God and logic. Whats the world coming too?

[ratgibson]

So its been a very eventful past couple of days which leads me to beg the question. Why are people so opposed to God and logic?

In light of Hawkings recent illogical statements about God not creating the universe I shared with a friends mother how bad the logic was and how I refuted that. She replied I need to "stop doing that". I asked "what?". She said "thinking". She said it was going to get me in trouble! Shes a christian!

Later that night....by the way Im not looking for a fight or a debate at all times...these things just kind of happen...

later that night Im talking to a christian friend about the Hawking thing and somehow it escalated into a debate where this guy was actually saying knowlege and logic were inherently bad. It was astounding how....off he was. He eventually said and i quote "hide behind your fancy talk and big words and research all you want. the bible speaks of ill fate of people like you".

This is a brother in Christ sending me this! I wasnt arguing against God, I was saying we have very good logical grounds to believe in God. He said that logic and knowlege was reducing the power of faith (which is to the contrary at least in my case, i love pondering God, he blows my mind when I think about Him). I eventually told him "God used logic to create the universe, how is it evil?" He gave no reply. I told him shortly after Im not mad at him, i still love him. I do...but i just dont get how he can say im going to hell for approaching aspects of God in a logical way.

THEN this morning....I was on facebook and an old friend IMed me. Hes gay and wants to be a transexual. But hes conflicted. I love this kid, we go way back as friends. He got on the topic of wanting to come to the church I attend because we are so accepting. We are. But I wanted to know why he wanted to come. You can usually tell who wants to be a clubhouse kid and not follow Jesus.

Maybe this is where I went wrong but I care more about his salvation than I do his hang out preferences. I asked him questions on what he thought about God, Jesus, the bible etc. I let him talk quite a bit because I wanted to understand his side but when I tried to show him what the Bible says by using scriptural passages or when I showed where his logic was wrong (in a loving way but not letting him get away with error) the conversation dwindled down into him disowning me after all these years. He said Ive gone off the deep end and we cant be friends anymore.

Is it just me or are people violently opposed to anything making sense? Or is my whole modus operandi flawed from the outset and I should just regress into a "Jesus loves you" mantra?

[August]

Hi RT,

I blame the churches for this sad state of affairs. Logic and thinking was what made theology into what it is, not this lazy, head-in-the-sand, fingers-in-the-ears going lalalala, shallow faith. Sadly very few churches require any intellectual vigor from their members any more, and that is why some people, like your friends mom, sounds like The Waterboys' mother.

As with all immutable laws, the laws of logic comes from God, and we should use them as we discuss our faith, and our God. You are doing exactly the right thing, keep studying how philosophy and logic supports our faith.

[CeT-To]

i know its sad ...im in a similar situation where my gf downrights just starts telling me to stop ( even shouts at me saying STOP or SHUT UP) everytime i try to say how logical it is to believe in God.... like i reaaally dont understand ...and ive been asking her this question for 1 year almost and ive only recently received the answer from her.. The question is : " Why do you believe in what you believe?" before she would just tell me to stop asking her and to shup up but last month she gave me the answer and it is " I dont know..." ...personally i already knew she was going to say this but it just astounds me that people can except that..it really shows how much they are intergrated with this world, she also said that she will figure it out after highschool but i really doubt it :S ...sigh i dont understand some people... the most important things in life are the least important, such as finding out if God is there...because it fully changed your perspective on life...and for example if one is wrong about that there is no God because they havent done their research or tried looking for Him then they are screwed for eternity..unfortunately its the opposite today ..Money and Me is are the gods of today... Personally i think that some people are scared because it will shatter their world perspective making them unsure....they dont want to go look...leave the comfortable zone. Ahh my brother i know how you feel.... the only thing you can do in times like this is pray to the Lord to be a witness to him..for the Holy spirit to guide you in showing him the Lord.

I will pray for your cause Brother! May God bless you!
Francesco

[narnia4]

I think you're absolutely right, and it really is sad. Atheists talk a big talk when it comes to "reason" and "rational thought", but often their anti-religious diatribes are simply useless rhetoric that has been refuted on just about every decent apologetic resource anywhere. They accuse Christians of living in a fairytale land, but they believe what they believe, often based off of emotion, and will just make fun of anyone who says otherwise without even thinking.

