AF-S125-060406 Salvation
Alêtheia Christian Fellowship
The most fascinating questions can only be asked by intelligent self-aware creatures – Why am I here? Why is there evil? How did everything come to be? Why does everything wear out and die? Is there life after this? What does it all mean? What is Truth?
I Love elk, but they expend no effort at all in determining these things. Are you a brute who can’t spare the brain power to contemplate these questions?
Some would say, “I am not an animal, rather, I am above the pursuit of Truth because I know there’s no answer so I refuse to waste my time.” Congratulations, I’m indeed intimidated because to arrive at that conclusion implies that you have examined every resource, turned over every stone and scrutinized every concept so yes I’m truly impressed. What? You say you haven’t personally analyzed every bit of information available? So really you’re just lazy. Technically you’re agnostic. From the Greek word literally meaning, without knowledge, and identical in meaning to the Latin derived ignorant. To be ignorant is to be without knowledge because you have ignored knowledge that was available. Both words mean to be stupid intentionally.
If you are not an animal, having enough intelligence to think about such things and also don’t want to simply be an ignoramus, i.e. stupid on purpose then I welcome you to the pursuit of Truth.
The truth we are interested in is Truth with a capital, “T.” You see it is pure foolishness to discuss the so-called truth that humans invent. That passes as truth for some, but it is really only opinion and we know it can’t be truth because other opinions disagree. Real Truth has to be that which is genuinely correct and as such is true for everyone, everywhere and at every time. It is called universal and absolute Truth.
We hit a snag right here because the philosophy that permeates our society insists that there is no universal and absolute Truth. Postmodern belief actually says that each and every individual must determine their own truth; what’s good or true for you is not necessarily good or true for me. Again, by definition, that’s not Truth.
How can we have a belief system that says Truth does not exist? It is because Postmodern Philosophy is based on the assumption that there is no God or gods or any other kind of supernatural, metaphysical or spiritual realm. It is based on the scientific notion that the physical, natural universe is all there is and that we humans have evolved purely by chance and everything we experience is just a cosmic accident. We live and die and are no more so what does it really matter how you live? One famous scientist said, “We exist only to further DNA.” That, like so many statements from people who should be smarter, is foolish because if that’s our only purpose, why in the world should we care about it or anything else for that matter? If this life is all there is then we should expend every resource on enjoying it to the maximum extent regardless of how it hurts other people today or in the future!
If you think about it for just a moment you will see that such thinking in practice would produce anarchy. One person believe child molestation is not only ok, but actually good, while others believe human sacrifice or might makes right are good. Because of the obvious problems our educated elite have established local society as the rule maker rather than giving each individual that authority. So governments must determine Truth, good and bad for their citizens.
You can readily see that this is not truth, but an artificial restriction placed on people by those who wield greater power. That’s what we’re stuck with unless there is a cosmic Truth that we can discover and which would overrule and supersede the rules made by man.
Finding Truth hinges on a single point and can be expressed as a prime question. Your answer to this first question will not only determine your ability to grasp Truth, it will also change your perception of everything else you think about. The fundamental and foundational question is does God exist? You may object, but if you spend some time wrestling with this question you will realize that it is the single-most important question facing mankind and that our answer truly changes everything. If there is a God then it opens the door to a plethora of other questions, but if God is dead as Nietzsche proclaimed, we are free to do anything we want. We, as the pinnacle of the food chain, are the gods.
Some may immediately complain that they are atheist and don’t believe in a bunch of mumbo jumbo hocus pocus. They may say they are too intelligent to believe in a god and too sophisticated to believe in anything requiring faith. Folks, if you don’t believe in a god that provides Truth then you are establishing your belief system by means of what seems best to you, thus, in effect, making you your own god. So no one is an atheist because everyone has their gods.
We can readily determine what God a person believes in by, whom or what they worship. Worship is simply valuing something so do you value your own achievements and opinions above others or do you value wealth, power, prestige, or is it health, longevity or education? What god or gods do you serve and honor?
A corollary question is why do you serve? What do you get out of it? Ok, everyone serves a god of some type, but let’s make it even simpler. Whatever you value, elevate or establish as worthy of praise is irrelevant because the reality is you are determining what that thing is through your own subjective human wisdom. I’ve said it before, either God is God and you are not or God is not God and you are. A denial of an Almighty Creator in effect establishes you as god.
The next objection may go like this: “I may not be an atheist by your definition, but I am far too sophisticated to believe in anything by blind faith.” Really, then how do you know that you can effectively perform as your own god? I mean how do you know that you’re right about believing in what you believe?
Let’s take science for a moment. My Bachelor’s degree is in aeronautics and I have additional extensive training in aerodynamics, physics and electromagnetic theory. As a military aviator and Airline Transport Pilot, I love science as far as it goes, but I can assure you science can’t answer the really interesting questions we’re talking about. Actual science, by definition is about what we can observe, reproduce and test. When science cannot empirically prove a physical fact they hypothesize and through these educated guesses develop complex theories based upon other complex theories. The key is that although these are intelligent well-educated people they are nonetheless only fallible people. We can readily see by examining the history of scientific study that in every generation science has been wrong about the theories.
Some people today say that the Bible doesn’t conform to the scientific theories and therefore must be in error. The problem is that people said the same thing 200 years ago and if the Bible had been in conformity to scientific theory then it would be wrong today. The Bible would have to keep changing in order to conform to the current theories.
Science asserts that our universe and all within it, to include you and me, has evolved to its present form by means of two things. The first is chance and the second is time. To borrow from R.C. Sproul, chance is used deceptively here. If I have a quarter and ask you what the chances are that the coin will end up heads when flipped in the air, I have used the term chance correctly. If on the other hand I flip the coin and it lands heads side up and I state that the coin landed this way by chance I have misused the word and am making a misleading statement. I have given chance the power of causality. I have implied that the force called chance has determined the outcome instead of recognizing the random nature of the outcome.
Evolutionists will imply that chance can somehow direct random action into something beneficial. Even the proclaimed atheist Carl Sagan said our universe was cosmos not chaos, yet if chance has no power then chaos is all we would have.
The second element is that of great time and there are many problems with the concept, not the least of which is how time came to be in the first place. Without digressing into a lot of technical concepts let’s simply recognize that an impossible thing cannot become possible just because we allow more time and yet this is exactly the belief. If we took all the parts of a Jet Plane and placed them on the floor of a hanger and sealed the doors would the parts spontaneously come together in the correct order by chance and become a functional jet? Is the outcome changed if we give the process more time?
Let’s move to a foundational question like, where did the matter that makes up the universe come from and how did the space to contain it begin? Science tells us plainly that nothing can be created out of nothing so where did it come from?
You say I will trust in the learned men and in the facts of science, but you have believed in men and in a system created by men through faith. You trust because you believe and yet time after time they have been proven wrong and theory after theory has been altered and foundational question after foundational question has been unanswered.
middle ground between there being no real Truth and letting everyone make up their own rules and the idea that there is real Truth and realizing that everyone exists within that Truth.
DARKNESS IS:
WILLFUL REBELLION ~or ~
IGNORANCE, WHICH IS WILLFUL REBELLION:
Agnostic – I just don’t know. Are you ignorant?
God won’t punish me for not knowing – I’m a good person.
1- Relative to what?
2- Not knowing is willful rebellion because you don’t want to know!