Evolution – Not a Controversy?

from Google Images

In his YouTube video, It’s Not a Controversy, Chris, an atheist whose testimonial videos I have been discussing, fails to show why the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is not a controversy. Chris makes the same mistake often made by folks who take the posture that TOE is a proved theory. That is, he assumes TOE is an overwhelmingly proved scientific analysis of how life forms have come to appear as they do today, and treats any opposing idea with disdain and abject dismissal. The problem, as I understand it, is that Chris confuses science with worldviews. He has become so accustomed to accepting his worldview without further analysis that he assumes it is proved science, but this is not true.

 

God or Naturalism—The Evidence

from Google Images

In two videos Re: Refuting Atheistic Naturalism Part 1 (HERE) and Part 2 (HERE), Chris addressed the arguments of another You Tube advocate in an effort to counter the statements he made against Chris’ worldview. I believe the point made against naturalism was that the only evidence a naturalist could gather to support his worldview could be found only in our own universe. Strong, physical and objective evidence cannot be sought or found outside our universe. One may postulate about membranes colliding together and causing the Big Bang that resulted in our universe (as Chris does HERE), but that is all it would be—a postulation, based upon the best guesses he could make about the universe we see and experience every day.

 

The Logic of God

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In his video Re: Logic of God, Islam & Evidence for Rational Theists, (HERE) Chris raises the question, “Where does God come from?” While he agrees with the premise of a fellow You-Tube advocate that nothing comes from nothing, Chris believes his question refutes his opponents logic that God is the cause or Creator of all that exists.

 

Where Do Morals Come From?

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In his video Where Does Morality Come From? (HERE) Chris asks and tries to answer where our sense of morality originates. “Do we need to invoke the existence of a super complex being (God), for which we have no direct physical evidence, or can we explain…” morality naturally? After a brief moment of thought, Chris comes up with two words: Natural Selection. He claims that “animals with a moral intuition increase the probability that their species will survive. Animals without this intuition don’t! Morals have a survival advantage”

 

Addressing Iron Age Biblical Morality

from Google Images

In Chris’ video Problems with Biblical Morality (HERE), he addresses issues concerning the Bible, which at least from the point of his worldview are antiquated and contradictory. He begins by showing an excerpt presumably from a Christian evangelist’s video where the Christian is discussing morality from a Biblical perspective with two young men who may be on a college campus. Chris reveals his perspective by saying the Christian evangelist was presenting a false dilemma—which would be that the Christian was saying morality must be the result of relativism or it comes from the God of the Bible.

 

How Could Man Make Jesus Up?

from Google Images

I found Chris’ video, My Reconversion (HERE), intriguing. In my previous blogpost I began addressing some of Chris’ concerns, which he made while critiquing C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. After satirically deciding from Lewis’ book that a moral code exists outside of mankind and therefore must originate from God, he rightly assumes that everyone breaks this code at least sometimes. Then, presumably thinking he is following through with the Christian worldview, he claims God is “pissed off” at us and has no choice but to send us to hell.

 

Chris and Mere Christianity

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In Chris’ short satirical video, My Reconversion (HERE), he pretends that he is reconverted to his former Christian worldview through C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. I read the book as a young man in the military and was so impressed with it that I bought several other books by C.S. Lewis. At least for a short while, he had become my favorite author. Anyway, I would like to address in this post some of the things Chris brought up as he critiqued Lewis’ support of his Christian worldview.

 

Atheism – Objections to Evidentialism

from Google Images

Regrettably, this next video (HERE) turned out to be Chris’ final video in this series. According to his blog (HERE), financial restraints have kept him from going on in his testimonial journey from his Christian worldview to his present atheistic / agnostic worldview. I think I was able to follow Chris’ arguments in this last video of his series. Admittedly, I am not the brightest spoon in the drawer, but with a little effort I think I am able to both see Chris’ point and agree that evidentualism is a very good method for recognizing physical truth, and (from my point of view) once recognized can be used to imply spiritual truth as the best answer to questions arising from knowing the physical truth.

 

Atheism – Evidence

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Perhaps this video (HERE) contains Chris’ most abstract confessions in this series that show why and how he rejected his Christian worldview. Chris asks: “How do I know what is real? Why do I believe what I believe? What am I justified to believe?” He then explains how these questions help him draw conclusions about reality. He compares different personal perceptions and concludes that the more evidence he has for a particular idea the greater the possibility is for it being true (real). On the other hand, the less evidence one has for an idea, the less value one should place upon that perception. Social pressures have their value in helping us navigate within and be nurtured by our cultural climate, but they have no real value in determining ultimate truth or justification of a belief.

 

Is There Any Evidence of God?

from Google Images

In Chris’ second video on the history of God (HERE), he ponders the different ideas about God held by people in the world today and throughout history. He began by looking through the eyes of “P”, the priest of JEDP and noted the Biblical God is portrayed as a Reality that cannot be fully known or grasped (cf. Exodus 33:18). God cannot be seen or comprehended in his essence by human beings as we are now. We are able to see only his manifestations in our reality, but Chris thinks that this type of God was generated from the ideas of polytheism.

 

The Beginning of Monotheism

from Google Images

Chris (or the summary he presents of Karen Armstrong’s book A History of God) tells us in his video (HERE)that the Enuma Elish, or the Babylonian creation story depicts the prehistoric world as “formless and void”, yet, when I searched for these words in the Enuma Elish, they were not there, neither was the word chaos. The reason for this is that chaos is personified in the myth. One must interpret the Babylonians gods, Tiamat and Apsu, to be chaos, if one is to see the world before law and an orderly environment appeared.

 

King Josiah and Deuteronomy

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In the JEDP hypothesis, which Chris embraces as his new truth for the Biblical record (HERE), claims that in the reign of Judah’s King Josiah a lost book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, was conveniently discovered by the priest, Hilkiah during renovations of the Temple. Since Josiah was a strict Yahawist, the discovery of Deuteronomy seems too suspicious, and, therefore, must be a forgery. So conclude at least some (Chris says the majority) of Biblical scholars such as Richard Elliot Freedman. In Deuteronomy “a strict and permanent covenant is made with Yahweh as well as a complete rejection of other gods is established.”

 

The Enuma Elish

from Google Images

According to Chris or, as I mentioned in my previous blogpost, according to his analyses of Karen Armstrong’s book A History of God, the story of creation is found first, not in the Biblical text, but in the Enuma Elish, seven clay tablets found in the ruins of the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh (see his next video HERE). They date to the 12^th century BC and contain interesting allusions to the Genesis account of creation. In fact, in 1876 they were published by George Smith as the Chaldean Genesis!

 

El Elyon

from Google Images

The Hebrew El Elyon first appears in the Bible in Genesis 14 where Abraham is praised for defeating the kings of the East and rescuing Lot. He is called Abraham of the Most High God (El Elyon). In Jewish theology this event occurs somewhere near the second millennium BC. Chris disagrees with this analysis in his video (HERE) stating that el elyon is the name of one of the Canaanite gods and appears in a clay tablet dating sometime earlier than 1200 BC.

 

Atheism—A History of God

from Google Images

At this stage of rebuilding his worldview we find Chris going from one idea to another; he is first impressed by this author and then that one. Sometime later some of the authors whose works he thought profound were dismantled by arguments of yet another impressive author. The sad truth is that as Chris showed himself embracing this idea and then that one, at first impressed but then disenchanted, he seemed like a drunkard bouncing off one wall of a hallway to the other as he staggered to reach the “light” (truth) at the end of the tunnel.