Atheism's Dishonest Redefinition of Faith

Atheist popularizers dishonestly conflated faith with blind faith to support their dishonest argument that materialism has evidence while no religion has evidence.

It's human nature to get frustrated, even angry, when people use dishonest arguments to argue against your position. Atheists always irritate me by using a dishonest definition of faith to score rhetorical, but illogical, points. Most do so in ignorance, so I have to practice some self-control when responding. If I point out the dishonesty of the rhetoric, I have to emphasize that I'm accusing the originators of the trick of dishonesty, not them.

Faith is not necessarily decided in the absence of evidence. That definition was popularized over the couple of decades by promoters of Atheism such as Dawkins and Boghosian. Those pop-science writers equivocated by conflating faith with blind faith. 

Faith, honestly defined, is active trust in the absence of absolute proof. I use the redundancy in “absolute proof” for emphasis. Blind faith is a subset; classifying all faith as meeting the definition of blind faith and then relegating faith to religion, to the exclusion of other matters, especially science, was deceptive rhetoric on the part of the popularizers.

Belief overlaps faith because it is a decision about a claim. The difference is that faith is active. Faith influences decisions, whereas belief can be active or passive. That is, one can accept a claim “in theory” without letting it influence decisions. 

(Grammatically, believe is a transitive verb: one believes a claim. Sometimes, the believed claim is implied. In contrast, faith is a noun that labels an active belief.) 

Can anthropogenic climate change be proven? No. Can the claim be believed? Yes. Can one put faith in it? Yes. Is there sufficient evidence (e.g., long-term history or evidence that politically- or career-motivated managers in the science industry fudge the numbers) to create reasonable doubt? Also yes.

Since issues such as climate change depend on evidence in the absence of proof, believe and faith are perfectly applicable terms in the realm of science. Technically, they lie outside the rules of the process of science, but they certainly apply to scientists, the public, and the policies and cancel culture that rely on scientific issues and evidence. One can honestly conclude, based on observation,  that fearmongering over climate-change crosses into religious (or at least ideological) zeal. 

To say that faith applies to religion and not to science is to mislead — and on the part of Atheists who popularized the bad definition, to use such rhetoric is to deceive. 

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use.

Judge Jesus: "Full of Himself?

Answering a question on Quora:

Why is Jesus so full of himself that he would condemn good loving peaceful people to an eternity in a burning lake of fire that doesn't worship him as a god?

First off, you’re not really “full of yourself” if you really are “all that.” Jesus is “all that.” If you understood the unimaginable precision of the constants of physics required to keep the universe from collapsing or exploding, you’d be just beginning to understand the greatness of God the Son. If you understood the virtual impossibility of the chain of events beginning with the formation of the right types of amino acids all having the same geometries, forming the right proteins, forming the right components that enable self-replication of RNA and DNA, and the half-gigabyte of quaternary-encoded information that enables the duplication of that environment (as well as itself) in even the simplest hypothetical biological organism, you would be just beginning to grasp how great God the Son is. He is “all that.” He is all that by nature, He is all that by virtue of being your Creator, and He is all that by virtue of the price He paid to secure your potential redemption.

Second, if you grasped the utter perfection and holiness of God the Son, you would never pretend that there’s such a thing as “good” people, This error normally results from judging people relative to ourselves or from judging ourselves relative to other imperfect people, rather than judging relative to God’s standard. What, you think your “good” outweighs your bad? Do you really think you can pay off your debts with what you already owe to your Creator? What, you think you’re perfect? You’ve never done anything wrong? Now who’s full of himself?!

Third, the unholiness of man and the holiness of God’s presence cannot coexist. The unholiness of a human would defile and insult an utterly righteous and holy God, and the glory of God would be unbearable to an unholy, unregenerated human. Neither could stand the other! Hell is not a problem, but rather, a solution.

Fourth, saying that not worshiping Christ as God sends people to hell is like saying one link in a chain suspends the load. It’s a flawed focus on a single symptom. God provided a means of redemption and regeneration. He offers it as a gift. Refusing that gift is the ultimate sin; it is a sin against oneself. But nobody goes to hell for that sin alone; it is merely one among many.

Hell was created for Lucifer and the angels who followed him in rebellion against God. We are born as citizens of Lucifer’s kingdom, and we all ratify that with by breaking God’s commandments. God’s gift can regenerate us so we gain citizenship in God’s kingdom. If we are so full of ourselves that we fail to receive that gift, we have only ourselves to blame.

Fear of hell is not a wrong reason to receive the gift and then worship God. But there is a better reason. God is good. In fact He is the ultimate standard of goodness. He not only gave us life, but also, at His own expense, created the means for our forgiveness, redemption, and regeneration. He balanced justice and love by paying a price that would have destroyed any mere human. In His kindness, He freely offers that to each of us.

When we rebel against physical laws, we pay a price. The price of rebelling against gravity by walking off a cliff is paid when you hit the bottom. You have only yourself to blame. Likewise, there is a moral law. If we fail to receive the gift of redemption, we will hit the bottom in hell. And how much more accountable will be those who actively reject the gift.

You can reframe the consequences to shift the blame to the One who enforces the law. You may rage against Him for all eternity. But in all honesty, you will have only yourself to blame. 

Copyright 2021 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please cite sources when copying.

