CrossExamined Blog

As CrossExamined.org conducts seminars and debates on college campuses, we owe much to Dr. William Lane Craig.  Dr. Craig is one of Christianity’s best intellectual defenders.  He is the author of several Christian apologetics books and scholarly articles, and has debated topics such as the existence of God, the problem of evil, the reliability of the Bible, and several other questions. 

Dr. Craig is now posting answers to difficult questions on his web site. You can find them here (at this writing, there are 63 such questions).  You owe it to yourself to learn Christian apologetics from this fine scholar and gentleman.

The following is from Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig’s recent article “God is not Dead Yet” in Christianity Today.   I encourage you to read the entire article.  I include this section on the moral argument because of our recent discussion here about how the existence of objective morality requires God– a claim that atheists have yet to refute. 

The moral argument. A number of ethicists, such as Robert Adams, William Alston, Mark Linville, Paul Copan, John Hare, Stephen Evans, and others have defended “divine command” theories of ethics, which support various moral arguments for God’s existence.

One such argument:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

By objective values and duties, one means values and duties that are valid and binding independent of human opinion. A good many atheists and theists alike concur with premise (1). For given a naturalistic worldview, human beings are just animals, and activity that we count as murder, torture, and rape is natural and morally neutral in the animal kingdom. Moreover, if there is no one to command or prohibit certain actions, how can we have moral obligations or prohibitions?

Premise (2) might seem more disputable, but it will probably come as a surprise to most laypeople to learn that (2) is widely accepted among philosophers. For any argument against objective morals will tend to be based on premises that are less evident than the reality of moral values themselves, as apprehended in our moral experience. Most philosophers therefore do recognize objective moral distinctions.

Nontheists will typically counter the moral argument with a dilemma: Is something good because God wills it, or does God will something because it is good? The first alternative makes good and evil arbitrary, whereas the second makes the good independent of God. Fortunately, the dilemma is a false one. Theists have traditionally taken a third alternative: God wills something because he is good. That is to say, what Plato called “the Good” is the moral nature of God himself. God is by nature loving, kind, impartial, and so on. He is the paradigm of goodness. Therefore, the good is not independent of God.

Moreover, God’s commandments are a necessary expression of his nature. His commands to us are therefore not arbitrary but are necessary reflections of his character. This gives us an adequate foundation for the affirmation of objective moral values and duties.

Some atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, insist that morality is simply the product of evolution.  Common moral sensibilities (Don’t murder, rape, steal, etc.) help ensure our evolutionary survival.  There are number of problems with this view:

1. Rape may enhance the survival of the species, but does that make rape good?  Should we rape? 

2. Killing the weak and handicapped may help improve the species and its survival (Hitler’s plan).  Does that mean the Holocaust was a good thing?

3. Evolution provides no stable foundation for morality.  If evolution is the source of morality, then what’s to stop morals from evolving (changing) to the point that one day rape, theft and murder are considered moral? 

4. Dawkins and Hitchens confuse epistemology with ontology (how we know something exists with that and what exists).  So even if natural selection or some other chemical process is responsible for us knowing right from wrong, that would not explain why something is right or wrong.  How does a chemical process (natural selection) yield an immaterial moral law?  And why does anyone have a moral obligation to obey a chemical process?  You only have a moral obligation to obey an ultimate personal being (God) who has the authority to put moral obligations on you.  You don’t have a moral obligation to chemistry.

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Atheists Have No Basis for Morality), several atheists at a recent I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist event at UNC Wilmington struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview.  They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral.  One atheist said “not harming people” is the standard.  But why is harming people wrong if there is no God?  And what if harming people enhances your survival and that of most others?

Another said, “happiness” is the basis for morality.  After I asked him, “Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?,”  he said, “I need to think about this more,” and then sat down.  This says nothing about the intelligence of these people– there just is no good answer to the question.   Without God there is no basis for objective morals.  It’s just Mother Teresa’s opinion against Hitler’s. 

See also Neil’s post: Does our Morality come from our DNA?

Both political parties have their problems, but I thought this was brilliant. http://www.townhall.com/funnies/cartoonist/MikeShelton/2007/09/1

This column is a column I wrote for www.TownHall.com today. 

