Agnosticism: The most Egregious Form of Fence-Sitting

Wiki defines Agnosticism as “the view that certain
claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but
also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.”

 

But how valid is this position really? Does anybody actually know for certain that
God does or does not exist? I mean 100%. Can these people give compelling
logical proofs or disproofs?

 

Not even the infamous anti-theist Richards Dawkins claims to
know 100% that God does not exist. What about theists? I’m a devout Christian,
but I can’t say that I know for sure. In fact if you press most Christians hard
enough, they too will admit that they don’t know for certain.

 

This may surprise many atheists, and some Christian’s may
recoil at the mere suggestion. But what we have to remember is that Christ
never said that admission to Heaven requires certainty, in fact the totally opposite is true. Christ constantly
stressed the importance of faith in the Salvation that is given by God (Matthew
25:21, Mark 5:2, Luke 5:20, Luke
7:50).

No demand was made for 100% certainty. How can anyone be
100% certain when our fallen, sinful existence is defined as being divorced
from God’s presence?

 

 

 

So if both atheists and theists admittedly only hold their
positions by faith, then where does this lead the agnostic? It seems as though
it leaves him in an untenable intellectual position.

I can understand the agnostics who are genuinely perplexed and ambivalent as to the
existence of God, but it is those agnostics that try and define Agnosticism as
a legitimate belief system in itself that I find frustrating. It is a refusal
to even genuinely debate the matter. It is a pusillanimous refusal to put ones
neck on the line.

But what these types of agnostics don’t seem to realize is that their neck is on the
line whether they like it or not. Either God exists or He doesn’t; when your
last breath departs from your lungs, you will quickly find that there is no fence
to sit on after all!

 

Could Neanderthal be a highly intelligent, bipedal ape?

 

Being a Young Earth Creationist (YEC), I have tended to view
Neanderthals as a highly diverged race of humans. There is very little evidence
to suggest that they are anything other than this.

But one thing that I had never considered before, is the
thesis explained by the author of this video; that the collection of skeletons
known as Neanderthal were actually highly intelligent, bipedal apes.

 

Of course this would not be a surprising revelation to any
evolutionist, but how would this fit into a YEC theory? The bottom line is that
there is no reason why God would not
have created a highly intelligent species of ape that fully aligns with what
the author of the video describes. This animal would certainly have been given
safe passage by Noah on the Ark during the
Global Flood, a

 

nd flourished afterwards in the frigid ice age continent ofEurope.

 

The only thing in this video that I couldn’t take seriously
was the claim that the vastly distinct Neanderthals were mating/raping human
females resulting in healthy offspring.

If there is anything that we know for sure in biology it is
that different types of animals that have been totally separated for tens, or
hundreds, of thousands of years CAN NOT produce viable offspring. This just
does not happen.

The reason why the author suggested that humans and
Neanderthals have mated in the past is because that DNA of Neanderthals closely aligns with humans. This fact,
coupled with their virtually identical physiology of modern human, is what
leads YECs to assume that the two are only different races of humans.

 

So is he right? The only thing that we can know for certain
is that nothing is certain! As contradictory as this sounds, it is true.
Skeletons tell us very little about the functioning of the organism. The whole farce
with the coelacanth should serve as an important lesson.

 

True or not, I can appreciate the author thinking outside
the box. It is certainly a very exciting thesis!

 

Is the Threat of Tyranny Over?

Western democracies have been constructed in a specific
manner so as to safeguard the rise of tyrannies through government. We see in
America and Australia that the government and the judicial system has been
split up into vastly different pieces so that all power can not be wielded by only
one person or group. This was specifically done so as to prevent tyranny.

We witnessed in Nazi Germany the cost of having insufficient
safe guards in place, which resulted in the infamous atrocities that stained
the 20^th century in blood.

But in the last few decades there has been a concerted move
within these two countries to largely amalgamate these various levels into the
federal level. The impetus for this has come from the desire to minimise the
waste of money in funding these different levels, as well as fast-tracking
progress that tends to get caught up in the many different levels of red tape.

As honest as these reasons are, they tend to forget the
actual purpose that the splitting up of power into different tiers was done for.
It was specifically designed to prevent tyrannical persons or parties from not
just rising to power, but in exercising it on everyone, everywhere.

But one may object that surely in this day and age such
tyranny is a thing of the past so we can safely amalgamate all the tiers of
government without fear of history repeating.

While it is tempting to think that such barbarous people and
parties don’t exist in our ‘modern’ Western world of today, such thinking is rather
dangerously naive.

