Atheism, its Annotated Bible, and Logical Incoherence

It is becoming increasingly common for atheists to refer us Christians to the Skeptics Annotated Bible (SAB). It presents many verses which we cannot understand completely – verses that seem to defy understanding. Here are the first three from the Book of Genesis:

• God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be "the evening and the morning" on the first day if there was no sun to mark them? 1:3-5

• God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters. 1:6-8

• Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11

Admittedly, I cannot provide an exhaustive understanding of these perplexities, and so I won’t even try. Instead, I think that it is more important to expose the faulty logic hiding behind the charges of the SAB. It goes something like this:

1. Many of the Bible’s verses are not fully amenable to our understanding.

2. Therefore, the Bible is mistaken and cannot be God’s words.

Admittedly, #1 is correct. The problem is with #2, which does not follow logically from #1. Simply because we cannot fully understand the Bible doesn’t mean that it isn’t God’s Word. In fact, if the Bible is God’s Word, we shouldn’t be surprised that some of it transcends our understanding. The Bible itself warns us that we only understand it in part. Why then should we reject it when we find that we can’t understand it completely – the very thing it claims!

To use an analogy, it would be pure folly for a first-grader to reject his math teacher because he fails to understand her lesson. To bring this principle closer to home, dismissing the Bible for SAB reasons would be like dismissing science because of its many perplexing findings and its failure to exhaustively define/comprehend even the basics – time, space, laws, mathematics, and matter.

Furthermore, many of the sub-atomic findings of science even seem to overthrow the very basics of science – cause and effect. Nevertheless, we do not reject science. Instead, we reject our limited understanding of science. We do not reject what is known by virtue of what is unknown! However, the SAB is not as gracious when it comes to its appraisal of the Bible.

Here is another reason why we should not dismiss the Bible, merely because it states some perplexing things. As with science, the Bible has already contributed so much to life and understanding that it would be foolishness to dismiss it. Besides, as is the case with science, it has been validated in many ways. Here are some of the ways:

1.      The Witness of the Spirit and Personal Experience

2.      Changed Lives and Societies

3.      External Confirmation

4.      Miracles

5.      Fulfilled Prophecies

6.      Internal Consistency

7.      The Other-Worldly Nature of Scripture

Having the Peace of God, Knowing He Reigns

The Apostle Paul has assured us that when we come to a correct understanding of God and His ways, we will have the riches of assured understanding (Col. 2:1-4). When we don’t get our theology right, we will reap confusion, and confusion will produce anxiety, instability and insecurity.

Our understanding of the workings of the Spirit provides a good example. While we believe that God’s children are led by the Spirit (Romans 8:9; Psalm 23:1-3) and can know His will (Rom. 12:2), we remain confused about this process. Consequently, we second guess ourselves, wondering whether we have correctly discerned the Spirit’s leading in our lives.

We correctly understand that we can discern His will in Scripture as we put it into practice:

·        Anyone who lives on milk [of the Scriptures alone], being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:13-14)

However, even if we are exercised in the meat of the Scriptures, we are still dazed by many decisions:

1.      Who should I marry?

2.      What job should I pursue?

3.      How much money should I give?

4.      How much should spend on myself?

These decisions can be maddening, and even once we make them, we continue to torment ourselves about whether we’ve made the right decision.

In our distress, we might even resort to trying to interpret our dreams, experiences, or even the facial expressions of others to determine God’s will.

However, much of our anxiety is the result of not bringing the character of God into our equation. God reigns over our lives and our smallest, most petty decisions. Jesus explained:

·        Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:28-30)

It is not simply that God knows the number of hairs on our heads; He’s actually determined them! He’s in control of our lives – our words, works, and decisions:

·        For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephes. 2:10)

Consequently, Paul confessed that he couldn’t even take credit for his hard work:

·        But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Cor. 15:10)

Our Lord gets all the credit, because all good things come from Him (James 1:17), even our efforts and decisions. Therefore, “I am what I am” because of God. This means that He is capable of guiding me even when I fail to discern His guiding hand:

·        Proverbs 20:24 A man's steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?