God Shoulda Created an All-Good Universe

An Absurd Atheist Remedy for the Problem of Evil

Many atheists argue that, if God has foreknowledge, He should have created a universe in which evil would not exist. The argument has multiple non sequiturs.

• Evil is not a thing that "exists." As darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of good and therefore the rejection of God. 
  
  
• The argument assumes that preventing His rejection (i.e., creating a vacuum that constitutes “evil”) would have been better than what He did create. 
  
  
• Using the word “better” makes a moral judgment based on either the atheist's mere personal preferences, which have no authority, or a standard the atheist rejects, God's goodness. So the atheist has no foundation on which to say one thing would be "better" than another.
  
  
• The argument assumes that no higher purpose exists that justifies God's allowance of His rejection. For example, it ignores that, in an all-good-always universe, love, mercy, and grace would be meaningless, and no creature would, by nature, be worthwhile for God to have a relationship with.
  
  
• In an all-good-always universe, only one option exists: God's perfect will. Any other choice would be non-compliance and, therefore, evil. If non-compliance with the perfect were an option, evil would happen. But if evil cannot happen, only one option exists. Thus, choice would be non-existent. Love, mercy, grace, and any other good would be meaningless because they would be forced. In fact, love, mercy, and grace would not exist because they would not be needed.
  
  
• The argument assumes that temporary material existence, not an everlasting spiritual existence that takes into account things done during material existence, is the correct courtroom in which to judge God’s plans. 

The argument is often accompanied by a claim that God created imperfection or evil. That is like saying that if I build a house and my client rejects me by vandalizing the house, I made a vandalized house. Like the main argument, it’s logically absurd. 

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. For your own conscience's sake, please give credit where credit is due. (You do know what remunerated means, don't you?)

One Core Religion, Progressively Elaborated

Responding to questions in a thread:

One Core Religion, Progressively Elaborated

Background

Me: The “religion” of Noah and Moses was the same “religion,” handed down from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Jacob’s (“Israel’s”) twelve sons. In Egypt, most of Israel forgot those beliefs and adopted Egyptian practices. Moses merely wrote it down as God restored it and elaborated on it.

Response: Does that mean Jesus modified and changed the eternal religion by deeming everything allowed to be eaten?

Secondly, do you have a proof of your claim that it was the same religion, or is it just a conjecture?

Response

First, the trend of the “religion” of Elohim/YHWH/Jesus as defined in the Bible has a constant thread of depending on God instead of on self-righteousness, and being rewarded with enjoying a personal relationship with God. The doctrines of the “religion” developed through punctuated elaboration. That is, at various times, more details were added so that it forms a continuum, just like the education of any student. The Jewish authorities of Jesus’s time dropped out by rejecting the next layer of elaboration and the corrections that laid its groundwork.

To me, calling that process “modifying and changing” is like saying that conducting a student from sixth grade into seventh grade is “changing” his education. There is a change in the student’s stage, but the stages of the plan have been there all along. So, from the religionist’s perspective, perhaps; from the Planner’s perspective, no.

Just as some schools will put part of their students on a path toward manual vocations and others on a path toward college, God separated the descendants of Abraham from the rest of the world. The purpose of the Abrahamic path became clear when God singled out Jacob’s descendants to become Israel, a nation of priests to the world (they failed miserably) and the path through which the Redeemer would come. A special role required special policies.

The Mosaic Law had a number of purposes, among which was conveying a message about holiness. The need for holiness was symbolized, for example, by dietary regulations. However:

• The dietary regulations were part of the Mosaic Covenant (or “Law” or “contract”) between God and Israel. The Law never had jurisdiction outside of Israel (“gentiles”).
  
  
• Israel abrogated the Law through breach of contract, violating it repeatedly, ultimately by rejecting the promised Messiah.
  
  
• God abrogated the Law by fulfilling it through the Messiah (“Christ”).
  
  
• God supplanted the Law with a new covenant (“New Testament”) with simplified requirements: Trust the sacrifice of Christ for redemption instead of trusting self-righteousness; Love God; love your neighbor; and love fellow believers. The simplification was new, but it continued “the spirit of the Law” that had always existed.

The butterfly is still the same creature that it was when it was a caterpillar. When a child discards the toys of a toddler in favor of the toys of a pre-pubescent, the process of maturation is not “modified or changed.” You aren’t changing the “religion” by moving it into a more mature phase.

Second, the genealogies do not say, “X begat Y and taught him his religion, and Y begat Z and taught him his religion,” etc. However, the whole of the scriptures emphasize that beliefs are passed from generation to generation; that the beliefs God defines should be passed down; and there were generations such as Abel, Seth, and Enoch between Adam and Noah that were specifically said to walk with God. And isn’t it the hope of every parent that their child will follow their religious (or non-religions) belief?

I’m accustomed to people (specifically, atheists) who ask for “proof,” demanding unreasonable, tangible, irrefutable, complete, and constantly available evidence. Since time machines are fantasy, I’m prejudiced to say that, according to their standards, “No, there’s no proof.” But if you’re a reasonable person, I’m sure a time machine won’t be necessary. 

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated reuse. Please give credit where credit is due.

The Fairness of Hearing the Gospel

Answering a question on Quora:

If only [by] believing in Jesus can someone go to heaven, what about people who died before Jesus's birth, who have not heard about Jesus at their time? If they can all go to heaven, is that not fair for us as we have to choose which god is the right one[?]