I can think of two specific groups of people here in Australiathat
would take advantage of such an amalgamated government and rule like tyrants;
moderate/radical Islam, and the radical-liberal Greens.

Radical Islam is quite explicit in it’s intentions of
installing Sharia law in Australia.
While the radical elements are currently few, moderate Islam is breeding more.
But what’s even more worrying is that even moderate Muslims harbour, or at
least are sympathetic, to the installation of Sharia law.

If moderate-radical Islam gained the controls of a vastly
strengthened and amalgamated federal government, tyranny is almost certain to
follow.

The Green party and it’s sympathisers are also on the
ascendency here inAustralia.

They, rather like the nascent Nazi party, are quite
duplicitous with their policies. They present themselves to the public as a
mainstream and credible alternative (again like the Nazi party), yet they
harbour some pretty scary policies that are only ever revealed furtively once
they have the power to instigate them. Policies promoting feticide, infanticide
and senicide are their most insidious, not to mention the fact that they are
generally regarded as narrow-minded economic vandals.

But what makes the Greens the greater threat is the
Nazi-like duplicity that they employ to gain power. This has been proven a
number of times recently where they have tried, and sometimes succeeded, in sneaking
through outrageous bills when they know that it would never succeed if the
bills were honestly proffered.

The enormous lust for power that these two groups have is
only matched by the radial nature of their ideologies. The thing that makes
them so dangerous is that their ideologies are very inconspicuous. It is hard
for the ordinary, busy voter to see behind the façade.

So in conclusion, having multiple levels of power may be
costly, but they are extraordinarily important in preventing these groups with
radical ideologies from sneaking into power, and if they do, then their actions
are largely mitigated by the multiple governmental bulwarks.

Ideologies and Morality

Crimes and atrocities are committed by those of all beliefs. In the great struggle between Christianity and atheism each has blood on it’s hands, though it is clear that atheist inspired ideologies have caused far more causalities in one century than religious conflict has in the whole history of humanity.

But this isn’t the topic of this post. Instead I want to discuss the distinction that separates the two.

When a Christian gives alms; cares for the vulnerable; is patient or humble, he is practicing the moral principles that are commanded of him by his ideology. Conversely when he murders; steals from; rapes or slanders somebody, he is violating the clear moral principles of his ideology. There is a transcendental moral code that he believes he is held accountable to.

The atheist on the other hand, has no obligation or responsibility to do either good or bad. When God is eliminated from one’s ideology, morality goes with it too. If an atheist gives alms or cares for the sick, it is of his own personal volition. He may think it is his moral obligation, but this is just his personal opinion. He has no objective reason to do so.

Similarly, his raping of the child next door, is just as much his moral obligation. Both are morally equal actions. He is in perfect harmony with his amoral atheist ideology. He can rape or care; assault or mend; steal or give alms, no particular action by a mere human ‘bag of carbon atoms’ has any more moral significance then the action of a particular cloud of stellar dust. At least a cloud of stellar dust doesn’t have the arrogance and audacity to claim that the actions of his particular arrangement of up-quarks and down-quarks is any more significant than the human atheist’s mix of quarks! He is at least a humble bag of quarks!

Thus when a Christian rapes someone, he is in clear violation of his ideology. But when an atheist does the same, he is in perfect harmony with his own ideology.

Atheism, when taken to it’s logical conclusion, is absurd. As Calvin (in the cartoon above) found out the hard way!

The God Delusion

Having read The God Delusion this second time, I have come to appreciate much of what he says. While there is no doubt that much of the content is intellectual drivel, most of his criticisms of the church hit the nail on the head.

The God Delusion to me seemed to act as a very efficient ‘Occam’s’ razor to various religions, and various practices within religions. I really think that if the Christian church implemented this razor to their theology and to their general practices, they would come out much stronger and fitter as a result. Though this is certainly not Dawkins intention!

The thing that shocked me the most was that this particular work by Dawkins is surprisingly short scientific evidence while being long on grand speculation. Page and page went by where Dawkins indulged in fantastic speculation as to the origin and possible Darwinian reason for religion, yet he never substantiated any of his arguments with anything remotely resembling empirical data. It is for this reason alone that religious people can simply ignore this book and it’s claims, because they are nothing more than spectacular speculation.

Most people seem to think that this book is an argument against the existence of a god, specifically the Christian God. This is certainly how it is portrayed. Yet this couldn’t be further from the truth. The basic arguments that Dawkins uses against the existence of God falls in to the trap of the Genetic Fallacy, that is to say that denigrating the origin of an idea or the people who believe it, does not address it’s actual existence. Dawkins quite rightly bemoans the ill that religious people cause, but wrongly assumes that just because some religious people do bad things, that God mustn’t exist. The second argument that falls into this fallacy is Dawkins’ attempt to explain the belief in God as being just a delusion in the human’s brain. But yet again, speculating as to the workings of the human mind doesn’t even begin to address the actual existence of God Himself.

