Author: Nick Peters

In our last look at the morality Dawkins speaks of, he decides to defend the atheistic mindset by talking about Hitler and Stalin. (Never mind the influence of Sartre in Cambodia or such rulers as Mao and Pol-Pot.) For Hitler, he leaves us with ambiguity. Much time is spent on discussing if Hitler was really a Christian or not.

From those who have read up on him who I have spoken with, Hitler was one who would use Christianity for his own benefit, but he was avowedly against the whole idea. Now if he was an atheist is another question, but I think we can rest assured that Hitler was certainly not a Christian. While he may have made claims to that regard, they were merely that. Claims.

He comes to Stalin though and I’m not that surprised. Stalin only gets a few paragraphs, but there is little doubt that Stalin was handpicked by Lenin for his hatred of all things religious. Stalin was an atheist and atheism has quickly become the worldview of the Soviet Union with Communism driving its economy.

However, Dawkins’s main point seems to be that atheism does not lead to this. Now if he wants to say that if someone is an atheist, that means they have no morality and are the scum of the Earth, then I agree with him. That is not what it means to be an atheist. Many atheists are fine and upstanding people. We have a good friend here who is an atheist who spends much time with us.

In turn, some Christians do great harm to the body of Christ by how they live their lives. Their Christianity is merely nominal and they don’t care who they hurt along the way. While I do not think hypocrisy is a good reason to reject the Christian faith, I think we should all strive to live like Christ to not throw any stumbling block in the way of anyone else.

However, this is the point that needs to be made. Atheism may not necessarily lead to many massacres in history, but it doesn’t contradict them. Someone might say as an atheist you are to respect your fellow human being. Says who? Give me a basis for the moral law that you think we must follow.

Nietzsche was at least honest with his atheism. He made it clear that there’s no point in establishing a moral system. God is gone and we have no eternal reference point any more. We should go on and live our lives our own way and do what we can to be the “Superman” as he would call it. (Who is quite the opposite of the comic book character.)

Now someone might say “What about the Crusades and Inquisitions?” My reply is simple. Were these actions done in accordance with the teachings of Christ or in contradiction? I’m not condemning the whole events by the way. The Inquisition has been made into a nightmare it never was and some Crusades were I’m sure just. It doesn’t mean all were. I’m not approving all and I’m not condemning all.

Where they are condemned though we have to look at the whole situation and ask, “Is this in accordance with the teachings of Christ or not?” Do Christians always live up to that standard of Christ? No. We know that. Those of us who know it well care about it and try to make the necessary change.

However, I do believe that if we do hold to atheism consistently, it can easily lead to the Gulag and other such events. If there is no ultimate meaning, you must make your own. If there is no higher power, why not make yourself that higher power? Who is anyone to say you are wrong? There must be some authority that is appealed to outside of both of you. What is it?

Again, not all atheists are like this, and I believe that’s because of Christianity. Christianity has changed the world so much that the values it brings with us we assume are just basic. The ancient world did not know of these values we take so much for granted. The ancients did not know of the self-evident truths the Constitution speaks of. Christianity brought those realizations about.

Overall, I think Dawkins just skimmed over things too much and did not want to follow the logical conclusions of the ideas that were taught.  My finishing of the section left me with no qualms at all about the position that I still hold.

Dawkins continues and tonight’s entry should be brief as this is simply a rant. Dawkins is complaining about slavery and racism in the Bible and how the Bible seems to approve of these. Dawkins might have a point if someone is unfamiliar with ANE literature. For those of us who know it though, it’s not a problem.

Many of us think back to Civil War slavery. The slavery in ancient times was not like that though. Slaves were capable of being given high positions in a Roman household for instance. In a Hebrew system, a slave could have the option of remaining with his master for life if he chose to.

However, this system did reach its end based on the Bible. I don’t believe the NT Christians set out to end the system because their goal was to spread the gospel and when it spread, you would see the end of slavery. You see some hints of wanting the end of it in the letter to Philemon.

When did it end? The wife of Clovis II was Bathilda. It was through her work mostly that the end came. What was the basis of the end of slavery? It was passages like Galatians 3:28. This taught us that Christ treats all as bearing his image and on the equality of the human race despite race or sex.