This question requires some untangling because it makes several assumptions and implies several questions. 

The question assumes that people have been accountable for fulfilling the same requirements at all times. That is, people living before Jesus’s birth could only go to heaven if they believed in Jesus.

Actually, accountability has always been proportional. That means that a child who has no ability to grasp the requirements has no accountability. It also means that people living in ancient times were not required to know something that had not happened yet.

The question asks, If [Since] only [by] believing in Jesus can someone go to heaven…. That is terribly over-simplified. “Believing in Jesus” is a mere title or summary. When you add the details, you find that five out of six (83%) of the requirements now and in ancient times overlap.

In ancient times, the required knowledge and belief were:

• God exists; and He is just and holy.
• My thoughts and actions have made me unholy, so I cannot defile the presence of a holy God.
• My actions require a just God to punish my unholy thoughts and actions.
• God is also merciful, gracious, and loving, so He will provide a way for me to enter His presence.
• I, therefore, trust God rather than myself.

In 33 AD, God added one more detail:

• The way is Jesus’s death and resurrection. (This is enough detail for this context, although another layer of details appears when you ask questions such as, Whom and What was Jesus? and What do you mean by resurrection?)

People living before 33 AD could not know how God would create the way to enter God’s presence, so they were not accountable for knowing the how. They knew — or at least they could know — through the Old Testament commands, that they were guilty before God. Then knew through the prescribed Old Testament sacrifices that it would require lifeblood and a substitution, and that it would be a price they could not pay without themselves being destroyed. So, instead of trusting themselves, they had to trust God.

Jesus lived, died, and rose again to create the way to enter God’s presence. The exact how was not something ancient people could know, but it is something we know. Since we know the how, we are accountable for following it.

Imagine being on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean. Someone tells you that a helicopter is hovering overhead, rescuing passengers.

• If you do not believe the ship is sinking, you will drown.
• If you decide to swim 2,000 miles to the nearest shore, you will drown.
• If you look at the helicopter and then return to your room, you will drown.
• If you believe them intellectually but do not let them hoist you up into the helicopter, you will drown.
• If you believe in the helicopter but insist on getting to it your own way, you will drown.

The question focuses on the way of escape, which is trusting that God paid our penalty. In a sense, failing to use that way of escape can be blamed for going to hell. But that is simplistic. The sinking ship represents our unholy thoughts and actions. Drowning represents going to hell. Failing to put faith in Christ’s actions is just one more unholy failure. A sinner does not go to hell for any single moral crime (although one is enough), but for a lifetime of moral crimes.

God sends people to hell for their sins. People send themselves to hell by failing to follow the way of escape that God created.

As for having to choose the right God, all men, always,  have "had to choose the right God." Only one God deals honestly with the problem of sin and justice. For example, when Islam's god forgives, he does so at the expense of satisfying justice. Only the Judeo-Christian God satisfies both justice and love.

The question ends by asking about fairness. Fairness is a relative concept. It is a question that children ask when they don’t get what they greedily desire. “Johnny got a gift he didn’t earn, so it’s unfair if I don’t get a gift.” If there is unfairness, it is created by us. We are the ones making the choice to repent and trust Christ or to reject God’s way.

From God’s perspective, “fairness” would have been making Jesus the political ruler over all earth 2,000 years ago instead of letting the Innocent One take the wrath the guilty deserve. Fairness would be letting all humans go to hell.

Since Jesus created a way to be saved from hell, fairness is allowing us to choose our own fates. Fairness to ourselves would be responding according to our knowledge of the way, living accordingly, and passing that knowledge along.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Assuming credit is given where credit is due, permission granted for non-remunerated use.

Why the Universe Couldn't Always Have Existed

 Answering a question on Quora:

If God always existed and did not need to be created, why is not possible that the universe always existed and did not need to be created?

The question needs a two-part answer. First, I want to clarify: For many, establishing the existence of God must precede establishing that God has revealed Himself. A debates over Big Bang cosmology versus various versions of Creationism is a subsequent issue. It can wait. One step at a time.

...why is [it] not possible that the universe always existed and did not need to be created?

Theoretical physicists don’t believe the universe is eternal. They believe it began 13.787±0.020 billion years ago. According to General Relativity, “universe” includes not only mass and energy, but also space-time.

1. Obviously, if the universe began to exist a finite time ago, it could not have always existed.
2. “Always existed” implies an infinite past. If space-time began during the inflationary period as physicists believe it did, then there was no earlier past in which the universe could have existed.
3. Due to increasing entropy, an infinitely old universe would have experienced heat death, long ago. Even if the universe were cyclical or a child universe, entropy would have been preserved through the rebirths or births, so an infinitely old series of cycles would still have produced a dead universe long ago.
4. If the universe began in the infinite past, it would be impossible to traverse an infinite time to get to “now.”
5. It would be impossible to traverse an infinite series of real things or events such as birth-rebirth cycles.

At the minimum, the universe had to begin to exist. This leads to a tangent: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. From the characteristics of the universe and of life, we can infer a number of attributes such as unimaginable power, creative power over space-time that enables spatial and temporal omnipresence, unimaginable levels of intelligence and craftsmanship — attributes of a Creator-God.

