February 18, 2011

Purpose Driven Blog

Wem, Atomic, et al,

Atomic Chimp states,
>>"Dan, You don't have to give up your belief in a god, just admit that your BS doesn't work."

By work do you mean to give an account and a reason of the hope that is in me? Because, hopefully, I have done that.

Wem adds,
>>"Agreed. Presupposition fails to convince, and it leads to fatal inconsistencies for its adherents' worldviews."

Well that is not the purpose and you're wrong. As you have been told before, my argument is not intended to be convincing, I am merely commanded to speak the truth, 'convincing' is out of my hands. As for the perceived fatal inconsistencies, I will quote Van Til in a minute for that.


>>"I don't care whether Dan believes in God or not - it's his insistence in using patently dishonest rhetoric in the place of conversation/discussion that keeps me coming back."

So then it is working! It takes a wolf to catch a wolf, after all. All joking aside, I hope and wish you will stick around and engage to continually keep God on your mind, in hopes that God will miraculously change you soon. A repentant Atheist would be a miracle indeed. I want to be a witness to that, and to celebrate with you. I do fear for you, and I want to keep you "in the game" and not completely give in to sin.

I wish desperately that everyone, that I have known here for years now, knows what is at stake as you all do, and that I am here for you to help if it ever becomes a true search. I certainly do not want to get in the way, if that is even possible, but I do want to be fighting for you and with you, to see you saved. I want to see success and I do want a win, granted, but its not a win for myself and my family, its for you and yours. I want to celebrate the glory of God, working in you...all of you. I patiently wait for that glorious day when God pulls one of you, all of you, from that fire, and you all are willingly seeking Him, and I will be jumping up and down celebrating your salvation. When that day comes, it will not be anything that was done on my part at all, although I want to be there when it does happen. Everyone loves a good party.

The byproduct of all of this is that I have learned quite a bit myself. I have also met some very smart people who are foolishly throwing away something great, themselves!  Its frustrating that I cannot prevent it from happening. Atheists are merely a car crash just waiting to happen. Everyone can't help themselves from watching a car crash.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the playful banter over the years even though the stakes are too high to laugh at. We find time though. Admittedly, I love being stood up and silenced. Like I have said, a move to truth is a move towards God.

Here is a great thought, I seek to be shut down,... by God. In that, there will be a day that I cannot continue and will have to close the doors on this blog. On that day there will be no need for "Debunking Atheists". The job will be complete. Until then...

As Van Til poetically said, "Looking about me I see both order and disorder in every dimension of life. But I look at both of them in the light of the Great Orderer Who is back of them. I need not deny either of them in the interest of optimism or in the interest of pessimism. I see the strong men of biology searching diligently through hill and dale to prove that the creation doctrine is not true with respect to the human body, only to return and admit that the missing link is missing still. I see the strong men of psychology search deep and far into the sub-consciousness, child and animal consciousness, in order to prove that the creation and providence doctrines are not true with respect to the human soul, only to return and admit that the gulf between human and animal intelligence is as great as ever. I see the strong men of logic and scientific methodology search deep into the transcendental for a validity that will not be swept away by the ever-changing tide of the wholly new, only to return and say that they can find no bridge from logic to reality, or from reality to logic. And yet I find all these, though standing on their heads, reporting much that is true. I need only to turn their reports right side up, making God instead of man the center of it all, and I have a marvelous display of the facts as God has intended me to see them.

And if my unity is comprehensive enough to include the efforts of those who reject it, it is large enough even to include that which those who have been set upright by regeneration cannot see. My unity is that of a child who walks with its father through the woods. The child is not afraid because its father knows it all and is capable of handling every situation. So I readily grant that there are some "difficulties" with respect to belief in God and His revelation in nature and Scripture that I cannot solve. In fact there is mystery in every relationship with respect to every fact that faces me, for the reason that all facts have their final explanation in God Whose thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and Whose ways are higher than my ways. And it is exactly that sort of God that I need. Without such a God, without the God of the Bible, the God of authority, the God who is self-contained and therefore incomprehensible to men, there would be no reason in anything. No human being can explain in the sense of seeing through all things, but only he who believes in God has the right to hold that there is an explanation at all.

