When
I decided to study The
Philosophical Problem of Evil, I thought I would be taking a
course
to help me understand the causes of evil, the results of evil, or what
to do about evil as a Christian.
I did not however know that the entire course would be based on the
faulty
logic of secular philosophers,
the blasphemous anti-God attacks of atheistic philosophers, and the
faulty
doctrines presented by false
Christian teachers trying to prove whether or not God exists. Certainly
another more descriptive name
could be provided to convey the actual content of the course to
prospective
students.
| The
Problem of Evil (Oxford Readings in Philosophy) by Marilyn McCord Adams |
by Marilyn McCord
Adams
The philosophers in my
text book, and those mentioned in the lectures, all made a decision to
create a
logical test to determine if God exists, albeit a grossly faulty one.
The
subject-specific authorities they
chose to engage were fellow philosophers. None of these philosophers
made
the claim that they were
God or the only Son of God. None of these philosophers claimed that
their
birth, their death, and the time
that spanned these two events were prophesied by prophets with 100%
accuracy
records. Certainly NONE
of these great thinkers claimed that they resurrected from the dead. I
believe that these so-called great ?thinkers?
chose a poor test to see if God exists. I also believe the main reason
they chose this obviously inferior test was
because they didn't honestly want to find out the answer to the
question,
?does God exist?, because the answer
necessarily carried with it some responsibility. It is extremely
easy to determine if God exists or not. One must
simply look. Look at Romans 1:20.
Romans
1:20 For since the creation
of the world God's invisible qualities, His eternal power
and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what
has
been made,
so that men are without excuse.
relationship with every person. This means that every person must
discover
God themselves.
and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he
who seeks finds;
and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
The search that revealed God to me will be different for others because
each person must find God for themselves.
Nature has so many clues for the attentive mind that there is no
possible
explanation, other than God created the
universe. The above mentioned philosophers had neither an open mind, or
an open heart but rather insisted on
dragging all the previous philosophical writings into the debate rather
than looking at the most obvious source of
information, namely The Bible.
A pre-existing test (to see if God exists) has already been in
existence
for nearly 2,000 years. Jesus claimed to be
the Son of God, and that the Son and the Father are one. The prophets
that
prophesied regarding the details of
Jesus? life, death, and resurrection, were 100% accurate or they were
killed
for being false prophets. With all of
the contradictions and arguments between the philosophers in the book
The
Problem of Evil, it is obvious that
philosophers do not work under this same criteria or most of them would
have been killed. Each of the writers, in
both the text book and the lectures, that decided that God does not
exist,
did not choose to take the test. What is
the test? God proclaimed in the Bible that if anyone searched for him,
honestly, earnestly, and with all his heart, that
God would reveal Himself to them. They did not. They chose the way of
man,
rather than the way of God. To claim that
God doesn't exist after refusing to take the test is ridiculous.
does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human
hands, as if he needed anything,
because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
From
one man he made every nation
of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the
times set for them and the exact
places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek
him
and perhaps reach out for him
and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
The
word philosophy comes
from two Greek words, phileoô, ?to love,? and
sophia, ?wisdom.? Philosophy is the love and pursuit of
wisdom.
This is the original meaning of the word at least.
It seems that this is no longer the case.
Philosophers have several ways to discover if God exists. Observe
nature,
observe the workings of God, read the
Bible, and search for God personally. A search for God does necessarily
require honesty and integrity, and it does
take some action of the Holy Spirit. Those not earnestly seeking God
will
not find Him. The writers included within
this course, did not search for God, try to observe God, understand
nature,
or read the Bible, which means their so
called argument began with the conscious act of NOT looking into the
four
most logical and available sources of
information. Because of this fact, most of the materials included were
offensive to me. I find it impossible to accept
the work of writers as being honest work when they have not even taken
the first honest step to find out the truth.
which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
I have decided to continue with this course rather than
taking another
course in its place, not to be taken captive, but to
set the record straight. I have decided to pursue this course in this
particular
method because of a couple of comments
someone made to me. They said that "nobody else has had a problem
with this course". This made me sad and very
concerned. That nobody had any problems regarding this course, while the materials are so anti-scriptural and that
so much time has passed is a mystery to me.
I
am curious about the various reasons that a significant portion
of thought contained within this course comes from Gottfried Leibniz
who
first 'coined' the phrase "theodicy",
or "the justice of God" in that he believed that God was a "just
creator".
Firstly,
we as humans are not qualified to judge what God considers "just".
Secondly,
we as humans should seek
mercy
from God, rather than justice because
by all rights, justice would demand our destruction due to our sin.
I
would
have thought that if Gottfried Leibniz had actually read and understood
the Bible,
that this fact would have been
clear.
The
term he should have investigated
would rather be called theoeleos
{theo el'-eh-os} or "the mercy of God" because I believe God is more-so
a merciful
creator. Why else should there be so many natural balances to stop
diseases,
why would all animals and plants have
a built-in survival strategy? Why would obvious odors come from bad
food
and water, and why would humans pass out
when they experience too much pain? Why are the nerve endings which
produce
pain located on the surface of the
skin only, making many serious and death inducing injuries not painful
at all? There are also many other similar graces
evident throughout nature and human society.
In fact there are so many
more obvious grace traits in nature than just
traits that the term theoeleos {theo el'-eh-os} needs to be included
within
this discussion, and the fact that Leibniz
completely ignored this entire concept, I now choose to present it. Presenting Theoleos.
We
see in Genesis 3:6 where Eve saw
the forbidden fruit as "desirable for gaining wisdom", yet this
inappropriate
wisdom resulted in a curse. I believe pursuing secular, atheistic
philosophy
rather than the scriptures may provide a
type of wisdom, but it is not Godly wisdom, it is again a type of
wisdom
that results in a curse.
Psalm 111:10 The
fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his
precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.
Psalm
111:10 tells us that the fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
Yet Hume,
shows absolutely NO fear of the Lord. Amazingly enough Hume ranks as
one
of the most influential
philosophers in the field of religious philosophy. So, how does Hume
exist
as one of the most influential religious
philosophers while at the same time claiming that God doesn't exist,
(or
does exist but isn't all powerful), yet
claiming that IF God does exist that He has terrible workmanship
regarding
His creation? Hume simply said what
people wanted to hear, and his message changed frequently. If this
wasn't
enough, he even created different characters
to write through so he could say three different things at the same
time. Hume
was
a hypocrite.
This one situation
pretty much sums up the levels of integrity and honesty evident within
the field of religious philosophy.
Proverbs 1:7 The
fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs
makes the same claim towards
the source of wisdom, but also includes an explanation as to the
source of foolishness, or the opposite of wisdom. Fools despise wisdom
and discipline. This pretty much
sums up the writings of Hume.
There
is no problem of evil, there
is a problem of sin, which causes evil. Evil is denying that God
exists,
and is
denying that God is God. This is Hume's actual intention regarding his
writings in speaking of God. There is no
wisdom to discover in Hume?s writing but only foolishness. Is Hume
simply
wrong in his assertions? Is he purposely
trying to deceive us? Perhaps Hume knows something that we don't. I
believe
that Hume KNEW that he was a
fraud and knowingly deceived others by his words.
Where men are the
most sure and arrogant, they are usually the most mistaken.
David
Hume (1711-1776) (Draper?s
Quotations for the Christian World #458)
Does
this sound confusing? How can
someone both deny AND confirm that God exists? Or claim that God exists
but is a lesser being with only limited powers?
God is an ever-present
Spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.
David Hume
(1711-1776) (Draper?s Quotations for the Christian World #5389)
Like
I have said already, Hume
is a complete fraud, a knowing, conniving, arrogant,
deceiving,
false writer
who is fully and purposely deceiving those that are naive enough read
and
believe his work. How can Hume
claim that God does NOT exist, and that He DOES exist, and then EXIST
BUT
AS A LESSER BEING?
The ?truth? can not exist in three contradicting statements. There is
no
great difficulty defeating or contradicting
Hume, because he does it himself around every corner and in all that he
wrote!
They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been
slaves of
anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free"? Jesus replied, "I
tell
you the truth,
everyone who sins is a slave to sin."
don't all have our own truth. There is one truth and it only comes from
God. Apparently Hume missed the boat.
I am extremely curious about the total lack of mention of Professor
Simon
Greenleaf, of
has been called "the greatest
authority on legal evidences in the
history
of the world".
Each
time I begin a chapter in the text The Problem of Evil, the same
equation pops up.
Since P is true, and Q is true, therefore R can not be true.
P
is NEVER proven to be a fact though. Since the topic of evidence
seems
to be a much stated issue to these
philosophers, you would think that just one of them might mention the
greatest
authority on evidence. Professor
Greenleaf did not believe the Bible, or the stories contained therein,
and the insistence of many of his students
in their faith in God and the Bible annoyed him to such an extent that
he decided to prove that the Bible was not
true according to the available evidence. After evaluating all the
evidence
contained in the Bible, he became a
Christian because the evidence was overwhelming.
(http://christjesus.us/greenleaf.html)
I have legal evidence, scientific evidence, logical evidence,
historical
evidence, mathematical evidence, typological
evidence, archeological evidence, and biological evidence, ALL showing
that the Bible is true and that the stories
contained in the Bible are also true. Where have the philosophers
considered
these facts while debating their
theories and ideas? They insist on debating their theories only between
themselves in a trivial, childish, and foolish
debate. In short, they are frauds. Rather than including any actual
evidence,
they dredge up other philosopher's
writings, dead though, these many years they may be. I call this
?inbred
stupidity?. That is not when you limit your
offspring's genetic potential by marring your mother's sister's
brother's
daughter and your children end up with
three ears, eleven fingers and only one eye. It is rather when a small,
closed group of people limit the intellectual
potential of their arguments by eliminating the most obvious sources of
information, and continue to regurgitate a
small closed group of thoughts over and over in complete indifference
to
the facts, logic, and honesty. Their thoughts
come into being containing many serious and fatal logical defects.
These
are not minor logic faults but huge glaring
misrepresentations which could not possibly stand without the awareness
and knowledge of their creators.
Matthew 12:36-37
But I tell you that men will have to give account
on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.
For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you
will be condemned.?
I have learned a great deal while taking this course, but I feel that I
had no alternative but to take the course and
address my problems with the content because I was informed that nobody
has ever had a problem with this
course. While this may be true, this doesn't mean there are no
problems,
it may just mean that nobody voiced
their concerns, or it may also mean that the Christian community has
gotten
so used to a lesser level of awareness
in recognizing faulty doctrine than in days past. I am writing these
comments
in the spirit of addressing some very
serious problems I am having with the content of this course, and hope
that my comments and answers will be
received in the spirit in which they are written, and that is to agree
with what we can agree on, and to correct what
we know to be untrue or that which is damaging to the Church.
Blasphemy
is the injurious or evil
speaking
about God. By including some of the materials propagated by atheists
and false teachers that make blasphemous statements, we are, to some
degree,
participating in their evil. Simply
renaming this blasphemy "philosophy" doesn't fix the problem. There are
numerous statements contained within this
course that speak of God not being omniscient, omnipresent, and many
even
state that God doesn't exist.
There are numerous references which redefine the meanings of
omniscience
and omnipresence in a way that
contradicts the Bible. It would have been entirely possible to include
only materials written by Christian writers with
differing views, and the outcome of the study process would have been
edifying.
The study processes I have undergone
during this course have not been edifying.
This
course has given time to Anti-Christians
while depriving time from Christian
writers.
The list of possible Christian writers, scientists,
and teachers is far too large to list here but their
discovery should take less than just a few minutes of thoughtful
searching.
I have learned a lot during this course,
but I learned a lot the last root canal I underwent also. How do I
apply
that lesson?
When
an atheistic writer makes the charge that God doesn't exist,
there is a natural inclination to
respond
to that statement. I understand the concept
of answering this statement with a defense of the Christian faith,
however
I believe the correct context of this idea
should contain arguments from the Bible rather than philosophical
arguments
that contradict the Bible.
An
atheistic philosopher proclaiming that God does not exist is not
searching for
God,
a situation in which a scriptural response
would be fitting. By leaving our scriptural foundation and entering the
philosophical logic arena, we have lost the very
basis of our argument. God is not revealed by human logic, especially
the
amazingly faulty logic represented by some
of the writers contained within this course.
God is ONLY
revealed by the Holy Spirit.
We
can put forth the most amazing arguments, sound logical reasoning, and
even concocted
scientific
evidence,
but all this is foolishness according to
the knowledge of God and we are incapable of understanding even the
slightest
truth about God unless the Holy Spirit
reveals His truth to us. Because of this supernatural fact, atheistic
philosophical
writers can not write about sin, salvation,
or any other spiritual issue with any degree of truth or accuracy
because
they do not have a relationship with the God they
claim doesn?t even exist. Attempting to argue with them, knowing that
they
have absolutely no ability to even understand
what you are talking about is a waste of time, is frustrating, and it
takes
us away from other important things that God
would have us be doing. So is studying the words of these deluded
spirits.
Even if we were able to reach these people
on a logical level, this has no effect on their spirit as only the Holy
Spirit can reach their spirits. Storm troopers can?t
knock down the spiritual door of unbelievers, but neither can clever or
intellectual arguments, only the Holy
Spirit can succeed.
The Philosophical Problem of Evil
Lecture
#1
Question
#1: What are the facts
that give rise to the problem of evil?
Answer:
Sin is the cause of all evil
and sin is irrational, but since we know that evil does exist and that
God is a
rational omniscient being, then we also understand that God must allow
irrational sin to exist for some reason.
When
we are in a state of misery
we find it difficult or impossible to believe the goodness of God.
Theodicy
is the technical term for
looking into the relationship of God and evil. (Leibnitz)
The
words "Theos" (God) and "Deka"
(Justice) are the components that make up the word Theodicy.
Some
consider it impious or irreligious
to question God?s relationship to sin.
This is only true if your motives for investigating theodicic
philosophy
are bad.
God reveals details to us regarding His relationship to
evil in
the Bible.
Evil
is tragic.
The
Philosophical Problem of Evil
Lecture
#1
Question
#2: Discuss the differences
between natural and moral evil.
Answer:
According to the speaker
the terms "good" and "evil" may not be perfectly defined,
although we seem to be able to recognize certain situations, actions,
acts,
people,
or things as being either good or evil because of our moral conscience.
According to the Bible, evil is anything that is opposed to God?s love
and mercy.
Good is anything that supports or reiterates God?s love and mercy.
Even though most non-Christians would probably reject this definition,
most Christians would
probably also reject a non-Biblical definition. This conflict is due to
non-Christians arguing from a perspective of evil,
and Christians are arguing from a perspective of the problem of evil.
That
is to say, non-Christians may view a
situation as being acceptable and not evil, because they cannot
recognize
the evil within the situation,
while Christians would view the same situation as evil because they can
recognize the evil in the situation.
Because
of their theistic perspective, Christians tend to see more evil in the
world than non-Christians, because of their/our beliefs.
The
difference between natural evil
and moral evil is basically a differentiation of the types of evil
based
on
the actual cause of the evil rather than on the results. Natural evils
may occur without the direct action of a
moral agent, while moral evils are the result of some evil action of a
moral agent, with either foreseeable
consequences, or non foreseeable consequences. Moral evils come about
because
of the misuse of the freedom of
some moral agent. Natural evils come about
because of the pain or misery felt by sentient beings caused by some
process
of nature when nature has injured or damaged these creatures.
Lecture
#2
Question
#1: What are the defining
characteristics of something being ?intrinsically good??
Answer - The concept of
?intrinsically
good? means that a thing or a state of being is good within itself.
Some intrinsically good factors of a good thing or state of being are
happiness,
pleasure, good intentions,
the exercise of virtue, good character, and love. ?Some state or thing
is good in itself?.
The Method of Isolation
One
method of determining if a thing
or a state of being is intrinsically good is as follows: If we imagine
a world where
a single thing or state exists, would we commend that thing or state or
would we not commend it? If so, it is intrinsically good.
Intrinsic
good, listed above, as
compared to intrinsic evils where a thing or state is bad in itself ?
such as misery, pain, bad intentions, the exercise of vice, evil
character,
hatred.
I
believe that the lists of intrinsic
goods and intrinsic evils listed in the text book by Roderick M.
Chisholm
are a more
accurate listing, which also shows the lack of understanding by most
philosophers.
My statement is that darkness,
evil,
and
cold do
not actually exist as a thing, or a positive state, in the real sense
that
light, good, and heat do.
The labels we call darkness, evil, and cold are actually misleading
negatives,
rather than positive actual things.
Light
does
exist and you can continue to add light to an object.
Darkness
is
not, as you can not add darkness to an object, you can only remove
light.
Evil
is a lack of good, and cold is a lack of heat. The list
shows
intrinsic
good things as: happiness, love, knowledge, justice,
beauty, proportion, good intention, the exercise of virtue. These are a
bit mislabeled and vague, but we will work with them
anyway. These items are positive existing things. The list of intrinsic
evils names these items: displeasure, unhappiness,
hate, ignorance, injustice, ugliness, disharmony, bad intention and the
exercise of vice. This list is also a bit vague and not
all that well thought out, but we will also work with it.