If God always existed and did not need to be created….

Again, “always existed” implies an infinite past. That has already been refuted. Theist apologists familiar with cosmology do not say God always existed. They say God had to exist “before” the universe. Since time is an attribute of the universe itself, and the universe had a beginning a finite time ago, God existed outside of time (not “always”).

While God existed outside of time, He also can enter into time. If God created the universe, and time is an attribute of the universe, then God has creative power over time. With such a creative power, God can enter into time, experience it, and interact with His creatures.

In fact, with such creative power, God can enter into space-time as multiple Persons or centers of consciousness. Being Spirit and not matter, the impossibility of two masses existing at the same time and location do not apply. And being timeless and spaceless combines with creative power so that coexisting as three Persons having the same essence (spiritual “substance”) does not create any paradoxes. But the fact of a triune God must be revealed; it cannot be deduced, sensed, or detected.

As with an infinite universe or cycle of universes, an infinite regression of gods creating gods is impossible. If there were a chain of gods creating gods, one of them must be the First Cause. This might make sense causally, but remember, you lack time during which sequences such as need and creation could occur. The idea of God being created is nonsensical in a condition that lacks the dimension of time.

One link in the chain of gods is as far as the evidence and logic permit us to go, and One is enough. 

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use; and remember to give credit where credit is due.

Jesus was not Joseph Campbell's hero

Answering a question on Quora:

Is the book of Matthew a monomyth?

In my opinion, the Gospel According to Matthew has some elements of a monomyth but lacks the most critical characteristic.

According to Wikipedia, monomyth is a term from narratology Narratology and Comparative mythology, popularized by Joseph Campbell as the Hero's journey. The monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.

Atheists believe Matthew is mythological, but it was intended as biographical; and good historical evidence supports that. While the book may be biographical, it remains narrative, so I would not exclude it from being a “hero’s journey” just because it is factual. There are better reasons.

Wikipedia includes a quote from Campbell that boils the Hero’s Journey cycle to such simple elements that Matthew could qualify as monomyth. However, that quote oversimplifies the cycle.

If you are familiar with Matthew and compare the events in Matthew to the graphic on Wikipedia’s page, you will find monomyth elements such as a mentor (God the Father), although mentorship precedes the narrative. Jesus of Nazareth has helpers (primarily the God the Holy Spirit), but his disciples are more dependents than helpers. Jesus of Nazareth gains victory over a climactic challenge — a torturous, humiliating death — resulting in the transformation of His body, but His character remains unchanged, since the core of His being was always fully formed. Jesus does not really return “home.” After His victory, He sporadically appears to His disciples to convince them of His victory and
deliver parting messages, but Matthew does not include the return home because "home" is God's throne. (The return home is described in Luke’s book, The Acts of the Apostles.)

Matthew lacks a self-revelation that transforms Jesus. Rather, Matthew turns much of the template upside down. Instead of being changed, Jesus changes the world. Specifically, Jesus transforms the relationship between God and humans. What people previously saw only through ceremonial metaphors and through clouded prophecies, they came to know historically and personally. What was previously conditional and superficial, He made unconditional and everlasting. (To support this statement, I would need to go into theological differences between Old Testament and New Testament salvation, which would stray off topic.)

Matthew does not qualify as monomyth. Rather than experiences transforming the Hero, the Hero’s experience enables transformation of the audience. The intent of Matthew is not to entertain readers with a transformed hero’s journey, but rather, to transform readers and send them on their own journeys.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated purposes, provided credit is given where credit is due.

God's Name: Holy, But Not Magic

Another question from Quora

Why are some words capitalized in the Bible?

Which Bible? Which words?

A. Others have explained how words such as pronouns are capitalized out of reverence when the words refer to God. Sometimes that practice is helpful because ancient writers were not always clear about whom a pronoun referred to. If a sentence referred to a prophet, a king, and God, figuring out which one of them “he” refers to might be difficult. When the pronounce is capitalized, you know that at least the translator believes it refers to God.

B. The New American Standard Bible uses all-capitals to identify quotations, particularly quotations from the Old Testament.

C. But I think what you really want to know about is the word LORD, in all capital letters.

Before the time of the exodus from Egypt, those who worshiped God referred to Him descriptively as “God” or “Lord.” Egypt had many gods, so after God told Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses wanted a name so he could tell the Israelites who sent him to them. God answered, “Tell them I AM has sent you.” That name was spelled YHWH. Hebrew did not have vowels, so if you did not learn Hebrew by hearing it, you would not know how to pronounce the name.

A thousand years later, Israel had departed from worshiping YHWH. God removed His protection, so other nations destroyed Israel and deported the leaders for seventy years. When the leaders were sent back to Israel a few years before 530 BC to re-establish the nation, they had learned their lesson and become extremely serious about worshiping God.

They became so serious that they refused to pronounce that holy name, YHWH. Consequently, later generations forgot how to pronounce it! By the time of Christ’s birth, it had become regular practice to add the vowels from Adonai (“Lords”) to YHWH to make YaHoWaH.

Since the actual pronunciation was lost, this new pronunciation stuck. Over time, the name was Hellenized for Greek translations. Then that was Latinized for Roman translations. Then that was Anglicized for English translations. That’s how it came to be pronounced Jehovah. Sometimes, some translations use the name Jehovah; other times, they use LORD in its place.

