Blog Archives
The Parable of the Year 4500 [PARODY]
A warning to the sarcastically impaired… this post is meant in jest, but it raises a valid point that bears addressing by atheists of OUR time. Before it’s even a question from speed readers or skimmers, I am not de-converting.
By Supportstorm (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
But I have, at last, thrown off the shackles of Christian oppression and joined the Brights of society, in knowing the truth that there is no God.
I now post my anti-testimony so that others may find the strength to resist the mindvirus of Christianity. But let me start with a little history…
Christians in 4500 point to two incontrovertible “miracles” proving the existence of their god. The first is the so-called Resurrection, when their zombie lord allegedly rose from the dead.
The second allegedly happened five days after an anonymous writer of what they used to call a “blog” wrote this:
If one evening, every star in the sky began to move in unison, and converge to form an illuminated three dimensional Latin Cross that filled the entire void, leaving the rest of the sky utterly black, devoid of any stars or planets; with Jesus’ face superimposed upon it, speaking in all languages at once its expectations of us, and for good measure it simultaneously rained human blood across the planet; and this all lasted for 24 hrs so that every person on Earth could view the event for themselves … I’d buy it. I’d become the worlds greatest Christian. Or if it were equally strong evidence of some other god being, I’d be first in line to at least apologize to it for my denial and happily sacrifice to it, grovel at its hooves, or otherwise demonstrate my reverence.. (source)
Five days after that, it happened. Millions of eyewitnesses saw it, and thousands posted accounts online and newspapers carried stories and the media frenzy was born.
And so was Christian oppression. Because who could argue with an actual appearance of God?
But I echo the arguments of many critics of this so-called “event” of mid-2012. I now do not believe it happened. The facile replies of the Christian so-called apologists lack so much luster as to be incredible. Even fanciful.
So, here are my questions. . .
First, Why did God wait so long? Allegedly, your “savior” rose from the dead in the year 33. Yet, this fictitious event didn’t occur until 2012 — almost 2000 years later. It seems to me that if God truly cared about humanity, he would never let questions about his existence happen, since you go to hell if you don’t believe in him.
So he wouldn’t have waited. He would have made the first great miracle, the Resurrection, more obvious. The Resurrection, in fact, is all he should have needed to prove that Jesus was who he said he was. People would believe then.
The fact that your god needed a second miracle proves he is inept and not worthy of worship.
Second, Where’s the video of this event? Christian apologists claim that as a supernatural event, this couldn’t have been put on video. Therefore, all of the video from the time that shows a typical, non-rearranged night sky is what we’d expect to see.
Well, it seems to me that if God expected this miracle to convince everyone of his existence, that he’d leave more than just a few eyewitnesses. I know that it is claimed the “entire planet” saw this, but that isn’t good enough. The Resurrection was supposedly seen by over 500 people who were still alive at the time of writing, but I can’t question them now, either. Therefore, both miracles suffer from lack of adequate attestation. Which leads us to …
Why do you expect me to take this on eyewitness testimony alone? Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. I can’t question any of these people today, and supposedly there’s no actual video of this event. The hundreds of blog posts that still exist are no proof, since the Church could have put those together and claimed they were authentic.
I bet they even destroyed the counter-testimony, the people of the era who said this event never happened. There was bound to be lots of those, as I understand atheist activism was popular on the Internet of 2012. Where are all of the atheists who would have decried this obvious Christian propaganda?
Destroyed by the Church, that’s where.
So that’s my case. That is why I now stand with the atheists. Go ahead, theists. Prove me wrong.
In other words, given the space of time, people will find old ways to disbelieve new miracles. All of these arguments are repackaged versions of anti-Resurrection arguments. Nice try, Atheist Camel. Believe because of the Resurrection, or move along. It is the only sign you’re getting.
Krauss’s Wager
Luke Nix of Faithful Thinkers ruminates on two of Lawrence Krauss’s recent statements:
Recently in a discussion with Justin Brierly (Unbelievable?) and Rodney Holder, Lawrence Krauss made an interesting statement (podcast: 58:01):
“You talk about this god of love and everything else. But somehow if you don’t believe in him, you don’t get any of the benefits, so you have to believe. And then if you do anything wrong, you’re going to be judged for it. I don’t want to be judged by god; that’s the bottom line.”
Earlier in the program Krauss also described himself as an antitheist and made a distinction from being called an atheist. Taken in the context of the quote above this distinction and title makes a lot of sense.
Absolutely: this is something that I’ve seen from atheists before. It’s not that they don’t grant the possibility of God — it’s the judgment of God they would like to deny.
It’s not fair.
I’m just being me.
The second objection is true. You are just being you: a sinful human being deserving of God’s judgment. But the first statement is false. God isn’t being unfair; he, too, is being him.
