So Much for Free Thought

One of the foundational assertions of atheistic naturalism is that everything has a naturalistic cause, and to think outside of that framework would mean you are not a free thinker. Until, of course, you apply that assertion to their thought-life and beliefs, which would imply determinism. So much for free thought

The Difference Between Might-Makes-Right and the Right Being Mighty

“Your claim is without God might makes right, then what's the difference? God says follow me or die. Worship me or burn.”

(A response to a friend)

There is a big difference between might making right and the standard of right being mighty. The difference is this; the atheistic worldview has no ground to claim that the mighty are right or wrong other than a subjective opinion, and the fact that the Christian worldview’s standard for ethics is mighty in no way disqualifies it from being a standard for ethics. In other words, anytime an atheist argues that something is not the way it “ought” to be, they contradict their worldview, because it cannot provide a solid base for what ought to be. Whereas the Christian, no matter how mighty their standard is, is not contradicting their worldview. This type of question tends to be a red herring since it neither alleviates the atheist from their conundrum, nor does it prove that God is not the standard for ethics.

God Bless,

Doug

Humanism, Freedom, and Chaos - Francis Schaeffer

The humanists push for “freedom,” but having no Christian consensus to contain it, that “freedom” leads to chaos or to slavery under the state (or under an elite). Humanism, with its lack of any final base for values or law, always leads to chaos. It then naturally leads to some form of authoritarianism to control the chaos. Having produced the sickness, humanism gives more of the same kind of medicine for a cure. With its mistaken concept of final reality, it has no intrinsic reason for being interested in the individual, the human being. Its natural interest is the two collectives: the state and the society.

Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto (1981)

Bad Advice for Atheists

Through countless discussions surrounding atheism, it has become apparent that someone must be feeding bad advice to atheists. Since the following errors are made repeatedly, this partial list has been populated to warn atheists of this underground movement in order for them to avoid these pitfalls. If you are an atheist and hear any of the following advice, realize that if used, it will be harmful to your cause.

1. Assume that because you compare theism to believing in pink unicorns or fairy tales that you have made a good argument.

2. Become hostile and use degrading vulgarities while maintaining that Christianity is an immoral religion.

3. When you are having trouble answering an argument posed by a Christian theist, simply say, “well even if this were true, it doesn’t prove the existence of the ‘Christian’ God.”

4. Assume that simply because you explain a phenomena from a naturalistic perspective that it constitutes an argument which must be true.

5. When arguing against the Christian God, simply say that you only believe in “one less god” than most people, as if that does not require you to defend an atheistic understanding of cosmology, anthropology, ethics, philosophy of history, philosophy of politics, philosophy of science, and epistemology.

6. Make metaphysical statements that suggest that metaphysics are a useless waste of time.

7. Argue that we should only believe things proven by empirical evidence without proving it with empirical evidence.

8. Use logic like it is a universal, transcendent, unchanging reality when atheistic naturalism cannot account for universal, transcendent, unchanging realities.

9. Argue that there is no evidence to believe in the existence of God because all the evidence that is produced fails to pass the rules of evidence which have been constructed from the belief that God does not exist.

10. Argue that human beings are robots, puppets, and machines programmed by natural selection in a closed system of cause and effect, and then argue for free thought and moral agency.

11. Place your ultimate trust in human reason while believing that man’s mind evolved from lower animals such as monkeys and will continue to evolve until we become the monkeys from which the minds of the future will have evolved.

Doug Eaton

On Christian Counselors Operating from Non-Christian Worldviews

I have a high respect for Christian counselors, especially when they are offering truly Godly advice to those in their care. What concerns me is when they start giving advice that is based upon non-Christian worldviews, and unfortunately it happens much too often. Recently I received an email from New Man Magazine. In the email newsletter it had a link to an article on dealing with lustful thoughts. Here is what I read on how to deal with inappropriate sexual thoughts...

"Unfortunately, many men have conditioned themselves in adolescence with airbrushed, fantasy babes who only look like real people. If you are lusting and objectifying women throughout the day, then you are more likely to also struggle in this area in the bedroom. You need to recondition your brain.