LORD is still used in place of YHWH in many modern translations. Sometimes LORD is used for Adonai, too, especially in compound names such as Adonai Elohim (literally, “Lords Gods,” but often translated “LORD God”). It’s done partly out of respect, partly out of tradition, and partly because we have no confidence that Yahowah is the correct pronunciation. It’s just assumed that readers know; but obviously, not everybody does.

Watch out for organizations of movements that stress knowing God’s “name” such as Yah, Yahweh, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, or Jehovah. They take advantage of people who lack biblical education. It’s good to learn the meanings that words and names convey. However, God understands all human languages, even when we mispronounce His name. Biblical faith is not a religion of sorcery and incantations wherein the words themselves have power. Our goal is to know and experience God, not magical words.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Free for non-remunerated use, but please give credit where credit is due rather than committing plagiarism.

Omniscience Is No Paradox for God

Answering a question on Quora

Sometimes, the answers on Quora are so bad, you have to add your own answer, even if the question is so elementary that any diction should give an adequate answer, because people who post questions tend to be most influenced by the first answers they read.

What does it mean to be "omniscient"?

Omniscient combines the prefix omni-, “all,” with the Latin root word scientia, “knowledge.” To be omniscient is to know all knowable information. For a more complete definition, watch the opening of the video below, titled, “Omniscience Paradox Debunked.”

Contrary to some objections, a Being with omniscience does not take away free will. Suppose you see someone whose face has lost its color, their eyes have become glassy and unfocused, and their body has started wobbling; and he says, “I’m going to faint.” You now have good reason to believe (“know”) that he’s going to faint. Has your knowledge taken away his choice to either continue standing or to lie down before he loses consciousness? Of course not. Similarly, an omniscient Being’s knowledge of what we decide to do or believe does not limit the freedom of our wills.

It could be argued that, if you knew the consequences of every option you do or do not choose, there would be no meaning to anything. This argument assumes that meaning comes from ignorance of future success or failure. Human motivation peaks when the ratio of success to failure calculates at around 2/3 — significantly higher for some, significantly lower for others. Motivation fades if one either succeeds too often or fails too often. But it is presumptuous to project a human tendency onto a Being who has attributes of perfection such as omniscience. Such a Being could derive meaning from other factors such as demonstrating justice, love, and an unimaginably intricated level of planning.

Some see a paradox in knowing even one’s future choices. If you already knew in the past what you were going to choose now, then you aren’t making a choice now. But this merely shows the falsehood of the assumption that you will make choices in the future. Any choices would already have been made through the same mechanism that endowed omniscience. Imagine the gears of a mechanical watch. The gears firmly enmesh so that all move together. Similarly, choices and knowledge could enmesh so that, if one exists, so does the other.

Further reading (or listening):

• What does it mean that God is omniscient?
• What Determines the Future?
• Doctrine of God (Part 13): Systematic Study of God’s Omniscience | Reasonable Faith
• God's Omniscience and Man's Free-will (William Lane Craig)
• Omniscience Paradox Debunked
• You might want to read answers to questions already on Quora, “What is omniscience?” and “Does an omniscient being know it's omniscient?”

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

How to Defeat Any Curse

From a question on Quora:

Do you believe curses or hexes exist?

A hex is just a curse made by a witch, so I’m going to just call them curses.

Curses can come from two sources: humans and God.

A curse from a human has no power of its own. It’s just words. Words can influence persons, but they have no force of their own. However, a curse can incite a listener to act. Curses can have a nocebo effect, which is the opposite of a placebo's positive effect. That is, the fear of a curse produces its own negative results or perception of negative results. Curses can also invite demonic forces into people's lives.

Note that agents of darkness may not be welcome in the life of the person who is cursed. For example, they might have the protection of the Holy Spirit of God. However, by invoking agents of darkness, people pronouncing curses invite demons’ influence into their own lives. So cursing can be more dangerous for the person cursing than for the person cursed.

The ways demons might influence or control people are a separate subject.

A curse from God is a pronouncement of judgment. The pronouncement may merely predict the consequences of evil action, such as when God cursed cities to be destroyed and never rebuilt. Two, three, of four thousand years after the destruction of such cities, their ruins are found by satellite photos, buried in the sands. Such pronouncements may also reflect God’s influence over humans to prevent anybody from ever re-established such cities.

God’s curse is far worse than curses coming from witches, shamans, demons, or anything else. Because we fall short of the moral standard based on God’s perfect holiness, God’s verdict of guilty and sentence of everlasting separation from God falls on all of us. If you don’t see yourself that way, just read the Ten Commandments and keep in mind that the violation need not be physical. God is Spirit, and the thoughts of our spirits are just as real to Him as physical actions are to each of us.

God offers to lift that curse. As Creator of the universe — time, space, energy, and matter — God used His creative power to enter, experience, and act in time and space as three Persons. The three Persons, while have identical natures, voluntarily assumed three distinct roles: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son voluntarily took on a human body called Jesus of Nazareth. He preached and performed miracles that validated His identity, and then He took our curse upon Himself.

God offers freedom from the curse as a gift, but the gift comes with three costs. The first cost is abandoning the pride and self-righteousness that leads us to either deny that we are under the curse or to think we can do enough good to justify ourselves. We can’t do good to make up for wrong thoughts and actions because we already owe it to our Creator to do good. We cannot pay with what we already owe.

