5/4/14

From Gary... Heaven is __________




 Thought about Heaven lately? If not, then today provides you an opportunity to remedy the situation.  Honestly, people die and the most unexpected times, so why should you or I be any different?  If you look at the graphic and can't fill in the line with something, you are in trouble; for what could be more important than eternal life? Of the many answers that could be inserted, the following passage provides some options...

John, Chapter 14 (NASB)
Joh 14:1  "Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.
Joh 14:2  "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.
Joh 14:3  "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.
Joh 14:4  "And you know the way where I am going."
Joh 14:5  Thomas *said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?"
Joh 14:6  Jesus *said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
I know I have explained in previous posts that the "I am" in the enlarge verse above really means "I MYSELF am", but it is just one of those things that really is worth repeating, again and again!!!  I suppose that there are many heaven concepts in the passage, but to name a few:

1.  A place where God is..
2.  An answer to our faith...
3.  A dwelling place with God and Jesus...
4.  A place where truth, life and fellowship with God and Jesus are...

And never, ever forget that Heaven is very expensive- it cost the Son of God his life...


From Mark Copeland... The First Church Of Christ (Acts 2:42-47)

                          "THE BOOK OF ACTS"

                 The First Church Of Christ (2:42-47)

INTRODUCTION

1. During His ministry, Jesus said He would build His church - Mt 16:18

2. With the preaching of the first gospel sermon...
   a. Those that gladly received the Word were baptized - Ac 2:41
   b. They numbered 3000 souls - ibid.

[From our text (Ac 2:42-47) we learn that thus began the first church of
Jesus Christ, located in Jerusalem.  What was it like?  What should we be
like today?  Note first that they were...]

I. DEVOTED TO APOSTLES' DOCTRINE (Ac 2:42)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Jesus expected people to accept their teachings - Jn 13:20; Mt 28:20
      2. He gave the apostles the Holy Spirit to guide them - Jn 16:12-13
      3. Thus the apostles' word was to be received as the Word of God
         - 1Co 14:37; 1Th 2:13-14

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. Many churches today do not, allowing societal trends to
         supplant the Word
      2. We need to heed Christ and His apostles regarding this - Mt 15:8-9; 2Th 2:15

[If we are to be a true church of Christ, we must emulate the Jerusalem
church in its steadfastness to the apostles' doctrine.  Next we note that
they were...]

II. DEVOTED TO SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP (Ac 2:42)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Godly people have always delighted in "spiritual sharing" - Ps 122:1; Lk 22:14-16; 1Jn 1:3
      2. Sharing by assembling together is crucial to spiritual
         wellbeing - He 10:24-25

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. Many Christians today do not, allowing many things to hinder
         their assembling
      2. We need to set our priorities straight - cf. Mt 6:33; Lk10:41-42

[A true church will be made up of members who value the principle of
assembling and sharing in spiritual matters.  The first church of Christ
was also...]

III. DEVOTED TO BREAKING BREAD (Ac 2:42)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. The context would suggest this refers to the Lord's Supper,
         which is a type of fellowship for it is called a sharing, a 
         communion - 1Co 10:16
      2. Jesus Himself instituted the Supper, and was observed weekly 
         - 1Co 11:23-34; Ac 20:7

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. Sadly many churches do not, observing it monthly, quarterly,
         annually, or not at all
      2. Others allow many things to hinder their observance:  family,
         jobs, recreation

[But a true church of Christ will provide weekly opportunities for its
members to partake, and its members will make diligent effort to
participate.  Another aspect of a true church of Christ is being...]

IV. DEVOTED TO STEADFAST PRAYER (Ac 2:42)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Jesus taught His disciples to pray and not lose heart - Lk 11:1-4; 18:1-8
      2. He now serves as our High Priest, through whom we can pray 
         - He 4:14-16

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. We are taught to pray fervently, frequently - 1Th 5:17; Col 4:2
      2. Sadly, many churches and Christians are negligent in this
         important spiritual activity

[If we desire to be a true church of Christ, then let us be a people of
prayer!  As we continue in our text, we learn from the first church of
Christ that they were...]

V. DEVOTED TO BROTHERLY LOVE (Ac 2:44-46)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Demonstrated in our text, but also later - Ac 4:32-35
      2. Such love was a sign of true discipleship - Jn 13:34-35
      3. Other churches had similar love for their brethren - 1Co 16:15; 1Th 4:9-10

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. We are to love one another fervently - 1Pe 1:22
      2. In dire circumstances, would we be willing to emulate the
         early disciples? - cf. 1Jn 3:16-17

[While we may not face the same circumstances, we should prepare
ourselves should similar occasions arise.  ***  As we continue examining
the first church of Christ, we notice that they were...]

VI. DEVOTED TO DAILY SERVICE (Ac 2:46)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Note the phrase "continuing daily"
      2. They did not serve the Lord just one day a week
      3. Perhaps it was "daily service" that resulted in "daily
         additions" - cf. Ac 2:47; 5:42

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. Serving the Lord every day of the week?
      2. Including serving one another? - cf. He 3:12-14

[A true New Testament church will emulate the first church of Christ with
daily service among its members.  Consider also that the Jerusalem church
was...]

VII. DEVOTED TO PURPOSEFUL UNITY (Ac 2:46)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Note the phrase "with one accord"
      2. United in their worship, and in their concern - cf. Ac 4:32
      3. The sort of unity for which Jesus prayed - Jn 17:20-23

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. The unity the apostles worked diligently to maintain? - 1Co1:10; Ep 4:1-3; Php 2:1-2; 1Pe 3:8
      2. Oneness of mind, purpose, and work, with a joyful and humble
         attitude?

[A true church of Christ will work hard to fulfill the prayer of Christ
and maintain the unity of the Spirit.  Another observation about the
devotion of the first church of Christ...]

VIII. DEVOTED TO JOYFUL SIMPLICITY (Ac 2:46)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Note the phrase "with gladness and simplicity of heart"
      2. The word "simplicity" involves "humility associated with
         simplicity of life" - Louw Nida
      3. Likely reflecting their contentment with what they had - cf.
         1Ti 6:6-10

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. Having learned contentment like Paul had? - Php 4:11-12
      2. A contentment based on trust in God and willingness to share?
         - cf. 1Ti 6:17-19

[A true church of Christ will consist of members, whether rich or poor,
who go about their lives with joyful simplicity.  They will also go about
their lives like the first church of Christ, being...]

IX. DEVOTED TO PRAISING GOD (Ac 2:47)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Despite their difficulties, they lived their lives praising
         God
      2. Like the faithful saints under the Old Covenant - Ps 145:1-2;
         146:1-2; 147:1

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. Delighting in opportunities to praise God?
      2. Offering the sacrifice of praise continually? - cf. He 13:15

[A true church of Christ will be filled with people who love to praise
God, not grumbling or complaining.  Finally, we observe that the first
church of Christ was...]

X. DEVOTED TO PLEASING PEOPLE (Ac 2:47)

   A. REGARDING THEIR DEVOTION...
      1. Note the phrase "having favor with all the people"
      2. As the NLT puts it, "enjoying the goodwill of all the people"
      3. A consequence of following the example of their Lord - e.g.,
         Lk 2:52; Ro 14:17-19

   B. DO WE HAVE THIS DEVOTION...?
      1. Living lives that promotes goodwill from those who are lost?
      2. Lives that as far as depends on us are peaceful and blameless?
         - cf. Ro 12:17-21; 1Co 10:32-33; 1Ti 2:1-4; Php 2:14-15

CONCLUSION

1. With the first church of Christ, God has given us an example of what
   a true church of Christ should be like:  devoted to...
   a. Apostles' doctrine         f. Daily service
   b. Spiritual fellowship       g. Purposeful unity
   c. Breaking bread             h. Joyful simplicity
   d. Steadfast prayer           i. Praising God
   e. Brotherly love             j. The people

2. Too often, churches today are more like those described in the
   following poem...

                          "FACTS 19:71-72"
                     Every individual
                     Each with his own opinions.
                     Competing for his own possessions
                     Looks out for his own,
                     Assuming there are no needs.
                     And once a week
                     Going to their private church
                     (With an annual communion)
                     Each return to his castle,
                     Fellowshipping with his family
                     Over good "native" cooking
                     After a short silent "grace",
                     And glad to be away from everybody.
                     Occasionally there are
                     New faces at church,
                     And last year
                     Someone was saved.
                                    ~ Myron Augsburger

Brethren, may this never be true of us...!