You can actually redirect your brain's chemical pathways by placing a rubber band on your wrist and snapping it every time you objectify a woman. This way, you'll stop "rewarding" your brain for lusting, and it will begin to connect the lustful thoughts with the "ouch" pain rather than pleasure. In my many years of counseling men in this area, I've seen this exercise successfully shut down more than 80 percent of lustful thoughts or fantasies within one month! "

What is disturbing about this answer is that it seems to be largely based on behaviorism, which is a theory that is built off of a naturalistic worldview, and at its core is Anti-Christian. We are more than responses to stimuli, and the sinful nature will never be subdued by mere physiological conditioning. And even if it could, how do we know that the sexual thoughts mixed with pain would not begin to be linked, thus making the person slightly masochistic. Sin is much deeper than "brain chemical pathways," and to treat it as such is a denial of Biblical truth, even if that denial is an unconscious one. If you are struggling with inappropriate sexual thoughts and this is the bulk of the response you receive, prepare to be disappointed.

Now I am not making a blanket judgment upon everything this counselor has written, especially since this is the only thing I've read from him. Nor do I think that this author would take it as far as I have. And I'm not even saying that behavior can't be changed by linking it to something unpleasant. I am simply stating that speaking of it in entirely behovioristic terms is to operate from a non-Christian worldview. Our thoughts and desires are not merely physiological but spiritual.

We must be sure, in whichever discipline we are working, to think like Christians and be a bit more careful with the answers we give. Because trying to promote Godly truth by leaning on worldviews, even mildly, that were built upon the suppression of His truth is like trying to lose weight by over-eating.

You can read the entire article here

Doug

Those Biased Christians

"In one state college an atheist is always appointed to teach the religion course. The administrators claim that if a believer taught it, the course would be biased. When someone suggested, however, that a theist should be allowed to teach an "unbiased" course on atheism, the hoots and howls could be heard all the way to Moscow. The atheists would not extend to believers the same freedoms they claim for themselves."

Robert Morey, The New Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom

On Dawinism's Attempt to Preserve What it Destroys

"Similar self-contradictions are endemic in the literature on evolutionary psychology. A prime example is The Moral Animal, where Robert Wright spends hundreds of pages describing human beings as “robots,” “puppets,” “machines,” and “Swiss Watches” programmed by natural selection. He insists that “biochemistry governs all” and that free will is sheer illusion. He unmasks our noblest moral impulses as survival “stratagems of the genes,” as mere devices “switched on and off in keeping with self—interest.” But then, in a grand leap of faith, Wright insists that we are now free to choose our moral ideals, and he urges us to practice “brotherly love” and “boundless empathy.”

This persistent inner contradiction stems from the fact that evolutionary psychology is essentially a search for a secular morality. Darwinism cut the modern world loose from religious traditions and systems of meaning; the result is a culture adrift in a sea of relativism. Now Darwinism is itself being plumbed as a source of meaning, a cosmic guide for the problems of living. Yet the Darwinist view of human nature is so negative, so counter to traditional notions of humanity dignity, morality, and reason (not to mention common sense), that there is an almost irresistible impulse to take a leap of faith back to those traditional notions, no matter how unsupported by the theory. For who can live with a theory that tells us that “ethics is illusory,” and the ‘morality is merely and adaption put in place to further our reproductive ends,’ in the words of Michael Ruse and E.O Wilson? Who can live with a theory that tells us that if ‘natural selection is both sufficient and true, it is impossible for a genuinely disinterested or “altruistic behoviour pattern to evolve,” in the words of M.T. Ghiselin?"

Nancy Pearcey, “Singer in the Rain,” First Things vol. 106

Naturalism, Miracles, and Cause and Effect

The tendency of present-day Modernism, of course, is to merge everything into nature and to admit of no other causes. What the Modernist needs to prove, therefore, is not simply that natural causes operate uniformly, but that every physical effect must have a physical cause. That, however, he is unable to do, and that, we hold further, no one except an atheist has a right to assert. In our own natures we find that mind influences matter,--we will to walk or run, to play a piano or to lift a weight, and the effect of mind on matter is clearly seen. We do not understand how the result is accomplished, but we know that it is very real. And if God has so arranged it that our wills produce these physical effects, certainly there is no reason for denying that his omnipotent will may produce infinitely greater effects.

Loraine Boettner - Studies in Theology

Trading the Truth of God for a Lie

The heavens declare the glory of God. Psalm 19:1

When we look at the universe, we wonder at this magnificence. We stand in awe as the massive spheres move perfectly in their orbits. We stand in awe at the power of our sun and realize it pales in comparison to many other stars, let alone the vastness of it all.

There is without a doubt a glory declared by the universe that causes us all to marvel, but we must realize that the glory that is declared is not the glory of the universe; it is the glory of God. The experience we are having is true knowledge of His glory. Now we must not misunderstand this, the passage does not say that the universe is God. In fact, it is clearly distinct from Him in this passage, but the Glory that we are experiencing is His.

