Some Seriour Thoughts by Unbelievers on The God Question

Wonde4rful things pop up on You Tube fairly frquently despite its being a leftist bastion of cancel culture and wokeness and all that craziness.  I can't navigate anywhere else so I'm stuck here but grateful for how much really good stuff comes up nevertheless.

Theatest I just litened to is a \n episode of Uncommon Knowledge with guests A\Douglas Murray, Tom Holland and Steve oh drat I keep forgetting his name.  But all three of them are deep thinkers and whatever they say is rivieting.  For me anyway.  

This one is The God Question and each of these men has written a book relating to this subject.  All have conlcluded to one degree or another that Christianity is the philosophical cultural foundation of wester civilization, even having coming from points of view that would put them at odds with such a conclusion.   

Theyreno belivers and talk about Chrisitanity ass a body of concepts.  They addresss the question of how theis perspective relates to the question of belief.  I keep wanting to argue with them about this or that, particularly with Tom Holland, because they miss the whole point of belief.  They do know this though and that's important.  

To summarize, they see how the moral framework of estern culture is thoroughly Christain even though belief in the resurrection is not necessarily part of that.  

It's a great discussion even if I think they go offf the rails here and there.  

Toad the end someon quoted someone, I don't believe in God but I miss HIm.  Apparently they can relate tot aht feeling.  I remember something like that feeling myself from the years before I became a believer.  I was a pretty committed atheist but I did from time to time have to admit that I felt a pang of loss from the time I gave up my pretty shallow childhood believe in God about the age of Ffifteen.  A pang of loss but I became an atheist.  For the next thirty or so years.    I well remember the first Christmas I experienced in church hafter becomeing a believer, sitting there hearing the old carols sung and actually believing them and knowing their meaning for the first time in my life, tears streaming down my face.  

Why can't they believe in the resurrection?  It seems an odd sort of stubbornness to me.   The disciples themselves didn't believe in it either at first but their coming to believe it by witnessing Him alive ought to carry some weight with readers of the account.  They saw Him alive.  He even appeared to do called doubtingg Thomas.  Then he believed too.  It's all there.  They are honest people.  

These are highly intelligent men and men of ddeep feelings too.  Very touching.

\Does God Exist? A Conversation with Tom Holland, Stephen Meyer, and Douglas Murray

Just want to add a couple remarks I remember from the discussion.  Both might have come from Douglas Murray but I'm not sure.   All of them agreed with the sense of strangeness of Christianity.  I thought that was an interesting observation.  Yes there is a strangeness to it and certainly to unbelievers committed to the contemporary secular mindset.    The other remark I remember was the poignant statement that everyone has had an experience like looking out a window at an entirely different world and feeling That is my true home.   Yes.  

Dawkins on Religion Again

 

IBest of Richard Dawkins against Religion (youtube.com)

Going to try to answe r Dawkins again without the intemperate rant.  I think that URL above goes to the same video , at least I haope so because capturing URLs is not easy for me.

As usual it all starts out with his claim that faith is belief in something without evidence, and as usual my answer is that it simply isn't so.  I really don't think anyone believes anything without evidene.  It may be bad evidence but you always have some kind of evidence for whatever you accept as true.   Anyway, faith as he is thinking of it comes from Christianity and is of course the strongest concept we use in discussing what we believe.  I sue the term myself as my own psedonum here.  But my believe in the God of the bible and in the teachings of the Bible, and in my dsalvation through the death of Christ on the cross, which I believe in by faith, is all baed on the evidence given by the witnesses in the Bible and the witnesess of the Bible itself as a collection of testimonies attributed to the inspiration of God Himself.  

Why Dawkins doesn't think of witness evidence as evidence I don't know.  I believe in tghe resurrection of Christ becaues it is reported in the Bible by people who claim to be wyweyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, and who report on other witnesses of His life and of His appearing after His death.  All this is evidence whther you think it is good enough evidencde for you or not.   If your cousin told you he syw a bobcat in the woods and narrowly escaped and you never saw a bogcat would you not believe him anyway?   Wouldn't it be a basis for taking it as reality?  

We knw a lotof thigs this way.  but we certainly have to know the revelations of the Bible this way because we have no other way of knowing it.  It's all intin the past and we can never see it ourselves.  Some of ti is outside our normal experience, supernatural , and that askes a lot of us to believe it, but we believe it because we count the witnesses to be trustworthy.   If you don't you don't, I can't help that, but I do and for me the ressurection is very real and my salvation based on it trustworthy.