The second cost is the flip side of the first. We need to depend completely on God’s gift. We cannot insult the Giver by depending on our own merit or by mixing our merit with His gracious generosity. The gift must be received as a gift.

Underlying this dependence is an acknowledgment that God (specifically the Son), adding to His own nature the nature of a man, Jesus of Nazareth, bore our curse by dying on a cross; but being God, could not be held by death; and so He restored life to that body and physically rose from the dead on the third day. That resurrection sealed the validation of His identity as the Creator of life. It proved the sufficiency of His death as payment for our moral crimes. And it served as a down payment for the continuation of our lives in heaven and the eventual resurrection and transformation of our physical bodies.

The third cost is the practical side of abandoning self-righteousness and receiving the gift of redemption from the curse. People who do that are called believers or Christians. They are also called disciples because, if they are sincere, they begin learning about and loving the things that God loves and hating things that God hates. They start abandoning old practices and start doing things, not to justify themselves, but to demonstrate their sincerity, out of gratitude to God, and out of love for others. When their lives and choices change, some people will be happy for them, but others will think them strange or even hate them.

Most people will not pay the cost. Accepting guilt and its deserved consequences and then depending entirely on God for freedom from the curse offends our pride. Not all have the courage to enduring what family, friends, or enemies of God will say and do. Those who accept freedom from the curse, however, will receive rewards in heaven that far outweigh any cost.

When people accept the cost, repent over their moral crimes or bad beliefs, and put their trust entirely in the Gift of Gifts, the Holy Spirit enters their lives and intercedes with the Father for them. Where the Holy Spirit dwells, dark forces lose all their power. The Son also welcomes them as beloved siblings and intercedes for them. And the Father welcomes them as beloved children.

Over such, no curse has power.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Feel free to use for non-remunerated purposes, but if you fail to give credit where credit is due, a pox be upon you!

Moral Monsters: Deviants from Objective Morality

From a question on Quora:

If God the Father of life is All-Holy and objectively moral, then wouldn’t the definition of a true monster be anything that is subjectively moral and anti-life or anti-God?

I would start with a dictionary definition of monster. Most definitions are subjective. I like the definition from biology given on Dictionary.com because it implies a standard:

an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure, as from marked malformation or the absence of certain parts or organs; a grossly anomalous fetus or infant, especially one that is not viable.

We can apply this definition to morality. Monster: a personal being having a set of principles, thoughts, or behaviors, from lacking or deviating from objectively moral principles.

I wanted to say that a hypothetical person’s subjective morality could coincide with the objective morality that is based on God’s character. Such a person would not be a monster. However, basing morality on the wrong foundation, personal opinion, would make one a monster because ignoring objective morality requires rejecting God’s sovereignty; and rejecting God’s sovereignty is immoral. So it would be impossible to be subjectively moral without deviating from objective morality.

Is every person that is not objectively moral subjectively moral? One could say that because, if morals are not based on an objective standard, then they are based on a subjective one. Ah, but there are monsters who have no morals at all. They may have a personal code based on what is convenient, profitable, or pleasurable. That is emotional or pragmatic, not principled, so it would be incorrect to call it “morality.”

The grammar describes a true monster as subjectively moral and anti-life or as subjectively moral and anti-God. In this context, and requires that both be true. The construction implies that people who are pro-life but subjectively moral and people who are pro-God but subjectively moral are not monsters.

Furthermore, the anti-life and anti-God positions are subjective morals, so they are redundant. The phrase is like saying a motorcycle is not a car and tires or a car and bumpers when the tires and bumpers are part of the car.

Does it flow from If God the Father of life is All-Holy and objectively moral that subjective morality is monstrous? If objective morality is based on God’s character, specifically, His holiness, then the link that contrasts God’s holiness against subjective morality is indirect. That means that God’s holiness is background information rather than part of the premise.

It is necessary for objective morality to exist in order for subjective morality to be anomalous. There’s no such thing as an anomaly without such a thing as normal. It is also necessary that normality is desired or intended, which requires an agent who desires or assigns a goal or purpose. However, desire or intent, like God’s holiness, is not directly related to whether one meets the objective requirements.

So refining the original statement should include:

• Account for the worst monster, the amoral person.
• Restate anti-life or anti-God as examples of subjective morals (and perhaps be a bit more specific).
• Treat as background or trim information about God being holy (and imposing a requirement that His creatures be objectively moral.
• Use attitudes about God and the sacredness of life as examples rather than as requirements.

A better phrasing would be: God the Father of life requires of moral beings an objective morality based on His holy character. Since objective morality exists and is part of our original, intended design, a moral monster is any person who is amoral or subjectively moral. Examples of subjectively moral principles might include promoting atheism or non-medically-necessary abortion.

The elephant in the room includes a practical application of the definition.

Although some of us aspire to match our morality to God’s objective standard, we all retain subjective morals and fall short even of those. We are all moral monsters. None of us is born with the moral perfection intended in God's children. We are all spiritually deformed and spiritually non-viable. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. 

God took responsibility for allowing us to bring moral monstrosity into the world by providing for redemption at His own expense. If we recognize our monstrosity, agree that we have earned the consequences, and entrust ourselves solely to the One who redeems us from our moral debt, then God will begin the process of transforming us from monsters back into the works of art that He originally designed us to be. 

