Tag Archive for: Evan Minton

Christians Science

“Christians Are Opposed To Science!” What Do You Mean By That?

By Evan Minton

In any debate or argument, it’s very important that you understand the terminology that your opponent is using and that your opponent understands the terminology that you’re using. If you don’t define your terms, you’ll just end up talking past each other and you’ll end up attacking straw men. As the philosopher, Voltaire put it: “Define your terms or we shall be like two ships passing in the night.”[1]

Often, you’ll hear atheists and anti-theists say things like “Christians don’t believe in science” or “Christians are anti-science!” or “You can believe in God or you can believe in science, but not both.” or “You can believe in The Bible or you can believe in science, but not both.” Atheists claim to be the champions of science and they deride Christians and Christianity for being opponents to science. But, in order to respond to the secularist’s claims, one has to ask a very important question: “What do you mean by that?” It’s one of the questions of The Colombo Tactic, a debate tactic talked about in Greg Koukl’s Tactics: A Game Plan For Discussing Your Christian Convictions. 

What do you mean by that? What do you mean by “science”? What definition are you ascribing to that term? Because how the secularist is defining “science” will determine whether or not I agree with his claims. In my experience debating atheists on the internet and in real life, I have found that “science” can mean many different things to many different people, and when they claim “Christianity and science don’t mix” or “God and Science don’t go together” or “You can believe in The Bible or believe in science, but not both”, while all of the atheists are using the same words and are phrasing their arguments the same way, they don’t actually all mean to convey the same message.

It is the object of this blog post to look at the various definitions of “science” and talk about whether or not Christianity (and Christians by extension) are truly “Anti-Science”.

Definition 1: Science = Science Is The Only Way To Know Truth. 

Some people confuse “science” with a philosophy called “scientism.” Scientism asserts that the only way to know what is true and what is not is through the scientific method. If you haven’t reached a conclusion through the scientific method, the conclusion can only be believed on blind faith or superstition. Scientism means that it can’t be known through science, it simply cannot be known.

If this is the definition of “science” that the skeptic says is incompatible with Christianity, then I would agree. Scientism and Christianity do not go hand in hand, for Christianity asserts that there are various roads to discovering the truth. For example, Romans 8:16 says that the way in which we know we are children of God is through the inner witness of The Holy Spirit. Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of things we do not see.”[2] We can know that we’re truly born again by The Holy Spirit witnessing to our hearts, telling us so. We can have confidence that God will always keep His promises by having faith in Him. Faith in Him is the evidence of what we do not see. What do we not see? His promises being fulfilled. We will see them in the future (e.g our entrance into Heaven because we placed our faith in Christ, Jesus’ return), but we don’t see them now. We trust that God will do what He says. Neither of these avenues to knowledge are through scientific means. The first is through spiritual, the second is through faith. One cannot be a Christian and believe that science is the only way to know truth.

On theological grounds, we must reject scientism. Since some atheists take scientism to be the same as science, they see a rejection of scientism as a rejection of science.

Of course, I would reject scientism even if I were not a Christian or even a theist at all. Why? Because the philosophy of scientism is logically self-refuting. A self-refuting claim is one that is refuted merely by asserting it. Such as examples would be “I can’t speak a word in English” spoken in English, or “My parents had no kids that lived” or “Everything I say is a lie”. If someone said to you “My parents had no kids that lived”, you would say “Well, that can’t be true. At least if they’re really your parents, since you’re alive.” If someone said “Everything I say is a lie”, you would know that if this statement is true, it’s false. If it’s true, at least one thing this person says is true, so not everything is a lie. But, if the statement is false, then it also isn’t true that everything he says is a lie since not everything he says is a lie. Either way, the statement cannot be affirmed without being undermined. If it’s true, it’s false, and if it’s false, it’s false.

Scientism is self-refuting in the same way. When someone says “Science is the only way to know truth”, I ask them “How did you come to that conclusion?” (another example of The Combo Tactic). How did you come to the conclusion that science is the only way to know truth? Did you come to that conclusion using the scientific method? How could the scientific method even be used to test that statement? What procedures would be involved in testing, scientifically, the claim “Truth can only be known through science”? The statement “Truth can only be known through science” is a philosophical statement, not a scientific one. It cannot be tested using the scientific method, and therefore, it collapses under its own criteria.

1: Truth can only be known through scientific testing.

2: Scientism cannot be known through scientific testing.

3: Therefore, scientism cannot be known.

For this reason alone, even atheists should reject scientism, at least if they want to remain logical. Are Christianity and Science opposites? Only if you’re using “science” as a synonym for “scientism”. But, by that definition, science and logic are opposites as well.

Definition 2: Science = An Old Earth and Darwinian Macro-Evolution 

I’ve come to learn that one big reason Christians are labeled anti-science, why Christianity is seen as being undermined by science, and why belief in God and belief in science are seen as incompatible, is because many Christians reject the scientific consensus regarding the age of the universe and the validity of Darwinian macroevolution. Being anti-evolution is seen as being anti-science.

Now, first of all, there are many, many Christians who accept the various dating methods and agree that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is around 14 billion years old.[3] There are also Christians who accept Darwin’s theory of large-scale evolution and believe that that was the process God used to bring about all of life.[4] Where I stand on this issue: I don’t know. I am definitely an old earther of some sorts.

So, even given this definition of “Science”, it would only follow that some Christians are anti-science, but certainly not all. On this definition of “science”, only a portion would be anti-science. This charge wouldn’t affect Francis Collins, Deborah Haarsma, N.T Wright, Peter Enns, or others. They would not be opposed to science under this definition of the word.

Would The Bible be opposed to science? Well, this would depend on whether concordism is true or whether accommodationism is true. Does The Bible actually intend to teach us how old the universe is and the precise method and order God brought everything into being? If The Bible’s goal isn’t to convey cosmology or biology to us, but instead used the scientific understanding of its initial recipients (ancient Jews) to get theological and moral truths across, then even if we find scientific nonsense in The Bible, that would be no grounds for disavowing biblical inerrancy or concluding that scripture isn’t inspired. So which is it, concordism or accomodationism? Richard Bushey wrote an article he wrote making the case that God never intended to teach His readers science: see “Why The Biblical Flat Earth Model Doesn’t Flatten Christianity”. 

For further reading, see “Hermeneutics 101 – Part 3: Understanding The Cultural Context”  and my blog post “Why Did God Write A Book?” 

There are many interpretations of Genesis that are compatible with an old earth and even evolution. For a treatment of The Day-Age View, I recommend reading Hugh Ross’ “A Matter Of Days”, for The Functional Ontological Interpretation of Genesis, read John Walton’s books “The Lost World Of Genesis One” and “The Lost World Of Adam and Eve”. Deborah and Loren Haarsma’s book “Origins: Christian Perspectives On Creation, Evolution, And Intelligent Design” is also a source I’d recommend.

Is God incompatible with evolution? No. Christians have always held that God can work through natural processes as well as through miracles. If a man goes into surgery, and people pray that the surgery goes well and it does, they don’t say “Well, God didn’t do it. It was the surgeon and his skills”. They would say something like “God guided the surgeons’ hands so that they wouldn’t screw up” or, if one is a Molinist, “God placed just these surgeons in these circumstances knowing that they would perform the surgery successfully”. For some reason, a lot of Christians just don’t apply that same reasoning to evolution. Evolution no more replaces God as an explanation for the existence of the animal kingdom than a vacuum replaces a maid as the explanation for why the floor is clean. Evolution doesn’t replace God as an explanation for why life exists any more than an oven replaces a chef as the explanation for how dinner was cooked. Evolution doesn’t replace God as an explanation for life any more than a surgeon replaces Him as an explanation for why a surgery went well.

Is evolution incompatible with the epistemological justification of God’s existence? I don’t see why that would be so. Biological design arguments aren’t the only arguments for God’s existence, you know. There’s The Kalam Cosmological Argument, The Cosmic Fine-Tuning Argument, The Local Fine-Tuning Argument, The Moral Argument, The Ontological Argument, The Argument From Desire, The Argument From Science’s Doability, The Transcendental Argument, and there’s plenty of historical evidence indicating that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross and rose from the dead (see here, here, and here). All of these arguments are, in my judgment, sound, and none of them depend on the truth or falsehood of Darwin’s theory. One can concede evolution and all of these arguments would still need dealing with.

I’d like to point out though, that just because one is opposed to a scientific theory, that doesn’t mean one is anti-science. That would be like saying that because a Christian disagrees with a particular interpretation of a passage of The Bible that he’s therefore “Anti-Bible”.

Definition 3: Science as defined As Philosophical Naturalism.

If what one means by “science” is the philosophical worldview called Naturalism (i.e nothing exists but the natural, physical world), then Christianity is definitely incompatible and opposed to “science”. There’s no such thing as a naturalistic Christianity. Naturalism rules out anything supernatural, by definition. It doesn’t allow for God, angels, or demons, and since it doesn’t allow for God, it doesn’t allow for miracles, and since it doesn’t allow for miracles, it doesn’t allow for a bodily resurrection.

Christians, Christianity, The Bible, God, all of these are anti-science if science is used as a synonym for atheism.

Definition 4 and 5: Science = (A) Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method. (B) Such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena: natural science.

This is one of the definitions that Merriam-Webster’s dictionary gives. It defines science as “such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena :natural science”[5]  Definitely not opposed to this. I speak for myself and many others when I say that learning things about the universe is a good thing. I am very pro-science under this definition of the word, and many other Christians are as well. Some Christians are scientists themselves. In fact, historically, the scientists who made the most groundbreaking discoveries and ergo were remembered for generations held to the Christian worldview. Do names such as Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Michael Faraday, Robert Boyle, and Johannes Kepler ring a bell?  Modern day examples would include Francis Collins, who worked with the team that successfully mapped the human genome in its entirety. Under Marriam-Webster’s number 3, we can say that Christians are not anti-science. Christians have actually made great contributions to science.

I love learning science. I can’t get enough of it, to be honest with you. I initially dove into scientific research as part of my apologetics training (i.e to learn how to defend the Cosmological and Fine-Tuning Arguments), but as I learned more and more, I actually became interested in learning science for the sake of science itself. In fact, if I hope to some day buy all the seasons of How The Universe Works and Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s show Cosmos: A Space-Time Oddysee on DVD. I greatly enjoyed those programs.

I find the information in scientific books, journals, and TV programs fascinating. Not only that, but I consider it a form of worship. Jesus said to love God with all of our minds (Matthew 22:37). To learn how creation ticks is one way to pay this intellectual homage Jesus was talking about. When I hear scientists on TV talk about what goes on inside of a star, I cannot help but think “What an awesome God I serve! He made that!”. When I hear of astronomers describe the conditions on Saturn’s moon Titan, even if I never open my mouth, I at least inwardly praise God for making such a fascinating system. Even with evolution, If I fall off this fence I’ve been sitting on, I would say alongside Charles Kingsley, an Anglican Priest, and a friend of Darwin: “We knew of old that God was so wise that He could make all things; but behold, God is so much wiser than that, that He can make all things make themselves.”[6]  I believe God loves science, and I believe it makes Him happy the more we learn about this big, beautiful world He created. When the Higgs-Bozon (a.k.a The God Particle) was discovered, I saw a meme that was captioned “‘Hey scientists, thanks for finding my particle’ – God” and although it was intended to be humorous, I personally think it reflected the truth. When Higgs first predicted that such a particle existed, I can imagine the Father turning to The Son and saying giddily “This particle We created, they’re close to finding out about it!” I like to think of it as like a father giving his children a large jig-saw puzzle, then he sits back and watches in gladness as His children piece together more and more, getting a fuller picture the more pieces they successfully fit together.

When I use the word science, I never use definitions 1-3. I always use 4 and 5: “(A) Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method. (B) Such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena: natural science.” Christians, Christianity, The Bible, God, none of these are incompatible or opposed to science by these meanings of the word. And if you’ll click the link in Footnote number 5, I think you’ll find the Christian worldview isn’t incompatible with any of the other 3 definitions Marriam-Webster gives either. It is certainly incompatible with some of the definitions secularists often ascribe to it.

Conclusion

“Christians are opposed to science!”, “God and Science and mutually exclusive”, “You can believe The Bible or science, but not both.”. To my Christian readers, when you hear these statements, you need to first understand what they mean by the word “science”. Do they mean “Scientism”? Do they mean acceptance of an old earth and evolution? Do they mean it as a synonym for atheism? Or do they use it to mean an investigation into how the universe works? Depending on what they mean by it will determine what kind of response you should give. Not getting a definition out of them will likely result in you and the atheist talking past each other. Does he mean the same thing as you do when he says the word “science”? Find out. Ask the question “What do you mean by science?”

Footnotes 

[1] Or at least he’s been attributed as saying this. It is uncertain whether he ever did.