The first item listed is
dis-pleasure. This item is not a positive
existing
thing, but is rather a
lack of pleasure. The second is un-happiness,
which
is also not a positive existing thing, but is also
a lack of happiness, a
negative. The next is hate, which is listed as a
positive existing thing, but is rather a created name for
an extreme level of a
lack of love. Ig-norance, the next item, is not
an
actual thing, but if rather a lack of knowledge, it is
un-knowledge. The next
item, in-justice or a lack of justice. The next
listed item is ugliness, or un-beauty. This is not an actual
existing thing or state
in the sense of being a positive, but is rather
a lack of beauty, because we actually judge what ugly is
by what beautiful is,
with beautiful being the highest standard, and
ugly
falls far from the mark of beauty. The next item listed is
dis-harmony, or a lack
of harmony. Bad intention is listed but is
simply
an aggressive lack of good intention. Clearly Chisholm
had his very finger on
the essential elements required to understand
the
concepts of good and evil, but instead of going to
the source of
information, the Bible, he instead immersed himself
deeper
into philosophy and only muddled his thinking
and lost the ability to
understand the very subject he claims to
understand.
Nelson Pike's writing argues the point that
omnipotence does include the ability to sin. It is entirely logically
possible
for God to do evil, but He would never do it,
because that would "violate a firm and stable feature of his nature"
also
betrays a lack of understanding that sin is the
moving away from God. When man chooses to turn from God, he turns to
evil,
which is a lack of God. This fact makes
the writings of Pike and Chisholm as frivolous as Hume's because they
are
writing on a subject that they have not even taken
the time to understand the basic meanings for the terms they use. It is
no wonder that each has painted themselves into a
corner with no way out. The pattern of their mis-logic is found in
that:
since A is clearly true, and B is also clearly true,
therefore C, yet A is not true because it doesn't
even exist as it is
presented
by these writers.
The
"Method of Isolation" is an impossible
situation to create in reality, so there is no actual ability to test
this
method, and as such is irrelevant. Since this method can not actually
be
tested because the "world" in which it should
be tested doesn?t actually exist, the test itself can not exist either.
Since this isolated world does not exist it reduces the
arguments both for and against this argument, to the level of babbling.
The
argument
of
an organic whole does not explain the weaknesses of the method of
isolation.
My wife's labor during labor was the most
intensive
pain that she had ever felt. Watching her
suffer was the second most painful thing that I have endured. The most
painful being a kidney stone. Both of these
painful circumstances, viewed through the method of isolation technique
would be viewed as intrinsic evils because they
both included misery and pain. Yet, the birth of my daughter is the
most
enjoyable memory that my wife and I share. Not
just because this situation resulted in the birth of my daughter, but
also
because it was a very difficult situation for us to get
through, and we accomplished this feat together. My kidney stone was
amazingly
painful. This would be considered an intrinsic
evil because the situation included much misery and pain, however I
have
an intensive appreciation for every part of my
body that functions properly that I didn?t have prior to the surgery.
The Philosophical Problem of Evil
Lecture
#2
Question
#2: What is Aquinas?
definition of divine omnipotence (power)?
Answer - Whatever is able to be
done,
or is possible to do, God is able to do that thing. Impossible things
are
not able to be done.
I
answered this question to show
that I have learned the information, but I have included this narrative
to show that I
disagree with it, and to substantiate my argument. The first element of
my problem of using the writings of Thomas
Aquinas
is that he was wrong about
science in his position in opposing Galileo,
he was wrong in his teaching
that unborn children are
"un-ensouled", males
for 40 days and females for 80 days, and
he doesn't even attempt to give a reference to his teaching.
He was wrong in his teaching
to promote the murder of so-called
heretics,
he was wrong in his
acceptance and teaching
of the Pope being
infallible. He was
wrong in not just allowing but
actually
accepting sexual immorality in the form of prostitution
for both the secular population as well as "the Church".
Houses
of
prostitution
attached to the Catholic church usually had the word "rose" in their
title.
Take
a few moments and research the number
of medieval houses for women or nuns with the word
rose included in their title. In true fact,
I have yet to
read any
writing
of Aquinas in its entirety that was right about anything.
So
sighting Aquinas as a "Christian" expert on the subjects of God and
evil is unsound.
Secular
or Catholic popularity is no reason for acceptance of doctrines that
contradict the Bible.
This is
the
celebrity endorsement and is one of most basic
logical fallacies known. I would have no
problem
in accepting a recipe, artwork, or some other created work that Aquinas
has produced that is not saturated with glaring errors, but to accept
his
teaching regarding God, good, sin, and
omnipotence is impossible because he was so plainly wrong about so many
things. The logic behind his writing is flawed,
and his writing is Catholic by nature not Christian. The mixture of
Pagan
religious teaching with Christian religious teaching
that created Catholic religious teaching is a perversion of the
original
writing of the Bible. The Catholic church does not
believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible, and the teaching it
does accept is only considered equal to the teaching of
leaders within the Catholic church. The elements of perversion I am
speaking
of include religious relics, statue worship,
the rosary, the apostolic lineage and the infallibility of the Pope,
indulgences,
purgatory, the crusades, the inquisition,
Unum sanctum, Mary worship, praying to saints, etc.. Certainly it can
not
be anticipated that all of these errors occurred
within the Catholic church but their teaching regarding the actual
nature
of God went unperverted, especially the issues
of the omnipresence and the omnipotence of God.
Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274)
With the intellectual guidance of Thomas Aquinas the use of torture was
instituted for those suspected of "heresy". If the victim was indeed
found
guilty (almost all of the time),
the victim?s property was confiscated and was distributed half to the
Catholic
church and half to the state.
As
far as I can determine, Aquinas'
definition is not Biblical, as God does
do things that are not do-able all
the time.
To say that God can not make a red orange, or a married-bachelor, is
nonsense, and is not a logical argument at all, and is actually nothing
more than a childish word game designed to deceive the ignorant! .
I'll give you some examples.
The very arrival of Jesus on earth is just one of these impossible
things
to do. Mary was a pregnant-virgin by the power of God.
If God is not able to do undo-able things, how was this
possible
then? And who is to say what is do-able and undo-able? Man?
Aquinas? This concept is not to be found anywhere in the entire Bible,
and I guess if one could be found, the reference would
have been given. The following verse contradicts this definition and IS
in the Bible, as well as hundreds of others that
contradict this same definition.
Luke 1:18
Whereby shall I know
this??All
things are possible
to God: no natural impediment
can
have any power when God has declared he will accomplish his purpose. He
has a right to
be believed on his own word alone; and it is impious, when we are
convinced
that it is his word,
to demand a sign or pledge for its fulfillment.
*
Emphasis mine.
_______________________________________________________________
Matthew 8:2-4
A man with leprosy
came and knelt before him and said, ?Lord, if you are willing, you can
make me clean.? Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ?I
am willing,? he said.
?Be clean!? Immediately he was
cured of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, ?See
that you
don?t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the
gift
Moses commanded,
as a testimony to them.?
In
this case, Jesus cures a man of
leprosy, which is not curable even with modern medicine. Then Jesus
tells
this man
to go to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded for the cure of
an incurable disease. The gift Jesus spoke of was
written into the law 1,800 years earlier or this passage would have
been
impossible as there would be no prescribed gift.
_______________________________________________________________
1Some
time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee
(that
is, the Sea of Tiberius),
2and
a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous
signs
he had performed on the sick.
3Then
Jesus went up
on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples.
4The Jewish Passover Feast was near.
5When
Jesus looked
up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip,
?Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat??
6He
asked this only
to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.
7Philip
answered him, ?Eight months? wages would not buy enough bread for each
one to have a bite!?
8Another
of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter?s brother, spoke up,
9?Here
is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far
will they go among so many??
10Jesus
said, ?Have the people
sit down.? There was
plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down,
about five thousand of them.
11Jesus
then took
the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as
much
as they wanted.
He did the same with the fish.
12When
they had all
had enough to eat, he said to his disciples,
?Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.?
13So
they gathered
them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley
loaves
left
over by those who had eaten.
14After
the people
saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say,
?Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.?
15Jesus,
knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force,
withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
16When
evening came, his disciples went down to the lake,
17where
they got into a boat and set off across the lake for
By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them.
18A
strong wind was
blowing and the waters grew rough.
19When
they had rowed
three or three and a half miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat,
walking on the water; and they were terrified.
20But
he said to them, ?It
is I; don?t
be afraid.?
21Then
they were willing
to take him into the boat, and immediately the
boat reached the shore where they were heading.
In
this case, Jesus is in the mountains,
which is one place, but he knows that the disciples are struggling with
the
storm in another place. An undo-able thing. This case also shows a
huge-small
thing, huge enough to feed a huge
crowd and small enough to be carried in the hands of one disciple),
defiance
of time and space, and defiance of the
laws of physics, namely buoyancy. This is a situation where God even
created
a free expensive thing, where the bread
would have cost many months salary to purchase but it was of no charge.
How then can baskets of break be left over from
a couple of loaves? This is also undo-able but it was done. All of
these
situations supposedly contradict Aquinas?s definition.
The location where the disciples put into the
The disciples were three and a half miles from the shore at the
southern
end of the lake when Jesus walks out to them
ON the water, and then ?immediately
the boat reached the shore where they were heading? which means the
boat,
the
disciples, and Jesus travel about twenty miles and arrived at their
destination
in an instant. This is clearly an un-doable
thing. If this is a do-able thing, this denial of the laws of time and
space, then why is making a red orange (denial of the laws
of color), or a married bachelor an impossible social situation, an
undo-able
thing?
While
I do understand that I may
be the only person that has had a problem with the content of this
particular
course,
this does not mean that the course is correct and I am incorrect. The
argument
of limiting God is not supported with
Bible verses, but my argument is. The very virgin birth is yet another
one of these contradictions,
Mary was a pregnant virgin, CLEARY an undo-able thing, which CLEARLY
God
did do.
As to adapting terminology put forth by Aquinas, I think
this is
a very bad idea. Aquinas condoned prostitution, not just for the
average citizen, but also for priests. He also declared that abortion
is
not murder as long as it is performed within
40 days for a male and 80 days for a female. Clearly this ?philosopher?
did not know God nearly as well as he thought he did,
OR his medical science. This is NOT the person we want fashioning
contemporary
Christian doctrine.
Anyone that would condone prostitution, abortion, and
murder would
hardly even be considered a Christian at all!
Although
Thomas Aquinas taught that
an unborn baby was "ensouled" at 40 days for a male and 80 days for a
female,
the Bible has something quite the opposite to say. Apparently we are
?souled?
from conception and we follow either a
righteous path or an evil path.
Righteous
Psalm
22:9-10 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you even at my mother?s breast. From birth I was
cast
upon you;
from my mother?s womb you have
been my God.
Evil
Psalm
58:3-5 Even from birth the wicked go astray;
from the womb they are wayward and speak lies.
Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that
of a
cobra that has stopped its ears,
that will not heed the tune of the charmer,
however
skillful
the enchanter may be.
Psalm 139:13-16 For you created my inmost being; you knit me
together in
my mother?s
womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your
works
are wonderful,
I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made
in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my
unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before
one of
them came to be.
This
verse clearly shows that the
unborn have the same status as the born by their inclusion in the same
book of God.
The
proposition stated over and over
in the lecture series that
1. God is good,
2. God is all powerful, and that
3. Evil exists and that if any two of these is true, then it is
"impossible"
for the third to be true is absurd at the very best.
Hume has avoided the obvious
fourth element of his proposition,
4. that Hume is wrong.
Clearly this is the most logical and productive solution to Hume?s
self-created
philosophical problem.
Each of Hume's three "facts" are clearly demonstrated throughout the
Bible,
in life, and in my own experience, thus I recognize
them as facts. Hume's statements are not proven to me either through
logic,
scripture, history, or my own experience,
so why would I accept a known false statement?
This
proposition also
completely
ignores any time factor of God. God is
going to eliminate evil but He is going to do it on His timetable, not
according to man?s and especially not according to Hume?s.
My proposition is this: Man exists, God exists, Evil exists, therefore
Hume's proposition that if any two of the above situations
exists it is then impossible for the third to exist, is preposterous
because
it is obvious, proven, and experientially provable that
all three of the components of Hume?s argument do exist therefore
Hume?s
proposition is ludicrous. The only thing that has occurred
here is that the idea that
a) God is good, and
b) any departure away from God is evil has turned into the
argument
Q obtains: Q entails P; P is good; Q is not good; and Q
entails a state
of affairs R such that P does not entail R,
R does not entail P, and Q is better than R.
This situation reminds me of the fact that a simple Gospel existed
within
100 years of the death and resurrection of Jesus,
but within 400 years this simple Gospel had been complicated
(stupefied)
into 28 tenants of the Christian faith that took
many years to memorize and learn. This was not the intention of Jesus
during
His life on earth. Jesus taught;
Matthew 18:2-10 He
called a little child and had him stand among them.
And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like
little
children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in
the
kingdom of heaven.
And whoever welcomes
a little child like this in my name welcomes me.
But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,
it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his
neck
and to be
drowned in the depths of the sea."
"Woe to the world
because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come,
but woe to the man through whom they come!
If your hand or your foot causes you to sin cut it off and throw it
away.
It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two
hands or
two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.
And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.
It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes
and
be thrown into the fire of hell.
See that you do
not look down on one of these little ones.
For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my
Father
in heaven."
The
writers included in this course
thus far would certainly not fall into the category of simple or
childlike,
but rather more on the line of those that look down on simplicity or
childlike
writing. It is the duty of an intelligent person
to serve the community he lives in and in fact the community of
humanity
by using his intelligence to present ideas
in a simple and succinct manner.
Matthew 13:19 When
anyone hears the message about the kingdom
and does not understand it, the evil one comes and
snatches away
what was sown in his heart.
This is the seed sown along the path.
The
philosophical writers included
in this book and lecture series have not used their intelligence and
education
to
present a simple succinct message but have done just the opposite in
that
they have taken a very simple issue and
complicated it to the point that even they themselves do not understand
even the basics of their chosen subject, and
indeed do not even understand the terms they use. These writers have
used
their intelligence to complicate a simple topic,
and to eliminate everyone except the intellectual elite of which they
consider
themselves a member of. This reminds me of
the situation when the Pharisees and the
Sadducees cornered Jesus and attempted to trap Him with their
hollow
philosophical reasoning.
Matthew 22:15-17 Then
the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in
his words.
They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. ?Teacher,?
they
said,
?we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God
in
accordance with the truth.
You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.
Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar
or not??
Jesus
respond to their question with
the answer
?Give to Caesar what is Caesar?s, and to God
what is God?s.?
This
is not a difficult or complicated
answer Jesus gave them. In fact it was brilliant in its simplicity.
It answered the question in such a manner that a child could understand
as well as the most learned person in the town.
Later
that day the Sadducees tried
to trap him with their philosophical argument.
Matthew 22:2330 That
same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection,
came to him with a question. "Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that
if a man dies without
having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for
him. Now there
were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since
he had no children,
he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second
and third brother,
right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the
resurrection,
whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to
her?"
Again, Jesus responded
with pure and brilliant simplicity.
Matthew
22:29-30 Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the
Scriptures
or
the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be
given in marriage;
they will be like the angels in heaven."
Then,
unhappy with how their complicated
plans were destroyed by the precise and uncomplicated answers of Jesus,
the
Pharisees took over the argument from the Sadducees and attempted to
trap
Jesus again. In this exchange, the Pharisees
pounced on Jesus like a tag team, posing another of the most difficult
questions they were able to come up. The Pharisees
were trying to show up Jesus as not knowing and understanding the 10
commandments
as well as they did, which they hoped
would then destroy the reputation of Jesus. Jesus made His response in
such a way that nobody on the planet could have,
because He responded from the position of being the author of the 10
commandments.
In doing this He was showing not only that
He understood the 10 commandments, but that He actually wrote them by
offering
evidence to the Pharisees that only the author
could know, but that the Pharisees had overlooked despite all of their
studying.
Matthew 22:34-4 Hearing
that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.
One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
"Teacher,
which is the greatest
commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with
all
your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and
greatest
commandment.
And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as
yourself.?
All the Law and the Prophets hang
on these two commandments."
The
Pharisees didn?t have any way
to respond because it was obvious that the 10 commandments were written
on two stone
tablets and there were only two topics related by the 10 commandments,
one topic for each tablet,
1) Love God, and
2) Love each other.
This clearly showed that Jesus understood the 10 commandments as the 2
commandments with elaborations, rather than the
misunderstood meaning the Pharisees held, that there actually 10
commandments.
This left absolutely no doubt that Jesus
was on the inside circle of knowledge and knew the intimate details of
the 10 commandments because He had written
them, and that the Pharisees had obviously misunderstood the meaning.
As
the Pharisees were reeling from embarrassment
from Jesus' statement, Jesus asks them this final question:
Matthew 22:41-22
While the Pharisees were gathered together,
Jesus asked them, 42 "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is
he?"