At least one lesbian is not happy with me for the case I made last week against same-sex marriage on our TV program.  She wrote me this ALL CAPS e-mail with “VERY JUDGEMENTAL” in the subject line:          

ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME AND I AM A CHRISTIAN LESBIAN AND HAVE BEEN FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS. STOP JUDGING AND MOVE ON!!! I AM SO TIRED OF ALL YOU UPTIGHT, DO RIGHT, SINNERS JUDGING PEOPLE. 

I wrote her back asking her why she was judging me for judging. It seemed like a fair question.  After all, if I am not to “judge” her, why is it OK for her to judge me?  And if she’s a Christian, doesn’t she know that God has already judged homosexual behavior as immoral?  I mean, I didn’t make the judgment that homosexual behavior was wrong.  God is the standard of morality, not me.

But the main point is that my lesbian pen pal did what most liberals do when they are faced with arguments they don’t like—they misuse Jesus’ apparent command not to “judge” in order to shut you up.  So if you oppose their behavior or their attempt to get the nation to endorse their immorality (i.e. same-sex marriage), you’re sure to hear “Thou shalt not judge!”  

As with most slogans shouted by the left, the truth is exactly opposite to what they claim. Liberals take the judgment statements of Jesus out of context because they want to avoid any moral condemnation for their own actions, and they don’t want you to notice that they are making judgments too. Let’s take a look at what Jesus actually said:   

Do not judge lest you be judged. ? For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Mt. 7:1-5) 

Notice Jesus isn’t telling us not to judge—Jesus is telling us how to judge.  He actually commands us to take the speck out of our brother’s eye—that involves making a judgment. But he also commands us to stop committing the bigger sins ourselves so we can better help our brother. In other words, when you judge, do so rightly not hypocritically.

Jesus expressed this same idea when he said “stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment” (John 7:24). Jesus would never tell us to stop judging– that would be suicide! Just think about how impossible life would be if you didn’t make judgments.  You make hundreds, if not thousands, of judgments every day between good and evil, right and wrong, dangerous choices from safe ones.  You’d be dead already if you didn’t make judgments.  

What does this have to do with politics?  Every law is a judgment about what’s best for society.  Homosexual activists are making a judgment that same-sex marriage would be the best law for society. It’s a wrong judgment as I’ve argued in this column before (Gay Marriage:  Even Liberals Know it’s Bad), but it’s a judgment nonetheless.  So in addition to being self-defeating, the belief that we “ought not judge” is completely impractical and even dangerous.  Making judgments is unavoidable both personally and politically.  If you want to meet a sudden and premature demise, just stop making judgments. 

Unfortunately, liberals are propelling our society toward a premature demise by making the disastrous judgment that we ought not make judgments about their behavior. They, of course, can judge our behavior as immoral when we oppose same-sex marriage or the killing of the unborn. But we are not to judge their behavior.  This is exactly the kind of hypocrisy that Jesus warned against. The passage they quote actually convicts them!

For folks so concerned about the “separation of church and state,” it’s amazing how fast liberals quote the Bible when they think it helps their case. Don’t let them get away with that.  If they believe the Bible when they think it condemns judging (which it doesn’t), then ask them why they don’t believe the Bible when it certainly condemns homosexuality.  If they want to use the Bible as their standard, then they will be judged by that same standard.

The earliest church found to date has been found in Jordan.  Click here.

Are Atheists really just as Moral as Christians?

One of the complaints that I often hear is that “Atheists are just as moral as Christians are”. The response is usually made when I present the Moral Argument. Well I always try to clarify that I never said or meant that atheists ARE immoral, just that they have no rational basis for their morality. And this is partly because we can always argue that expedience is always better, e.g. killing all the weak is actually better for society; stealing when no one will ever find out, will help preserve your genes; lying when you can’t get caught will help you make headway in society (and if YOU are better FOR society than all those other fools, then it will be good for society if YOU get ahead) etc.

On the contrary, Christians say character is based on “What you do when you know that you will never be found out,” regardless of the expediency.

But now suddenly there’s a glitch. Researchers in 4 independent and separate studies have found that conservatives are indeed much more “honest” and “moral” than “progressives.”