This is where fallen man steps in and attempts to suppress that truth. Many naturalists say it should be enough for us to marvel at this world and all its complexities without any appeal to God. And this is what we should expect since the natural progression from trading the truth of God for a lie is to begin to worship the creation instead of the creator (Rom. 1:26), and this they do by ascribing the glory that belongs to God to the creation itself.

-Doug-

If Knowledge, Then God

Here is a link to a great article on the transcendental argument for the existence of God.

The Futility of Non-Christian Thought

Here is one of the opening statements to whet your appetite...

"Epistemological autonomy is the view that the human mind is the final criterion of knowledge. According to this view, common to non-Christian thinkers from Thales to Derrida, the Christian God has to be either non-existent or irrelevant to epistemological concerns. Human categories alone are necessary to determine modality, truth, and value. From a Christian perspective, autonomy is a rebellious attempt to deify human categories or some aspect of creation by attempting to usurp the Creator's functions -- i.e. replacing the Creator with the creature (Rom. 1:25). Nevertheless, the result of this attempt to be epistemologically independent of the Christian God is epistemological futility."

God Bless,

Doug

Christian Theology: A New Team Blog

There is a new team blog I will be participating in. It is simply called Christian Theology. We also have access to a podcasting studio, so once we get things up and running we hope to make some audio and video resources available. It is still in its beginning stages, but to kick things off be sure to check out Chris Neiswonger's new post.

On Atheisms and why they are unthinkable.

God Bless,

Doug

An Honest Atheist

By “an honest atheist,” I do not mean that atheists are always being deceptive, but when it comes to the idea of worldviews, the materialist will many times claim that they have reached their conclusion through an unbiased look at the evidence, but this is clearly not the case. All of our interpretation of evidence will be formed by our presuppositions. This is why it was refreshing to read evolutionist, Richard Lewontin’s comment regarding materialism and science. He said…

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

Richard Lewontin “Billions and billions of demons,” The New York Review (Jan. 9, 1997).

Presuppositions must be addressed when doing apologetics. If you are looking for a good book in how this is done, I recommend “Pushing the Antithesis; The Apologetic Methodology of Greg L. Bahnsen.” I am currently reading through it and will hopefully be offering a few quotes dealing with this topic.

God Bless,

Doug

On Miracles and David Hume (part 2)

Again, David Hume’s argument against miracles can be broken down into two parts. Part 1 being the ‘in principle" or philosophical argument and part 2 being the "in fact" or historical and evidential arguments. The focus of this post is on part two of Hume’s argument. The basis of his argument is that if "in fact" a miracle is claimed to have taken place in the past and we wanted to actually weight the evidence and not use probability (see part 1) then we still should not believe the claims of the witnesses for a few different reasons. 1) We cannot trust the reliability of the witness because people who report these miracles tend to be uneducated, uncivilized, and even barbaric. 2) It is the nature of humans to gossip and exaggerate. 3) There are conflicting religions that claim miracles, so they in turn cancel each other out.

As stated in part one, Hume tries to evaluate the credibility of a miracle, not by weighing the actual evidence, but by probability or the number of testimonies. Francis Beckwith gives a good analogy of this in his article History and Miracles. He gives the example of a woman being charged with murder, and there are five upstanding citizens who were eyewitnesses. Now the defense attorney who is a proponent of Hume’s logic, goes out and gets 875 people to testify that, not only did they not see the murder, but they can’t even imagine this woman doing something like this because in the past they have seen that she is an upstanding person herself. The defense attorney then asks the jury to make their decision based on the fact that 875 testimonies say they have never seen her murder anyone (but did not see the event in question) verses five who say they saw here do it. It is clear that just because 875 people had never seen her murder anyone nor even think that she would do something like that, does not mean she didn’t do it. It is at this point that Hume brings his "in fact" argument into play. He proceeds to say that the witnesses are not trustworthy because they are uneducated, uncivilized, and even barbaric. On top of that, people have the tendency to gossip and exaggerate so they probably made up the story without any real evidence because it is what they wanted to believe.

What Hume does, is say that whenever there is miraculous claim there is always plenty of reason to question the witnesses education, reputation, and integrity. The problem is he never sets any kind of standard for what and educated man who lives in a civilized society looks like. Colin Brown points out that maybe educated and upright men, are men who do not believe in miracles and follow suit with Hume. Anyone outside this description is obviously uneducated and uncivilized.