As others have said, this isn't just atheists, Christians do the same thing. A Christian who doesn't realize that there ARE good reasons to believe in God can get throw up his/her hands and say "I believe in God because I want to!" These sort of people don't want to hear reason from other Christians. There are huge numbers of people who label themselves and take on a worldview for no good reason. To a degree it's just human nature. As much as I love apologetics and logic and philosophy and intellectual thought, those things usually aren't what draws a person to or away from God. Even among so-called "intellectual circles", what people choose to believe is pretty much what they WANT to believe.

For a Christian, he does need more than reason alone. Apologetics and reason give me a solid, rational ground to believe in the God of the Bible, and other things (like faith and God) take it from there. You shouldn't lose your rationality, but there is more to it. As you said, however, things often seem to swing way too far in the opposite direction.

[ratgibson]

Waterboys mother lol!

I mean...its one thing to have the faith of a little child. Im constantly confounded by the way God loves sinners like us enough to save us through what Christ did. That is the most illogical thing in the world I can conceive. The love of God is what floors me...

But what perplexes me is the willful ignorance of some. I brought up names like Dawkins and Ehrman to my brother in faith because he said some people might read something and lose faith. I brought up Dawkins and Ehrman because they have been a problem to some but my brother in faith said he didnt know who they were and didnt want to know! Ehrman really challenged me actually in his book Jesus, Interrupted. But of course I did further studies and found his error. This has helped solidify my faith and understanding.

These books and people are popular. They are presenting garbage to the masses so people can feel justified in not having faith. Moreover thanks to the new militant atheism, we as people of faith are being challenged in ways like never before. The taboo of questioning God is gone. Thank you Dan Dennet and Sam Harris....now everyones got a target on us after they read the End of Faith and the God Delusion or watch some Hitchens debate.

So we live in a day an age where 1 Peter 3:15 takes on a whole new life that people arent ready for. The churches today dont help. At my church we recently adopted a new apologetics bible study called the Truth Project. Theres a fancy video they play with heroes of mine like RC Sproul and Zacharias but when the rubber meets the road and the class is underway the bible study was led by a guy who had a bad attitude and the whole room of people were reduced to waxing philosophical about gay marriage and abortion. I was amazed at how useless that hour sitting there was...

Oh and then try to bring these issues up with some christians and they accuse you of having nothing nice to say. They say you shouldnt criticize people or say anything negative. I told one christian who told me i was being negative. I responded that telling someone they have cancer isnt a good thing but its necessary to lead to treatment. Paul did that all over the epistles he wrote. It went right over their head however.

When I got saved I made it a point with God that I was going to challenge Him in every way possible to find the truth and that if He IS God then He will have an answer and this life following Christ is what it really is. I never did so with guile or pride. I want to be ran over with a bulldozer of truth and the Lord has not failed me yet. I do not regret giving my life up to Him in the least because of that.

[Gman]

What's even more sad is when atheists claim to have all the evidence for their doctrine.. Unfortunately nothing is said to have 100% proof. Therefore you are gong to have to rely on some faith for your claims. No one was here (except God) to see the creation of the world so you are going to have to rely on some guesswork for your scientific claims which actually are philosophical in nature as Hawking's has beautifully fell into.. It's the EXACT same thing that Darwin did when he also examined origins. Dawking's proves to us that his science is philosophical in nature.. You CANNOT escape it. So thank you Dawking's...

Belief in God sounds nice but believe it is wrong based on materialistic philosophy. It’s almost like the heart vs. the brain conflict. The heart is what we use for belief in God and the brain is what we use for science. Christianity essentially is what you believe because of faith. With science, you need evidence and need to back it up. Science deals with the material world of genes and cells, faith with the spiritual world of value and meaning. Science is about facts, faith is about personal values. This isn’t even accurate, because Christianity does make claims about the material world, about the cosmos, about human nature, events in history, etc..

[Gman]

Perhaps I should be clearer.. Let's look at one of Dawking's claim again..

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

This claim by Dawking's has absolutely NOTHING to do with science and everything to do with theology. Whenever you take science and question the meaning or origin of life like Darwin did in his book “Origin of Species” and others, then you are making a belief system out of science, the answer for everything, your concerns, a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. You are making a religious philosophy..

