Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength

Announcing: The God Question(s)!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:30:00 +0000

I know what you're thinking. "Why is this guy starting up a new site when he hardly ever seems to post anything on this site any more?" That's very nearly the same thing I was thinking.

This blog has been around for quite a while and has covered a fairly wide-range of areas from theology to philosophy to apologetics to even my own personal commentaries on various chapters of the Bible.

So, why launch a new site? Well, a lot of it had to do with a recurring theme I had been running into over and over again. That theme was related to the fact that many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, seem to have a lot of questions about God, Jesus, the Bible and Christianity in general.

While I suppose I could have simply addressed those things on this blog (the scope here does seem to encompass that sort of thing), I felt that it would be better to have a site that focuses more precisely on these sorts of things in a more obvious way.

For that reason, I have created a new blog called "The God Question(s)." I've been logging a number of hours in my Evernote, getting as much material pre-written as I can so that I don't run into the same problem that I have had here, which is lack of new, fresh content on a regular basis. The last thing I would want to do is start developing a readership and then leave them hanging for months at a time because I either don't have topics or don't have time to do much writing.

That's one area where all those who read this blog (both of you) can participate. While I do have a pretty good list of questions started, I would not want to run out of questions to research, gather information about and either answer decisively or at least offer some sort of thoughts on.

Most of the answers to questions that I have gathered thus far are really answers that are amalgamations of answers that I have learned from various sources like Stand to Reason, Reasonable Faith, Reasons to Believe and other valuable resources.

One thing that I want to be careful about is not giving wrong answers. I know that this is inevitable to some degree, but my plan is that if I do not feel reasonably comfortable with regards to how to answer a question, I will at the very least do my best to offer a point of view and then provide links to resources both for and against that point of view.

Hopefully, the first posts on The God Question(s) will be up within the next month or so. My current plan is to post every week. I know...Blogging etiquette is to post daily if you really want to build traffic. But if I do that, I'll be out of new posts within a few weeks as I have to allow myself time to read, research, study, write and then post. You understand. The more questions you send my way, the more I have to work with and the less likely that I will go months without posting something (like has happened several times here).

All in all, I am pretty excited about getting this going. I'll still be spending the next couple weeks building up my head-start but I will be sure to post something here to let everyone know when things will get kicked off.

In the meantime, go ahead and start sending in questions so I have more material. Any God related questions will do. I have things currently split up into several different categories:

Questions about God
Questions about God's Word
Questions about God's Son
Questions about God's Creation
Questions about God's People

You get the idea.

So, if you have a question that ranges anywhere from, "How do we know that the Bible we have today is the same thing that was written 2,000 years ago?" to "Is it OK for Christians to watch rated 'R' movies?" bring them on. Even if you think of a question that you may not have but know someone else who does, it's all good.

Thanks for your patience and I look forward to hearing some excellent questions from you. The more, the merrier.

Grace, love and peace.

Why is Christianity the Only True Religion?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:30:00 +0000

I remember once seeing a YouTube video of someone who had come up with "the best argument against all religions" or something to that effect. Recently, this came back to mind when listening to the Unbelievable? podcast.

The basic argument was something along the lines of...make a list of all the world religions and state why you don't believe any of them. Then, at the end would be whatever religion you claimed faith in and when you would go back through the list of reasons for rejecting all the others, those rejections would also render your own faith false.

For being "the best argument" against Christianity, I guess this seems to me to be just about the worst. Mainly because one does not really need to go through all the other world religions and try to refute each one individually. The argument assumed that in order to make the claim that Christianity is the only true religion, one would have to first show that all the other religions are false.

This, however, is not the case. You do not actually need to disprove all contrary claims in order to show that only one is true. Let's use a very over-simplified example, just to make the point clear.

Imagine that you have misplaced your wallet. You have no clue where it is and cannot quite remember when or where you last saw it. It could be in your laundry basket, your car, on top of your dresser, on the bathroom counter, in the kitchen, inside a jacket pocket or a hundred other possible places.

Let's just say that you check in the laundry basket and find it in the back pocket of the pair of pants you wore that day. Do you still need to look in all the other places for it? No! Why? Because the fact that you have shown the truth of the location of your wallet necessarily implies that it is not in any of the other places.

The truth of Christianity is actually very similar to that. The entire Christian faith rises and falls on a single event that either happened or did not happen in the course of human history. Either Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again or He didn't. If He did...if Jesus was actually seen alive by people three days after He was executed...then that changes everything.

As has been pointed out before, usually by critics of Christianity as a way of attempting to make it appear absurd, dead people do not just come back to life again. I agree. Dead people do not naturally just suddenly come back to life.

The facts of history, however, lead to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth did come back to life three days after he was killed. If no natural explanation is possible, one has to conclude that there would have to be a supernatural explanation.

When it is all said and done, this single event in history lends credibility to the claims of Jesus...claims about the truth of scripture, the existence and nature of God and His own divinity. That being the case, I know that other religions are false because if Christianity is true (and I am persuaded that it is, based on the historical evidence), then the things Jesus spoke and taught must be true. If that is the case then the other religions cannot be true.

If Jesus rose from the dead, as He predicted, then I have no reason to think that anything He said could be anything other than equally true. Jesus taught that the scriptures were true and that God is real. Those same scriptures claim that there is only one True God.

There cannot be one God and the thousands of gods of the Hindu faith. There cannot be one God and no God (as Buddhism would teach). There cannot be one God and the male and female gods of Wicca. God cannot have created the universe and the universe be God as pantheism would teach.

I know that other world religions are false because if Christianity is true, the other religions simply cannot be true. And that argument doesn't seem to do much damage to Christianity as the YouTube video seems to think it would.

What are your reasons for believing that Christianity is (or is not) the one true religion?

Grace, love and peace.

The Circle of Life Argument Against Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:30:00 +0000

Recently, one of the questions on my mind with regards to how one might argue against the Christian worldview is what I will call the "Circle of Life" argument. This argument attempts to attack Christianity by highlighting what seems to be a potential issue with the idea of the Christian concept of he resurrection.

According to Christian doctrine, followers of Christ will be physically resurrected and restored to their bodies. We see from the Gospel of John, for example, that Jesus' resurrected body seems to be the very same physical body that had died.

And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
John 20:20

Then He said to Thomas,"Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing."
John 20:27John 20:27

Jesus' body still had the wounds which resulted from his crucifiction. His physical appearance seemed to be the same in that the disciples (apart from a couple of times when they were kept from doing so ) were able to recognize Him. He looked like the Jesus they had just spent three years with. Same appearance. Same voice. Same mannerisms. I imagine he walked the same way.

So, if we are to be resurrected into the same body we had in this life, there seems to be a problem. You see, the atoms that make up the molecules which make up the cells in our body are the same atoms that have probably made up other living creatures throughout the history of the world.

For example, a man living 4,000 years ago dies and is buried. His body deteriorates and the atoms of his body are part of what becomes fertilizer for the grass of the field under which he is buried. Along come a flock of sheep who eat the grass. Now, some of those atoms are part of the sheep. The sheep are slaughtered, cooked and eaten by a family. Now those same atoms that made up the dead man are now part of the atomic structure of the members of the family who eventually will die, be buried, decompose, fertilize more vegetation which will be eaten by some creature....and so on.

The question becomes, how many people's physical bodies were made up of some of the same physical substance that is part of my (and your) physical structure today? So, if multiple people are to be resurrected who have, via the "circle of life," been physically made of the exact same atoms or molecules, how can be all be resurrected in our physical bodies? We obviously can't both have those same atoms and molecules as part of our physical makeup!

For some, this line of argument can be quite persuasive. However, this seems to depend on an assumption that "we" are our bodies. Science has shown us a vast number of amazing things, one of which is that every single cell of our bodies is replaced over the course of about seven years. Yet, "I" am the same "me" that I was 21 years ago even though the entire physical makeup of my body has been replaced three times since then. I still have the same features (though more weathered with age) that I had then. The same scars are in the same places even though all the cells of my skin have been replaced.

This seems to indicate that "I" am not my body. If I were, I would be a completely different person every seven years, which I am clearly not.

That being so, there seems to be no reason that God cannot fashion a brand new body with all (or at least many) of the physical attributes of the body I had lived with prior to the resurrection, with all the same scars, physical characteristics, shape (I hope not exactly the same shape), etc. and wed that to my "soul" which is more accurately who "I" am.

Take a look at what the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:

You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.
1 Corinthians 15:36-38

God will give us a body at the resurrection. It will be a glorified body without all the corruption our current bodies contain. They will not wear out. People born without certain body parts (legs, arms, etc.) will look essentially just as they did during this life, but when God forms their new, glorfied bodies, I imagine He will form them whole, with nothing missing.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
1 Corinthians 15:42-44

It seems to me that when Paul refers to the "spiritual body" he is not talking about a non-corporeal body. This seems to be the same type of distinction between the flesh and the spiritual he makes in 1 Corinthians 2:15, among other writings.

What it comes down to is that God can handle making sure that our physical bodies are whole and complete and made in the same manner as our physical bodies we have today, albeit without the imperfections, and can join those bodies with our souls, which is the part of us that contains our "self."

What are your thoughts on the physical resurrection and whether or not our bodies will be the same bodies we occupied in this life?

Grace, love and peace.

Did God Really Say...?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:30:00 +0000

It's the oldest trick in the book....literally. Way back at the very beginning, the very first trick, the way the serpent got Eve to take the forbidden fruit. All he had to do was question whether or not God really said what mankind though He said. "Indeed, has God said...?"

With that, he questioned the very Word of God. And that same tactic seems to be used over and over and over again throughout the course of history. Every time there is a major departure from orthodox Christianity, it seems like it starts with questioning God's Word.

I am, by no means, offering a comprehensive list. However, if you just take a trip down memory lane for a few moments, you'll recognize many times that this has happened and many movements and organizations and faiths that resulted from such a thing.

The first one, as already mentioned, was what we know as "The Fall." But think about the other groups that started as a result of such questioning....The Muslim faith got started in the 7th century when Mohammed claimed that the the scriptures were corrupted and that he was given the "true" scripture by Allah.

Move forward several hundred years to the 19th century where we find Joseph Smith claiming to "correct" the corrupted scriptures based on the revelation he received from the angel Moroni. He claims that this angel gave him golden plates from which he should translate the "true" scriptures. Never mind how much of these scriptures were lifted directly from the King James version of the Bible...including all the translation errors that Greek scholars have more recently identify more accurate renderings for.

Shortly after that, we had Charles Taze Russell. His questioning of God's Word led to the formation of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Rather than, like the Mormons, writing entirely new books to include in the canon to supplement the existing Bible, they actually just re-wrote the Bible itself and helpfully changed certain passages in order to obscure several core doctrines of Christian theology, such as the deity of Christ and His bodily resurrection.

