Atheists frequently charge that Christians are so obsessed with the next world, that we forget about this one. To that, C.S. Lewis writes:
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
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I’ve been fairly critical of Catholicism. But this guy has pretty much summed up what needs to be said about Christianity in general and its relationship to the secular media. Yet people seem to find a causal relationship between religion and public stupidity, such as what we have seen from Mel Gibson in the past.
I read the blog of James White’s sister, Patty Bonds, quite frequently. Through it, I discovered this video. It’s amusing.
Patty feels that it accurately represents Calvinism. She writes:
I was probably one of the most radical Calvinists of all. I would and did stand flat footed and state unwaveringly that all five points of the TULIP were infallible and that those who were not elect were going to glorify God simply by their depraved lives and their eternal damnation. I had also come to the conclusion that even unborn babies that perished were subject to God’s capricious picking and choosing. I had been taught that since it was Tradition that taught us that children were not guilty of actual sin until after an age of accountability that we should reject that idea along with the whole of Catholic Tradition. So if a child was still born, it was entirely up to God whether that child would die with his sinful human nature and suffer damnation for it or if he would somehow become “regenerate” and be saved. If your head is spinning right now, don’t feel alone. I can’t believe I once believed this rubbish either.
So, while Jim’s folks have a cow about this video and bluster about bearing false witness and all, I have to say I found the video not only funny, but also an accurate representation of my own former Calvinist beliefs. I’d say they were also Jim’s but he would just tell me I’m wrong like everyone else is wrong when they find fault in him. Whatever. (source)
Of course, the video does not accurately represent Calvinism. I was toying with the idea of picking through this video and showing how badly it misrepresents Calvinism, but TurretinFan has done that for me. He said everything that I would have said, so enjoy his short but excellent refutation of the video.
In my much derided “No Heavyweights of Theology” post, a commenter named Karen Leonard posted the following comment:
It is very difficult to be a “heavyweight” in theology. There is so much mythology, misogyny, racism, sexism, cruel and unusual punishment, mixed messages, and down right nonsense within the bible, that the only people you can address that will sit through your oratory would be those whose minds are so fearful of death that they would believe ANYTHING that gave them hope to the escape the grave.
I was rather nasty in my reply:
Do work really hard at in-the-box-atheist-groupthink, or does it just come naturally?
This prompted commenter Enoch Sherman to stop following my blog, concluding that I don’t encourage rational conversation.
What, exactly, was rational about Ms. Leonard’s comment? NOTHING. Every point she made in that comment has been refuted, either by me or by another apologist. Those charges have stood refuted for years.
I already left these links in the comments, but since Ms. Leonard’s charges are so common, I thought I’d leave them here for your perusal.
According to an Alliance Defense Fund press release, Augusta University graduate student Jennifer Keeton has been told she won’t graduate with a Master’s degree in counseling unless she abandons her Christian belief that homosexuality is a serious sin.
Sad, but this is hardly an isolated case. The ADF is also handling the case of Julea Ward, who was dismissed from Eastern Michigan University’s graduate program for the same thing. Also, the ADF is handling the case of Emily Brooker, who was threatened with expulsion for refusing to write a letter to her Representative expressing support for homosexual adoption.
Consider the dismissal of licensed counselor Marcia Ward from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for referring a client seeking counseling for a same-sex relationship to a colleague. Ward told the client that she couldn’t affirm or encourage homosexual relationships due to her religious beliefs, so she referred the client to a counselor who would. The client filed a complaint anyway, and the CDC fired Ward.
Also, the Christian Legal Society, according to a recent Supreme Court decision, must allow leaders who disagree with its statement of faith to hold office. However, the Supreme Court did acknowledge that the CLS could have a discrimination suit in the making, since the college in question selectively applied the policy that led to this suit. They allowed minority groups to limit leadership to the minority race it represents; therefore, there is no logical reason why the college should throw a fit if religious groups do the same thing.
What we face as Christians is the increasing secularization of society, and the fact that the “majority” is going to impose its views on us, forcing us to accept the “normative” values that they are creating. In order to be considered “good” members of society, we will have to discard our Christian mores. Some Christians are going to do this (such as Bruce Waltke). Others, like Jen Keeton, Emily Brooker, and Marcia Ward, will fight to be allowed to maintain Christian values.
I applaud Keeton, Brooker, and Ward. Stand up and fight for biblical values and lead the way for a new generation of Christians to do the same!
A side project that I’m working on, in addition to everything else, is to re-read (in their entirety) the books that are supposed to destroy not only Christianity, but theism in general. I’m creating a site, currently empty except for some cool pictures, where I will post my thoughts and links to the thoughts of others on these “masterworks” of atheism.
I’ve started with Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, which is the shortest of all of the books. Harris makes a huge error in the opening pages of the book. This mistake might hold the title for the most idiotic argument against Christianity ever purported, and I’ve noticed that other atheists have propagated the error. Like a virus.
