Tag Archives: Atheism

Atheism, General Apologetics, Miracles, Religion

If Only I Could See a Miracle, I Would Believe

22 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

If you are a person who says this about Christianity, excuse me for being skeptical.

God performed miracles through Moses, and yet Pharaoh did not believe.

God performed miracles through Elijah, and yet Jezebel did not believe.

Jesus performed numerous miracles that confirmed his power over sickness, weather, and even death.  Ultimately he rose from the dead.  Yet still some who saw these miracles did not believe.

God has provided plenty of evidence that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and rose from the dead.  If you are a person who has heard the gospel message and understood it, but you continue to demand more evidence in the form of miracles, ask yourself if there isn’t another problem.

Is it possible that you just don’t want to believe?  Is it possible that no matter how much evidence you are shown, that no matter how many times God reveals himself to you, that you just will not believe?

If that is the case, search your own heart and figure out why you don’t want to believe.  Where is this barrier of belief coming from?  We can answer your questions about Christianity, but until you deal with your will, our answers will remain unpersuasive.

Atheism

Amusing Take On the "New Atheists"

22 Comments

I read this over on GeoChristian’s Blog.  It doesn’t advance the argument for Christianity at all, but I think it does give the reader some insight into the minds of the crop of new atheist writers who have been attacking Christianity for the last few years.

Rev. Cwirla, in his review of the Charlotte Allen article on atheism that I linked to in my previous post, summarizes the new atheist (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, Myers, et al.) arguments as follows:

1.  The existence of God can’t be proven scientifically, therefore there is no God.

2.  Religious people do bad things, therefore there is no God.

3.  No one has yet to convince me there is a God, therefore there is no God.

4.  The world sucks, therefore there is no God.

5.  Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy don’t exist, therefore there is no God.

Pretty good summary of the shallowness of modern atheism.

Cross, Jesus Christ

Did God Kill His Own Son?

23 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Often I hear non-Christians characterize the Christian God as a bloodthirsty tyrant who killed his own son (Jesus) on the cross.  Jesus, they claim, was sacrificed against his will in order to fulfill the bizarre requirements of his sadistic father.  “I cannot,” they say, “worship a God that would kill his own son!”

The first few times I heard this complaint against God, my first reaction was disbelief at how twisted an interpretation of Christianity this was.  But then I thought, “How would I answer this charge against God?”

The answer is simple.  Jesus was not forced to die by his father.  He willingly laid down his life in the supreme act of sacrifice for mankind.  How do I know this?  Well, I read the Bible, unlike those that level this charge.

The Gospel of John provides the answer in John 10:11-18:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.  The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.  I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.  The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.

Sadistic God killing his son?  Not even close.  As the Good Shepherd, Jesus lays down his own life for his sheep.  A greater sacrifice has never been known.

Atheism, Religion

Does Religion Kill?

22 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

There is no doubt that religious people throughout history have killed people, at least partly because of their religious beliefs.  Even Christians have been guilty.

But many prominent atheists accuse religion, and especially Christianity, of mass killings and argue that if the world could rid itself of religious belief and turn to atheism, we would create a true utopia.  If only we could escape the fairy tales of religion, society would vastly improve and the killing might stop, or at least greatly decrease.

But wait a second.  There have been atheist governments who believed in science and reason, and looked with scorn upon organized religion.  What was their track record?  Instead of guessing what the results might be, let’s look at history.  Following is a book excerpt from The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible by Robert J. Hutchinson, that I found at Truthbomb Apologetics:

Religion the greatest danger to world peace? Think again

Contrary to what anti-religious zealots such as [Sam] Harris assert, throughout history far more lives have been snuffed out by faith-hating fanatics than by religious believers.

Historical demographers estimate that, in the 350 years between 1478 and 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was responsible for the execution of between 2,000 (Encyclopedia Britannica) and 32,000 people (Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, 1987.)

That works out to about ninety-seven people a year- a ghastly number, to be sure, but a far cry from the “millions” routinely cited by secular fundamentalists.

As for the “witch hunts,” another example Harris and others give as irrational religious fanaticism, the British historian Norman Davies estimates 50,000 people, primarily women, were executed as witches over a four-hundred year period-an average of about 125 a year.

Yet as horrible as these examples of religious intolerance may be, they pale in comparison with the single-minded, bloodthirsty, satanic fury unleashed upon the innocent by secular fundamentalists-those militantly atheistic regimes that sought to expunge religious belief and “bourgeois” morality represented intolerable obstacles to social progress.

