Tag Archive for: worldview

Is It Possible To Break Through Apathy?

Is It Possible To Break Through Apathy?

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By Al Serrato

The biggest obstacle to most apologetics efforts is apathy. While there are indeed some ardent atheists, usually the ones who take the time to write a response to posts like these, by and large the response of the average skeptic is to figuratively throw up their hands. They usually don’t take the time to research and consider a specific truth claim that is being made, or to counter some argument with evidence to show that an argument is false or mistaken. Nor do they try to convince you that their worldview is in fact true. Instead, most skeptics I’ve dealt with have developed a comfort level regarding the “unknowability” of ultimate things. They often argue that the fact that people disagree about such things – that a range of people have differing views on the subject- is itself evidence that no one can ever know whether there is a God, what He is about, or most importantly, what He may want of us. And so, they often don’t bother to try to investigate these things for themselves.

But if the Christian worldview is correct, such apathy is itself hazardous to one’s spiritual health. Recently, I tried to make this case in a conversation with a skeptic. It went something like this:

“Let’s say this was 70 years ago, and when I saw you, you were chain smoking cigarettes with your children always nearby. I know where medical science is headed, so I tell you that you are hurting yourself, and your kids. You respond that no one can really know such things; after all, you can point to doctors who advertise cigarettes and smoke them themselves, and you feel fine when you smoke. I point to other doctors who think that it’s really bad for you. You respond, ‘See, it’s a tie, so stop bothering me. Each person believes what they were raised to believe, or what they want to believe.”

“Do you see,” I asked, “that the conflict between the doctors should not lead you to conclude that neither is right, or that the answer is not knowable? As a friend, should I keep trying to bring you back to the truth about cigarettes, or should I let you persist in believing something that is, in the end, hurting you and your loved ones?”

My friend’s response was not unexpected. It went like this:

“Have you ever noticed how so many things are bad or wrong only at certain points in a cycle? Eat eggs, don’t eat eggs; give your kids soy, soy is bad; babies should sleep on their backs, no their stomachs, no their sides, no their backs etc., etc. When my daughter was born I would put her on her back to sleep and when I left the room my mother would put her on her side and when my mother left the room my grandmother would put her on her stomach. Over time the answer comes full circle. Why go around and around with it? What I am saying is not just throw up your hands and quit; what I am saying is that I do what feels right to me and that is the best I can do. Sometimes I listen to friends (and doctors) and sometimes I don’t. I think the ‘answer’ to many of these things is unknowable.”

Fair enough. Some things are unknowable, and for some things, it doesn’t really matter. But that of course is the point of being thoughtful: deciding which is which. So, I conceded that for some things, the right answer might be “it doesn’t matter.” For example, a child might be equally safe on her side or her back. Eggs or soy might be good for you or bad, depending on your health and how much you eat.

But for other things – like smoking – it will never “come back around.” Science will never say that smoking is good. It might say that it won’t necessarily kill you, but not that it will “balance your humours” like they said 200 years ago.”

“This analogy to smoking,” I continued, “is just one of many possible examples of the way consequences are built into the nature of reality. Take another example: if I embark upon a life of crime or drug addiction, I will eventually reap what I sow and the place I find myself might not be pleasant. We have the ability to foresee possible consequences through the use of our minds and imaginations. Is it really that much of a stretch to consider that this life will end at some point and to give some thought to what may await? Take my drugs example one step further – since you’re young and healthy, you might be able to abuse drugs for quite some time without being harmed. You might presently be indifferent to whether using drugs is a good or bad idea. But how smart a move would it be for you to say that you really don’t care what effect it will have on you in twenty years? Looking down the road to the consequence of our choices is something we all really need to do.”

“So,” I concluded, “the trick is, which is this? Are questions of eternal life like laying a child on her side, or are they more like smoking with my kids in the room or abusing drugs? I hope you see the answer matters. If you were smoking ten hours a day with your kids present, you would be harming them. Getting the right answer on that would matter. Getting the right answer on your relationship with God also matters, both to you and to the people you influence.”

I don’t think I persuaded her. As with smoking, not everyone bothers to read the warning label.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

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

Why Doesn’t God Intervene More? (DVD Set), (MP3 Set), and (mp4 Download Set) by Frank Turek

Two Miracles You Take With You Everywhere You Go by Frank Turek DVD, Mp3 and Mp4

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Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he worked for 33 years. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing Apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com.

 

 

 

 

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“Being Good” Isn’t Enough For Salvation

“Being Good” Isn’t Enough For Salvation

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By Al Serrato

The point of Christian apologetics is to “defend” the faith, and the point of the faith is to proclaim the good news of salvation to the world. Salvation, naturally enough, means saving, and a person only needs saving when he is in some peril. But ask many people today what peril they are in: they may tell you they’re worried about the state of the economy or inflation, or about the rising crime rates across the country, or about difficulties they might be having at home. It’s doubtful that they will throw in that they’re also concerned about the ultimate destiny of their soul, or that they wish they could be sure that they will spend eternity in God’s presence in the company of those they have loved here.

Why is that? Why are so many people today so confident that their soul does not need salvation? Though there are an increasing number of atheists, most people still recognize that there is a God who created them and all there is around us. Nonetheless, though fallen away from the faith they once knew, they do not seem worried about how God will one day judge them. Most often, if pressed, the modern secularist will provide a variation of: “Look, I’m a good person, after all, and God will judge me accordingly. There’s nothing for me to be worried about.”

There are dozens of definitions of “good” but for our purposes, let’s assume that most people mean “good” as something along the lines of “morally excellent, virtuous or righteous.” God presumably will tally all the morally excellent, virtuous or righteous deeds they have done in their lives, and this will tip the “scales of justice” in favor of entry into heaven.

But this analogy, upon reflection, actually provides scant reassurance. After all, a scale is only used if there is something to be placed on the other side, something against which the one side is weighed or measured. If a “good“ deed tips the balance in one direction, then failing to perform such a deed, or worse yet acting in ways that are decidedly not good, moves the needle in the other direction. Most people would agree that acting in a “selfish“ manner, i.e. making decisions that benefit only oneself and not the others in one‘s life, is not a “good“ way to act. But selfishness is part of the human condition. Parents see it in their young children, and most parents try to move children away from selfishness into more altruistic types of behavior. Add to that the times that we are not simply failing to do good but are intentionally doing wrong, without caring about the harm our actions may bring to others. Seen from this perspective, we have a real problem, for God is all-seeing and all-knowing. He lives eternally and sees all that we have ever thought or done; the things we may view as in our distant past remain in his eternal present. For anyone engaging in a clear-eyed and rational assessment of the situation, there is real cause to be concerned that the scale upon which we are being measured will quickly tip against us.

