Posted by Anthony on January 5, 2010
Kevin Hundt of La Crosse, WI seems to think so:
Atheists do not have “more” say than religious people, we just don’t want government (public-owned) resources to be used to promote religion. Religious people already have tax-free churches; if you want statues and monuments, you can put them there. No one is demanding anyone “hide” their religious belongings – when you all put up those 10 commandments signs in your yards, did anyone complain? No, that’s your property. Put up whatever you want there. But government property is my property, so keep your backward magic superstition off my lawn. [Emphasis in the original newspaper]
This logic, very common among evangelical atheists of the Dan Barker/Freedom from Religion type, is flawed at so many levels, paragraphs could be devoted to refuting each phrase. For tonight, I’ll just settle on making the simple observation that government property, public land, is not only Kevin Hundt’s. It is also mine.
Perhaps a refresher in the Constitution is in order: Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on February 21, 2009
On a recent thread on my discussion forum an atheist endorsed the view: “It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.” Of course, this atheist, like all atheists, rejects any notion that heaven and hell are real. Nonetheless, there are a number of reasons for making the argument. It essentially amounts to fundamental rejection of the ‘terms of engagement’ that Christians contend that God has laid out. (This is especially fundamental when the atheist is, as in this example, an Ayn Rand Objectivist). Additional layers of the argument take it as true for the sake of argument that the God of the Bible is real as described but the atheist will retort that they don’t want to have anything to do with a God like that.
So you see, either way you go, either rejecting the existence of the Christian God or accepting it, the atheist possesses some sort of moral standard (which they’d prefer not to explain) by which to measure the conduct of God and the terms he lays out. But I find this all very ironic. After all, the whole point of disgust has to do with people being eternally punished by God and how unfair and indecent that is (“What? Just for not believing?!?!??”) but when it is pointed out that the Bible further describes this eternal punishment as an eternal separation from God (relationally), shut out from his presence forever, they are not satiated? I mean, isn’t that what they wanted? If God turns out to be real and they hate him so much don’t they actually want there to be something like ‘hell’ where God will leave them to their own devices?
Yes it is. Here you see one of those classic “there is no pleasing them” scenarios. Even if there is a God they don’t like him and would rather in that case spend eternity separate from him, but when that actual opportunity is presented to them from the same texts they reject God as being unloving and Christianity (and religion in general) as fear mongering. Dudes. You’re getting what you want. Why complain?
Of course, we Christians understand that getting what you want isn’t all it is cracked up to be. The idea that you could actually ‘rule in hell’ is a joke. The idea that you could actually be happy and contented apart from God is a farce. For all good things come from God- this is according to definition- and to be separated from God means to be separated from these things. One cannot expect that in hell one will have their intellect, food and drink, other people to talk to… all of the things that you count as ‘good’ today and don’t believe have anything to do with God, according to the Christian definition of God, would necessarily be stripped away in the course of ratifying the atheist’s choice of being ’separated from God.’
Anyway, in the course of the discussion on this matter, a forum member mentioned an old Twilight Zone episode about a man going to heaven and not finding it to his liking. I thought it makes the point nicely. If you don’t want the ending spoiled, I wouldn’t go and read the discussion forum thread first.
Here is the link to the Twilight Zone episode which I managed to find online… enjoy! I did!
(if it doesn’t work go to their twilight zone page and find episode “A nice place to visit.”)
Oh yea, and short answer to “Would an atheist be happy in hell?” is “No, because happiness is, by definition derived from God (assuming he exists), and in hell one is deprived from God.”
God won’t need fire and brimstone to inflict eternal suffering on someone. He needs only to leave them to themselves forever- which is exactly what many atheists want: to be left alone.
Posted by Anthony on February 10, 2009
Hat tip to Charles for pointing this article out to me.
Recently ChristianityToday had an excellent article on the use of science fiction to communicate a distinctly secular and atheistic world view. If you are a Christian that cares for the state of the Church today and our modern challenge, you should read the article.
The article correctly says:
… viewers don’t leave movies such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hancock, X-Men, and Contact—or television programs such as The X-Files or Heroes—scratching their heads in confusion. We are intrigued, but not surprised. Why? Because stories of advanced extraterrestrials, ancient human-alien contact, superior intelligences roaming the universe, and emerging super-races have grown familiar through repeated exposure. Thanks to the longstanding efforts of a wide range of artists, popular writers, and even scientists, we immediately recognize intelligent aliens and advanced humans. We now see space and the future as sources of hope.