Jesus
finally has demonstrated that
He was indeed the Son of God to the Pharisees and left them without a
single
defense.
Jesus then asks them the critical question which was the true topic of
the argument. Is Jesus the Son of God? Clearly,
He was, and is. After this exchange which left the Pharisees with
nothing
else to say, they finally left and no one
dared ask any more questions.
This
is the manner in which Christians
should respond to philosophical arguments as the example given by
Jesus.
This example teaches us not to engage in circular reasoning, absurd
philosophical
equations, or complicated responses but
rather to break the problem down to its essential components and then
to
answer in simple, succinct answers that cut to
the actual issue at hand. Apparently the spirit of the Pharisees has
returned
to us many years later in the form of
atheistic philosophers. Compare this exchange by Jesus with the
following
one by Marilyn McCord Adams, and Robert Merrihew Adams.
"On
Mackie's deployment of the
argument, (P1) and (P3) are advanced, not as pre-analytic guesses as to
what is
meant by "omnipotence" and "perfect goodness", but as principles having
presumption in their favour.
He assigns the theologian the burdon of proving that a modification of
(P1) and/or (P3) that would leave
(1) and (2) consistent would not "seriously affect the essential core
of
the theistic position" (p37).
From The Problem
of
Evil,
Introduction, page 3.
The Philosophical Problem of Evil
Lecture #3
Question #1: Briefly
define a
priori and a posteriori.
Answer - "A
Priori" means "from the
prior things". If something is known a priori or recognized a priori,
it means that we can come to substantial conclusion without or prior to
sense experience.
It is known without the aid of sense experience.
"A
Posteriori" means "from
the later
things". Things that are posteriori are known after or including sense
experience.
It is known with the air
of sense
experience. a priori
- from cause to effect; from generalization to particular;
deductive; presupposed by or reasoning from self-evident propositions
(based
on theory rather than practice).
The
Philosophical Problem of
Evil
Lecture
#3
Question #2: Would a
courtroom
argument more likely be an a priori or and a posteriori argument? How
about
a mathematical proof?
Answer - The question of
whether
a courtroom argument is more likely to be a priori or an a posteriori
argument
doesn?t
make sense to me as courtroom arguments would most likely be a
combination
of the two. Civil law is based on
English law, and Criminal law is based on Hebrew law. In criminal
court,
some if not all evidences would be proven scientifically,
while some evidences may be based on mathematical probabilities, the
larger
percentage of evidence would be provable fact.
The facts in a criminal case would be largely a posteriori in nature,
but
the mathematical probability evidences such as genetic
finger printing, or fiber evidence, or hair evidence would be closer to
a priori in nature. Prior evidence or
cataloged
samples
would exist and the probability of a match with the specific case
evidence
would be the determining factor in the acceptance or
credibility of the case evidence. This evidence would be a priori
because
the evidence would be something that is known prior
to the case and the conclusion would be based on preexisting
conclusions
and/or decisions rather than on experiential
conclusions. While this evidence relies heavily on mathematical
calculations,
the calculations are supposed by statistical
probability rather than provable mathematics. Blood spatters would be a
contrasting comparison of both a priori and a
posteriori arguments as the evidence would be photographed and analyzed
and then spatter patterns would then be duplicated
in a lab which would be a posteriori in nature. If a match could be
obtained,
the result would be a posteriori. An a
posteriori
argument would be constructed by matching preexisting evidence, or a
priori,
with duplicated evidence
created in the lab, or a posteriori.
In civil court, each side
presents
their case and the judge or jury would decide the outcome of the trial
through a preponderance
of the case evidence which could include strictly a priori or a
posteriori
arguments, or a combination of both. Enactments would
allow the judge or jury to experience first hand the details included
in
the evidence presented which would be a posteriori.
Many times in civil court though, the arguments are only a priori
because
there is no way to duplicate a posteriori
experiences for the judge or jury.
A mathematical proof would
be a priori
in nature if it had been established by another person and we learned
of
the pre-existing
proof by reading about it, or hearing about it, but it would be a
posteriori
if we did the work and established the proof our self.
1. Why is pain used to
incite us
to respond to possible trouble? Why pain to being burned rather than
just
a reduction of pleasure?
2. Why is the world
conducted in
the terms of general laws rather than God simply irradicating evil as
soon
as it happens?
If a mountain climber is going to fall in 10 seconds, why doesn?t God
will
away the evil situation?
3. Why doesn?t God give out
more
good making abilities to His creatures? Some animals have speed, some
have
thick hides,
some have intelligence. Why not give
everything
with more super features?
4. God?s inaccurate
workmanship.
Storms are excessive, heat is excessive or lacking, rain is excessive
or
lacking, etc..
The Philosophical Problem of Evil
Lecture
#4
Question #1: What, in
contrast,
are some of the Christian assumptions about pain
and evil in relation to God?s purposes for creating us?
Answer - The four responses
to Hume's
moronic premises are as follows -
Hume Argument ? 1. Why is
pain used
to incite us to respond to possible trouble?
Why should we experience pain when we are being burned rather than just
feeling a reduction of pleasure?
Lecture Argument - 1. The
Christian
assumption doesn't avoid pain, but that God desires us freely and
wishes
us to
pursue a relationship with God. Naturally, we are serving our own
desires
and not those of God. (Romans 12:1,2.)
As Christians, we are to become fit vessels for God's pleasure and
glory.
As Christians, our main desire is not to maximize
our own personal pleasure, but rather to become a pleasure to God and
not
ourselves.
Hume seems to overlook the value of pain.
Sigel Argument - 1. To start
with,
Hume's propositions are evil, arrogant, immature, and stupid by nature,
and if this wasn't
enough already to insult God, each argument of his is unfair and
mean-spirited
too. In Genesis, when God creates
something the word used is Bara.
That is, to
create something out of
nothing.
Before attempting to comment
on Hume, this course requires that I read Hume.
Before attempting to start this
course, it was required that I prove that I have taken several courses
and have some
prerequisite education in
order
to prove that I have the mental ability to
understand the information that is presented. In the same way, for Hume
to critique God's ability to create, and indeed, to
critique God's creation, and then to take the amazingly arrogant
position,
to actually judge God?s handiwork, Hume must have
the ability to understand the creative process in order to fairly judge
it.
The word used for the
situation when man creates something is not Bara, but another word.
This means that God can bara
(create
something out of nothing) and that man can only
create something new out of things that God has already created.
Certainly,
if Hume is going to take the situation that if he
had created the universe, and in fact he would have done a better job,
therefore there must not be a God because He certainly
would have also done a better job is pure stupidity. Hume can?t
actually
create anything. Not a single thing. He can't even create
an original idea. So, if Hume can not "bara" or create something out of
nothing, he certainly is not qualified to judge God?s
ability to create. Hume?s critique is insulting to logic in that he
can?t
even produce a single molecule, while God created the
entire universe, yet Hume insists on insulting the quality of God's
workmanship,
while Hume doesn't even have workmanship
in any sense. According to Hume?s rules, even Hume doesn't exist!
Hume
totally ignores that fact that humans actually
choose pain all the time. Football, hockey, soccer, and dozens of other
sports are all violent and painful, yet these are
some of the most popular activities humans engage in. In fact, just the
activity of keeping or getting into shape causes
pain. Since these activities require pain to become proficient, any
award
or prestige for becoming proficient is actually an
award for being able to endure either the most pain, or to endure pain
for the greatest amount of time. Perhaps Hume attended
some type of sporting event but was too busy crafting insults to God to
actually engage his mind in the activities at hand.
To write a philosophy in complete contradiction to things easily
observable
betrays a dishonest thought process and a dastardly
perspective. People seem to enjoy some degree of pain and they don't
seem
to avoid it under certain situations.
The outcome of many of these activities provides people with a sense of
accomplishment, confidence, and invigorates them.
These qualities would seem to be pleasurable, yet they are accomplished
through pain. I think Hume should have spent a little
more time trying to discover God, and gone out into the world a bit
more
instead of sitting in his little room writing nonsense
to insult God. These observations are easily observable to anyone with
an eye to see. The ramblings of Hume are not
deep, profound, or even thoughtful at the face of them. Everyone has
seen
a child gone wild and everyone has seen a child
that has been raised with respect and thoughtfulness. Hume's ideas
would
train rebellious and wild children which would then
grow into similar adults. Perhaps this situation is responsible for
Hume?s
anti-theistic philosophy.
Hume Argument - 2. Why is
the world
conducted in the terms of general laws rather than God simply
eradicating
evil as
soon as it happens? If a mountain climber is going to fall in 10
seconds,
why doesn?t God will away the evil situation?
Lecture Argument - 2. Many
situations
have a specific facet of danger included in their function such as
explosives,
yet this same situation has a facet of benefit to man. Perhaps driving
your car to a mountain to go mountain climbing would
be pleasurable, but the fact that gasoline is explosive and you might
get
hurt, God might prevent your use of gasoline because
if it exploded you might get hurt, and that would eliminate your
pleasure
so you would be prevented from using gasoline. Yet, this
argument has just eliminated your favorite pastime of mountain climbing
which eliminated your pleasure in the situation so that you
would be safe and could protect your pleasure level. Courage requires
the
facing of danger, but if Hume?s created world didn?t
include danger nobody would be able to develop the characteristic of
courage.
This created world of Hume?s would also eliminate
much of human contact because as man had no needs and no struggles,
mankind
would not have to band together to overcome
difficulties, or situations that might include an element of danger.
Sigel Argument - 2. These
general
laws that Hume speaks of create a situation for man, where man has an
ability
to
predict the outcome of his actions. By doing the same action time and
again,
the same outcome can be had time and time
again. The predictability of an action?s result creates a learning
curve
whereas man can actually learn from his actions what
will occur. The example given of the mountain climber shows an example
where man is thrilled by the threat of death. Many
mountain climbers call their activity of mountain climbing ?living near
the edge?, that is they put themselves into a situation where
they endanger their lives, but through training, understanding their
equipment
and their mental ability to endure hardship, they
have an increased appreciation of their everyday lives. If Hume had his
way, these same mountain climbers would have no
purpose in climbing a mountain because there would be no adverse
reaction
to making a mistake and there would be no
possible way to endanger their lives. There would also be no learning
curve
which means training would be impossible because
no mental preparation would be needed, no equipment would be needed
because
it would be impossible to have an adverse
reaction to their activity. By eliminating the logical outcome of a
stupid
action, eliminating the outcome would only have the
result of encouraging recklessness and stupidity. Perhaps Hume would
enjoy
an entire world populated with over six billion
humans doing stupid actions because there were no negative outcomes for
their actions. I would not. It is painful enough
dealing with the stupid actions of people that DO have painful results
to their stupid actions. Having a world with no
consequences for any stupid action would make the world an intolerable
place for us to live, and man would never be able
to learn anything. Hume?s entire premise of eliminating pain and
replacing
this economy with one where nothing you did
had a painful result would simply reduce the world to a place of
apathy,
boredom, and a place where it was nearly impossible
for man to learn anything. In fact, Hume?s proposition sounds
suspiciously
like a description of a drug induced state.
The pursuit of knowledge through experimentation, education, or even
observation
also seems to be a pleasurable undertaking
and mankind seems to benefit from these activities. This would also
seem
to produce feelings of pleasure, so again, Hume
is on the opposite side of his own argument of increasing pleasure
rather
than suffering pain. Even the mountain climber
that would supposedly benefit from Hume?s cosmic meddling would have
his
favorite activity reduced to a meaningless
activity devoid of any pleasure for the mountain climber. Isn't THIS
evil
that Hume as created himself?
Hume Argument
- 3. Why doesn?t God give out more good making abilities
to His
creatures?
Some animals have speed, some have thick hides, some have intelligence.
Why not give everything with more super features?
Lecture argument - 3. The
fact that
the creations of God can actually reproduce shows that they do have
sufficient
abilities
to survive. If all animals had super features, all animals would cease
to exist. The conflict between different
species of animals allows them to exist.
Sigel argument - 3. Hume's
assertion
that all animals should have all, or at least more, super features is
ridiculous.
The struggle of nature keeps each species strong as only the strong are
able to reproduce. Nature provides a screening
process which determines which animals are able to reproduce. The
weakest
examples of each species are killed because
their abilities are not as great as other animals trying to kill and
eat
them. If the ability that God gave that animal is superior
to the predator trying to eat it, then that animal survives. This
situation
makes the world vibrant, vital, strong, and
interesting. There are a great number of lessons to man in observing
the
creations of man. In fact, the Bible says that God?s
fingerprint is on His creation and as such, His handiwork is so obvious
that man has no excuse for not believing that God
exists. Just as the Bible states, Hume also has no excuse for not
believing
that God exists, and he has absolutely no
excuse for the complete lack of logic he presents in his writings, nor
his obvious lack of understanding nature. When
evidence of this enormous content is so easily observable to man,
Hume?s
argument betrays his rebellious nature and his
hatred of God. Hume's argumentative points are not logical or fair and
do not match up with the components of his own life.
Hume argument
- 4. God's inaccurate workmanship. Storms are excessive,
heat is
excessive or lacking, rain
is excessive or lacking, etc. This supposedly proves that the universe
was not created by a god.
Lecture argument - 4. Some
of the
processes of nature have gone off track, because of the fall of man.
Christians
work to
restore God's image within us which offsets the defects of nature. Pain
helps the process of Christians becoming holy, or to
be over comers of painful situations. God is morally good, and wants us
to also become morally good through
the mechanism of pain.
Sigel argument - 4. Again,
Hume cannot
even create a single atom, yet he assumes to know more than God, to the
point to deny that God even exists. The world existed in a perfect form
before the fall, and rebellious man and rebellious
woman caused the world to be reformed in its now seemingly imperfect
form.
Hume's argument shows us that his anti-God
perspective and his belief that he is superior to God and also shows us
that if Hume was the first man, that he would have
made the same choices that Adam did. His argument doesn?t prove that
God
doesn't exist, but rather proves that he is
exactly like Adam and would have messed up the world just as the first
man did. Man's decisions created pain and death,
not God's and Hume's argument shows that he would have also caused pain
and death, which means his argument is
stupid and meaningless as Hume's ambition is pain disguised as a
logical
argument. It would seem that if someone like Hume
wishes to claim that nature is inaccurate therefore there must not be a
God, that Hume would himself be able to come
up with an accurate statement. Forget creating something from nothing,
but just make a statement that is not inaccurate.
He cannot. Hume is a fraud and attempts to make logical arguments but
his
arguments contradict themselves and they do so
to the degree that they would necessarily be self-evident even to Hume.
This shows dishonesty in his mental process and that
his illegitimate propositions are not just in error by an honest
mistake,
but that they are actually forged from a knowingly
false premise and that he attempts to deceive his readers by design.
This
is one of the main problems I have with the
inclusion of these ridiculous writers in a Christian course. Hume isn?t
a Christian and his propositions are so basically
stupid on the face of them that their inclusion is insulting to the
logical
mind. The space dedicated to Hume?s writings
should have been dedicated either to a Christian writer, a component of
the Bible, or possibly even to a secular writer
that at least is able to formulate a logical argument that can not be
defeated
by an average grade school student.
The
Philosophical Problem of
Evil
Lecture
#4
Question #2: Based on
suggestions
given in the lecture, develop a response to
Hume?s second criticism or ?circumstance.?
Answer - Hume's complaint
that the
world operates through a series of general laws rather than God simply
eradicating
evil as soon as it happens doesn?t even qualify as a real argument in
my
opinion. But, since this is Hume?s time I?ll
indulge him. If a knife cuts, and cutting is not pleasurable, you
couldn't
have surgery. If pain is so against Hume's liking,
how should unruly children be raised? Should the parents simply let
them
run astray and not punish them when they
are wrong? Perhaps Hume doesn?t believe that children would behave
badly
if he designed the universe. Should all animals
then be vegetarians? Why should we then as humans have to cook our own
meals? Why shouldn't God gather and prepare
all of our meals? I have had some meals that were downright nasty and
painful.
Certainly if Hume was in charge, we wouldn?t
have to undergo terrible food would we? What about music? I hate rap
music
to the point that it is painful, yet millions of
other people like it. Who?s right? More importantly, when will Hume
stop
complaining about all of these really stupid points?
On a final note, this argument of Hume?s is painful to the logic center
of my brain, I do agree with Hume that this should have
only been a reduction of pleasure rather than a painful experience. I
must
say that if Hume thought that God did a
terrible job in creating the universe, he is really going to be
disappointed
with hell.
Question #1: Explain why
the statement
(?An omnipotent, perfect being would prevent the existence of any evil
whatever.?),
cannot be used to show (1) God exists, and (2) Evil exists, are
inconsistent
ideas.