Let’s approach this with a modern example. Repeated studies tell us that an increasing percentage of the American population is overweight or obese. Health experts consistently warn of the many negative consequences that can attach to excessive weight, ranging from greater risk of serious health consequences from Covid to various types of illnesses and cancers. While some involuntary factors may contribute to obesity, this unhealthy lifestyle does still involve the repeated choice to eat to excess. I suspect no one starts out in life wanting to tip the scales against himself by choosing gluttony as a lifestyle. More likely, the end result is the product of many small decisions, played out repeatedly over the course of time. Indeed, it is difficult to fight the human capacity for self-deception. We ignore the evidence of our eyes, and of the scale, as we continue to feel “pretty good” about ourselves and the choices we make. We applaud ourselves for skipping dessert or starting a diet, all the while ignoring the bulging beltline that displays the direction in which the scale is tilting.

So too, it seems, with eternal things. We applaud ourselves for donating to charity, or volunteering at the soup kitchen. We give ourselves a pat on the back for each time we keep our temper in check. We laud ourselves for our sense of tolerance and enlightened thinking and surround ourselves with people who feel and think the same. In so doing, we focus only on the one side of the scale, neglecting to remember the many times we fell short of the mark…or worse, engaged in intentional bad behavior.

Banking on our ability to keep the scale tipped in our favor – on the side of “good” outweighing bad – simply fails to consider how a perfect God views our behavior. Like battling obesity through diet and exercise, the struggle is incremental. We may in fact do much that is good and worthy of praise. But like the defendant in an earthly court, the misdeed that has brought him before the court isn’t ignored when the defendant seeks to impress the judge with the many good deeds he has performed in his life. The point of the sentencing, on a finding of guilt, is to attach the appropriate consequence to the misbehavior in question. Standing before a perfect God and asking him to forget our misdeeds because we also happened to have done some good in our lives will be similarly unavailing.  How does one go about impressing a judge who has both set the standard of perfection and is Himself perfect in every conceivable way?

The good news of course is that the One who made the scale, and who will do the judging, has given us the means to put the scale back in balance. This first requires us to see ourselves clearly enough to accept that we cannot meet God’s standard of perfection on our own. When Jesus took our sins upon himself on that cross two thousand years ago, he provided the means for us to become reconciled with God, to be “perfected” so that we can be ready and worthy to stand in the presence of a perfect being. It is Jesus who does the work of salvation, not us and our meager efforts at being “good.”

Trying to do good is a laudable goal. Sadly, too often today it is in short supply. But doing “good” isn’t going to be enough when that someday comes, as it will for each of us, that we meet our Maker.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Is Original Sin Unfair? by Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Was Jesus Intolerant? by Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

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Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he worked for 33 years. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing Apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com. 

 

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What Our Perpetual Fight With Entropy Tells Us

What Our Perpetual Fight With Entropy Tells Us

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By Al Serrato

Many years ago, when I was younger and much less wise, I decided it would be a good father-son project to invest in an older car that I could restore. (Note to fathers: it’s a much better bonding idea to find something your kids like than the other way around). So, after some searching, and mindful of my meager budget, I ended up finding an ’87 Mustang convertible that was in pretty good shape overall. It wasn’t difficult for me to envision that with a little elbow grease, and a website that specializes in Mustang parts, I could make this car showroom quality in no time.

After the novelty wore off, and my kids’ interest waned from little to none, I found that I had a solitary project on my hands that had this very annoying habit of making negative progress. That’s right. No matter how many items I crossed off the to-do list, more kept getting added. And I found that things always went from good to bad, from working to broken, from clean to dirty. Window switches that were working one day stopped working the next. Motors that keep the windows moving smoothly up and down began to groan and then stopped. Fuses blew, over and over again. Amazingly, the process never worked the other way. No matter how long I waited, broken switches never fixed themselves. Cracked pieces of trim, or a broken taillight, never repaired themselves. Rust in the metal always appeared, where it wasn’t before, and never gave way to clean and shiny metal. Yes, the law of entropy was fully in effect, and the only way to reverse that process was to invest time, energy, and money.

This of course comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever owned anything. Nor is it a surprise to anyone who has considered the way nature operates. Scientists tell us that this law – entropy – is a characteristic of the universe. Entropy is, put simply, a measure of disorder, and it seems that a universal law is in operation moving everything from states of higher to states of lower order. In other words, nature has a particular direction to it, and that direction is down.

Christianity and atheism are competing worldviews. Each one claims to be able to make sense of the world so as to explain the way things really are. And despite the increasing popularity of atheism, and the increasing disdain for historic Christianity, the atheistic worldview is utterly incapable of making sense of the world. As it relates to entropy, atheism must explain why it is that the “evolution” of life has escaped this universal law. How is it that incredibly complex human beings evolved from lower life forms? When DNA is subjected to random change, the result is often lethal – it’s called cancer. But somehow, atheists insist, given enough time, a simple single-celled life form acquired the instructions necessary to produce a complete human life, instructions that must perfectly direct the assembly and interworking of dozens of systems. And if that were not hard enough, how can life have emerged from inert – lifeless – material? Leave a rock alone for a few millennia and you end up with, well, a rock.

The Christian worldview, by contrast, can provide that explanation. The Big Bang event that started this downward slide in progress is the result of a massively powerful and immensely intelligent being, who provided the laws we see in nature, and who wrote the instructions that scientists are beginning to decipher within DNA. The reason life “evolved” on earth is because an Intelligent Designer designed it to and provided the energy source to power the process. Recognizing the need for such a “first cause” is not unscientific. Indeed, modern science began with the presupposition that intelligent minds could untangle the mysteries of nature because these mysteries were not random but were themselves the product of an ordered mind, of intelligence.

Fighting the obvious, as atheists do, is even less successful than fighting entropy. They would be better off using their time in more productive pursuits.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

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

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book)

 

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Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he continues to work. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing Apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com.

 

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How to Build a More Discerning, Less Naïve, and Better Culturally Engaged Church

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By Natasha Crain 

In my last article, Christian Naivety is Harming the Church’s Engagement with Today’s Culture; I identified four ways that I’ve seen many Christians respond with naivety to calls for discernment in today’s world. At the end, I asked, “How do we fix this?” and said my answer would be the subject of my next article. This is that article. Since this is a follow-up, please be sure to read my last post before this one for context.

Let me start by saying that the title of this article is a rather sweeping proposition. Obviously, this is a single article, the issues are complex, and I’m not claiming that what I write here is a complete answer to all the problems we have. But I want to offer what I see as some key levers needed to drive change in how Christians engage with today’s culture.

In my years as a marketing executive, I came to deeply appreciate one particular model that people in the marketing field have used for over one hundred years (in various shapes and forms). It’s a simple funnel that describes the psychological stages people go through before committing to an action:

AIDA model

Though this originates in marketing, I’ve noticed many times in the last few years how this model applies to so much in the area of ministry as well. As such, I’m going to use it as a framework for my current subject. If we want to move more Christians to the bottom of the funnel—the action point of being more discerning, less naïve, and better culturally engaged—here are the key levers I see at the awareness, interest, and desire points leading there.

