This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled
Posted: 25 Sep 2017 01:19 AM PDT
If you’ve raised your children to believe Christianity is
true, you probably want them to continue to believe it’s true, especially
through their critical university years. There are good reasons to be concerned
for young Christians once they leave our care. Statistically, most will walk
away from the Church (and their belief in God) during their college years.
Probably because it is only outside their protective homes and churches that they will become exposed to truths that create serious problems for the fundamentalist view they were raised with. There can be no doubt that the number of Christian "fundamentalists" has dwindled significantly since the explosion of the internet in the popular sphere in 1995.
What
can we, as parents, do to address this growing problem? How can we help them
know that God exists?
What a shame for you that although you claim to depend on "God", the way in which you solve the problem betrays that you don't think God actually does anything more here than he does when you order fries at the drive-through. If you are the one implementing the safety procedure, then the only reason you credit your kids' safety to God is your theological insanity. And it gets more insane if in spite of not crediting your own good works to yourself, you readily credit your bad works to yourself (i.e., when you do good works, it's God's fault...when you do bad works, it's not God's fault).
As a cold-case detective, parent, and prior youth pastor, I
have a suggestion: master the case for God’s existence and start sharing it
with your kids at an early age.
And the best way to do that is to purchase your forensic faith materials and basically swallow whatever marketing gimmick you use, correct?
Sounds simple, right? Maybe, or maybe not. If
your kids asked you to defend the existence of God right now, what would say?
What evidences would you provide? Are you ready to make the case for what you
believe, even as the world around us often makes the case against God’s
existence?
Is there anything in the writings of the NT that requires Christians to make the case that God exists? No. You are blindly assuming that all Christians be evangelists and teachers, but not every person in the body of Christ can do this:
11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; (Eph. 4:11-12 NAU)
28 And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.
29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?
30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?
31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way. (1 Cor. 12:28-31 NAU)
Wallace continues:
Don’t panic, you don’t have to be a theologian, philosopher or
scientist to defend the truth. All you need to be is interested.
You don't even need to be interested. The bible makes plenty of room for a person to a a genuinely born again Christian whose witness to others does not consist of learning arguments.
It’s not hard to be interested when the spiritual fate of
our kids is hanging in the balance.
Here you blindly assume the stakes are high, when liberal Christian theologians make a persuasive case that everybody will be saved and a hellish afterlife are false doctrines.
Make a commitment to investigate the case
for God’s existence so you can communicate it to your kids.
Translation: "purchase the materials that I so ceaselessly promote".
The Apostle Paul
was correct when he said that God’s “invisible attributes, His eternal power
and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has
been made” (Romans 1:20).
Which means you are not addressing anybody here except those who believe everything Paul taught as blindly as you do.
We’ve written God’s Crime Scene for Kids to help you
and your children investigate everything “that has been made.”
Which cannot be reconciled with your alleged belief that the bible alone is sufficient authority for faith and practice. God would probably worry himself sick if you stopped helping the Holy Spirit through your attention-deficit lectures and videos, wouldn't He?
Along the way,
you’ll discover four truths that will help your kids demonstrate the existence
of God:
Implying that God wasn't capable of demonstrating these to Christians between the 1st and 20th centuries. But if he was capable then, he's capable now, in which case modern Christians no more need your forensic faith bullshit than hey need Benny Hinn.
Our Universe Requires a Divine “First Cause”
Scientists have determined that our universe is not
infinitely old.
You conveniently leave "scientists" unqualified, thus creating the false impression that "most" scientists deny the infinite age of the universe. You are incorrect, the number of scientists who are open to the possibility of the universe being infinite is growing.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: So it goes on, but is it infinite? Chuck Bennett is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.
CHUCK BENNETT: It is somewhat unimaginable, but quite possible that our universe simply goes on forever.
=============
Scientists have predicted the possibility that the universe might be
closed like a sphere, infinite and negatively curved like a saddle, or flat and infinite.
