More Dawkins: The Improbability of the Existence of God

 Dawkins keeps coming up on my You Tube page, which makes sense of course since it keeps finding more of the same of whatever it is you spend time on, and it is tempting to listen to some of it and when I do I usually get provijed into saying something about it.  So an interview he had with one Alister McGraw came up and they are discussing hte probability of the existence of God and what faith is and that'sa as far as I've gonve to this point.

I long ago got tired of arguments for the existence of God based on mere reasoning because none of it proves anything in either direction.  The onlyu argument tht convinces me is the one from scripture, The Bible of course not any other scripture.  Christian theology it seems to me answers all the relevant questions and nothing else does.  I don't care if God seems provable or improbable to the antheists I think you have to have a proposition about the existence of God directly experiencesd by people which is what is found in the Bible.  Personal testimomnies on top of that may help but personal testimonies without that are of no use iether.    If or course you've found the Bible so odious you couldn't believe it for that reason alone, which is apparently Dawkins' position, then there is no place to go from there.  But his rejection of it on those tgrounds is misguided as he just has no feeling for the context of the actions he is vilifying, as I discuss in a post a few days ago.

It is only the Bible that gives us a n explanation for our common experience of a sort of blankness when we think of God, hwe have no experience,k ono eability to recognize a God, it's not in us you wcould say.  That is true for the entire human race as we find ourselves in this world.  And it's only the bible that gives us the explanation of the Fall or Original Sin as havigng deprived us for the ability to sense the presence of God.  Dawkins mocks tht idea too of course, but as with the rest of his mockerings it's just hthat he has no rael understanding of the meaning of "total depravity" as it is put in the arguments about Calvin's theology.  Tottal depravity does not rmean we are wholly evil as so many  seem to think, it means we are cut off from the highest good at the very least and cannot make a right judgment or right decision about God and His moral Law because of our deficiency or depravity.    

Of course he have some sort of moral sense.  We have a conscience.  We are all made in the image of God, Christians don't deny that.  There is a goodness in us considering the depravity and so on.   Howeverk, if the claim is that we don't need God to make right judgments accurtely all the time that is wrong.  Huamnity without God thinks abortion is just fine for instance, or pornography, or divorce, and has no problem with covetousness which is one of the vforbidden ten of the ten commandments.  Most would accept murder and lying and stealing as sins or moral failures or whateve they want to scall them, maybe not so much adultery and as I said not covetousness, and certainly nothe five commancments of the first table, loving God above all others, having no other gods, not taking His name in vain, honoring the Sabbath and always honoring parents.  All that is problematic to one degree or another to humanity without God.  So while we have some moral sense it's not the same as the one we'd have through the Biblical God.But then they just say they are right and the Bible is wrong and so what.

When I first understood the idea of Original Sin during the years when I was reading my way to God as it were, I was thrilled because it seemed to me to answer a million questions I hadn't even formulated clearly.  Why there is evil in the world at all for instance, why there is war, why there is so much hatred and so on.  Why there is murder, how there could be a Ted Bundy or a Stalin and so on.  Finally getting a sense of iroriginal sin added to the faith in God that was started to grow although I didn't yet grasp much about the role Christ played, what the cross had to do with any of it and so on.  I wasn't reading the bible, thoughj I was getting quotes from it in many of the books I was reading.  

I don't think you can conclude much of anything about ehe existence of God without the Bigle, and apparently that doesn't do it for a Dawkins either though for me it makes all the difference.

Fatih is the substance of things hoped for, tevidence of things unseen.  Well, yes, God is Spirit, we can't see Him.  If we are born again we have a sense of HIs presence at times but He's not physical and we can know Him only through faith.  Christ once walked the earth and was a real physical presence for those who knew HIm but we have to know Him by faith now.  And we know all the tenets of the religion by faith, that we are saived by belief in His death of r us on the cross and so on.    That's what faith is.  I tdon't think other realigions have faith in the true sense of the term.  People seem to think it merely means you believe there is a God.  Pretty minimal idea though.  Faith in the biblical sense tells us a lot about God and allows us to grow in knowledge of Him.  That can't happen in a religion that doesn't even describe God as the Bible does.  The bible shows us God in many diffedrent contexts so we accumulate a sense of Him far beyond the notionj  of some vauge entityu.

