Did God Make Mistakes?

Our bodies suggest something other than a designer. As embryos, we produce tails, gill sacs, and a full coat of apelike hair. Happily, of us lose these accessories before birth. While bizarre this can be readily interpreted in evolutionary and genetic terms; it is a mystery if we are the products of a creator.

 

Men have a urinary tract that runs directly through the prostate gland. The prostate tends to swell throughout life. Consequently, most men over the age of sixty experience the weakness of the design. A woman’s pelvis is not designed as well as it could have been to assist in giving birth. As a result, each year hundreds of thousands of women suffer prolonged and obstructed labor that results in a rupture known as obstetric fistula. Women in the developing world who suffer this condition are often abandoned by their husbands and exiled from communities. The United Nation estimates that more than two million women live with fistula today.

 

Another example of what appears to be a bad design, the human respiratory and digestive tracts share a plumbing at the pharynx. In the United States alone, this poor design lands tens of thousands of children in the emergency room each year. Some choke to death. Many others suffer brain injury. What purpose does it serve? Perhaps those parents needed to be taught a lesson: God has prepared a special reward in heaven for every child who chokes to death on a bottle cap. If God was involved with creation did he make mistakes?

Prayer Affects?

I recognize that when people pray they feel good, they feel comforted; they may even feel love for other people in a way they had never imagined possible. Some may experience feelings of bliss. I would not deny that but I will point out that others have had similar experiences but they were thinking of Krishna or Allah or the Buddha while making art or music or contemplating the beauty of Nature. There is no question that is possible for people to experience transformative experiences. And there is no question that it is possible for them to misinterpret these experiences, and to delude themselves about the nature of reality. People may believe there is more to life than simply understanding the structure and contents of the universe. But this does not make unjustified or unjustifiable claims any more respectable. 

God Punishes the Victim

Apparently God has never heard that it is common for the rapist to threaten to kill the victim if the victim cries out for help.

 

Deuteronomy 22:23-24

 

23“If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, 24then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

A cascade of problems

 

The funny thing about amputees is that this evidence is obvious to everyone. We have all seen that God ignores the prayers of amputees. This evidence has been plainly visible for centuries.

 

Amputees are not the only ones either. For example:

 

If someone severs their spinal cord in an accident, that person is paralyzed for life. No amount of prayer is going to help. If someone is born with a congenital defect like a cleft palate, God will not repair it through prayer. Surgery is the only option. A genetic disease like Down Syndrome is the same way -- no amount of prayer is going to fix the problem.

 

We pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this completely heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways. Will anything happen? Of course not. If prayers like this worked, Christians would have prayed every disease on the planet into extinction centuries ago.

 

It is also easy to find corroborating evidence outside the medical arena. At the global level, we see the evidence every day in many different ways. For example, we all see the millions of children who die every year from the tragic effects of poverty. Unicef puts it this way:

Every year, more than 10 million children die totally preventable deaths. Some are directly caused by illness – pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles – and others are affected by indirect causes such as conflict and HIV/AIDS. Malnutrition, lack of safe water and inadequate sanitation are contributing factors to more than half of these deaths.

 

Jesus is supposed to love all the little children of the world: "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." So we can ask this straightforward question: If children are precious to Jesus, then why is he killing 10 million of them every year with abject poverty? That's 27,000 dead kids every day -- more than 1,000 dead children each hour. If Jesus answers prayers as he promises in the Bible, then why haven't the prayers of billions of people to end world hunger caused Jesus to solve the problem of global poverty?

 

 

We all know that holes like these exist. It is easy to find them. The holes suggest that something very odd is going on.

Does God Ignore Amputees?

 

God is all-powerful. Therefore, God can do anything, and regenerating a leg is trivial.

God is perfect, and he created the Bible, which is his perfect book. In the Bible, Jesus makes very specific statements about the power of prayer. Since Jesus is God, and God and the Bible are perfect, those statements should be true and accurate.

 

God is all-knowing and all-loving. He certainly knows about the plight of the amputee, and he loves this amputee very much.

 

God is ready and willing to answer your prayers no matter how big or small. All that you have to do is believe. He says it in multiple places in the Bible. Surely, with millions of people in the prayer circle, at least one of them will believe and the prayer will be answered.

