Why Billy Died Even Though He “Trusted” God! (Why Truth Ain’t Enough to Protect you from Error, Here’s What Else is Needed.)

Flash floods. Bad storm. The dam overflows…then brakes. Billy hears the rush of water hit his house as he awakes. Floods rise as he climbs on his table, but the water is getting higher. Standing upon a chair on the table he grabs the beam, he swings, smashing the window that leads out to the roof. All the way he prays for his life. Faith wells up in him. He knows God will spare his life. Climbing up to the peak, sitting on the gable, he awaits for the salvation of God -- for a miracle. The water continues to rise, creeping up the roof nearing his feet, his faith wavers.

A Magician’s Art of Deception, And The Third Way (& Only Way) To Find Truth

Join me, if you would, and think about a magician’s act, who’s not mesmerized by the “trickery”? We all know the card tricks, “death defying” antics, and captivating“disappearing” and then “reappearing” moves are basically misdirection, sleight of hand and skill. Simply: a type of deception we like. Try sleight of hand on small children, they love it. Tricks leave people saying “how was that done?” Even if we know every step of the magician’s trick, we love the experience.

It seems we are the same way in other areas of our life. Society's glitter draws crowds. Charismatic religious teachers unintentionally or intentionally cause misdirection. Rather than a focus on Christ, there is a focus on sports, a promotion of a culture or a clawing for money. While a magician's misdirection can be controlled, the simple person is illiterate to life’s parasites. We can’t risk being simple, not for a follow of Christ, we need to understand truth and why it’s true.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Before the Universe

Near the end of his article (here), Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who stared in the series "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey", talks about what was prior to the universe's existences.

After making some slightly disparaging remarks toward the theists view, he postulates a couple other "where the universe came from" ideas. The multiverse and it "just popped into existences from nothing". It seems that for himself, he holds to the safe and seemly intellectually superior skeptics view of "I don't know". Then he rises the good o'l question of if God did it, who made God?

The Two Main Competitors Problems

However, I'm blown away with the lack of cogency of the only two real competitors to an intelligent being: the infamous multiverse and the "popped into existences from nothing" views. I'm not trying to sound saucy here, but really, are those the best hypothesis out there?

The multiverse hypothesis has big problems, namely its conjecture in some minds and it's not really possible to demonstrate even if true. It seems to me that if multiverse true, you would still need something to bring them all into existence, who is that prime mover? Plus the complexity of making all those universes rises to infinity.

POOF, Like Magic!

So the naturalists view is still left with the universe(s) going "POOF"... into existence, for no reason? Nothing makes everything? Magic without a magician? I'm scratching my head.

Tyson concedes these views usually don't satisfy people, as you can see why. However, it seems to me he takes them more serious than the possibility of a "prime-mover."

So, Who Made God?

Seemingly, in an attempt to discredit a deity, one of his last questions (more or less rhetorical), asks the infamous question of "what was around before God?" or otherwise cashed out as "who made God?" This question has been answered by the fields of theology, history and philosophy.

The "who made God" question has this problem, who would have made the creator who made the creator? You see, it becomes an infinite regress of creator creating creators - forever. Silly, I know.

A preacher once preached that the Earth sits upon nothing (without getting technical about gravity). An old lady came up afterwords and said "I don't agree with you, the Earth rests on turtles." So the preacher asked "What's under those turtles?" She responded "more turtles." To which he replied, and under those?" Out of finality, she said, "turtles all the way down!"

So What About That God Question?

However, there is an answer to this question. A good one, quite simple and elementary. With just a little knowledge of theology, history and philosophy, Tyson should have known better (except for the fact that he seems to degrade the field of philosophy, while philosophizing). In philosophy this "prime-mover" is also called the "uncaused-first-cause". In other words, this "prime mover" has always been in existence, thus uncaused. He is not dependent upon the space time continuum. In fact, we read in history and theology (ie. the Bible), this exact thing - one who isn't dependent on time and who is eternal.

Even as a scientists he should have known better. We know from experience things that began to exist must have a cause. We know the universe had a beginning, came into existence. We also know that the causes must be outside of the thing that comes into existence. Outside the Universe there's no space, time or matter. To cause a universe and life, this cause must must be super powerful, smart and be able to make choices as well! Plus only minds cause the creation of large amounts of meaningful information, DNA anyone? This uncaused-first-cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, eternal, smart, powerful, has a mind and personal. Ah, that sounds familiar....

What If We Did Not Know Who Made It All?

Even if there was no answer to this question, a being who created everything still seems to be a perfectly good argument. Just because we would not know who the "prime-mover" was, does not seem to effect the idea that there was an original "prime-mover." Does one have to know who painted a picture, carved a horse or even committed an homicide to recognize agent of causation?

