Israel's "Genocide" Against the Midianites

The Problem of Evil...

includes an argument that, when God commanded Israel to wipe out certain populations, He contradicted His own nature. If God contradicted Himself, then He is not Good, is misrepresented by the Old Testament, or does not exist.
I've never seen an Atheist put it that logically, but that's what their lazy rhetorical questions imply.
One specific example of "genocides" is Israel's first significant war, one against the Midianites and the five kingdoms led by Balak.
In Numbers 31:16, we read that the prophet Balaam advised the Baal-worshiping nations to lure the men of Israel to sexually sin and to worshiping their idols. Numbers 25 documents that this had resulted in the deaths of 24,000 Israelites. God then orders Israel to war against the nations that had lured them into sin, killing every man, woman, and male child (chapter 31).
Chapter 31 verse 19 adds a new element of understanding. The killing had made Israel's warriors ritually unclean -- which is another way to say, they had sinned. They were required to remain outside the camp of Israel for a week while undergoing purification rituals prescribed in Numbers 19:11-22.
In other words, although going to war had been a necessity, in God's eyes, acts of war were still an evil. This implies that God's judgment reflected weighing the evil of killing in war and the evil of failing to go to war.
Refraining from the war would have violated justice against the Baal-worshipers whose actions had cost thousands of Israelite lives. The events of chapter 25 were an insult to God Himself. Inaction would have left in place the temptation to sin. And the silence would constitute a failure to warn Israelites against repeating their apostasy.
So like the Atheist, God saw the so-called genocides as evil. However, unlike the Atheist, He had weighed the war against its context and judged it necessary. This answer may be generalized to the subsequent wars as Israel took possession of the promised land. One more lesson can be drawn from Numbers 25 through 31. Temptation can have life-and-death costs. Believers must deal decisively with circumstances that would draw us away from God and into sin and idolatry.
Copyright 2020 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal and non-profit use, provided credit is given where credit is due.

From a question on Quora:

Is the separation of "the entirety", the one god, into multiple gods or aspects due to our inability to comprehend "the entirety" as the singular aspect of all of creation?

In Hinduism, a multiplicity of minor gods make up components of a unified cosmic stew. The answer for Hinduism could be yes. I won't speak for them. My answer comes from a Christian perspective.

From a Christian perspective, the answer is no. The question reveals a lack of understanding of Christian theology. It comprises major non sequiturs which the following statements answer:

1. In Christian theology, one God is not separated into multiple gods or aspects. I’ll explain this below.
2. The “members” of the Trinity did not evolve from human imagination, but rather, are discerned from divine revelation.
3. The definition of the Christian God is not a convenience for the sake of comprehension, but rather, is a hindrance to the comprehension of many people such as Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Latter Day Saints (Mormons), Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarians, and Muslims. The majority of trinitarians still accept it by faith despite the difficulty of comprehending it, and you may find the following explanation to be unique even among top Christian apologists and philosophers.
4. God is separate from His creation and not an aspect of creation. The way the question is worded is like asking whether an egg is an aspect of a hen or a painting is an aspect of an artist.

According to current cosmology, the Inflationary period and the Big Bang mean that the universe had a beginning. Matter, energy, space, and time are so intertwined that if the universe had a beginning, then even time and space had a beginning.

According to the Cosmological argument, everything that begins to exist has a cause, so the universe had a cause that was immensely powerful, timeless, spaceless, and volitional. Skipping other arguments that fill in attributes… according to Christian theology, that cause was a singular God.

Some people, thinking themselves clever, ask, “Then what caused God? And what caused the cause? [This is actually compatible with Gnosticism.] You end up with an infinite regression of causes of causes, but an infinite regression is impossible because if you start at the other end, you can never get to this time.” The argument creates two logical absurdities.

• If God had a Cause, then that Cause had to be greater than God. But if the Cause was greater than God, then God is not God. (Reference the Ontological Argument and St. Anselm’s definition of God.)
• Multiple causes and effects requires sequence, and sequence is meaningless outside of time. Thus, it is nonsensical to assume that, outside of time, God began to exist due to a preceding Cause.

