How to Reach Your Non-Christian Relatives this Christmas

Why Is God So HiddenIt’s going to happen again this year.  You’re going to get together with a bunch of people who would rather talk about anything but Jesus.  What can you do to reach them?

Face it.  You’re probably not going to get them to accept Jesus by the end of dinner.   A direct frontal assault with facts isn’t going to work because many of them don’t want Christianity to be true.  So I think your goal should be more modest.  How about just planting and watering seeds (like Jesus and Paul did!)? In other words, getting them to doubt what they believe and/or getting them to think about the claims of Christianity.

Here are few ideas you might try:   

  1. Pray: Start praying now for opportunities and for hearts to be open.  Then volunteer to pray before the meal (No one will interrupt or critique a prayer!).   Keep the prayer short and thank God for:
    • Your family members and guests by name
    • The food
    • Coming to earth that first Christmas in the person of Jesus to pay for our sins and to offer forgiveness and salvation for free to anyone who trusts in Christ
  2. Serve: Get off the couch and serve people as if you were a real Christian!
  3. Ask:  Seriously ask people how they’ve been doing this year.  Then ask them, “Is there anything I can pray for you about?”
  4. Testify: If they ask you how you’ve been doing, fold in a story of how God is working.
  5. Agree & Affirm whatever they get right.  It will make points of disagreement more acceptable.
  6. Use Tactical Questions When They Get Something Wrong: When people make truth claims, it’s not your job to refute them—it is their job to support them. So before responding to their statements, ask these questions.
    • What do you mean by that?
    • How did you come to that conclusion? (Or what evidence do you have for that?)
    • Have you ever considered…? (Fill in the blank with the evidence you would like the person to consider).
  7. Use the Quick Answers section of the CrossExamined App to respond to specific objections.   
  8. Show them what makes your walk easier: Glo Bible, You Version Bible, CrossExamined App (people love gadgets and apps).
  9. Seed the conversation:  Depending on how the conversation goes, some of these statements may get people thinking and even get them to ask you questions.  They include:
    • If I were perfect, I wouldn’t need a Savior.
    • God won’t force people into Heaven against their will.
    • I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.
    • The greatest miracle in the Bible is the first verse.
    • What motive did the Jewish New Testament writers have to make up a new religion?
    • If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?

    10. Write them afterwards:  Following up on a conversation later via email can be very effective.  That’s because you can present your ideas more clearly and completely while the other person can actually consider what you are saying without feeling the pressure of having to respond immediately.  You can also include links to articles or websites for those that want to go deeper.

I hope some of these ideas will help you move people closer to the gospel this Christmas!  I’d love to hear what actually worked for you.  Please you story in a comment below or drop me an email at Frank@CrossExamined.org after the holiday.  Blessings to you this Christmas!

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Does Causality Apply Outside of Space and Time?

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The-Law-of-Causality-JM2 During a radio debate I had with an atheist recently, I pointed out that the universe had a beginning and thus needs a cause.  He responded by claiming that since there was no space or time prior to the creation event we shouldn’t appeal to the law of causality to claim that the creation event was caused.

Dr. Lawrence Krauss cites a slightly different objection. When Dr. Krauss says that every physical thing requires a physical cause, he is talking about what Aristotle called “material” causality—namely, what the cause is made of.  But the objection my radio opponent made deals with what Aristotle called “efficient” causality.  An efficient cause is what most people think of when they think of a cause.  It is the primary source of the effect:  an author writes a book, a spider builds a web, a quarterback throws a pass.  They are efficient causes.

Atheists who make this claim are saying that there is no efficient cause of the universe because it didn’t take place in space or time. Let’s look at that argument in a syllogism.

  1. The law of causality only applies to physical things in space-time.
  2. The creation of the universe did not occur in space-time (it was the creation of space-time).
  3. Therefore the law of causality does not apply to the creation of the universe.

This argument doesn’t work because the first premise is false. Notice that there is no physical relationship between the premises and the conclusion of the argument above (or any argument).  Also notice that the premises are not objects in space-time.  Yet, there is a causal relationship between the premises and the conclusion.  In other words, true premises cause valid conclusions.

If this atheist argument were sound, then no argument could be sound.  Why?  Because if the law of causality only applied to physical things, then no argument would work because premises and conclusions are not physical things.  For any argument to work—including arguments against God—the law of causality must apply to the immaterial realm because the components of arguments are immaterial.