 

God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he is answering millions of other prayers every day, God should be answering the prayers of amputees too. Nonetheless, the amputated legs are not going to regenerate. What are we seeing here? It is not that God sometimes answers the prayers of amputees, and sometimes does not. Instead, in this situation there is a very clear line. God never answers the prayers of amputees. It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God is singling out amputees and purposefully ignoring them.

A simple experiment

For this experiment, we need to find a deserving person who has had both of his legs amputated. For example, find a sincere, devout veteran of the Iraqi war, or a person who was involved in a tragic automobile accident.

 

Now create a prayer circle. The job of this prayer circle is simple: pray to God to restore the amputated legs of this deserving person. I do not mean to pray for a team of renowned surgeons to somehow graft the legs of a cadaver onto the soldier, nor for a team of renowned scientists to craft mechanical legs for him. Pray that God spontaneously and miraculously restores the soldier's legs overnight.

 

If possible, get millions of people all over the planet to join the prayer circle and pray their most fervent prayers. Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving amputee. Then stand back and watch.

 

What is going to happen? Jesus clearly says that if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. He does not say it once -- he says it many times in many ways in the Bible.

 

And yet, even with millions of people praying, nothing will happen.

 

No matter how many people pray. No matter how sincere those people are. No matter how much they believe. No matter how devout and deserving the recipient. Nothing will happen. The legs will not regenerate. Prayer does not restore the severed limbs of amputees. You can electronically search through all the medical journals ever written -- there is no documented case of an amputated leg being restored spontaneously. And we know that God ignores the prayers of amputees through our own observations of the world around us. If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs, we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day.

Isn't that odd? 

Are Unambiguous Prayers Ever Answered

Many Christians are convinced that prayer can heal a wide variety of illnesses (despite what scientific research indicates), it is curious that prayer is only ever believed to work for illnesses and injuries that can be self-limiting. No one ever seriously expects that prayer will cause an amputee to regrow a missing limb. Why not? Salamanders do it routinely as do starfish and squirrels. If God answers prayers, ever, why wouldn’t He occasionally heal a deserving amputee? And why wouldn’t Christians expect God to answer prayers to work in such cases?  

 

Why won't God heal amputees? It may seem like an odd question but it just might be one of the most important questions that we can ask about God. It probes into a fundamental aspect of prayer having to do with ambiguity and coincidence.

 

Imagine that you visit your doctor one day, and he tells you that you have cancer. Your doctor is optimistic, and he schedules surgery and chemotherapy to treat your disease. Meanwhile, you are terrified. You don't want to die, so you pray to God day and night for a cure. The surgery is successful, and when your doctor examines you again six months later the cancer is gone. You praise God for answering your prayers. You believe with all your heart that God has worked a miracle in your life.

 

The obvious question to ask is: What cured you? Was it the surgery/chemotherapy, or was it God? Is there any way to know whether God is playing a role or not when we pray?

Unless you take the time to analyze this situation, it looks ambiguous. God might have miraculously cured your disease, as many Christians believe. But it might have been the chemotherapy drugs and surgeries are the things that cured you. Or your body's immune system might have cured the cancer itself.

 

When your tumor disappeared, in other words, it might simply have been a complete coincidence that you happened to pray. Your prayer may have had zero effect.

How can we determine whether it is God or coincidence that worked the cure? One way is to eliminate the ambiguity. In a non-ambiguous situation, there is no potential for coincidence. Because there is no ambiguity, we can actually know whether God is answering the prayer or not.

 

That is what we are doing when we look at amputees. Think about it this way. The Bible clearly promises that God answers prayers: Mark 11:24

Jesus says, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." And billions of Christians believe these promises. You can find thousands of books and magazine articles on the power of prayer. According to believers, God is answering millions of their prayers every day.

 

So what should happen if we pray to God to restore amputated limbs? Clearly, if God is real, limbs should regenerate through prayer. In reality, they do not.

 

Why not? Notice that there is zero ambiguity in this situation. There is only one way for a limb to regenerate through prayer: God must answer prayers, at least occasionally. What we find is that whenever we create an unambiguous situation like this and look at the results of prayer, prayer never works. God never "answers prayers" if there is no possibility of coincidence.

