Tag Archives: Religion

Strongly Religious Folks Have More Self-Control

This according to research published by Michael McCullough and Brian Willoughby.  Thanks to Wes Milam for bringing this article to my attention in the NY Times.

The researchers found that those who are intrinsically and strongly religious just have more self-control than those who don’t.  They are better able to withstand temptation and are less impulsive.  The non-religious, including extrinsic believers (those just going through the motions of religion) and outright non-believers, are, by comparison, more impulsive and exhibit less self-control.

There is also bad news for those devotees of a vague New Age concept of God as a spiritual force, much like the concept of God that Oprah Winfrey consistently promotes.  Their self-control was also worse than the strongly religious.   

Another interesting sidebar in the article is worth mentioning:

Researchers around the world have repeatedly found that devoutly religious people tend to do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and be generally happier.

Even though researchers have repeatedly found these things to be true, the media rarely report on such research, and so most of us aren’t aware of these findings, but thanks to the NY Times, now we are!

So religious people do better in school, live longer, have better marriages, are happier, are better able to withstand temptation, are less impulsive, and exhibit better self-control.  So what?  Does this prove any religion true?

Of course not, but it does show one important thing.  Any worldview worth following should work for its adherents.  It should genuinely improve their lives because they are believing in something that more closely conforms to reality. 

Over the long run, a worldview that sees reality more accurately is going to benefit its followers more than one that gets reality wrong.  This study shows that strongly religious worldviews really work for the adherent.  Believing in God, and taking that belief seriously, is a worldview that is good for people in their everyday lives. 

Some critics might claim that the religious are just self-deluded, but they have to explain why this self-delusion persists across all places, times, and peoples.  We find religion in the most primitive to the most advanced societies on earth, all over the earth, and all throughout history.  Where did this powerful delusion originate and why does it persist?  I’ve heard the evolutionary accounts of religious belief, but they are nothing more than bedtime stories without any shred of empirical evidence.  Scientific accounts without any evidence are not persuasive, but this doesn’t stop some scientists from telling these stories anyway.

Those of us who believe in God notice that it seems to be built into us, as if  God Himself placed it there.  When we believe, we are responding to a natural desire to know God that seems to be present in all mankind.  Some of us respond positively to this desire, and some of us negatively.  The research seems to show that those of us who respond positively are better at living life.

Truth Is What?

All truth is relative!

You can’t know the truth!

That’s true for you but not for me!

These are some of the most popular statements that float around our modern society.  Talk to any college or university student and you are likely to hear something  similar.  They seem to make truth out to be like your favorite sweater… that sweater is good for you but not for me.  Truth is talked about as if it is something that is different from person to person… completely relative.  Can this possibly be accurate?  Fortunately, the answer is no.

What is truth?  Quite simply truth is what “is”.  Truth is not like your favorite ice cream.  Truth is absolute.  Here are some facts about truth that I recently read in Norman Geisler and Frank Turek’s book I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist.

  1. Truth is discovered, not invented.  It exists independent of anyone’s knowledge of it.  For example, gravity existed prior to Newton.
  2. Truth is transcultural.  If something is true, it is true for all people, in all places and at all times.  2+2=4 in China, America, Australia, etc.
  3. Truth is unchanging.  Our BELIEFS about what is true will change from time to time but truth itself does not change.  When we discovered the earth was round our BELIEFS about the earth changed.  However, the earth itself has always been round.
  4. Beliefs cannot change a fact, no matter how sincerely we believe them.  One can SINCERELY believe the world is flat, but they will just be sincerely WRONG.
  5. Truth is not affected by a person’s attitude.  An arrogant person does not make a truthful message they share with you wrong.  A humble person does not make a wrong message they share with you right.
  6. All truths are absolute truths.  Even truths that appear to be relative are in fact absolute.  For example, I, Darrell, was cold yesterday at 2 PM.  Even for a person in China, it is still true that I, Darrell, was cold yesterday at 2 PM.

What all these add up to is one thing… contrary BELIEFS are possible but contrary TRUTHS are not.

So, what about the statements at the beginning of this post.   They are the latest thinking in society.  Are they TRUE?  No!!  They are self defeating.  We can turn them on themselves and easily see how illogical they are.

All truth is relative.  Is that a relative truth?

You can’t know the truth.  Do you know that to be true?

That’s true for you but not for me.  Is that statement true for you or is it true for everyone?

Think about it!!

Also, if you have a chance, I highly recommend I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist.  It is a great book!!

Darrell

What If There Is No God?

I think many people toy with some form of atheism at some point in their lives.  They wonder if all they were taught growing up is really true.  They don’t see God, they don’t hear from him, and they don’t touch him or smell him, so maybe he doesn’t really exist.

Wondering whether God exists, it seems to me, is perfectly rational and reasonable.  Most of us struggle with doubts, but we learn how to deal with those doubts, maybe by finding good answers to our questions, or even having an experience with God that reassures us.