In the San Francisco Examiner Commentary - Peter Schweizer claims that “Conservatives are more honest than liberals”. -

He actually phrases it as a question, but the conclusion is that conservatives ARE more honest. (click on the link).

Now as you read it you’ll realize that he’s not talking about atheists or Christians specifically, but if you are out there and are an atheist and not a liberal/progressive, I want to talk to you. I’d be very interested in picking your brain. I don’t run into too many of those (I did once, i.e. a conservative atheist, but he became a Christian within 6 months of me meeting with him on a regular basis and giving him “The Case for Christ”).

As I see it, atheists are a subset of the superset of secular progressives. And while Christians are indeed a subset of conservatives, we all know that they are a majority of them in the United States where these surveys were taken. (Correct me if I am wrong).

Now don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t mean that I will stop trusting my atheist friends. I know them too well. I just had lunch with one of them last week and he’s a guy I’d trust with my life and fortune. I say this lest you think I actually think all atheists are not moral.

But point 1 is that:

It does seem to indicate that there may now be some statistical validity to the fact that if there really is no rational basis for your morality, one tends to be less moral. What say you?

Is this a valid conclusion?

This also lends itself to the second point/question:

1. If it is true that morality is “good,” for society (and I surmise this from even the atheists’ vehement claim that they are also moral – so presumably morality is a plus for society even in their eyes)
2. And it is true that conservatives and Christians are much much more moral than atheists and liberals

Does this not mean that the more GENUINE (and I emphasize that on purpose), the more genuine conservatives and Christians we have, the better for ALL of society?

In which case, shouldn’t even atheists encourage the Christians to continue what they are doing (including evangelizing) so they improve society for all of us?

Just wondering. Naturally next week a new study could come out that refutes these 4 studies, but since that hasn’t happened and we are scientists and philosophers that work with the facts that we have at the moment (and not hope for a future “revelation”), if these studies are true what does this mean? I could be wrong but it does seem to imply something along the lines of the two conclusions I’ve argued for.

Neil Mammen

In a lame attempt to justify same-sex marriage, Google News linked to this story from an LA Times blog.   According to the story, some female albatrosses may be coupling and caring for offspring together after the dead-beat daddy albatross has left.   This animals-do-it argument is seriously put forth by homosexual activists. Yes, some animals engage in homosexual behavior and perhaps even parenting on occasion.  But some animals eat their young too.  Should we do that as well? 

When homosexual activists extol animals as their moral examples, they are looking down rather than up.  The argument is an albatross around their necks.

Hank Hanegraaff, the BibleAnswerman, will join us at CIA on Wednesday night, August 13 for a special Q&A session.  CIA will be held in Charlotte, NC from August 13-15.  The application deadline is June 24.  Click here for details.  Don’t miss this opportunity!

If current Big Bang cosmology is correct (and the evidence is very good that it is) then the entire space-time universe exploded into being out of nothing (see previous posts God and the Astronomers and Who Made God? ).   Therefore, the Cause of the universe would seem to have these attributes:   

·         spaceless because it created space

 ·         timeless because it created time

·         immaterial because it created matter

·         powerful because it created out of nothing

·         intelligent because the creation event and the universe was precisely designed

 ·         personal because it made a choice to convert a state of nothing into something (impersonal forces don’t make choices).

These are the same attributes of the God of the Bible (which is one reason I believe in a the God of the Bible and not a god of mythology like Zeus). 

When I’ve posed this conclusion to atheists, many of them responded by claiming that I was speculating—that we really don’t know what caused the universe (see comments on the posts above). This is exactly the kind of response that Agnostic Astronomer Robert Jastrow said is common for atheists who have their own religion—the religion of science. Jastrow, who once sat in Edwin Hubble’s chair at the Mount Wilson Observatory, wrote this:

There is a kind of religion in science . . . every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implicationsCin science this is known as Arefusing to speculate@Cor trivializing the origin of the world by calling it the Big Bang, as if the Universe were a firecracker.

The implication of the creation of the universe out of nothing is that there is a Cause outside the universe with the attributes listed above.  That’s not speculation, but following the evidence where it leads.

This is my column that is running today at TownHall.com. I’ll post more on this later because 800 words is not enough to cover this very controversial topic.

