Category Archives: Worldview

The Most Important Message

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For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
– The Bible (John 3:16)

God’s Message to Us

The Bible is not a normal book. It claims to contain a message that God wants man to know, and there is no reason to not believe what it says. It tells us that God created the universe, and when He did, He made it to be a perfect place. There was no death or suffering. All of the good things we see in nature and more existed at that time. On the new earth, God placed all kinds of the creatures as well as the first two humans. He made a garden for them to live in, but He also gave them a test. He put a tree in the middle of that garden and commanded them to never to eat from it.

Satan’s Story

God also created angels, and at one point, some of them rebelled against God. The leader of the rebellion was the most beautiful creation that God ever made named Lucifer. Not long after man was created, Lucifer, now called Satan, decided to see if he could convince man to go against God too.

Satan took on the form of a snake, and tempted Eve to eat from the forbidden tree by causing her to doubt God and think independently of Him. God had warned Adam and Eve that if they ever did choose to eat from the forbidden tree, they would die. Satan was successful in tricking Eve into eating from the tree. Even though Adam wasn’t tricked, when Eve ate it and gave it to him, he decided to go along with her and eat it too. The perfect world that God had created was then cursed by God because of what Adam and Eve did. That’s why things are so bad for us today.

Man’s Fall and Future Hope

God had put man in charge of the earth, but man decided to disobey God and as a result, God kept His word and brought death into it, but instead of killing Adam and Eve immediately, God killed an animal and gave Adam and Eve clothes and allowed them to die slowly. He said that even though Adam and Eve would get old and die, He was going to save mankind and heal the whole earth someday through one of their descendants. Adam and Eve believed and started having kids!

Our Separation from God

The Bible goes on to tell us that as the population of mankind grew, they began to sin so badly that God was disgusted and decided to destroyed the whole world with a flood, but, keeping His promise, He reserved one good man and his family alive to repopulate the earth. Even after that, their descendants kept disobeying God to such a degree that God forced them to separate from each other by confusing their languages. This divided the world into different cultures. The resulting genetic separation is probably what caused such widely different looking humans. In all of this, God was still following through on His promise to Adam and Eve, but the child who was to save mankind had not yet been born.

God’s Plan to Save Us Could Not Be Stopped

Satan, however, was doing whatever he could to stop God’s plan from happening. He may have thought he defeated God when Adam and Eve sinned, but God had a plan and went right around him. He may have thought he won when God decided to destroy the world with a flood, but God saved Noah. He may have even thought that he won when he made Noah’s descendants go against Him, but God still worked it out.

Then the Bible follows the history of Israel. God decided to pick out three men: Abraham, his son Isaac and his son Jacob. Out of these men, God literally generated a new country that He named after Jacob, whom He had renamed Israel. He also chose a piece of real estate in a land called Canaan, destroyed the existing evil descendants of Noah who lived there and put Israel’s descendants in their place, but Satan could see what was happening and got right to work. By his scheming, he tempted Israel to become just as evil, if not worse, than the Canaanites were before them. Once again, God punished them, but once again, God went right around the problem.

God’s Plan is Revealed

Unexpectedly, after Israel had been occupied by the oppressive government of Rome, God sent an angel named Gabriel to a poor Israeli girl named Mary, telling her that she was going to have the promised child. Gabriel explained to her that this was not to be a typical child, but would actually be God Himself, and to prove it, she would get pregnant without the help of a man. That’s exactly what happened, and she gave birth to Jesus. To spread the word, thousands of God’s Angels were sent to announce the coming to the most unlikely segment of Roman society, Jewish shepherds! God was aware of what they were capable of, however. They went and told everyone what they saw and didn’t rest until they found this promised child. God knew what He was doing. Satan, however, got the leader of the time to kill all of the Jewish children in the region, but God gave Mary’s husband, Joseph a dream, and they immediately left to Egypt, once again escaping Satan’s attempt to stop God’s plan.