Answer ? This statement by
Mackey
is not logical despite the comments on the lectures describing it as
logical,
but is instead a
commonly occurring
fallacy, namely ?begging the question?. Begging the Question is when
one
assumes the proposition so that he might prove the proposition; Begging
the Question consists in making use of
the very proposition in dispute, as though it were already proved. This
statement is made, but is not logical on the face of it,
it is not verified by any other source other than the originator of the
statement, has no evidentiary proof, and does
nothing to
eliminate arguments refuting the statements accuracy. An omnipotent,
perfect
being may very well allow the existence of
evil to serve a purpose. The rebirth of
If pain is evil, than childbirth is evil but my daughter couldn?t have
been born without childbirth. Nearly every sport in the
world is painful, as is training for it. Making a trip to the dentist
is
painful, and therefore evil, yet the pain and level of evil that
would result from not going to the dentist would be even greater. Most
people feel bad when killing an animal, yet the pain
of starving to death, or worse yet, watching your family starve to
death
would be even more painful. All of these situations fit in
the definition of evil because they are not pleasurable yet all of the
situations are also necessary.
I believe the answer
expected in
the context of this course is that since the statements in the first
and
second case are
not proven, the third case can not be proven. I reality, the problem
can
not actually exist long enough to enter this argument
because the term ?evil? is incorrect in its inception long before the
argument
ever existed. The question implies that evil, as
a thing, actually exists, just as God, a thing, exists, therefore the
problem
exists. The problem is that the logic is flawed in the
first two statements, not in the third. Evil is a situation in which
God
is absent. Where God is not, evil is. Where evil is,
God is not. Just as darkness is a lack of light, and does not exist in
itself as a thing, evil does not exist as a thing in itself,
but is actually only a lack of God.
To show that firstly evil
exists
and then secondly that God exists and then try to prove that they are
not
consistent can not
be done. God did not create evil, He created choice. To create a being
such as man, and then wanting to have a free and
reciprocal relationship with that being required that God create man
with
a will, and allow man to exercise that will. Not allowing
man the freedom to choose would have been evil. Man would have been
nothing
more than a robot. You can not expect a
robotic being to demonstrate love towards its creator.
To do so would be unfair which is also evil. God created
man with
the ability to choose, but taught man how to make the right choices.
Man,
using his free will chose not to obey God and
make the right choices, but decided to rebel against God and make the
wrong
choices. This was evil. The question is
flawed because it assumes that evil is an actual thing that exists. It
is not. Evil is a condition. God is good and evil is
anything that is against God. For God to allow man to choose God had to
limit the degree of control He had over man. In doing
so, He gave man the ability to choose rightly and to return God?s love
which would have been godly. Man did not, he chose to
disobey God, that is to turn his back on God which is evil because it
is
anti-God. This freedom is a grace God allows to
permit man to choose. Placing expectations on man while not allowing
man
the ability to fulfill those expectations would be
unfair, and therefore evil. God created a
godly
situation but man used the situation to do evil instead. The evil is
not
created
by God, it is created by man by using the materials at his disposal for
an ungodly purpose. The question does not clarify if God
should prevent evil from occurring or if God should immediately
eliminate
evil as soon as it occurs. Preventing its existence
is a rather vague way to state the question. If God prevented evil from
occurring then He would also be preventing man from
fulfilling his purpose for existence which is fellowship with God
because
God would be eliminating man?s ability to choose
fellowship. Now that the question of time has been introduced, the
other
possible meaning of this question would be that God
could simply eliminate evil as soon at it occurred thusly preventing
its
existence. This interpretation of the question forces God
to operate on man?s time schedule. God is not subject to man, man is
subject
to God. God has told us in the Bible that at
some point in the future, hopefully in the near future, that He will
indeed
eliminate all evil. This will be according to God?s
idea of time not mans. This is all I am able to do with this question
the
way it is phrased.
This may be the best time to
express
my opinion that the continued discussion of possible worlds is
irritating
as it also
falls under the ?begs the question? fallacy. This IS the real world. I
am sitting at my chair typing on my laptop computer in
Anchorage Alaska, it is softly raining, I am sitting in my hanging sky
chair with the television playing in the background with the
sound muted. This is the real world. Discussions of a ?possible world?
are silly because they are simply NOT possible.
Would this possible world exist in my mind? If so, it is not an actual
world at all. Is this world on another planet?
Which? Would I exist in this other world?
This would be clearly impossible as there is only one me. Would this be
on another time line? I must assume that I am
not immortal in this other possible world, which means that I would die
at some point. Yet, I am living in this real world and will
probably die here sometime. The Bible says that it is appointed for me
to die one time. This argument of other possible
worlds contradicts this statement. Has anyone ever met someone in this
other world? I?d like to meet them. No other worlds
exist, spiritually, physically, mentally, logically, or any other-ly. While it does allow people to hear themselves
talk, the
Bible
also makes a statement of not making idle chatter, which speaking of
other
possible worlds easily falls under. The argument
contained within the lecture that John is not over six feet tall in
another
possible world because clearly John is not over six feet tall,
and then explaining that the speaker does not play the piano but in
another
possible world, that the speaker
is a concert pianist is possible is contradictory. Just as John is not
six feet tall, the speaker is not a concert pianist. The
conversation the speaker meanders through is also inconsistent. The
argument
that a statement must necessarily be true and
then a comparison can be drawn to the second statement is a human
argument.
God is not human. The writer says that a
true statement can not contradict itself. This is true in human terms,
yet God causes many situations that contradict each
other to occur but both situations are true none the less, because this
is God at work and not man. Having a pregnant virgin,
such as Mary the mother of Jesus is just such a situation. Jesus
walking
on water in the middle of a storm is another. Water
is behaving just as you would expect by tossing the boat around. The
buoyancy
of the boat matches the scientific laws we know
of, the storm matches what we know of science, yet Jesus is violating
the
laws of buoyancy while the boat is not, yet it is the
same water. Jesus was prophesied to come from a certain royal family
line,
but this same family line had a blood curse on
it for several generations. Jesus did come from this royal line just as
prophesied, but He did not have direct blood
connection to the family curse. Clearly this is a contradictory
situation
but both factors of the situation are true. Leprosy is
an incurable disease, and, Jesus cured people suffering from leprosy.
These
statements are ?explicitly? contradictory, but these
statements are also explicitly true. Trying to contort the human mind,
or to rewrite historical facts will not accomplish what the
speaker is attempting. Yet these facts to contradict HUMAN
understanding,
but these are not
situations created by man, they are created by God. Trying to apply
human
laws to God is futile, fruitless, and stupid. The
speaker?s argument that an object, a ball, can not be both blue and red
at the same time because each statement, the
object is blue, and the object is red, are explicitly contradictory.
Yet
God did create the Morpho Menelaus butterfly which has
extremely sophisticated and complex wings, each with thousands and
thousands
of rows of strands, with thousands and
thousands of oblique shaped reflective cups on the rows of strands.
Each
of these cups has lines with a biochemical
composition that looks metallic and can reflect light rays at a
slightly
different angle, thus changing the color that the observer
sees when the butterfly changes the angle of each cup. The butterfly
can
then sit motionless on a fence post and the
observer can observe that the butterfly is one color, and then by
taking
a step in another direction the observer can then
observe the butterfly?s wing being another color. The butterfly has
done
nothing to change the color of its wing, but the
observer will observe these two colors nonetheless.
This is not an ?explicitly inconsistent? because both
statements
contradict
each other, but both statements are also true. Need even more possible
contradictions? Let?s have John, who is less than
six feet tall look at the butterfly, and he can truthfully say that the
butterfly is blue. John?s brother can stand next to John and
look at this same butterfly, yet John?s brother can truthfully say that
the butterfly is another color. So, it is an explicitly
contradictory argument that the butterfly can be two different colors
at
the same time, and that these two different colors
can be seen by two different people at the same time. So, these
statements
are both true, but they also contradict
each other. If the Morpho butterfly did change its color scheme against
matching colors, we might have yet another observer
who might say that the butterfly simply disappeared. This statement
would
also be true, even though this statement contradicts
the other two statements. It would appear so, but did not in fact, it
just
made its detection extremely difficult which was God?s design
in the first place. Color is simply what we call the reflection of
light,
and man?s interpretation of that color?s reflection on the
retina of man?s eye. The ball used in this example is also visible on
many
different wave lengths such as ultra violet, infrared,
and several others, which man can not even see, so basing an argument
solely
on color, and then using this statement to
prove a logical point, especially since the point is so evidently false
does not support the next argument because the first
statement is clearly false. Accepting a false statement in the first
argument
will only cause the reader/listener to accept
another false statement because it is premised on the first. There are
a great many seemingly ?impossible? things that man
cannot do, but to say that God cannot do these same ?impossible? things
is simply not true. God is God, and man is man.
The same rules simply don?t apply. This is because man operates in the
natural, and God operates in the supernatural.
The speaker?s statement that John can not at the same time be less than
six feet tall, and be over six feet tall at the same
time. The only way the facts of either statement can be ascertained is
by utilizing a standard. The standard in this case
would be a measuring tape, which would measure John?s height to
determine
how tall John is. In the matter of evil, a
standard must also be used to ascertain the true nature of evil. This
standard
is the Bible. The philosophers that made the
original statements were atheists and they have no standard to measure,
or understand the true nature of evil. Their
comments regarding God are also irrelevant also because they make a
statement
that claims that God does not exist prior to
making any factual statement, and their assumed statement is then used
to support their statement that God does not exist.
Note ? The speaker?s
statements regarding
the situation of a paradox is not an accurate use of the word, and is a
common
mistake in the understanding of a paradox. The speaker treats the word
paradox to mean that this is an unsolvable problem,
that is, there is one situation that contradicts another situation, and
the two are irreconcilable. The speaker uses the word to mean,
we have an unresolvable situation, but a paradox is really a
resolvable
situation because both seemingly stated positions really
are true. If both positions really are true, then there can be no real
contradiction, just a situation that appears to be a contradiction.
A paradox is not a problem where one fact exists but that fact
contradicts
another so called fact that is wrong, a paradox is when
two facts exist but the facts appear to contradict each other, yet both
are true. That is to say, a paradox speaks of a possibility,
not of an impossibility. The truth behind a paradox can be discovered.
That is also to say, a paradox can be solved, but the
speaker treats the word to mean, a paradox can not be solved. The most
common usage of the word paradox attempts to use
the word to explain that the contradiction can?t be solved. The actual
usage of the word paradox means that with careful study
and logical thought, the paradox can be understood, or solved, or that
the appearance of contradiction can be eliminated.
The speaker?s explanation
that in
some ?possible world? God can be all knowing, all powerful, and all
good,
but that evil can
still exist is mumbo jumbo. The fact that God is omniscient, and all
good,
but that evil exists is true in this world, the
?real world?, the ONLY world. God is completely good, He is all
powerful,
and evil exists, because God created man with the
ability to choose. If man chooses evil, then man created evil, not God.
Lecture #5
Question #2: Is it
essential to
human beings that they sin after they are created?
What in Christian theology helps us to decide one way or the other?
Answer ? The answer you are
looking
for is ?no?. God knew in His omniscience that man would sin, but He
didn?t
cause it.
Sin is an accidental attribute of humankind, and is not an essential
component
of being human.
The question is asking if
mankind
has to sin because it is a part of his nature. I know
that Plenega is saying that
we don?t,
but that isn?t the entire story, and the question
as well as the answer is a
bit deceiving.
Man is not whole, and hasn?t been from the
garden. Man was designed to
be in
communion with God, and this has been true
from the creation of the
world. Sin
is not a physical issue, but rather a spiritual one.
The argument that a finger,
your
hair, your nails or sin, are accidental and not
essential components of
mankind is
a fallacy. Man?s spirit is not the same as his
hair or his fingernails. The
comparison
of an appendage of man and man?s spirit is
not a valid comparison, and
leads
to a wrong conclusion. The word sin means
falling short of the mark. The actual word "hamartia" in the New Testament is
     |
hamartano {ham-ar-tan'-o} 1)
to be without a share in 2) to miss the mark 3) to err,
be mistaken 4) to
miss or
wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or
go wrong 5) to
wander from
the law of God, violate God's law, sin
The concept the word sin is
based
on means a lack of perfection. Man is not complete without communion
with
God, his
existence has missed the mark, and in this partial incomplete state, he
is not capable of doing anything ?perfect? or that meets
the mark. With God, man can meet this level of perfection, but without
God he can never hope to do this. The
question
is
flawed in that it presents another definition of the word, an incorrect
definition, as it portrays sin as an action, and not as
a condition, yet the question also speaks of a time when man is
created.
When man was created, he chose to turn away
from God, which damaged his relationship with God, and changed his
existence.
This change is clearly evident in
Genesis where man?s relationship with God changed, man?s relationship
with
each other changed, even man?s relationship with
the rest of creation changed. As the offspring of Adam, we also have a
tendency to turn away from God. It doesn?t require that
we do something evil to sin, we exist in a state of imperfection, which
makes us unable to stand in the presence of God
because everything about God is perfect. The question pre-assumes that
man is good until he does something which would
be considered a sinful act, or in other words, until he does something
that falls short of the mark. What mark? The mark
of perfection. Since man can now only do something perfect with the aid
of the only perfect being, namely God, then unless
man?s spirit is in perfect communion with God, this is impossible. The
only way to be in perfect communion with God, is
by accepting the death and resurrection of Jesus, God?s son, as our own
personal penalty (the Lamb) which we owed to
God due to our heritage of sin, as well as our own actual performed
sin,
which fulfilled the covenant between God and
man, and restored the communion God intended to exist between God and
man
in the first place. So, the question is
flawed, as is the answer that I learned from the lecture. In the Old
Testament,
a lamb was required for the sacrifice, a
perfect lamb, and this lamb had certain other characteristics that had
to exist. If these characteristics did not exist, then
the lamb was not an acceptable sacrifice. That is to say, if the lamb
fell
short of the requirements, it was rejected and
could not be used to eliminate the sin of the people. Man does not live
as a perfect being, and does not have the ability to
be an acceptable sacrifice because he exists as a defective being. It
does
not matter if he participates in an act of sin,
which is falling short of the mark, his very being falls short of the
mark,
which is perfection.
That?s why the question, and the corresponding answer are misleading
and
wrong.
Question #1: How,
according to
Augustine, are the theological doctrines of good,
evil, and creation related to each other?
Answer ? Good, evil, and
creation
are related by
1. What is evil?
2. What is the origin of
evil?
3. Why did God create many
different
forms of life other than the highest forms, namely the angelic beings?
Evil is privatio boni, or
the privation
of good. Evil does not exist on its own but needs a host in which to
dwell.
God creates
something like a tree, but then something within the tree stops
functioning
properly. That is, something happened within the
tree to deprive the tree of the necessary elements required for the
good
of the tree. Good therefore, is anything that exists,
and evil is anything that ceases to exist. Created matter has a
tendency
to return to nothing. Ok, now that the answer has
been given, the Bible teaches something completely different than this
idea. Man?s spirit is immortal. Man is created and
continues to exist even though his body does not continue to exist in
the
same form as his physical body did earth. The Bible
says that none is good except God. By accepting the term of good
philosophers
are stealing a quality of the creator and infusing
this quality into the created. That is, man is not good because he
exists,
but rather man is good because he is created in the
image of God. Any goodness that man possesses is strictly due to his
connection
to God, and not in the fact that man exists.
The origin of evil in the
world was
the fall of man. God created everything in its particular place. Man
was
created a little lower
than the angels. Evil occurs when something created loses its original
nature in the way it was intended by God. Pride caused
man and the devil to focus on themselves rather than God. Sin entered
the
world through the sin of pride, and the sin of pride
caused sin to enter the world. Since
everything
is created out of nothing, and nothing is the same as not existing, and
not
existing is evil, then man is able to be corrupted because of his
origin
of nothingness. Good on the other hand is the same
as existing. Pride came before the fall.
God created many different
forms
of life for aesthetic reasons, which is called the principle of
plentitude.
By creating just the
angels God would have not fully saturated the universe with His
creations
and the result would have been less aesthetically
pleasing. The range of forms begins at the lowest with the imperfect
and
increases upwards to the perfect. These ideas
originated with Plato and were later expounded by the neo-platonic
philosophers.
While the higher things are better than the
lower things, the total of all created things are better than only the
better things. Just as viewing a small segment of a great
painting is not as pleasing as viewing the entire work of art, viewing
a lower created thing may not be as pleasing as viewing
the whole of creation of which the lower thing is a part and plays a
distinct
role.
Lecture #6
Question #2: What is
meant by
the ?great chain of being??
Answer
-The great chain of being is a representation of the universe including
everything and all facets of everything, not just
the physical creations but their attributes also. The top of the chain
represents perfection in the highest degree, and many
people would call this God. The chain in its entirety represents all
degrees
of perfection from the highest and fullest to the
lowest and least; it is complete. The
universe
would not be complete if the chain did not extend all the way to the
bottom
or if it had any gaps. The universe is more perfect, in that it is more
complete if all degrees of perfection are represented,
and not just the highest forms. This is why a perfect God created an
imperfect
world because the most perfect (complete)
universe must contain every kind of thing, even the imperfect things.
