Sunday, June 12, 2016

Two things today, (if I get to them; I'm waiting for Chowon to finish something and then we're gonna snuggle), Sheol and other religions.

I'll try to be brief about Sheol, because I want to get thinking about the other religions kick as soon as possible... (although that's a huge topic, so maybe I shouldn't attempt it until I have more time...)

Anyway there are a few key points on the Sheol topic.

The OT never mentions heaven or hell. It talks about "Death" or "The Grave" as a place (Hebrew "Sheol"). The OT has both good and bad people going to the same place: Sheol.

Aaaaand Chowon is ready...

[3 days later]

I'm finally not busy again! Time to finish this post!

hmmm... on second thought, I'll talk about Shoul later. Here are the primary verses I was planning to use: Luke 16, 1 Cor 15, Rev 1, Rev 20, 1 Peter 3, 1 Peter 4, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

Actually, I'm a little too tired right now to go into the religions thing also. I'll give sort of an introduction:

First of all, I'm operating on the underlying principle that absolute truth exists. I know that there are some people out there (and I've spoken with more than 2 of these in person), who do not believe in the existence of absolute truth. Eventually, if you probe enough, you find that they are willing to tell you that you're wrong about something, or that they would be willing to tell someone else that that person was wrong in a hypothetical scenario -- in either case, they've defeated themselves. If there's no absolute truth, then nobody is ever necessarily wrong about anything, because nobody else is necessarily right about anything. The a priori assumption that absolute truth exists is necessary for all cognitive functions.

Second, this thought experiment is based on the idea that truth is a full and complete system. Every truth is linked to every other truth. If you lie about something, then your lie is inconsistent with some truth, and so a worldview which contains your lie is not fully internally consistent. Therefore, every accurate truth is necessary to form the bigger picture of what is truly absolute truth. That operating assumption is demonstrably true, and is compatible with the Christian worldview.

I feel like a few caveats are necessary here. First, that you cannot therefore derive all truth from any truth, [for example, knowing that there is a table in my dining room does not enable me to deduce that there is a toaster in your kitchen]. Second, it is possible to believe a lie without thereby becoming unable to function for lack of a rational worldview. This is done, simply, by not considering the lie carefully, or by not knowing the truth that would connect the lie to the other parts of your worldview, [for example, I might believe that there is a man standing outside the window because of a shadow I see. In reality, it's not a man, but a tree; and in order for that tree shadow to have been a man's shadow, all manner of changes would have to have been made to the time leading up to now. Who is this man? Why is he there? Why is that tree not there in this scenario? What about the ancestor of that tree, from which the seed fell? Then what of the cat that recently died by falling out of the tree, and the effects of that on the timeline? Eventually, as these changes expand their scope, we find that this one lie makes full change of all knowledge. Indeed, the laws of physics may have to be different somewhere along the line, so that a seed might fall elsewhere or a sperm not reach its egg. All manner of things must change in order to compensate for the shadow being a man's shadow and not a tree's shadow, but I don't know the things in detail, I am not omniscient, so I may believe the lie until the truth is made known to me.]

So, the third point, drawing on the previous points and adding a new optimistic principle, is that by examining the truth we may identify why certain parts of it are irrevocably necessary for an internally consistent worldview.

At that point, what I intend to do is to re-examine God with this goal in mind, and to identify characteristics of God which make Him necessary for a functional worldview, and throw out some conceptions about God which would be incompatible with a functional worldview, (so that Christianity will have more well-articulated feet to stand on after it demolishes Atheism, or find itself a similar failure). I will not be unbiased in this endeavor, but I will attempt to be a little bit more careful than I was last time I attempted this.

"Over there is all the alcohol you can drink."

Monday, May 30, 2016

Postmodernism is the spirit of the age, right? In my usual sphere of friends, the word is pejorative, but I've actually heard some folks use the word with very positive, and even hopeful tones. There are people out there, in the great wide world, who actually praise the idea of applying postmodernism to all areas of life and politic. My first reaction to hearing that kind of thing is, honestly, and literally, to get a little bit nauseous because of the deep nervousness that it incites in me. I find the idea itself to be somewhat terrifying. Really, really, if someone were interested in simply scaring me, all they would have to do is give honest praise to the applications of liberal, pluralized postmodernism outside of the arts.

... but does it have any real merits? Maybe it does.....