It should be noted though that slavery did not just exist in the biblical culture. The other cultures of the time had slaves as well and the slaves under the Hebrew system were treated far better. In fact, it’s not slavery so much as it is a type of employee relationship that was just more binding. People would often willingly go into slavery.

Dawkins seems to think that religion is the force of this. Does he really believe that if they had all become atheists that everyone would have literally beat their swords into plowshares and the slaves would be free and peace would reign on Earth. I would like to see Dawkins back this.

Especially in light of the Gulag Archipelago where Russians were arrested, including leading scientists, and thrown in a hideous prison where many died. I would like to know how in an atheistic regime that Dawkins thinks that religion is somehow the cause of this. Is it a coincidence Dawkins doesn’t mention the Gulag once?

One more note. Dawkins speaks of a common and shared humanity. Could he tell me what this is based on in atheism? In Christianity, it is based on us being in the image of God. In atheism though, what exactly is it that we can say we all have in common? What is to keep us from having Orwell’s Animal Farm.

We will continue more of looking at the God Delusion later.

Before getting to the New Testament though, I will take a moment to answer what was said on my treatment of Dawkins’s treatment of the OT. A reader pointed out that the Bible says Lot was a righteous man.

The point?

Seriously. Because he was a righteous man, everything he did was perfect? Not so. Even the great saints had their failures. The father of the faithful is shown to not be so faithful at times. David, the man after God’s own heart, is one of the most notorious sinners in the Bible. What made them saints though? It’s how they lived their lives overall.

Now though, we need to get to the NT.

Dawkins begins by stating that he does like Jesus. I think it’s hard for someone to come out and say they don’t like the figure presented in the gospels. Even if you think the gospels are made up and nonsense, there is something appealing about the persona of Jesus Christ.

However, Jesus has poor family values apparently, such as telling us we must hate our own parents to be his disciple. Um. Not so Dawkins. Jesus saw for the care of his own mother in John’s gospel on the cross. Peter traveled with his wife. Jesus told us to honor our father and mother. What’s going on?

This is a typical way of speaking in Jewish circles. He speaks in hyperbole to show the level of devotion that must exist in order to be a disciple of Christ. Christ has to come before your family. They are important, but must be secondary. I also think of the definition of Barclay as hatred being to set something at a distance. Your ultimately loyalty must lie to Christ.

Of course, I wasn’t surprised to see Dawkins complain next about original sin and the atonement. McGrath rightly points out in “The Dawkins Delusion” that original sin is not at the heart of Christianity. It is a true doctrine I believe and an important one, but it is not the cornerstone of Christianity.

This blogger is a Traducian who believes that the soul was corrupted in the first sin and that when our parents came together to make us, that their souls somehow formed ours. As one of my professors once said, and I quote, “Your parents didn’t just do it and a soul dropped into your body from Heaven like a gumball machine.”

Now did the atonement involve blood? Yep. Got a problem with it? God takes sin seriously. He takes it so seriously that justice has to be paid. If he just overlooks a violation of his holy standard, he’s not treating himself seriously. He’s denying his nature in order to bring about a good for another, which is not treating himself as the greatest good. Justice and holiness must be satisfied, and the way to do that is the doctrine of the atonement.

That’s why God just can’t forgive as Dawkins ask. (Also, generations of Jews were not to be condemned as Christ-killers. Only that generation killed Christ. If some others want to claim otherwise, let them, but rest assured I will not join them in their condemnation.) I also believe that generation was judged.

Interestingly, Dawkins brings up the Gospel of Judas and treats it as if it has any credibility. There’s a simple way to see why it wasn’t canonical. Read it. I wish more people would do this with these gnostic gospels instead of hearing about these new gospels and thinking there was some conspiracy. Just read them.

Dawkins then says that the idea of “Love your neighbor” meant only to love another Jew. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that I granted that that’s what the Jewish mindset was. Does this mean that Jesus was of the same mindset. I’m hoping most readers have their minds going where mine went when I first heard this, and that would be to where Jesus answered the question himself. That would be the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In all of the backing of this idea of Dawkins, he never touches that passage. He also never touches where Jesus said to love your enemies. He ends it by speaking about the Jewish prayer that a man would recite thanking God that he was not a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. He was nice enough to leave out Galatians 3:28 where Paul has a statement denouncing that very prayer.

