mathematics. It is unbelievable that some mindless force would create these laws. If there are laws then there must be an intelligent being that created them. It would follow that because there are principles and law, there has to be a something and not nothingness.

Some have responded by saying that they can believe in a super consciousness, but not in one that has a personality[2]. But why not? If that quality that we call personality exists, which we know it does for we each share in it, why would not a super consciousness have a super personality and even the emotions associated with personality. Emotions like super love which would be the complete negation of hate and fear. Of course, super personality and how it is integrated with super consciousness would be impossible for humans to understand seeing we cannot understand our own consciousness, personality and emotions.

Science tells us that there are four forces in nature; gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces. However, there is one that they have missed. That force is life. All life is a force that acts on the material world and can copy the prime mover by making decisions and acting on them. In the Greek language the word for this life force is called spirit. We know that all living things have a life force that animates them and gives them the unique thing that we call life. Because there is life we know that the prime mover must be in itself the giver and very essence of life. As the prime mover does not exist, for he is existence. He likewise does not have life, but rather he is life or spirit. It is interesting to note that Jesus said that God is spirit not a spirit[3]. We might interpret spirit as a life force that has personality.

From the above we can gather that super personality and super consciousness is beyond our understanding and beyond our languages ability to explain. It is beyond dispute that we cannot comprehend the Wholly Other but we can apprehend Him by studying the things revealed about him in His creation, this includes the study of nature. From a biblical perspective this would especially include man for the Scriptures say that man was created in the image and likeness of the super consciousness.

[1] The law of causation is being question by some scientists that are trying to justify their materialistic worldview.

[2] I do not believe in a personal God that does my personal bidding. However, I do believe in a super consciousness that knows how many hairs are on my head.

[3] John 4:24.

What Do Rocks on The Ground Prove?-Evolution and The Fossil Record

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

What Do Rocks on The Ground Prove?

Evolution and The Fossil Record

 

One huge problem with Darwinian evolution is not the theory itself but rather those evolutionists who believe it and who say the evidence for it is in the fossil record. However, when asked about the anomalies and other problems with the fossil record, they will say the problem is that the earth tends to erase its history and therefore the fossil record is not complete, which may be true. But if the fossil record is complete enough to say that Darwin’s evolution is a fact[1], it seems it should be complete enough to answer the anomalies and other problems that the fossil record presents. The truth is that evolutionists have made so many claims about the fossil record that it hard to know the truth from fiction. The truth is that fossils are just like rocks lying on the ground. The narrative that you give to explain them comes partially from preconceived ideas, one’s imagination, and one’s indoctrination. However, absolute knowledge of how they actually got there is unknowable unless you were there to witness it, and the only way you could get that kind of knowledge is to create a time machine to carry you back in time so you could witness those past events. The problem is that for many evolutionist the narrative has become the facts and the evidence in itself. In other words the map has become the territory.

The other day I saw a truck dumping a pile of rocks on the ground. I wonder what the explanation of this event would look like 10,000 years after a great ice age had erased human history, a time when there were no dump trucks. How do you think the rocks would be explained? Do you think mankind would just throw up their hands and say there are no answers to the rock pile, or would they come up with a convoluted story? What kind of story would they come up with if they were told they could not make any appeal to intelligence of any kind, and that they would have to explain it totally by citing natural causes?

Let’s take my illustration of stones on the ground and analyze it using the scientific method. The question would be: How did the stones get on the ground? For the fun of it, let’s use some real stones. Let’s look at the rocks at Stonehenge, which is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England. The fact is that these stones are sitting on the ground in an orderly fashion in Wiltshire, England. With this observation, we have the facts that there are rocks on the ground and they are arranged in an orderly fashion. Next comes the question: How did the rocks get there? Then we would have to come up with a hypothesis or a guess of how they got there. Well, because they are arranged in an orderly way, we would think it safe to infer that an intelligent creature was involved in placing them on the ground. Of course, that is an assumption, something which we had inferred from the order and design of Stonehenge. So this data that points to design would rule out any hypothesis that an act of nature alone placed them there, or at least it makes it highly improbable. Therefore, we could eliminate the theory that stones were placed by glaciers, volcanoes, or the shifting of the earth. Now, I have heard a few hypotheses about those stones and how they were placed on the ground. (1) They were placed by a deity. (2) An alien life form from space placed them on the ground. (3) Lastly, somehow ancient man placed them on the ground through some method as yet unknown. All these theories have one thing in common. They all have an element of intelligence built into them based on the intelligent order of the stones.[2].

Now, here is the problem. The Stonehenge stones are prehistoric. In other words, they were placed before recorded history began. There are no written records of how they got there and there are no witnesses left alive that were present at their placing. This means that if I put together a narrative or a story of how these stones came to sit on the earth the way they do; it would have to come from my imagination more than the facts, for the facts end with their existence and their orderly placement. They have no story to tell other than they exist in their order. If I am good at spinning a story with graphic details, one could write a textbook and even make a movie of how the stones were set on the earth. If I was really good, I could come up with a whole scientific scenario which would explain how they got where they are, but no matter how detailed or graphic the story was, it still would only be a story made up by my imagination. However, if the story was told enough times by people, others would begin to believe the story to be a fact. It still would be only a myth. You see, man is incorrigibly gullible and will fall for a good story every time. In fact, the more unbelievable the story, the more likely they will fall for it. The bigger the lie, the more believable it becomes. The reason for this is that people cannot believe that anyone would have the arrogance and audacity to tell such a story.

