Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 55

Challenge Response: Religions Are Products of Culture and Geography, Not Truth

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

 

God and Morality | Every Idea Has Consequences

Brett’s and Alan’s April newsletters are now posted on the website:

God and Morality by Brett Kunkle: “[W]e don’t want to claim unbelievers cannot know moral truth. Instead, we need to demonstrate that without God, there is no ontological foundation for the existence of morality. Here’s an analogy to illustrate this distinction. Does a person have to believe in the existence of mailmen in order to read the mail they find in their mailbox everyday? No. But what best explains the existence of mail in their mailbox everyday? A mailman. In the same way, unbelievers can affirm moral values and live moral lives, even if they don’t believe in God. However, if they think there are real objective moral truths that exist, they must offer an adequate explanation for the existence of such things. This is the ontological question, and here we can demonstrate the unbeliever does not have a satisfactory answer.” (Read more) 


Every Idea Has Consequences by Alan Shlemon: “Christianity has a history of surviving – even thriving – amidst persecution. For the first few hundred years after its inception, following Christ was illegal and believers were hunted, burned, and fed to lions. Despite the opposition, Christianity experienced explosive growth. I fear that in the upcoming era of hostility, we won’t see growth. Instead, we’ll see decline through two means: cleansing and compromise. Nominal Christians – believers in name only – will abandon Christianity. Since they aren’t firmly rooted in the faith, it will be too costly for them to retain the title “Christian.” Instead, they’ll be cleansed from the Church (John 15:2). Others will compromise. They’ll continue to claim Christ, but will abandon orthodoxy in favor of a more palatable and politically-correct Christianity. By approving of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, they’ll remove themselves as targets.” (Read more)

You can subscribe to their monthly newsletters via email here.

Links Mentioned on the 4/21/15 Show

The following is a rundown of this week's podcast, annotated with links that were either mentioned on the show or inspired by it:

HOUR ONE

Co-hosts: Alan Shlemon and Amy Hall

If God Is Good, Why Is There Evil and Suffering? (video) by Amy Hall

Commentary: "Pray the Gay Away?" (0:00)

How to Help Transgender Children by Amy Hall (quoting Walt Heyer)
I Tried to "Pray the Gay Away" and Ended Up in a Hospital Bed by Vicky Beeching
Homosexuality to Holiness by Alan Shlemon
Got Same-Sex Attraction? Things Can Change by Alan Shlemon

Questions:

1. When should you leave a church? (0:40)

Second commentary: Blog Features (0:53)

Find links to guests, articles, books, etc. mentioned on any past show.
Challenge posts
Book club reading Nancy Pearcey's Finding Truth

HOUR TWO

Commentary: Is Allah a Generic Term for God? (1:00)

Questions:

2. Define evil. (1:06)

3. What's a quick way to explain why he's not participating in LGBTQ week activities? (1:26)

Listen to today's show or download any archived show for free. (Find links from past shows here.)

To take part in the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00–7:00 p.m. PT), follow @STRtweets and use the hashtag #STRtalk.

Challenge: Religions Are Products of Culture and Geography, Not Truth

This week’s challenge comes from a post by “exbeliever” on John Loftus’s blog, Debunking Christianity:

From the atheist's perspective, it seems too coincidental that religions just happen to dominate certain geographic locations and culture…. 

[I]t is hard not to dismiss a religious person's claim that their religion is the truth when it certainly seems, from my point of view, that that same person would be pushing another religion had they been born in a different part of the world….

[I]t is not unreasonable for us to conclude that religions are products of culture and geography, not products of "truth" and "falsehood." 

How would you respond to this one? Tell us what you think, and then check back on Thursday to hear Brett’s answer.

[Explore past challenges here and here.]

Live Broadcast Today

This week, Alan Shlemon and Amy Hall will be guest hosting the show. Call them with your question or comment at (855) 243-9975, outside the U.S. (562) 424-8229. Today 4-6 p.m. PT (only two hours this week).