Dawkins then points to modern violence and blames it on religion. I urge the reader to read Dinesh D’Souza’s work “What’s So Great About Christianity?” I found it amazing to hear Dawkins talk about how if you found any place in the world today with intractable enmity and violence, religion would be there. Hmmm. Would that include anti-religious Communists persecuting Christians in China? Who does Dawkins blame for that? Is it the fault of the Christians when they’re being persecuted as well as when they’re supposedly persecuting?

Dawkins again has terrible eisegesis and his sources are far from the best. It would have been good to have seen some citations of orthodox scholars, but one will look in vain. Again though, this is why Christians need to know their Bibles. The ones who don’t know them might find the case convincing.

The ultimate answer to Dawkins on the Bible then is biblical literacy. Let’s make sure we all have it.

Today, I am going to go into Dawkins’s view of the Old Testament. Again, this is what happens when you let the biologist out of the lab. I make it a point to not comment on the science of Dawkins. Why? It’s not my area. It’s not that I don’t care about it, but I know where my strength lies and I prefer to stay there. There are others out there who can and will and do critique Dawkins there.

Fortunately, the Bible is not an area I think I am weak in and I can see the errors Dawkins is making, so let’s dive into his look at the OT.

Dawkins begins with some rants about religious fanatics. Now with these, I agree. Some people are very fanatical so much so that they say things they ought not to say. Unfortunately, Dawkins considers this mainstream and all Christian intellectuals are painted with that brush.

Now Dawkins points to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The first thing he really criticizes is the treatment of women in that culture. I’d like to point out that the Bible nowhere supports Lot’s offering up of his daughters to appease the crowd. In fact, the biblical culture was revolutionary for its time in raising up the status of women as compared to other ANE law codes.

Dawkins also complains about Lot’s wife who died because she looked back. Now to him, this is a simple matter. Not so in the ancient mindset. It was saying that she wanted to return to that world. It could be by that pause, that she got caught up in the brimstone falling and paid for it with her life.

Now we should all know about what happened with Lot’s daughters next. Why does Dawkins bring this up? If he wants to show this as an example of human depravity in the Bible, then he’s right. This is not affirmed in Scripture. It merely records what happens and shows how depraved the daughters had become by their culture. (Which Dawkins will complain that God destroyed.)

Dawkins compares this to what happened in Judges19. Readers. I urge you to look up the references, but he talks about the man who had his concubine gang-raped till she died and then cut her up and sent her pieces to the twelve tribes of Israel. Dawkins leaves something out. Before this is what is told happened when there was no king and each person did what was right in his own eyes. Again, the reader is pointing to the depravity of the kingdom and most likely using this to support the Davidic dynasty.

Dawkins does not know the difference between the Bible recording history and approving of acts in history.

Dawkins also condemns the deceitfulness on the part of Abraham in lying saying Sarah wasn’t his wife. Unfortunately, it’s the same blunder. It doesn’t mean that this was approved of. The father of the faithful was not always faithful. If he wants to point that out, more power to him.

Now he complains about the testing of Abraham. Dawkins points out that the sacrifice never took place, but he acts like it doesn’t matter. It matters entirely. Also, in Jewish tradition, Isaac was a willing sacrifice. It’s not likely a 115 year-old man will overpower his 16 year-old son.

Dawkins has repeatedly in this chapter talked about apologists who try to allegorize this. I can’t think of who he’s talking about. The apologists I know, including myself, treat this as a historical event. The point was that God did provide a sacrifice. It is a picture to point to the coming Christ.

We now come to the story of Jephthah and his daughter. I do not believe an actual burnt offering took place though. No priest would have allowed it. Instead, it is most likely that the girl went into temple service which is why she mourned not her coming death, but her  never marrying. (even if it was a burnt offering, there’s no record God approved of such a thing.)

Dawkins also complains about the golden calf and God complaining about idolatry. Yes Dawkins. God claims exclusive right to worship. To not worship him when you are in a covenant with him is idolatry. Of course, we can’t expect Dawkins to understand the treaty system of the time.