In other words, logic itself wouldn’t work if the first premise were true. But since logic works, the law of causality applies metaphysically not just physically.  In fact, to deny causality beyond space and time would be to deny logic, which would be self-defeating and would negate our ability to argue anything.

You can also see why it is self-defeating to deny the law of causality by simply asking anyone who doubts it, “What caused you to come to that conclusion?”  Or more precisely, “What reasons do you have for your position?”

If the person cites scientific experiments or observations as the source for his evidence, then point out that experiments and observations presuppose cause and effect.  You couldn’t make those observations or draw any conclusions without the law of causality.[i]  Likewise, any process of reasoning he uses would also use the very law of causality he would be denying.  In other words, it’s self-defeating rationally and scientifically to conclude that effects do not need causes. That’s because any denial of the law of causality uses the law of causality. 

[i] Some atheists will appeal to the quantum level to question the law of causality.  But just because we can’t predict cause and effect among subatomic particles, doesn’t mean that there is no cause and effect.  That could be a matter of unpredictability rather than uncausality.  In other words, the limits of our knowledge of the quantum level might be the issue. Moreover, any conclusion the atheist makes about the quantum level would use the very the law of causality he is questioning.  That’s because his observations of the quantum level and his reasoning about it use the law of causality!  While it is possible that causality does not apply at the quantum level, given the fact that the law seems universal everywhere else and the scientist uses it in all of his conclusions, why would anyone conclude it’s more plausible to believe that causality does not apply at the quantum level?  Could it be because it helps one avoid God?

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“Eternity Has the Floor:” Another Look at Pascal’s Wager

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Silent you stand before the altar of death! Life here and life after constitute an eternal conundrum; but its expiring spark awakens us to holy devotion and quiets every other voice except religion. Eternity has the floor.

~Alfred Nobel: read at his funeral (1896)

The above words were spoken at Alfred Nobel’s funeral service in 1896. In life Nobel was an interesting but ironic man. He is remembered, of course as the Swiss chemist and engineer who invented dynamite among other things, and also the man whose name is associated with coveted prizes in physics, chemistry, literature and peace. Nobel was also an atheist, and yet he also left large sums of money to churches. In 1888 when Nobel was reading through a French newspaper, he was astonished to read about his own obituary – the heading was “The merchant of death has died.” As it turned out, it was actually his brother Ludwig that had died. It would only be eight years later that Alfred himself would die by a brain hemorrhage at age 63.

Apparently Nobel had given some thought to that moment when he would face his own mortality. It’s not a pleasant thought – thinking about one’s own death, but one day every person must stand in silence and enter that mysterious realm beyond this life on earth, or as Nobel says… that eternal conundrum…

Cementary

The Old Testament patriarch Job pondered this question millennia ago when he asked, If a man dies, will he live again? (Job 14:14)

Atheists and materialists alike, stake their eternal souls on the belief and the affirmation that there is no afterlife or soul which survives the body after physical death. But is science equipped to answer such a question? Pascal would say no.

In the 17th Century (the 1600’s) a brilliant Frenchman (child prodigy, pioneering mathematician, inventor of the world’s first mechanical calculator, philosopher and scientist)[1] named Blaise Pascal put forth a rather strange argument for religious faith – and not just generic religious faith, but faith in full orbed Christianity.[2]

This is Pascal’s famous argument called “The Wager” (or The Bet).

But first let’s clear up a common misconception and make one clarification about Pascal’s famous Wager.

(1). He is not proposing “faith in faith” (a blind leap in the dark), but assumes that we have our data correct (faith is only as good as its object) – i.e. that the true God is the God of Christianity and that salvation is found only in a belief in Jesus Christ and that rejection of Him will result in eternal damnation.[3]

(2) Similar to the above notion – the Wager should not be considered in complete isolation from the larger work of Pascal’s Pensees (his apologetic for Christianity).

As philosopher James R. Peter’s observes, “Properly understood, the wager makes a compelling but limited point….”[4]

Kreeft clarfies:

“The Wager is not an attempt to prove the God exists. It is not a new argument for the existence of God. Rather it tries to prove that it is eminently reasonable for anyone to “bet” on God, to hope that God is, to invest his life in God. It moves on the practical, existential, human level rather than the theoretical, metaphysical, theological level. …It is not an alternative to the traditional arguments for the existence of God… [the Wager]…is addressed to unbelievers, to those who are skeptical of both theoretical reason and revelation.”[5]

What Pascal’s Wager highlight’s is the fact that we are all “in the game” – there is no neutrality on the question of God’s existence or of eternal salvation in Jesus Christ.

