Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao et al:
The Role of Darwinian Evolutionism in Their Lives
What a person believes to be true about the Origins of all that is (mankind included), absolutely and without a doubt colors that individual’s philosophy of life in all its aspects. Very little thought on the part of anyone able to think at all will confirm that statement.
In fact, so patently obvious is the truth of that statement, that one must marvel that any understanding of any individual in any walk of life would be attempted without letting it be plainly known what their beliefs were (and are) about the origins of man and all else.
Narrowing down those beliefs about origins, we can conclude that they are basically three in number: 1) Atheism. No God. Energy and Matter created all that exists over billions of years. 2) Theistic Evolutionism. There is a god, but he created everything thru evolutionary processes. (These folks fall into two broad categories: a) Some walk hand in hand with the atheist back to the alleged appearance of the first germ, which they then allow god to have created some three billion years ago to kick-start the evolution process. These discount the Bible and its miracles.) b) Others hang on to some of the Bible but believe “science” has proven Darwinism (and Copernicanism, of course, you idiot!), but hopefully a resurrection and heaven of some sort is in the cards...or at least some kind of reincarnation where one can keep on going as a bug or a rock or something). 3) Creationism. God (Allah to many) created everything in six days about 6000 years ago and has an eternal, blissful creation in store on a New Earth for a multitude without number who meet His rather modest criteria.
So, what have certain powerful historical figures in the not too distant past believed about the Origins of all that is? Since Adolph Hitler is the most demonized figure of the 20th century, let’s begin by seeing what he believed about Origins....
Dr. Jerry Bergman, a college professor somewhere in Ohio the last I heard, put together information from various authorities showing important connections between Hitler’s Nazism and Darwin’s Evolutionism. A few quotations will make the accepted but rarely discussed point that Hitler’s Nazism was a calculated and deliberate plan to apply evolutionary “science” to government policy. Indeed, Darwinism was the heartbeat of Nazism as Hitler conceived it. Note Bergman’s findings:
“Adolph Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching--probably since he was a boy.”
“One of the central planks in Nazi theory and doctrine was...evolutionary theory...”, we read in another place.
The whole Hitlerian idea of the “master race” of “supermen” was based on the Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest” which Hitler proposed to speed up by various policies. Jews and Blacks were singled out as retards on the evolutionary scale who must not be allowed to contaminate the more evolved, i.e., the more advanced “aryan master race”. (This was the ultimate effrontery, the unpardonable sin, as far as the Talmudic Jews were concerned. How dare he appropriate THEIR position on the subject of superiority and inferiority! That blankety-blank paperhanger--and the whole German people--will find out who is superior and who isn’t! They are going to pay and pay, and then pay some more for this effrontery!)
Dr. Bergman’s conclusion: “The evidence is very clear that Darwinian ideas had a tremendous impact on German thought and practice.... In fact, Darwinian ideas had a tremendous influence on causing WWII, the loss of 40 million lives, and the waste of about 6 trillion 1945 dollars. Firmly convinced that evolution was true, Hitler saw himself as the modern savior of mankind.... By breeding a superior race, the world would look upon him as the man who pulled humanity up to a higher level of evolution.”
Vot more can ve zay? The interminable vengeance exacted on the Germans by the Jews in particular is partly due to their Holocaust experience, which was bad to be sure, but admitted by many Jews themselves to be highly exaggerated. (The Zionists officially declared economic war on Hitler in 1933, just six weeks after he was elected Chancellor [a little publicized fact somehow].... He [thru Himmler chiefly] got increasingly rough with them after that, no doubt about it. Maybe a million died in the camps of all causes, and another million during the invasion of the Soviet Union.) The Holocaust Industry, as many are calling it (including those reading Finklestein's hot new book by that title) has served the Zionists in particular wonderfully well, not only as an immense source of revenue, but also as an unfailing psychological club to beat off any post-war inclinations anywhere to expose their multi-faceted dark side. This ceaseless retribution and hair-trigger labeling of “anti-Semite” and “Nazi” has gotten the Zionists a lot of mileage in the post-war world.
Still, the Holocaust is only the most visible and effective tool used to establish once and for all who is superior and who is inferior. Bombing Hitler and Nazism off the map didn’t touch the root of evolutionism! Indeed, pruning the Nazi limb off the evolution tree just made the other branches (Communism, Socialism, Humanism) grow stronger and bear more fruit of an equally, if not more poisonous variety than Hitlerism! All four of these big “isms” of the 20th century (Fascism, Communism, Socialism, Humanism) are rooted and grounded in Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolutionism. I find that a rather interesting fact, don’t you? Hitler was totally persuaded that evolutionism was a scientific fact. Ernst Haeckel’s recapitulation nonsense aided the Darwinian conquest of the Life Sciences in Germany on the heels of Darwin's book (HERE). Hitler was also deeply convinced by the theories of Eugenicist Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin) and others about improving the quality of the human race by careful selection of parents in the breeding process. Nordic stock was preferred for achieving the best evolutionary results. Hitler concluded that this was the best way to thin out the weak and propagate the strong. As far as can be determined Hitler retained a belief in God...as did Galton. He just added Darwin in the mix and adopted one of the different shades of belief open to the theistic evolutionist. This seems to be a pattern for deep dyed evolutionists who lean toward Fascism, i.e., they do not officially promote atheism, they are ardent nationalists, and, to a degree, they favor a substantial element of capitalism in the economy.
Deep dyed evolutionists who embrace Communism and Socialism and Humanism, on the other hand, tend to officially promote atheism, seek to get rid of nationalism and install globalism, and ostensibly denounce capitalism while using it for their own ends in an otherwise government run economy. The “fall” of Soviet Communism, by-the-way, effected nothing as far as the evolutionary underpinning of these non-Fascist isms is concerned. Everybody just became Socialist-Humanists, which sounds a lot better, and the march away from nationalism toward globalism has now gone to afterburners. Globalism is the “ism” of the day and--being evolutionist to the core--it bloody well means to get rid of that pesky competition from Biblical Creationism and proceed quickly to the main order of business, i.e., finishing off Jesus and the New Testament foundation for Christianity.
So, while all the big talk from world leaders goes on about politics, economics, environment, nuclear proliferation, etc., the real culprit is what has been implanted in man’s mind about his origin and purpose in the world. And this offender (evolutionism cleverly disguised as “science”) remains as effectively hidden as a rabbit in a brush pile. False science, and those who knowingly use it, has been Satan’s major weapon in the world--at least since the Copernican fiction paved the way for the Darwinian fiction--and is no more suspected of being behind all this misery than is Donald Duck.
Hidden and unsuspected or not, it is absolutely clear that evolutionism is that mind warping concept that has been (and now is!) a key ingredient in modern history’s greatest blood baths, its interminable racial turmoil, and the most terrible economic waste in the history of the world. Hitler--being totally persuaded that evolutionism was a scientific fact--simply turned out to be one of--if not the--most impassioned promoters of that theory about man’s origins in the 20th century. As with hundreds of millions of others, Hitler perceived that here was a scientific fact which basically demanded that all previous concepts about mankind be thrown out the window. Being the white supremacist concept that Darwinism is, Hitler made this idea his guiding principle. With “scientific truth” on his side, he set about to further the “Master Race” concept. The rest is history.
But there were other equally persuaded and zealous devotees of Darwinism in Hitler’s time. These also were men who have had a powerful influence on modern history, an influence heavily weighted on the destructive side of the balance. These men (Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Marx) were globalists, rather than nationalists, and they openly mocked God and set about to rid the world of His influence on mankind....
Lenin was “...a confirmed atheist, dedicated to the destruction of...all religious worship...he regarded Christ with undisguised hatred.”
On his desk Lenin had a statue displayed in a “prominent position for all to see...its vivid presence dominated the room.” (What kind of statue?)
It was a “...bronze statue of an ape gazing at an oversized human skull.” This symbolized the evolutionary core of Lenin’s atheism. It further symbolized the core of Marx’s Communism which Lenin set about imposing on Russia and much of the rest of the world. When Lenin died in 1924, control of the Soviet Union passed to Joseph Stalin.
Let’s glance at the role evolutionism played in Stalin’s mind (a mind, all agree, which conceived and carried out the calculated murder of at least ten--and more likely--twenty to thirty million people, mostly Christians):
“At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.”
G. Gludjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin’s relates: “I began to speak of God. Joseph heard me out, and after a moment’s silence said: ‘You know, they are fooling us, there is no God....’”