Dawkins then speaks about the destruction of the Midianites by Israel in Numbers 31. He talks about some of the virgins simply being captured and then assumes, “Oh! It was for sex!” No. They most likely were adopted into Jewish families or went into tabernacle service. Sex is not mentioned in the passage. The reason it was virgins spared is that they could not be behind the sexual seduction of Israel in Numbers 25.

And of course, we have the usual whining about the destruction of the Canaanites. Please understand that this is a specific time and place. Also, understand that God treats sin seriously. He punishes it. It’s amazing that they complain that God doesn’t do anything about evil, but when he does something about evil, they complain. Someone wanting more information on this one is encouraged to go to the Christian-thinktank.

And where would this be without the complaining about the Levitical Law. Sorry Dawkins. Being disobedient to your parents was a lifetime crime that was done by an older child who was living in rebellion. Little kids did not typically get drunk as the parents speak of the child.

As for the man gathering sticks on the Sabbath, this man was showing contempt of the law of God in the theocracy. The law was clear and the man violated it knowing the consequences. You can say you don’t like it, but disrespect for the law could not be allowed. We all know how Israel turned out when it did get away from the law.

Now Dawkins might say that none of us would act like God in the OT. Well, he’s right. I wouldn’t. There’s a simple reason for that.

I’M NOT GOD!

Now does it make a difference that God ordered these attacks? In a word, yes. Of course it would! God can order the taking of life because he is sovereign over life. Note also that the Israelites never went out and conquered the lands of the other nations. In fact, David could have been punished for taking the census because that was his plan.

Dawkins will move on to the NT. We will do the same on another day. I find Dawkins completely lacking in his eisegesis of the OT though. (And he still has given no standard by which to condemn these events.)

For the record, I also want to say Christians should not be caught off-guard by these stories. If you are familiar with your Bible, you should know them already. Maybe the reason so many don’t know how to respond is that they don’t know their Bibles like they should.

This is connected with what will be a later post. Dawkins does speak about the biblical witness to morality in his book, but that’s so badly handled that I want that to have its own post. For now, I want to concentrate on Dawkins’s idea that we don’t need God in order to be moral.

Dawkins begins by talking about mail received by non-Christian organizations from Christian writers. The language is terrible as are the threats of physical violence. I see no reason to think Dawkins is making these up for some who are skeptical. I sadly do believe some could write such things and believe they are doing God a service. Dawkins condemns these letters.

On this, we agree.

Here’s the distinction though as we’ll see when we get to the parts on Scripture. This is in direct contradiction to the claims of Christ. I don’t believe Christ would condone what these people are doing. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Christ is pleased with the other side either. However, let us not do evil that good may result. (Romans 3:8)

Now Dawkins’s basis for morality is what we would expect. Natural selection. The problem though is that an is does not imply an ought. What happens when I learn there’s nothing outside of myself I am accountable to? Heck. What happens when I learn good does not exist outside of me? What happens when I learn that good and evil are just subjective?

Dawkins goes into moral dilemmas. Please be clear on this people. Moral dilemmas do not destroy absolute morality. If there is no absolute morality, there is no such thing as a moral dilemma. Moral absolutism does not claim that we know the best and right thing to do in every situation. It just claims that there is one.

Dawkins speaks of a study of Hauser and Singer that shows that atheists and religious believers seem to make the same judgments when predicted with these dilemmas. Dawkins proudly says that this seems to be compatible with the view that he and many others hold that you do not need God in order to be good – or evil.

At this point, D’Souza would say “This is what happens when you let the biologist out of the lab.”

I read this and thought “It’s no shock to me.” Here’s why. As a Christian, I believe in the natural law which is rooted in God and is in all of us as we bear his image. You do not need to hold to a religious worldview to know that murder is evil. God places that knowledge in you innately. As soon as you understand what life is and what murder is, you know that murder is evil.

Now Dawkins asks if we really need moral surveillance to be good, and while he’s skeptical, he tells a story of how in Montreal the police went on strike. Chaos had come about by the end of the day. Dawkins simply asks why the fear of God did not stop most people? I would answer it’s because most people don’t have it.

