Theodicy

An Atheist Response Turns Into Evidence of God | Fazale Rana

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted September 2013; updated June 2021)

My title, “An Atheist Response Turns Into Evidence of God,” is worded that way because if the evidence used against God is said to be proof against His existence… and later it is shown that such evidence actually support the God hypothesis, it doesn’t cease being evidence, it just changes columns (or can be in both). Much to the skeptics chagrin. (In other words, “natural evil” turns out not to be so evil.)

First order of business: God Talk

Mind you, these are consequences of a fallen world, i.e., things that must happen via entropy in order for life to continue when not sustained directly — like before the fall. One commentator put it thus:

  • The question then becomes how do we know if a particular natural disaster is directly from God. The answer is simple. We don’t know. What we do know is that the ratio of the very small number of God-announced natural disasters compared to the total number of naturally occurring natural disasters is very, very small. So we can safely assume that a natural disaster is probably just that, a naturally occurring phenomena that happens because we live in a fallen world [….] So let’s stop blaming God for something that He didn’t directly cause…. (DAVE MAYNARD)

However, as an aside, “fullness of history” itself is known by God alone, so verses like this make known a great mystery that all of it bends to the “arch of God,” if you will:

  • He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He planned in Him for the administration [dispensation] of the days of fulfillment [of times]—to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him. (Ephesians 1:9-10)

To support the idea of Mr. Maynard, here is the final paragraph of a decent short dealing with the Sovereignty of God:

  • While Christian thinkers often have used speculative methods in an attempt to explain the interplay of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, finite creatures likely will never fully understand this mystery. Yet believers can live in the full confidence that God is in control and that the Lord of the universe always does what is right (Genesis 18:25b).

Hurricanes

Another example is that hurricanes help to regulate the earths temperature, and cause “sea deserts” to bloom… assisting in many ways earth’s climate:

  • “Some parts of the ocean are like deserts, because there isn’t enough food for many plants to grow. A hurricane’s high winds stir up the ocean waters and help bring nutrients and phytoplankton to the surface, where they get more sunlight, allowing the plants to bloom,” Babin said. (NASA | NASA)

OXYGEN

Why are these “blooms” important, you ask? Well, the blooms produces most of the worlds oxygen, one old article I noted said 90% — but in fact it is closer to 50% (NATGEO says %50… still, that’s the lions share!), and revitalizes what is known as “Dead Zones” in the ocean. Which bring life in “blooms” to the ocean which feed its inhabitants. To wit:

In the process of photosynthesis, phytoplankton release oxygen into the water. Half of the world’s oxygen is produced via phytoplankton photosynthesis. The other half is produced via photosynthesis on land by trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants.

DEAD ZONES

To support the above, via TAMPA BAY TIMES:

….“Most certainly,” says Steve DiMarco, a Texas A&M University oceanography professor who for 16 years has studied the Gulf of Mexico, which has a “dead zone” where oxygen-depleted water can kill marine life.

In early July, most of the Texas-Louisiana shelf from Freeport, Texas, to the Mississippi River Delta was hypoxic – meaning the salt water has lost large amounts of oxygen. Later in July, Hurricane Dolly disrupted the dead zone and re-oxygenated the shallow waters south of Louisiana and the entire shelf off Texas. Oxygen levels started to drop again within days after the storm.

In early August, Hurricane Eduard re-oxygenated the Louisiana shelf, but by mid-August oxygen concentrations dropped to hypoxic levels.

And guess what?

Hurricane Ike re-oxygenated the shelf when it made landfall Sept. 12 in Texas. The latest data collected in October showed oxygen concentrations nearly all at normal levels, DiMarco said….

For even more examples, head over to WINTERY KNIGHT and his post on the matter, “Why does God allow so much natural evil from phenomena like earthquakes?” For example, plate-tectonics and earthquakes are turning out to be an observed necessity for life to exist (as Fazale was mentioning):

EARTHQUAKES

…New research provides yet another component that appears fine-tuned for life. In a letter in the September 27, 2007 issue of Nature together with a corresponding news release from the University of Bonn, Arno Rohrbach and his colleagues have discussed another mechanism similar to the carbonate-silicate cycle. It also depends on plate tectonics but, in this case, the mechanism controls the amount of oxygen on the surface of the Earth.

Oxygen becomes bound up in various oxides which are then drawn into the Earth’s interior, where various processes result in its being incorporated into an exotic mineral called majorite. The results reported in this letter established that majorite functions as a kind of “reservoir” for oxygen, and when the majorite ascends nearer to the surface of the Earth it breaks down and releases its oxygen. Some of this oxygen also binds with hydrogen released from the interior of the Earth to form water. The authors have referred to the whole process as an “oxygen elevator.”

They go on to say that “without the ‘oxygen elevator’ in its mantle the Earth would probably be a barren planet hostile to life. According to our findings, planets below a certain size hardly have any chance of forming a stable atmosphere with a high water content.”

This research confirms the existence of one more finely tuned mechanism that depends on plate tectonics and contributes to an environment that can support life. It also gives humans one more reason to be appreciative rather than dismayed when we experience an earthquake that breaks some precious possessions beyond repair.

…read more..

In other words, the skeptic should be THANKING God for the environment that allows life. The gift of life and the opportunity to know and have a relationship with your Creator is a miracle! And is why God is a jealous God and burns with righteous anger at the rejection of giving Him alms — instead the non-regenerate use even their breath to curse Him.

