The art of the self-defeating statement

Morality Play (novel) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m entirely unable to write English.

For the quick-witted among you, I’m sure you already spotted that the above sentence is pointless – you don’t need years of analysis to figure out that the sentence proves itself to be incorrect. But we do fall into the trap of believing these self-defeating statements from time-to-time.

Shall we look at a couple of examples?

No-one can know any truth about religion.

Well, for that to be true, it must not be true…shame.

You can’t know anything for sure.

Are you sure?

You shouldn’t force your morality on people.

Ever heard this one? Why shouldn’t I? Is it morally wrong? Stop forcing your morality on me!

You should just accept people as they are.

I’m assuming that the only exception to this rule is you then, who haven’t just accepted me as I am?

Now I don’t want to be that guy who just shouts at people then refuses to listen to them, but at the same time I don’t want to just roll over in the face of clearly flawed reasoning.

Any suggestions as to how to spot these, or any other examples that might be useful?

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I’ve grown accustomed to your faith

Blind Faith (book) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What sort of faith do you have? I’ve maintained for a long time that a Christian’s faith can’t possible be faith ‘contrary to the evidence’, as many atheists would have it, because that would require us to have less faith in the event of an answered prayer or whatever.

Thankfully, someone way cleverer than me has pulled together a little summary, together with lovely little pictures, to explain what different people mean when they say ‘faith’. I’ll retell it here, but if you want the original click to see the original Four Types of Faith. In each case, Christianity is a chair and sitting on it is our act of faith.

• Blind faith is as if we’re approaching the chair wearing a blindfold; we can definitely sit in it, but we can’t tell if there aren’t better chairs everywhere else, or if the chair’s on a conveyor belt about to tip us into a cauldron of boiling oil. This is not good faith.
  
• Irrational faith is the faith the daft atheists (as opposed to the not daft ones, I’m not caricaturing here) say Christians have; chucking reason over our shoulder we intentionally sit on what we know is a broken chair which isn’t just foolish, it’s dangerous.
• Warranted faith is faith based on evidence; it’s the sort of faith you and I use every moment of every day. I have faith that the pavement won’t randomly turn into jelly today, yet I have no evidence to disprove that theory. We look at the foundations of the chair, observe it to be stronger, more reliable, with a better creator, and safer than all the other chairs, and sit confidently in it.
• Biblical faith is faith which is based on evidence, yet with the catalyst of the Holy Spirit. I put something up on the blog a bit ago showcasing some straightforward evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ; I’m reasonably sure it was seen by at least one non-Christian, yet I didn’t get any responses saying ‘I believe!’ Why not? Because the Holy Spirit didn’t awaken that faith. It’s as if we can see the chair but we know it’s been made by someone we hate more than anything else, so out of spite we refuse to sit in it until he comes over and gives us a hug, reassuring us that he’s actually a pretty nice guy. And his chair’s really comfortable actually.

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An atheist: ‘Christianity is the answer to Africa’s problems’

Matthew Parris and Jonathan Dimbleby (Photo credit: Pickersgill Reef)

Matthew Parris is an atheist. He’s so much of an atheist that an article he’s written has been published on Richard Dawkins’ own website.

Now, Richard Dawkins, for those who might not know him, is the guy who hates belief in God so much that I once heard him in a debate against Tony Blair, of all people, arguing that the cause of all suffering in this world was a direct result of people’s religious beliefs.

Firstly, clearly that’s not true. But secondly, it’s therefore interesting that on his own website he’s published this article, entitled As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. Here’s a great quote:

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

Well, there you go. The article on Dawkins’ site is here, and the original’s here (although you need an account to view it). The place I found out about it all is here.

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Nothing exploded

English: A cross close to the church in Grense Jakobselv, Norway. Suomi: Risti kirkon lähellä Vuoremijoella, Norjassa. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Christians have a lot of faith. They stupidly believe in some guy who lives in the sky, definitely Caucasian, definitely with a white beard, probably holding a staff or a lightning bolt or something like that, who created everything, then sneakily hid proof of evolution in it all so that the cleverest humans would be led astray, leaving the stupid ones to get into heaven because of their faith.

Well, judging by the way the new atheists talk I think that’s what they believe anyway. The fact that I’m a Christian and believe none of that paragraph (except maybe the bit about him creating everything) seems to make no difference; why address real-life Christians when imaginary ones are so much easier to get angry and aggro about!

I’m not convinced that Christians have any more faith than atheists do. Let me tell you what I can see at the moment:

• a whole bunch of electronic stuff
• chocolate biscuits
• furniture
• buildings
• statues
• trees

All of those, with the exception of the last one, have a clear creator or creators; humans. But the last one, according to atheists, needs faith to believe in a creator. Odd.

Ok, so the tree grew ‘naturally’ out of a seed, but where did the seed come from? Another tree? But that doesn’t go back forever…atheists would have us believe that everything came into existence out of nothing on its own.