Dawkins later makes the claim that absolute morality is driven by religion. This is not the claim of a natural law believer though. It can be revealed in religion, but the source is God and one does not need a religion to know what is good and what is evil.  Dawkins seems to think that until the Ten Commandments were spoken, no one knew murder was wrong.

And in the end, Dawkins never gives one thing. He never gives an objective basis for good and evil. He simply says that we know what actions are good and what are evil. By what criteria? How does he differentiate? Without an absolute standard of good and evil, we cannot say. The actions are either good in themselves or not good. It’s interesting Dawkins says this while saying that it’s fortunate that morals do not have to be absolute.

Again, this is what happens when you let the biologist out of the lab.

We will be writing more on Dawkins’s book over the next few days, but needless to say, I am not impressed. A poster on a forum I belong to said that with him apparently retiring, that leaves more time for writing books so look out creationists.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see the threat. If books like this keep coming out, my faith will definitely be increased.

I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’s work “The God Delusion” for the past few days. I’m not going to hold back on some opening thoughts. I have heard people who can argue for the other side. Some of them can appeal to “evidences.” (I say that as I think the evidences are fallacious.) Some of them can make decent cases. From Dawkins, all I get is rhetoric. He can make people feel an emotion, but that’s about it.

Friends. It is really bad to me when I go through a book and see gaping mistakes in the preface about my worldview. Dawkins is a scientist. That is the area he’s best at. However, in this one, he’s trying too much to play philosopher and theologian and quite frankly, it doesn’t work.

As an example, he talks about how he would have read Duns Scotus if Scotus had been open to the possibility that God didn’t exist. Scotus was a medieval. These thinkers made numerous arguments for God’s existence and critiqued each others arguments. They told some their arguments were just wrong. Just look at the debate that came about because of the Ontological Argument. They didn’t just assume God. In fact, they assumed very little and you can find them nitpicking on the tiniest things.

Dawkins also speaks about faith as belief without evidence. I would like him to find me a dictionary of the NT that has that as the definition of faith. It certainly isn’t the definition I believe in and for one who is so big on evidence, one would hope he could find evidence of the meaning of a single word.

Dawkins also speaks of many Christians as afraid of science. I don’t know who he’s talking about. I have no problem with science. Science instead gives me wonder in Christianity. There are even passages in Dawkins’s own work here where he speaks about how the universe does have fine-tuning (Though not design for him naturally) and they leave me in wonder. When he talks about various animals and how they go about reproduction and other interesting habits, I am quite interested. These don’t damage my faith.

In the same way, if evolution was true on the macro level, it would not damage my faith. My faith is built on Jesus Christ rising from the dead. I’m simply skeptical now due to the anti-supernaturalistic bias that I see in science today. (More accurately, that would be scientists today. Science is not anti-supernatural and rests on theology. See Rodney Stark’s “The Victory of Reason.”)

It is quite humorous to see Dawkins try to debunk the Trinity. The statements he thought were nonsensical made sense to me. You see Mr. Dawkins, back then, the writers assumed the listeners were educated in basic Christian beliefs so they didn’t spell out everything and used theological shorthand if need be. Dawkins’s complaint though is that it makes no sense. Maybe Dawkins just needs his consciousness raised by understanding Trinitarianism. (Readers of the book will understand.)

Dawkins also tries to refute proofs for God’s existence. Aquinas is dealt with in just four pages and even then, the arguments aren’t presented accurately. The argument from motion is not a horizontal argument but a vertical one. Dawkins makes it sound like the domino effect where one domino falls because of the one prior etc. I think that argument is valid. I’ve used it myself. However, that is not Aquinas’s argument.

Aquinas’s argument is more like taking a stack of gears all running together. It doesn’t explain the motion of the gears to say that there is simply one big gear at the top. There is something outside of the sequence of gears that is keeping the gears running or as it were, starting them in motion. That something is what we call God.

Consider also Aquinas’s Teleological argument. Aquinas is not dealing with intelligent design as we see it. I have no problem with saying life is fine-tuned, but that deals with what Aristotle calls the efficient cause. Aquinas is dealing with how things function according to a purpose, and that is a final cause, and the explanation of the final cause is God.