He writes:

“Let us examine this point, and let us say: ‘Either God is or he is not.’ But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong.

Do not then condemn as wrong those who have made a choice… ‘No, but I will condemn them for not having made this particular choice, but any choice, for although one calls heads and the other one are equally at fault, the fact is that they are both at fault: the right thing is not to wager at all.’

Yes, but you must wager. There is no choice, you are already committed. What will you choose then? Let us see: since a choice must be made, let us see which offers you the least interest. You have two things to lose: the true and the good: and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness.”[6]

Finally and interestingly, the Wager comes down to a pleasure (or a happiness) calculus – which appeals to what a person has the potential to gain from such a wager.

Here is what is at stake.

A. God exists (& Christianity is true)

  • If I believe it and it turns out to be objectively true then I gain eternal happiness and lose nothing.  
  • If I do not believe it and it turns out to be objectively true then I lose everything (including happiness and pleasure).

B. God does not exist (Christianity is not true)

  • If I believe this and it is objectively true then I gain nothing and lose nothing.
  • If I do not believe this and it is objectively true then I gain nothing and lose nothing.

If Christianity is true then those who don’t believe it have everything to lose. But if it is not true then nothing, in the end, is lost to the pious believer. It is really the unbeliever who has more to lose if they are wrong.

Pensee 241 provides a good summary:

I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being mistaken in believing it to be true [& it not actually be true].

On death’s threshold “eternity has the floor,” then religious questions don’t seem so silly after all.

What will you choose then?

[1] For an old but excellent biography of Pascal’s life see Morris Bishop’s classic, Pascal: The Life of Genius (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1936)

[2] See his Pensees, 418.

[3] For more on this point see Peter Kreeft’s excellent book, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensees Edited, Outlined & Explained (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), pp. 292-3.

[4] James R. Peters, The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Rationality of Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 188-9.

[5] Kreeft, pg. 291 [emphasis mine].

[6] “233” in Pensees, Translated by W.F. Trotter, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Editor in Chief, Great Books of the Western World, (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 213-6 [emphasis mine].

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Human Design Blindly Echoes Design in Nature

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"Gears" from a plant hopping insect look designed

“Gears” from a plant hopping insect.

Scientists continually tell us that certain features found in nature are not “designed” but are the product of unguided evolutionary development. In his book The Blind Watchmaker biologist Richard Dawkins curiously has to remind his readers and warn them that some things in nature may appear designed when in fact they are not. He wrote that, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

A recent article posted by Christian apologist, Melissa Cain Travis, offers some compelling reasons that nature is in fact, designed. Many of these designs are copied either unconsciously or consciously (via the science of Biomimicry) by humans. The most reasonable inference is that these designs come from an Intelligent Creator.

You can read about it here

 

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A Universe from Nothing? Dr. Krauss Explains Nothing

A Universe from Nothing? Dr. Krauss Explains Nothing

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If Dr. Richard Dawkins is the atheist’s rock star of biology, Dr. Lawrence Krauss is the atheist’s rock star of physics (maybe only second to Stephen Hawking).  An engaging speaker and winsome personality, Dr. Krauss is a theoretical physicist and professor at Arizona State University. In his book A Universe from Nothing, Krauss seeks to answer the age-old question, “Why is there something rather than nothing” without reference to God.

Dr. Krauss says the cause of the universe is not God—it is “nothing.”  He cites happenings at the quantum level to dispense with the need for God.  (The quantum level is the world of the extremely small, subatomic in size.)

“One of the things about quantum mechanics is not only can nothing become something, nothing always becomes something,” says Dr. Krauss. “Nothing is unstable. Nothing will always produce something in quantum mechanics.”[i]

Now, whenever you hear something that just doesn’t sound right, you ought to ask the person making the claim, “What do you mean by that?” In this case, the precise question to Dr. Krauss would be, “What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”

It turns out that Dr. Krauss’ definition of “nothing” is not the “nothing” from which the universe originated.  The initial starting point of the universe was not the quantum vacuum that Dr. Krauss keeps referring to in his book. The starting point was non-being– literally no thing.  Since no thing isn’t anything, there are no properties to work with.  Nothing is, as Aristotle put it, what rocks dream about.  Unless someone powerful intervenes, the ancient maxim still stands:  out of nothing, nothing comes.