*** Conclude first part here if lesson is presented in two parts
Executable Outlines, Copyright © Mark A. Copeland, 2012

From Bert Thompson, Ph.D. The Many Faces of Unbelief [Part I]



http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=101

The Many Faces of Unbelief [Part I]

by  Bert Thompson, Ph.D.

One of the most mind-numbing mysteries for those who believe in God is trying to understand the unbelief of those who do not. As one who writes and lectures often on the topics of apologetics and evidences, I frequently am asked the question: “What causes people not to believe in God?” Generally, the motive behind the question is not derogatory, but complimentary. That is to say, the querist really is asking: “Why is it that obviously intelligent people do not believe in God?”
Neither question is easy to answer because usually the person doing the asking wants a simple, quick, concise response. It is difficult for the inquirer to understand why people who are “obviously intelligent” refuse to believe in God. It has been my experience that rarely is there a single reason for unbelief, because rarely is there a single reason that can explain adequately why a person thinks, or acts, as he does.

THE “FREEDOM” OF UNBELIEF

Surely a part of the answer has to do with the fact that when God created humans, He endowed us with freedom of choice (often referred to as “personal volition” or “free moral agency”). This stands to reason, considering Who God is. The Bible describes Him as being, among other things, a God of love (1 John 4:8). Even a cursory survey of the Scriptures documents God’s desire that man, as the zenith of His creation, possess, and employ, the freedom of choice with which he has been endowed. The truth of the matter is that God did not create mankind as some kind of robot to serve Him slavishly without any personal choice in the matter.
For example, when Joshua—who had led the Israelite nation so faithfully for so long—realized that his days were numbered and his hours were few, he assembled the entirety of that nation before him and, in one of the most moving, impassioned pleas recorded within the pages of Holy Writ, admonished his charges to employ their personal volition in a proper fashion.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve Jehovah, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah (Joshua 24:15).
Joshua’s point could not have been any clearer. The Israelites, individually and collectively, had the ability, and yes, even the God-given right, to choose whether or not they wished to follow Jehovah. As the text continues, it indicates that on this particular occasion they chose correctly.
And the people answered and said, Far be it from us that we should forsake Jehovah, to serve other gods.... And Israel served Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, and had known all the work of Jehovah that he had wrought for Israel (Joshua 24:16,31).
Years later, however, the people of Israel—employing that same heaven-sent personal volition—freely chose to abandon their belief in, and obedience to, God. Judges 2:10-11 records:
[T]here arose another generation after them, that knew not Jehovah, nor yet the work which he had wrought for Israel. And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and served the Baalim.
Within the pages of the New Testament, the principle is the same. When Jesus condemned the self-righteousness of the Pharisees in John 5:39-40, He made this observation: “Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.” The Pharisees of New Testament times possessed the same freedom of choice that the Israelites of Old Testament times possessed. But while the Israelites to whom Joshua spoke chose at first to heed his plea and obey Jehovah, the Pharisees to whom Christ spoke chose to ignore His plea and to disobey God.
Two chapters later, when Jesus addressed the Jews in their own temple, the text indicates that they marveled at His teaching (John 7:15). But Jesus demurred, and said: “My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself ” (John 7:16-17). Jesus’ point to the devout temple Jews was no different than the one He had made earlier to the legalistic Pharisees. God has imbued mankind with the ability to choose. If a person wills, he can accept God and His teaching, but God never will force Himself on that person. As the apostle John brought the book of Revelation to a close, he wrote: “he that will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17). The operative phrase here, of course, is “he that will.”
But what of he that will not? Freedom is accompanied by responsibility. With freedom of choice comes the responsibility to think carefully, choose wisely, and act forcefully. Freedom of choice always works best when tempered with wisdom and good judgment. Thus, in every human activity the process of recognizing, believing, and properly utilizing truth is vitally important. Especially is this true in the spiritual realm. Jesus tried to impress this upon His generation when He said: “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). What we as humans so often fail to realize is that we are not involved in a search for truth because it is lost; we are involved in a search for truth because without it we are!
Some, however, have elected to employ their freedom of choice to ignore the truth regarding God’s existence and to disobey His Word. They are the spiritual descendants of the first-century Pharisees; they could come to a knowledge of the truth, but they will not. The simple fact of the matter is that we are responsible for what we choose to believe. Using the personal volition with which God has endowed us, we may choose freely to believe in Him, or we may choose just as freely to disbelieve. The choice is up to each individual. And once that individual has made up his mind to disbelieve, God will not deter him, as Paul made clear when he wrote his second epistle to the Thessalonians. In that letter, he spoke first of those who “received not the love of the truth” (2:10), and then went on to say that “for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:11).
What, exactly, was Paul suggesting? Was the apostle teaching that God purposely causes men to believe error? No, he was not. Paul’s point in this passage was that we may choose to accept something as the truth when, in fact, it is false. Because God has granted man personal volition, and because He has provided within the Bible the rules, regulations, and guidelines to govern that personal volition, He therefore will refrain from overriding man’s freedom of choice—even when that choice violates His law. God will not contravene man’s decisions, or interfere with the actions based on those decisions. The prophet Isaiah recorded God’s words on this subject many years before when he wrote:
Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations: I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did that which was evil in mine eyes, and chose that wherein I delighted not (Isaiah 66:3-4).
Concerning the people who refused to have God in their knowledge, and who exchanged truth for error, Paul repeatedly stated that “God gave them up” (Romans 1:24,26,28). In his commentary on the Thessalonian epistles, Raymond C. Kelcy addressed the fact that men often prefer the consequences of a certain belief system, and that as a result
God gives the man over to the belief of the lie which he prefers. In a sense it might be said that the means by which a person is deceived is God’s permissive agency—not God’s direct agency (1968, p. 157).
There is an exact parallel in the instance of the Pharaoh who sparred with Moses and Aaron over the release of the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage. When Moses and Aaron arrived at Pharaoh’s court as God’s ambassadors to demand the release of the enslaved Israelites, they told the pagan potentate: “Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go.’ ” Pharaoh’s response, preserved in Scripture for posterity, foreshadowed the attitude of millions of unbelievers who would imitate the militant monarch’s demeanor of disbelief throughout the course of human history: “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:1-2, emp. added).
Several times the biblical text records that it was God Who “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20,27; 11:10; 14:8). Are we to understand, therefore, that God caused Pharaoh’s stubborn attitude of disbelief? Certainly not. The simple fact of the matter is that God did not cause Pharaoh to harden his heart and disobey, but instead permitted the ruler’s actions. The Scriptures speak to this point when they acknowledge that Pharaoh himself “hardened his heart” (Exodus 8:15,32; 9:34-35). In their commentary on the Pentateuch, Keil and Delitzsch addressed Pharaoh’s hardness of heart, even after he witnessed the miraculous plagues sent by God.
After every one of these miracles, it is stated that Pharaoh’s heart was firm, or dull, i.e. insensible to the voice of God, and unaffected by the miracles performed before his eyes, and the judgments of God suspended over him and his kingdom.... Thus Pharaoh would not bend his self-will to the will of God, even after he had discerned the finger of God and the omnipotence of Jehovah in the plagues suspended over him and his nation; he would not withdraw his haughty refusal, notwithstanding the fact that he was obliged to acknowledge that it was sin against Jehovah. Looked at from this side, the hardening was a fruit of sin, a consequence of that self-will, high-mindedness, and pride which flow from sin, and a continuous and ever increasing abuse of that freedom of the will which is innate in man, and which involves the possibility of obstinate resistance to the word and chastisement of God even until death (1981, pp. 454,455, emp. added).
Pharaoh’s hard heart was not God’s doing, but his own. God’s permissive agency was involved, but not His direct agency. That is to say, He allowed Pharaoh to use (or abuse, as Keil and Delitzsch correctly noted) his freedom of will in a vain attempt to thwart God’s plans. Throughout history, God’s actions have been consistent in this regard. The psalmist wrote:
But my people hearkened not to my voice; and Israel would not hear me. So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart, that they might walk in their own counsels (Psalm 81:11-12).
Concerning the rebellious Israelites, Paul wrote in Romans 11:8 (quoting from Isaiah 29:10): “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear.” In every generation, God has granted mankind the freedom of self-determination to be blind to His existence, and in so doing to believe a lie. E.M. Zerr put it well when he said:
The Bible in no place teaches that God ever forces a man to sin, then punishes him for the wrong-doing. Neither does He compel man against his will to do right, but has always offered him proper inducements for righteous conduct, then left it to his own responsibility to decide what he will do about it (1952, 5:159).
The same principles operate even today, almost two thousand years later. If an acknowledgment of God’s existence and obedience to His Word make us free (John 8:32), surely, then, disbelief and disobedience make us captives of one sort or another. Set adrift in a vast sea of confusing and contradictory world views, we find ourselves susceptible to every ill-conceived plan, deceptive scheme, and false concept that the winds of change may blow our way. We become captives to error because we have abandoned the one moral compass—the existence of God—that possesses the ability to show us the way, and thereby to set us free.
Throughout history, unbelief has worn many masks. But behind each is a Pharaoh-like spirit of rebellion that—in angry defiance—raises a clenched fist to God in a display of unrepentant determination not to believe in Him. An examination of the faces, and causes, of unbelief is both informative and instructive.