BSaving America Daydreams. Again. In the Teeth of Despair

 It' s been a while since I did a post on the subject of saving America.  I'd already lost much hope back then and it's even more so now.  Althought trump looks like he's in a good position to win the election I'm afraid the democrats could still manage to manipulate it in their own favor and Trump would lose, and that really might be finally THE end of America.  

I always come back to the recognition that half the country is believing the lises of the Democrats or leftists.  they never hear the truth and don't have any interest in seeking it out because they think they have the truth in their propagandists.  The rpblem keeps seeming to be this blindness of half the country.  Surely a lot of them would change their minds if they knew the truth.  I suppose not all of them, but a lot of them.  But getting the truth to them seems insurmountable problem.  All the normal channels are effectively blocked.  Even with millions or billions of dollars you couldn't get the message through on those normal routes.  

I tend to daydream about doing it the old fashioned way, with flyers, stuck under windshield wipers, thrown onto porches, nailed to telephohne poles and so on.  Enormously difficult but in a different way.  It wuld also take billions but on top of that a lot of human workers.    Still I keep coming back to it.

mark Levin gave a list of questions he'd like to ask Kamal a Harris on his show this eveing, quetsions about economics for instance since she keeps lying about whty there is inflation and who creted it and seems not to understand how inflantion is created.  The left keeps pushingpolicies tht can only bankrupt the country but they either don't know it or they are doing it on purpose and p[robably it's both.  but the average Democrat surely just don'oestn' know any of it and needs to be educated.  those wuld be the popele a blitz of flyers would aim at.

Economics, the border --  wow, there is an ad on my local radio stateion, supp[oedly a conservative station, for a guy fruning for Congress who sounds like a Republica mnn compalaining about the border situation and how criminals have come into the country, but he blames it on the Republican incumbent rather than the biden administration.  The guy calls himself an independnent but clearly he's a leftist.    I wonder how mmany people his tack will influence.

Just list the econionmic issues and answer them briefly in this flyier.  causes of inflation, facts about inflation under Biden and under Trump, how etaxing the rich actually venefits the poor and middle class rather than being a favor to rich cronies as the left likes to say it is  did I say tazing the rich?  I can't remember .  I meant of course cutting taxes on the rich.    Cutting taxes on the rich benefits the whole country, produces more jobs, expands businesses wihich further produce more jobs, can even raise wages, and is known to bring in more tax revenuie thatn when taxes are raised.   I'm sure the liberals have no clue about any of that.    Also the minimum rwage is a disaster for the economicy and they love that one.  As Milton Friedman said it is the worst possible policiy for young blacks just enetering the work force because nobody will hire them for menial jobs at such high wages.    Why\\\\  Surely what we need to bget across is the simplye fact that a free market, free enterprise, works out best for everybody in the end, but they hate capitalism.  that's another big one for the flyer.    Rento controls, price controls, more favorites of the leftg, disasters for the economy.  They don't get it.  Or they are determined to destroy the country.  I hope they just don't get it.  Bombard them with educational flyers.    

Unfortunately a flyer would't be large enough to contain all the information I'd like it to contain.  Id like to ahve a section taking on everyly lie told agobbout Trump and snswering it.  I keep hearing all that idiotic stuff still..  Hear it on The view for instance.  

Hundreds of millions of flyers would have to go out in the next few weeks unfortunately.  too bad.