A finite universe has a finite size that can be measured; this would be
the case in a closed spherical universe. But an infinite universe has
no size by definition.
According to NASA, scientists know that the universe is flat
with only about a 0.4 percent margin of error (as of 2013). And that
could change our understanding of just how big the universe is.
"This suggests that the universe is infinite in extent; however, since the universe has a finite age, we can only observe a finite volume of the universe," NASA says on their website. "All we can truly conclude is that the universe is much larger than the volume we can directly observe."
Wallace continues blindly appealing to what his intended audience already believes:
In fact, they now believe that everything in the universe, all
space, time and matter, had a beginning in the distant past. Everything that
begins to exist must have a cause. What could account for the beginning of the
universe?
No, see above, you are giving the false impression the only respectable scientific theory on the universe is that it is finite. You apparently know not even that which can be determined with a quick Google search, or you are dishonest.
One thing is certain: whatever caused the cosmos must be
something other than space, time or matter (since these didn’t exist prior to
the beginning of the universe).
Well since the universe is infinitely old, the problem of where the universe came from, disappears.
That means we’re looking for something
non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material, and incredibly powerful. Sounds a lot
like God, doesn’t it?
It also sounds like a fairy-tale solution more in line with religious belief than empirical observation. There are no concretely established cases for the existence of anything that is "non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material", so until the day you establish such, you cannot get rid of the possibility you'd like to get rid of, that what you are talking about is pure nonsense.
Life in the Universe Requires a Divine “Author”
Scientists have also determined that life in the universe is
formed and guided by information. Biological organisms (like humans) possess
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules. The nucleotide sequence in DNA is an
incredibly long (and sophisticated) code that guides the growth, development,
function and reproduction of every living organism.
But where does the information in DNA come from? Did this
incredibly complex series of instructions come about by chance? Was it caused
by the laws of physics or some process of evolution? No. The best explanation
for information is intelligence. The information in DNA requires an intelligent
author. Once again, God is the most reasonable explanation.
Why do predator birds have very sharp eyesight? If the world of lving things was vegatarian before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, then nobody would need eyesight any sharper than that of a cow, to locate and eat foilage and fruit. In which case you cannot cite the degrading effects of the Fall to account for today's predatory birds having super-sharp eyesight. If you continue denying evolution's ability to increase the complexity of creatures over time, you are forced to blame God for predatory birds gaining an increase in their visual acuity at some point after they stopped being vegetarians in Eden. In which case your god is personally responsible for causing eagles to be motivated to inflict the misery that carnivores typically inflict on other animals. And your god's doing this is arbitrary since apparently becoming carnivorous wasn't a
requirement after the fall as so many billions of cows testify.
And if you say predatory birds were carnivorous even before any sin entered the world, then it is a world full of tooth and claw misery and pain, that God is calling "good" in Genesis 1:31, using the Hebrew word "tob" for "good" that is used in 2:17 to signify the moral opposite of evil. In which case God in 1:31 is asserting the full moral goodness of a world full of carnivors inflicting misery and pain on each other.
That should come as no surprise, for when God inflicts rape upon disobedient women (Deut. 28:30), this is something he "delights" to do no less than he "delights" to grant prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).
That's how you cause the intelligent design argument to back-fire in the face of Christian apologists. Since you deny that random chance and evolution can account for why eagles desire to kill, lions and others have fangs suited to little more than ripping flesh, etc, only intelligent design can account for these, in which case your God's idea of "good" is so alien to everything you stand for that it can only be by a truly "blind" faith that you insist this God is always "good".
Moral Laws in the Universe Require a Divine “Law Giver”
All of us recognize the existence of moral laws and
obligations. While some behaviors (like stealing or lying) may be justified on
rare occasion (to save the life of an innocent person, for example), it’s never
morally acceptable to steal or lie for the fun of it.