THE MANY FACES OF UNBELIEF

Atheism

In his book, If There’s a God, Why Are There Atheists?, R.C. Sproul noted in regard to theism that “literally, the word means ‘Godism,’ that is belief in God. It is derived from theos, the Greek word for God” (1978, p. 16). Chief among unbelievers, then, would be the atheist (a, without; theos, God)—the person who affirms that there is no God. As Sproul went on to observe: “Atheism involves the rejection of any form of theism. To be an atheist is to disavow belief in any kind of god or gods” (p. 18). In his book, Intellectuals Don’t Need God, Alister McGrath noted:
The atheist is prepared to concede—no, that is too negative a word, to celebrate—the need for commitment and the existence of evidence to move one in the direction of that commitment. In other words, the atheist recognizes the need to come off the fence and the fact that there are factors in the world of human experience and thought that suggest which side of the fence that ought to be. At present, the atheist happens to sit on the godless side of that fence (1993, p. 81, emp. in orig.).
Bruce Lockerbie, in Dismissing God, referred to atheism as “the abdication of belief,” and described the person who falls into this category.
For the ardent disbeliever, the hypothesis and its given propositions are one and the same: God does not exist.... All that has energized the human imagination and motivated the human spirit with prospects of nirvana, the Elysian Fields, the happy hunting grounds, paradise, or heaven—all that is meant when the Book of Ecclesiastes declares that God “has set eternity in the hearts of men”—must be invalidated by counterclaims of atheism (1998, pp. 225, 227, emp. in orig.).
This, no doubt, explains why a famous unbeliever like the late Carl Sagan, eminent atheist/astronomer of Cornell University, opened his television extravaganza Cosmos (and his book by the same name) with these words: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be” (1980, p. 4). Commenting on the exclusivity of that statement, D. James Kennedy wrote: “That is as clear a statement of atheism as one could ever hear” (1997, p. 61).
Declaring oneself to be an atheist, however, is much easier than defending the concept of atheism. Think of it this way. In order to defend atheism, a person would have to know every single fact there is to know, because the one fact that avoided detection might just be the fact of the existence of God. Theodore Christlieb noted:
The denial of the existence of God involves a perfectly monstrous hypothesis; it is, when looked at more closely, an unconscionable assumption. Before one can say that the world is without a God, he must first have become thoroughly conversant with the whole world.... In short, to be able to affirm authoritatively that no God exists, a man must be omniscient and omnipresent, that is, he himself must be God, and then after all there would be one (1878, pp. 143,144).
Impossible task, that—since one would have to be God in order to believe with certainty that there is no God! Yet, as apologist Dan Story has pointed out,
...[T]his fact stops few atheists from arguing against the existence of God. Rather than admitting (or even recognizing) the irrationality of their own position, many atheists attempt to remove the rationality of the Christian position.... These atheists argue that because they don’t believe in God, because their belief is negative, they don’t have to martial any arguments in their favor (1997, p. 20).
Evidence of such a stance abounds. Atheistic writer George H. Smith, in his book, Atheism: The Case Against God, wrote:
Proof is applicable only in the case of a positive belief. To demand proof of the atheist, the religionist must represent atheism as a positive belief requiring substantiation. When the atheist is seen as a person who lacks belief in a god, it becomes clear that he is not obligated to “prove” anything. The atheist qua atheist does not believe anything requiring demonstration; the designation of “atheist” tells us, not what he believes to be true, but what he does not believe to be true. If others wish for him to accept the existence of a god, it is their responsibility to argue for the truth of theism—but the atheist is not similarly required to argue for the truth of atheism (1979, p. 16, emp. in orig.)
Such a view, however, is seriously flawed for at least two reasons. First, theists do not make the statement, “God exists,” with wild abandon, expecting it to be accepted as if somehow it were spoken by divine fiat. Rather, when they defend God’s existence, theists offer evidence to back up their case (e.g., the cosmological argument, teleological argument, moral argument, etc.)—which places the matter of the existence of God in an entirely different perspective. As Story properly noted:
Christians have given ample evidence for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. In light of this, if atheists claim God does not exist, they must be prepared to explain why. When Christians state that God exists and offer evidences to support this claim, they have moved the debate into a new arena—an arena in which atheists must prove that the Christian evidences are erroneous (1997, p. 20, emp. in orig.).
If evidence for God’s existence has been set forth, the atheist has a responsibility (if he expects his world view to be considered seriously and accepted intellectually) to show why such evidence is not legitimate. After all, the Law of Rationality (one of the foundational laws of human thought) states that one should draw only those conclusions for which there is adequate and justifiable evidence. Indifference to such evidence—in light of the claim made by the atheist that God does not exist—could prove to be suicidal philosophically. The evidence just might document the theist’s claim. And in the process, the atheist just might be proven wrong!
Second, in his book, Dismissing God, under the chapter heading, “When Disbelief Has Gone,” Bruce Lockerbie rightly remarked:
To disbelieve necessitates the possibility of a reasonable alternative, namely to believe. So “when disbelief has gone” means that the secular mind has passed even beyond this stage of contesting with Christian orthodoxy, no longer deigning to concern itself with the fantasies of faith (1998, p. 228, emp. in orig.).
While it may be the case that the modern-day unbeliever no longer deigns to concern himself with what he views as “fantasies of faith,” such an attitude does nothing to address the evidence presented by the theist. Nor does indifference to the theist’s evidence on the part of the atheist do anything to establish whatever type of unbelief the atheist wishes to recommend in its place. Lockerbie is correct: “To disbelieve necessitates the possibility of a reasonable alternative, namely to believe.” Thus, the atheist shoulders two burdens: (1) to prove the theist’s evidence is invalid; and (2) to establish—with attending evidence—a belief system that is a “reasonable alternative” worthy of acceptance by rational, thinking people.
Neither of these tasks is simple (or, theists would suggest, possible). One problem that, by necessity, would have to be broached from the outset is this. For whatever reason(s), many atheists appear unwilling to consider the evidence in the first place. Robert Gorham Davis is a retired professor of English at Harvard University who spends much of his time writing letters to the editor of the New York Times in order to take exception to any published reference to religion in that newspaper. In one such letter to the editor, he wrote:
On no clear evidence theologians and philosophers declare God to be omniscient and omnicompetent. Plainly if there were such a God who really wished to reveal Himself to mankind, He could do so in a way that left no doubt (1992, emp. added).
That God did reveal Himself “in a way that left no doubt” is made clear from such evidence as: (1) the marvelous order and complexity of the macrocosm we call the Universe; (2) the intricate, delicately balanced nature of life; (3) the deliberate design inherent in the microcosm we know as the incomparable genetic code; (4) the astounding historical testimony attesting to the miracle-working Son of God; and (5) an otherwise unexplained (and unexplainable) empty tomb on a Sunday morning almost two thousand years ago. Each of these pieces of evidence (and many more like them) helps form the warp and woof of the fabric whose purpose it is to document God’s eternal existence.
That the atheist does not consider the evidence to be trustworthy or adequate to the task does not negate the evidence necessarily. A man’s attitude toward the truth does not alter the truth. As Winfried Corduan stated in his book, Reasonable Faith:
An argument, in order to be considered sound, must have true premises and valid logic. Because we think within the context of world views, someone may not be convinced by a perfectly sound argument. This is an everyday occurrence in all human reasoning and attempts at persuasion. That is no fault of the argument... (1993, p. 106, emp. added).
The late atheist, Isaac Asimov, once bluntly admitted: “Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time” (1982, p. 9). Such a boast is easy enough to understand, and requires no further explanation. Yes, Dr. Asimov was a committed atheist, but not because he could offer adequate, legitimate reasons to justify his unbelief. Rather, his world view was an emotional response resulting from his personal freedom of choice.
The fact remains that after everything is said and done, the atheist’s first option—disproving the theist’s evidence—is a difficult challenge that many choose not to accept.
What, then, about option number two—providing, with attending evidence, a belief system that is a “reasonable alternative”? That, too, apparently is beyond the pale of atheism. In 1989, Richard Dawkins, renowned atheist and evolutionist of Oxford University, released the second edition of his book, The Selfish Gene, in which he discussed at great length the gene’s role in the naturalistic process of “survival of the fittest.” Dawkins admitted that, according to the evolutionary paradigm, genes are “selfish” because they will do whatever it takes to ensure that the individual in which they are stored produces additional copies of the genes. In commenting on the effects of such a concept on society as a whole, Dr. Dawkins lamented: “My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthlessness would be a very nasty society in which to live” (1989, p. 3, emp. added).
Michael Ruse, a Canadian philosopher, and Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard entomologist, had made the same point four years earlier when they wrote under the title of “Evolution and Ethics”:
Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends.... Ethics is seen to have a solid foundation, not in divine guidance, but in the shared qualities of human nature and the desperate need for reciprocity (1985, 208:51-52, emp. added).
The eminent humanist/philosopher, Will Durant, went even further when he admitted:
By offering evolution in place of God as a cause of history, Darwin removed the theological basis of the moral code of Christendom. And the moral code that has no fear of God is very shaky. That’s the condition we are in.... I don’t think man is capable yet of managing social order and individual decency without fear of some supernatural being overlooking him and able to punish him (1980).
Once again, the fact remains that after everything is said and done, the atheist’s second option—providing, with attending evidence, a belief system that is a “reasonable alternative”—is an unattainable goal. Enter “agnosticism.”