[2] I don’t believe that Hebrews 11:1 is teaching blind faith. Fideists will use the verse this way, but I really don’t think that’s what the verse is actually saying. For one thing, the context of this verse includes examples of people who had very strong evidence for God’s existence (e.g Abraham, Moses) and praises them for their great faith. Hebrews 11 is a sort of “Faith Hall Of Fame”. Faith is a synonym for trust. To have faith in God means to have trust in God. You can trust in God while having evidence for His existence. Inversely, you can have evidence for God’s existence and not trust Him at all (cf. James 2:19).

[3] Most of the Christian Apologists I’ve learned from over the years are Old Earth Creationists, such as Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, Hugh Ross, Frank Turek, Norman Geisler, J. Warner Wallace, Sean McDowell, and Neil Mammen. While they reject evolution, they do agree that the universe and Earth are billions of years old, and would agree that young earth creationism defies sound science. For those interested in this position, I suggest Reasons.org. Also, see my blog posts on this on the “The Creation Controversy” page.

[4] These Christians call themselves Evolutionary Creationists. For those interested in investigating this position, I suggest BioLogos.org.

[5] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

[6] Charles Kingsley, The Natural Theology Of The Future, 1871

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2yXQsPo

/by
Why did God write a book

Why Did God Write A Book?

By Evan Minton

Why did God write a book? By that, I mean why did God inspire authors to write documents which make up a compilation we call The Holy Bible? What were God’s purposes in doing that? Obviously, He had reasons of some sort. All authors write books for reasons. For example, when I sat down to write Inference To The One True God, my purpose was to give arguments for why belief in the Christian God is warranted as opposed to any other so-called deity. In my book A Hellacious Doctrine, my purpose was to establish that God’s love and justice aren’t incompatible with The Bible’s teachings on Hell. My purpose in Inference To The One True God wasn’t to tell my readers about agriculture, or whether abortion is morally permissible, or what the health benefits of a glucose-free diet are or are not. I had a specifically stated purpose: to give reasons to believe that The God of The Bible exists, and by extension, The Bible’s truth, and by even further extension, Christianity’s truth.

Likewise, The Bible’s divine author (God) had a purpose for inspiring the authors of the 66 books and letters which comprise it. It’s important that we know an author’s purpose for writing because if we don’t, we may wrongly accuse him of error, or criticize him for not talking about something or mentioning something in his work. If we don’t know an author’s reason for writing, we may also have unreasonable expectations which, if not met, will cause us to be disappointed or to doubt the author’s credibility.

Through reflection on this subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that God had 3 reasons for inspiring the 66 books and letters which comprise The Holy Bible.

1: To Teach Us Theology

The most obvious reason God inspired The Bible was to reveal to us truths about Himself. Through The Bible, we learn that God is omnipotent (see Genesis 18:14, Job 42:1-2, Matthew 19:26, Luke 1:37), omniscient (see Job 34:21, 1 John 3:20, Proverbs 15:3, Psalm 147:5, Psalm 139:1-4), omnipresent (see Psalm 139:7-12, Joshua 1:9, Jeremiah 23:24, Acts 17:27), morally perfect (see Deuteronomy 32:4, 1 John 1:5), all-loving 1: John 4:8, John 3:16), and so on.

We learn that God is a Trinity from the inference of 5 biblical facts: 1) There is only one God (see Isaiah 44:8, Isaiah 45:5, Isaiah 43:10, 1 Corinthians 1:8, 1 Timothy 2:5), that 2) The Father is God (1 Corinthians 4:8), that 3: Jesus is God (see John 1:1-3, 14, John 10:30, Isaiah 9:6, Philippians 2:5-8, Colossians 1:15-17, Hebrews 1), that 4: The Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4), and 5: That The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons (as evident from the fact that Jesus often talks to the Father, that John 1 said the Word was with God, that Jesus said He would send The Holy Spirit when He Himself departed  in John 14:26, etc.).

We learn that Jesus’ death on the cross was to pay for our sins in passages like Isaiah 53, 1 John 2:2, Romans 4:25, and 1 Peter 3:18. Moreover, Romans 4:25 tells us that not only did Jesus die to bring us justification, but He was resurrected from the dead as well. Jesus’ resurrection was part of His atoning work.

So, theological truths, doctrine, is why God inspired The Bible. The Bible was written so that man would know He is a sinner who has broken God’s laws, and that God became incarnate, took the punishment on his behalf, and will apply that shed blood if he only places his faith in Him. The Bible was written so that we would know what God is like, who God wants to save, who Jesus died for, and much more.

2: To Teach Us History

The Bible was also written to teach us history. Now, not all of The Bible’s books were written for this purpose (e.g Proverbs, Psalms), but undoubtedly many fall into the historical genre. For example, most scholars agree that the 4 gospels fall into the genre known as “Greco-Roman Biographies”, which is to say that they’re written to chronicle the events of a person’s life (in this case, Jesus’). The books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, etc. are also universally agreed by theologians to fall in the historical genre. These are records of events that happened in space and time.

One of God’s purpose in having His chosen authors accurately record history is that much of Christian theology rests on historical events having taken place. For example, if the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus did not actually occur in time and space, the entire Christian faith crumbles (see 1 Corinthians 15:4). If you don’t have a historical death and resurrection, you don’t have an atonement for mankind’s sins (Romans 4:25). Thankfully, the historical evidence is strong that Jesus did die on a cross and did subsequently rise from the dead (see “A Quick Case For Jesus’ Resurrection”).

Moreover, almost anyone would admit that history can be learned from, even secular history. That’s why they say “If people don’t learn history, they will be doomed to repeat it”. We can learn from the lives of Moses, Samuel, David, The Apostles. For example, every time I read about the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness, and how they complained and distrusted God, how they accused Moses on more than one occasion of leading them out there to die, and so on, and how God never fails to provide for them, I am reminded that God is faithful. He will do what He says He will do. He will never leave us nor forsake us. I take a lesson from that. In the wanderings through the wilderness we call “life”, we should trust God to take care of us. Often times, many of us find ourselves in the same position as the complaining Israelites.

Moreover, the historical narratives strung together to tell a specific story: the story of God’s mission to rescue the world from Sin. It starts in the garden of Eden and climaxes in the death and resurrection of Jesus. “It is accomplished” (John 19:30) And now history continues, as followers of Christ spread all over the globe to tell others the way to salvation (Matthew 28:19).

3: To Teach Us Morality 

Obviously, God wants us to live moral lives. If He didn’t, He would not have given us The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), or told us “Be holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16, cf. Leviticus 11:44, Leviticus 20:7), or “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). God wants us to live holy and upright lives. He wants us to produce the fruits of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control, (Galatians 5:22:23) rather than the fruits of the flesh (i.e sinful nature) which are sexual immorality, drunkenness, outbursts of anger, hatred, idolatry, discord, factions, witchcraft, envy, orgies, etc. (Galatians 5:19-21).

God tells us what is right and wrong in The Bible, and He commands us to choose the right and refrain from the wrong. Now, of course, we can know right from wrong in many areas without scripture, as Romans 2:14-15 tells us that God wrote an awareness of morality on our hearts, but not everything can be read of “The Moral Law”. For example, in Romans 7:7, Paul says that if The Old Testament scriptures hadn’t told him that coveting was wrong, he would have never known it was wrong. I can say the same thing about looking at women with lust. If Jesus hadn’t told me that it was wrong in Matthew 5:28, I would probably do it and think nothing of it. I also probably wouldn’t think to get drunk was a sin had various verses in The Bible said so. I would think it unwise to get drunk, but not morally wrong. Crossing the street without looking both ways is unwise, but it’s not a sin.

4: To Teach Us Science? 

The 3 purposes God had for inspiring The Bible’s documents will be uncontroversial for any orthodox Christian believer. I think any Christian reading this would be in full agreement with me that doctrine, history, and morality are reasons that God wrote The Bible. We could probably include wisdom as well, given that that’s the explicitly stated purpose of the book of Proverbs, but one may possibly put that under the morality category. I don’t know, it’s up to you whether you think Wisdom fall under category number 3 or stands as its own category.

Anyway, there is a split in the church today over whether God intended His authors to convey accurate scientific information. By that, I mean that many Christians (in fact, I’d be willing to say most) believe that whenever a Bible passage makes reference to the natural world, the way it talks about it should correspond to the way the world really is. They think that if The Bible taught some scientifically ludicrous idea such as the Earth is flat or that the sky consists of a solid dome, then The Bible is in error and therefore not divinely inspired. The Christians would call themselves “Concordists” as they believe The Bible must be in concord with what science says about the universe.

However, we need to ask two questions: first: what is the definition of biblical inerrancy. Secondly: what would constitute an error.

My definition of inerrancy is this: “The Bible is inerrant in everything that it intends to teach.” If The Bible did not intend to teach something, then if the authors got it wrong when talking about that something, then inerrancy isn’t undermined. So, for me, I would accuse The Bible to be in error if it got it wrong in any of the three categories stated above: Theology, History, and Morality. I would also consider it to be in error if it got it wrong in describing cosmology IF God intended to teach the recipients of His book cosmology. However, if that wasn’t His goal, then no problem.

I am not a concordist. I am an accommodationist. I believe God did not intend to teach the Israelites Cosmology. In fact, the more I think about the idea of God conveying absolutely perfect scientific information in scripture, the less sense it actually makes. Here’s why I say it doesn’t make sense. I go back to that one question: “Why did God decide to write a book?” Was God really interested in teaching the ancient Israelites how the cosmos functioned? Was that really on His list of priorities? Did it matter to him whether they believed the Earth is a sphere or is flat? Did it matter to Him whether or not they believed the sky was solid? What was God’s purpose for writing a book? I think 3 reasons given above make perfect sense, but it makes no sense to think teaching them accurate cosmology and physiology was even on His to-do list.

For one thing: God has foreknowledge (Psalm 139:1-4). He knew we would figure out the truth about the universe eventually through the rigorous scientific method. It would have been redundant to tell us in His Word. God may have thought to Himself “There’s no need to correct my Peoples’ faulty cosmology. Humanity will figure it all out on their own in time. Besides, a lot of this would just confuse them anyway, and I already have a tough time getting them to trust what I say. Overturning their entire cosmological system with something foreign to their thinking would just be counterproductive. I’ll just use the cosmology they think is true to get my theological points across.”

On this view, God accommodated (hence the name) the scientific understanding of his original recipients to teach truths about Himself. I resisted this view for a long time because I thought to affirm that The Bible contained Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology was to affirm that The Bible is not inerrant. But I now see that’s mistaken.

It’s like this: imagine there’s a pastor teaching vacation Bible school, and he wants to teach the children about being charitable. It’s Christmas time and all the kids are talking about Santa’s supposed imminent coming. The pastor talks about Santa Claus and says “Santa Claus travels all over the world delivering lots of toys to good little girls and boys. You know why he does this? Because he’s loving and selfless. He gets nothing out of this global delivery except your joy and happiness. You should strive to be just as charitable and giving as he is”.

Now, the pastor’s point is not that there is actually a person called Santa Claus who delivers presents on Christmas Eve. His point is that the children should be just as charitable as they believe Santa is. In an analogous way, when The Bible says “The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength; indeed, the world is established, firm and secure.” (Psalm 93:1, NIV), God’s point is not that the Earth doesn’t move, but that God’s throne (His sovereignty) is as established and unmovable as the ancients believed the Earth was. Just as the pastor could use a false belief of the child’s to teach a moral truth, God used a false scientific belief to teach His initial recipients a theological truth. Neither the pastor nor the Lord could be accused of being in error because the existence of Santa Claus and the immovability of Earth wasn’t what they were trying to teach. Indeed. Neither of them needed to teach such, for the child believed in Santa Claus prior to receiving the teaching. The Israelites believed the Earth was motionless prior to receiving the revelation. The pastor and God simply used false pre-existing beliefs as a springboard to teach something that is true.

Conclusion 

Why Did God write a book? To convey the history of his interactions with His people, to convey theological doctrine, and to convey morality. God could have used scripture to teach cosmology, but what motive would He have for doing that? I can’t find any motive. He knew we would figure it out on our own anyway, so why tell us thousands of years in advanced? One can have a spiritually fulfilling life and a strong relationship with God even if they’re the most scientifically ignorant person of all time, so why would correct cosmology be a priority at all? Moreover, one could argue that concepts like evolution, a spherical earth, a non-solid sky, would have just confused them at best, and made them distrustful of this God didn’t know anything about their “correct” science at worst.

Of all the motives I can find for God to write a book, cosmology isn’t one of them. I can’t think of a single reason God would have to want to correct the ancient Israelites cosmology via divine revelation.

So, if God’s book doesn’t describe the world properly (and it doesn’t), I don’t find blame God. Teaching cosmology wasn’t one of Scripture’s purposes. Getting mad at God for not teaching cosmology would be like getting mad at me for not teaching quantum physics in A Hellacious Doctrine. Quantum Physics wasn’t why I wrote the book.