What about applying the scientific method[3] to discover the truth about the stones? The scientific method will not work for the question of how the stones got there for two reasons. Though the facts can be observed (the rocks on the ground), the way they got there cannot be observed, and the scientific method requires the observation of the thing being studied or questioned.[4] The question is how the rocks got on the ground. You can observe the rocks on the ground, but you cannot observe how they got there, for it was a onetime happening, which took place before recorded history and cannot be observed. Therefore, the scientific method cannot be applied. The scientific method also requires experimentation to verify one’s hypothesis. There is no experiment that could reproduce the erection of the stones. How could there be, seeing as we know nothing of how they were first erected? We could bring in equipment, e.g., bulldozers, excavators, and cranes and reproduce the site, but this would not be re-creating the original erection or construction method. The new model that we erect would prove nothing more than the original facts, i.e., that there are stones on the ground and that an intelligent being erected them. In view of this, we have to conclude that any hypothesis about how Stonehenge was constructed would be nothing more than a guess and would not be science and could never be called a fact of science.

To say that the knowledge we have of Stonehenge is not based on science is not earthshaking, but what if we apply the same logic to the fossil record? The truth is that fossils are like the stones of Stonehenge. They’re just there. In themselves, they have no story to tell other than the one we read into them. And what story do we read into them? It is a story that was popularized by Charles Darwin; one he created without any scientific evidence that natural selection had ever produced a new species.[5] Darwin had heard these stories of how evolution happened from his father and grandfather all of his life. When he sailed to the islands on the ship H.M.S. Beagle, he did not go as an unbiased bystander, but rather as man on a quest to prove a preconceived idea. He surely did not come to his conclusion by the scientific method nor did the scientific community of his day which accepted his theories without any evidence. Their beliefs in his story came out of a need to tie together or complete a naturalistic way of looking at everything. The result was that the scientific method was completely ignored when it came to the new science of evolution. It was given a pass because the only other explanation would be God, which the scientific community could not accept. Necessity is the mother of invention and we can add, it is the mother of some unbelievable stories.

Another example of a tall tale is the story of the caveman, which is used to support the evolution story or could it be that the evolution story is used to support the caveman story? Either way, it goes something like this: Once upon a time there were hairy ape-like creatures that lived in caves in Europe and elsewhere. The caveman creature was the ancient ancestor of modern man but quite primitive in his morals and mating practices. The caveman was less intelligent than we are and secured his food by hunting. He painted pictures on the walls of his caves, and we know that he knew how to use primitive tools because we have found them in caves with some of his remains. He was so different from us that he was not the same species and could not interbreed with us Homo sapiens.[6]

How much of the caveman lore is based on science and how much is based on the preconceived idea of progressive evolution read into the fossil evidence? The facts that are based on science, which can be proven, are very few. The actual facts tell us that there were some men in the past who sometimes inhabited caves. However, there are probably more living in caves today than there were then. At least some of these prehistoric men used tools and could draw pictures. That’s it for the science. The rest of what you have learned about cavemen is fiction and came from the fertile imagination of those who could spin a fine tale.

Here are a few things that are based on modern man’s assumptions, which in turn are based on our belief in progressive evolution. The caveman was less intelligent than we are. He had a lot of hair all over his body, a protruding jaw, huge eye sockets, a large sloping forehead, all of which is actually the description of one of my neighbors. Maybe my neighbor is the missing link. Back to the unscientific gibberish. He was a brute and forcibly mated with the females of his species. He carried around a club to subdue the females. He was a polygamist and had a herd of females with whom he mated. He lived permanently in caves. In actuality, this sounds like a want-to-be list for a lot of American males.

But did he really live in caves or were they just temporary shelters in severe weather, or were they places of worship? Could they have been safe places for woman and children? Could the picture on the walls of the caves have been done by children, like children write on the walls of their bedrooms as my children did? I know, for I had to clean the writing off. Could caves have been a burial ground like the Pyramids in Egypt, a stronghold in time of war, or maybe a nursery for the kids?

All this was said about cavemen to point out there are many things we assume to know, which in truth, we are actually quite ignorant of. It would seem that much of what we call science and history is nothing but speculations drawn from our imaginations and presented as facts.[7] We tend to blindly trust the system of authority which teaches these things without anyone questioning the source of its facts and its interpretation of the facts. These authorities propagate their assumptions by setting themselves up in privileged positions of authority in our universities and schools, leaving the impression that they have special access to the truth, which sounds a little like priest craft to me.

The answer is for us to start asking a similar question as the one which God asked Adam: “Who told you that?” We need to ask this question to ourselves and of other men we are listening to. This includes those in our universities. We also need to learn how to distinguish or discern the difference between the facts and people’s interpretation of the facts. You will find that this is very difficult for most people and involves a great deal of thought and practice.

[1] Evolution is a fact, you see it taking place everywhere in the creation. However, Darwinian evolution is not a fact but only a theory.

[2] What would you say of a discipline or men who told you to ignore the design and come up with a theory of how the stones got there without making any appeal to intelligent design? Is not design in this case a self-evident truth?

[3] The scientific method is a systematic system used by scientists to logically form their conclusions. (1) Frame a question. (2) Collect the data. (3) Create a hypothesis. (4) Do experiments. (4) Make observations. (5) Try to falsify the hypothesis. (6) Publish your findings to the community for review.

[4] Hypotheses without tests are no more than cocktail party chatter and are without value except perhaps as entertainment. They are not science. (My emphasis) Henry Gee, Deep Time Henry Gee is a senior editor at Nature. He holds a PhD in Zoology from Cambridge.

[5] The Road of Science and the Ways to God by Stanley L. Jaki Page 282, the University of Chicago Press.

[6] This has just been debunked by DNA studies at Harvard. Harvard Gazette, January 29, 2014.

[7] Henry Gee in his book Deep Time gives a realistic history of what we know and what we don’t know about the history of the earth.

