Deeper Waters

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve been looking at atheist sound bites lately and I’d like to post on something tonight that’s similar to that, but is not in itself a sound bite. I got the inspiration for this in posting earlier today on TheologyWeb.com in reply to a skeptic there who was pointing out the importance of fairly representing the other side. Do they? I wish to look at Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins as two such examples:

Let’s start with Dawkins in “The God Delusion.” Here in the bibliography of books cited and recommended, I only count three that I could in any way consider evangelical authors.

Michael Behe of “Darwin’s Black Box.”

Alister McGrath: “Dawkins’s God”

John Polkinghorne: “Science and Christian Belief.”

How fares the index?

“Answers in Genesis” is cited once.

Thomas Aquinas is mentioned a few times, but I can assure you as one who studies at a Thomistic school that Dawkins badly misrepresents the Thomistic arguments. He frankly does not have a clue.

Augustine on two pages

Michael Behe gets mention on four pages in a row.

G.K. Chesterton on one page

Francis Collins on one pages

James Dobson on one page (And I would not count him an apologist)

Dostoyevsky on one page, though I would not necessarily name him an apologist either.

Dons Scotus on one page and I know that page and it never references his arguments.

Philip Johnson on three pages.

C.S. Lewis on two pages.

Alister McGrath on one page. (McGrath is also probably Dawkins’s main critic, seeing as they are both at Oxford and McGrath is an atheist turned Christian trained in the sciences and a theistic evolutionist. Dawkins’s only citation of him is incredibly weak as he doesn’t really acknolwedge McGrath’s arguments.)

Henry Morris on one page.

Blaise Pascal on four pages.

John Polkinghorne on three pages.

Karl Rahner on one page.

Richard Swinburne on seven pages.

Kurt Wise on three pages.

Note that these are only citations. It does not mean actual interaction with the argumentation. I have been doing some more checking lately and looking at what Dawkins says about Thomistic arguments. For instance, he says the problem with omnipotence and omniscience together is that God cannot change His mind. I really don’t see this as a weakness but as a strength. The point is that Dawkins cites a poem by Karen Owens that shows how apparently silly it is that God cannot change his mind.

Who is Karen Owens? No citation is given. No description whatsoever. A google search of Karen Owens along with Richard Dawkins points to a trustee in Richard Dawkins’s own foundation. What are their educational credentials? How old are they even? Don’t have a clue. Dawkins presents this as an authority, a move I consider dishonest.

If Dawkins is bad however, Sam Harris in “The End of Faith” is worse.

Harris’s bibliography?

Augustine’s “The City of God” and “Confessions”

Rene Descartes “Discourse and Method and Meditations.”

Paul Johnson “A History of Christianity.” (I believe I have heard he’s a Christian. I’m not sure.)

Bruce Metzger: “The Oxford Companion to the Bible.”

Blaise Pascal “Pensees.”

Richard Swinburne “The Existence of God.”

Might sound more impressive, but consider the index. I have each reference listed with how many pages they appear on.

Augustine, 8.

Rene Descartes, 5.

Soren Kierkegaard, 3.

Blaise Pascal, 5

The new atheists in these works are not interacting with Craig, Geisler, Habermas, Licona, Plantinga, Moreland, Kreeft, Zacharias, and numerous others. The argument is entirely one-sided.

As a student who still writes research papers, one of the first things I do when I have decided on my topic is to go and order books from the other side. I want my opponents to have their views presented in the best possible light so I can show all the more how weak that they are.

These books do not do that at all. Richard Dawkins does not interact with Alister McGrath, for instance, who is one of his strongest critics being an Oxfordian trained in the sciences. I find it hard to believe that Harris is a graduate from Stanford in philosophy when I read a book with such poor argumentation as the one that he wrote.

If I was a professor and a student turned in assignments to me written like these books are, that student would fail that assignment. The poor research and weak argumentation should have these authors being seen as shameful disgraces. Instead, there are actually pastors who apparently wrote to Harris saying they deconverted upon reading his book, enough to convince me that they should not have been pastors to begin with.

When I encounter an atheist who cites these books as authoritative, I already know that this is someone who does not take research seriously. The sad reality is that their works get absorbed by the atheists on the net and lower the quality of the debates. It’s really hard to have a serious discussion with someone when they think the question of “Who made God?” is an ultimate stumper that Christians have never answered.

