Tag Archive for: Free Thinking Ministries

The MAVEN Experience

The MAVEN Experience

By Tim Stratton

The primary goal of FreeThinking Ministries is to equip the church to engage the culture. In my opinion, no one is doing that better than Brett Kunkle. Kunkle became well-known in the apologetics community through his time at Greg Koukl’s organization, Stand To Reason. Recently, however, Kunkle has branched out and started MAVEN, an organization focused on helping the next generation know the truth, pursue goodness, and create beauty.

What exactly is a “maven?” Wikipedia defines maven as “a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass timely and relevant knowledge on to others in that field.” Kunkle’s particular “field” is worldview, apologetics, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Since our goals overlap (and we are both former youth pastors), Kunkle invited FreeThinking Ministries to partner with MAVEN to pass this “timely and relevant knowledge” of God along to teens.

This is primarily accomplished through MAVEN’s Apologetics Immersive Experience. I joined Kunkle and his crew this summer to witness the “experience” first hand on the campus of Cal-Berkeley in northern California. Three youth groups—from New York, Colorado, and Utah—joined forces under Kunkle’s lead. What I witnessed was amazing!

Teenagers from around the country put many “stones in the shoes” of people in the Bay Area. They engaged in respectful and intelligent dialogue with atheist speakers, talked to skeptical U.C. Berkeley students and professors, visited Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and even went surfing. As a former youth pastor, I can attest that this was the best “evangelism training” I have ever witnessed. These teens are inoculated by the MAVEN team “injecting” them with the best arguments atheists, and those of other religions will offer against Christianity. That might sound risky, but then Kunkle and his team show the students all the logical flaws with these arguments raised against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5). After training, teenagers are sent to the mission field, in this case, UC Berkeley, to put their new-found apologetic skill set to the test.

The Berkeley Survey & Dialogues with Atheists

This is primarily accomplished through a survey MAVEN has developed. Teens spread out across the campus in groups of two or three and ask students and professors if they would be interested in taking a quick survey on worldview. Unless one is late to class, most are happy to engage in this discussion.

Many of these campus surveys at Berkeley would turn into 45-minute conversations about worldview, God, and Jesus Christ. I lost track of how many times an ardent “anti-Christian” would take a step back and say “you’ve really given me something to think about.” Or, “I guess I’ve never thought about it that way before.”

After conducting campus surveys, the students and MAVEN leaders reconvene. One evening I had the opportunity to teach students about how we have epistemic access to the supernatural. That is a fancy way to say, “how we can know the supernatural exists.” I explained that although we cannot directly sense the supernatural with our five senses, logic provides epistemic access to the supernatural. I offered the Kalam Cosmological Argument as one example.

To be fair, however, MAVEN allows teens to be exposed to ideas from atheists as well. A prominent atheist in the San Francisco area was invited to give the students his best shot. Kunkle invites certain atheists to come to speak to kids and lets them explain why they believe atheism is true and Christian theism is false. There is one catch: they must engage in a dialogue with the teenagers. Shortly after my discussion (about how we have epistemic access to the supernatural through logic) came to close, one particular atheist entered the classroom and proclaimed: “Even if the supernatural does exist, we would have no way of knowing it!”

The youngest student in the room (still in middle school) raised his hand and with what he had learned an hour earlier politely asked: “Have you heard of the Kalam Cosmological Argument?” The atheist said that he was aware of the Kalam, but was no expert. The young student (while regularly looking back at me to make sure he was explaining it correctly) began to debate the atheist. His classmates joined him and were able to explain how we do have the ability to know the supernatural exists and how we can know specific things about supernatural entities.

The takeaway is this: the atheist left his encounter with the teens with his “faith” shaken. The Christian teens left with their faith strengthened with logic and reason.

Movie Night

The MAVEN experience also includes times of Bible study and prayer, time enjoying God’s creation, and time learning how to see everything through the lens of a Christian worldview — a worldview that happens to be true! This even includes a lesson on how to watch a movie.

One evening we all gathered to do just that — watch a movie. Before it began, Kunkle prepared the students to keep several things in mind when watching any movie and to always look for certain ideas, assumptions, moral values, and how characters are developed throughout the story. We then watched Les Miserables starring Liam Neeson and Uma Thurman.