A quantum vacuum, on the other hand, is something—it consists of fields of fluctuating energy from which particles appear to pop in and out of existence.  Whether these particles are uncaused, or are caused but are merely unpredictable to us, is unknown.  There are ten different models of the quantum level, and no one knows which is correct.  What we do know is that, whatever is happening there, it is not creation out of nothing.  Moreover, the vacuum itself had a beginning and therefore needs a cause.

Lest you think I am mad to question the physics of Dr. Krauss, please note that I am more questioning his logic, which is required to do science of any kind.  Dr. Krauss is committing the logical fallacy known as equivocation—that is using the same word in an argument but with two different definitions.  The “nothing” in the title of Dr. Krauss’ book is not the “nothing” from which the universe came.

This critical distinction was not lost on fellow atheist Dr. David Albert.  A Ph.D. in theoretical physics, Dr. Albert is a Professor at Columbia University and author of the book Quantum Mechanics and Experience.  In his scathing review of Krauss’ book in the New York Times, Dr. Albert questions both Krauss’ logic and his physics.  He pulls no punches and even uses his fist to illustrate.

Commenting on Krauss’ central claim that particles emerging from the quantum vacuum are like creation out of nothing, Dr. Albert writes:

But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-­theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing (emphasis in the original).[ii]

Speaking of fists, Dr. Albert lands the knockout blow to Krauss’ entire thesis this way, “But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right.” (It’s important to note that Dr. Albert and Columbia University are not known for Christian fundamentalism.)

Now Dr. Krauss didn’t take all this lying down.  He got up off the canvas and fought back by calling Dr. Albert “a moronic philosopher.”[iii]

Well, that solves that then.  If the guy’s a moron, the non-moron must be right. Right?  Actually, on several occasions in this book, Dr. Krauss confuses even non-moronic readers when he admits Dr. Albert’s point in advance—namely, that the “nothing” Krauss is talking about is not exactly the nothing from which the universe came.  Dr. Krauss even puts his “nothing” in quotation marks like I just did.

In an interview, Krauss acknowledges that no matter how one defines “nothing,” the laws of physics are not nothing (sorry to keep using the word nothing, but there’s nothing else to use!).  And although he’s clearly annoyed doing so, Dr. Krauss eventually gets around to admitting that his “nothing” is actually something.

“Even if you accept this argument that nothing is not nothing,” he says, “you have to acknowledge that nothing is being used in a philosophical sense. But I don’t really give a damn about what ‘nothing’ means to philosophers; I care about the ‘nothing’ of reality. And if the ‘nothing’ of reality is full of stuff, then I’ll go with that.”[iv]

So if Dr. Krauss admits all this, why the bait and switch title: “A Universe from Nothing:  Why there is something rather than nothing”?  Why smuggle in the laws of physics and the quantum vacuum and then call it “nothing”?  Why diss philosophers who are only trying to bring the book’s assertions back to reality?

Dr. Krauss seems to think that philosophers are not talking about reality, when in fact, that’s exactly what philosophy is—the study of ultimate reality.  The problem for Krauss is two-fold.

First, reality is not merely physical stuff.  Since nature and the laws of physics themselves had a beginning, ultimate reality is beyond nature or supernatural.  So despite claiming to explain how the universe came from nothing, Krauss has explained nothing.

The second problem is a far more serious intellectual disease that infects the thinking of Krauss and several other prominent atheists as well.  This disease is so severe that it threatens the accuracy of the very science they seek to promote.  Krauss, like Dawkins and Hawking, are dismissive of philosophy.

Now, having studied a lot of wacky philosophy myself, I sympathize with them.  But the existence of wacky philosophy doesn’t discredit the existence of good philosophy any more than the existence of wacky science discredits the existence of good science.  While it is true that one can use bad philosophy, it is impossible to use no philosophy.

In fact—and this is the essential point—Krauss, Dawkins and the like can’t do science without philosophy.  While scientists are usually seeking to understand physical cause and effect, science itself is built on philosophical principles that are not physical themselves—they are beyond the physical (metaphysical). Those principles help the scientist make precise definitions and clear distinctions and then interpret all the relevant data rationally.

What exactly is relevant?  What exactly is rational?  What exactly is the best interpretation of the data –including what exactly is or isn’t “nothing”?  Those questions are all answered through the use of philosophy.  (Perhaps that’s why the “Ph.” in Ph.D. stands for “philosophy.”  The originators of advanced degrees knew that philosophy is the foundation of every area of inquiry.)