If an atheist wishes to be an atheist, very well. Take my advice in this however. Distance yourself from the new atheism. Read instead the old atheists like Mackie, Martin, Nielsen, and Flew. (Granted, Flew did deconvert, but he was a giant in atheism in his time) These writers took theism seriously. They were not driven by an emotional hatred of theism and were willing to acknowledge some good Christianity had done for the world.

As for my Christian brethren, while our opposition is lazy, it is not necessary for us to lower our level of study. We will continue to study and see this as an opportunity. If atheism sees this as its pinnacle, then our serious studies in all fields if we do so can allow us to, as it were, corner the market. We need to have people of high education in every body of knowledge out there.

I also wish to let readers know that tomorrow I could be heading out to spend Christmas with in-laws. It all depends on what my doctor says due to my recent surgery. If you do not see a new blog in awhile, do not worry.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! With the Christmas season coming up, I would like to write about a sign that has been showing up in some places for our look at atheist sound bites tonight. This one has shepherds and a star like a typical nativity scene. However, it also has “You know it’s a myth. This year, celebrate reason.”

Never mind that the whole idea of the Christ myth if that is what is being propagated is entirely against reason. My contention with it at this point is the idea that if you are reasonable, then you are ipso facto an atheist. After all, it is only the unreasonable people who believe in a deity of some sort. We live in a scientific age and therefore we do not believe in any of this nonsense.

There is no necessary connection between the two. Someone can be an atheist and be intelligent. Someone can be a theist and be intelligent. Someone can be an atheist and be an idiot. Someone can be a theist and be an idiot. The problem is that the atheist in this case is immediately writing off the theist as irrational. (This is the same idea we see in the writings of the new atheists, such as Victor Stenger writing a book about the new atheism taking a stand for science and reason, and note how closely those two are tied together.)

To start out saying that one side automatically uses reason and the other doesn’t is to poison the well. However, we have all been touched by this bias to some extent. Picture a pastor being on a TV talk show. How is he automatically going to be viewed in the eyes of the public? This is someone who doesn’t have a clue. All he has are his religious platitudes and he can have no study in anything outside his faith. I have no doubt this is how people were viewing the Jesuit automatically who appeared on Larry King’s program with Stephen Hawking as a guest discussing his newest book.

Of course, we Christians have unfortunately done much to help this stereotype. The new atheist teach a false view of faith. We need to make sure we’re not teaching the same view. Are we really holding to our intellectual grounds? Are we meeting the atheists on their turf or not? We should be able to. If we believe Christianity is a religion of truth and describes reality as it is, then we can be sure that we can take reality on on any level.

Now that doesn’t mean don’t do your proper study. I think a Christian who wants to take his intellectual ground in the sciences should study science. Don’t enter thinking you will win because you are a Christian. Being a Christian is no excuse for laziness in studies. God is under no obligation to come through for you where you are deficient due to your own laziness.

Should we celebrate reason? Of course. I intend do. My reason tells me Christianity is true and thus, this year, I will celebrate reason. Let’s make sure we do the same the rest of the year and show those who contradict that we really are reasonable people.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve been looking lately at atheist sound bites. These are ideas that are thrown around the water cooler, or in our case, the blogosphere, meant to stop Christians in their tracks. So far, not one has done so. What we are looking at tonight, is not one sound bite but a kind of genre of sound bites.

I was on Keith Parsons’s blog recently when I heard an atheist argue against the resurrection by saying how we know that dead people stay dead. When I see a statement like this, it is hard to believe that someone can seriously put that position forward as if it was an intellectual argument. Here’s why.

Let’s suppose for sake of argument that we lived in a universe where 10% of people who died came back to life again shortly afterwards and we did not know why. Jesus’s resurrection being accurately predicted could be something as he has a one-in-ten chance of getting it wrong, but it would not be something that would be considered miraculously.

Suppose also we lived in a universe where 100% of people who died came to life again and lived one year later. Again, a resurrection would not be miraculous. Instead, it would be the common state of affairs.

Now let’s suppose we live in our universe where someone dies and they stay dead. We know they stay dead so much so that we bury them. I realize this might be hard for some atheists to believe, but people long ago also buried their dead because they believed that they were staying dead.