Divorce?

For centuries, divorce in the West was a male tool of control, a legislative chastity belt designed to ensure that a wife had one master, while a husband could enjoy many mistresses.

 

Based on Jesus instructions, a husband needed to prove adultery to obtain a divorce. By contrast the wife had no options. Over the years women learned that brutality, rape, desertion life-threatening cruelty or adultery on the husband’s part did not count. According to Jesus, one would be hard pressed to say what did.  

God in our lives?

Statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings tell us that somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. He will rape, torture and kill her. If it is not occurring at this moment it will in hours or days at the most.

 

The same statistics also suggest the girl’s parents believe, as you believe, that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it Good that they believe this? Or does the murder of a single little girl cast doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God?

 

Examples of God’s failure to protect humanity are everywhere. The city of New Orleans, for instance, was destroyed by a hurricane. More than a thousand people died; tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions; and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to believe that almost every person living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck shared that belief in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled to safety only to be drowned.  These were men and women of faith who prayed throughout their lives. Did these people die talking to an imaginary friend?

 

There had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. It was inept in response to the information provided by science. God told no one his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans relied only on the goodness of God, they would not have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down on their city until they felt the wind on their faces. And interestingly the Washington Post found that 80 percent of Katrina’s survivors claim the even has only strengthened their faith.

 

As New Orleans was being battered by Hurricane Katrina, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. These pilgrims believed in the God of the Koran. Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before Him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It is doubtful a single survivor lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagined that they were spared through God’s grave.

 

It is disgraceful for the survivors of a catastrophe to believe they were spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs.

 

We should recognize that a large fraction of our suffering and that of our fellow human beings is brought about by what we do to one another. It is humankind, not God that has invented knives, arrows, guns, bombs, and all manner of instruments of torture used through the ages. The tragedy of the young child killed by a drunk driver, or the innocent man dying on the battlefield, or of the young girl cut down by a stray bullet in a crime-ridden section of a modern city can hardly be blamed on God. After all, we have somehow been given free will, the ability to do as we please. We use this ability to frequently disobey the Moral Law. And when we do so, we shouldn’t blame God for the consequences.

 

Should God have restrained our free will in order to prevent these kinds of evil behavior? That line of thought quickly encounters a dilemma from which there is no rational escape. C.S. Lewis said: “If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can.’ Nonsense remains nonsense, even when we talk it about God.”

 

Rational arguments can still be difficult to accept when an experience of terrible suffering falls on an innocent person.

 

Perhaps on rare occasions God does perform miracles. But for the most part, the existence of free will and of order in the physical universe are inexorable facts. While we might wish for such miraculous deliverance to occur more frequently, the consequence of interrupting these two sets of forces would be utter chaos.

 

What about the existence of natural disasters: earthquake, tsunamis, volcanoes, great floods and famines? On a smaller scale, what about the occurrence of disease in an innocent victim, such as cancer in a child? John Polkinghorne an Anglican Priest and a physicist has refered to this category of event as “physical evil,” as opposed to the “moral evil” committed by humankind. How can it be justified?

 

Science reveals that the universe, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evolutionary process. The consequences of that can include the unpredictability of weather, the slippage of a tectonic plate, or the misspelling of a cancer gene in the normal process of cell division. If at the beginning of time God chose to use these forces to create human beings, then the inevitability of these other painful consequences was also assured. Frequent miraculous interventions would be at least as chaotic in the physical realm as they would be in interfering with human acts of free will.

 

These rational explanations fall short of providing a justification for the pain of human existence. Why is our life more a vale of tears that a garden of delight. Much as been written abut this apparent paradox, and the conclusion is not an easy one: If God is loving and wishes the best for us, then perhaps his plan is not the same as our plan. This is a hard concept, especially if we have been too regularly spoon-fed a version of God’s benevolence that implies nothing more on His part than a desire for us to be perpetually happy.  Again C.S. Lewis writes: “We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven---a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘likes to see young people enjoying themselves.’ And whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of the day, ‘a good time was had by all.’

 

 

When children are baptized.

 

Most of us believe what we choose to believe. Our acceptance of a truth depends on our perception of the person telling us that truth. If we trust the person we accept if we do not we reject. Facts have little to do with which we choose.