Hume’s lack of listing qualifications of what a civilized educated person is, leaves the door wide open to say every time a person claims to be a witness to a miracle, this person must be uneducated. Clearly this statement by Hume does not do anything to prove that all witnesses to miracles have been both uneducated and uncivilized, but is merely a statement of his personal prejudices.

The next statement that Hume makes is that it is so pleasurable to tell a piece of news and be one of the first ones to spread it, leads people to gossip or exaggerate the claim without any evidence. Hume also adds that this is especially true in religious cases because people want to support their case. A wise man, in Hume’s mind, should never believe any of these claims because of this principle.

Francis Beckwith makes a point that when it comes to believing in the historicity of a miraculous event; it does take more evidence to believe it than it would a non-miraculous event. He gives the illustration of receiving a report that your friend’s father, who had passed away, came back to life and went to lunch with your friend. You would obviously need more evidence to believe that report then you would need to believe your friend went to lunch with his father who never passed away and lives in the same house that he does. You would need more evidence, but the fact, that as a general rule, many people have the propensity to exaggerate does not mean that your friend’s report is not true.

If we cannot believe anything out of the ordinary because people tend to exaggerate in order to strengthen the case for their belief system, then it seems Hume fails his own test. He states that no miracles have ever occurred and that all witnesses to miracles are not credible. By his own rule I should not believe until I have further evidence, because he could be exaggerating just to support his own belief in naturalism. After all, it is a pretty miraculous claim to say that you know throughout history that every witness to a miracle was uneducated and uncivilized.

Hume also forgets about witnesses to miracles that do not want to believe what they see because it represents everything they are against. Saul of Tarsus is a good example of this. He was on his way to persecute Christian when Jesus Christ, who had been crucified and resurrected, appears to him. It would have not been in Paul’s best interest to report this miracle. Also, he had absolutely no reason to exaggerate this event because it could only do damage to his cause.

The final section of Hume’s "in fact" argument is that if two competing religions both claim that they have miracles to support their religion, then they must cancel out each other. For example if Christians claim that their God became a man, died, and was resurrected, and the Muslim’s claim the same thing, then these miracles must cancel out each other. Ron Nash states that this is probably Hume’s strongest point in the "in fact" argument. Nash then proceeds to state, that when it comes to the core miracles of the faith like the resurrection, there are no other religions that claim and event like this so they do not cancel out each other. There may be other types of miracles like healing that seem to cancel out each other, but this does not mean that at least one or maybe even both of them actually took place. Nash also points out that God’s goodness is not restricted only to believers and that there is not reason why God could not reveal His power and glory to an unbeliever, even if this person belonged to another religion.

In conclusion Hume’s "in fact" arguments do nothing to prove that miracles have not taken place. The only thing it really does is warn us to be careful when looking at the claims of a miracle, but this is something most people already knew.

-Doug Eaton-

On Miracles and David Hume (part 1)

David Hume in his article “Of Miracles” has made what appears to be a strong case against miracles. His article is continually read on college campuses and is still held as one of the strongest arguments against miracles. Almost all the arguments against miracles that were to follow are merely restated versions of Hume’s arguments. In fact, David Hume touted his own argument as the definitive argument that will be used by all wise and learned men as long as the world endures. This argument can be broken down into two parts, the “in principle” argument and the “in fact” argument.

Part I, the “in principle” argument, is the argument that is philosophical in nature. It deals with the repeatability of and event and the laws of nature. The argument can be broken down as follows.

1). A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.
2). Firm and unalterable experience has established these laws.
3). A wise man proportions his beliefs to the evidence.
4). Therefore, the proof against a miracle is as complete as any argument from experience can be.

Part II, the “in fact” argument deals with the historical and evidential nature of a miraculous claim. Hume does this through 1) questioning the reliability of any witness of a miracle by looking at his lack of education and/or his uncivilized environment, 2) appealing to the nature of humans to gossip and/or exaggerate, and 3) having claims of miracles from competing religion cancel out each other.

The “in fact” argument will be explained in greater detail and critiqued in a second post on this topic. The main focus of this post will be to critique the “in principle” argument set for by Hume.

When looking at the four part “in principle” argument as cited earlier. Norman Geisler sites two possible interpretations, the hard and the soft. The hard interpretation could be broken down as follows. 1) Miracles by definition are violations of natural law. 2) Natural laws are unalterably uniform. 3) Therefore, miracles cannot occur.