Although I will develop the argument more succinctly later, I wanted to take a moment to address it. Neal, a user who commented on John W. Loftus’s reactionary piece to The Infidel Delusion, stated that atheism cannot provide an objective moral standard, but Christianity does. Neal makes a serious philosophical error, though I don’t think he intended to. I think that he intended to suggest that Christianity, as it points to God, provides that as the ground for morals. Atheism isn’t able to posit objective morality, as much as it is synonymous with metaphysical naturalism. If the universe is all there is, then there is no transcendent realm to appeal to when looking for the ideal standard. The ideal standard ought to be, it does not exist in point of fact. “Ought to be” has no meaning in a universe where only the natural exists: nature is what it is.
The first reaction to Neal’s lengthy piece was from Jim, who said:
Neal,
And atheism provides no objective criteria whatsoever. So even here Christianity is superior in that it provides objective foundations for society.
Sorry, Christianity doesn’t provide any objective foundations for society, either, except perhaps purely “within” Christian society.
There seems to be no evidence of any actual absolute objective morality. The universe doesn’t care what Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, or the Inquisition did.
Within human society, we have determined certain “objective measures.” Take the length of the meter, for example. The length of the meter is only as good as HUMANS desire to accept OTHER HUMANS declaration of the standard.
If a group of humans decides to have a different standard for length (the “foot” or “yard”) they are free to come up with their own objective standard for their group. Or they can redefine the length of the “meter” for their own group. What they CAN’T do is redefine the “meter” for a different group.
What Christians have done, allegorically is subjectively decided on the nature of a GOD who decides what the length of the meter is and then claim that they have the ultimate OBJECTIVE foundation for the definition of a meter.
You see what Christians are doing? They are simply using the creative power of their mind to invent something (SUBJECTIVELY) and using that creation as a foundation for OBJECTIVITY.
It’s quicksand . . .
Both Neal and Jim fall into the same trap, propagating the same error that I’m accusing Harris of: Christianity is not the foundation for morals. God is the foundation for morals.
To his credit, Jim corrects himself (kind of) midway through the post, shifting the source of morality back to God. This is the correct view. Christianity is, with qualifications that I won’t get into here, a series of interpretations of the same book. Being subjective in nature, therefore, Christianity cannot provide an objective ground for morality. As such, it is not the source of morals.
Jim, however, makes many serious mistakes. The underlying assumption of his comment is that philosophy and theology cannot provide any objective insight into who God is, and what he would command. That is, philosophy and theology don’t consist of real knowledge, just mere opinion. He also rejects the authority of Scripture, and in all probability, the very existence of special revelation. He also implicitly accepts relativistic morality, which is also false.
I hate it when people say that Christianity is the ground of all morals. That’s patently false. God is the ground of all morals. Christianity is, with some qualifications, subjective and therefore cannot be the ground of morality. God, who is the good, is immutable. Therefore, God is our ground for morals. Atheism cannot account for the existence of the material universe, much less provide a ground for objective moral standards.
Mike from the blog Finding Bliss has objected to Calvinism. He says, “I find it spiritually abusive,” calls it “reckless [sic] doctrine”
In my previous post, I showed that Mike isn’t objecting to Calvinism proper. In that vein, I will answer some of the objections he then comes up with in the latter section of his post, most of which can be defused by appealing to what Calvinism actually teaches, not what Mike thinks it teaches. First objection:
How many nights have people laid awake at night questioning whether or not God chose them first? Or if like me you first believed and then you fell then that could very well mean that I was never truly saved in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
I was wondering when I’d see a Catholic response to New Atheism. Most books I’ve seen have been by Protestant authors, though I know Dave Armstrong has done a continuing series on his blog addressing an atheist on YouTube, and recently detailed the Top 10 Atheist Arguments and exposed their fallacies.
Now, Patrick Madrid has released a new book, The Godless Delusion, with coauthor Ken Hensley. Madrid’s book tackles philosophical objections to atheism, and isn’t a defense of theism per se. Madrid took note of some atheists commenting on his book at RichardDawkins.net. Fascinatingly enough, none of them had actually read the book. User xwizbit seems the lone voice of reason:
I have to point out that when I was (an admittedly very wishy-washy and doubting) Christian I challenged myself to test my faith against a reading of The God Delusion, for various and sundry personal reasons. It hammered home what I was already secretly thinking about god, and turned me into the radical atheist I am today.
Nevertheless, had I merely mocked and jeered at the book, I’d still be wandering about in a fog of confusion instead of splashing in the waters of a clear-thinking oasis. Is it too much to ask that we might dare to challenge a book by reading it and then commenting?
After all, thankful as I am to Mr Dawkins, I at least read his book before wholeheartedly embracing it!
Which, of course, meets with invective of its own, despite the fact that xwizbt all but recanted this position in the very next comment (after having read the introduction). This one from user TrumpetPower!:
xwizbt, in this case the very description is more than ample to dismiss the whole thing as purest nonsense: “With remorseless logic, wit, skill, and boundless, joyful enthusiasm it lays waste that stronghold, routs the enemy, occupies the high ground for Christ their king, and dares anyone to retake it.”
Anybody who thinks it’s a good thing to occupy the high ground for an ancient zombie hero in a religious snuff porn anthology isn’t deserving of serious consideration.