Why not legalize same-sex marriage? Who could it possibly hurt? Children and the rest of society. That’s the conclusion of David Blankenhorn, who is anything but an anti-gay “bigot.” He is a life-long, pro-gay, liberal democrat who disagrees with the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexual behavior. Despite this, Blankenhorn makes a powerful case against Same-Sex marriage in his book, The Future of Marriage.

He writes, “Across history and cultures . . . marriage’s single most fundamental idea is that every child needs a mother and a father. Changing marriage to accommodate same-sex couples would nullify this principle in culture and in law.”

How so? The law is a great teacher, and same sex marriage will teach future generations that marriage is not about children but about coupling. When marriage becomes nothing more than coupling, fewer people will get married to have children.

So what? People will still have children, of course, but many more of them out-of wedlock. That’s a disaster for everyone. Children will be hurt because illegitimate parents (there are no illegitimate children) often never form a family, and those that “shack up” break up at a rate two to three times that of married parents. Society will be hurt because illegitimacy starts a chain of negative effects that fall like dominoes—illegitimacy leads to poverty, crime, and higher welfare costs which lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and a slower economy.

Are these just the hysterical cries of an alarmist? No. We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.  

Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.” But it’s not just Norway. Blankenhorn reports this same trend in other countries. International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal.

As we remember those who have paid the ultimate price to defend our country, I think a letter from President Abraham Lincoln will help us feel the impact of what Memorial Day really means to those who have lost loved ones.  On November 21, 1864, President Lincoln wrote these words to Mrs. Lydia Bixby of Boston who had lost five sons in the Civil War:

“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.  But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.  I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

I doubt anyone ever expressed anything so tragic to a grieving parent in such an eloquent and redeeming way.   Lincoln’s message of sacrifice and redemption parallels that of Christianity—Christ himself was sacrificed on the altar of freedom.  He lived the perfect life and then took our punishment on himself at the Cross.  So as we rightly remember those who selflessly sacrificed themselves for our temporal freedom, let us not forget that Christ selflessly sacrificed Himself for our eternal freedom.  

Following the California Supreme Court decision last week, I posed four questions about Same-Sex Marriage that have generated quite a lot of discussion.  It seems many people are operating on emotion rather than reason on this issue.  Most of us know and like homosexuals, and that can cloud our reasoning.

One of the cloudy areas is the purpose the state endorses marriage. Contrary to what homosexual activists assume, the state doesn’t endorse marriage because people have feelings for one another. The state endorses marriage primarily because of what marriage does for children and in turn society. Society gets nothing positive, and actually gets additional negatives (I’ll explain in another post), by recognizing the relationship of two homosexuals. But the very future of the state and a civilized society depends on committed relationships between heterosexuals. That’s why, regardless of what you think about homosexuality, the two types of relationships should never be legally equated.

I am completing a book on this topic right now, and these short posts may raise more questions than answers.  So for a more detailed response, I thought you might like to hear from a very sound thinker on this topic, Greg Koukl, President of Stand to Reason.  (Greg will be an instructor at our CrossExamined Instructor Academy in August.)  Click here to read his article Same-Sex Marriage:  Challenges and Responses.  I appreciate your feedback on his points.

Now that the California Supreme Court has usurped the will of the people by striking down their democratically-decided law,  there is sure to be a debate over the next few months about the merits of Same-Sex Marriage.   The issue may even make it to the ballot box in November in the form of a California Constitutional Amendment. 

Political process aside, I’d like for you to weigh in on the following four questions:

1.  For what secular purpose does the state endorse traditional marriage (i.e. what benefits does the state experience from traditional marriage)?

2.  What would be the results to society if every adult lived faithfully in traditional marriage?

3.  What would be the results to society if every adult lived faithfully in same-sex marriage?  

4.  In light of your answers above, should the state legally equate heterosexual and homosexual relationships by endorsing same sex marriage?

Sorry if this sounds like a test.  I just want to see how much people have thought through this very controversial issue.

If you have some expertise in the area of Christian Apologetics, we are looking for instructors to help us take I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist to students and churches around the country.  Greg Koukl and Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason, and Jason Reed of Southern Evangelical Seminary will join me, Frank Turek, in leading the CrossExamined Instructor Academy (CIA), August 13-15 in Charlotte, NC.  Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answerman, will join us for a special Q and A on Wednesday night August 13.  This is a great opportunity for you to make an impact through apologetics. But hurry– the application deadline is June 24.  Click here for details.?