Agnosticism

Perhaps the logical contradiction inherent in atheism (i.e., one would have to be God in order to know God does not exist) has caused many unbelievers to affirm agnosticism instead. The agnostic (a, without; gnosis, knowledge) is the person who says it is impossible to know if God exists, due to the fact that there simply is not enough credible evidence to warrant such a conclusion. Sproul believes that “the agnostic seeks to declare neutrality on the issue, desiring to make neither assertion nor denial of the theistic question.... The agnostic maintains that there is insufficient knowledge upon which to make an intellectual judgment about theism” (1978, pp. 19-20).
The term “agnostic” was coined by British scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, a close personal friend of Charles Darwin’s and an indefatigable champion of evolution who frequently referred to himself as “Darwin’s Bulldog.” Huxley first introduced the word in a speech in 1869 before the Metaphysical Society. He later wrote of that occurrence:
When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis”—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble....
This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were –ists of one sort or another.... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of “agnostic.” It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the “gnostic” of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society.... To my great satisfaction, the term took.... This is the history of the origin of the terms “agnostic” and “agnosticism” (1894, pp. 239-240, italics in orig.).
Huxley cannot be accused of inventing the term “agnostic” in a cavalier fashion. Nor can he be accused of harboring a “hidden agenda.” He knew exactly what he was doing, and went about doing it in a most public fashion. He spoke often to “working class folks,” frequently presenting lunchtime lectures at factories. In a letter to a friend written on March 22, 1861, he remarked: “My working men stick by me wonderfully. By Friday evening they will all be convinced that they are monkeys” (see Leonard Huxley, 1900, 1:205). He was passionate about referring to Charles Darwin as the “Newton of biology” (see Blinderman, 1957, p. 174), and did not hesitate to affirm that, so far as he was concerned,
I really believe that the alternative is either Darwinism or nothing, for I do not know of any rational conception or theory of the organic universe which has any scientific position at all besides Mr. Darwin’s.... Whatever may be the objections to his views, certainly all other theories are out of court (1896, p. 467).
Huxley worked diligently to convince those around him that agnosticism was a respectable philosophical position, and that it was quite impossible to know whether or not God existed. Yet he simultaneously advocated the position that it was quite possible to deny some theistic claims with certainty. He “knew,” for example, that the Bible was not God’s Word, and openly ridiculed anyone who believed it to be so. He heaped scathing rebukes upon those who believed in what he termed “the myths of Genesis,” and he stated categorically that “my sole point is to get people who persist in regarding them as statements of fact to understand that they are fools” (see Leonard Huxley, 1900, 2:429).
That Huxley had in mind antagonistic views toward Judeo-Christian theism when he claimed to be “agnostic” has been made clear by those who otherwise would have no reason to be biased against Huxley. For example, under the heading, “agnosticism,” the authors of the British-produced Encyclopaedia Britannica wrote:
Agnosticism both as a term and as a philosophical position gained currency through its espousal by Thomas Huxley, who seems to have coined the word “agnostic” (as opposed to “gnostic”) in 1869 to designate one who repudiated traditional Judeo-Christian theism and yet disclaimed doctrinaire atheism, transcending both in order to leave such questions as the existence of God in abeyance.... But Huxley’s own elaboration on the term makes it clear that this very biblical interpretation of man’s relation to God was the intended polemic target of agnosticism. The suspension of judgment on ultimate questions for which it called was thought to invalidate Christian beliefs about “things hoped for” and “things not seen....” Huxley himself certainly rejected as outright false—rather than as not known to be true or false—many widely popular views about God, his providence, and man’s posthumous destiny... (1997a, 1:151; 26:569, emp. added).
Rather than courageously embrace and defend atheism, Huxley opted to feign ignorance with his “I don’t know, you don’t know, nobody knows, and nobody can know” position. This cowardly compromise did not endear him to those who were quite willing to champion the more radical stance of apodictically affirming that God does not exist. In their discussion of agnosticism under the section on “religious and spiritual belief systems,” the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica noted that
Huxley and his associates were attacked both by enthusiastic Christian polemicists and by Friedrich Engels, the co-worker of Karl Marx, as “shame-faced atheists,” a description that is perfectly applicable to many of those who nowadays adopt the more comfortable label (1997b, 26:569, emp. added).
The fact is, the agnostic is far from indifferent. He takes his agnosticism extremely seriously when he affirms that nothing outside of the material world can be known or proved. But agnosticism is built upon a self-defeating premise. English philosopher Herbert Spencer (also a close personal friend of Charles Darwin, the man from whom Darwin borrowed his now-popular phrase, “survival of the fittest,” and popularly regarded as one of the foremost apostles of agnosticism in his day) advocated the position that just as no bird ever has been able to fly out of the heavens, so no man ever has been able to penetrate with his finite mind the veil that hides the mind of the Infinite. This inability on the part of the finite (mankind), he concluded, prevented any knowledge of the Infinite (God) reaching the finite.
Such a premise is flawed internally because it wrongly assumes that the Infinite is equally incapable of penetrating the veil—a position that reduces the term “Infinite” to absurdity. An Infinite Being that is unable to express Itself is less finite than mortals who forever are expressing themselves. And an Infinite Being that is both capable of self-expression and aware of the perplexity and needs of mortal man, yet fails to break through the veil, is less moral than mortal man. As one writer expressed it:
What man would stay in shrouded silence if he were the Infinite and knew that a word from him would resolve a thousand human complexes, integrate shattered personalities, mend broken lives, bring coveted light to baffled minds, and healing peace to disturbed hearts? (Samuel, 1950, p. 14, emp. added).
To be either correct or defensible, Spencer’s proposition must work both ways. Finite man must be unable to penetrate the veil to the Infinite, but at the same time the Infinite likewise must be unable to penetrate the veil to the finite. By definition, however, the Infinite would possess the capability of breaking through any such veil.
Further, there is a question that begs to be asked: Will the agnostic admit that it is at least possible for someone else to know something he does not? If he is unwilling to admit this point, is he not then attributing to himself (even if inadvertently) one of the defining characteristics that theists attribute to God—omniscience? In commenting on this very point, Nelson M. Smith wrote:
Obviously, no agnostic can speak for anyone but himself and perhaps not then. What effort has he made to know God? Has he exhausted every effort to know God? Maybe he has not been as honest with himself and with the evidence as he ought to be? Maybe he is unconsciously hiding behind a screen of “can’t know” to avoid responsibility as a being made in God’s image of facing his Maker? (1975, 92[6]:6).
Smith’s point is well taken. Is it not possible that the agnostic is avoiding—purposely—the evidence for the existence of God? Rather than being unable to know, perhaps the agnostic is unwilling to find out. Sir Hector Hetherington, Principal Emeritus of Glasgow University, addressed this concept when he said:
There are issues on which it is impossible to be neutral. These issues strike right down to the roots of man’s existence. And while it is right that we should examine the evidence, and make sure that we have all the evidence, it is equally right that we ourselves should be accessible to the evidence (as quoted in Samuel, 1950, p. 29, emp. added).
The agnostic is perfectly capable of making himself “accessible to the evidence.” The question is—will he? Or will he choose instead to hide “behind a screen of ‘can’t know’”?
[to be continued]