Existing outside of time and space and having creative power over the universe, God can enter or “reach into” His creation, reveal Himself to us, and experience it as one, three, or any number of apparent (apparent to us, that is) entities.

The Scriptures pose problems that the Jewish faith never dealt with. The clues are scattered throughout the Old Testament and are made more clear in the New Testament. The Father is clearly God, Christ is clearly God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and each of these has a distinct consciousness in time. Yet the scriptures explicitly teach that there is exactly one God.

To the Jewish and others who believe in a monolithic God, the idea of one God entering time and space as three Persons — the Trinity — is a problem. The evidence does not fit their understanding of God. However, to those who build their understanding around the evidence, the Trinity is a solution. It fits the scriptural evidence, and now we know it fits with science, as well.

In Christian theology, the three Persons are fully God, share the same spiritual substance, and share all the same attributes. The apparent (from our perspective) differences stem from the three cooperating by voluntarily accepting differing roles. Differences such as hierarchy of authority derive from the roles, not from the natures of the participant.

Another difference results from Christ joining with a human body so that, as the Son, He became fully man while retaining the nature of being fully God. Through this incarnation, He could experience the temptations, trials, and pains of life as a human, becoming a fitting proxy for us when God poured out judgment. At the same time, as God, He could live a sinless life, thus not needing to be judged for His own sins; and He could bear and recover from a judgment that would have destroyed us.

Thus, God is both eternal and temporal, transcendent and condescending, just and loving, responsible for creating a universe in which evil would happen and responsible for providing a way to offer redemption at His own expense. This is the maximally great God, far greater than any of the monolithic, “entirety” gods.

So God is creator of the universe, not an aspect of it. This one God is not separated into multiple gods or aspects. Rather, He exists as a continuing Unity. If we could see God from a perspective outside of time, we would see one God, whereas seeing God from within time, we see three co-equal Persons voluntarily fulfilling separate roles. Rather than man developing the Trinity as a convenience for our comprehension, the concept was discerned from divine revelation in spite of its challenge to our comprehension.


Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Feel free to use for personal, non-profit use, provided you give credit where credit is due.

A Partial Case for the Trinity

God is Jesus, God is the Father, but Jesus Is Not the Father

I wrote this for someone on Quora who seemed unsure about whether Jesus is God, but not the Father.

Science tells us that, when God made the universe, it had to involve creating energy, matter, space, and time. Having creative power over space and time, God entered time to experience it in three roles. From our perspective, God is three Persons, yet one God.

It is, as we used to say, mind-blowing! Here is just a sample of of the biblical evidence:

• Jesus called Himself “I Am” (John 8:58).  God called Himself I AM (Exodus 3:14) 
  
  (Note: Through translation from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, YHWH turned into “Jehovah,” which has little resemblance to the original word. For this reason, sects that make a big deal out of knowing the name “Jehovah” are founded on a myth.)
  
  
• Jesus claimed to have existed before Abraham, who lived about 1900 years earlier. (John 8:58)
  
  
• John wrote that God the Son (“the Word”) made all things that have come into being. (John 1:3)
  
  
• Paul wrote that God the Son created all things, and He is what holds all things together. (Colossians 1:16-17)
  
  (Note 1: In verse 16, one very bad translation inserts the word “other” so it reads, “created all other things.” They insert the word because they deny that the Son of God was created and not the Creator.
  
  Note 2: Some will say, “But look at verse 15! It says he was the first one born, so He was created. However, the Greek word translated “firstborn” in verse 15 does not mean “first one born.” It means Preeminent One. If you search the scriptures, you will find men who were called firstborn but were not the first ones among their siblings to be born. They were “firstborns” despite not being first ones born.)
  
