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| Hi all, I'm back again, at least temporarily. I was transferred at work to a location where I couldn't access Xanga during the day and ended up falling into the "Open Diary" crowd. You can see my posts there under the same name....
I'm starting a series over there on the myth of religious neutrality. My objective is to prove that, first of all, neutrality cannot exist in a state, and second that it is not proveable that neutrality is an inherently good thing. I'd like to bounce this discussion off of people here before I inundate the more liberal/atheistic crowd at OD with too many posts.
What is "good"?
I have a very articulate Athiest/Libertarian friend, and we debated whether state neutrality towards religion is "good".
AL: "Of course it's good"
MP: "Why?"
AL: "Because everyone agrees that it's good."
MP: "Well, I don't agree that it's good. I think the state should be Christian."
AL: "You're just 10% of the people. 90% think that neutrality is good, and what about all the other religions?"
MP: "Was it wrong to send the Japanese Americans into concentration camps?"
AL: "Of course"
MP: "But it was wildly popular. The governor of Colorado lost re-election because he apologized to those citizens who were held in those camps."
--- So here we have the inconsistency in the argument of neutrality. Neutrality is a good thing because it's popular. I then understand the implicit Atheistic argument that popular=good. So, here's the argument and rebuttal.
Neutrality=popular
<popular=good>
therefore Neutrality=good.
Japanese detainment=popular
<popular=good>
therefore Japanese detainment=good.
Yet, that argument fails because we all agree that Japanese detainment was not good. Now if you went back to World War II, you would not be able to make this argument, but now that we are wiser, it's simple.
So, we've just blown a colossal hole in the premise of humanism - that morality=popular opinion. (popular=good). And we find that, in fact, good is something that the specific humanist determines is good based on his own intellect.
So, now, religious neutrality cannot be argued on the basis of popularity. What standard can the humanist bring to bear on this debate? I think the only argument is based on the history of religious intolerance and fighting, which, although a worthy argument to consider, still doesn't answer the question at hand. If my concepts of murder are based on Biblical values and not on Muslim values, then I've inherently given creedence to the Judeo-Christian morals, whether I want to say that or not. Thus, if women have rights, and private property exists and I have a right of privacy from government intrusion, then I've just checked off a whole set of boxes that are squarely in the Judeo-Christian camp. So, who's neutral now? We have recently begun to shed the benefits of Judeo-Christianity in the sense of a stonger, more invasive federal government and the concept that rights come from the government at its discretion. This is because the philosophical underpinning of justice and morality comes only from a proper understanding of our relationship towards each other and our Creator - the God of the Bible.
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| For all you Christians out there, I'm sure that
someone, somewhere asked you to basically prove that God exists.
Whether it was some offhanded comment about the problem of evil or a
direct confrontation, it happened. Now how did you respond?
Most try to prove God from what the Bible says or from nature - the
complexity of life or, even like C.S. Lewis, try to prove God from our
thoughts about right and wrong. All of these seem steeped in
futility, but why is this so? Because the existence of God is
axiomatic.
An axiom is something in mathematics that you can't
(or think you can't) prove, but seems to stand up to scrutiny.
That's it. Axioms are necessary, because you have to start from
somewhere, and that starting point can never be proven, otherwise it
isn't a starting point. Addition is an axiom. Think about
it. Try proving that 1+1=2 or 2+2=4. I asked this of my
Sunday School class. They said, "well, you get two rocks and you
put them side by side. One rock + one rock = two rocks."
BAH! That's no proof. It's an axiom. Who says that
what seems to work (at this instant) for rocks works for a, b and
c? You see, the word asks the impossible. You can't prove
an axiom. You can only add circumstantial evidence.
But, is this concept so foreign? While
Mathematics just labels addition as an axiom and moves on, because
mathematicians don't really put a lot of thought into axioms.
They just state them and move on to what interesting things are the
results of those axioms.
What about Physics? It's the same thing.
You have laws. Now scientists hold up Evolution as a theory, but
what is it really? It's an axiom. The scientists will never
prove Evolution. Scientists can't prove gravity, they can't prove
relativity. Ah, you say, "but I can conduct experiments that show
gravity exists." But I can say that a billion experiments cannot
prove gravity, because, gravity may not work the billion+1th
time. It's an axiom. You assume that it's true, state it
and move on. Physicists are often wrong about their
theories. Classical physics is, at best, a convenient
approximation of relativity, and a convenient aggregation of the
shadowy happenings of Quantum physics.
All axioms appear to be circular logic. I've
been accused of circular logic more times than I can count. Why?
Because I treat God as an axiom. When you talk about 1+1=2, you
don't spend time considering what would happen if 1+1 equaled 3.