And I don't have faith in the boiling temperature of water for pete's sake.  I can measure that.  Or any other question that can be dealt with by the method of observation and experience, the scientific method.  Good grief.  

Then we have his remarks on biblical morality as he objects to stoning people for adultery and death for breaking the sabbath without regard to the biblical context which of course escapes him completes.  Laws for the ancient Israelites had a specif purpose of keeping themj separate from the peoples around them and protecting the integrity of the population of God's chosen people.  Christians wer not subject to those laws, they were for the Israelites only.  We ave are subject to eh Ten Commandments because those are universal laws but we are not subject to those given to the Israelites for the purpose of identifying them with the true God.   Since the people wer e prone to wander off into the mindset of the surrounding nations they sometimes had to be brought back harshly.  Bug t askdide from theat adultery threatened the cohesiveness of the group and had to be punished severely.  The Sabbath had farreaching implications concerning the nature of God and His promise of the Messiah to come, breaking the law of respecting the prmomise was a very serious thing, and it isn't that it could be violated inoocently, the death sentence for breaking it was well known so there was no expecuse.    There is also  reelation of the mind of God on these thigns, what He considers to be of great importance, which we too are to take seriously even if we are not under the lolaws as the Israelites were.

I'm not very happy with that paragraph but oh well, on we go.

He goes on to say how he liekes our modern morality, for instance that we are rid of slavery, women are treated as equals with men, we favor gentleness in general and being kind oto animals and so on.   He has zerio idea that this all comes from Christianity.  He thinks it is a secular achievement.   Slavery used to be universal throughout the world, may cultures depended on it economically and there was no opposition to it.  To oppose it under those circumstances would have accomplished nothing but the rebellion of the pepole or at least the leaders.  SlAvery couldn't have been effectively opposed until modern times and when it finally was it came from Christianity.  The west was finally freed sfrom slavery but it still remains entrenched in the rest of the world.  It is a Christian achievmenet and Dawkins is completely wrong about history.    Same sith equality for women.  Jesus liberalized relations with women and that became the basis for its eventual accewptance in modern times.  Again only in the west.  Same with kindness to animals and kindness in generl.  All from Christ.  

He aparently thinks that secular morality and rational thought somehow exist apart from the Christainity that pervades the west but aththat is his big mistake.  It all derives from Christaintiyh.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali understands this which she touches on beriefly in the previous post.

Then he goes into his hatred of the doctrine of original sin which he considers to be highly immoral and demeaning.    Funny when I first understood it I wa thrilled by it because to my mind it explains all kinds of things in our lives that otherwise don't get exlainsed,  all the suffering and hatred and violence and war and etc etc.   but I take the Bible as revealing universal truths, dawkins takes it as being the wordk of fallible humanity so he thinks we can just do away with it and make up our own morality.    

I'm not at all happy with this post but  it's the best I can do right now.  I think I'll end it by saying that I think Richarc d Dawkins needs to engage in some empirical science to get a better nderstanding of what is really going on with religion.  If for instance he learned something about how Chrsitain children perform in science I'm sure he'd be forced to admit that there is no difference in how they perform than unbelieving children, that includeds strictly homeschooled Christain chidlren.  They are taught the scientific method like weveryone else.

the only difference is that evolution is not science in that scense, it is hosistorical science that can't have the absolute certainty we get from the hard sciences.   they don't even have witness evidence for their supposed facts concerning the change from ne species to another, ti's all speculative, all conjecture and thee evidence as I've tbeen trying to show in many recent posts is just not there at all.  

but now I'm going to end this very unsatisfactory post.  

Later .  I have to add here that I just went back and listened to some of the Ayaan Hisrsi Ali interview and want to emphasize that I think it's an extremely good discussion about how the west and all our institutions and philosophies are shot through with Christain principles.  They refer to a gook by Tom Hallond I'm not familiar with but apparently he developes this theem and I'd like to be able to read it.  But the discussion alone is very good and I want to promote it for anyone who is interested.

GoGoing Down Under the Avalanche of Lies, or Will God Have Mercy on Us

 The entire Harris side of the election is built on lies, absolutely every word of it.  It's staggering.  How do they live with themselves.  And lies could win the elecrtion and plunge the nation into a dark ages most naive Americans have no way of imagining.

