Clearest Example of the Unforgivable Sin
On this very blog, we have a clear example of the Unforgivable Sin. In fact, the clearest ever offered here. Alex said this:
It needs to be mentioned that the definition of nature is what science can measure and the reason we call your god’s being and doings supernatural is that when we measure, there is no god there, only natural explanations such as physics and chemistry. (source)
The Unforgivable Sin, from Mark 3:22-30 or Matthew 12:22-32, is the denial of the Spirit moving in our world. It is through the movement of the Spirit that we can see evidence of God acting in our world.
So, a little context. I deny the categories of natural and supernatural. Alex is saying that when we measure the doings of God, we find no God, just natural movements.
The first problem is that our instruments aren’t going to measure or detect God, who exists outside of the time and space we know how to measure. Instead, what we’re going to see are the effects that God creates, which are accomplished by the Holy Spirit. This is the evidence of God.
Denying that what we have seen is the movement of the Spirit is the Unforgivable Sin.
For example, Alex looks at biochemistry. The amazing complexity and well-oiled interactions of the various systems of our bodies, the ability of our bodies to obtain the raw ingredients our cells need to produce energy in the foods we eat and the drinks we consume all bear evident marks of design. The well-defined stages of growth humans go through, the inherent curiosity to learn and flourish, shared ability to define morality, to know what is is not what ought to be; these are the hallmarks of a being who can impart these things to us.
Alex, however, looks a this design and says, “Nah, random mutation acted on by natural selection — not a personal, intelligent force — created this.”
And that, my friends, is the Unforgivable Sin in a nutshell. The Pharisees saw the work of the Spirit in Christ as he drove out demons and cured disease, and they attributed it to Satan. Alex sees the work of God in chemistry and biology and attributes it to chance and natural laws. Both deny the Spirit’s efficacy, and both have severe eternal consequences.
Share this:
Posted on September 24, 2011, in God, Philosophy, Science, Sin, Theology and tagged Blasphemy, chemistry, evidence of god, Philosophy of Science, physics, random mutation, Unforgivable Sin. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
Josiah Concept Ministries 
I disagree. At the very least, there is the technicality that creation was done through Jesus (John 1:1-3, Proverbs 8:30), and Matthew 12:32 specifically says that blasphemy against Jesus can be forgiven.
As for what blaspheming the Holy Spirit could mean, look at the context in which Jesus speaks. “28 But if I am casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has arrived among you.” What would the opposite of that look like? Cast out the Spirit of God in the name of Satan, and the Kindgom of God has left you.
are you saying that everyone who accepts that evolution is true is going to hell?
Cory, your comprehension levels are failing and your inner theologian is running on auto-pilot. You are now doing the old canard of claiming your god of the gaps, that everything that looks complex must contain some godly smudge, that your god *is* the universe and gravity and the Boson-Higgs, and that saying these things aren’t God is the *same* as declaring that your god does not exist. And you know what? That’s all fine, if that is how you define your god.
But it isn’t. Your god is the one with talking snakes, the one who sends bears to kill children, the one that wager with the devil to make innocents suffer, the one that turns people into pillars of salt, who thinks that working on a specific day is punishable by death, and so on. Your god is the god of iron-age people in the desert, people who had no knowledge of any of the things that modern science has found out. You’re basically retro-fitting your god into a modern understanding of the cosmos, and as such I cry “foul!” Either you believe that the mustard seed is the smallest, that flying insects have four legs, and that 200 pigs needed to be possessed by demons and then drowned, and the world has four corners, that heaven is limited to a specific number of people, that heaven is above the firmament in the sky … and on and on. This is the world of your bible, this is your god from which it comes. You’re retro-fitting what is written in the bible to fit with the more we find out about the world.
You’re inching closer and closer to defining your god as quantum mechanics and the state machine of the singularity, that the bible is just a bronze-age instance of this grander being which *is* the universe. Again, that might be a perfectly valid way of going about it, but it * definitely* isn’t your Christian god anymore.
