Tag: unbelief

Letter to a Young Atheist, a Leap of Faith

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Faith

 Letter to a Young Atheist, a Leap of Faith

 You can doubt everything and everyone. You can even make a scientific argment that we do not exist and everything is an illusion (The Matrix). Sometimes, to believe in God we must first believe in people or at least a person. In some matters, we must trust the word and the experience of others. We all need to remember that our knowledge and experiences are finite; we personally cannot know and experience everything. Because we have not found or experienced something does not mean that, it does not exist; it simply means that I have not experienced it. I personally believe in many things that I have not experienced. I believe in them because I trust that someone else has experienced them and I trust that person’s word or testimony. The big question is whom can we trust and who should we listen to. After surveying a huge number of men living now and throughout history, I believe that Jesus can be trusted. In fact, I have trusted him with my life and eternity. However, it is not just Jesus; the greatest and most loving men I know are followers of Jesus Christ or had great respect for him and his teachings.

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

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

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

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

Who Has The Burden of Proof Atheists or believers?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics

The Burden of Proof

I have read a number of articles written by atheists, claiming that the burden of proof about the existence of God lies on the believer. That is believers have the responsibility of  proving the existing of a God. That may be true if the belief in God was a new doctrine that had not been accepted by billions. But, belief in a God is still the predominant world view in the west with atheism being held by a minority.  When a minority says the majority is incorrect, it seems this would shift the burden proof on those making the charge that the majority is wrong. Was the burden of proof in atheistic Russia and China placed on the atheists because unbelief was the acceptable ideology?

When the first Christian missionaries went into the non-Christian world, they seemed to accept that the burden of truth was on them and not on the pagans. Paganism was the established faith and Christians understood that they must prove it false and offer something more to the people. Atheism has failed to do either.

I think the real reason for atheists trying to shift the burden of proof to believers is that they have no evidence or proof for God’s nonexistence. When a man has no evidence against something, he has few options. (1) He can completely ignore the subject and act, as though he is above it and refuse to engage in any debate. (2) He can listen to his opponent and try picking apart his arguments, without ever offering any evidence for his own position. In this, his augments are based and directed at attacking the man’s arguments and the subject is somewhat ignored. (3) He can cleverly build a straw man and change the subject. The later is a favorite of  atheists; they change the debate over the existence of God, to how religion is so bad and corrupt. The constant chatter of atheists about the burden of truth belonging to believers is nothing more than a diversion away from the existence of God debate, to the subject of religion, and this diversion is a clear indication that atheists have no evidence, only quibbles, assertions and suppositions.

I personally believe that faith in God is a positive affirmation, which to a believer is a self-evident truth. Self-evident truths need no evidence, they just are. Does a person have to prove scientifically that the sky is blue? If they did, they could not. The sky being blue is just a part of our human understanding at one level of awareness of reality, i.e. self-evident truth. A person does not have the responsibility or the burden of proof  to justify such beliefs, as though they were in a courtroom and the only evidence which was acceptable, is science. If so, you would need a courtroom to put common sense on trial to determine what constitutes common sense and is not common sense our collective reason? So, in the end reason itself must be put on trial and how would reason defends itself?

Moreover, science itself would have to be put on trial to prove what makes up true science and to prove that it has the ultimate authority to judge. There are many things that science will never have an answer to, like why was the universe created? Why is there something and not nothing? Why some things are the way they are and not some other way. Science alone can never be the final judge of reality. When it claims finality and that its knowledge is absolute, it ceases to be science and becomes something else.

What it comes down to it, if you question what the majority considers to be self-evident truth, you should be prepared to accept the burden of proof.  To expect otherwise is pure folly.

The Amazing New Atheist-Revised With Footnotes

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics

The Amazing New Atheist-Revised With Footnotes

I am truly amazed at people who claim they are atheist and then spent a great deal of their time talking about or even arguing about transcendental concepts like love, justices and truth. Well, not so much about love, but a lot about truth and morality.  If there is no God, are these concept not just empty expressions? Why spent the time and effort to try to convince the theist or for that matter anyone that there is no God?  If there is no God, is not truth just a subjective term that has no real content? All concepts which I call ultimate concepts e.g. love; truth, justice and beauty have their roots in a belief in an absolute or a cosmic order, which reveals these things to humanity.  If you remove the absolute or the ultimate you destroy all the concepts that are built on it. Our founding fathers spoke of these things as self-evident truths[1]. If you reject a cosmic order which reveals truths to mankind you turn truth, justice and beauty into nothing but beliefs and according to atheists beliefs only exist in people’s head and cannot be established in reality. In fact this is one of their favorite arguments against belief in God. It is simple a belief like a belief in a unicorn or spaghetti monster. Is believing in love the same as believing in a unicorn or spaghetti monster.To be consistent with their scientific materialism they would have to say yes. Love is only a biological reaction of chemicals in the brain and has nothing to do with reality or the social construction we humans put on love, i.e. it is an illusion like the belief in God.

