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.

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?)

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.

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.

Jesus's Teachings Without His Identify? Patronizing Nonsense.

My answer to a question on Quora:

Is there a religion that only believes in Jesus, and not necessarily God? I believe in the things Jesus taught, but not that he would be the son of God. I don't believe in God in general, honestly.

One religion that allows belief in Jesus but not in God would be Atheism. Some atheists completely reject Jesus’s existence because they have an emotional need to refute the existence of God. They claim that Jesus did not exist in order to refute the existence of, specifically, the Christian God. However, other, less biased atheists accept the preponderance of historical evidence that Jesus did exist.

Atheists would protest that Atheism is not a religion because they reject the existence of the supernatural. However, by making a claim about the supernatural, they claim to have information that they could not have in a materialist world. So their claim refutes itself. Furthermore, the claim of Atheism leads to further beliefs. For example, one line of though leads from non-existence of God to the non-value of individual lives and to the Collective being a higher form of organism than the individual. The highest form of organism would be the State. Since, without God, objective morality and individual value do not exist, the State can do anything to individuals. Anything. certain States have done “anything” and do so today. This line of thinking, a part of Marxism, has led to the slaughter of more people in a single century than all the religious wars in history. If that kind of “revelation” and fervor about the supernatural is not “religious,” I don’t know what is.

Many religions pay lip service to Jesus. One relevant religion would be Buddhism. Buddhism, or at least a major branch or it, believes that the ultimate state of being is a freedom from consciousness and pain, resulting in “god” being non existent. That would make Buddhism a sort of a spiritual form of Atheism.

Now, it is a contradiction to say one believes in what Jesus taught while not accepting that He is the Son of God. As CS Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity,

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say…. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Jesus never said, “Worship me because I am God.” He followed one of the great rules of writing prose, Don’t tell them; show them. He made many claims that, against the backdrop of Jewish theology, were claims to divinity. He claimed authority over the Sabbath. He cast out demons by His own authority. He taught by His own authority without ever saying, “Thus says the Lord….” He claimed to have existed before the world and to have shared the glory of God. He claimed to have the power to judge and to forgive sins, which God alone can do. He even applied to Himself the name, I AM, that God had revealed to Moses. And he accepted worship and being called, “My Lord and my God!”

If Jesus was not the Son of God, then He was a liar, so His “teachings” would be morally dangerous. Indeed, by rejecting His divinity, you have already rejected a very large portion of His teachings. And the word for that religion is inconsistent.

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

Weak God? No, Weak Argument.

Answering a question on Quora:

"Why is the Christian God so weak? He punishes those that don’t worship him for eternity."

The question assumes that punishing people who don’t worship Him shows that God is weak. Not just weak, but so weak. That is not only a non factual and a non sequitur, but it is also counter intuitive.

Suppose a criminal stands before a judge, charged with a lifetime of minor and major offenses. The list of charges might fill several volumes with fine print. One of the charges is contempt of court. Sentence has been pronounced: The criminal will serve a life sentence in prison.

Then the criminal’s lawyer goes to Quora and asks, “Why is the judge so weak? He punishes prisoners for life for contempt of court.”

Can you see how ridiculous the question’s assumptions are? The criminal is not sentenced for just one offense, but for a lifetime of offenses. The lawyer simplistically boils the volumes of charges down to a single charge — the one that happens to be an offense against the court — in order to embarrass the court. The intellectual dishonesty of the argument crosses into propaganda when posted or published. And many people who hate the court will be inclined to believe the lie and turn it into a meme, undermining others’ confidence in the court.

Suppose the judge wants to provide an opportunity for redemption to that criminal. “He cannot bear the punishment,” he reasons, “but I could, so I will take the punishment for him.” He steps down from the bench, removes his robe, and surrenders himself to the warden of the prison. Inside the prison, he is stripped, tortured, and beaten to death.

Fortunately, EMTs resuscitate the judge. (He’s just a human, after all, not both God and human.)

Back at the courthouse, the bailiff tells the prisoner, “The judge has taken your punishment for you. He died but was brought back to life. If you will admit your guilt and trust the judge’s actions on your behalf, you may go free.”

A humble person would follow the bailiff’s advice and spend the rest of his life doing reforming his life out of gratitude.

But this prisoner refuses to admit his guilt. Or he refuses to accept that the judge suffered in his place and was brought back to life. “Yeah, right!” he says. “What a bunch of lies! What I did wasn’t that bad.”