Recently I posed a question to our fellow truth seekers who are atheists, and we had a great response and good dialog.

It let us understand a lot of the feelings and reasons for either accepting or not accepting the God of the Christians if He was real.

So here’s another question in the same vein (there maybe some overlap naturally).

Atheists, what kind of God would you accept?

Imagine that a God existed, what characteristics would you require of him before you accepted him as your God and what behavioral change if any would that cause in you?  E.g.

1. He would be more obvious about revealing himself (this I think is a given).

2. He would not send anyone to hell just for not believing he didn’t exist.

3. He would not allow suffering or evil.

4. He would punish bad folks like Hitler or hypocritical Christians with a bolt of lightning on the spot.

5. He would not require anyone to glorify or worship him. 

6. He would not have any rules or regulations that we would have to follow.  etc.  

So what characteristics would you require before you accepted him as your God. If the answer is None, that’s a valid answer too, especially if you say why.

Can God do Anything? Can he create a stone so big that he cannot move it?

Part 1

In a response to one of our readers, I said that God cannot do anything. The reader responded?

“Then what about Miracles.”

In another post an atheist reader said:

“… God can suspend the law of gravity. God can make 2+2=5 if it suits his purpose …..”

But this seems to indicate a misunderstanding of the Christian God.

So let me see if I can clarify the Christian concept of God. I won’t try to speak for the god of any other religion or myth or a god of anyone’s personal creation. Why? Because that is only limited by your imagination.

In addition do understand that what I am about to present to you is Theology. That is, I maybe able to prove some of these concepts to you, but I can’t prove them all. However I do think that they are all rational, logical and self consistent. So take them as information to understand how Christian philosophers and how most of us on this site view God.

1. God cannot do “anything.”

From the writings of the great Christian theologians, thinkers, scientists and philosophers, and from the Bible, we can derive the following of characteristics of the First Cause, uncaused Creator:

God cannot do anything which is not actually possible, for example contrary to the statement above, He cannot make 2+2=5,

He cannot stop being God,

He cannot make a round square in 2 dimensional space,

He cannot make black actually be white,

He cannot paint a door black with red paint bought from Home Depot and no added chemicals and no added activity on his part,

He cannot give someone freedom of choice in an area and then not let them choose in that area.

After all it would seem fallacious and irrational to try to argue that the source of all rationality could be irrational itself.

Here are some more:

He cannot sin,

He cannot cease to exist.

He cannot “not” be God.

He cannot make another God.

He cannot allow anything else to become God.

He cannot be irrational.

He cannot be evil.

He cannot be lonely.

He cannot be unhappy.

He cannot have unmet needs.

He cannot begin to exist.

He cannot forget.

He cannot learn anything new (at least as far as we understand).

The last few imply that He  cannot change his mind (because that would mean he’d learned some new information or remembered something He’d forgotten, He can however have always planned to do something different at a certain point in time, or plan to respond to a certain event in a specific way).

And he certainly cannot create a stone so big that he cannot move it. But we’ll cover that in a second blog.

So if someone asks you if God can do anything. Say “No.”

1. The Miracles in the Bible are not “actually” impossible

As indicated in my blog of April 28^th, Biblical Miracles do not fall into this category because they are not actually “impossible.” They are not irrational. Why do we say that? Well because any miracle or supernatural event recorded in the Bible could have been made to take place if enough technology, equipment or knowledge was available or if an extra-dimensional being was able to manipulate molecules, electrons, quarks or leptons. Look carefully, there are no truly impossible or irrational miracles in the Bible including the creation of the Universe and if an atheist were to suggest that creating matter from nothing is impossible, we’d say “Really, then why do you think it happened accidentally”.

 By the way the feasibility of most of the Biblical miracles (short of creation) through technology is quite an interesting observation when you think about it. I doubt I can claim credit for it though, because, as with most things I think I have discovered, I always end up finding out that some other philosopher or theologian had already written about it 1000-2000 years ago.

An entry on my personal webpage titled “Is the Supernatural Impossible? Goes in to more detail about miracles (click for the link).