So
imperfect things are not evidence of the
imperfection of creation and the bottom of the great chain of being
represents
the least possible perfection, which is
nothingness (as opposed to evil). This means that every form included
in
the great chain of being above the very bottom
has some degree of perfection. This also means that if anything exists
at all, that it has its share of truth. So, error
(or untruth) is not something positive but truth is. Error is the lack
of truth and error is privation of truth, so as evil is not
positive but good is. Evil is the lack of good and evil is the
privation
of good. Being or existing is a perfection as it is
more perfect than not to be. What exists positively is good and was
created
by God but privation lacks being and
therefore goodness and was not created at all. So, now this answer is
given
and it seems that the philosophers
have again confused an easily understood term and used it to tie
themselves
up in little knots. The term perfection is
an absolute. Perfection is hitting the mark. Imperfection is missing
the
mark or also known as sin. There can be no
so-called share of perfection. If a perfect state exists and you take
something
away from it, it is then less than perfect
or not perfection. There can not be perfection and less than perfection
at the same time because they are opposites. Perhaps
God could work it out, but philosophers that seem to find it impossible
to understand even the most simple of term will not
be able to. The Hebrew word kaliyl
{kaw-leel'} which is translated in the Old
Testament to the English word perfection
means entire, all, entirety, or perfect. You can not have part, and all
of the same thing as the two terms contradict each other.
The Greek word teleiotes {tel-i-ot'-ace} which is translated in the New
Testament to the English word perfection means
perfect-ness, moral and spiritual perfection. While I understand that
the
philosophers would rather not worry about what the
words they use actually mean, in this case it would have helped a lot
as
things do not get more perfect, they get less
perfect. If things increased in their perfection then perhaps the
theory
of evolution would have a better chance
of being true, but this of course negates the scientific law of
entropy.
Things left on their own do not better, they get worse,
they do not increase in their good, they increase in their lack of
good.
As things wind down, they get worse than they did
right after the fall when they were less than perfect. Now they are a
lot
less than perfect, they do not have their share
of perfection they simply have different levels of imperfection. About
this whole ?if it exists it is good? nonsense.
In Matthew
5:16 we are told
?Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,
and glorify your Father which is in heaven.?
Here the word works is talking about a product. The work of our hands,
the work of our spirit, the fruit of our effort is our
works. These works exist, so I guess according to these philosophers
they
must be good, but this Bible verse tells us to
show our ?good works?, which means it must also be possible for us to
create
bad works, yet these bad works would exist as surely
as the good works do. So, if these philosophers are correct, then good
works would exist because existing or being, and
good are the same, while not existing or being is the same as evil.
Clearly
we can choose to create good or evil works,
they would both exist, but they would not both be good regardless if
they
exist or if they have being or not. So, the
only valid lasting determination if something is good or not is by the
sole judgment of God and not as to whether it exists
or not. In this case, evil works not existing would better than evil
works
existing, which contradicts this silly circular argument the
philosophers just threw at me. The old French proverb says: ?Beauty,
unaccompanied by virtue, is as a flower
without perfume.? Certainly
this circular argument telling us that imperfect beings were included
in
this universe or world,
for aesthetic reasons or to provide us with ?beauty?, defeats its own
logic
as the inclusion of these imperfect beings within the
great chain of being would not add to the beauty of the universe, but
actually
detracts from it.
Lecture #7
Question #1: According
to the
lecture, why is it just and loving for God to allow people to go to
Hell
deservingly?
Hint: the key words are ?desert? and ?respect.?)
Answer ?There was nothing
mentioned
during this lecture that is even close to this question of discussion,
and even the very words are
not mentioned. Hell is mentioned as: ?Hell is important for orthodoxy?.
?Hell is more or less the terminus point for those
rejecting God.? The words desert and respect were not mentioned at all
in the lecture. I know, I listened carefully four times.
As far as my own conclusion, it would be unfair for those that end up
going
to hell to blame God for allowing them to
gain what they have strived for during their lifetime. Hell is an
absence
from God, and the people that end up in hell
must spend their lives rejecting God and choosing to follow themselves.
In hell, God is not, but they themselves are there.
When God allows them their desire, it would be patently unfair to then
blame God for having their own way.
?Hell is the
best that
God can do for those that reject Him.? (George
Mc Donald). Emanuelle Kant
Lecture #7
Question #2: What is
Leibniz?s
main contention concerning the kind of world God would create?
Answer ? Leibniz, as a
participant
of the modern period rationalists claimed that God would have created
the
?best? of all possible worlds. As his
stated
parameter of what best means, he claimed that it would be the world
with the most variety. This thought is in line with Augustine in that
it
follows the theory of the great chain of being which
speaks to the benefit of great variety. This view seems to be
consistent
with many environmentalists today, except they also
seem to reduce man to the level of other created species. Leibniz seems
to think that the principal of sufficient reason (PSR)
explains the existence of sin. He seems to think that the occurrence of
sin has something to do with the process of creation
rather than as a willful, thoughtful decision of God. He believes that
God chose the best of all possible worlds or the
world with the most varieties.
Question #1: Briefly
describe
the two particular evils to which Rowe refers to in his
evidential argument from evil, as covered in the lecture.
Evidential argument from
evil.
The first particular evil
Rowe mentions
is 2).
Sue?s suffering. E1. Jan 1
1986,
Detroit Free Press wrote, a little girl, 5 years old suffers. Sue?s
mother
was living
with her boyfriend and an unemployed man and two other children of
Sue?s
mother. On New Years Eve 1985 all three
adults were drinking at a local bar and Sue?s boyfriend was taking
drugs.
He had been asked several times to stay away
from the bar, and then was asked again at 8:00 PM, and finally does at
about 9:30 PM. The woman and the unemployed man
stayed at the bar until about 2:00 AM. Sue?s mother went home and the
unemployed
man went to a party. The boyfriend
attacked Sue?s mother but the brother hit the boyfriend on the head and
knocked him out. The brother left and then the
boyfriend attacked Sue?s mother again. This time Sue?s mother hit the
boyfriend
on the head and knocked him out. After
checking the children, she went to bed. Sue went downstairs to go to
the
bathroom. The unemployed man returned from the
party at 3:45 and found Sue dead. Sue had been raped, beaten, and
murdered
presumedly by the boyfriend.
Natural and moral evils.
Answer - The second
particular evil
Rowe mentions is 1)
The fawn suffering. E2.
Suppose in
some distant forest that lightning strikes a tree. In that forest a
fawn
is trapped
and is burned by the forest fire. The fawn is trapped for several days
in a state of misery and finally dies because of the burns.
Rowe Premise 1. There are
instances
of gratuitous evil and horrific suffering which an omnipotent being
could
have prevented
without thereby losing some greater good, or permitting some greater
evil
from occurring.
Rowe Premise 2. An
omniscient wholly
good being would prevent the occurance of any intense suffering it
could
unless it
could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting
some evil equally bad or worse.
Premise 3. There does not
exist an
omniscient wholly good being.
Neither of these two
situations has
anything to do with God?s action, and in fact violates everything that
God has told
us to do. In the situation of Sue, Sue?s mother is a drunk, her
boyfriend
that she sinfully lives with is a drunk, and the
unemployed man that also lives with them is a drunk. They left the
three
children unattended and went drinking at a bar.
They all three have violent natures, and they all three only think
about
themselves. At no time did either Sue?s mother or
the unemployed man call the police to report the boyfriend. So, because
all three of these willful free moral agents choose to
do what they wanted to do in complete violation of everything God has
had
to say to man for the past 6,000 years this is
a viable argument for atheism? Hardly! I must believe that for sinful
man
to sin, and then claim that God doesn?t exist because
He certainly would have prevented this sin is about as insulting a
comment
that could be made regarding God, that is next to
saying that God doesn?t exist at all.
In the second case, I
believe that
rain didn?t exist in the antediluvian age and the main reason for
forest
fires in nature is from lightening
storms. When the world got so absolutely disgusting with man?s sin that
God had to destroy almost all of mankind, this
situation is what caused the storm. The storm is what caused the forest
fire, and the forest fire is what killed the faun. Again,
sinful man sinned and created a situation wrought with destruction, and
again he blamed God because God didn?t stop
the destruction man created. All of this is nonsense and is in no way
even
close to a logical argument for atheism. I have
answered the questions, however this time should have been spent
reading
CS Lewis, Paschal, or any number of other
Christian writers. If anyone wants to do some sinful act, watch the
destruction
that occurs and then claim that this is logical
proof that God doesn?t exist, they don?t understand anything about how
the universe operates in the first place. These arguments
combine begging the question, non sequitur, and straw man fallacies in
a very poor method and the logic is completely
faulty. By interfering with man?s free will God would have reduced
mankind
to robots thereby eliminating God?s chance
at obtaining fellowship with certain members of the human race even
though
God has done nothing good. This would have
also communicated the message to the rest of mankind that it really
doesn?t
matter what you do because God will break
His word and come and interfere with your life even though you didn?t
do
what God said, and no matter what kind of evil you
perform, God will undo it so you can go out and do something even more
evil. This also is not an argument for atheism.
Lecture #8
Question #2: What is a
deductive
argument? What is an inductive argument?
Briefly define the two, and give an example of each.
Answer ? AGAIN
the
answers asked for were not even mentioned during this lecture. The word
inductive was used exactly
one time during the lecture and no explanation was given. I find it
impossible
to believe that nobody has had a problem
with this course. Forget the really poor references, the faulty logic,
the fallacy ridden arguments, the insulting content, and the
meandering rambling of the speaker, the questions asked don?t even
match
up with the information contained in the
lecture series. I find it amazing that I am now taking the worst course
I have ever taken right after the best course I have ever taken.
I will give the answers from
elsewhere.
Deductive logic
was developed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. A deductive argument
is an argument that assumes a
conclusion must follow from a stated premise. A form of argument that
uses
reasoning from the general to the specific. A
deductive argument is one in which the conclusion is certain based on
the
premises. In a deductive argument the
conclusion is contained in the premises.
Example #1.
A categorical syllogism
is a deductive argument containing three statements: two premises and
one
conclusion.
Each of the three statements is a categorical statement. These
statements
can be of the form: All S are P, No S are P, Some S are P, or Some S
are
not P. An example of a valid categorical syllogism is:
All humans are mortal.
Socrates is a human.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal
Example #2.
Here is a common form of deductive
reasoning using the concept of a conditional or hypothetical
statement.
The name "modus ponens" comes from the Latin word "modus"
meaning method, and the Latin word "ponens" meaning affirming.
If it rains, then the
sidewalks will
be wet.
It is raining.
Therefore the sidewalks will
be wet.
An inductive argument is an
argument
that assumes a fact about all members of a class when only a few
members
have been examined. This is reasoning from the particular to the
general.
An inductive argument is one in which the
conclusion is probable based on the premises. In an inductive argument
the conclusion goes beyond the premises.
Example #1.
A common form of inductive argument is the argument by analogy.
This is an argument in which a
conclusion is drawn about a situation based on similarities of this
situation
(analogies) to previous situations. For example,
if we predict that a since it is snowing today a certain employee will
be late because in the past when it was snowing the employee
was late, we are making a probabilistic argument based on an analogy,
the
occurrence of snow.
Example #2.
An inductive argument is one in which the premises are supposed
to support the conclusion in such a way that if
the premises are true, it is improbable that the conclusion
would
be false. Thus, the conclusion follows probably from the
premises and inferences. Here is an example:
1.
Socrates was Greek. (premise)
2. Most Greeks eat fish. (premise)
3. Socrates probably ate fish. (conclusion)
Argument by Example. Let us
define
argument by example as follows:
An argument by example
supports
its conclusion by referring to as many instances as possible of its
claim.
If you have children, you
may have
encountered this inductive argument without realizing it. Does the
following
argument in support of
staying up later sound familiar:
But Joannie gets to stay up
even
though its a school night. So does Erin and so does Kelsey...all my
friends
are staying up -
you should let me stay up!
Lecture #9
Question #1: What is the
importance
to theodicy of recognizing that God is omniscient,
with respect to the goods and evils and the connections between them?
Answer ? Since we as humans
don?t
know, or actually that we are not aware of, all of the goods or
possible
goods that God is able
to achieve than we are unable to understand why some evils are allowed
to exist, as they may be necessary to enable some
good to occur that we are unaware of. Because God is omniscient and is
aware of the final outcome of all situations, we must then
accept that some situations that appear evil to us, may actually be
only
a small part of the total situation which would be considered
good if we had all of the information available to us. Since man is not
omniscient we must trust that God has the good of man in
mind in His workings and since He is omniscient, He can observe the
whole
picture of the situation and work for the overall best
situation for all involved.
This scenario has just an
element
of truth, which is actually refreshing at this point in this course,
but
there is still a lot of
unreasonableness contained within this situation. If you insist on
conditionalizing
this scenario by saying that man has only a small
portion of the entire scenario that is viewable by him, then it must
also
be reasonable to say that from man?s perspective this
actually is an evil. That is to say, if God restricts man?s view to a
small
portion of the whole, than it is not reasonable for God then to
hold it against the man for viewing this scenario as an evil. Man
created
the economy in which he lives by his free will actions.
For man to create the situation in which these two evils exist and then
to blame God for preventing the outcome of man?s choices is
ludicrous. Sin produces hurt. Hurt produces anger. God did not create
the
sin which produced the hurt which produced the anger,
man did. God does however extend His hand to us and helps us through
these
times of hardship. Since almost all of this course
entails situations that are not proved by reason, I will indulge myself
for just a moment to include one of my unproven
thoughts. This idea is neither provable or disprovable, but it has been
a pattern of my observations. I have noticed that there
seems to exist a ?death grace? evident in animals, and I have even seen
it with humans. That is to say, there are situations
where an animal, lets say a deer, no, better yet lets say a fawn, gets
tangled up in a fence. There is no possibility of untangling
itself. The fawn fights frantically and struggles to free itself from
the
wires of the fence. Finally when it becomes evident that the
deer is going to die, a calmness comes over the fawn and it stops
struggling.
It is just this death grace which allows human rescuers
to save the fawn from starving to death or from being killed and eaten
by a predator. I have seen people that are dying display
this same death grace as they accept the fact that they are going to
die.
This is not a natural characteristic for either animals
or humans as the will to survive is one of the strongest drives in this
world. Yet I have seen this phenomenon several times
myself. So where does this grace come from if not from God? If the
issue
is suffering, than this death grace is something that
God does to prevent the excessive suffering of His creatures. The
body?s
nerve endings are almost all located on the
surface in the skin. This shows that the sensation of pain is a
protective
agent that helps God?s creatures from injuring themselves.
Many fatal injuries are not painful at all as the critical systems are
located inside the body far from the nerve endings. When a person
suffers too much pain they pass out. Evolutionists may argue that this
is evolution at work, that this ability evolved.
Yet, this is not a survival ability! If we were being attacked by an
animal
and our pain level rose to a degree that we passed out,
we would actually lose our ability to fight back. This is NOT survival.
This is clearly an incident of grace.
This is also a grace provided by God. So rather than blaming God for
allowing
suffering to
exist, we should thank God for provided the mechanisms which allow us
to
live in a world full of pain, knowing that
these devices were provided by our Creator from a position of love to
reduce
or limit our pain.
Lecture #9
Question #2: What is a
?cumulative
case? argument for God?s existence? Give examples.
Answer ? A cumulative case
argument
for God?s existence is an argument based on all evidence that God
exists
such as
God being the creator, the evident moral order, the ministry of Christ,
prophecy, history, etc.. A man walks into
the
room you are
standing in and takes his wet coat. You notice the man?s shoes are also
wet. You hear water sounds on the roof. While
none of these evidences actually prove that it is raining outside, the
combination or the cumulative evidence leads you to believe
that it is actually raining outside and not some other situation. Each
part of a cumulative case must be related to each other.
Lecture #10
Question #1: Critically
examine
and discuss the prospects for success or failure of the inductive step
(the ?argument behind?
his premise 1) of Rowe?s argument from evil. (Make use of the material
from lectures 8-10.)
Answer ? It is difficult to
decide
which example is premise 1 because the speaker mentions premise 1 and
then
premise 2
in his opening, but then refers to premise 2 as being E1, and premise 1
as E2 for the rest of the discussion. I doesn?t really
make much difference as this argument is completely lacking in logic
anyway.
When man chooses to sin with his own will,
then it is stupid to blame God for allowing the evil to exist because
it
was originally caused by the action of a free moral agent.