More recently, we have seen the effects of post-modernism on how we understand and interpret the Bible. Objective Truth (note the capital 'T') is being jettisoned in favor of a more "tolerant" view that allows everyone's view to be equally valid and true for each individual. Pluralism is the name of the game...all roads lead to God!

Unfortunately, it seems pretty obvious that each group claiming the way to God is claiming that other ways don't lead to God. That could be a little problematic to get one's arms around. But the basic tactic remains the same...question God's Word. Question what it says. Offer another interpretation. Move people away from the Word of God and, once separated, it becomes far easier to get them to buy into ideas that they would otherwise have rejected as completely ludicrous.

It seems that the enemy is quite predictable. The M.O. doesn't really change. Certain details are varied throughout the various attempts to lure us away from the Father. But the overarching plan is basically the same old song and dance. As Solomon pointed out..."There is nothing new under the sun."

What other groups or movements do you know of that used this same tactic to get people away from the Word of God?

Grace, love and peace.

Can Anything Good Come from the ACLU?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Although I am not generally one to follow politics very closely, there are some things in the political / legal arena that manage to find their way to my attention. One such thing was the recent law passed in Cranston, Rhode Island as the ACLU once again came in to save (a.k.a. "ruin") the day by helping one, single mother escalate what amounts to a minor complaint into what is now a ban on father/daughter or mother/son activities.

A mother was upset about the fact that, because her daughter's father not being around, said daughter was not able to attend the father/daughter dance at her school. Once the ACLU got ahold of this information, they capitalized on it and brought it up as a gender discrimination lawsuit. Now, such events are banned in that school district.

Thanks, ACLU, for ruining it for everyone.

Now, let's just take a look at this situation....

I have not read anything about why the father is not active in his daughter's life. Perhaps he skipped town, perhaps the mother left him and severed ties, perhaps he is no longer alive. Whatever the case may be, it is certainly unfortunate that this young girl does not have her father in her life. It is certainly heartbreaking that such a girl would probably feel left-out, less-than or just simply very sad that she would not be able to go to this type of event. There is the pain of simply not getting to go to what could be a fun event...the painful reminder of the absence of a father to take her to such an event, the pain that may be experienced every time one of her friends asks her if she's going...the pain every time someone talks about how much fun it was....and so on.

It doesn't seem that anyone is arguing that anyone should just "get over it" and quit whining. It is a legitimately painful and sad state of affairs. But, let's look at the logic of the situation and, as Greg Koukl might say, let's "take the roof off" and see where this kind of logic leads us.

The reason this girl does not get to go to the dance is because she does not qualify. The ACLU will try to zoom in the "qualifications" and make it about gender, but that seems to be an arbitrary thing. The fact is...there is something about the girl and her situation which disqualifies her from this event. Therefore, according to the ACLU, this is discriminatory and should not be allowed.

Now, let's see what else would follow from that kind of logic.

For reasons beyond my control, I am not qualified to be a professional baseball player. I would like to be a professional baseball player, but I simply do not have the ability to do the things that they do as well as they do them. My life would be so much less stressful if I were making $5,000,000 per year by playing a professional sport. I feel left-out, discriminated against. Why should athleticism (a seemingly arbitrary criteria) keep me from being a professional baseball player? That seems unfair and so perhaps I'll contact the ACLU and we can ban Major League Baseball. Or football, basketball, hockey, etc.

How about this one...

I and my parents do not have enough money to pay for me to attend Harvard Law School. Besides that, I didn't pass the entrance exam to get in. How could I have not passed? Isn't that discriminatory? How can Harvard Law School, based on something so arbitrary as test scores, deny me access to such a highly respected education in order to improve my station in life? That is simply unfair and I shall sue Harvard Law for discrimination and have the ACLU help me to close their doors forever.

What about the Olympic Games? Just because someone was unable to run 100 meters as fast as someone else, why should they not be able to get a gold medal, too? It's not the so-called "second place" athlete's fault that his/her body was simply not physically capable of running as quickly as the "first place" gold medal winner. That's discrimination! Let's ban the Olympic Games!!

I think you get the point. We could probably come up with an endless list of potential "discrimination" lawsuits. However, what the ACLU (and those who actually agree with and support them) do not seem to realize is that in order for ideas like "fairness" and "justice" one must make distinctions (which in ACLU-speak is often also called "discrimination"). In order to be fair and just, same things need to be treated the same and different things need to be treated differently.

For example, in the gold vs. silver medal illustration above, if all participants in the 100 meter race were awarded the same medal, it would be unfair. After all, only one person crossed the finish line first and that person should be rewarded according to their performance. My guess is that people would be outraged if the Olympic Committee members came out to the field after the race and announced that, due to the good sportsmanship and effort by the athletes, they were going to aware them ALL gold medals regardless of the order in which they finished the race.

Similarly, to paraphrase an example from J. P. Moreland, if your house was burning down and you could only take one thing and you had a choice between a crumpled up piece of scratch paper or an authentic Van Gogh painting on your wall, it would seem silly to ponder which you should take if those were your only two options. One is simply more valuable than the other.

Now, let's not misconstrue that to mean that a little girl with no father in her life is any less valuable than any other little girl. That is not at all what I am getting at. What I AM getting at is the fact that there are differences and distinctions which, when abused, can be characterized and presented as discrimination. But, it seems clear to me that we "discriminate" all day long, every day of our lives....and there is nothing wrong with that.

I discriminate with regards to which route to take to work, what to have for lunch, who to invite to my kids' birthday parties, where I take my family on vacation, what TV shows I watch, which smart phone I want to buy and the list goes on and on and on. We are discriminating every single time we make a choice or a decision.

It is awful that there are children growing up with only one parent. But, if that is a problem (and I believe it is), it seems to me that the solution is not to disallow anyone else from doing what they can't but rather to address the ACTUAL problem and work to keep fathers in their children's lives so that the girl CAN go to the father/daughter dance.

Leave it to the ACLU to try to treat the symptom by removing everyone else's rights to the lowest common denominator. If everything were left up to them, this post would be reduced to the following:

"Something happened regarding more than one entity."

That would be about all I'd be able to say publicly if the ACLU had carte blanche to legislate our society. Notice, the "Something" is unspecified (wouldn't want to discriminate by referring to only one specific thing) and we can't identify if the "entity" was a person or an organization...nor could we identify the number of entities involved because that would leave out other entities of other types and in various numbers. Wouldn't want to discriminate, would we?

Has Intelligent Design Helped Science?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:30:00 +0000

While there are often many denials of Intelligent Design being "science" in any significant way, I would like to focus on only one of the arguments that I hear offered somewhat regularly. That is, that ID is a "science stopper" and hinders scientific progress. If only one instance of scientific progress can be attributed to ID, this claim is rendered false.

While it seems to me that many of the "ID is not science" arguments are built on a foundation of hyper-skepticism, this argument seems particularly fallacious given that there is at least one very important example of how ID has actually advanced scientific progress.

"How is that?" you might ask. Well, as with many things related to ID, the answer revolves around DNA and the information contained within the DNA structure. It is the contention of the neo-Darwinian advocate that DNA does not have an intelligent source and was developed over a period of millions of years by unguided, natural processes.

After decades of studying DNA, scientists have identified much of how DNA works and how certain "parts" of the DNA code have specific "jobs" in "building" the organism to which they belong. I use teleological language here, though it should be understood that the naturalist would not actually subscribe to any sort of teleology, though the language seems best suited to describe the process.(That, itself, might just be a clue.)

With the DNA code cracked and scientists cataloging the various parts of the code and what they do, it was discovered that a significant portion of the DNA molecule did not seem to be used and was henceforth labeled as "junk DNA." This seemed to lend credibility to the neo-Darwinian model as one might expect that over the course of time, certain DNA information would become obsolete, yet still passed down to subsequent generations of species.

On a naturalistic world view, this made sense. It was very powerful corroborating evidence that life was not, in fact, designed. They argued that an intelligent designer would not bother with so much useless DNA code and therefore was too inefficient to be considered "intelligent" in any significant way.

Proponents of ID, however, were the ones who's world view allowed scientists to continue to investigate the so-called "junk DNA." Their view was, in a way, similar to naturalists in that they knew that a designer would not have purposefully included so much useless code in the DNA molecule. Therefore, they decided to suppose that there might be some purpose behind this mass of seemingly unnecessary information.

Without getting into the specific details (you can search the articles at Reasons to Believe for more specifics) it was finally discovered that "junk" DNA was not so useless after all. In fact, this code, previously thought to be unused in the formation of a living organism, played a vital role in determining how the remaining code was "interpreted" (for lack of a better term).

For the hardened skeptic, this evidence gets discounted and not viewed as "evidence," though such conclusions are arrived at by using the same methodology that any other "accepted" scientific discoveries are made. Radical skeptics, however, cannot countenance such things as it would upset the proverbial house of cards upon with their materialistic world views are built.

My suggestion, if bringing this to a discussion with a critic of ID, is to first establish the principles of the scientific method and perhaps agreeing upon criteria for how we use data to lead us to a conclusion. That way, we can show that, rather than being close-minded, ID advocates are actually more open-minded than the opposition because we are willing to follow the evidence where it leads...without restricting the possibilities a priori by claiming that ID cannot be a possible explanation.

Remember, to exclude possible explanations in this manner is called special pleading. It is an intellectually dishonest way of drawing conclusions because it artificially limits the possible conclusions. Those who agree with ID theory can continue their research knowing that some things may be found to have naturalistic explanations and they can accept such conclusions, but they also can accept that some things may not have naturalistic explanations without excluding those explanations by fiat.

What are some other things that have helped to advance scientific progress that would not have helped if we maintained a naturalistic world view?

Grace, love and peace.

Straw Men Don't Create Universes

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:00:00 +0000

It has been quite some time since I have taken the time to write. It seemed appropriate to write after doing a good deal of the reading that I've been doing lately. The more I read, in particular the more atheistic blogs and articles I read, the more I am amazed how how seldom opponents and critics of Christianity seem to accurately portray "our" side of things.

To be fair, I'm sure the same goes the other way around, too. However, Christians are not generally the ones touting themselves as intellectually superior. The "New Atheists" as they are often called today, are using rhetorical games and word-play by such things as referring to themselves as "the Brights" and holding events like the so-called "Reason Rally."

The latest of these comes a blog I recently read that makes so many mistakes, misinterpretations, straw men that I felt like I just needed to jot down several of the errors that were made. The post was from the Rosa Rubicondior blog and was trying to refute the arguments of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Now, one of the standard escape clauses apologists use when you ask them to subject their favourite god to the same tests they demand science passes, like explaining where it came from, what it's made of, who created it and whatever and wherever that came from in the first place; how gods can come from nothing when they insist that nothing can - that sort of thing - is to invoke infinity.

They simply assert that their favourite god has always existed so they don't need to explain its origins. This neatly absolves them of having to apply the same standards they demand of science and, if you fall for it, allows them to get away with a much lower standard of proof whilst you try to meet their impossibly high, and usually shifting, standard.

