Silence of Mind wrote a little post that set off a minor uproar, Why the Atheist Disdain for God?. Since I liked it, I reblogged it, Why the Atheist Disdain for God? A couple people did not, however. Those bloggers are: Barabbas Me and Ben Berwick. Please read their posts and then read my replies.
Reply to “Wednesday Word: Why the Atheist Disdain for God?” by Barabbas Me
There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who have repented and accepted Jesus as their Savior, and there are those who still have not done so. Nevertheless, we have no way of knowing who Jesus has saved. Human beings, whether Jesus has saved them or not, don’t appear to be much different. When Jesus saves us, His work in us has just begun.
Still, when we refuse to repent and accept Jesus as our Savior, we do know that when we die we will go to Hell. Further, logic suggests that if we deny the even the existence of God, then we are going to refuse to repent and accept Jesus as our Savior.
Atheism is illogical and self-destructive. Since the Bible plainly states that much we should do so as well.
Are you uncomfortable with stating the truth plainly? Well, here is one of the tasks of apologetics.
Restrain evil. Calvin argued that one value of apologetics was to “stop the mouths of the obstreperous.” Here apologetics, though not able to convert the infidel, can restrain the unbeliever from unbridled assault against the faith.
from https://www.crosswalk.com/church/pastors-or-leadership/an-apology-for-apologetics-11531708.html
Consider how some Christians become martyrs. Those who hear them take offense and kill them. Are we supposed to shut up just because people don’t like what we have to say? The apostles refused. Remember that they pointed out who was responsible for the execution of the Messiah. The members of the Sanhedrin did not like hearing that, not one bit.
Reply to “Why Silence is Golden” by Ben Berwick
What is the difference between an Agnostic and an Atheist? An Agnostic says, “I don’t know.” An Atheist says, “There is no God.” Since there is no way of proving there is no God, the Atheist is making a faith-based leap that far exceeds the faith required to be a Christian. Of course, since the illogic required to be an Atheist is obvious, many Atheists try to redefine the term. However, if one just doesn’t know whether God exists, it makes more sense to call ourselves Agnostic.
Let’s consider the basic question. Does God exist? If you are going to insist upon empirical evidence, no. However, an insistence upon empirical evidence is a silly requirement. The notion that we have the tools to study the Creator and do reproducible experiments upon Him is just absurd. Do we have the capacity to apprehend the Being that created the universe? Not likely. Yet you assume we can.
The question of whether or not God exists is a philosophical problem, not a scientific one. That is one reason the Greek philosophers approached the existence of God from that perspective, and we have not progressed to the point where we can do much better.
What does our science do for us? Well, we can probably see that Creation is much more beautiful, ordered, and delicate than the ancients realized. Few of them would have perceived the ground that they stood upon was just part of a gigantic ball of air, water, earth, and molten rock that revolved around a nuclear inferno. We don’t have the capacity to directly perceive the vast emptiness of space. Still even the ancients somehow managed to grasp that the stars move with clockwork precision. And all without a guiding Intellect, a Creator, a First Cause? That defies logic.
Conclusion
Do you think Silence of Mind and I are foolish, deluded, fanatical, or too harsh? Then go read Romans 1:18-32 and try thinking about it. We live in a society that cannot even figure out the difference between a boy and a girl. Why? What has happened? I believe the problem is that we are being led by Secularists (Atheists?) who are determined to remove God from the public square in our society, and they have been succeeding. These Secularists are making fools out our people, the sort of fools described in Romans 1:18-32. If we want to protect our children, in particular, from these Secularists, then we must speak out plainly and boldly.
Citizen Tom 
Reblogged this on Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach.
Thanks for the reblog!
Reblogged this on Calculus of Decay .