Now, I intend to do my level best to put myself into the other's shoes, and I intentionally do this without interviewing anyone (minus the conversations I've already had) or even reading any material on the subject, written by proponents of liberal, postmodern, moral plurality. The reason I'm doing it that way is so that I can present a picture of the common person, who has not spent much time studying the enemy's own writings, but I'll do it with as much sympathy as I can muster. The case study is driven in part by my laziness, my curiosity, and my never-ending desire to write long blogs about nothing... but I hope it will prove valuable to those proponents of postmodernism who are less lazy than I, so that they can more effectively present their arguments to conservative pipe-hitting Bible-thumpers like me, using language that conveys at least an understanding of the conservative psyche. (Not a very compelling justification, perhaps, but the idea is that, since I realize how biased I am, hopefully I can breach my own shell in a unique way).

OK... Sympathy! ... I can do this!! ..... Hmmm.... agnosticism.... atheism..... higher progressive taxes.... free universities.... giving free contraceptives to minors at school *clears throat*..... "hate-speech" legislation..... abortions provided to minors without notifying parents *face contorts*..... gay marriage (ewwwwwwww)... gender *gulp* identity....... womens *straining* right.. to.. choooooose to murder their babies....

Whew! That was difficult! I'm beginning to question whether or not this is a worthwhile exercise.

I'm gonna take a break for a few minutes and come back to this.

......

Alright, here's what I'm thinking:
I have been trained since childhood, and indeed I endeavor to train myself, and I hope that the Holy Spirit trains me, so that whenever I have (what I will call) a "moral inclination" one way or another about something, I check that inclination against the Holy Scriptures in the Bible to determine what is ultimately good or evil. As a result of this, my knee-jerk response to any issue related to morality is to associate a person's views with their religion.

This is a valid approach in the case of a person who claims to be religious. Any person who truly believes in a higher power, and an eternal afterlife which will be better or worse for the person depending on the things that happen in this life, will do everything they can to conform their thoughts and behaviors to those which will produce a better outcome in the eternal hereafter. (Now, true Christianity is unique in that it is not the actions or efforts of the believer which determines his eternal fate, but it is his belief and faith alone, and even that is a gift given to him by God).

However, attempts at applying this kind of presuppositionalism to an atheist, agnostic, or other pluralist, meet with outright, sometimes hostile, rejection by the subject person.

I have, in the past, spoken with some atheists who attempt to propose various criteria for measuring morality (such as "the most happiness for the most people", etc). But on pressing the atheist about any given "theory of morality" they might present, when said theory fails they simply fall-back onto another theory, which must in-turn be debunked. If the atheist is creative enough, it can be a virtually endless train of theories, and each time the atheist will say "this is THE criteria" as if they are presenting a tenant which they have kept since the beginning of the discussion.

In the end, though, it comes down to this: the postmodern atheist does whatever feels right to himself. Whatever is good or bad is what feels right to that person. The obvious question that any good Christian asks here is "Well, what if a person feels like it's ok to _______ (insert terrible crime)? Is that ok?"

A postmodernist who is trying to be consistent will say, "Well, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but they will have to face the natural consequences of that action, such as the retaliation of the governing authorities."

This, on the surface, provides for a functioning society, where the majority naturally produces a government. The function of said government is ideally to protect the self-prescribed rights of the majority. Now, more practically, what happens is that the "naturally-established" government imposes the ideals of the majority onto the whole. This is acceptable to the postmodernist, though, as long as the majority is postmodern -- and postmodernists believe that eventually postmodernism will be the normative view.

A few issues with this come up in my mind. First of all, the most obvious issue with such a government (in my mind) is that the only "bad" action is the action which gets caught. This, though, is not necessarily objectionable to the postmodern person. Suffering happens, and the postmodernist only wants to minimize it by hoping the majority rule will eventually minimize suffering.

Here's the next (and, I think, fatal) issue, though. Postmodernism is inherently opposed to any religion which claims to have exclusive truth, or a clear-cut code of ethics. Well... just as an example... could someone out there name for me any atheist humanitarian group that opposed slavery in the U.S.? It was Christian organizations that pushed for the end of slavery? Do the phrases "God-given rights" and "all men are created equal" ring a bell? Postmodernism would never have freed the slaves -- never. That's just one example, and it's perhaps the easiest for me to give and defend.