  1. Grow awareness of worldview differences by addressing biblical illiteracy.

Every time there’s a heated discussion on social media about some issue of discernment (calling out sin, the intersection of morality and politics, etc.), you can count about 5 seconds before a Christian drops a comment reminding everyone involved that Jesus says not to judge.

Or that Christians just need to “love” people (however, the person defines that).

Nothing to me represents a bigger lack of biblical literacy than when people make those two culturally popular comments, completely lacking in context and understanding of what the Bible says on these subjects.

Now, if research showed that Christians read their Bibles consistently and deeply and we were still seeing pervasive comments that suggest a lack of understanding, I would be writing here about the need for more guidance in Bible study. Guidance is surely important too, but the research shows many Christians aren’t even reading the Bible in the first place.

A study by LifeWay Research, for example, found that only 45 percent of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week. Almost 1 in 5 churchgoers say they never read the Bible, and that’s about the same number who read it every day.

If a person doesn’t realize that their understanding of the Bible lacks appropriate context and depth, they end up navigating the stormy cultural waters in whatever way happens to make sense to them based on what they think the Bible says. Ironically, without an accurate biblical anchor, their Christian views get completely watered down by the cultural waves…and discernment no longer functions effectively. They’re less able to engage effectively with culture because they aren’t even fully aware of how a biblical and secular worldview really differ.

A less naïve, more discerning church must start with deeper biblical literacy. This should be a top priority for churches everywhere.

  1. Grow interest in cultural engagement by addressing (lack of) conviction.

Even if a person gains a better understanding of what the Bible says on relevant cultural topics (the awareness I just addressed), it doesn’t mean they’ll be interested enough to become culturally engaged. There could be many reasons for that, but there’s one that’s especially problematic: a lack of conviction that Christianity is objectively (and exclusively) true.

Pew Research shows that 65 percent of Christians believe many religions can lead to eternal life. This, of course, is another example of pervasive biblical illiteracy; the Bible clearly claims that only through Jesus is there eternal life (see Chapter 7, “Did Jesus Teach That He’s the Only Way to God?” in Talking with Your Kids about Jesus for more on this). If a person believes that Christianity is one of many worldviews that ultimately leads to the same truth, they aren’t going to be all that interested in standing up for what they perceive to be just one of those so-called “truths.”

A church filled with Christians who lack conviction that Christianity is the one true worldview is a church filled with Christians who will never care enough to challenge a non-Christian culture.

This is why there’s a desperate need for apologetics in the church today (apologetics is the study of why there’s good reason to believe Christianity is true and how to defend the faith against various challenges). Christians need to understand: 1) the evidence for God’s existence (see chapters 1-6 in Talking with Your Kids about God); 2) why multiple religions cannot be true (see chapter 10 in Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side); 3) the evidence for the resurrection (i.e., the truth test for Christianity as the one true religion—see part 4 of Talking with Your Kids about Jesus); and 4) the evidence for the reliability of the Bible (see part 4 in Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side).

Knowing why there’s good reason to believe Christianity is objectively true—and why that truth makes an eternal difference—is a critically important step toward building a church that cares enough to stand for truth.

  1. Grow desired or engagement by destigmatizing the relationship between politics and religion.

Let’s now say that we have a person who is aware of what the Bible says on today’s hot topics, and they’re interested in engaging culture because they’re convicted that the Bible offers the one true picture of reality.

That doesn’t mean they’ll actually do something.

Marketers are well aware that awareness and interest do not always lead to a strong desire to do something because there’s often some kind of barrier. There are a lot of barriers I could list here with respect to cultural engagement, but a major one I’ve seen is the prevailing stigma about mixing politics and religion.

Just saying the words “politics” and “religion” in the same sentence immediately puts people on the defensive. Unfortunately, many pastors and Christian leaders have emphasized a generic dichotomy between the two areas, and over time the stigma of mixing them has grown. Consequently, when important cultural concerns arise—such as the ideology of the Black Lives Matter organization (which I discussed in the last couple of posts)—many Christians automatically bucket those questions into the “don’t touch this” category of “politics and religion,” as if it’s their Christian duty to stay out of it. Meanwhile, people start burning Bibles as part of BLM protests, and Christians are surprised! If you paid attention to their underlying ideology in weeks leading up to this, it’s not surprising at all.

We need to be able to think in more nuanced ways about the interaction of politics and religion if we’re ever going to have a more culturally engaged church that isn’t taken by naive surprise as hostility to Christianity increases.

Here are a few quick things I think we should be able to all agree on:

  • While some “political” issues are worldview neutral (e.g., local zoning laws), many are not (e.g., abortion or religious freedom laws).
  • When we’re talking about issues where biblical morality conflicts with secular morality, someone’s morality will be legislated; legislation based on a secular worldview isn’t the “neutral” option.
  • Acknowledging that there are political issues that involve the moral direction of our country and that Christians should care enough to be engaged in such areas, is not the same as saying one political party or the other represents Christianity. It’s also not the same as saying that we’re looking to a political leader to be our savior, or that we think we’ll eventually build an earthly utopia. These are often the strawmen people try to knock down when claiming Christians shouldn’t mix their faith with politics.
  • There are also many political areas where Christians can legitimately disagree. For example, we should all agree that God cares for would-be immigrants, but we may have very different policy opinions on how best to process immigration in this country. Identifying where grey exists is important for maintaining charitable conversation among Christians while uniting on issues that should be more black-and-white for anyone with a Christian worldview.

In short, we need to quit ending culturally relevant conversations before they begin by perpetuating the idea that politics and religion shouldn’t mix. Of course, they should, in some cases.

In all three of these areas, there is much that any pastor could do in a church through sermons, groups, studies, initiatives, and more. But that doesn’t mean others can’t make a significant impact as well. For example, you can:

  • Use social media to share biblically-sound articles that educate others about cultural issues from a Christian worldview. (I do my best to share a variety of such articles from my author Facebook page—you can follow me there if you don’t already.)
  • Take the time to engage in a thoughtful dialog when you see Christians make comments online that lack biblical understanding. It’s worth the time even if the person you initially respond to doesn’t seem to appreciate it—remember that others are reading too. If a comment is best addressed privately, do it that way. But resist the urge to just be silent because that’s the easy thing to do.
  • Lead a Bible study (online or in person, through your church or on your own).
  • Lead a book study that addresses current cultural questions from a biblical worldview.
  • Start a group to learn apologetics. (If you’re interested in starting a group specifically for parents and grandparents, we give you all you need to get going with Grassroots Apologetics for Parents. You can start an in-person or online chapter!)
  • Encourage your pastor to address more of these questions in sermons.
  • Work with your church to invite subject matter experts to provide training. Many of these experts are currently offering training online. For example, the Life Training Institute a 4-day Zoom event next week that anyone can sign up for: How to Survive Being Pro-Life on Campus in a Cancel Culture. Many apologetics speakers are also offering remote sessions right now. The Center for Biblical Unity is offering trainings on a biblical approach to current racial questions. So much is available!
  • Commit to the serious discipleship of your kids. They are literally the future. Training them in the same ways I’ve mentioned here for adults is just as important.