As apologists, it is not enough to address a worldview as a whole, we must look into the specific views of an individual to appeal to them on both an intellectual level and an emotional level.
And Luke unpacks all of that nicely in this post.
Is There REALLY No Evidence for God?
I know every atheist reader is simply going to say “YES” when they read my title and move on. So be it. For those of you still here, I think that Seth Dillon of Logical Faith sums things up nicely:
Atheists . . . have adopted a naturalistic worldview, which means they believe that every event, no matter how supernatural or miraculous it may seem, can be explained without appeal to the supernatural. Thus their disbelief is not the result of a lack of evidence that God exists, but of a philosophy which, from the outset, denies the possibility of any such evidence. In other words, they’re bringing a ready-made conclusion to the evidence, rather than drawing a conclusion from it. Such backward thinking is begging the question, and is neither reasonable nor scientific.
Despite what atheists would have you believe, Christianity is a self-proclaimed evidence-based faith, with Jesus being the supreme piece of evidence.
Meeting the Contrarian’s Third Challenge to Believers
I’ve talked about the Contrarian (part 1 | part 2), and his strawman representation of the Christian gospel. As it happens, this guy is a gold mine of article ideas for an apologetics blogger. Sort of a one-stop shopping center for a writer who needs ideas.
Therefore, I couldn’t resist his first challenge to believers. I have no idea why I answered it. Along with the second and third challenges, he proves he is only interested in grandstanding for an atheist audience.
So far, #3 is the final challenge and I hope it mercifully stays that way, even though it is the only one remotely interesting: “unobfuscate the Trinity”:
Lucifer: The trinity has caused divisions amongst various christian denominations for centuries. There are those christians who bellieve that Jesus was god in the flesh and those who say he is the sun of god and an entity distinct from god almighty.
Contrarian: Jesus BLATANTLY said things on numerous occasions that points to the fact that he is a being distinct from god, and not god in human form. Before and after being crucified, Jesus prays to god to let this cup pass from his lips, and to forgive his persecutors because they know not what they do.
Furthermore, Jesus also said that neither the angels in heaven nor he (referring to himself) knows the day of his second coming. But he clearly states that God does and speaks of him as a separate entity.
There are various other cases where Jesus makes it plain as daylight that he is NOT GOD incarnate, such as when he claims to have observed the creation of the world, but was not the one doing the creating.
The Contrarian is actually on to something. His problem is one of equivocation, though I don’t think he realizes that he is the one committing the error.
Let’s see if I can set this straight.
First, in general the doctrine of the Trinity (at it’s most basic) says that the Father, Son, and Spirit share an essence but remain distinct persons. Something like I am simultaneously a husband to Jody, father to Ashleigh, Gabe, and Kayti, and a manager to my staff at work.
Each role is different.
This isn’t a perfect analogy — but it’s a step in the right direction. JP Holding, infamous Internet apologist, explains the Father-Son-Spirit relationship better in this video.
Second, we need to get some definitions straight. “God” sometimes refers to the ontological category of what Jesus and the Father are — in other words, their shared essence. Other times, “God” refers to the Father, the First Person of the Trinity. For our purposes in this post, God always means the essence of deity and Father refers to the person.
With this in mind, let’s see how equivocation derails the Contrarian’s line of thought.
Jesus BLATANTLY said things on numerous occasions that points to the fact that he is a being distinct from god, and not god in human form. Before and after being crucified, Jesus prays to god to let this cup pass from his lips, and to forgive his persecutors because they know not what they do.
Wrong.
Jesus is God, distinct from the Father. He is God in the flesh — not the Father in the flesh. Jesus is praying not to his essence, but his Father.
Furthermore, Jesus also said that neither the angels in heaven nor he (referring to himself) knows the day of his second coming. But he clearly states that God does and speaks of him as a separate entity.
Again, he’s speaking of the Father, not of God in an ontological sense.
There are various other cases where Jesus makes it plain as daylight that he is NOT GOD incarnate, such as when he claims to have observed the creation of the world, but was not the one doing the creating.
Again, he’s observing the Father creating.
Critical reading and a little bit of thought should unobfuscate the Trinity. I hope that I’ve helped.
Meeting the Contrarian’s Second Challenge to Believers
I’ve talked about the Contrarian (part 1 | part 2), and his strawman representation of the Christian gospel. As it happens, this guy is a gold mine of article ideas for an apologetics blogger. Sort of a one-stop shopping center for a writer who needs ideas.
Therefore, I couldn’t resist his first challenge to believers. I have no idea why I answered it. Along with the second and third challenges, he proves he is only interested in grandstanding for an atheist audience.