REFERENCES

Asimov, Isaac (1982), “Interview with Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible,” Paul Kurtz, interviewer, Free Inquiry, pp. 6-10, Spring. [See also: Hallman, Steve (1991), “Christianity and Humanism: A Study in Contrasts,” AFA Journal, p. 11, March.]
Blinderman, Charles S. (1957), “Thomas Henry Huxley,” Scientific Monthly, April.
Christlieb, Theodore (1878), Modern Doubt and Christian Belief (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).
Corduan, Winfried (1993), Reasonable Faith (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman).
Dawkins, Richard (1989), The Selfish Gene (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press), second edition.
Davis, Robert Gorham (1997), “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, July 5.
Durant, Will (1980), “We Are in the Last Stage of a Pagan Period,” Chicago Tribute Syndicate, April.
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1997a), s.v. “Agnosticism,” (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.), 1:151.
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1997b), s.v. “Religious and Spiritual Belief, Systems of,” (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.), 26:530-577.
Huxley, Leonard (1900), Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley (New York: Appleton).
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1894), Collected Essays (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968 reprint). [Quotation is from volume five of a nine-volume set published between 1894 and 1908.]
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1896), Darwiniana (New York: Appleton).
Keil, C.F. and F. Delitzsch (1981 reprint), Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
Kelcy, Raymond C. (1968), The Living Word Commentary: The Letters of Paul to the Thessalonians (Austin, TX: Sweet).
Kennedy, D. James (1997), Skeptics Answered (Sisters, OR: Multnomah).
Lockerbie, D. Bruce (1998), Dismissing God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).
McGrath, Alister E. (1993), Intellectuals Don’t Need God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).
Ruse, Michael and Edward O. Wilson (1985), “Evolution and Ethics,” New Scientist, vol. 208, October 17.
Sagan, Carl (1980), Cosmos (New York: Random House).
Samuel, Leith (1950), The Impossibility of Agnosticism [a tract], (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).
Smith, George H. (1979), Atheism: The Case Against God (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus).
Smith, Nelson M. (1975), “The Case Against Agnosticism,” Firm Foundation, 92[6]:6,11, February.
Sproul, R.C. (1978), If There’s a God, Why Are There Atheists? (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House).
Story, Dan (1997), Defending Your Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel).
Zerr, E.M. (1952), Bible Commentary (Bowling Green, KY: Guardian of Truth Foundation).

From Bert Thompson, Ph.D. ... The Many Faces of Unbelief [Part II]



http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=103


The Many Faces of Unbelief [Part II]

by  Bert Thompson, Ph.D.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I of this two-part series appeared in the March issue. Part II follows below and continues, without introductory comments, where the first article ended.]

Skepticism

The skeptic is the person who doubts there is a God. The standard dictionary definition is quite revealing when it describes a skeptic as one who holds to “the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain and who has doubts concerning basic religious principles.” Notice that the skeptic does not claim knowledge of God’s existence is unattainable (as in agnosticism), but only “uncertain.” However, the skeptic does not stop at mere “uncertainty.” In fact, skepticism “...confidently challenges not merely religious or metaphysical knowledge but all knowledge claims that venture beyond immediate experience” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1997, 26:569, emp. added). The key words here are “immediate experience.”
Translated into common parlance, this simply means that the skeptic is not prepared to accept anything that cannot be verified empirically (viz., via the scientific method). Corliss Lamont, famous twentieth-century skeptic and humanist, wrote:
The development, over the past four centuries, of a universally reliable method for attaining knowledge is a far more important achievement on the part of science than its discovery of any single truth. For once men acquire a thoroughly dependable method of truth-seeking, a method that can be applied to every sphere of human life and by anyone who faithfully conforms to certain directives, then they have as a permanent possession an instrument of infinite power that will serve them as long as mankind endures. Scientific method is such an instrument (1949, pp. 236-237, emp. in orig.)
Paul Kurtz, another well-known skeptic and former editor of The Humanist (official organ of the American Humanist Association), put it like this:
To adopt such a scientific approach unreservedly is to accept as ultimate in all matters of fact and real existence the appeal to the evidence of experience alone; a court subordinate to no higher authority, to be overridden by no prejudice however comfortable (1973, p. 109, emp. added).
Chet Raymo, in his book, Skeptics and True Believers, explained the dichotomy that exists between “Skeptics” and “True Believers” (capital letters are used throughout his book). Raymo, professor of physics and astronomy at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, has written a weekly column on science for the Boston Globe for more than a dozen years and was reared as a Roman Catholic. He began his book by suggesting that Skeptics and True Believers operate by different “made-up maps of the world.” In chapter one he stated:
We cannot live without some sorts of make-believe in our lives. Without made-up maps of the world, life is a blooming, buzzing confusion. Some elements of our mental maps (Santa Claus...) satisfy emotional or aesthetic inner needs; other elements of our mental maps (hot stove, nuclear-powered stars) satisfy intellectual curiosity about the world out there. We get in trouble when the two kinds of maps are confused, when we objectify elements of make-believe solely on the basis of inner need.
The True Believer retains in adulthood an absolute faith in some forms of empirically unverifiable make-believe (such as astrology or the existence of immortal souls), whereas the Skeptic keeps a wary eye on firmly established facts (such as atoms). Both Skeptic and True Believer use made-up maps of the world... (1998, pp. 13-14, emp. in orig.).
Raymo then went on to ask:
Is one map as good as any other? Since all knowledge is constructed, can the choice between two contradictory maps...be a matter of personal or political expediency? Not unless we are willing to erect partitions between what we know to be true on the basis of unambiguous, reproducible evidence and what we merely wish to be true. Apparently, many of us are willing to do just that (1998, p. 14, emp. added).
With his strict dichotomy between the Skeptic (a person who knows about such things as atoms and nuclear-powered stars—“on the basis of unambiguous, reproducible evidence”) and the True Believer (a person who believes in such things as Santa Claus, astrology, and an immortal soul—in spite of the evidence) firmly in place, Raymo then spent the remainder of his book laying out the Skeptic’s case against: (a) the existence of God; (b) the Genesis account of creation; (c) the occurrence of biblical miracles; (d) etc. Eventually, however, he was forced to admit:
The forces that nudge us toward True Belief are pervasive and well-nigh irresistible. Supernatural faith systems provide a degree of emotional security that skepticism cannot provide. Who among us would not prefer that there exists a divine parent who has our best interest at heart? Who among us would not prefer to believe that we will live forever? Skepticism, on the other hand, offers only uncertainty and doubt.... Science cannot rule out heaven and hell because they are beyond the reach of empirical investigation (1998, p. 5,77, emp. in orig.).
Thus, in the end the skeptic does not say he cannot know that God exists. Rather, he says he doubts that God exists because He cannot be seen, felt, measured, weighed, or probed by the scientific method. Thirty-four years before Chet Raymo wrote about “Skeptics and True Believers,” George G. Simpson, the late evolutionist of Harvard, wrote: “It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything...” (1964, p. 769). Simply put, the point is this: If science cannot deal with something, that “something” either does not exist (worst-case scenario) or is completely unimportant (best-case scenario). Welcome to the make-believe world of the skeptic in which science reigns supreme, and a cavalier attitude toward all things non-empirical rules the day.
But what about those concepts that, although non-empirical and therefore unobservable via the scientific method, nevertheless are recognized to exist, and are admitted to be of critical importance to the entire human race—concepts like love, sorrow, joy, altruism, etc.? Arlie Hoover accurately assessed the situation in which the skeptic finds himself in regard to the existence of such items when he wrote:
Why does the scientific method reject subjective factors, emotions, feelings? Simply because it is not convenient! Because the method will not allow you to deal with the immense complexity of reality. The scientist, therefore, selects from the whole of experience only those elements that can be weighed, measured, numbered, or which lend themselves to mathematical treatment....
This is a fallacy we call Reductionism. You commit the Reductive Fallacy when you select a portion of a complex entity and say the whole is merely that portion. You do this when you say things like: love is nothing but sex, man is just an animal, music is nothing but sound waves, art is nothing but color.... When it gets down to the real serious questions of life—origin, purpose, destiny, meaning, morality—science is silent....
If science can’t handle morality, aesthetics, and religion that only proves that the scientific method was reductive in the first place. Sir Arthur Eddington once used a famous analogy to illustrate this reductionism. He told of a fisherman who concluded from his fishing experiences with a certain net that “no creature of the sea is less than two inches long.” Now this disturbed many of his colleagues and they demurred, pointing out that many sea creatures are under two inches and they just slipped through the two-inch holes in the net. But the ichthyologist was unmoved: “What my net can’t catch ain’t fish,” he pontificated, and then he scornfully accused his critics of having pre-scientific, medieval, metaphysical prejudices.
Scientific reductionism or “Scientism”—as it is often called—is similar to this fisherman with the special net. Since the strict empirical scientist can’t “catch” or “grasp” such qualitative things like freedom, morality, aesthetics, mind, and God, he concludes that they don’t exist. But they have just slipped through his net. They have been slipping through his net all the way from Democritus to B.F. Skinner to Carl Sagan (1981, p. 6, emp. in orig.).
In speaking of skepticism and its offspring of humanism, Sir Julian Huxley wrote: “It will have nothing to do with absolutes, including absolute truth, absolute morality, absolute perfection and absolute authority” (1964, pp. 73-74, emp. added). To that list, one might add absolute joy, absolute love, absolute freedom, absolute peace, etc. The skeptic has paid a high price for his scientism—the rejection and abandonment of some of the human race’s most important, valuable, worthwhile, and cherished, concepts. Why? In order to be able to say: I doubt that God exists!