It is in this universe that a resurrection can be seen as a miracle, that is, an act of God of bringing about an event that would not happen naturally, at least for a first-class miracle. In other words, the very reason for believing that the resurrection is a miracle is for the simple fact that dead people do stay dead.

The same can be said with events like the virgin birth or walking on the water. If someone says “We know these kinds of things don’t happen”, then you can just as easily say that the ancients knew that they didn’t happen as well. That’s why they were regarded as miracles.

For the person who says “Dead people stay dead” as if they were presenting some new kind of information to the debate, I have a few questions. Which scientist was it that discovered this? How did he prove it? Who were his colleagues that disagreed with his thesis that he had to convince? When did this happen?

People do not believe dead people stay dead because they are scientific. They believe that because that is what the evidence leads to and that is why all cultures have some practice of dealing with those corpses. The same applies with other miracles. More understanding of the laws of nature will not prove that miracles can’t happen. Quite the contrary, they should make those miracles all the more fantastic to you in that you should realize more how remarkable it is they are being intervened. However, your study of them will not be able to prove that no intervention can take place.

The argument is simply an argument to dismiss the ancients. Those dumb people back then might have believed that someone could come back from the dead, but we know better! No. Those people did know better. In fact, if anything, I would say the dumb people today are not the ones who know that dead people don’t naturally come back, but those who think ancient people were too dumb to know that.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! For those concerned, I am recovering nicely today and I appreciate a donation made by a kind reader in light of all that has happened. Here at Deeper Waters, I greatly appreciate prayers, kind comments, and donations. Lately, I’ve been guiding you through a look at atheist sound bites. After reading last night’s, a reader suggested I tackle how atheists say “When you understand why I dismiss all other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

This to me again reveals a lack of real thinking. What is going on when an atheist makes this remark is that he is a priori dismissing any supernatural being whatsoever and so when the topic of the God of Christianity comes up he just looks and says “Oh. It’s supernatural? Okay. I disregard it.”

Now there’s a great line between someone who says “I’m really not sure with the evidence I have before me right now” and someone who says “There is absolutely no reason to believe in any deity whatsoever.” When I write about these remarks, I am not condemning sincere intellectual doubt. In fact, I admire that. I have a number of atheists I am friends with and one reason I respect them is that they don’t use nonsense sayings like the ones I am critiquing. Now it could be that there are emotional reasons for not accepting faith still, but there is still an openness.

As my reader said last night, it’s just a fancy way of saying that they believe without evidence. Once again, there is a great gulf that needs to be crossed. Let us suppose that you are an atheist and you do not believe there is sufficient evidence for you to believe in God. Okay. That does not mean that I do not think the evidence is sufficient. You can hear my reasons and say “Those are weak reasons.” For the sake of argument, let’s suppose they are. There is a great difference between weak reasons and no reasons.

When someone is quick to describe religion as a delusion or brainwashing of indoctrination, I really have to wonder about their mindset. I do not deny that in some systems, like the cults, there is brainwashing and indoctrination going on. However, I think that can happen just as easily in atheist regimes. Those are wrong things to do whatever the belief system. I have no problem with atheist parents raising up children to be atheists however, just as they should have no problem realizing my Christianity is extremely important to me and I’m going to raise up my children to be Christians. However, I also want them to know they can openly question their faith at any time.

I can understand also someone being suspicious of many claims of deities, but when it comes to a religious claim, I offer the same advice in each case. Take each one on a case-by-case basis. This is exactly what I do with miracles. When someone says “What about different miracle claims in other religions?” Well first off, if there is any miracle, atheism is in a heap of trouble. Second, examine the miracle claim and see if it holds up to scrutiny. If it does, then you look and see if there’s any propositional content to be derived from it. I am open to miracles in other religions entirely. They could be a case of the true God shining light in a place of darkness or could be a result of darker demonic powers. I don’t rule them out a priori.

The problem comes down again to the mantra that is given. “There’s no evidence!” Atheists have started saying this so much that it looks more like they’re trying to convince themselves instead of me. Do atheists really think every Christian is so dumb that he just blindly believes something enough to commit his whole life to it and be ready to die for it?