Some of us, though, willingly turn those doubts into a strong and hardened form of atheism.  Granted, hardened atheists are a tiny percentage of the population (most surveys I’ve seen say it’s less than 5%), but there is still a larger percentage who are toying with the idea of no God.  It is to those people who are toying with atheism that I would like to speak. 

What if there really is no God?  What does that really mean?  I’m betting that many of us haven’t thought this through.  If there is no God, then there are real consequences for that viewpoint, and many hardened atheists who have rigorously examined their convictions would agree with me.  Here goes.

First, free will does not exist.  You are the consequence of random, natural processes, and therefore everything you say and do is determined at the atomic level.  You are not free to do anything.  Once science gets there, we will be able to predict everything you will say and do just by understanding the chemicals that make up your body and the surrounding environment.

Second, there is no absolute right and wrong.  Morality is a human invention which changes with time, place, and people.  What’s wrong today may be right tomorrow.  Transcendent moral laws are illusory because right and wrong are constantly changing.  We, as individuals, and as groups of individuals, decide what we call right and wrong.  When we die, our children will decide, and so on.  Slavery used to be right, but now it’s wrong.  Who knows, maybe it’ll go back to being right again some day, if there is no God.  

Third, there is no ultimate justice.  Those who commit heinous crimes in this life are never punished for those crimes in the next life, because there is no next life!  This is it.  Not to mention the fact that without a foundation for moral law, as seen above, how can anything be declared unjust? You have to know what is just before you can know what is unjust, but what is just is constantly changing.  If there is no God, then there is no ultimate justice for Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.  Maybe they were just doing the best they could given the time and place they lived.  Who is to say?

Fourth, as already mentioned, there is no life after death.  You will never see your deceased loved ones again.  Once you die, you will decompose into a pile of inanimate chemicals and never be conscious again.  As they say in the world of sports, it’s one and done.

Fifth, there is no ultimate meaning to life.  Your life has no cosmic purpose.  You aren’t here to fulfill any kind of mission.  The only meaning you can have in your life is the meaning you subjectively give yourself.  That meaning, however, is just a psychological comfort, a pleasant illusion to keep you going.  It really doesn’t matter if you live or die.  Everything you accomplish in this life will eventually be destroyed and forgotten. 

Sixth, there is no purpose to human history.  All of the things that we as humans have achieved will eventually be lost when our species dies out.  History is not headed in any particular direction.  There is no plan for the human race.  Eventually, we will wipe ourselves out or some comet will smash into the earth.  Either way, human history is a dead end.

Still toying with atheism?

Is Your Religious Belief Similar To Your Favorite Ice Cream Flavor?

Often when I speak to people about my Christian faith, they respond by saying things like, “I’m so happy for you!” or “I’m glad you found something to believe in!” or “It’s great that Christianity works for you!”  Years ago, these kinds of statements puzzled me as it seemed like these people weren’t really understanding what I was saying.  I was telling them something that I thought was objectively true, and they were acting as if I was telling them about my favorite flavor of ice cream.

“I’m so glad you like Rocky Road!”  “Vanilla is a great flavor for you!”  “It’s important to have a favorite flavor!”  I now understand that this is what our secular western culture thinks of religion, by and large.

A favorite ice cream flavor, however,  is a subjective preference.  It says something about you, the subject, and nothing about the ice cream, the object.  You would never seriously argue with someone over their favorite ice cream flavor.  It’s just a personal taste, and no argument can ever sway the other person because the preference is within them and not moveable by evidential argument.

Same way with sports teams.  It’s hilarious to me that some people try to argue with each other over what team you should like.  It’s just a personal preference that is subjective.  In today’s sports world, if you root for a specific city’s team, you’re basically rooting for a uniform, because the team uniform is about all that stays the same.  The players and coaches constantly change.

When I make an objective statement, like “Raleigh is the NC state capital,” this statement can be argued by presenting evidence.  You can convince someone of this fact by showing them documentation that Raleigh is, indeed, the capital.  If I told you that George Washington, the first American president, was born in AD 1250, you could check that out, too.  It’s an objective statement.  Its says something about the object, George Washington.

So when I say I’m a Christian, am I just saying that I have a personal preference for Christianity, that I like their team better than other teams?  Is that all I’m saying?  If so, then it would be ridiculous of me to try to convince people of other religions to convert to my team.  Why bother?  You like chocolate and I like vanilla.  There’s no point in trying to convince you vanilla or Christianity are better.

Those of us who are serious about our faith understand that we are not talking about favorite teams, but about reality and what is true.  We are making objective truth claims.  Every religion makes claims about man’s origin, morality, meaning, and destiny.  Many religions also make historical claims.  If you are trying to judge a religion, then you need to evaluate the claims they are making about the empirically verifiable world, and then investigate those claims to see if they are true.

