William Lane Craig – What if Faith and Reason Conflict With Each Other?

William Lane Craig:

In tonights’ debate, I tool the word ‘faith’ to mean the same thing as ‘believe’. So ‘faith in God’ – ‘believe in God’ is a belief that God exists. But, you’re quite right in saying there’s another understanding of faith that is more than propositional belief. It would be the idea of trusting in someone, committing one’s life to someone. And I would say that that kind of faith would be subsequent to propositional belief. You first believe that God exists, and then you can believe in God and put your faith in Him.

Now, in the chapter you were speaking of in (the book) Reasonable Faith, when I am speaking of faith there, I am talking about is how do we know that propositional truths of the Christian faith- like that God exists? Or that God loves me, and so forth? And what I was suggesting there is that in addition to external arguments and evidence, there is also this immediate testimony of God Himself to one, that gives you in a properly basic way a knowledge of God’s existence and the great truths of the Gospel. That was my 8th point in tonight’s debate- that God can be personally known and experienced. And I said this isn’t an argument. Rather, it’s suggesting that just like we have properly basic beliefs, like the belief in the reality, in the external world, or the reality of the past, so belief in God could be a properly basic belief grounded in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. So, this isn’t some kind of leap in the dark sort of thing. It’s saying that God Himself can give a person a knowledge of His existence, that is independent of argument and evidence. And this is a view that’s widely defended today, especially by Alvin Plantinga, in his book ‘Warranted Christian Belief’ And I think he’s shown that there aren’t any philosophical objections to this point of view. It’s a perfectly coherent religious epistemology.

VIDEO by drcraigvideos What if faith and reason conflict with each other? What is the relationship between reason and faith? In this clip Dr William Lane Craig answers this question during the Q&A time of his debate with Dr Alex Rosenberg. On February 1st, 2013 at Purdue University, Dr Craig participated in a debate with Dr Rosenberg on the topic, “Is Faith In God Reasonable?” Over 5,000 people watched the event on the Purdue University campus along with tens of thousands streaming it live online from around the world. For more resources visit: http://www.reasonablefaith.org (photo above via wikipedia)

(4) Why God? An intelligent cause – A new series of apologetic tools

Read

(1) Why apologetics?

(2) Why believe in anything at all?

(3) Why God? A beginning cause

The Essentials of Apologetics – Why God (Part 2)? from Robin Schumacher

Ravi Zacharias – Can Man Live Without God? National University of Singapore

Photo via www.gdtd.vn

Lecture Friday March 26, 2004 (just recently uploaded) In this brilliant and compelling defense of the Christian faith, Ravi Zacharias shows how affirming the reality of God’s existence matters urgently in our everyday lives. According to Zacharias, how you answer the questions of God’s existence will impact your relationship with others, your commitment to integrity, your attitude toward morality, and your perception of truth. (Video via EnimVeritas)

This topic is from Ravi’s book ‘Can Man Live Wihtout God’, a subject he spoke on at Harvard University Law School. The book treats this subject more exhaustively than his lecture here, and at other venues where Zacharias has lectured on this topic.

The book is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Can-Man-Live-Wi…

Ravi Zacharias – The scientific naturalist view does not answer our questions, nor prove God’s in existence

Zacharias ravi

Question from Ethan Kaiser:

Hello, I am a scientists and an atheist, and my question is: Since the Bible has been scientifically disproven, as far as all the claims, you know, the theory of evolution, and archaeology, you know, Noah’s ark, Adam & Eve, since we know this didn’t happen because of our science, my question is: According to the Bible, how do we have free will, if God is this omniscient being, that knows everything about us, everything that we will do, and he pretty much knows our outcome before we’re even created, so he creates us, knowing everything we will do, we can’t surprise him by our actions, we have no free will. Our choices have been predetermined, and that the act of judgment is completely immoral, because he knows what we’re gonna do, nothing can surprise him.

Ravi Zacharias:

It’s interesting that you began, by saying that, as an atheist, all of this has been disproved, and so you live with scientific materialism as your world view. I studied under John Polkinhorne at Cambridge University. You probably know the name- one of the world’s leading quantum physicists. He came to the exact opposite conclusion you did, while being a dean at King’s College, as quantum physicist, taking the same data you did. So, obviously, for a man of his intellectual ability, to come to a totally different conclusion, one would either have to say he is stupid to come to that conclusion, or else his empirical data is … I want to read to you what David Berlinski says about the scientific, naturalistic world view. He is one of the world’s leading physicists, who is an agnostic, but took issue with Richard Dawkin’s book “The God Delusion’, and wrote a book called “The Devil’s Delusion’. Here’s what he said,

  1. Has anyone provided proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
  2. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
  3. Have the scientists explained why the universe is fine tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
  4. Are physicists and biologists even willing to believe in anything, as long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
  5. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
  6. Has secularism in the secular 20th century been a force for good? Not even close.
  7. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy being taught in the opinion of the sciences? Close enough.
  8. Does anything in the sciences or the philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ballpark.
  9. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.