Is it just me, or is that absolutely ridiculous? In what other situation would we see something and conclude that it came into being when there was nothing there before, not even its various parts?

Atheists: you demonstrate more faith than I feel I can muster up I’m afraid!

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Fancy going to the atheist church?

St Ananias Church in the Christian section of Bab Touma in Old Damascus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A news story I saw this morning: a new church for atheists has started in London. How lovely. Clearly I disagree with their theology (or lack of it…discuss) but I honestly think it’s great that some atheists are starting to formalise their belief system.

A couple of quotes from, and thoughts off the back of, the news story, if I may:

“It’s a nice excuse to get together and have a bit of a community spirit but without the religion aspect,” says Jess Bonham, a photographer.

“It’s not a church, it’s a congregation of unreligious people.”

Hm. Depends on your definition of church. The word ‘church’ comes from the Ancient Greek word ekklesia, meaning a gathering of people. So it’s definitely a church. Sorry.

Another attendee, Gintare Karalyte, says: “I think people need that sense of connectedness because everyone is so singular right now, and to be part of something, and to feel like you are part of something. That’s what people are craving in the world.”

Indeed, that is what people are craving in the world…if Christians are so stupid and atheists are so clever, how come it took atheists so many thousands of years to figure it out when community has been at the core of Christianity since creation?

The Sunday Assembly certainly did better business than at the evangelical St Jude and St Paul’s Church next door, where about 30 believers gathered to sing gospel songs and listen to Bible readings.

What a ridiculous comparison! The atheist church got 300 or so members, let’s compare that with a Christian church in North London, not too far from this atheist church, linked to the church I attend. The only statistic I could find about attendance there is that they saw over 1,000 people at one Easter service in 2011. And that’s not to mention the hundreds of other Christian churches in and around London. Comparing it to one small church doesn’t mean anything.

But Bishop Harrison, a Christian preacher for 30 years, says he does not see his new neighbours as a threat, confidently predicting that their spiritual journey will eventually lead them to God.

“They have got to start from somewhere,” he says.

Absolutely. The apostle Paul went from killing Christians to being perhaps the most influential missionary of all time. I hope and pray that the leaders of this atheist church see a similar turnaround.

Read the original article if you like. Glory to God!

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How do I know if my brain is faulty?

The cartoon here, created by the ever-clever xkcd, spots a problem, but misses out on asking the right question. So let’s ask a different question:

Can I trust my brain?

Well, to find out whether or not I can trust my brain I need to perform some sort of test. Hm. Do I think that 2+2=4? Yes I do! Therefore, my brain must work…but the only reason I think that is because I know that…definitely a bit of circular reasoning going on there.

This is by no means an original thought but Christians have no problem with it; God created my brain, and therefore I can trust it. Great.But the atheist can’t think like that; no-one ‘created’ their brain, it adapted over millions of years. We simply assume we can rely on our brain’s reasoning abilities because otherwise there’s no scientific method.

Assume.

Assume basically means blind faith. Both Christians and atheists trust their brains (we have to really, don’t we) but Christians have a genuine, logical reason for doing so based on our beliefs whereas atheists don’t.

Bit of a problem, that.

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We need to trust the Bible

I found out yesterday that our brains send more information to our eyes than they receive from them. Does that worry you at all? Perhaps it should.

One way we can easily see this is with this optical illusion. By staring at the dot, you’re convincing your brain that you’re staring at the world through colour filters, so when the image changes you see it in full colour, even though you know that it’s in black and white.

Maybe this one’s a bit easier:

Your brain tells your eyes that B is in shade, so you observe it as being a lighter grey. They’re exactly the same colour, but your brain beats your eyes; we simply can’t see that they’re the same.

So what we see when we look at the world is more informed by our presuppositions than by what’s actually there. Sorry to break this to you, but we subconsciously lie to ourselves all day, every day. The Bible calls this sin.

Let me give you a real-life example. A bit ago a friend of mine had hurt his back. Another friend and I prayed to Jesus, and he immediately felt better. Great news! Answered prayer! But an atheist reading that story would either deny its truth, or deny the conclusion. The atheist is blind to see what’s actually happened because his presupposition is that God doesn’t exist.

So we’re at an impasse; the atheist cannot be convinced to convert because any evidence proving Christianity’s truth will first by filtered by his presuppositions, which require Christianity to be false. So how do we figure out what the truth is?

Simple. We need one objectively true source: the Bible. Our senses can’t be trusted (we just proved that), so should be ignored.

And just to prove that they are the same colour, hopefully this little animation works.

Optical illusion causing the brain to interpret colors wrongly. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The religion of atheism

– Taken at 2:23 PM on May 07, 2006; cameraphone upload by ShoZu (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don’t know how many times I’ve had a conversation with an atheist which ends up with them saying something like:

Christians believe in the Trinity. Muslims believe in Allah. The Ancient Romans believed Jupiter etc. Who knows what Hindus believe. Your faith may all be genuine but you can’t all be right, therefore the only logical conclusion is to only believe in a god if there’s objective, undisputed, absolute, cast-iron proof. And there isn’t any. So you’re a fool.