C.S. Lewis:

If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong? And for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling “whatever you say and however clever your arguments are, isn’t it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power? Aren’t all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious?” But then that threw me back into another difficulty.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist — in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless — I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality — namely my idea of justice — was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1952), 38-39.

Prager Discusses Evil and Hysteria

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager reads from a NEW YORK TIMES article, “Talking Apocalypse With My Son” — this article shows the hysteria of the Left. Prager also plays some audio (I add the video) of Donny Deutsch on the Morning Joe Show on MSNBC.

NEWSBUSTERS transcript:

DEUTSCH: I think there’s a word we have to start to use with Donald Trump in addition to all of the crazy talk we have right now. I just — if you take Charlottesville and his, his blessing and, and love of or kinship with understanding there are nice Nazis out there, if we take his, uh, implied support of a pedophile, and now if we take this a-, additional very clear racist thing—he is an evil man. You know, we don’t talk about that a lot. We talk about he’s insane and he’s crazy and he’s this. That’s evil. You know, I, I — thi-, this is just a [sic] evil, evil man. And to me, the kill shot in that quote was Norway.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: You know, after that, it was — if in any way you could twist that racist statement, but then you add in: But let’s let the white guys in. And by the way, when I say white, Norway, you — let’s let the Aryans in. You know what I mean? You couldn’t get any whiter than Nor- — it wasn’t like: Let’s let some more British in. Let’s let the Norwegians in, you know.

HEILEMANN: It’s like, it’s like upper Caucasians.

DEUTSCH: Yeah, you know. And, and, so, but — we’re talking now — our president is not only racist, is not only stupid, is not only imbalanced, he’s evil.

And here is part of the NEW YORK TIMES article Prager was reading from throughout the audio:

I had forgotten what it was like to live daily with terror until my 26-year-old son started sending me existential texts. “Are we living in a PCP-laced version of the Cold War era?” Sam asked me recently, in the wake of another mine-is-bigger-than-yours debate between President Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un —the exchange followed by the Hawaiian missile attack that wasn’t.

“Literally with every passing day I get A) less worried about paying my student loans and B) more serious about buying a grill guard for the car he continued.

Why a grill guard? I had to ask. To be ready to drive through the police state’s police barricades, he explained. Such is the status of our mother-son discourse in the Trump era.

Our Obama years were far less apocalyptic. Sam and I talked about his fluctuating college grades, Scions versus Hondas and why he still refused to revisit the restaurant where he worked as a busboy at 15. We had political discussions, but they mostly served as Good Parenting Payoffs, since we were usually on the same side of most issues.

Now my historically sunny son has a pretty dark vision of things. “Every day something enrages me … Love Trumps Hate? Like, where?” he asked me the other day. Sam has worked in public health since high school, and so has tried his best to mitigate the inequities and inequalities that have been spreading like poison ivy for most of his life. Mr. Trump’s campaign rhetoric disturbed him; his victory left him disgusted.

As a mother who prides herself on possessing a skeptical but unshakable patriotism, this has been hard to take. Sure, I can chalk up some of Sam’s cynicism to youthful hyperbole, but at this point — Mr. Kim coupled with the imminent destruction of the Affordable Care Act, DACA kids’ uncertain futures, tax “reform” that will cost us — I can’t counter without sounding like someone who has lost her marbles. “This, too, will pass” sounds pretty weak when I’m texting Sam the location of his parents’ wills.

[….]

Fortunately, it wasn’t, and my fears faded. Yes, the first and second World Trade Center attacks revived my paranoia. But despite George W. Bush’s zombielike reading of “The Pet Goat” to elementary-school children while the towers burned, I held on to the belief that even if the president was lost, his associates and various government agencies were not. This was a little self-deceptive — the Sept. 11 hijackers had been on watchlists, as I recall — but we still managed to avoid any more catastrophes on our shores.

But now we have a president who baits foreign leaders who share his propensity for brinkmanship, and I have a son who doesn’t really believe in the future — not just his own, but that of his country. He doesn’t see a community of people who can put aside their differences fora greater good, and he doesn’t see anyone on the horizon who can allay his fears, even me. I got nothin’.

Logical Consequences of Atheism (e.g., Silly Syllogisms) [Updated a Tad]

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is a thoughtful challenge by someone a friend is in conversation with:

I’ll jump into this message by addressing the assertion that suffering is related to sin. I understand that this is what the Bible says, and during the infancy of the human species, when religion was our first attempt at making sense of the world, it might have made sense to attribute suffering to violating the will of a god. However, to make such an assertion in 2016 seems rather ridiculous. Nine million children die every year before they reach 5 years old. Remember that tsunami in 2004 that killed 250,000 people? Imagine one of those every ten days, only killing children under the age of five. We’re talking about a thousand dead children per hour, or about 17 every minute. This means that before you reach the end of this paragraph, some few children will likely have died in terror and agony somewhere in the world. The parents of these children almost certainly believe in God, and are praying at this very moment for their children to be spared. You and I both know that these prayers will go unanswered. The classic position taken by nonbelievers is that any god who would allow children by the millions to suffer and die in this way, and their parents to suffer and grieve in this way, either can do nothing to help them, or doesn’t care to. This conception of a deity is therefore either evil or impotent.

The very first thing that pops into my mind is the idea Dr. Clouser pulls from many positions taken by people who profess to “think well,”

The program of rejecting logic in order to accept mutually contradictory beliefs is not, however, just a harmless, whimsical hope that somehow logically incompatible beliefs can both be true…it results in nothing less than the destruction of any and every concept we could possess. Even the concept of rejecting the law of non-contradiction depends on assuming and using that law, since without it the concept of rejecting it could neither be thought nor stated.

Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2005), 178.

(More can be see in this regard in my intro chapter to my book, here)

We will venture into how this challenge is void of “thoughtfulness” — which is why I italicized this word in the first sentence at the top of this post. The main laws of logic will show that if the skeptics viewpoint is “true,” then “truth” does not exist. But I digress ingress.

…continuing…

In the challengers paragraph we find him inferring the classically and oft used syllogism that follows:

  • Premise 1: God is all-good (omnibenevolent)
  • Premise 2: God is all-powerful (omnipotent)
  • Premise 3: Suffering and evil exist
  • Conclusion: An all-good, all-powerful God could not exist since there is so much suffering and evil in the world. If he did, he would eradicate this evil.

However, not many atheists use this any longer since the excellent work of Alvin Plantinga in his book, God, Freedom, and Evil. This syllogism changes a bit and looks like this:

  • An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God created the world.
  • God creates a world containing evil and has a good reason for doing so.
  • Therefore, the world contains evil.

Ronald Nash comments further, and a larger excerpt can be found in my detailing Greg Gutfeld’s agnosticism:

Numbers 1 and 2 taken together do, of course, entail 3. Therefore, the propositions from our original theistic set that now make up 1 are logically consistent with the existence of evil. The only relevant question regarding 2 is whether it is possibly true. Obviously it is since it is not logically false. Therefore, the theistic set is logically consistent from which follows the impossibility of anyone’s ever demonstrating that it is not.

Ronald Nash, Faith & Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), 189.

So we see that by using logic found in philosophical principles that the challenger alluded to, especially in his last sentence, saying “This conception of a deity is therefore either evil or impotent,” that the challenge is defeated.

Not only that however, is, HOW does the challenger come to a conclusion that he can judge something to be wrong, outside of his personal opinion that is. In other words, he is saying that an action or inaction constitutes evil. He uses this moral presupposition bound up in “evil” to insert into a syllogistic formula to disprove God (at least God in the Judeo-Christian sense… for “evil” being negative is absent from every other religious viewpoint).

He, the challenger, is saying that I, that my neighbor, someone in Bangledesh, or Papua New Guinea [etc.] should see this formula, understand what “evil” action or inaction is, and agree with him. He is – in other words – inserting an absolute principle in the formulation. This is where I want to challenge such an idea.

CS Lewis once reflected on himself doing the same thing as an atheist when he said:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too–for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist–in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality–namely my idea of justice–was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1952), 38-39.

To further draw out this idea, Ravi Zacharias responded to a questioner at Harvard where a moral principle was inserted into the premise of the question:

You see… when an absolute is brought into the equation, the challenger ceases being an atheist or skeptic. UNLESS they pause and explain to others why they should accept what they consider to be an “evil” act. ~These presuppositions also assume a goal or end to life, inserting meaning and purpose that the skeptic EXPECTS others to see and agree with.~ Let us see a little about what atheists consider to be “evil.” Again, these are people bringing their worldview to their logical ends (for references, see, 26 Brutally Honest Atheist Quotes Worth A Read):

  • “When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is not self—evident. . . Christianity is a system.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
  • “…to say that something is wrong because… it is forbidden by God, is… perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong… even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable….” “The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone.” ~ Richard Taylor
  • “There is no objective moral standard. We are responsible for our own actions….” | “The hard answer is it [moral decisions] is a matter of opinion.” ~ David Silverman
  • “There is no purpose to life, and we should not want there to be a purpose to life because if there was that would cheapen life.” ~ Dan Barker

Here is my “AFTERTHOUGHT” to two examples proffered by myself in regards to a meme floating around the internet:

AFTERTHOUGHT

Just as an afterthought. A skeptic who rejects God and accepts naturalism cannot say rape is wrong like the theist can say this:

RAPE:

  • THEISM: evil, wrong at all times and places in the universe — absolutely;
  • ATHEISM: taboo, it was used in our species in the past for the survival of the fittest, and is thus a vestige of evolutionary progress… and so may once again become a tool for survival — it is in every corner of nature;
  • PANTHEISM: illusion, all morals and ethical actions and positions are actually an illusion (Hinduism – maya; Buddhism – sunyata). In order to reach some state of Nirvana one must retract from this world in their thinking on moral matters, such as love and hate, good and bad. Not only that, but often times the person being raped has built up bad karma and thus is the main driver for his or her state of affairs (thus, in one sense it is “right” that rape happens).
[….]

In other words they have to BORROW FROM ethics the worldview that they are trying to disprove (again referencing CS Lewis and Ravi Zacharias’ work above).

For more on this, see my post noting many more atheist/evolutionary (philosophical naturalism) positions followed to their logical conclusions here:

Here we see the logical consequences of the “God Is Dead” movement and Nietzsche’s prophecy concerning the outcome:

Nihilism can take more than one form. There is, for instance, passive nihilism, a pessimistic acquiescence in the absence of values and in the purposelessness of existence. But there is also active nihilism which seeks to destroy that in which it no longer believes. And Nietzsche prophesies the advent of an active nihilism, showing itself in world-shaking ideological wars. “There will be wars such as there have never been on earth before. Only from my time on will there be on earth politics on the grand scale.

The advent of nihilism is in Nietzsche’s opinion inevitable. And it will mean the final overthrow of the decadent Christian civilization of Europe. At the same time it will clear the way for a new dawn, for the transvaluation of values, for the emergence of a higher type of man. For this reason “this most gruesome of all guests”, who stands at the door, is to be welcomed.

Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy, Volume VII (New York, NY: Image Books, 1994), 405-405.

And so, the Twentieth Century was indeed the bloodiest ever. In fact, non-God [atheistic] governments killed more people in 100-years than all religion did the previous nineteen. See my “Religious Wars” post for more.

Again, even truth is called into question, as the many quotes in the above link show, if God is extant from our discussion about reality.

“If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents – the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts — i.e. of Materialism and — are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.”

C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 52–53.

Do you see? If atheism is true, then these absolute statements entwined in these skeptical position vanish. In fact, “consciousness” is a problem for this discussion:

Atheist Daniel Dennett, for example, asserts that consciousness is an illusion. (One wonders if Dennett was conscious when he said that!) His claim is not only superstitious, it’s logically indefensible. In order to detect an illusion, you’d have to be able to see what’s real. Just like you need to wake up to know that a dream is only a dream, Daniel Dennett would need to wake up with some kind of superconsciousness to know that the ordinary consciousness the rest of us mortals have is just an illusion. In other words, he’d have to be someone like God in order to know that.

Dennett’s assertion that consciousness is an illusion is not the result of an unbiased evaluation of the evidence. Indeed, there is no such thing as “unbiased evaluation” in a materialist world because the laws of physics determine everything anyone thinks, including everything Dennett thinks. Dennett is just assuming the ideology of materialism is true and applying its implications to consciousness. In doing so, he makes the same mistake we’ve seen so many other atheists make. He is exempting himself from his own theory. Dennett says consciousness is an illusion, but he treats his own consciousness as not an illusion. He certainly doesn’t think the ideas in his book are an illusion. He acts like he’s really telling the truth about reality.

When atheists have to call common sense “an illusion” and make self-defeating assertions to defend atheism, then no one should call the atheistic worldview “reasonable.” Superstitious is much more accurate.

Frank Turek, Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2014), 46-47.

These are meta-narratives just assumed by the skeptic with no regard to how they arrived there. I liken it to an analogy of driving a car. The atheist thinks he has gotten in his car, backed out of the drive-way, and is a few turns into his trip to the market of reason. I am merely pointing out that the car is not starting when the key is turned. One may wish to go through another post of mine entitled, “Is Evil Proof Against God? Where Does It Come From?“

Remember, always ask yourself if the question or challenge is a proper one to begin with…

Mortimer J. Adler rightly points out that while many Christians are quick in responding to the conclusions in an argument often times the Christian is unaware that the point of departure is not in the conclusion, but in the starting premise, the foundational assumptions.

Norman L. Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakable Foundations: Contemporary Answers to Crucial Questions About the Christian Faith (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2001), 20-21.

Classic Syllogism – Simple Change

This is how it is often presented:

★ If God is all-powerful, He can prevent evil.
★ If God is good, He would want to prevent evil.
★ Evil exists.
★ Therefore, there is no God. (Or: God is either not all-powerful, or He is not good.)

All that is really being done is this simple change, and it is sound:

★ If God is all-powerful, He can prevent evil.
★ If God is good, He would want to prevent evil.
★ Evil exists.
★ Therefore, the world contains evil.

The conclusion that the world contains evil has no explanatory power on why it does or even if this impacts the existence of God in any way.

Actor Stephen Fry’s “Evil God” Video Critiqued (Re-Edited)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Firstly, the original video from William Lane Craig | Reasonable Faith should be the place to comment and thank Dr. Craig for his [body] of work… not my video edit (which I explain a bit below).

For more clear thinking like this from Dr. William Lane Craig, see his site: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/

I changed a couple things from the original video (https://youtu.be/XG35_ZJP0BM).

FIRST I knocked the opening intro volume down some DBs… people like me that may be up late watching this stuff while my wife is asleep in the next room and then have this *BLARE* creates bad blood between husband and wife. (Fellas’ you know what I am talking about… can you give me an “AMEN!”)

The audio from Fry’s video used was horrible… like they were recording the sound from the laptop, fixed that with the inclusion of the video of Stephen Fry’s interview — something that offers a better visualization of what Dr. Craig and Kevin Harris are viewing for audience inclusion and clarity.

Responding to the “Angry, Immoral God” – Objection

Published by Papa Giorgio

How would you respond to the following quote: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion). In this video, filmed at a Fearless Faith Seminar, Frank Turek and J. Warner Wallace respond to this common objection. If you would like to bring a Fearless Faith seminar to your community, visit http://crossexamined.org/fearless-faith-seminars/

Ravi Zacharias Challenges the Challenger

Published by Papa Giorgio

Mortimer J. Adler rightly points out that while many Christians are quick in responding to the conclusions in an argument often times the Christian is unaware that the point of departure is not in the conclusion, but in the starting premise, the foundational assumptions.

Norman L. Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakable Foundations: Contemporary Answers to Crucial Questions About the Christian Faith (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2001), 20-21.

(One may wish as well to peruse the posts with Greg Bahnsen’s audio included.) Below are two short audio examples of Ravi Zacharias “questioning the questioner,” the first is a recounting of conversation, whereas the second is a challenge proferred by a student and is Ravi at his best!

This second audio is of a student asking Ravi Zacharias about God condemning people [atheists] to hell and the moral implications of this. This Q&A occurred after a presentation Ravi gave at Harvard University (the entire presentation is worth the purchase), and is now one of his most well-known responses in the apologetic sub-culture.

Enjoy this short response by Mr. Zacharias, it is him at his best.