Needless to say, even if one doesn’t agree with Aquinas’s proofs, one thing must be said. He was no idiot. You don’t simply dismiss him out of hand in a few pages. Yet Dawkins does, which reveals more to me about Dawkins than it could ever reveal to me about Aquinas.

Dawkins also tries to deal with the argument from beauty by simply saying it doesn’t make sense. I know the argument from beauty. It is one of my favorites and what Dawkins’s writes does not touch my faith in the least. Dawkins. It’s simple. Either beauty is objective and rests on something outside of us or else it is subjective and nothing is truly beautiful. Take your pick. If you choose subjective, then tell me why you think your wife is beautiful when in reality, she isn’t. (Note. I would not be saying she isn’t, but if all is subjective, then that’s the only conclusion. There’s no right and wrong to the question of “Is my wife beautiful?”)

When Dawkins deals with Scripture, he brings up German theologians dismantling the Scripture’s accuracy. Unfortunately, most of us who are educated know about these so-called dismantling attempts and quite frankly, they don’t work. Dawkins think it’s self-evident. I would have preferred to have seen a real argument.

Lastly, I shall deal with his argument of the Ultimate 747 Boeing. Unfortunately, Dawkins says that chance isn’t behind it all, but he never tells me how he avoids chance in his system. Indeed, on pages 168-169, he attributes our being here to luck. I would like to know how that isn’t chance.

Now Dawkins’s argument is that God must be complex. Little problem here. He’s making a category fallacy. God is simple in his being and immaterial. He is not made of parts that one sticks them all together. Had he read Aquinas, he would have known about this. Material thing are put together. God is not. He is pure actuality.

The argument does more damage to Dawkins anyway. Let’s suppose he insists on it and says “If he’s so complex, he needs a designer!” Then we simply say “Very well, the complexities you admit exist here need a designer.” If he backs up at that point then we say, “Okay. God doesn’t need a designer then.” He can’t have it both ways.

The ultimate argument though is no argument as Dawkins does not explain how anything got here other than luck. If he were to approach a philosopher on the topic who was a Christian and devout and educated, he would be easily shown the error of his ways. I find it amazing anyone is persuaded by that argument.  Dawkins may think he’s removed God, but he hasn’t, and he has yet to put a system in that will take his place.

I am a little over halfway through. I hope things get better, but it seems they are only getting worse. These are just my opening thoughts but readers can be assured I will write more later.

Wow. I see a lot of talk has been brought about by recent blogs and I am certainly thrilled with it. I am never disappointed by more and more people coming to my blog. There is still much to respond to, but some of my friends are apparently handling that part of it. I thought I’d jump in some, but then I decided against it.

And of course, there’s a reason why.

There are some people I’ve had interaction with before and while I think it’s good to give answers for the sake of those viewing, I also tire of the same kinds of questions. It is as if someone thinks they have found a new objection and post it as if it was pirate’s gold or something not realizing that in 2,000 years of church history, it’s been addressed. (Don’t expect them to crack open books by Augustine and/or Aquinas.)

Now I do grant some people really have factual objections. However, I also grant that a lot of people hide behind supposed factual objections. Instead, these people would often like to go with any other kind of explanation they can have no matter how implausible it is just as long as it isn’t the Christian answer.

If such is the kind of person that I am with alone I will often say “Fine. I’m going off to do something else.” Why? I’ve got better uses of my time. If you don’t really want to believe no matter what, then I see no reason to bother. I could play a game or read a book or watch a movie or do something far more worthwhile with my time.

But what about their salvation? Let me tell you something. The gospel is no secret to people. I could go to the typical atheist today and have him explain to me the gospel and what I must do to be saved. Now provided he did so without using sarcastic language and such, I’m willing to bet he could tell me exactly what the Christian worldview teaches on this question.

Now if it isn’t factual. Then what is it? There are only two kinds left. It is either emotional or volitional. Emotional is quite common today and most doubt is emotional. It is the person of unruly emotions who hides it behind rationality. When our emotions are out of control, we can think of all kinds of reasons to believe nonsense things. We get our emotions under control and we realize that it was all nonsense indeed.