Let’s look briefly at the the water into wine miracle. The water was changed into wine most probably at the molecular level. It wasn’t water that was also wine (and while it could have been hypnotism, the passage indicates it wasn’t and anyway hypnotism isn’t “impossible”). He changed the water molecules into actual wine molecules (and very good wine at that). Was it synthetic wine? It probably was. (I say probably because of course he could have also swapped the water for pre-made wine – OK OK using the equivalent of a transporter beam…I’m a geek at heart).

What about dead men walking as in the case of those who came to life, again healing of tissue and reanimation of life (God created life to begin with – a merging of some multi-dimensional elements back to their original 4D ones) are all “possible” rational things. They are just not natural or common.

So we see none of these miracles are actually impossible.

Now it’s worth nothing that impossibility is usually seen best in philosophical or conceptual issues. E.g. making the square root of (-1) = 1. Or making the cube of 5, 124. All of which are rationally impossible.

You see making 1+1 = 3 or 2+2= 5 is not a matter of manipulating molecules. It is dealing with things at a much basic and in a sense a higher level. It’s dealing with things at the point of rationality. Mess with that and everything stops being cohesive, the universe starts to unravel, and you start to violate the very nature of God.

What about changing the laws of Gravity in the example. I would argue that God cannot change or suspend the laws of Gravity without having to then simultaneously attend to all the other effects of there being no Gravity. That’s not to say that he couldn’t also stop every individual thing from flinging out in to space using some other power, but the point is He would have to attend to it.

It’s of value to note that the original comment about Gravity by the atheist at the opening of this blog was said in the context of God being unable to be studied by science because he could change the laws of Gravity and we would not know about it. However, the nature of God being what it is and from the examples in the Biblical miracles, I tend to think that if God did do a miracle he would allow the side effects of the miracle to be apparent such that we could indeed measure it and see that an external agent had acted upon things. I also think that while God could indeed do things that cannot be studied by science, He could just as well do certain things that COULD be studied by science and point to him. So we cannot apriori assume that God did not do so. Maybe God has chosen to be able to be detected by Science. In which case would not science be the best way to detect him?

You cannot merely say that Science cannot prove God. If God wanted to, Science could indeed prove God. And contrary to what some believe, most Christians Theologians and Philosophers think that God HAS indeed chosen to leave his Fingerprint for us to detect. The question we are asking ourselves is “Why is he not more obvious about it?”, for that discussion you’ll have to wait for a future post titled “Why doesn’t God just show himself?” So for now know that the miracles in the Bible at not rationally or logically impossible.

1. But I thought God was Omnipotent

(this section was updated with the definition of Pantocrator on 5/11/08 – I would like to express my appreciation to “db0” who allowed me to bounce these arguments off him and prompted this further expansion, I’m adding this back into the blog to allow people to see most of the argument in one place. )

God IS omnipotent (all powerful) but he is not omni-able (i.e. able to do “any”thing at least not anything irrational). The definition of power should not be confused with capability when it comes to the Christian God. There’s a clear distinction between the two. Christian theologians have long taught that God is all-powerful, not all capable when it comes to irrationality. And if you think about this, we see this as being tied into His character, His personality, His being. If God were to become irrational, it would violate his nature and he would cease to be God. God is a slave to his character (but then so are you).

But you say doesn’t the Bible say that God can do anything? Actually no, it does not. The word used in the Bible for Omni-Potent comes from the Greek word Pantocrator (Pantokrator). Pantocrator means all ruling. Almighty not all-capable. Let me explain.

When the Vulgate Manuscript was created as a translation from the Greek Septuagint (the Old Testament) into Latin, the Greek word Pantocrator was translated into the Latin “omnipotens”, which means having all the power (again note this is still technically correct as it means having power and strength not capability). The word is tied to rulers and ruling not to being all “capable.”

Over the recent years many Christians just started assuming that Omnipotence meant all capable and modern language uses it that way. But the original Greek and Hebrew do not support this. (BTW that’s what we think is infallible, the original Greek and Hebrew autographs written by the apostles and prophets. We don’t think the translations are or the copies are infallible.)

The KJV New Testament Greek Lexicon explains Pantocrator as:

Strong’s Number: 3841

pantokravtwr from (3956) and (2904)?