So you see when I was young I was conditioned on every side; I could not help believing in God. Now that I am older I still cannot help believing in God. I believe in God now because unless I have Him as the All-Conditioner, life is Chaos.

I shall not convert you at the end of my argument.
I think the argument is sound. I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else. But since I believe in such a God, a God who has conditioned you as well as me, I know that you can to your own satisfaction, by the help of the biologists, the psychologists, the logicians, and the Bible critics reduce everything I have said this afternoon and evening to the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian. Well, my meanderings have, to be sure, been circular; they have made everything turn on God. So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy." (emphasis added)

21 comments:

  1. Whew!

    Reposted again, with relevant links and html intact. Is there an edit function on comments that I'm missing?

    I wish desperately that everyone, that I have known here for years now, knows what is at stake as you all do, and that I am here for you to help if it ever becomes a true search.

    I appreciate the sentiment, Dan, even if I think the beliefs and methods behind it are misguided.

    Allow me to hope the same for you, that you will one day seek genuine understanding, even at the expense of facing your fear of death and oblivion. Do you really know what is at stake?

    If you're interested, you can read a little more about my personal quest here and here.

    Everyone loves a good party.

    Pardon my insolence, but as a Calvinist, are you sure you know what a 'good party' is?

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  2. More dishonesty? He uses juvenile rhetoric to keep people reading this blog? Really?

    It's a wonder he doesn't hear the alarm bells ringing in his head. What kind of powerful benevolent force would require trickery to save people? What kind of being would want his believers to use such methods?

    What kind of deity would condemn dishonesty and then endorse it if it brought more believers into the fold?

    No, Dan. You're dishonest and are trying to spin it into some kind of concern for your fellow human beings. You lie both to us and yourself, and for that reason you are untrustworthy.

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  3. Dan, of course, doesn't think he's being dishonest - such is the power of cognitive dissonance.

    If he really knew as he claimed to, that there was a hell of eternal suffering awaiting those who transgressed his god's orders, he would think twice before claiming concern for unbelievers and then resorting to schoolyard taunts and shut-up-that's-why 'arguments' in what he claims are not attempts to convert anyone.

    He has seen enough to know that those of us who frequent his blog do not do so because we are seeking the god he describes. But I don't think he really believes that this god exists. He has merely found a comfortable position of intellectual laziniess that has the added benefit of making him feel like he's winning arguments when he never even makes any.

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  4. Dan, I have a simple question for you - can I "be saved" if your god hasn't selected me as one of "the elect"? And if the answer is no, why not?

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  5. Ericka,

    >>Dan, I have a simple question for you - can I "be saved" if your god hasn't selected me as one of "the elect"? And if the answer is no, why not?

    Hmm, good question. Here is my take. If you seek to be saved by God you WILL be saved. That is His wish too, as you will be chosen. If you do not seek Him, then that is what God knows as your wishes. He will honor those wishes. You choose to be with each other.

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  6. Dan +†+ said...

    Hmm, good question. Here is my take. If you seek to be saved by God you WILL be saved. That is His wish too, as you will be chosen. If you do not seek Him, then that is what God knows as your wishes. He will honor those wishes. You choose to be with each other.

    ...and we're back to the illusion of free will again.

    Of course Dan leaves out that in his worldview God already knew what you would choose before He created you and, even if you choose to not seek God, He created you anyway knowing full well He'd send you to Hell for all eternity over something you have no control over - you can't suddenly change your mind and seek God because God already knows you won't and what God knows is exactly what will happen.

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  7. I see the free will issue differently, Freddie...

    Rather than it being an illusion, my choices are set in stone. That is, there's nothing I can do to change my ultimate fate. If so, this doesn't mean I have no free will; it means there's no impetus for me to work at making the right choice.