Then there is volitional doubt. This is the kind of person who doesn’t want to believe. They are living in some sort of sin often and knows that Christianity has something to say about it. Or, they could just be an individual with pride who doesn’t want to believe what is for all of these stupid backwater people.

Can I diagnose each case? No. It’s not my place. However, I would just ask simple questions. What is really keeping you from believing right now? I’ve dialogued with some people before who have shown great signs of emotional doubt. I watch for this kind of thing closely when dialoguing with someone outside of the Christian worldview. (For the record, Christians can believe for purely emotional reasons also and these are prone to fall away.)

That comes down to the resurrection mainly. Do you have a killer argument against it? Do you really believe that your argument holds water? If so, present it. Let it be examined. Let’s go through it all piece by piece. If you want to start with God’s existence first, fine. That can be done. If the skeptic needs then the reliability of Scripture, sure. We’ll do it. If he then needs the evidence directly for the resurrection, fine. Just start where they are.

I just ask people in dialoguing to watch not only what is said but what is not said. Watch for smokescreens. If someone keeps raising intellectual objections and doesn’t acknowledge what has been said thus far, you most likely are dealing with a non-factual doubter.

By the way, don’t think that we’re Christians also because we necessarily want to be. I think of what D’Souza said about the Ten Commandments. He could think of three he’d scratch off the list right now if he could. There is only one reason anyone should be a Christian. It’s because Christianity is true. What you like is irrelevant. Also, if I was just choosing a religion I’d like, it wouldn’t be Christianity. It is quite demanding on my life and my desires. I follow it though because it’s true and though my sinful nature screams against it at times, it’s the best way to live in the end.

Watch for smokescreens friends. There is a time to answer and there’s a time to walk away. Wisdom consists in knowing the difference.

A reply to my post last night mentioned Genesis 3 where the man was to be made like God knowing good and evil. I have good reason to believe that this was meant in a sarcastic manner. Unfortunately, the writer didn’t give the context. I don’t mean the context of the passage, but the way he wanted me to take it. What does he desire for me to draw from this?

I can think of a number of things, but none of them really seem to make sense. Let us suppose the first one. Let us suppose that he wants to get the idea that God knows evil. In this case though, knowledge does not mean experience but speaks of it as a reality. However, evil is only a reality in that it is a privation of the good and God knows the evil by the good.

In fact, if that is the point, it’s nothing new. (Something most critics of Christianity have yet to learn. Many points of this kind have been raised within the past 2,000 years of Christianity and have already been answered but there are some out there who never crack open a book and jump up and down thinking they’ve found a new stumper. Hate to tell you all but you won’t disprove the resurrection by asking who Cain’s wife was, who was his sister by the way.)

In the first volume of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Question 14, Article 10, Aquinas deals with this question. Does God know evil things? The answer is yes. How? If God is to know good things perfectly, he must know their absence as well. If he does not, then he does not know the good. Aquinas uses the argument that by light, darkness is known. In fact, he quotes the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius which predate him.

These questions have been raised. I urge the reader to check out the source for himself. If it’s hard to understand, that’s alright. There’s a lot in theology and philosophy that’s hard to understand and I read a text and often think “It’ll make more sense in a few years.” However, Aquinas wrote in a time when the students were familiar with great thought.

It was so much a time that this was written for the instruction of beginners. The beginners would have known Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, most of the church fathers, and Scripture. They would also have a knowledge of many of the natural sciences and be familiar with the Muslim philosophers.

Do we have any beginners today? (Yet somehow, we’re the most intellectual era of all supposedly.)

The second objection I can think of is that man did not know good and evil then. I think there are types of knowledge then. Man did not know it on a basis of familiarity. He would have known it was evil to disobey God, but he did not know the reality of what it meant to disobey God. He did not know the reality of the privation of the good.

But since this was about Lewis originally, let’s get it back to his point. Lewis wrote about how God wants to make saints. God does it by having the creatures be themselves and slowly removing all that does not reflect him and the creature does participate in this. (And I would say willingly. This does not mean that we don’t resist it at times though.)

That then is Lewis’s point. We do know evil, and we will still know what evil is I believe in eternity, but we will be free from its presence. It has been said that justification is freedom from the penalty of sin, sanctification from its power, and glorification is freedom from its presence.