I am including some remarks from an earlier version of the above audio from my YouTube. Someone makes the following statement:

  • Polish parlor trick showman. Why do people still fall for his nonsense. BTW. There is no evidence for gods, none. Ravi is merely lying and creating logical fallacy.

To which another commentator responds:

Actually he is very articulately (yet indirectly) pointing to the presence of “argumentum ad ignorantium” in the debate over atheism/theism. Faith is a logical fallacy on the terms of atheism, as atheism is a logical fallacy on the terms of the physical universe being unable to explain its origin. All leading atheists and Religious believers/scholars accept these boundaries. His answer begins with his explanation of the self-destructive nature of the question as given from its source (being an atheist)… it self-destructs because the question giver already doesn’t subscribe to the moral law as bound to the moral law giver who is the subject of the question. The question giver rejects the evidence that the believer accepts. And the believer can only point to evidence that the atheist rejects.

Conversations with Lemmings: Did God “Create” Evil (Isaiah 45:7)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I won’t get into the long back-and-forth that preceded this exchange. As much as I am confident it shows my own close attention to giants of thinkers that p[receded me as well as the clarity of the theistic position and the inherent implausibility and self-refuting nature of atheism… you can go to the discussion yourself and decide (you would have to be on FaceBook and “like” the group this took place in for the link to work).

Here Daniel said the following:

God being all powerful could have just as easily not created evil and permitted us free will. I am not able to imagine that which is impossible yet I still possess free will. Evil could have just as easy been one of the things I can not comprehend. Your argument is incredibly flawed.

[….]

Notice how I put came to be in “”. It’s simply referring to him being perfect from the get go from the beginning to forever. Never changing perfectly complete in every aspect. Never in need of anything.

I’m talking perfection not your flimsy anthropomorphic idea.

To which I respond in part:

He didn’t create evil. And in a previous post elsewhere you mentioned God coming into existence. You really should study the classical view of God (from Grecian times to ours). Maybe something like (I am struggling for something basic for you, because you seem not to be lifting with your legs on what I put down), Philosophy for Dummies, by Tom Morris. And, Christianity For Dummies, by Richard Wagner and Kurt Warner. [I didn’t mention this in the conversation, but the best intro to the topic of basic Christian beliefs is a book by theologian Wayne Grudem tiled “Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith“]

Because you say stuff that paints a giant straw-man and this interferes with your conclusion.

  • Mortimer J. Adler rightly points out that while many Christians are quick in responding to the conclusions in an argument often times the Christian is unaware that the point of departure is not in the conclusion, but in the starting premise, the foundational assumptions.

Norman L. Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakeable Foundations: Contemporary Answers to Crucial Questions About the Christian Faith (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2001), 20-21.

Daniel retorted with…

Again you are wrong. Hold on I’ll be back with the verse….Isaiah 45.7

  • I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

This verse, ISAIAH 45:7 — for context — reads:

  • I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things. (ESV)
  • I form light and create darkness, I make success and create disaster; I, Yahweh, do all these things. (HCSB)
  • The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these. (NASB)
  • I form light and create darkness, I make harmonies and create discords. I, God, do all these things. (The Message)

Here is the Hebrew:

Isaiah 45-7 -- interlinear 690

(Click to enlarge)

Note that Daniel used the KJV, whereas most versions since 1611 translate this word/thought (“and create evil“) better due to communication and modern access to many more manuscripts. Really, the context of the preceding verses should be included… you can read it here. I reference a previous discussion of this person [probably young man] coming at any ancient text with some parameters. He made it clear that his viewpoint is the only one that mattered (implicitly at least).

I responded

I will respond to the verse… it will offer you a great opportunity to be a literary critic… but first, here is a section from Philosophy for Dummies:

ROBOTS AND COSMIC PUPPETRY: THE SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGE TO FREEDOM

Since at least the time of Sir Isaac Newton, scientists and philosophers impressed by the march of science have offered a picture of human behavior that is not promising for a belief in freedom. All nature is viewed by them as one huge mechanism, with human beings serving as just parts of that giant machine. On this view, we live and think in accordance with the same laws and causes that move all other physical components of the universal mechanism.

According to these thinkers, everything that happens in nature has a cause. Suppose then that an event occurs, which, in context, is clearly a human action of the sort that we would normally call free. As an occurrence in this universe, it has a cause. But then that cause, in turn, has a cause. And that cause in turn has a cause, and so on, and so on [remember, reductionism].

  • “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player” ~ Albert Einstein.

As a result of this scientific world view, we get the following picture:

  • Natural conditions outside our control…
  • cause…
  • Inner bodily and brain states,
  • which cause…
  • mental and physical actions

But if this is true, then you are, ultimately, just a conduit or pipeline for chains of natural causation that reach far back into the past before your birth and continue far forward into the future after your death. You are not an originating cause of anything [this includes brain activity of all degrees, that is, love, pain, etc.). Nothing you ever do is due to your choices or thoughts alone. You are a puppet of nature. You are no more than a robot programmed by an unfeeling cosmos.

Psychologists talk about heredity and environment as responsible for everything you do. But then if they are, you aren’t. Does it follow that you can then do as you please, irresponsibly? Not at all. It only follows that you will do as nature and nurture please. But then, nature on this picture turns out to be just an illusory veil over a heartless, uncaring nature. You have what nature gives you. Nothing more, nothing less.

Where is human freedom in this picture? It doesn’t exist. It is one of our chief illusions. The natural belief in free will is just a monstrous falsehood. But we should not feel bad about holding on to this illusion until science corrects us. We can’t have helped it.