Though he claims he is “actually here hoping that someone will prove me wrong and enhance my understanding of reality,” he goes on:
I give the faithful a snowball’s chance in hell that they will actually do so—if past success can help us predict future success—but I must remain true to my scientific convictions. At any moment, anyone could come forward with proof that would require me to abandon my current perceptions; this is why I dedicate this article to asking questions that I would like answers to. (source)
Yeah, that’s the kind of statement we expect from someone who has already decided the outcome before running the experiment.
Now, on to the second challenge for believers. As it is written in a make-believe dialogue with Lucifer, I’m not sure why the Contrarian expects anyone to actually take it seriously.
Yet, I’m lending it credibility by answering it.
Go figure.
Anyway, he’s asking for a YouTube video from a believer demonstrating any of the following three things:
- Levitation
- Walking on low-viscosity fluids
- Raising someone from the dead
Why? Matthew 17:20, of course:
Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.
Now, of course, no believer has ever taken this as meaning that we’d actually command a mountain to jump to a new location. We’ve always understood Christ to be using a rhetorical device common among Semitic people even today — hyperbole.
Why can’t this be a rhetorical device?
The Contrarian doesn’t say.
Of course, the best answer to his drivel is found in the comments section, from Saffa in Asia:
After months of watching this religion bashing and the pointless back and forth arguing, I have come to the conclusion the only way to end this stupidity is for theists to totally ignore the rants and raves of atheists.
If you don’t react, they will become bored and move on to something else where they can get a reaction, for it is the reaction that feeds them.
Ever tried to fight with someone who doesn’t fight back? Rather frustrating. So, don’t feed the trolls. Theists and atheists have made their relevant points over and over again and we are still at square number one.
I know for sure I will get lots of thumbs down and lots of snide comments about being a coward, deluded, stupid, ignorant etc, etc but who cares? Not me.
So I bid you adieu and I trust others will follow suit.
Meeting the Contrarian’s First Challenge to Believers
I’ve talked about the Contrarian (part 1 | part 2), and his strawman representation of the Christian gospel. As it happens, this guy is a gold mine of article ideas for an apologetics blogger. Sort of a one-stop shopping center for a writer who needs ideas.
Therefore, I couldn’t resist his first challenge to believers. I have no idea why I’m answering it. This, along with second and third challenges, are just plain idiotic — proving he is only interested in grandstanding for an atheist audience.
Though he claims he is “actually here hoping that someone will prove me wrong and enhance my understanding of reality,” he goes on:
I give the faithful a snowball’s chance in hell that they will actually do so—if past success can help us predict future success—but I must remain true to my scientific convictions. At any moment, anyone could come forward with proof that would require me to abandon my current perceptions; this is why I dedicate this article to asking questions that I would like answers to.
Yeah, that’s the kind of statement we expect from someone who has already decided the outcome before running the experiment. Read the rest of this entry
Randomness from Yahoo! Answers, part 2
To show people that I’m still here and blogging, I have decided to examine the top three results from the search phrase, “Does God exist?” on Yahoo! Answers. The second question, from user Justin James, asks “Is it safe to make the assumption that God does not exist?”
Science does not prove that God exist, nor do they disprove existence of God either. However what science does is show that God is unnecessary for these processes to occur within our world seeing that the Universe is governed by Natural laws. Science does not have a “thing” against God, but rather Science acknowledges compelling evidence for the non-existence of God. Thus is it safe to make a conclusion that since God is unnecessary for the universe as we know it to exist, we can assume that God does not exist at all?
Let’s break this down:
- Science does not prove God exists
- Science does not disprove God exists
- Science shows God is unnecessary for natural processes because the universe is governed by natural laws
You are correct until #3.
The laws act within the universe, so long as there is a universe for them to act on from the inside. However, the universe — if it began to exist, and we believe that it did — would have an external cause. That external cause cannot simply be those natural laws for those only act on things already inside the universe. The universe would have to be eternal for this to work.
So it is not safe to assume that there is no God. The universe still had to come from somewhere, and could not simply have been ordered by the forces that exist within it any more than a piece of music wrote itself by putting the notes in the right place using the rules of time, rhythm, melody/harmony, and selecting its own major key. Those rules, rather, were used by a composer to arrange the music in a fashion that would be pleasing to the ear.
It is not the scope of this post to answer the question of Who Designed the Universe?; rather, the purpose is to point out that natural laws and such forces are inadequate for they only explain how the components of the universe interact when they already exist.
It merely defers or delays the question of Who. It does not answer it.
Randomness from Yahoo! Answers, part 1
I haven’t blogged in a while. A long while.
I don’t want people to think that I shut the blog down. Nope. I just had a baby, and have been working long hours on top of trying to have a family life. So my blogging life has been put on hold for the last month or so.