What Jesus Did for Us

You can imagine the life that Jesus must have lived after that. He would do something, but Satan would try to kill it, only to have Jesus go right around it. The Book of John in the Bible is important reading at this point. It tells you some of the details of this time in history. The fight to secure the salvation of the human race was coming to a critical moment.

Jesus lived in a way that made every other human look bad. He followed God’s commands, the ones that He gave to Israel’s children when He formed their nation. Unlike all the rest of them, He didn’t fail and on top of that, He pointed out the failures of others. Jesus wasn’t trying to just make people feel bad, He just knew that a person who doesn’t want to be saved, can’t be saved. If you are happy with the fact that you are sinning and don’t care that you are going to be punished for it, you won’t be willing to accept your way out of punishment. God had given man free will up to this point and He continues to do that now. If you don’t admit that you do things that God hates, you won’t be thinking clear enough to accept your salvation!

Without really understanding what they were doing, the Romans and the Jewish leadership conspired to kill Jesus. I really think that Satan thought he did it this time. Not only did Jesus die, He was tortured to death by God’s own special people, along with the leadership of the Roman government. Once again, however, this was all part of God’s plan.

God Wins

Jesus did die and for three days He was put in a tomb in Israel, but on the third day, He resurrected Himself and walked out of His tomb, never to return. When you look back at the Bible, you discover that God had planned this from the very beginning. The concepts were symbolically placed in the history of the Bible. Israel had prophets that predicted it, and Jesus himself even predicted it. Jesus, by his obedience to God beat death itself by coming back from the dead.

The Bible says that it was God’s plan to win back all of mankind by taking the punishment for Adam and Eve’s sin Himself. He did that as Jesus. If you are willing to admit that you are part of the problems we have on earth and simply believe that Jesus has already paid the price to keep you from punishment, you will not suffer that punishment.

What Jesus Saves Us From

That brings up the issue of punishment. What is the punishment that Jesus was saving people from? For that I need to quote something that Jesus hasn’t said yet. You heard that right. The Bible speaks of things that haven’t happened yet. There are things in it that are still happening. Jesus is still getting around Satan and Satan is still trying to stop Him. You and I are now in the middle of this. This is what Jesus will say in the future:

He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He said, “Write, for these words of God are faithful and true.” He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give freely to him who is thirsty from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes, I will give him these things. I will be his God, and he will be my son. But for the cowardly, unbelieving, sinners, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
– The Bible (Revelation 21:5-8)

That lake of fire that burns is what we call Hell. That’s God’s jail and it’s permanent. The death we usually talk about today is just the first one. After that, those who haven’t accepted Jesus will have to go to court and then it will be too late to change. This is why this message is so important.

Your Choice

If you will believe in Jesus now, before you die, you will be saved from the second death. The section of the Bible called “The Book of Revelation” that I just quoted from, also tells us that we aren’t at the end yet. When the end comes, God will change the whole earth, transforming it from what it is today. This world will contain only the good things again and none of the bad things. God will destroy all of the bad things. If we don’t accept God’s way for a human to become good, we will have to be destroyed with the rest of the bad from the old world. So, please take this seriously and choose to depend on Jesus now because you don’t know when you will die.

If you have chosen to trust in Jesus’ payment for your sin by his death, I encourage you to do these four things:

1) Tell God right now. Pray to Him by just talking and telling Him you accept what He has done for you. He is everywhere and can hear you.

2) Tell someone else that you believe. Start by just telling them, but I encourage you to make it “official” by getting baptized. Have another Christian perform this ceremony in order to show others that you have accepted this.

3) Read the Bible and pray as often as you can. God has provided us everything we need to grow as Christians in the Bible and Satan is here and he will be after you now. God’s message is like a weapon against Satan. Just like we need to believe the Bible about being saved from Hell, we need to believe it about everything God has said. Satan will try to stop that in order to keep you from influencing other people, so we need to stay focused on the truth. Get an e-copy of the Bible’s book of John right here.

4) Get together with other Christians on a regular basis. The Bible says that we were meant for each other. Although there are many troubles, even between Christians sometimes, a whole life of joy awaits us as we experience God’s love together. We will not accomplish God’s work alone.