Fundamentalism According to Silly Atheists

 Oh good grief, there's no end to it.  I guess I have to comment on dawkins' conflation of Christianity, Christian fundamentalism that is, with Islam.  He just can't seem to make meaninful distinctions no matter what he's talking about.  So he talks and talks and talks and talks about the strocities committed by Islam ahnd then just adds Christianity into the fundamentalist grab bag without evidence for it.  Just that it's logical, he says, tht if you believe your god is the only God then you must feel you have a right to kill other people who ave other gods.    Well, no we don't. 

Old Testmaent religion is not New Testament religion and that's bwcause Old Testametn religion was about a single nation, a single people, a theocratic state chosen by god to be His own people.  They ghad vowed to obey their God, they had willingly put themselves under covenatn with Him.  None of that applies to anyone else.    What we see in the Old Testament does teach us a lot about God's character, His Law, His role in history, and particularly His plan of recemption which he was to bring to the whole wrold thorough His chosen people.  

But silly atheists like Dawkins are always trying to make us reposnble to boey llaws that there given to the Jesws and only to the Jews.  And they get all indignant at our supposed hypocrisy when we claim not to be under those laws while at the same time we revere the Old Testament as a revelation of the mind of God, the character of the God we worship.

No,k Christianity is not a theocraxcy, it's not a single nation, it's a collection of people scattered throughout the world united by our belief in Jesus for salvartion for starters.  We are not bound by the laws of the Old Testament both because they are mostly aimed at Israel, but also because being crucified with Christ we are set free from the Law altotehr.  Of cousree we want to live by the Ten Commandments, but with the understanding that we cannot do it perfectly and that our salvation is not dependent on our obedience.  

dawkins doesn't know what he's talkinga botu.

And he doesn't understand natural selection either.  So there.

More Dawkins: Ethnocentrism in the Stupid Hatred of the Old Testament by Today's Atheists

 Skimming through the books of moses I found the law of the Sabbath which plainly says that anyone who does work on the sabbath, or spetcifically kindles a fire on th Sabbath, will be put to death.  That certainly makes the man who picked up sticks on the Sbbath guilty of the death penalty.  Silly people who have no idea of the culture of the times or the Law that had alreayd been given loudly and carefully to the whole cogreegation imagine something trivial about the act of picking oup sticks.  That's really what most if not all of the objections of Atheists to the God of the Old Testament amounts to in the end, just culturebound ignorance.

I also rand across the very brief episode of the Midianite woman being brought into the tent of an Isaelite man somewhere in the book of Numbers, which linked that act with the secuctions of the Moabites to their own gos through their women.  That suggests to me that it was the participation in that corruption of the Israelites that brought the dire punishemnt on the Midianites that the atheists swo self righteously decry today.  Again a case of context blindness.

why Christians object to evolution

 I wuld certainly like to be able to prove Dawkis wrong about evolution as well as religion and sometimes it's hard not to get angry about someto f hte things he says although I think I'mve managed to aoid letting loose with it so far.  I tis distressing however when he reads a bunch of hate mail he gets from people who identify as Christians.  Of course those are the ones he would read, and maybe he doesn't get mail from Christians otherwise, i wouldn't know, but that sort of namecalling rnacor shouldn't be coming from Christians.  mabr they arn'et really Christians.  Actually they probably aren't really though they may think they are.  Oh well, it's distressing but what else can be said, nothing I can do about it.H  He got

he got asked the question why religious people get so upset about evolution and he says he doesn't know.  Well, of course I don't care about all the toehr religions since I consider them all to be fakes anyway, but it sould be pclear, I would tbhink, why Christians object, ral Christians I mean, th ones who take the Bible as God's word.  There is no death in the created wsorld and there is certainly death in the theory of evolution.  And of course the world is only a few thousand years old acording to the Bible, laughable though that may see it's nevertheless the truth, while evolution requires billions of years.   Both those elements of evolutionary theory contradict the Bible and that's the meain reason to object to it.  Then there is the fact that the different kinds of creatures are clearly shown in scripture to have been created separately from each other.  Much more but mostly things that an ehetheist would wave off anywyay so I won't bother.