Listen live online. Join us on Twitter during the program @STRtweets.

If God Is All-Loving, How Can He Say He, "Hated Esau" in Malachi 11?

Alan explains this seemingly contradictory passage in this week's video blog.

How Social Ostracism Could Increase Our Love

Here are some good words from Trevin Wax:

The ethical dilemmas we are facing would boggle the mind of my great grandparents…. 

It’s not going to get easier.

If in a mere decade, a society can overturn a pillar that has undergirded civilization for thousands of years, what kind of changes will come in the next decade or two? The unthinkable is now the possible.

The cultural pressure upon us will increase. We better be okay with standing out from the rest of the world, no matter how unpopular it makes us.

We also better get used to people saying we are filled with hate and vitriol toward neighbors we disagree with. And we should do our best to show the world so much love that those labels don’t stick.

Maybe the way God is teaching us to reach out to the maligned and marginalized is by letting us taste the same kind of social ostracism.

Maybe the less we seek the love of society, the more we’ll be free to love others in God’s image.

Read the rest.

Finding Truth: Twilight of the Gods

Today is our third week discussing Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (see links to the previous posts below). The chapter “Twilight of the Gods” goes into more detail about the first of five principles in Pearcey's Romans-1-based template for evaluating worldviews: “Identify the idol.”

Pearcey first reminds us what follows from the fact that we’re rational beings:

Because we are created in God’s image as rational and responsible beings, we all have a philosophy—not necessarily one learned out of a textbook, but an overall view of life by which we make sense of the world. The biblical view of human nature implies that we are “incapable of holding purely arbitrary opinions or making entirely unprincipled decisions,” writes Albert Wolters. (p. 58)

Now we get to the first step for evaluating these systems of thought created by rational human beings:

[T]hose who reject the Creator will create an idol. They will absolutize some power or element immanent within the cosmos, elevating it into an all-defining principle—a false absolute. When evaluating a worldview, then, the first step is to identify its idol. What does it set up as a God substitute?

Despite the vast diversity of religions and philosophies, they all start by putting something created in the place of God. (pp. 60-61)

To identify the idol of any system of thought, we need to look for “the convictions that engage us most deeply and drive our behavior.” Since every worldview has these convictions, even atheist systems have these idols:

[I]t is impossible to think without some starting point. If you do not start with God, you must start somewhere else. You must propose something else as the ultimate, eternal, uncreated reality that is the cause and source of everything else. The important question is not which starting points are religious or secular, but which claims stand up to testing. 

The advantage of using the biblical term idol is that it levels the playing field. Secular people often accuse Christians of having “faith,” while claiming that they themselves base their convictions purely on facts and reason. Not so. If you press any set of ideas back far enough, eventually you reach an ultimate starting point—something that is taken as the self-existent reality on which everything depends. This starting assumption cannot be based on prior reasoning, because if it were, you could ask where that reasoning starts—and so on, in an infinite regress. At some point, every system of thought has to say, This is my starting point. There is no reason for it to exist. It just “is.”

If starting premises do not rest on reasons, how can they be tested? Although you cannot argue backward to their prior reasons, you can argue forward by spelling out their implications, then testing those implications using both logic and experience. (pp. 62-63)

Philosophies, she says, are a kind of secular religion. Not every religion includes a god, morality, or even rituals, but they all acknowledge a “self-existent, eternal reality that is the origin of everything else…. No other factor is genuinely universal among religions.” She concludes, “Religions are a lot more like philosophies than most people think. And philosophies are a lot like religions.”

Since secular philosophies, like religions, point to an ultimate reality, they can be evaluated, just as religions can, by identifying their idols. For example:

Paganism: The idol “is Nature itself, or a spiritual substance interconnecting all of nature.”
Plato and Aristotle: “The ultimate formative principle within the universe was what they called rational forms.”
Scientific materialism: “What is ultimately real is matter—molecules in motion.”
Marxism (a “denomination” of materialism): “Economic conditions are the ultimate explainer.”
Empiricism: “What we can really rely on are empirical facts—what we can see, feel, weigh, and measure…. Makes an idol of the sensory realm. Whatever is not susceptible to empirical testing is not real.”
Rationalism: “The sole source and standard of knowledge are ideas in the mind known by reason.”
Romanticism: “The ultimate foundation for truth was…the creative imagination.”