  
• Jesus existed with the Father before creation, sharing in God’s glory. (John 1:1-2, John 17:5, John 17:24)
  
  
• If you read the last reference in context (John 17), you will notice that Jesus talks to the Father as separate Persons. The Father sends, glorifies, give authority to, gives followers to, gives a mission to, and shares glory with the Son. The Son prays to, glorifies, receives glory from, accomplishes work assigned by, shared and will share the glory of, conveys the words of, goes forth from and returns to, the Father. And that’s just the evidence from one chapter that, although the Father is God and the Son is God, the Father and the Son are two distinct persons.
  

As I said, this is just a sample of the evidence. Many scoff at the Trinity, but they have to twist hard to get the scriptures to indicate that the Son and Holy Spirit are not Persons of God, or that God just switches identities to trick us into thinking a single Person doesn’t pray to Himself, delegate to Himself, send Himself, go forth from Himself, and obey Himself.

Here’s why this is very important: If you were saved by the wrong God, you still need to be saved.

Did God Change His Mind about Creation?

If God knows all things, why did he regret making man (Genesis 6:6)?

Let's add verse 5 to that:

• Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time.
  And the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him in His heart.
  (Genesis 6:5-6, Berean Study Bible)

The logical answer is not always a satisfying answer, but let's deal with the flaw in the question first.  It is illogical to assume that foreknowledge precludes regret. The question assumes that knowing something will happen precludes regretting it when it happens. A parent knows an inoculation is necessary, yet can regret that it causes pain and wailing (or in my case, fainting).

The Hebrew word translated sorrow or regretted has a very wide range of meanings:

• for others: be sorry, moved to pity, have compassion
• of one’s own doings: be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent
• comfort oneself, be comforted, ease oneself, take satisfaction (through vengeance)

It’s important to recognize the weakness of any argument based on such an ambiguous word.

• NASB and NKJV use sorrow, which is purely an emotion. 
• In the Atheist’s argument, the NIV's and BSB's word regretted implies admitting to having made a mistake. 
• The KJV's word repent implies a change of mind that motivates a change in actions. 

Both repent and regret go a bit far by implying thought and planning processes whereas sorrow emphasizes the emotional side and is more true to the Hebrew text. 

We could end the argument here: So God experienced an emotion. So what?

An illustration might make this more intuitive. I read of a lone climber who fell in a crevasse and spent several days and nights with his arm pinned. Believing that another night of dehydration, hunger, shock, and exposure would kill him, he decided to amputate.

Imagining myself in his place, once I started… separating tissues, to put it gently… even though the action served a greater good, I would feel mixed emotions. Even though I would be following a plan that saved my life, I would feel conflicted about inflicting agony and the irreversible loss of a limb on myself. I’m not sure I’d have the courage to do that.

Scripture says that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but would prefer that all come to repentance and faith. When God saw the wickedness of man and man’s nearly universal rebellion against Him, He experienced sorrow (or whatever the intended translation was) while knowing the cause of the sorrow served a greater good.


Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal and non-profit use, but please give credit where credit is due.

The Heresy of Forgiveness

Or more precisely...

The Heresy of Requiring Forgiveness to Get Forgiveness

Many people fail to discern the difference between the preaching of Law that demands repentance and the preaching of Christ that demands trust in Him to redeem us. One heresy is the idea that, if we do not forgive all who sin against us, God will not forgive us. This is based on Jesus's preaching to the self-righteous Jews.

• "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Matthew 6:14-15

Jesus used the Law and rules like this to show self-righteous people that they could never achieve the level of righteousness needed to stand justified before God. 

• Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [Jews], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

Anything less than lifelong sinless perfection would desecrate God's holy presence. 

The Jews added thousands of commandments to the 600+ in the Old Testament, yet Jesus said...

• unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20).

This was to drive us to depend on God's grace:

• the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24).

So then, we are justified not by do's and don'ts such as forgiving others, but by the grace of God, and if justified by grace, then we are no longer under the law of death that condemns, but under the law of love that liberates and rewards.