“The Bible shows the way to go to Heaven, not the way the heavens go.” – Galileo Galilei[1]

“I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption” – Billy Graham[2]

Notes

[1] Galileo Galilei, (n.d.) BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved August 15, 2017, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/galileogal381320.html

[2] Source Book:  Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man, 1997.  p. 72-74

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2g9peKZ

/by
Free Will Critics

Responding To Free Will Critics

By Evan Minton

My article “5 Arguments For The Existence Of Free Will” became very popular. Tim Stratton liked it so much that he featured it as a guest post on his blog FreeThinkingMinistires.com, Martin Glynn specifically asked me to post it to The Society Of Evangelical Arminians’ website, and Jairo Izquierdo published it as a guest post on CrossExamined.org. In the case of the latter, several comments came flooding in as pushback to the things I said in the article. This isn’t surprising given how popular CrossExamined.org is as an apologetics ministry. Instead of responding to the comments specifically and getting into long back-and-forth conversations with people, I thought it would be more edifying if I actually made a response article addressing a few of those rebuttals.

To the readers of this site, I will assume you have already read “5 Arguments For The Existence Of Free Will“, and the following content will assume that background knowledge. If you haven’t read it, go read that first. Moreover, I’ll address these rebuttals according to each specific argument that the rebuttal is aimed towards.

The Argument From True Love 

Rebuttal: You Can’t Choose Who You Fall In Love With.

Andy Ryan wrote “You can talk about ‘love freely given’ but does anyone believe they have a choice over who they love? It’s pretty much something that just happens. Many people wish they could stop loving someone they love or regain a love they’ve lost. But in vain. So I don’t get how you connect love to free will.” 

The problem with this response is that it’s equivocating “love” with “infatuation”. I’ve pointed out in other blog posts that love is not an emotion. It’s not a feeling. Love is an action or series of actions aimed at the wellbeing of the one being loved. You can choose who you love if love is an action or series of actions rather than a feeling. Obviously, you can’t control how you feel. If that were the case, I’d never feel worried, angry, or sad a single day in my entire life. When someone I love dies, I’d choose to just be giddy rather than heartbroken. While you can’t control how you feel, you can control how you act.

The idea that love is action and not an emotion is grounded in scripture. Let’s turn to one of the most famous passages on love; 1 Corinthians 13.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

This passage is a description of not just love, but perfect love. Go up and read the passage again very carefully. I want you to notice something. There isn’t much talk of warm, fuzzy feelings in this passage.

Kindness is not a feeling. Kindness is an action. If I buy you a house, it doesn’t matter how I feel about you. My action was a kindness towards you. My choice to buy you a house was just that: a choice. You can have very bitter feelings towards someone and will yourself to do something nice for them. Kindness does not have to be associated with feelings.

What about patience? Well, that might seem like an emotion, but in reality, patience itself is an action. I might be irritated that someone is taking a long time in doing something they said they were going to do for me, but I can choose to not to express my agitation. I can conceal it, and say “Take your time. There’s no hurry.”. An impatient person would say “What is taking you so long? Get on with it already!” I may be experiencing a feeling of impatience, but I can still express the action of patience. A friend and I may both be waiting on another friend to pick us up to take us to dinner, and I may say “What is taking him so long? He should have been here 20 minutes ago! This is going to screw up my whole schedule.” while my friend next to me may be experiencing the same emotion but keeps his impatient emotion to himself. So, although we’re both feeling the same emotion, I choose to express impatience while he chooses to express patience. When my future wife takes a long time in the bathroom getting ready, I may be irritated at that, but what will I express? Patience or impatience? The choice is up to me.

“It keeps no record of wrongs”. This is also a choice. You may incidentally remember wrongs done to you, but the one who loves will try to forget them. The one who loves will not purposefully keep a list so that he can keep throwing the misdeeds up in the misdeed doer’s face. I have been wronged by some of the people in my life, and while I can remember that I was wrong, I can’t remember very many of the specific wrongs (except when something triggers a memory). I’m trying not to keep a record.

“It does not dishonor others”. Is dishonoring others a feeling? Surely not.

“It does not boast” — regardless of what your emotional state is, you can choose not to brag about things.

“It is not self-seeking” — another action that’s not a feeling. You can choose to seek the good of others instead of your own good.

The only things resembling emotions in this passage would be the parts that say “It is not easily angered” and “rejoices in the truth”. Now, these are emotions. Does this contradict everything I’ve just said? I don’t think so. I don’t think love itself is an emotion, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely isolated from emotions. Love can invoke emotions. I’ve heard testimonies of Christians who have done kind things for their enemies. While initially gritting their teeth in distaste, over time, their continued choice to express love softened their hearts towards their enemies and they actually had emotional feelings towards them. One of my Bible teachers spoke of a man he worked for years ago who made his life Hell. The employer developed cancer and my Bible teacher reluctantly prayed for him over a long period of time. The more he prayed for his boss, the less hard feelings he had towards him. When he learned of his employer’s passing, he said that it actually broke his heart and he burst into tears. I have had similar experiences. Doing love can actually transform your feelings towards someone. This is why I think it’s entirely possible to learn to “love the one you’re with”. This would also explain why so many arranged marriages actually worked out in times past.[1]

In light of this, Jesus’ command in Matthew 5 to love our enemies makes a lot more sense. Jesus isn’t commanding us to have warm and fuzzy feelings towards the people who treat us horribly. Rather, he’s telling us to show them kindness, patience, to avoid dishonoring them, to not boast if you one up them, to seek their well-being. Most of Jesus’ examples of loving your enemies are *drum roll* actions: “ If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”(verses 39-42).

In conclusion: I can’t control who I become infatuated with, but I can control which woman I show love to. I don’t have to have warm and fuzzy feelings towards someone to love them.

The Argument From Moral Accountability 

Rebuttal: Your Argument doesn’t follow because you haven’t demonstrated that The Bible is true.

In one of KR’s comments, he said: “Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premises since you haven’t established that what the Bible teaches is actually true. Your 2nd argument suffers from the same problem.” 

My article was primarily aimed at Calvinists, who believe The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant, and ergo true. So, I admit that I presupposed that The Bible was true in most of the arguments I used in my blog post. I wasn’t concerned with refuting atheistic determinists, but determinists who were Christians. The only argument in the blog post that would apply to both Christian and non-Christian determinists was The FreeThinking Argument. I’ve argued with KR in the comment sections of other blog posts on Cross Examined’s website, so I know that he isn’t a Christian. It isn’t surprising that he wouldn’t find the argument from moral accountability compelling since it does presuppose that The Bible is true.

The Appearance Of Free Will Problem

Rebuttal: I Feel Determined?

In the same comment, KR wrote “As for the appearance of free will, it may be the case that we have different experiences. While I certainly feel that I have a self and that this self-performs various actions and has various thoughts, it feels to me that these actions and thoughts are always a reaction to something that happened before. I don’t feel that I decide to perform an action or have a thought ‘ex nihilo'”.

I don’t like responding to arguments when I’m not 100% sure I understand. But I studied this response carefully and I think I know what he’s saying here. I suspect that KR may be misrepresenting what libertarian free will is when he says “I don’t feel that I decide to perform an action or have a thought ex nihilo.” It is a common misconception that libertarian free will asserts that our choices are “random” or “spontaneous”, like the appearance of a particle in the quantum vacuum. No one knows when and where one is going to pop up. I don’t think my choices originate “ex nihilo” either, at least if KR is using that term the way I think he’s using it. Certainly, there are previously existing factors inside and outside of myself that have an influence on my choices, but does this mean that they determine my choices? I would say no. My feeling of hunger may influence me to get up and grab something to eat, but the hunger doesn’t determine me to eat. My urge for sex may influence my decision to have intercourse with someone, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have refrained from having sex with that person. Libertarian Free Will (LFW) neither asserts that our choices have no good reasons or motivations behind them. I may choose to eat because I’m hungry or I may choose to refrain from eating because I’m too busy working on a blog post, or maybe I’m in the middle of a fast, or maybe I’m dieting to lose weight. LFW doesn’t assert that our choices are without purpose, just that it laid within our power to choose the opposite of what we actually chose.

Does KR have an accurate understanding of LFW? If not, that might explain why he feels he doesn’t have it. If he thinks of free will as spontaneous actions devoid of any influences or motivations, then it’s no wonder why he doesn’t think he has it. I don’t believe I have that kind of free will either!

The Free Thinking Argument

Rebuttal 1: Computers Do Calculations And They Don’t Have Free Will.

Andy Ryan wrote “You’ve not shown or demonstrated this. Why does the latter follow from the former?” Premise 3 of The Free Thinking Argument states that if libertarian free will does not exist, the rationality and knowledge does not exist. He says I haven’t demonstrated that this premise is true. Why does he think that?

The argument I put forth was a quote from Tim Stratton. Stratton said “Premise (3) is equivalent with ‘if all things are causally determined, then that includes all thoughts and beliefs.’ If our thoughts and beliefs are forced upon us, and we could not have chosen better beliefs, then we are simply left assuming that our determined beliefs are good (let alone true). Therefore, we could never rationally affirm that our beliefs are the inference to the best explanation – we can only assume it. Here is the big problem for the atheistic naturalist: it logically follows that if naturalism is true, then atheists — or anyone else for that matter — cannot possess knowledge. Knowledge is defined as ‘justified true belief.’ One can happen to have true beliefs; however, if they do not possess warrant or justification for a specific belief, their belief does not qualify as a knowledge claim. If one cannot freely infer the best explanation, then one has no justification that their belief really is the best explanation. Without justification, knowledge goes down the drain. All we are left with is question-begging assumptions.”[2]

Andy responded “Why does one have to ‘freely’ infer it? Do computers require free will to make accurate calculations? Evidently not – they seem to get by just fine! Imagine giving two computers sentience. They argue between them over a particular course of action and which option is the best. What’s wrong with describing what they have as ‘knowledge’?”

To hark back to Stratton’s explanation: knowledge is “justified true belief”. In order to have a belief that is both true and justified, one must be able to think freely. In order to think freely, one must have free will. You can’t be a free thinker without free will. In the case of computers, yes, they do mathematical calculations and they always come up with the right answer to the equation, but that’s because there were people who causally determined the computer to have an infallible calculator inside of it. The programmer just as well could have programmed the computer to come up with wrong answers, and the computer wouldn’t know the difference. Or perhaps someone hacked into the computer and infected it with a virus that causally determines it to come up with calculations. If human beings are causally determined, then how do you know that the beliefs you hold to aren’t irrational? How could you keep yourself from committing fallacies? How could you know whether or not the beliefs you were determined to hold are true? They could be true, they could have good reasons for them, but you wouldn’t be able to rationally weigh alternatives. If person 1 is causally determined to believe truth A, if person 1 was causally determined to believe lie B, he was determined to believe B.

Just as a computer will come up with the truth or a lie depending on how it’s wired, so we will come to true or false beliefs depending on how we’re wired. Can it really be said that someone possesses knowledge (i.e justified true belief) when the conclusions they came to were a mere matter of the molecules and chemistry in their brain + their environment? If the atoms in their brains bumped around differently, or if they had lived different lives in different circumstances and environments, their beliefs very well could have been different. What someone believes, on naturalism, depends on happenstance. If what someone believes depends on happenstance, how can that belief be said to be justified? It could, by happenstance, be a true belief, but it would not be a justified true belief. You would just happen to hold to the correct viewpoint.

The same problem affects theological determinism. If God causally determines everything we think, say, and do, then if we believe the correct theological doctrines or not just depends on whatever God decreed we would believe.

William Lane Craig said it well: “There is a sort of dizzying, self-defeating character to determinism. For if one comes to believe that determinism is true, one has to believe that the reason he has come to believe it is simply that he was determined to do so. One has not in fact been able to weigh the arguments pro and con and freely make up one’s mind on that basis. The difference between the person who weighs the arguments for determinism and rejects them and the person who weighs them and accepts them is wholly that one was determined by causal factors outside himself to believe and the other not to believe. When you come to realize that your decision to believe in determinism was itself determined and that even your present realization of that fact right now is likewise determined, a sort of vertigo sets in, for everything that you think, even this very thought itself, is outside your control. Determinism could be true; but it is very hard to see how it could ever be rationally affirmed since its affirmation undermines the rationality of its affirmation.”[3]

Rebuttal 2: What Is A Soul And How Does It Allow For Free Will but Physicalism Doesn’t? 

In that same comment, Andy Ryan said “What exactly is a soul and by what exact mechanism does it make libertarian free will possible where it is otherwise impossible? If one person has a soul and another person doesn’t, how does the soul lead to better or more informed decisions in the first person? If their brains are otherwise working exactly the same, I don’t see the difference.”

Andy is responding to the second premise of The Free Thinking Argument which states that if the soul does not exist, then no one has a libertarian free will. First, souls are immaterial entities that animate the physical bodies of humans and higher animals. It controls the brain and the brain controls the body. When a person dies, the soul leaves the body, leaving it lifeless. A soul isn’t something you have, it’s something you are. A body is what you have.