Whatever our idol is, everything else we encounter in the world is explained in terms of that idol. Or at least, we attempt to explain things in those terms; everything that doesn’t fit is “either denied, redefined, or dismissed as unreal.”

In the end, while other worldviews can teach us true things within the areas they focus on, “whatever is genuinely good and true finds its true home within Christianity.” 

Christianity alone provides what the greatest philosophers and sages have sought all along: a coherent and transcendent framework that encompasses all of human knowledge. (p. 89) 

Tell us what you thought of this chapter in the comments below. Did you find anything interesting or new? Any questions or disagreements? Next Friday, we’ll move on to the second principle (“Identify the idol’s reductionism”) described in the next chapter, “How Nietzsche Wins.”

Previous posts:

Book Club Introduction (Includes a 15% discount for the book)
Week One: Foreword
Week Two: I Lost My Faith at an Evangelical College

Twitter: #STRread, #FindingTruth

Van Leeuwenhoek – Father of Microbiology

Antony van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch Calvinist born in the 17th century who became the father of microbiology. He was a draper by trade and owned his own business in Delft, Holland. He didn’t have any scientific training, but he was in awe of God’s creation and wanted to study it to understand it better. He felt this was loving God with his mind.

He became interested in lens making as a hobby and developed a unique technique for making lenses that required no grinding. He never shared his technique with anyone. In fact, he never published a scientific paper. His work came to light in his correspondence with the Royal Society in London. He was the first to record observations of bacteria, spermatozoa, and blood flow in capillaries. He was also the first to observe infusoria (tiny aquatic life), vacuoles (a structure in cells), and the banded pattern of muscle fibers. He proved that microscopic organisms procreated, which differed from the prevailing scientific view that they generated spontaneously.

In 1676, he sent his observations of microscopic single-celled organisms to the Royal Society. These were unknown at the time, and the Society doubted his findings. They sent a team of experts to visit van Leeuwenhoek, and they confirmed what he had reported.

Van Leeuwenhoek was always secretive about the specific techniques of his work. He never allowed anyone to see his best microscope lenses, or the many microscopes he built over time. Very few of his microscopes and lenses survived. It wasn’t until the 1950s that anyone was able to recreate his technique for the fine lenses he made. 

He remained humble because of his lack of scientific training, despite being inducted into the Royal Society and being visited by Peter the Great and other dignitaries.

Antony always approached his work with reverence, wondering at the details of God’s creation large and small. He viewed his work as providing more evidence of God’s greatness. He believed science could be studied to glorify God.

Free Audiobook: Tortured for Christ

ChristianAudio.com’s free audiobook this month is one by Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand (see “How Our Suffering Glorifies God,” “Decide Here and Now,” and “How We’ve Infuriated Centuries of People”), written during the height of the Soviet Union, titled Tortured for Christ. From the book’s website:

Months of solitary confinement, years of periodic physical torture, constant suffering from hunger and cold, the anguish of brain-washing and mental cruelty—these are the experiences of a Romanian pastor during his fourteen years in Communist prisons.

His crime, like that of thousands of others, was his fervent belief in Jesus Christ and his public witness concerning his faith. 

Meeting in homes, in basements, and in woods—sometimes daring to preach in public on street corners—these faithful souls persisted in their Christian witness knowing full well the ultimate cost of their actions. 

This is their story—a classic account of courage, tenacious faith, and unbelievable endurance. This history of the Underground Church reflects the continuing struggle in many parts of the world today.

Download the free audiobook here. (The Kindle version is only $1.00 on Amazon.)