Preferring the Bronze Age over the Present Age

Unbelievers often scoff and mock that Christians follow, as these unbelievers say, Bronze or Iron Age beliefs written down by ignorant peasants and superstitious persons thousands of years ago in a no longer relevant book called the Bible, and by using these pejorative and chronologically-snobby labels for the foundational text of Christian belief, the unbelievers are obviously trying to imply that Christians are fools for holding to these antiquated ideas, but, in fact, the truth, in many cases, is the exact opposite of what such unbelievers believe, for the fact of the matter is this: in this present age, where 1) we have modern academics and “thinkers” telling us that men can become women by mere verbal fiat, and where 2) we have modern academics and “thinkers”, such as modern ethicists, endorsing infanticide and bestiality and incestuous marriage, and where 3) we have modern academics and “thinkers” telling us that something can come from nothing, or that language is meaningless, or that morality does not exist, or that consciousness and the self are just illusions, or that there actually is such a thing as equality in the world between people, or any one of the other myriad of absurd and reality-denying claims made in the modern world today, then I tell you that, in many cases, I am more than happy, and I am more than rational, in preferring to believe the common-sense and time-tested wisdom of reality-hardened men from generations long past than I am in trusting some modern gender-studies professor or some “ethicist” who tells me that shagging sheep is A-OK; remember, truth does not respect chronology, and just because it is 2016 does not mean that we do not have many things insanely wrong, and it is for that reason that in many cases, I am more than happy and smart to embrace Bronze Age beliefs rather than wedding myself to the insanities of our present age.

No, Atheists Cannot Be Good Without BELIEF in God

In today's day and age, it is often contended, and very often contended by Christians themselves, that while atheists might not have a foundation for their moral values and duties, atheists can nevertheless be moral individuals without belief in God,--in the sense of being individuals who, though denying God, nevertheless follow an objective moral code of right and wrong and do, generally speaking, what is right--and yet, having thought about this matter for some time, I actually think that this contention is actually wrong, or, at the very least, not completely accurate, for consider that if the Triune God exists, and atheists do not believe in Him or acknowledge Him or give Him the worship that He is due from His creatures, then, in a very real sense, atheists are not being good, or at least not good in a very fundamental way, for they are failing to fulfill a critical moral duty / commandment that they should be fulfilling (namely, to love God with all their heart, and soul, and mind), but if, on the other hand--and for the sake of argument--we say that God does not exist, then atheists cannot be considered good in an objective sense either given that, on atheism, there are no objective moral values and duties that would allow us to call atheists 'good' in some real and significant sense, for while they might be trivially considered 'good' because they do what they wish and that is good to them, they cannot be seen as good in an objective sense, for there is no such objective good on atheism (a debatable point, I know, but one which I accept); and so, it seems to me at least, that atheists cannot be considered good without belief in God, at least not in a full and meaningful sense, for whether atheists are right or wrong about God's existence, the label 'good', in an objective sense, has trouble sticking to them either way, and so perhaps Christians should stop conceding the point that atheists really can be good without belief in God, for, as seen, a decent case can be made that atheists simply cannot be considered good without such a belief.

   

Co-opting the Atheist Talking Point about One Less God

In recent times, many of us have heard the atheist talking point that goes something like this: 

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” 

– Stephen Roberts 

...and while this is not quite an accurate representation of the state of affairs concerning the God question given the massive differences between what a god can be, there is no doubt that this is a snappy quote, and as such, it is interesting to wonder whether it could be co-opted for the rhetorically purposes of Christians; after all, could we not say something like this: 

I contend that we are both creationists and anti-evolutionists (in the "blind watchmaker" sense). I just believe in a few less extraordinary claims than you do (the universe from nothing, the multi-verse, abiogenesis, macro-evolution, consciousness from non-consciousness, language from non-language, etc.). When you understand why you dismiss so many other extraordinary claims, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

…and maybe also something like this:

I contend that we [theists and atheists] both believe in miracles*. I just believe in a sufficiently powerful miracle-worker, whereas you believe they just somehow magically happen. When you understand why you dismiss so many other absurd and extraordinary claims, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

*If a miracle is defined in the Humean sense of "breaking a ‘law of nature’", where a ‘law of nature’ is an observed regularity that we then come to believe in as a "law", then note that, in that sense, a universe from nothing, abiogenesis, macroevolution, consciousness from non-consciousness, and so on, could all be considered Humean-type miracles, and so the atheistic-naturalist does believe in miracles in the Humean sense. 

