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Showing posts with the label Presuppositions

Worldviews, Reason, and Assassins

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  Whatever your opinion of Donald J. Trump, put it in the corral over yonder and you can pick it up in a few minutes. Something I keep emphasizing is the importance of worldviews . Everyone has a worldview , which is a collection of things assumed to be true, experience, values, convictions and so on that people use as a framework to understand life. Obviously, they also influence our thoughts, and those affect our conduct. Political parties are secular in nature. Some actively oppose the things of God and embrace things he hates (such as materialism, evolution, disdain for human life, abortion, and other sex-related beliefs), other parties have members who hold Christian worldviews.  Colorful crosshairs, Pixabay / Gerd Altmann (geralt) Leftists in the Democrat party have been using violent talk for quite some time, demonizing Trump and saying he is a "threat" to our democracy. (No, it is a constitutional republic with democratic processes. Big differen

Free Will and Evolution?

Misotheists often level a complaint about Christianity that there is no free will, sometimes indicating that God is a marionettist pulling our strings. When we sin, he punishes us even though it is not our fault. Admittedly, questions about free will have been debated by Christians for centuries. When such shallow attempts at theology are made by atheists, they conveniently ignore the fact that in their worldview , free will is impossible. Materialists reject the existence of God, so everything — even morality — does not make sense. Modified from image of train tracks merging, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen Some believers in fish-to-fool evolution admit that the logical conclusion of their worldview is that we are all dancing to our chemicals in the pale moonlight. There are some who presuppose evolution believe it provides free will. Debate in their camp ensues. A big problem here is that people do not understand the meaning of free will. We can make choices that are only consistent w

Eden and the Dinosaurs?

Dinosaurs and the Bible are subjects frequently cussed and discussed regarding biblical creation science views, but because of secular propaganda, they are usually rejected out of hand by many people. Declarations of how dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years are in all sorts of media. These include science documentaries, children's programming, news reports, science journals (as expected), advertisements and more. Christians are often swayed by evolutionary material and dismiss what God's Word says without thinking. Dinosaur image from RGBstock /  Adrian van Leen Of course, a scoffer might say, "Hey, there was no death in the beginning. What if an Ultrasaurus didn't watch where it was going and stomped on Adam? Haw, haw, haw!" If someone like that is going to use our presuppositions to register a complaint, they should be consistent and use what the Bible actually teaches. Some rational thought would also be helpful. Even so, an honest inquirer may won

The Proper Worldview is Imperative

Something that this child learned several years ago is the importance of worldviews, including how they are made and the way they impact our lives. I bring these things up every once in a while because they are crucial, especially for Christians. Many professing Christians do not know what and why  they believe things, and are essentially heretics. They are riding to perdition in a handcar. We must not only make sure of our salvation , but have a proper worldview and submit to the authority of God's Word. Spectacles by kkiser at FreeImages Everyone has a worldview. It's how we interpret reality and respond to life. People may not know that word, and I doubt that they have analyzed the components and developed their own. Worldviews are mostly built on our presuppositions — those things we take as basic truths, though they are not tested or proven true. For more about this, see " What’s Your Worldview? " Unfortunately, many Christians are into tribalism, a kind of &quo

Chow Time for Carnivores on Noah's Ark

We all have ultimate starting points. Those of us who believe the Bible are to presuppose that it is true, just as unbelievers presuppose materialistic or pagan mythologies. Both biblical creation science and adherents of universal common descent use  operational and historical (forensic) science. Things become more complicated when discussing Noah's Ark. Credit: RGBStock /  Savvas Stavrinos Using science and what is observed in living things today, creationists also reason from Scripture to determine how Noah and the others provided food for carnivores on the Ark. In the beginning, creation was very good. There was no carnivory until after Adam sinned, and humans were not permitted to eat meat until after the Flood . Since God brought pairs of animal kinds  (which were probably very different than species living today ), they were intended to be kept alive. Noah didn't say, "Put the ugly ones off to the left so we can feed them to the carnivores." Obviously, there h

Secularists Using Dinosaurs to Indoctrinate Children

Now there is a provocative title! Believers in an old Earth, evolution, and similar things are probably clutching their pearls while expressing their outrage. Secularists (and many professing Christians, unfortunately) insist that deep time is a scientific fact . We must teach children real science, right? Credit: Flickr / Marco Verch ( CC BY 2.0 ) What is actually happening is that children (as well as the rest of us) are being given stories based on naturalistic interpretations about the past; there is no actual empirical evidence that obliges us to believe that the earth is billions of years old. Children have been enamored with dinosaurs for many years, and this has been increasing in recent years. It is not surprising to find a youngster who can rattle off the names, secular dates, locations, and more of those terrible lizards. Movies and merchandising helped fuel the interest of many people. (I wonder how many were annoyed when the Jurassic Park movies made the Velociraptors

The Best Evidence for the Young Earth?