Anyone that has listened to Dr. Craig for more than about five minutes has probably heard him discussing the Kalam Cosmological Argument and/or Liebnitz's Cosmological Argument. It also doesn't take long to recognize that this representation of the cosmological argument completely misses the whole point.

You see, the author of the above quote seems to think that Christians posit a God and then back-pedal when presented with questions about His origin by throwing up a Hail Mary (pun intended) by saying that God didn't have a beginning. Rosa has put the cart before the horse.

We do not go from God to ... how can we maintain a belief in such a God in light of (or despite) the evidence to the contrary. Instead, we start with what we can observe and reason from there to God. Let's start with what Rosa is seeking to define...causation.

Causation basically comes down to the idea of the change in state of some thing. Any time a thing changes state, there is a cuase. There are two types of causation, event and agent. Event causation requires matter. Agent causation requires consciousness.

At the risk of using an often-over-utilized illustration, imagine a billiard ball sitting on a pool table. One moment, it is at rest and the next, another ball hits it and suddenly it is in motion. There has been a change of state. That is an example of event causation.

Now, imagine a billiard ball on the table at rest. Then imagine a person reaching over and pushing it. Now the ball is in motion. This time, it was through the decision of a person to reach out and move the ball. That would be an examle of agent causation.

How does this relate to the cosmological argument or the existence of God? Good question. If we know that event causation requires material causes and we know that all of the material of the universe began to exist at some point in the finite past, then we can rule out event causation as the cause of the universe coming into existence. No matter to cause anything...no even causation.

That leaves only agent causation. A conscious entity with the ability to choose. Now, as Dr. Craig will be the first to admit, this line of argument does not, at least at this point, lead us to the Christian God. But, it does effectively show that this is not the Hail Mary that Rosa Rubicondior seems to want to claim it is.

Next, she does a very poor job of trying to refute Dr. Craig's expanation of using probability theory for showing the improbability of the existence of the universe in the absense of God's existence. Because it's been a while since I've written anything, I'll reserve that for later.

In the mean time...

Grace, love and peace.

Courage to be a Father

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:30:00 +0000

In last week's post, I started writing about a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Before I continue on with another post on this topic, there was something else that I felt was personally pressing for me. This will be somewhat of a more introspective type of thing, but I am writing it here to share it with you.

Last night, I finally got to watch the movie Courageous. Many of you are probably at least passingly familiar with Sherwood Pictures from one or more of their other movies, Flywheel, Facing the Giants and Fireproof. There is a lot that can be said for all of these movies, but since I just watched their fourth feature film last night, I'll stick to that.

Like their other movies, Courageous has a very obvious and unapologetic evangelical Christian message. I have still not personally decided whether or not any of these movies are particularly useful as evangelism tools, though I know that for me, prior to coming to Christ, these would have turned me right off.

Don't get me wrong. That is not to say that the movies are bad. On the contrary, I own the first three and am definitely going to purchase this latest release. I love these movies. It's just that I love them for reasons other than evangelism.

While I do not think that they would be useful to evangelize the unsaved, I think that all four of these films are extremely useful (read "convicting") for those of us who are members of the Body of Christ. Every time I watch them, I am re-convicted with regards to some part of my life and/or my spiritual walk that I am falling short in.

This film was no disappointment in that respect. There were a number of times I felt like I was not meeting my obligations as a father. All through the movie I kept recognizing areas and opportunities for improvement. I do not see this as a bad thing, as it seems to me that the best first step to fixing anything is to identify what is broken. If you don't take that first step, change never happens.

I won't give you any spoilers, but suffice it to say that there was one particular scene where the main character, Adam (I just now, as I'm writing this, recognized the (probably intended) use of that name), writes up a Resolution about being a father. He hands copies of it to his friends in order to ask them to hold him accountable to this resolution.

As they are talking, he asks a question of his friends. I don't recall the exact phrasing, but it was something along the lines of "At what point in your life did you realize that you were a man?" I'm going to be brutally honest and open here...that one question probably affected me more than any other part of the movie...and that's saying something.

Throughout the rest of the movie, and even as I was laying in bed, I could not get that question out of my mind. The fact is that I don't know that there has ever been a time in my life (at least that I can recognize) when I felt as though I was a man. Sure, I know that, at almost 42 years old, a wife, two children, a good job, a nice house, etc. I realize that in many ways I am doing what a "man" is supposed to do. But, do I think of myself as a man?

The movie makes you wait for a while before you get to hear what the resolution contained, but after every line of that resolution, I couldn't help but wonder..."Am I ready/able to commit to that?" Yes, I have a family. I provide for them. I work hard. I try to live with integrity. I do a lot of things that men do. But do I truly see myself as a man?

How often do I feel inferior around other people? How often do I lack the confidence in certain decisions that I am supposed to make? When I think of what it means to be a strong, decisive, committed Man of God, I don't ever seem to feel like those attributes describe me.

Do I lead my family toward God? We probably miss church as often as we go. Do I pray with them? Maybe at bed time. Do I teach them the Bible? I read my kids Bible stories (Ok...on this one, they're 5 and 2...probably not going to get into the Kalam Cosmological Argument with them just yet). Do I serve? When and how it is convenient. Do I share my faith with unbelievers? Sure, if you consider hiding behind a blog "sharing my faith." Am I doing anything to help people's faith and knowledge of God increase? See previous answer.

There are probably people who will argue with me and show me all the ways that I am being a man. But it seems to me, in some of the more important areas (as shown above) I fall very, very, very short.

Another "man"...G.I. Joe...is famous for saying "Knowing is half the battle." So, I guess, from that perspective, I have already won half the battle. Of course, that means that there is still the other half to fight. And it seems, to me, that it will be all up hill.

Am I the only one who struggles with this? Or some variation of this? Share your thoughts and your own experiences.

Grace, love and peace.

A Dark Cloud Approaches

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:30:00 +0000

If you don’t listen to the Stand to Reason radio show (or podcast), you should. Though, at times, and this weekend was one of those times, you may find that some things just get you riled up. That was the case when I listened to the podcast of the show from this past Sunday.

What got me going? Well, Greg’s opening commentary was about a paper that was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics recently (I believe it was dated 10/4/2011, actually). This paper detailed an argument from authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva entitled “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?”

The title, alone should be sufficient to get you up to speed on the content. But, for the sake of clarity, I will attempt to provide a (very) brief synopsis of what the article is about. In fact, what I will do is simply put the exact text from the abstract here so you can read it in the authors’ own words.

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

In such a short paragraph, there is already so very much to contend with in this paper. The very first sentence begins with an idea that is, it seems to me, entirely irrelevant to the idea that the authors are attempting to argue in favor of. The fact that “[a]bortion is largely accepted…” seems completely unrelated to the morality of abortion itself.

The acceptance of a behavior or action has no bearing on whether that behavior or action is moral or immoral. If that were the case, the fact that German society found the extermination of Jews to be “acceptable” would make it a perfectly moral action according to their standards. I try not to pull the Nazi Germany card, but it seemed like a pretty clear way to make the point.

Another point about this first sentence is with respect to the latter part of the statement “…for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health.” This seems to be a sanitized way of citing the fact that abortions can be performed for any reason and, therefore, require no justification apart from a decision by the mother (as an aside, note that the decision need only be by the mother. The father’s choice in the matter is irrelevant).

Next, we move on to the second statement that “both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons.” Notice what is happening here. As we will find later in the paper, this is a set up in which they will make a distinction between a “human” and a “person.” As I already argued in my series on abortion, medical science shows that the entity that is growing in the uterus during pregnancy is, in fact, a human. In the past, pro-abortionists would attempt to claim that the fetus was not human, but that battle has been lost and we now can show that it is human.

So, they switch tactics. Instead of fighting the battle for being non-human, they admit that the fetus is human, but distinguish between human and person. The claim now is, while the fetus is human, it is not a person. Why make such a distinction? Because by separating the two, one can go on to define what constitutes a “person” and can do so in such a way as to justify what they want to do. By separating humanity and personhood, we can now remove the idea of intrinsic human rights (rights afforded to an individual by merit of their simply being a member of the human species) and offer extrinsic rights to those who we deem “persons.”

Now, here is the tricky part…what makes someone a “person?” Not only that, but who gets to decide? Another question that gets raised (upon further reading, this question came to mind) which is…once some unspecified individual or group decides the criteria for “personhood,” how do you validate or test whether or not an individual meets those criteria? This may seem like a fairly simple question, but hopefully I will remember to come back to this later when we get to one of the other points made in the paper. As it turns out, this is not as easy as it may seem.

The third part is that, since the newborn and the fetus are not “actual persons,” they are labeled as “potential persons.” According to the authors, this fact is “morally irrelevant.” I will not go into much detail on this now, but again, later in the paper, this becomes an issue as much contradiction is hidden by some clever slight-of-hand with regard to this claim.

Their third point is that “adoption is now always in the best interest of the actual people…” (emphasis, mine). I have little to say other than...well, I guess we wouldn’t want anyone to be inconvenienced or anything. That would be a shame.

The last part of the abstract is one which, it may surprise you, I kind of agree with. Well, I do and I don’t. Let me clarify. The entire paper was written to argue in favor of one idea…that is “‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”

The part that I agree with is the fact that the idea of abortion, and the logic behind how abortion is justified in the United States and other countries, is the very same logic that can be used to defend the concepts that the authors are attempting to put forth. In other words, while I think this whole concept is morally reprehensible, at least the authors are consistent in how they determine whether or not there is a moral distinction between the unborn and the newborn. Many who are pro-abortion are not usually so consistent. The down side of this logic is that it is a logical slippery slope (no, this is not the slippery slope fallacy).

The same logic that we use to justify abortions, the same logic the authors are offering to justify after-birth abortions is the very same logic that could later justify a number of other things that we, today, might consider atrocious, but later could very well be quite acceptable. All it will take is for someone to take what these authors are doing and move it to the next level.

Notice how this works. They start with the idea that abortion is already acceptable. The next generation of their kind will start with the foundation that after-birth abortion is acceptable. Once they start with that foundation, claiming that there is no logical difference between that and killing a human who has certain defects or is otherwise burdensome will not seem like all that far of a leap to take. You’ve probably heard about how you can boil a frog by turning up the heat a little at a time. This is the same idea. The problem is that the foundation of this entire line of reasoning depends upon the original assumptions that abortion is not immoral and humans and persons are distinct from one another.

It is my position that these assumptions are false and that abortion is immoral, humans are not distinct from persons (particularly with respect to having rights) and, if that can be shown, this whole argument collapses upon itself. Unfortunately, as Francis Shaeffer pointed out some time ago, what was unthinkable yesterday is thinkable today, and ordinary and commonplace tomorrow.

Agree? Disagree? Feel nauseous that these things are not only being discussed, but even published? Please leave your comments or thoughts.

Grace, love and peace.