The text of my response: Tom and I have briefly crossed paths before. Following a discussion over at SoM’s site, I wrote a post based upon that discussion. I recently dissected another of SoM’s rants, and shared those thoughts with Tom. In response, Tom has written a new post, and that is the post I take a look at here. To quote:
[quote]What is the difference between an Agnostic and an Atheist? An Agnostic says, “I don’t know.” An Atheist says, “There is no God.” Since there is no way of proving there is no God, the Atheist is making a faith-based leap that far exceeds the faith required to be a Christian. Of course, since the illogic required to be an Atheist is obvious, many Atheists try to redefine the term. However, if one just doesn’t know whether God exists, it makes more sense to call ourselves Agnostic.[/quote]
I dare say that here, we have an example of expecting atheists to prove a negative. ‘prove there is no god’. Prove there is one. God, be it in a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, or any other form, has not revealed themselves to humanity in any way shape or form, save for in texts written thousands of years ago, and these texts often contradict both each other, and observable facts about the world and universe. These texts are often highly self-referential, which is to say, their proof of accuracy is because they say they’re accurate.
[quote]Let’s consider the basic question. Does God exist? If you are going to insist upon empirical evidence, no. However, an insistence upon empirical evidence is a silly requirement. The notion that we have the tools to study the Creator and do reproducible experiments upon Him is just absurd. Do we have the capacity to apprehend the Being that created the universe? Not likely. Yet you assume we can.[/quote]
When dealing with observable facts, and evidence-driven conclusions, what conclusions should we reach? The idea of a supreme creator is entirely faith driven, not fact-driven, and Tom, you more or less admit that. People who address the world in observable terms aren’t going to acknowledge a being that has not been observed, and indeed, cannot be observed, and for which no evidence exists. Every process in the known universe could have formed naturally. It is a question of probability, but it is far from impossible. I refer to the excellent Creation Theory, and an experiment you can run there, involving dice.
The point I am making is, we do not need the existence of God to explain the evolution of the universe or our world. Our studies of the universe have demonstrated this. Any arguments about the supernatural and divine are impossible to verify. From a purely practical, logical point of view, they are therefore irrelevant.
[quote]The question of whether or not God exists is a philosophical problem, not a scientific one. That is one reason the Greek philosophers approached the existence of God from that perspective, and we have not progressed to the point where we can do much better.[/quote]
For the most part, I broadly agree here. It is impossible to prove God’s existence from a logic-driven, observation-driven, scientific perspective.
[quote]What does our science do for us? Well, we can probably see that Creation is much more beautiful, ordered, and delicate than the ancients realized. Few of them would have perceived the ground that they stood upon was just part of a gigantic ball of air, water, earth, and molten rock that revolved around a nuclear inferno. We don’t have the capacity to directly perceive the vast emptiness of space. Still even the ancients somehow managed to grasp that the stars move with clockwork precision. And all without a guiding Intellect, a Creator, a First Cause? That defies logic.[/quote]
All that we see and observe could, as mentioned earlier, form naturally, over time. The odds of that may be great, but they are not impossible, and all it would take is time. The universe is billions of years old, and the earth is billions of years old, so all these processes have had plenty of time. Not only that, but we can see from fossil records how chaotic this process is. Evolution isn’t linear; earth’s history is littered with extinct creatures that could not adapt.
As for a ‘first cause’, we simply don’t know, but just because we don’t have an answer at this moment, does not mean we’ll never find an answer. The absence of knowledge doesn’t automatically mean we apply any form of god to the equation. Even if we did, which god? Maybe none of the gods in earth’s history are responsible. Perhaps the universe exists as we know it, because of a vast alien intelligence. We can speculate endlessly, but in the end, assuming a divine involvement takes a lot more faith than following the evidence.
🙄 All you needed to do is post a link.
*Shrug* I figured it would be a curtesy to share it directly, my mistake.
Poor Tom, still going on about his imaginary friend.
Happily, Romans 1-18-32 is false just like the rest of the bible. Every cult claims that the universe is “evidence” for their god, but alas, they can’t support that claim. Not even Christians with their many versions of their god.
We’ve discovered that this god’s “wrath” is imaginary. Poor Christians, they used to claim that sickness was god’s wrath, and then humans came along and showed that was a lie, curing and treating those illnesses.
No one will go to hell, and poor Christians won’t have their sadistic fantasies come true.
You are entitled to make your choice. You can even call people names. I will just make my choice and pray you repent of your foolishness.
Will you? I don’t know, but you should. See Luke 16:19-31.
“You are entitled to make your choice. You can even call people names. I will just make my choice and pray you repent of your foolishness.