One of the things that I’ve noted (see this blog entry on Heroes and Philip Pullman) is that the modern method is to denounce anything we might call supernatural as nonsense in one breath, and in the other breath re-issue the same phenomena but provide a naturalistic explanation for it. Heroes is a great case in point, as most of the ‘heroes’ have powers that, if we ever met them in real life, we’d instantly conclude were supernatural. But Heroes prepares the way for 2 Thess. 2:9-10 in that it provides a ‘plausible’ explanation for how even the miraculous is merely natural. (In my discussions with atheists, no evidence for natural explanations is necessary- plausibility is sufficient. See, for eg., abiogenesis, and Dawkins hemming and hawing at the end of Ben Stein’s Expelled).
Another case in point is Carl Sagan’s Contact, where scientists are able to scientifically detect intelligent design. We are told today that this is impossible; the implications involved in conceding even the mere possibility of reliably detecting design are too frightening to be allowed by our ‘methodological’ naturalists. So, Contact would not have been written today, but even so it served to show how ‘advanced’ information is no evidence at all for God, and can be- and should be- interpreted in natural terms. With this method in mind, it is no wonder that atheists conclude there is no God. They are merely ahead of the pop culture trend, prepared to interpret all facts in naturalistic terms and then smug in their conclusion that no facts exist to support supernaturalism.
So how does one combat this? Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on February 6, 2009
Actual conversation from last night:
[having spotted me reading a book titled Introduction to Biblical Interpretation]
Him: So, are you a religious nut?
Me: A nut?
Him: Yea, do you like really believe in God?
Me: (to myself: does mere belief in God make you a nut?)
Him: Do you believe in Jesus? The holy Mary…
Me: Well, I’m not a Catholic. I’m protestant, so I don’t go in for that Mary business…
Him: I used to be a Catholic.
Me: And now?
Him: I’m an agnostic.
Me: What happened?
Him: Like I said, I was raised Catholic.
Me: You can believe in God and not be Catholic.
Him: I really don’t care. If there is a God or not, I don’t care.
Me: Not at all?
Him: What has God ever done for me?
Me: [fishes for business card]: Well, if you ever decide you do care, shoot me an email.
Him: Have a good night.
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All in all it was an interesting exchange. I thought his explanation for his disbelief confirmed what I’ve been saying for some time about the church actually creating atheists. In fact, let me take a minute to single out a correspondent from a church in Indiana- is that specific enough?- who recently complained about my ‘law’ posts attacking the state of the church and how we are transmitting the faith and just ask him: do you ever even talk to people who are not Christian? It must be nice to operate in a little bubble where you figured you did your job after you confirmed all the kids in your youth group but then 48 out of 50 of them fall away in college- and you hardly are aware and are happily willing to go on doing everything the same way you’ve always done it. Meanwhile, we apologists strive to clean up the mess. It is a mess made worse, often, I think, then if they had never been raised in the faith at all. (Matthew 12:43-45) Yes, if it’s law, it is a law message that you need to hear.
But I digress.
The conversation I had last night raised a number of lines of thoughts for me (see previous paragraph for some) but on the off chance that this gentlemen decides to visit my webpage, despite not caring, let me take a minute and answer the question: Why should you care about God’s existence?
First of all, the common complaint that there are too many options out there to care about one or two of them is overblown. In other words, I can see one of my hard core atheist friends saying, “I don’t care about your God, just as you don’t care about Zeus.” This presumes, of course, that I haven’t investigated Zeus, or that educated Christians don’t have a reasonable basis for their dismissal of other religions. I would reply more generally, though, saying that there are nonetheless a finite number of categories, and no one is asking anyone to pursue every varying subcategories until the category itself warrants further scrutiny. (and in some cases, such as Christianity, the diversity of the subcategories is vastly overblown) Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on January 29, 2009
I recently had a conversation with some gents that I thought I would paraphrase for my blog. I think I’ve had the same kind of conversation a dozen times in the last three months. I have combined all the conversations into one paraphrase. The Internet is filled with conversations like this. If you have got one feel free to share. Enjoy.
Them: We believe science is the only way to learn about the world and religion is just faith-mongering superstition. There is no scientific basis for believing in the existence of God. Belief is just irrationalism. I know what you’re going to say. That there had to be something that has always existed. Why not the universe?
Me: Well, science says that the universe had a beginning. So I guess the universe can’t be the thing that has always existed. Surely that means we can explore other options.
Them: Did I say that I accepted that something has always existed?
Me: No. Do you?
Them: No.
Me: So something can come from nothing?
Them: No, that’s now what I’m saying.
Me: Well, if it isn’t the case that something has always existed then there is only one alternative, and that is that you posit that something can come from nothing.