And this is precisely why we separate the godly stuff and the natural stuff into the natural and super-natural; it comes from the world of Christianity itself, just like the word secular (the time on earth before you go to heaven). As as been said before, if god is in every seed of flowers, he’s then also in a lot of poop, and I kind suspect that’s not what theists mean when they talk about the pretty flowers …
Cory, had an additional thought. Sorry for saying “your comprehension levels are failing”, what I meant to say is that I feel you’re peddling your own version of what I write rather than hearing what’s being said (and had a too-high a level of personal attack in it which I certainly didn’t mean). The divide between natural and super-natural comes only from humans who have a notion of the super-natural, ie. religious or superstitious people who need this divide. It’s perfectly fine for you to break down that wall, but it makes you paria amongst Christians and most religious / superstitious / alternative believing person out there. The very foundation of your belief is that it is something outside of the predictable and explainable nature, for example miracles, heaven, time-less, all-powerful etc. which are in direct odds of it.
I don’t believe that it’s a particularly radical notion amongst Christians that God displays himself through the natural occurrences of the Universe, in fact, I’d say that it’s basically the average apologist’s idea of God’s nature that he does most of his work in that way. What you seem to be calling retrofitting, I would call understanding. In the same way that scientific theories must be revised as we discover more about the physical world, as we discover more about ancient geology, culture and history in general, we must revise our interpretation of the Bible for it to make sense – which we have managed to do. For instance, just because the previous idea that light is a particle was false, doesn’t mean that light doesn’t exist. Just because people interpreted Revelation as a hyper-literal account of a prophecy, doesn’t mean that Revelation itself is incorrect, just that the original interpretation was, and that it was written with various literary devices for the purposes of communication to the early Christians in that context.
All of that, Alex, is why I posted 1 Corinthians 2:14 earlier. Everything you’ve said has been addressed by Christian apologists, *repeatedly*, and that you throw ridiculous things like “four corners of the earth” or “wagering with the devil to make innocents suffer” as some kind of knockdown argument is pure and simple *ignorance* of how to consistently approach the Bible.
What a poor response. Bringing out 1 Cor 2:14 over and over as some kind of ultimate answer when it clearly speaks of cumulative regress is just not very clever. And note; just because some random apologist have said something about something in the past (I’m sure apologists have had something to say about every single word, image, phrase and model in the bible many times over) it doesn’t follow that any of them are satisfying. I’m talking with *you*, not them. You proclaim to have your own opinions, so show me.
As to the “four corners”, again you fail to see the point being made. You’re so stuck in your theological tapestry that you can’t judge anything except through it. And *that* is your 1 Cor 2:14 to a tee, and makes you blind to seeing things from different sides. In order for a lot of things in your bible to be true, you *must* define this natural / super-natural divide, otherwise you end up in stupid conundrums like there were two different ways that physics and quantum mechanics worked before and after the flood. (Hint: rainbows) It’s nonsense, and it *is* retro-fitting your religion to fit with new knowledge, *not* your god making things clearer, it’s *you* making things clearer. The only thing ridiculous is that you seem to be unable to grasp this point.
“Oh, those scientists have discovered some natural cause for thing X that the bible has been explicitly super-natural about, so we better change doctrine unless it makes us look really bad. Yeah, it wasn’t literal, it was metaphorical” seems to be the paraphrased summary of doctrinal development.
Here’s another example; Adam and Eve, real or allegory?
If “real”, then you end up in the crackpot category, and we’ll leave you alone with your weird beliefs that are in direct conflict with established science, but if “allegory” then we are having this discussion about where natural and super-natural starts and stops, and how theology can tell from a piece of writing what it is. To put it bluntly, 1 Cor 2:14 is a non sequitur.
Before I get to Alex’s response, I am working on a reply to the longer comment left on my post on lack of posting. This one is shorter and easier, so I decided to start here.
First, a complaint. I have often pointed out that other Christians have answered the points that you think you’re making (but most are plain ignorant of what apologists in general have written), and you reply:
I’m glad you’re talking to me, however, I point to replies with which I am in agreement. So if William Lane Craig’s reply on the Kalaam Cosmological Argument (for example) didn’t satisfy you, then neither will anything I say because I agree with Craig’s analysis.