Gludjidze reported: “I was astonished at these words. I had never heard anything like it before. How can you say such things, Soso?” he asked Stalin, who replied:
“I will lend you a book to read: it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense.”
“What book is that?” his friend inquired.
“Darwin. You must read it,’ Joseph impressed on me.”
A few pages later, another person who was in school with Stalin, said of what they were taught:
“...in order to disabuse [i.e., free from deception or error] the minds of our seminary students of the myth that the world was created in six days, we had to acquaint ourselves with the geological origin and age of the earth, and be able to prove them in argument; we had to familiarize ourselves with Darwin’s teachings.”
So, in plain words, the church school Joseph Stalin attended labored to get the Bible’s explanation for origins out of kid’s heads and fill those same heads with the evolutionary explanation for origins. And that was church school well over a hundred years ago! Education--public, private, church, TV, whatever--is THE tool for getting the evolution explanation for the origin of man and all else into peoples heads.
A quick note on how Mao Tse-tung made indoctrination into evolutionism his very first priority after the Communist victory in China in late 1949 is of interest, I think. See if you agree:
1) Mao’s method was quite resourceful given what he had to work with. He called it “Each One Teach One”. It was basically the idea that every literate person would teach an illiterate person and, as soon as the pupil learned enough to read and write he would then teach what he had learned to another illiterate person. Within a few short years the 85% figure was totally reversed.... It was quite an accomplishment given all the obstacles.
2) Being a Marxist and an atheist and a firm believer in evolutionism himself, Mao mandated that the reading material used in this early day “Great Leap Forward” in literacy would be the writings of Charles Darwin and other materials supportive of the evolution paradigm. Understanding modern China of necessity includes an understanding of the transference of this state mandated indoctrination into evolution-based atheism from one generation to another for more than a half century. The fact that Mao’s regime was responsible for the out-and-out murder of somewhere between 30 and 60 million people...many of them Christian missionaries and their flocks...does not suggest that all evolutionists are potential mass murderers, of course. However, it does strongly suggest that a passionate belief that man is just another evolved animal is a conviction that is fully capable of creating a mind-set which cheapens life and excuses whatever behavior and policies individuals may pursue, no matter how hurtful and even deadly that behavior and those policies may be to millions of other people. Indeed, one abiding result of this passionate belief in the evolutionary origins scenario--a result more evident in the lives of the Lenin, Stalin, and Mao than in Hitler--is an utter disdain--often escalating to outright hatred--of Christians in particular. One can see the source of this malevolence in a few facts about modern communism’s founder:......
KARL MARX: (b. 1818; d. 1883) When Darwin’s book came out in 1859, Marx read it and exulted: “Darwin’s book is VERY important and serves me as a BASIS for the class struggle in history.” “Basis”, as we know, is a strong word meaning “the foundation” or “underpinning” upon which something is built. In other words, we learn from the horse’s mouth itself that the very foundation of Marxist Communism--the one thing that underpins the whole concept and holds it up--is an all-out belief in the evolution of man and everything else out of energy and matter, and a corresponding all-out belief that whatever teachings there are that God Created everything are teachings that must be purged from peoples minds.
In all the 70 tumultuous years of Soviet Communism and the 45 years of the “Cold War” between Soviet Communism and the West, and the half-century of the no longer sleeping giant of Chinese Communism, and all the incidental “little” Communist states of Cuba, N. Korea, and Viet Nam still with us, and the wars, etc., this central fact that the very foundation of the system of communism, its very BASIS, is a belief in Darwinian evolutionism, is a huge FACT that is scarcely if ever heard. Does that strike anyone as just a little bit of an oversight on the part of “International Relations Experts” and a lot of world leaders et al who were making “Cold War” policy for the West??
It is good to recall this fact as well: Another name for Communism has always been “Scientific Materialism”. This concept rests on two beliefs: First--as Friedrich Ingles (Marx's side-kick) made clear--"Communist physics permits no inertia in the cosmos, i.e., the stationary earth in Bible teaching is forever anathema and the Copernican cosmology is forever true science." Second, man is an accidentally evolved animal who has no spiritual needs. His needs are only material ones, and “science”, not God, will fulfill those needs. “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” as Marx put it.
In his book: Was Karl Marx A Satan Worshipper?, author Richard Wurmbrand gives plenty of evidence that he was. At the very least, Marx was a hate-filled man who, from his college days throughout his life, was bent on inflicting as much grief and woe on the world as he possibly could. Those who know something about how Satan-worshippers operate can see that Marx fit all the criteria. Check some of his own words and draw your own conclusion:
“I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above.” (From a poem).
Another poem: “The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed. See this sword? The Prince of Darkness [Satan] sold it to me.”
From a drama Marx wrote and called “Oulanem” (an inversion and anagram for Emmanuel, a Biblical name for Jesus), is loaded with devilish stuff, including these lines:
“You will sink down and I shall follow laughing, whispering in your ears, ‘Descend, come with me friend.”
The Drama ends:
“If there is something which devours, I’ll leap within it, though I bring the world to ruins - the world which bulks between me and the abyss, I will smash it to pieces with my enduring curses. I’ll throw my arms around its harsh reality. Embracing me, the world will dumbly pass away.”
Only eighteen years old when he penned those sweet uplifting thoughts, Marx found the destructive instrument he was looking for in Socialism and its most radical expression, Communism. Some of his acquaintances included Moses Hess, Bakunin, and Proudhon. Bakunin, an anarchist who quarreled with Marx (everybody did!), was supposedly a militant atheist, but actually praised Satan openly. He also longed to become the anti-Christ of the Bible. Proudhon, another anarchist, “worshipped Satan”. Hess, like Marx, a Jew, inserted a racist dimension into Marx’s ideas: “Race struggle is primary, class struggle is secondary,” he wrote. Hess was a modern forerunner of the Zionist Movement launched in 1897 by Theodore Herzl. Hess said and Marx listened: “Every Jew has the making of a Messiah in himself....”
Marx’s main writings were his three volume tomes entitled, Das Kapital. You may have three guesses as to whom he tried to dedicate this work: 1) Charles Darwin; 2) Daffy Duck; 3) The Salvation Army.
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Leaving aside evolutionary zealots and their records in the Political realm, we can glimpse the impact on modern man’s mind stenciled there in diverse fields by other evolutionary zealots. One may have to flip a coin to determine whether these men (and a thousand like them) have had as much or more impact than Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Marx....
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SIGMUND FREUD: (b. 1856; d. 1939) Sigmund Freud’s impact on 20th century thinking is almost too great to measure. Read these statements from different commentators about Freud and that impact:
1) “Sigmund Freud’s name is as cardinal in the history of human thought as Charles Darwin’s.”
2) “Few others in the history of the world have had a more profound influence on the way man thinks about himself.”
3) “The very intellectual air we breathe has been infused with Freud’s categories of thought.”
4) “In the wide area of experience covered by the Humanities and Social Sciences it is difficult to find a single discipline that is not indebted to Freud’s theories.”
5) “...probably no scientist has ever had so strong and so widespread an influence upon literature.”
6) “No other thinker in modern times has had a comparable effect upon so many branches of knowledge.”
So, upon what concept of man did this mover and shaker of men’s minds base his theories? These are Freud’s own words:
“Man is not different from or better than, the animals.... The present development of mankind seems to me to demand no other explanation than that of the animals...”
Freud based everything he came up with on the idea that man was just a highly evolved animal whose brain contained a lot of stuff imprinted upon it from past stages of evolution. This writer hits the proverbial nail on the head:
“Freud, like Marx, sees the development of man in evolutionary terms.... He sees primitive man as one who gives full satisfaction to all his instincts, and also to those perverse instincts which are part of primitive sexuality....”
Many observers have noted the way Freudianism complimented and advanced Marxism. Here is one example:
“...Freud...deserves place with Darwin and Marx in the revolutionary discoveries he has made concerning man. Whoever wishes to maintain a claim to being a revolutionary...must also embrace, as an essential Marxian outlook, the Freudian dynamics of psychological phenomena.”
How did a man who thought he was either Moses or a new Moses have such a world shaking impact on modern man’s “knowledge”? How did a man who by the age of forty had stopped having sex with his wife and could only be stimulated by perverse fantasies become the world authority on sex? How is a man who brought statuettes to the dinner table and talked to them become recognized as one of the 20th century’s leading intellectuals? How did...Ah, forget it....(For more on this, see section on Freud: HERE.)
