Tag: atheism

The Atheist Delusion

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

The Atheist Delusion

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

It is evident that the atheist has not experienced God, but how in the world can he deny that others have not experienced God. Seeing that experiencing God is a personal matter that cannot be judged empirically by an outsiders. You cannot get into another man’s mind or body to know how or what he is or has experienced. Yet this is the very thing that an atheist must claim.

We know that human beings experience pain to various degrees and that it is impossible for one to experience the other 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 different degrees. Therefore, the atheist claim that there is no God is totally unreasonable and contrary to the experiences of billions of people. The only real claim that they can reasonably make is that they have not experienced God personally. Yet, in their arrogance they go one step further and say that no one has experienced God and if they claim that they then are delusional.

As pointed out the most that the atheist can truly claim is that they have not experienced God. However, even that might be saying too much for they could have experienced God and not recognized it as a God experience. This would be a very likely theorem because of their preconceived biases which could keep them from recognizing a God experience if they had one. The most that an atheist can say is that they have not knowingly experienced God. Of course, many atheist will say that if they have not experienced God because he does not exist or that God in some way is obligated to reveal himself in such a way that his existence would be undeniable. They seldom blame themselves for accepting an ideology or worldview that will not allow them to experience the divine.  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 blame color itself 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 people who atheists will move to their unbelief is those who have never experienced God and are already in a sense in the atheist or agnostic camp. Atheist will never be able to argue that God does not exist with a man who has experienced God. That would be like telling a man who was rescued from the sea by a person in a lifeboat, that the person did not exist.

Humans come to know things in many ways. We learn through our mind but we also learn through our other senses. In actuality, our minds process 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 the world through it. It could be 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 to 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 been raised 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 become bitter towards his father and also somewhat towards his mother. This bitterness not only hardened him against having a relationship with his father but it also hardened him against 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. In many cases reason is the water boy for the will and imagination, and often hinders people from experiencing God, for people use it to justify themselves.

For those seek an experience with God I would suggest a brutal self-examination of one’s life. This kind of self-examination if done truly will open one’s spirit to God. No haughty or prideful man will ever come in to the presence of God. One must make themselves small and God big before having any kind of meaningful experience with him. In my own personal experience with God I have found it easier to connect with him in a quiet place. My quiet place is the mountains or wilderness. But even if it’s at home in your office or in your bedroom it’s got to be quiet. Noise turns off or weakens our senses. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God”.  By pure in heart he meant those that are single-minded. They are like Jacob who wrestled with an angel and refused to give up because he was totally committed to receiving the promise of God. If you seek God hard enough you will find him or should I say He will find you. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt 7:7-8)

 

 

The New Atheist and the Social Justice Movement

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Postmodernism

The New Atheist and the Social Justice Movement

New Atheists. “These are attitudes masquerading as ideas, emotional commitments disguised as intellectual honesty”.[1]

What is the source of the new atheist movement?  The new atheist movement is an offshoot of the social justice movement which came to the forefront in America after 911.  However, its roots can be traced back to a number of intellectual and political influences.  These influences include social Marxism, postmodernism and critical theory all of which were planted in the United States after World War II by European scholars who migrated here after the war.  A number of movements can be traced to these roots, e.g. the social justice movement, the feminist movement, the gay rights movement and the libertarian[2] movement and yes, the new atheist movement, all of which can be traced to the Frankfurt school in Germany and to what is now called social Marxism.  The thing that all these movements have in common is their hatred of power and authority or should I say someone else’s power and authority.[3]

Postmodernism and critical thinking teach that all power structures are basically oppressive and therefore, need to be destroyed.  These power structures include the family, religion, especially Christianity and government.  Of course, they fail to see that the university itself is a power source linking them to the very thing they criticize.  They also fail to consider that these power structures they are so critical of were part of the systems which allowed and fostered the development of civilization and without these structures, it is doubtful that humankind would have advanced as far as it has.  The parasitical college professors who came up with postmodernism and critical thinking, would not have had the leisure time to develop their theories if it was not for the power structures that they are now condemning.

Postmodernism and modernism both share two basic errors that center in their view of human nature.  One is that human nature is a black slate and the second is that man is basically good.  The blank slate people believe that there is no basic operating system in the human mind.  Therefore, humans are totally controlled by their environment.  The keyword is totally.  In other words, according to this view humanity has no nature.  Everything is socially created by one’s culture and the institutions of that culture[4].  Free will is an allusion and all institutions are created to maintain the power of the ruling class.  Therefore, all institutions are oppressive.

Of course, the glaring question is, how can you have an inherently good nature if you don’t have an operating system that directs your nature into natural goodness?