The main bone that I have to pick with Dawkins is his extreme intolerance towards those who disagree with him. He seems to be a hardcore anti-pluralist. He seems totally unwilling to even consider the idea of just living with people who disagree with his own worldview. In critiquing religion his chosen method is to throw the baby out with the bath water. He isn’t interested in letting those religions who shun all forms of violence to live beside him. No, instead he tarnishes all religions with the dirtiest brush that he could find, and proclaims that even the most benignly pacifist religions must be eliminated. This type of dogmatic intolerance sadly reminds me of the oppression techniques of communist China and Russia where everybody who disagreed with the rulership was systematically eradicated. Dawkins rhetoric is shockingly similar to this horrible time in history.

It is disconcerting that this book is in the hands of the pleb. While I recommend it to those properly educated in religion (specifically Protestants), ‘The God Delusion’ is a dangerous propaganda tool in the hands of those people whose only real knowledge of religion is from these types of biased books. These people are totally unable to critically evaluate Dawkins claims, and balance them against what the Bible really teaches.

As a Protestant young earth creationist, I found that virtually nothing in this book that Dawkins criticised was applicable to my worldview. I could almost feel the bullets rapidly bounding off of me! Virtually all of his attack was directed against the various Catholic beliefs and practices which clearly don’t apply to Protestants. His other major point of attack was against the various inconsistencies that arise by trying to marry ones belief in God to the theory of evolution, and again, none of this applies to the YEC worldview. For me, I came out the other end of this book smiling. Dawkins razor was only ever directed at the dross that holds Christianity down as a credible alternative to atheism. If you eliminate all that Dawkins recommends, you get YEC; a worldview tempered in the crucible of Dawkins vociferous attacks; a worldview, by virtue of Dawkins tempering, that is immune to all weapons that he has in his arsenal.

Atheism, Creationism and a Conflict of Interest

 

Atheistic naturalists are inherently incapable of critiquing any theory which presupposes miraculous events. This is for the same reason of judicial ‘conflict of interest’.

Suppose an accused man was brought before a judge who was his father. If the judge insisted on presiding over the accused he would be forced to step down from the case because of an obvious conflict of interest. The reason this is so is because the accused is likely to be benefited by the judge’s predisposition towards favouring him due to their special relationship. Thus, the judge has an ineradicable favouring towards the accused, therefore the outcome is quite likely to be skewed.

The same is true of atheistic naturalists who wish to pass judgement over creationism.

The most foundation axiom of the atheist is that supernatural events do not exist, and as such the ‘supernatural’ is totally excluded from even consideration. This means that their starting assumption – there is no supernatural events – conflicts with the task at hand – critiquing creationism – because creationism presupposes supernatural events as an axiom of their model of origins.

The fact that the atheist has an ineradicable disposition against creationism means that his conclusion will be highly skewed; the atheist has a substantial conflict of interest when discussing creationism.

YEC, ID and the God of the Gaps

Atheist Fairytales

The ‘God of the Gaps’ idea (hereafter abbreviated as gotg) is commonly used as a disparaging epithet against anyone who denies that only natural causes have been in effect in the universe’s history. Wikipedia defines it as:

“a view of God as existing in the “gaps” or aspects of reality that are currently unexplained by scientific knowledge, or that otherwise lack a plausible natural explanation….a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena for which science has yet to give a satisfactory account.” [Emphasis added]

I will ignore the non-sequitur logical fallacy of the gotg argument that, just because you can imagine a plausible natural explanation for an event in the past doesn’t mean that it actually occurred that way. Instead I want to focus on it’s common application to the two worldviews of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and the Intelligent Design movement (ID).

It seems to me that the idea of filling the explanatory gaps in the naturalist theory of origins with ‘god did it’ is most applicable to ID. To explain why this is so, a brief explanation of what ID is, is necessary. Wikipedia defines ID as the:

“proposition that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”

This means that ID basically accepts every single part of the atheistic model of evolutionary origins, except where atheistic evolution fails to explain how something happened, like the commonly cite bacterial flagellum. So whenever naturalism fails to provide a plausible explanation of how something could have occurred naturally, ID says “god did it” (or to be more accurate: “a designer did it”). So we see that the definition of what ID is, inherently includes the essential logic of the ‘God of the Gaps’ idea.