JOHN DEWEY: (b. 1859; d. 1952 ) John Who?? This name is not a household word, to be sure. Nevertheless, this man almost single-handedly reshaped and transformed the basic emphasis of American education from being Bible centered to being evolutionary “science” centered. Dewey has been called “the philosopher who influenced American education more than any other thinker”. His books were required reading in teacher’s colleges for two generations. What inspired Dewey to lead the charge to get God out of the schools and put Darwin in? From Source Problems In Education we find part of the answer:
“John Dewey, whose reconstruction of philosophy fundamentally conditioned modern thought, was himself conditioned by Darwinian evolution... Instrumentalism, the name Dewey used to describe his philosophy, reflects its Darwinian temper just as its humanistic naturalism reflects the inspiration of science.”
So impressed by the theory of evolution was Dewey, that on his own 50th birthday, he wrote an essay to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of Darwin’s book (which was also “born” in 1859). About that book, Dewey rhapsodized:
“...the Origin of Species [Darwin’s book] introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion.”
That’s a mouthful! And he had it exactly right! “Transform the logic of knowledge...the treatment of morals, politics, and religion....” Whew!
If evolutionism had any solid evidence behind it, all this would be well and good, of course. If, however, it is a contra-scientific lie, the American education system throughout the 20th century (and now into the 21st) has been the primary indoctrination tool for instilling false logic and false knowledge--all based on a false science--into innocent student’s minds. (Other countries have had their own Dewey-like education leaders, of course. Remember Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, et al were indoctrinated with the same thing in their early “education”! French Jesuit Priest Tielhard de Chardin’s writings had a big effect on Catholic schools everywhere from the 20’s to the 50’s and beyond. Chardin’s theistic evolutionism included an early day globalist outlook and incorporated the pagan concept that even rocks have divine force.)
So, three and four generations of students have been robbed of the most basic spiritual Truth (confirmed by real science) that mankind can know, i.e., the Truth about their Origins, how they got here. All Truth begins with the Truth about Origins. Origins Truth is absolutely foundational. Other Truths in all areas can be erected on that foundation. If the foundation consists of lies about Origins, only lies in all other areas can be erected upon it. Modern man’s “knowledge” consists of deceptions in all areas of learning built upon the foundational lie that the Origin of all that exists came about as the result of a Big Bang explosion 15 billion years ago, and that the earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago, and that an evolutionary process leading from a spontaneously generated germ to Rachmanioff began 3 billion years ago (HERE). As a result of these compounded deceptions built on the sand of evolutionary mythology, modern man’s “wisdom” is foolishness to God (I Cor.3:19).
...Where was I? Oh, yes: Transforming the mind.... Dewey has had a lot of company in this endeavor, especially since Copernicus. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries Darwinism had dug in its heels in the Universities and was filtering into the high schools (a la “The Monkey Trial” in 1925: HERE). Steadily, stealthily, Creation by God was being pried out of people’s belief systems and Darwinian evolutionism was being funneled into their minds. Even as far back as the early 1880’s, German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was writing essays like “The Transvaluation of Values” and declaring that: “God is dead; we have killed him with our science”. I think Dewey got a lot of his ideas from Nietzsche.
So, this transforming of minds from a creation mode to an evolutionary mode, has been going on for a good little while, as we can see. Now, today, NASA’s “Origins Program” is all set to put an end to the transformation by administering the coup de grace to Creationism with its high tech Virtual Reality Flim-Flammery: (HERE & HERE)
But verily, there was another writer over nineteen hundred years ago who also talked about transforming the mind. He wrote:
“...be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom.12:2).
Make no mistake: this was a desperate time, a crucial juncture in an ages long struggle to destroy Bible credibility and hence its crowning message of Jesus as set forth in the New Testament. Einstein’s Relativity Theory (1905) proved nothing, but seemed to put the issue out of the reach of verification. That was enough to make him an international celebrity and “man of the century” at its recent close. Curiously, Einstein’s Relativity concept came straight out of the Kabbala, as did the concept of Zionist nationalism, for which Einstein was an ardent spokesman. He was an agnostic and evolutionist thru and thru, a Sadducee who did not believe in life after death. (Lots more on Einstein in: The Earth Is Not Moving and elsewhere.)
E. T. : (nickname for “extra-terrestrial”: born in Steven Spielberg’s mind and filmed in 1982. Can still be viewed in the celluloid hall of fame.) Ah, lovable little ET with the flashlight finger! What is there to say? ET is a superstar amongst a very long line of extra-terrestrials now starring in every third movie and TV production that comes out it seems. Some halfway exciting stuff. Some halfway funny stuff. A lot of warp speed stuff. Kind of entertaining all in all, if one keeps in mind that we are talking 100% FICTION here. I mean, there is NOTHING real about any of it. Right?
Right. Well, as long as we keep that in mind, and we are not totally dumbed-down couch potatoes who have quit thinking altogether, we can plainly see that there is one underlying message in every single one of these story lines. In fact, there wouldn’t be any story if this message wasn’t in there. Did you get that? Without this message none of these TV programs, movies, cartoons, books, video games, etc., which rely on extra-terrestrials in the plot, would exist. Sometimes the message is stated offhandedly, sometimes boldly; other times it is just accepted and understood without being stated. But the message is always there. OK?
What message??
This message: Intelligent life forms have evolved “out there”. They look different from humans...pointed ears, big heads, spindly legs, washboard brows, etc. Some are mean and ugly and some are nice and kinda cute in a grotesque way. But the main thing we all are to “get into” and accept without thinking or questioning is that all kinds of life has “evolved out there” in other star systems and other galaxies. That’s the one plain message that is implanted over and over and over, ad nauseum.
OK. Now, in your own Think Tank, consider what that means for a minute.... As you think it thru, you will see how all this life in outer space stuff is the most successful and powerful form of spreading and imbedding the evolution idea in people’s heads that anybody has ever come up with. You can see real fast that when a person begins to accept the idea that there are other intelligent life forms which have evolved “out there”, that person is ipso facto accepting and reinforcing the concept of the evolution of human beings and all other forms of life on earth.
The reasoning we’ve all been indoctrinated with goes something like this: Our star (the sun) gave the right amount of light and heat to cause certain chemicals to become “simple” life forms. Over millions and hundreds and thousands of millions of years these “evolved” into fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and finally man (not to mention the entire plant kingdom....)
Sound familiar?
All right. So, if this happened here with our star (the sun) and we have this seemingly endless number of stars (suns) “out there”, don’t we have to conclude that planets similar to earth are out there in great numbers and that life forms have also evolved on them over these billions of years??
Of course we conclude that. And zap, we become converts and supporters of the evolution myth while thinking we are just being entertained, or even educated in some of the fine points of outer space science and technology.
I fell for it. You probably have. It seems that just about everybody has! (And lots of people will get into an absolute snit if you raise any challenge to the life-in-outer-space dogma. It’s part of a religion, you see. The “scientists” are the priests and Darwinism is their holy book. We are the congregation. If you question any part of this religion or attack it, make no mistake, the ones who are fanatics and have closed their ears to any truth that contradicts their faith will want to beat you around the head and shoulders with a blunt instrument...or at least give you the verbal equivalent thereof.)
So, what are the facts about all this alleged life in outer space?
Well, here are a few for starters:
FACT: There is absolutely no evidence of any kind showing that there is life in any form whatsoever outside planet earth. None. Zip. Nada. (Note Sagan’s lament (half way thru: HERE.)
Here is another FACT: No telescopic sighting of any planet outside our “solar” system has ever been made. All such planetary homes for supposed space dwellers excitedly announced by NASA are pure fiction. (See: Virtual Reality Fraud & NASA’s Hanky Panky.... & Redshift Fraud & Star Distance Deceptions.)
And how about this FACT: There is solid scientific evidence by the truckload showing that the earth’s age is under 10,000 years. You don’t want to know? Don’t look. You do want to know? You will if you look. (See: “Time” in The Truth About Evolution or a hundred other sources by Creationist scientists in Geology, Chemistry, etc. I like the visual proofs, myself, such as polystrata trees, sandals, jewelry, tools, etc., found in strata with fossils supposedly beaucoup millions of years old; dinosaur and human footprints side by side, etcetera, etcetera....)
Given that there has been a media blitz promoting evolutionism--both slyly and boldly--for a long time, an interesting question comes up, namely: Do the Spielbergs et al and Sagans and Goldins et al, and all the authors of books and articles with an extraterrestrial theme, know that they are promoting the evolutionary explanation of the Origin of all life, or don’t they know it??