With more discernment from biblical literacy, more interest from conviction, and more willingness to engage by removing the “politics vs. religion” barrier, we can shape a better culturally engaged church. Perhaps one of the positives that will come from the chaos of this year will be a wider recognition that these things are so desperately needed in the body of Christ.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

American Apocalypse MP3, and DVD by Frank Turek

Correct, NOT Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone (Updated/Expanded) downloadable pdf, Book, DVD Set, Mp4 Download by Frank Turek

The Case for Christian Activism MP3 Set, DVD Set, mp4 Download Set by Frank Turek

You Can’t NOT Legislate Morality mp3 by Frank Turek

Fearless Generation – Complete DVD Series, Complete mp4 Series (download) by Mike Adams, Frank Turek, and J. Warner Wallace

 

Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/30RAGmC 

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Marx Attacks!

By Phil Bair

If I were to ask you who the most influential philosopher of the 21st Century is, what would your answer be? The correct answer might surprise you.

It is Karl Marx.

Karl Marx believed that class struggle would occur naturally on its own without the help of any social engineer. He believed the Communist Revolution was the inevitable outcome of socio-economic forces, and it was only a matter of time.

He was wrong.

The marxists of today believe in the class struggle, just like Marx did in his day. Except that now, the new Marxists recognize that it won’t naturally happen on its own. They have forged a new agenda to bring about a social revolution similar to the one Marx imagined. Except this time the intended outcome will be a cultural and social revolution they hope to control through deliberate measures rather than an unpredictable result left to chance.

A Worldview and its Weapon

A study of this cultural marxism can be summarized as the movement to apply classical marxist ideas of economic class struggle to cultural classes and identities primarily based on proportionality. The majority classes (e.g., white anglo-saxon male, cisgender Christians) are seen as oppressive just because they are the majority. Minorities are seen as oppressed just because they are minorities. Power is perceived as an automatic property of having greater numbers in your group, and that alleged power is always seen as villainy.

Whenever you see and hear people use language like “American racism,” or “systemic racism,” or “American original sin,” or any other expression of built-in institutional or structural bias cited as the cause of socio-economic disparities, cultural marxism is behind it. It is blaming imaginary policies and systems for what it sees as institutional discrimination rather than identifying the real causes of the disparities. It is the myth that the whole system is rigged against minorities and in favor of the “privileged.” It is the idea that what was institutional discrimination in the past still exists, despite the fact that Jim Crow laws and the earlier scourge of slavery have been eradicated. It is blaming society for disadvantages rooted in individual dysfunction and/or cultural pathology.

The left-wing marxist soldiers are engaged in a systematic and widespread attack on Western Civilization. They use an insidious tool known as “critical theory” to accomplish their objectives. It is important to understand that despite having the word “theory” in its name, critical theory is not technically a worldview or an ideology. It is a methodology. It functions as a weapon designed to torpedo social frameworks that are healthy and beneficial for all mankind. The worldview behind the methodology of critical theory (cultural marxism) sees those frameworks as evil and oppressive. Critical theory poisons the minds of those in society against those frameworks and deceives them into thinking they should be dismantled and replaced by an anti-Christian collectivist framework that becomes the true oppressor and destroys the freedom and rights of God’s image-bearers. Critical theory is not the ideology itself, but the blueprint for aggression and activism that is designed to pulverize the existing social fabric and establish the new order the marxist ideology visualizes.

The weapons of the critical theory include challenges from radical feminism, identity politics, the weaponization of homosexuality and transgenderism, and the accusations of systemic racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, and evangelical religious oppression. The battle is waged against what they view as the establishment of “whiteness.” The Equinsu Ocha, the white devil, is the enemy, and has to be destroyed at all costs in order to bring about social justice and cultural transformation.

The strategy? Criticize, demonize, disrupt, divide, and destabilize Western society and its institutions by cultivating resentment and grievance culture so that they can be dismantled more easily and a new social order can replace them. The criticism and accusations of critical theory don’t have to be true, and they rarely are. Truth doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the marxist narrative, to be accepted as dogma through blind ideological conformity. Critical theory seeks to turn people against each other by fostering tribal warfare and victim culture. It stirs up hatred and animosity based on false narratives people have been brainwashed in for decades in our colleges and universities.

One of the largest flaming arrows critical theory has been shooting at us over the last few years is the idea that evangelical Christians have abandoned the Gospel to embrace a power-centered “right-wing” political agenda. We are told that our efforts to promote the Kingdom of God in this life and in our society have been co-opted by a fawning devotion to the spiritually and morally problematic “orange man” occupying the White House. (And by the way, it’s called the “White House.” Hello? The White House.) The purpose of this accusation is to shame and intimidate us into silence when it comes to speaking into our current socio-political climate. After all, we are subordinate to the Son of God, not the Republican Party. This has taught us to avoid politics in the church so as not to offend those in the laity whom the marxist ideology has infected, and to avoid any potential divisiveness taking a stand may cause. Very clever.

The reality is, God is the author of all truth. Truth always has political implications, whether we like it or not. Therefore to avoid politics is to avoid truth. To avoid truth is to ignore the author of all truth: God. Which group of people are terrified of getting political more than any other, and which community avoids it like the plague with unrelenting tenacity? The church. Take your time.

The easiest way to establish a new order is to silence the most vocal opponents of that order. Social engineering is just as much about silencing dissent as indoctrinating the credulous. Critical theory has had overwhelming success in this regard.

Marxism vs Freedom

What does this new social order look like? No classes. No racial “inequality.” No “oppression.” No white “privilege.” No wealth or income, “inequality.” Absolute uniformity of outcome through the coercive power of the state. No dissent. No opposing ideas. Utopia.

Oh, and by the way, no freedom. Free people are at liberty to think and speak as they wish, based on their convictions, and this is not allowed. Nothing contrary to the marxist narrative of class ideology is permitted, no intolerance of the state ideology will be tolerated.

Every outcome is equalized through force. The state is greater than the individual, and until the revolution is complete, people will be treated and judged according to their class, not as stand-alone human beings created in the image of God. If you are white, you are privileged, and you are damned in the name of social justice. Whether you enjoy any personal “privilege” or not, and whether you are personally racist or not, you are guilty, privileged, and racist anyway — period. None of the details about who you are as a person matter. The only thing that matters is that you belong to the white class, and therefore you are a target.

