Category: Atheism

The Darwinian Evolution Narrative or Myth

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

 The Darwinian Evolution Narrative

The more I read on evolution the more I have come to realize that the theory of Darwinian Evolution is based more on narrative than facts.  By this I mean that it is based on a well thought out story without a lot of real facts to back it up.  Most often it is based on conjecture or outright fiction.  I also have noticed that the facts are often made to fit the story instead of the story fitting the facts.

How could this happen?  How could so many intelligent people embrace such a theory as fact?  There are three answers to this question.  The first one is that they have accepted the scientific maxim or dogma that everything must be explained naturalistically, leaving no other possible explanation, except maybe for the seeding of the earth by alien life forces.  This dogma also hinders any real attempt by those inside the system to attempt to disprove the theory.  The second is the failure to see that the theory is not the facts.  Some confuse the map for the territory.  The third is that many in the educated class had accept science as a new faith. Some have gone so far as to give it a name, it’s called scientism; the belief that only true knowledge must come through science.  Well this may make Johnny a real brilliant boy but it also makes him a very narrow-minded boy.

Evolution in its most basic form is a fact.  Life changes and adapts to its environment.  We can see this happening in the barnyard and sometimes it is aided and directed by man (consciousness)[1].  However, Darwin’s theory of evolution is not a fact, it is an interpretation of the facts, with the interpretation of the facts being dependent on the narrative and there is no narrative without a secular or atheist world view.  Historical fact verifies that the materialistic worldview came first, then the narrative and then the theory.  It is a well-known fact that Darwin and others in his time believed in the theory of evolution before there were any scientific facts to support it[2].  This simply means that it would be very easy for this theory to have a social origin.

Evolutionist’s are constantly asking the question what narrative best fits the facts?  By this they’re usually talking about a theological narrative that they suppose existed.  However the truth is there is no theological narrative as to how God made the world.  The Bible simply states that God did it and any good theologian would never suppose or assert that they were capable of explaining how God created the world.  They clearly understand that such an event could only be spoken about metaphorically in story, poetry and myth.  Theologians understand the difference between truth, and the truth.  Theology leaves room for mystery and science leaves none. For that reason, science has the tendency to fill the gap’s with narrative and speculation, which it then attempts to falsify.  At least that is what it claims to do and should do.

In this, the Darwinian theory of evolution is a theory of necessity for those accepting a materialistic or atheistic worldview.  The only alternatives would be for them to just simply say they don’t know. Unfortunately, the majority are not willing to do that or even try to base their study and research on an attempt to figure out how consciousness created all things. In most cases this is because they have a prior commitment to materialism, like Johnny, they have become small-minded. It should also be noted that because of their prior commitment to materialism it would be very difficult to attempt to falsify a theory which you have already committed to as the only one possible.

However, this insight has not led me to any expectation on my part that the theory will be overthrown sometime in the near future. The Theory itself has evolved into a secular myth that supports a secular world view. The science has ended, religious faith has taken its place.

[1] I find it strange that people can accept that man can direct evolution and at the same time hold to the belief that a God could not do it.

[2]  “The Road of Science and The Ways to God” By Stanley L. Jaki Page 282

 

When Waking Up Is A Nightmare

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

When Waking Up Is A Nightmare

Do you remember the movie The Matrix  where Morpheus told Neo that he had a choice between taking a blue pill or a red pill?  If  Neo chose the blue pill he would remain asleep living in a world of illusions.  However if he chose the red pill he would wake up and see the world the way it really is, not so pretty but real.  Jesus said something similar when he told Nicodemus that a man had to be born again to see the kingdom of God (Jn. 3:1-5).

However, beware, for someone has been tampering with the pills and some blue pills have been colored red.  If you take one of these faux blue pills you will wake up in a world with no good or evil, no purpose  and no meaning.  One of the illusions in that world is; if you try hard enough you can manufacture some personal meaning and even a personal morality.  In this nightmarish world people spend a great deal of time convincing themselves that they are good and justify themselves.  In that world people spend enormous amounts of time trying to find meaning and purpose.  However, in that world try as they may, no one can find ultimate purpose or meaning inside of themselves and above their own  opinion.  In fact, in that world all you have is your opinion.  The reason is that only an Ultimate can give ultimate meaning and truth.  You cannot give something that you don’t have.  You cannot give ultimate meaning to anything because you do not possess it within yourself.  All you can give others and yourself is the ultimate illusion that your life has some meaning in itself, and of itself.  The first thing that a person should realize when they are really awake, is that there must be an Ultimate and they are not it.