Looking at it in this way Hume simply begs the question. The question to which we are seeking an answer is can a violation in a law of nature occur? Hume says no because they cannot be violated. Hence he is begging the question. It is doubtful that this is the argument that Hume was trying to make so the softer view is probably more realistic. The softer view can be broken down as follows. 1) Miracles are rare. 2) Natural laws are regular occurrences. 3) There is always more evidence for the regular than the rare. 4) A wise person will always go with the greater evidence. 5) Therefore a wise person would never believe in a miracle.

When looking at Hume’s argument in this light, miracles are not ruled as impossible, instead, they simply cannot be believed in even if they do occur. This argument is based on what is know as the “repeatability principle” which says that evidence for something that occurs repeatedly will always outweigh the evidence for those events that do not repeat regularly. To refute this argument, I will summarize four refutations given by Norman Geisler.

1) The assumption of uniform experience- Hume uses uniform experience against miracles claiming that natural laws have not been broken in the past, but he would need to have a form of omniscience in order to understand all the laws of nature and know that they have not been broken. Since he does not have this knowledge, he cannot say they’ve never been broken. Maybe he was only speaking of the uniform knowledge of a person who has never seen a miracle, but this rules out the experience of someone who has seen a miracle. Either way Hume gives no reason why we should believe the experience of uniformity over those who claim to have experienced a miracle.

2) Adding evidence verses weighing evidence- Really what Hume is doing here is stating that people should base their belief on probability rather than evidence. For instance, he says that it is more probable for a man who died, to stay dead, than it is for him to be resurrected, so we should believe the higher probability even if a resurrection did take place. But if we use this kind of logic we could never believe a rare event if it was within the laws of nature. For example, suppose we have a shopping center with a staircase, and it is said to be the safest staircase ever made. Thousands of people walk up and down it everyday, and no one has ever fallen down it. If we extend Hume’s reasoning to this scenario, and one day we heard the testimony of many eyewitnesses say someone fell down the staircase, we would not be wise in believing it because more people have walked up and down the staircase without falling then those who have fallen. We should not believe the story of someone falling, because it goes against the probability of regardless of the evidence.

3) Evidence for the past cannot determine the present- Hume is telling us that a wise person will believe that miracles will never happen. If there is someone who is trying to show evidence for an alleged miracle, the wise person should come with the presupposition that the claim is false, based on the evidence of the past which is infallible. This type of reasoning is fallacious because even in science things that are repeatable could alter in the future. We are not guaranteed that the sun will rise tomorrow simply because it always has. Sure the probabilities are high that it will, but it is not a guarantee, and if we were to notice a 48 hour period without seeing the sun rise. We would not be unwise to think that something had altered the normal rising of the sun, simply because every other day of our lives it rose. There are also anomalies in nature, which have no supernatural connotation, so to state that a person should never believe and exception to a repeated event hurts Hume’s case.

4) Confusing the basis of knowledge and the object of knowledge- Hume also confuses the basis of knowledge with the object of knowledge when he says that the evidence for what is repeatable is always greater than the evidence of what is rare. For example, we will use a great piece of art to show this type of confusion. We realize that a piece of art is great because we have seen many great pieces of art by many great artists. This is the basis of knowledge. We also know that the production of great art is a repeatable event, but this is not the object of knowledge. The object of knowledge is a single piece of work (e.g. the Mona Lisa). This single piece of work will never be repeated, it is a one-time event. When we have evidence of something being miraculous, we must not confuse the basis of knowledge with the object of knowledge. The basis of knowledge for a miraculous event is when we see something take place outside the laws of nature, and we realize that some higher or more intelligent force cause it. This is the repeatable, but the object of knowledge is the single miracle, which will never be repeated.

After careful review of Hume’s “in principle” argument, we see that he did not prove that miracles cannot take place, but he actually helps us define what a miracle is.

-Doug Eaton-

On Defending the Resurrection of Jesus

When refuting arguments against the resurrection, it is important to know the core facts that most scholars believe about the events surrounding Jesus’ death. There are usually at least four core facts that are held by Christian and non-Christian scholars.

1. Jesus was crucified and died
2. Jesus’ tomb was found empty
3. The Apostles believed they had experiences with the risen Christ.
4. Christ’s disciples were radically transformed after these experiences.


1) Jesus was crucified and died- Virtually every scholar holds to this proposition. They believe that Jesus was actually crucified and that He did in fact die. Rarely is this fact contested. The idea of the actual crucifixion being a conspiracy is not one generally held. He was nailed to the cross and died.