It is almost impossible to dislodge this ideology from its acolytes. The false accusations carried into our minds by the pathological vector called critical theory are so deeply embedded and so thoroughly pervasive in our society that they have been elevated to the status of axiomatic certitude. Anyone who challenges these presuppositions is seen as a drooling hateful neanderthal and will be treated as a pariah. The mechanism to silence dissent is known as “political correctness.” You are not allowed to question the narrative nor attempt to refute it by speaking the truth. Truth is offensive. This is what happens when myth has been implanted in the minds of multitudes of people through indoctrination (from the entertainment industry, the media, and academia) and repetition for so long that people are no longer capable of seeing the world any other way.

The Infected Church

Now this poison has invaded the Body of Christ. Untold numbers of Christians are redefining the principles of their faith to conform to the agenda of social justice rather than personal redemption. The Gospel articulates and endorses a well-defined concept of true justice. But it stands in sharp contrast to the false justice in modern marxist ideology that now has so much of the Church in its death grip.

The monolithic ideology of “white guilt” is wreaking havoc in the Church by pressuring white Christians into “apologizing” for things they didn’t do, and to adopt an attitude of self-condemnation as a means to redeem themselves before the judgment seat of social justice. It comes in the form of progressives (which are now almost identical to marxists) insisting on whites becoming “woke” to their alleged implicit racial bias and defining themselves by their newly enlightened status as pathetic inferiors.

The most virulent lie in the arsenal of critical theory in our present moment is the idea of systemic racism, belief in which is a form of mental illness (a mind detached from reality). Those who are brainwashed by it will attack you like rabid animals if you so much as question their holy article of faith or offer evidence that systemic racism doesn’t exist. Facts don’t matter. The only thing that counts is subjective interpretation of personal experience guided by junk ideology. That is why they spray such toxic venom at their own black brothers and sisters who are trying to teach them a different way of understanding their condition — a way that embraces the truth. For them to admit, that possibility would force them to stop blaming their favorite scapegoat (whiteness), and to honestly examine the real roots of their suffering.

Make no mistake: those who believe in the lie of systemic racism have no desire to see that alleged racism eradicated — ever. If it did exist, and if it came to an end, their precious grievance culture and celebration of their own victimhood would cease to exist. They must believe it’s true, and they will never believe otherwise. The accusation of racism toward whites is what they live for. It is what nourishes and sustains them. That their psychotic security blanket could ever be taken from them is unthinkable. Do not believe for a second that movements like Black Lies Matter really care about black lives or true justice. They only care about one thing: the obliteration of the foundations of Western Civilization. Their web site speaks of dissolving the nuclear family. Their leaders openly inform us they are trained marxists. Their marches advocate deadly violence against the police. Meanwhile, they ignore the over 300,000 black victims of homicide at the hands of other blacks over the last 40 years. The only time they protest and riot against the loss of a precious black life is when it occurs at the hands of the police. And they don’t give a flying rat’s patoot whether it was justified or not. I repeat: they don’t care about black lives — at all. Black Lies Matter is a race-baiting hate group, and the only thing that matters to them is the perpetual decomposition of our society. They are the most high profile puppets of critical theory you can possibly find.

Conclusion

This is the essence of the attack of left-wing marxist pathology in our society. It has achieved the lofty status of a militant social cult. It has already destroyed Europe, and we are next in line. The invasion has already begun. The most tragic aspect of all this is that gullible Christians, especially the millennial variety, have been brainwashed into the new marxist ideology and are busy helping the left do the dirty work of destabilizing American society, and worst of all, invading the Body of Christ like a metastasizing flesh-eating disease that is exterminating the true Gospel of Christ and replacing it with a demonic substitute.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

American Apocalypse MP3, and DVD by Frank Turek

Correct, NOT Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone (Updated/Expanded) downloadable pdf, Book, DVD Set, Mp4 Download by Frank Turek

The Case for Christian Activism MP3 Set, DVD Set, mp4 Download Set by Frank Turek

You Can’t NOT Legislate Morality mp3 by Frank Turek

Fearless Generation – Complete DVD Series, Complete mp4 Series (download) by Mike Adams, Frank Turek, and J. Warner Wallace

 

Phil Bair studied philosophy, technology, earth sciences, and music theory at the University of Iowa, the University of Colorado, the National Institute of Technology, and Simpson College in Indianola Iowa. He has been dedicated to independent study and research for over thirty years in a variety of subject matter pertaining to the Christian world view. He has written several monographs on the relationship between theology and hope, being true to the Word of God, the creation/evolution controversy, and critiques of alternative spiritual doctrine and practices. He has written two books: From Rome To Galilee, an analysis of Roman Catholic theology and practice, and Deconstructing Junk Ideology – A Modern Christian Manifesto, a series of essays on the culture wars and applying Biblical principles to our socio-political landscape. He has delivered lectures, seminars, and workshops to churches and educational institutions on apologetics, textual criticism, creation science, ethics, critical thinking, the philosophy of science, understanding new age thought, and the defense of Christian theism, as well as current religious, philosophical, cultural, and political trends, with an emphasis on formulating a meaningful and coherent Christian response in those areas. His roles include author, speaker, Bible study leader, worship pastor, and director of contemporary music and worship for several evangelical churches. He has served as a philosophy consultant and speaker for Rivendell, a cultural apologetics organization founded in Denver, Colorado, and headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/32Cfnqk

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An Accurate Picture Of The World

By Bob Perry

Jesus is the Logos. The Logos is a combination of truth, goodness, and beauty. Truth, goodness, and beauty are the references that give us a grounded Christian spirituality. That’s the True Horizon model — spirituality based on an accurate picture of the world. But what does a spirituality grounded in the real world look like?

More Than An Analogy

I have used an aviation analogy as a model for visualizing what it means to be spiritual. But an analogy is just a way to represent something real. And analogies can only go so far. Please don’t miss the purpose behind it. My point is simply that the culture has convinced too many of us that spirituality is disconnected from reality. That it is some free-floating source of emotional comfort. What I’m suggesting is that that is not what Christianity teaches. Christianity is grounded in the Logos. It produces a spiritual life that is attached to, and reflects, the real world.

Grounded In Truth

The dictionary definition of truth is “correspondence to reality.” In other words, if what you believe about something matches the way the world actually is, then what you believe is true. Again, truth doesn’t exist in our minds. To seek truth is to want to believe things about how the world is, not about how we would like it to be.

Christianity matches what we find in the world in several different ways.

Common Observations and Experiences

Here are a few things that every one of us can see when we look at the world around us:

Human life is inherently unique and valuable. 

This matches our common experience of the human condition. We don’t need anyone to teach us to respect and value human life.

The universe we live in owes its existence to an external source.

The universe had a beginning that requires an explanation. This is a conclusion that both science and philosophy lead us to.