When a person attempts to find meaning in himself it is  evident that he is still asleep.  He’s accepted the ultimate illusion that he can have meaning apart from an Ultimate.  The truly awake atheist (if there is such a person) will live a meaningless life of despair (nihilist)  knowing his life is as meaningless as a spec of dust, which he ultimately knows he is.  Some in that world seem to get some comfort out of the fact that they can call it star-dust, hinting at its complexity but in the end it is still dust.

Jesus talked about taking a pill that will wake you up so you can see the world and yourself, the way  you truly are and the way God see’s you and the world.  It also will allow you to see the way it will be when God has put everything right, which allows one to live in faith, hope and love.

Jesus once offered a red pill to a young wealthy man who thought he was okay because he obeyed all the rules.  Jesus told him that if he would take the red pill he would have to give up his wealth and follow Him.  The story says that when the young wealthy man heard this he went away sorrowfully because he loved his possessions more than he did the truth or God.  What is it in your life that is keeping you from taking the real red pill?

The Religious Impulse

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Religion

The Religious Impulse

Hi – I’m reading “Heresies: Against Progress And Other Illusions” by John Gray and wanted to share this quote with you and a few thoughts I have on it.  Gray is an English public intellectual and is an unbeliever.  I say this up front to simply refute the claim of bias by the atheistic community.

Here is Gray’s quote “For many, the promises of religion lack credibility; but the fear that inspires them has not gone away, and secular thinkers have turned to a belief in progress that is further removed from the basic facts of human life than any religious myth”.

“Traditional religion is in retreat but it has not been replaced by rationality.  Modern societies are full of occult and millenarian cults.  They abound in new, short-lived religions, ‘flickering and fading’, as J.G. Ballard has put it, ‘like off-peak commercials’.”

The first thing that I would like to point out is the fact that man seems to be Homo religious in his very nature, i.e., he is not taught to be religious, he is hardwired to be religious.  To say that he is taught religion is to use the word religion in its most narrow sense.  If we use it in a broad sense of the word religion, let’s say the concept of ultimate concern, it becomes easy to see that man is by his very nature religious.  It is easy to see how ones ultimate concern can slip in to being an idol and become ones religion.

Many questions could be raised when Gray speaks about rationality taking the place of religion.  Could we not talk about the myth that humanity is rational?  Could anyone make the claim that humans on the whole are rational?  Could you not say that in some groups, that rationality is their ultimate concern and therefore their religion?  Could it be that religion is necessary for one to be rational?  It seems to me that as a culture loses its religious, it also loses its ability to reason.  The decay and the downfall of many cultures seem to follow their loss of faith in their gods, which results in them being plunged into the dark ages.  In the west this has held true, we first lost faith in God and it was not long before we began to question reason.  (note the positivists and idealist movement of the past, and now the post modern movement of today).

Another question that Gray’s remarks resurrect, is the question of the fears that he mentioned as the cause, or sources of religion.  Here we need to ask a number of questions.  The most basic is, are the fears real?  What about the fear of death?  First of all death is real.  All men must die.  The next question that arises would be, is the fear of death rational?  My answer is absolutely yes.  We are an organism that from the very beginning of our existence has been programmed to resist death and strive to stay alive and to live.  Therefore the fear of death is natural to the species.  Fear is part of the evolution programming and is implanted in the human psyche.  To tell people that the fear of death is irrational is counter intuitive.  We are programmed to fear anything that threatens our life.  You could say that it is natural to fear death and anything that threatens our organic existence.  Still, another huge question.  Is there something for the masses of men better than traditional religion, especially Christianity to deal with these fears?  Could it be that the Creator programmed humans to seek life and fear death?  Seeing that God is the living God or the God of life, it would seem right for him to plant the survival impulse into every creature.  In this, the survival impulse is an impulse from God and towards God.

I say all this to point out that faith with reason is the only practical way to approach reality.  Faith in Christ gives people the authority and courage to face the big questions of life.  Questions like, who am I, what is my purpose and where am I going?  Faith in Christ also destroys the idol of reason, taking it off its throne and restores it to its rightful place as a gift from God, a tool to help us structure our lives and to help us find truth.

 

Science and Religion

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Religion

Science and Religion

Natural science is the study of nature and religion is the study of how to live.  Religion is the collective knowledge of humanity on what works in living one’s life in the world.  Natural science does not tell us how to live or what the world is or its purpose but rather how it works.  What the world is and it’s purposes are metaphysical questions and cannot be answered by the Scientific method.  They are questions for philosophy and religion.