Now, I already hear the chorus of God-haters chiming in, "but Christianity is pro-slavery!". I've got a lot to say about that; but I think it suffices to drop just a few principles that would have shut down the entire trans-atlantic slave trade:

1. The law is very clear on kidnapping, and buying people who were kidnapped, regardless of origin. The kidnapper and any subsequent buyers shall be put to death. Exodus 21:16 says, "Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death". This alone condemns almost the entire history of human slavery.

2. The law and traditions of Israel allow for foreigners to become citizens of Israel, having all rights that Israelite have. In order to do this, they must a) Fear the Lord (as Rahab did), and b) have all their men circumcised, (hence Exo 12:37-38,48, the mixed multitude, and the regulations on foreigners partaking in sacred rituals). Also, Exo 12:49, Lev 24:22,  Num 15:14-16,29, all say that the same law which applies to the Jews applies also to the foreigners among them. This means that any foreigner who becomes a slave "for life" in Israel can achieve freedom on the year of jubilee by simply acknowledging the only living God.

An external ancient source in support of the idea that foreigners can become israelites: Josephus's account of the Wars of the Jews records instances of deserters from foreign armies being accepted into the Israelite community on the grounds that they circumcised themselves and desired to honor the one true God.

3. Finally, there were no laws in the OT restricting two men from fighting one another. However, there are laws handling the outcomes of the fights. In the case where two men are fighting and one is the master of the other, we have laws specifically to protect the slave. First, if the slave is injured permanently then he is set free; second, if the slave is killed, the law reiterates the death penalty for the owner. (Exodus 21:20-27)

So, to conclude: the Bible defines a kind of slavery which is incompatible with early American slavery. That's why the Christian community fought to shut it down.

So, back to postmodernism: history is replete with examples of groups of people who did appalling things with the support of the majority. A postmodern society has no way to keep a itself from doing the things which atheists even today will say, for no reason other than their own feelings, are unthinkably evil. And if a postmodernist says, "well, look at the history of humanity, nations don't usually survive when they do those bad things" Then I have to respond, "yeah, because in nearly every case their wickedness was shut down by a movement backed by religion (actually, often it was Christianity)." Postmodernism has no tools to back up its claim that an atheist society will eventually become utopian, and a careful look at history reveals the opposite.

This post is getting kindof long, so without getting into all the other religions at once....... only Christianity has the morals, the consistency, the justice, and the grace, to provide for a truly equitable system. I'll revisit my theories about debunking every religion at once in a future post.

"What's weaving?"

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

I have a few topics I want to hit today.

The first thing is that I want to, in two sentences, reiterate a point I tried to make in my previous post. That is: If we seek to justify God before we will believe in him, then any justification would necessitate that the jutsification itself is our ultimate standard of truth, rather than God's own self-sufficient word. This applies, in varying ways, to logic, morality, and every other aspect of life to which God has spoken.

Up next, presuppositions and evidence:
God being the ultimate, unjustified standard does not mean that there is no evidence for his existence. A good example I want to use to make this distinction clear is the theory of evolution. It would be dishonest of me to say that I don't see any merit to it at all as a speculative theory. Indeed, it has been very thoroughly speculated upon!

Now, the evidence we have for and against evolution is ultimately inconclusive. I've spoken with a person before who told me that evolutionary theory was a scientific fact, with the same amount of credibility as the theory of gravity itself. Frankly, that's ridiculous. Evolution simply isn't as set-in-stone as many people would like to believe. It is not what I would call a "justified fact", but there are many people, some of whom I've met, who passionately (that is, with strong emotional tones) defend it as if it were. They treat evolution in the same way that I treat God. They accept it as a fact a priori, and then argue for it afterwards.

The point I thus far attempted to make is: Just because you presuppose something to be true before you approach the evidence, it doesn't mean that the thing which you presupposed was wrong, and it doesn't mean that you were wrong to presuppose it to be true. Now, I don't believe that macro evolution occurred, but this here-ending paragraph is intended to make my point to people who believe that evolution occurred.

In any case, here we are looking at the same evidence, and drawing different conclusions from it. The variable is not in the evidence; it's in the people. It would be truly foolish for an atheist to claim neutrality in his view of the evidence. I know that's a favorite thing for atheists to do, but the brain is simply not inactive in receiving information, no matter what your religious presuppositions are.