YEC on the other hand, rejects all forms of evolution (be it atheistic, theistic, deistic etc) totally and utterly. YEC has a totally different model for the origin of life. It completely rejects the idea that all life has commonly descent from bacteria via any form of evolution. YEC rejects the theory that all life has a common ancestry as merely a figment of the imagination, and as a false interpretation of the empirical data that the earth’s rocks provide.

I would consider YEC immune from the gotg allegation, as opposed to ID (or any other variation of theistic naturalism), because YEC doesn’t actually attempt to insert supernaturalism in the gaps of the atheistic framework, but inserts supernaturalism in place of the whole atheistic framework itself!

Thus, if the YEC theory rejects the actual whole fractured framework of evolution, than any accusation that the YEC theory is a gotg type theory is inapplicable since the YEC model rejects the actual framework and thus the gaps that gotg thinking is employed to plug.

Because of this rejection of the atheistic evolution of all species, and the rejection of the corollary gaps in the model that ID tries to fill, YEC is free to interpret nature through supernatural means, immune to the gotg epithet.

It is for this reason that YEC avoids the whole gotg trap that ID inherently falls head-first into.

Interpreting Scripture

It is generally agreed by laymen and Biblical scholars alike that the best way to interpret the meaning of Scripture is to compare it to itself (that is, cross-referencing with itself), and that a good rule is that the Bible should be taken as literal unless is obviously means otherwise, as is obviously the case with Psalms or Revelations.

Yet when the topic of Creation and the Flood is discussed, the rules suddenly change and we are told that Scripture should also be interpreted by “science” whenever the two disagree. 

Essentially what is implied-consciously or not- is that the Christian worldview is to be subordinate to all other worldviews, particularly the currently reigning secular worldview. Whenever there is a disagreement between these two, the Bible is always the one that is reinterpreted. It is claimed that the “science” of the secular worldview is the acme of human knowledge and as such all other forms of knowledge must be subservient.

But what is meant by the term ‘science’? It seems that the two terms ‘science’ and ‘naturalistic evolution’ are used synonymously. It is certainly true that most of the public have the fallacious impression that ‘science’ inherently means naturalistic evolution to the exclusion of all other worldviews such as YEC, OLC, theistic evolution etc. And vice versa it is believed that naturalistic evolution has exclusive rights over the term ‘science’, to the exclusion of all other worldviews (Hence why so many religious people feel compelled to reject all ‘science’ outright; they wrongly think that in order to reject evolution they must also reject ‘science’).

Science certainly is a powerful explanatory tool for acquiring knowledge. Therefore because naturalistic evolution claims exclusive rights over ‘science’ it is wrongly assumed that ‘naturalistic evolution’ must similarly be regarded as just as powerful and authoritative by synonymous association alone. Thus, it is claimed that the philosophical worldview of naturalism must be the rule to which all other worldviews conform.

It is for this reason alone that the Biblical account of origins is demanded by secularists to be subservient and must genuflect to their own worldview of naturalistic evolution. 

What secularists are erroneously claiming is that any Biblical idea that conflicts with science is wrong.

But what they really mean is that any Biblical idea that conflicts with their philosophy of naturalism is wrong! It has NOTHING to do with science at all!

But what must be remembered is that science is rather like statistics; you can pick or ignore whatever pieces of science that you like to suit whatever worldview you like; YEC, OEC, IDism, theistic evolution, deistic evolution, atheistic evolution etc, the fact is that ALL worldviews have some sort of science behind them.

So in the end we see that scientific evidence actually does comport with Scripture-rather; it is only the philosophical worldview of naturalistic evolution that does not fit with Scripture. And considering that it was originally designed to oppose the Biblical model, the fact that the two conflict should come as no surprise to anyone.

The conflict is not between ‘science’ vs the Bible at all. Instead the real conflict is between the worldviews naturalism vs the Bible, as well as between naturalistic science vs Biblical science.

So what Christians are actually doing when trying to compromise the Bible with evolution is making the Bible subservient to the most popular worldview of today in a vain attempt to avoid embarrassment in the face of ungodly man, rather than being concerned with truth in the face of God. 

Should the perspicacious Word of God really be subservient to the capricious vogue of man?

A Letter Sent to My Local Member for Parliament

Hello,

I am quite concerned in hearing about the Federal Parliament’s intentions in allowing homosexual couples to marry, giving the same status to homosexual unions as heterosexual unions. This incidentally, and most importantly, legitimises the rescinding of the right that children have always had to the psychological necessity of both a mother and a father.