Science is not in the business of ultimate explanations. That’s not what it does.. It works on specific things, it advances theories, but it never makes a claim about everything. Unfortunately for Dawkings, he is creating ultimate explanations, something science never does.

In others words.. This is not science, this is philosophy 101.

[Human]

To me it seems to be coming down to post-modern laziness. The idea that all ideas are valid(so long as it doesn't contradict this idea, oddly enough) is storming the minds of people. Since everything is valid, there's no need to think things through and look for solid evidence. Combine that with the setup of instant gratification and overstimulation and you have nobody willing to put in any work. Add in a touch of overcentrallization on credentials and you end up with people believing things based on the messenger and not the message. You can (dis)prove something all you want, but if the reciever doesn't think you're qualified to make the statements, you might as well have no evidence or logic(this is overly evident in abortion debates when pro-choicers run out of logical arguments and attack the gender of the pro-lifer if the pro-lifer is male. Ignoring the blatant sexism, logic has no gender nor sex....not the argument at hand, but the same logic is used in cases like this topic, only less evident cos they don't outright say "You're not a scientist/pope, so you can't say anything!!!!!!!!!!!!eleven)

Additionally is the issue of the idea of the separation of religion and science. Obviously the majority here see Christianity and science as two things that coincide very nicely. I remember being taught by my parents to keep my mind and heart separate(Is this a Catholic teaching? My family is Catholic but I'm not sure what that all entails.). Initially it made sense, to ignore all evidence, until.....well, looking at logic and....well, evidence(shoot, need to find new words, eh) With these teachings being given to little children and the postmodern ideaology being forcefully fed to people, ideas are bound to be "I BELIEVE X AND YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT! >:(" And of course that will allow wonderful lies to go unstopped. Unless someone has credentials....then it can have an effect. The "religion vs science war"....well, it can't really *end* so to speak. Christianity needs to separate itself from other religions. Depending on your definition of religion, Christianity is not a religion at all/Christianity is not a religion but has a religious aspect. As long as it's associated with others, that leaves a lot of bad connections in people's minds. I remember a debate where a friend of mine(atheist) tried to prove religion is bad and then proceded to show me atrocities commited in the name of religion. Oddly enough, less than 10% had anything to do with Christianity and the few that did were not in line with Jesus's teachings(see: Crusades).

tl;ddr: "Mainstream Christians" are falling to the idea that religion requires one to ignore logic and "mainline secularists" are falling to the idea that atheism is proven and they need not know anything more than that single phrase on the topic.

[narnia4]

To back up one of Human's points, looking at some of the reaction to the recent Hawking's quote in different comment sections and forums (not usually a thing I'd do, seeing as these places are often crawling with atheists, it's almost like their just waiting for a story like the Hawking one so they can come out and make fun of Christians in force), there were several comments that gave the same basic idea about those who were trying to say that Hawking's was wrong. It was, "Lol at internet bloggers trying to debate Hawking!" or "What do you know? He's one of the most brilliant men in the world!" It doesn't really matter what he says, reputation alone will allow him to say basically whatever he wants without people being able to contest it.

Frankly, I think this has happened with some atheists for quite some time now. If an atheist says something about abiogenesis that sounds stupid and likely IS stupid, he's not going to be called for it because he's the "smart" guy. And in certain climates ("intellectual" circles, universities, a science classroom, etc.), people are predisposed to believe that the Christians are the "dumb" ones. And if Heaven forbid a Christian DOES make a mistake or mis-speak, people will eat it all up.

[gralan]

Hi RT,

I blame the churches for this sad state of affairs. Logic and thinking was what made theology into what it is, not this lazy, head-in-the-sand, fingers-in-the-ears going lalalala, shallow faith. Sadly very few churches require any intellectual vigor from their members any more, and that is why some people, like your friends mom, sounds like The Waterboys' mother.

As with all immutable laws, the laws of logic comes from God, and we should use them as we discuss our faith, and our God. You are doing exactly the right thing, keep studying how philosophy and logic supports our faith.

I will just state that the seminaries have driven most of the conversation in our local congregations, rather than our local congregations needs being met by the seminary and school of our day. When the leadership is confused, what do you think is going to happen at the local level? Actually some of what happens is just like what is going on with TEC... the local congregations are leaving the heretical church which denies classic Christianity.

Many denominations are going that route. There has been no accountability at the top end of the leadership ladder... and Jesus Christ is supposed to be the Head of the Church! He is not the author of confusion.