If God prevented the evil from occurring through the action of limiting
man?s ability to choose than God would have prevented
Himself from having fellowship with man in the sense that He would like
to have relationships with people that WANT to have
relationships with God and not that we HAVE to. If God prevented the
evil
from existing by removing the effects of the willful
acts of men, a similar situation would ensue, but this would also teach
man that there are no results to his actions. This would
encourage man to sin, which is evil in a very high degree, and man
would
live a life of depression knowing that he was not
important, and that it didn?t matter what he did because all actions
lead
to the same end. This means that the argument was
flawed at the very foundation of the argument long before we ever got
to
the second stage of reasoning. It is disingenuous to
make an argument that since p is true, and q is true, therefore r is
true,
when it is obvious that p is not true, and even if there were
some logical argument for p, it was not proven. Speaking of which, I
truly
believe we should mind out P?s and Q?s when
attempting to turn the situation around and blame God for either
creating
sin, or for allowing sin to exist when we know very
well in our hearts that we have grieved God by our sinning, and that He
is not at fault in any way. If discussion of this
completely moronic argument is absolutely necessary, then we must admit
that there are so many possible unknowns that
it would be completely impossible to even list them all here. Here are
a few however: If the evil of suffering is the pain endured,
then the animal may not actually feel pain at all, but it merely looks
pathetic. If the evil is in the memory of suffering after death
and the fawn is in little fawn heaven, God may be able to remove this
memory
from the fawn. God may be able to create
a different possible world (as stupid as this concept is) in which does
not include the suffering incident of the fawn. God may be
able to accomplish a good for which we know nothing about. God may be
able
to use the suffering of the fawn, which does
have pain, and does have recall regarding this incident, for a higher
good
for which we do not now know, but at some point
will. Since this incident is concocted anyway, perhaps if a suffering
fawn
does not have an audience it is not actually suffering
at all. Perhaps this was a merciful death compared to another death
which
may have occurred if this death had not happened.
God could use this situation to portray the damage, suffering, and evil
that sin causes by causing man to observe the suffering
of the fawn, and the haunting image of the suffering of the fawn could
prevent some future sin which would result in evil. Perhaps
the entire situation of the fawn was only to cement the fact in my mind
that the moronic philosophies of man are based on made
up stories which are lacking logic and common sense, and that was the
actual
motivation of this situation.
Lecture #10
Question #2: When are we
in our
rights to say, ?It appears that the church bell is ringing.?
When are we not in our rights to say that? (Hint: refer to the proper
functioning
of our senses.)
Answer ? According to the
lecture
series I should answer that if my senses are working properly we should
have the right to make
this claim. If our senses are not working properly then we should not
make
this claim. But as usual, the argument that the speaker
makes is completely inaccurate again. According to the speaker, one
should
be able to smell the milk in the fridge to see if it
has gone bad, and if there were not bad milk smell, than we should be
able
to say it ?appears? that the milk is good, IF our
sense of smell is working properly. Again, this is a human argument
that
ignores the laws of science and the laws of
God. The concept of ?Homeostasis? teaches us that the condition of the
milk in the fridge is a balance of purity and
contamination. Since milk is a biological product, there are antibodies
contained within the milk that help reduce the numbers
of harmful bacteria within the milk. The process of homogenizing the
milk
kills these beneficial agents as it also reduces the
number of active harmful bacteria. Milk is a dead product, as the
product?s
host is no longer attached to the product. So,
milk is a balance of live harmful bacteria, live beneficial bacteria,
dead
harmful bacteria, and dead beneficial bacteria,
as well as water, calcium, several vitamins, milk fat, minerals, etc..
There has been no attempt at all to determine what the
parameters will be in the declaration that the milk is ?good? and in
fact
the milk is both good and bad anyway. One person with
a very sensitive nose may claim that the milk is bad a day or two
before
someone with an average nose would. And the
average nosed person may claim the milk is bad a day or two before the
person with a poor sense of smell would. Because
of our personal bias that WE are right, we reserve the right to say
when
the milk is bad, however we are always wrong unless
you use God?s standard. We seem to use this flawed logic when
determining
when other things are ?good? or ?bad?.
According to God, if a thing is good, it is completely lacking in
anything
bad, and that bad is the shortcoming to the standard
of being good. We look at men having sex with men and some say it is
bad
but some say it is good. Some of those that say
it is good would then say that men having sex with children is bad
while
others may say that it is good. Some would say that
telling a dirty joke is ok as long as you don?t mean anything by it,
but
others would say that is bad. Some would say it is bad to
have an abortion because it is bad while others would say that it is ok
as long as it is performed during the first three months of
pregnancy. Others may say it is ok to have an abortion even the day
before
birth. It is because of this fact that the only reliable
source of judgment can be the Bible. Man?s sense of honor, justice, and
godliness are sorely lacking and as such are totally
undependable. God?s sense of honor, justice and Godliness are perfect
and
we as imperfect need to rely on God?s decisions
and not on our own. Many times our ?senses? are the very things that
get
us into trouble and cause us to sin. Man is constantly
seeking his own pleasure rather than trying to please God. We have but
one single purpose on earth, and that is to be
pleasing to God and to bring Him pleasure. The argument that we are ?in
our rights? is insulting in that we lost our ?rights?
in the garden of Eden, and that any rights we now have are as an
adopted
son in God?s domain. Our rights are based
on God?s acceptance of us, period. Not if our senses are working or
not,
because as we have seen by the principle of
homeostasis, we as humans are in a constant battle between health and
sickness,
godliness and sinfulness, and our so-called
senses are in the middle of this battle and can not be relied on by
themselves
unless we allow God to renew us as a new creation.
We lean on God?s senses
as Christians
knowing that our senses are made of flesh which we know will fail us.
Romans
6:19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural
selves.
Just as
you used
to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to
ever-increasing
wickedness,
so now
offer them
in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
Time and time again God
tells us
not to trust our flesh, so it would seem stupid to do so on the word of
some philosopher
that can?t even formulate a logical sentence.
Question #1: Define
?seemingly
gratuitous evil.?
Answer ? This is an evil
that seems
to us to have no redeeming good for the evil to occur. This is the
speaker's
answer.
This of course completely ignores (again) the fact that sin is missing
the mark and is not a thing that actually exists on its own.
Sin causes evil, and sin is the falling short of perfection, and only
God
is perfect. This means that the argument that some evils
occur because they permit a greater good to occur is nonsense. To
rephrase
this statement in real terms would mean that the falling
short of perfection would in some way allow a situation of being
perfect
in some other greater way. If falling short of perfection
is a scenario which makes up the whole, than the whole can not in any
way
be perfect, as it contains an imperfect component.
This is a self denying argument. Merely changing the terms to more
vague
terms does not strengthen the argument, it only make
it confusing for those with weak minds.
Psalm
18:32-36 It is God who arms me with strength and
makes my way perfect. He makes
my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights.
He trains my hands
for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield
of
victory, and your
right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden
the
path beneath me,
so that my ankles do not turn.
God is able to strengthen us
through
His strength, and we should rely on His senses not ours.
2
Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, ?My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in
weakness.?
Therefore
I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,
so that Christ?s power may rest on me.
This verse shows us that we should NOT trust our senses and in fact
that
the more our senses diminish the more of God?s
power will be evident.
Several years ago, I
attempted to
do some evil to a fawn, well, an older fawn in the sense that I went
deer
hunting. I was
suffering from low self esteem and I had the purist motives in that I
knew
that if I could develop a high level of self esteem
and increase my self image that I could be a powerful tool for God. I
prayed
like there was no tomorrow to bag a deer.
Several years I did this to no avail. Finally I discovered that God had
no intention of developing my self esteem or
increasing my self image. He was working hard at developing my God?s
awareness
and my God?s esteem. While my senses
told me that I was doing what I should do according to MY plan, I now
understand
that I was working directly against GOD?S plan.
I now try to show God to people I meet, and I try to show as little of
myself to them as possible simply because I know that I am
such a poor example of what God is. My last deer hunting trip I went
bow
hunting and bagged a deer in the first hour I was
hunting. It didn?t increase my self confidence at all, it just made me
mindful of how perfect
with God was, and how man?s attempt to increase HIS own self awareness
destroyed every thing he was enjoying in this
perfect state. Now that I have been so amazingly enlightened by my
current
thinking it?s amazing to imagine that I was so
backwards and blind in my old thinking. This of course then reminds me
that if I continue to reduce myself more and more and
allow God to emerge more and more, that in just a few years, I will be
amazed at how enlightened I am then, and at how
backwards and blind I am right now. This is just some of my historical
experiential reasoning as to why I don?t trust my own
judgment, my own senses, or my own thoughts. They fall short of the
mark,
they are imperfect, they are flawed. If I had spent just
a little bit of the time I spent praying for a stronger self image or a
stronger self confidence in studying the Bible I would have quickly
discovered this in the scriptures. While I
don?t mean to be overly critical towards this course, it is very
obvious
to me that
the materials contained within this course fly in the face of what I
have
discovered to be spiritually true. Perhaps because I
was a knuckle head when I was younger and spend my youth learning God?s
truth the hard way, it is now painful for me to
relive the feelings I had because much of the material presented here
returns
me to my rebellious thinking. The materials included
in this course seem to ignore some of the very first, most basic
lessons
I learned about God and His work. As far as this
material being used to defend my faith, this is not likely as the
argument
portion of the defense of my faith can not occur until
the primary components are presented. And the primary components of the
arguments presented here are juvenile, illogical,
and fraudulent from the start. Perhaps these greatly learned men have
simply
forgotten their entire education by stating the first
element of their argument falsely or inaccurately in which case they
should
not be presenting their work for the inspection by
others. If this is not the case, and they are actually so completely
lacking
in their understanding of logic and reasoning that they
have made an ?honest? mistake and are not trying to deceive or justify
their faulty positions (as I think) than they also have no
business presenting their work for the inspection of others. This is
especially
true since the Bible is the most published book in the
world currently and it is the most published book in the history of
books.
It is also so entirely easy for people in most parts of the
world to aquire a Bible that you would just wonder why these great
minds
chose to ignore the writings contained within. One
would wonder why then, if these great minds chose to ignore the
greatest
book of all time, why they would then undertake the
writing of a replacement of this book? Certainly even on a purely
business
sense they would have wanted to see what the competition
had to say, if for no other reason but to refute it. Even this was not
the case here. These intellectual philosophers, these great
thinkers of all time were so full of their own ideas and principles
that
they ignored the greatest collection of knowledge, science,
history, literature, poetry, religion, and common sense ever written.
They
are frauds.
Lecture #11
Question #2: Summarize
the position
of the professor, that for a few individuals who suffer horribly in
this
life,
they will be given a ?moment of decision? in a post-mortem experience.
That is, a ?moment of chance? to come to know and accept God?s free
gift
of grace.
Answer ? The speaker did
mention
this topic however bizarre this idea is. This is a non-question in that
the actual
question contains two half questions that are not related to each other
as well as the answer assumes a condition that the
question does not mention. The questions asks if people that suffer
horribly
in this life will be given a special chance to make
a decision to accept Christ which means that people that have accepted
Christ necessarily would not be included within this
group of people that have suffered horribly. In fact, many people have
suffered horribly BECAUSE they have accepted
Christ. At this very moment in the
herded into buildings which are then either bulldozed into the ground,
or doused with gasoline and they are burned to
death. These people will not need some special ?moment of decision? to
either accept God?s free gift of grace because they
have already made this choice, and it is this choice that caused their
horribly suffering. Their suffering does not merely consist of
a horrible death, but their lives have been equally horrible because of
the faith in Christ. Christian women in the
systematically raped to assure the Muslim majority that more
?Christian?
children will at least be half Muslim. While there
may be some people in distant third world countries that have not heard
about Jesus and God?s plan for salvation, this is
a miniscule minority of the worlds population. God will judge these
people
according the amount of knowledge they had and
the decisions they made regarding this knowledge. I know of nowhere in
the Bible where this idea is mentioned. In fact,
most of the verses that are appropriate to this topic teach something
quite
the opposite. It is clear that the speaker has places the
emphasis for the basis of his faith in philosophy first, and the Bible
only secondarily. This is evident
when he speaks of taking the best parts of Hume?s, Aquinas?, Rowe?s and
other philosopher?s writings and blending them
together to fit with the Bible?s teachings. The Bible IS the credible
source
for Christians and there is absolutely no need
to ?add to? or to embellish or support the words of the Bible with
these
really silly and inferior writings.
John 1:1-34 In the beginning was the Word,
and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made;
without
him nothing was made
that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of
men.
The light shines in the darkness,
but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent
from
God; his name was John.
He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through
him all men might believe. He
himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The
true light that gives light to every
man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the
world
was made through him, the
world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his
own did not receive him. Yet to all
who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right
to become children of God? children
born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband?s will,
but born of God. The Word became
flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory
of the One and Only, who came
from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning
him.
He cries out, saying, ?This was he
of whom I said, ?He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was
before me.?? From the fullness of
his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law
was given through Moses; grace and
truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the
One and Only, who is at the
Father?s side, has made him known. Now this was John?s testimony when
the
Jews of
priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20He did not
fail
to confess, but confessed freely, ?I am not
the Christ.? They asked him, ?Then who are you? Are you Elijah?? He
said,
?I am not.? ?Are you the
Prophet?? He answered, ?No.? Finally they said, ?Who are you? Give us
an
answer to take back to those
who sent us. What do you say about yourself?? John replied in the words
of Isaiah the prophet, ?I am the
voice of one calling in the desert, ?Make straight the way for the
Lord.?
? Now some Pharisees who had been
sent questioned him, ?Why then do you baptize if you are not the
Christ,
nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?? ?I
baptize with water,? John replied, ?but among you stands one you do not
know. He is the one who comes
after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.? This
all
happened at
side of the
said, ?Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This
is the one I meant when I
said, ?A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before
me.? I myself did not know him,
but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be
revealed
to
testimony: ?I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain
on him. I would not have known
him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me,
?The
man on whom you see the Spirit come
down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.? I have
seen
and I testify that this is
the Son of God.?
Jesus was, is, and will continue to be
?The Word?
regardless of the fact that we as humans don?t understand everything
that God does. God would be pretty puny if humans could comprehend
everything
in God?s mind. God has no obligation to make
His word ?fit? with human philosophy. The Word is. It exists, it is
credible,
it is powerful, it is logical, and it is definitive, but
mostly it is SPIRITUAL. NONE of the philosophical writings contained in
the text book as well as any of the philosophical
writings mentioned by the speaker can be described as such. They are
not
even in the same category. So trying to make the
scriptures fit in with philosophy is like giving a child a marking pen
and letting them doodle on a paper and then trying to
match up the perceived letters with the dictionary.
While taking this course, I have come to believe that the word
?philosophy?
is actually a latin word which means ?incredibly
arrogant and prideful?. While this is not actually a true statement, I
will let it stand on its own merit because many of the statements
included within this course are also not actually true either. This so-called position (of the professor?s)
sounds a bit
like
purgatory-lite, you know it?s just like the real purgatory but there?s
a third less punishment and it?s faster. Like its grown up
full version, the teaching of ?purgatory? is a carry back to pagan
beliefs
and is not to be found in the Bible. In the order of
things, God is the determiner of facts and justice in our lives. We are
not. If we believe that someone suffers horribly in this life
we can not simply make up a scenario where we think that justice will
be
fulfilled because
it fits in with our mindset. We do not know if this person has suffered
so horribly because they are so horribly evil, nor do
we know if this person has suffered so horribly because God wants to
reward
them so amazingly later for their suffering
now. We do not know if this person has suffered so horribly because
they
are a Christian.In fact, since we are us, and NOT
God, we don?t actually know anything about them at all except that it
seems
unfair to us that they are suffering. Yet we are
unable to go a single day actually being fair in the same degree that
God
is. Every one of us deserves to suffer horribly
because of our sins, but because we have been spared this suffering to
the same degree as this poor suffering person,
we now think of this grace as our ?right?. If that person is suffering
greatly, we should be all the more
thankful that we are not suffering in the same way. We should also do
what
we can for that person, in love, and we
should share in their suffering. There are numerous verses in the Bible
to support this idea. If we are called upon to suffer
horribly than we should also be thankful for that. There are numerous
verses
in the Bible to support this idea. How can both
of these situations be true at the same time? This is a difficult
equation
for nonbelievers but it is very simple for the believer.
Many years ago I would pray to God that I would have the rent money. I
would pray if I was sick. In fact, I would often pray for
a great many things that I wanted from God. As selfish as this was God
always responded to my selfish prayers because I
was a young believer and God was working with me through my selfish
nature
to bring me closer
to Him. It dawned on me that I wouldn?t want myself for a friend
because
I would only contact myself when I wanted something. When
I received something I didn?t say a prayer of thanks. When I was able
to
pay the rent I didn?t acknowledge God?s ability to provide my
needs. I was disgusted and ashamed of myself. I decided to make a
change.
I read Exodus 21:1-6 and decided what I should do.
Exodus 21:1-6 ?These
are the laws you are to set before them: ?If you buy a
Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh
year,
he shall go
free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free
alone;
but if he has a
wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a
wife
and she bears
him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her
master,
and only
the man shall go free. ?But if the servant declares, ?I love my master
and my wife and children and
do not want to go free,? then his master must take him before the
judges.
He shall take him to
the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will
be
his servant for life.
I pierced my ear and put an earring in about 1978 to remind
that I was
not in charge of my life and could call upon God at any time to
demand Him to do what I wanted Him to do, but that He was in charge of
me and that He could call upon me at any time to do what
He wanted me to do. So things have gotten amazingly easy for me to
figure
out. Just as the centurion that spoke with Jesus about healing his
servant understood the order of things, so do I understand this same
order.