2) Jesus tomb was found empty- The first point that this core fact insinuates is that Jesus was actually buried. William Lane Craig, in his article The Empty Tomb of Jesus, goes into great detail and gives us five points why scholars believe this. 1) There are many early sources that attest to the burial of Jesus. 2) Even skeptical scholars agree that it is unlikely that Joseph of Arimathea was a Christian invention due to the fact that he was a Jewish Sanhedrist. Christian’s were at odds with the Sanhedrin, so why would they create a story of a Sanhedrist doing what was right in burying Jesus. 3) The story of the burial is simple and is not trying to conjure theological reflection and it is non-apologetic. 4) It is also believed because this type of burial was the custom in dealing with the death of a Holy man. 5) Finally, this is the only burial tradition that existed, which means it would have been completely out of character to do something different. The belief in the burial is important because it is needed to believe in an empty tomb. He had to be buried and they had to know which tomb he was buried in to find it empty. Why it was found empty is where scholars differ.

3) The apostles believed they had experiences with the risen Jesus- Again most scholars will agree that the apostles has some type of experience which they believed was the risen Jesus, but they do not agree on what the actual experience was. Some say it was a hallucination; some say it was the ghost of Jesus, and others believe it was the physical resurrected body of Jesus. These issues will be covered in the arguments against the naturalistic theories about Jesus’ death and resurrection.

4) Jesus’ disciples were radically transformed after these experiences- We can look at the example of Peter who denied Jesus three times in fear of his life during the events that lead up to the crucifixion. After these experiences with the risen Christ, he went on to be the leading spokesperson for the resurrection of Jesus. He was later crucified and would not back down even if it meant death. In fact, all of Jesus’ disciples were killed for their belief, except for John who was dipped in boiling oil and survived.

Virtually every scholar holds the four core facts listed above. In light of these four facts there have been three naturalistic arguments, which try to explain that Jesus did not rise from the dead. They are 1) the swoon theory 2) the hallucination theory, and 3) the stolen body or conspiracy theory.

1) Arguments against the swoon theory- The swoon theory is the argument that Jesus never really died on the cross, he merely went into a swoon, a kind of coma or unconsciousness, and later he was revived by the cool of the tomb. The first thing we notice is that this theory violates core fact #1 that Jesus was crucified and died. It also violates core fact #4, Jesus disciples were radically changed after the experiences of seeing Jesus. This raises the question, would the disciples have been radically transformed at the sight of a half dead Jesus? The swoon theory is not a highly regarded argument because of these violations, but in order to not commit the bandwagon fallacy, let us look at a few other reasons why this is not possible. A) Kreeft and Tacelli in the book Handbook of Christian Apologetics, point out that Jesus’ body was totally encased in a winding sheet (we know this from the burial tradition mentioned earlier). How could a half dead man escape a virtual straight jacket? B) We know that a swooning corpse could not have overpowered the Roman guards. C) Who moved the stone? D) Kreeft and Tacelli also make a great point that he swoon theory actually turns into the conspiracy theory, because the disciples attest to a resurrected Jesus who did not swoon. The conspiracy theory will be addressed later. E) Finally, a swooning Jesus would have had to eventually die, so where is His body?

2) Arguments against the hallucination theory- the hallucination theory is the theory that the disciples did not really see a resurrected Jesus, but merely hallucinated. This would explain why the disciples were radically transformed, because they actually thought they saw a resurrected Jesus, but this violates core fact #2, Jesus’ tomb was found empty. If the disciples were hallucinating whey didn’t the Romans take them to the tomb and show them the body when the disciples began preaching. This would have stopped them in their tracks. Kreeft and Tacelli bring up some other arguments also. A) There were too many witnesses. At one point Jesus appeared to 500 people at on time. Did they all have the same hallucination? B) One of the criteria that doctors say is needed hallucinations of this type is that the people expect to see what they see. The disciples didn’t expect to see Jesus. In fact, when they did see him they still didn’t believe, which lead to Thomas touching His wounds, and hallucinations do not have material properties. C) Jesus ate. Hallucinations do not eat. At one point the disciples sat down and ate with Jesus. If this was a hallucination, then either a hallucination (Jesus) ate actual food, or the disciples ate hallucinated food. It is clear from all the details of the appearances of Jesus that they could not have been hallucinations.

3) Arguments against the stolen body or conspiracy theory- This is the idea that the disciples stole the body in order to make people believe Jesus had actually resurrected, but this violates core fact #4 the disciples were radically transformed. How could a group of men go from being men who feared for their lives to men who would die for their beliefs if they knew that their beliefs were a lie? Another argument is that this goes against the character of the disciples. These were honest upright men who would have had to violate their core beliefs to pull this off.