Lies and deception are destructive.

We see this all around us every day. No one wants to be lied to. Everyone recognizes the harm that lies can bring to us individually and as a society.

Evil repulses us. Goodness attracts us.

Remember, we are talking about a feature of reality here. This is not about how we know good and evil. It is about the fact that both exist.

There is an order, intelligence, and purpose to the universe.

There are laws of logic and mathematics that describe the universe. Our location in time and space is fine-tuned to an incomprehensibly unlikely level. There is a digital code more complex than any computer algorithm ever written that controls and sustains every form of life on the planet.

There are many more examples, but all of these are different forms of truth, goodness, and beauty. And here’s the point…

A Grounded Spirituality

Based on just these things, a grounded spirituality should:

  • Pursue a life that values other human life.
  • Recognize that we are created beings, not gods unto ourselves.
  • Make us truthseekers and truth-tellers.
  • Understand that goodness, and the morality it demands is not based on our feelings and experiences, but in the nature of the Creator who made us.
  • Stand in awe of the miraculous nature of our very existence.

And each of these holds three things in common:

  • We can learn them directly from our observations and experiences in the world.
  • We don’t need the Bible to know any of them.
  • They are perfectly consistent with Christianity.

This is what I mean by a “grounded spirituality.” It matches what the Bible says — and it is supported by reality itself.

Common Ground

Don’t misunderstand. When I say, “we don’t need the Bible to know any of them,” I am not diminishing the importance of the Bible in our spiritual life. I am simply pointing out that this gives us confidence that truth is grounded in the Bible — and that the Bible is grounded in the truth.

Both come from the same Source.

When we understand that, it gives us common ground for discussing spirituality with everyone. Whether they are a hardcore atheist or a spiritually disoriented Christian, they live in the same world as you and me. And we should love them enough to have the courage to confidently, but respectfully, help them re-orient their thinking.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Counter Culture Christian: Is the Bible True? by Frank Turek (DVD)

Is Morality Absolute or Relative? by Dr. Frank Turek DVD, Mp3 and Mp4

How Can Jesus be the Only Way? (mp4 Download) by Frank Turek

 

Bob Perry is a Christian apologetics writer, teacher, and speaker who blogs about Christianity and the culture at truehorizon.org. He is a Contributing Writer for the Christian Research Journal and has also been published in Touchstone and Salvo. Bob is a professional aviator with 37 years of military and commercial flying experience. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering from the U. S. Naval Academy, and an M.A., Christian Apologetics from Biola University. He has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1985. They have five grown sons.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3iRsvOb 

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“The Ring of Truth”

“The Ring of Truth”

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By Tim Stratton

What religion or worldview possesses the “Ring of Truth?” It is definitely not Islam or atheism!

To be sure, this is not a deductive argument like the Kalam, Freethinking, or Ontological Arguments. I am simply encouraging readers to pay attention to their intuition. Although we cannot always trust our intuition, I contend that it is a great place to start when searching for the truth. Moreover, when one’s intuition is supported by a cumulative case of data, there is a good reason to continue trusting intuition.

With this in mind, consider the “Ring of Truth” to be frosting on top of a metaphysical cake already baked to perfection by a cumulative case supported by logic, science, and historical data:

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

The Moral Argument

The Teleological Argument

The Ontological Argument

The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

The Freethinking Argument Against Naturalism

The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus (The Facts)

The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus (The Explanation)

With the cumulative case of evidence in mind, now consider three of the most popular worldviews on the planet: Islam, atheism, and Christianity. Next, consider what logically follows from each of these worldviews and examine them through your intuitive lens:

— If Islam is true, it is objectively good to kill infidels (non-Muslims).

— If atheism is true, it is neither objectively good or objectively bad to kill anyone.

— If Christianity is true, then it is objectively wrong, bad, and evil not to love everyone from your neighbor to your enemies.

What seems most likely or probably true? Which worldview has the “Ring of Truth?”

If you are not sure, consider the Muslim man who murdered 49 people of the LGBT+ community at The Pulse nightclub the summer of 2016 in Orlando, Florida. According to the teachings of Muhammad (Islam), this mass murder of homosexuals was good and the right thing to do.

In fact, according to the final commands of Muhammad, Muslims ought to kill all infidels and non-Muslims (Quran 2:191; 9:5; 9:73; 9:123)! Nabeel Qureshi, a former devout Muslim, explains why Islam is not a peaceful religion in a short video (click here).

Is atheism any better? Not really. According to logically consistent atheism, since God does not exist, then humanity was not created on purpose or for a specific purpose — we are nothing but a “happy accident” — nothing more than dust in the wind. If this is true, then it follows that there is no objective purpose in which humans ought to approximate. Thus, if atheism is true, there is nothing really wrong with anything!

Does that “ring” true?

According to logically consistent atheism, there was nothing really good or bad with the mass murder of homosexuals at the Pulse nightclub. Nor was there anything objectively wrong with the recent mass murder of fifty Muslims in New Zealand while worshipping at their mosque.

Moreover, if naturalism is true (a view held by many atheists), then humans do nothing but deterministically “dance to the music of their DNA” as the famous atheist Richard Dawkins contends. Thus, the Muslim who shot up the gay nightclub and the man who shot up the New Zealand mosque each had no moral choice in the matter. Do not blame guns or the shooter — blame physics and chemistry (imagine a ban on physics and chemistry)! If naturalistic atheism is true, then nature determined the slaughter of those in the Pulse nightclub and the New Zealand mosque.

The Christian worldview, as opposed to Islam and atheism, “rings” true.

According to the Law of Christ (Christianity), as opposed to naturalistic atheism, we have a categorical ability to make real moral choices (Deuteronomy 30:10-20; 1 Corinthians 10:13). We possess the libertarian freedom to make objectively good choices… or objectively evil choices. Moreover, according to the teachings of Jesus, it is objectively wrong to murder or persecute homosexuals, Muslims, or anyone else!

The apostle Paul echoes the commands of Jesus in Romans 12:18:

18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Paul was the first one to preach “COEXIST.” However, Muhammad disagrees, and consistent atheism/naturalism is not only neutral on the matter, but also implies that we have no choice in the matter (since all that exists is matter).

Pay attention to intuition. As Gandalf would say, what worldview has the “ring of truth?”

I assume that the vast majority of those who are willing to answer honestly admit that Christianity at least seems to ring true (even if they do not want it to be true for some reason)! However, for those who continue to reject their intuition, Christians still have a cumulative case of logically deductive arguments that cannot be ignored (see the above list to get you started).

Christians stand on solid ground. We do not have to ignore logic or what is intuitively obvious. We ought to wear the “Ring of TRUTH” for all to see!

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18),

Tim Stratton

 

Tim Stratton (The FreeThinking Theist) 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/2X2YuCZ

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Whirled Views

Whirled Views

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By Terrell Clemmons

A Framework for Mapping Reality & Engaging Ideological Confusion.