Transliterated Word TDNT Entry:?Pantokrator

Noun: Masculine?

Definition: he who holds sway over all things, the ruler of all, almighty: God

As you can see Pantocrator does not mean all capable even of irrational things. It just means powerful, mighty and ruler of all.

Hope this helps clarify where we stand.

Neil Mammen

By the way: Any errors in examples or theology are my errors and not those of the owners of this site.

Coming soon:

Part II. The correct response to: Can God create a stone so big that he cannot move it?

If you read the threads of several of the blog entries on this site, you will see both atheists and Christians charging one another with committing “logical fallacies.”  The assumption both sides are making is that there is this objective realm of reason out there that: 1) we all have access to; 2) tells us the truth about the real world; and 3) is something we ought to use correctly if we want to know the truth. I think those are good assumptions.  My question for the atheists is how do you justify these assumptions if there is no God? 

If atheistic materialism is true, it seems to me that reason itself is impossible. For if mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there is no reason to believe that anything is true (including the theory of materialism). Chemicals can=t evaluate whether or not a theory is true. Chemicals don=t reason, they react.  

This is ironic because atheistsCwho often claim to be champions of truth and reasonChave made truth and reason impossible by their theory of materialism. So even when atheists are right about something, their worldview gives us no reason to believe them because reason itself is impossible in a world governed only by chemical and physical forces. 

Not only is reason impossible in an atheistic world, but the typical atheist assertion that we should rely on reason alone cannot be justified. Why not? Because reason actually requires faith. As J. Budziszewski points out in his book What We Can’t Not Know, AThe motto >Reason Alone!= is nonsense anyway. Reason itself presupposes faith. Why? Because a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. Our only guarantee that human reason works is God who made it.@ 

Let=s unpack Budziszewski=s point by considering the source of reason. Our ability to reason can come from one of only two sources: either our ability to reason arose from preexisting intelligence or it did not, in which case it arose from mindless matter. The atheists/Darwinists/materialists believe, by faith, that our minds arose from mindless matter without intelligent intervention. I say “by faith” because it contradicts all scientific observation, which demonstrates that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. You can=t give what you haven=t got, yet atheists believe that dead, unintelligent matter has produced itself into intelligent life. This is like believing that the Library of Congress resulted from an explosion in a printing shop. 

I think it makes much more sense to believe that the human mind is made in the image of the Great MindCGod. In other words, our minds can apprehend truth and can reason about reality because they were built by the Architect of truth, reality, and reason itself.

So I have two questions for atheists:  1) What is the source of this immaterial reality known as reason that we are all presupposing, utilizing in our discussions, and accusing one other of violating on occasion?; and 2) If there is no God and we are nothing but chemicals, why should we trust anything we think, including the thought that there is no God?

So how do Christians respond to this Epicurean question?

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?”

And especially for Dave the “suffering version of this =:

Either God wants to abolish suffering, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish suffering, and God really wants to do it, why is there suffering in the world?”

{P.S. This was not the blog entry that I’ve been working on. I will post that shortly.}

ALERT: The above blog entry is now posted at: http://www.crossexamined.org/blog/?p=57 Click to go there.

Frank will be back in the US anytime soon, so he’ll be taking back the helm shortly. So as he returns, I’d like to ask our Atheist fellow travelers in search of truth this question: 

Atheist readers, what if you were to suddenly find out tomorrow that the God of the Christian Evangelicals was real?

I.e. that He HAD created the world, had created you, the Bible was true, Jesus had died on the cross for your sins etc etc.

What would you do?  

Now I realize that you may be wont to say: Ah, it won’t happen.

And I agree it won’t happen tomorrow and if you are right and I am wrong, it will NEVER happen.

But do humor me. What if it did happen?

I’m not asking HOW it would happen (see Frank’s earlier blog on this) but IF it happened, how would you react?

What is your response?

Anger? Agreement? Kowtowing to this being? Resigned acceptance, passive aggression, active aggression, resigned damnation? 

Would you fall on your face and worship him? Why or why not?

What would you do?

Do you think a being that creates you automatically deserves your worship? (Note he does not needs it, but desires it.)   

So what would you do if you found out tomorrow that the God of the Bible was real?