Infidelity

The infidel is the person who not only refuses to believe in God himself, but also is intolerant of, and actively opposed to, those who do. A study of human history provides a veritable plethora of men and women who made quite a name for themselves via their public display of infidelity. In the third century A.D., for example, Porphyry wrote a fifteen-volume series titled Against Christians, in which he sought to lay bare alleged contradictions between the Old and New Testaments, and to document how the apostles had contradicted themselves. He excoriated the book of Daniel, and charged Jesus with equivocation and inconsistency. He was recognized widely as one of the most celebrated enemies of God the world ever has known. McClintock and Strong have suggested that he “...became the most determined of heathen polemics the world ever beheld or Christianity ever encountered” (8:422).
Another infidel of the ancient past whose name is associated with vitriolic opposition to God was the Frenchman Voltaire. Beginning in 1765, he attacked Christianity with viciousness and vigor. He began with what today would be styled “higher criticism,” by which he brought into question the authenticity and reliability of the Bible. He then alleged chronological contradictions in the narratives of the Old Testament. He challenged as incorrect many of the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and he stoutly denied any such things as miracles and the efficacy of prayer. He once boasted: “It took 12 men to originate the Christian religion, but it will take but one to eliminate it. Within fifty years from now the only Bible will be in museums” (as quoted in Key, 1982, p. 2). [Interestingly, not long after his death, the Geneva Bible Society purchased Voltaire’s house and used his printing presses to print French New Testaments.]
David Hume, born in 1711 in Scotland, attacked the idea of the immortality of the soul and placed the origin of religion on par with elves and fairies. But he is most famous for his essay, “Of Miracles,” which was tucked away in his work, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1748. The essay itself consisted of scarcely more than 20 pages, but concluded that from what we know about the laws of nature a miracle simply cannot occur. The treatise went on to suggest that historical testimony regarding miracles is specious, and never could be strong enough to override scientific considerations. For Hume, there was no evidence strong enough to prove that miracles actually had taken place. His attack upon biblical miracles had serious consequences upon religion generally, and Christianity specifically. Even today many refuse to believe in God because of Hume’s arguments.
In more recent times, one of the most vicious attacks upon God, Christ, and the Bible was spearheaded by Robert Ingersoll. Born in Dresden, New York in 1833, he set up his law practice in Peoria, Illinois in 1858, and eventually was appointed as that state’s Attorney General. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, while still director of American Atheists in Austin, Texas, once characterized Ingersoll as “...a superb egotist. And, he engaged in more than one drunken public brawl.... Not withstanding all of the anomalies of his character, he was magnificent when he did get going on either religion or the church...” (1983, p. vi). In The Atheist Syndrome, John Koster has suggested that “what he hated was organized religion” (1989, p. 123). Shortly after Ingersoll went on the lecture circuit around 1877, he began to include in his repertoire such topics as “Heretics and Heresies” and “Ghosts”—both of which were undisguised attacks upon religion generally, and Christianity specifically. By 1878, he had expanded his lectures to include “Hell” and “Some Mistakes of Moses,” both of which were favorites of atheists of his day. He died in 1899, having established his reputation both as an atheist and an influential infidel.
John Dewey was born in Vermont in 1859. He completed a doctorate at Johns Hopkins, and in 1884 began teaching at the University of Michigan. In 1894, he was appointed chairman of the department of philosophy, psychology, and education at the University of Chicago. In 1904, he left Chicago and moved to Columbia University, where he remained until his retirement in 1930. More than any other individual before or since, Dewey’s views have altered American educational processes. Durant wrote: “...there is hardly a school in America that has not felt his influence” (1961, p. 390). Why did he have such an impact? Durant went on to explain:
What separates Dewey is the undisguised completeness with which he accepts the evolution theory. Mind as well as body is to him an organ evolved, in the struggle for existence, from lower forms. His starting point in every field is Darwinian.... Things are to be explained, then, not by supernatural causation, but by their place and function in the environment. Dewey is frankly naturalistic... (1961, p. 391).
Dewey was a prolific writer, and eventually authored A Common Faith in which he discussed religion (and in which his infidelity was brought into full view). He made it clear that “he wished at all costs to be scientific; for him the processes of science are the most obvious and the most successful methods of knowing. Therefore if science neglects something, the something is nothing” (Clark, 1957, p. 519). Because he viewed religion as “unscientific,” he therefore considered it to be “nothing,” which was why he vehemently opposed religion of any kind and insisted upon the teaching of organic evolution as fact, not theory. In his writings he stressed that “moral laws” were neither absolute nor inviolate and unabashedly advocated situation ethics. Dewey died in 1952, having altered forever the landscape of American education and having ensured his reputation as one of the chief infidels of the twentieth century. Had he lived a few years longer, he would have seen his ideas on the naturalistic origin and basis of all things take hold in a way that perhaps even he never dreamed.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair probably has been the most famous atheist/infidel in America for the past three-and-a-half decades. Her public saga began in 1963 when a suit to remove prayer from public schools was presented before the United States Supreme Court. Although the suit (in which Mrs. O’Hair was only a secondary litigant) originally had been filed in the name of Philadelphia Unitarian, Ed Schempp, she took over the battle and ultimately was victorious in the landmark decision of Murray v. Curlett. A writer in Time magazine has described her as:
...a heavy woman with a strong voice and a jaw who even in repose resembled, as author Lawrence Wright once observed, “a bowling ball looking for new pins to scatter.” She was an Army veteran and a law-school graduate and a big talker. Most important, she was an atheist.... “I love a good fight,” she said. “I guess fighting God and God’s spokesmen is sort of the ultimate, isn’t it?” (Van Biema, 1997, pp. 56,57).
She was the star of the first episode of Phil Donahue’s television talk show. She filed lawsuits at what one journalist called “a near pathological level of pugnacity” for 32 years (Van Biema, 1997, p. 57). And once, while watching a female orangutan on television, she quipped, “The Virgin just made another appearance” (as quoted in Van Biema, p. 57).
In 1965, having worn out her welcome with state and local authorities in Maryland and Hawaii, she settled in Austin, Texas and formed the Society of Separationists, later adding the Atheist Centre in America and several other satellite groups. In the 1980s, she enjoyed a heyday as she ruled over her pet project that came to be known simply as “American Atheists,” from which she published her pratings against God via books, posters, and bumper stickers (e.g., “Apes Evolved From Creationists”). She would debate anyone, anywhere, anytime on the existence of God and the “atrocities” of organized religion.
In fact, in the late 1970s, while serving as a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University, I attended a debate she conducted with Bob Harrington, a denominational preacher from New Orleans referred to as “the chaplain of Bourbon Street.” Mrs. O’Hair was (and I say this only from observation as a member of the audience, and not in any derogatory sense) unkempt, haggard, slovenly, and bitter. During the course of the debate, she cursed wildly (frequently taking God’s name in vain), belittled the audience for its “obvious” lack of intelligence, and mocked her opponent. She looked for, and seized, every possible opportunity to berate God and anyone who was, in her considered opinion, “stupid enough” to believe in Him. Little wonder that in 1964 Life magazine had headlined her as “the most hated woman in America.” Bruce Lockerbie wrote regarding Mrs. O’Hair:
When we begin to speak of O’Hair and others like her, we turn directly into the face of aggressively militant disbelief. Here is no lady-like apologist, no grandmotherly disputant; for O’Hair, the cause is nothing short of all-out war (1998, p. 231).
But suddenly, without warning, she disappeared—vanished without a trace. On August 28, 1995 workers at the American Atheists building came to work, only to find a note taped to the front door that read: “We’ve been called out on an emergency basis, and we’ll call you when we get back.” But she (along with her son Jon and his daughter Robin who disappeared with her) has not called, and she has not been back. Curiously, about the same time over $600,000 turned up missing from the treasury of American Atheists. In 1995, tax forms submitted by the United Secularists of America (one of American Atheists’ satellite groups) documented a $612,000 decrease in net assets and admitted:
The $612,000...represents the value of the United Secularists of America’s assets believed to be in the possession of Jon Murray, former Secretary. The whereabouts of Jon Murray and these assets have not been known since September 1995 and is not known to the organization at this time (as quoted in Van Biema, 1997, p. 59).
[In April 1999, Ron Barrier, national spokesman for American Atheists, announced that the group was moving its headquarters from Austin, Texas to Cranford, New Jersey, stating that “the Northeast is much more progressive than the South...” (Montgomery Advertiser, 1999, 3-D). On Sunday, April 4, 1999 a dedication ceremony was held for the new offices in Cranford. Approximately two years later, law enforcement authorities in Texas announced that they had uncovered the buried, dismembered bodies of Mrs. O’Hair, her son Jon, and his daughter Robin, all three of whom apparently had been murdered by one of Mrs. O’Hair’s employees.]
It can be said without fear of contradiction that “the most hated woman in America”—who had made it her life’s goal to oppose God—did not live up to anyone’s expectations, but undeniably lived down to the level of her self-professed atheism. The history of infidelity, only a brief overview of which I have examined, documents all too well that she has not been alone. In his novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky had one of his characters, Ivan, comment that if there is no God, everything is permitted. French atheist and existential philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, opined:
Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself.... Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior (1961, p. 485).
As essayist G.K. Chesterton once observed: “When men cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything” (as quoted in Bales, 1967, p. 133).