If you trust in Jesus in this way, you are a Christian. You have nothing to worry about because God has forgiven you and you will be with me and all of the other Christians on the New Earth someday. Thank you for listening to this message.

What is a Worldview?

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Does it seem to you like people have completely lost their minds these days? It does to me, but I’m quite sure that the issue has nothing to do with intelligence or ignorance. I believe that what we are witnessing is a fundamental difference in worldviews. You and I may find something to be wrong or foolish, that someone else actually dares to base their entire life upon. We may wonder why people are doing so many strange things or think that our country has become divided and question: “Why can’t people just come together?” The fact is that when people have significantly different worldviews, it may be impossible to be united on even the most basic issues.

A Definition

I’d like to provide a formal definition of a worldview. Here’s one that I think is very helpful for us in our day and age:

“A worldview is a network of presuppositions, untested by the natural sciences, and in light of which all experience is interpreted.”

Dr Jason Lisle, Presuppositional Apologetics,(source)

A “network of presuppositions” is just the interconnection of ideas that you believe to be true about the most basic things in life. When it says that these things are “untested by the natural sciences,” it means that these are things you “automatically assume” to be true without any evidence.

It’s important to realize that everyone has a worldview. That’s because each person has to have one in order to make sense of the world. Also, there’s a reason why you don’t have any evidence for your worldview. It’s because evidence is always interpreted through your worldview. You have to have a worldview before you interpret evidence.

There’s No Way to be Neutral

There are some people who like to think that they don’t have a specific worldview. They believe that they are neutral and accept all worldviews. That sounds pretty good, but it’s actually not logical at all. A person who is trying to be neutral, might say: “It is better to accept all views.” This is an example of an non-neutral existing belief or “presupposition”. It’s one of those presuppositions that is already contained in their worldview. The funny thing is that they are assuming that they are not assuming something. That makes this a worldview that denies its own existence. This particular worldview is irrational and wrong. There’s more on this in my article: The Fallacy of Neutrality.

Refuting an Evidentialistic Worldview

So, “presuppositions” are what you automatically assume to be true without any evidence. That might raise a red flag to you. You might even be thinking: “I don’t have any presuppositions. I require evidence for everything I believe in.” If you are thinking this, your thinking is actually an example of a presupposition.

If you think that you have evidence for all of your beliefs, your presupposition is that it is wrong to believe in something without evidence. You probably agree with the statement: “It isn’t right to believe in something without any evidence”, but once again, this statement is a presupposition. Do you have evidence to prove that this is correct or are you just assuming it to be correct?

I would guess that you are merely assuming it to be true. Have you even listed all of your beliefs? Even if you have listed every one, do you have evidence for each of them? If so, can you prove each one of those? At some point, you will run out of evidence. That’s because you are not all knowing. At some point, you are forced to “just believe” some things. Those beliefs, whether you admit to them or not, are your worldview.

So, truth claims, such as: “It isn’t right to believe in something without evidence” cannot be proven with evidence. This particular worldview is sometimes called Evidentialism or Empiricism.

Why is this Important?

A rational worldview helps us sort through the information that invades our world. It colors everything everything we see and hear, but there can only be one correct worldview and the Bible claims to be the correct one. The Bible tells us that the only correct worldview points us to God Himself and actually makes life better.

King Solomon, the wisest king of Israel other than Jesus, told us this:

“There is no wisdom nor understanding
    nor counsel against Yahweh.”

Proverbs 21:30

“The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge;
    but the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.”

Proverbs 1:7

“The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
    They are corrupt.
    They have done abominable deeds.
    There is no one who does good.”

Psalm 14:1

“The way of the sluggard is like a thorn patch,
    but the path of the upright is a highway.”