I Believe (An essay on science and faith)

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

Author:  Skip Reith

Date:  9/26/2015

I Believe

I believe!  These two little words contain a lot of power.  These two little words are also misused, misunderstood, abused, and often ridiculed.  What do we mean when we say I believe?  That is what I will explore today.

Belief is that understanding a person has when they analyze and process all of the facts and information they have on a particular subject.  Belief can come from direct observation (I’ve been to New York so I believe it exists); or belief can come from indirect information – that is from an authority on the subject (I’ve never been to Tokyo, but I believe it exists because I have been told by maps and people who have been there that it exists).

One important note before I continue.  When I use the term authority here, I am not talking about some governmental organization.  I am talking about an expert on the subject whose knowledge, skill, and background gives them a special place in the hierarchy of understanding on the subject.  An authoritative source is one step up from an expert.  If the authoritative source is a person then that source not only is an expert, but that person also has a breadth and depth of knowledge around the main subject that allows them broad understanding on the subject.  If the source is not a person, then the source is complete and detailed.  For example, a professional astronomer with 30 years experience is an authority on astronomy.  The complete body of written papers and books on astronomy is an authoritative source on the subject.  In addition, an authority on the subject is one that other people agree and believe is an authority on the subject.  Is possible to think a person is an authority on a subject when they are actually not an expert and may have little knowledge in the subject.  (This technique is used all of the time by advertisers.  They get a famous person to promote their product.  Since people know the authority of the famous person’s specialty, they subconsciously assign authority to this other, advertised subject as well.)

Let’s look at belief in more detail.  Belief and knowledge are similar, but not identical.  Belief is your understanding of a situation, but you may not be able to prove that understanding to another.  Knowledge is a direct understanding of something that you can easily prove.  I know one plus one equals two and I can prove it in a number of ways, including demonstrating the summation with two pennies.  I know New York exists (or at least it did) because I was there.  I cannot prove its existence now because I am not there.  I can show evidence of my trip (pictures and souvenirs) but until I go back I can’t definitively prove its existence.  So, at the moment I believe that New York exists.  My belief in the existence of Tokyo is indirect.  My only proof is the maps and pictures I have seen of Tokyo.  If someone does not accept the authority of my proofs then they will not believe in Tokyo.

Science is the attempt to quantify beliefs and turn them into provable knowledge while authenticating the proofs.  The scientific method (described in my Observation – Applying the Scientific Method to Religion) is a disciplined approach to proving an understanding and turning belief into knowledge.  For example, I could apply the scientific method and fly to Tokyo and prove to myself that it exists, turning my belief into knowledge.

The problem with science is that it can only prove physical things.  It can prove the existence of matter and the existence of something called gravity, and so on.  It can dig out the understanding of how things function and explain the interactions of various objects.  Science also has beliefs, but to make it sound more important, scientists call those beliefs theories.  The scientific method attempts to prove that the theories are correct and to expand the understanding and details of those theories.

Science cannot prove strictly personal items.  It is not possible to weigh love, measure directly satisfaction, or count hate.  It is not even possible to directly analyze pain.  Scientists try to measure these strictly personal objects, but everything science does with these items is indirect.  For example, a doctor may ask you your pain level on a scale of 1 to 10, but that is a subjective measure and not an objective measure.  It is impossible for the doctor to measure directly your pain level.  The doctor cannot get a scale out and weigh your pain.  Even brain scans and EEG measurements do not measure pain they just measure physiological response to nerve stimulation.  Your awareness of pain is greater and more personal than the physiological response.

Consider, for example, love.  I know that I love my wife, son, step children, grandchild, dog, cats, and so on.  I cannot prove that love, except by my actions and that is just indirect.  No one could take out a ruler and measure my love.  Science cannot apply the scientific method to my love in such a way that others could know definitively my love.  Love is completely and utterly personal.

It is impossible for one person to know directly what another person feels.  Even if we could hook two people’s brains together, they still could not know each other’s feelings because our emotions, our response to external stimulations, our core being is determined by every experience we have had up to that point.  Since no two people follow the same path in life, no two people experience emotions the same way.  This puts love in the belief column.  Although I KNOW I love my family, I cannot prove it.  So ultimately, I can only say I believe in my love.

Others may believe that I do, in fact, love my family.  Others experience love themselves, and even though they do not have the same feelings towards my family as I do, they understand that those feelings exist.  Sometimes people may not understand why that particular feeling exists (“how is possible that people actually loved Hitler”), but they understand that there is such feelings.

What about stuff that many people may not experience directly?  What about, for example, spiritual experiences that many people may never encounter.  If something like love cannot be quantized or measured and therefore are not subject to the scientific method, something like spiritual experiences are even further removed from science.  If we cannot prove our love to another, when that other person also experiences love, how can we prove spirituality and religious belief to someone who has never undergone that experience?  It is at this point that ridicule and disbelief occur.

If a person cannot understand directly a spiritual belief of another and has no indirect proof, then that person is faced with a problem.  If the unbeliever (atheist) accepts that the other has had a spiritual experience, then that means the atheist is deficient in some manner.  Unless the atheist wants to admit this deficiency (which is rare) they then have to take the second path – trying to prove the other person’s beliefs are false.  Yet, spiritual experiences are not something you can measure.  It is not possible for the atheist to get out a scale and say “see your belief does not measure up!”  The attack on spiritual and religious knowledge must take different approaches.

One approach is the strawman approach.  In this approach, the atheist constructs a strawman; that is, they liken the religious belief to some other, more tangible belief, and then attack the strawman.  For example, someone could say that the belief in God is like the belief in Santa Claus.  Since we all know Santa Claus does not exist, it is obvious that God does not exist.  This argument fails on many dimensions.