Defending the indefensible: sharp critique of a book that one hasn’t read. And a statement that clearly shows this person doesn’t understand anything about the Christian faith.
And an anonymous commenter said this:
It’s astonishing. Believers come about their superstition via faith, which has nothing to do with reason. Then they pretend that they can defend their faith with reason. It just makes no sense to me. All they should do–all that they are entitled to do–is to stand there and say “I have faith”. That’s it.
While most atheists scream at us to defend our faith, this guy says that we aren’t even entitled to defend our faith. Obviously, he doesn’t actually understand what faith is. Actually, no atheist I know of knows what authentic faith is. Faith and reason are certainly not incompatible; where did this serious error in logical thought originate? That might make an interesting e-book some time in the future.
I’ve seen an interesting claim several times recently by different atheist bloggers. It’s been stated a few different ways. Let me illustrate. First, John W. Loftus:
In my opinion there are no heavy weights for Christianity just as there are no heavy weights for Scientology or Islam or Orthodox Judaism or Hinduism. It’s all improbable to the core and I see no reason why one religious myth’s scholar is any better than another. (source)
I see it in this post from Ray Garton, as well:
I’ve got news for you. We’re all experts on religion to one degree or another, every last one of us. Religion is not like, say, heart surgery or entomology or aviation. Sure, there are people who spend years in school studying theology and the bible, years in seminaries becoming clergymen. But there are also people who wake up one morning and decide to start their very own religion, and then do it. You, if you so desired, could go online and, for a small fee (small compared to the tuition that would be required to get a degree in anything), become an ordained minister, start a church and – presto-chango! – become a tax-free religion (yes, it really is that easy).
In any field of endeavor in which you are free to make it up as you go along, the word “expert” has little or no meaning.
In this video, Angie Jackson (aka Angie the Anti-Theist) also makes the claim (2:02-3:13). When criticized for not taking on better theistic arguments, she responds by saying that theism is self-evident nonsense no matter who she takes on. Therefore, she doesn’t need to seek out any better arguments because she can defeat all of them easily.
The underlying idea is that all we, as theologians, are doing is making this stuff up as we go along. That presupposes many, many things. First, it presupposes that they are absolutely correct and there is no God. From that, it it goes on to posit that there is no revelation, since no one is beyond this world to reveal it. And finally, it concludes that rigorous and lifelong study of the Scriptures yields no useful knowledge, no matter whose mind takes on the task.
The first proposition shows an incredible arrogance. To suppose, from material investigation only, that the immaterial doesn’t (or can’t) exist isn’t being fair-minded at all.
The second proposition, building from the first, concludes that there is no divine revelation due to the fact that there is no divine. The Scriptures are nothing but the scribbling of ignorant Bronze Age herdsmen. This proposition is accepted based on the erroneous conclusion that there is no God. God can be deduced from science, but not proven by science. If there is no reason to accept the first proposition, then the second proposition is also nonsense because special revelation is the only way to understand God’s character. It’s impossible to know the full character of God from general revelation only.
A written Scripture, in that framework, makes sense.
The third proposition is a negative consequence of scientism, which is the philosophy that only science can yield truth, and therefore knowledge gleaned by science is the only valid knowledge we can possess. (This notion has been linked to positivism, and they both can be refuted by the simple fact that, while they both require empirical evidence to prove everything, there is no empirical evidence to prove either of these propositions.) This rules out almost all of classicism, and philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle–anything that isn’t science isn’t knowledge.
By that standard, what I do (philosophy with some theology) is bunk to these people. Philosophy can’t be proven by science, though I would argue that science can suggest the truth or falsity of certain philosophies. Some people who subscribe to scientism go so far as to say that nothing learned before the Age of Enlightenment is worthwhile anymore.
This just isn’t so. The classical philosophers have much to offer us.
But, here’s the real problem. Assuming that these guys are wrong, and there really is a God who sits in judgment, who do you want teaching you his Word? L. Ron Hubbard, who (by all accounts) wholesale made up Scientology, or a godly Christian pastor, who has studied the revealed Word of God his whole life?
Before you make your choice, think about this. The soul, the part of you that is you, that is your essence, your being, is eternal. The beginning of anything sets the trajectory for how that “anything” plays out. This life, the beginning of your eternal existence, is going to set the trajectory of your eternity.
Philosopher Peter Kreeft used geometry as an illustration. Planar geometry represents this life, while adding a third dimension represents eternity. A planar shape, such a square, magnified into eternity, can only ever be a cube. Same with your life. In eternity, your “shape” is determined by the foundation you laid in this life. You can’t get around that.
Eternity is a long time. I want the guy who studied his stuff to teach me about God.
This video, from YouTube user AntitheistAtheist, has the critical praise of numerous atheists in the comments found below the video. Examples:
The last commenter, in typical atheist style, presents an alternate definition of faith that is not what faith really means. I’ve advocated the death penalty for this before, and I think the law is on my side.
Anyway, why is Who designed the designer? still so popular among atheists? There’s an easy answer to the question. Here it is, from philosopher William Lane Craig:
Notice that Craig laughs about the objection. Like me, he finds it absurd.
God is NOT Imaginary Refuting Loftus
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