There is no reason for me to re-invent the wheel. If someone said something great, then I’ll continue to point you to what others have said. J.W. Wartick and Greg West both think that my posts and my e-zine articles — usually the ones you complain about as silly or lacking substance — are worth syndicating on their respective blogs. So if I’ve said something that they need to say, they can simply cite me instead of writing it again.
Perhaps the next time you cite a bit of scientific research or make a talking point I’ve heard a dozen or more times I’ll just dismiss the whole thing and say “Alex, I’m arguing with you, I don’t care what the latest scientific research on the topic is.”
Speaking of bringing up tired talking points, I get very tired of replying to crap like this over and over again:
Nope. I do not need to do any such thing. Read that Bible you criticize more carefully before you prove the point you think doesn’t exist (that 1 Cor 2:10 applies to you) — Genesis 2:5 says that God had not yet caused it to rain, and I find nothing between that verse and the Flood story to indicate that he did. So it is my conclusion (and the conclusion of other commentators) that the first time it rained was the Flood, and that means that no “new” laws of physics would be necessary to prevent rainbows prior to the Flood. No rain, no rainbows. End of story.
As we gain more understanding of the world around us, our interpretation of Scripture is bound to change. I think you miss two things, however. First, God has given us the Bible — which ends his responsibility. Our responsibility, now, becomes to learn from it. And that requires a little bit of work on our part, however, the end result is worth it because Jesus’ words are life. Where else can we go?
The second thing you miss is that these debates have been raging since the beginning of Christianity. Even before Christianity, since the majority of the Bible predates Christianity. It is only much more recently, in the last couple of hundred years, that the largest faction gaining a toehold is the fundamentalist movement, who insist the Bible means exactly what it says and there are no metaphors, nor should we apply a Hebraic interpretive framework to the historical narrative. Of course, atheists and critics are only too happy to insist on that framework since it is the easiest to show as completely absurd.
That leaves us with non-starters like the black-and-white, all-or-nothing false dichotomy you present with the historical Adam and Eve dilemma. I believe in a historical Adam and Eve. I see no reason not to. In fact, coalescent theory in genetics suggests that humans share a single father and mother in the distant past. Which means that when you say this:
It’s not true. This is not a “weird belief” and it is not contrary to genetics.
Perhaps you mean that the Bible teaches a 6,000 year old earth. But that’s not true either; that is the fundie interpretation of the Bible. In reality, genealogies were written as much for story effect as for preserving history — meaning that they might not contain the complete father-to-son-to-grandson-to-great-grandson picture; they might skip a generation or two in order to preserve the lyrics of the poem.
Which means that the Bible can’t be used to tell us the age of the earth, or even the age of mankind.
On the other side:
No again. Even if I did think Adam and Eve were allegorical, you already know I don’t accept “supernatural” as a total barrier cutting one reality off from the other. I believe God is separate from creation, but I think that “natural” and “supernatural” are only useful as points of view.
And we don’t need theology to tell reality from allegory in the Bible, only simple literacy. You don’t try to figure out the historicity of Jesus’ parables, for example. If you read it, it becomes clear.
Is that a perfect, 100% tried-and-true statement? Unfortunately, no. There are several theories as to the “sun stopping in the sky” in Joshua 10:1-15. Since that is poetry in an otherwise historical account, we have some latitude as to what the writer meant.
To wrap things up, I do not agree with you that I gave you a poor response. The verse I have quoted says that the natural man (you) cannot grasp the spiritual facets of Scripture. And clearly, time and again, you show that to be true (like when you miss the fact that the first rainstorm brought the Flood and suggest that laws of physics must have been different pre-Flood so that there wouldn’t have been rainbows).
I’m proud to be stuck in a “theological tapestry” through which I see the world. I can see it very clearly, thank you very much. I don’t find your new least favorite verse to be a non sequitur; on the contrary, it is a valid point to bring up. And I will continue to refer to it as often as you trot out bad exegesis, false dichotomies, and non-starters. You really don’t understand the spiritual facet of the Scriptures, and you can’t cover for that by suggesting that I don’t understand the natural world, or by trying (unsuccessfully) to show that Scripture doesn’t.