 

When children who are ten, twelve, fourteen years-old are baptized are they capable of understanding what they are doing or are they just responding to someone they trust? For that matter do adults just respond to someone they trust? Faith is not enough. Who does not have “…confidence in what they hope for and assurance about what they do not see.” in something? Remember those in “the” denominations, Muslims, Hindus etc all have “faith” as we have faith even atheists have confidence in something and hope for something.

 

Is it odd that what someone called “The Christian Age” is for first time since Creation that God does not interface directly with his creation? I realize many believe God answers their requests but factual evidence calls that belief into question. We are expected to believe without evidence of any type. We are not even allowed the Gideon test. In fact, I am told testing God is sin; relying upon God is testing God which is sin; God helps those who help themselves. Our belief is based on our perception of the person telling us which is, in turn, based on their perception of the person telling them which is … you get the picture.

 

At some point shouldn’t belief rely on fact, on knowledge? Are we the first of all creation expected to take somebody’s word? God had been speaking directly but now…silence.

 

Studies have shown we are more likely to believe that a statement is true if we have heard it before---whether or not it is actually true: “illusion-of-truth effect.” Subjects rated the validity of plausible sentences every two weeks. Without letting on, the experimenters snuck in some repeat sentences (both true and false ones) across the testing sessions. And they found a clear result: if subjects had heard a sentence in previous weeks, they were more likely to now rate it as true, even if they swore they had never heard it before. This is the case even when the experimenter tells the subjects that the sentences they are about to hear are false: despite this, mere exposure to an idea is enough to boost its believability upon later contact. The illusion-of-truth effect highlights the potential danger for people who are repeatedly exposed to the same religious edicts or political slogans.

 

How many untruths do Christians believe only because they have heard it all of their lives? How many untruths do Christians believe only because they are in the songs we sing most of which, by the way, were written by people we believe are destined for Hell.

 

If we understand what we believe and why we believe we might get insight into why the church is they way it is.

 

 

 

 

Golden Rule?

While the Golden Rule is a great moral precept numerous teachers offered the same instruction centuries before Jesus (Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Epictetus and other records discuss the importance of self transcending love without violence we find in the Bible.

 

For example Jainism: the Jains preach a doctrine of complete nonviolence. While the Jains believe many improbable things about the universe, they do not believe the sorts of things that that permitted the Inquisition. The Inquisition may have been a perversion of the “true” spirit of Christianity. The problem is that the teachings of the Bible are muddled and self-contradictory which permitted Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five centuries. It was possible for the patriarchs of the Church like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to conclude that heretics should be tortured or killed outright. Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews and witches. Isn’t it amazing Christians today understand the true teachings of Christianity while the most influential thinkers in history of Christianity failed?

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. considered himself a Christians, but his commitment to nonviolence primarily came from the writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Where did Gandhi, a Hindu get his doctrine of nonviolence? He got it from the Jains.

 

If you believe Jesus taught only the Golden Rule and love of one’s neighbor, look at

 

2 Thessalonians 1:6-9

 

“since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”

 

John 15:6

 

“If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

 

The Bible supports the Inquisition and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reason for Meeting

"On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight."  Emphasis added.

Do we meet to break bread or to listen to a preacher talk to us?

Institution of the Lord's Supper

"Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."

Do you suppose the apostles took as small a pinch of bread as they could possibly take? Do you suppose the apostles took as small a sip of the cup as they could possibly take?

We do.

Any of Us

On the first day of the trial of Adolph Eichmann when Eichmann entered the court room for the first time one of the witnesses fainted. When asked why he had had such a reaction the man said that was the first time he realized that Eichmann was not a monster. He was an ordinary man which he took to mean any of us could do what Eichmann had done.

Different Views

 

Andrew Carnegie said:

 

 “The whole scheme of Christian Salvation is diabolical as revealed by the creeds. An angry God, imagine such a creator of the universe. Angry at what he knew was coming and was himself responsible for. Then he sets himself about to beget a son, in order that the child should beg him to forgive the Sinner. This however he cannot or will not do. He must punish somebody--so the son offers himself up & our creator punishes the innocent youth, never heard of before--for the guilty and became reconciled to us. . . . . I decline to accept Salvation from such a fiend.”