Seems sensible, actually.

Oh no, wait. It doesn’t. Because this atheist hasn’t given the full picture. They might think they have, but they haven’t. Here’s how they should have presented it:

1. Everyone believes in something (I believe that the Bible is true, a Muslim believes that Muhammad was Allah’s final prophet, atheists believe that there’s nothing other than what we can observe in nature).
2. We can’t all be right.
3. Therefore, we should do everything in our power to determine who is right.

Ok, now that’s better. The atheist demands evidence not only that a god exists, but that one specific God (or host of gods) exists. Problem though: God is outside of nature, and therefore can’t be observed in the manner which the atheist has faith in.

In other words, all that the atheist is saying is ‘I don’t believe in God, therefore I don’t believe in Him.’ Clearly circular reasoning.

Now, everyone demonstrates circular reasoning when it comes down to worldviews. I believe that humans don’t have wings. I’ve seen evidence that humans do have wings (e.g. in movies, people dressed up in public) but I easily dismiss those as fiction because of my beliefs. So atheists shouldn’t be ashamed of their faith (in fact, it comes across as a bit desperate when atheists insist so strongly that everyone should believe them), but should acknowledge it.

So there we go.

Atheists: do you have the faith for evolution?

PhotonQ-Homer’ s Evolution Theory (Photo credit: PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE)

Probably one of the most often-used comment on this blog from atheists goes something like this:

You’re a Christian? Doesn’t that mean you don’t even believe in evolution? Ha ha ha, hey everyone! Look at this clown! Not only does he not believe in atheism, he doesn’t even believe in evolution, which everyone knows is a fact! What an idiot.

Well, atheist, just in case you still don’t realise that evolution is not, in fact, a fact, I think you may need to read a book written by an atheist. Here’s a little quote from it:

Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.

Hm. So why is he not happy to force every piece of evidence into the evolutionary theory? In his own words:

My skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense.

[D]oubts about the reductionist account of life go against the dominant scientific consensus, but that consensus faces problems of probability that I believe are not taken seriously enough, both with respect to the evolution of life forms through accidental mutation and natural selection and with respect to the formation from dead matter of physical systems capable of such evolution.

So there you go. It’s called Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, and of course it’s on Amazon and elsewhere.

Intolerant of tolerance

El prisionero en esta fotografía apodado Maestro, estuvo de acuerdo con la publicación de esta fotografía bajo la licencia expuesta debajo de este mensaje. Prisión del Condado de Mantras, Colombia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been having a discussion in the comments section of this post about whether morality is subjective or objective. Feel free to read the discussion if you fancy, although like any conversation it drifts off on tangents. Here’s the summary:

• Objective morality: God has a standard of what’s good and what’s bad. An action is either good or bad based on this one morality.
• Subjective morality: Actions are neither good nor bad, they just are. I hold my own moral standards which are likely to be different to yours.

Now, these are the extremes. Most people in today’s secular society would probably hold a position somewhat in the middle (some actions are objectively good or bad, some actions are neither good nor bad), but that doesn’t really work. If God holds an objective morality then that’s it, end of story. And if he doesn’t, then nothing’s subject to an objective morality.

In other words, to believe that some things are morally subjective rather than objective is to have to believe that all things are.

And here’s the example. There’s a tribe somewhere that doesn’t have the concept of personal possessions, so theft isn’t simply not considered bad, it’s not considered an action. Who am I as a westerner to tell them that their morality is wrong because of something like this?

In today’s society politicians love to talk about tolerance; people hold different cultural standards, but we should tolerate them. People disagree with our opinions, but we should tolerate them. One politician recently said something like ‘the only thing we’re intolerant of is intolerance.’

And that all sounds lovely until you apply it to real life. A man is drunk, gets angry and murders his wife. Under an objective morality, this is wrong. Under a subjective morality his defense in court could be ‘I believe it was the right thing to do under the circumstances,’ and it would be morally wrong to then judge him; he’d done what he thought was best.

Two problems:

1. The obvious one is that if you think him murdering his wife was wrong, then you probably believe he should face consequences for his bad actions. But under a subjective morality this can’t work because it can’t be applied to other people by definition. That’s a problem.
2. If morality is subjective then judging someone else for doing something they consider to be morally right is surely morally wrong (as in the example above)…but that shows that having a subjective morality is logically incoherent; it assumes an objective morality within which subjective morality must operate.

Conclusion: Subjective morality simply doesn’t work, therefore morality must be objective. Murder is wrong. Forgiveness is good. Rape is wrong. Mercy is good. Racism is wrong. Love is good. Lust is wrong. God is good.