Many atheists might also think there are no good arguments for God’s existence. I do not believe in giving a lot of new evidence because to me, the old arguments have never been answered satisfactorily. Now I do not believe they all work. If you want to say the ontological argument doesn’t work, be my guest. I do think something like the existence/essence argument of Aquinas works great. It’s easy for an atheist to say something like “X philosopher refuted that.” Okay. Don’t just say it. Show me. Point me to the writings. Tell me how you think the argument works out and let’s discuss it.

The line as it is today though is entirely ignorant. I believe in the God of Christianity because of the evidence. The atheist can either take my argument seriously, or he can give this cop-out line that is usually given.

That this is becoming a sound bite amongst atheists shows that they’d rather just give cop-outs instead of intellectually engage opposition.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I ask for your continued prayers and support. I was walking out of our apartment this morning for a counseling session when I slipped on our icy walkway and crashed to the ground. I ended up going to the doctor instead. My wife and I just have one mishap after another so we appreciate your prayers and support in this time. Being unemployed doesn’t make it easier.

We’ve been talking lately about atheist sound bites. Tonight, I’d like to look at the one often heard when an atheist will say “You’re an atheist with regards to Zeus, Thor, and Isis. We just go one god farther!”

At this point, an audience is left in awe as if a major point has been scored against the Christian. Hey! That is true! You are an atheist with regards to all those other gods! It seems like the atheist is being the consistent one! This has been repeated so mindlessly by atheists that you’d almost be tempted to think that there was some substance to the argument.

Why should this be seen as a great point. Yes. I don’t believe in those other gods. The reasons I don’t however are quite different from the reasons an atheist doesn’t. I don’t believe in those other gods not because I disbelieve in deities altogether. I disbelieve in those other gods because of the reason the atheist keeps thinking is a good reason to deny something, and I agree, lack of evidence.

When someone presents me with good evidence to believe in the existence of Zeus, Thor, Isis, or any other deity, I will be glad to listen to that evidence, but until such evidence is forthcoming, I will believe in the God who I believe has left sufficient evidence of his existence, and that is the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Of course, you could say that you do not believe the evidence is sufficient, and you have all right to say that. That does not mean that I do not believe it is sufficient. You could be tempted to say my reasons for belief are entirely emotional, but if I point to rational argumentation instead of an emotional response, then upon what grounds will you do that other than an a priori conclusion that all theistic belief must be for emotional reasons?

The reason I believe in the one God that I do is not for special pleading, but because I find the evidence to be convincing. To just say “I disbelieve in one less god” is not satisfactory. The question is “Why do you believe in one less god?” That is when we finally get to the reasons rather than a vapid saying devoid of any content.

As I have said before however, statements like these reveal to me the real anti-intellectualism of the new atheism. It is a belief system that thinks it alone has reason and that theism can be dismissed with a wave of the hand. The problem is so many Christians are unprepared that they can easily be blown away by that wave.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve lately been going through some atheist sound bites which are simple little aphorisms that you will hear in the lines of “water cooler conversation.” Tonight, we’re going to look at the question of “Who Made God?” as it is a common objection raised up when the Kalam Cosmological Argument is presented.

The example of this par excellence would be Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, for instance, in reviewing the Five Ways of Aquinas tells us that Aquinas makes the unwarranted assumption that God is exempt from the infinite regress. (Page 101 of The God Delusion) It is remarks like this that lead apologists like David Robertson to say that Dawkins has never read Aquinas.

I have to agree with Robertson. Why? The Five Ways come just before Aquinas’s writings on the nature of God where he expounds on that God and why He is immune to the regress. Aquinas knows the buck has to stop somewhere and he stops it at a being he calls God. This is the God of reason however and not necessarily the God of Scripture. I am not asserting there is a difference between the two, but only stating that reason can take someone so far.

Aquinas then reasons further on the nature of that God using Scripture and philosophy. It is in that process that he gives an explanation for why God is exempt. Now Dawkins might not like the explanation, but to say he does not give one is nonsense and it reveals that Dawkins has not done his homework. In fact, he stated in the God Delusion that he was not reading theologians unless they were seriously open to the possibility of God’s non-existence. What a great strategy! I shall make it a point to only read evolutionists who are seriously open to evolution being false and only read atheists who are seriously open to atheism being false.