Deism

The concept of deism (from the Latin deus, god) had its beginnings among writers in seventeenth-century England, beginning with Edward Herbert (1581-1648) who later became the first Baron Herbert of Cherbury and often is recognized as the “father of deism.” In his 1624 book, De Veritate (On Truth), Lord Herbert laid out five basic principles of deism: “(1) The being of God; (2) that he is to be worshipped; (3) that piety and moral virtue are the chief parts of worship; (4) that God will pardon our faults on repentance; and, (5) that there is a future state of rewards and punishment” (see McClintock and Strong, 1879, 2:730). In the second edition of that work (1645), Herbert expanded his ideas as he dealt with the foundations of religion and critiqued the idea of direct revelation from God. That same year, he further elaborated his views in De Causis Errorum (Concerning the Causes of Errors). An additional work, De Religione Gentilium (The Religion of the Gentiles) was published posthumously in 1663. He urged a quick and permanent abandonment of the idea that God supernaturally intervened in man’s world in any way.
Herbert’s views were propagated by a number of influential British writers such as his chief disciple, Charles Blount (1654-1693), Anthony Collins (1676-1729), Thomas Woolston (1670-1731), Matthew Tindal (1655-1733), and Peter Annet (1693-1769), who was the last of the old-line British deists. In the eighteenth century, deism flourished in France. In fact, “English deism strongly influenced later French deism and skepticism, of which Diderot and Voltaire are notable examples” (Geisler, 1976, p. 165). Shortly thereafter, deism spread to Germany and held sway in Europe for a hundred years. Norman Geisler has added:
Along the way there were many philosophical figures who may not technically qualify as deists but who nonetheless gave impetus to and provided arguments for the movement. Bacon’s scientific approach, John Locke’s empiricism, and David Hume’s skepticism about miracles definitely aided the deistic cause (1976, p. 152).
Eventually deism spread to early colonial America as well. The editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica noted:
By the end of the 18th century, Deism had become a dominant religious attitude among intellectual and upper class Americans.... The first three presidents of the United States also held deistic convictions, as is amply evidenced in their correspondence (1997, 26:569).
The evidence sustains such an assessment.
In America deism flourished after it had declined in England. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine are classed as deists.... Perhaps more than anywhere else in the United States, deistic tendencies of naturalism and Biblical criticism have lived on in modernistic or liberal Protestantism... (Geisler, 1976, pp. 165-166).
But why was such a system necessary? Basically deism came into existence as men attempted to work around the contradictions and internal inconsistencies posed by atheism and agnosticism. The atheist was unable to disprove God’s existence, and the agnostic was forced to admit that while he might not be able to know that God exists, someone else certainly might possess such knowledge. Enter deism.
The best way out of the dilemmas posed by atheism and agnosticism would appear to be the following: let us say that there is a God. This God created the world. He issued to the world a moral law, a code of behavior which all of His creatures are supposed to follow. God will someday judge His creatures on how well they obeyed His commandments. In the meantime He does not interfere with His creation. He made it the way He wanted it to be, and He will not contradict His own will. For the moment, we worship God and try to live by His law, but we must not expect Him to do supernatural things for us (Corduan, 1993, p. 90).
What, then, are the exact tenets of deism? Truth be told, at times those tenets are not at all easy to decipher.
In the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth century more than a few thinkers came to be called deists or called themselves deists. These men held a number of related views, but not all held every doctrine in common. John Locke, for example, did not reject the idea of revelation, but he did insist that human reason was to be used to judge it. Some deists, like Voltaire, were hostile to Christianity; some, like Locke, were not. Some believed in the immortality of the soul; some did not. Some believed God left his creation to function on its own; some believed in providence. Some believed in a personal God; others did not. So deists were much less united on basic issues than were theists (Sire, 1988, p. 50).
By way of summary, however, it may be said that the deist begrudgingly acknowledges that God exists, and even grants that God created the Universe and its inhabitants. But deism insists that since His initial miraculous act of creation, God has had nothing whatsoever to do with either the Universe or mankind. As the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica have observed:
At times in the 19th and 20th centuries, the word Deism was used theologically in contradistinction to theism, the belief in an immanent God who actively intervenes in the affairs of men. In this sense Deism was represented as the view of those who reduced the role of God to a mere act of creation in accordance with rational laws discovered by man and held that, after the original act, God virtually withdrew and refrained from interfering in the processes of nature and the ways of man (1997, 26:567).
The idea behind deism often is clarified and discussed via the analogy of a clock, the idea being that God created the clock, wound it up, and then walked away to leave it operating on its own. In his book, The Universe Next Door, James W. Sire titled his chapter on deism, “The Clockwork Universe,” and commented that according to the deist “God is thus not immanent, not fully personal, not sovereign over human affairs, not providential.... God is not interested in individual men and women or even whole peoples” (1988, pp. 50,56). The God of deism therefore has been called a “hermit God” (Dickson, 1979, 121[8]:118), an “absentee landlord” (Brown, 1984, p. 47), and a “God in absentia” (Coats, 1989, p. 61). The deist’s position is not that God cannot perform miracles; rather it is that God will not perform miracles because “according to deism, it is contrary to God’s nature to do miracles.... In deism God and the supernatural are considered to be incompatible” (Corduan, 1993, p. 91).
Such a position inevitably leads to the following. First, deism rejects both the triune nature of the Godhead and the deity of Christ. Geisler and Brooks assessed the matter by suggesting that deists
...believe that God never specially intervenes in the world to help mankind. Since this also means that Jesus was not God (that would be a miracle), there is no reason for them to believe that God is a Trinity. The idea of three Persons in one nature (the Trinity) is to them just bad math (1990, p. 40).
Or, as Hoover has noted: “Deists believed in a Supreme Being, but he was only one in number. They denied the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. Jesus Christ was merely a great moral teacher” (1976, p. 12). Thus, the deist denies “any supernatural redemptive act in history” (Harrison, 1966, p. 162).
Second, deism rejects the idea that God has given a special revelation of Himself in the Bible. For God to reveal Himself by speaking directly to man would be a miracle—an intervention into man’s world. This is something the deist is not prepared to accept. Observation of the general revelation that God has left of Himself in nature, says the deist, is sufficient for understanding the Creator and His desires for mankind.