If people are merely physical organisms, then that means all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions are causally determined by brain chemistry, firing neurons, external environmental conditions and so on. How can free will exist if a man is nothing more than a collection of physical parts? Does a computer have free will? Does an amoeba have free will? Do thunderclouds have free will? No. All of the above react to physical cause and effect because they are purely physical things. I just took a swig of diet coke after typing that last sentence. If humans are purely physical creatures, then I don’t see how we can control what we do any more than my diet coke can control whether or not it fizzes.

Many atheists, like Francis Crick who I quoted in the article, are determinists precisely because they are physicalists. It’s their physicalism that drives them to the conclusion that we are merely organisms reacting to stimuli.  The assertion of premise 2 is that if the soul doesn’t exist, then free will doesn’t exist. I think I’ve done a pretty good job explaining that we have good reason to believe this is true. Now, how does the soul solve the problem? I’m not entirely sure what it is about a soul that gives it the ability to choose between alternatives, but I do know that it makes human beings more than mere physical objects. If I am a soul with a body, then there’s an aspect of me that transcends the natural realm, and that therefore entails that I am not necessarily subject to do whatever my environment and internal brain activity make me do. I have a mind, not just a brain. And while the brain can affect/influence the mind (e.g mental illnesses like schizophrenia), and the reverse is also true (e.g studies have shown that positive thoughts and negative thoughts can shape your brain), it is not the case that my brain makes me do anything.

Conclusion 
I don’t think any of the people in the comment section successfully refuted any of the arguments I put forth in libertarian free will.

By the way, there was a comment left by a person named John B Moore, but I didn’t address it because he didn’t get any rebuttals. All he did was essentially say “Your arguments are no good. You’re wrong”. Not a quote, but that’s the essence of his comment. He didn’t say which of the premises of which of the arguments were not true, nor did he tackle my arguments for the truth of the premises.

Notes

[1] I ‘m not advocating for arranged marriages. I’m just saying that maybe a reason so many of them actually turned out well was that the people realized “This is who I’m going to be stuck with for the rest of my life. I should make every effort to show love to him or her”.

[2] Tim Stratton, “The FreeThinking Argument In A Nutshell”, November 30th 2015, http://freethinkingministries.com/the-freethinking-argument-in-a-nutshell/

[3] William Lane Craig, from the article “Q&A: Molinism VS. Calvinism: Troubled By Calvinists”, – http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-vs-calvinism 

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2ku9IhP

/by
Arguments Existence Free Will

5 Arguments for The Existence of Free Will

By Evan Minton

Free Will is a topic debated among Christians and even some non-Christians. The Christians who affirm that men have free will in the libertarian sense are Arminians, Molinists, and Open Theists. Christians who deny free will in the libertarian sense generally fall into the Calvinist camp. I have argued elsewhere that libertarian free will is the only true kind of free will that there is. Compatibilism, despite what the name suggests, doesn’t reconcile free will and determinism. Compatibilism, at most, would explain why we feel like we’re free when we make our actions even though we’re determined. Compatibilism would explain why I feel like a free creature despite being the puppet of God, my sinful nature, my desires, or the molecules in my brain ((depending on what kind of determinist you are)). But it doesn’t actually let us affirm the two propositions; (A) Man is determined, and (B) Man is free. Why? Because on compatibilism, man still cannot choose between alternatives. He can only choose what God, his sinful nature, his brain chemistry, or his desires caused him to choose. When placed with the options of choosing A or Non-A, God/Sin Nature/Neurological Processes/my desire will cause me to choose one, and I have no ability whatsoever to choose the opposite of what I chose. I fail to see how this is “free” will in any meaningful sense. Saying that “You’re free to choose what you’re determined to choose” is tantamount to telling a person who’s tied up “You’re free to stay put.”

Libertarian Free Will is the only true free will there is. If you deny that, you might as well deny that we have free will altogether. I believe we do have free will, and I have both philosophical reasons as well as scriptural reasons for holding this belief. Sometimes the philosophical reasons and biblical reasons coalesce (as you will see below). Below, I will list 3 arguments for the truth that man is a free creature. Before I do, let me make sure you understand the definition of “free will” I’ll be employing. As stated, I reject the idea of compatibilism (that determinism and free will can co-exist) because you cannot choose anything except what you were determined to choose. The Free Will that exists in man is libertarian free will.

Libertarian Free Will asserts that:

1: The Man is the origin and cause of his own actions.

2: The Man, in most cases, [1] will have the ability to choose between 2 or more options. And whichever option he chooses, he did not have to make that choice. He could have chosen one of the alternatives. For example, if presented with A and Non-A, man chooses A, but he didn’t have to choose A. He could have chosen Non-A instead. It laid within his power to choose Non-A. He just didn’t exercise that power.[2]

3: The Man’s choice was undetermined. Nothing internal or external to the man causally determined the man to make the choice he did. His choice was uncaused or undetermined.

Now, what reasons might be given for believing that God has endowed human beings with this kind of free will?

1: The Argument From Moral Accountability

It seems to me that if a man is determined to do what he does, then he cannot be blamed for his own actions. If God causally determined man to sin (as many Calvinists claim), then how can the man be blamed for that sin? Wouldn’t God be the one to blame? After all, God is the one who causally determined the man to do what he did? How does the human being get the blame but God magically gets off the hook? If our sinful nature causally determined us to sin, why blame us? Why not just blame the sinful nature within us? If, as on atheistic determinism, the molecules in motion inside our brains caused us to do what we did, why blame us? Why not blame our brain chemistry? “It’s not my fault! My brain chemistry made me do it!” Causes are always responsible for their effects. If God causally determines people to sin, then God is responsible for our sins. If our sinful nature causally determines us to sin, then our sinful nature is responsible for our sins. If our brain chemistry….you get the point. Whatever caused us to do what we do is ultimately responsible for what we do. This is common sense that determinists of all stripes willfully deny. If we are not the origin and ultimate cause of our actions, then we are not responsible for our actions. Whatever is the origin and ultimate cause, that thing is responsible. And it is that thing that will get the blame.

If I knock a ball off a table, is the ball to blame for falling to the floor? No! Well, who or what is? Obviously, I am. I’m responsible for the ball falling because I’m the one who caused the ball to fall.

At this point, the determinist who affirms compatibilism may respond, “But Man did what he did because he wanted to. He wasn’t forced against his will. His action was in line with his will.” Okay, but why did the man want to do what he did? Many Calvinists say that God causes people to want X and the want then determines them to do X. In this case, the problem is merely kicked upstairs. Man did X because he wanted to do X, but the reason he wanted to do X was that God caused him to want to do X. So, God is still to blame. Determinist Compatibilists who are atheists will substitute the word “God” or “Neurological processes” and make the same argument, but the argument fails on naturalistic determinism for the same reason it fails on divine determinism. From here on, I will only address theological forms of determinism. I only mention naturalistic determinism to point out that it suffers from the same flaw as Calvinism’s.

Some Calvinists believe that Adam had libertarian free will (LFW) and he sinned, from then on, no one was free. Our sinful natures causally determined us all to commit sins of various kinds. In this case, God isn’t on the hook, but neither is a man. You can’t blame a man for sinning on this view. It’s in his nature. Just as it’s in a lion’s nature to kill gazelles. You don’t blame the lion for not choosing a vegan diet, though, do you? If it is in X’s nature to do Y, we generally don’t have any moral outrage at X. We excuse X by saying, “It’s in X’s nature. X can’t help it.” Why do this with animals, but not humans?

Moreover, we generally realize that if a person could not choose other than what they did, they are not culpable. If I knock you over, you don’t hold me accountable if you realized that the reason I knocked you over was that my shoe was untied unbeknownst to me, and I tripped over my shoelace while running, causing me to slam into you and knock you over. If you knew my situation, you would most likely excuse me, yes? Now, on the other hand, if I took my hands and purposefully shoved you down, that would be a different story. You would hold me accountable because you knew I had it within my power to choose; otherwise, I did it on purpose, and the actions’ origin and the ultimate cause was my volition (not something external to me as in the former example).

If a man has no arms and you tell him to hug you, and he doesn’t because he has no arms, you wouldn’t penalize him, would you? No! Why not? Because the man was not able to hug you. Everyone intuitively believes that an “ought” implies a “can,” well, except for determinists who believe God penalizes man for sinning when he wasn’t able to choose otherwise, and penalizes man for not believing in Christ when they believe that man was unable to believe. But even they accept this premise in all other areas of life, just not theology. I could never accuse a Calvi of being consistent.

It seems to me that unless man is free in the libertarian sense, he cannot be held accountable for anything he does.

My argument for free will is as follows:

1: If Men Aren’t Free In A Libertarian Sense, They Cannot Be Held Responsible For Wrongdoing.

2: The Bible teaches that God will hold men accountable for wrongdoing.

3: Therefore, men have Free Will in a libertarian sense.

This is a logically valid argument. The rule of inference this argument goes by is “Modus Tollens.” So, in order for the conclusion to be reached, both premises must be true. I’ve given us good reasons to believe that premise 1 is true. In fact, premise 1 is the only premise in this argument that Calvinists will deny. No Calvinist will deny premise 2. Nevertheless, let me give some of the biblical evidence for 2 anyway.

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.” – Revelation 20:11-13

“So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.” – Romans 14:12

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” – 2 Corinthians 5:10

These 3 passages are only a small sampling of passages stating that God will hold man accountable for his actions. Clearly, the second premise is true. It seems then that both premises are true, in which the conclusion follows: 3: Therefore, men have Free Will in a libertarian sense.

2: In Many Places, The Bible Asserts Or Implies That Man Has Free Will 

Free Will is implied throughout The Bible, but there are a few places where it is explicitly evident. For example, in 1 Corinthians 10:13, the apostle Paul wrote: “No temptation has overtaken you, except what is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, will provide a way of escape also so that you will be able to endure it.” This is probably the most powerful evidence of libertarian free will, the most explicit example of libertarian free will, and the most difficult-for-determinists-to-get-around passage in the entire Bible. Paul says that the temptation that afflicts his readers isn’t anything unusual, nothing unique to them. He then goes on to say that God is faithful, and won’t allow the temptation to sin to be so overwhelming that it’s impossible for them to resist it. Instead, God will provide “a way of escape” so that they’ll endure it and ergo avoid sinning.

Paul is assuming here that his readers don’t have to sin. Sin is not inevitable. God provides a way out so that we’ll be able to avoid sin. If we do sin, it’s because we refused to take “the way of escape” that God offered. If we don’t sin, it’s because we chose “the way of escape.” This verse presupposes libertarian free will. It presupposes that the listener does not have to sin. He’s faced with A (sin) and Non-A (The Way Of Escape). He can choose either and is responsible for whichever one he chooses. The determinist cannot make sense of this verse. If humans are causally determined to do everything we do, then “the way of escape” was not a possible option for those who sin. “The way of escape” on determinism, was nothing but an illusion! Only if man truly has the power to genuinely choose between alternatives, can we say that “the way of escape” was a possible option for those who sinned.

Paul is essentially saying in 1 Corinthians 10:13 “Look, you don’t have to sin. You don’t have to. God will provide a way out so you’ll be able to endure it. If you choose not to take His way out, it’s your fault, not God’s.”

“See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees, and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” – Deuteronomy 30:15-19

In this passage, Moses was clearly giving the Israelites a choice to serve God or to serve idols. Now, if the Israelites thousands of years ago had a choice, why don’t we have a choice today? In this passage, Moses was saying, “I set before you A and Non-A. I’d prefer it if you chose A”. Sounds like the libertarian free will to me!

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” – Joshua 24:14-15

Joshua is clearly giving the Israelites a choice to serve God or to serve idols. Now, if the Israelites thousands of years ago had a choice, why don’t we have a choice today?

Moreover, on the Calvinist view, God causally determines everything, so we’d have to conclude that the apparent offer to choose between the one true God and pagan gods was insincere. Is God insincere? Surely not! The most reasonable inference is that the Israelites had the legitimate option of choosing A (worshiping the one true God), or Non-A (worshiping idols). And whichever choice they made, they didn’t have to have made and could have chosen otherwise.

Moreover, several passages in The Bible talk about “Freewill offerings” (e.g., Leviticus 22:23, Numbers 29:39, Deuteronomy 12:6, Deuteronomy 16:10, Ezra 8:28). How can you give a “Freewill offering” if you have no free will!?

3: The Argument From True Love

If human beings don’t have libertarian free will, then it is impossible for love to exist. This argument for the existence of free will goes as follows

1: If man’s love isn’t given freely, it isn’t genuine.

2: Man’s love is genuine.

3: Therefore, man loves freely.

This is a logically valid argument as the syllogism takes the form modus tollens. Therefore, in order to affirm the conclusion, we’ll have to affirm that both of the premises are true. So, are the premises true, or are they false? Well, let’s look at them.