Dawkins has followed this with what he calls the Ultimate Boeing 747 argument, and it is a wonder that such an argument can come from someone at Oxford. One can understand a small child trying to stump a theologian by asking that question. One cannot understand a serious philosopher doing such. (Sadly, being a denizen of web forums, I have seen that argument come up quite often as if it was a stumper, one even claiming Hume used it to totally destroy Aquinas. Aquinas would have just laughed at it)

Dawkins says that if we picture the universe as designed because it is complex, then it must have come from a designer. However, if this complex universe comes from a designer, then how much more complex must the designer be? He himself must need a designer above him in order to exist.

It would really do many atheists good to distance themselves as far away from Dawkins as possible with arguments like this.

To begin with, it seems that Dawkins goes against his evolutionary principles and this will be the real irony of it all. Why could I not say “But professor Dawkins. Don’t you tell us that simplicity gives rise to complexity? Why that is all that has happened. Why do you assume that the cause must be complex? Perhaps it could be the simplest cause of all?”

The ultimate irony I speak of is that that is exactly the case.

“WHAT?! Surely you’re not going to say God is a simple being.”

Actually, I already have. I’ve blogged about that in my look at the Summa of Thomas Aquinas on the doctrine of God. What I mean by simple is ontologically simple. I do not mean conceptually simple. No one for a minute think that I am saying that God is an easy being to understand. He is incredibly difficult to understand.

What I am saying is that God is simple in that he does not have parts. Some readers might be tempted to think I mean material parts, which is what I also think Dawkins has in mind. Dawkins thinks like a materialist and can only picture God as being complex if He has all this knowledge and power. The reality is that while Dawkins wants to dismiss theology, he is actually doing theology. I have often in discussing apologetics with my wife told her about theology and philosophy and said “The question is not if you will do theology or philosophy. Everyone does them. The question is if you’ll do good philosophy and theology or bad philosophy and theology.” Dawkins is bad on both counts.

Dawkins should know that in Christian thought, God in his nature is immaterial. What parts does he think he can speak of then? Do such questions even occur to him? One cannot know because Dawkins simply does not interact with his opponents. Evolutionists prefer to not argue when all their opponents simply get their arguments only from YEC materials. Fair enough. (To those who are YEC, I do recommend reading all materials so you can have an idea of what your opponents believe and why. I have met a number of YECs who unfortunately think being YEC means denying inerrancy and a literal Adam and Eve.) However, Dawkins seems to get all his information secondhand, as if he was reading it off of Wikipedia, which would make a lot of sense.

What do I mean however by God being simple then? I dare not simply say Dawkins has it wrong without entering my own information in. I mean that God is not made up of parts. There is no combination in him. For instance, I as a human being possess a human nature that is tied to this material that I dwell in. Both of these also have existence. They do not existence necessarily but have a derived existence.

An angel is different. Now to my atheist friends, even if you do not believe in angels, Aquinas does. His argument does not depend on their existence, but it shows his way of thinking and it does not refute his point to say “There are no angels.” An angel is an immaterial being, but it does not have necessary existence. It too has derived existence. Angels are not separated by matter seeing as they’re immaterial, so they differ by essence. Each angel is his own essence. Therefore, an angel has an essence with no matter. It is purely essence plus the existence it receives. In this, it’s essence is simple as it has no parts, but it is not absolutely simple in that it has essence plus existence.

However, God has his essence AS his existence. What it means to be is God. God is being without limitations. Of course, Aquinas works this out further, but it means there is no combination in God. It also means His existence is not caused as what can cause existence? Something outside of existence? Then this non-existing thing is acting to cause existence, which is absurd. Is it another existing thing? There cannot be two such beings for there is nothing they would differ by and if two things differ by nothing, they are the same.

Anyone who has studied Aquinas briefly would know that Dawkins fumbled entirely on this one, and the shame is that these are the first arguments Dawkins attempts to refute. Even if one is an atheist, one should accept that Aquinas was a brilliant mind and that he reasoned out his arguments well. That does not mean they’re right, but that does mean one should take them seriously and not write them off hastily.

If any atheist uses this kind of argument, you can rest assured you are talking to a neophyte in the area of theology who does not understand the concepts he argues against. It is the shoddy research of the new atheists in this manner that further to me realize the bankruptcy of their position. It is simply outrage against a belief system they have not taken the time to understand. Sadly, this comes from the people who are supposedly the beacons of reason.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I did not do a blog last night as I was still really out of it, but I made it through my surgery just fine. I’m still really sore, but my wife is taking excellent care of me. However, I prefer to jump right back into the swing of things. Tonight, I’d like to look at another atheist sound bite, as we’ve been looking at several lately. This will be the one that we don’t need God to be good.