Santa Claus is a belief children develop because they accepted their parents and adults as an authority on the subject.  The adults lied to the children (we hide that fact by calling it a fantasy or a story, but it is still a lie).  The children have no other source, so they accept the adult’s authority.  They believe in the existence of Santa Claus on authority of the lying adults.  Once the children grow old enough to perform an independent validation, they uncover the lie.  Their belief changes because they have new facts and data.

An atheist saying that belief in God is like a belief in Santa Claus is actually saying that belief in God is like a belief in a lie that some authority told you.  This may hold for children and extremely gullible people, but it does not hold for discerning, open minded adults who have directly experienced God.  In addition, the believer has additional proof of God that the believer in Santa Claus does not have.  There are corroborating historical documents that validate some of the religious writings.  There is the fact that millions of people have died for their belief – something that has not happened over the belief in Santa Claus.  More importantly, the belief in God is open to everyone, and everyone can run the religious experiment.  That is, each person has the opportunity to follow the authoritative sources on God and see the results for themselves.

The other approach an atheist can try to discredit a religious belief is to claim that science has never proved God exists and they only believe in science.  Before I get into what science can and cannot prove I have to address this belief in science.  Science has brought a lot of knowledge and understanding to the world.  Science has enabled a lot of engineering and technology that brings enhanced medicines, labor saving devices, and so on.  (It also enhanced war, pollution, oppression, and other ills, but we don’t need to go there for our current discussion.)  So, saying you believe in science seems reasonable.  The problem is most people have no idea what they are talking about or what they believe in when they say they believe in science.

First off, almost everything we call science these days is actually engineering.  Computers, cell phones, air planes, medicines, surgical procedures, cars, TVs, and on and on are all engineering feats.  For the most part, the science on these things is done behind closed doors and people never see the actual science.  Most people wouldn’t even know the scientific method if it hit them in the face.  So, what people are really saying when they say they believe in science is that they believe in the technology they have and they believe the authoritative sources that they are exposed to who proclaim the greatness of science.

Let’s look at those authoritative sources.  In most countries a major part of scientific research is funded by the government.  Research gets published in journals, but most people have never even seen a scientific journal, let alone read one.  Even though scientists publish, the publication is controlled by a review from scientific peers.  The government controls what scientists investigate through funding, and therefore control what scientists understand and believe.  I will point out that the government is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats not scientists or even people with a scientific background.

People’s exposure to science first comes about in school.  The classes are taught by the teachers, who are managed by administrators, and the whole thing is controlled and regulated by the government.  A lot or research and enhanced scientific advances come from universities.  Universities get a major part of their funding either directly (through grants) or indirectly (through tuition) that is paid by the government.  Other sources of scientific information and “discovery” comes from governmental agencies like NASA, national science foundation, food and drug administration, US department of agriculture, the atomic energy commission and its various follow on agencies, the department of defense, environmental protection agency, national weather service, US geological survey, and on and on.

Some people are exposed to science through things like public television.  Public TV gets a majority of their funding from the government.  If you perform a review of a lot of “scientific” articles on public media you will find that a lot comes from some governmental source (like NASA). Non-governmental entities, like the Discovery Channel may present “scientific documentaries” but these are often sensationalized stories.  Interestingly enough, many of the critics of these documentaries are government funded agencies and government supported public media.

So, when a person says they believe in science, they are really saying that they believe in the government.  The government is controlled and run by politicians, and we all know that politicians lie, cheat, twist the truth, hide information, and do whatever they can to remain in power.  Since most people have no direct experience with science, then when an atheist says they believe in science what they are saying is that their belief is just like the belief in Santa Claus – it’s based on a lie.

As I have shown, science cannot prove or disprove love.  Science cannot measure anything that is personal.  Scientists cannot measure thoughts, feelings, ideas, responses, or any of thousands of deeply personal experiences.  Yet, we all know these are real.  Science cannot answer basic questions like why does the universe exist or what is the meaning of life?  While modern science has discovered a huge amount about the physical reality, there is way more to our existence than just the physical.

Science (as people define science, which are the physical and social sciences) cannot, and never will, be able to scientifically prove personal, internal experiences of people.  Science is limited.  So, when an atheist says they only believe in science, they are also saying that they do not believe in emotions, thoughts, ideals, creativity, art, spirituality, honor, or God.  That’s kind of a limited point of view.

When I say I believe in God, I am not saying that I believe that someone once told me God exists and I accept their authority on the subject.  I say I believe because I have personal knowledge that I have tested using the scientific method.  I have investigated life with and without God.  I have researched God, the authoritative writings, and talked with people who I feel are experts on the subject (both for and against).  I have weighed all of the evidence and data and I have found that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of believing that God exists.

I cannot prove God’s existence.  I cannot pull out a photograph of God or take out my telescope and show you God.  However, I have looked deep inside myself and have found God there, waiting for me.  I cannot force you to believe.  I can only say that if you run the experiment – that is, if you follow the teachings of an authoritative source on religion and God, then you too may experience God in a way similar to (but not exactly the same as) my experience.

I hope you do.  I hope that you run the experiment and prove to yourself the existence of God.  However, if you instead try to hide behind science and use science as a shield, you will find that the shield is very small indeed and not much protection against larger truths.

Religious Phobia and Liberalism

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Atheism, Liberalism, Progressivism

Religious Phobia and Liberalism

Many of my atheistic and progressive friends are constantly accusing religious people of being homophobic and of having some other biases.  That may be true of some religious folks.  However, I have found that many progressives and many who fancy themselves as liberals have their own phobia, i.e., a religious phobia.  In other words, they fear religion.  Of course, one tends to hate the things that one fears.  So I have found that many of my liberal and atheist friends have a dislike that approaches a loathing for religion.  This has caused me to do a considerable amount of thinking about where these fears came from and whether they are real or imagined. Of course, a fear is real to the one who has it, but this raises the question of whether or not there is really something in reality on which to base their fear.