I believe logic is part and parcel of God's creation, because God is not illogical and unreasonable. I hope that our churches can begin pointing to Christ, teaching folks to think with renewed minds, getting to the task at hand.

We are acting like citizens of this world. My conclusions are not separated from self-examination, and I've been in touch for over 39 years with folks who strove to serve Christ Jesus in every aspect of their lives - not just on Sunday. We are strangers and aliens in this world.

I know that deductive logic is a difficult thing for some to grasp, and often it is because we teach it the way the world teaches it.

When we look at the world and see what they've wanted to do in eliminating inductive logic from the conversation I do not see Christianity making much a fuss. This year, 2010 A.D., MIT is teaching students in Logic studies that there is no science of induction.

Many pastors have told me, from various denominations, that one place to lose your confidence in God and in faith making a difference in this world is to go to seminary.

Anybody else find that odd? It is not logical!

Perhaps we should just fiddle while Rome burns around us, in a manner of speaking?

[gralan]

I guess fiddling it is.

Thanks for all your intelligent responses to my posts here.

I'm sorry to have interrupted your Vacua. I'll go.

[enlightenment]

Hi i read an article on a facebook group Intelligent Design vs Darwin that you might be interested in, whose link is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Intellige ... 062?ref=ts, where there is a discussion about how there is misconceptions about the Bible posted on many hate websites and explains the realities behind them, on issues such as human sacrafice, rape, murder, slavery and so fourth.

[jenni]

...Many pastors have told me, from various denominations, that one place to lose your confidence in God and in faith making a difference in this world is to go to seminary...

Sad, but often true. I attended a Bible College/Seminary for two years a couple decades ago. Even then, the college had mistakenly focussed on getting accreditation for their programs, rather than being true to the Word. They had brought in secular philosophy in place of Biblical truths. Many of the prof's seemed to have little faith themselves, being more concerned with prestige/status/appearances.

[zoegirl]

So its been a very eventful past couple of days which leads me to beg the question. Why are people so opposed to God and logic?

In light of Hawkings recent illogical statements about God not creating the universe I shared with a friends mother how bad the logic was and how I refuted that. She replied I need to "stop doing that". I asked "what?". She said "thinking". She said it was going to get me in trouble! Shes a christian!

Later that night....by the way Im not looking for a fight or a debate at all times...these things just kind of happen...

later that night Im talking to a christian friend about the Hawking thing and somehow it escalated into a debate where this guy was actually saying knowlege and logic were inherently bad. It was astounding how....off he was. He eventually said and i quote "hide behind your fancy talk and big words and research all you want. the bible speaks of ill fate of people like you".

This is a brother in Christ sending me this! I wasnt arguing against God, I was saying we have very good logical grounds to believe in God. He said that logic and knowlege was reducing the power of faith (which is to the contrary at least in my case, i love pondering God, he blows my mind when I think about Him). I eventually told him "God used logic to create the universe, how is it evil?" He gave no reply. I told him shortly after Im not mad at him, i still love him. I do...but i just dont get how he can say im going to hell for approaching aspects of God in a logical way.

THEN this morning....I was on facebook and an old friend IMed me. Hes gay and wants to be a transexual. But hes conflicted. I love this kid, we go way back as friends. He got on the topic of wanting to come to the church I attend because we are so accepting. We are. But I wanted to know why he wanted to come. You can usually tell who wants to be a clubhouse kid and not follow Jesus.

Maybe this is where I went wrong but I care more about his salvation than I do his hang out preferences. I asked him questions on what he thought about God, Jesus, the bible etc. I let him talk quite a bit because I wanted to understand his side but when I tried to show him what the Bible says by using scriptural passages or when I showed where his logic was wrong (in a loving way but not letting him get away with error) the conversation dwindled down into him disowning me after all these years. He said Ive gone off the deep end and we cant be friends anymore.

Is it just me or are people violently opposed to anything making sense? Or is my whole modus operandi flawed from the outset and I should just regress into a "Jesus loves you" mantra?

I was also VERY surprised by the same attitude from some Chrsitians, a rejection of critical thinking. There is this elevation of "blind faith" as it that trumps intelligent faith.

[1over137]

I've just hit on the very good website:
http://www.bethinking.org

Enjoy!