First off, for those of us who are Christians, there is a point that should bring shame to us. Often, our lives are not any better morally than those whose worldview we criticize, and we’re the ones claiming to have the Holy Spirit in us. If they are looking at us and not seeing something that they don’t have, perhaps we should be living our lives differently. Christians are to be salt and light. We’re not called to be transformed by the culture. We’re called to transform the culture.

However, let us look at this argument. Writers like Dawkins and Stenger and others will regularly make a big deal about how unbelievers can do good things. Now I don’t deny that. No Christian should. Somehow, this misconception has come about that Christians seem to think nonbelievers are just living in sin all day long and just thinking about ways to be evil.

I don’t see it that way largely because our world has been, what I prefer to call, Christianized. Even if you’re not a Christian, most countries in the world have had their ethical cultures shaped by Christian values. However, I suspect that the farther a country moves away from that Christianization, the more that country will decline morally.

A good many nonbeliever you meet could be someone in many ways like you. He wants to love his spouse, raise his family right, and be a good citizen where he lives. I wonder however about the younger generation coming up. We have a nation of hedonists in our midst. It is the culture that seeks to please self without thinking about the past or the future.

In that sense, an unbeliever does not need God to be good. The problem is, the atheist who raise this argument do not seem to understand the Christian argument. It is said that all religions seem to agree on basic moral principles. Well of course they do! This is what I’d expect as a Christian since the Bible tells about the Natural Law written on our hearts. We all know right from wrong on at least fundamental principles. That’s how God can judge the world after all. He can judge us on what we already know about right from wrong. No one will be able to say “I didn’t know X was wrong” on the last day, granted X is one of those basic principles, such as “Do not murder.”

Then what is the argument really? The argument is that you need God for goodness to have an ontological basis to it. For the concept of “good” to have objective meaning, you need God. Well suppose you want to deny objective morality? If that’s the case, then Hitchens’s book goes out the window as there’s nothing good being poisoned by religion. No one can complain about the evil of 9/11 caused by “religion” or how oppressive and intolerant Christians are.

Goodness is either real and a real something that we read out of an object or concept of some sort (And I can include a person or God in the category of object in this case) or else it is something we are throwing onto that object or concept. What we have to ask is if we want to know the things in themselves, or think that we can only have the idea of things and that idea just doesn’t match reality.

When I hear the new atheists use this argument, I get more evidence that they just don’t do their homework. The old atheists would have been embarrassed by this as the new atheists simply use argument from outrage more than anything else.

Actually, the more I think about the moral argument, the more I really don’t like how it’s phrased nowadays. We phrase it so there’s no distinction from right and wrong in ethical actions if there is no objective morality, and I agree. Goodness has to do with more than just morality. Goodness of actions is about morality. What about goodness of substance and goodness of results and other kinds of goodness? Those also need an ontological basis. Our predecessors of Aristotle and Plato spent much time telling us about goodness. It behooves us to listen to what they say. (It amazes me how many atheists refuse to look in the Nicomachean Ethics at my request to see the definition I use of goodness when it’s in fact the first line of the work!)

When we get that definition of goodness down, I think we have an even stronger argument I can go into another day where you no longer have a basis for right and wrong if God does not exist, you no longer have a reason to do anything if he does not exist. Perhaps alert readers can find out why.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Before I get to tonight’s blog, I’d like to state first off that I do have some responses coming to emails. I try to break as much as I can on Sunday however. I do not know when I will be able to answer for sure. Tomorrow, I have to have gallbladder surgery. If there’s no new blog tomorrow, don’t worry. I could just be not feeling up to writing a blog.

We’ve been looking meanwhile at atheist sound bites. Right now, I’d like to answer the charge that evidence is not scientific.

What is surprising is that in our day to day experience, we would never make such a charge. It doesn’t mean that we don’t look at evidence. It means that we know the evidence is not scientific. When I was preparing to propose to my wife, I looked at evidence for that decision being the right one. (It was) None of that was scientific. You would not test it in a lab.