Your 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ, whom you aren't likely to deny the salvation of since they accept all doctrines you say are "essential" to salvation, assert that a person is fulfilling God's
secret will when they sin, even if with such act they are also contradicting god's "revealed" will. So if some criminal steals a six-pac of beer from the corner store mostly because she thinks it "fun", this must be credited to God, and that sucks for you, because you insist that anything which God wills, is righteous by definition.
If even spiritually alive Calvinists can "misunderstand" the nature of God's sovereignty in a sinful universe, as you will likely accuse them, you are a fool to expect spiritually dead atheists and non-Calvinist Christians to think your views on this matter are the end of the discussion.
This is true for all of
us, regardless of when we have lived in history or where we have lived on the
planet. These objective moral laws also describe obligations between persons.
No one, for example, is morally obligated to the laws of physics or chemistry.
All laws such as these require law givers.
No, the laws that most humans agree on, they agree on because obeying them conduces toward facilitating easier survival, that's all the rationale needed to explain why most human beings think torturing babies for fun is immoral. We are social animals the the acts we think of as crimes, just happen to be those that end up playing a significant part in breaking up society which inhibits survival.
Objective laws
and obligations that transcend all of us require an objective, personal law
giver who transcends all of us. Once again, God is the best explanation for the
moral laws and obligations we all recognize.
Well since your own god takes credit for motivating pagans to inflict horrible miseries on the Israelites:
15 Though he flourishes among the reeds, An east wind will come, The wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; And his fountain will become dry And his spring will be dried up; It will plunder his treasury of every precious article.
16 Samaria will be held guilty, For she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their little ones will be dashed in pieces, And their pregnant women will be ripped open. (Hos. 13:15-16 NAU)
...you cannot assert that humans are rebelling against god's moral will when they murder each other. You are forced to agree with your bible that they were empowered by God to do these things.
You will say God doesn't force people to hurt others, but that in his judgment he sometimes withdraws his prevenient grace so that such humans naturally inflict the misery they are already naturally inclined to inflict, so that God is free from responsibility for the evil he knew would happen as a result of his own choices, but this is about as convincing as the dog owner who intentionally unleashes his pit bull for the purpose of mauling you, then arguing later in court when you sue for injuries, that because he didn't maul you himself but only removed the restraints on his dog knowing the dog would maul you, he is thus not responsible for your injuries.
Yeah right.
Evil in the Universe Requires a Divine “Standard”
Some people point to evil as an evidence against the
existence of God. Why would an all-powerful, all-loving God allow bad things to
happen?
Maybe because his idea of love is so different from ours, the acts we perceive to be unloving, he thinks are loving? And therefore, when you assert "God is loving" to the average person, you are guilty of deception and equivocation?
If God's "love" cannot be construed as an absolute guarantee that he will do all in his power to, say, prevent a child from being raped, then why are you so sure God is "loving" toward children? Answer: your blind faith that because the bible says God is loving, that must be the end of the discussion.
Is He unable to stop them?
Yes, the God who was helping Judah win a war, wasn't able to overcome the power of iron chariots:
17 Then Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they struck the Canaanites living in Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. So the name of the city was called Hormah.
18 And Judah took Gaza with its territory and Ashkelon with its territory and Ekron with its territory.
19 Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.
20 Then they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had promised; and he drove out from there the three sons of Anak.
21 But the sons of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.
(Jdg. 1:17-21 NAU)
Even Christian scholars who accept and defend biblical inerrancy, are forced to speculatively "presume" something not implied in the text, in order to "explain" this surprising admission that God's power wasn't enough to do the intended job:
In our text (v. 18a) the narrator explicitly attributes Judah’s successes in the hill country not to equivalent military power but to the presence of Yahweh. Then why could they not take the lowland? Why is Yahweh’s presence canceled by superior military technology? The narrator does not say, but presumably the Judahites experienced a failure of nerve at this point, or they were satisfied with their past achievements.
Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Wallace continues:
Is He simply unwilling to prevent them?
Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63. God not only "allows" evil (i.e., rape, v. 30, parental cannibalism, v. 53), but he takes credit for causing or inflicting it. Worse, he "delights" to inflict such atrocities on them, v. 63.