Great Rhetorical Value?

But the question, "who created God", seems to be misleading. This rhetorical questions seems to be meant to raise questions in the uninformed mind. Seemly it is an attempt to discredit those who hold to this view. Even though he may view his ignorance as more intellectual, it seems that he created a straw-man for the theists, rhetorically dismissing it while trying to make it look unreasonable.

However, in reality, the most logically satisfying view is the one he seems to dismiss. It is the most logical and coherent. We have a robust worldview with amazing explanatory power. The naturalistic worldview is broken, having very limited explanatory power, a degraded view that has lame and tenuous answers - a view that does not match reality.

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So, what's your view? Do you agree with Tyson? Or does a Creator seem to be the best explanation? Why?


Image source: "Tyson - Apollo 40th anniversary 2009" by NASA/Bill Ingalls. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The One View Some Christians and Some Atheists Agree On - And Why It is Wrong!

Interestingly, prominent agnostics, atheists [1] and Christians of various persuasions agree on at least one thing, philosophy is of little worth. Other Christians are afraid of the enterprise. Our Western culture downplays classical education – such as philosophy. Even so, philosophy is pivotal, yes pivotal. Especially for our days.

We all have a philosophy and use it, the question is do we do it well? Simply, philosophy is the love of wisdom, it stretches back millennia, notably from the Greeks. However, one can't ignore the elegance and power of Scriptures support for knowledge and wisdom from Proverbs 4:5-11

Why Critical Thinking Skills are Essential, But Not Sufficient

For one like me, whose mind never seems to rest, there is a burden that I call “the thinker's bane.” You see, as thoughts increasingly swirl around in my mind my brain at times aches some. It's genetic. Writing helps releases those thoughts. But there is a concern when one thinks, one needs true knowledge and proper thinking skills so errors are avoided. Proper thinking skills are called logic or reason - these aid with truth. However, one needs more than just proper thinking, ones needs something to think about. Whether you are a deep or shallow thinker, you still need the two: knowledge and logic.

Martin Cothran, a classical education proponent, once told a story of a debate he took part in. A college biology professor and the chairman of the Kentucky State House Education Committee took the position that, instead of memorization, students should be learning "critical thinking skills" [1]. While Martin was not against "critical thinking", he said there needed to be more memorization in education as well.

He notes what he told his opponents, "I said that I doubted whether they even knew what 'critical thinking skills' were. And as it turned out, they couldn't give a definition." He went on to say "[w]hen the moderator of the debate asked me what my definition of critical thinking skills was, I answered: 'Logic.'"

Logic is given a bad rap by many post modern Christians, but this is confusing to me. Feel free to check out the first chapter of the biblical book of John, Jesus is called the "Logos!" The word logic is derived from logos and they have similar meanings. Think about this, as far as I know Jesus never made a logical error! Ah, now it makes sense.

In Martin's same piece, he made an interesting statement, "We can’t teach children thinking skills if we don’t know what they are—and we can’t teach them how to think if they don’t have anything to think about." Interestingly, this seems to be very similar to the teachings from the book of Proverbs, from the first chapter. Knowledge and wisdom are greatly praised.


[1] The Critical Thinking Skills Hoax
[2] The proper use of knowledge, in which logic is its main tool.
Image source: Flicker/Sodanie Chea

Multiverse Theory Proves Flying Spaghetti Monster

You may not consciously believe in the flying spaghetti monster, but if you affirm Multiverse Theory–as many atheists, agnostics, and anti-theists do–then you really do believe in his Meatball Noodliness. Here’s how.

Premise 1: To account for the vast improbabilities of this universe, this universe is treated as one among many, perhaps, infinite universes [Multiverse theory]

Premise 2: Given infinite (or nearly infinite) universes every logical possibility becomes a metaphysical inevitability (or near inevitability) [i.e., all possible options are tried, so every remotely possible state eventually occurs]

Premise 3: The Flying Spaghetti Monster is logical possible [as are unicorns, leprechauns, tooth fairies, etc.] since they are not logically incoherent.

Conclusion: Therefore, the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.

There you have it. If one agrees with multiverse theory, where the number of universes are so vastly expanded as to make inevitiabilities out of the many improbabilities of this universe, it is virtually certain that at least one of those many universes has a flying spaghetti monster. For that matter, one may add to the collection of actualized creatures, unicorns, fairy god mothers, tooth fairies, leprechauns, and honest lawyers. All of these exist!!!




Image and Post source: Intelligent Christian Faith used by permission. For in-depth rebuttal and responses to the rebuttals please go to Intelligent Christian Faith.