We’ve been looking at Brownlow North’s Six Steps for New Christians. I’m pretty sure they apply to all Christians. In fact, today’s step is brilliant:
Never let a day pass without trying to do something for Jesus. Every night reflect on what Jesus has done for you, an then ask yourself, “What am I going to do for him?” (Mt 5:13-16)
I remember once having a conversation with regular commenter Alex and saying something to the effect of “God created the universe, you, gives you life and sustains your existence, sent his Son to die for your sins, and you’re basically asking me, ‘So what has God really done for me?’ Tough room!”
Alex was a bit irritated by that, and said that if I want him to take me or “my God” seriously, then I shouldn’t be so flip.
Except that it’s true. God has done a lot for humanity, even though we don’t deserve it. So, to echo North’s sentiment, and to paraphrase JFK, let’s ask what we can do for God instead of always asking what he can do for us. He’s already done plenty.
The focus of this blog has been on getting you to the point where you can intellectually accept that Jesus and God are very real, and that you can commit in good faith to a relationship without surrendering your intellectual integrity. I’ve gotten mixed reviews on my ability to do this; people open to the possibility are generally convinced, but hardcore skeptics think I’m deluded beyond even psychiatric help.
Once you’ve actually made it to the point where you accept Christ (or rededicate your life to Christ, in the case of one recent e-mail correspondence I had), what do you do? Well, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life worked for me.
Warren’s simple 40-day devotional gave me a great introduction into what it meas to be a Christian. It helped turn the five New Testament purposes for a church into
Shorter and better, however, are Brownlow North’s Six Short Rules for Young Christians. These aren’t just for young or new Christians–these will work for any Christian, no matter how far along in his or spiritual journey.
First:
Never neglect daily private prayer; and when you pray, remember that God is present, and that he hears your prayers (Heb 11:6).
Short and simple, and something that I think many people forget. Being omnipresent in our reality, God is present during your prayers and he hears your request. This doesn’t obligate him to answer affirmatively, but he is present and he does hear you.
That’s simple, yet very deep. Let’s just think about that for today, and I’ll have more to say on this issue tomorrow, because this rule combined with rule #2 will have a profound effect on the life of the Christian.
“Human beings are never neutral with regard to God. Either we worship God as Creator and Lord, or we turn away from God. Because the heart is directed either toward God or against him, theoretical thinking is never so pure or autonomous as many would like to think.”
— Ronald Nash
Yesterday, I presented a theoretical post. I said that the Euthyphro dilemma could be solved, as William Lane Craig observes, by the ontology of God. God is the ultimate source of good, and therefore the dilemma creates a false dichotomy. God neither commands something because it’s good, nor is it good because he commands it. God is good, and therefore his commands are good since they flow from his nature.
However, I observed, this wouldn’t satisfy most skeptics because they don’t think a syllable of the Bible is either true or reliable. Most believe that the Bible has been completely disproved by every discipline of science:
And on the list goes.
Now, all of those have logical answers. I’ve linked to what others have said (I haven’t actually addressed any of those claims in depth) if you, the skeptic, would actually care to read them.
But let’s get to a practical application of yesterday: the Resurrection. This is the central tenet of Christianity, but if the skeptic believes that the Bible is as riddled with error as many believe (above), then how are they ever going to swallow something as improbable and unbelievable as the Resurrection?
And make no mistake: It is both unbelievable and improbable! Read the rest of this entry
Is it moral because God says so or does God say so because it’s moral? False dilemma. It’s moral because that’s the way God is. — William Lane Craig
I think that this an excellent and adequate response to the Euthyphro dilemma. I believe that the answer is rooted in the ontology of God as perfectly good.
However, I don’t think that the skeptic would ever be convinced by such an answer.
He’ll just ask how we know God is good, and when we way “the Bible,” he’ll mention that the Bible also says to sacrifice turtledoves to “clean” women during their menstrual cycles, confirms the existence of unicorns, and prohibits football.
Now, all of those things are hyper-literal readings of the text and have simple responses. My point here is that the skeptic doesn’t accept the Bible’s description of anything, let alone God.
To illustrate, archeologists give the benefit of the doubt to ancient documents when a site contradicts a document. The thought is that the ancient writer was closer to the events and probably knows better than we do thousands of years later. Not to mention that its possible that a site might have been altered, destroyed, rebuilt, or built upon between the composition of the document and our discovery of the site.