·        Proverbs 21:1 The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.

The Bible is overflowing with accounts of God directing unsuspecting kings to do exactly what He had wanted and when He had wanted. If He can do this with rebellious kings, He can certainly do this with His anxious children!

God is sovereign, and it’s essential to know this. When we fail to understand that He has a glorious plan for our lives (Psalm 139:16), we obsess on ourselves and our decisions. However, when we know that He is in control and that He loves us, we can settle into His protective arms, even as we suffer, even when we know we’ve made a bad decision.

I’ve made some foolish decisions and have been humbled as a result, but I’m now assured that He works even these together for my ultimate good (Rom. 8:28). What a blessing it is to know Him!

Has God Changed His Mind regarding Homosexuality?

Does God do new things that violate His Word? Emergent Church guru, Tony Jones, claims that He does! Here, he lashes out against a critic of his pro-gay agenda:

• As I’ve warned my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ before, Denny had better beware of committing the unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. If God’s Spirit is doing a new thing [by now promoting homosexuality], but they claim it’s the devil, well, let’s just say that the stakes are high.

Here’s my response to Jones:

Tony,

Despite your warning that God might be doing a new thing (in regards to homosexuality) and therefore I might be resisting the Holy Spirit, blaspheming against Him, I’m just not too worried. This is because Scripture assures me that I can trust in the Lord and the Word He has given us:

• Isaiah 8:20 To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.

• 1 Cor. 4:6 Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written."

• John 15:7-10 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you…If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.

• 2 Cor. 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we TAKE CAPTIVE EVERY THOUGHT TO MAKE IT OBEDIENT TO CHRIST.

• 1 Tim. 6:3-5 If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

• Deut. 13:1-4 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.

Consequently, I do not fear that God might now be opposing His Word. In fact, His Word stands forever (Isaiah 40:8).

Genocide and the Conspiracy of Silence

Some atheists are not blinded by their presuppositions. One atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, has made some balanced assessments that few Westerners can or are willing to make:

·        We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia”—a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.

But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

And there is a “conspiracy of silence,” despite the denials of the many PC voices, which hypocritically sound out about their own moral crusades, while they deny the dead bodies piling up around them.

Proving God: The Transcendental Argument

Atheist’s always challenge me, “Where’s your proof that there is a God. I don’t want to hear about your experience. I want concrete evidence.”

There are a number of proofs for the existence of God. The Transcendental Argument is one of the less well-known, but it can be powerfully used. Here’s how it goes:

1. Logic and reason exist.

2. Logic and reason can’t exist without God.

Conclusion: God must exist!

Premise #1 doesn’t require any proof. It is self -evident. We all agree that reason and logic exist. In order to deny them, we must use reason and logic, the very things we are denying!

Premise #2 involves only two possible choices: 1) logic and reason are either the result of natural, unintelligent force(s) or 2) an intelligent, transcendent Being. If we can rule out the first possibility, we are left with God. Here are some considerations that would tend to rule out the first option:

1. There is no evidence that natural, unintelligent forces exist. Although we all agree that objects are subject to laws and respond in formulaic and predictable ways, there is no evidence whatsoever that these laws are natural, unintelligent and independent of one another. It is more likely that they find their origin and unity in the single Mind of God.

2. Reason and logic are unchanging. In an ever expanding universe of molecules-in-motion, naturalism can’t account for unchanging laws or principles.

3. Reason and logic are uniform, wherever we look and in whatever historical period. However, for a force or law to be natural, it must have a location from which it exerts its influence. (At least, that’s our experience with the “natural.”) The sun attracts the earth because it is in proximity to the earth. We find that this gravitational influence diminishes as the distance increases. Likewise, I’ve found that I can’t pick up the WQXR radio signals, which beam from a station in NYC, when I’m in Pennsylvania. However, the laws of physics (and reason and logic) seem to operate uniformly and universally, transcending the material considerations of location, matter and energy. Naturalism can’t seem to make such a leap.