Will you? I don’t know, but you should. See Luke 16:19-31.”
Oh dear, the story about Lazarus, and the typical sadistic fantasies of christians that will never come true. I do like this story since it says that christians need to listen to Moses, which means follow all of those pesky commandments. It also shows that this god isn’t as omnipotent as claimed.
“19 ‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.[g] The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.[h] 24 He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” 25 But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” 27 He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” 29 Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” 30 He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” 31 He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”’”
I’m ever so not impressed with stories from a book that thinks that a god’s “wrath” causes disease.
Well, Tom, since your prayers do nothing at all, and your bible claims that true believers will get their prayers answered with what is asked for, no substitutions or excuses, and answered quickly, what is the problem? Does your god love me as I am? Does your god not consider you a Christian? Or is your god imaginary?
If the God I worship is so ineffectual, why do you bother fretting about Him?
Does your god love me as I am? I don’t think so. Would you like to spend eternity with you or me?
That is the problem we have with God. We love our sins, and He hates our sins. So, He insists we give up sinning. Apparently, you are ready to give up your sins yet, What sins? You know, and that is what matters.
I, as an atheist, and as a former christian, “fret” about this religion since its lies cause real harm. That’s why I spend time showing how you lie.
Oh dear, Tom thinks he can speak for his god. Why can’t this poor god speak for itself? This god has done nothing against me and gave me a very nice life, if it exists.
I’d much rather spend an eternity with me, not a liar like you Tom.
It seems your god is imaginary. Christians keep claiming that their personal list of hates and desires are “sin” to their imaginary god, and funny how you all have different lists. There’s no way to know what actions we need to be avoiding.
Happily, I haven’t sinned since that is an notion that only applies to Christians, and again, you poor dears have no idea what your god wants.
“If the God I worship is so ineffectual, why do you bother fretting about Him?
Does your god love me as I am? I don’t think so. Would you like to spend eternity with you or me?
That is the problem we have with God. We love our sins, and He hates our sins. So, He insists we give up sinning. Apparently, you are ready to give up your sins yet, What sins? You know, and that is what matters.”
Club
So, you think Christians cause real harm? Meanwhile, because they don’t agree with you, you devote yourself to snidely attacking others personally. That makes a whole lot of sense. 🙄
Of course, you don’t think you have sinned. Only the people who don’t agree with you have sinned.
You remind me of the stereotypical egotistical high school girl who meanly ridicules another girl in order to elevate herself. Behaving like a troll definitely isn’t a sign of maturity or wisdom. It is just juvenile foolishness. I just hope you don’t find someone who so fragile you can actually harm them.
Will you spend eternity with yourself? Possibly. There is a theory that Hell is sinners getting what they want, existence without God. Not a good choice.
Of course, Tom, you try to claim that Christians don’t do harm. Unfortunately, reality shows you wrong. We have your ignorance and hate having caused much harm to folks who you don’t like, from Christians who don’t agree with you, to people of other religions, to LGBT+ folks, to women.
Christianity has quite a track record of injuring, both physically and mentally, and murdering, those folks if they don’t obey you, including other versions of Christians. You all claim that anyone who doesn’t agree with you deserve death and worse, like most, if not all, other religions. I’m sure you’ll try to claim it was just “Christians” and not your religion, but your supposedly holy book repeatedly has your god and its followers committing genocide, killing people who don’t agree with it, killing children who have done nothing wrong for the actions of others and approving of slavery. Then we have your bangup finish of Revelation, where your god murders all non-christians, and proceeds to work with its supposed archenemy to corrupt the Christians left.
That’s quite a religion you have there.
I have no problem in pointing out your, and SOM’s, lies. If you consider that a personal attack, good!
Again, Tom, you have yet to show that your god merely exist, and that it agrees with what you want to pretend is a “sin”. I’ve been waiting and gee, you can’t. I get to see millions of Chrsitians contradict each other and utterly fail to be able to do what your supposed messiah promises. You appear to all be frauds.
I have no problem in ridiculing liars and cultists, Tom. That you can’t show I’m wrong just supports reality. Your false accusations fail again since you can’t show your claims are true. It’s always fun to see you make even more false claims in your attempt to have me stop showing your failure.