Premise 1:

If our love for God and one another weren’t given of our own free will, it would be impossible for our love to be genuine. Instead, we would have an artificial love, a programmed love, a forced love. Love, in order to be genuine, must be freely given. People who give true love must have the freedom to choose not to love. To see the point: imagine it’s the year 3,000 where robotics have been perfected to the point where robots look, sound, and behave 100% identical to real human beings. You go down to “Robot Depot” to buy yourself a wife. You buy this android that looks as beautiful as a supermodel. Based on her looks, you already know she’s got the attractiveness quality. But what of her character? The manual she comes with tells you that you can program her personality anyway you desire. So, you program her to always do whatever you want, to always put your needs above hers, and to always laugh at your jokes, etc. You program her to never leave you for another man. You program her to say “I love you” 20 times a day. You program her to never bother you while watching football. In fact, you program her to be just as into football as you are. You program her to be the perfect wife.

Question: would any of this be meaningful to you? Would you feel loved? No. You would clearly recognize that her love for you is artificial. Every act of kindness, every display of affection, and every “I love you,” was your doing, not hers. You causally determined her to do these things for you. They did not originate within her. All of her acts of love and selflessness would be empty gestures because you caused her to do them, and she had no capability of doing differently.

Similarly, if God causally determined everyone to love Him, praise Him 24/7, to never disobey Him, and to always do good, our actions would be devoid of meaningfulness. The only reason we praise Him is that He programmed us to praise Him. The only reason we abstain from sin is that He programmed us to abstain from it. It would be the same for our “love” for one another. If God causally determines a man to love his wife, I don’t see how that would be any more meaningful than when a little girl causes a Ken doll to show love to a Barbie doll.

I think premise 1 is most certainly true. Even if the Calvinist denies that God causally determines everything, and wants to scribe the determination to the sinful nature or our desires alone, that doesn’t help anything. Suppose in the aforementioned robot-wife illustration that I didn’t causally determine my wife to do all those things, but one of my close friends did. He got me a robot wife and programmed her to do all those things for me because he knows what kind of wife I would like. Even though the programming didn’t come from me, I still wouldn’t feel loved by this robot woman because she was still unable to choose otherwise. So, in a similar way, if my nature, desires, or brain molecules causally determine me to love God and my neighbor, it would be just as meaningless as if God were the One pulling the strings.

Premise 2:

Why think that our love is genuine? Maybe The Calvinist can bite the bullet and say, “Okay, I agree. Without libertarian free will, our love is worthless automata. But so what? Maybe our love is worthless automata?” First of all, I’d like to point out to my readers that I don’t think any Calvinist would deny premise 2. He’s more than likely to go after premise 1. Of course, that raises the question: Why would the Calvinist be reluctant to deny premise 2?

Because the Calvinist, like all Christians, realizes that God is perfect. God is a Maximally Great Being, and as such, has all great-making properties, including omniscience. If God omniscient, then He knows what kind of world would be one where true love could exist. If premise 2 is false, we’re forced to say that God created a loveless world! No one truly loves God; no one truly loves their neighbor! But, The Bible teaches that God wants our love for Him to be genuine. This is why the two greatest commandments are to love God with all of our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (see Matthew 22:37-39, Mark 12:30-31, Luke 10:27). God wants us to love Him with all of our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. If God did not want us to obey those commands, then why did He give them in the first place? Would God really create a world where love is impossible and then command us to love? That would be a rather stupid thing to do, wouldn’t it? Since God commands us to love Him and each other, that implies that we are able to love Him and one another. Given that only a world of free-will creatures is a world where fulfilling those two commandments is possible, it follows that God would prefer to actualize such a possible world, and since God would prefer such a world, it follows that He would actualize such a world.

Moreover, denial of premise 2 would entail a denial of biblical inerrancy. For The Bible implies that our love for God is real when it says, “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). There it is, right in 1 John 4! “We love.” If you deny this premise, then you have to deny that this verse is true!

Conclusion:

Given the truth of the 2 premises, the conclusion follows logically and necessarily. Man loves freely.

4: The Appearance Of Free Will Problem

One of the problems I have with the Young Earth Creationist’s Argument that “The universe is really only 6,000 years old, God just made it look like it was billions of years old” is that it makes God out to be a deceiver. Yes, God had the freedom to make the universe in an advanced state, and He certainly made the wine at Cana in an aged state as it was the best-tasting wine (see John 4), and if the literal reading of Genesis is correct, God made Adam and Eve in adult bodies. BUT would God create Adam and Eve with an appearance of past history? There’s a difference between the appearance of age and past history. As Richard Deem wrote, “Did Adam have an appearance of history? Did he have a navel from a birth that never happened? Were his teeth worn at his creation, even though he had never eaten? Did Adam have calluses on his feet even though he had never walked? The Bible does not address these issues, and since Adam’s body is not available, we have no idea of the answers to these questions. Does the Bible compare Adam’s body to the creation? No! The analogy has no biblical basis and is based upon conjecture alone. Does the wine of Cana have an appearance of history? According to the biblical account, Jesus ordered water pots to be filled with water and, immediately, the water had become wine. Did it have an appearance of history? If the wine had been in wineskins (like the original wine), then one might say that it appeared to have been aged in the wineskins. However, the wine was still in the water pots. It had no appearance of history. Does the Bible compare the wine of Cana to the creation? No! Like Adam’s body, the wine of Cana analogy has no biblical basis and is based upon conjecture alone.”[3] For God to have created a universe like he did, He would have created an appearance of past history. History of millions of years of erosion, a bombardment on the surface of the moon, erosion of the canyons on Mars, starlight reaching us from millions of light-years away, but reaching us in thousands because it was created in-transit, etc. This would make God a deceiver, and The Bible teaches that God cannot lie (see Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:18). Since God cannot lie, it follows that He could not have created a universe that appears to have endured through millions of years of history.

Well, it appears the same problem affects Calvinists in the realm of free will. Even Calvinists won’t deny that we appear to have free will. We feel like we have free will. Most of us think our actions are free. It certainly seems like when we make a choice; we could have done otherwise. Calvinists will just deny that this appearance and feeling is real. They will say it’s a delusion or illusion. The problem is that this entails that God created a universe with a deceptive appearance. Everyone is a puppet of His, but He has caused us to believe that our actions are free. He pulls all the strings, but He has implanted in us belief that what we do is done of our own volition, and that we had the power to choose other than what we chose.

In fact, I would not shy away from arguing that belief in free will is a properly basic belief. I think most people innately believe that they’re free, just as they believe objective morality exists, and that the external world exists. It’s only the case that people stop believing in these things when a determinist, relativist, and solipsist respectively talk them out of it. Why would God deceptively form our minds like this? Why would he plant an innate belief in libertarian freedom if that did not reflect reality? It seems to me that if man isn’t truly free, then God is a deceiver, just as God is a deceiver if the starlight hadn’t been traveling for millions of years.

5: The FreeThinking Argument 

This argument originated with apologist Tim Stratton, head of FreeThinking Ministries. The premises of the argument demonstrate both the existence of free will as well as the existence of the soul, and it indirectly points to the existence of God. So it simultaneously slays Calvinism and Atheism, at least if all of the premises are true. Stratton’s argument goes as follows

1- If naturalism is true, the immaterial human soul does not exist.

2- If the soul does not exist, libertarian free will does not exist.

3- If libertarian free will does not exist, rationality and knowledge do not exist.

4- Rationality and knowledge exist.

5- Therefore, libertarian free will exists.

6- Therefore, the soul exists.

7- Therefore, naturalism is false.

8- The best explanation for the existence of the soul is God.

Premises 1 and 2 seems obviously true to me. If Naturalism is true, then we’re just organic robots. If atheism is true, all there is matter, energy, space, and time. There are no “souls” or “spirits.” Most atheists would agree with premise 1. In fact, I’d be shocked if I found one who thought there was a soul inside of his body or thought spirits existed. If this is the case, if we are not souls in bodies, then it follows that we’re just “molecules in motion” as Frank Turek likes to put it. If Naturalism/Atheism is true, we are nothing but automata. All of our movements, feelings, thoughts, and opinions are causally determined by electrochemical processes in our brains, molecules, and atoms bumping about, and other physical processes. “You” are a meat machine. As geneticist Francis Crick put it “Your joys and your sorrows, your memories, and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”[4]

So if atheism is true, we don’t have souls, and if we don’t have souls, we don’t have free will. We’re just “molecules in motion.” What about premise 3? Is it true that “If libertarian free will does not exist, rationality and knowledge do not exist?” I think so! Tim Stratton, in his article “The Freethinking Argument In A Nutshell,” wrote “Premise (3) is equivalent with ‘if all things are causally determined, then that includes all thoughts and beliefs.’ If our thoughts and beliefs are forced upon us, and we could not have chosen better beliefs, then we are simply left assuming that our determined beliefs are good (let alone true). Therefore, we could never rationally affirm that our beliefs are the inference to the best explanation – we can only assume it. Here is the big problem for the atheistic naturalist: it logically follows that if naturalism is true, then atheists — or anyone else for that matter — cannot possess knowledge. Knowledge is defined as ‘justified true belief.’ One can happen to have true beliefs; however, if they do not possess warrant or justification for a specific belief, their belief does not qualify as a knowledge claim. If one cannot freely infer the best explanation, then one has no justification that their belief really is the best explanation. Without justification, knowledge goes down the drain. All we are left with is question-begging assumptions.”[5]

Is Premise 4 true? Yes. I think it is. It is clear that human beings do possess rationality and knowledge. To contradict the claim that humans possess rationality and knowledge would be to affirm that humans possess rationality and knowledge. To deny the claim would be to affirm it. Why do I say this? Because the detractor of this premise would be saying that he’s giving us the knowledge to the contrary. Moreover, if one rejects knowledge, why should anyone listen to them? If one denies that he is a rational man, why should we listen to him? Why listen to someone who openly admits that he is irrational?

Given the truth of the 4 premises, steps 5-7 follow. Libertarian free will exists, therefore the soul exists; therefore naturalism is false.

As Stratton will tell you, this argument has 3 deductive conclusions and 1 inductive conclusion. The deductive conclusion is that naturalism is false; the inductive conclusion is an inference that God is the best explanation for why the human soul exists. An atheistic universe with spirits is implausible prima facie. It makes more sense to me to think that if souls exist, immaterial minds, then there was a “Mega Mind” that created all of them. Given that this article is pretty lengthy as it is, I won’t go any further into The FreeThinking Argument’s inductive conclusion than that.

This argument kills 2 birds with 1 stone. Those birds are named Atheism and Calvinism.

For a full, in-depth defense of this argument, check out this 48-minute lecture by Tim Stratton. –> http://freethinkingministries.com/test-video-2/

Conclusion

For these 5 reasons, I believe human beings have libertarian free will. I cannot bring myself to embrace any form of determinism. There are too many reasons both philosophically and exegetically to believe man has free will.

Footnotes 

[1] When I say “most cases,” I mean that there will be some instances in which only one choice will be available for us to choose from. Libertarians aren’t committed to the view that we must always in all circumstances, be able to choose between alternatives. For example, if you jump off a building, clearly your only option is to fall to the ground. If a man snorts cocaine, he is addicted and now can do nothing but snort it unless either God miraculously frees him or rehab rehabilitates him. In the case of jumping off of buildings and additions, man cannot choose Non-A, but man can choose Non-A in many circumstances. Ken Keathley calls these “freedom permitting circumstances.” The circumstance before jumping off the building was a freedom permitting circumstance. The circumstance after you jumped off was not.

[2] This does not apply to salvation. I am not a Pelagian. I believe man is free to either choose to receive Christ or to reject Him, but man must be given this ability by The Holy Spirit. Man must be given what Arminian theologians call “Prevenient Grace.” To see the biblical case for the doctrine of Prevenient Grace, see my blog post “What Biblical Evidence Is There For Prevenient Grace?”  I believe man’s will must be freeD in order for him to come to Christ.

[3] Richard Deem, from the online article “Appearance Of Age — A Young Earth Problem,” http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/appearance.html

[4] Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994 cited in Mariano Artigas, The Mind of the Universe: Understanding Science and Religion, Templeton Foundation Press, 2001 p. 11.

[5] Tim Stratton, “The FreeThinking Argument In A Nutshell,” November 30th, 2015, http://freethinkingministries.com/the-freethinking-argument-in-a-nutshell/

 

Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2h6DKqx

/by
Contingency Argument God

The Contingency Argument For God’s Existence

,

By Evan Minton

Why does anything at all exist? Why isn’t there just nothing? This is the first philosophical question I ever remember asking myself. I remember lying in bed at night when I was about 6 years old, and I asked and pondered this very question. I thought to myself “Everything must have been made by God. If God didn’t exist, then nothing else would exist either. Since everything exists, God must exist. But what if God didn’t exist either? Then nothing else would exist.” It was only 15 years later that I discovered that my childlike insight was actually developed into a sophisticated philosophical argument for the existence of God long before I was even born. In fact, I had even forgotten that moment of reflection when I was a small child until I started reading about the argument as an adult. Then I remembered.

The argument is called “The Contingency Argument For God’s Existence”. Sometimes it’s referred to as “The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument”, the reason why it is called that is that the argument was first formulated by the mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The argument’s premises are:

1: Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause).

2: If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.

3: The universe exists.

4: Therefore, The universe has an explanation of its existence.

5: Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.