This reasoning is called The Challenge of Scientific Determinism. According to determinists, we are determined in every respect to do everything that we ever do.

This again is a serious challenge to human freedom. It is the reason that the early scientist Pierre Laplace (1749-1827) once said that if you could give a super-genius a total description of the universe at any given point in time, that being would be able to predict with certainty everything that would ever happen in the future relative to that moment, and retrodict with certainty anything that had ever happened in any moment before that described state. Nature, he believed, was that perfect machine. And we human beings were just cogs in the machine, deluded in our beliefs that we are free.

(Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies, 133-134)

Previously I noted his view of Consciousness was ill-placed:

What merit would attach to moral virtue if the acts that form such habitual tendencies and dispositions were not acts of free choice on the part of the individual who was in the process of acquiring moral virtue? Persons of vicious moral character would have their characters formed in a manner no different from the way in which the character of a morally virtuous person was formed—by acts entirely determined, and that could not have been otherwise by freedom of choice.

Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1985), 154.

At any rate, here is my response to Daniel’s verse he quoted most-probably from an atheist website:

A historian and critic of ancient literature would ask the following questions:

  • Who was the writer?
  • To whom were they writing?
  • Is the choice of words, wording, or word order significant in this particular passage?
  • What is the cultural, historical context?
  • What was the author’s original intended meaning?
  • How did the author’s contemporaries understand him?
  • Why did he say it that way?

By doing this one shows a maturity level past taking a verse out of context. And again, you would want to give the benefit of doubt to the document [Aristotle and our court system] with the following:

1) Rule of Definition: Define the term or words being considered and then adhere to the defined meanings.
2) Rule of Usage: Don’t add meaning to established words and terms. Ask what was the common usage in the culture at that time period.
3) Rule of Context: Avoid using words out of context. Context must define terms and how words are used.
4) Rule of Historical background: Don’t separate interpretation from historical investigation.
5) Rule of Logic: Be certain that words as interpreted agree with the overall premise.
6) Rule of Precedent: Use the known and commonly accepted meanings of words, not obscure meanings for which there is no precedent.
7) Rule of Unity: Even though many documents may be used there must be a general unity among them.
8) Rule of Inference: Base conclusions on what is already known and proven or can be reasonably implied from all known facts.

[I discuss the above more in-depth here.]

So, for example, I will post one thought on the matter by CARM:

  • “We can see that the Bible teaches that God is pure and does not approve of evil and that the word, rah (evil), in Hebrew can mean many things and that contextually the verse is speaking of calamity and distress. Therefore, God does not create evil in the moral sense but in the sense of disaster or calamity.”

And from Come Reason Ministries:

  • “Evil means natural, and not moral evil, or sin. Herderson says ‘affliction, adversity’; Calvin, ‘afflictions, wars, and other adverse occurrences.’ Whichever interpretation may be adopted, none of the above texts, nor any others when properly explained, sanction the revolting proposition that God is the author of sin.”

Take hurricanes as an example. Hurricanes cause havoc, mayhem, and many times death and suffering. Yet, our planet would be dead without them (see my post where similar to you, arguments made against God end up being proof for Him.

So are you being thorough in your studies, knowing that which you refute? or are you being like the masses of uneducated voters/thinkers and just “willy nilly” taking stuff for granted and thinking you have a good argument?

Honorable mentions of resources on this verse:

Did God Create Evil – Does the Bible Say So? (Evidence for God):

Isaiah 45:7 contrasts opposites. Darkness is the opposite of light. However, evil is not the opposite of peace. The Hebrew word translated “peace” is shâlôm,2 which has many meanings, mostly related to the well being of individuals. Râ‛âh,3 the Hebrew word translated “evil” in the KJV often refers to adversity or calamity. There are two forms of the word. Strong’s H7451a most often refers to moral evil, whereas Strong’s H7451b (the form used here) most often refers to calamity or distress. Obviously, “calamity” is a better antonym of “peace” than “evil.”

Why does Isaiah 45:7 say that God created evil? (Got Questions?):

The context of Isaiah 45:7 makes it clear that something other than “bringing moral evil into existence” is in mind.

Here are a few commentaries on the verse[s]:

6. Comfort from Cyrus, God’s Anointed (Chap. 45)

45:1–6 The LORD calls Cyrus His “anointed” (the same word as “messiah” in Hebrew) because the Persian monarch was a prototype of the Messiah who would give final deliverance to His people. Jehovah promises to give him victory over nations, principally Babylon, to remove all hindrances to his conquests, and to hand over to him tremendous amounts of hidden riches in secret places. Still addressing Cyrus, the LORD speaks of Himself as the only true God, who calls Cyrus by name, who surnames him as anointed and shepherd (44:28), and who equips him for his mission. God does all this for the sake of His people, and so that the whole world may know that He alone is the LORD.

45:7 Verse 7 does not mean that God creates moral “evil,” as some have claimed, based on the King James Version and other early translations.

Delitzsch points out that the early “Christian” heretic Marcion, and the heretical Valentinians and other Gnostic sects, abused this text to teach that the God of the OT was “a different being from the God of the New.”

Addressing the problem of evil (including calamity, no doubt), Delitzsch continues, “Undoubtedly, evil as an act is not the direct working of God, but the spontaneous work of a creature endowed with freedom.”

  • William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments, ed. Arthur Farstad (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 972.