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Feel free to use for non-remunerated purposes, but please remember to give credit where credit is due.

Another Silly Question about God's Origin

From answering a question on Quora:

Does God know where he came from?

The question assumes that God “came from” somewhere. According to Christian scriptures, theology, and philosophers, God created the universe. Without a universe, no “then,” “there,” “source,” or “cause” existed from which God could come. So the question is broken.

Perhaps the asker meant, “What was the source or origin of God?” Again, without time, sequences such as going from non-existence to cause, to creation, to existence are nonsensical. Nevertheless, many Atheists ask the same question differently, asking, “Who created God?”

If God had a creator, who created him? And who created the Creator’s creator? And who created the Creator’s creator’s creator? Once you insist that the Creator had to have a creator, you create an infinite regression. It doesn’t work. If you started at a time infinitely in the past, and then pass through time, you could never get to our “now” because that would take an infinite length of time. In an infinite length of time, no matter how much time passes, there’s still more time that needs to pass before you can get to our “now.” Similarly, if you start with an infinitely precedent creator, you could never get to the current Creator. The assumption that God had a creator creates a mathematical impossibility.

The above analysis brings us to another problem. If God created the universe, then He created all the attributes and artifacts of the universe, including time, which cosmology and physics tell us had a beginning in the Inflationary period that became the Big Bang. If God created time, then He has an existence outside of time. And if God exists outside of time, then saying that He must have had a beginning and a creator is like saying that the number seven must have a color and a temperature. “Beginning” is meaningless without time, so, again, the assumption that God had a beginning creates a practical impossibility.

The question is in the class of questions such as “Why did God do this?” and “Why didn’t God to that?” It requires knowing the mind of God. Such questions require either God revealing His knowledge or reasoning to us, speculating, or reading god’s mind. I’m not a god, and I don’t believe anybody else who uses Quora is a god, either, so reading the memories in God’s mind is out of the question. That leaves us with either revelation or speculation. According to revelation through the Christian scriptures, God is self-existent and created the universe. From that, we can say that God does not "know" the incorrect assumption that He had an origin. If you reject revelation, then giving an authoritative answer is impossible. And the impossibility of giving an answer can only prove, at best, human limitations.

There’s a common practice of posing rhetorical questions as a substitute for actual arguments. Rhetorical questions can be used to hide false assumptions and faulty logic. The person answering the question has to restate the question as a claim and then detect the assumptions and logic and their flaws. So, if the intent is to discourage belief in God, the question is more specious than logical. (I don’t assume that the asker had that intent. I’m just pointing it out because others do use such flawed rhetoric.)

To sum up, the question is a non sequitur, meaning that it assumes facts not in evidence. And the concise answer is, no, God would not “know” something that is impossible and meaningless.

For further background:

• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gdeV4Rk9EfL-NyraEGXXwSjDNeMaRoX

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Feel free to use for non-remunerated purposes, but please give credit where credit is due.

Could God Be a Monad?

Can God the Father be God without Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

(From a question on Quora)

The question is asked in present tense, and it is a bit ambiguous. I take it to mean, Is God the Father able to remain God if God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were split off, eliminated, or retracted from the universe?

Your question could also be taken to mean, Could God the Father have chosen to be a unitary God without having also existed as Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

Based on the relationship between God and the universe, I would say yes with respect to His substance but no with respect to His character. The same answer applies to either interpretation of the question.

One of the arguments for the existence of God is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It states:

• Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
  
• The universe began to exist (around 13.8 billion years ago)
  
• Therefore, the universe has a Cause. 

From the nature of the universe and related arguments, one can derive (without turning to revealed information such as the Bible) that the Cause is timeless, spaceless, non-contingent, unimaginably powerful, volitional, and unfathomably intelligent. In other words, God.

According to General Relativity, time, space, matter, and energy are so intertwined that if God created the universe, He created time and space, as well. Creative power over time and space allows their Creator to be omnipresent and omnitemporal — which explains omniscience with respect to both every location and every time.

Creative power over time and space also allows God to enter and experience time and space as one Person (or center of consciousness) or as a billion Persons, yet remain One God outside of the Universe. As it happens, He chose to exist in time and space as three Persons. Those three Persons, while remaining in every way equal, voluntarily took on different roles and titles: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Due to the feat of entering time and space, all three Persons have the same substance (spirit). If God were a creature of the universe, this would be counter intuitive. However, with God having His “home” or “natural” existence outside of time and space, all three Persons can consist of the same spiritual substance.

We would be bothered by the physical law that two things can simultaneously occupy the same space at the same time. However, God’s substance is Spirit, not physical; so He is not subject to the same limits as we are.

Since all three Persons consist of the same substance, eliminating one or two of the Persons would not affect the existence of the third Person. Neither would it affect the existence of God outside of time and space.

So, with respect to God’s substance, one Person of the Trinity could exist without the other two.
But is this consistent with God’s character? God is relational and loving, and He has no needs. To exist as a unitary Person (a “monad”) would leave a relational God without any source or object of love until He created intelligent life. If God has no needs, then this makes it probable that God existed as three Persons even “before” creation. As Genesis 1:1 says, In the beginning, Gods (Elohim, “gods”) created (singular) the heavens and the earth.….