I don't think most Democrats or liberals could really be in favor of what their party actually stands for but if all they are hearing is lies they may well be deceived into voting for them anyway, and that is the big problem we have now.  How to get the truth to the liberals.  There seems to be no way to do that.  They are in the habit of trusting the usual sources and won't even think of checking out sources that might oppose them.  I ran into this recently with two liberals who were trying to convince me that Google wouldn't have intentionally interfered with my blog because I'm a conservative as i told them, no they have must simpler explanations, inocent explanations for why I'm having the problems I'm having.  The kind of problems one has in the old ckind of America swhere as a general rule we could trust both sides to be basically honest.  That is not the case any more and they have no idea that it isn't.  I certainly can't persuade them otherwise, they have a mountain of information they trust on their side.  That it is misinformation isn't cgoing to occur to them without many encounters with evidence and that isn't going to happen because they don't expose themselves to it.   They are convinced the misinformation is on the other side so why should they spend any time investigating it?

So it's up to God.  Well it isn anyway.  Will He have mercyh on us or not?  Does He want America to go down now?  Or will He give us another chance?

Have mercy on us, Lord.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: In Her Own Words || Conversation with Glen Scrivener\\

This is after her conversion to Christianity and she is ver clear that the benefits of western civilication are all due to Christian influence.

Bret Weinstein and Brandon Strat

\\\\Leave No ALeave No American Behind: Brandon Straka on DarkHorse (youtube.com)maricon Behind: Brandon Straka on DarkHorse (youtube.com)

Leave No American Behind: Brandon Straka on DarkHorse (youtube.com)

Trying to et the right URL I got the three above and I'll have to try to sort them out carefully sometime.  At least one of them goes to the middle of the video, I don't know if any go to the starting point of the video.  

Anyway.  Brandon Strat is the founder of the Walkaway movement which consists of people who feel disenfranchised by the Democratic Paty and left it, although they don't all nevcessarily to to the same place.  Strat himself has pretty much joined Trump but seems to have some rservations about that too.

Bret Weistein has done his own alking away but I find him less easy to understand or agree with than Strat.  He's still too much of a liberal for me, his reasoning just comes from some other place than minde andit's hard to get into his.  

He still doesn't get MAGA meaning the last A because his focus is all on how America has failed with racial issues.  Strat says he doesn't see it that way but as getting back to a time when Ameria was prospecerous and enjoyhing our liberties or something like that.  I'd agree with that but when I think of being great again I thik mostly of the Greatest Generation, the fact that Amerida has always been a generous good force in the world, helping our enemies rebuild after war being part of that.  That's the kind of greateness I'd like ot see us get back to , but also the propsperity and especially the times when we felt safe and trusting of our neighbors and left our doors unlocked.  That America is long gone since the Left took over.

And Weistein doesn't swant Strat to identify the Left as the prolblem but I agree with Strata and hoepe he doesn't change his mind about that.  I get bBret's problem that he still identifies with that word but to my mind the Left just now has come to stand for all the bad stuff.  If he wants to hold onto Liberal I can handle that one, but no, Left belongs to the stuff i want to get rid of.  

It's always good to have da discussion about these things anyway and maybe Bret's views will start making more sense to me if I hear more of them.

Just a Little Rant Against dawkins and the other antireligionists, and against the Left

I am cancelling this post because I was way too intemperate.  And 

And I spologize to Mr. dawkins for my insulting remarks.

IBest of Richard Dawkins against Religion (youtube.com)

Authenticity and Believability

 The idea that we must believe something in order to be saved, which is taught in the Bible, doesn't sit well at all with the atheists out there.   There is something suspicious about the idea of belief or fatih to them.  Dawkins is always saying that faith simply means belieivng something for which there is no evidence.  I keep answering that no, the evidence is there and it is witness evicdence, which iis the only kiind of evidence you can have for something that occurered only onece which you weremn't there to see for yourself.  Jesus Himself is to be known only by faith because it is impossible for anyone to meet Hims today.  All the events and peroplld ofthe Bible are knowlable only by faith.  