Biblical creationists are occasionally requested to give what we consider the best evidence for creation, and closely following, the best evidence that the earth is young. We have quite a bit of scientific and logical evidence for both. However, it is a serious mistake to try to "out evidence" a skeptic, because they often counter with something else (often unrelated — be careful of distractions), then you counter the counter, ad nauseum, even though the evidence is on the side of biblical creationists. Credit: Unsplash / Robert Lukeman Many times, atheists and evolutionists will reject what we present out of hand because of their naturalistic and deep time presuppositions. They are not in the habit of honestly considering books, videos, articles, and so on, and find rescuing devices. Creationists often have links thrown at us, which can be from atheistic and evolutionary sites, compromising Christians, and so forth. Scoffers have a habit of finding something written for

You Cannot Be Neutral

Neutral is useful for machines and a color palette, but for people, not so much. You can be neutral about a variety of topics, but that kind of neutrality is often hitched up in the team with apathy and ignorance, among others. Will Manchester United win the next FA Cup ? I neither know nor care, so I'm neutral. Do you have an opinion on my picture of the Catskill Mountains near the Ashokan Reservoir, or are you neutral? I am neutral about your opinion. When emotions are involved, it becomes more difficult to remain neutral. From there, we have matters of involving spirituality, origins, and so forth. Whether atheists and evolutionists believe it or not, they have faith-based positions just like Christians have. When discussing God, the Bible, creation, evolution, and other things, unbelievers often say that they want to "leave God out of it" and to discuss on "neutral ground". Sorry, pilgrim, you cannot be neutral. As the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen said abo

Using Secular Science to Negate Bible Miracles

There was a time when the Bible was respected as a source of history from believers and secular scholars alike, but that seems to be fading nowadays. As atheism, anti-creationism, postmodernism, and other things are ramping up, attacks on the Bible are also increasing.  Credit: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) However, blatant attacks on the Bible by village atheists who get false information from their bigotry clearinghouses are the domain of amateurs. Many will argue from their materialistic presuppositions by asserting that miracles cannot happen, and find excuses to dismiss them individually. To get even more viperine, scoffers rely on the public's adoration of what "scientists say", then use scientific finagling to discredit miracles. This is inconsistent, since they are trying to disprove events that they claim never happened in the first place. In this example, we have the

The Most Self-Absorbed Generation?

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen It has been said that every generation has a dim view of subsequent generations, but seldom with good reason. Some of this frowning is based on rejection of cultural traditions, changing etiquette, new methods of socialization, and other less consequential areas. More importantly, however, is the way morality has declined, as have critical thinking skills, in younger generations. This is very apparent in the group called the Millennials. I'd better reign in for a spell and make a couple of points. First, sometimes we just have to say that when discussing a people group, generalities are necessary. Second, while stereotypes exist for a reason, I'm not saying everybody in younger generations (or whatever group I'm talking about) behave, think, believe, or whatever according to their age, ethnic group or demographic. People can't be pigeonholed so neatly, you savvy? Credit: Pixabay / Gerd Altmann A recent sermon called "Lovers of Sel

Literacy in Bible Times Confirmed

Hand me a pottery shard, I have to leave a note for my wife...much obliged. If someone gets a notion to slap leather with a Christian about evidence for the Bible, he'd better not be grabbing archaeology to use as his shootin' iron . Archaeology has been supportive of the Bible. (Why not? It's God's Word, after all.) Some tinhorns will use arguments from silence using archaeology (something mentioned 4,000 years ago hasn't been found, so the Bible is false), but that shows desperation as well as ignorance of logic. Dead Sea image credit: Freeimages / phunphoto It has been claimed that people in the Bible could not have written because they were not literate. How do they know that? They don't. It's an assumption based on presuppositions, and those ultimately come from evolutionary assumptions. That is, ancient humans were stupid and hadn't evolved enough yet, and we're the most intelekshul specimens of humanity, us today being them. Wrong.

The Season of the Witch Hunt?

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Way back yonder in my school days, kids would get together based on hate. They didn't really understand hate, but they were upset with someone and disliked him or her. Then they'd recruit others to join them in their persecution efforts. You see that kind of thing today with the advent of the Internet, which became a useful tool for cyberstalking. Cyberstalking is a crime (not that people care about the law until they're actually captured). In some cases, cyberstalking and vicious bullying have driven people to suicide — and worse, such as in the case where it led to the deaths of three people . While it's fine to fellowship with people who agree with you on things (Christians are exhorted to do so throughout the New Testament, for example), recruiting people to join in a witch hunt is petty, childish, and harmful. Part of that is based on an inner need for acceptance and to feel important (some people want to save the world from the "e

Christian Fundamentalism and Anti-Intellectualism

"To be ignorant and simple now – not to be able to meet enemies on their own ground – would be to throw down our weapons, and betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen." — C.S. Lewis  By Cowboy Bob Sorensen Edited September 13, 2016   This is a difficult article to write because supporting documents are difficult to obtain. Although there is a plethora of material that states, essentially, "Christian Fundamentalism is anti-intellectual", I am unwilling to use it because of anti-Fundamentalist bias. (Ironic, really, that liberal analyses decrying the anti-intellectualism of Fundamentalism are themselves slanted and illogical in their approach.) There are some problems and bad connotations associated with the Fundamentalist movement , but I am not interested in emotionally-laden terminology. Therefore, this article will draw from my own thoughts, research and experiences. If pe

Wisdom and Reason

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Edited 10-30-2016, mostly to change images Where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached. For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. ( 1 Cor. 1:20-23 ,HCSB) For the longest time, my approach to apologetics (ἀπολογία) was based almost entirely in evidentialism. The basis for this was something like, "Here we are, two reasonable people on neutral ground discussing the existence for God, the reliability of the Bible, evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead (and so forth). Then, you'll see that Christianity is entirely reasonable, repent, surrender to the risen Savior so your life will