• But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24).

This does not mean we can get away with sins such as unforgiveness. God chastises us to form righteousness in us. 

• Listen up, Joel Osteen! Listen up, Prosperity preachers! For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives (Hebrews 12:6). Christians' lives are actually MORE painful than non-Christians' lives. But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons (verse 7).

But although we are under our loving Father's disciplinary hand, He will never, ever cast us out of His family, reverse our adoption, or un-birth us; and our Big Brother Jesus will never, ever disobey our Father's command to lose none of us. 

Saying that God's grace of forgiveness is contingent on our good work of forgiveness contradicts the gospel. It even contradicts itself: Grace means "gift," so anything earned cannot be grace. The gospel commands us to let go of all forms of self-merit and rely 100% on God's gift. If we do not receive the gift as a gift, we insult the Giver and receive neither the gift nor the Giver.

The unsaved forgive to get forgiveness. Christians forgive because they have been forgiven. To say otherwise may simply reflect confused and incomplete thinking about the gospel. However, adding any condition such as forgiveness to the gospel costs people their salvation. When salvation is jeopardized, heresy is not too strong a word.

If you depend on your ability to forgive others in order to attain to God's forgiveness, repent of this form of self-righteousness and trust Christ alone. Now, before you forget.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Edited version of a previous post on Facebook. Permission granted for personal, non-profit use; but please give credit where credit is due.

Messiah's Unfulfilled and Fulfilled Prophecies

Question from Quora:

Since even the Christians agree that Jesus did not fulfill most of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, then why should anyone accept Jesus as the Messiah?

A Broken Question

The question is contains two non sequiturs. The correct answer to the question is, “The question is not a valid question.”

First, I’d like to know the count of fulfilled and unfulfilled prophecies and how it was arrived at. Bear in mind that many prophecies were in the form of typology.

For example, Moses prophesied that the Messiah would be like him. Both Jesus and Moses were rejected by their people. Both, after presenting themselves to their people, when away for a very long time before a second appearance. Both delivered Law: the first, a Law that condemns, and the second, a Law that liberates. Both presented sacrifices: the first, covering sacrifices, and the second, a redeeming sacrifice. I haven’t even scratched the surface here; Moses’ life was rich with prophetic symbolism. And that’s just one of many prophets.

Second, saying the prophecies concerning Messiah were not fulfilled is like writing a review for a play before the second act has even started or calling a baseball game after only the second inning. During Messiah Jesus’s first appearing, He accomplished a redemptive sacrifice that is there, plain as day, throughout the Old Testament, yet none of the Old Testament Jews anticipated. They focused entirely on nationalistic, political events yet to unfold, to the exclusion of predecessor, spiritual events. As Jesus said to Peter, “you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matthew 16:23, NKJV).

Why Believe?

Why anyone should accept Jesus as the Messiah remains a valid question, even if a gross misunderstanding of the prophecies motivates it. There are other answers, perhaps better answers, but this answer fits the context of the question. To understand it, some context is needed.

In the Bible, redemption, adoption, and sanctification all have two phases. These differences are gleaned from how the words are used in their contexts and from customs of ancient Jewish, Hellenist (Greek culture), and Roman societies.

• Redemption first involves the payment that transfers ownership and then involves taking delivery of the thing purchased.
• Adoption involves a legal declaration that makes someone a legal heir and then involves the execution of the will; which means for Christians the resurrection or transformation of the body leading into Judgment Day.
• Sanctification involves a legal declaration that makes someone holy and righteous, based on Messiah’s already having paid sin’s debt, followed by a gradual process of transforming that person’s behaviors into righteousness.
• Redemption, adoption, and sanctification converge when Messiah returns, wherein Messiah takes to Himself the believers remaining on earth, and transforming them into holy perfection, no longer in a form that is subject to temptation, and worthy to enter God’s presence.