And they are knowlable.  That word is appropriate enough.  Wek know many things by witnesse evidence alone that we can't witness ourselves.  Most of our knowledge ois of this kind.   But when it comes to the supernatural claims of the bible in particular, that's where they get all fidgety and annoyed and try to dismiss it all as fiction because there is no way for any of us to witness it now.  

But th whole thing from Genesis to Revelation is kowlable only by faith.  All the people are dead and all the events are in the past.  All we hae is the words of the people in the bible that any of it happened, or the bible itself presenting them as real.  So of course they have to bring the Bible into doubt and disrepute if they simply cannot entertain the idea of a miracle for half a second.  

That way of course they stand no chance of ever believing in Miracles unless God grants them one of their very onewn and tchances are they won't believe that weither beause they can always interpret it out of existence as a miracle, or ir not always then certainly most of the time, by doubting their own perceptions, suppossing it to have been a neuropsycholgoial experience rather than real and that sort of thing.

Futile it  for John to write his gospel with the aim of giving evidence "that you may believe" since they will doubt the very existence of John among other things.  Who is this John anyway?  

There really isn't any point in trying to discuss these thins with someone who discounts any or all of it as possibly fictional because there really isn't any way to prove that it's not.  It's a matter of judgment.  You either have an ear for the truth or you don't.  Fallen  humanity is born into this world, acording to Christian understanding, lacking the faculty of spiritual discernment, it having been lost at the Fall when our fistrst parrents disoveyed God.  We are all born dead in that way, unable to know God.  We may or may not logically decide that a God must exist but there is nothing in our nature to require it of us.  to actually discern God requires the regeneration of the faculty of the spirit in our natures, requires, in orther words, being born again.    Without that we are confined to what we can know through our senses and that keeps us tethered to the physicla universite.  this is why science deals only with the material world and why it is so common for people to seek physicalistic interpretations for spiritual things.  Such as to say that it must be neuropsychological.  everything is physical to the fallen mind.  It all originates in phsycial reality.  that is the basis of evolutionary theory too of course.  It all started with something physical happening in the primordial ooze, some coming together of atoms and molecules, an evlution itself is of coruse all a matter of physical beings making more physical beings, and thn in the end when they have to try to account for consciousness all they have is the physical and that's when we get all the fanciful notions about how it could arise from the physical.    In sohort, again, it's all because the human rce is fallen.  Fallenness is being relegated to the physical realm.

"The They are but flesh"  God says I think in Genesis five or six, therefore He will not always strive with us.  After the Fall we becmae "but flesh" unable to relate teo Him because He is Spirit.    I think it was Watchman Nee who pointed out in something I read recently, or maybe it was Andrew Murray, that we are the only creature with the tripartite nature of body, soul and spirit.  the animals have a body and a soul but not the spirit withich communicates with god.  the angels and demons are pure spirit.  But we are this unusual combination of matter and spirit.  Or we were originally since at the Fall we lost the spirit, or it fell into a corrupted state, not sure hjow to think about that.  It's "dead" however, acording to sciprture, and needs to be "quickened" by the new birth for us to be saved.  Being saved is first o all being regenerated in our psirits so that we can apprehend god.  We have to grow into it after being merely born into it again and that thakes time but it is in fact renewed in us and is the foundation of our salvation.  We receive the Holy Spirit through this rebirth.

that is mre or less a side trip here though probably necessary.  I mostly wanted to get into the futility of trying to confince a fallen person about the things of the spirit, to confince him or her about the truth of the Bible for istnace or the need for salvation.  I know that God must do that work and that is because we can't, mere persuasion isn't going to accomplish anything you must be born again.  yet they must hear it in order to be in a position to be born again.  there's that too.

Most of the debates on these subjects I hear lately are frustrating because they are usually trying to compromise something to make the truth more accessibly to the fallen mind.   TIt doesn' work but it continues anyway.  Far better in my opinion just to state the flat facts as the bible presents them no matter how unpalatable to the fallen ear and leave it to God to sort it out.  

There are parts of the discussion that do seem to be more or less amenable to simple locial arguent such as that it seems to me that the Biblcial presentation doesn't read like fiction to me at all or to other believers.  Still the fallen mind will turn it into fiction even though it has none of the marks of fiction just beuase the content doesn't fit into their worldview.  So even that little bit of argument doesn't go anywheresjere either.

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I keep frgetting to add my new email address that is managed by my daughter:  

faithswindow@mail.com