 

He was an ordinary man and thought differently than Christians think and was as comfortable with his beliefs as we are with ours.

 

When our youth leave the shelter of the local congregation they meet people who believe differently than they believe and are unprepared

 

Consider; devout Muslims have the same reasons for being Muslim as Christians have for being Christian. And yet Christians do not find their reasons compelling. The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. Muslims believe this as fully as Christians believe the Bible’s account of itself.  There is much literature describing the life of Muhammad that, from the point of view of Islam, proves that he was the most recent Prophet of God. Muhammad also assured his followers that Jesus was not divine and that anyone who believes otherwise will spend eternity in hell. Muslims are certain that Muhammad’s opinion on this subject, as on others, is infallible.

 

Why don’t Christians lose any sleep over whether to convert to Islam? Can Christians prove that Allah is not the one, true God? Can Christians prove that the archangel Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave? Of course not. But Christians do not need to prove any of these things to reject the beliefs of Muslims as absurd. The burden is on them to prove that their beliefs about God and Muhammad are valid. They have not done this. They cannot do this. Muslims are simply not making claims about reality that can be corroborated. This is perfectly apparent to anyone who had not anesthetized himself with the dogma of Islam.

 

Christians know exactly what it is like to be an atheist with respect to the beliefs of Muslims. Isn’t it obvious that Muslims are fooling themselves? Isn’t it obvious that anyone who thinks the Koran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe had not read the book critically? Isn’t it obvious that the doctrine of Islam represents a near-perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. Understand that the way you view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way atheists view all religions.

 

Appoint Elders?

Paul told Titus: "The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you."

Do you suppose Titus appointed men with invalid wives; men who lived in another country; men who lived in a different city; men who spent half the week at the other side of Crete? We do.

David's Attitude

Second Samuel records: “…David said to Araunah, ‘I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing’ so David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.”

 

Now consider that today we use stale bread in the Communion to save money?

 

 

Is Prayer a Myth?

Gamaliel said: “… keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!”

 

If he was correct how is the success of the Herald of Truth explained in the face of opposition from many congregations of the Church of Christ?

 

On a more recent subject, explaining their conclusions on the role of women in worship the elders of Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, TX they say “Our experiences over these several years led to certain results, which proved to be very important. At every step of this study, we bathed our study, our discussions, our 'daily life in prayer before God. We came to understand the various backgrounds, insights and inner feelings of a wide diversity of people in race, age and gender. We slowly grew in love closer to God and to one another as we tried to understand many issues in life, not just the function of women in public worship. We received improved perceptions of the meaning and application of scripture and of contemporary thought and life. This has confirmed our former studies about the religious issues mentioned above, and inspires us to approach new issues for the church in the future.”  Emphasis added.

 

Prayer often confirms what we already believe as it did with the Highland elders. Generally Christians live in a world of their imagination.  

 

On the other side they based their conclusions on prayer so how is it that other congregations of the Church of Christ oppose their conclusions?

 

I have long believed prayer to be a myth rising almost to the level of superstition. Apparently I have never met a righteous man since  I have never experienced nor observed God answering any prayer or healing anyone let alone "availing much." Prayers in the assembly are for the most part rote and about us and our comfort.

 

The bible was written by people who had their prejudices, i.e. low opinion of women; translated by people who had their prejudices, i.e. low opinion of women; read by preachers who have their prejudices, i.e. low opinion of women and laity with their prejudices, i.e. low opinion of women. When was it we allowed women to own property and to vote in our country? How are they treated today?

 

We believe what we choose to believe. Someone wrote that our acceptance of a truth depends on our perception of the person telling us the truth. If we trust the person we accept if we do not we reject. Facts have little to do with which we choose.

 

Considering that the Restoration Movement resulted in Disciples of Christ, Conservative Christian Church, Churches of Christ with the number of subgroups ranging from 20 to 50+ not counting the 19 or so in the acappella subgroup alone with most not recognizing the others as Christians what was Jesus thinking when he “prayed” that we be one? What do you suppose he was expecting God to do and do we have Bible support for expecting same?