In
either case, the existence of evil seems to invalidate our definition of God as
an all-powerful and all-loving Being.
It wouldn't make much sense for you to defend God's all-loving nature, if you have to argue that certain acts we find unloving, God thinks are loving. If God's idea of "love" is so contrary to our own beliefs about it, you aren't "defending" anything, you are simply preaching the bible and reminding the believing audience that God's definition of love is more accurate than the definition accepted by civilized societies. Which then involves you in the stupidity of asserting that God condemns the evil men that God uses...sort of like paying a hit-man for murder, then telling everybody that while what he did was evil, your using him to commit murder was not evil for YOU. Well fuck you.
But what defines something as evil in the first place?
How about your bible? Since God in Ezekiel 39 is punishing the Gog and Magog armies because they warred against Israel, we can soundly presume God thought these armies had done evil...but in Ezekiel 38:4, it is God himself who is forcing these armies to commit this specific evil (i.e, "hook in your jaws", a metaphor that puts images in the mind that are wholly contradictory to any notion that God "respects human freewill" or that God doesn't want people to do evil.)
Is
something “evil” simply because we don’t personally approve of it,
Yes, there's no natural law that says a person's subjective beliefs about evil are disqualified. If I think it is evil for fundamentalist Christians to evangelize unbelievers, I am rational to think that way despite the fact that other people would disagree. Nothing else is more common than people disagreeing on what constitutes evil.
or do we
believe some acts are truly evil, regardless of our opinion? If the latter is
true, we would need an objective, transcendent standard of good by which to
judge any particular act.
And since we all agree that a) sex within adult-child marriages is evil, and b) God doesn't have jack shit to say about this evil, you don't have an "objective, transcendent standard of good by which to judge" this particular act as evil. You have nothing but your own conscience, and some would argue your conscience is hardly objective or transcendent.
The existence of God offers such a standard,
And used car salesmen offer used cars to solve your transportation problems too. Many of those cars are lemons, and so is yours, you shameless salesman.
and God
often allows and uses temporal evil to develop our eternal character,
If I cannot justify murder by saying the emotional outrage this causes will develop the survivor's moral character, then when you try to justify God with the same argument, you are doing so because of blind and arbitrary choice to believe God just cannot do anything wrong. You have defined God as "good", so to you, trying to allow that God could do wrong is, in your mind, equal to suggesting that the word "good" could sometimes mean "evil". Well in light of Genesis 6:6-7, God is quite capable of making the wrong decision and regretting it later, and your "this-was-just-an-anthropomorphism" excuse derives neither from the genre of Genesis, the context nor the grammar of the passage, and is therefore most likely a false interpretation forced on the text because of your prior belief that other bible passages are correct in saying God is always infinitely good.
draw us
to himself, and achieve a greater good (if not immediately, over the course of
history).
According to Deuteronomy 28:15-63, God also inflicts and causes evil solely for the purpose of causing the misery and destruction of the people he is hurting. Yet, you will never tell Christian parents that God allowed their child to be raped because God was angry with them because of some sin. You are more interested in telling people what comports with their existing beliefs, than in telling them the more harsh brutal biblical truth.
Evil doesn’t disprove God’s existence, but instead requires a
standard of good to be anything more than a matter of opinion. Only God can
provide such a standard.
There’s much more to examine in the universe, and you can
help your kids make the case for God at www.CaseMakersAcademy.com. They’ll
solve an intriguing mystery, as they also learn how to investigate the truth
about the cosmos. They’ll also have a chance to become Case Making Cadets and
earn a Certificate of Graduation after completing our free Case Makers
Academy. It’s never too
early to master the truth. Help your kids defend with they believe so they can
worship God with their hearts, souls, and minds.
This article first appeared at Crosswalk.com.
And the fact that you make money of of this marketing gimmick makes us wonder how God was able to teach before you came along, suggesting Christians don't "need" your materials half as much as you pretend.