Here's a quote:
"Intellectual activity in the mind is never totally passive or even receptive, but always more or less active...Indeed, all sciences proceed from a series of unproven and unprovable presuppositions." - Bavinck

There's a bunch of stuff around that quote that I agree with, but I am too lazy to write it out here. It's in his Prolegomena.

The evidence itself is important, but it's only part of the puzzle. We have to examine our own presuppositions first of all, to see if they are able to support and account for basic logical operation, before we can even approach the evidence. Your interpretation of the evidence is meaningless without an answer to the question "why do you interpret it that way".

I had two more topics that I wanted to continue into -- Postmodernism and Sheoul -- but me and my friend had a plan to watch Inuyasha tonight. We agreed with one another that we would finish the series, no matter how dumb it got, and it has gotten pretty dumb in some places, (like, I suppose the author occasionally forgets major plot points). Time to go watch that.

"It's not even funny"

Monday, May 16, 2016

Today I want to briefly run-through the morality debate, give a summary of how it played out, why I think I lost, what I learned and how I should have argued, etc.. Before I forget, though, I want to note here that some other things I plan to discuss in the future are: my argument against post-modernism; my thoughts on the tithing debate (which I also lost); some discussion on slavery in the Bible; and my current understanding of some historical events, including the fall of Rome, and the development of Biblical canon.

Another thing before I dive into this. I'm going to write some of my thoughts on how I should have argued, but I recognize that I can't say "This would have won the debate for me" unless I go back to Logan Belcher and actually give him the argument... Hopefully he doesn't change his email before I get up the gusto to approach that.

So, here's how the argument went in a nutshell:

I gave the common Christian argument against any atheistic claims to morality, saying that they lack foundation. We discussed what grounds we have to claim any moral authority over others, even including our children. We discussed the role of fear in parenting (that is, whether it has any role and what that role may be), and we discussed how much a child needs to know about the reasons for a command before he is obligated to obey, and whether there is any such thing as obligation, etc.. These things, of course, directly relate to the topic of obedience to any authority, including God. Logan also gave the common arguments atheists give about the functional efficacy of certain atheist moral theories. I think I rather successfully demonstrated the arbitrariness and weaknesses of the various atheist moral claims offered, and Logan didn't seem to try very hard to fight that. It's not a difficult argument to make.

So why do I think I lost?

Logan asked me the same questions. Why obey God? Who cares? I gave several bad answers to this, drawing from the characteristics of God to make the argument that he is an authority due to his omnipotence, his omniscience, and his omnipresence, and the fact that he created everything with a purpose; but do we obey anyone who is more powerful than us? Do we obey anyone who knows more than us? Do we obey anyone who is bigger than us? Older than us? etc. Eventually, the thing I finally fell back on was holiness, because it's the only characteristic that no other thing has of their own or in any significant measure, but even then it was holiness that was the standard, and not God. Furthermore, skipping some cars in the long train of emails, my argument eventually mandated that I say that humans have intrinsic value and thus should not be murdered! How worthless an argument, and I knew it but I didn't know how to escape it!

Here's the problem: I was telling the atheist, "You have no ultimate foundation. Only God can function as an ultimate foundation". But then I was trying to justify God. If God is truly the ultimate foundation, then we MUST NOT present any justification underneath God, because then that justification is the new ultimate foundation! When the atheist asks, "Why?" and "So what?", God is and must be the end of the infinite regression. If I say that God is my ultimate standard, then that means that God looks to no other source in order to prove his validity and ultimacy.

So why do we know that logic is dependable, and that our senses more-or-less accurately depict the outside world? Because God told us when He knit us together in our mother's womb, and then affirmed it in His word.

Why do I love my neighbor instead of stabbing my neighbor? Because God told me to love my neighbor. Why do atheists love one another? Because they are created in the image of God, and so have God's laws written in their hearts. So why do bad people do bad things? Because they reject the God who they know from birth.

Then why do I believe that God exists? Because He told us that He exists.
So why don't I prove it? Where's my evidence? The evidence is all around us. Since you have already seen it, my pointing it out to you won't cause you to accept God. (Proverbs 26:4-5)

Now here is the critical point; the final bolt in the argument, which makes it a stumbling block to the "spiritual" person, and foolishness to the skeptic.