I am called to answer to God. I do. To this very day I wear an
earring in my ear to remind me that God is in charge not me. This means
that I don?t have to figure out the motives of God. He has revealed
Himself enough to me that I understand that ALL of His motives are good
and pure and loving. I am freed from trying to determine which
actions of God I agree with and which ones I don?t. It doesn?t matter.
I have placed myself in God?s hands period. I can not possibly save
my life anyway, I can not create anything, and the limits of my human
brain
can not fathom even the most simple thoughts of God. So I put
my trust in Him and simply do what He has told me to dol. All that I
have
is God?s so I have no fear of losing anything. I live a simple life
and truly enjoy my position in the universe. I love God, I love my
family,
and I have enough food to eat and a place to live. I am content
and fulfilled. None of the philosophical writings convey a sense of
fulfillment
or satisfaction, but rather portray a sense of competition. It is
rather like having a room full of people with wrong and incorrect ideas
competing in a contest to see who is the least wrong. Who cares,
they have ALL missed the mark. None of these writings have even a
single
thing to offer those suffering these horrible situations.
There is no ?life? contained in philosophical writings.
I can?t imagine that
insulting God,
or portraying God as being evil, will in any way reduce the suffering
of
these poor souls because
ALL suffering was caused by man, in
is not subject to our demands, our time schedules, or our preferences.
Each of us has our time on this planet as a ?probaton?
(sheep) and during this time we prove ourselves by our choices
(probation).
We do not all have the same challenges or trials. Some
people suffer very visible evils, while others suffer more invisible
evils.
As humans we all go through difficult times but this is just
a part of our probation. To me, flying to
throwing up does not seem like a really fun weekend to me. But in fact,
this is the dream of many marathon runners who save their
money, train their bodies, and look forward to this event every single
year. This seems a lot like horrible suffering to me. Some
people love to go the the Grand Ol Opry to hear country music. I am
personally
quite sure this is one of the most unfair, horribly
painful experiences that a human could possibly endure, yet some people
think this is the next best thing to heaven. I think is it
arrogant and presumptuous to assume that everybody experiences
?suffering?
in the exact same way that we do. It is even
more arrogant and presumptuous to assume that WE know what God should
do
to fulfill OUR expectations of how the
universe should operate.
1
Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to
man.
And God
is faithful;
he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.
But when
you are
tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under
it.
The speaker needs to seriously reconsider the priority of his
acceptance
of written works as the Bible should be his only
source of authoritative fact. This speaker should also understand that
we, as Christians, have responsibilities to fulfill and
decisions to make based on our position, and that God has different
responsibilities
to fulfill and decisions to make based on
His position. We are not to play in the role of God by making God?s
decisions
for Him. We, as Christians, have never been
instructed to predict what God would do in any circumstance based on
our
human experience or what we consider
to be ?fair? if we were in God?s position. We are not God. I believe
that
the speaker is a Christian due to the statements
made by him, but I believe he is a compromised Christian also because
of
the statements made by him and the complete lack
of evidence to support the views he presents. This means that the
lecture
series is a compromised work which has been
tainted by the inclusion of false teachers and atheistic philosophical
writers.
Lecture #12
Question #1: What is the
role
of laws in God?s creative act of creating the world?
Answer ? The role of laws in
God?s
creative act of creating the world determine what the outcome will be.
That is to
say, the laws that govern created things must exist before the created
things do for the laws to be in effect. If no laws
existed the world would be in chaos. The role of laws determine both
how
the created things will act, but the role of laws
also determines how created things with react with other created
things.
Laws are constraining forces which determine
that God?s purpose will be fulfilled by the things He creates. The
speaker
goes on however to state that God is subject
to these laws and that it is impossible for example ?for God to make
two
plus two to equal three or for one plus one to equal
four, that?s impossible, but we do no count that against God?s
omnipotence.?
God controls the things He creates, he is not
controlled by the created things. God can make two plus two to equal
three
or any other number which is not four. Take two
gallons of water and add it to a two gallons of alcohol. According to
the
speaker, we should have four gallons but we
do not. Some of the space contained by the water, (a rather spacious
liquid)
will be filled in by some of the alcohol,
(a dense liquid), so the outcome will be less than four gallons. Take a
talented artist, a great writer, and a skilled publicist
and the outcome will be greater than the individual outcome of these
three
people. Synergy disproves the above statement of
law. God created synergy. Any alloy in existence will disprove the
above
statement which limits the abilities of God.
Alloy?s must be discovered because we do not know what the outcome will
be in mixing certain metals together. Metal one
may have a property of 1 and metal two may have a property of 2, yet
the
combined properties of the two metals is often greater
than 3 and can even be the value of 7. Did God make a mistake in
creating
the laws that govern his creations? No, man just has
not understood them fully. This is the danger in claiming a full
knowledge
of God?s creation. It is simply not our place. The roles
of law governing the universe control the natural, but God is
supernatural
and is not subject to natural laws. The continual
insistence by this speaker that God is limited is amazingly annoying to
me, and the statement that ?we won?t hold this
against Him? is patronizing to God, and insulting to me because I serve
God. MY studies, personal experience, and my
relationship with God is in complete contrast with this statement. I
could
literally list a thousand different instances where God has
done something ?impossible? (even according to the speaker?s
definitions)
without even breaking a sweat. Certainly the
speaker has discovered at least one incident during his studies? That
is,
unless most of his time is spent in philosophy
books rather than in the Bible. Even science books hold many examples
of
how God can perform impossible tasks.
Lecture #12
Question #2: Suppose
Ralph intends
to harm another person. What, according to the lecture, is Ralph
willing
to have
happen to that person? How does this affect the ?threshold? of evil
(the
basic amount of evil in the world) that God regulates?
Answer ? The evil Ralph
intends to
inflict on Ruth his intention is of the nature of soul destroying and
not
soul making. By
willing to harm Ruth in the cause of destroying her soul, Ralph raises
the threshold of evil in the world by his intentions.
This is an outstanding point, and is the only point covered in
this
course so far that has had relevance to the Bible.
I feel better now that I have learned a scriptural lesson from this
course.
This point does however contradict all the previous points made.
Lecture #13
Question #1: According
to the
lecture, why does a ?virtue ethical theory? fit better with a Christian
ethical theory than it does for Aristotle?s theory or virtue ethics?
Answer ? Aristotle held that
to instill
a certain character trait the person had to act courageously and in
time
they would be
courageous. This system does not interact with luck, random incidence,
or other situations which may have influence within
the circumstance. Regardless as to how this theory has been dashed by
other
philosophical writers, a person without the
characteristic of courageousness would not act courageously because it
is not a part of that person in this system. Either
this characteristic would exist or it would not. According to this
lecture,
God develops different characteristics within the
Christian. Christianity is a more fitting system to receive a virtue
ethical
theory than Aristotle?s system.
Lecture #13
Question #2: What are
some of
the instrumental (or extrinsic) values of natural evil (e.g. the one
mentioned
by Kant in the lecture)?
Answer ? Some of the
instrumental
or extrinsic values of natural evil are:
?It would take omniscience
in order
to figure out what kinds of goods and evils a person would need at
different
points in their lives.? ?Evils are often
instrumentally
good.?
Romans
3:8 Why not
say?as we are being slanderously reported as saying and
as some claim that we say??Let us do evil that good may result??
Their condemnation is deserved.
Kant?s argument is yet more
of the
same stupidity that blames man?s failures on God. The assertions of
Kant
that evils are
often instrumentally good, are secondary at BEST! If man chooses to do
good, there is good because man is doing what
he was created for. If man chooses to sin, and evil occurs because of
his
sin, and God redirects man?s focus on doing good,
this is because of God?s grace because God is good, not because evil is
good or has some instrumental value of good.
Just as Romans 3:8 tells us
that
it is stupid to do a moral evil to that good may result, Kant?s
argument
tries to portray
God performing a natural evil so that good may result. This is simply
not
what happens. God does not cause an evil to
occur, but He does take situations where an evil has happened because
of
a sinful action by man, and then recreates the
evil to create a good result. This is grace, or the act of God
forgiving
mankind for his sinful nature and giving him yet another
chance to choose good. Let?s look at good just one more time. Only God
is good. If man attempts good, he is only doing so
with the help of God. If man does not do good, but rather sin, than God
has instituted some mechanisms which will draw man?s
focus back to God. How in the world can any thinking person then say
that
the evil that damages man is good, rather than
saying that God, which is good, used the damage to stop man?s action of
sin to return him to God. The evil caused damage,
which got man?s attention back on track towards God. Damage is not
good.
Any resulting good came directly from God
through His grace and not from the evil. If this were the case than the
argument must follow that damage is good. It is not,
God?s grace to rescue us FROM damage is good. If natural evil had some
instrumental value, than it would not be
damaging. Again, the terms have been confused for no good at all.
Natural evil is the
shortcoming of
natural good. Natural good existed in
evil. God did not create the natural evil, natural evil has NO
redeeming
values at all, but God does, so he rescues us FROM
natural evil. If natural evils did have instrumental value to man, then
adding more of that natural evil should benefit man even
more. Sounds stupid doesn?t it? This anthropomorphic bestowal upon
natural
evil makes it sound like natural evil has the
ability to think, or to reason, or to make determinations or to act.
Natural
evil does not have intelligence. On the other hand, God
is the creator of intelligence. It would take a very intelligent and
forgiving
being to forgive humans that continually claim that God
is limited but that natural evils have some value of good.
Mention of tectonic places
being
a creation of God, thereby implying God?s responsibility for
earthquakes
ignores man?s sin
and the resulting great flood. The argument that God did create
tectonic
plates for a purpose but that God is not responsible
for specific evils that happen to a person because of the action of
tectonic
places during an earthquake is ridiculous.
Regardless of the findings of many insurance companies, these are not
?acts
of God?. These are actually the result of the
earth?s new economy which occurred after the flood, which was caused by
man?s sin. The entire biological pattern of the
world was changed at the time of the fall. The fall was due to man?s
sin.
How is this new pattern then to be blamed on God?
The entire weather pattern of the earth was changed at the time of the
flood. The flood was due to man?s sin. So, how in
any way, is the new weather pattern God?s ?fault?? As far as I can see
there is natural evil outside man, but inside the
world, which would be predominately what we call nature. There is also
natural evil inside man, which we call genetics
and disease. Yet both the natural evils, that is, inside man, and
outside
man, were both brought about by the actions of
mankind. I in absolutely no way consider either of these natural evils
to be the ?fault? of God, but rather the fault of man. The
third natural evil that I can recognize is that of a moral evil that
transforms
into a natural evil. That is, when man does some action
by his free will, which then has some kind of natural negative outcome.
Choosing to eat a very fatty diet or smoking cigarettes
are both moral evils which become natural evils because of the diseases
that occur from these activities.
Lecture #14
Question #1: What
similarities
are there between Epictetus? theodicy and a conservative Christian
theodicy?
Answer ? Epictetus claims
that ?from
everything that happens in the universe, it is easy for man to praise
providence?.
Calvin?s first published work was based on Seneca and was of the same
nature
which was considered Stoic Philosophy.
Epictetus uses the metaphor of the banquet to teach humility in that we
can choose how we do what we do within
our role, but we are not free to choose our role and that through
suffering
we can reach out and have contact with God?s love.
I write this narrative to
address
the shortcomings of the question as I could not simply accept the facts
the question implies
without confronting the error of the question.
Christianity is a term which
many
people claim ownership of, or at least affiliation to, regardless of
how
similar their actions are
to those of Christ or His disciples. This is a sad thing. Just as the
rest
of the course asks for correct answer, the correct
question is not asked. There is no actual thing as ?conservative?
Christianity,
or ?liberal? Christianity. There is correct Christianity
or incorrect Christianity. There is a right Christianity and not
Christianity
according to the Bible. The labels conservative and liberal
cause the hearer of these terms to believe that there is Christianity,
and there are two opposite poles of Christianity of which any
believer can choose to align themselves with. This is in complete
opposition
to the scriptures.
I have never ever heard a
person
say to me, I have read the Bible and found it to be true. I understand
the teachings of Jesus
and believe that what Jesus had to say is true, but I choose NOT to
follow
those teachings. I know that Jesus is the Son of God,
but I CHOOSE not to accept Jesus. I would venture to say that you have
never ever heard anyone say anything even close this
statement either. Rather what happens is that many people filter the
Bible
through their own wants and desires and then accept
the verses that fit in with their personal pre-existing bias. Those
?hard
parts? of the Bible, the parts that certain people can?t or
won?t accept as truth because they don?t fit in with today?s
deteriorating
moral majority, are either abandoned or twisted to fit their
personal bias. These collected warped teachings are then collected and
labeled liberal Christianity. This same ?liberal? Christianity
has included the acceptance of an openly ?gay? (homosexual) bishop in
the
Episcopal Church this week, which has outraged
many within ?the Church?. This act apparently has offended many people
that are threatening to leave this denomination over
this issue. Where were these people last week when this openly
homosexual
was merely an openly homosexual priest? This may
fit in with modern society, but this is certainly NOT Christianity.
There
are also those people that have taken the parts of
Catholicism that they can accept, and added the parts of
denominationalism
that they can accept, and blended these two
philosophies with their own favorite cultural behaviorisms and call
this
conservative Christianity. This is also not Christianity.
For example, most conservative Christians meet in a building that has a
large steeple. Yet the steeple is a throwback to the
Egyptian obelisk which is a huge phallic symbol. What
makes sitting under a giant penis ?conservative? or ?Christian?? Most
of
these conservative Christians also go to Churches where there is a
silent
moiré to dress to match the richest member?s
wardrobe and profession. Yet we are told NOT to give preference to the
rich man in Church. So does a plumber or a
carpenter wearing a suit on Sundays make him conservative? Does
listening
to hymns on Sunday, of which many were old
drinking songs, make the listener a conservative Christian? These same
songs were used to reach the unsaved with the
message of the Gospel because of their familiarity to the unsaved, but
the same people that insist that only these same
songs (hymns) be used in worship today, deny the inclusion of any ?new?
music which may reach this generation?s unsaved.
Christianity is a
description of
the behaviors and views of a group of people that follow the teachings
of Christ. Period. Those
people that do and teach things that do not match the teachings of
Christ
are NOT practicing liberal Christianity, but are
actually practicing anti-Christianity. The same is true for
conservative
Christianity. Those elements of their behavior that are
in contradiction to the actual teachings of Christ are
anti-Christianity.
Matthew
7:21-23 Not
everyone who says to me, ?Lord, Lord,? will enter the kingdom
of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Many will say to me
on that day, ?Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your
name drive
out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, ?I
never knew
you. Away from me, you evildoers!?
According to this verse
there will
be people that others may believe are Christians, and they may even do
many amazing ?Christian?
things. In other words, they will look great to many people in the
Church,
but God, who sees their hearts, is the only One that
determines whether they will exist in heaven with Him or not.
Lecture #14
Question #2: What are
some relevant
N.T. passages that inform us about the relationship between humans,
God, evil, and God?s ultimate defeat of evil?
Answer ? I feel that I have
been
liberated from prison, and that I can finally breath again. A chance to
respond to a
question strictly from the Bible. Yeeeaaaahhhh!
I would have naturally gone
to Genesis
for an example where the man and woman were so close that they were
called
collectively ?Adam?, and they had perfect communion with God. Since I
am
directed to answer from the New Testament,
I will do so, but I think a wonderful example exists there in Genesis.
Matthew
13:24-30
Jesus told them another parable: ?The kingdom of heaven is
like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was
sleeping,
his enemy
came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat
sprouted
and
formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. ?The owner?s servants came
to him and said,
?Sir, didn?t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds
come from?? ??An
enemy did this,? he replied. ?The servants asked him, ?Do you want us
to
go and pull
them up?? ??No,? he answered, ?because while you are pulling the weeds,
you may root up
the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that
time I will tell the
harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be
burned;
then gather the
wheat and bring it into my barn.??
Matthew
13:36-43
Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples
came to him and said, ?Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the
field.?
He
answered, ?The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of
and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the
sons of the evil
one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end
of
the age, and
the harvesters are angels. ?As the weeds are pulled up and burned in
the
fire, so it will be
at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and
they
will weed out of
his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will
throw
them into
the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Then
the righteous will shine
like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him
hear.
John
3:19-21This
is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved
darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who
does
evil hates
the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds
will
be exposed. But
whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen
plainly that what he
has done has been done through God.?
Overview.
It is interesting to see the writings of Aquinas and Hume
included in
the course materials in The Philosophical Problem of Evil.
Hume was an atheist and Aquinas was a false teacher. I don?t understand
why either of these views towards (or against)
God would be included as scripture must be understood spiritually, and
with the aid of the Holy Spirit, of which atheists
(and false teachers) have neither. If the actual purpose of including
these
materials was to offer some experience to the student in
defending their Christian beliefs, then the correct (scriptural)
battlefield
has been abandoned for an incorrect (secular) one. The
words to consider in any attempt to discern spiritual truth are located
in the Bible, not in secular philosophical writings. If the actual
purpose for including these secular philosophical writings was to give
the student experience in defending their beliefs against such
atheistic
attacks, certainly the choice of atheistic views should at least feign
some sort of logic. Hume?s (so-called) logic is faulty in a
complimentary tone, and is prima facially stupid in a blunt tone. I have had quite a bit of experience with
atheists and in
earnest,
the very
fact that there are atheists is one of the strongest evidences that God
does exist.
Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.
~ Heywood
Broun ~
not hold the position that they don?t
believe God exists, but they rather they DO believe that God
does not exist. In
other words, atheists aggressively deny God?s existence. The atheist
labors
to either discover or to create
evidence that denies God?s existence.
A spiritually neutral person would approach the question of whether
God exists or not, with a mind full of curiosity to discover the
answer.
An atheist, which is a spiritually negative
person, approaches this same question with the pre-existing decision
that
God does not exist, and then
searches for evidence to support their view.
A spiritually positive person approaches this question with the
pre-existing decision that God does exist and searches for evidence to
support their view. The atheistic claim
that God does not exist because there is no proof that He does is
ridiculous
because it can be said with equal
conviction that God must exist because there is no proof that He does
not.
It is however a common popular
saying that you can not prove a negative. This is of course also
ridiculous
as half of science is based on
proving negatives. Albert Einstein proved the universe is expanding and
is curved. He did this mathematically with
a piece of chalk and a blackboard located literally light years from
the
components his argument included. Much
of our understanding of space is based on dark matter, which are the
objects
in space that do not emit or
reflect light. We watch the behavior of light objects which are
affected
by dark objects such as the case of M105.
Since we can not actually see objects of dark matter their actual
definition
depends on the action of objects
of light matter. Yet, light matter only makes up about 5% of the known
universe, while dark matter makes up
the other 95%. So, we have ?scientific? proof that an object that we
can
not see does actually exist. In the
same way, God can not be seen with physical eyes, but spiritual eyes.
Yet,
there are radical and life changing
occurrences in many of those persons believing in God, which shows an
effect
which necessarily requires
a cause, namely God. Atheists seem too willing to accept the proofs of
objects of dark matter because they
exist as a cause, and the effects of this cause can be seen. Yet these
same atheists refuse to accept the proof
that God exists even though the effects in believers can be observed
which
means there also exists a cause.
This is not a lack of evidence, but rather a lack of willingness. In
the
spirit of fairness, any rule that is
accepted as a component in a logical argument should applied
universally
to both sides of the argument.
Atheists are simply not willing to participate in a fair debate. If you take the same ridiculous arguments as
to
why atheists claim God does not exist, and apply them to the atheists
themselves,
they would logically
cease to exist. I have no photographs of Hume but atheists claim that
he
did truly live. Still, I don?t know of
anyone personally meeting him. I do read writings of those that claim
to
have read his writings but this
type of evidence is instantly thrown out by atheists when mentioning
the
writings of God, otherwise
known as the Bible. There is mention of Hume in history, and yet
atheists
dismiss the Bible of which
about one quarter is history in nature. I have perhaps several million
pieces of evidence that God exists
more than I have evidence that Hume existed. Still, this does not
satisfy
the atheists that insist that they do
indeed exist. Why should I believe them? Just because I believe I can
see
them? I have made millions of
mistakes in my life so far, how should I know that I am not making
another?
Does this sound ridiculous?
It couldn?t possibly sound as ridiculous as the arguments put forth by
Hume.
David
Hume?s argument: [Is God willing to prevent evil, but not
able?
Then is he malevolent? Is God both
able and willing? Whence then is evil?] presents
no difficulty to the logical mind. Hume?s argument simply
asserts that Hume?s opinion is of higher esteem and more valid than
Gods,
which of course it is NOT!
Hume?s
argument seems to match many scientists argument regarding the Bumble
Bee.(*1)
According to current scientific understanding, the
bumble
bee does not possess the ability to fly because it
violates the known laws of aerodynamics. Yet the bumble bee does indeed
fly. These two facts seem to contradict
each other. I have an a priori evidence that bumble bees can not fly,
or
at least should not be able to fly. I have a
posteriori evidence that they do actually fly. Therefore I have no
option
but to conclude that the a priori evidence
is either flawed or incomplete. Nobody with this same evidence seems to
have a problem in accepting the fact
that bumble bees do fly. I also have personal a posteriori evidence
that
God exists. Nobody with this same
evidence seems to have a problem with my evidence. Accepting Hume?s
argument
is simply faulty a priori
evidence which is contradicted by personal a posteriori evidence. God?s
design of rewarding man?s search for Him
is designed to create a situation that demands inward honest searching
to find God. Those that take Hume?s
path, deciding that God does not exist are prevented from finding God,
by God Himself!
So the argument Si deus est,
unde
malum? (If God exists, why is there evil) does not actually
exist because it has no basis in fact. A much more honest
proposition
could be phrased ? If God exists can
He also allow a degree of freedom for His creations? The answer is
obviously
yes. Now, does His creation
have the freedom to choose God or to choose to go against God. Again,
the
answer is yes. So, if man can
choose God or to choose NOT God simply by using or abusing the freedom
God provided him with, which
is the actual cause and essence of evil, how then can these same people
claim that God does not exist
because evil exists, when their very purpose and words created the evil
that then fuels their argument that
God must not exist? This circular reasoning is not reasoning at all
but PURE FOOLISHNESS!
While this on the surface
this may
seem like a case of semantics, it is actually more a case of
perspective.
Not
believing that God exists expresses a passive perspective, and does not
convey the feeling of permanence.
Believing that God does not exist expresses an active perspective that
God does not exist. Why is this
important? The question at hand is Does God Exist? Each person
contemplating
this question must make
several decisions when attempting to answer this questions for
themselves.
The Bible states that if man will seek
God he will find Him. This leaves the decision as to whether you will
look
for evidence that God does exist, or
if you will look for evidence that God does not exist. If you have
already
made the decision that God does not
exist, how then will you search for someone that you believe does not
exist?
Your search was doomed to failure
before you even began. This, of course, was the actual unstated goal of
such a search. The true intention of a
person with this mind set was to prove that God does not exist in the
first
place. This perspective is evidence
of dishonesty. Why then would this evidently dishonest person be
discovered
at the center of a debate requiring
honesty, integrity, and understanding as a so-called ?expert??
The Riddle of Epicurus
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is
he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
*If He is both able and
willing and
God, when will he eliminate evil, according to our own human timing, or
in His own Godly timing?
This
world, for
aught [we] know,
is very faulty and imperfect,
compared to a superior standard;
and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity,
who afterwards abandoned it,
ashamed of his lame performance ---
David Hume
Hume
will not rise from the dead, yet he scorns Jesus, Who did!
Hume did not create anything from nothing as God did, yet he
will claim that creation is a "lame performance".
When Hume meets his creator, I wonder if HIS performance
will be judged to be "lame"?
Certainly accusing that the existence of suffering (an evil) is proof
that
God does not exist
is insulting and false to the greatest degree since Jesus suffered more
unfairly than any other person
in the history of man.
Jesus' suffering, death, and ressurection is indeed proof of God, not
an
argument against God!
Course
Review
Inbred philosophy and closed
educational
systems. Something needs to be said regarding the materials included in
this course. Using such questionable sources as Thomas Aquinas has had
the effect of polluting the content of this
course. The dominant religious system at the time (of Thomas Aquinas)
was
the Catholic church. The official doctrine of
the Catholic church does not teach the literal interpretation of the
Bible.
Yet, the Catholic church also made it a capital
offense to read the Bible if you were not a priest in the Catholic
church. Just as having a family with a
limited gene
pool produces children with three ears, missing fingers and defective
organs,
having a closed pool of ideas produces
theology and philosophy that is inbred and has defective ideas with
three
ears, missing fingers, and defective organs.
Compound this with the refusal to take the Bible at face value and your
religious system is fatally flawed to degree that it
can not possibly be redeemed. Yet, this faulty system viewed itself in
such high regard that it murdered any detractor with
impunity. The incredible arrogance of this organization caused the
murderers
to view their murderous actions as their
duty to God and didn?t even consider their actions sinful despite the
fact
that these very actions violated the specific
words as well as the specific teachings in the Bible which they
militantly
deprived the populace of through the threat of even
more murders. Thomas Aquinas also taught that ?heretics? should be
killed
as this was a lesser evil than having these
heretics add other heretics to their numbers by their false teaching.
Including
any teaching by these truly heretical teachers
has detracted from the overall value of this course and there was
absolutely
no way for me to complete this course without
bringing these issues into the overall discussion.
There are several extremely
interesting
elements included within this course. There are many elements that
prompt
very
deep thought. There are parts that even challenge the student to
reevaluate
the student?s existing beliefs. There are also
several elements of this course that are very difficult and painful for
the student to endure. As a whole, this course is mentally
exhausting. This is not because the material is so especially
difficult,
but rather that the information is so interlaced with
false information, faulty logic, and contrived conclusions that it
forces
the student to be on guard and at times militantly
defensive while attempting to complete the study.
In this course, time and
time again,
the book (and at times the lecture series) presents a false statement,
and
then painfully drags the reader through a series of justifications for
the clearly false statement presented at the opening.
If a true statement is made, there should be substantiation for the
statement
in the form of proofs. This is clearly not the
case as the writings presented in the book present numerous false
statements,
and then the arguments supporting these
false statements are presented, but by using faulty and false
documentation.
This forces the reader to hold a false idea
in their head, and then to slog through false argument after false
argument,
layer by layer, trying to support the opening
statement, which was clearly false on the face of it.
Clearly, one of the most
basic problems
of this course is the concept of evil. It is thought that heat exists
and
that
cold exists as individual conditions, when in reality they are a
continuation
of the same single condition. You can apply
heat to something and change its form. You can continue to apply heat
in
appreciating degrees until the object vaporizes and
is no more. You can not however apply cold to something; you can only
deprive
it of heat. If you could actually apply cold
to something, you could continue to do so without limits just as you
could
with heat. This however is impossible because at
some point you will reach absolute zero or 273.15deg C or -459º
Fahrenheit where the object can
not
get any colder. This means
that all heat has been withheld from the object and there is no more
heat
to withhold. Cold is the opposite of heat in that heat
has been removed from cold. They are opposites of the same condition,
not
two different conditions. People also think that light
and dark exist as separate conditions, but they are similar in nature
in
that you can only deprive something of light, and then
you have dark. It can only get so dark, and you can not make it any
darker.
Light and dark are opposites of the same
condition, not two different, separately existing conditions. This same
situation is true of life and death. Life and death do not
exist separately, but each are a part of the same whole. Death is
merely
a lack of life. Life and death are opposite sides of
the same condition, not two differently existing conditions. I believe
this is also true of evil. Evil is the absence of God. The
closer something is to God, the closer it is to good, and the farther
something
is from God, the more evil the thing is.
There
does not exist the thing of good, and the thing of evil. There exists
good,
and the absence of good which we call evil.
This situation is a sort of spiritual homeostasis. As Christians we
experience
spiritual homeostasis in that we struggle each
day on the side of good, trying to defeat the lack of good in us due to
our carnal nature. I think this is why people are so
confused by the concept of original sin. It does not mean that we have
evil within us, it means that we don?t have life in us.
We lost that element of life at the time of Adam and Eve?s fall. We
didn?t
introduce evil into ourselves, we simply lost life.
Our connection with, our redemption by, and our regeneration through
the
blood of Jesus on the cross and resurrection is
what gives us that life again.
There are faulty statements
and concepts
throughout this course whose time has clearly come and gone, but the
writing
is
held in high esteem as if the statement were actually true. If a
philosophical
writer presented a statement, and he was well
accepted at the time (or at a later date), then the fact that the
assumptions
and theories presented by this writer have long
since been disproved doesn?t seem to affect the validity of the
writing.
It seems that if the writer has been historically
accepted, then we must somehow accept his writings and ideas now, even
if what he has to say is clearly false. In the
case of the Bible and Christianity, we are dealing with a topic that
frames
eternal life and eternal punishment and there is
absolutely no room for false beliefs, false evidence, or faulty
thinking,
regardless of the prestige of the writers presenting
these false statements. The speaker in the lecture series mentions a
situation
where the definition of
omnipotence is defined in such a way that God is able to do those
things
that are do-able. The definition of omniscience is
also framed with the idea that God is able to know all things that are
know-able. This limitation of God?s power is supported
by some linguistic tricks such as God can not make a married bachelor,
and similar ideas. This verbal nonsense is simply
a misapplication of words, rather than of the ideas and concepts
demonstrated
BY the words. That is, by juxtaposing
opposites, we are to believe that God cannot do some things, which by
God?s
standards should not be all that difficult to
achieve. I guess then by this definition God would not be able to place
a prophecy in the Bible saying that Jesus would
descend from a particular blood line, and then place a blood curse on a
King of that bloodline, and then still fulfill His
prophecy that Jesus would descend from that bloodline. Yet, we see just
the case with Jesus. God DID create an
impossible situation, and then provided an impossible solution to the
impossible
problem. I believe that making a
statement, presenting it as a law, and then defining God to fit within
this statement is playing with fire. It is not our job
as Christians to define God, but rather to discover who God really is.
God exists as an entity, with personality, feelings,
thoughts, demands, joy, and several other facets only available to
living
beings. The idea that we can define who God is
by presenting a statement is preposterous. By His very nature, God is
indefinable.
His power is unknowable and
impossible to comprehend by human beings. Many if not all of the
written
statements that make up the collection of
writings contained in the text book are seriously flawed because of the
position of the writer. This is not a horizontal
relationship we have with God. This is also not only a near vertical
relationship
we have with God, but the power of
God, the wisdom of God, the knowledge of God, and the very being of God
is so far beyond our comprehension that
even attempting to present a definition of God to other human beings is
impossible. This inability to convey an image
or an understanding of who God is, is not an accident. This design,
this
unknowing, is one of the most amazing attributes
of God?s design of being a human being that I have experienced. The
impossibility
to convey an accurate explanation
of God to another human being requires a personal exploration by each
person.
God cannot be drawn, photographed,
explained, or conveyed. God must be sought after, discovered, and
understood
by each person individually. In this
way, God can truly have a distinctly different relationship with every
single person that seeks Him. The idea was also
presented in the lecture that some people make the claim that the very
action of doing theodicy in itself is impious. I do
not believe it is. I do believe though, that the action of stepping
between
God and others by creating a definition for
others to accept is impious. I believe this action attempts to short
circuit
the requirement each of us has to search,
discover and explore who God is on a personal level. I also believe
that
many writers in this book are attempting
to do just that, that is, to stand between God and man by presenting
their
understanding of who God is, and
expecting others to accept their definition because of their status,
their
false logic, or their position as either a
writer or a philosopher. I think it is wrong to replace a personal
experience
of knowing God, with a philosophical
or intellectual experience of reading about God. It is impossible to
truly
get to know someone personally on
a philosophical or intellectual level.
Man is compared to sheep in
the Bible.
The Greek word for sheep is Probaton, which means something that moves
forward. In being a probaton, you will notice how similar this word is
to the word probation. This is no accident. As
people (or sheep) we are in a situation where we are required to make
decisions
and to learn. We are also expected to
practice what we learn. This in fact is the probation portion of our
lives.
The word probation is interesting in that it is a
testing period. When you join a club there may be a probation period
where
you and the club members can see if you
are a good match for the club. After serving a prison term you may be
put
on probation to see if you are ready to re-enter
society. The question of why God would permit sin, which apparently
creates
the ?problem of sin? mentioned in this
course, would not exist if God instantly destroyed sin as it occurred.
But man, the sinner, would also not exist because the
Bible says the price of sin is death, and that all sins fall short of
the
mark. In this way, we would also be deprived of our
probation time here on earth because we would not have the ability to
live,
to learn, to practice what we learn, and to
learn just who God is. So, the idea that God should prevent evil from
existing
is firstly poorly phrased in that we don?t know
if God should prevent evil from happening which would make man nothing
more than a robot, or if God should prevent
evil from continuing to exist. God will prevent evil from existing, but
according to His time table not ours. Those demanding
that God destroy evil immediately don?t really know what they are
asking
because this would remove their time on
earth which would also eliminate their ability to get to know God. The
Bible says that whatever is loosed on earth will be
loosed in heaven, and whatever is bound on earth will also be bound in
heaven. If this is true, we should make the most of
our time on earth and to bring as many as possible with us into heaven.
This does not mean sitting around trying to second
guess God, or to tell Him how he should have done things, or how we
would
have done things if we were God.
I resist the temptation
which is
often presented to me, namely that of surrendering to the forced
membership
in the Cerebral
Antiquisation club. This club is related to the reformation, and the
structured
secular university training, and
denominational theology that permeates it. I struggle daily to retain a
fresh spirit, an open mind, and the ability to
be influenced by the Holy Spirit. This course has been intolerably
conforming
in its design, and amazingly unscriptural
in its content. I have survived, but I would like to never repeat this
exercise, and I would strongly suggest that others
wishing to maintain their scriptural integrity to run the other way and
avoid this course like the plagues mentioned in Revelation.
Franz
Sigel Shroy MCM