I began my research by asking my liberal friends if religion or religious people had done any personal harm to them that would cause them to hate religion.  The majority of them said they had received no such hurt.  I did find some who said that their parents had made them go to church when they were little. However, this to me seemed to be the normal thing for good parents who believed in their religion to do.  Yet, many of my friends felt that this was reason enough for them to reject religion.

I did find some people who told me that they hated religion because religious people are hypocrites.  I’ll admit this might be a good reason if we were not all hypocrites.  Most human beings are guilty of saying one thing and doing something else.  If we all stopped doing everything that hypocrites do, we wouldn’t do much.

My research did lead me to a few books whose authors seem to hate religion.  I gathered from these books that the authors hated religion for all of the terrible things that it had done in the past, such as the witch hunts and the Inquisition.  Of course, if you were to count noses, you could say that religion has killed its tens of thousands, but atheism and liberalism has killed its millions.  It was atheistic communism that killed twenty million of its own people in Russia and even more in China, and it was Western liberalism that spread its philosophy with the sword. It looks to me like it’s not religion that kills people, but it’s people who kill people.  If truly analyzed, it is usually people who have a will to power who do the killing, whether religious or not. You will find these people in religion, business, and government and for that matter, virtually in every walk of life.

However, all of the above does not explain the irrational fear and hatred of some people toward religion.  I believe the truth is that liberalism as a world view and philosophy itself has a propensity to dislike religion.  Liberalism belief in the autonomy of the individual tends to color its views of all authority but especially religious authority.  This bias was embodied in the French Revolution, whose motto was “no master, no God.”  A quick review of history reveals that at the time of their revolution, the French had reason to fear and hate religion.  During that period in their history the church had been captured by the governing class and was being used to oppress the people.  However, the hatred and bias of the liberals and progressives of the French Revolution are still with us today.  Like all bias and prejudice, these are passed on blindly from generation to generation.

However, much of the dislike of religion comes from the fact that religion tends to cramp the lifestyle of some people.  Some people just don’t like the idea of being told that they are going to stand in judgment for their behavior.  Jesus hinted at this when He said, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” John 3:19-21.

It is obvious from the above words of Jesus that a strong anti-religious bias can come from a godless amoral lifestyle.  This bias goes much deeper than many liberals would like to admit.  This bias comes from a deep-seated prideful rebellion that exists in the human heart, and like all bias it is hard to detect by those possessing it, and like all biases it can be passed on for generations.

My conclusion is that my far left liberal friends have been biased toward religion by the traditions and the propaganda of their own philosophy more than by reason or clear thinking.  This is not to say that religion should not be watched.  Religion is a power that can be abused, but it is also a power that can be a blessing to people.  However, it is irrational to hate all religion because some men have abused it and used it as a means to gain power over others.

 

Two Kinds of Liberals

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Atheism, Liberalism, Progressivism

Two Kinds of Liberals

Today we hear a lot about liberals and conservatives, but much of this talk is misleading.  All Americans are liberal to some degree.  The liberal philosophy is so broad that it would take in the majority of Americans.  There simply is no fixed definition of liberalism.  Liberalism only has some vague principles, which most Americans would endorse to some degree.  They would be things like democracy, equality, individualism, the rule of law, and the free market.  How these things are defined and to what degree a person takes them is where the great divide in liberalism takes place.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that in America we have two kinds of liberals–not liberals and conservatives–but two kinds of liberals, and for our discussion one can call these two groups French liberals and English liberals.  Note that one can only take this allegory so far for it will break down because of the diversity of the liberal view.

Let’s look at these two kinds of liberals.  First are the French liberals.  These are the children of Voltaire and the French Revolution.  They are characterized by a dislike of authority, a dislike of religion, and distain for the upper class.  They tend to be populists and feel comfortable with socialism.  They tend to put more emphasis on collectivism than on individualism.  They believe that mankind can trust in reason alone, apart from a faith that informs reason.  They also seem to put more stress on the concept of equality and define it differently than their English counterpart.  Because of their negative view of faith and religion they seem to be informed more by their vices than their virtues.  For this reason, I sometime refer to this group as profane liberals.

The extreme French liberals come closer to being classified as revolutionaries rather than liberals.  They see man’s greatest need to be liberated from tradition, morality, and superstition (religion).  Many of them would preferred to be call progressives rather than liberals. I often call these folks advanced liberals.  Of course, many scholars today would call their form of liberalism something other than liberal.  The champion of French liberalism is in fact not French but English.  His name is John Stuart Mill, and he is most famous for his small book entitled On Liberty. However, to be fair to Mills’ he probably would be shocked by much of the thinking of modern advanced liberals. Mill himself did not believe in socialism.

On the other side we have the English liberals who in some degree reflect many of the French liberal characteristics, but to a lesser degree.  However, there are some marked differences.  One is that English liberals see religion as a positive force in culture and at worst a necessary evil.  Their view of religion varies from true faith to seeing it from a pragmatic point of view.  A great example of this is the American philosopher William James who was the father of the philosophy of pragmatism.  English liberals also believe more strongly in the free market and the concept of limited government.  They seem to have a respect for government, but at the same time a healthy distrust.  Many of our founding fathers embraced this form of liberalism to some degree.  It is this group of liberals who today are called conservatives by many people.  Their champion in the time of Mill was James Fitzjames Stephen.  He is famous for his rebuttal of Mill in his classic book Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.  In his book he completely dismantles Mill’s form of liberalism. (Note: John Gray, Liberalism)

What causes people to be in either camp?  Well, that is difficult to say, but I think we can say that no form of liberalism is based on reason alone.  If it were, there would not be such diversity in liberalism.  Liberalism, like all systems of thought, is diversified because people come to it with diverse presumptions.  What are some these presumptions?