45:5–7 The Lord’s Witness to Cyrus

In the first stanza (45:5–6a) and from this center-stage position, the Lord continues to address Cyrus with the word I am the LORD. Though Cyrus does not know the Lord (cf. 45:4), the Lord knows Cyrus and equips him. I am using the word equips to refer to all of the ways in which the Lord has strengthened Cyrus (45:1–4). The goal of that equipping was to set the Judean exiles free (45:13). The equipping of Cyrus takes place so that they may know … that there is no one besides me (45:6). It is not clear who they might be. The NIV substitutes the word men, meaning people in general. But this is conjecture. The more likely antecedent for they would be Jacob-Israel (45:4). But why would the Lord’s equipping of Cyrus make it possible for Jacob-Israel to know that there is no one besides the Lord? The answer lies at the end of 45:1–13. Cyrus will permit Jerusalem to be rebuilt; Cyrus will set the Judean exiles free (45:13). Jacob-Israel will know that the Lord has delegated power to Cyrus but that it is the LORD’s power that needs to be reckoned with.

The phrase I am the LORD opened the first stanza and now it opens the second (45:6b–7). This is followed by parallel lines describing the Lord as

forming light and creating darkness,
making peace and creating distress. (45:7 AT)

These lines employ language from Genesis 1 and 2 (forming, creating, making). In the second line the Lord lays claim to making peace as well as creating distress (ra‘). The Hebrew noun ra‘ has a range of meanings (cf. evil, KJV; disaster, NIV; woe, NRSV; calamity, JB). It is a mistake to elaborate a theology of God as the creator of evil from this text (see “Creating Evil” in TLC below).

The main point in the witness to Cyrus in 45:5–7 is the Lord’s singularity (no one else) and his activity (doing all these things). God’s power may be seen in creation and in history. God’s sovereignty is over Cyrus; Cyrus does not control God.

  • Ivan D. Friesen, Isaiah, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottdale, PA; Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 2009), 277.

45:5–7. Again the uniqueness of God is stressed. The fact that there is no other is stated in verses 5–6, 14, 18, 21–22 (also see 43:11; 44:6; 46:9). In Cyrus’ day the Lord was not universally acknowledged, but eventually He will be (cf. Phil. 2:10–11). People will realize that all that happens-light (life), darkness (death), prosperity, and disaster (not “evil” as in the KJV; cf. Amos 3:6)—comes from God. As the sovereign LORD of the universe He can do everything.

  • John A. Martin, “Isaiah,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 1100.

CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Here is a remarkable statement relative to the creation of the universe before all time. God says:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil, I the LORD do all these things [Isa. 45:7].

Zoroastrianism began in Persia. It teaches that Mazda is the god of light. God says He creates light, and that it is no god. The Persians were getting very close to the truth. Many have wondered why they worshiped one god in the midst of idolatry. Well, you must remember that they came in contact with the nation Israel, and Israel was a witness to the world. In Zoroastrianism darkness was Ahriman, the god of evil. God takes responsibility for creating the darkness also.

“And create evil”—the word evil does not mean wickedness in this instance, but rather “sorrow, difficulties, or tragedies”—those things which are the fruit of evil, the fruit of sin. This is the Old Testament way of saying, “The wages of sin is death …” (Rom. 6:23). If you indulge in sin, there will be a payday for it!

By the way, let me introduce something else at this point, since we are living in a day when it is said that good and evil are relative terms, that whatever you think is good, is good. The argument is put forth: The Bible says “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal” (Exod. 20:13, 15). But what is the Bible? Who should obey it? Or why should we listen to the God of the Bible?

The Lord has another very cogent argument. God says that if you indulge in sin, you will find that sin has its payday. It pays a full wage, by the way. This is what God is saying through Isaiah. God has so created the universe that when you break over the bounds that He has set, you don’t need a judge, a hangman’s noose, or an electric chair; God will take care of it.

He says, therefore, that He is the One who creates light and darkness. He is answering Zoroastrianism which worshiped the god of light. God says, “I want you to know that light is no god; I created it.

  • J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible Commentary: The Prophets (Isaiah 36-66), electronic ed., vol. 23 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991), 71–72.

ISAIAH 45:7—Is God the author of evil?

PROBLEM: According to this verse, God “creates good and evil” (KJV, cf. Jer. 18:11 and Lam. 3:38; Amos 3:6). But many other Scriptures inform us that God is not evil (1 John 1:5), cannot even look approvingly on evil (Hab. 1:13), and cannot even be tempted by evil (James 1:13).

SOLUTION: The Bible is clear that God is morally perfect (cf. Deut. 32:4; Matt. 5:48), and it is impossible for Him to sin (Heb. 6:18). At the same time, His absolute justice demands that He punish sin. This judgment takes both temporal and eternal forms (Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:11–15). In its temporal form, the execution of God’s justice is sometimes called “evil” because it seems to be evil to those undergoing it (cf. Heb. 12:11). However, the Hebrew word for evil (rā) used here does not always mean moral evil. Indeed, the context indicates that it should be translated, as the NKJV and other modern translations do, as “calamity.” Thus, God is properly said to be the author of “evil” in this sense, but not in the moral sense—at least not directly.

Further, there is an indirect sense in which God is the author of moral evil. God created moral beings with free choice, and free choice is the origin of moral evil in the universe. So, ultimately God is responsible for making moral creatures who are responsible for moral evil. God made evil possible by creating free creatures, but the free creatures made evil actual. Of course, the possibility of evil (i.e., free choice) is itself a good thing. So, God created only good things, one of which was the power of free choice, and moral creatures produced the evil. However, God is the author of a moral universe and in this indirect and ultimate sense is the author of the possibility of evil. Of course, God only permitted evil, but does not promote it, and He will ultimately produce a greater good through it (cf. Gen. 50:20; Rev. 21–22).

