A Simple Question and an Apologetic Response

A dear friend when I sent this pic to a group responded (mostly joking… but maybe as a defensive shield for a way of protecting his own beliefs?) in a way that allowed me – from my DRACONUM PERCH — to opine. Noting the title of the book, he said: “Is it?”

To which I texted back to the group:


QUOTE


It is a play off a 1966 Time magazine title, “God Is Dead.” Since then, the complexity of the simplest cell, DNA, the Big Bang, and the like, as well as conversions of well known atheist philosophers (Sartre, Camus, and Flew), and even the mainstream evolutionary field abandoning Natural Selection, have all but shown atheism to be dead. At least if you read, discuss important subjects (religion and politics), read history, and the like. Which is why my site is called “Religio-Political Talk.” For instance, the Big Bang is called that because the majority of atheists rejected it. Why? Because a beginning of the universe was a theistic position. And so, astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle used “big bang” in a derogatory sense, but the name stuck. And so from 1911 to this day, science has shown that Genesis aligns well with science. For instance, as one example:

  • “Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.” ~ Robert Wilson: is an American astronomer, 1978 Nobel laureate in physics, who with Arno Allan Penzias discovered in 1964 the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB)…. While working on a new type of antenna at Bell Labs in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, they found a source of noise in the atmosphere that they could not explain. After removing all potential sources of noise, including pigeon droppings on the antenna, the noise was finally identified as CMB, which served as important corroboration of the Big Bang theory. (Scientific and Anecdotal Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe)

And the “pope of atheism” changed his atheism based on the evidence from DNA:

  • “My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato’s Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads.” After chewing on his scientific worldview for more than five decades, Flew concluded, “A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.” Previously, in his central work, The Presumption of Atheism (1976), Flew argued that the “onus of proof [of God] must lie upon the theist.” However, at the age of 81, Flew shocked the world when he renounced his atheism because “the argument for Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.” (RNA/DNA < Information | Or, What “IS” Information)

But many, instead of testing their own beliefs, fill their mind and days with things that fill a void….

  • What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself. — Blaise Pascal (Pensees 10.148)

UNQUOTE TEXT


I added the Pascal quote to bring home the idea that knowing every stat about a particular player, team, or sport MAY not be — in the end — as important as bringing home the “bacon” to a life well lived. Aristotle said any animal can exercise practical reason in determining what to do to survive, but can an animal reason theoretically? Aristotle says no and that is what separates human beings from animals. To me — sports is a way to survive mundaneness. Deeper thinking about worldviews is worthy of higher order thinking, and add to the quality of a “life well lived.”

A “coherent worldview must be able to satisfactorily answer IN THE LEAST these four questions: that of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.” It is never to late to expand one’s knowledge in these matter.

  • “A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our well being.” — James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), 122.