One of the obvious is a belief or lack of belief in a deity.  Belief or lack of it tends to shape one’s attitudes on a host of subjects, but especially on the concept of authority.  Authority seems to be a thing that all liberals struggle with, especially the French liberals.  Religion tends to temper this rebellious spirit, so large numbers of religious people seem to lean toward the English side.  However, by religious I do not necessarily mean Christian.  Most knowledgeable Christians would have some problems with any form of liberalism.  However, you will find vulgar Christians in both camps.

Still, another factor could be the geographies of where a person was brought up or lives.  Rural people seem to lean more toward the English side than city dwellers.  This can be contributed to by many factors like the fact that rural people tend to be self-sufficient and independent from the system and have less trust in any form of government, even a liberal form.  Also rural people are closer to nature and often have more of a God consciousness which the city dweller may not have.  An example of this is a study I saw on how the people in California voted in a recent election.  All the counties that had large cities in them were blue and the rest of the counties were red.

Other factors that may contribute to the tribe of liberals you belong to could be: family ideology which greatly affect the values and beliefs of an individual, the educational institution attended, one’s chosen profession and one’s social economic level.  All this is to say that the source of one’s liberalism has very little to do, for most people’s, with intellectual choice.  In fact, for the most part, liberalism of all kinds has many intellectual inconsistencies.  Therefore if you fancy yourself as a liberal intellectual, think again.

For those that would like to know more about Liberalism the following are interesting books on the subject, Liberalism and Its Discontents by Patrick Neal, The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb, Two faces of Liberalism by John Gray and The Betrayal of Liberalism by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball.

 

 

 

 

 

The Cruel Joke of Atheism

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

The Cruel Joke of Atheism

Atheists fiercely argue with theists about the existence of God. But why? Is it simply to win an argument to justify themselves intellectually, or is it out of love for the theist, believing that the theist would be happier as an atheist? In order to have any of these motives they would have to make a moral judgment on the value of religion and religious people. The problem is that in doing this they are doing the exact thing that they criticize religion for, i.e., making moral judgments of what is good or bad. I believe there is a story in antiquity about people who wanted to usurp the right of the deity to determine good and evil and become the judges, assuming the role of God.

Let’s talk about the happiness hypothesis first. Drawing from my personal experience, which I admit is limited, I have a number of friends who are atheists, and I do not think of them as especially happy people. From reading blogs written by atheist on the Internet, I would not personally judge those people as happy people. Some seem to be hinting at their emptiness and unhappiness in their compulsive blogging and criticism of religion.

The only real study I have found on happiness is Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Happiness Hypothesis, in which he clearly points out that believers are overall happier than unbelievers. By the way, Jonathan is an atheist. He claims that his book is based on scientific research. So the idea that atheists are spreading happiness is nothing more than a cruel joke. Of course, the atheist must believe the allusion that atheism is the salvation of the world and that materialism is the new gospel (good news). Is it really good news that we are just sacks of star-dust with a bio-chemical illusion maker, which we call a brain, telling us what to believe and leading us from nothingness to nothingness? According to the atheist, this is good news giving us all kinds of meaning and purpose. Is it good news or a bad joke?

Other atheists say they do not believe in God and speak out against faith because they believe it is not true or in some cases they say that it is evil. However, what do they mean by truth and evil? How can they condemn anything as evil? It seems the reality would be that it would be very hard to believe in the traditional meaning of truth or evil if there is no final and ultimate authority that stands above man. Is there is no authority outside of man as to what would make a thing right or wrong? Reason? The next question would be whose reason? Who determines whose reason is correct? Of course, the atheist believes in reasoning done by atheists, for they are the only reasonable people. Of course, in the end under their thinking it will be the reasoning of the guy who has the gun (power), which in the end means the state. Who do you think determines right and wrong in atheistic China or Russia? In atheistic cultures religion is not just wrong, it is bad and those who practice it are put into prison. Who determined that morality? Reason or the state?

Atheists, in order to prove their world view, must be able to establish by science that there is no God and that science can establish morality. However, they can do neither. All they can do is assert that there is no God on their own authority. Fortunately, in this country they don’t have the guns (power) as they did in communist Russia. Their problems with science proving that there is no God is huge, for anyone who knows anything about science knows that science cannot prove the existence of God or disprove it. 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.”[1] So much for their appeal to science. So, what about their appeal to science for their proof of atheism? Reality or a bad joke?

When it comes to morality, only someone desperate for an argument would infer that science should or could create morality. Morality is a subject of philosophy and metaphysics, not science. It seems to me that when talking to atheists about morality they don’t like,[2] they quickly become moral relativist and dismiss it.[3] However, when it comes to the morality they use to make judgments against religion, they are absolutists. Another one of their cruel jokes.

In reality they want us just to accept their opinion because it is their opinion and their opinion is based on an assumed world view of naturalism,[4] which they assume is reality. In this assumed reality, their arguments win by default and become the absolute.[5] Yet, if they are consistent with their world view, their beliefs are nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain and are not real, especially if one of those beliefs is faith in a God. Of course, faith in reason is not a belief according to them, but reality and this reality proves their position that all beliefs in a God are an illusion. Of course, reason is real even though you cannot see it, taste it, smell it, or feel it. It seems to me, reason is a concept or belief like the idea of God. However, for the atheist God is an illusion and reason is real.[6] What a joke.