Einstein had an observation about the man of science.  He said, “The man of science is a poor philosopher.”  Unfortunately, if you abandon good philosophy you end up with bad science. And if you disdain all philosophy, as Krauss and company tend to do, then you put yourself in the self-defeating position of holding a philosophy that disdains all philosophy.  You can’t get away from philosophy.  It’s like logic.  To deny it is to use it.

In the end, despite the lofty promises of his book’s title, Dr. Krauss explains nothing about the ultimate origin of the universe.

Notes

[i] Opening statement of Lawrence Krauss in his debate with Dr. William Lane Craig, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-craig-krauss-debate-at-north-carolina-state-university#ixzz2bwKlOhe1.  See also Dr. Krauss’ book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, Atria Books, 2012,Chapter 10.

[ii] David Albert, “On the Origin of Everything ‘A Universe From Nothing,’ by Lawrence M. Krauss,” The New York Times, March 23, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=0.

[iii] Ross Anderson, “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?”. The Atlantic, April 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/.

[iv] Ross Anderson, Ibid.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

God’s Crime Scene: Cold-Case…Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe (Paperback), (Mp4 Download), and (DVD Set) by J. Warner Wallace

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design (mp4 Download Set) by J. Warner Wallace 

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design in Biology DVD Set by J. Warner Wallace 

What is God Like? Look to the Heavens by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4) 

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler 

 

Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation.  His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God:  Why atheists need God to make their case

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A Titanic Failure: Never Learning from Our Past

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Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

~ Georg Wilhelm F. Hegel, from his lectures, On the Philosophy of History (1837)

Just recently my son has become keenly interested in the story of the Titanic, the steam ship which hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic on April 14, 1912. These past few days we have watched a number of very interesting documentaries, some of which recount eyewitnesses to the disaster who were passengers on board the night it sank. On board the ship that fateful night were some of the world’s most famous and prominent people – among them were the American millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Force Astor, industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, Macy’s department store owner Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida among many others. Throughout the documentaries there were historians and letters cited from people who lived at the opening decades of the 20th century. Historian Carroll Quigley in his book Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time writes that, “The 19th century was characterized by (1) belief in the innate goodness of man, (2) secularism, (3) belief in progress, (4) liberalism, (5) capitalism, (6) faith in science, (7) democracy, (8) nationalism.”[1]

Although most people today think of the Titanic as the award-winning movie of 1997, in 1912 it was the symbol of the hopes and dreams of thousands of people around the world. For the wealthy it represented the pinnacle of technology and the triumph of science, to the poor, it represented a chance for a new life in America – itself a symbol of hope for millions of immigrants. On the evening of April 15, 1912 the huge ship struck an iceberg ripping open a huge section of the hull. In 2 hours, 40 minutes it was on the bottom of the Atlantic. 1,514 lives were lost. The world was in shock.

Sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic, April 15, 1912

The sinking of the Titanic was the first of several shocks the world of the early 20th Century would receive. Just two short years later, (July, 1914) for the first time in history, the entire world would be engulfed in the First World War. In 1918 when the war ended, over 10 million Allied & Central command soldiers were dead, not including civilians. The results of WWI set in motion the gears which led to the Second World War when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.[2]

WW I also had a profound effect on some of the greatest artists (Picasso, M. Duchamp, etc…) and literary minds of the 20th century. Among them was J.R.R. Tolkein whose Lord of the Rings series came right out of his gruesome experiences of fighting in the trenches on the Western Front. One of his biographers makes a telling comment. He writes:

This biographical study arose from a single observation: how strange it is that J.R.R. Tolkein should have embarked upon his monumental mythology in the midst of the First World War, the crisis that disenchanted and shaped the modern era.[3]

“The crisis that disenchanted and shaped the modern era…”

What can we learn from this and the other tragedies of the last century?

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

In conclusion, I would like to ask if there are any lessons we can learn from these opening decades of the 20th Century? Are we, in the 21st Century, still clinging to 19th century ideals which lead to the disillusionment of so many? I assert that we certainly are. We are holding on to at least three of them and we are once again setting ourselves up for even greater disillusionment or even worse:

(1). Belief in the innate goodness of man. (Is human nature basically good?)

“The belief in the innate goodness of man had its roots in the eighteenth century when it appeared to many that man was born good and free but was everywhere distorted, corrupted, and enslaved by bad institutions and conventions. As Rousseau said, Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains.