The relation of God and evil can be summarized this way:

GOD IS NOT THE AUTHOR OF EVIL
In the sense of sin
Moral evil
Perversity
Directly
Actuality of evil		 GOD IS THE AUTHOR OF EVIL
In the sense of calamity
Non-moral evil
Plagues
Indirectly
Possibility of evil
  • Norman L. Geisler and Thomas A. Howe, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1992), 271–272.

Numbers 31:15 ~ “Have You Allowed All the Women to Live?”

Published by Papa Giorgio

sisera Canaanites Bible Giordano

This is a bit of a convoluted rant from YouTube by a cult member (or at least, a supporter). My response will not be my own, but Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s response to the verse mentioned by this cult member.

…the teachings of the Bible? You mean where “God” instructs Moses and them to slaughter entire cities including babies(except the virgin women) and rape women…or where Jesus allows his enemies to capture and crucify him? Who are you trying to fool…thank goodness Fard Muhammad came to kill religion…if you are standing by the Bible as your moral base then you have no moral base to stand on….you would mutilate your son’s penis because your poison bible tells you to….the Father Allah was a greater God than Jesus…at the very least he didn’t go out like a punk like your boy did…the enemy of the planet right now is the global system of white domination…and this system oppresses everyone including so called white folks…you seriously lack understanding…the Father Allah was not anti white or pro black…

…your poison book is in every hotel room and it states in the old testament….. “Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. “Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded. “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.” ….om just trying to show you how ridiculous you look promoting such a filthy poisonous book and at the same time judging a cipher that was only founded to fix the mess that european christians started…and now we gotta fix the mess in your video….Allah the chosen one, who left temple 7 in 1963 and borned the first 5 percenters was no racist and if he was a racist he problably would be alive today…its like you damed if you do and u damned if you don’t with yaw people…nothing pleases you except for mucus, pus and white blood cells…

This is with thanks to Moral Apologetics. Here is the text from the wonderful book, Did God Really Command Genocide?

Number 31:15: “Have You Allowed All the Women to Live?”

The third example Morriston cites to make his point is the defeat of Midian as recorded in Numbers 31. The Israelites fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man (v. 7). After the battle, however, Moses commanded Israel to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Morriston says Yahweh was angered by the fact that some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides, writing, “Not only must the Israelites be punished, but the Midianites must be punished for causing the Israelites to be punished.” God’s stated reasons, according to Morriston’s thinking, are inadequate.

But Morriston appears to have misread the text. First, consider his claim that the text explicitly states that God’s reason for commanding the killing of the Midianite women and boys was “spiritual infection” because “some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides.” There are several problems with this.

First is the fact that, in the text Morriston cites (Num. 31:17-18), God himself does not explicitly command Israel to kill all the Midianite women and boys. God’s command to Moses regarding the Midianites is actually recorded in Numbers 25:17-18 and 31:1-2. God explicitly commands Israel to respond to the Midianites’ spiritual subterfuge by fighting against the Midianites and defeating them. The reasons why Israel is to obey isn’t the spiritual infection of women as Morriston says, but rather the fact that Midian has been hostile toward and deceived Israel.

The Numbers 31 text does not explicitly attribute the command to kill the women and boys to God, but to Moses. Morriston acknowledges this, but suggests three reasons why this observation doesn’t come to much. (1) Moses is regularly characterized as being very close to Yahweh, faithfully obeying his instructions most of the time; (2) Yahweh expresses no disapproval of anything Moses does in this story; and (3) Yahweh himself is the principal instigator of the attack on Midian.

These responses, however, are inadequate. Consider the last point first. The fact that someone is the “principal instigator” of an attack doesn’t entail that he approves of every single action that takes place within the battle in question. Similarly with 2: the lack of explicit disapproval in the text does not entail approval. Morriston’s argument is an appeal to ignorance; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is not uncommon in biblical narratives for authors to describe sinful behavior without expressing explicit disapproval. In most cases, no doubt, the author expects the reader to know certain actions are right and wrong.

Finally, regarding 1, the fact that someone is portrayed in the text as close to God or faithful to him does not mean that every action he is recorded as doing is commanded or endorsed by God. Consider David, or Abraham.

A second instance of Morriston misreading the text is that not only does he attribute Moses’s reasons to God; he also misstates the reasons Moses does give in the context. The real issue is that the Midianite women had been following the devious advice of the pagan seer, Balaam, who had been explicitly commanded by God not to curse Israel. Balaam had led the Israelites into acting treacherously at Baal-Peor. This is the clearly stated issue (31:16). What occurs, when the background is taken into account, is not that some Israelites marry Midianite women, but rather these women use sex to seduce Israel into violating the terms of their covenant with God—an event that threatened Israel’s very national identity, calling, and destiny. This act was in fact deliberate.

So Morriston’s comments are far off the mark when he insists that the Midianites could not have been trying to harm the Israelites by inviting them to participate in the worship of a god in whom they obviously believed. The whole point of the exercise was to get God to curse Israel so that a military attack could be launched by Moab and Midian. The picture isn’t one of innocent Midianite brides, but acts tantamount to treason and treacherous double agents carrying on wicked subterfuge.

Note that the problem wasn’t God’s opposition to Israelites marrying Midianites per se. Indeed, Moses married Zipporah, a Midianite, and he received wise counsel from his father-in-law, Jethro, a Midianite priest.