Proverbs 15:19

Staying Alert in the Information Age

We live in a world that is full of information. It seems to come at us from every direction. In order for information to be truth, the correct worldview must be behind it. Most things that we hear in the news and from others these days are not based on the correct worldview. Even if words and concepts from the Bible are used, the information may still be a well crafted lie. If we pay attention to the worldviews of those who are giving us information it will help us avoid being fooled. The Bible tells us that God honors this kind of careful behavior. Paul writes:

“…that no advantage may be gained over us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.”

2 Corinthians 2:11

So when you read the news, Facebook, a blog or listen to a preacher, remember how important worldviews are. You may have to ask: “How do you know that?” a few times. If they are expecting you to avoid your belief in the Bible as your basic presupposition, then their worldview is wrong and the information they provide may lead you down the wrong path, even if they sound good or seem right at first. Our basic assumptions about reality should always be firmly in place, like a firm foundation and we must always guard that foundation.

“…for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, 5 throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,…”

2 Corinthians 10:4-5

Further Study

The Fallacy of Neutrality
In this article, I discuss the problem of neutrality and explain why it is logically impossible to have a neutral philosophy.

Learning to Think Biblically by Ken Ham
In this video, Ken Ham discusses and demonstrates how important worldviews are when you are faced with information today. He also discusses the fact that there are fundamentally only two kinds of worldviews.

A “Neutral” Government?
In this article, I discuss the problem caused by governments, including the United States, when they attempt to pretend to be philosophically neutral. I also discuss the worldview foundation that formed the United States.

Christianity and the Separation of Church and State

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This document addresses a popular but irrational interpretation of “the separation of church and state.” It’s a fairly common belief today that the separation of church means that the government is required to operate in a completely neutral way when it comes to religion. I would like to explain why this view is both irrational and dangerous to liberty. As I’ve said before, philosophical neutrality is fallacious and when an interpretation of the constitution is irrational, it could easily lead to tyranny.

The Founders’ Thoughts

It is possible that some of the founders believed they were neutral to all religions, but it is clear that they didn’t design a system of government that would actually work that way. The constitution merely disallowed the federal government to govern what they considered to be the exercise of religion. It is well known that the founders didn’t want the federal government specifying certain matters for the states or for the individual. The problem is that they also made claims based on the existence of God, that did apply to everyone. Unfortunately for us, the range of practices considered to be personal choices and the ones considered to be moral and virtuous for all, are not really self-evident to everyone today. As Christians, we must realize that no matter what the constitution’s problems are, our God is real, what He demands of government is not optional for anyone.

We do know that many of the founders favored Christian principles and those principles were reflected in the things they said and wrote. Here’s what some of the prominent founders of the United States said:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.” – George Washington, First President of the United States, Farewell Address

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams, Second President of the United States

“Providence has given to our people the choice of their ruler, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” – John Jay, First Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Second Governor of New York

The Absurd Results of Religious Neutrality

No matter what a person believes about it, complete religious neutrality isn’t possible. It isn’t achievable because religions frequently define opposing sets of requirements. At best, a government can only pretend to be religiously neutral. Consider the religious practices of human sacrifice and cannibalism. If the United States government were really neutral, it would be required to allow these things to take place. It’s obvious to most of us that the government should not allow this, but by not allowing it, the government isn’t really being neutral.

This pretended neutrality also makes it easier for a government to destroy itself. We have seen this appear in the United States as some have suggested that the system of government itself is not neutral and must be dismantled. This is a crafty method of revolution because even if the government is torn down, a new non-neutral government will fill the void.

Over 100 years ago, a well respected pastor in England named J. C. Ryle, gave us this warning:

“To tell us that a Government must leave religion alone, because it cannot promote it without favouring one Church more than another, is simply absurd. It is equivalent to saying that, as we cannot do good to everybody, we are to sit still and do no good at all.”

J. C. Ryle (J.C. Ryle on the Government’s Role)

Opening a Door to Tyranny

When a government pretends to be religiously neutral, it damages the rule of law. It enables a tyranny to be empowered by a well known philosophical error. In logic, it’s well established that if you allow a single inconsistency in your worldview, it can be used to prove anything you want it to. This is sometimes called The Principle of Explosion. If a person can convince you to believe in a contradiction, it paves the way for them to manipulate you. If an inconsistency is used as a means of government, it can be used as a manipulation technique to make all of its behavior seem reasonable when it really isn’t.