Yet somehow, we think that when it comes to religion, science should be the decider. If a claim is made that is directly scientific, by all means test it scientifically, but if it is not, then you simply cannot test it scientifically. The question “Does God exist?” is not a scientific question. It is a question relating to metaphysics rather than to physics. (Something that made me think even the title of Stenger’s book was hysterical. When the title commits a category fallacy, you know you’re in for some fun reading)

Does that mean science is useless? No. Consider fine-tuning as an example. Suppose it is agreed that the universe is fine-tuned. That can lead to us drawing philosophical inferences that there is a god of some sort. That can in no way however tell us who this god is. Is it the god of Christianity or the god of Islam or some other? For that, we will need to study philosophy and the claims of any religion we think could match the deity we believe created.

What it means is that we do not elevate science to the position where it is the final authority. Why do we get tempted to put it there? It is because we are all a materialistic people who believe in getting all that we can get and focus on the material. When that is the way a people think, is it any shock that that which tells us about the material is what matters most?

In this, we have lost sight of such concepts as beauty, morality, truth, and goodness. Each of these has been attempted to be relativised by someone. Why? They are not scientific. It is a result of swinging the pendulum too far. In no way should we slow down science or cease doing it. We should rather increase our efforts to understand the above topics that matter far more to all of us. Many young people today can tell you Newton’s Laws of Motion. All good and well. How many can tell you definitions of beauty, morality, truth and goodness?

Give science its proper place, but don’t give it every place.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve been looking lately at atheist sound bites. These are claims that are made by atheists in the blogosphere. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at ECREE which is “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

I understand this one goes back to Carl Sagan. (Why does it seem that scientists seem to think they’re good at philosophy when they’re not?) This was his response to those who held theistic beliefs. A lot of times today, it’s given as a stopper to Christian beliefs. Many a Christian has been unable to respond to this sound bite.

To begin with, if anyone has the claim that would be seen as extraordinary, it would have been Sagan. After all, most people in history have been theists and even most people today are theists of some sort. Most people probably thought Sagan’s claim of “The cosmos is all there ever was, is, and ever will be” was extraordinary.

That gets us to the first problem with this. The idea of what is extraordinary is subjective entirely. Who determines what is and isn’t extraordinary? I find Sagan’s claim to be extraordinary. He finds my claim to be extraordinary. Is there any neutral party between us?

We can also ask what constitutes extraordinary evidence? As one of my professors said in response to this claim when he was given it, “Does it glow?” As it is in the first problem we have with this sound bite, the term “extraordinary” is just way too ambiguous to know what is meant by it.

Let’s suppose also a claim was made that I found to be hilarious. Does that mean that the evidence for the claim would have to be hilarious? Whether something is hilarious or not can differ from person to person. What we need is a different measure whereby to determine what kinds of evidence are to be given for an argument.

Here’s my solution. First off, if you are making a claim of science, your evidence should seek to be scientific. If you are making a claim of philosophy, you should seek philosophical evidence. Historical claims are to be backed by history. Mathematical claims are to be backed by Math.

Who has the burden of proof? Anyone making a claim does. Of course, the inability of one person to back their claim does not prove the other is true, but it can weigh heavily in their favor. If Sagan says “The cosmos is all there was, is, and ever will be,” then that’s a claim and it needs to be backed. If I say “There is a God,” that’s also a claim and it needs to be backed.

What about evidence? You give the reasons for believing what you believe and so does your opponent. If you find an argument faulty, you tell why. If you don’t find the data convincing, you tell why. ECREE is a sound bite that simply stops debate and sadly assumes atheism as it is atheists who use it the most.

That gets us into a topic for another day however.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve spent a lot of time lately looking at atheistic soundbites that one will regularly encounter in the blogosphere. Tonight, I’m going to look at one that I think really shows the new atheist movement for what it is.

Before that however, let’s be clear about words. The meaning of a word is inherent in the text the word is in. I cannot go to what you say, attribute my own meaning to the words you use, and make you mean something different. No. I need to seek to understand how you mean the word to be used and if it’s a word in an ancient book, I need to understand how the people of the time used that word and not how people today use it.

For instance, we can read about marriage in the Bible and while it is still a relationship between a man and a woman that’s monogamous and sexual and life-long, that does not mean everything is the same. We will be hard-pressed to find information about choosing your spouse in the Bible and how to behave on a date. The concept just wasn’t around back then.