Ah, a “theory” of hell? Nice of you to admit that you Christians can’t agree on anything, and you have no idea about your imaginary hell, Tom. Happily, the idea of hell, and of heaven, are invented nonsense by your cult. Your sadistic fantasies will never come true, just a ongoing set of failures that have repeated for the last 2000+ years.
Now, what will happen in the next 2000+? I would posit that Christians will insist that their end times nonsense was “really” metaphor or be like the Jehovah’s Witnesses with their claims that Jesus came back invisibly to excuse their failure.
Right now, you can’t show your god exists at all. So we are currently living without this god since it does nothing at all. Not a perfect world, but not bad. No one needs your god or you.
Club
So, Christians are mass murders who call themselves Nazis and Communists, and Christians throw tens of millions into concentration camps so they can starve and work them to death? Why aren’t you in one of these camps?
I have never said Christians don’t do harm. That doesn’t even make sense. The first prerequisite for joining a Biblically Christian church is to be sinner. That is, we have to repent of our sins before we can recognize our need for Christ. If you were former a Christian, you would know that, but you never were a Christian except perhaps in name only.
Do we stop sinning after we repent and turn to Jesus? No, and the Bible says as much. Salvation is a work in progress.
Instead of just cherry-picking the Bible to “prove” your nonsense, try reading it carefully. God does not set up Christians as judges. He forbids us from taking vengeance. Therefore, Christians tend to be peaceful. Perfectly peaceful? No.
Anyway, this is getting old. We are not having a serious discussion. You are just making a bunch of senseless assertions and accusations.
Anyway, most of what you wrote is just projecting your own sins upon Christians. Frankly, it is so much easier to spew vitriol and claptrap that I don’t have any hope of keeping up with you. I also don’t feel any obligation to do so. There is nothing to stop you from looking at your own charges, doing an Internet search, and seeing what both Christians and Atheists have to say. Will you? All I can say is that I don’t see any sign that you have.
And yet more fail from Tom.
Yes, Christians who call themselves chistians are indeed Christains. There is no other way to know who you are since not one of you can do what JC promised his true believers to do.
Happily, Christians are all over the place in what they claim their god wants as morality. So, we have liberal Christians, conservative Christians, etc. You yourself have attacked those Christians who don’t’ agree with you.
You have claimed that Christian beliefs don’t do harm. That is quite a false claim. You also try to claim that only your chrsitianity is “biblical” just like every other Christian, including those who you claim aren’t christains. You poor dears also can’t agree on what this god considers sin, so your claim that you have to repent of sin is meaningless since you have no idea what should repent for. Your repenting is meaningless.
You also find you must lie and claim that I wasn’t a Christian when I was. It’s also great funto see christains like you choosing to keep lying, which is a problem since you don’t even try to follow your god.
Oh and other christains don’t’ believe that salvation is a “work in progress”, but alas not one of you can show your baseless nonsense to be true.
Happily, I don’t’ cherry pick the bible. I quote it and it supports my points. I’ve read it carefully as a Christian and as not, and funny how your magic spell doesn’t work and make me agree with you. The bible does set up chrsitians as judges and you do love to judge each other.
That’s quite a lie that Christians are peaceful. We can see that to be false all throughout history and in your own behavior, attacking your fellow Christians who don’t agree with you. That you would try to make such a false claim in the face of reality is quite funny. You aren’t even close to peaceful.
I am having a serious discussion and it is unsurprising that you don’t’ like it since you have yet to show I’m wrong. You yet again make false claims and are unable to show them true. Where are these “senseless assertions and accusations” you accuse me of? Surely you can cut and paste them in, right?
Or are you simply making more false claims as usual?
Again, show where I’ve projected anything, dear? You have no hope of keeping up with me since you have nothing to show I’m wrong and thus must try to lie about my comments. I’m still waiting for you to support your accusations with evidence. Why is it that you cannot show where I’ve done the things you accuse me of. Happily, I’ve looked at my own charges and have looked at many atheist and apologist claims in the internet. I know what they say and how apologists fail. You seem to be trying to convince me that there is an answer for my points somewhere, hoping I’ll do your work for you, but alas, there isn’t, and you and your apologists have failed.