One more thought here: If evolution on earth were true, then the whole extra-terrestrial concept would be plausible, even probable. On the other hand, if there has been no macro-evolution on earth--and factual, actual science proves there has not been--then the whole ET construct falls to pieces and can be seen to be at bottom, nothing more than a clever evolution propaganda promotion scheme. One further question is: Why would people go to such far-out crazy lengths to try to get mankind to believe that matter created everything over a period of 15 billion years instead of conceding that the endless list of ineffable designs present everywhere demands a Designer God who is capable of doing it all in six days and getting that information out along with the rest of His Plan in a Book?? Why present a counterfeit of Origins when there is no excuse for failing to see that all that exists would be impossible without a Designer God of unlimited knowledge and power and PURPOSE? Could God with this unlimited knowledge and power expressed in every aspect of His creation be so dumb as to not have a Plan for all of it?! Could He be so naive as to think He could communicate that Plan to Man in any sure way other than to put it in writing? Could He be so careless as to allow copiers of the Plan, and outright enemies of the Plan, to mess it up over the centuries so that His Truths could no longer be established from it alone?
Those are rhetorical questions....
So, is the object of all this counterfeiting of the Truth about Origins...this unrelenting hammering on the evolution theme from every quarter, to be viewed as some kind of quirky accident which just happens to knock the props out from under Bible credibility from A to Z?
Or, if the probability on that is zero, as it plainly is, then there would appear to be a well defined, finely honed, nearly completed strategy afoot from somewhere to bring the Bible down and replace it with a totally adversarial, contradictory explanation for not only the Origin of all things, but for the entire Plan of God as set forth in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
If Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Marx, Freud, Dewey, et al--all born in the 19th century-- were evolutionary zealots and left wide paths of misery and death thru much of of the 20th century (in large part because of the philosophy of life that governed their policies), what has been wrought by evolution’s zealots in positions of power from then till now who have the same philosophy of life??!
Evolution’s zealots (I was one of them!) today are not confined solely to any identifiable group. Third graders write reports on how manatees came from elephants (or vice versa; I forget how that part of the myth goes); and every six year old “knows” that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago when a comet came real close or an asteroid struck the earth. I mean, how dumb can anybody be not to know these rudimentary evolutionary “phacks”?!
But all this is obviously the effect of increasingly sophisticated indoctrination on the all-important Origins subject. (The same can be said for teachers and professors who are zealots. They teach what they learned.) If today, however, one begins looking for the controlling cause of all this indoctrination instead of its effect, one needs to look no further than the flagrant evolution indoctrination program being conducted thru NASA’s tax-funded “Origins Program”. (Go: HERE, HERE, & HERE.)
If Hitler and the others were alive to see such a division of all people into basically followers of God and followers of Satan, it would be interesting to note which side he and the others would embrace after the evolution lie and others are exposed, wouldn’t it??
writetoknow
JoinedPosts by writetoknow
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HOW MANY DIED DURING CRUSADES?
by writetoknow inhitler, lenin, stalin, mao et al: .
(the heart of this statement is: darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species..were created by god....) .
1856; d. 1939) sigmund freuds impact on 20th century thinking is almost too great to measure.
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writetoknow
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76
Staying a Christian Upon Leaving (cont.)
by serotonin_wraith inwritetoknow, you can paste in those articles again if you like.
could you just put in the first two for now (the one with the sunset on the right side, and the one about the author's atheist friend?
no one is making anyone read this.
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writetoknow
Ryan Pyle for The New York Times
A woman prayed at Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai, where many worshipers new to religious expression seemed uncertain about how to act.
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By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: March 4, 2007
SHANGHAI, March 3 — Qin Fangyi’s religious moment came after a walk in the pouring rain two years ago to a nunnery for a ceremony that her mother had urged her to attend.
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Ryan Pyle for The New York Times
More young people now visit the temple, where a man burned incense.
Ms. Qin’s mother converted to Buddhism two years earlier despite her husband’s open hostility to religion, and quietly nudged her daughter into having a look for herself.
“I got there at about 8 a.m. and was told the ceremony was delayed by an hour,” said Ms. Qin, a 21-year-old design student. “At about 8:55, all of the sudden the sky grew clear and the sun came out and people began cheering and screaming that the real Buddha was about to appear in the sky. Although I didn’t see the Buddha myself, I was amazed, and I began to feel the power of God.”
Ms. Qin’s story, although unique in its details, has an ending that is fast becoming commonplace, as Chinese by the tens of millions shed decades of state-imposed atheism. The phenomenon has gained momentum so fast that it appears to have taken the government by surprise.
A recent poll by East China Normal University estimated that 31.4 percent of Chinese 16 or older are religious, putting the number of believers at roughly 400 million.
In recent years, official estimates have placed the number of believers at around 100 million, but the fact that the new survey’s results were not only made public but were also reported by the government-controlled Chinese news media suggests that the survey has been given at least some official credence.
Perhaps the most popular time of the year for Chinese to engage in public worship is the traditional Chinese New Year, which began last month. Buddhist and Taoist temples, in particular, overflowed with visitors who prayed for ancestors or the health of their own households.
As Ms. Qin spoke on the eve of the holiday at the Jade Buddha Temple in central Shanghai, scores of worshipers strolled through the temple complex. Many were well-dressed office workers who often seemed uncertain about how to act as they entered the central pavilion and bowed or knelt in prayer.
Many other visitors were older Chinese who may have privately clung to their religion through decades of official hostility. Some accompanied grandchildren, tutoring them in the rituals of prayer as they worked their way around the pavilion, with its giant golden Buddha.
Others, meanwhile, burned thick clutches of incense in the temple’s large, open courtyard, bowing to the cardinal points of the compass and then depositing the burning sticks in huge iron urns.
“There was no way for me to do this with my own daughter,” said Zhang Li, 62, who escorted her smiling granddaughter through the complex, stopping here and there for prayer. “The temples were closed, and this sort of thing simply wasn’t allowed.”
Official attitudes toward religion have gradually loosened in China in recent years, enabling the resurgence of popular belief. Places of worship for the five officially recognized faiths — Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam — have been restored or built anew, and public worship allowed again amid signs that the government sees limited religiosity as a useful component of its drive to build what it calls a “harmonious society.”
Chinese experts say the growing popularity of religious belief has been driven by social crises involving corruption and the expanding gap between rich and poor.
“People feel troubled as they ponder these issues and wonder how they’ll be resolved,” said Liu Zhongyu, a professor of philosophy at East China Normal University and the principal author of the new religion survey. “People think, I don’t care what others do or what their results are, but I want something to rely upon.”
Asked about the government’s evolving attitudes toward the growing popularity of religion, He Guanghu, a professor of philosophy at People’s University in Beijing, said, “I hope the government will look at the zeal in religion positively, and see that it can help restore social order and harmony, that it helps governance and is not a threat.”
Strict limitations on religion remain, however. Beijing handpicks senior clergy for each of the authorized faiths and frequently persecutes believers in unauthorized religions, from Falun Gong to underground Protestant churches that meet in homes. The government also severely restricts religious education and prohibits proselytizing.
Membership in the Communist Party, meanwhile, remains a major avenue for individual advancement, but the party does not permit members to practice religion. Many employers and even universities also look askance at believers.
A result of these mixed signals is that many people still do not feel altogether comfortable being recognized as believers.
Many, however, say they are increasingly up front about their beliefs. “I usually make it clear to people that I’m a Catholic at the beginning,” said Zhu Zhaofeng, 27, a salesman at a French-owned luxury goods company who attends services at an unofficial Catholic church. “I don’t want other people to feel strange if I go to worship in churches or on pilgrimage. On the other hand, it is not something I promote.”
Mr. Zhu’s situation represents almost a reversal from that of his father, who spent seven years in prison and in labor camps in the 1950s because his religious beliefs were considered “antirevolutionary.”
His father, Zhu Dafang, now 74 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, now passes his days in a tiny bedroom in an old house in central Shanghai, surrounded by Catholic reliquaries.
“We don’t hate anyone, and I have no regrets,” he said, of the suffering he endured. Struggling to speak through his tremors, he added, “One must try not to focus on the hardships you endure for faith.”
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76
Staying a Christian Upon Leaving (cont.)
by serotonin_wraith inwritetoknow, you can paste in those articles again if you like.
could you just put in the first two for now (the one with the sunset on the right side, and the one about the author's atheist friend?
no one is making anyone read this.