Obviously, if man is innately good and needs but to be freed from social restrictions, he is capable of tremendous achievements in this world of time, and does not need to postpone his hopes of personal salvation into eternity.”[4]

If the Twentieth-Century and our own experience has taught us anything, it is that man is not innately good – but has a fallen nature. People automatically don’t do the right thing and despite all of their valiant efforts[5], atheists & materialists fail to ground absolute goodness in reality. Similarly, if there is no God – no absolute standard, then there is no ultimate grounding for right and wrong (morality). If there is no God (in reality) then (in reality), there is no difference between Mother Theresa and Hitler.

(2). Secularism (Is ‘religion’ just a hangover from our past?)

Secularists have a strictly materialistic & mechanistic view of human nature and because of this they utterly fail to account for man’s religious nature which they will never eradicate nor will they understand with the methods of the sciences. For most of human history people have had the desire to worship. This is certainly not to say that all religions are the same or that they are all equally true, but merely to point out that the desire to worship and the desire for transcendence is part of what it means to be truly human.[6] Secularism just doesn’t get it! The ultimate question is which religion is true? Which religion corresponds to reality? If the laws of logic apply to all of reality then they apply to religious claims as well. Only one can be true.

(3). Faith in science (Will “science” solve our problems?)

“Science” is touted by many today as the only true view of reality and an inoculation against the claims of religious masses who still live in ignorance & stupidity. These are the ones who still believe that “science” will answer all of our burning questions and solve all of humanity’s problems. But lest we forget, we have the 20th Century as a guide. It is intimately familiar to us. We have lived through much of it. It is analogous to all of human history because of the simple fact that human nature remains the same and many are still trusting that “science” and the scientific worldview is the way forward.

Why are things not improving now in the first decade of the 21st Century – the most well-informed, well-educated and scientifically minded centuries to date?

Surely the sciences and technology have brought us much good (curing diseases, saving lives, etc…), but they are ill-equipped to solve our greatest problems which are spiritual & moral in nature.

Many critics will surely point to religious extremism and the turmoil happening in the Middle East as the prime example that “religion” is at the core of the world’s problems. They fail, however, to make vital distinctions between contradictory religious truth claims (especially in the Theistic religions of Judaism, Islam & Christianity). Yet it is only in the religion of Christianity – whose message is the reconciliation of fallen humanity (made in God’s image) to the Creator by the God-Man, Jesus Christ who died on a cross for the sins of the world – that there is hope for the future.

There simply is no unity, order or peace apart from Him.

[1] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1966), pp. 24-5.

[2] And of course, WW2 ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

[3] John Garth, Tolkein and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), xiii.

[4] Summary of Quigley, p. 24.

[5] One of the latest is Sam Harris’s, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (New York: The Free Press, 2010).

[6] For an excellent study on the relationship between science and human nature I strongly recommend Brendan Purcell’s excellent work, From Big Bang to Big Mystery: Human Origins in the Light of Creation and Evolution (Hyde Park, New York: New York City Press, 2012).

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A Not So Bright Future: Technology, Atheism & the Death of Man

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Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900

It is widely believed that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ushered in the twentieth century with his famous phrase, “God is dead…”[1] Nietzsche himself died in 1900. Obviously, atheism didn’t start in the twentieth century with Nietzsche. In fact, he was the culmination (the pinnacle) of a long line of thinkers which reached back into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[2] The European Enlightenment promised grand and wonderful things when human reason finally divorced itself from the shackles of faith.[3] Using the newly found tools of the “scientific method,” (via Bacon & Spinoza); a humanistic morality which was becoming increasingly devoid of God (via Nietzsche); and the burgeoning industrial revolution with its new technologies, the twentieth century was set to take mankind to new heights never before dreamt of – a utopia of sorts. Some who were wise, however, could see that “wicked things were written in the sky.”[4] The next century (the 20th) would either be wonderful or it would be a nightmare. Enter H.G. Wells novel, A Modern Utopia (1905), the book which inspired Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future in Brave New World (1932), and later, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Both of these novels predicted a future in which mankind would be destroyed either by external oppression by a despot using technology (the big-brother of Orwell) or through technologies which would make us lazy and undo our capacity to think (Huxley).[5] In both instances, technology would somehow be used to lead to our undoing.

If there is no God (or at least since He died in the 19th century) then humans must put their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future in something. Enter the Enlightenment 2.0 – 21st-century edition – human reason, science, and technology will surely help us solve all of the world’s problems. How are we doing 13 years into this century? Not very well. Do we ever learn? Usually not.

Neil Postman makes a brilliant observation in, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992). An observation that we should etch into our heads.

Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise from inadequate information. If a nuclear catastrophe occurs, it shall not be because of inadequate information. Where people are dying of starvation, it does not occur because of inadequate information. If families break up, children are mistreated, crime terrorizes a city, education is impotent, it does not happen because of inadequate information. Mathematical equations, instantaneous communication, and vast quantities of information have nothing to do with any of these problems. And the computer is useless in addressing them.[6]

The scientific, atheistic and materialistic worldview is utterly incapable of ensuring civilization. It can’t be trusted. Why? Because the last century has been one gigantic experiment in what it is capable of and also of what it is incapable of.

In my next post A Titanic Failure: Never Learning from Our Past, we will take a look at some epic examples of the complete failure of the European Enlightenment and materialistic atheism and what it could teach us about our future – if anything at all.

[1] See, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” in Walter Kaufmann, Editor & Translator, The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin Books, 1982).

[2] For an excellent book on the philosophical battles which ensued between various German thinkers on the role of reason during the era of the Enlightenment see, Fredrick C. Beiser’s, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); for a Christian analysis of the Enlightenment see, James Collins, A History of Modern European Philosophy (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1954).

[3] Interestingly, the modern Internet & Wikipedia had its birth in the Enlightenment with the idea of the Encyclopédie which was published in France 1751-1772.

[4] To borrow the line from Chesterton’s poem “The Ballad of the White Horse” – a poem about England’s Saxon king, Alfred the Great.

[5] I am indebted to Neil Postman for this observation in his excellent book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). Postman’s thesis is that Huxley was right. History has proven that he was correct.

[6] Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p.119.

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Three Apologetics Conferences Coming Soon

You have three outstanding opportunities to participate in apologetics conferences over the next several weeks.

Your first opportunity is to join me, Doug Groothuis and Mary Jo Sharp online this Saturday, September 7, for the “Is Christianity Actually True?” conference put on by the C.S. Lewis Society of New Zealand.  There will be time for Q&A.  Again, this is an ONLINE event, so you have no excuse.  Click here for details:  http://www.truthsayer.org.za/is-christianity-actually-true-why.html

Your second opportunity is the “Truth for a New Generation” conference led by Alex McFarland September 27-28 in Charlotte, NC.   Alex has a great lineup that includes Lee Strobel and Eric Metaxas.  He even has a session on religious freedom moderated by Lauren Greene of Fox News.  Click here for details: http://www.truthforanewgeneration.com/

Your final opportunity is the 20th annual “National Conference on Christian Apologetics” October 10-11 also in Charlotte, NC.  I will be emceeing this along with Southern Evangelical Seminary President, Dr. Richard Land.  This lineup is also impressive and includes Josh McDowell, Hugh Ross and Jay Richards.  There are several debates during this conference as well.  Click here for details: http://conference.ses.edu/

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Archaeology, the Bible & the Great Dating Debate

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An article posted by the Biblical Archaeology Society cites a recent report published in BASOR (the Bulletin for the American Schools of Oriental Research) which calls into question the dating of the Siloam Tunnel which was supposedly excavated during the reign of the biblical king, Hezekiah. According to references in the Old Testament (specifically 2 Kings 20:20 & 2 Chronicles 32:30), the water tunnel was dug by Hezekiah in preparation of a siege to Jerusalem which was led by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in the late eighth century B.C..

Hezekiah's Tunnel

Hezekiah’s Tunnel

The significance of this new study by Israeli geologists, Amihai Sneh, Eyal Shalev and Ram Weinberge, is the re-dating of the tunnel to the time of Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh. According to these scholars, there simply wasn’t enough time for Hezekiah’s workers to have excavated such a long tunnel. The three geologists from the Geological Survey of Israel maintain that it would have taken about 4 years to dig the 533 meter (approx. 1748 ft.) tunnel. But as archaeologists, Aren Maeir and Jeffrey Chadwick rightfully point out:

“In marshaling evidence to support their model, however, the authors entirely ignore the only contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous textual sources that shed light on Jerusalem in the Iron Age II (and that specifically mention aspects of the city’s water system)—namely the narrative passages in Isaiah 7–8 and the historical allusions in Isaiah 36 and 2 Kings 18. The only reference to Biblical material in the article is the authors’ after-the-fact quotation of the single verse in 2 Chronicles 32:30, which recalls that Hezekiah stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon and brought it down to the west side of the City of David.”[1]

In addition to this oversight, another glaring omission of the geologists is information gleaned from Assyrian inscriptional sources.[2] According to a reconstruction of this period based on Assyrian records, Judah’s revolt against Assyria began at about 705 B.C., exactly four years before Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem – exactly the amount of time that the geologists said that Hezekiah’s workers needed to complete the tunnel!