If a government doesn’t admit its bias, it actually opens the door to tyranny. By choosing when it will pretend to be neutral and when it will not, it can make its subjective philosophy dominant over the objective philosophy of others. Since the founders intended our country to be governed by law not people, the only workable interpretation of the separation of church and state must be one that allows the government to continue to operate by law. The only way for a society to be governed by the rule of law instead of man is for that law to ultimately be in subordination to God’s law. This is a Christian principle and it was a common belief in the west at the time our government was being formed.

What Christians Believe about Government

Christians firmly believe that each person’s decision to become a Christian is personal and autonomous. If a person were to be forced to become a Christian, they would not really be a Christian. Christians also believe that whether or not you choose to be a Christian, all mankind must obey certain civil laws. These civil laws are clear and obvious in the Bible. They include things like fornication, theft, murder and lying in court. The Bible teaches that Christian morality is to be upheld, even among non-Christians. Because Christian principles are based on God’s law in the Bible, no man or government can avoid or change them. This standard exposes human tyranny and promotes liberty because every individual knows that they are free to think and speak as long as they live within the clear and simple civil laws of God provided in the Bible.

Conscience

Some might wonder how Christians would expect non-Christians to abide by their Bible’s civil laws? The answer is that God has placed a conscience into each person, whether they choose to become a Christian or not. For instance, even in places where the Bible isn’t known, people know that murder is wrong. They also know that cheating, theft and taking someone else’s wife is wrong. The problem is that mankind tends to purposefully corrupt his conscience in order do things that give him pleasure. A person’s inner compass can be suppressed. God’s written civil laws go along with a person’s conscience and a good government merely enforces that conscience so that people can live together in freedom and harmony. This may be distasteful to those who are accustomed to living for their own passions in spite of their conscience, but it is the best thing for them and for their community. More importantly, it is what God, or Creator requires.

Further Reading

J.C. Ryle on the Government’s Role
Read more about what a honorable pastor and follower of the Bible said about the the Church and state.

Rebuilding America’s Foundation
This is something I wrote as I lamented the moral deterioration of the United States. It contains some more quotes that you may want to see by American leaders regarding the Christian worldview that forms the foundation of the American republic.

The Fallacy of Neutrality
I develop the Pretended Neutrality Fallacy a little bit more in this article demonstrating that it is immediately self-refuting.

Exploring the Limits of Civil Government
This document does a better job of explaining the true role of government. The reason that there is a separation of church and state is because God is the only one who gives authority to men and He made the distinction between the two. This is an exploration of the doctrine of governmental authority.

The Christian foundations of the rule of law in the West: a legacy of liberty and resistance against tyranny
This is a very detailed document that discusses issues regarding the history and application of the rule of law in western governments.

220 Days in Luke – Day 103: The Separation of Church and State
I also commented on this subject in my devotional commentary in the book of Luke. You can find that here.

A “Neutral” Government?

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If philosophical neutrality is a fallacy, as I previously asserted, then building a government on this philosophy is a critically serious problem.  It appears to be a trend in governments across the world and it looks like a plan forged by the powers of darkness to me.

Peace does not come by the careful application of a fallacy.  It only comes through love and proper reasoning and that will mean that those who are thinking irrationally will have to be exposed.  That exposure doesn’t feel very good and some will fight to death over it, but I know from experience that true humility brings peace when we are finally willing to admit that we are wrong.

I was reading a report from a few years ago, about a Canadian ruling that was addressing the contents of prayers before meetings.  I am told that they were warning that there are prayers that may not be legal.  This appears to be a clear case of philosophical absolutism to me.  The United States has it share of the same kind of thing, as do other countries.