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writetoknow
LAW OF THE LAND
Court rules atheism a religion
Decides 1st Amendment protects prison inmate's right to start study group
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Posted: August 20, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.
"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said. -
76
Staying a Christian Upon Leaving (cont.)
by serotonin_wraith inwritetoknow, you can paste in those articles again if you like.
could you just put in the first two for now (the one with the sunset on the right side, and the one about the author's atheist friend?
no one is making anyone read this.
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writetoknow
I've stated the same point over and over again you cannot prove there is no God! You have proven to yourself and those that want to believe there is no God - so there is no God.
That a wonderful thing for you and I am really happy for you. Thank you again for posting your beliefs I enjoyed them they have reinforced my faith in God even more.
Best Regards
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76
Staying a Christian Upon Leaving (cont.)
by serotonin_wraith inwritetoknow, you can paste in those articles again if you like.
could you just put in the first two for now (the one with the sunset on the right side, and the one about the author's atheist friend?
no one is making anyone read this.
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writetoknow
"I am the true vine and my Father is the Tiller"
"Remain in Me and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself without staying on the vine, so you cannot without staying in Me."
"Whoever does not remain in Me, is thrown away as a root-sprout and withers"
Science cannot prove Christ Jesus words above to be true or not. According to Jesus a person would have to be a part of him and he a part of them to know that he exist. If they were not a part of him then he would not exit for them or the God he worships.
For those that don't believe there is a God no truer words have been spoken then "There is NO GOD"
Jesus was not the least bit concern with the fact people did not believe (it only proved his message) in him or his Father. If Christ would have put mans disbelief in front of his Father words; he would have sought the glory of men over the glory of God and become a lier;
:Then they said to Him, "Where is your Father?" Jesus replied, You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father as well."
"To which Jesus replied, If I ascribed glory to Myself, My glory would be worthless".
"You do not know Him, but I know Him if I said, 'I do not know Him' I would be a prevaricator like yourselves. But I know Him and observe His word."
'You investigate the Scriptures, because you suppose that you have eternal life in them, and yet they are the testimonies for Me in order to have life. I reach for no human fame, But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you."
Science or no human level of knowledge can prove the words above to be false. Those that don't believe in God are only proving Christ words to be true in their case. They can however discredit the messenger through human logic, but they cannot come between Christain relationship with the true vine. Nor can they understand that relationship.
If a weak Christain succumb to such factitious reasonings out of fear of man, doubt and lack of faith that "there is no God" they only prove Christ words true that the person has become a prevaricator. But they have not proven God does not exist.
Moreover, if all person on earth agreed "God does not exist" that agreement only prove Gods' word to be true again.
"There is none doing right, not even one."
"What if some failed to believe? Their unbelief surely does not nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all. Rather shall it be God must be true though every man be a cheat, as it is written".
If a Christain want to appear wise in the worlds knowledge they are denying the person they claim to worship"
"For the message of the cross seems folly to those on their way to destruction, but to us, the saved, it is God's power"
"Inasmuch as in God's providence the world failed to know God by means of its wisdom, God was please to save the believers through the folly of the proclamation."
The proof that one cannot understand the words of the Spirit proves the truth of the Spirit: "And we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that comes from God in order that we may realize the graces that have come to us from God."
"But the worldly-mined person does not accept things of the divine Spirit; to him they are folly and he cannot understand them, because they are estimated from a spiritual standpoint. The spiritual person, on the other hand, judges the value of everything, while he is properly valued by none'.
The fact that people hate God only proves the God's word as true. The fact that people spend their lives obsessed with disproving there is a God only proves God's word as truth all the more.
"Do not be surprised, brothers, if the world hates you."
"Whoever loves the world has not the Father's love in his heart'.
"If the world hates you, consider that it hated Me first."
Although what some consider intelluctal wisdom that they have proven there is "No God" in fact proves God does exist where they cannot go or see or understand:
"When the Comforter comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth which goes out from the Father, He will testify regarding Me' but you too will testify'.
To be against Christ Jesus and his word is (Anti) Random House Webster's Dictionnary: states the meaning to be; a person opposed to a policy; preventing or counteracting; opposite or contrary to rivaling Chirst.
Once again proving God's word to be true:
"Who is the liar if it is not the denier that Jesus is the Christ? He is the Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father."
"Of these matters we make mention, not in speeches taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by Spirit - spiritual language for spiritual things. But the worldly-mined person does not accept things of the divine Spirit to them they are folly and he cannot understand them, because they are estimated from a spiritual standpoint.
What seems to some to be a noble cause to prove there is "NO GOD" is a war that has strengthen the faith of Chirstain for thousands of years and proves that the Spirit that dwells in them only become stonger and more compassionate strengthening their faith in the Word of God, that is Chirst Jesus.
So thank you for your encouraging post it helped my faith
"Do not touch these men but leave them alone; for should this plan or movement be merely human, then it will go to pieces, but if its source is God, the you are unable to crush them. You might even find yourselves to be God-resisters."
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76
Staying a Christian Upon Leaving (cont.)
by serotonin_wraith inwritetoknow, you can paste in those articles again if you like.
could you just put in the first two for now (the one with the sunset on the right side, and the one about the author's atheist friend?
no one is making anyone read this.
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writetoknow
The art of argument does not prove a point to be absolute what it does prove is one person can out argue the other. If a person studies, the art of debate and legal writing they would understand how any point can be agrued for or against with convictions.
That is the reason "the best hidding place of a dishonest person is in the logic.". People can take any subject and prove it through argumentation and logic. Some of the worst leaders of our times used such logic and reasoning to destroy over 100 milion lives in the name of "no God". Did these men believe their claims?
I can't say for sure but it was a means to come to power and take control of people lives. Same can be said of those in relgion. Would a discussion like this one changed their behavior I don't think so. People start from a position and reinforce them through argument and logic. When they feel they are in control or smarter then the other group the belief is reinforced through the power of the argument.
I don't for one minute believe there anything written or that could be agrued that would prove to someone there is a God to a person that does not want to believe in God.
And the same could be said of those proving there is no God. It has been said by scholars that if science could prove there was a God then there would be no God. God is a Spirit and science has never done well with that subject.
When clear lines are drawn, that is, black and white, agrument serve to entrench people into already held beliefs. The only way to get read of a belief it to have the power to make it illegal or educate people to feel superior over anyone confessing the belief where people become ashamed do to peer pressure to acknowlegde they believe a certain way.
But that does not prove the belief is right or wrong it only make one group happy. When hatard is involved a person never get what they think they want or deserve it is only a temporary mask the for real problem.
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44
New Generation Understanding
by momzcrazy inhello everyone, i am new here and newly freed from the snare of wtbs.
my sister, also newly freed, said our mom told her at the annual meeting there was a new "understanding" on the generation confusion.
it is now the annointed that will not pass away.. has anyone else heard this?
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writetoknow
Not "new light" it is an old teaching that been around since at least the 1930. But it was rejected and I am certain people we called apostates for holding this view. Around and around we go were we land...
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100
Staying a Christian Upon Leaving
by serotonin_wraith inso you found out the jehovah's witness religion/cult was bogus.
congratulations, it's a step in the right direction.
now all you have to do is escape the cult of christianity.. while other christian groups are (perhaps arguably) less controlling (on the whole), the foundation christianity rests on is bogus too.
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writetoknow
INTERVIEW as follows:
Question #1:
Both of you seem to give somewhat contrasting verdicts (as your titles seem to indicate, Heeren being most positive, Ferguson less so) to our main question: "Can Science Prove God?" Ferguson remarked that as long as God was not thought of as a "person", most scientists seem to have little problem with the idea. So suppose we distinguish between the existence of God and the essence or "nature" of God: would this distinction cause you to qualify your answers?
Ferguson: No, sorry, but I would not qualify my answer. I don't believe that anyone taking an unbiased look at science could say that science proves (by scientific standards) either the existence or the essence or nature of God. It does not uphold atheism. if one chooses to be an atheist one must find another reason besides science.
God does, certainly, reach out to us through nature and science. If we already believe in God, as I do, then science and nature make us feel worshipful, can draw us closer to God, can become a celebration of the glory of God, can fill us with immense awe -- cause us to fall to our knees, can make us feel tremendous elation as we gain better understanding through science of God's magnificent, clever mind manifested in His Creation. Those who don't believe are sometimes surely led nearer to belief by an experience of nature. But science in no case that I know of offers independent proof of the existence of God.