What did a typical deist deny? In one word: intervention.... God didn’t need to reveal anything about himself in a holy book like the Bible or the Koran. Nature itself is the only revelation God needs. A rational man could find out all that he needed to know about God from nature... (Hoover, 1976, p. 13, emp. in orig.).
In summarizing the aversion of the deist to the miraculous, Roger Dickson noted that “the principle point of concern here is the deist’s denial of the inspiration of the Bible and miracles. If God does not intervene in the natural world, then both are impossible” (1979, p. 118).
Third, deism advocates that human reason alone is all man needs to understand God and His laws for humankind.
Deism...refers to what can be called natural religion, the acceptance of a certain body of religious knowledge that is inborn in every person or that can be acquired by the use of reason, as opposed to knowledge acquired through either revelation or the teaching of any church... (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1997, 26:567).
Sir Peter Medawar put it this way: “The 17th-century doctrine of the necessity of reason was slowly giving way to a belief in the sufficiency of reason” (1969, p. 438). Without special revelation from God (a miracle), deism had no choice but to advocate that reason alone was sufficient.
Fourth, deism rejects the notions of a prayer-hearing/prayer-answering God and a God Who works in men’s lives through divine providence. As Hoover observed: “If you deny revelation you must also sweep out miracle, prayer, and providence. Any tampering with nature and her perfect laws would imply that nature had a defect” (1976, p. 13, emp. in orig.). Coats lamented:
With his concept of God, there is no possible way for the deist to believe in the providence of God. Since God has taken a long journey and is “at rest,” He leaves the affairs of men and nations to tick alone, as would the pendulum of a clock. There is no reason to pray to a deistic god for the system is completely fatalistic (1989, p. 61, emp. in orig.).
What response may be offered to deism? First, deism’s flawed view of God’s inability to work miracles must be addressed. Corduan has reasoned as follows:
Now we can see that deism is actually irrational.... If God can perform the miracle of creation, there is no good reason why He cannot do other miracles. Thus deism has an inconsistency at its core. Two affirmations are at the heart of deism: (1) God performed the miracle of creation; and (2) God does not perform miracles. If you are a deist, you must believe both of them, and yet these affirmations cannot both be true. Therefore deism is not a believable worldview. It founders on the criterion of consistency (1993, pp. 91-92).
Second, if the deist believes supernatural Creation occurred, he cannot deny the only divine source of knowledge concerning that Creation—special revelation.
The deistic arguments intended to eliminate the basis for belief in a supernatural revelation apply equally as well to elimination of the deistic belief in creation.... If the Bible cannot be trusted to teach one doctrine then there is no grounds for believing the other one is true.... Hence, the deist defeats his own case against revelation when he accepts from revelation the doctrine of creation (Geisler, 1976, p. 170).
Third, since God created the laws of the Universe, and since those laws are contingent upon God for their very existence, there is no good reason why an omnipotent God could not set aside those laws for the benefit of mankind. Furthermore, would not a God concerned enough to create humans likewise be concerned enough to intervene on their behalf on occasion—especially if they had fallen into grave (spiritual) danger? Geisler has suggested:
“You have made your own bed, lie in it” is something less than the attitude a good Creator ought to have. If he had enough love and concern for man to create him, then it would seem to be most compatible with such a nature to believe that God would miraculously intervene to help him if he were in need. And surely a God strong enough to create the world is strong enough to help it. The laws of creation are not inviolable; they are created and contingent. And what is created and contingent can be laid aside if need be for the moral good of man. Hence, the nature of God, even as conceived by deists, would be compatible with miraculous intervention into the natural world when the situation calls for it (1976, p. 170).
God is not just a “Master Universe Mechanic.” He also is personal—a concept even deists accept. Is it not reasonable, then, to suggest that this personal Creator would desire communication between Himself and His creation—especially if the creation had been made “in His image”?
Fourth, the idea that human reason alone is an adequate guide for mankind, and that the “natural world” can provide him with all that he needs to know in regards to behavior, ethics, response to God, etc., is severely flawed. As Hoover wrote:
Especially puerile was the deistic belief that you could establish an ethical code by mere reason based only on nature. Which part of nature do we consult for this moral standard? What animal gives us the norm? Some spiders eat their mate after sexual intercourse—should we humans imitate this example? If not, which animal shall we follow? (1976, p. 14).
Fifth, deism became the easily crossed bridge from theism to out-and-out naturalism—the view that there is no God and that “nature” is all that exists. Sire summed up this fact when he wrote:
Deism did not prove to be a very stable world view. Historically it held sway over the intellectual world of France and England briefly from the late seventeenth into the first half of the eighteenth century. Preceded by theism, it was followed by naturalism (1988, pp. 56-57, emp. added).
Roger Dickson has pointed out that for many of its adherents, “deism was the first step toward naturalism” (1979, 121[8]:118). In his monumental work, Does God Exist?, Hans Kung summarized the situation.
This Deism, not accepted by theology, which still needed God in the physical world...now developed consistently into a scientific atheism, which did not need God either physically for the explanation of the world or even morally for the conduct of life (1980, p. 91, emp. in orig.).
Today, it is rare to find a genuine deist. I mention it here, however, not merely from a historical perspective, but also to document the end result of accepting it. As Kung poignantly noted, deism “developed consistently into a scientific atheism, which did not need God.”

CONCLUSION

Every person familiar with the Bible is aware of one of its central themes—the evil results of unbelief. Throughout the Bible, Heaven’s warning was that belief (and its accompanying faithfulness) would bring spiritual life and God’s blessings, while unbelief (and its accompanying unfaithfulness) would bring God’s wrath and spiritual death. The prophet Ezekiel spoke of the man who “turneth away from righteousness and comitteth iniquity, and dieth therein” as being one who “in his iniquity...shall die” (18:26). The apostle Paul observed that the Old Testament had been penned “for our learning” (Romans 15:4), and was to be our “schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:24). It should come as no surprise, then, to see Paul catalog in 1 Corinthians 10 a number of instances of apostasy—as a warning to those who might be thinking about following in their unbelieving predecessors’ footsteps.
All too often man’s “wisdom” has replaced God’s (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-25), causing many to lose their way in what has become one of the most horrible, and yet one of the most common, tragedies of our day. The price humans have paid for being intellectually learned but spiritually ignorant—the loss of their own souls—has been far higher than we ever could have imagined.

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