We may be tempted to assert that a government should stay out of speech related issues, but in reality, how can they?  A government must assert a philosophy of some kind or else it cannot function.  It has no choice.  The problem with what governments are doing is that the philosophy they are asserting is often irrational.  You can’t rationally assert a philosophy that assumes that no philosophy should be asserted. A government built on a foundation of irrationality is in no position to bring about peace or anything else.

With great sorrow, I see the problem again in the recent speeches of both President Trump and Vice-President Pence.  Their words sound like an attempt to respect all religions and creeds, even though it is obvious that they can’t.  In many of the same speeches, they rightly express that that there are certain creeds and religions that they do not respect, such as those that kill people or promote the destruction of the United States or disrespect its constitution.  Are these not creeds and religions?  This is confusing to say the least.  That’s not what made America great.

If they intend to go back to America’s foundation, they must return to the doctrine of Christian tolerance which asserts that although Christians don’t respect other creeds and religions, they do tolerate them to a degree in civil life, because that’s what Jesus expects us to do until He chooses to deal with them Himself.  Christian tolerance is built on the concepts of free will, grace (meaning favoring others when they don’t really deserve it), and the fact that Jesus is still alive and able to take care of the wicked without our help.  Christians desire that all men will come to know Jesus by willingly accepting His offer.  This means that, according to Christian tolerance, there can be no force when it comes to individual choice either.  This is the basis for American liberty and it also happens to be non-neutral.

So why is this a big deal?  It’s because it’s this issue that leads a people toward either liberty or tyranny.  If a government doesn’t have the authority over life, liberty and personal property, it definitely doesn’t have authority over the Creator that endowed those rights.  Any government that thinks it does that is indicating that it believes it is the supreme authority in certain matters.  Even if taking God’s place isn’t intentional, that’s what is being communicated and it leaves the door open to serious future problems.  Even now we are seeing the desire for philosophical respect drive the followers of various ideas to converge against Christianity, asking that it either comply or be silenced by “civil” government.  Since Christian tolerance is the basis for our liberty,  freedom as we know it is in serious danger.  What governments must do is to acknowledge that their right to rule comes from the God of the Bible, the true One that the Christians have acknowledged.

Other brands of neutral thinking have already been used in the west and have failed quite miserably at critical times.  Recall that Neville Chamberlain attempted to bring peace in his time using a method that would allow the UK to respect Hitler’s choices.  President FDR signed a peace agreement with Japan in a similar gesture right before we entered the war.  It’s important for us to remember how well those things worked out.  How about those Israeli peace agreements?

It’s important to ask ourselves: What good is peace if freedom is taken away?    There is a way for peace and freedom to coexist, but it depends on Christian philosophy, because that’s the only way they fit together without the government becoming an irrational tyrant.

 

Believing in Science

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The evidence for God’s existence is everywhere.  The same evidence is used by both atheists and evolutionists.  This evidence is found in biology, geology, chemistry, astronomy, paleontology, physics and everything else.  The most obvious evidence for God’s existence is the Bible.  It’s hard to top a written document that explains things, but somehow, this most obvious evidence, is often ignored.  This demonstrates that the problem isn’t evidence, it’s how that evidence is being interpreted.  Because evidence has to be interpreted, there is absolutely no way to do science without a faith.  Allow me to restate that.  If you must interpret scientific evidence, then your method of interpretation, or faith, is a prerequisite.

Let’s consider “faith” in “the law of cause and effect.”  We must “believe” in the law of cause and effect, or doing experiments wouldn’t be possible.  When we do an experiment, we naturally “believe” that the experiment is the cause and that the result is the effect.  If we didn’t then we couldn’t do any science at all.  We must also “believe” in the existence of “laws of nature.” Isn’t that what science discovers?  If there were no laws in nature, why do science?   Somehow, we “know” that nature has laws.  We make these assumptions and these assumptions form our faith.  The sum of all of the things we believe or “take for granted,” is what we call a “worldview.”

Requiring evidence for a worldview is not rational because your worldview tells you how to interpret evidence.  The Bible provides us with a worldview.  Requiring evidence for it would never prove it, because any evidence would simply be reinterpreted by the worldview of the person considering the evidence.