Now, this is a logically airtight argument. So if the atheist wants to deny the conclusion, he has to say that one of the three premises is false. Let’s examine the premises to see what reasons can be given for affirming them.

Premise 1: Everything That Exists Has An Explanation Of Its Existence (Either In The Necessity Of Its Own Nature Or In An External Cause). 

*Types Of Explanations – There are 2 types of explanations for why something exists. X was either caused to exist by something that exists outside of and prior to X or X exists out of a necessity of its own nature (I.e its non-existence is impossible and it depends on nothing outside of itself to bring it into or keep it in existence). Something was either caused to exist by something else or it exists out of logical necessity.

*This Premise Is Self-Evident – We all intuitively know that whatever exists has some sort of explanation as to why it exists. Imagine you were walking in the forest with a friend and found a ball lying on the ground. You would naturally wonder how the ball came to be there. If your friend said to you “Don’t worry about it. The Ball just exists inexplicably” you would either think he was crazy or was joking around. Either way, you’d never take seriously the notion that the ball just existed there with no explanation for why it existed or how it came to be there.

Whatever it is we think about, whether it be cars, trucks, chairs, tables, people, houses, trees, balloons, mountains, planets, galaxies, etc. we know that they must have some explanation for their existence. Nothing exists for no reason. Even little children know this. Why else would they ask Mom and Dad “Where do babies come from?” They know that they have an explanation for their existence. They know that they don’t exist inexplicably.

*Objection: Does God Have An Explanation Of His Existence?

Critics of this argument frequently object to this premise by saying that if everything that exists must have an explanation for why it exists, then God must have an explanation for His existence. If God exists, then the premise applies to Him as well. However, that would demean God as it would mean something existed outside of God Himself which brought Him into existence. In other words, God would have a Creator and we would have a Heavenly Grandfather. Now, if we make God an exception to premise 1, the skeptic would rightly accuse us of special pleading. And moreover, he could ask that if we’re allowed to make God an exception to premise 1, why not exempt the universe?

This objection does not succeed. Read the first premise again. “Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause)”. We would agree that God’s greatness would be diminished if he had anexternal cause for His existence. But that’s not the only type of explanation there is. One category of existence-explanation is necessary existence. What the Christian Apologist would say in response is that God does indeed have an explanation for His existence, but that explanation is that He exists by the necessity of His own nature. If God exists, He cannot not exist. His non-existence is logically impossible.

So premise 1 certainly seems to be true. What about premise 2? Is premise 2 true?

Premise 2: If The Universe Has An Explanation Of Its Existence, That Explanation Is God.

At first, this premise may seem like a huge logical leap. But it actually makes sense when you think about it. In order to have caused the universe to come into being, the cause of the universe must be beyond the universe, beyond space and time. And therefore cannot be a material, spatial, or temporal type of thing. Whatever caused the universe to come into being must be a spaceless, immaterial, uncaused, powerful, personal Creator. Why is that?

The cause must be

Spaceless — because it brought space into existence. If the cause is responsible for space’s existence, it cannot be inside of space. It cannot exist inside of something that doesn’t exist yet. Just as the builder of your house could not have existed inside your house, so the cause could not have existed inside of space.

Immaterial – The cause’s non-spatiality entails immateriality. How? Because material objects cannot exist unless space exists. Material objects occupy spatial dimensions. If there is no space, matter cannot exist. This means that because the cause is non-spatial, it is therefore non-material.

Supernatural – “Nature” and “The universe” are synonyms. Since the cause is beyond nature (given that its the explanation why nature exists), it follows that the cause is supernatural. After all, that’s what phenomenon transcendent to nature is. Supernatural, that which transcends the natural.

Powerful – Whatever is able to create and/or sustain the entire physical cosmos must have enormous power.

Uncaused – Given that the cause of the universe is a necesarilly existent being, it must therefore be uncaused. Necesarry existence presupposes eternal existence.

Personal – This is an entailment of the cause’s immateriality. There are two types of things recognized by philosophers that are immaterial: abstract objects (such as numbers, sets, or other mathematical entities) or unembodied minds. Philosophers realize that abstract objects if they exist, they exist as non-physical entities. However, abstract objects cannot produce any effects. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number 3 isn’t going to be producing any effects anytime soon. Given that abstract objects are causally impotent, it, therefore, follows that an unembodied mind is the cause of the universe’ beginning.

This sounds an awful lot like God to me. Now, we don’t have to call this cause “God” if that makes the atheist feel uncomfortable. We could just call it “The non-spatial, immaterial, unimaginably powerful, necesarilly existent Mind behind the universe”. But to avoid getting out of breath, I prefer to label this explanation “God”.

Moreover, even if the universe were beginningless, it would still be the case that it needs a cause that has the aforementioned properties. Leibniz’ argument doesn’t depend on proving that the universe had a beginning. As long as the universe is not a necessarily existent thing, then it needs a non-spatial, non-material, powerful, uncreated Mind to be the explanation for why it exists. For The Contingency Argument to succeed, all that needs to be true is that the universe is contingent.

3: The Universe Exists.

The truth of this premise is overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with even a small shred of sanity. No defense of this premise needs to be given.

Of course, if someone wanted to resort to some crazy idea like solipsism (the view that you are the only thing that exists, and the entire universe and everything you experience are projections of your own mind), that doesn’t get you out of this premise. In this case, one could just say that YOU are the universe.

4: Therefore, The Universe Has An Explanation Of Its Existence.

This follows logically from premises 1 and 3.

5: Therefore, The Explanation Of The Existence Of The Universe Is God.

This follows logically from premises 2 and 4.

*Objection: “Well, Maybe The Universe Doesn’t Need To Have An External Explanation For Its Existence. Maybe The Universe Exists By A Necessity Of Its Own Nature.”

This is one way an atheist could escape the conclusion of this argument. Perhaps premise 2 of this argument is false. The atheist could say “Well, granted. God or a being remarkably similar to God must be the explanation of the universe’s existence provided the assumption that the universe requires an external cause. But maybe that assumption is wrong. Maybe the explanation for the universe’s existence is that exists by a nature of its own existence.”

In order to save premise 2 and ergo the argument’s conclusion, we’ll need to show that the universe does require an external cause for its existence. There are some pretty clear reasons why we wouldn’t want to embrace this alternative. As we think about this big ole world we live in, none of the things that it consists of seem to exist necessarily. It seems like all of these things didn’t have to exist. It seems like they could have failed to exist.

But, you might say, perhaps the matter that these things are made of exists necessarily? Perhaps that although the galaxies, stars, planets, people, etc. and everything in the universe doesn’t exist necesarilly, the material stuff these things are made of exists necesarilly.

This proposal just simply doesn’t work. Allow me to explain why. You see, according to physicists, matter consists of teensy weensy particles called “quarks.” Everything in our world are just different arrangements of these quarks. But it seems to me that one could ask why a different collection of quarks could not have existed in the stead of this one? Are we expected to believe that every single quark in existence cannot possibly fail to exist? Does the skeptic want us to buy into the notion that all of the quarks in the universe have to exist?

“Okay, well maybe quarks aren’t necessarily existent. But maybe the particles of which the quarks are composed exist necessarily.” This suggestion won’t work because quarks aren’t composed of anything! They just are the basic units of matter. So if a quark doesn’t exist, the matter doesn’t exist.

It seems obvious to me that the existence of a different collection of quarks comprising everything of the cosmos was possible, but in that case, it follows that a different universe could have existed, and if a different universe could have existed, then it follows that our universe isn’t necessarily existent.

To see the point, think of your house. Could your house have been made of candy? Now, I’m not asking if you could have had a different house (one made of candy) in the stead of the one you actually live in. I’m asking if the very house you’re currently living in ifthat house could have been composed of candy. Obviously not. If it did, then it would not be the same house. It would be a different house.

Similarly, a cosmos comrpised of different quarks would be a different cosmos. Even if the said quarks were arranged in such a way as to resemble our universe identically, it still wouldn’t be the same universe because the quarks comrprising it would be different quarks. It follows from this that the universe does not exist by a necessity of its own nature.

Moreover, we have powerful scientific evidence that not only could the universe have failed to exist, but there was a time when it actually did not in fact exist. The Big Bang Theory has a lot of scientific evidence in its favor. A Big Bang beginning is a logical entailment of the expansion of the universe which is itself an entailment of the empirically verified “red shift” of distant galaxies, and moreover, The Big Bang is the only explanation for the abundance of light elements in the universe. Moreover, the universe is running out of usable energy over time, and if the universe had existed from eternity past, it would have run out of usable energy by now. Yet the universe has not run out of usable energy by now. This means that the universe cannot be eternal in the past, but must have an absolute beginning. Since the universe had an absolute beginning, it cannot exist by a necessity of its own nature. Why? Because necessary existence entails beginningless existence. It something cannot possibly not exist, then it could not have had a beginning to its existence. Since if it had a beginning to its existence, that would mean there was a time that it did not exist.

Conclusion

Given the truth of the 3 premises, the conclusion follows: God is the explanation for why the universe exists.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2te1kFa

 

/by
Paul Distance Witness

Did Long Distance Make Paul’s Witness List Unfalsifiable?

By Evan Minton

In chapter 8 of my book Inference To The One True God, in my blog post “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection PART 1” and in my blog post “A Quick Case For Jesus’ Resurrection”, I make the case that we know many people had experiences of the risen Jesus appearing to them because the creed cited in 1 Corinthians 15 dates back so early, well within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses (i.e it dates to 5 years after Jesus’ death), that anyone curious about whether or not Paul was telling the truth could have traveled over to Jerusalem and interviewed the people mentioned in the creed to see if they really did believe Jesus appeared to them. If Paul were lying about these people and they really hadn’t seen Jesus, the cat would have been out of the bag and the resurrection would have been exposed as a falsehood. Given how fragile a faux resurrection would be in this case, the best explanation is that the twelve disciples, James, and 500 people actually did have postmortem Jesus experiences.

On two different occasions, people have read my argument for the historicity of the postmortem appearances and have responded with the following rebuttal: “Paul is writing his letters to churches far removed in distance from where the events are said to have occurred. It would be highly unlikely anyone from his church in Corinth would travel to Israel and seek out these apparent witnesses.” The argument is that Jerusalem and Corinth were so far that it would have been very difficult for Paul’s readers to trek all the way over to Jerusalem in order to interview the people Paul was talking about. It was too inconvenient for them, so most probably never did it and never would have done it. So the they-could-have-checked-it-out argument fails. Is this true? Was Paul’s resurrection eyewitness list really protected from falsification due to large travel distance?

I don’t think this is a successful argument. There are 3 reasons why the resurrection claims could have been checked out.

1: The Corinthians Had An Invested Interest In Knowing If It Was True

 The reason why Paul was even mentioning the list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15 is because  we see in the context of the passage that there were people denying that Christ had risen from the dead, implicitly at least, because they were denying the bodily resurrection in general. They were denying that anyone would rise from the dead. Paul said if the dead are not raised then Christ isn’t raised either if Christ isn’t raised, our faith is useless and our sins remain unatoned for (1 Corinthians 15:12-14), but fortunately, Christ has been raised (verse 20). Paul argued for this by listing the various postmortem appearances of Christ in verses 3-8 via the creed he had received earlier. Now, given that the Corinthians were skeptical of the resurrection, wouldn’t they have an invested interest in knowing whether Paul was telling the truth? Of course! And given that they had an invested interest if they didn’t take Paul at his word, wouldn’t they have traveled to Jerusalem to talk to the people mentioned in the creed even if it was a rather long journey? While it might have indeed taken them a while to get there, it wasn’t impossible for them to arrive in Jerusalem. It’s not like they were traveling to New York or anything. It was certainly feasible for them to go to Jerusalem to interview the witnesses in the creed even if it wasn’t a hop, skip, and a jump from their church.

And given that this was a topic of immense interest to them, it would be difficult to argue that they wouldn’t have. Besides, we know that Paul traveled to Jerusalem to Corinth. Why wouldn’t the Corinthians travel from Corinth to Jerusalem?

2: The Resurrection Occurred During Festival Time

Moreover, the resurrection was during a festival time. The witnesses would have been from all over the place, seen the appearances, and gone back home. It’s very likely some of the 500 that Jesus appeared to were from the city of Corinth. It very well could have been the case that there were some Jewish eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Christ living in the very midst of Paul’s readers. In that case, the Corinthian resurrection doubters wouldn’t have had to travel very far at all. There were likely witnesses in their own backyard.

It was certainly the case that those reading Corinthians included Jews who may have traveled to Jerusalem for Passover. This would provide an opportunity to verify Paul’s assertion.

3: Mail From Snails 

 It is also the case that even if no one physically visited the twelve disciples and James, that they could have gotten verification via correspondence, i.e snail mail. The Corinthian resurrection doubters could have written letters to the disciples asking them “Hey yo, Pete mah BOIII! It’s ya boi Zechariah from Corinth. My homie Paul sent me a letter saying Jesus appeared to you after He died. This true, bro?” (first-century folks totally talked like this). And Peter, John, or whichever of the eyewitnesses received the letter, could have sent a reply saying either “He is risen! He is risen indeed!” or “What? Who told you this? I haven’t seen Jesus sent they crucified him.”

Conclusion 

 Given these 3 reasons, I think it is still the case that having the 1 Corinthians 15 creed dating within the lives of all the eyewitnesses provides good grounds for concluding that these postmortem sightings occurred. If they didn’t, the eyewitnesses could have talked to these people themselves, by either journeying over to Jerusalem despite it being a long journey, because they had a highly invested interest in knowing whether they occurred. Or they could have had postmortem witnesses in their own midst that they could have talked to, or they could have at least gotten verification or falsification via correspondence. Any of these scenarios would have either falsified the resurrection if it didn’t occur or vindicate it if it did occur.

 Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2s3304I

/by
Minimal Facts Divine

Does The Minimal Facts Approach Dishonor God’s Word?

By Evan Minton

The Minimal Facts Approach is an approach to establishing the truth of Jesus’ resurrection using two criteria; (1) they must be facts that have a lot of evidence in their favor, and (2) these facts must be universally or nearly universally agreed upon by scholars and historians who study the subject, even the skeptical ones. Then, once the facts are established as facts, we then examine which explanation best explains them, and it turns out that only the He-Is-Risen hypothesis best explains all of them. These facts are (1) Jesus’ death by crucifixion, (2) Jesus’ empty tomb, (3) Jesus’ post-mortem appearances to His disciples, (4) Jesus’ post-mortem appearance to Paul, and (5) Jesus’ post-mortem appearance to James.

We establish these 5 facts by looking at secular historical documents as well as applying the standard historical “criteria of authenticity” to The New Testament documents. In doing so, we can establish the truth of Jesus’ resurrection in an evidential and non-question-begging way. I make the case for the resurrection in “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection PART 1” and “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection PART 2”, but if you think those are too lengthy, I have an abridged version of that first article titled “A Quick Case For Jesus’ Resurrection”. So, check those out if you want to go into the arguments and evidence. I also argue for the resurrection in chapter 8 of my book “Inference To The One True God”. 

One objection to this method of establishing Christianity’s central doctrine that I have encountered a few times is this: it dishonors God’s holy inspired word. Some Christians don’t like the minimal facts approach because it treats The New Testament documents as if they were ordinary documents written by ordinary people rather than inspired scripture. We don’t argue that Jesus’ tomb was empty “because The Bible says so” but rather, for example, “The tomb was likely empty because all 4 gospels mention women as the chief witnesses. They wouldn’t have done this if they were making it up because it was commonly thought that women were untrustworthy witnesses, to such an extent that they weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law. If they were making up this narrative, they would have had males the first one on the scene. Therefore, by the principle of embarrassment, we can conclude the tomb was empty.” As you can see, these two approaches are very different. The former takes the words of the New Testament at face value and concludes they’re true because The New Testament was inspired by God, whereas the latter approach has to apply some historical method to determine whether or not it’s true. This makes some Christians uncomfortable because it seems to suggest that God’s Word cannot be trusted to give us truthful information. It seems to treat the holy scriptures as just common literature which may or may not be true, or which may be true in some places but false in others.

The conclusion reached is that we, therefore, shouldn’t try to prove the resurrection (fideism), or if we do try to prove it, to prove it some other way that doesn’t demean The Bible (presuppositionalism). How might evidentialist Christian Apologists respond to this objection? Do we really demean God’s holy word when we argue for Jesus’ resurrection this way?

The Minimal Facts Approach Meets The Unbelievers Where They Are 

 It is very important that we reach unbelievers in a way that will be most effective to them. The Minimal Facts Approach reaches unbelievers where they are epistemologically. The non-Christian does not accept The Bible as God’s holy and inspired word and because of this, he, therefore, does not consider it authoritative, infallible, or inerrant. Therefore, it’s useless to just quote a passage from it and expect him to say “Well if it’s in The Bible, it must be true!” He doesn’t accept The Bible as authoritative, so he isn’t going be persuaded by this.

To help you get in their shoes: imagine if a Muslim tried to convince you of Islam by citing from the Quran. You wouldn’t be persuaded, would you? Why? Obviously, because you don’t think the Quran is inspired! You think it’s a fabrication by Muhammad. Well, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, and other non-Christians see The Bible the same way. If a Muslim were to convince me of Islam, he would have to take an approach to proving his religion that didn’t presuppose the inspiration of his holy book.

The Minimal Facts Approach does this. When we argue for the 5 minimal facts undergirding the inference to the resurrection, we don’t quote from The New Testament as inspired scripture. We do use The New Testament, but not as scripture. We use it as we would any other ancient document that claims to tell of historical events. We proceed to use the “criteria of authenticity” that historians use on many non-biblical documents, and we’ll see what we can affirm as true by that method. Principles such as multiple attestation, the principle of embarrassment, the principle of early attestation, the principle of dissimilarity, and so on. These are principles that historians use on secular documents all the time, in order to discern whether or not what they record is true.

Many non-Christians have come to faith through this approach, such as Lee Strobel, J. Warner Wallace, and Frank Morrison, just to name a few. These men went on to share this evidence they discovered with unbelievers they witnessed to.

We believe all of The Bible is inspired, but we pretend the gospels and epistles aren’t for the sake of the argument. The Christian Apologist is basically saying “Even if I conceded these weren’t inspired, I can still establish that the resurrection of Jesus is true.” All we are doing is simply meeting the unbeliever where he is.

This approach of meeting unbelievers where they are epistemologically is biblical. I noticed that Paul dealt with the unbelieving Jews in Berea and the unbelieving Pagans in Athens quite differently in Acts 17. With the Jews, he used scripture to reason with them, using arguments from fulfilled prophecy to prove to them that Jesus really is the messiah. With the Pagans, he didn’t use The Old Testament prophecies as evidence at all. Instead, he used philosophical arguments, and he appealed to their own Greek poets and pagan authors to establish his points. Click here to read the passage. 

In 1 Cortinthians 9:20-23, Paul wrote: “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

 The Apostle Paul saw the importance of changing his tactics depending on who he was witnessing to. We should too. When I’m witnessing to atheists, agnostics, or other people who don’t believe The Bible is inspired, I employ arguments that don’t hinge on that presupposition. However, if I’m witnessing to a heretic who does believe scripture is inspired but has interpreted some passages in such ways as to come up with heretical doctrines (e.g Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons), then I will appeal to scripture to make my points. In the case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’ll even refute their doctrines using the New World Translation (a twisted translation, but the only one they accept). I change my approach based on who I’m talking to. The Message doesn’t change, but the method of conveying the message does.

Conclusion 

 The Bible is the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). It brings no shame to a sword just because you swing it differently in different battles. Sometimes you need to slash vertically, sometimes you need to slash horizontally, other times you need to stab. You need to wield a sword in the most effective way you can to deal with the particular fighting style of your enemy. This holds true for literal swords, one would think it would hold true of “The Sword Of The Spirit” (i.e The Bible) as well. Depending on our audience, we will either use The Bible as inspired scripture or as a collection of ancient writings which we will apply the historical method to.

When we use The Minimal Facts Approach, we are not at all suggesting that we distrust God’s word. Rather we are acknowledging that our audience distrusts God’s word, and we respect that, and we witness to them with that fact in mind.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2r3yJTa

/by
Trinity Divine God

A Rebuttal To The Philosophical Argument For God’s Triune Nature

By Evan Minton
In my book “Inference To The One True God”, I gave an argument for a while only the God of the Bible can be the God proven to exist by The Moral and Ontological Arguments. The Argument here is that the Moral and Ontological Arguments prove the existence of a being that is morally perfect. Given that the Moral Argument and the Ontological Argument are logically valid, and the premises of both of these arguments are true, it follows that a necessarily existent, morally perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, personal being exists.
Now, in order to be a morally perfect being, this being would have to exist as more than one person. If God is not a trinity then God is not love. This is because love requires three things: someone to love, someone to do the loving, and a relationship going on between the lover and the Beloved. If these three things are not present then love is not present. But before any human beings were created, God was all by himself. So if God was all by himself, who was there to love? God had no one to love! Given that God had no one to love, God couldn’t be love or loving until he created the first human beings or Angels or any persons other than himself. But in that case God could not be maximally great or be the the standard of morality, for in order to be maximally great and in order to be the standard of morality, God would have to be morally perfect, which he could not be if God were only a single person. But the Moral and Ontological Argument established the existence of a being who is indeed morally perfect and ergo maximally great. So how does one resolve this dilemma? The doctrine of the Trinity provides the answer. If God is a trinity, then God can be an intrinsically loving being, because if God is a trinity then all of the necessary requirements for love are present. You have a lover, you have a beloved, and you have a relationship between them. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of love. This is why I said in my book that only the trinitarian concept of God is compatible with the God demonstrated to exist by the Moral and Ontological Arguments. But the real kicker is that only Christianity has a God who is a trinity. Therefore the Moral and Ontological Arguments demonstrate the truth of Christianity.
However, I have recently encountered one objection to this philosophical argument for the Triune nature of the God of the Moral and Ontological Arguments. The objector argues that God was omnipotent even before he created the universe and he did not have an apparent outlet to display his power. The objector is arguing that according to my logic, we would have to argue that God could not be omnipotent without a physical universe. Why? Because without a physical universe, God would not be able to display any acts of power because God would be the only thing that could exist and God cannot cause any effects on himself. This would imply that either God is Not omnipotent, or he doesn’t need an outlet to display his power. In a similar way, we must conclude that if my logic is sound, then God really is not perfectly loving, or we must conclude that having other people to love is not necessary for God to be loving, and therefore God doesn’t have to be a trinity in order to be loving from eternity past.
God is omnipotent and did not have an outlet for that until he created the universe. There is a parallel there with God’s love.
Is this a good objection? I don’t think so. Let’s think about God’s omnipotence for a moment. Omnipotence is a modal property meaning that a being who is omnipotent has the ability to do anything that is logically possible. God can create out of nothing, God can make ax heads float in water, God can make a virgin pregnant, God can raise people from the dead, it cetera. It is a modal a tribute and just simply means that you have the ability to do anything that does not violate the laws of logic. Given that comma I don’t see why God would have to have a physical Universe in order to have the property of omnipotence. Omnipotence does not mean that you will do everything that is logically possible, it just means that if you are omnipotent you can do anything that is logically possible. It doesn’t mean that you will do everything that you are able to do, just that you are able to do it.
Love is different. Unlike the property of being powerful, Love Is not just pure potentiality. A person who is stranded on a desert island with no other people around may have the potential to be loving. It may be in his nature to be kind and compassionate and selfless and so on. Nevertheless if there are no other people around, he will never have the ability to express these attributes. This person will forever just have a loving potentiality, but will never have actual love. If God were only one person, then before he created any other beings, he would be like a machine that is turned off. This “Love Machine” would have the ability to be loving, but he would never actually be expressing that love. It seems very intuitively clear to me that a being who is constantly expressing love is a greater being than one who merely has the potential to be perfectly loving. But in order to be a being who is constantly expressing love and is not merely a being of potential love, this being would have to be a trinity.
In conclusion, this objector has not succeeded in showing that my Arguments for the Triune nature of the maximally great being of the Ontological Argument, and the being who is the standard of morality of the Moral Argument fail.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2n04ISN
/by
Faith Bible Blindness

Biblical Faith VS. Blind Faith

,

By Evan Minton

Many Christians when asked by unbelievers why they should believe anything The Bible says, the most common response is “Just have faith!”. And this “just have faith” line is pretty much the answer to every single objection one could possibly raise against the Christian.

Far too often people have turned away because of intellectual doubts that plague them. “If God is all loving and all powerful, why does He let so much suffering go on in the world?” “How could a loving God send people to an eternal Hell?” “How do I know Yahweh is the one true God instead of these thousands of other gods in these other religions that contradict Christianity? How do I know The Bible is true and not The Koran or the Hindu Scriptures?” And when a Christian or a pastor responds with “Just have faith” that translates in the mind of the unbeliever as “in order to be a Christian, you need to commit intellectual suicide.” This blind faith approach is so, so, so very unbiblical. Many places in The Bible command us to tell others WHY Christianity is true.

“Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have, but do so with gentleness and respect.” – 1 Peter 3:15

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 10:5

In Jude 1:3, Jude urges his readers to DEFEND the faith (that’s what we call “Christian Apologetics”).

In Phillipians 1:16, Paul says that he was appointed to DEFEND the good news (i.e do Christian Apologetics).

“Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.” – Colossians 4:5-6

In 2 Corinthians 12:12 Paul says he gave the Corinthians PROOF that he was indeed an apostle from God because he performed many signs and wonders when he was with them. If God really wanted us to have blind faith, why would Paul give evidence for his credibility?

In 2 Corinthians 13:3 Paul says he is willing to offer the Corinthians PROOF that Christ speaks through him. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa! Hold the phone, Paul! Paul, buddy! Don’t you know that if you offer the Corinthians proof that Christ speaks through you that they won’t have legitimate faith? Why would you deprive them they opportunity of having faith, Paul? Maybe faith isn’t what people think it is.