If you read the exceedingly long youtube conversation I posted before, you might notice that at one point I asked Logan if he had ever "experienced God", (I think this wasn't the best way to word it, but whatever). He responded saying that he didn't know.

Romans 1:18-23 (emphasis added)
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,[g] in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Things to note there: They suppress the truth by means of unrighteousness. Now, the only grace I can give to an atheist on this point is that they do it without thinking about it consciously. So why, then, do they not come to the truth when confronted with it? How can they continue to reject the obvious?

John 6:44
44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

John 6:65
65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

So nobody comes to Christ unless the Father first draws him (it is not by our choice that we receive it).

John 6:37-39
37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

So every person who is drawn (given to the son) comes (it is not something we can choose to reject). Once someone is drawn, and comes, Jesus will never lose them (we cannot lose our salvation).

The point is: The Christian worldview is rock solid from within Christianity. Having God as an ultimate foundation is the only workable worldview; God is the end of the ultimate regression, but atheists will not accept it and will continuously seek to justify God. So, seeking to justify God, in itself, places God in a position of non-ultimacy, and so will never arrive at the truth of God's existence. Those who accept Jesus are those who God has drawn, and those who reject Jesus are those who God has not drawn.  Also see John 5:37-38  .

Well, that wasn't brief at all. I've already written too much for one blog, and if I go any further then I'm going to take thunder away from my future post on post-modernism.

"Jesus answered, 'I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'"

Saturday, May 7, 2016

OK, so today I want to run through an item I mentioned yesterday as something I wanted to take back. That is, the idea that Christians believe that there is a truly random element intrinsic to the human spirit. This is something I mentioned in a previous blog.

Before I get to it. I want to point out that I'm not 100% comfortable flat-out rejecting the idea. I think that the spiritual world may very well operate on a different set of rules which allow for a separate scope of action, which may as well be, with respect to the rules that govern the physical world, random, and which have some effect on the physical world. I don't know, and I wouldn't want to die for any answer one way or another on that.

On a similar note, angels and demons may do things that we would call supernatural, because they don't abide by the physical laws that we understand, but those angels and demons are still creatures, (that is, they are created things). As such, they are limited, and so must act according to their limited nature. Only God can be called unlimited, but even God cannot act against His perfect character, and so is limited only by His own will. So, with the exception of actions done by God directly, there is nothing supernatural; we can only say only that spiritual things may be supersensible to us. At the same time, in a way of speaking, everything is supernatural in that it is all created, planned, dictated and allowed by God. </tangent>

So the problem with any "true" randomness is that it necessitates against God's sovereignty as I understand it.The Bible is very clear that God knows the future, (examples include every single prophesy in the Bible). If anything is truly random, then by definition nobody is allowed to know the result of it until that result is produced.

This is related to a number of other issues. The Bible is also clear that God created the whole world, owns it and maintains it (see the last few chapters of Job). The Bible also says pretty directly that those who are saved are predestined (Romans 8). People often seem to respond to this with, "Does that mean that God predestined some people to hell, and others to heaven?". Paul anticipated this, and answers it in Romans 9:21. The point is, God planned and purposed everything from before the world began.

This means that God created the world knowing that all this evil stuff would happen. Indeed, He could have created the world in a different way, but He didn't. God therefore planned for evil things to happen, and the Bible is also clear that God does so for His own glory. The Bible is full of examples where God raises up wicked nations and allows them to be wicked, in order to demonstrate His power (Egypt), in order to carry out His justice (Bablyon), and in order to execute His plans for salvation (those who crucified Christ). What it comes down to is this: Either God has purposed everything for good, or all the wickedness in the world is gratuitous and without purpose. Either God planned it, or God's plans were defeated by it. Either God planned it and wanted it to happen, or God didn't want it to happen, and so has set up a system wherein things happen that are not a part of his plan, and he doesn't know what's going to happen, and he's therefore powerless to stop the devil.

That makes people uncomfortable, but the Bible doesn't give us what we want to hear. It gives us what we need. The Gospel doesn't give us health and wealth on earth, nor physical comfort. It gives us the peace that surpasses all understanding, which guards the hearts and minds of those who are in Christ Jesus.