For example, if a religion denies that pain and suffering are real, that they are just illusions, then run away!  It is the universal experience of every person who ever lived that life is full of pain and suffering, so a religion better explain where that comes from.  Just denying it’s there is totally inadequate and incomprehensible.

If a religion makes claims of history that are patently false, then run away!  Any religion that gets major historical events wrong is untrustworthy.  If they can’t get verifiable history right, then how can we expect them to get heaven and hell right?

Bottom line: treat each religion as a real and testable hypothesis.  Do the research and see for yourself.  If you think that religions are just personal preference, you’ve completely missed the point.

A Former Mormon's View of The Bible – Part 2

As a continuation to Post 1, I would like to discuss another principle that is used in the Bibliographical Test.  This principle involves looking at the time span between the original manuscript in question and the oldest surviving copy.  The principle behind this is, obviously, the shorter the time span, the more reliable the copy is deemed to be.  How does The New Testament compare to other literature of antiquity?  Let’s look at a few notable works…

  1. Caesar – Gallic Wars – 1000 year gap
  2. Pliny Secundas – Natural History – 750 year gap 
  3. Tacitus – Annals – 1000 year gap
  4. Plato – 1300 year gap
  5. Herodotus – History – 1350 year gap

Notice how LONG the time frame is!!  But wait… let’s look at one more.  Historians and scholars consider Thucydides to be one of the most accurate historians of antiquity.  How many copies do we have of his works and what is the time span?  We only have 8 surviving manuscripts and a 1300 year gap!!!  Yet, despite this he is considered by many to be THE MOST ACCURATE IN ALL OF ANTIQUITY!!  WOW!!  

How does this compare to The New Testament?  Remember from my previous post that we have 24,970 surviving manuscripts… compared to only 8 for the most accurate historian from all of antiquity.  Here is where it gets even more amazing.  We have portions of books of The New Testament that go back to within 100 YEARS of the original!!!  This is compared to a 1300 YEAR GAP for the most accurate historian of all of antiquity!!  Not only this… we have an entire copy of The New Testament that goes back to within only 225 YEARS… again, compared to 1300 years for one scholars and historians consider to be one of the most accurate in all of antiquity!!  Wow!!  God is good.

What all this adds up to is this… we can hold The New Testament in our hands and have an intelligent faith in it because we have the evidence!!  We can rest assured based on evidence that what it says is what was originally written down.    As scholars  Norman Geisler, William Nix and Bruce Metzger have concluded, we have a text that evidence shows is 99.5% pure!

For the Mormons who are reading this, how does this compare to The Book Of Mormon?  Your church teaches you that it is the most correct book on the face of the earth and that The Bible is filled with errors.    Yet, how many changes has your church made to The Book Of Mormon since it was first published?  What proof do we have of it’s historicity?  I will deal with these issues in future posts.  In the meantime, I would encourage you to research this to find out for yourself if The Book of Mormon is really what your church claims it to be.

In addition, in some upcoming posts I will also address the historical reliability of The Old Testament.

Darrell

A Former Mormon's View of The Bible – Part 1

 The 8th Article of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints states “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God”.  Notice the caveat for the Bible of “so far as it is translated correctly”.  I remember many times as a Mormon I would tell people about this article of faith and explain to them how many “plain and precious truths” have been removed from the Bible… how the Bible has been mistranslated throughout history, does not contain the fullness of the Gospel, and cannot be trusted.  I would tell them how we need The Book Of Mormon and modern day prophecy to clear up the confusion caused by the mistranslations in the Bible.  However, when I started questioning the truthfulness of the LDS church, I began to research the history of the Bible, how we got it and how it has been transmitted to us throughout history.  I wanted to find out for myself whether or not the Mormon claim that the Bible is “mistranslated” is true. What I found out amazed me. 

Historiography is the the study of ancient documents.  It is used to determine the authenticity and validity of documents of antiquity.  One of the tests used in Historiography is called the Bibliographical test.  One principle of the Bibliographical test is to look at the number of surviving manuscripts of any document of antiquity.  Obviously, the more copies we have the easier it is to determine errors in copying and determine what the original text said.  So, the question is, how many copies do we have of the New Testament?

For the New Testament alone we currently have 24,970 surviving manuscripts!  This makes The New Testament the #1 document in all of antiquity in manuscript authority!  Despite being Number 1 in manuscript authority it’s accuracy is questioned more than any other document of antiquity.  You don’t hear many college professors questioning the reliability of Caesar’s Gallic Wars… yet we only have 10 surviving manuscripts for it!!

What is really amazing is the gap between The New Testament and the #2 document in manuscript authority, Homer’s Iliad.  There are only 643 surviving manuscripts for it!!.  The New Testament has 24,970 and # 2 HAS ONLY 643. What a gap!!  God is good!!   

In part 2 I will discuss the 2nd principle used in the Bibliographical Test and how these principles lead one to a reasoned conclusion that the New Testament we hold in our hands today is an accurate transmission of what was originally written down.