 When we are talking about ultimate concepts we are talking about the very foundations of human culture and civilization. To take the idea of a deity or a cosmic order out of the equation would mean make up and necessitate the complete remaking of everything, our language, our culture, values, civilization and in essences the very way we think about everything.  We are talking about the world of Nietzsche, a world, which has gone beyond good and evil, a world of a mad man[2]. When this is understood the question may change from, Is there a God, to can mankind survive as man without the idea of God? By survive, I do not mean maintaining biological life but rather living in a state of freedom and human dignity. I personally think not.  For this reason I believe that atheism is the most dangers and destructive ideology in the world. Of course, many atheists are like Karl Marx who criticized all ideology and at the same time fail to see that he was creating one. The new atheists seem so engrossed in destroying religion and belief in God, that they have neglected to considered what a world would look like without the idea of God?

Some may respond by saying that they feel religion is evil and that they are simply trying to do away with evil and replace it with something better. Well I would have to agree that some religion is evil but not because religion itself is evil but rather because there are evil men in religion.  However, we again run into a similar problem as above.  Without the concept of a God can there be any ground for the concepts of good and evil?  If there is no good and evil how could religion be evil? You might reply, because religion hurts people. My answer is, it has not hurt me, what standard are you using to make that judgment? You might say reason. My question is why is your reason different from billions of other people who believe in God and what makes your reason better than theirs? Moreover, how do you know that it is evil to hurt people? Is it evil when my dentist hurts me to fix a tooth? Was it unreasonable for the Nazis to hit children in the head so they could find a cure for head trauma? They seemed to think it was reasonable. You say, no for those children were humans. Without God is there any different between a lab animal and a human being? If you say, there is a different, on what ground do you justify your opinion?

I have had atheists respond by saying that they can create a new morality based on reason alone, which can replace the morality of religion. Of course, there has been other groups that have believed that, like the Nazis and the Communist. The hypothesis of a human created morality raises some interesting questions? Like who are going to be the Angels that create this new morality; Scientists, philosophers or maybe politicians, all of whom would of necessity have to be atheists in order for the foundation of this new morality to be total free from religion. Even then, would this system of morality be free from religion or just a different type of religion? And who would enforce this new morality, maybe the state? I believe I have seen this kind of morality somewhere. I think this experiment was the very thing tried by the Communist in Russia. They even had a church called the church of scientific atheism.

In view of the above thoughts I would think that if a person really was an atheist they would think long and hard about destroying the ideal of God and the way of thinking that accompanies it. What would a world look like without faith in God? Would the idea of truth and freedom survived in this brave new world?  If history is any commentary they did not do to well in atheistic Russia or China.

Some will say I cannot believe. When people say this they are often saying that their intelligent is keeping them from believing. No, some of the most intelligent people in history have been believers. The truth is that belief in God is as much a matter of the will as the intelligent. So it is not so much a question of your intellect as much as your want too. It is the human ego, which has blinded many to their motives. We all like to think that our beliefs are correct because we all like to think we are smarter than the other guy.

It would be more accurate for many especially those in the educated class to say that they have been conditioned not to believe by a secular education. If honest, the majority of this class would have to say that their minds have been captured by a materialistic liberal world view, which discourages any other way of viewing the world. They are like a man sitting in a room with a multitude of windows that are boarded up except one. Because, they are so occupied with what is going on outside the one window they have forgotten the other ones, which are boarded up. In fact, some are so excited about what they are seeing out of the one window, that they have total ignored the others to point that some actually say they don’t exist or if they do notice them, they quickly ignore them believing they cannot be as important as the one through which they are viewing the world. I challenge these folks to take a look at their conditioning and realize that there are a number of worlds out there other than the materialistic world of science and western Liberalism.

The first step on the road to faith is to ask yourself what is the real reason for you lack of faith[3]. This step many take some hard work but the true God only reveals himself to those that are earnestly seeking Him i.e. those that work at it.  Like many endeavors in life, things may not be equal; it may be harder for some because of their preconditioning to find God. Yet one thing I do know, if you find God too easily you probably have found an idol and not the true God.

[1] The new atheists have little or no knowledge of the concept of natural law and self-evident truth taught in philosophy andtheology. Please note my article “Atheism, Natural Law and Self-evident Truth”. I am not saying that atheist are immoral. I am saying that they don’t know the real reason of why they are moral.

[2] Nietzsche was an atheistic nihilist who preach the death of God. He went mad and died in an insane asylum. He believed that man was evolving into what he called the over man or Superman who through reason alone could live above the old moral codes of religion. His vision was somewhat tainted by two world wars and the moral declension of Western culture. The new atheists believe they are the fulfillment of Nietzsche’s prophecy of the over man. However, they have not reached this state by exceeding the morality of religion, but rather by subverting words and interpreting declension as progress.