“The first problem is that our instruments aren’t going to measure or detect God, who exists outside of the time and space we know how to measure.”…so we might be able to? Héhé, could we invent some supermachine that could do it? If no, then God CAN’T be measured by whatever means, God is SEPARATE from nature (not just in “time and space we [don’t] know how to measure”), and so is supernatural…but if we could become clever enough to actually reach him, or just potentially (like we can potentially reach any galaxy out there, any star, given enough billions of years…like we can UNDERSTAND the connection the rest of a theoretical multiverse would have with our universe, have given birth to it by collisions and such…is there a moment God physically touched our universe, collided with it, directly manipulated it?), if you’re claiming there IS a way to do it, THEN you’re saying God is truly part of nature, héhé…
I was a little busy lately, didn’t have time to drop by, but interesting posts…
Well I’m glad you found the time to check things out.
I don’t like categorizing God as “natural” or “supernatural,” primarily because they are points of view rather than actual categories. God is still separate from our reality
The reason I hate calling him “supernatural” in the category sense is that includes things like ghosts, unicorns, and (of course) Santa Claus.
Those are myths. God is real, and therefore “natural” in some sense of the term. I think it’s a mistake to think of “natural” as confined to our reality.
(No reply-to button under the post, so it’s put here)
“So if William Lane Craig’s reply on the Kalaam Cosmological Argument (for example) didn’t satisfy you, then neither will anything I say because I agree with Craig’s analysis.”
So when I point out that Craig has a huge problem with his premise, and by extension so do you, you proclaim that you’re tired of hearing people like me arguing with people like you because Craig – the source here – has already written about it, and you agree with anything he does and could say about it? Surely not. If you already understand and agree with WLC’s argument it should be a doozey for you to point out how quantum mechanics don’t kill the first premise?
“Wartick and Greg West both think that my posts and my e-zine articles — usually the ones you complain about as silly or lacking substance”
They are not silly, and in fact, I think it’s great that you do them, I really do. However, just because you do them doesn’t mean the arguments within can’t sometimes be silly or lacking in substance (and note that I’m not saying they all are silly or all lacking in substance), and I’m not afraid of pointing some of these out when I come across them. I don’t mean to hurt anyone by it, but I – like you have professed lately – have a strong conviction of getting at the truth, and to be truthful you need to make arguments that are consistent, logical, legal (ie. have solid premises) and factual, and if either of these fail the whole argument is in danger. So if I point to something that is problematic, I’m engaging in a quest for truthiness, and not any particular view-point (even if I do have a few).
“Perhaps the next time you cite a bit of scientific research or make a talking point I’ve heard a dozen or more times I’ll just dismiss the whole thing and say ‘Alex, I’m arguing with you, I don’t care what the latest scientific research on the topic is.'”
You already do this, so I’m not sure what your point is. (I’ll show you a few examples further down) But this comparison you make is simply not the same. Science revolves around self-correcting facts. Theology is mostly modeled opinion. Comparing the two is, uh, a bit out there. Science is a contained model in which the facts can be tested and re-tested for finding and weeding out faults and bias, but most importantly for predicting future answers. However, I’ll grant you this; if you can refute one scientific statement with *another* scientific statement, you have a case for argument, lest you’ve got the dates in the right order. 🙂
“Speaking of bringing up tired talking points, I get very tired of replying to crap like this over and over again: […] Genesis 2:5 says that God had not yet caused it to rain, and I find nothing between that verse and the Flood story to indicate that he did. So it is my conclusion (and the conclusion of other commentators) that the first time it rained was the Flood, and that means that no “new” laws of physics would be necessary to prevent rainbows prior to the Flood. No rain, no rainbows. End of story.”