Tom, SOM
Your posts brought this quote to my mind that “sometimes” it is wise to discern this conundrum of life in terms other than , logic, science, etc.etc.
“Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.” —N.D. Wilson, Dandelion Fire
Source Link
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201208/the-six-attributes-courage
Regards and goodwill blogging.
Thanks for the comment and the link.
Great post. However, it is possible to infer God’s existence from modern scientific discoveries. Also, in 2014 I wrote “The God Equation,” and presented it to my professor and student peers in Astronomy class. I expressed God in the language of mathematics using the theory of limits (first semester calculus), where God is a function of order. In biology, one of the attributes of living things is their high degree of order. God is out there where order is infinite. Man is just below God where order approaches infinite. That’s the math.
In the chemistry of living things, biochemistry, God speaks non-living matter to life. We know this because of Francis Crick’s “Fundamental Dogma of Biology,” presented to the world in 1958.
Saint John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word.” This “Word” is life itself. This “Word” speaks through specific biomolecules bringing life where there was none. Speech is the rational activity of transmitting the thoughts of one mind to another mind. When the Word of God speaks life into non-living matter, he is communicating with us who also have rational minds capable of understanding the speech taking place within living creatures.
SOM
Thank you for the kind remarks.
Are you using science to prove the existence of God? I don’t think so. I think the source of our disagreement is how we define the term “science.”
When we are talking about “science” with respect to proof, that involves the scientific method. Because we cannot conduct reproducible experiments on God, we cannot apply the scientific method to the study of God, and I think you know that.
So, what do you mean when you use the term “science”? I think you are talking about technology that the ancients did not have available to them. Thanks to scientific progress, we have observational data that the ancients did not have. The observational data displays surprising order, in DNA, for example, that indicates the need for an Intelligent Creator. That is a philosophical proof that God exists, not a scientific one.
Citizen, central to the scientific method is the logical technique called inference. Inference is fundamental to cosmology and astronomy because, like you have said previously, there are many things that scientists can’t see directly.
The existence of God can be inferred from our understanding of biochemistry. DNA is almost infinitely complex coded information. That coded information is transcribed into a mRNA molecule. Then, a factory made of protein called a ribosome literally reads the information transcribed into the mRNA molecule and translates that information into proteins. Proteins are what make life work in living organisms.
“Code,”, “transcription,” “translation,” “reading” are words of speech and indicate a master coder, thinker and speaker.
That master coder, thinker and speaker is the Word of God.
Why the focus on inference? When we are trying to figure out how a system works, we gather data and then we generate a hypothesis to explain our observations. That is, we propose a model (mathematical, if practical), and we use experiments to test our hypothesis. Ideally, we set up our experiment in a laboratory so that we can control all the causes and monitor all the effects that are relevant to our hypothesis. If our model accurately predicts the relationship between the causes and effects, then we presume we have a good hypothesis.
Often it is not practical to perform a laboratory. So, we have to go back to Philosophy for a different technique to prove our hypothesis. instead of testing our hypothesis with a laboratory experiment, we test it with a prediction. This prediction “solves” the problem when our system is too big and/or too complex to test in a lab. The discipline of Astronomy provides a great example of this. Try as we might, we have no way of working with planets, stars and galaxies in a lab.
What is the problem with using scientific predictions to test our hypotheses? The quality of the prediction can vary considerably. The “experiment” is not reproducible. That makes Astronomy a relatively speculative science.
Nevertheless, with respect to Astronomy, such inferences are about the best we can do, and the logic involved even seems to satisfy Atheists. Atheists just seem to have a problem when we use similar logic to infer the existence of our Creator.
Inference is used when appropriate like every scientific tool. We know what speaking is. We know Crick’s Fundamental Dogma of Biology. From those, we can infer God’s existence without a shadow of a doubt.
I think watching the birth of a baby and then seeing that child become an adult is more than sufficient.
Citizen, Watching the birth of a baby and then seeing it grow into an adult is not science. My comments here addressed scientific proof of God’s existence.
Believe me. It is a reproducible experiment that illustrates how DNA works.