Still another cruel joke is that atheists are never consistent in the area of morality, nor are they fair or accurate in many of their moral judgments. For instance, they lump all religious groups and faith groups together and make sweeping generalities. An example is one made by one of their leaders in Religion Poisons Everything.[7] Of course, the first problem with this statement to a thinking person is: What is religion? The next question will be: Is there more than one, and if so, which one are you talking about or are you talking about all of them? What happens if you define religion as the practice of virtue? Would the practice of virtue poison everything? If a person’s religion was to love his fellow-man as himself, does that religion poison everything? Only if you subvert the religion and turned love into hate would that be true. However, if you subvert the religion, it is no longer that religion but another form of religion. The other form may poison everything but the original may be good. Another cruel joke of atheism is that it must deny this common sense truth that there is good and bad religion.

Their absolutist concrete mentality proves them to be very much like the religious people they judge as judgmental. Of course, as I have said elsewhere, they are the mere image of a fundamentalist religious person. This is nothing but a cruel joke, but this time the joke is on them.

[1]  Taken from Who made God?: A Searching for a Theory of Everything by Fay Weldon.

[2] Leftist of all kinds especially dislike morality which places limits on their sexuality; for example sexual preference, abortion, euthanasia, etc.

[3] Morality that restricts so-called sexual freedoms.

[4] Naturalism is an ideology that believes that nature is all that exists or is the whole show.

[5] Proof of this is the lack of references to any authority other than themselves in their articles on their blogs. All they have is their opinion or the talking points they get from other blogs, on which they feed their opinions.

[6] The problem is that if reason is real, free will must be real, but according to many atheists like Sam Harris, free will is an illusion.

[7] God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Hitchens.

The Roots of The New Atheist Movement

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

The Roots of The New Atheist Movement

Where did the new atheist movement originate?  I may not have all the answers to this question but one thing I do know is that you cannot start and organize a movement around a non-belief as some of the new atheists would have people believe. To create a movement, you must have specific beliefs and the emotions that will fuel the movement. The energy of any movement comes from the emotions that drive it. Likewise, every movement is a bearer of particular beliefs and the emotions that are generated by the beliefs as they are put forth by forceful leaders of that movement. So, whatever is driving the new atheist movement is also spreading it. But what is it?

The belief that is driving the new movement is naturalism[1]. Naturalism is a belief system that believes nature is the whole show, and  there is nothing outside of it. Therefore atheists believe that everything must be explained by natural causes. In pure naturalism[2], there is no room for faith in a God or even the belief there might be something more than nature. The truthfulness of naturalism is not a question that science can answer. Therefore it falls into the area of metaphysics and is a question for philosophers and theologians[3].

What about the emotions driving this new movement? This writer believes that much of the new atheist movement has come out of a well of anger and hatred. It reflects the nihilism of the French and Russian Revolution. The movement exists for the main purpose of organizing atheists’ hatred of religion, good or bad. Of course, to the new atheist there is no such thing as good religion; there is only religion and it is bad. One of the marked differences between the new atheists and those of the French and Russian Revolutions comes in understanding the real reason for their anger. During the period that these Revolutions took place, the Catholic and orthodox churches had sided with the rich and were oppressing the poor, i.e., the poor had a reason to be angry. However, the new atheist seems to be made up of white, middle-class, college educated males who are part of the system that suppresses the poor. So, what are they angry about? Could it be that they are angry about a meaningless existence, which they have inherited from their secular education? An education that promised them utopia and that is failing.

Furthermore, it is not beyond belief to see the hand of the Communist Party of America behind a lot of the funding of the new atheist movement. The hard-core socialists still see religion, especially the Christian religion, as their chief enemy and would like to eradicate it around the world. You really need atheists in order to have communism and socialism because you need a people who believe in so-called scientific planning and who have the state as their ultimate concern. That is their benefactor and Savior. Of course, planning by the few, spells non-freedom for the many, for in the end there can only be one planner.

Another reason for this movement and many other deconstructionist movements[4] is rooted deep in our culture, a mega culture in which men have lost their identity and meaning. The old atheist types were not organized, because they had an identity and a strong belief in Western ideology and values. However, in recent decades Western academia has emptied these ideologies and values of any meaning. This has led to an increasing number of people in our culture empty of meaning and purpose. These people are easily attracted to movements, which give their existence meaning and structure. Hollowed out people are easy prey for any ideology and cultic belief. These movements are the devil’s workshop and the people who get involved are, as Lenin called them, “useful idiots” for cult leaders and dictators.

The only practical reason I can see for the new atheist movement is that it has afforded a number of shrewd men the opportunity to get wealthy and gain status in the eyes of their followers, which strangely is one of the things they charge religion with. Of course, when there is money and power to be had, there will always be men willing to spread hate to obtain it, men like Karl Marx and Stalin. Some new atheists will respond that they are not spreading hate or hurting anyone. I will grant you that if you steal a man’s faith that he doesn’t  value or have a need for; you have done little harm or hurt. However, if you destroy a person’s faith that has a weak faith, but needs it, you have done harm. Even some of the new atheists who have told their story of losing their faith, talk about the hurt and the negative emotions they experienced. Like many atheists, the new atheists have hardened their hearts to the pain of others and begin to think of their movement as a bitter pill that will cure people of the disease that is hurting them. That is, faith in God. Like all mass movements of true believers, they believe the end justifies the means.

However, are the new atheists really Angels of light as they claim, delivering a bitter pill or are they really Angels of darkness? I will let one of the old atheist types answer that question. 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 is 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 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.” Need I say more?

[1] Atheism in itself is not a belief. However, the naturalistic and the materialistic philosophy that support it are ideologies and represent worldviews. The minute an atheist starts arguing for his non-belief he has embraced a belief system of naturalism and materialism and the burden of proof shifts to them.