After the movie, Kunkle led a fantastic conversation by asking some key questions regarding the overarching theme, who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys.” (What makes them “good” and “bad”?) What values are promoted and what is the “good life” according to the movie? These questions led to a fantastic and deep conversation with the teens.

Conclusion

By the end of the week, teens in these three youth groups were equipped to engage the culture! They all know exactly what they believe and exactly why they believe it. They know the Gospel and are prepared to share it and also to answer questions and objections raised against the Gospel message (which is a rarity)! These students also learned how to worship God while enjoying His beautiful creation — and simultaneously learning how to surf. The kids had tons of fun and were transformed by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2). They also changed a few lives for eternity.

If you are a youth pastor, Sunday school teacher, parent, or grandparent, you must do whatever it takes to get your kids on one of these trips before they graduate! To get a glimpse of the MAVEN experience click here for a Berkley trip and here for a Salt Lake City trip (they also offer a “Worldview Roadtrip”)! To learn more about these experiences email Glenn Pinson here: glenn@maventruth.com.

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18)

 

Tim pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of Nebraska-Kearney (B.A. 1997) and after working in full-time ministry for several years went on to attain his graduate degree from Biola University (M.A. 2014). Tim was recently accepted at North-West University to pursue his Ph.D. in systematic theology with a focus on metaphysics.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2LYzO9U

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Incoherent Questions

Incoherent Questions

By Tim Stratton

It has been said that there is no such thing as a stupid question. Consider the following: How much does the color purple weigh? Can God create something that is not contingent upon Him? Is the fourth corner of the triangle an obtuse, acute, or right angle? Where do the vast majority of married bachelors live?

These are examples of incoherent questions . . . stupid questions do exist! If one asks questions like these, those who are empowered by reason know that the questioner simply lacks reason.

With that in mind, if one assumes determinism, then it makes no sense to ask the following questions:

Are you willing to change your mind?

What would it take for you to change your mind?

If one assumes determinism is true, then they must also assume that these questions are just as incoherent as those found in the opening paragraph. Determinists cannot ask or answer these questions because they do not believe human agents have free will or the ability to change our own minds. This is because they affirm that things external to humans (nature or God) causally determines all things — including our thoughts and beliefs.

So, the only related question a determinist can consistently answer is this:

“What would it take for your mind to be changed?”

The naturalistic determinist would have to appeal to physics/chemistry, the initial conditions of the big bang, or perhaps to random events in quantum mechanics. None of these things are up to the determinist, so if their mind is to be changed about anything — including the topic of determinism — then things external to the determinist would have to force and determine them to reject determinism or to change their minds about anything else. If determinism is true, one simply does not possess the ability to freely think, and thus, they are simply held captive and along for the ride dictated by the forces of nature.

The theological determinist fares no better. If one assumes exhaustive divine determinism, then if this determinist’s mind is to be changed on any topic — including that of divine determinism — then it is God who must change this person’s mind on the issue. It is simply not up to them. Just like the naturalistic determinist, they would simply be along for the ride.

Those who presuppose determinism of any flavor have big problems on their hands. Consider the words of William Lane Craig:

“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.”

If determinism is true, then genuine free will does not exist, and if free will does not exist, then free thinking does not exist. Given the determinist’s view, how could anyone ever freely choose to be rational and know they are? If everything is determined by factors external to you — including your thoughts and beliefs and your thoughts and beliefs about your thoughts and beliefs — then your choice to follow the laws of logic and to think rationally would only be an illusion. You have no say in the matter.

If determinism is true, then the determinist who holds to determinism did not come to that conclusion based on their intelligence, and by choosing to examine the evidence to infer the best explanation. They were simply determined by physics and chemistry (or God) to be determinists. It has nothing to do with knowledge, logic, or rationality. If determinism is true, then there is no free will either in assessing whether one thought is better than another or not. All that remains is question-begging assumptions and presuppositions. Those are not reasons to think anything; in fact, they are not reasons at all.