The minute science begins to try to tell us what the world and its purpose is, it ceases to be science and becomes philosophy or even religion.  Science cannot tell us what the world is any better than it can tell us what gravity is and for that matter, what science is.  If you say science is the study of nature you have not told me what it is but rather what it does.  For example, for measurement, gravity could be labeled a force but that does not tell you what gravity is but rather what it is like.  But what is a force?  Science mainly tells us how things behave and attempt to measure their behavior, and it often does this by the use of metaphors.  A good example of this is light.  Sometimes light behaves like a wave and other times like a particle.  On the other hand, religion also uses metaphors to explain life and right living.  These metaphors come in the form of stories, myths and similes.

Humans attempt to label and define everything with words.  It is our way of bringing order out of the chaos of existence.  Science, Philosophy and religion are the tools we use to do this labeling.  These disciplines are often so intermingled that it’s impossible for the majority of people to even get close to separating them.  Science is based on facts that can be demonstrated and tested and Philosophy is based on things inferred from the facts.  The problem is that inferences that are inferred from the facts can be infinite.  These inferences could be called hypothesis, or a stronger word could be theory.  A hypothesis has little or no factual evidence of its truthfulness; a theory on the other hand has evidence, but many lack the means of testing it or falsifying it.  If these two things are absent, a theory will always remain a theory. e.g. String theory.

There are two predominant philosophies  that attempt to explain what the world is.  They are materialism and dualism.  Materialism is the belief that everything is made up of matter.  Dualism is the belief that a second ingredient exists which they may call, spirit, consciousness, life force or something, which is unseen. It is important to remember that the ancients did not concern themselves with the nature of the seen or unseen.  They simply accepted the fact; there were things that we see and there were things we could not see.

The philosophies of materialism and dualism are not the dominant philosophy because they have  been proven by science.  Both have been around a long time and  were embraced before modern science was created.  You could call them the philosophies of existence, but neither should be called science in a true sense of the word.  Both have an element of faith.  The materialist believes that only matter exists but makes a leap of faith when he adds the word ‘only’. The dualist has the problem of testing what they would call spirit.

However, when everything is said, the debate between materialism and dualism will not settle the question, does God exist?  The debate if ever won would rather, simply help determine the definition and nature of the deity, which is quite impossible to know to begin with, if we are talking about the God of the Bible, who some  theologians within the church referred to “as the nothingness” to ensure they did not insult him with a belittling description.

 

The Great Atheist Illusion

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

 The Great Atheist Illusion

The greatest illusion embraced by the atheist is not that there’s no God but rather that they are free from illusions.  The belief that you are free of all illusions is the most dangerous illusion of all for it opens the floodgates to the acceptance of unreality in a multitude of forms.

It is evident that atheists have not experienced God but how in the world can they deny that others have not experienced Him.  Seeing that experiencing God is a personal matter that cannot be judged empirically by outsiders, as no one can get into another man’s mind or body to know how or what he is, or has experienced.  However, this is the very thing that an atheist must claim.  This claim springs from an illusion of omniscience and an assumption that the only true knowledge must be objective knowledge.

We know that human beings experience pain to various degrees, and that it is impossible for one to experience another man’s pain exactly and to the same degree.  The same thing is true of our experience of God.  People experience God in different ways and to distinct degrees.  Therefore, the atheist claim that there is no God is totally unreasonable and contrary to the experiences of billions of people. Have they tested empirically everyone’s experience of God?  The only real claim that they can reasonably make is that they have not personally experienced God.  Even so, in their arrogance they go one step further and say that no one has, or can experience God and if they claim they have, they are delusional.

The most that atheists can honestly claim is that they have not experienced God. However, that might be saying too much for they could have encountered God and not recognized it as a God experience.  This could be a very likely theorem seeing that their preconceived biases could keep them from recognizing a God experience if they had one.  The most that an atheist can say is that they have not had an understandable experience of God.  Of course, many atheists will say, if they have not experienced God, that he cannot exist or that God in some way is obligated to reveal to them himself in such a way that he would be undeniable.  They seldom blame themselves for accepting an ideology or world view that will not allow them to experience God.  It could be that they’re like a blind man who denies the existence of color because he cannot see it or has not experienced it and then blames color for their inability to see it.