    Whether I struggle or whether I watch tv all day, my fate will be exactly the same. As such, there's no need for fundagelicals to preach or for Dan to try to bring people to God. I will either be brought or not, independent of any massively annoying effort they might spend.

    EDIT: reposted to fix a typing error

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  8. Freddies Dead,

    Over something you have no control over? You cannot control your adultery, murder or lying? Are you Charlie Sheen's lawyer?

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  9. The thing that's confusing me here is that 'choice' implies picking one of any number of possible alternatives.

    If all our 'choices' are somehow preordained, or set in stone, or in any manner predetermined such that the outcome could not be other than it turns out, it seems to me that the number of possible alternatives is reduced to one, and the idea of choice becomes an absurdity.

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  10. Absurd? I'd liken it to the value an ant places on the size of the hunk of food he brings back to the nest. It's pretty damned important to him, but it'ss otherwise cosmically unimportant.

    You're just understanding the inconsequential nature of your ability to choose things under Dan's theology. Indeed, even Dan seems unaware of the implications.

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  11. Dan +†+ said...

    Freddies Dead,

    Over something you have no control over? You cannot control your adultery, murder or lying?


    In your worldview, no. God already knows exactly what I'll do - I can't do it any differently or your God isn't omniscient. In your worldview, if I lie, cheat or murder it's because that's what your God had planned for me - it must be part of his plan as He actively created me knowing that's what I'd do.

    Of course, in my worldview, where there aren't any omniscient deities with a plan taking away my ability to choose, I make every effort to avoid doing those things.

    Are you Charlie Sheen's lawyer?

    I wish, but in your worldview I don't get to choose that either.

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  14. Whateverman said...

    I see the free will issue differently, Freddie...

    Rather than it being an illusion, my choices are set in stone. That is, there's nothing I can do to change my ultimate fate. If so, this doesn't mean I have no free will; it means there's no impetus for me to work at making the right choice.


    Isn't the whole concept of free will rooted in the ability to choose between multiple possible 'choices'? If your 'choices' are preordained then, as DD says, there is only one choice i.e. you are not really able to choose at all, it has, in effect, been chosen for you. The choice you think you're making is just an illusion of choice and therefore your free will is illusory too.

    Whether I struggle or whether I watch tv all day, my fate will be exactly the same.

    But in the Christian worldview God also knows whether you'll struggle or watch TV - you don't even get to choose that, you will do what God knows you will do, you have no say in it at all, everything is predetermined.

    EDIT: To fix a typo and then again to put back the HTML formatting lost when I fixed the typo ... doh!

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  15. Choice is something that is contemporaneous: it is a decision made at a specific point in time, presumably based on factors that come from your past.

    The fact that your choice is predetermined does not remove your ability to make it freely (ie. based on everything that's happened to you in the past).

    Today's thursday. Wednesday night I had pizza for supper. Looking back, I can clearly see that I freely chose pizza (instead of salad, etc). Could I have chosen salad? Yes, but if that had happened, I'd probably be asking myself today "Could I have chosen something other than salad?"

    The ability to see what will be chosen does not remove your ability to choose it freely. It's merely knowledge of what that free choice will be.

    It's important to keep in mind that there are other problems with Dan's God. He can't be both omnipotent AND omniscient, for instance; nor can he be omnibenevolent when condeming us for choices that we could not have made differently.

    However, omniscience can co-exist with free will (imho). Infallible knowledge of a future choice does not *force* that choice to be made. It is simply knowledge of what that choice will be.

    One last point: modern cosmology suggests that there could be quadrillions of universes as well as a quintillion of possible outcomes. If so, the future is fundamentally unpredictable; even a deity would be unable to predict what my choice would be. My omniscience/free will argument assumes the future is predictable; I'd drop it in a flash if cosmology turns out to be right.

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  16. You're just understanding the inconsequential nature of your ability to choose things under Dan's theology. Indeed, even Dan seems unaware of the implications.

    I think I finally get where you're coming from, WEM. The predetermination you refer to, I'm now thinking, is the influence of past events on future choices. Makes a whole lot of sense.

    And I'd agree that individual human choices certainly are inconsequential on a cosmic scale - they only become significant if a lot of people make the same choice, like, say, to drive their cars to work rather than catch the train; and, of course, our choices will always impact our own lives, and influence our future choices.

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  17. DormanDragon responded to me with this: The predetermination you refer to, I'm now thinking, is the influence of past events on future choices.

    Right. Free will is merely "the ability to reference the things you've experienced, and make a concious, willful determination based on those things". In this sense, you can have free will to choose X right up to the point that you actually choose it.

    A person's ability to know what this choice is (even if that person's knowledge is infallible) does not impact your ability to make the choice.

    Took me a long time to come to this position, and I mean that independent of the discussions here

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  18. Whateverman said...

    I have tried to respond to the bits I felt had common themes for brevity - if I've misrepresented your argument through the editing I apologise in advance.

    Choice is something that is contemporaneous: it is a decision made at a specific point in time, presumably based on factors that come from your past.

    Today's thursday. Wednesday night I had pizza for supper. Looking back, I can clearly see that I freely chose pizza (instead of salad, etc). Could I have chosen salad? Yes, but if that had happened, I'd probably be asking myself today "Could I have chosen something other than salad?"


    Past events influence present/future choices - there is a certain amount of determinism in the universe but we appear to be making choices - I get that bit. That's how reality seems to operate from our perspective but...

    The fact that your choice is predetermined does not remove your ability to make it freely (ie. based on everything that's happened to you in the past).

    The ability to see what will be chosen does not remove your ability to choose it freely. It's merely knowledge of what that free choice will be.

    However, omniscience can co-exist with free will (imho). Infallible knowledge of a future choice does not *force* that choice to be made. It is simply knowledge of what that choice will be.


    I'm not talking about a little bit of determinism, influence on decisions etc..., and I see that it's not just that a God could be omniscient - I recognise now (after Henracious pointed it out) that 'just knowing everything' on it's own doesn't necessarily affect us, but, it's that the Christian God is not only omniscient He also has a purpose for us (to bring glory to God seems to be the general refrain). There's a plan and you must follow it. Pizza and salad seems like a choice from your perspective but God not only knows you'll pick pizza, it's part of His purpose that you will pick pizza you're not freely choosing pizza you're following God's plan - the choice you think you have isn't a choice at all and without choice there's no free will.

    It's important to keep in mind that there are other problems with Dan's God. He can't be both omnipotent AND omniscient, for instance; nor can he be omnibenevolent when condeming us for choices that we could not have made differently.

    As I say above - it's not that He's omniscient, it's that He's omniscient and has a plan.

    One last point: modern cosmology suggests that there could be quadrillions of universes as well as a quintillion of possible outcomes. If so, the future is fundamentally unpredictable; even a deity would be unable to predict what my choice would be. My omniscience/free will argument assumes the future is predictable; I'd drop it in a flash if cosmology turns out to be right.

    Surely sheer numbers shouldn't be a problem for an infinitely powerful deity?

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  19. Freddie responded to me as follows: it's that the Christian God is not only omniscient He also has a purpose for us (to bring glory to God seems to be the general refrain). There's a plan and you must follow it. Pizza and salad seems like a choice from your perspective but God not only knows you'll pick pizza, it's part of His purpose that you will pick pizza you're not freely choosing pizza you're following God's plan - the choice you think you have isn't a choice at all and without choice there's no free will.

    I wont argue with that; free-will and the Christian deity is a whole 'nother ball of wax. My point is only in regards to "mere" omniscience (and free will), independent of who exhibits it.

    I see people argue that you can't have free will while omniscience exists, and this appears (to me) to be wrong on the face of it.

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  20. ".... So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy." (emphasis added)"

    Is this what the Christians said to the Canaanites before they killed their babies?

    Disgusting Monster!

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  21. "s this what the Christians said to the Canaanites before they killed their babies?"

    Are you calling the Ancient Israelites christians? Very few Ancient Israelites at that time took Christ's name upon themselves -- unless you count the parting of the River Jordan as a baptism.

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