If one holds to these question-begging assumptions and presuppositions, they must also assume that it is incoherent to ask them if they are willing to change their minds. With that said, they can coherently consider the much different question, “What would it take for your mind to be changed.”

However, if and how they respond to this question is not even up to them! This is good reason to freely choose to reject determinism!

Stay reasonable (Philippians 4:5),

Tim Stratton

Resources for Greater Impact

When Reason Isn’t the Reason for Unbelief TV Frame_DVD_Official

When Reason Isn’t The Reason for Unbelief (DVD)

(Download)

SFG angled book

Stealing From God (Paperback)

 

 

 

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The Law of Identity & the Human Soul

By Tim Stratton

Do humans survive the death of their bodies? As a pastor, I have officiated several funerals over the past few years and I have attended many recently. This topic is always sure to come up while talking to the surviving relatives. Questions such as these are regularly asked: Will we see our loved one again? Although the body of our loved one has died, does their soul continue to exist?

The vast majority of humanity has believed in the soul throughout the centuries; however, many advocates of scientism (the presupposition that science is the only way to know reality) have caused much doubt regarding the existence of the soul today. It is important to remember that if the human soul does exist, it is something that, like God, cannot be discovered by science. The scientific method is only applicable to things in the natural universe, and science is impotent to test, discover, or explain things such as the laws of logic, mathematics, self-introspection, objective morality, the order of science itself, and anything outside of or transcending the natural universe. [1] These kinds of things would be other than nature and this is what philosophers refer to as “supernatural.”

I have come to the conclusion that after examining all of the data, we can confidently proclaim the human soul does exist. In fact, The Freethinking Argument deductively proves that not only do humans possess libertarian free will and that naturalism is false, but it also proves that the human soul does exist! This counts as evidence demonstrating the existence of the soul; however, I am often asked for more, and independent, evidence.

The Logical Law of Identity

There are other reasons to think we are more than just bodies and brains. JP Moreland provides a powerful philosophical case regarding the logical law of identity. He says, “If I have the property of being possibly disembodied, but my body does not have the property of being possibly disembodied, it logically follows that I am not my body.”[2]  That is to say, if it is not logically incoherent to conceive of the idea that I could exist apart from my body, then it logically follows that I am something other than my body.

According to the laws of logic, there is a property that I have that my body does not, and therefore, my body and I are not identical. My body and I are not the same thing. That is to say, I am not my body.[3]   This thing that I call, “I,” is something other than my body (or brain) and it is what I refer to as the soul.

To illustrate, think about this: suppose water is H2O and they are identical. Is there anything that could possibly happen to water that could not happen to H2O? No. Whatever temperature forces water to boil, will necessarily force H2O to boil, because they are identical.[4]

Here is the point: even if life after death is false, I am at least possibly the kind of thing that logically could exist after my body dies. It is not a logically incoherent concept. Therefore, if I am the kind of thing that could (at least possibly) exist disembodied, then, logically, I cannot be my brain or body.

Moreover, I am possibly disembrainable (after all, near-death experiences could possibly be true), but my brain is not possibly disembrainable. This proves I am not my brain because there is something true of me which is not true of my brain. Namely, I am the sort of thing that could survive death (even if I do not), but the brain cannot logically survive its destruction. Moreland provides a deductive syllogism to summarize his case:[5]   

  1. The law of identity is true: If x is identical to y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa.
  2. I can strongly conceive of myself as existing disembodied.
  3. If I can strongly conceive of some state of affairs S that S possibly obtains, then I have good grounds for believing that S is possible.
  4. Therefore, I have good grounds for believing of myself that it is possible for me to exist and be disembodied.
  5. If some entity x is such that it is possible for x to exist without y, then (i) x is not identical to y, and (ii) y is not essential to x.
  6. My body (or brain) is not such that it is possible to exist disembodied, i.e., my body (or brain) is essentially physical.
  7. Therefore, I have good grounds for believing of myself that I am not identical to my body (or brain) and that my physical body is not essential to me.