[2] In naturalist world view one could believe in a god, which existed inside nature and had evolved with the universe.

[3]  Werner Heisenberg physicist and Nobel prize winner for physics confirms  this, “If anyone wants to argue from the indubitable fact that the world exists to a cause of this existence, then this assumption does not contradict our scientific knowledge at a single point.  Scientists do not have a single argument or fact with which they would contradict such an assumption, even if it was about a cause which–how could it be otherwise– would evidently have to be sought outside our three-dimensional world” Wermer Heisenberg quoted by Hans Kung Pages 79-80 in “The beginning of All Things: Science and Religion”.

[4] Deconstructionist movements would include the radical gay rights movement, radical feminists, and radical socialism. All of these movements question the traditional moral and family structure of Western culture.

Spaghetti monsters, Unicorns, and God?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

Spaghetti monsters, Unicorns, and God?

Spaghetti monsters, unicorns, and hobgoblins. If you have ever talked to an atheist I’m sure you’re familiar with some of these fictional creatures that they compare belief in, to a belief in God. They say a belief is just a belief and cannot be proven or disproven unless you have tangible proof. But is this true or is it just some mumble jumble from someone wishing to win an argument?

Atheists say they do not believe in beliefs, but is that true? The truth is they believe in some beliefs and not in others. For example, they cannot see, touch, smell or hear their great, great, great, great grandparents however; they believe that they existed based on the fact that they themselves exist. This is  an inference based on causality; the existence of something that is seen now; can prove that something else (which cannot be seen) did or does exist. The causal inference is based on the law of cause and effect; we can infer some things by experiencing the existence of other things.

If we observe an effect, we know that there must be something equal to or greater than the effect and that cause cannot be just a belief, for beliefs without a corresponding reality can do nothing. The idea of a gun cannot shoot you, nor can an idea of a dog bite you. Yet there is something, so there had to be something to create it, not just an idea or belief. God is not just a belief. Therefore, the law of causality places the belief in God in a completely different order of beliefs than spaghetti monsters and unicorns which have no causality factor. Unless you give spaghetti monsters and unicorns causality power; i.e. the characteristics of God that is, all powerful, all knowing and eternal. Of course, if you did that you would simply be changing the name of God.

Atheists say they don’t believe in beliefs however they themselves believe the most unbelievable things that can be imagined, i.e. they believe that something came from nothing. People who believe that something could come from nothing; could also possibly believe in spaghetti monsters and unicorns. Those who believe in the law of cause and effect cannot believe such nonsense.  Do you know why they believe that something came from nothing? Because one atheistic scientist wrote a book claiming it happened.[1] If this is the kind of faith and gullibility required to be an atheist, then I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

Subsequently, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of atheistic scientists and atheists who believe in a multi-verse of 11 dimensions without having one bit of objective evidence to support it. Are these people irrational? What about the atheist that believes in alien life forms? The truth is those atheists believe in all kinds of things that they’re not allergic to. I bet some of them believed in Santa Claus until someone told them that his real name was Saint Nick

I wonder if they believe that in one of those fairytale universes, that there might be flying spaghetti monsters and unicorns. If you can believe in fairytale universes, couldn’t you also believe in the magical creatures that populate those universes?

In reality atheists just want us to accept their opinion (beliefs) as concrete fact, even if they are nonsense. They have no facts; all they have is suppositions and assertions. They fail to see that their belief in materialism and naturalism is no different in kind from other people’s belief in God; the different is their opinions (beliefs) have not fulfilled the law of cause and effect[2]. Therefore, their beliefs in materialism and naturalism are equal to believing in spaghetti monsters and unicorns[3]. Moreover, if they are consistent with their world view (none are) their beliefs are nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain, which are determined by the law of cause and effect; a principle that they only believe in when it’s convenient and advantageous for their own arguments.

Consider for example, the beliefs of love and reason. You cannot see, touch, hear or taste love. Yet, most normal people and some atheists believe it is real, however, it is a belief that you cannot put under a microscope, so does that make it just an illusion or just a belief?  What about reason itself.  Is it real or just a belief?  There are some atheistic scientists like Sam Harris[4] who do not believe that love, reason or free will, really exist. He believes that they’re just beliefs or allusions. He says that we are just “biochemical puppets”. Yet, reason has taken him and others to the place that they can deny reason.

How do they know they’re right if they can’t trust reason? If atheists believe that we are biochemical puppets or soft machines why do they spend so much time arguing about their beliefs or lack of them? Are they simply programmed to be contentious and contrary? No, the truth is that their ideologies of materialism and naturalism have taken them into fallacious thinking, which has led them into denying the simplest truths of reality. This reminds me of the words of Aristotle. “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.”

 

[1] These atheistic scientists are brilliant men and they know that the law of cause and effect is devastating to their atheism. The idea that something came from nothing was created for the sole reason to skirt the law of cause and effect. Since the time of the big bang theory which basically says that the earth and the universe had a beginning some atheistic scientists have been trying to explain away the law of cause and effect and that the universe had a beginning. Their efforts have led to the nonsense of some claiming that there are multiverse’s and that something can come from nothing.

[2] Materialism and naturalism both have to believe that everything is eternal without begin or end and void of first cause or a prime mover. The only other explanation is that some came out of nothing spontaneously, again no first cause. Both of these ideas seem to contradict the consensus of science that the universe began in what is known as the big bang and deny the law of cause and effect.

[3] Believers have no problem meeting the demands of the law of cause and effect because they start with an uncreated consciousness which is the cause of all things. Spaghetti monsters and unicorns fit in the category of beliefs like, something coming from nothing, which s the spaghetti monster of atheism.

[4] Sam Harris is one of the guru’s of the new atheists’ movement.