So today, with my free time and in honor of a person who has e-mailed me several times about Yahoo! Answers, I have decided to take on the top three results for the search phrase “Does God exist?”
First question, “How, or in what way does God exist?” asked by a user named Bolo Joe two years ago:
I think the question should no longer be “Does God exist?”, but instead “How, or in what way does God exist?” In my opinion, the discrepancy surrounding God has more to do with concepts and interpretations than the actual existence of God.
This is interesting, and I think worthy of a quick comment. It has been a tactic of atheists that have engaged me in dialogue to shift the goal posts in this fashion.
When I have them at a stalemate — they can no longer contend based on my sound objections that God’s existence is impossible — they shift the question from absolute existence to one of semantics.
This essentially means they lose the debate. Their original contention is that God does not exist, but once they stop contending that and start asking why to suppose my particular God over all of the others from mythology then they have conceded there is a God and are now just asking which.
So far, I agree with Mr. Joe. The question of which God is the key, for the actual existence of God is, in my mind, a foregone conclusion in favor of yes.
For example: Referring to God as “He” is a big problem. He is gender specific and references half of a whole, with the complement of course being “She”. Male and female should be viewed as positive and negative expressions of the living being as positive and negative charges are expressions of electricity.
This is where the semantics are coming into play.
“God” can refer to one of two things:
- The shared ontology of the three persons of the Holy Trinity
- The First Person, the Creator of Genesis and the Father of Christ in the Gospels
In using God to refer to (1), I would agree that “he” or “she” are meaningless concepts. However, in English, there is no gender-neutral pronoun that can refer to a living person. “It” is insulting, especially to God.
The essence shared by the persons of the Trinity is neither male nor female, but somehow both. This is suggested in Genesis when both genders are required, but for different roles in the marriage. The male-female marriage is therefore the divine institution given to us by God, and all others (polygamy, polyamory, homosexual) are perversions of it.
I doubt this seeker would realize he just stumbled into that position or endorse such a conclusion; the New Age-y people are typically liberal and thus in favor of gay marriage.
The male pronoun is used as convenience. Up until the flood of political correctness that has gripped America, “he” was always used as a generic pronoun when the sex was unknown, meaningless, or unable to be determined. It is only in the last 20 years or so that that has become a slight to women.
In using God in (2), the male pronoun is the preferred method of address, and not just because the Bible says so. But because of the way the Bible says:
- Jesus repeatedly calls the First Person of the Trinity “Father”
- Paul repeatedly uses marriage as a metaphor for salvation, and the church repeatedly takes the role of the woman (the “Bride of Christ”)
- Church leaders and elders are supposed to be male (the husband of one wife)
- After the Fall, the man was supposed to take the lead and the woman follow, subjecting her desires to the man
Given all of that, it is clear God sees himself in the male role of a complementarian view of gender relations. He is neither male nor female, for both are made in the image of God. But his role is male and therefore the mode of address should remain male.
I say this to illustrate that God can be neither a “He” nor “She” as these two individually are incomplete. That’s the beauty of a healthy relationship between a man and a woman, in which case God is revealed. From this idea comes the concept of Twin Flame soul mates.
Again, as I stated above, this is the strongest argument for heterosexual marriage being the divine institution and homosexual marriage being nothing more than a perversion of it.
All of the physical world, as we know it, is divided into these complementary halves: Up down, back front, light dark, good bad, etc… It is through experiencing these extremes that we find the balance to perceive the whole, or the essential design and this essential design is what I believe to be the expression of G.O.D. (The Grand Organizing Design). Comments…???
Well, I don’t see God as merely a Grand Organizing Design, but a person. I’m not sure how to complete any sort of analysis of this meandering question, so let’s just move forward with the next one tomorrow…
Another Reason I Won’t Debate the Historicity of Jesus Christ
Hard as this may be to believe, there are actually people who don’t believe that there was ever a real, historical Jesus Christ. Their arguments are on par with people who deny Shakespeare wrote his plays, Holocaust deniers, AIDS deniers, and Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory series.
But they won’t go away. Worse, probably 95% of the Internet atheist movement counts themselves among those who deny a man named Jesus of Nazareth, described by the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and many others ever walked this planet and performed miracles before being sentenced to die on a Roman cross.
I’ve decided that I won’t debate the question of the existence of Jesus anymore. It’s really not an open question. No serious scholar of history or of the New Testament, Christian or not, actually questions this issue. Even scholars of comparative mythology question whether or not Jesus’ stories had their origin in pagan mythology! In fact, it may be the other way around.
Well, Christians, historians, and non-Christian comparative religious scholars aren’t the only ones who think that the idea Jesus never existed is preposterous. Of all people, Bart Ehrman, thinks the idea and the arguments supporting it are terrible. And he tells the Infidel Guy so during an interview:
Back Rome Again 