In fact, in many instances in history where we thought we had found proof in science (the argument from design, for example), science turned right around and pulled the rug out from under our feet. Belief in God (or unbelief) because of supposed proof from science turns out to be terribly slippery footing, because science is a shifting body of knowledge, insisting on the "right to be wrong" and to change its mind frequently. Even before Darwin, theologians warned that using the "argument from nature" even as "secondary evidence" tended to give it too much importance and detract from more profound reasons for belief. Most who believe in God do so because they have experienced God's love and power and presence in their own lives and have seen it at work among those around them, not because of independent proof from science.
One might argue (on behalf of there being scientific proof) that St. Paul wrote (in Romans 1:20) "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." But Paul was talking about a common sense response to what we see in this universe, not about scientific proof as we insist on it today...
Heeren: My book certainly does not claim that "science can prove God." Since the scientific method cannot be applied to such an entity, God is clearly outside the domain of science. However, different scientific expectations about our universe arise according to one's personal view about the existence of a Creator, and these expectations can be met or disproved, in the spirit of putting the Creator's handiwork under the microscope rather than the Creator Himself. An atheist, to make his case most clear, would like to make discoveries about our universe to show that its development can best be attributed to random processes. A God-believer would predict that we should find clear evidence of care and precision, for our benefit, in the way that the universe is set up. What cosmologists find, of course, are carefully chosen values in nature's constants, adjusted to a degree that makes the odd too great to be explained by blind chance.
Most scientists acknowledge the evidence for some kind of organizing principle. And perhaps this is as far as science can take us. In Show Me God, however, I examine all the alternatives for various types of Creators. All can be summed up in three fundamental categories: God is the universe, God is us, or God is "other." By "other" I mean that God is not part of or one with the universe, but is of a distinctly different substance, independent of the physical universe we observe. My conclusion is that this century's greatest discoveries about our cosmos strongly support this latter view of the Creator: an entity beyond time, beyond space, a causeless cause, an infinite, all-knowing being, whose care and purpose show that this Creator of persons has at least as much attributes of thought, consciousness, will -- in short, "personhood" -- as we do.
Question #2:
I was particularly struck by your reactions to the whole idea of an "Anthropic Principle" (Heeren in particular seems very much put off by the whole idea, Ferguson remaining rather ambivalent). As a theologian, my own reaction has been much more positive, seeing in the AP a certain vindication of what seems to come very close to the teleological proof of the existence of God. Granted that some who have tried to advance the principle have gone to great lengths to avoid its theological implications, still, would you not both be encouraged by interest in the subject?
Heeren: Yes, I certainly would be encouraged by interest in the anthropic principle -- or anything else that draws people's attention to the amazing-but-not-so-well-known fact that our universe has been put together, against incredible odds, in a way that makes it look like it was designed for our benefit. As a matter of fact, in a recent video I did man-on-the-street interviews on Michigan Avenue in Chicago and on the U.of C.'s Berkeley campus, asking people what they knew about the fine- tuning of the universe -- and no one had ever heard of such a thing!
Cosmology, apparently, is not taught in high schools. But everyone takes a high school biology course, in which they are taught that evolution works without a goal -- its randomness is its essential feature. My book and my new magazine, Cosmic Pursuit, have as their core purpose the spreading of the word on the sort of discoveries that have given us our anthropic principle.
I'm only "put off" by the idea of taking too seriously the strong anthropic principle (esp. in its "multiple universes" and "participatory" variations) or by non-theists who misuse the general principle to say it "explains" the finely tuned physical constants as [simply] a "brute fact".
Ferguson: I think we can be encouraged by the questions that have led to the invention of the anthropic principle; for example, How is it that the universe is so remarkably fine-tuned to allow for our existence? However, the anthropic principle itself is (simply put) the statement that we find things fine- tuned for our existence because if they weren't we wouldn't be here to wonder why they are fine-tuned. Of course, the definition gets more sophisticated, but that remains the bottom line. The theological implications of this answer are that we don't necessarily need God in order to explain the fine-tuning. But I don't think we should be particularly discouraged. No one, not even scientists who don't believe in God, such as Stephen Hawking, claims that the anthropic principle has to be the correct explanation. In fact, most would rather find a better one.
Question #3:
One of my own areas of concern has been in "theodicy" or the problem of evil in this world. It seems to me that the whole process of evolution, with its inherent randomness or play of chance, for the first time gives us a rational insight into why so much suffering can coexist with a God that is inherently good. Would you care to comment?
Ferguson: I appreciate your point, and you have stated it eloquently in your piece "Evolution and the Problem of Evil, " but I am sorry to say that this is not an insight that I personally find very satisfying. It is my belief that God does have absolutely free choice as to whether and how to create, and it is not limited by any pre-existing standards or conditions. I don't even accept the notion that God is limited by the fact that He by nature is good and has no power to be anything but good. To me, that is a meaningless statement, since it is God Himself who is the very definition of good. In other words, God limits what "good" is. There is no reason or opportunity for "good" to limit what God is.
Be that as it may, if God chose to create the process of evolution as a way of allowing the universe to develop and eventually produce creatures such as ourselves who could exercise self-reflective awareness, seek God, and decide whether or not to respond to God, He chose a remarkably ingenious process but one in which there is immense suffering, and He is, then, wouldn't you say, responsible for that suffering? I don't think this contributes much to solving the problem of evil. We are right back with Augustine.
In defense of Augustine, I submit that one problem with discarding the Adam, Eve, and original sin explanation for evil is that, despite its flaws and woeful inadequacy (for example, it doesn't explain why the possibility of evil had to exist at all, and it seems incompatible with some of the evidence for evolution that we have discovered), and old-fashioned ring, nobody has managed to come up with a significantly more helpful explanation. Even if it is a metaphor or a parable (which to my mind does NOT downgrade its essential truth and power) it gives us very deep understanding of ourselves, God, and our estrangement from God.
May I add that I do not see God as perched up there in heaven ignoring our pain and suffering. I believe that God suffers intensely with his creation ... that whatever the root cause of evil and pain, God is in this with us all the way. Someone once suggested to me that we should get our priorities right, stop sniveling about unimportant things, and pray that our hearts would be broken by things that "break the heart of God." I could not pray for that. Not that my heart shouldn't be more like the heart of God for his creation, but I don't think I could bear to remain alive or maintain my sanity for a minute if I really had a heart for the suffering of this world like the heart of God -- if I really felt the world's suffering as God must do. Only God can bear to love us as He does and at the same time know and share our suffering without avoidance. Why, then, does He not put an immediate stop to it? I've heard lots of attempts to explain that, but I don't think any of us knows.
Heeren: The problem that Kropf is addressing is well worth the efforts he has made to explore it. I find his ideas intriguing. In reading his essay, I see that he has come to his solution on the basis of supposing that certain physical restrictions may be placed on the Creator, a solution that is only possible for a limited God.
Here's another solution to consider. This one is based on the idea that there is a logical, not a physical, restriction placed on the Creator, which is possible even for an infinite, unlimited God (consistent with Spinoza's First Cause, which could not be limited by anything, in order to be truly independent of His creation).
The solution is the necessity of free will, which Kropf and others so quickly dismiss. Now hear me out. Most people think it is good that we have moral choices. But then we have a problem with God allowing evil. You can't have it both ways. It's contradictory to have a morally free creature who can't choose wrong, thereby messing up the Creator's otherwise perfect universe. It's not a matter of God's lack of power: it's just a logical contradiction. It's like the old question: If God can do anything, then can God create a rock so big He can't lift it? It's just a logical contradiction. It doesn't say anything about God's physical limitation.
The questions, however, are so worthwhile because they lead us to good reasons for hope: How could a good God allow all the evil and suffering? Would He really just ignite the big bang and then sit back to watch us make a mess of things? Or would He have a plan? The answer, I believe, is wrapped up in the very essence of the good news of the Christian faith. No, the Creator who showed such initial care and purpose wouldn't sit back, powerless or unwilling to cure the evil that we do. And yes, being omniscient, He would have a plan from the beginning to do something about it. What He would do is spelled out in my book ...and in His. (See esp. "Seven Cosmic Histories" in Show Me God , pp 247-249.)
Kropf: I want to thank both of you for the time you have taken to contribute to "DIALOGOS". Although I do differ with both of you on several points. For example, I'm inclined to think, that with the advent of the Big Bang hypothesis, the argument for the existence of God is considerably strengthened, even if it hardly gives us much of clue as the nature of God, other than simply as an "uncaused cause". But of course, science could be wrong about the Big Bang.