4. Reason and logic require an adequate cause. There are so many other things that naturalism can’t adequately explain (life, DNA, fine-tuning of the universe, freewill, consciousness, moral absolutes, the unchanging physical laws). Therefore, there is no reason to believe that naturalism is adequate to account for reason and logic.

5. Our experience with causal agents informs us that the cause is always greater than the effect. If the effect was greater than the cause, it would suggest that some part of the effect is uncaused - a scientific impossibility!

If we can't account for reason and logic naturally, then we are only left with a super-natural explanation! God must exist!

Don’t be surprised if this doesn’t impress your atheist friend. He is just as committed to his beliefs as we are to ours. However, you can use this reasoning effectively when the atheist claims that logic or reason dismisses the notion of God. Here’s how:

• ATHEIST: “You have no concrete reasons to believe that there is a god!”

• CHRISTIAN: “Why do you trust in reason and logic? These unchanging laws cannot be explained from your naturalistic perspective. Unchanging laws must have an unchanging cause. However, your view of the world cannot account for anything unchanging, just molecules-in-motion. In other words, you are using that which can only come from God to disprove God.

The Deadly Implications of Atheism

Does atheism lead to genocide? It seems to! Just look at Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot and the 100,000,000 they exterminated to accomplish their ideal progressive society. However, atheists claim that there is no association between atheism and the horrors committed by atheists:

• Whenever an atheist points out that a lot of people have died in the name of religion, a theist’s first response is always that people like Mao Zedong and Pol Pot were atheists. Therefore, atheism is responsible for a shit load of deaths too. This would be a good point, if not for the fact that atheism simply doesn’t have enough to it in order to condone or encourage genocide.

• Atheism is defined as a lack of belief in any deity or higher power. That’s it. There is nothing in that sentence that calls for atheists to murder anyone…Atheism simply doesn’t have enough in it to be a world view or something that can support a psychopath’s rage. http://godswillchurch.com/2013/08/atheism-actually-isnt-responsible-for-mass-murder/#sthash.XNRgY2Mj.dpuf

Truly, there isn’t anything in the etymology of the word “atheism” that translates into killings millions. However, when someone rejects the concept of God, it seems to create a worldview avalanche, a veritable mental tsunami. When the idea of God is rejected:

Naturalism takes the place of super-naturalism. Instead of God creating, a new creation myth is required – Everything came into existence naturally (even before the existence of natural law – go figure!) uncaused, and out of nothing.

Secular Humanism takes the place of theism. Instead of God defining meaning and morality, each human being becomes his own court-of-last-resort. Hence, each one of us becomes the creator of our own destiny – the captain of our own ship - and sole determinator of meaning and morality.

Moral relativism takes the place of immutable, universal moral law. This means that moral “truth” is relative to the way we might feel on a particular day. It also can be relative to whatever an authoritarian regime might deem as “good” or what the majority decide. If the regime or the majority decide to eliminate the capitalist as vermin, there is no reasoning left that can deter this action as “evil.” After all, evil no longer exists, but merely what is expedient. Therefore, it might be deemed expedient to destroy the “enemies of the state” and redistribute their money.

Lenin had been asked, “What constitutes morality?” He simply answered, “Whatever promotes the revolution is good; whatever interferes with it is evil.” This kind of pragmatic thinking can justify anything, and it did! Besides, there is no longer any objective moral rationale that can challenge this thinking!

Materialism replaces the Transcendent. Although atheists seek to elevate humanity, they have degraded him, esteeming him as no more than an animal, albeit a sophisticated animal. We are no longer esteemed as having been created in the image of God, full of glory and worthy of all protection and dignity.