I’d like to apply this to faith. Go through the new atheists be it their books or their audio debates and hear how they talk about faith. See constantly how they berate people believing something for which they say they don’t have evidence. The irony is rich and it should be something that the new atheists deserve to be shamed for.

Each of them should know better, and none of them apparently do. Dawkins knows Alister McGrath. He can disagree with McGrath, but he surely knows McGrath doesn’t believe without evidence. Harris is supposed to be a graduate in philosophy from Stanford. He should know about the philosophical arguments for God’s existence from Christian philosophers.

Consider also Victor Stenger who regularly makes this kind of claim as well. Oh Stenger will every now and then reference Craig and Zacharias, but he will not really interact with them. In his book “The New Atheism: Taking A Stand For Science and Reason” he will counter apologists who argue against the new atheism. Now I find nothing wrong with that. I think if you’re of a belief and you think an argument against your belief is faulty, you should argue against it. However, I also think if an argument is for your belief and faulty, you should argue against it. I certainly don’t want my viewpoint to be presented with bad arguments.

The problem is Stenger will give the impression that there are no arguments for theism. In fact, his total jump to science shows this. Oh we’ve heard the philosophy and the theology before, but we all know that doesn’t matter! Let’s go to science and if science says it’s not true, then it’s not true! It’s the priesthood of science that I’ve spoken about here. Forget philosophy and forget theology. They don’t matter. I think atheists would rightly reply with scorn if a Christian said “Forget science! All we need is Jesus and the Bible.” Heck. I’d reply with scorn. That’s not a Christian attitude at all since we are to be people of truth. That’s not just biblical truth. That’s ALL truth!

However, the sad irony of all of this is while the new atheists condemn faith as believing something without evidence, I have never seen them give any evidence that this is what the biblical writers meant by faith. Readers. I ask you this and you can tell me if I’ve missed it. Have they ever once cited a Greek lexicon that says this is the definition of faith? Have they pointed to any Greek authorities? Have they shown any research abilities whatsoever in looking up what faith means?

I have a few copies of Vine’s in my room. Vine’s does not say that this is what faith is. Faith is instead to be granted to that which is trustworthy and reliable. To have faith in Jesus means to say that you find Jesus to be one who is worthy of trust and you choose to side with him.

Where do the new atheists get the idea? The first place I checked is the abomination that causes misinformation. Here’s what the first sentence on Wikipedia is about the topic:

“Faith is the confident belief or trust in a person, idea, or thing that is not based on proof.”

Well to begin with, very few of our beliefs are based on absolute proof. You do not have proof that that box of cereal at the grocery store contains cereal. You do not have proof that the surgery you’re going to undertake will succeed and you’ll walk away more healthy. You do not have proof that that airplane you’re about to board will get you where you want to go.

What’s really bad about the Wikipedia definition however is that it gets its definition from a dictionary. That’s just fine if you want to use a word in its modern sense and I can agree that sadly to many moderns, faith means believing something without evidence. To argue against the Bible however, you must take the word as the writers of the Bible took it to mean.

For instance, when the Christmas carol says “Don we now our gay apparel”, we don’t look at that and say “They want us to dress like homosexuals?” We know that “gay” meant happy. Today, it’s been twisted to mean something else. It doesn’t mean we look back and think the writers of the Christmas carol had some sexual fetishes we don’t know about.

The new atheists however don’t do that. For them, shoddy research has been their calling card. God belief is not something any rational person would believe to them a priori so why spend any real time studying it? Why also think any readers would do the same? The new atheists say that this is what faith is, so let’s just have all the drones repeat it. (For people claiming to be free-thinkers, you’d think some of them would actually think differently)

Even if atheism were true, I think arguments like this should be enough to discredit the new atheists as not doing appropriate research. What’s the result of this? They end knocking down a straw man that doesn’t exist, having several atheists think Christians don’t have real arguments, having some Christians think likewise, and destroying the false faith of many who really do believe without evidence.

Not only that, it is just intellectual dishonesty. When you present your opponents’ viewpoints, you present them in their best possible light with the best arguments that you can possibly come up with. The new atheists do not do this and I cannot think of any good reason why they do not.

If you are a follower of the new atheists, I urge you to consider this. If they’ve done this bad of research on a basic point, can you trust them on greater points?