According to research conducted by the political scientist Rudolph Rummel at the University of Hawaii, the officially atheist states of the Communist bloc committed more acts of genocide than any societies in governments in the twentieth century-communist, socialist, fascist-equals about 170 million.

  • USSR: 61 million people murdered 1917-1987
  • Communist China: 35,2 million people murdered 1949-present
  • Mao’s army: 3.4 million people murdered 1923-1949
  • Nazi Germany: 20 million people murdered 1932-1945
  • Communist Poland: 1.6 million people murdered 1945-1948
  • Communist Cambodia: 2 million people murdered 1975-1979
  • Communist Vietnam: 1.6 million people murdered 1945-1975
  • Communist Yugoslavia: 1 million people murdered 1944-1987
  • Anti-Christian Mexican Revolution: 1.4 million people murdered 1900-1920
  • Turkey:1.8 million people murdered 1900-1918
  • Pakistan: 1.5 million people murdered 1958-1987
  • Japan: 5.9 million people murdered 1936-1945

…Rummel’s conclusion is as shocking as it is inescapable: War wasn’t the most deadly evil to afflict humanity in the twentieth century. Government was! And not just any government, but atheist government.

As a result, ordinary people-whether religious or not-might be forgiven their general skepticism when today’s secular fundamentalists talk about the “intolerance” and “violence” of biblical religion or the people who believe in it.

In terms of raw numbers-which is the only kind of evidence that rationalists such as Harris claim to accept-the evidence is incontrovertible: Freed of any moral restraint, believing that the ends justify the means, scoffing at the notion that they will ever answer to a power higher than themselves, the murderous dictators of atheistic regimes feel little hesitation in committing mass murder if they believe it will advance their more “rational,” more “scientific” social aims.

Now, I don’t believe that an atheistic government is always going to cause this kind of bloodshed, but I think it is time to drop the argument that Christians, in the name of religion, commit mass murder, when the evidence squarely rests on the other side.

Atheism, Evolution

How Does Atheistic Darwinism Explain the Origin of Language?

11 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Not very well, unless you believe that fairy tales from evolution’s past count as evidence.  This excerpt comes from A. N. Wilson in a recent article he wrote for the New Statesman.

The phenomenon of language alone should give us pause. A materialist Darwinian was having dinner with me a few years ago and we laughingly alluded to how, as years go by, one forgets names. Eager, as committed Darwinians often are, to testify on any occasion, my friend asserted: “It is because when we were simply anthropoid apes, there was no need to distinguish between one another by giving names.”

This credal confession struck me as just as superstitious as believing in the historicity of Noah’s Ark. More so, really.

Do materialists really think that language just “evolved”, like finches’ beaks, or have they simply never thought about the matter rationally? Where’s the evidence? How could it come about that human beings all agreed that particular grunts carried particular connotations? How could it have come about that groups of anthropoid apes developed the amazing morphological complexity of a single sentence, let alone the whole grammatical mystery which has engaged Chomsky and others in our lifetime and linguists for time out of mind? No, the existence of language is one of the many phenomena – of which love and music are the two strongest – which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat.

Well put, I think.

General Apologetics, Intelligent Design

Interesting Comment This Morning

7 Comments

I attend a Referral Network group every Tuesday morning and this morning a local Chiropractor gave a short presentation on her business.  This wonderful lady (who is a great Chiropractor by the way!!) made a few comments which amused me – in a good way. When talking about the human body she kept referring to “it’s design”.  In speaking about the kidneys, she said they are “designed” to rid the body of toxins.  She also referred to the marvel of how the body is “designed” to heal itself and warn us when something is wrong.

I always find it interesting how even in the most secular of business settings people can, perhaps unknowingly, marvel at the greatness of our Creator.  For referring to the body as something “designed” rather than “evolved” implies a Creator – if it is designed, who designed it? 

I had a huge smile on my face realizing that even without knowing it we praise our great God and Designer, Jesus Christ!!  It was a wonderful way to start off the day.

Darrell

General Apologetics

Empirically Test The Existence Of God?

3 Comments

In my conversations with atheists and agnostics some have made the statement “the only way we can know if something is true or not is through empirical testing”.  Many then follow by saying this “disproves” the knowledge of the existence of God… saying “since we can’t empirically test the existence of God we cannot know for sure He exists”.  While this line of reasoning may seem logical in a society dominated by the philosophy of Naturalistic Materialism it has one severe problem… it is self-defeating.  For you cannot empirically test the statement “the only way we can know for something is true or not is through empirical testing”.  Therefore, turning the statement against itself we cannot know if it is true!