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN

Eating Shellfish was right up there with homosexuality as an abomination

We read in the bible that to the Jews eating shellfish and homosexuality were to be abominations to the people.

 

Leviticus 11

…Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

 

Leviticus 2o

…If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination:

 

Apparently God has changed his mind at least on one of the subjects.

 

 

Acceptance of Truth?

Most of us believe what we choose to believe. Someone wrote that our acceptance of a truth depends on our perception of the person telling us the truth. If we trust the person we accept if we do not we reject. Facts have little to do with which we choose.

 

The American Restoration Movement produced The Disciples of Christ, the Conservative Christian Church, and the Churches of Christ. Estimates range from 21 to over 50 as the number of sub-groups with 19 sub-groups within the a cappella sub-group alone. Most of which do not accept the others as Christian.

 

The bible was written, interpreted, and read by people with their opinions and prejudices how is one to identify the truth?

Free Will or Chao?

Let us recognize that a large fraction of our suffering and that of our fellow human beings is brought about by what we do to one another. It is humankind, not God that has invented knives, arrows, guns, bombs, and all manner of instruments of torture used through the ages. The tragedy of the young child killed by a drunk driver, or the innocent man dying on the battlefield, or of the young girl cut down by a stray bullet in a crime-ridden section of a modern city can hardly be blamed on God. After all, we have somehow been given free will, the ability to do as we please. We use this ability to frequently disobey the Moral Law. And when we do so, we shouldn’t blame God for the consequences.

 

Should God have restrained our free will in order to prevent these kinds of evil behavior? That line of thought quickly encounters a dilemma from which there is no rational escape. C.S. Lewis said: “If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can.’ Nonsense remains nonsense, even when we talk it about God.”

 

Rational arguments can still be difficult to accept when an experience of terrible suffering falls on an innocent person.

 

Perhaps on rare occasions God does perform miracles. But for the most part, the existence of free will and of order in the physical universe are inexorable facts. While we might wish for such miraculous deliverance to occur more frequently, the consequence of interrupting these two sets of forces would be utter chaos.

 

What about the existence of natural disasters: earthquake, tsunamis, volcanoes, great floods and famines? On a smaller scale, what about the occurrence of disease in an innocent victim, such as cancer in a child? John Polkinghorne an Anglican Priest and a physicist has refered to this category of event as “physical evil,” as opposed to the “moral evil” committed by humankind. How can it be justified?

 

Science reveals that the universe, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evolutionary process. The consequences of that can include the unpredictability of weather, the slippage of a tectonic plate, or the misspelling of a cancer gene in the normal process of cell division. If at the beginning of time God chose to use these forces to create human beings, then the inevitability of these other painful consequences was also assured. Frequent miraculous interventions would be at least as chaotic in the physical realm as they would be in interfering with human acts of free will.

 

These rational explanations fall short of providing a justification for the pain of human existence. Why is our life more a vale of tears that a garden of delight. Much as been written abut this apparent paradox, and the conclusion is not an easy one: If God is loving and wishes the best for us, then perhaps his plan is not the same as our plan. This is a hard concept, especially if we have been too regularly spoon-fed a version of God’s benevolence that implies nothing more on His part than a desire for us to be perpetually happy.  Again C.S. Lewis writes: “We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven---a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘likes to see young people enjoying themselves.’ And whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of the day, ‘a good time was had by all.’

The Language of God: Francis S. Collins

Bible is a perfect guide to morality

Consider; devout Muslims have the same reasons for being Muslim as Christians have for being Christian. And yet Christians do not find their reasons compelling. The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. Muslims believe this as fully as Christians believe the Bible’s account of itself.  There is much literature describing the life of Muhammad that, from the point of view of Islam, proves that he was the most recent Prophet of God. Muhammad also assured his followers that Jesus was not divine and that anyone who believes otherwise will spend eternity in hell. Muslims are certain that Muhammad’s opinion on this subject, as on others, is infallible.

 

Why don’t Christians lose any sleep over whether to convert to Islam? Can Christians prove that Allah is not the one, true God? Can Christians prove that the archangel Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave? Of course not. But Christians do not need to prove any of these things to reject the beliefs of Muslims as absurd. The burden is on them to prove that their beliefs about God and Muhammad are valid. They have not done this. They cannot do this. Muslims are simply not making claims about reality that can be corroborated. This is perfectly apparent to anyone who had not anesthetized himself with the dogma of Islam.

