Signs, Morality and Logic

from Google Images

In Luke 12:54-55 Jesus turned from his disciples and directed his teaching to the people, among whom were his taunters, the Jewish authorities. He drew an analogy from the weather. The people understood that when a cloud rose up out of the Mediterranean Sea to the west, there would be rain. Again, when the wind came across the hot desert to the south, the people were able to predict warm, dry weather (Luke 12:54-55). In other words the people knew how to interpret signs of things to come.

 

What Is the Source of Morality?

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At the very heart of any criticism of God’s judgment of the Canaanites is the question of our source of moral consciousness. If morality is not what God says it is, then it must be what man says it is. If morality is what God says it is, then we have no right to judge God for doing whatever he does, because all of his judgments are good (moral – see Deuteronomy 32:4). On the other hand, if morality is what man says it is, how have we come upon this knowledge of knowing right from wrong? What is its foundation, and can we trust it?

 

The Untamable God

from Google Images

Some Biblical critics may argue that the proposition that Israel waged war with the Canaanites at the command of God, gives carte blanche permission for all would be religious terrorists to do as they please and claim “God told me to do it!”[1] This was the battle cry of the Crusades, and it is behind the jihad terrorism of our day, including the 9/11 tragedy. Yet, this reasoning cannot be reconciled with the Bible. God’s commands to Israel under Moses and Joshua were unique and never again repeated throughout Israel’s history. Saul didn’t seek to have the Philistines devoted to destruction, and David didn’t seek such a thing in any of his campaigns against the nations surrounding Israel. Neither did any of the kings of Israel or Judah seek to devote any of their enemies to destruction in the wars they took part in later. One cannot reasonably justify war or indiscriminate killing by using the Bible for one’s support.

 

Were the Canaanites Morally Liable?

from Google Images

Some Biblical critics argue that the Canaanites cannot be held morally accountable for their evil deeds, because they were only doing what their ancestors had done in a socially accepted religion as far back as memory served them.[1] Did they know any better? If one isn’t taught right from wrong, how can we hold them accountable for their deeds? If God had sent in prophets to warn his people of impending national disaster before they were carried away into captivity, why didn’t he do something similar for the Canaanites?

 

Barbarism and Crude Laws

Sometimes it is difficult for our Western mindset to come to grips with the ways of the Ancient Near East (ANE)[1]. The problem, at least from a contextual standpoint, is that we evaluate the severity of the Mosaic Law in the light of our Western culture, rather than in the context of ANE traditions. If the new atheists (and those of us who agree with them) would focus on the original context in which the Mosaic Law was given, a new and more positive understanding might develop, rather than merely gaining rhetorical points by dwelling upon the intellectual snobbery motif of the backward ways of the Bible in light of modern Western thought.

 

Does God ‘Settle’ for Less than Perfect?

from Google Images

No doubt one of the biggest errors the new atheists have made, regarding the persona of the God of the Bible that they paint for their readers, is their assumption that, because the Bible mentions a thing, that thing is automatically approved by God.[1] This, of course, is not true, and their argument is even denied in Scripture, itself. David, the man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), power raped Bathsheba, and then had her husband, David’s close friend, killed in order to hide what he had done. Did God approve of what David had done? Of course not! He sent his prophet Nathan to confront him about his sin (2Samuel 12:1-7a).

 

God’s Approach to an Uncivilized World

from Google Images

I remember discussing God’s method of salvation in a Sunday school class a few years ago. One of those in my discussion group said she had recently decided to read the whole Bible and began in the Old Testament. She was shocked with all the blood and death, and commented that she was glad to have been born this side of the cross. I understood her response to it all, because I could remember similar feelings while reading Judges 19-21 where eleven tribes of Israel rose up against the Benjaminites and almost wiped out the entire twelfth tribe. I could hardly believe what I read, but it was there, and I couldn’t deny how it unsettled me. I get similar feelings watching programs on TV like Criminal Minds. While I appreciate the acting and like the fact that evil is always put down, I simply cannot take a steady diet of the horrific details of its theme.

 

Is God Humble or Arrogant?

from Google Images

The new atheism[1] tries to categorize the God of the Bible as an arrogant control-freak, who often seems to seek attention and crave praise. Daniel Dennett writes that what makes the God of the Bible “such a fascinating participant in the stories of the Old Testament is his kinglike jealousy and pride, and his great appetite for praise and sacrifice.”[2] Is this an accurate estimate of the Judeo-Christian God, or do the new atheists misrepresent him in their works?

 

A Comedy of Errors

from Google Images

We often hear of the so-called “new” atheists getting great laughs from their audiences at the expense of the Christian worldview.[1] While even though they weren’t Christians, the new atheists have shown no regard for differences of worldviews by lumping Christians together with the Moslems, who hijacked the airplanes during the 9/11 Tragedy. Facts don’t seem to matter to them, unless they happen to be their own facts. It is “religious people” not political terrorists who run airplanes into tall buildings! If that gets the laughs or the cheers from their philosophically and theologically challenged audiences and adds another buyer to the list that would make their latest book a best seller, then such half-truths are worthy of expression.

 

Where Do Morals Come From?

from Google Images

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.

 

How Do We Become Good?

from Google Images

It has been put forth by Chris, our young atheist whose video series on You Tube I am presently considering as a theme for discussion,[1] that, if the commands of God define morality, then God could command rape, murder and child molestation, and such things would become moral, simply because God said so. Moreover, if morality is being good, it would render being good meaningless. While I agree that what God says is moral, I don’t agree this renders morality meaningless, because the Bible claims God is good, and only he is good in his essence (Matthew 19:17). Therefore, morality can be defined as being like God (cf. Genesis 1:26-27). So, if we know what good is, we know what being moral is. What, therefore, does it mean to be good?