Some might say that it was not the disciples who took the body but the Romans, but we have already shown earlier that if it were the Romans, all they would have to do in order to put a stop to the disciples preaching would be to produce the body. This also violates core fact #3 that the disciples believed they saw a resurrected Jesus. If the Romans had taken the body then they disciples would have had hallucinations, and we have already shown that this does not work.

Up to this point there has not been a plausible naturalistic explanation for the resurrection of Jesus, which leaves us with the alternative that he did raise physically from the dead.

-Doug Eaton-

The God of the Gaps is not the God of the Christian

Many naturalistic philosophers argue that god is less and less needed to explain natural phenomena because science continues to explain more and more of it without him. Therefore, God is becoming less and less needed, and pointing to gaps in the scientific data to bolster belief in God is slowly being eradicated.

The problem with the “god of the gaps’ argument is that it is a question begging argument since it assumes from the outset that God is merely an explanation to unknown things and not an actual being. As the argument goes, since we now understand so much more than we did in previous generations, we have less need to create a god to answer our questions, and we can now live without this myth called god. This may be a good way for the naturalist to side step the issue of whether God really exists or not, but pulling premises from your conclusion in order to validate your conclusion never makes for a good argument.

God is not simply an explanation to holes in our knowledge. God is the one who created this world of order that we can actually explore scientifically. The truth is that it is not only the gaps in some of our knowledge that point to God, but also the very things we do understand and continue to figure out through scientific inquiry that attest to him. This is seen in scripture.

Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handywork”.

Notice that is does not say, the gaps in our understanding declare the glory of God, but instead, it is the heavens and the firmament that we do see and have some understanding of that declare His glory. For example, the fact that we know more of how a flower grows today than we did in years past, makes us wonder and glory in God even more, not less. If the god of the gaps theory were true, we would actually glory less the more we understand, but who can truly say that this amazing creation is less awe inspiring the more we figure out its causal relationships?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it this way, “How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved.”

Finally, we need not let the naturalist poison the well of appealing to what is ultimately unexplainable by the naturalistic worldview. There are questions that cannot be answered by the naturalist that do in fact point to the existence of God. Questions like, why is there something instead of nothing? Many times the use of the “god of the gaps” argument is simply an attempt to silence the theist from appealing to many of the questions that the naturalist cannot answer. For example, since we have been discussing the fact that we can actually understand this world and its causal relationships, and that its order can leave us awe inspired, let us end with this classic example of argumentation from Stephen Charnock as he argues from the existence of order, to the existence of God.

“From all this it follows, if there be an order, and harmony, there must be an Orderer: one that 'made the earth by his power, established the world by his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by his discretion.' (Jer. 10:12). Order being the effect, cannot be the cause of itself: order is the disposition of things to and end, and is not intelligent, but implies an intelligent Orderer; and, therefore, it is as certain that there is a God, as it is certain there is order in the world.”

-Doug Eaton-

Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson Debate

Here is a link to an outstanding example of apologetics. It is a six part interchange between a theologian, Douglas Wilson, and an atheist, Christopher Hitchens.

Is Christianity Good For the World?

I need to thank the Pyromaniacs for bringing this to my attention.

God Bless,

Doug

The Metaphysics of Science - Carl F. H. Henry

Scientific study is not nearly as disengaged from metaphysical commitments as it is often represented to be. The fact of causality, for example, was for a long time as dogmatically affirmed in the study of physics, and with far less justification, as is the reality of God by theologians. More recently, due to the evident limitations of empirical method, many physicists concede that causality is a non-experimental idea, and they speak more guardedly of observed sequences of events. Yet contemporary science is nonetheless replete with metaphysical postulations. Who has ever seen an atom or an electron? It will be replied, of course, that vast differences separate the celestial beings with which the ancient religions filled the invisible world and natural selection, gravitational fields, electrons and other postulates of modern science. For one thing science is a method of knowing that accepts nothing as final (let it be said with finality!) and stands always ready to revise its finding (the word findings may itself be less than accurate). But if we remember that mathematical formulas reflect statistical averaging, the question arises whether the reported mathematical connection have in all or in some cases ever been observed and whether nature per se corresponds to them. Surely it will be pointed out that the empirical scientist does not simply assume metaphysical realities (a biblical theologian can only welcome reassurance at this point), but instead postulates them for purposes of explanation and then seeks to disprove his hypothesis, whether one speaks of a gravitational field or of electrons. If this is intended to imply that metaphysical affirmations become rationally significant only when both evidence and criteria of verification of disproof are introduced, the emphasis is no less welcome in theology than in empirical science. But if it implies that the empirical scientist additionally has a special way of testing the truth of metaphysical assertions, it is wholly of being correlated with sense verification is giving rise to new doubts. Operational science does not assume but denies the reality of an electromagnetic field. The scientist has on the basis of empirical methodology no legitimate metaphysics at all. Electrons in distinction from centaurs permit deductions which seem at present to sustain rather than to refute them, but whether natural selection and electrons are less imaginative than centaurs may well depend upon which generation of scientists one asks.