Finally, the topic relates to God's position with respect to time. I feel like I often hear the assertion that God is outside of time, because how else would he be able to know and predict the future. Well, I don't think that eternality and foreknowledge are enough to draw that conclusion; God could simply have instantiated a system with only one possible outcome. We need Biblical support to accept this. Another thing I've heard before is that creation being ex nihilo means that creating time was a part of the creation of earth. I would accept this except that I'm not convinced that the spiritual world is outside of time. Also, the fact that the spiritual world is as it is indicates that something existed before the creation of the world -- perhaps nothing material existed, but I'm not sure that the Bible is conclusive on that point. All we know is that the "heavens" and "earth" were created from nothing in the beginning (I'm lead to believe that "from nothing" is an implication derived from the Greek).

Here, I'm going to reach a little bit to make my point. I've got a few verses off the top of my head that I'm going to use to formulate a brief opinion. Jesus says, "Before Abraham was born, I AM" (John 8:58). Here is God saying that he "is" in reference to a past time. So, one might be able to draw from this that God is outside of time, experiencing a sort of eternal "now". However, in the OT we have written that God is not a man, nor is He a son of man (Numbers 23:19); which is a negative statement, concerning characteristics which God lacked, and that human nature was appended to God at the moment of the incarnation (John 1). So, God is able to add to himself a new nature, and his emotions can vary, and those changes take place at points which can be measured with reference to time, but his being and character are eternally constant (God cannot make himself to be not-God). We know that the spiritual world does experience time, I think, because of what I see in Revelation 6:9-11, the 5th seal opens and spirits of dead people are asked to "wait a little longer". So when we die we don't fall out of the time-continuum. So God is not restricted or subjected to time, but He seems to at least have a certain nature which is subject to time -- some kind of appendage that reaches into our scope of understanding, and I don't suppose that we will ever quite escape time. We might be able, eventually, to manipulate our standing with respect to time, but I think all signs point to an idea that "eternal life" implies that we'll be time-bound forever.

And~~~~~~~ that's all for this post. I think I've gone in about enough depth here for now.

"Most of that is present knowledge."

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Hi readers,

It's been a pretty long time since my last post. That discussion I had with the atheist was long enough, I suppose, to act as several posts.

Since that time, my theology has undergone a significant overhaul, but while I might change a few points, and the direction of the discussion I posted before, I think that I would do it mostly the same if I had another shot.

Following that, the atheist and I had a discussion over email about morality. I have to admit, I think I lost the morality debate (which is a weird thing for a Christian to do in a morality debate with an atheist), and I simply exited the discussion. I did in part because my pride was hurt, but also because things were stressful at home. Around that same time, I was 3 to 5 months married, and I totaled my car and got a dog. I recognized where I had gone wrong, but I had already gone back on myself more than once as my worldview was being overturned by the things I was hearing at Apologia. I couldn't bring myself to go back on my argument again. I entered that discussion with a failed worldview, and at the time when I exited I was undergoing very rapid change in the way I saw the world.

I've been longing to get back into blogging. I missed this a lot, and I have a lot to share. I want to take back a few things I've said that would have caused my argument to reduce to Open Theism, and redirect my overall train of reasoning a bit, given new info. I'll try to find exactly the points I made, and demonstrate why they are wrong wherever I change rails. I want to revisit the morality debate, summarize it for you guys, give some info about my old opinion and the things I've thought about since then. (Maybe, if I build up the gumption, I'll even get back in touch with that guy.) I'd also like to comment on the series of posts I did before with a few new bits of info that I realized they lacked. I want to restate the issue of presuppositions and foundations, and give some examples that have come up in argument with atheists since my last post.

I also hope to put out some generalized (not too specific) info about the way God has been working in my marriage. Marriage is a beautiful thing (and doesn't exactly make sense in atheism, I think).

As I've done in the past, I want to remind everyone that I'm still a Trinitarian, saved-by-grace/faith-alone Christian. I don't want to live my life without a foundation under my feet, and I must be able to live in a way consistent with my foundation. I don't want to eat, drink, or breathe if I cannot justify the act in the ultimate. I'm doing my best to be continually examining the world around me, and I have not yet seen any flaw in the Christian foundation, nor have I seen any other Rock without fissure. Rebuilding a worldview is unsettling, humbling, and exciting, and I hope that I never stop doing so; humbly sanctifying my opinions and beliefs under the Lordship of the one and only God, until I die.

"Let God be true though every man a liar."
Map
 
my pet!