No, you’re not thinking straight here, and the arrogance of “end of story” is a bit alarming. What does that really mean, “caused it to rain”, because we *know* what normally causes it to rain; water (from seas and springs and wells and skin and whatnot) vapourize and turn to clouds (and by extension, this is the same system that creates wind and most waves), and you’re digging yourself deeper and deeper into a place where the physics are so different (where water don’t vapourize, for example, or wind is caused by something else than what it is caused by today, and maybe cactuses were pre-filled with water that would last beyond their generation age …) as to be bizarre. How much physics and biology were your god stopping or intervening with in order for this to be true? Even a waterfall would cause a rainbow. Heck, throw a glass of water up in the air in a warm day with strong sun, and a rainbow appears but for a brief second. Rainbows appear in snow and ice. It appears in high-altitude crystal clouds. It appears on the edge of a waterdrop. It appear in the condensed dew on leaves and grasses. It’s refraction and defraction on a multitude of scales. Rainbows, despite their name, happens all over the place and not just after rain. Do you see my point? Either your god had a different type of physics before the flood, or the story is simply a Pourquoi story, or the bible is so fuzzy that it can’t be used as a proper guide for these things. You see? If the physics were the same, there must have been rainbows before the flood, *even* of it never had rained (which, with our physics, is actually impossible, so another conundrum there).
“As we gain more understanding of the world around us, our interpretation of Scripture is bound to change. ”
I think we all agree to that. The disagreement seems to be in what direction we should go when other knowledge is gathered, whether we should revise our old knowledge, or shoehorn our old into a model (or outright re-interpretation of the old) trying to fit it with the new. The problem with the bible is that it is set in stone (so to speak), and have no self-correcting mechanism except theology which is opinion about that which is set in stone. Hardly a good framework for working towards truth.
“I think you miss two things, however. First, God has given us the Bible — which ends his responsibility. Our responsibility, now, becomes to learn from it. And that requires a little bit of work on our part, however, the end result is worth it because Jesus’ words are life. Where else can we go?”
1. You don’t know that your god has given you your bible. You only know that some people have written it, and they and it proclaim to be something bigger than that.
2. Learning from it is a multi-faceted statement that falls both ways; sure, learning some parable about the harvest is probably all fine and well, but you also learn that it’s ok to kill people who pick sticks on the sabbath or that it is ok to persecute homosexuals.
3. “Where else can we go?” I’m not going anywhere. Why do you think you’re going anywhere?
“The second thing you miss is that these debates have been raging since the beginning of Christianity.”
Uh, why and how am I missing this? I’m rather well-versed in religious history and theology (special in Christian doctrinal history), despite what you might think. In fact, the *reason* I don’t believe is *because* I’ve studied so hard. (And I’ll gently nudge you towards the Clergy Project for more hints)
“Of course, atheists and critics are only too happy to insist on that framework since it is the easiest to show as completely absurd.”
No, even the basic tenants of Christianity is bizarre enough to demonstrate that, starting with the trinity, miracles, the synoptic problems, and basic morals about human sacrifices (and the 2000 pigs. I love that story!). We don’t have to walk far into Christianity before weirdness strikes, the only reason it has persisted the way it has is because we all grew up hearing about it as if it was perfectly normal. But then people start thinking a bit deeper about it, realizing that Christianity is not about life, it’s really about death, that all they want is heaven and don’t really care for this secular state, making it as miserable as they possibly can in the process of promoting their idea. (And yes, there’s a ton of bible quotes I can give you to back that up; I can play a theologian as well, but then, I don’t have to, because lots of theologians have promoted these thoughts already. See what I did there?)
“I believe in a historical Adam and Eve. I see no reason not to. In fact, coalescent theory in genetics suggests that humans share a single father and mother in the distant past.”
No, no, no, no, no, no! Please, if you’re going to use science to back you up, cite it. Genetics (and, more pointed here, RNA [or more interestingly, pre-mRNA] and how it evolves over time and our symbiotic state with viruses and genetic drift) does not support that at all, quite the contrary. It’s simply not how evolution works; no specie on the entire planet comes from one pair of any specie, it’s outright impossible. It’s not how genetics work; there are no axiomatic genes for any specie. You’ve got it wrong, and you really shouldn’t base your views on this information, lest people who know a bit about genetics and science think you a fool.
As an aside, I can kind of understand young-earth creationists hard battle against science and evolution as they absolutely, conclusively and utterly disprove Adam and Eve as historical people, even though I do find such people batshit insane, but that’s their choice. 🙂
“It’s not true. This is not a “weird belief” and it is not contrary to genetics.”