Historical Evidence

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:30:00 +0000

If you are not already subscribed to the Unbelievable? podcast, you should be. Just about every week, Justin Brierley does a great job of putting together a discussion between believers and non-believers so that we can be a "fly on the wall" as it were and listen in on the types of questions that are raised against Christianity and how those questions and challenges are responded to.

Last week, we got to hear a discussion that, in part, delved into the idea of evidence for the resurrection as a means to faith. Chris Sinkinson, author of Confident Christianity, was discussing with James Croft, the idea that there is much evidence for the historicity of the resurrection. Croft denied such was the case and posed questions regarding why, if that were true, are not more historians believers.

In response, while Chris attempted to explain that the evidence is the same for everyone, but how we interpret the evidence differs from person to person, the conversation ended up with the age-old argument first brought up by Scottish skeptic David Hume regarding the requirement of "extraordinary evidence" to back up "extraordinary claims."

This got me to thinking (again) about this type of challenge. In fact, it seems to me that it is not actually the evidence that is required to be extraordinary. After all, how can one piece of evidence be more extraordinary than any other. We have written documents from those whom we believe to be (or be very close to) eye witnesses of the events. We have scholarly agreement upon many of the historical facts surrounding the death and burial of Jesus of Nazareth as well as reports of sightings of Jesus post-mortem. We have a general consensus regarding what the first disciples believed with regards to these events and how that influenced the start of Christianity.

None of these pieces of evidence is any more or less extraordinary that any other evidence of historical events. But, says the followers of Hume's thinking, in this case, you are asking me to base my eternal destiny on this evidence. To take such evidence and conclude that the Christian God exists and raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead would carry much more broad and life-altering implications and therefore, extraordinary evidence is required as opposed to historical events which, if found to be different than what we learned in high school history class, would have little impact on my life.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it is not the evidence itself that one should expect more from (or more of) but rather, given the life-altering implications of such a claim of history, one must be more rigorous to investigate these claims to ensure that they are accurate. The evidence itself for the empty tomb, the origin of Christianity, the life-change in the disciples, the claims of post-mortem appearances, etc. are evidence enough to reasonably conclude that Jesus was raised from the dead and, by implication, that His claims of divinity and such are true.

Therefore, given the implications of believing such things based on the evidence, I would think that it would be important to ensure that the historical events actually happened. In other words, there better have actually been an empty tomb. It better be true that the first disciples' lives were changed following what they believed to be appearances of a living Jesus of Nazareth after his death and burial. The claims of the first Christians that they saw Christ risen from the dead must have actually been made by those purported to have made such claims.

When I hear people claim that the evidence that would be required (Croft actually claims this during the show) would include physically being present and witnessing the cessation of life and then staying in the presence of the body for three days and seeing with one's own eyes the body suddenly come to life once again, it shows me that people simply do not want to believe. If that is the level of evidence which is needed to make a person believe, well...it doesn't seem like that evidence is possible to provide since we cannot travel back in time with them to give them such evidence.

Instead, it seems to me that we should challenge why the existing, widely accepted evidence is not sufficient for them. Perhaps they do not believe that the evidence is valid because the need more assurance that the evidence is accurate. Fair enough. But please do not claim that "more extraordinary" evidence is required due to the nature of the claims being made. All that should be required is extraordinary effort to ensure that the data is valid and correct.

If the evidence of the resurrection put forth by the likes of William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas and others is historically accurate, then it seems perfectly reasonable (in fact, almost obligatory) to accept the resurrection as historical fact.

Is that extraordinary enough for you?

Grace, love and peace.

The Grace of God

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Today, I have a guest post that was not originally written to be a blog post. Actually, it was written as an e-mail to follow up on a conversation between to men of God. With permission, I am happy to publish the first guest-post on this site...by a non-blogger.

J.T. is a good friend who continually challenges me and has been there for me in various challenging times. I hope that I challenge him as well and that we can both sharpen each other.

The "Glory of God" is referenced many places in the bible. You can look in any bible concordance and see the numerous passages you can reference. I am not going to link them here in this email right now. What I would like to bring up is that most of us that have faith agree that God is glory or has glory. That is to say that glory is a character of God. Maybe go so far to say that the definition of glory is God and can only be understood in reference to God who is glory. That sounds a bit circular in argument, but it is hard to separate God and glory.

The saying "it's a glorious day" is made in the understanding that God being the creator has made the day. Being that it is something that he created then it reflects his character or glory. As we perceive the day, usually the sun rise or set, we will say "it's a glorious day" giving recognition that is God who made the day.

So then how do we give Glory to God? That is when we do something intentionally that aligns with the will of God. In doing so we are a reflection of His character in action visible to those that see. In doing so we give glory to God. In my opinion, it's not something we say, it is something we do. I believe only a believer who is living according to the will of God can do this. And even still since we are not yet made perfect, will not do this all the time. But it is something we should strive to do.

I remember, back when I first came to accept the grace of salvation through Jesus Christ, in the small church I attended, that when you spoke in church during service you would start of with "First giving glory and honor to God...". I did this out of tradition and not understanding. If I was getting up to preach, saying that would not give glory to God. What would give glory to God would be the words spoken if I spoken them in truth under the obedience to the will of God. And in my speaking them, if it edified a believer or more so brought someone who did not know Jesus Christ as the lord and savior to Him. The end result of my preaching would then bring glory to God.

Now if I was not faithful in my study, if I did not seek out His will through prayer, if I spoke out of my own efforts, than how could I bring glory to God. If I used any verse of the bible then His word in the bible could bring Him glory but not my rambling words of self thought. Even today, as I get up if I don't seek out His will through meditation and reflection both in spirit and word, how can I give glory to God?

My challenge is to seek out His will and strive to live a life with actions and words that reflect the character of God that He may receive the glory that comes from Him and returns to Him. Let me at no time think that I am the source or cause of this glory. Though we were originally made in His image and the bible says “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:5, ESV), we are now in a fallen state and God's glory can only be seen through us when we allow the Holy Spirit to be seen in our life usually through persecution as seen here “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” (1 Peter 4:14, ESV)

Stay Strong,

J.T.

Definition: Omnipotence

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:30:00 +0000

It has been a while since I have visited the idea of defining terms (at least as the main purpose of a post). Today, I want to take a look at the term "omnipotence." Since this is an often misunderstood and misapplied term, I thought it would be a good idea.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the challenge of understanding omnipotence correctly is the old question that I first heard from (though it may have preceded) George Carlin. My guess is, you have heard it, too. It goes something like this:

"If God is all powerful, can He make a rock so big that He, Himself, could not lift it?"

Inherent in this question is a grossly distorted, misunderstood idea of what omnipotence means. While I would not say that "all powerful" is not a valid way of understanding the concept of omnipotence, it is not strictly the "dictionary" definition of the word that is the problem.

The problem is understanding this from a more philosophical point of view. The most basic way to shed light on this is to point out that "all powerful" does not mean "able to do anything." What it means, more accurately, is "able to do anything that power can do."

You may be asking the question "what is the difference?" right about now. The difference is actually important in this context. Power is not able to defy logic. No matter how much power you wield, you could never create a square circle.

So, getting back to our question, to ask if God can create such a rock is an absurd question. I would be like asking to color a picture blue AND not color that same picture blue in the same way, at the same time. That would be a logical contradiction. No amount of power could do such a thing.

This may lead to another question. If God cannot do the logically impossible, does that mean that He is subject to the laws of logic and therefore, in some way, subservient to a law that is "above" Him? Not so. God is, by His very nature, logical. After all, John 1:1 tells us that Jesus was the "word" ("logos").

God is not subject to logic. God is logic. And God cannot deny Himself. (2 Tim 2:13)

So, the answer to the question is....no. God cannot make a rock so big that He, Himself could not lift it. And that answer does not, in any way imply that God is anything less than omniscient. He can still do anything that power is capable of doing. But that does not mean that he can do anything.

God cannot deny Himself. God cannot lie. God cannot sin. God cannot cease to exist. There is quite a long list of things that God cannot do. Yet, He is still all powerful.

Grace, love and peace.

Christians and Euthanasia

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:30:00 +0000

If there is one thing that I am trying to do, it is thinking more deeply about subjects that I find important enough to think about at all. Historically, my thinking about a given topic tended to be somewhat superficial and certain probing questions never really occurred to me to ask. Hopefully, I am getting better at asking (and perhaps answering, to some degree) those questions.

One such subject that I hear/see come up every so often on blogs and podcasts is euthanasia. I have heard arguments in favor of it from the secular/naturalistic point of view and I have heard professed Christians who claim that it is a way to end someone's suffering. Of course, there are those who also oppose the idea on either side, as well.

When thinking a bit about this recently, another topic came to mind. This happens to me sometimes and it helps me to connect some of the dots. It didn't hurt that I had also recently had a conversation about something else during which some very important questions had come up which also somewhat applied to euthanasia.

Basically, it was something like this...most Christians would agree that God is sovereign, though how they might understand that idea differs. But we all seem to know that He has a plan. We, as finite human beings, do not have the benefit of omniscience or eternality. That being the case, we are not in a position to know what His plans are, who they include or what part we may play in them.

If that is the case, we have to recognize that every moment we are alive, we are an integral part of His plan. It is not for us to know the full range of how we fit into that plan.

The reason that most people who are pro-euthanasia feel the way they do is because they have an aversion to human suffering. They feel that if a person is suffering and there is no hope for recovery, the "humane" thing to do is end the person's suffering. There is a part of most of us who feel our hearts break for those people who are living with such pain, despair and/or hopelessness.

While it is certainly understandable to want to help people so that they no longer suffer, there is a major factor involved that many do not seem to take into consideration...our God is a BIG God.

I say this for two distinct reasons. First, there is never such thing as "too late" or "beyond hope" where God is concerned. A person who seems like they could pass any second could be instantaneously restored to full health if He were to decide to do so.

The second reason is the one that really got me thinking. If God has a plan and a person is still breathing. then it seems to me that that person is still a part of the plan. In our limited understanding, we may not be able to see how someone who is comatose with no indication of recovery for years and years could be part of that plan. We cannot see how someone with terminal cancer, Parkinson's disease. Alzheimer's, Huntington's or any other terminal illness for which many very compassionate people advocate for euthanasia could be part of any kind of plan.

Again, we are not in a position to know the answer. The only thing we have to go on is what we can know. And, in these situations, we know at least two things. One is that God has a plan. The other is that the person in such a condition is still alive. With these two things in mind, it is reasonable to conclude that the infirm person must be part of that plan. We may not know how. We many not know to what end. But we know He has a plan and the person lives.

Hopefully, that thought should give all of us hope. If we are still here, God's plan still includes us. I don't know about you, but that is a pretty comforting thought.

How do you feel about euthanasia? Why do you feel that way? Have you ever thought of how God's plan plays into it?

Grace, love and peace.

Child-like or Childish

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:30:00 +0000

There always seem to be various parts of the Bible that just about everybody remembers...sort of. While many people mis-remember passages quite frequently, they even more frequently seem to mis-interpret passages.