If the Son and the Holy Spirit ceased to exist in the universe, God the Father would still be God. However, He would cease to be “the Father” because you can’t be a father without at least one person in the role of “the Child” (or “the Son”).

Also, the roles of the three Persons teach us about relationships and solve problems that I won’t go into now. (For example, how can God remain untouched by corruption and at the same time experience incarnation? Or how can God simultaneously express His wrath and be the subject of that wrath in our place?) God would have to either fulfill the functions of all three Persons or eliminate some of those functions.

If God is God, then He is maximally great. If God is maximally great, then any other form in which He existed in the universe would be less than maximally great. By definition, a less-than-maximally great god would not be God.

To Modalists such as Oneness Pentecostals and to sects such as the Watchtower (Jehovah’s Witnesses), Oneness is not a problem. Modalists believe God is a quick-change artist, switching between three hats in order to deceive people into thinking He is three Persons. But that makes God a deceiver. The Watchtower teaches that only the Father is God because the Son is just an exalted archangel and the Holy Spirit is just an impersonal force of God.

But we are approaching this from the view that all three Persons are God, so a lonely, God is an unsolvable problem for Modalists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, and Muslims.

So my final answer is that, if two Persons ceased to be, the third Person could continue to be God. However, as a monad, God would have had or might still have unfulfilled needs and would be less than maximally great, so without the Son and the Holy Spirit, He would not be God.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Since I originally posted this answer on Quora, I probably lost the right to claim copyright. However, I ask that if you use this material, please give credit where credit is due.

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.

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.

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.

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.


Usual disclaimer for something I've already poste elsewhere: Please give credit where credit is due if you copy this.

Sacraments, Ordinances, and Channels of Grace

Sacraments Are Catholic. Ordinances Are Biblical.

A sacrament is a ceremony that both symbolizes something and serves as a conduit for grace. Sacraments are "Christianized" substitutes for the Jewish religious practices that the Catholic hierarchy restored after God had fulfilled and abolished them. So sacraments are "good works" by which Catholics think they earn grace.

Earn grace is an oxymoron, of course, because grace means unmerited favor, and you cannot earn something that you cannot merit. In Romans and other epistles, Paul goes to great lengths to explain that faith and works, and grace and wages, are mutually exclusive pairs. By trying to mix the unmiscible, Catholicism

The only conduits of grace in the New Testament are faith (Ephesians 2:8), prayer (Jude 20), and hearing the Word (Romans 10:17). (Calvinist/Reformed may add the new birth, which they believe has to precede faith because they take "dead in trespasses" to be literal, not metaphorical.) These are neither symbols nor conduits. A purely symbolic ceremony such as baptism is called an ordinance, or sometimes, a tradition.

Many churches that descend from Rome retain Romish baggage such as infant baptism and words like "sacrament." If you carefully distinguish between sacraments and ordinances, it will be easier to discount Rome's works-based gospel.


Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler (Permission granted for non-profit purposes; just give credit where credit is due.)

The Problem of Evil

I'd appreciate comments on this potential explanation of the problem of evil.

Atheists often ask how a good God could allow evil to exist. They usually toss out the rhetorical question as though it were a proof, indicating to me that the majority just parrot each other and don't think nearly as deeply as they think they do. A valid argument could be something like, If God is good, then evil must offend Him. God allows evil, so God must not exist.

Rather than point out the flaws in that, I'd like to show that evil is a necessity. The flash of insight that inspired this fit of writing was that free will requires randomness in the universe, and randomness inevitably causes evil. Since I'm currently reading William Lane Craig's Reasonable Response, I had to develop the idea in the style of a logical argument.

I'm not trained in philosophy, so please be charitable.

Starting assumption

Judeo-Christian teaching that God created man to have meaningful, loving relationship with God.

A. Free will was necessary

1. If actions such as love and praise are to have value, the agent giving them must have free will. 
2. The purposes for which God created man included man loving God.
3. Therefore, when God created man, man had free will.

B. At least some events are random

1. Free will cannot exist in a deterministic world.
2. Man had free will.
3. Probabilistic events occurred.
   

Note: By saying the world was probabilistic, I mean only that determinism was not total. That is, a probabilistic world has randomness, but physical laws or a Creator's part-time interference can influence events.

Lemma 1 -- The current age

Once probabilism is established, it is no longer necessary to use the past tense.

C. Non-preferred events must occur.

1. If events are probabilistic, then some will be disadvantageous to man.
2. Probabilistic events occur.
3. From man's perspective, disadvantageous events occur.

D. Extreme disadvantageous events must occur.

1. If events are probabilistic, some disadvantageous events will be extremely disadvantageous moral behaviors.
2. Events are probabilistic.
3. Extremely disadvantageous moral behaviors occur.

E. Evil must occur.

1. If extreme disadvantageous moral behaviors occur, then according to objective morality, evil occurs.
2. Extremely disadvantageous moral behaviors occur.
3. Objective morality exists.
4. Therefore, evil must occur.

Summary

For God and man to achieve meaningful, loving relationship, evil must occur.

Lemma 2 -- After Judgment Day

Once God has established meaningful, loving relationships with all the people whom He intends to save, the eventual elimination of probabilism and evil by transforming the world into a new heavens and a new earth becomes consonant with God's purpose.


Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler