How do we know assuredly that the universe is in fact uniform?
"We are wanting the laws of the universe to be such that we can understand them, but there is no reason offered as to why the universe should be like this." (Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity)
If I set out to argue the uniformity of the universe because I can predict cause and effect, am I not presupposing the uniformity and validity of my experience? Cause and effect is accurate reflection of what really happens?
Since man cannot know everything he must assume or presuppose uniformity and think and act on this very basic assumption.
Consequently the principles of uniformity is not scientific law but an act of faith which undergirds scientific law. This, adherence to the principle of uniformity-though absolutely essential to science and scientific method- is an intrinsically religious commitment.
Unfortunately for the non-Christian cosmology, chance involves randomness and unpredictability. The unbelieving worldview requires faith in miracles, yet without a reason for those miracles. Life arises from non-life. Intelligence from non-intelligence. Morality from that which is a-moral. These are faith claims for explaining our world and how it came to be.
The uniformity of nature is perfectly compatible, however, with the Christian worldview. The absolute, all-creating, sovereignly-governing God reveals to us in Scripture that we can count on regularities in the natural world.
(Ephesians 1:11, Colossians 1:16-17, Hebrews 1:3)
We just have to keep asking "Which worldview makes sense of universals and the laws of logic?"
Can an Atheist justify the laws of logic in his chance universe? Especially a chance universe conceived naturalistically as involving only material things? Once he tries to justify universals and the laws of logic, he steps out of his worldview and into ours. His presuppositions cannot sustain his worldview and cannot account for universals.
Patty pointed out, "They’re teaching plagiarism, too! I heard a lyric from Jesus Loves the Little Children in there...
They say “red, yellow, black or white are all equal in his sight”
"Jesus loves the little children All the children of the world Red and yellow, black and white, All are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world"
So it is completely off limits to sing a song about Jesus or God but it is fully acceptable to worship a man, as long it is not God. Even sing the same songs and replace Jesus or God with [whatever you worship, other then the Creator]. Worship is worship and they have violated their own rules. Hypocrisy!! We all know what the truth is. Worship anything other then God himself.
Alex Jones said "The idea of kids being forced to worship Obama in schools across America is no longer just a chilling example of Maoist style political brainwashing – children are literally being trained to religiously worship Obama via adapted versions of Christian hymns!"
Speaking of Home School. My daughter found another good homeschooling resource - Brain Games
A while ago Science admitted that an Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah but as we know The Bible already told us about it and said it was God Himself that destroyed the wicked cites. It also made me think that scientists and researchers are searching for God, secretly, while we are not looking. These days many are explaining that the "evidence" that corresponds to the Bible is merely circumstantial evidence or coincidental.
Interesting though, you can send a man to prison on circumstantial evidence but it may be not enough to convince people about God. I understand that evidence is not faith, and we shouldn't look to science to find God. We need to, as instructed to us by God Himself, trust based on the current evidence. I can wonder though.
What will atheists do when science does find undeniable evidence that agrees with the Bibles claims? Will they believe in that "smoking gun" that the Bible is actually a historical narrative to be understood plainly? Will nonbelievers believe that God exists and created the Universe, as the Bible says, or would they still hold on and 'believe' in Neo-Darwinian evolution or metaphysical naturalism? I guess I am just wondering what would it take, if anything? I suppose even if Neo-Darwinian evolution completely falls apart as a theory, Atheists would still claim that God of the Bible, though historically accurate, may not be the God that Created the Universe. Right?
What if Dani'El is right? Would that convince anyone to repent and trust God? Would you just consider him just another crazy Christan that just happen to predict something, somehow?
ICR said: "We are warned that friendship with the worldly lifestyle and that which espouses the "things" of the world, makes us an "enemy of God" (James 4:4). That is because such people embrace the "spirit of the world" and not "the spirit which is of God" (1 Corinthians 2:12). Those people speak about the things of the world, and the world listens to them (1 John 4:5).
God's people may be "base" and "weak"--even "foolish" in the eyes of the world (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). Since the great Creator God has chosen us out of the world (John 15:19), it should not surprise us that the world "hates" those who belong to the Lord Jesus (John 17:14). Hence, the ungodly passions that drive the ungodly behavior of the world, "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world" (1 John 2:16).
Those passions and the people who embrace them will "pass away." (Sodom and Gomorrah) But "he that doeth the will of God abideth forever" (1 John 2:17)."
What if Dani'El is right? Would that change the hearts of any? What if the Prophecies of the Bible started to happen? Would that even be enough evidence to convince a hardened Atheist that the end may be near? Dani'El admits that he is not predicting or prophesying the end of the world, but the destruction of a wicked city like Sodom and Gomorrah, as God has done so many times in the past. For Dani'El's sake I hope he is right as he continues his walk with God, and for all of our sake here in California I hope Dani'El is wrong. Either way, God will be glorified.
I wonder what would it take to change such strong presuppositions that there is no God? Would even impending doom suffice? I would venture to guess, probably not.
Many Atheists here like to debate and converse with me. I enjoy it a great deal myself. We have a common enjoyment, to communicate with others. But where does that come from? My question to the Atheist is, do you agree that you are self aware?
The fact that you are talking and debating others assumes your own self-awareness whereby you know yourself, recognize that you live in an environment involving other self-aware humans, and sees value in communication, conversation, and debate between equally self-aware beings. If you didn't you would be admitting that conversing on the existence of God, or any subject whatsoever, would be meaningless.
My next question to you is how do you account for human self-awareness as a fundamental factor of life? Where does it come from? How is it that man is self-aware? Without presupposing God, your worldview is ultimately committed to chance. From the perspective of your worldview, the universe was self-created by chance and is self-diversifying by chance.
In such a naturalistic, materialistic conception of the universe, all must be accounted for in terms of the material interaction of atoms. With that worldview, it forces us to view ourselves as simply matter-in-motion. How can matter be self-aware? Are rocks self aware? Trees? Hammers? In fact, what view of the world makes self-awareness intelligible? Slime is certainly not self-aware, which eventually becomes rational, which eventually becomes moral-and all by the evolutionary mechanism of time plus chance?
In my worldview the personal, sovereign God of Scripture created all things and gave them their properties. He created man in His image, thereby establishing personality and self awareness in us. At the very beginning God communicated with man, speaking intelligently to His rational, self-aware creature (Genesis 1:28-29) and gave him commandments (Genesis 1:28,2:16-17). Consequently, self-awareness and personality are not problems for my, Christian, worldview.
My point is that the very self-awareness of you, even as an idolatrous denier, is evidence for the existence of God due to the impossibility of the contrary.
There are serious internal problems with your worldview. Because of your opposition to the absolute God of Scripture, you must account for reality in some other way then by a personal, rational, sovereign Creator. Simply that your rational is built upon the irrational.
**Of course this argument was taken from the late Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen.
A new Atheist came to me and started to ask some questions. I am very pleased that Atheists do this because it may mean they are still searching for the truth.
I welcome all questions and will do my best to answer any inquiries about God, faith, Christianity, or my beliefs. Just please be serious about these questions. Don't seek to trip me up, seek the knowledge that there possibly is a God and you may have missed something important.
TimAtheist asked:I am glad that you do not take well to saying that young children are not to be held responsible. However, does your religion agree with you?
Yes completely. God is not the evil overlord that many believe He is. God is not "an evil tyrant Who condemns innocent children to eternal destruction." He is kind, loving, and just that knows all things. His righteousness is more then we could ever imagine. God would not arbitrarily send children to hell, just because they are too young. In fact, children go to Heaven.
I found an article written by our friend Kyle Butt, M.A. that makes the case. He wrote:
"In 2 Samuel 12, King David's newborn son fell terminally ill. After seven days, the child died. In verses 22 and 23, the Bible records that David said: "While the child was alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'Who can tell whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?' But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."
It is clear that David's dead infant son would never return to this Earth, but David also said that one day, he would go to be with his son. Through inspiration, David documented that his own eternal destination was going to be " in the house of the Lord" (Psalm 23:6). Therefore, we can conclude that "the house of the Lord" would be the eternal destination of his infant son to whom David would one day go. King David was looking forward to the day when he would be able to meet his son in heaven. Absolutely nothing in this context gives any hint that the dead infant son's soul would go to hell."
He also added:
Matthew 18:3-5 "And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me."
Luke 18:16-17 "But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein."
TimAtheist also said: "I hear that a very common teaching is that we immediately inherit Adam's sin, that we are born into a "sin nature."
In that same article Butt shows that children do not “inherit” the sins of their parents. Butt writes:
"In Ezekiel 18:20, the Bible says: "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son." Also, in Exodus 32, Moses pleaded with God to forgive the sins of the Israelites when he said: "Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written. And the Lord said to Moses, 'Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book' (Exodus 32:32-33). The Bible is plain in its teaching that babies do not inherit the sins of their parents. One commonly misapplied scripture used to teach that infants inherit sin is Psalm 51:5-6, which has been dealt with in detail by Wayne Jackson (2000)"
Butt concludes: "Therefore, we have been given a specific example in the Old Testament of an infant who died and would live forever in heaven. And Jesus Christ Himself, in the New Testament, stated that little children retain the qualities that make a person eligible to inherit the kingdom of God. We see, then, that infants and small children that die are in a safe state, and will live eternally in heaven."
Steven Curtis Chapman just wrote a brand new song about his daughter that he lost because of a very unfortunate accident. God gives us hope, not despair, children go to Heaven. (Revelation 21:4)
It is final, we are not allowing anything Miley Cyrus in our house.
We suspected her worldly ways with her revealing and tasteless pictures that she took, then the poor decision to allow those Vanity Fair pictures go to print, now to the recent Pole Dance routine, she is out.
It is perfectly understandable. If you allow such worldly things into your home, and even encouraged, these results are to be expected.
I guess Billy Ray is forgetting that very wise advice that Chris Rock gave.
"My only job in life is to keep her off the pole."
(strong language alert)
We all know that nothing good comes from that Pole.
"Christians should not be a thermometers that merely record and reflect the temperature of popular opinion.
Christians should be like thermostats, responsible for transforming and setting the temperature or standards of society" ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Update on theory confirmed
What I can read, from one article, she was never spanked but just grounded. Our prayers go out to the false convert called Miley, and hope she understands Christianity...someday soon.
Thank God, Free at last!
Update: My theory held true, not a Christian yet. Some false converts cover well, this one didn't. She's now leaving America to go be British? Yikes, bad decisions galore. You failed her Billy Ray. She's still an Antichrist.
Yes, It is either the end of civilization as we know it or it happens. I just learned that users can access their email via IMAP or POP still if they set it up using Outlook or something else. I choose to wait, my comments may be delayed.
I made a link to check the status TinyURL.com/appchk, for future reference.
What do I do now? Time to go play outside with the kids!
How do we know assuredly that the universe is in fact uniform?
Unfortunately for the non-Christian cosmology, chance involves randomness and unpredictability. The unbelieving worldview requires faith in miracles, yet without a reason for those miracles. Life arises from non-life. Intelligence from non-intelligence. Morality from that which is a-moral. These are faith claims for explaining our world and how it came to be.