“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking,” said Carl Sagan in the last interview he gave before his death in 1996 at age 62. Sagan and Charlie Rose were discussing Sagan’s last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and the danger that America’s deficiency in basic science posed for future generations. People in positions of power, they agreed, as well as the electorates who put them there must have a correct understanding of “the way the universe really is” and not be informed by doctrines that “make us feel good.” “If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true,” Sagan stressed, “then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.” The upshot of it all was that science, rather than demons or doctrines, must be the “candle” that lights our way to the future.

Sagan is best known as the author and host of the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was the most widely watched PBS series of the 1980s. His legacy lives on in the 2014 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which aimed to capture for a new generation the “spirit of the original Cosmos,” according to host Neil deGrasse Tyson. Building on the popularity of the original, Tyson explained, the 21st-century remake would “present science in a way that has meaning to you, that could influence your conduct as a citizen of the nation and of the world—especially of the world.”

Salvo readers should be familiar with the concept of agenda-driven science, and to those who listen with an ear to discern it, it’s clear that Sagan, Rose, and Tyson are using science as they understand it to advance an agenda—to influence the way people think, with the aim of changing their behavior. This is the stuff of propaganda, and like most propaganda, Cosmos served up a slickly produced package of truths, half-truths, and subtle lies, skillfully laced with running undercurrents of moralistic appeals to emotion.

How does one respond to wholesale agendas like this without coming off as an abject contrarian? Try the worldview reset.

Worldview Reset

In How Now Shall We Live? (1999), Nancy Pearcey and Charles Colson laid out a framework for worldview analysis that can be applied to any narrative, idea, or agenda that comes ambling along. Here’s how it goes: Any worldview must provide an answer to three questions:

Who am I, and where did I come from? This is the question of origins.

What is wrong with the world? This is the question of the problem.

How can it be fixed? This is the question of the remedy.

Put through this filter, Christianity can answer each question in one word: Creation, fall, and redemption. God, sin, and Christ or the cross would work equally well. The point is not to nail down precise terminology, but to sketch out the main points on the biblical map of reality. Christianity is not just a relationship with Jesus, or adherence to a set of doctrines or rules, or association with a religious institution. Those things may have their place, but it’s more than that. Christianity is a full-orbed, comprehensive worldview that puts forth testable truth claims about all of reality.

The same framework, then, can serve as a test for coolly analyzing alternative worldviews. All agendas operate according to some worldview, and our first objective in the face of one should be to identify it. In the case of Sagan and Tyson, this is straightforward. They’re scientific naturalists. But even if we didn’t know that, we could figure it out from the grandiose opening to the original Cosmos, where Sagan intoned, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” From there, given the title of his book and his discussion with Rose, we can see that the problem they diagnose in the world stems from authorities and doctrines that are unscientific. Following through, the remedy they prescribe is for people to question those authorities, reject those doctrines, and think “scientifically,” just like they do.

Popularized through folksy celebrities like Tyson and Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” this materialistic narrative, along with its socio-moral dictates, is just one of the subliminal narratives that have become deeply entrenched in our culture.

First Things First: The Question of Origins

In practice, worldviews tend to bleed together, but the most prevalent ones in the developed world today are: scientific naturalism, which says that God is effectively nonexistent; postmodernism, which says that the question of God is unanswerable or irrelevant because cultures make up their own stories; pantheism, which identifies God with nature or the universe and then sees in nature a myriad of non-transcendent deities; and Judeo-Christianity, which says that there is one transcendent God who created the universe and everything in it.

It is supremely important to note that, of these, the Judeo-Christian worldview is the only one that is actually theistic. It alone, along with its offshoot Islam, answers the question of origins with a self-existing God. All the others are non-theistic. They amount to some form of philosophical naturalism and then try to explain all of reality, including human history, behavior, and culture, within those limits.

In 2016-2017 Morgan Freeman hosted a National Geographic series on religion called The Story of God, in which he traveled the world asking people of different faiths how they viewed death, evil, the afterlife, and other matters related to religion. The series was visually stunning, but its name is actually a misnomer. It was really a “story of a man”— a professed atheist attempting to explain the panoply of human experience within the confines of naturalism. Freeman’s worldview governed his interpretation of all the incoming data, and viewers who don’t understand that at the outset will likely find the series confusing.

Worldview and Ideologies

The concept of worldview is closely related to the concept of ideology, but the two are not quite the same thing. Every ideology is born of a worldview, but not every worldview is an ideology. Dictionary.com defines ideology as a body of doctrine, myth, or belief that guides an individual, group, or movement, together with a socio-political plan and devices for implementing it. In simpler terms, an ideology is an idea that has been elevated to worldview status and then activated into an agenda.

Let’s look at a few ideologies that are dominant today and identify the worldview behind them. Broadly speaking, environmentalism is an ideology that begins with philosophical naturalism, diagnoses the problem in the world as human mismanagement of the earth’s resources, and then prescribes changes to resource management, usually to be implemented by the government. Marxism, too, begins with naturalism, but it diagnoses the problem in terms of some kind of inequality between people groups. From there, it prescribes as the remedy some form of equalization, also usually to be implemented by the government.

Sexual ideologies grew out of Freud’s naturalism-based diagnosis that human problems stem from sexual repression, and they accordingly prescribe a remedy of casting off restraint. And, for an example of how ideologies bleed together, LGBT demands for “equality” effectively fuse the Freudian and Marxian diagnoses of the problem and then demand equalization for “sexual minorities” with respect to such social benefits as moral approval and state-endorsed marriage.

Interrogating the Disconnect

When one is confronted with a pre-assembled agenda masquerading as a good idea, applying the three-point worldview framework will facilitate dialogue in a way that clarifies, rather than clouds, the conflict. The framework does this by keeping attention on the incoming worldview and examining its truth claims. To use Sagan’s terminology, we interrogate it —Where is this idea coming from? What unstated presuppositions lie behind it?—with the goal of mapping the worldview disconnect and then peacefully shifting the discussion to the actual point of contention.

This can revolutionize a conflict in two ways. First, it draws all ideas out into the open. I was recently invited to participate in an informal roundtable discussion with Ben, a college student majoring in philosophy. When asked about my worldview, I answered within the three-point framework: God, sin, Christ. He liked that structure and used it to articulate his worldview as well: evolution, dogma, better science education—right in line with the Sagan-Tyson synthesis. Then he elaborated. Scientists aren’t doing enough to educate the public about what they know, he said, particularly with respect to the beginning of the universe and the origin of the first living things.

Now, if you’ve been reading Salvo for any length of time, you know why scientists aren’t providing these explanations. It’s because they don’t exist. And our discussion exposed this and other gaping holes in Ben’sworldview that are being filled with a materialistic version of faith.