Now, I am certainly not going to try to claim that I have arrived at the perfect interpretation of all scripture. I would say that I am at approximately .01% with respect to how much of the Bible I would claim to have the "right" interpretation of.

One of the concepts that I hear often used or talked about is the idea of Christians having a "child-like" faith. This seems to be one of those passages that really gets put through the ringer. So often, when I hear people talk about "child-like" faith, what I seem to hear them describing is "childish" faith.

Childish implies immaturity, impulsiveness, inexperience. (Like the alliteration with the "I's?") For example, I might hear someone describe some dogmatic resolve to hold to a very tenuous and ambiguous teaching of the Bible. Like whether it was Mary Magdelene that was caught in adultry in John 8.

Child-like faith is quite different. But before we get into that, I should first make it clear that, as a Christian, the term "faith" is essentially synonymous with "trust." (That is another idea that is mis-represented quite often, but I will not go there at the moment.)

When you think of a child's trust, what do you think of? While it is true that a child trusts his/her parents blindly and without regard to facts, this does not seem to be the idea that is being presented in scripture. Regardless of the basis for their trust, the fact is that a child trusts so fully and so completely that they are completely and wholly abandoned in their trust.

If I told my 5 year old son that I flew in an airplane to another country before he was born, he would not doubt it for a moment. If anything, he would ask me where I went and who I was with and could I show him a map of where I was among other questions. There would be no question in his mind as to the truth of what I had told him.

When my 2 year old daughter comes leaping off the couch toward me when I get home from work, she does not wonder if I am going to catch her. She trusts me so completely that such thoughts do not even get entertained. There is, in her mind, no danger whatsoever of falling and getting hurt. Daddy is going to catch me and hold me. That is all there is to it.

As I read about having a child-like faith, it is that sort of thing that strikes me as the concept. Certainly we should have justification for believing what we do about Jesus. But once we have determined that Jesus is the real deal, we should trust him with that kind of abandon.

That is how the Apostle Paul trusted Him. In 2 Corinthians 4:17, Paul comforts himself throughout his trials with the understanding that this is a "momentary, light affliction." He is completely sold out to the idea that he will spend eternity by Jesus' side in heaven. He throws himself into his ministry knowing that the beatings, shipwrecks, stonings, imprisonments, etc. are all worth it compared to what he is fully confident eternity with Jesus will be like.

How many of us can claim to be completely abandoned to Christ? How many of us can honestly say that we trust Him so completely that we would take any risk, face any obstacle, stand up to any persecution because we know that Jesus will be there for us in the end?

In my case....epic fail!

Grace, love and peace.

Design "Flaws"

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Anyone who is going to debate Dr. William Lane Craig on the topic of God's existence will generally know that they will have to defeat Dr. Craig's five arguments for the existence of God. Among these five arguments is what is called the "teleological argument" (or argument from design). I'll let you read Dr. Craig's work on this elsewhere on the web or in his book, Reasonable Faith.

For now, let's just say that the gist of this argument is that one piece of evidence in favor of God's existence is the fact that the universe looks as though it has been designed. The amount of matter, anti-matter, dark energy, the gravitational force, the "strong force," the "weak force," and many other constants and quantities in the universe all seem to be "fine-tuned" so that our universe exists and has the ability to maintain intelligent life.

A popular rejoinder to this argument is to point out flaws in the natural world. This, according to the critic, shows evidence that the universe was not designed because a designer would have avoided such "flaws." Questions arise about why God would create stars in a way that would cause them to eventually super-nova and be destroyed, thus causing much destruction to neighboring heavenly bodies. Why would God have designed us to be affected by illness and disease? These and other questions are used to show that perhaps there was no universal designer.

Being the egg head, techno-geek that I am, I was thinking about an analogy that could potentially be helpful to understand this. Hopefully I can do so in a way that doesn't require you to know too much about technology, either.

Imagine you have a user ID with which you log into your computer system at work. Not hard to imagine, these days. Your user ID is (ideally) set up in such a way as to allow you access to the files, folders and other resources that you need to do your job. A common way to handle access to network resources is to use "groups."

By setting up groups of users, access to a specific resource (printer, file, folder, computer, etc.) can be granted or removed simply by determining what groups you are a member of. If, for example, you are a member of the "Accounting" group, then any files or resources that Accounting has access to, you also have access to by way of being a member of the appropriate group.

Clear as mud?

Here's where things can get a bit more complicated. You see, many systems nowadays allow you to add user groups to other user groups. For example, you could be a member of the Accounting group, but the Accounting group can be a member of the Financial group. In this scenario, you would have access to everything that the Accounting and the Financial group has access to.

Another thing about how most systems work is that the most restrictive permissions to resources is always the one that wins. As an example, if the Accounting group is a member of the Financial group and the Financial group has access to a particular folder, you can set up that folder to explicitly deny access to the Accounting group. So, even the Accounting is part of Financial, because Accounting is explicitly denied access, they cannot access that particular folder. On the one hand, they are given access through the Financial group, but on the other hand they are denied access through the Accounting group.

I know...it's a little bumpy, but hang with me and just re-read all that at your own pace if you need to.

So, what happens if you are a member of several different groups, which themselves are members of other groups and so on? Things can get a bit complicated.

Now, let's say that you need access to a particular file on the network. Your user account is set up as a member of a group that has access to that file. But, when you try to access it, you get an "Access Denied" message. The system administrator looks into it and sees that you are a member of the appropriate group. They also see that the group "Denied Users" is explicitly denied access to the file, but you don't seem to be a member of that group.

Unbeknownst to you, and the system administrator, you are part of a group that is part of a group that is part of a group that is part of the "Denied Users" group. Therefore, the most restrictive access wins and you are denied access.

Now, why did I go into all that? Well, I'll fill in the gaps as to how this relates to the argument against design.

You see, one of the attributes associated with God is omnipotence (the idea that He is "all powerful). This is commonly misunderstood to mean that God can do anything. That is not actually what it means. It actually means that God is able to do anything that one can do using power. For instance, there is no amount of power that will make logical contradictions possible. No matter how much power you have, you cannot make a square circle or a married bachelor.

When we look at the "flaws" in design and start to argue that an omnipotent, omniscient designer would have designed things without that "flaw" we fail to recognize (due to our limited intelligence) that it is quite possible that that "flaw" exists because to not exist would result in a logical contradiction. Like the accountant who can't access the file because you can't be in certain groups and yet not be in some of those groups, certain things may be a necessary aspect of how the current world is set up. I'm willing to bet that many of the "flaws" are because the world must exist without the continual presence of God (at least in the way or to the extent that He was present before the Fall).

One example might be aging or disease. If we were not mortal (i.e. designed to eventually die), there would be a problem with over-population all over the earth. This probably seems a bit heartless, I know, but right now we're not looking at the emotional aspect of this, we are simply looking at the logical facts of the matter. And facts, by their very nature, tend not to have anything to do with "warm & fuzzy."

What it comes down to is, we are not in a position to know enough to come to the conclusion that the "flaws" in God's design could have been avoided by a better designer and therefore, if there is the possibility of a better designer, than God must not exist since He is supposed to be the "perfect" designer. The design in nature seems to not be perfect (according to our standards) therefore this perfect designer must be fictitious.

We simply cannot know such things in order to arrive at such conclusions without a great deal of speculation and unknown variables.

Unfortunately, all analogies fail at some point. In this one, the system administrator can eventually find the group membership that is causing the problem and figure out a way to grant the necessary access to the desired file. From that standpoint, the analogy fails. But, again, that assumes a well-versed understanding of the system (which we do not have with respect to the entire body of nature).

Does this analogy work for you? Why are why not?

Grace, love and peace.

The "Evil God Challenge"

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Welcome back from the "holiday madness" and I hope the new year finds you all well. It has been a little while since I have had an opportunity to write anything, but I suppose most people have been so busy over the holiday season that they probably did not have much time to read anything.

This week, I thought I would take a look at what is coming to be known as the "Evil God Challenge" that I have been hearing about via the Unbelievable? podcast. I first heard it during William Lane Craig's recent debate with atheist Stephen Law.

The most basic form of this challenge is the idea that any explanations one can offer to refute the Problem of Evil in order defend the idea of an omnibenevolent God can be "flipped" so that the same argument could be used in reverse to defend the idea of an omnimalevolent God.

So, when one says that the evil in the world does nothing to deny the existence of a good God by citing free will or the building of character. The same, according to this challenge, can be said in defense of the evil God. Any good in the world can be explained using the same logic, the same types of arguments.

According to Dr. Law, he feels a great deal of frustration at people's misunderstanding of this challenge. Many people argue that this challenge fails because all we need to show is that it is at least slightly more plausible that God is good than evil. Law claims that this is a fallacious view of the challenge.

If I understand Dr. Law's arguments correctly, I believe he is correct as far as people not correctly understanding his argument as he puts it. It was clear that the people view this argument as a scale of sorts, with evil on one side and good on the other. Dr. Law explained that, in fact, his argument is presented more accurately as two separate scales. One with good God on one side and no God on the other. The second with evil God on one side and no God on the other.

This seems to better represent what Law is attempting to argue. However, it seems to me this line of reasoning is fallacious. In the debate with Dr. Craig, Law did not ever address Dr. Craig's cosmological or teleological arguments because he argued that if he could show that the good God espoused by Dr. Craig was implausible, he did not need to show that a supernatural deity did not exist.

The problem, as I see it, is this...If Law is correct that the moral arguments cannot evidence the existence of God and the design and first cause arguments do not reveal the character of God, then one cannot use the moral argument to show the implausibility of God altogether. In other words, if you cannot prove the existence of God using the moral argument, you cannot disprove God with it, either. (Incidentally, I personally believe that the moral argument actually is quite strong evidence for the existence of God, but that is a topic for another time.)

While these two arguments do not tell us about the character of this entity, they do tell us other things. First, that such an entity exists. It also tells us that this entity is personal, enormously powerful, amazingly intelligent and exists atemporally (outside of time) among other things. Once the existence of such a being is established, we can look to the moral argument for the character of this being.

What if we agree with Dr. Law that the moral argument could point to an evil God just as easily as a good one? Well, we can certainly tip the scales in favor of a good God based on "special revelation." Based on other arguments (that I will not outline here) we can view the scriptures as historically reliable documents. If that is the case then it would appear that God has revealed His nature and character to us as a good God. In addition to biblical texts, there are other historical texts that point to the resurrection of Jesus and therefore corroborate and reinforce the reliability of scripture.

While it could still be argued that it may possibly be an evil God who is simply lying to us, we do not really have any reason to believe that such is the case. In fact, while to some degree this argument could have some force behind it, that force is relatively weak in light of events such as the sacrifice of Christ. Once we take the atoning sacrifice of Christ into consideration, the plausibility of God being evil begins to significantly diminish while the plausibility of a good God gets stronger.