Instead, we are regarded as purposeless bio-chemical machines, free perhaps, but free for no transcendent purpose. However, we are not even free. As bio-chemical machines, materialism deprives us of our freewill and freedom of thought. After all, such things are just the product of a serious of chemical reactions!

If we are simply animals living in an amoral, atheistic world, then there is no reasoning or rationale that can prevent us from being treated as animals to be used, manipulated and even destroyed for the “good” of the powerful. If we are machines, then the State is justified in getting whatever use it can out of us before it deposits us on the junk heap along with other useless machines.

Our Responsibility in View of the Genocide against our Brethren

 

Recently, I’ve turned on my fellow evangelicals for their apparent lack of concern about the growing genocide of Christians in Muslim countries. Here’s one exchange:

ME: Aren’t you concerned about the murder of Christians throughout the Muslim and Communist world, or do you believe in the same politically correct silence as our mainstream media?

EVANGELICALS FOR SOCIAL ACTION: We mourn the loss of life everywhere, no matter a person’s creed or political views. Every human is a child of God. God is the creator of all lives and each one is precious.

ME: But do you speak up on behalf of the many instances of genocide against Christians – crimes that the mainstream media refuse to acknowledge or acknowledge only in passing? Who can take your love seriously, when it is not reflected at home, among your fellow evangelicals?

While it is true that “Every human is a child of God…God is the creator of all lives and each one is precious,” don’t we have a special obligation to cry out about the genocide of our brethren? I think that we do:

For one thing, this special obligation is commanded:

• Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Gal. 6:10)

We need to get our priorities straight. God’s world isn’t a communist world. Nor is the world of leftist Christians where “Every human is [equally] a child of God,” and therefore we have the same exact responsibility towards all humans.

Instead, we have a special responsibility for our own wives, children and parents. If our love doesn’t begin here, then our love for the rest of the world is hollow and seen as  hypocritical. It is a mockery of our faith if we love someone else’s children, wife and parents at the neglect of our own! Instead, it is our primary familial responsibilities that enables us to empathize with the familial responsibilities of others.

Our Lord wants all to be saved, by observing the special love we have for the brethren, for one thing:

• By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35)

Consequently, if we truly want to love the world, we will start by loving the brethren. By this the world will get a glimpse of the only source of transformational love. Similarly, the best way to love our children is by first loving their father or mother! Love filters down in this manner!

Therefore, Jesus prayed that His people would be one in love:

• "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me...I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23)

Love is not necessarily about making communities more economically viable. In the long run, this can prove counter-productive. It can disrupt communities and make us proud and arrogant. Therefore, love is primarily about introducing people to Jesus, the Savior, allowing His love to percolate throughout our lives.

Besides preaching the Gospel (Mat. 28:18-20), the best way to accomplish this is through love – love of the brethren. It is in this way that “world know that you sent me and have loved them.” Therefore, our good deeds must always have this in view!

When we fail to extend ourselves to our brethren around the world, we fail to fulfill this command, and the world fails to see our oneness. When we fail to cry out for our brethren being martyred around the world, we simply communicate, “I am not concerned,” and we deny the essential unity that Christ wants us to display. We also deny the truth of the Gospel regarding the unity of believers, leaving our persecuted brethren to wonder, “Where are my brothers?”

I can do very little, but I want the persecuted to know that there are those on the other side of the Atlantic who are praying and crying out on their behalf.

We can also let our outrage be known to our congressmen. If we don’t, they will merely conclude that the genocide against Christians doesn’t matter to us. Here is some contact information:

• http://www.house.gov/representatives/
• http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

My dialogue with this evangelical group continued:

EVANGELICALS FOR SOCIAL ACTION: I'd be happy for you to send me information…

ME: Thanks for asking! Here's one article that provides an overview:

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3875/christian-suffering-under-jihadi-extremism

Please let me know if you would like to see more.