I wonder what he would do with the observation I make about the strata or the fact that selection reduces genetic vriability.  Probably wouldn't even bother to tr to thijnk about it.

Ity is harfd to accept of course, that scientiest have been working with this stuff for centuries and never dealt with these questions.  They've written tones on stratigraphy for instance.  how can they go on thinking they represent time periods when they work so closely with them?  

I guess I can make the case even fairly well and nobody will take it seriously.

Dawkins makes much of his believing in something only because it is true and not for any other reason that others sometimes claim for their beliefs, such as that it's comforting and that sort of thing.  Well, I believed in Christianity because I believe it is true, that's how I came to it, So I can say I share tht with him.  I don't think I gave much if any thought to the promise of eternal life ujtiol I was well into my belief and had to deal with the question of salvation which had also escaped me ot that point.  I was enamored of the reality of God, smitten you could say with Goedd, in love with God whom I had come to know is real, really real.  I couldn't love a hypothesis or a myth, I had to know He is real and then I was reduced to a kind of swooning if you will at the very thought of this omnipresent omnipotent omniscient Being.  Who said what I thought were , are, very lovable things in the Old Testament.  Yes tht book that Dawkins hates so much.

So I'm sure Dawkins genuinely believes that evolution is true and has been proved by evidence just as he is convinced that the God of the Bible, or anyh god at all for that matter, is not true, not real but a figent of human imagination.  I'm sure he believes it all.

But I can't find this evidence he thinks exists for evolution.  I really can't.  It seems to me to be nothing but a plausible hypothesis, an idea, a way of imagining how it could work if it were true, but that it has absolutely no real evidence for it.  None.  He claims it over and over but hasn't succeeded in showing it to me.

Seems to me all the variation in living things is attribuable to what is sometimes called microevolution, the built in variability of each genome.  The human geneome contains potential variations in skin colr, hair type and color, eye color, size, height, type of musculature and things like tht so that we all differ from each other and whole populations differnt enormously from other populations.  But that is microevolution, variabiles built into the genome.  The Theory of Evolution would have human beings change into something that is not human over bazillions of yers and there is abolutly no evidence for that, not even little hints of the possibility in present time.  Microevolution can make races and breeds but it hhas an end point beyond which no further change is possible when all the variables in tht given line of "evlution" are played out and the final population is characterized by a great number of fixed or homozygous genes.  If it can't change further then that is the end point of evolution, period.  There are plenty of other lines of evolutiont ht could still be pursued in any given large poulation, but each of those will eventually meet the same end point.  if it's "evolving" then it will reach that point eventually.  Of course much of a population may not be changing much t all.  The vast herd of wildebeests can probably stay genetically the same for thousands of years.  It has to do with the great numbers and the constant intermixing among them.  Once yhou have a small group isolated from the main herd it will begin got develop new characteristics over somje number of bgenerations and will eventually produce its own very different look to set it apart from the original population.  And a very small number, which is where we see the biggest amonunt of phenotypic change, would rapidly reach the point beyond which no further change is possible.  Which is the point that has been reached by the cheetah and the elephant seal and no doubt other endangered species.   Selection does not fuel evolution in the Darwininan sense.  it fuels, or some kind of sleection which is rally tjust the isolation of a portion of a larger population, fuels microevolution and the devleopment of new populationj characteristics, but microevolution reaches the end point beyond which no further change is possible, at least the treand is always in that direction even if that actual pointis not reached.

The evidence is against Dawkins.  What evidence is anuway.

And then there is the fossil record.  Al the fossil record is is an imagined sequence, period.  Imagined.  You can't prove that one fossil is the descendant of a previousait is merely assumed, imagined.  but they call it a fact anyway.  It seems reasonable to them, plausible, and that's all it tkae sto make it a fact.