At this point, we begin to see a divide between modernism and postmodernism.  For the postmodern, man is a blank slate and everything is socially created, if so, then the concept of good and evil can only be a social construct for the benefit of the oppressors.  Of course, religion and Government are the institutions used to foster this construct using the tools of morality and law.  The logic of this is that government and religion being forms of oppression must be destroyed.  This clearly seems to be the case with Carl Marx.  Marx believed that when communism reached its completion or perfection, there would be no need for religion or government to control the people.  Of course, all of this was based on the dubious doctrine of progressive evolution and Nietzsche’s idea that the will to power is the chief motivating force in human beings.  The truth is that human beings are motivated by numerous attitudes and emotions.

It is here that we begin to see the beginning of the social justice movement that in turn gave birth to the new atheist movement.  Both movements are grounded in Marxism and its attacks on religion.  The early Marxists attempt to use the state to destroy religion failed.  So, the new Marxists are attempting to use atheism to create the brave new world of Marxism.  If the new atheists destroy religion, there is no place for atheism to go other than complete communism.  It was atheism that gave rise to Marxism and communism, not the other way around.

One of the seeds of postmodernism is the false belief of modernism, which is that man is basically good and if left alone will evolve into an angelic being,  who can live by pure reason.  In this rational, you can hear the whisper of postmodernism and the noble savage who symbolizes humanity’s innate goodness, which is one of the false narratives and myths of modernism.

Most thoughtful people have come to realize that western civilization is under attack from many sides.  Its institutions are being assaulted by feminists, socialists, Marxists, globalists, the new atheist movement and the Libertarian movement.  All of these leftist movements have a number of things in common.  They are deconstructionists that want to destroy what now exists so it can be replaced with something new.  In this, they want to destroy or change the institution of family, religion and government.  In contrast, you have the conservative movement that believes that these institutions are a part of the natural order and should be maintained.  The conservative movement does not believe these institutions are perfect, and if possible, they should be improved.  However, they do not believe that they can be perfected because human nature at its base level cannot perfect anything.

The bottom line is that the new atheist movement is more of a social movement that has created attitudes and emotions that are the driving force of the movement.  This, of course, is the very opposite of what the new atheists believe about themselves.  They fancy themselves as intellectual and progressive in their social views when, in reality, they are nothing more than the products of cultural and intellectual brainwashing.  They have deified the attitude and emotions of rebellion similar to that of the French Revolution.  They are angry at the human condition because it is a threat to their comfort, ease and pleasure.  They are the adult version of the spoiled child and they feel like victims of a meaningless life.

[1] Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies Hart, David Bentley

[2] The libertarian movement has many different degrees. Here I am talking about the far left that hides in their ranks.

[3] Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks

[4] This includes gender.

Who made God?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, God

 

Who made God?

 When you hear the question, “who made God?” you should notice the first word is always who never what. The Who of the question infers the idea of cause-and-effect. That is that everything must have come from something equal or greater than itself.  We intuitively understand that we are conscious and personal beings, so we infer automatically that if something created us; it must be conscious and personal in the sense of having a personality.

Of course, the answer also depends on one’s definition of God. If you believe that God is simply an idea in someone’s mind, the answer is the person that believes in him made him up. However, if you believe that  God is an infinite being outside of time and space without beginning or end, the answer would be totally different. It would be something like God is the uncreated one without beginning or end and the first cause of all things. So, a reasonable answer to the question who made God? would be, what God are we talking about? This question the atheist cannot answer because they don’t believe in God. To ask a person that believes in an infinite creator the question “who made God?” would be nonsense, because the answer is within  the question and the definition of God.

However, when an atheist asks the question “who made God?” this is a proof that they have an idea or image of God in their minds. You must have an image of something before you can say you don’t believe in it. So, the proper question to the atheist is what god are you talking about? They in turn might say the Christian God or the Jewish god. Now here’s the problem with the majority of atheists whom I’ve talk to, they do not have an inkling of theological knowledge, which means that the God they have an image of is a  figment of their imagination to begin with, i.e. a straw man. In most cases, an intelligent  believer would not believe in the image of the God that most atheist hold in their minds. For the Christian any image of God that an atheist has in their minds is an idol and Christians known that idols do not existence. ” Dear children, keep yourselves from idols”(1 John 5:21).

 

 

Who Created God?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

 

 

Who Created God?

 

 

A  father was reading a story to his young son about cosmetology and likened the earth  to a ball sitting on the back of a huge turtle. The young boy replied “but dad who made the turtle and what is holding up the turtle” “The father replied it’s, “turtles all the way down.” To deny a first cause in the end is to deny reason and the principle of cause-and-effect which simply says that everything must have a cause that is equal or greater than itself.  If I find a complex computer in the wilderness I would automatically look for an intelligent life form that created it. I could say that it always existed but it seems that that would be begging the question and surely wouldn’t answer the need for a cause or the ground for understanding the computer. Young children may ask, “who made the turtle”  grown men do not.