As you can see, the phased processes (along with too many other processes and goals to mention here) dovetail with the concept of two appearance. That brings us to the answer to the question. First, one should believe because Jesus did fulfill so many prophecies. Second, one should believe, and believe now, because the delay in fulfillment of the remaining prophecies means there’s still time to find redemption. When Messiah fulfills the rest of the prophecies, it will be too late.

Tank

I remember a troubled young man Tank. After believing, he thought about questions he’d never considered before. One question above all bothered him: Why hasn’t God stopped sin and punished the wicked? How can God allow it to go on?

I asked when he had become a believer. Tank answered, two weeks ago.

Then I asked him, “Two weeks. Suppose Jesus had come three weeks weeks ago, stopped sin, and judged all the wicked for their sins. Where would Tank be now?”

Tank thought about it. “I guess, instead of asking why God allows sin to go on, I should thank Him for giving me more time, shouldn’t I?”

The delay between the first and second appearances of Messiah Jesus allows time for more people to repent and their place faith in Messiah. It allows them time to grow in holiness, worship God, and demonstrate His power. It also allows others to add to the accountability that will enable God to demonstrate His justice and holiness. You don’t want to be in the group that thinks the yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecies comprise a valid rationalization for rejecting the redemption the Messiah offers.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Most of this question was originally posted on Quora. Permission granted for personal and non-profit use, and please give credit where credit is due.

Unrealistic Expectations and Hypocrites in the Church

Excuses

An atheist protests, most so-called Christians don’t believe the Bible, don’t follow it, don’t believe what Christ said and live lives directly contrary to it. Real Christians agree!

The gospel according to a counterfeit Christian can be damning. The way they discredit the truth in the minds of unbelievers is an obstacle to conversion, and the way they distort the gospel leaves converts no closer to God than they were as Atheists. Plus, the way counterfeits discredit the gospel places a burden to those who do believe and live out the scriptures.

However, the Atheist's argument is not logical. The proliferation of counterfeits does not disprove that the real thing exists. To the contrary, it can indicate that something of real value exists and is worth counterfeiting.

Unrealistic Expectations

I need to say something about unrealistic expectations. Entering the biblical Christian faith requires understanding that you’re not good. Gaining understanding of the faith and its requirements takes time. Living the faith requires growth. One does not simply transform from decades-old habits and personality patterns overnight. Regardless of your chronological age, believers start out as spiritual babies when converted. They don’t start out worthy of being canonized as saints. 

So when a person criticizes a Christian for not being perfect, it’s like criticizing a student at some random point in his education for not having all the scholarship of a researcher who earned his PhD decades ago. There’s a point where criticizing the “hypocrites in the church” becomes an absurd excuse for not seriously considering the faith itself.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal or non-profit use, but please give credit where credit is due.

Was Matthias the Twelfth Apostle?

Was Matthias, or Paul, the twelfth apostle?

The apostles cast lots in Acts 1:24-26 to know who should replace Judas. The lot fell to Matthias.

Was this sanctioned by the Lord? Does Proverbs 16:33 endorse it?

First, understand that it does not matter. It does not affect the gospel. It will not affect how we live. However, I’ll spell out my reasons for disagreement with those who say God chose Matthias because there might be something to learn hermeneutically.

1. Most of the proverbs are generalities, not universal promises. I won’t argue this point myself. Instead, I’ll direct you to any parent who reared their child in the love, nurture, and admonition of the Lord, yet that child went permanently astray. Citing Proverbs 16:33 is an extremely weak argument because the literary style of Proverbs prohibits turning 16:33 into a universal endorsement of casting lots. It is also weak because there's no evidence that the disciples should have been casting lots in the first place.
   
   
2. Description of an event does not imply endorsement or prescription. Many bad interpretations of the Bible come from taking the description of an event to indicate its endorsement. Atheists commonly take Old Testament descriptions of murders, rapes, and child sacrifices to mean that God endorses such abominations. But the Bible describes people honestly warts and all. Acts in no way endorses the selection of Matthias as an apostle; it merely documents it.
   