So once again I simply poinmt out tht those strata they are found in are flat slabs of sedimentary rock that culdn't possibly ever have been the surface of the earth in some time period.  The Jurassic or Devonian or whatnot could not have been characterized by thousands of square miles of sedimentary rock.  

Oh well.

The God Delusion on the argument from scripture

 I don't think I got it quite said what I wanted to say about the evolution examples in the previous post, but I'm going to leave it for now anyway and say a few words about Dawkins' God Delusion, specifically where he addresses the Argument from Scripture.

He proceeds to rip scripture apart based on some modern critics he apparently chooses to believe over the traditional histories of the Bible.  gfosh I wonder why h woudl do that.  So he has the gospels written long after Jesus' death and even after Paul's epistles, just because those crticis got themselves convinced of that.  And that's the only reason even if Dawkins himself doesn't say wso.  Two thousand years of scholarship isn't enough any more, we have to shred it with a few decades' worth of modern criticism.  

of course he claims that Jesus didn't claim to be God, a least not in any convincing way.  I have no idea what would convince himb tu I suspect there may not be anything tht would.  I know some have been able to identify hundreds of places where He puts HImself in the position of God but I'm not good at that, I can only mention a few that come to mind.  When He claims to forgive hins, just as Pharisees' said, He is claiming to be God.  Where He says "Before Abraham was, I AM" He is claiming to be God not onlyu by saying He pre-existed Abaham, but by using the nName for God, I AM.  Then in John Seventeen in what is known as His priestly prayer, He asks God to "Glorify Me with the glory I had with You before the beginning of the world"  I'm not sure about the last few words but that I believe is the gist of it.  To be glorified that way is definitely to claim to be God.  And there is also external testimony to His identity as God, as when Thomas, famously known as "doubting" Thomas, calls Him "My Lord and My God."    And of course there is the virgin birth, which means His actual Father is God the Father while He is human through Mary His mother.

But of course he takes on that favorite of the debunkers the way the word "Almah" is translated in the Old Testmeament.  They, and therefore he, claims it doesn't mean "virgin" although that is of course how the New testament writers understood it.  No, it just means "young woman."    Yeah a young woman who has a child, apparently without benefit of a husband but oh well.  Anyway, the answer to this one is that when the Jews a coupole hundred years before Christ translated their Hebrew scriptures into Greek, the word they chose to translate "almah" into Greek was the Greek word for "virgin."  

Then there is the claim that the text was corrupted by having been copied so many times by scribes, corrupted to the degree that it isn't really trustworthy at all to hear them go on about it.  But this is sheer ignorance of the science invovled in studying old manuscriptures which is assiduously applied to the Bible to some five thousand fragments of the Bible in all languages that go back to the tenth century.  TGhey are bable to identify and correct errors in the copying and trance them through lines of manuscriptures copied from one sourcew and the number for such errors is really quite minimal and for the most part trivial and does not affect the meaning, but in any case because they are on top of these errors they are in a position to recognxtrct the manuscirpture quite well so that the text we possess now is thoroughly reliable.

Oh he hates the God of the Old Testament.  So what else is new.  People who react that way have no idea what theyu are talking about.  They don't bother to ask why God did what He did and how millions of us regard His acts as justice and not benocide or whatever horror they want to imjpose on them.  They haven't read closely enough to understand why a particular drastic execution of a tribe was the only just thing to do.  And it's there to warn us that God's justice is severe.  But the debunkers aren't going to olearn anything.