In the end, the old saying that a man with an argument will never convince the man with an experience is true.  The only person in whom the atheists experience will stick and will move to their unbelief are those who have never experienced God and are already in a sense in the atheist camp. The atheist will never be able to argue that God does not exist, with a man who has experienced Him.  That would be like telling a man who was rescued from the sea, by an other man in a lifeboat, that the other man did not exist.

Humans come to know things through many ways.  We learn through our mind, but we also learn through our other senses.  In actuality, our mind processes the information that we get through our other senses.  However, if some sense has been crippled or damaged, we may become dead to that sense and no longer be able to experience it or the things that it was created to sense.  It could be also that some knowledge requires more than one sense and channel.  I think this is the case with the knowledge of God.  The knowledge of God requires the whole man.  If any part of the man has been damaged or disabled it becomes increasingly hard for that man to experience God in any meaningful way.

Therefore, talking to a hardened atheist is like talking with a handicap man who doesn’t know that he’s handicapped.  I once talked to a young atheist who I knew growing up, who had grown  up in a very dysfunctional family where there was a great deal of brokenness.  His parents claimed to be Christians and for whatever reason they could not work through their dysfunction.  This environment caused him to be bitter towards his father and somewhat towards his mother.  The bitterness not only hardened him from having a relationship with his father but it also hardened him to having faith in God.  Being an intelligent person he had to come up with a rational explanation for his lack of faith.  His self-justifying mechanism is the source of his unbelief and not his intellect.

Does the Earth’s Size Matter?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

Does the Earth’s Size Matter?

I often hear people say that people in Biblical time believed that the earth was the center of the universe. This is truly a miraculous statement seeing that people in biblical times in general did not even know there was a universe. The truth is, it was early scientist’s who believed that the earth was the center of the universe, not biblical writers.

Furthermore, it was not until the 20th century that the idea of an expanding universe was set forth by Hubble. The consequence of that discovery was that the earth became relegated by pseudoscience to an insignificant place within the universe. This dogma of insignificance was totally based on its size and place of the earth in the universe. This thinking could be akin to saying that a man’s importance is based on how big he is and where he lived at a particular time and place. I guess these folks believe that if God created the world that he would’ve created it as the biggest planet in the universe for man to inhabit. Of course, this thinking comes from the childish idea that big is better or that God is just a big man. Therefore, he must create a big place for the beings created in his likeness.

From a theological point of view and a rational point of view, the earth’s significance may have nothing to do with its size or place within the universe but rather with its function. Could it’s importance be found in the fact that God placed the creature created in his likeness on the earth to grow and mature into the sons of God? Could the whole thing be based on relationship and purpose and not on size? There are numerous schools throughout our nation, some big some small, some better than others. However, when my kids were in school, I was interested in their small school more than any other school in the land, you see sometime importance is based on relationships and not size. God has no little people and no little place He just has relationships. “God is love”.

 

Rejecting the God of the Child

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

Rejecting the God of the Child

I have had a number of people tell me that they rejected God when they were a child.  When someone says this in most cases what they rejected was not the true God but rather the wrappings of religion or a child’s view of God.  For a child, most of religion does not make sense, especially the so-called worship service where the seated child’s feet are hanging in midair, and someone is preaching a message above their heads about a subject they are not much interested in.

Some children as they grow into adolescence confuse or equate the rejection of religion with the rejection of belief in God.  However, it is quite doubtful that any child would have the intelligence and the experiences of life to reject a mature view of the deity which their young minds are incapable of conceptualizing.  In most cases, what they reject is an anthropomorphic or personal corporal view of God, i.e. God is a man sitting upon a throne in heaven.  Of course, this picture thinking of God as a man would’ve been rejected by many if they had matured in their faith anyway.  The adult mind understands that the spiritual (unseen), and the physical are linked by metaphors and symbols that cannot be taken literally.  This is not only true in religion but in science as well.  I am still astonished at the number of atheists who cannot or refuse to look at these concepts metaphorically.

It may be time to rethink your beliefs about the unseen with your adult mind.  Try to think of God as pure spirit or pure personality.  If you are into reason try super consciousness.  If you’re into morality try thinking of him as the highest good.  If you are into relationships try thinking of him as pure love.  The Apostle John did refer to Him as love.  “God is love”.  However, remember that anything that we compare God within our human experience will fall short of the reality.  God is greater than any mortal mind can imagine so at best we must use metaphors and similes to speak of him.  Otherwise, he would not be God. If you want to know more about the true God check out my blog lyleduell.me