As for my own attempt to solve the "problem of evil", I would like to point out that I do see (contrary to Heeren's impression) the existence of human freedom as THE key to understanding evil, but in a way that stresses the necessity of the chance and randomness of nature as causes of human tragedy and suffering, but (again) not in a way that all of this can be traced to human sinfulness. Of course, I realize, as both of you point out (and object to), that my approach assumes that God is in some way constrained to create this way, although I do not see this constraint so much as a "physical limitation" (God could create an entirely "perfect" world) as it is a logical one, as such a perfect world would be a world of robots. In other words, in some way I do put a limit to God's power just as did Rabbi Harold Kuschner in his best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. You might even say that my book Evil & Evolution attempts to replace the "WHEN" in Kuschner's title with WHY (For a summary of the book's main thesis, see Dialogos Issue #4.)
But as for God's ultimate answer to this whole problem, I strongly agree with both of you. God identifies with our suffering completely, whether that suffering be part of the "growing pains" of the universe or somehow "atoning" for the all the evils committed by humankind. This is the essence of the Christian belief in the redemption, so much so that Ignatius of Antioch, one of the earliest of the "Church Fathers" (died about 110 CE/AD) could write boldly, without qualification, of "the passion [or suffering] of my God." (See Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans 6:3.) Perhaps the three of us can at least agree on that. Again, you have my thanks!
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Notes:
Kitty Ferguson's book The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion & the Search for God was published in 1994 and is available from William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49503.
Fred Heeren's book Show Me God: What the Message from Space Is Telling Us About God was published in 1995 and can be ordered directly from Searchlight Publications, 326 S. Wille Ave., Wheeling IL 60090.
Richard Kropf's book Evil & Evolution: A Theodicy was published by Fairleigh Dickenson University Press in 1984 and can be ordered from Associated University Presses, 440 Forsgate Dr., Cranbury, NJ 08512.
Harold Kuschner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People was first published by Schocken Books in 1983.
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For further comments from readers on this interview , go to linked file
To proceed to Thornhill's paper: Richard Dawkins: Science, Non-science, Nonsense
To return to Index Page
File:DIAL5.HTM 1/17/2000 -
100
Staying a Christian Upon Leaving
by serotonin_wraith inso you found out the jehovah's witness religion/cult was bogus.
congratulations, it's a step in the right direction.
now all you have to do is escape the cult of christianity.. while other christian groups are (perhaps arguably) less controlling (on the whole), the foundation christianity rests on is bogus too.
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writetoknow
What Science Can't Prove Gregory Koukl If science can't even disprove the existence of unicorns, how can it disprove the existence of God? I often hear the comment, "Science has proved there is no God." Don't ever be bullied by such a statement. Science is completely incapable of proving such a thing. I'm not saying that because I don't like science, but rather because I know a little about how science works. Science operates on induction. The inductive method entails searching out things in the world and drawing generalized conclusions about those things based on observation. Scientists can only draw conclusions on what they find, not on what they can't find. Science, by its very nature, is never capable of proving the non-existence of anything. For example, can science prove there are no unicorns? Absolutely not. How could science ever prove that unicorns don't exist? All science can do is say that scientists may have been looking for unicorns for a long time and never found any. They might therefore conclude that no one is justified in believing that unicorns exist. They might show how certain facts considered to be evidence for unicorns in the past can be explained adequately by other things. They may invoke Occam's Razor to favor a simpler explanation for the facts than that unicorns exist. But scientists can never prove unicorns themselves don't exist. Since science, by its very nature, is never capable of proving the non-existence of anything, one can never accurately claim that science has proven God doesn't exist. That's a misuse of the discipline. Such a claim would require omniscience. The only way one can say a thing does not exist is not by using the inductive method, but by using a deductive method, by showing that there's something about the concept itself that is contradictory. I can confidently say for sure that no square circles exist. Why? Not because I've searched the entire universe to make sure that there aren't any square circles hiding behind a star somewhere. No, I don't need to search the world to answer that question. The concept of square circles entails a contradictory notion, and therefore can't be real. A thing cannot be a square and be circular (i.e., not a square) at the same time. A thing cannot be a circle and squared (i.e., not a circle) at the same time. Therefore, square circles cannot exist. The laws of rationality (specifically, the law of non-contradiction) exclude the possibility of their existence. This means, by the way, that all inductive knowledge is contingent. One cannot know anything inductively with absolute certainty. The inductive method gives us knowledge that is only probably true. Science, therefore, cannot be certain about anything in an absolute sense. It can provide a high degree of confidence based on evidence that strongly justifies scientific conclusions, but its method never allows certainty. If you want to know something for certain, with no possibility of error--what's called apodictic certainty in philosophy--you must employ the deductive method. There have been attempts to use the deductive method to show that certain ways of thinking about God are contradictory. The deductive problem of evil is like that. If God were all good, the argument goes, He would want to get rid of evil. If God were all powerful, He'd be able to get rid of evil. Since we still have evil, then God either is not good or not powerful, or neither, but He can't be both. If this argument is sustained, then Christianity is defeated, because contradictory things (the belief that God is both good and powerful in the face of evil) cannot be true at the same time. The job of the Christian at this point is to show there isn't a necessary contradiction in their view of God, that genuine love does not require that there be no evil or suffering, and that preventing such a thing is a not function of God's power. I think that can be done, and I've addressed that issue in another place (see The Strength of God and the Problem of Evil ). So don't be cowed or bullied by any comments that science has proven there is no God. Science can't do that because it uses the inductive method, not the deductive method. When you hear someone make that claim, don't contradict them. Simply ask this question: "How can science prove that someone like God doesn't exist? Explain to me how science can do that. Spell it out." Some take the position that if science doesn't give us reason to believe in something, then no good reason exists. That's simply the false assumption of scientism. You can even choose something you have no good reason to believe actually does exist--unicorns, or leprechauns, for that matter. Make that person show you, in principle, how science is capable of proving that any particular thing does not exist. He won't be able to. All he'll be able to show you is that science hasn't proven certain things do exist, not that they don't exist. There's a difference. Some take the position that if science doesn't give us reason to believe in something, then no good reason exists. That's simply the false assumption of scientism. Don't ever concede the idea that science is the only method available to learn things about the world. Remember the line in the movie Contact ? Ellie Arroway claimed she loved her father, but she couldn't prove it scientifically. Does that mean she didn't really love him? No scientific test known to man could ever prove such a thing. Ellie knew her own love for her father directly and immediately. She didn't have to learn it from some scientific test. There are things we know to be true that we don't know through empirical testing--the five senses-- but we do know through other ways. Science seems to give us true, or approximately true, information about the world, and it uses a technique that seems to be reliable, by and large. (Even this, though, is debated among philosophers of science.) However, science is not the only means of giving us true information about the world; its methodology limits it significantly. One thing science cannot do, even in principle, is disprove the existence of anything. So when people try to use science to disprove the existence of God, they're using science illegitimately. They're misusing it, and this just makes science look bad. The way many try to show God doesn't exist is simply by asserting it, but that's not proof. It isn't even evidence. Scientists sometimes get away with this by requiring that scientific law--natural law--must explain everything. If it can't explain a supernatural act or a supernatural Being then neither can exist. This is cheating, though. Scientists haven't proven God doesn't exist; they've merely assumed it in many cases. They've foisted this truism on the public, and then operated from that point of view. They act as if they've really said something profound, when all they've done is given you an unjustified opinion. This is a transcript of a commentary from the radio show "Stand to Reason," with Gregory Koukl. It is made available to you at no charge through the faithful giving of those who support Stand to Reason. Reproduction permitted for non-commercial use only. ©1997 Gregory Koukl For more information, contact Stand to Reason at 1438 East 33rd St., Signal Hill, CA 90755 (800) 2-REASON (562) 595-7333 www.str.org Resources for Additional Study Title Author Contents Price Why I'm Not an Evolutionist Gregory Koukl CD with pdf study notes $7.95 Harvesting the Unborn: The Ethics of Fetal Tissue and Embryo Stem-cell Research (Masters Series 2001) Scott Klusendorf 2 cassettes $8.95 Theism, Atheism, and the Big Bang Cosmology (Masters Series 2000) William Lane Craig 2 cassettes $8.95 © 2005 Stand to Reason ARR | 1438 East 33rd Street, Signal Hill, CA 90755 Voicemail (800) 2-REASON TM | Local phone (562) 595-7333 | Fax (562) 595-7332 | [email protected]
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Staying a Christian Upon Leaving
by serotonin_wraith inso you found out the jehovah's witness religion/cult was bogus.
congratulations, it's a step in the right direction.
now all you have to do is escape the cult of christianity.. while other christian groups are (perhaps arguably) less controlling (on the whole), the foundation christianity rests on is bogus too.