If God were evil, there would be no need of atonement to bring us back into relationship with Him. The idea of separation from Him would be irrelevant because an evil God could endlessly torture souls no matter "where" they were. The concepts of heaven and hell are useless. If that were the case, why bother trying to get us into heaven? In the case of a good God, the atonement is necessary in order to restore our relationship with Him for eternity. With an evil God, such restoration is unnecessary.

What would you say about the "Evil God Challenge?" Do you feel that it has any significance? Why or why not? What would you say about this proposed response to this challenge?

Grace, love and peace.

Getting Even

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Throughout the Bible, there are a number of passages that seem to be known to even those who seem to know virtually nothing about the Bible or what it says. One of the more popular passages is the "Judge not, lest ye be judged." (Mat 7:1 KJV) This one gets thrown at Christians quite a lot by critics of Christianity.

There is another passage that seems to be pretty well known as well by the biblically illiterate. This one is from the Old Testament and it has to do with revenge. Yes, you probably have already figured out what I'm referring to. It's Deuteronomy 32:35.

It is mine to avenge; I will repay.

When was the last time you read Deuteronomy, anyway? All those old ceremonial laws from Moses seem so dry and antiquated. Besides, it is in the New Testament that we read about Jesus. That's the "good stuff" right? In fact, I think that this passage alludes to the New Testament and the salvation that God had prepared to be offered through Jesus.

Let's break this down...

According to the orthodox Christian doctrines, those people who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and put their faith in Him are justified before God as righteous. That means, upon accepting Christ, we no longer have a debt to pay for our sins. With me so far?

So, what is it, exactly, that we might seek retribution for with respect to other people? Well, I suppose if we are seeking retribution (a.k.a. "revenge") it would seem that this would be for some perceived sin that this person committed against us. Let us also remember that all sin is against God. So, if someone sins against us, that person sins against God as well.

If the accused, then, accepts Christ and God forgives them their sin....all their sin...why then do we suppose that we are in a position to exact justice for the sin committed against us? Think about this for a few moments. If we attempt to avenge a perceived wrong against us that God has forgiven, we are essentially exacting vengeance upon one to whom God Himself has imputed His own righteousness. It would be as if we were attacking God!

You may ask, "Then what about those who do not accept Christ? Aha! I can seek my vengeance against them, can't I?" Well, no. It does not work that way. You see, while that person may not currently accept Christ, you (unlike God) do not know for certain the ultimate, eternal disposition of that person's relationship with God. Only God knows if that person will one day accept Him and be forgiven. Meanwhile, while they are still alive, we are to treat every single human being as if they will one day be saved and forgiven.

How good are you at letting the Lord take care of justice? I know that I tend to be less than stellar in this area. In fact, there are many times that I get so frustrated with someone that, knowing it is the wrong thing to do, I feel as though I simply can not move forward until I make that snide remark or make a rude comment or whatever. My own wrath insists upon satisfaction. I must have justice! The offender must pay!!

Hopefully, you are better than I am at this.

Arguably, there are situations which call for justice in the "worldly realm." I do not want to get into some of the more complicated things like capital punishment and the whole system of justice as it pertains to our legal system. I am focusing more on those personal affronts and offenses that our friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors, etc. may be guilty of on a day-to-day basis.

When it comes to refraining from revenge, how are you doing? Are you able to defer to God for vengeance, or do you find that you need to see justice done?

Grace, love and peace.

Train Up a Child

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:30:00 +0000

The Bible tells us about a number of different promises that God has made to us. Unfortunately, there are many passages within the Bible that people claim as promises that do not seem to be intended to be promises. Alternatively, some of these passages may have been promises, but they were not made to us.

One passage that I have heard people lament over is from Proverbs. Now, this should immediately tell you something. Proverbs is not, by its very nature, a book of promises. Rather, it is a book of advice. This advice is made up of general principles and guidelines rather than hard and fast promises. A proverb is something that is a good idea to follow, but it does not promise to always bring a specific result.

The particular verse in question comes from Proverbs 22:6 which reads as follows:

Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it. (NASB)

There have been several people I know who have brought up this scripture after they have raised their children to adulthood only to find out that they have done something to indicate that they are not following "the faith" quite so closely as their parents had imagined. In most cases, the parent(s) will inflict upon themselves guilt and shame as they see that they have failed as good, Christian parents.

So, what is it that is wrong with this perception? It is simply this...they are attempting to claim a promise from a proverb. The next question is, how do we know that this proverb is not a promise? Let's take a look at it and see if we can figure that out.

First of all, we can take a look at an underlying assumption that one has if this is taken as a promise. If this passage were a promise, then what it is saying is that we, as parents, have the ability to ensure our own childrens' salvation. It is our responsibility to raise them in such a way that they will follow, love, and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

The Bible, however, teaches that it is the Holy Spirit that draws, not all, but the elect to Himself. Who decides which people are the elect? Their parents? Or God? I'll let you consider that one on your own, but I'll give you a hint....His name rhymes with "Yahweh."

If we think that we can do something that will cause our children to love and accept Christ and the promise of salvation, then we are essentially claiming a works-based faith. This, it seems to me, would be somewhat insulting to Christ because if our works are necessary to attain salvation then this would mean that Christ's work on the cross was not sufficient. I'm not going there.

We do not determine the eternal fate or faith of our children any more than our parents determined ours. As a matter of fact, if we thought this was the case, then we would have to say that our own salvation was determined by our own parents. But wait...they only accepted Christ because of their parents, so our faith and salvation is because of them. No, not quite. We would have to go back generation after generation until we found the first person in our family tree that did not receive their faith from their parents.

In some people's cases, that might only be one or two generations. But for many, it could go back several thousand years.

The more we look at it this way, it seems the more absurd the idea becomes. Our parents are not responsible for our salvation and we are not responsible for our childrens'. We are simply responsible to teach them what we believe to be true, teach them to make good choices and think clearly and then we basically can do nothing but sit back and pray that the Holy Spirit will draw them to Himself as part of the elect.

In some cases, we may never know. We may see our children fall away, but then after we pass away, they may get drawn back. We may see them grow strong in their faith and then reject Christ before they die. We simply do not have a way to know, with certainty, the state of relationship any other person has with God. That is not our business.

So, let us not take Proverbs 22:6 and try to hold God's feet to the fire if we see our children reject their Christian upbringing. If you taught them what you knew and practiced your faith for them to see and lived it out as best you could, answering tough questions if/when they asked, then you have done your part. (Well, daily prayer probably wouldn't hurt, either.)

Have you ever beat yourself up using this passage? Or known someone who has? Please, comment below and share your story.

Grace, love and peace.

Faith and Public Life

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Perhaps more than in any other presidential election in this country, this one seems to be bringing in the topic of faith / religion into the discussion, particularly with regards to the candidate of choice for the GOP. While this seems to be the topic of many headlines around the country in light of the pending election, there are many who believe that one's faith should not enter into discussion in the public sector.

Now, if you ask many people who seem to be "anti-religion," many will tell you that they do not have any problem with people exercising whatever faith system they would like...as long as they keep their faith out of the public arena. Basically, they will claim that they do not want to interfere with people's faith, but people of faith should not allow that faith to inform other areas of their lives, their priorities, opinions, values, behavior, etc.

What is the problem with this view? Well, part of the problem is a gross misunderstanding of what a person's faith is all about. For one thing, and I'll use the Christian faith (surprise!!) as an example, Christianity is not simply a set of rituals that are performed on a weekly basis in a building that smells like burning incense. It is not a set of prayers or a list of rules.

It would be more accurate to say that Christianity is a "world view." A world view is a filter of sorts. It is a paradigm, or lens, through which we observe, understand and interpret everything that we see, learn, act on, etc. It is basically a way of understanding our reality. A world view that most closely approximates the real world is one that could be considered more "correct" or "truthful" or "accurate." Our world view is comprised of all the various beliefs that we hold about everything.

For example, if part of my world view held a belief that tigers in the wild were nothing worse than large, cuddly cats, this belief could be very dangerous and would not be a good belief to have as part of one's world view. On the other hand, if it held a belief that it is my duty to love and care for my children, then I will hug them, teach them, keep them safe, play with them and enjoy the process of watching them grow.

To a certain degree, many of us have a large number of the same beliefs that make up our world view...touching hot things is painful, driving in one lane at a time is safer than not, the day is approximately 23 hours and 56 minutes long (Yeah...I know...Some of you actually thought it was 24 hours, huh? That's why we have Leap Year!). Because of this, people with different world views can coexist quite peaceably, without a great deal of difficulty.

The problem is, when someone basically tries to tell you that if you run for public office, you should not incorporate your world view into your politics, values, priorities and, most especially, your votes. When you think about it, how is this even possible? And why is it only people of faith who are not allowed to have such decisions informed by their world view? Who, then, gets to decide which beliefs are acceptable to bring into public office and which are not?

While I will certainly accept the idea that a public official should not use their position to proselytize people, I would expect that any public official would be guided by their faith and the values that are informed by that faith when making decisions on public policy. It seems ludicrous to me to think that an anti-abortion public servant should vote in favor of abortion just because not everyone he represents is against abortion.

That may cause some people to respond with something like, "Well, what's wrong with that? If elected officials are supposed to represent the will of the people, then that's how they should vote!" To an extent, I agree. The problem is in how we achieve such ends. It seems to me that, rather than force an individual to vote against his own strongly held beliefs on a given issue, each elected official should have a responsibility, to the best of their ability, to disclose their values and priorities to the voters who can then elect the candidate who best fits with the most important values and ideals of the voter. Then, whoever wins the election can vote with their own conscience on certain matters because the people have decided that they adequately represent the people. If that turns out to not be the case, the next election can resolve the problem.

What it comes down to is this...you cannot ask people to keep their faith out of public life. It would be like asking a professional baseball player to hold back his swing and not try to hit the ball so hard. Yes, we know, that's the whole point, but we think you should try your best to fit in with the average Joe and not deviate from the norm.

People's faith, in most cases, informs every aspect of their life. It is not something that can simply be put on a shelf and then picked up at the end of the day to take home and then left on the shelf again the next time they have to come into the office. It doesn't work that way.

Would the naturalist like to be told, "You are not allowed to use natural explanations for anything except in the privacy of your own home?" Should we tell the atheists, "You must suspend your disbelief in the supernatural when dealing with matters of public policy?" Which beliefs should or should not be allowed to inform the decisions of our public servants? And, again, who gets to decide?

Why not put the people in office who most closely match our own world view and then let them represent those who put them in office for deciding that they most closely represent the voters values? Is there a better way? I'm all ears!

Grace, love and peace.

All Good People Go to Heaven?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:30:00 +0000

You probably hear it all the time. At some point, we have all heard some form or other of the following claim..."I believe I am going to go to heaven. After all, I'm a good person." If you haven't heard that before, you probably need to get out more.

This belief has been refuted often in the past and pastors and teachers can quickly point to a number of biblical passages to show that this is not the teachings of orthodox Christianity. But, rather than go down that road, I was thinking about this type of claim earlier and stumbled upon something a little more subtle that seems to be going on, here.