Islam is Not a Race, Just Like Christianity Is Not

The fact that Islam is not a race but rather a religion and a political ideology, and the fact that Muslims come from essentially all major ethnic and racial backgrounds, and hence the fact that calling critics of Islam ‘racists’ is false and disingenuous, is so bloody obvious that it is not even worthy of being mentioned by any honest person, and yet it has to be mentioned in today’s day and age--which is a mark of the stupidity and decline and dishonesty of our times--given the idiotic and reflexive desire by certain segments of the leftist political population to label any criticism of Islam as racist; now, as stated, it is obvious that Islam is not a race and hence obvious that critics of Islam are not racists, but one further way to see the truth of this point, and one way in which to show this point to the fools and knaves who have some sympathy with the idea that criticism of Islam is racist, and one further way to know that the use of the term ‘racist’ is ultimately just about using it as a tool of power to shut down any debate about Islam, is to simply point out that no one on the left side of the political spectrum would ever dream of calling someone a ‘racist’ for criticizing Christianity, and yet Christianity, just like Islam, is a religion and a partial political ideology with members from nearly all major ethnic and racial backgrounds, and so the very fact that a critic of Christianity would never be labelled a ‘racist’ by the left, but a critic of Islam would, tells you all that you need to know about what the actual purpose of using the term ‘racist’ is in this case: It is simply about power and shutting down criticism of Islam, which is why the next time someone calls you a ‘racist’ for criticizing Islam, not only tell them that they are &$%## stupid, but tell them to go to hell as well, and then keep on talking…its the only way to keep the dishonest liars from stopping the debate.

Local News and the Gospels in Action

A few weeks ago, I remember surfing on the internet, and somehow, the following story came to my attention:

--QUOTE--

A 72-year-old man has been released from custody on conditions after historical sexual assaults were reported to the Ontario Provincial Police.

The Leeds County OPP Crime Unit launched an investigation after receiving information in October 2015. Sgt. Kristine Rae of the OPP told the Whig-Standard on Wednesday afternoon that four male victims reported being assaulted between the late 1960s and 1990. At the time of the assaults, which occurred in Ontario, the victims were between 12 to 17 years old.

As a result, officers executed a search warrant on a residence in Rockport on Tuesday.

Arrested at the residence was Ronald Howard Huck. He has been charged by the OPP with three counts each of gross indecency and indecent assault on a male as well as one count each of sexual exploitation and sexual assault. He was released on a promise to appear in court and an officer-in-charge undertaking with conditions. He is scheduled to appear in Brockville’s Ontario Court of Justice on June 10.

http://www.thewhig.com/2016/04/13/opp-charge-rockport-man-with-historical-sexual-assaults

http://www.recorder.ca/2016/04/13/police-historical-sex-assault

--UNQUOTE--

Now the reason I bring up this rather sad story is for one simple reason: it helps to analogically show us that the Gospels, at least concerning the issue of when they were written, can still be sufficiently reliable as eyewitness testimony, even if written decades after the fact, to form a reasonable belief that they are true, just like the police in this case formed the reasonable grounds to lay criminal charges against this man on the basis of eye-witness testimony even though some of the crimes he is alleged to have committed occurred approximately 50 years ago, meaning in the late 1960s. 

Now, having worked these types of cases before, I can almost guarantee that the complainants in this matter did not write their story down before they told it to the police. In fact, they might not even have told anyone else about the story until they spoke to the police for the first time. And yet their testimony was still credible enough, even after all those years, to be reasonably believed by seasoned investigators. So even if a skeptic tries to claim that the Gospels were not written for a generation or two after the death of Jesus, that fact, in and of itself, is by no means a clear or certain testament of their lack of reliability, for as we have seen, there are real-life cases today where we take very old testimony seriously enough to charge and arrest people for it.

One Way to Minimize Both the Mass of Migrants and Their Progressive Enablers

There is no doubt that Europe is presently in the throes of a serious struggle with migrants, and there is also no doubt that this issue is being exasperated by the many individuals of a liberal and progressive and even anarchist persuasion who are encouraging both the migrants and the mass quantities of immigration into their European lands rather than trying to help these individuals in their own homelands, and now since the wave of migration into Europe is, in my view, something that is seriously undesirable and will cause massive problems in the near future--problems which are eminently avoidable through a sane migration policy--but also given that we do not necessarily wish to restrict the desires and freedoms of those European progressives wishing to have migrants enter their country, then one way that I propose to both solve the migrant crisis and to make the pro-migrant cheerleaders put their money where their mouth is, is to offer the simple solution that migrants are welcome into a European country, but they are only welcome so long as a European person is willing to sponsor them and have them live in the same residence as the European for a set period of time, such as one-to-two years; by doing this, we would achieve two things, the first of which would be exposing, once again, the utter hypocrisy of the leftist liberal progressive given that few of them would actually offer their own homes to house migrants even though they are more than ready to “compassionately” offer other people’s towns and neighborhoods for the migrants so long as the progressive himself is not personally affected by his own “benevolent” policies, and the second outcome, derived from the first, would be a massive drop in the amount of migrants flooding into the country given the lack of progressives who actually would be willing to personally do what they demand so many other people do, and so, in this way, we could, so to speak, kill two birds with our one stone, for we would expose the progressives for the hypocrites that we all know that they are and drive immigration down to a trickle…and yet because this idea would be so effective, it is obviously one of the reasons that it won’t be done in Europe today, which, sadly, means that the eventual cultural collision that all this immigration will bring will be much worse than most of us realize.

Smart-Ass Cartoons: "Then a Miracle Occurs...the Atheist Edition"