You take two rocks or fingers or coins and show that 1+1=2. But
that is a circular proof. You are starting from the conclusion
that 1+1=2 to prove 1+1=2. In the same way, the Bible claims to
be Gods Word, and the Bible claims that God Exists. Those who
believe the Bible understand that it is a circle. Those who don't
want to break it up. You believe God because the Bible claims He
exists, and you believe the Bible because you think it is the word of
God. Circular logic.
The important thing with every so-called axiom, or
theory, is that it withstands scrutiny. You may get ridiculed for
believing in God, but the existence of God withstands scrutiny.
Why isn't God scientific? Because the scientists declared that He
is not scientific. That's why Intelligent Design is so hated
among scientists. It cuts at the very heart of their denial of
God. For better or worse, science has been declared to be the
study of only measurable things. God cannot be measured,
therefore God cannot be shown by science. The next step, which
science loves to take, is that God cannot exist. But even in
"explaining" Evolution, science actively denies God, which leads it to
erroneous results. Think about it. Here's a bit of
evidence, the evidence can easily fit with Creation/Biblical accounts,
or it is a quandary for evolution to solve. Since I can't use the
Bible to explain the evidence, I must accept the quandary and move
on. Thus science has stabbed itself in the back by forcing an
explanation for something that it cannot answer.
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| Since we're having another child, my dear wife has been encouraging me
to put our two-year old Irene to bed. This, thus far has been an
exercise in frustration. Even a week or so ago when mom left to
go shopping, Irene had a fit - so much that I had to go back in and
comfort her after mom got home.
Tonight was different. I said, "Irene, time to get ready for
bed." No complaints, no fussing, no asking for mommy. In
fact, I took her out to give mommy a goodnight hug and she said, "back
to daddy?" A few rounds of "in a cabin by the woods" later, and
she willingly climbed into bed and has since not made a sound.
Usually she's somewhat fussy until I walk out of the room and then
starts crying as soon as I leave. Mommy and I spent a good minute
between, "I can't believe what just happened!" and just staring at each
other in disbelief.
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| I'm starting to think that I am very strange. I've started to
realize that many people don't like to debate. I grew up in a
family where there was nothing more mentally invigorating than a good
argument, which would escalate to the point where we were yelling at
each other, but it would rarely turn into a fight. In fact, I
think that some of my brothers purposefully did/said things to start
these arguments, especially if they thought they had some new angle on
winning it.
I tend to participate in various blogs more as a matter of
debate. I LOVE DEBATING. In verbal debates, I get too
excited and start getting louder, which doesn't go over too well, but
in written debates, there is time to think and respond. Loudness
seems to be an overwhelming force when there is no time to think how to
respond. ;)
But, what I've noticed is that many, if not most people don't like to
debate. They want to state their opinion as if it's the Word of
God, and then they expect everyone to say, "Wow! That was so insightful
it left me with no way to respond!" I think Jesus and the
Apostles were some of the few people who had this knack. Jesus
could thoughtfully listen to the best debaters and then say the one
sentence that not only tore their argument apart, but showed them the
kernel of truth that they were missing. His detractors were
almost always left with no way to respond. I am nowhere near
that, but I tend to think of myself as being able to pick apart many
arguments.
I find this sadly true in the church as well. Maybe it is my
problem and not the problem of others. Our church has a long
history of Reformed doctrine, and many of our beliefs are based on
long-standing traditions. There are a few that I disagree with,
but what I've seen is a reluctance to really search out the issue and
more of a desire to turn it into an up or down vote with a short,
poorly defended paper.
In fact, our highest court, and those of most other churches choose NOT
to debate issues on the floor. What they choose instead is to
appoint a few men to study the issue and then write a report.
That report is shortly debated on the floor, and then given an up or
down vote. That system is easy to exploit. In a trick
learned from our Congress, papers seem to be loaded with riders.
In other words, someone who knows they would lose if they challenged
each individual issue they disagreed with puts them all together along
with some of the other complaints he has heard, and all of the sudden,
you have a paper that might pass, not because the majority agrees with
each point, but because somehow the church has chosen to restrict
itself to an up or down vote on every paper.
While we don't know everything about what happened in Acts 15, we know
that the first court DEBATED the most critical issue on the floor,
decided on an approach, and THEN wrote a paper justifying their
decision to pass back to all the churches.
I would expect no less if I wrote a thoughtful paper to the courts of
the church. I would expect thoughtful consideration and a
thoughtful response that was the collective opinion of the church, not
the opinion of a few men. In other words, when I read a paper, I
expect not only the "what" to be the opinion of the church, but also
the "why".
I guess I must be strange.
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| Okay, all this stuff is a bit of heavy thinking. Here's something
I saw today, which I thought was pretty cool. Extreme Hammock!
Check it out. It's way too extreme for me.
http://www.jamesdeane.com/ExtremeHammock/album/index.html
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