The way of escaping the sentence was provided, and he refuses it — adding yet another offense, this time, an offense against himself.

Having the power to punish is not weakness, and having the character to enforce justice is not weakness. To the contrary, having the character to allow people to make their own choices in life rather than turning them into puppets shows strength. And taking the ultimate burden to rescue others from a fate that they cannot bear, knowing that most will refuse it? That shows unimaginable strength.

No, weakness is refusing to acknowledge one’s moral failings, refusing to set aside pride and false intellectual arrogance, refusing to accept that one is dependent on someone greater for redemption and guidance.

Refraining from accelerated sentencing of enemies who mock you, patiently waiting for them to become more reasonable and honest with themselves, shows quite a bit of strength, too, I think.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. In the case that posting this on Quora makes copyrighting unenforceable, I ask that users at least give credit where credit is due. I don't mind if somebody uses it for non-commercial use, anyway.

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.

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.

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.

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

Silence In the Search

Atheist: I want to believe so hard. I've prayed to God to help me find faith, to guide me, just even a tiny shred of light in a dark world. So far, even trying to be open as possible, it's been resounding, deafening silence.

I have the same struggle, though I'm a believer. I want that "shred of light in a dark world," too. Here are some differences in our thinking.

The light does not come through the world. The world is corrupt. Whether you attribute that to the Second Law of Thermodynamics or to the consequences of sin, everything tends toward decay and evil. Although there are philosophical arguments that make God highly probable, the world is the wrong place to look for light.

God is not an impersonal force that we can test in a laboratory. He is personal. Like us, He generally does not hang with those those who are hostile or untrusting. When we trust our senses, we trust ourselves (which are part of the world) and the world itself -- which, apart from God's interference, has no light.

We not only look in the wrong place, but we look for the wrong reasons. Look at the counterfeits, the televangelists obsessed with self-esteem, worldly prosperity, vulgar displays of "power," and worked-up emotional experiences. They all look to worldly experience, too. But that's not where God reveals Himself.

The hindrance to faith is usually love of something that offends God. For many, that offense is a practice that they know they'd have to give up. Some rationalize that the practice is not sinful, but the really arrogant ones admit they don't care whether it's sinful. Others stumble over their pride. Some refuse to replace their idols with the biblical concept of God, while others justify themselves. Self-justification takes the form of believing one is righteous enough to stand in God's presence or that one can earn such righteousness.

Faith in God requires a context of need. We cannot realize that need until we face the ways we offend God, ways that render us unworthy to stand in the unbearable light of His holy presence. The prophet Isaiah wrote, "the LORD’S hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear."

Humbly facing that diagnosis sets the context for the cure. The cure is a gift. Like a big brother taking his younger sibling's punishment, God, as Christ, suffered our sentence for us. He offers that as a gift, to be received as a gift. That entails two conditions.

First, remember that part about humility? We can do nothing to earn the gift. We cannot do ceremonies or good deeds to compensate for the bad we've done. We already owe it to God to do good, and we cannot pay with what we already owe. Neither can we earn the gift without insulting the Giver's capacity, resources, and generosity. (Most "Christian" churches violate this!)

Second, since there's nothing we can contribute to earn the gift, all we can do is quiet our minds and trust. To trust ourselves, our experiences, or our feelings is to distrust the Giver. God rewards trust. Sometimes He exercises our trust with trials or silence; sometimes, He shows people supernatural evidence (that cannot be repeated or shared with others). But it starts with enduring trust.

I used to wish I were a Pentecostal. (That has a strong parallel with what the seeking atheist describes.) It would be so much easer being able to walk by sight rather than by faith. However, according to the Bible, if my faith endures, my reward will be greater than that received by those who believe because they experienced (or thought they experienced) something miraculous.

This is not blind faith that believes despite the evidence. This is informed faith that puts the evidences together and then acts on the probability.  We all have some light. We do not all receive it. Some, like the person who asked the question, are too busy collecting arguments against it to learn why those arguments are flawed. (You'd have to read the whole of his conversation to know that he falls in that category.)

Your challenge, then, is not to convince God to prove Himself to you, but to decide whether you are going to admit your need and then trust the cure for everlasting benefits, no matter what it costs you in this world.

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Since I originally posted this on Reddit, I can't copyright it; and I'd welcome anyone to use it for personal or non-profit used, anyway; but I hope that if you use it, you will give credit where credit is due.