Conclusion

It makes sense to conclude, along with the Nobel Prize winning neurologist, Sir John Eccles, that I am a soul who uses a body and brain. This argument for the existence of the soul, along with the Freethinking Argument (and others), provides good reason to conclude that the Apostle Paul knew what he was talking about: “…  we are confident and satisfied to be out of the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). 

Do we survive the death of our bodies? You better believe it!

Stay reasonable (Philippians 4:5),

Tim Stratton

For more articles like The Law of Identity & the Human Soul visit Tim’s website Freethinkingministries.com

NOTES

[1] William Lane Craig in debate vs. Peter Atkins, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U_NS9WsJ08 (Accessed 9-11-12)

[2] JP Moreland “In Defense of the Soul,” Biola University lecture on CD

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] J.P. Moreland’s syllogism is found in, The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2014), 125-26

Randy Everist provides a detailed defense of this argument here and here. Be sure to check it out!

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Stuff Atheists Say: Believing in God Is Like Believing in Santa

Stuff Atheists Say: Believing in God Is Like Believing in Santa

By Timothy Fox

Welcome to the second installment in my series, Stuff Atheists Say! (Read part 1 here.) This series is dedicated to bad arguments and statements that some atheists (the internet troll type) make to derail a conversation and avoid having to put forth any arguments or evidence of their own. My intention is not to smear every nonbeliever as there are many thoughtful and honest questions that skeptics ask which need to be answered. In fact, there are many atheists who are just as tired as these nonsensical statements as I am! That’s why I want to clear up some of these pointless slogans once and for all. So on to the second one:

Bad “argument” #2: Believing in God is no different than believing in Santa Claus.
Or maybe you’ve heard it stated: “I don’t need to disprove God any more than I need to disprove the existence of leprechauns.” Or fairies. Or any other type of mythical creature. The point of this statement is to equate God with any other imaginary being that is ridiculous to seriously believe in.

The Santa Delusion

So is believing in God really the same as having an imaginary friend? An invisible sky daddy? Maybe, if believing in a fat man in a red suit who delivers presents in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to every child in the world is the same thing as believing in a God who created the universe from nothing, brought life from non-life, and grounds objective moral values and duties. If so, then yes, they’re exactly the same.

But if believing in God is so ridiculous, you know what’s even more ridiculous? Giving lectures against his existence. Having debates about it. Trolling blogs and internet chatrooms. Writing popular-level books promoting unbelief. Meanwhile, I don’t see anyone penning The Santa Delusion or The Tooth Fairy Is Not Great.

And I guess that the overwhelming majority of humans throughout all of time are as deluded as little children. Because every culture across history has had some kind of religion or believed in a deity of a sort.  We discuss God’s existence in the classroom, at the dinner table, and over a coffee (or beer). From philosophers to scientists, with believers, skeptics, and everyone in-between. Silly humans.

No, Seriously

But let’s take this argument seriously. Is belief in God really no different than belief in Santa? First, how justified are we in believing in Santa Claus? What would it take for someone to actually think that he exists? Evidence. And here the atheist says “Correct! There’s no evidence for either of them! That’s why it’s ridiculous to believe in God or Santa!” But is the evidence for Santa Claus and God really the same? Well, if Santa does exist, we would know what to look for: a fat man in a red suit delivering presents Christmas Eve. But what about God? If God exists, do you know what you would look for? Before stating that there is no evidence for something, make sure you know what kind of evidence there should be if that thing does exist!

For it to be reasonable to believe that Santa Claus exists, he would have to be the best explanation for the existence of Christmas presents. But is there another, better explanation? Perhaps someone else put the presents under the tree, like parents. Maybe the gifts just popped into existence from nothing. Or maybe they’ve been there for all eternity! You can probably see where this is going. How did the universe get here? Did it just pop into existence uncaused, has it always been here, or is it reasonable to believe that something, or someone, caused it to begin to exist? God is the best explanation for all of reality. And even if you disagree, it’s still a legitimate option, is it not?

But maybe Santa exists and he’s just hiding. That’s why he has never been observed, just like God! Again, what are the reasons to believe that Santa exists? Are there any? Because there are very good reasons to believe that God exists, such as the cosmological argument, moral argument, fine-tuning argument, etc. Can you honestly say the same about Santa? Of course not.

Furthermore, what are the consequences if Santa doesn’t exist? Then kids must get their Christmas presents another way, because we know from experience that presents exist (unless you were on the naughty list, I guess). But if there’s no God? Then the universe came into existence uncaused from nothing for no reason. Life came from non-life and consciousness from non-consciousness. There are no objective morals and values. Exactly the same? No. Not a chance.

Conclusion

I hope we can all see how ridiculous it is to equate God with some imaginary or mythical being. It’s not as trivial as who delivers Christmas presents or trades cash for teeth; we’re talking about the First Cause who created and upholds the entire universe. There are good reasons and arguments for God’s existence. So to those who say that belief in God is no different than belief in Santa Claus, please stop. You’re the ones making ridiculous claims, not us.

For another good and thorough treatment of this issue, check out the Reasonable Faith article Is God Imaginary?

For More Articles like Stuff Atheists Say: Believing in God Is Like Believing in Santa visit Tim’s site at FreeThinkingMinistries.com

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think

The Top Five Reasons Faith is Not What You Think It Is

By Richard Eng

The Bible’s definition of faith is simple, easy, and straightforward. But there are influences both inside and outside the church that confuse the biblical definition. Imagine the biblical definition as the ingredients to a fruit smoothie and the bad influences are chocolate, salt and pepper, and fish. When you blend it all together the once delicious drink is now a goopy mess, not exactly appetizing; a definition that the world laughs at. The sneaky part about the smoothie illustration is this: the false information that gets blended in with the definition of faith looks appealing, but it ultimately leads to a definition so unlike the original that it changes the meaning. Christians cannot allow false teachers and the world to define our terms. When we lose our definitions, we lose our control of the conversation. Atheistic professors, youtube personalities, and zealous social media commenters devour unsuspecting christians when they ask, “so you are saying that you believe in a god without evidence? And that’s what faith is? Why don’t you believe in somethingbased on evidence??”

But is faith a belief without evidence? Is it something else? Here are The Top Five Reasons Faith is Not What You Think It Is.

Faith is not Blind

I really believe that this misunderstanding comes from a bad interpretation of a familiar bible passage. 2 Corinthians 5:7 says, “for we walk by faith, not by sight.” (ESV) People then take this passage to mean that faith is sightless or blind. As if to be a christian is to walk around with your eyes closed. The best advice I’ve heard about reading the bible is this, never read a bible verse. Meaning, do not read only one verse- always check the context.

Even from just a quick glance of the context, the apostle Paul is talking about how this world is not our home. His point in 5:7 is for believers to not be so focused on this world that they forget that they are not in their true home. In other words, don’t get so caught up with this world that you forget about the next – the next one that we yet do not see.

Faith is not “Belief Without Evidence”

We at FreeThinking Ministries often quote atheists to see from the horse’s mouth what is being said about Christianity. Here is Richard Dawkins, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” (footnote 1) Surely that is the straw man that Dawkins would like to raise, and even Christians will take this definition and run with it! But is it really the definition of the Bible?

Alan Shlemon, a contributor for Stand to Reason, writes,

“But this definition is foreign to the Bible. The Greek word for faith, pistis, is derived from the verb pisteuo, which means “to convince by argument.” Hebrews 11:1 explains that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Some translations replace “conviction” with “evidence.” Faith, then, is being convinced that the things we can’t see (e.g. God, heaven, the resurrection, etc.) are real.” (Link to rest of article)

Shlemon points out that when the author of Hebrews says, “conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1) he means that we simply do not yet see those things! He does not mean that we cannot see them, or that the only way to know they are real is by seeing. It’s a rhetorical question, “Do you see Jesus in front of you? No? Then it’s a conviction in him who we can’t yet see.”

Faith is not a Leap

Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th century philosopher, coined or is at least attributed the phrase, “the leap of faith.” This builds off our previous points, because Kierkegaard has shaped our understanding of faith in the west so substantially. Kierkegaard’s understanding of belief was much like ours; the belief must be justified and be true. But Kierkegaard divorced faith with evidence, and made faith out to be more experiential than a proposition about reality. He said that faith must be met with intense self-reflection, and the life of faith is ultimately submitting yourself to something that cannot be known in any real sense. To Kierkegaard, faith is closing your eyes and jumping out of a plane. Maybe Jesus will show up and give you a parachute halfway down? But it is not certain. But on Kierkegaard’s view, faith is a flip of a coin kind of leap – maybe you make it, and maybe you do not. But our faith is confident because Jesus is who he says he is, and he does what he says he does. 

Faith is not All or Nothing

Preachers and pastors either explicitly or imply that if you are not 100% all in than you do not believe at all. But the Bible teaches a different story.

Mark 9:23-25 

23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”24 Immediately the father of the child cried out[a] and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”

If we are honest, all of us can identify with this man. “I believe; help my unbelief” is a perfect summary of the internal struggle that every Christian experiences. It’s like reaching for Jesus to pull you out of the water when you have a weight tied to your ankle. In that moment you are focused on the weights keeping you under, but your heart is yearning to look up! So look to Jesus! The point of this passage is this: even if you are only 51% sure that Jesus will do what he says, He can work with that. Here’s the thing, the only things that you know with 100% certainty is that you exist, because you are a thinking thing, and logical and mathematical laws like “1+1=2.” Other than that we need to be ok living in the tension of doubt and unanswered questions. Jesus never promises to answer all of our questions. Most of the time he says something like, “Trust me and let me work.” Do not be afraid of doubt or unanswered questions, because God meets you there. Our beliefs need to have reasons behind them, and they must best correspond to reality. But if your expectation is that Christianity will bring you to a place of 100% certainty, the flesh will do a lot of damage to you when you never get there.

Faith is not a Substance

This one will sting, because I see church-goers eating this stuff up. The sad thing is, I do not blame them! It is trendy, “spiritual,” and you find more of this false teaching in book stores than Bibles! This is the word-faith movement, or word-of-faith movement. I will write more about this later, but like a window-seat passenger on a flight home they can look out the window and notice some key landmarks.

The most effective false teachers in the church will use the same vocabulary but use a different dictionary. In other words, they use the same words to make it sound like they are preaching orthodox church doctrine when in fact they are sneaking in ideas that are bad philosophy.

Let me paint a picture:

Your son is sick in the hospital. You have been praying faithfully for months for a cure… you know that it is life threatening. Your prayers are fervent and continuous, but by his hospital bed you are at the end of your rope. Just then, you see your pastor walk in the room. He embraces you in the midst of hopelessness, and you begin to explain the situation. After he hears it all, he offers this advice, “Well it seems to me that God wants to heal your son through your prayers… but you don’t have enough faith. If you had enough faith God would heal him.”

Have you ever heard that? “You don’t have enough faith?” Have you even thought that? Let me be clear, nowhere in scripture is there even a hint of this idea. Faith is confidence! Assurance! Trust in a trustworthy person! Faith is not a substance or thing, it is the sure road to Jesus. Jesus says clearly, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20) It’s not about the amount of your faith, it’s about the object of your faith. God created mountains, if he wants to move them he can!

So What Is Faith?

Faith, in it’s purist definition is near indistinguishable from the word belief, except for one key component: if faith is 51% or more, trust makes up the difference. Faith is confidence, assuredness, and sturdy, but knowledge can never bring us to 100% certainty. There is always a healthy dose of unanswered questions that every person deals with. The difference is that Christianity offers a person, Jesus Christ, in whom we place our trust in the unanswered questions. The God of Christianity is a maximally great being, he cannot lie, he cannot sin, he is faithful, he is good, he is just, he is loving, etc. The unanswered questions find rest in God’s character. Do not be afraid to doubt, but bring those doubts to the foot of the cross. May your faith be characterized by the man who in full and utter vulnerability from his heart cries, “I believe… help my unbelief!”

Richard Eng

Visit Richard’s site: Free Thinking Ministries

 

Footnotes:

1. A lecture by Richard Dawkins extracted from The Nullifidian (Dec 94),

2. http://www.str.org/articles/is-faith-blind#.VrTQzDYrJmA (accessed 2/5/16)

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