However, when that ancient document is the Bible, then the error is automatically assumed to be with the Bible, and not assumed to be one of a myriad of possibilities like the ones I just mentioned. To recap, random ancient document contradicts a site: “There’s probably an explanation. Let’s assume the document is right and find out the reason for the contradiction.” The Bible contradicts a site: “Bible’s wrong, it’s complete fiction, God doesn’t exist. Three cheers for freethought!”
While I think that the answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma lies in God’s ontology, I think that in order to get the skeptic to see that, he must be willing to step out in faith and trust the Bible. However, given all of the skeptical attacks on the Bible (despite it previously thought to have been very reliable), there’s a long way to go on that.
By the way, I’m not the only one that sees this. The Bible has yielded much good archeology in the past, and if we would continue to rely on it I have faith it will produce much more good in the future. However, there is a serious prejudice against the Bible not only in archeology, but in every academic discipline.
History and archeology aren’t my thing, but I hope that other apologists who feel called to that area work hard to counter some of this anti-Bible sentiment in those fields. If the Bible can be believed again as a reliable ancient source of history, then we will have taken a good step toward resolving some of the theological questions being raised as well.
I really have to stop letting these accumulate. Answering them is never as bad as I seem to think it will be. And, often, I learn something.
First up, on my post on how Twitter breeds shallow reasoners, Boz thinks that the Twitter users I mention are misunderstanding proof, which he says is:
1) Provide strong evidence for; Demonstrate. I can prove that Morphine is addictive.
2) Show to be true with 100% accuracy. I cannot disprove solipsism.
I agree on both counts, and I also believe Boz is correct that the Twitter users I’m picking on don’t get what proof really is. Nor do they understand that one cannot disprove solipsism (which is why they resort to ridiculing me).
The point is that argument can suffice in place of empirical proof. Provided one can show a belief is rational by logic and argumentation, then empirical proof isn’t necessary. There’s no empirical proof that an external world or other minds exist, and we can’t say for certain (therefore) that we aren’t living in a computer simulation (a la The Matrix).
But we are rational for accepting the existence of the external world and the existence of other minds without evidence. So I also argue that, because we can argue rationally and cogently for the existence of God, that we are justified in accepting it as true in the absence of empirical evidence.
Really, it all boils down to treating God as we would any other belief. So, then, I’ve asked the atheist to provide good reasons to not accept the existence of God. No one has stepped up, and Boz reversed it on me: provide rational reasons for not believing in Amun, the Egyptian god of creation and the sun.
Challenge accepted. First:
As for Amun:
I think that these three points nicely demonstrate the superiority of God to that of Amun-Ra.
[T]he force of sheer emotional experience will not equip teens to address the ideas they will encounter when they leave home and face the world on their own. Young people whose faith is mostly emotional are likely to retain it only as long as it is making them happy. As soon as a difficult crisis comes along, it will evaporate.
–Nancy Pearcy, Saving Leonardo, Kindle iPad Edition, p. 16 (emphasis added)
One of the things I love about atheists is their constant use of complete double standards. It’s why I can’t be an atheist: I’m way too consistent.
First some background:
Jennifer Fulwiler wrote a post about five Catholic beliefs that would make sense to atheists. The spirit in which she wrote it would be to show that Catholicism is intellectually honest, not that an atheist would actually agree that those beliefs as true. As only he can, PZ Myers wrote a response entitled “Jennifer Fulwiler: Vacant-eyed, Mindless Cluelessness Personified.” He essentially dismissed each point as supernatural nonsense, so no atheist would ever actually agree to any of them.
But that wasn’t Jennifer’s point. Her point:
I evidently did not make it clear enough that all of my examples were meant only to illustrate the intellectual consistency within Catholicism, and therefore assumed that you would be in a discussion with an atheist who would stipulate belief in God for the sake of argument. E.g. In the case of Purgatory, when I was an atheist I would have said, “All belief in the supernatural is crazy. But if you must believe in all that God and heaven mumbo jumbo, then, yeah, you need Purgatory in order not to contradict your own bizarre little belief system.” (source, emphasis added)
The first comment to that post, addressed to Jennifer, is the atheist double standard:
“intellectual consistency within Catholicism”
I would ask then if it is possible to get a blood born disease from the blood of christ when taking communion?
I read your original article, and as an atheist I did not agree with a single point (none of the teachings made “sense” to me”, and as PZ suggested, I am not convinced you had arrived at your previous atheism from an intellectual standpoint. It sounds as if you were just a theist in denial or in “thenial” – it happens all the time.
There it is: the No True Scotsman Fallacy. Basically, DKeane is saying that Jennifer wasn’t a true atheist, because true atheists would never convert to theism. She’s been a theist all along. Read the rest of this entry
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