 

The truth is Christians know exactly what it is like to be an atheist with respect to the beliefs of Muslims. Isn’t it obvious that Muslims are fooling themselves? Isn’t it obvious that anyone who thinks the Koran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe had not read the book critically? Isn’t it obvious that the doctrine of Islam represents a near-perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. Understand that the way you view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way atheists view all religions.

 

Christians believe that Christianity is an unrivaled source of human goodness.  Christians believe that Jesus taught the virtues of love, compassion, and selflessness better than any teacher who had ever lived. Christians believe that the Bible is the most profound book ever written and that its contents have stood the test of time so well that it must have been divinely inspired. Could it be these beliefs are false?

 

Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering. This is why we do not have moral obligations toward rocks. To the degree that our actions can affect the experience of other creatures positively or negatively, questions or morality apply. Some people consider the idea that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality is astounding, given the contents of the book. God’s counsel to parents is straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod

 

Proverbs 13:24, Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

 

Proverbs 20:30 Blows and wounds scrub away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.

 

Proverbs 23:13-14 Do not withhold discipline from a child;  if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death.

 

 

If they talk aback to us, we should kill them

 

Exodus 21:15 Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death.

 

Leviticus 20:9 Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.

 

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

 

Mark 7:9-13 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

 

Matthew 15:4-7. For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

 

We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshipping graven images, practicing sorcery, and a variety of other crimes.

 

Deuteronomy 13:6, 8-15

6If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, … do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.

 

If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock.

 

 

Andrew Carnegie and Religions

The other night I mentioned that Andrew Carnegie gave Harvard $500,000 requiring they sever their connection to their religious roots.  

 

Andrew Carnegie wrote to the Principal of St. Andrews University in 1905:

 
“The whole scheme of Christian Salvation is diabolical as revealed by the creeds. An angry God, imagine such a creator of the universe. Angry at what he knew was coming and was himself responsible for. Then he sets himself about to beget a son, in order that the child should beg him to forgive the Sinner. This however he cannot or will not do. He must punish somebody--so the son offers himself up & our creator punishes the innocent youth, never heard of before--for the guilty and became reconciled to us. . . . . I decline to accept Salvation from such a fiend.”

 

Carnegie had established large pension funds in 1901 for his former employees at Homestead and, in 1905, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to provide pensions for teachers; the foundation established the first widespread educational standards for the nation's colleges and universities. In addition, the foundation developed standardized, machine-scored tests, a function that merged into the Educational Testing Service in 1947. Because the foundation only gave money to secular schools, it was also responsible for the decision of many colleges to drop their religious affiliations.

 

People who lament the deterioration of religious education have to support religious education.

 

My guess is the groups that came out of the Restoration Movement the Disciples of Christ, The Christian Church and the Churches of Christ and their estimated 70+ subgroups make their version of Christian Education’s survivable doubtful. Each claiming allegiance to God and his son; each believing they alone understand truth; each believing the others are destined to hell.

 

Christians know exactly what it is like to be an atheist with respect to the beliefs of Muslims. Isn’t it obvious that Muslims are fooling themselves? Isn’t it obvious that anyone who thinks the Koran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe had not read the book critically? Isn’t it obvious that the doctrine of Islam represents a near-perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. The way Christians view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way atheists view all religions.

 

Might explain Carnegie’s attitude.

 

Christians and Morality

Religion tends to divorce morality from the reality of suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when those concerns inflict unnecessary suffering on innocent human beings. Christians expend more “moral” energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why Christians are more concerned about human embryos that about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why Christians preach against condom use while millions die from AIDs each year.

 

Christians believe their concerns about sex have something to do with morality. Their efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults and even discourage their sons and daughters from having premarital sex are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. Relieving human suffering seems to rank on their list of priorities.

 

If abortion is wrong does it matter how the fetus was conceived? Is the fetus any less human if it was conceived as a result of incest or rape, forcible or not? Do you think Christians know why they are against abortion? It appears Christians do not want abortions to be done unless they deem it necessary.