As I got to thinking about this, it seemed to be that there were some assumptions being made that I wanted to highlight. The first, of course, is the assumption that our eternal fate comes down to whether we do at least one more good thing than bad. Many of the scriptures that get brought up tend to focus on showing that this is not the case. We learn from the body of scripture that the only thing that gets you into heaven is faith in Jesus Christ.

Here is another assumption that I had not really noticed before. The assumption seems to be that "good" things earn you "credits" and "bad" things earn you "demerits" or some such thing. So, you get a point for helping an old lady cross the street and lose a point for stealing a candy bar. Maybe you earn or lose more points if what you did was really good or really bad.

If any married men read this, perhaps you can relate to something, here. You see, when you buy flowers and a card for you wife on Valentine's Day, do you "score points" for that? Not really. It is expected. That is what you are supposed to do. You only get points if you also plan a surprise romantic evening for the two of you where you can get away from the kids and just enjoy some quality time together. You went above and beyond and, when it comes to these types of situations, "above and beyond" is the only thing that you really get any kind of "credit" for.

Please do not get me wrong, ladies. I am not trying to make you sound ungrateful for the "little" things. Besides, my guess is that if you think about it for more than a few seconds, you can find a similar example that shows how guys do the same basic thing. But, I digress...

As I said, it is the "above and beyond" that makes the difference. You score no points for average. You get no credit if you just toe the line. However, anything that you do that is bad earns you an immediate demerit. You may not sweep your wives off their feet, men, by getting her a birthday card. But, if you do not get a card...well...let's just say you might need to be prepared to spend a night on the sofa. (OK. Maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

Now, let's get back to the original point. Those who believe that heaven is a matter of more good than bad in our life are basically thinking that each bad deed is counter-balanced by some good deed. The problem is, as good as our deeds are, they can never get "above and beyond" and so have no ability to earn credits to make up for the bad deeds. Every bad deed, however, takes us further and further into the negative.

You can probably see where this is heading.

In the end, we just keep getting further and further away from God. That is where Christ comes in. It is He who wipes out all the "ethical debt" in our lives. Our own good is never good enough. Only the good of Jesus Christ actually went above and beyond and got us back in good standing with the Creator of the Universe.

Hopefully, that will give you another angle to think about when it comes to whether or not "good" people will go to heaven on their own merits. Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?

Grace, love and peace.

Making Biblical Arguments in a Secular World

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:30:00 +0000

There almost always seems to be some sort of heated debate in our society that pit people of faith against people who want to keep faith out of the government. Many on the Christian side of these arguments seem to rely on arguments that center on what the Bible says about a certain situation or behavior or value or what have you.

As I see it, this has the effect of further polarizing the Christian and secular communities. The debates escalate into emotion-laden, heated arguments and descend into hatred and venomous diatribe at one another. The two sides are so busy shooting fiery arrows at each other that they stop even hearing what each other is saying.

While it would be tantamount to folly to claim that I have the be-all, end-all solution to this problem, I do believe that I know of a way to perhaps minimize how bad this can get. I wish I could say that this is my own insight, but to be honest, so very little of what I know has anything to do with my own insights.

Basically, what it comes down to is this...Christianity is, in a certain sense, a world view. A world view is simply a way we view, interpret and understand our reality. The more our world view accurately depicts our reality, the better we understand what is Truth. As a Christian, I believe that the orthodox beliefs that are taught in the Bible are what most accurately represents reality and so everything that I see, hear, etc. gets viewed through that "filter."

Unfortunately, when debating issues and ideas with those who are not Christians, we must understand that they do not hold the Bible as authoritative and therefore are not going to submit to the teachings of the Bible simply on the basis that the Bible teaches a particular ethic. The more we attempt to force them to comply with biblical teachings, the more resistent they will be and the more they will distrust those who use the Bible to ground their position on any given issue.

If Christianity accurately represents reality and the Bible communicates Truth to us, then this is something we can take advantage of. That is, we can use arguments and evidence from the real world, not the Bible, to make our case for issues and ethics. If what the Bible teaches is how the world really is, then we should not be afraid to base the arguments for our values and positions on secular ideas and facts.

This might be easier if some examples are given. As I have shown previously, there are many arguments that can be made against abortion that do not rely on Bible passages. There are arguments to defend traditional marriage that have nothing to do with quoting the Bible. These are just a couple of examples.

The point is this...We can't use the Bible to argue with non-Christians (or basically anyone who does not submit to it's authority) on any issues or differences in values or ethics. Not abortion. Not marriage. Not embryonic stem cell research. None of that. The reason is because they will feel no obligation to change their point of view based on what the Bible says or doesn't say. But, we may be more persuasive if we argue using logic, science, physics and things that they do put their trust in.

I am not saying that we should abandon biblical arguments or values. I'm not saying that we should, ourselves, use science and physics to learn and understand ethics and values and moral obligations and such. All I am saying is that we should only use biblical arguments when discussing things with others who submit to the Bible.

Because we believe the Bible is factual and based in reality, I believe when we engage a secular audience, it is not only better to use secular arguments, but I think there is a secular way to argue any biblical value or point in a persuasive and powerful way that they will actually be more likely to be well received. While it may not always persuade every non-believer, I believe it will give us a far better chance at bringing them to the point of view we hold even if it is not for the same reasons that we hold them.

Do you think there are any ethical issues that could not be argued for using secular methods? What are some examples?

Grace, love and peace!

The Cultural Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Last week, I shared a discussion I was having on Facebook with a couple of people regarding what the Bible does and does not say about traditional marriage. During the course of this discussion, I had asked a question (I can't take credit for it, I listen to Greg Koukl a lot) about whether or not we, as a society, define marriage or whether it is something that we simply describe.

After those in the discussion indicated that we define marriage and we can re-define it as our society decides to do so. Upon making that statement, and following the logic as Koukl has pointed out, I decided to "take the roof off" and ask whether or not they would support someone who wanted to marry their daughter or their brother or a plant.

This, of course, was met with the charge that such a thing was ridiculous and that the difference between what they were asking for and my example was that there are not a half million people wanting to marry a plant. So, in the interest of following that line of logic, it seemed to me that numbers were the issue. One of the people in the discussion even indicated that if there were a half million people wanting to marry a plant, then we could discuss that scenario.

It seemed to me, then, that the distinguishing factor between a ridiculous idea and an idea worth discussion and consideration, on this persons view, comes down to the number of people advocating for a position. In light of that, I probed to identify where that line was drawn. If only 499,999 people advocated for their position, does it not yet merit discussion? Perhaps it's fewer than that. What if it was only 10,000? It seems that the "magic number" must be between one (where it is deemed "ridiculous") and 500,000 (at which point, it seems almost a moral imperative, on this person's view).

When asking for such clarification on where these lines are drawn I was accused of being "deliberately obtuse." My example was asserted to be logically flawed, but nothing was offered to explain how this was the case. Also, when discussing this "debate" with a Christian friend, I was met with a somewhat surprising response. "Don't you believe that God is the only one that can change people's minds and hearts? Is what you're doing effective?"

In the end, something finally occurred to me (I'm not that bright...it sometimes takes me a while). Somehow, the combination of the failure on the part of those I was discussing this with to understand the arguments and points I was offering, coupled with the Christian response that I should basically not engage people in these areas and allow God to handle it reminded me of something that I had heard in my studies with Biola University's Certificate of Apologetics program.

I'm going through this program and one of the audios is titled "Christianity and the Problem of Popular Culture" which is a lecture given by Dr. John Mark Reynolds. In this lecture, Reynolds discusses the problem of how our culture is becoming less "literate" in the sense that people no longer spend time reading and learning to use rational discourse. Because our culture is watching more movies and television and doing less reading, we are losing the ability, Reynolds claims, to do logical, left-to-right rational thinking in a manner which allows us to make logical and rational decisions.

He gives an example of his grandfather who was poorly educated but read quite a bit (usually the Bible). He talks about how, in his grandfather's day, a political candidate would offer their views, values, priorities and strategies and people would, on the basis of such things, decide for whom they would cast their vote. He then points out that, in today's society, most politicians rely heavily on rhetoric and people vote for who they find the most "likeable." (Forgive me, Dr. Reynolds if I'm way off...this is a very loose paraphrase.)

Essentially, what he seemed to be saying was that by using rational discourse, one could actually allow their world view and important decisions to be affected by such discussion of ideas. Today, either people dogmatically hold to their world view regardless of how flawed it is shown to be and they just live with the "cognitive dissonance" or, if their world view is somehow shown to be inadequate, they will simply go and adopt some other world view that does not cause them to have to alter their lives or beliefs significantly (or at all).

In discussing the idea of what the Bible presents as marriage and whether or not we define marriage, I started to realize that these very well may be the types of situations that Dr. Reynolds was shedding light upon. They simply could not understand that by pointing out an undesired scenario that is consistent with the beliefs they claimed to hold should then encourage them to re-investigate what they believe, why they believe it and what could the be consequences of those beliefs.

Instead, they rejected out of hand the scenario I offered, seemingly on the basis that it was unlikely. They failed to recognize that, while unlikely, it did fit with what they espoused to believe. I found that, when I offered this example, I was met with responses that attempted to draw conclusions about what I was saying that were so out of left field, the discussion was getting exhausting because I had to spend so much time disputing what I hadn't said.

For example, when I first offered my scenario of a person wanting to re-define marriage so that a person could marry a dog or a tree, the first response was that this would be offensive to homosexuals because I was using an analogy of dogs and trees against them. After picking myself up off the floor, I then had to spend time distinguishing between an "analogy" (which would certainly, then, make such a comparison) versus simply offering an example of where their logic could potentially lead. My example wasn't at all analogous to anything. It was a hypothetical situation that I was presenting so that they could see the type of absurdity that could result from a belief they claimed to hold.

In the end, I had to decide whether to continue trying to have a rational discussion with people who did not seem to understand how rational discourse worked or simply bow out of the conversation and allow them to have the last word. I opted for the latter, but with a good deal of regret because there was so much about their thinking that I felt was flawed and I always feel bad about letting people continue on with such bad thinking.

On the other hand, I have to ask myself whether or not my methods need to be re-evaluated. Perhaps I could be more discerning with such conversations and avoid getting into them to begin with. I do know that, at least at the beginning of the discussion, my manner was not exactly becoming. There was a good deal too much sarcasm and my manner began in a very polemic fashion. Eventually, I eliminated much of the polemical attitude and attempted to rely on questions. clarifications and offering ideas that seemed to fit their espoused beliefs.

I suppose that means that I need to polish my own approach more (Greg Koukl likes to say that if either party gets angry, he failed) and more quickly identify the level of ability (not to mention willingness) to discuss things in this manner so that I can avoid myself or others to become frustrated or angry. While I do think that we should not avoid such discussions, it does seem vitally important to comport ourselves appropriately in them. Yes, God is the only one who can change hearts and minds, but God also uses means, one of which is us.