Them: What I am saying is that we can’t know which is true, whether something has always existed or if something can come from nothing.
Me: Well, for which do you have evidence for?
Them: Evidence?
Me: Well, you’re claiming the high road of science so obviously you must be willing to accept, provisionally at least, where the evidence takes you.
Them: But we can’t know which. That’s my point.
Me: So you should be a principled agnostic, then.
Them: I’m not, I’m an atheist.
Me: But if you’re saying you can’t know then agnosticism is the proper answer.
Them: But I’m an atheist.
Me: lol, whatever. Moving on. The evidence would seem to suggest that the universe hasn’t always existed. It had a beginning. Regardless of the fact that you can imagine scenarios by which the universe could regress infinitely, it would seem that science tells us there is a hard limit on speculations about what was ‘before.’
Them: But if everything requires a cause then that would include God.
Me: Who said everything requires a cause? The whole point of our conversation to this point has been on the general agreement that something has always existed- without a cause. So you are misrespresenting the argument. The argument is really, best known through William L. Craig, is that everything with a beginning has a cause. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on October 6, 2008
Heroes is continuing to try to string along the religious viewer by employing Christian verbiage such as ‘image of God’ and ‘God’s will.’ Tonight we had something that passes as a good juxtaposition between the Christian worldview and the secular worldview though ironically the roles were reversed… Nathan Petrelli has ‘got religion’ and is now seeking transcendental meaning for his life. So far, so good. A Nathan Petrelli in the future attempts to reason with his brother, Peter, that we’ve all got good in us since we’re made in the image of God- as such, we can center extraordinary power in a superpowerful army of good intentioned individuals with ‘Heroes’ powers. (As I understand the conversation). Peter, who hasn’t said a peep about religion or God doesn’t trust people and believes his brother is wrong.
I’m not denying that we are made in God’s image and that this then necessitates ‘goodness.’ The rest of the story, though, is that that image has become corrupted. No Christian who knows his Bible and has studied human history and observed human nature would fail to note this critical distinction or reject the evidence of it all around them.
On the other hand, secular humanists thought they had people all figured out. They thought they could throw off the shackles of religion. Once everyone was a ‘free thinker’ like they were, things would be swell. They put pen to paper and created the Humanist Manifesto. In the 1933 version, we read:
Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education and supported by custom. We assume that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.
Did you see the date on that? The word you’re looking for here is “Oops!” Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on October 3, 2008
Many people are intimidated by the pompous declarations of those like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Many people think that becoming a Christian means checking your brain at the door. Some think that it would take endless study to be able to stand up to the challenges against Christianity. Let us be clear: it does take some work, but it need not be all at once and you can do a little at a time. The Athanatos Online Apologetics Academy offers short modules that do not require massive amounts of your time. At the same time, you’ll gain resources to use for further study and you’ll probe some of the truly foundational aspects of the Christian faith.
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The staff at the Athanatos Online Apologetics Academy are ready to release the details of the fall session. I should note first of all that the academy now resides at its own domain at www.academyofapologetics.com Old links will not work, but your old login information should.
At present, we are offering four courses, beginning on October 27th. Here are the courses:
Basic New Testament Greek — Begins Oct. 27th (3 week course)
Reliability of the New Testament Documents — Begins Nov. 3rd. (2 week course)
Formation of the New Testament Canon — Begins Nov. 17th. (3 week course)
Studies in Atheism — Begins Nov. 17th. (3 week course)
I recommend taking the Reliability and Formation classes in tandem. Between the two of them you defeat numerous challenges to the Christian faith. On the one hand, you improve your understanding of why we believe that what we have is what was originally written and on the other hand you understand why the books of the New Testament were really chosen, as opposed to accusations made in the Da Vinci Code and skeptics who insist that early Christianity embraced gnosticism such as we see in the Gospel of Thomas.
The Basic New Testament Greek course will teach you the Greek alphabet, how to distinguish between nouns, verbs, and definite/indefinite articles, and equip you with the ability to figure out what the actual Greek words are behind your English translation. You will be amazed at how your Bible studies are transformed.
The Studies in Atheism course is one I’m really looking forward to presenting. We will trace atheism from ancients like Democritus through influential atheists like Hume, Russell, Rand, and Flew. We will end with an examination of the ‘new atheists’ like Richard Dawkins. The course is designed to explore atheism not to answer atheism. Nonetheless, the participant will be pointed in some helpful directions.
We are enrolling in these courses now. Please visit www.academyofapologetics.com for more information and click here if you want to go right to the enrollment and courses page. Additional courses may yet be offered.