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writetoknow
A PRACTICAL MAN'S PROOF OF GOD
The existence of God is a subject that has occupied schools of philosophy and theology for thousands of years. Most of the time, these debates have revolved around all kinds of assumptions and definitions. Philosophers will spend a lifetime arguing about the meaning of a word and never really get there. One is reminded of the college student who was asked how his philosophy class was going. He replied that they had not done much because when the teacher tried to call roll, the kids kept arguing about whether they existed or not.
Most of us who live and work in the real world do not concern ourselves with such activities. We realize that such discussions may have value and interest in the academic world, but the stress and pressure of day-to-day life forces us to deal with a very pragmatic way of making decisions. If I ask you to prove to me that you have $2.00, you would show it to me. Even in more abstract things we use common sense and practical reasoning. If I ask you whether a certain person is honest or not, you do not flood the air with dissertations on the relative nature of honesty; you would give me evidence one way or the other. The techniques of much of the philosophical arguments that go on would eliminate most of engineering and technology if they were applied in those fields.
The purpose of this brief study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective. To do this, we are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real. If you do not believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere.
THE BEGINNING
If we do exist, there are only two possible explanations as to how our existence came to be. Either we had a beginning or we did not have a beginning. The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1 :1). Most atheists maintain that there was no beginning. The idea is that matter has always existed in the form of either matter or energy; and all that has happened is that matter has been changed from form to form, but it has always been. The Humanist Manifesto says, "Matter is self-existing and not created," and that is a concise statement of the atheist's belief.
The way we decide whether the atheist is correct or not is to see what science has discovered about this question. The picture below on the left represents our part of the cosmos. Each of the disk shaped objects is a galaxy like our Milky Way. All of these galaxies are moving relative to each other. Their movement has a very distinct pattern which causes the distance between the galaxies to get greater with every passing day. If we had three galaxies located at positions A, B. and C in the second diagram below, and if they are located as shown, tomorrow they will be further apart. The triangle they form will be bigger. The day after tomorrow the triangle will be bigger yet. We live in an expanding universe that gets bigger and bigger and bigger with every passing day.
Now let us suppose that we made time run backwards! If we are located at a certain distance today, then yesterday we were closer together. The day before that, we were still closer. Ultimately, where must all the galaxies have been? At a point! At the beginning! At what scientists call a singularity! In 1999, it was discovered that the galaxies are accelerating in their expansion. Any notion that we live in an oscillating or pulsating universe has been dispelled by this discovery. The universe is not slowing down, but speeding up in its motion.
A second proof is seen in the energy sources that fuel the cosmos. The picture to the right is a picture of the sun. Like all stars, the sun generates its energy by a nuclear process known as thermonuclear fusion. Every second that passes, the sun
compresses 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium with 4 million tons of matter released as energy. In spite of that tremendous consumption of fuel, the sun has only used up 2% of the hydrogen it had the day it came into existence. This incredible furnace is not a process confined to the sun. Every star in the sky generates its energy in the same way. Throughout the cosmos there are 25 quintillion stars, each converting hydrogen into helium, thereby reducing the total amount of hydrogen in the cosmos. Just think about it! If everywhere in the cosmos hydrogen is being consumed and if the process has been going on forever, how much hydrogen should be left?Suppose I attempt to drive my automobile without putting any more gas (fuel) into it. As I drive and drive, what is eventually going to happen? I am going to run out of gas! If the cosmos has been here forever, we would have run out of hydrogen long ago! The fact is, however, that the sun still has 98% of its original hydrogen. The fact is that hydrogen is the most abundant material in the universe! Everywhere we look in space we can see the hydrogen 21-cm line in the spectrum--a piece of light only given off by hydrogen. This could not be unless we had a beginning!
A third scientific proof that the atheist is wrong is seen in the second law of thermodynamics. In any closed system, things tend to become disordered. If an automobile is driven for years and years without repair, for example, it will become so disordered that it would not run any more. Getting old is simple conformity to the second law of thermodynamics. In space, things also get old. Astronomers refer to the aging process as heat death. If the cosmos is "everything that ever was or is or ever will be," as Dr. Carl Sagan was so fond of saying, nothing could be added to it to improve its order or repair it. Even a universe that expands and collapses and expands again forever would die because it would lose light and heat each time it expanded and rebounded.
The atheist's assertion that matter/energy is eternal is scientifically wrong. The biblical assertion that there was a beginning is scientifically correct.
THE CAUSEIf we know the creation has a beginning, we are faced with another logical question--was the creation caused or was it not caused? The Bible states, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Not only does the Bible maintain that there was a cause (a creation) but it also tells us what the cause was. It was God. The atheist tells us that "matter is self-existing and not created." If matter had a beginning and yet was uncaused, one must logically maintain that something would have had to come into existence out of nothing. From empty space with no force, no matter, no energy, and no intelligence, matter would have to become existent. Even if this could happen by some strange new process unknown to science today, there is a logical problem.
In order for matter to come out of nothing, all of our scientific laws dealing with the conservation of matter/energy would have to be wrong, invalidating all of chemistry. All of our laws of conservation of angular momentum would have to be wrong, invalidating all of physics. All of our laws of conservation of electric charge would have to be wrong, invalidating all of electronics and demanding that your TV set not work! Your television set may not work, but that is not the reason! In order to believe matter is uncaused, one has to discard known laws and principles of science. No reasonable person is going to do this simply to maintain a personal atheistic position.
The atheist's assertion that matter is eternal is wrong. The atheist's assertion that the universe is uncaused and selfexisting is also incorrect. The Bible's assertion that there was a beginning which was caused is supported strongly by the available scientific evidence.
THE DESIGN
If we know that the creation had a beginning and we know that the beginning was caused, there is one last question for us to answer--what was the cause? The Bible tells us that God was the cause. We are further told that the God who did the causing did so with planning and reason and logic. Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know God is "through the things he has made." The atheist, on the other hand, will try to convince us that we are the product of chance. Julian Huxley once said:
We are as much a product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.
The subject of design has been one that has been explored in many different ways. For most of us, simply looking at our newborn child is enough to rule out chance. Modern-day scientists like Paul Davies and Frederick Hoyle and others are raising elaborate objections to the use of chance in explaining natural phenomena. A principle of modern science has emerged in the 1980s called "the anthropic principle." The basic thrust of the anthropic principle is that chance is simply not a valid mechanism to explain the atom or life. If chance is not valid, we are constrained to reject Huxley's claim and to realize that we are the product of an intelligent God.
THE NEXT STEP
We have seen a practical proof of God's existence in this brief study. A flood of questions arise at this point. Which God are we talking about? Where did God come from? Why did God create us? How did God create us?
All of these questions and many more are answered in the same way--by looking at the evidence in a practical, common sense way. If you are interested in pursuing these things in more detail, we invite you to contact us. We have available books, audio tapes/CDs, video tapes/DVDs, correspondence courses, and booklets/pamphlets and all can be obtained on loan without cost. You can get more information on what is available from our catalog online or by requesting our catalog from the address below. Click this link for a PDF copy of this article (it will print on 8-1/2 x 14 inch paper). You can request a printed copy of this pamphlet from:
DOES GOD EXIST?
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REFERENCES:
Glanz, James, “Accelerating the Cosmos,” Astronomy , October, 1999.
Hoyle, Frederick, The Intelligent Universe , Hol t, Rinehart & Winston, 1983.
Humanist Manifest I and II , Prometheus Books, 700 East Amherst St., Buffalo, NY 14215, 1985.
08/27/2007
compresses 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium with 4 million tons of matter released as energy. In spite of that tremendous consumption of fuel, the sun has only used up 2% of the hydrogen it had the day it came into existence. This incredible furnace is not a process confined to the sun. Every star in the sky generates its energy in the same way. Throughout the cosmos there are 25 quintillion stars, each converting hydrogen into helium, thereby reducing the total amount of hydrogen in the cosmos. Just think about it! If everywhere in the cosmos hydrogen is being consumed and if the process has been going on forever, how much hydrogen should be left?