   
3. Jesus told the disciples to chill until the Holy Spirit came. During the time between Jesus ascension into heaven and Pentecost, the disciples should have been waiting, not taking action. Impetuous Peter impulsively perpetrated a violation of that command. God’s choice was Paul, and that choice came later, in God’s timing.
   
   For an Old Testament analogue, recall how Jesse presented all the sons he thought would be qualified to be anointed by the prophet (1 Samuel 16). The prophet had to urge Jesse to present the son he hadn’t thought of, and that son, David, turned out to be God’s choice. Likewise, the disciples set their own criteria for selection and then forced a choice from among their own personal favorites.
   
   
4. There’s no evidence that when they cast lots, they gave God the option of “None of the above.” They forced a selection of a replacement.
   
   
5. When Paul said in his church epistles that he was chosen by God, not by men, it was a dig at the false apostles who were misleading the churches. I would speculate that the net also caught the Eleven’s forcing a premature choice.
   
   
6. Matthias, once chosen, rarely, if ever, appears again in the New Testament. He is not know for any great accomplishment.

Arguments 5 and 6 are very weak arguments, but I think that the arguments, taken together, form a very strong case that the twelfth apostle was Paul, not Matthias. 

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. This is a significantly edited version of a comment first posted on Quora. Permission granted for non-profit use provided credit is given where credit is due.

Define Deliverance

What is deliverance according to the Bible?

Deliverance means protection or rescue from danger. The more interesting questions are:

• From what things are people delivered?
• Who delivers?
• Who is delivered?
• How does (whom?) deliver?

When you consider all the possible answers to those questions, you can see that deliverance can have a great number of meanings.

Here are some examples from the Bible. Note: A word in the original Hebrew or Greek manuscripts can have more than one translation or interpretation in English, so different Bible translations may use other words.

• No king is saved by his vast army; no warrior is delivered by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; even its great strength cannot save. Psalm 33:16–17.
  
  The word deliverance in this passage has a wide meaning. It could be translated deliverance, help, salvation, or victory. The passage emphasizes reliance on God instead of on physical means. It continues:
  
  Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him,
  On those who hope for His lovingkindness,
  To deliver their soul from death
  And to keep them alive in famine.
  Our soul waits for the LORD;
  He is our help and our shield.
• You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7.
  
  God protected the prophet, King David, from many attempts on his life both before and after he became king of Israel. God usually did this by providing a way of escape for David.
• For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Esther 4:14
  
  Israel had been conquered by Babylon. A politician had tricked the king into killing them. God was using Esther’s cousin/adopted father to talk her into appealing to the king in order to rescue their people from the plot.
• But on Mount Zion there will be deliverance, and it will be holy, and the house of Jacob will reclaim their possession. Obadiah 1:17
  
  This was part of a prophecy that had a very broad meaning. It predicted that God would provide a means of rescue and protection from the destruction of the wicked on Judgment Day. It implies physical protection of both faithful descendants of Abraham and faithful non-Jews, as well as redemption of faithful people from damnation.

In the New Testament, the word deliverance is replaced by more specific words such as salvation and redemption. The word deliver is used, but usually in a negative sense wherein one person turns a second person over to an authority for punishment. That includes (a) betrayers or low-level authorities turning a believer over to authorities for persecution and (b) a spiritual leader turning a badly sinning Christian over to the devil for punishment. The second sense happened when false preachers blasphemed and when a Christian took his father’s wife as his own.

Some churches use the term deliverance to means that God rescues someone from an addiction, disease, or demon, possibly using healing of the body or the emotions. Many of those churches cross the line into fanatical. The deliverance is almost always psychological, not miraculous. However, it would be just as wrong to say that God never does such deliverance.

In other churches, deliverance may mean that God rescues someone from the penalty of sin. This is normally called salvation. Near-synonyms that emphasize how it happens include redemption and the new birth (born again). Spiritual deliverance is far more important than types that only benefit us in our short, earthly lives. As Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” God does this by by granting an awareness of one’s condemnation and then granting trust in His promise to apply the price that He paid through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, with the physical resurrection of Christ being the proof that God does what He promises.