While empirical testing is a wonderful tool, to say it is the only way to know truth is vastly overreaching.  Of course we can know truth without empirical testing.   We do it everyday using the process of induction – drawing general conclusions through specific observation.  For example, if someone were to tell you they have a friend by the name of Henry who is a 4 legged reptile, you would logically determine Henry is not a man.  Every man you have observed in your life is a mammal (most with 2 legs… none with 4!), therefore, Henry cannot be a man. 

Can induction be used to determine the existence of God?  Absolutely!  We investigate God the same way we investigate other things we cannot see around us (i.e. gravity) – by observing their effects.  We will touch on this in future posts.

Darrell

Atheism, Philosophy

Who Made God?

19 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Nobody.  Christians hold that God has always existed and will always exist and is, therefore, uncaused.  Only things that begin to exist need a cause, and God never began to exist, so God needs no cause.  Nobody and no thing made God.

Something or someone had to have always existed, or else everything that exists now would have ultimately come from nothing.  Nothing causes nothing, so the fact that something exists today means that something or someone must have always existed.  Think about it.

An infinite regress of causes going backward in time not only doesn’t solve the problem, it makes the problem infinitely worse!  You are just adding an infinite number of effects that need a cause.

You have to stop somewhere with causation.  Atheists often claim that the universe needs no cause, but if it began to exist, then it does need a cause.  The atheist may respond that the universe never began to exist, and therefore does not need a cause.  But this is a statement of faith.

Ultimately, you either go with God or matter, personality or impersonality, rationality or non-rationality, intelligence or non-intelligence, as the source of everything.

What you decide says a lot about you.

Atheism, Evolution, Philosophy, Religion, Truth

Can Naturalistic Evolution Yield True Beliefs About Reality?

15 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Philosopher Ken Samples, in a recent “New Reasons to Believe” (Vol 1 , No 1) publication, argues that naturalistic evolution cannot explain how human beings can have true beliefs about anything.  Naturalistic evolution posits that there only exists the material, natural world around us.

Everything that exists is the result of  random, material processes working over billions of years.  According to naturalists, the ultimate result of those natural processes is the wonder of the human mind.  So why doesn’t this theory make sense?

Samples offers three reasons.  First, “Naturalism postulates a nonrational source for man’s rationality.”  Naturalists believe that nonrational, impersonal, unintelligent, and purposeless processes produced rational, personal, intelligent, and purposeful human minds.

But, as Samples argues, every effect must have a cause greater than itself.  This is exactly the opposite of what the naturalists would have us believe!  The effect of the human mind is orders of magnitude greater than its alleged cause, the matter of which it is composed.  Samples concludes that the naturalist “is assuming a trustworthy reasoning process only to conclude that his reasoning is is ultimately untrustworthy.”

Second, Samples argues that “evolution promotes a species’ survivability, not its true beliefs.”  Natural selection, the primary evolutionary mechanism, only selects for survival.  But having true beliefs about the world is not always required for animal survival.  One can think of examples where an animal’s beliefs about its surrounding environment are irrelevant to its survival.

Human beings survived for thousands of years without knowing about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics or the DNA double helix.  Are knowledge of the laws of logic and geometric proofs necessary for humans to reproduce?  Our knowledge about the world seems to be complete overkill for evolutionary survival.

Third, Samples reasons that “false beliefs illustrate evolutionary naturalism’s epistemological unreliability.”  Many atheists today argue that mankind’s beliefs about God, morality, and life after death are mere evolutionary vestiges that must have served some survival purpose in the past.

It seems that almost all of humankind, through recorded history, has held that God exists.  Evolutionists admit this, but answer that this belief was necessary in the past, but is no longer necessary.  It is left over from man’s earlier evolutionary stages.

But that means that evolution can produce false beliefs about reality.  Naturalistic evolutionists strongly urge that religious beliefs are false, but they also believe evolution produced these beliefs.  Samples asks:

If evolutionary naturalism can cause a person to believe that which is false (such as religiously oriented beliefs) in order to promote survivability, then what confidence can evolutionists muster that their convictions are reliable, true beliefs?  And if evolution cannot guarantee true beliefs in a person’s mind then how does one know that belief in evolutionary naturalism itself is a true belief about the world?

Maybe naturalism is just evolution’s false belief du jour.  There is no way for evolutionists to know!  Now that is some serious irony.

Christians, on the other hand, are able to easily explain the human mind and its ability to have true beliefs.  A rational, personal, intelligent, and purposeful God is the source of our rational, personal, intelligent, and purposeful human minds.

Samples concludes, “Such conceptual realities as logic, mathematics, knowledge, and truth flow from a supremely intelligent divine mind.”  In this case, the cause more than adequately explains the effect.