Perchance there was more in the objection. If there is, I’m missing it honestly. There are other objections to get to though, and maybe those will come up in the next few days. This writer is busy though, but Deeper Waters will keep going to keep giving you thoughts on theology and philosophy from a Christian worldview.

This is chapter 8 of the Screwtape Letters. It has been called the Law of Undulation.

For those who don’t know, Screwtape is a demon writing to an apprentice demon named Wormwood. Thus, all that is said is said from the perspective of the demon. When you hear about the Enemy, it means God.
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

So you “have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away”, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dulness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.

To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily good; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

But of course the troughs afford opportunities to our side also. Next week I will give you some hints on how to exploit them,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

This is one of my favorite passages in all of C.S. Lewis, particularly the last big paragraph. Why?

Because we all know these troughs. We also know the peaks. When the peaks come, we realize the troughs were nothing. When we get to the troughs though, we forget all that we learned in the peaks.

There are times I have woke up angry with God for something. Things just aren’t going well in life. However, those times, I still serve. I sometimes wonder why, but it is just so built into me that I do so. I remember someone saying in a sermon once about the times that we say “Lord, I’m so angry now, but I love you anyway!”

I can relate.

I then take heart at what Greg Koukl says about this passage. The Christian who serves now is the Christian who can’t be defeated. Why? Because it’s not entirely dependent on emotions. It’s a commitment of the mind and will.

Well readers, I know it’s short, but I’ve had a late evening and I wanted to say something and this had been on my mind. If you are in the peak, be thankful. If in the trough, (Which is where I tend to live) remember that this too will pass.

 

Last night, I had a friend up with me and my roommate and he told me about a debate he’d heard about that was going to be online on the resurrection. We thought we’d tune in as we knew one of the debaters. Friends. I hate to say it, but I really was disappointed. My friend and roommate would be able to tell you about my steaming over here.

So I figured I’d give some advice as one who has done debates before.

First off, protocol. If you are going to be there at a certain time, make absolutely certain you are there at that time. Now I understand things can happen. If some crisis comes up, get in touch with the opponent or the moderator of the debate and let them clearly know what has happened and say “I’ll be late” or say “Can we reschedule?”

Moderators are an important point. Absolutely never do a public debate without moderators. I could not tell what was going on half of the time when I was listening to this. Neither side was really listening to the other and the non-Christian side was using strong profanity.

That gets us to listening. Do it. In the debate, the Christian wanted to stick with Habermas’s minimal facts approach. I agree with the approach, but I do not think it was good for this person as their presuppositions would not allow that to be seen as valid. The opponent told the Christian that the Christian wasn’t listening. On this, the opponent was right.

Friends. It must be realized there is no one approach that will work on every atheist, non-Christian, pagan, etc. If the minimal facts did it, well I’d say buy a plane and fly over every city broadcasting them out of huge speakers. You could convert New York City overnight. Unfortunately, it’s not like that.

I told the Christian this later on. Don’t get me wrong on this. I think this guy has a good heart and he does have enough knowledge I think to deal with a number of skeptics. This was one though I don’t think he was adequately prepared for. I had to say that while I disagreed with the other side, I think they presented their case better.

Make sure that you also word things right. The Christian used the term “Minimal facts” in the debate. I believe in Habermas’s minimal facts. They’re a great tool. I’ve used them. I just would not say “Minimal facts.” Why? Because if your opponent is familiar with the work, he’d just be saying “We have a Habermas parrot here.” If he’s read Habermas and wasn’t convinced, why should he be when you parrot it back?

If you’re using them also, go through them one at a time. Don’t assume your opponent will accept everything. You must start where they are. If they are a Christ-myther for instance, you need to start from there. Demonstrate that Christ existed. It is one step at a time to get someone to come to the cross.

Also, if you are going to do a debate, commit yourself to it. Make sure there is nothing else going on that will interrupt you. Both debaters made this mistake. We as Christians can’t afford to do anything to make our side look less than prepared in a debate. Now we won’t know everything, but we should be sure we know enough.

Friends. These aren’t just debates to be won. There are onlookers each time. You never know how eternity might be different because of what you said in a public area. Be prepared.