What I see as the problem here, is that for proper psychological development in children, they need to have both feminine and masculine roll models in the same house. Preadolescent humans have been designed to develop under certain strict biological conditions, and having the feminine and masculine influences of both the mother and a father one is one of the most important.
I do not for a minute, think that anyone would seriously assert that a parental couple of the same sex would be in any way equal to a heterosexual couple in providing distinct feminine and masculine attributes to a child’s development. Be it male or female children, both sexes need close feminine and masculine influences. Even a male or female roll model ‘popping around’, or taking the child of a homosexual couple out fishing or shopping could never replace the 24hour attentive support and influence that a heterosexual couple will inherently provide.

I fear that two parents of the same sex could easily lead to some form of psychological imbalances in the delicate mind of a developing child. We are talking about the psychological wellbeing of the most vulnerable people in our society. At the very least the Government needs to conduct thorough research to make sure that legitimising homosexual marriage doesn’t also legitimise a detrimental environment for so many children. It would be quite irresponsible to make such an extraordinary decision with such far-reaching consequences based on whim.

While the rights of a homosexual couple to some form of legalized cohabitation must certainly be taken into account, the wellbeing of a child’s development must be paramount, above and beyond the desires of the parents.
This is true not just in the case of homosexual couples, but also other forms of cohabitation such as polygamy and bigamy. These other forms of cohabitation are not sanctioned by the state for a very good reason; they are detrimental to the most vulnerable people in the ‘family’; the children. 

If the Government can, in anyway, prevent any child growing up in such a poor psychological environment, then it most certainly should, especially when it can do so in such a basic way as prohibiting homosexuals, polygamists and bigamists from marriage.

While I do disagree with homosexuality as such, I am by no means homophobic. I have close family members who are gay and we get on extremely well, so one could not dismiss my opinions as mere homophobic bigotry.
As I see it, this proposed legislation or law will result in children growing up in conditions that are unnecessarily detrimental to the child’s psychological development. This I believe is unacceptable.

Regards,
Timothy

P.S. Below is a link to an article that I found quite informative. I highly recommend that you take a look:

http://www.jubileecentre.org/resources/the_causes_of_homosexuality_what_science_tells_us

Man and Dinosaurs Together?

One contentious facet of Young Earth Creationism is the belief that humans walked the earth with dinosaurs only 4000 years ago.

Can you spot the Dinosaur in this ancient carving?

This belief is rubbished by evolutionists because it is in complete contradiction with their own beliefs. They believe that dinosaurs ceased to exist over 65 million years ago. 

They come to this conclusion because their interpretation of the earth’s rocks shows no fossilised dinosaurs which is dated by radiometric dating methods to be younger than 65 million years.

The dating methods that produce these dates are not the topic of this particular article, and have been adequately refuted many times by others.

The reason why this logic is fundamentally flawed is that it relies on the absence of evidence, rather than the presence of evidence. This is a logical fallacy called an Argument from Ignorance.

Even if we accept their false dates for the sake of the argument (which I will for this article), the absence of fossils from a certain period of hypothetical time does not mean that that particular animal did not live at that particular time.

Three basic ways that a species of animal could be alive and not leave fossils is if 1) it moved to an environment where the fossilization process just didn’t occur. 2) a species population size temporarily and dramatically decreased to a size where fossilization would never occur. Or 3) we just haven’t found any fossils yet! Remember that palaeontologists have only dug a few miniscule little holes when compared to the vast volumes of fossil laden soils of the earth’s surface.

But what is even more significant is that even according to the evolutionist’s own models, it is incontrovertibly accepted that species routinely lived for vast amounts of time without ever leaving even a hint of fossil evidence!

Some gaps are so large that when put in context of the whole fossil record, the gaps turn into vast chasms, some as large as three quarters of the whole fossil record!

The fact is that, even assuming the corrupt radiometric dates of the theory of evolution for arguments sake, if the fossil record fails to record the existence of a species for such vast amounts of time, then how can we trust the alleged finely graduated sequence of evolution that is claimed of the fossil record?

Similarly, how can we really trust that dinosaurs haven’t been on earth in the last 65 million years (assuming the evolutionist’s theory) based on an absence of fossils, when other species are claimed by evolutionists to live for hundreds of millions of years without leaving any fossil evidence at all???

So when all this is combined with the corrupt dates ascribed to the fossils, we have even more reason to disregard the alleged evolutionary history as nothing more than dubious speculation.

And no amount of dubious speculation, no matter how frequently and dogmatically parroted, will ever match the veracity of the clear and omniscient word of God.