Siloam Tunnel inscription records when workers from the 8th Cent. B.C. met when digging from opposite directions. The inscription is now located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

Siloam Tunnel inscription records when workers from the 8th Cent. B.C. met when digging from opposite directions. The inscription is now located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

There are two observations I would like to make about this:

  1. As I have stated in my previous posts on archaeology – one of the major areas of debate in Old Testament archaeology is dating and not a lack of material evidence. We have seen this sort of thing crop up in other debates in the Old Testament such as the dating of the Exodus and the Conquest – specifically the debate over Tel es-Sultan (or ancient Jericho) between John Garstang and Kathleen Kenyon and the recent work of Dr. Bryant Wood.

Skeptics of the Bible and theological liberals complain that the stories in the Bible are mostly fabrications but when we do find archaeological corroboration then they move the goal-post back by re-dating the discovery to an earlier or later date.

  1. The second observation is that this episode highlights the prevalence of an extreme bias against the historical trustworthiness of the Biblical text in professional scholarly and archaeological circles (specifically ASOR – the American Schools of Oriental Research and their peer-reviewed publication BASOR – the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research).

If the article was “peer-reviewed” before it was published, then how could they have missed such an oversight of basic historical knowledge?

I suspect that there will be more dating debates in the days ahead, as ongoing research and excavations in Bible lands reveal even more corroboration and affirmation that the Biblical text is indeed trustworthy when it records events that happened in the past.

As the late novelist Michael Crichton once wrote, “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ”

All of the “leaves” of the New Testament are connected to branches which reach down to the trunk and roots of the Old Testament. As Jesus taught, “…if they would not believe Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead” (Lk. 16:31).

[1] http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/regarding-recent-suggestions-redating-the-siloam-tunnel/?mqsc=E3610342&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHDDailyNewsletter&utm_campaign=E3B827, (accessed August 30, 2013).

[2] See, A. Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704-681 BC), Part 1 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012).

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How Will Same Sex Marriage Hurt You?

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If you think that push for same sex marriage and so-called “non-discrimination” laws are all about love and tolerance, you couldn’t be more wrong.  A decision out of the New Mexico Supreme Court this week couldn’t be more intolerant and un-American.  According to the court, a Christian photographer violated a New Mexico non-discrimination law by politely declining to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.  She now must pay nearly $7,000 in court costs to the Lesbian couple who brought the complaint.

Attorney Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defending Freedom, who argued the case for Elane Photography, will be on our radio program next week to explain why this decision violates First Amendment rights, and what it means for the future of religious freedom in the United States.  In the meantime, you can see his interview with Shannon Breem here:

 

Let me make four quick points here before I discuss it on radio today and next week with Jordan:

1) Refusing to photograph a same sex wedding is not the same as refusing to service on account of race.  Race has no bearing on one’s behavior, but homosexuality does have implications on behavior.  Race can’t hurt anyone– it has no moral dimension.  But sexual behaviors can and do hurt people, and that’s why morality is intrinsic to them.

2) Elane Photography was not refusing service because the clients identified as lesbians.  She was not refusing service on account of attractions (sexual orientation).  She declined service because she did not want to use her artistic talents to advocate homosexual actions that went against her moral and religious beliefs.  Elane Photography was happy to work with lesbian clients on other projects that did not involve advocating homosexual behavior.

3) The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was put in place to prevent exactly what the New Mexico Supreme Court has done:  forcing citizens to advocate (not just tolerate) ideas and behaviors that contradict their deepest religious beliefs.  If you don’t like Elane Photography’s religious or moral position, be careful:  imagine a homosexual photographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage.  Should that homosexual photographer be forced to do so?  Of course not!  Then why Elane Photography?

4) This is just another in a long line of examples where people of faith and conscience are being discriminated against in the name of “tolerance” and “non-discrimination.”  This is not tolerance or non-discrimination.  It is exactly the opposite.  It is totalitarianism– see it our way, or else!  And unless the church and other people who love freedom begin to speak up and get involved in politics, education, the media, and the law, we will lose the very freedoms that allow us to live our lives as Christians.  Soon you will not be able to even preach the Gospel without paying a very heavy price.

 

 

 

 

 

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