Did you know that there is a mathematical model for the geocentric (earth is the center instead of sun) view of the solar system?  I am told it is possible to chart the movement of objects in the sky using this model with success.  The model, however, is extremely complicated.  If one insists on the fact that the earth is the center of the solar system, the evidence can be interpreted that way.

I am also told that at one time, Galileo tried to convince the skeptics of his day that the moon wasn’t a perfect sphere, as Aristotle had stated.  He had them look into his telescope and see that the moon was covered with craters and valleys.  They refused to believe their own eyes!  They stated that there must be an invisible crystalline sphere that  covered the moon, filling in its valleys and craters.

These examples demonstrate the limit of evidence.  It cannot prove anything, ultimately.  It can confirm a person’s ideas but it is amazingly inconclusive when faith is involved, and faith is always involved.  Why couldn’t the earth be the center of the solar system?  Why couldn’t there be an invisible crystalline sphere around the moon?  Evidence alone won’t prove the point!  If you try to live by evidence without faith, you will always be easily confused.  I tend to believe the simplest answer, if God doesn’t say otherwise.  The Bible tells us that God is a God of love and hides things for us to discover.  It makes sense that God’s science would be fascinatingly simple.

The faith problem explains why so many evolutionists and atheists disregard the best evidence of God.  They find ways, based on their faith, to disregard things, like the Bible.  It is consistent with their faith to re-interpret evidence, but to so and then act like others shouldn’t, is very inconsistent.  I find that, in general, evolutionists and atheists don’t actually want evidence for God or the Bible, they already have faith in something else that causes them to use the evidence the way that they want.  They may think they are being “neutral,” even though that doesn’t exist, but they are merely holding to their worldview.  If something disagrees with their worldview, they simply create a new possibility, based on the unknown, and reinterpret the evidence.

Bible believers actually have a more strict position.  Unlike evolutionists, I can’t just make things up.  God’s words are pretty clear and never change, and I have to stay consistent with them.  It is true that when I don’t understand something I use conjecture, just like the evolutionists, but I try to stay within the confines of what God has said.  I’m not asking evolutionists for evidence, though, because I am aware that the real issue is that evolutionists have an opposing faith.

I have a good reason to believe in God and science.  Evolutionists and atheists don’t have a good reason to believe what they believe.  The demand for evidence is just being used as a way to suppress the fact that what they believe doesn’t make sense.  Take the “law of cause and effect” for instance.  How can evolution explain the existence of a law like that?  If things change randomly, what’s to stop the law of cause and effect from changing randomly?  As far as I can tell, evolution doesn’t provide a rational framework for the existence of any law.  In order for an evolutionist to believe in science at all, they must irrationally rely on biblical assumptions.  The Bible says that the earth was created by a Person who never changes and makes laws.  Because of that, I have a real reason to believe in science.  Evolution, however, cannot rationally support the worldview that must be assumed in order for science to exist.

 

The Fallacy of Neutrality

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Neutrality is actually a fallacy. That’s because “neutrality” is a position.

A person who decides to be neutral is taking a position of neutrality, therefore, they are not being neutral.   They are relying on a self-refuting logical argument. Not only that, they are implying that every philosophy that takes a position is wrong, usually while convincing themselves that it is an expression of tolerance!

It is not unusual to hear people assert that they come to scientific evidence neutrally, but this a denial of the obvious fact that everyone takes a position.  Evidence can’t talk (even though some say it speaks for itself). Evidence requires a method of interpretation or else the “evidence” is just a set of objects without significance.  To deny the method of interpretation is another way to deny taking a position.

It is also common for nations, business and individuals to claim the be neutral in regard to religious beliefs.  Once again, this attempt to tolerate them all, denies them all since all of them are asserting their own position.  Just because a person claims to not be doing something, doesn’t mean that that is what they are actually doing.  You can claim to love someone while harming them.  The same thing happens when a person claims to be religiously neutral and then disallows any of them to be expressed.  The fact is that a secular position is being promoted under the disguise of “neutrality.”