Carl F. H. Henry; God, Revelation and Authority, Vol. 1 p. 172

The New Atheism's Leap of Faith

There is on the rise something called the new atheism. It has come on the scene thanks to books like Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation and of course our friends the rational responders. Though there really is nothing new in the atheistic belief system itself, since most of them are naturalists, nor in the arguments they are presenting, what seems to be new is that these preachers of atheism have become much more dogmatic in their stance. Some of them are even preaching doom and gloom if religion or belief in God is not eradicated. Most of them though center in on one thing, and that is that they simply want to know the truth, instead of buying into some myth, and this is what everyone ought to be doing.

This idea that everyone ought to be doing this raises a problem though. Putting aside the question for a moment of whether or not there is a God; let us look at this claim of “oughtness” from within their naturalistic worldview. As Ravi Zacharias has so aptly pointed out, “wherever one finds “oughtness,” it is always linked together with a believed purpose in life. Purpose and oughtness are inextricably bound.”

What he is getting at is that the only way we can ever say that something is not as it ought to be is if we know what its purpose and function is. For example, the only way anyone can say that a watch is not working correctly, is if they know how it is supposed to work in the first place, or in other words how it was designed to work. If the watch has no purpose or proper function assigned to it, than there is no way to say that it is functioning incorrectly.

But this is exactly the problem that the naturalist runs into. Since naturalism cannot account for mankind’s purpose or proper function, it has no way of saying how it ought to be. Within the naturalistic worldview, mankind was not designed for any specific purpose; we are the product of a “blind watchmaker” which has no purpose in what it is doing. This lack of purpose makes any real statement of what ought to be, absolutely groundless.

These new atheist with their strong focus on reason and being logical seem to be making blind leap of faith from a purposeless creation, to what they think ought to be. It seems like the responders are not being as rational as they had hoped.

-Doug Eaton-

Below is the link to the VLOG version of this post.

The New Atheism's Leap of Faith

Atheistic Naturalism's False Hope

Many Atheists who hold to Naturalism argue that religion, especially Christianity, is the curse of mankind, since it causes men to be held in bondage to myth and oppressive meta-narrative. What mankind needs is to see that this human invention called god is not real, then and only then can they be free to think in light of the way things really are. This newly found “free” thought will enable men to live true lives of purpose and meaning, by doing what really matters, not lives of false purpose built upon myth.

The problem is that this newfound freedom and hope is refuted by their own philosophical belief. The reason for this is that the freedom they promise is snuffed out by the materialistic determinism that their worldview logically demands. If naturalism is true, then we are captive within this closed system of cause and effect, and every thought, action, belief, and hope is merely determined by materialistic cause and effect. This is because our choices and freedoms are merely the phenomena produced by the functions of our brain. And our brains are determined by nothing more than chemical reactions and other physical causes.

The result of this is that the naturalist tears down one thing they think is a myth and false hope, namely God, and holds up another false hope, namely free minds. This then is portrayed as progress toward freedom, when in fact it enslaves us to a new myth; the religion of meaning and hope found in thought without God.

And as German sociologist Max Weber argues, “Man embraces religion at the point of meaning.” And since meaning and purpose cannot be accounted for by the naturalistic worldview, so then any appeal to it tends to digress back to the very thing they are arguing against, and becomes their new god.

Aldous Huxley said it best when speaking about purpose and meaning from within the naturalistic worldview. He said, “Science has “explained” nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes, and the profounder the surrounding darkness.”

Though this in no way proves the existence of God it shows one of the many self-defeating claims of the naturalist, and exposes a major leap of faith taken by many who hold to this worldview. The leap from a naturalistic world to a world with meaning and purpose: a leap that cannot be made through reason.

-Doug Eaton-