What are your thoughts?

Grace, love and peace.

Traditional Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Recently, I have been engaged in a discussion on Facebook regarding traditional marriage. Someone had posted a link that referenced several Bible passages and Bible stories to attempt to make marriage in the Bible look horrible. I assume that this is in reaction to much of the controversy surrounding marriage in the political arena these days.

While I do not want to get involved at the moment with such political hot potatoes, I do want to address the type of rhetoric being used in these scenarios. This isn't the first time I have seen people attempt to attack the Bible by using such tactics as straw men, taking things out of context and mis-representing the text.

On such claim from this link was that the Bible says that marriage is between a man, his wife (or wives) and his concubine(s). People such as Abraham, Solomon and Jacob are referred to in order to back this up. This accusation is a type of equivocation fallacy. In other words, they are saying that because the Bible describes a behavior, that this somehow means that this behavior or practice is prescribed by the text.

In fact, the Bible is simply reporting a historical event that took place. The men described had a wife (or wives) and, in some cases, concubines. Just because they did so does not mean that the Bible or, by association, God condoned these practices. If you read the accounts of these people who took on multiple wives or mistresses in addition to wives, you will notice that things did not go well for them with respect to their relationships. Solomon, for example, was led astray and began allowing altars to be built to false gods and even began to worship these false gods.

Take a look at Abraham. He slept with Hagar and had a son with him because his wife, Sarah, could not have a child. How did that turn out? Well, it caused strife and turmoil until Abraham finally had to separate them by sending Hagar and Ishmael away just to keep the peace.

What about the whole thing with a widow being given to her deceased husband's brother? Well, genealogies were very important and if a woman was widowed before she could have children, this was done to allow the deceased husband to carry on his heritage. That is why it fell to the brother to fulfill this requirement...he was of the same blood. Not only this, but then the widow would be cared for because women in middle-eastern cultures at that time were not able to provide for themselves. (Not because they were incapable, but because the culture did not allow it.)

This brings up another fun one. Another arrow that gets fired at the Bible with regards to marriage is from Deuteronomy 22:28-29. Here, the accusation is stated, in cleverly rhetorical fashion, that a "virgin who is raped must marry her rapist." That's a very disingenuous way of putting it as it makes it sound as though the poor victim is to be punished by marrying her attacker. In fact, that is not what the Bible says.

If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.

First of all, it is not that the woman is commanded to marry her attacker, but the other way around. While that may seem to be splitting hairs, this is significant. As I mentioned above, women of that time, in that culture, relied upon a husband for provision and protection. A young, unmarried woman who was raped would not likely find a man to marry and thus would probably continue to live with her parents. People in those times were not as long lived as today, so after her parents passed away, her best way to provide for herself would either be to sell herself as a prostitute or take up begging at the temple and hope she could be given enough money to buy food and such.

This was not a very good prospect for someone who had just gone through such tragedy. If anything, it seems to me, that would be the crueler punishment... to allow such a destiny. Instead, the attacker was ordered to then take her in as his wife, provide for and protect her and, notice the last part....he was not allowed to divorce her....ever. Once put in the proper context, it suddenly seems like it is the attacker who is taking the punishment for his crime, not the victim. She gets provided for and protected and cannot be divorced. He, on the other hand, now has to marry a woman whom he probably had not intended to marry.

With all of this, it just is basically to show that opponents of biblical Christianity will do everything they can to undermine such faith. They will erect straw men, they will twist things around, they will take things out of context, they will use powerful rhetoric...all to try to show how terrible Christianity is. The fact is, I have not yet come across an opponent of Christianity who has accurately portrayed the Christian faith as I know it...And not just me, but any pastor, author, speaker, writer, blogger or other Christian that I am aware of, for the most part.

There are a handful of "Christians" who are not normative of the Church but who are viewed as such by those outside the Church in order to make the Church seem far worse than it is. We are not perfect. We have committed terrible atrocities throughout our history by people who have abused power. But such things are a very small and regrettable group who fall outside the boundaries of what would generally be considered "orthodox Christianity."

Have you heard of the types of accusations like I've described? Do you agree with them? Why or why not?

Grace, love and peace.

The Dangers of Biblical Inerrancy

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:30:00 +0000

One of the most popular reasons that I hear about why people lose their faith has to do with the "Problem of Evil" as it is commonly known. I've written about this issue already, so I will not get involved in that here. Another popular reason people loose their faith has to do with something known as "Biblical Inerrancy." This has to do with the idea that the Bible, being the Word of God, is without error.

The idea of inerrancy is a bit tricky as there are many understandings and interpretations of what that means. For example, some people would claim that anything the Bible states must be indicative of exactly what God wants. In other words, not only are there no errors in the Bible, but this concept would view every story, every verse, every scenario as be prescriptive rather than descriptive. In other words, if the Bible states that someone does some thing, then that must mean God willed (or commanded or desired) for them to do that thing. They believe that, since it is in the Bible, we should do the same thing.

It seems that this is a very unorthodox (to say the least) way of understanding scripture. After all, the Bible tells us many things that happened that seem to be obviously counter to what God would want. However, since these events are part of the history of the Church, the Bible reports them to us so that we might learn a lesson from them (often, the lesson being what not to do).

Another way of understanding inerrancy is a bit less rigid. That is that some believe that every single letter of the Bible is exactly perfect and correct just as it is written. This eliminates concepts of differing literary styles such as allegory, poetry, songs, history, parables, creeds, etc. There is difficulty with this view because if we take the Bible literally to such a degree, we will run into trouble when we reach passages where Jesus claims to be "the door" for example (John 10:7) or a vine (John 15:5).

Still a different understanding of inerrancy is the idea the everything the Bible says is true. Again, this can be taken too far. Finally, there is the idea that the Bible is true in everything that it teaches. There is some debate in this area because some people believe that every verse in scripture is written for the purpose of "teaching" something. This seems to be dependent upon what one means by "teaching."

Without getting further bogged down in defining terms (not that I generally mind doing that), this was mainly to lay the ground work. As I mentioned at the opening, people often lose their faith because of the idea of inerrancy. I have attempted to give a brief overview of the various ways this is understood and each has a different way of being "falsifiable." This is a technical term and it refers to the idea that any theory, to be valid, has to have some way or some set of conditions which, if shown to be the case, falsifies the theory. While it may sound somewhat counterintuitive, to prove a theory true, one must first show how it might be proven false.

One must be careful with this as what I am not saying is that it has to be false. For example, if I said that I was born on August 22nd, 1973, there is a way to prove this false. You could look up my birth certificate and see the date of birth. That does not mean that the claim of my birthday is true or false, rather that it can be shown to be either true or false. Got it?

So, with all this, what would happen if the scripture is shown to have errors? Does that mean Christianity is false? Many people would say that is the case. I, and many others, would disagree. It is important to understand that, as important as the Bible is for Christianity, our faith does not rise or fall on whether the Bible contains errors or not. Christianity rises and falls on the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ by his disciples.

Personally, I believe in inerrancy. Every time I've heard someone attempt to point out an "error" in the scripture, I have been able to reconcile the "error" once I take into consideration the social, historical, cultural, textual, linguistic contexts, the "error" seems to pretty much disappear. With all of that, if the Bible is shown to have errors, that does not show Christianity is false. It only shows that the Bible is not inerrant. To claim Christianity is false because you believe the Bible to contain error(s) is throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water.

Whatever you believe about biblical inerrancy, it does not essentially effect the truth value of Christianity. It might mean that we would have less confidence in some of the details about the early Church and teachings of Christ. But it wouldn't change the fact that Jesus Christ died, was buried and was raised from the dead.

Do you believe that the Bible has errors? Why or why not?

Grace, love and peace.

The Power of Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel J. Carrington) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Both Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger have cited “prayer experiments” as evidence against the existence of God. According to these experiments, they selected various people with similar medical conditions and separated them into groups for which some would be prayed for and some would not.

According to Stenger and Dawkins, the results of these experiments did not show any sort of favorable outcome for those who were prayed for. This, they claim, leads us to the “inevitable” conclusion that prayer is ineffective and therefore is evidence against God’s existence.

It is because of such conclusions that there are people in the world who recognize the necessity of having philosophers of science. Scientists themselves make such poor philosophers and end up making silly claims like this. The fact is, the conclusion simply does not follow from the experiment for a couple of reasons.

One popular objection to such “prayer experiments” is the idea that God is not a “show pony” that will just play along and jump through the hoops that we have set up for Him. While I tend to agree with this concept, I am not entirely certain that this argument is powerful enough to overcome the “evidence.”

Before we get to what I believe to be a stronger argument, I have to take a moment to bring up a couple of ideas that many will probably feel is quite obvious. Still, it seems important to get this into the forefront of our minds so that we can see the connection as we move forward.

Of all of the “Christians” in the United States (we’ll limit it to that since that is where many of the experiments took place), the vast majority of them would be what some have referred to as “Cultural Christians.” These are people who:

Claim to believe in Christ but do not go to church at all
Claim to believe in Christ but only rarely go to church
Claim to believe in Christ and go to church but show no life change

In all three cases, we are talking about people who would tell you that they are Christians, but apart from such a claim, there is no way to distinguish between their own life and the life of a non-believer. Their “faith” does not inform their behavior or their world view. It makes no impact on their daily life. For all intents and purposes, they are functionally atheists.

On the other hand, there are people in the church who genuinely believe in God, the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, etc. There lives are marked by such attributes as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. These are people who are sold out to the creator of the universe and spend their lives working to glorify God by loving Him and loving their neighbors.

Here is where we get back to the prayer experiments. My main contention here is that there does not seem to be valid controls on these experiments. How would the experimenters know, for example, if there were people praying for the group of people that were not supposed to be receiving prayer from their group? Do they think that these people’s families are simply not going to pray for a family member just because a few people lab coats asked them not to?

What about the group of people that they had praying for the other group? How many of them were “cultural Christians?” These people’s prayers, it seems to me, would not be heard by God. After all, Jesus even says that there are some who will say “Lord, Lord” to whom He will say “I never knew you.” It seems quite plausible, to me, that a group of people willing to participate in this type of experiment would likely fall into this category.

On the other hand, those who were “not” prayed for may very likely have been receiving prayers from family, friends, other church members, etc. These would more likely be prayers from faithful Christian believers whose prayers would reach the ears of the Lord and be heard. Perhaps not all, but enough to account for some of the experiments where the results were completely opposite from what might be expected (the “non-prayed-for” group showed better results).

Regardless of the sincerity of the faith of those praying, the main point here is the fact that there really is not a good way to identify which group of people received and which did not. Well, specifically, it cannot be discerned whether or not the “not prayed for” group was really not prayed for. That fact alone invalidates the “experiment.” Even if we do not take into consideration the sincerity of the faith of those praying…that is just icing on the cake, as it were.

What do you think of such “prayer experiments?” Do you think they are valid? Why or why not?

Grace, love and peace.