The claim: “I am neutral” is itself a non-neutral claim because it assumes that “Neutrality exists.” Asserting this claim, is taking a position against those who don’t believe it exists. When a person asserts a position, they are not being neutral. Therefore, the claim that neutrality exists is a fallacy.  Dr. Jason Lisle calls this fallacy: “The Pretended Neutrality Fallacy” in his book “The Ultimate Proof of Creation”.

Both Evolutionists and Creationists aren’t really neutral. They may convince themselves that they are, but by choosing to believe in neutrality they are not only taking a position, they are being irrational. It’s understandable that evolutionists would be irrational, because they don’t have a basis for logic or morality in their worldview, but Christians actually have a moral obligation to be rational because it’s biblical.

Christians are supposed to be honest about the fact that they are not neutral. Jesus said that people were either for Him or against Him. He never said that there were people who were “on the fence.” Instead, He made it clear that the fence didn’t exist. By doing this, He exposed everyone’s position. Claiming to be neutral is to say that Jesus is wrong. When you say that Jesus is wrong, you taking a very bold, non-neutral position.

So, the claim that a person is neutral is fallacious because it is based on the non-neutral position that neutrality exists.  Christians should be aware of this and not be persuaded by the fallacy of neutrality.

Further Study

What is a Worldview
We all have a worldview. We see the world through a set of presuppositions that we can’t prove scientifically.  This is how I describe it.

Science Opposes Evolution

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Science is the study of physical things that can be repeatedly observed, and by doing experiments, it has been observed that order is a fundamental element of physical systems.  In living systems, this order takes the form of programming, which we recognize as a very complicated form of linguistic information.  This doesn’t fit well with the ideas of evolution because evolution usually tries to explain change as a random process that happens when energy is applied to matter.  I believe, that at least one reason we don’t consider this to be a problem, is because we were only exposed to part of the truth about the fundamental elements of universe in school.

In an effort to stay within the bounds of naturalism, public schools teach two things that don’t work together.  We see this in the difference between what was taught in health class and what was taught in science class.

In health class, we are warned about germs and ways to protect ourselves from doing things like eating canned goods that have had the seal broken.  We are told that as long as the seal of a canned item is unbroken, an unwanted organism cannot get through and contaminate it.

Now when we go to science class, we are told something else, but it isn’t obvious at first.  Evolutionary science teaches something that could be simplified into a formula like this:

Matter + Energy = Life!

One thing that was shown to me is that we are capable of doing this experiment ourselves, but I suggest that we go back to health class to do it!  Let’s take a sealed can of beans and put it in a shaking machine.  Let’s also heat it up to just above room temperature.  Let’s leave it there all day.  Then let’s open it up at the end of the day and see what kinds of new life has formed.

Note that we had this formula:

Beans + (Shaking and Heat) = ?

To our dismay, when we open the can we find no new life.  There is no mold or anything.  We added a significant amount of heat and shaking.  The amount of pounds of pressure that was sent through the can could probably have built a house.  What we are experiencing is a way in which the formula we are taught in science class doesn’t appear to work.  We still eat cans of beans that haven’t been opened yet, even though the temperature has changed, it has been shaken and light has been showing on it.  We could have even been exposed to an magnet.  Did you realize that this experiment is performed over and over every day all over the world?  There are literally millions of cans being stored every year. The government is so concerned with the reality of this that they make laws to ensure that business abide by health class rules and not science class rules.

Here’s the formula being carefully controlled by health organizations:

Matter + Energy + Information = Life!

I would argue that there are actually three fundamentals of nature and one of them isn’t physical.  Information is from outside nature.  It’s “super” natural, and we don’t observe nature without it.  Once the right kind of information is introduced into a can of beans, we quickly discover new life forms.  If information is kept from being introduced into the experiment, only the existing life forms are left, but only until they break down (but that’s another topic).

The Bible has been telling us the truth the whole time.  Even when we didn’t understand the nature of germs or DNA yet.  Unlike a science book, it didn’t have to change to protect its philosophy.