[3] Note the article “The making of an Atheist”.

A Rant Against the New Atheist

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Science

A Rant Against the New Atheist

I have found that many new atheists (not the old type) are not true skeptics[1] and in many ways resemble the true believers they so noisily criticize. The majority seem to be ignorant of the things they criticize and often seem to be just repeating talking points from the Internet. If you refute their arguments, they either ignore your response completely or reciprocate with a whole lot of rhetoric,[2] which is an indicator that they really did not understand their own argument to begin with or that they have ignored your response. In this, they remind of me of many of the religious folks they aggressively attack.

One thing that really irks me is the young, white male, college type, who seems to run on a 100% octane of ego. He knows nothing, or at the very best, little, about religion, theology or science, other than the twisted and shallow information he may get through the net. Even so, he blogs on as though he was an expert on the great philosophical questions of life. Many of these young men are not old enough to be experts on anything. As I reflected on this atheist type, the more this nagging question kept coming to mind: Why would young healthy males spend so much time arguing for their beliefs, if those beliefs had not become a faith (religion)? The word religion is a symbol that stands for one’s ultimate concern, and I believe for many of the new atheists, their ideology of unbelief has become their religion without them even being aware of it.

Many of the new atheist types operate from the presupposition that the only true knowledge comes from science, and yet they know little about it. If they truly understood science, they would know that science is mute and neutral when it comes to the question of God[3]. Where is the scientific argument against the existence of God? The truth is, the atheists have no scientific argument or proof that there is no God. What they have are assumptions and assertions that they arrogate as evidence. The majority need some basic knowledge of epistemology. Then they might have an awareness that large amounts of their knowledge is based on presuppositions that cannot be proven. Of course, the same could be said for the theist. However, astute theists understand the source of their knowledge and therefore, understand that the root of their knowledge is faith. In this acknowledgment, they reflect self-awareness and a basic honesty that many atheists do not have about the foundation of their beliefs.

Here is the source of much of the problematic thinking of the new atheist; he cannot tell the difference between the facts and his opinion or interpretation of the facts. This is a problem that all true believers have, whether religious or nonreligious, and yes, most atheists are true believers and think as true believers do, i.e., one-dimensional and concrete. Atheists are the fundamentalists of the secular minded and therefore, are mirror images of the far right they criticize and hate.

Another thing that irks me is the undercurrent of intellectual snobbery that fills the majority of atheist blogs. Seldom do I read a blog or interact with new atheist types without them inferring someway that they are intellectually superior to believers. Therefore, they write as though the fundamentals and presuppositions of their materialistic worldview have been proven and are now a fact that all educated people believe. The truth is that only a small minority of people believe in materialism and even fewer live it out consistently, which is strange for an ideology that claims to reflect reality (note the facts below) 4 For example, I recently had one writer say he, “could not believe in God because nature was a closed system and was the whole show,” i.e., the only thing that existed. This is like saying there is no God because there is no God and there is no God because I believe there is no God. This is an argument from an unprovable assumption that nature is all there is or that it is the whole show. From a scientific perspective, a scientist can say that we only study nature. However, if they add, because that’s all that exists, they are no longer speaking as scientists but rather as philosophers. It is here that it becomes obvious that what most people consider science has a metaphysical basis that is used to interpret the facts. Sorry, there is no such thing as pure science.

The bottom line is this: I wish the new atheists would stop polluting science by bringing it into the mud puddle of their atheistic apologetics. Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God Who is outside nature. In fact, at this time science does not even have the knowledge or tools to prove or disprove the existence of God within nature. For all science knows, Zeus may be somewhere out there in the universe. At the very best, scientists can simply say that they have not found Him. Of course, the honest ones would admit that they do not know what they would be looking for if they were looking for him, it or she, which means if they found it they may not recognize it.

Still another thing that irritates me about the new atheists is their constant attacks on organized religion. They seem to be obtuse to the fact that like anything, religion can be good or bad depending on the men who are in it and controlling it. Unfortunately, the more power any human organization has the more prone it is to corruption; this is true for government, religion and even charitable organizations. This is also true for atheism. When government and atheism were mixed in communist Russia and China, it became more corrupt than the religions it was trying to replace. However, the new atheists continue to try to organize themselves, thinking they are going to be the angels of light who save the world from darkness. We have heard that rhetoric before, and it has always led to tyranny.

[1] The majority of the new atheists do not qualify as true skeptics because of their blind faith in science, reason, and human knowledge in general. A true skeptic doubts everything, even their doubts. I have found in my discussions with atheists that I am far more skeptical about things in general than they are.

[2] The rhetoric is usually in the form of rehearsing the tall tale of undirected evolution, which is based on suppositions and assertions only.

[3]  The US National Academy of Sciences has gone on record with the following statement: “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”  Taken from “Who Made God?:A Searching for a Theory of Everything” by Fay Weldon.