Second, a worldview reset can reorient a potentially contentious dialogue. With most conflicts regarding secular ideologies, the disconnect is, at root, a clash between the theistic and non-theistic foundations. This can be the case even if both sides are invoking biblical imagery.

For example, sexual ideologies are often pushed with slogans like, “Jesus would accept gays and transgenders.” That may be true, but if Jesus is going to be invoked, then it’s fair and intellectually honest to redirect the discussion to the question of worldview foundation. If the Judeo-Christian God created humanity male and female and instituted marriage, then certain implications for sexuality follow from that. If not, then anything goes.

The relevant point for discussion would be, Which worldview foundation are we starting from? Is it Christian theism? Or is it some form of philosophical naturalism? If naturalism, then moral dictates based on what Jesus may or may not have done are irrelevant. Furthermore (and worse for the naturalist), in naturalism, morality is an ungrounded, arbitrary chimera. Whenever possible, then, ideologues, whether sexual, environmental or otherwise, should be pressed to grapple with the full implications of their worldview foundation. This is not rhetorical tit for tat. Wisely executed, it’s an act of Christian love.

Practical Peacemaking

Another entrenched narrative out there says that truth claims are the source of human conflict. But a worldview reset can actually be a move toward peace. Family counselor Beverly Buncher created a communication strategy for families of addicts called BALM—Be A Loving Mirror. It involves remaining calm in heated situations and, as lovingly as possible, reflecting back your opponent’s thoughts and emotions. The objective is to stay in the relationship, grounded in your own reasoned composure, in hopes of serving over time as a peacemaking, transformative presence for your loved one.

Both the worldview filter and the BALM approach are powerful aids for remapping ideological impasses and bridging relational divides. More important, they provide a setting for illuminating truth.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2zJGiBe

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Religion Tested Truth

Can Religion Be Tested for Truth?

By Luke Nix

Most of the time, I’m not too fond of using the term “religion”. I normally prefer to use “worldview” because it is more clear about what all a belief-system entails. However, for this post, I will use the term common for the question posed in the title: Can religion be tested for truth?

Many years ago, I would not have even thought to ask if religion can be tested for truth. I never thought much about it, because the obvious answer to me seemed to be “Yes”. Apparently, though, many people are questioning whether religion can be tested for truth today. Some even say that religion can’t be tested, thus such a term as “true religion” is an oxymoron. A common slogan that I hear is, “You can’t put God in a test tube”. I thought that I might take a few minutes to break this down and form some kind of defense for the idea that religion can be tested.

Just to get us started, I want to give a basic definition of “religion”. I want to go with “a series of beliefs and practices”. If we further define “beliefs”, we find that beliefs are a series of propositions about reality that one trusts accurately reflect reality. If someone were to say, “I believe A”, they are saying that they trust that A accurately reflects reality.

Some people have stated to me that a person can have a religion that has nothing to do with reality. I beg to differ. If a necessary part of religion is a trust that a proposition accurately reflects reality (belief), then religion must have something to do with reality. What’s really great about most religions of the world is that they tend to not just make claims about how we should live (practice), but they make claims about reality- propositions that are claimed to accurately reflect our world. This makes it quite easy to test the religions of the world for truth.

It seems to me, though, that people have forgotten that “religion” includes beliefs. They tend to think that “religion” is merely a series of practices or routines. In this context, the claim that religion cannot be tested for truth makes a little bit more sense…but not much. No, practices don’t have a direct “truth value”, but they do have a “moral value”, and “moral value” is determined by propositions about reality being true. The “truth value” of practices are indirect, but that is not to minimize their “truth value”. The “direct” vs. “indirect” distinction comes into play when we are trying to figure out the “truth value”. For beliefs, the “truth value” can be found directly by testing it against reality. To find the “truth value” of a practice, we must test the “truth value” of the beliefs that necessarily lead to the practice.

A while back, I wrote an article about right beliefs being required before right action (practices) can be performed (here). However, I think that I would have to adjust and nuance that position a bit. If one does not have the true beliefs, they can still perform right actions. However, I would say that right action is useless without right intention (which is derived also indirectly, from beliefs). Notice that I did not say that it is “wrong”, just “useless”. Of course, “useless” implies a purpose. So, if a religion posited no purpose, then practices could be neither useless nor useful- they would just “be”. Whether or not actions possess a “use value” depends upon purpose existing (a proposition that contains truth value), and that can be derived by testing the truth values of propositions of a religion that claims purpose does, in fact, exist.

That purpose exists, is not enough, though. We would need to determine what the purpose actually is before we could determine right intention, which would lead to useful action. Not only must an action be right, but it must also be useful to possess a positive truth value. It is possible to have a right action that is useless to the purpose.

In order for us to know that our actions are the true actions that we should be performing, we need to know if the basis of those actions accurately reflect reality. We can know if the bases are true by testing them against reality. If our bases (beliefs) do not accurately reflect reality, then we must adjust them to accurately reflect reality. When we have accurate beliefs that inform accurate practices, then we have an indication of the true or correct religion.

Any religion that makes claims about reality is subject to being tested. Whatever is responsible for this universe has (un?)wittingly handed itself to humanity in a test tube. If what is responsible for the universe is an intelligent Being, then It has given us the tools to discover It. We can even test the identity of the intelligent Being if different religions claim different things about the creation (reality) created by its intelligent Being. If there is no intelligent Being responsible for the universe, that is testable also. We just need to gather the claims about reality from the different religions and put them to the test.

Check out this post from Bill Pratt: Can Science Test for the Supernatural?*

This post from J.W. Wartick: Can We Evaluate Worldview? How to Navigate the Sea of Ideas

And this post from Wintery Knight: Ground Zero: Why truth matters for preventing another 9/11-style attack

Other Related Posts

Can We Be Good Without God?

Can You Trust Your Senses and Reasoning?

Nature vs. Scripture

Great Websites For Testing Christianity Against Reality

Reasons to Believe

Reasonable Faith

Risen Jesus

Stand to Reason

Apologetics 315

Notes

*Thanks to Greg West at The Poached Egg for finding this article.

 

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

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Ideas About God

The Secret Battle of Ideas About God with Dr. Jeff Myers

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A virus has been spreading across America. Chances are you’ve already been infected without even realizing it. The virus is made up of dangerous ideas—worldviews that don’t reflect Jesus and biblical living.

According to a recent Barna study, less than one in five practicing Christians have a biblical worldview. Idea viruses—stemming from secularism, Marxism, postmodernism, new spirituality, and Islam—are rampant in our churches today.

But don’t give up—there is hope! The Secret Battle of Ideas about God is a manual for winning the battle of ideas that is raging for our hearts and minds. Join Dr. Jeff Myers on this podcast as he’s interviewed by Frank about his fascinating new book ➡️The Secret Battle of Ideas About God!

 

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