Objection: If you need evidence, you don’t have faith.

This is an objection often proposed by Christians (as well as atheists) who think that the word “faith” means to believe something without any reason to and/or even to believe something in the face of reasons to not believe it. This distortion of the meaning of the word “faith” has had very bad consequences on the church because it makes a person think that Christianity requires you to be an undiscerning airhead who doesn’t like reason.

Here is a Bible verse that gives an example of a person placing their faith in God in spite of having evidence for His existence. I tell ya, reading The Bible is like going into a spiritual gold mine and mining all the good stuff you find. BUT you gotta dig for it. Usually, I’m not looking for stuff like this, I just happen to stumble across it while reading through the verses. I found this one night when reading through Exodus. I think it does a good job of arguing against Christians who think that apologetics is wrong because you’re supposed to have blind, undiscerning belief.

“When the Israelites saw the mighty power that The Lord had unleashed against the Egyptians, they were filled with awe before Him. THEY PUT THEIR FAITH IN HIM and His servant Moses.” – Exodus 14:31

Clearly, the Israelites had evidence that God existed and was helping them escape Egypt and yet the text says they put their faith in Him anyway (for a little while at least. we all know they lost faith a bunch of times after this). They ESPECIALLY had evidence that MOSES existed and the text says they placed their faith in him as well. So given this piece of scriptural evidence, we know that a Christian can still base his belief THAT Christianity is true on the basis of evidence and still be able to have faith in God. You see, faith means the same thing as the word “trust”. Or as I’ve said before “Faith is when someone is holding you over a ledge and knowing in your heart that not only will they not let you fall, they’ll pull you up to safety”. You know that the person holding onto you exists. You have very powerful evidence that that person exists, yet all the evidence in the world is not going to make you trust that that person will help save your life. This is the real definition of the word “faith”.

I like using an analogy. Let’s say you discovered you had heart disease, and need a risky surgery. You have sufficient resources, so you research doctors, anesthesiologists, etc. until you have the best team possible assembled. You now have a group of people that you believe will give you the best chance of survival. Even though you have researched extensively, you still show your faith in this team when you allow yourself to be put under. Faith does not mean not researching and exploring the truth. Jesus even says as much when he tells us to love God with our heart, soul, *MIND* and strength.

http://bible.cc/exodus/14-31.htm <– Here you can look at other translations of Exodus 14:31 to see all the different words that are used other than “faith”. The NLT uses “faith”, the NIV used “trust”, the KJV uses “believed” that is; they believed IN God and His promises even though they had just witnessed good evidence THAT He existed and was helping them. This is the difference between belief THAT God exists, THAT Jesus rose from the dead and belief IN His character and His promises to you.

We are never told to have a blind faith. Paul commended those in Berea for checking the Scriptures daily to see if what he was telling them was so. Jesus showed Himself alive to make sure those believed on Him, especially Thomas (John 20:28)

Paul also said to “Test everything, hold onto the good.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:21

1 Thessalonians 5:21 seems to be telling us to have just the exact opposite of blind faith.

Objection: “Without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly” – Hebrews 11:6

I agree with this. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. But then again, it’s impossible to please ANYONE without faith. It is not possible to have a good relationship with any human being without faith. What is faith? Remember, the word “faith” is synonymous with “trust”. If you’re constantly distrusting God, you’re not going to have a very good relationship with Him just as you wouldn’t have a very good relationship with your wife/husband if you were always distrusting her/him. If you’re constantly suspecting your wife of cheating on you, I “suspect” that it’s not going to be very long before she hands you the divorce papers telling you “I can’t live with someone who distrusts me so severely”. Although sometimes that kind of suspicion is warranted.

I walk by faith, not by sight. This doesn’t mean I believe God exists without any evidence or reason. It means I trust in Him even when I don’t know what He’s up to. Sometimes our circumstances can have deceitful appearances. Sometimes it looks like God has abandoned us when He really hasn’t. Sometimes it looks like God won’t keep His promises. Sometimes we think our suffering has no good purpose for it. It is in times like these that we have to have faith in (i.e to place our TRUST in) God. That His plans are for ours or someone else’s ultimate good.

Having evidence for God’s existence does not mean you’re not walking by faith. Faith is placing one’s trust in a person. Just because you have EVIDENCE for that person’s existence does not mean you don’t trust them. Moses had PLENTY of evidence for God’s existence, but He still had to trust that God was going to lead Him and the Jews where He said they were going to. Many times it looked like Yahweh was leading them on a wild goose chase, but Moses continued to have FAITH in the God which he had plenty of proof existed. Although many of the people did lose faith. They got impatient and started worshipping false idols, and constantly complained.

Objection: Do Apologists forget the work of The Holy Spirit?

Anyone who does apologetics knows the Holy Spirit has to play an integral part of the entire process. As Ergun Caner says, “It is impossible to be effective in apologetics without the work of the Spirit in both the apologist and the hearer.” (2) No mature apologist forgets that the Bible stresses that humans are blinded by sin. Therefore, sin has damaging consequences on the knowing process (Is. 6:9-10; Zech. 7:11-12; Matt. 13:10-13; 2 Cor. 4:4). How people respond to God’s revelation depends on several factors such as his/her personal history (both past and present). People can be hardened towards God; sin certainly dampens an individual’s ability to being receptive to God’s invitation to them. The Holy Spirit works through apologetics just as He works through preaching.

Objection: Shouldn’t we just preach the gospel?

This is true. By all means, “Preach the Gospel!” But guess what? What do you do when you try to open the Bible and use it with someone who doesn’t think the Bible is an authoritative or inspired book? This happens all the time to Christians. And did you know Muslims and other people think their holy book is just as inspired and authoritative as the Bible? The Hindus think their scriptures are inspired. The Buddhists think their holy scriptures are inspired. If you keep trying to quote the Bible, you would be “begging the question.”

“Begging the question” is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place. In some cases, you may be able to go quote the Bible to many people without any objections, like when you’re trying to witness to Mormons and Jehova’s Witnesses. If you’re witnessing to Jews, you can show them all the messianic prophesies and how Jesus fulfilled all of the prophesies. But in other cases (like when witnessing to atheists and agnostics), you would need to show the individual the Bible is a reliable historical document before trying to use it as an authoritative text in these types of conversations.

Avoiding Apologetics can have dire consequences.
Christianity is under a severe attack in this day and age. In fact, I’ve never seen the Christian faith under attack more than I have in the 21st century. “The New Atheist” movement has set a goal to eliminate religious belief from the face of the Earth. High School teachers and College professors endorse Darwinian evolution and try to convince your kids that a Creator was not needed for advanced life to come into being.

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig concurs. He said “In high school and college Christian teenagers are intellectually assaulted with every manner of non-Christian worldview coupled with an overwhelming relativism. If parents are not intellectually engaged with their faith and do not have sound arguments for Christian theism and good answers to their children’s questions, then we are in real danger of losing our youth. It’s no longer enough to simply teach our children Bible stories; they need doctrine and apologetics. It’s hard to understand how people today can risk parenthood without having studied apologetics.”

If Jesus wants us to have blind faith, then why did He have to fulfill so many ancient prophesies? 
If God required us to have blind faith, then why did Jesus have to fulfill so many prophesies to PROVE to the Jews that He was the true messiah? Why couldn’t Jesus just come onto the scene and say “Hey, I’m the Messiah, follow me!” Maybe because so many other people were claiming to be the Messiah at the time period and they were NOT the Messiah. The Jews needed the ability to tell truth from falsehood. The Jews needed the ability to tell the difference between the TRUE messiah and a phony. Blind Faith can’t give you that. God gave the Jews a test for the real Messiah to take and if He was able to get a perfect score, then their conclusion would be that He was and is the Messiah. Lee Strobel calls this “The Fingerprint Evidence” in his book “The Case For Christ”. Jesus had to fulfill each and every one of the messianic prophecies. If He did, then that proved He was the genuine article.
 
Blind Faith can actually be dangerous!
Blind Faith can actually be dangerous. How are you going to “beware of false prophets” like Jesus said if you don’t exercise some discernment? Back in ancient Judaism, the way to tell if a prophet was truly from God was if he gave evidence that he came from God. How’s that? Well, if his prophecies came true then he was truly from The Lord but if his prophecies were false then everyone knew he was a false prophet and they had him stoned. 1 John 4:1 says “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Yet another verse telling us that blind faith is wrong. This verse is telling us that we should “test the spirits” to see if they give evidence that they are indeed from God.

NOTEWORTHY QUOTES:
“I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.” – Galileo Galilei

“As I speak around the country, I often encounter devoted, committed Christians who are hesitant to embrace an evidential faith. In many Christian circles, faith that requires evidential support is seen as weak and inferior. For many, blind faith (a faith that simply trusts without question) is the truest, most sincere, and most valuable form of faith that we can offer God. Yet Jesus seemed to have a high regard for evidence. In John 14:11, He told those watching Him to examine ‘the evidence of miracles’ (NIV) if they did not believe what He said about His identity. Even after the resurrection, Jesus stayed with His disciples for an additional forty days and provided them with ‘many convincing proofs’ that He was resurrected and was who He claimed to be (Acts 1:2-3 NIV). Jesus understood the role and value of evidence and the importance of developing an evidential faith. It’s time for all of us, as Christians, to develop a similarly reasonable faith’.” —J. Warner Wallace

“The “I just take Christianity on (blind) faith” attitude can’t be the right approach. It leaves the Bible without defense, yet Peter directs us to make a defense for the hope that is in us. Also, the biblical word for faith, pistis, doesn’t mean wishing. It means active trust. And trust cannot be conjured up or manufactured. It must be earned. You can’t exercise the kind of faith the Bible has in mind unless you’re reasonably sure that some particular things are true. In fact, I suggest you completely ban the phrase “leap of faith” from your vocabulary. Biblical faith is based on knowledge, not wishing or blind leaps. Knowledge builds confidence and confidence leads to trust. The kind of faith God is interested in is not wishing. It’s trust based on knowing, a sure confidence grounded in evidence.’ – Greg Koukl

“Any and every other belief you hold, about anything whatsoever, if it is to be taken seriously, if it is to be of any value or worth anyone’s consideration, it must have in its favor more than your emotions, personal history or external circumstantial factors. It must have reasons.” —Clint Roberts (from the article, Believing for No Reason)

“Question with boldness. Question even if the very existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.” – Thomas Jefferson

 

“Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine”. He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.”

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2mzdohl

/by
On Talking Snakes and Donkeys

On Talking Snakes and Donkeys

By Evan Minton

One criticism that’s become extremely common from atheists is the mention of talking animals in The Bible, specifically the snake in the garden of Eden and Balaam’s donkey. In fact, on Facebook pages and in forums, I’ve heard this complaint so much it’s coming out my ears! Their point is that we never see animals talk. Animals can’t talk in the same way that humans talk. We’ve never seen any animal have the ability to speak in a human tongue and therefore, The Bible is in err. This critique is actually question begging as it presupposes that atheism is true. If God exists, why couldn’t He give one or two animals the ability to speak? After all, He gave human beings the ability to speak when He created them. If God can give human beings the ability to speak, then why couldn’t He give Balaam’s donkey or a snake the ability to speak? IF atheism were true, then I would wholeheartedly agree with the atheist that any account of a talking donkey or any other animal would be absurd. But since I believe in an all powerful God, I don’t think it’s absurd to say that God acted upon Balaam’s donkey and temporarily gave it the ability to communicate with its master.

Question: If there is a God and He had the ability to create the entire physical universe out of absolute nothingness (as current astrophysical evidence shows), which is the greatest miracle reported in The Bible, would not causing a donkey to speak Hebrew be child’s play? Of course! The question “Is an account of a talking donkey absurd” all boils down to the question “Does God Exist”? If God does not exist, then miracles can’t occur. If Miracles can’t occur, then certainly no animal could ever just spontaneously start talking since that would be a miracle. In syllogistic form, it would go like this

1: If God does not exist, then miracles can’t occur.
2: If Miracles can’t occur, then certainly no animal could ever just spontaneously start talking since that would be a miracle.
3: God does not exist.
4: Therefore, Miracles can’t occur.
5: Therefore,  no animal could ever just spontaneously start talking.

If the 3 premises are true, the conclusion follows. I agree with the first two premises, but I deny the third premise. The question as to whether or not a donkey could ever spontaneously start talking all boils down to the question “Does God Exist”. Since Christians believe God DOES exist, this objection has little to no weight to it and it’s clearly question begging.  I think all Christians would agree that if God does not exist, then in fact all of the miracles in The Bible couldn’t possibly happen, be it Jesus turning water into wine, walking on water, raising Lazarus, Moses parting the Red Sea, etc. etc. etc. But once again, and I cannot stress this enough, it comes down to question “Does God exist?” Is there a miracle working God?

Visit Evan’s blog at CerebralFaith.Blogspot.com

Resources for Greater Impact: 

/by