Deep Time and Evolution

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Evolution

Deep Time and Evolution

Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch closer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.[1] But this is exactly what some atheists attempt to do.[2]  They think they have explained existence by explaining evolution in some kind of narrative form. However, they have a number of large problems. (1) They must first prove that evolution is a science. That is if you believe that science is made up of knowledge that follows what is known as the scientific method[3]……….(2). let’s assume that you prove that evolution is a science. Then you  must prove one theory of evolution.[4] That is, you must prove that evolution is non-dirtected from outside of nature.(3) Then after proving 1 and 2 you must show how evolution of any kind proves that there is no God. In actuality, if you prove one and two all you have proven is that you have the ability to explain how something changed into something else. This may prove that you are intelligent and maybe that you have kissed the Blainey stone and that you are a great storyteller, but it proves nothing else.  An explanation that can never be proven by the scientific method is not science in the literal sense of the word.  Moreover, after all that work you still are not even close to explaining how something came from nothing.

In 2000 Henry Gee[5] who was the Senior Editor of Nature published his book “Deep Time” which was somewhat ignored by the scientific community and especially evolutionist. In the book he maintains that span of time in which evolution took place makes it almost if not impossible to have any rational conclusions about the fossil record. In speaking about the two conflicting views of evolution progressive and non-direct he says the following: “The failure of both use of evolution rest, once again, on the failure to understand that deep time cannot sustain scenarios based on narrative. I return, once again, to the thought experiment that is central to my argument. Next time you see a fossil ask yourself whether it could have belonged to your direct ancestor. Of course, it could be your ancestor, but you will never be able to know this for certain. To hypothesize that it might be your ancestor, then is futile, because your hypothesis would be untestable. So, to take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story – amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not science.” Page 114 of Deep Time.

[1] G.K. Chesterton

[2] A few atheist in recent time have attempted to explain how something could come from nothing. However, a close reading at their books always end up pointing to a cause that is something.

[3] “There were five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Had anyone observed the phenomenon—in this case, Evolution—as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper’s “falsifiability” test)? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of Evolution… well… no… no… no… no… and no. In other words, there was no scientific way to test it. Like every other cosmogony, it was a serious and sincere story meant to satisfy man’s endless curiosity about where he came from and how he came to be so different from the animals around him. But it was still a story. It was not evidence. In short, it was sincere, but sheer, literature.” “The Kingdom of Speech” by Tom Wolfe.

[4] The two main theories of evolution. There is Darwin’s that espouses random undirected evolution and there is the progressive that believes that there is a built in progressive element that improves and directs the species.

[5] Gee joined Nature as a reporter in 1987 and is now Senior Editor, Biological Sciences. He has published a number of books, including  In Search of Deep Time (1999),A Field Guide to Dinosaurs  (2003) and Jacob’s Ladder (2004).

The New Atheist and Self-righteousness

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

The New Atheist and Self-righteousness

There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes,and yet is not washed from their filthiness. Proverbs 30:12

The new atheists think that they’re righteous because they have never really made an honest attempt to be righteous.  You never know how weak you are until you try to lift something heavy.  The new atheist believes that they are righteous because like many in the west they equate righteousness with believing the correct thing.  In other words, if you have the right doctrine, you are righteous.  They inherited this belief, that right doctrine equals righteousness, from evangelical Christianity which they so vivaciously hate.  Like all Pharisees they hate what they are and they detest their own shadow to the point that they deny that they even have one.

One man said of the new atheists that their thinking was “…attitudes masquerading as ideas, emotional commitments disguised as intellectual honesty.”  At first these remarks puzzled me and then I realized that the new atheist’s thinking did not have its origin in deep clear thinking and reasoning, but rather in attitudes and the emotions brought about by those attitudes.  The attitudes that come to my mind as typical of the new atheist type are rebellion, hubris and self-righteousness, which are very similar attitudes as those involved in the social justice movement. All of these attitudes are commonly found among younger people, especially young educated males.

Like so many young people of today the new atheists seem to be angry, but  why are they angry?  They are a part of the most spoiled and  pampered generation that’s ever been on the face of the earth.  The majority of the new atheist types are college graduates that have grown up with comfort, ease and pleasure beyond another generation’s imagination.

What are they angry about? They’re furious that the world, and it’s God, is not to their liking.  Yet they are frustrated that they don’t have the power to change it.  They only have the power to destroy it, which is the reason they are called ‘deconstructionists’ by many.  This deconstructionism can take many forms; it can be seen in the new atheist movement, the feminist movement and the social justice movement.  All of these movements have their roots in atheism and in the denial of the divine.  All of these movements are nihilistic in the end and create a people without God, without meaning and without any hope in the world.  The only meaning they seem to have is found in their deconstructionism and their utopia world view.  This can all be seen in the atheistic communist movement that destroyed everything in its path.

Are the new atheists righteous?  Well, if there is a God, they are not righteous, they are evil.  If there is no God it really doesn’t matter because the word righteousness would be just a word without any real content.

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