Yes, it is, and badly so. This is one of those examples where you dismiss whole swaths of the argument becuase you don’t actually understand some scientific notion. It’s not uncommon, though, but I still feel compelled to point this out, as truth is more important than opinion or preference. (And trust me, there’s tons of stuff that science finds out that I rather it didn’t because it afflicts on me as a person [especially in the cognitive sciences], however I’m not inclined to ignore it, rather work with it)
“Even if I did think Adam and Eve were allegorical, you already know I don’t accept “supernatural” as a total barrier cutting one reality off from the other.”
They are not barriers on reality. They are two categories of reality, where the former is measurable, testable and agreed upon between people who share that reality. The latter lacks any of those qualities. (If I hit you with a rock, I’m sure we can agree upon that. If you proclaim your god, we won’t agree, because your god doesn’t appear in *my* reality.)
“And we don’t need theology to tell reality from allegory in the Bible, only simple literacy. You don’t try to figure out the historicity of Jesus’ parables, for example. If you read it, it becomes clear.”
When Jesus says he’s doing a parable, yes, by all means, it’s a parable. But what about Lot’s wife? And the 2000 pigs? And the wine at the party? Or the devil taking Jesus to where he could see the four corners of the world? Where does allegory start and stop?
“Is that a perfect, 100% tried-and-true statement? Unfortunately, no. There are several theories as to the “sun stopping in the sky” in Joshua 10:1-15. Since that is poetry in an otherwise historical account, we have some latitude as to what the writer meant.”
The bible is full of stories that could or couldn’t be interpreted as allegory, story, poetic license or facts. The only thing you’ve got is “the spirit of the lord” guiding you, however given the mountain of theology to spring from this venture I’d say he hasn’t guided very well or precisely.
“To wrap things up, I do not agree with you that I gave you a poor response.”
Well, that’s your opinion, however you haven’t written anything back that would change my perception. It was poor in understanding the ramifications of allowing the same physics to roam both before and after the flood (not to mention where all that wanter went, but I’m sure there’s some theology or magic one can apply to that, which is bizarre; why did the water go away by magic, but rainbows dodn’t appear in water before the flood? What a juxtaposition!)
“The verse I have quoted says that the natural man (you) cannot grasp the spiritual facets of Scripture. And clearly, time and again, you show that to be true (like when you miss the fact that the first rainstorm brought the Flood and suggest that laws of physics must have been different pre-Flood so that there wouldn’t have been rainbows).”
Or, you know, maybe *you* don’t grasp a few things here and there. It’s not always everybody else, you know. 🙂 Btw, “natural man”? What a conveniant way of saying that if you don’t understand what I’m on about, it’s clearly your fault, not mine. Some clear bible you’ve got there.
“[you trot out bad exegesis, false dichotomies, and non-starters]”
Truly, you are a noble man looking for truth using the best of your faculties coupled with the stringent and best philosophical tools that are available inside your bubble.
“You really don’t understand the spiritual facet of the Scriptures”
And here I was thinking that apologetics was all about explaining this to us mere mortals, when in fact it looks more like you just need a place to prozelyte. Oh well.
I can remember sitting in a Bible study 20 years ago as a new Christian and being told about the unforgiveable sin. We all sat there quaking in our boots wondering if we had ever blasphemed in our lives and instead of being saved were doomed to a fiery end.
For that reason some light needs to be thrown on the situation otherwise some Christians might believe they aren’t saved and some of the unsaved might believe they are beyond redemption.
First of all the blasphemy was that the Scribes and Pharisees who claimed to be God’s representatives witnessed the miracle working power of the Holy Spirit and attributed that to Satan, but is it truly unforgiveable?
And now the punch line……
When the New Testament scriptures were written in Greek from which our English translations are taken, the word “Blasphemy” was written in the continuous tense as were many other words. We don’t have a continuous tense in English we only have past present and future so when the continuous tense is translated it sounds like a one off event.
In other words,what Jesus actually said to them is If you continue to do this you can never be forgiven.
Likewise if I was unsaved and continually rejected Jesus then I would remain unforgiveable.
If there is still any doubt, then Paul tells us that he was a blasphemer and many other things before he came to Faith.
I hope that clears it up.