There is that one about how drastically the ma n who picked up tickes on the Sabbath was punished since they can't think of picking up ticks as anuything but trivial, having no interest in asking why on earth God thought it was and the Israelites accepted it as a just punishement.  Well, the peopl ehad been taught quite carefully about the meaning of the Sabbath and how no work was to be done on that day.  it was a soluemn charge to them to be rigorouslyh enforced, and it has not only meaning for the present but a prophetic significance looking ahead to the coming of the Messiah.  It is a profundly important observance they are to obey absolutely strictly.  Picking up sticks is what they would do when they arewere about to start a fire to cook food, that is the issinificance of picking up sticks.  It is work in itself but it is a preliminary to a kind of work they were forbidden to do on the Sabbath, cooking.  Did the man no t know?  How dould he not have sknown?  But then what possessed hims to defy God?  I'm not sure that question is answered, but his act was certainly deserving of death for treating so casually such a high priority command, whichn would have had the effect of undermining God's authoirty and the importance of the observnace throughout the whole populationm if it had not been pusnished by death.\\

And the crazy idea that the gospels in the canon were "arbitrarily" chosen from a whole collection of gospsls.  No they wrern't.  The many writings about Jesus were circulated among all the churches that were growing up all over the Roman world during the warly centuries, copied and passed around, iand it ws those that the churches thesmeves, the people, the bishops but also just the people who were born again and had th Holy Spirit for guidance, recognized to be inspired, tosing out those that were clearly fraudulent such as the "Gnostic" gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene and the rest of them.  The four chosen were deemed by the true Church to be inspired, rightly so.  Take it or leave it Dawkins.  You don't have the HOly Spirit and you have no kidea. You can only act from your fallen huma n nature in judging these things, as can those whose authirity you preer over the ones Christians know to be the true ones.  

That's how the whole canon was finally determined.  There were dsome disputes but in the end the majority opinion of the churches as a whole body was determinate.

actually thinks the gospels are fictin.  What a dullwitted man he must be to come to such a conclusion.  Matthew and Luke have different stories about Jesus' birth he says.  No they do't.  Oh how dtiresom.  \\\And then the claim that the stories wer eborrowed from toerh religions.  Only if you turn yourself into a pretzel to make it so.  The gosplesz are built ioon the Old Testament.  if outher religions copied some of it that's because Satan was busily in the world doing his best to create just this wsort of confusion in themind so fthose inclined to prefer such debunkery over the trutyh.  There is no real virgin birth anywhere else for instance.  go read the original accounts.  

So I just went back and heard him mocking the translation of Almah int o the Greek Parthenos.  Oh dear.  I take that as proof that the word really is properly translated as virgin but oh no, apparently you can make it mean something else completely.  Oh just a mistake, a mistranslation.  Hardly.  The Greek translation was done by Jewish scholars in their own scriptures, not mean who would make a silly mistake.  they would know the Greek word for virgin and they would know the Hebrew word for virgin ande they obviously got it right.  And there's nothing ridiculous about it.  jeswus identiy as God is defined by the virtin birth and the whole story revolves around this fact.  Of course Dawkins is free to believe the lie if he wants to but unfortunately he's influencing others and that makes him culpable of some pretty horrific crimes against humanity in my opinion.  

There is nothing arbitary or whimsical about the virgin birth, it isn't just a piece fo lore emeant to dazzle and add a glitter to the stgory.

I keep forgetting to emphasize that "almah" means "young unmarried woman"   UNMARRIED woman, and the context of that certainly implies a virgin or as amother she'd be guilty of adultery and not have found a place in the cscripture at all.And remember that the Jews who reject Jesus as messiah have reason to defame Mary, as hey did in her time too, as an adulteress, so they are going to try to convince you that "almah" means young woman and doesn't mean virgin.

Later:  More stuff.  dawkins has the effeontery to correct C S Lweis' famous statement that anyone who said the outlandish things about Himsrlf that Jesus said could only be a liar, a lunatic or Lord.  Dawkins thinks he should have known better, that of course He could have been mrerely mistaken.  Groan.  But that was Lewis' whole point, Professor Dawkins, his WHOLE POINT, Mr. Dawkins, tht He could NOT have been merely mistaken about callibng Himself God, Dr. Dakins, that was his WHOLE point, Mr. Dawkins, that He could NOIT be mistaken, He HAD tro be at least a lunatic, Mr. Dawkins.  Yikes.