Understanding and Belief

Not too long ago I was discussing naturalistic evolution with an atheist. After a while of being unable to convince me of its truth, he told me that if I understood it, I would believe it. And further that since I didn't believe it or understand it, that any arguments I offered would be strawmen, and he didn't have to respond to them. I let the discussion rest at that point. Not because I saw the problem with what he was saying, but more because I was caught "off guard" and saw that he had actually come to that conclusion before we even began the conversation.

I wasn't too worried about it at the time, but I've come across similar claims from those who don't agree with me on other things as well. So I'm going to take a few minutes to put together a response for such claims.

A Quote For Independence Day

"We have been preserved this many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown but we have forgotten the gracious hand that has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming grace, too proud to pray to the God Who has made us"- Abraham Lincoln

Book Review: Chosen But Free

Introduction

One of the major debates in Christianity is the relationship between God's sovereignty and man's free will. Many people interpret the two to be at odds. Each side believes that the other side will result in compromising some essential doctrine of the faith. I wish I were immune to such a debate, but I'm not. I have found myself in the middle of it; not debating for one side or the other, but trying to figure out which side to go with. Chosen But Free: A Balanced View of God's Sovereignty and Free Will is Norman Geisler's attempt to reconcile the two doctrines.

Chapter 1: Ideas Do Have Consequences

This is the third edition. The book itself is only 188 pages in ten chapters. But in addition is another 149 pages worth of 14 appendices. The first few chapters are quite short. In chapter one, Geisler explains that ideas have consequences and that big ideas have big consequences. He provides a couple examples of the consequences of taking God's sovereignty or man's free will to a logical extreme.

Book Review: Creating God In The Image of Man

Introduction

Creating God In The Image of Man by Norman Geisler is a book focusing on the debate about Open Theism (called "neotheism" in this book). I've been going through some of the different views on the relationship between God's sovereignty and man's free will. Open theism is one of the options that falls on the extreme side of Arminianism.

The book is a short read at 145 page divided into seven chapters. Geisler includes two short appendices and a glossary for quick reference of terms used.

Chapter 1: The Chief Competitors to Christian Theism

In Chapter 1 Geisler explains why there are so many different worldviews and briefly looks at eight primary positions relating to God. These include: theism, deism, finite godism, atheism, pantheism, polytheism, panentheism, and neotheism (open theism). He explains that beliefs about the world have major consequences for how we act and uses a chart comparing theism, pantheism, and atheism to each other to illustrate the vast differences in beliefs.

Can Religion Be Tested for Truth?

Most of the time, I'm not too fond of using the term "religion". I normally prefer to use "worldview" because it is more clear about what all a belief system entails. However, for this post, I will use the term common for the question posed in the title: Can religion be tested for truth?

Many years ago, I would not have even thought to ask if religion can be tested for truth. I never thought much about it, because the obvious answer to me seemed to be "Yes". Apparently, though, many people are questioning whether religion can be tested for truth today. Some even say that religion can't be tested, thus such a term as "true religion" is an oxymoron. A common slogan that I hear is, "You can't put God in a test tube". I thought that I might take a few minutes to break this down and form some kind of defense for the idea that religion can be tested.

The Power of the Cumulative Case

Last week I talked a bit about the issues with presenting evidence and arguments that do not lead to an exclusive conclusion and one way to obtain an exclusive conclusion. Many times a single argument cannot produce an exclusive conclusion. However, there is another way to eventually obtain that single conclusion.

Investigations take place all the time. People investigate different happenings and phenomena throughout the world. Investigations are how we come to understand and are able to explain things. In any investigation, a series of evidences are compiled. Any explanation that is to be considered plausible must account for all the evidence. Investigators attempt to enter an investigation without any assumptions prior to seeing evidence. The truth is that an investigator has a reason for investigating otherwise investigating would be of little value.

The Danger of Overstating Conclusions

Have you ever played the electronic game 20 Questions? If you haven't, this is what it is: You think of an object and the computer will ask you "yes/no" questions until it narrows down what you are thinking about. If you answer 20 questions, and it can't figure out what you're thinking about, you win. I've tried it a few times, and I've been able to stump it a couple. :) What the computer does is ask questions to get answers. It uses these answers as premises in an argument. Let's say that I'm thinking of something. It asks me if it is an animal; I tell it "yes". It asks me if it is fury; I say "no". It asks me if it is black; I say "no". If it asked only these three questions, and told me that me that I was thinking of a frog, it would be wrong (I'm thinking of a lizard). A frog does match the answers that I gave (the premises of the argument), but it does not match exclusively. The conclusion that the only thing that I could possibly be thinking about is a frog, is an overstated conclusion.