I first posted this on Quora at https://www.quora.com/unanswered/What-is-deliverance-according-to-the-Bible. I trust anyone who copies it to give credit where credit is due.

Bases of Atheistic Faith

From three questions in a conversation on Quora.

“what evidence does an Atheist base his belief on that God doesn’t exist?”

It depends on the Atheist. There’s a new book out by an Atheist about the seven types of Atheist. Each type is a rather broad category, and there seems to be overlap. The author criticizes five of the seven types.

According to current wisdom, the typical Atheist’s belief has two parallel bases. One is the motive, and the other is the intellectual side.

The thinking atheist claims that the evidence for God is inadequate and the universe does not need a God; but the jump from not needing God to actively judging or rejecting God requires blind faith.

The smarter Atheists know they cannot prove there is no God, so to escape having to prove a negative, they’ve begun equivocating by importing the definition of Agnosticism into what they claim Atheism is. They revert to an obsolete definition of Atheism which meant “You don’t believe in my god(s).” Then they claim they merely believe in one less god than monotheists, and monotheists are atheists, too because they don’t believe in all gods. They also claim (falsely) that they’d be open to proof.

The deception is revealed when they stop their ears to Theistic arguments and when they set ridiculously high levels of evidence that would be needed for them to move from Atheism to Theism. (And even if they received such evidence, they’d explain it away as delusion.)

The motive can be

1. negative experiences (such as mistreatment by “Christians”)
2. attachment to sins
3. defensiveness (taking offense at having their disbelief pointed out, having been reared without religious training or having later rejected God)

Negative experiences actually become an attachment to sins such as anger, bitterness, jealousy, and unforgiveness against “Christians” or daddy issues. Defensiveness also becomes an attachment to the sins of unbelief and “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.”

The foundation, the basis underlying the bases, is the “the Fall,” “sin nature” or “original sin.” We all start out in rebellion against God, and Atheism is just an expression of that rebellion.

That people may have gone through a religious phase does not mean they left the faith. They may have had a misunderstanding of The Faith, shallowness of understanding or faith, or priorities that made idols of “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” Man judges by the outward appearance, so they and we are easily fooled by counterfeit belief. They may seem to us to have lost salvation, but what they lost was superficial; it was counterfeit.

God is not so gullible. He sees the hearts, and He sees the future thoughts and actions that the hearts will produce. He’s not going to turn a goat into a sheep just to let the sheep turn himself back into a goat again. Either He will preserve that sheep, or He will never turn the goat into a sheep in the first place.

I’ve heard many stories of people who spent their lives in good churches but only late in life actually were converted. How much easier it would be for people to deceive themselves or others and then abandon their counterfeit faith.

“what is his experience or is it that he takes pride in his ability to reason?”

Both. His experience is a lack of encounters with the supernatural. He may have prayed without receiving the requested answer or seen a miracle that he later decided was a con job. By (flawed) reasoning, He then projects that lack of experience onto all of history and adds that to many other flawed arguments. Most then close their minds to protect their pride and to resist admitting to their underlying rebellion.

“….then his ability to reason doesn’t validate his faith (how does an atheist prove that his faith is true?)”

• In engineering and business, verification is a check that you did something correctly. Validation is a check that you did the right thing.

The Atheist thinks his ability to reason verifies his faith, but it is a false verification because a mixture of flawed information and reasoning can only produce wrong conclusions.

Validation happens when the end result meets the underlying needs. If the underlying needs are forgiveness, relationship with God, and everlasting life, and the Atheist’s faith blocks the way to fulfilling those needs, then his ability to reason and his faith are invalidated. The invalid nature of his assumption that he does not need forgiveness, God, or life meet there ultimate, tragic invalidation when he follows Richard Dawkins into hell.


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