Ethan (questioner), what you are wrestling with is not uncommon. Many people from a scientific and materialistic worldview will say what you’ve said, and will come to that conclusion. The problem is, what you’ve mispositioned is your concern between  determinism and free will. Your application could have gone in many directions, but you came to that one for some reason, which was unfortunate. In Cambridge, I listened to a talk, in 1990, by Stephen Hawking. As you know, he can’t speak, he uses a speech synthesizer. His whole talk was on determinism and freedom. Do you know what he concluded? That the tragedy with scientific materialism , if we take its assumptions, is that we are not free, we are totally determined. That was the world’s leading physicist at that time, saying, “The very thing you are asking of the Christian faith, he pinned on your backs (the scientific atheists). You can go online and trace it. And he said, “The only escape I have is since I don’t know what has been determined, I may as well not be. The whole auditorium moaned and groaned, with an escape hatch that he gave for himself, after telling us that we were completely determined. That’s Berlinski’s issue, that is actually something that even people like Dawkin’s will concede. Or, you read Stephen Pinker and the others, totally determined. So the question is: Were you free to ask this question?

If you are totally determined, you are prewired to think the way you do. The nature means you are hardwired to come to a conclusion. Out of flux, nothing but flux. What you put into the computer has to come out. But, you have to ask yourself: Are you making a truth claim? If you’re making a truth claim, you’re rising above the subjectivity, and the moment you claim a truth claim, you’re violating determinism.

Ravi’s response comes at the 7:15 minute mark of the video-

Is Truth Relative? Greg Koukl at THRIVE Apologetics Conference 2013

See also

  1. Greg Koukl – Moral Relativism lecture to University students
  2. Apologetics PAGE

photo via http://rogueuniversity.com/musings

When you think about it, there are a lot of ways to show that christianity is false. Look at our story, it starts with “in the beginning God…”  If the atheists are right, we don’t get a beginning, we don’t even get started. Our case is based on Jesus of Nazareth. If He never existed we’re out of business. If He wasn’t the one reflected in the Scripture, if that’s just a bunch of legends, we’re up the creek as well. No soul. Why is that important? Because if there is no soul , there is no thing to go into the afterlife. And since the afterlife is an important part of christianity, we’re sunk again, if they can make the case there’s no soul. On the resurrection, Paul himself said that christians of all people should be pitied if there was no resurrection.

Christianity can be falsifiable in principle, and if it can be falsifiable and falsified, it can also be supported. It can be demonstrated that it can be true. But, the minute you say something like “can be demonstrated to be true”, you run into another obstacle, that is very popular and very in play in our culture. It’s also very unusual to me, because taken at face value, which strikes me as a pointless challenge. The other challenges that I mentioned, and by the way, every one of those areas I talked about- the existence of God, the existence of Jesus, the existence of the soul, the resurrection, and a whole bunch of others, there’s a full course press on all of those right now. And that’s why I’m glad you’re all in this conference. All of those, I would say, are intellectually noble ways of going after christianity.

Relative truth – pulling the rug from underneath the  christians

This next thing, that I want to spend my time talking about, I don’t think it is intellectually noble. I think it’s a foolish way of going after christianity, but it is very popular. Everybody’s fighting over what they think is true. Well, the truth of the matter is in this world truth doesn’t exist- it’s not unusual to go into a campus society in general and begin to talk about these kinds of things. And, as you advance christianity, if you’re doing it properly, you’re doing it as a picture of reality. This is true in the deep sense of the word. That’s our view; that’s our claim. That’s what we’re offering. And people want to dismiss it and say, “Well, there is none of that kind of stuff. Truth doesn’t exist in this world. Maybe it’s true for you, maybe it’s relative to your beliefs. Everybody has different beliefs that are true for them. But, no one can say that what they believe is true, that it applies to everyone.” In one sense it’s a kind of end around  all of the conflict. It’s a kind of a saying, :Well, everybody’s right.” It has a tolerant feel, but, at the same time it’s kind of like saying everybody’s wrong, too, “You are wrong in all your individual beliefs on what is actually so; you are just right for yourself.” And so, it’s an odd kind of “everybody’s right, but, in the background, everybody’s wrong, at the same time. A lot of folks haven’t thought about that particular point.

Truth on this view, then, is relative, is subjective, it is just up to individuals. And, I hope you can see how, when a culture is deeply convinced  of that idea, it’s a complete end around all the arguments. It’s a pulling the rug from underneath the christians. It’s a very clever move, in terms of spiritual warfare.

Notes continue under the video-

Professor Greg Koukl answers the question, “Is truth relative?” at the 2013 Thrive Apologetics Conference, held at Bayside Church in Granite Bay, California.thrivingchurches

…and I think of spiritual warfare in the area of ideas and how ideas are being used to dissuade people. That’s why Paul says that the weapons of warfare are divinely powerful of destruction of forces which are tearing down speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of  God, taking every thought captive through the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 The point here is this is an idea that is a fortress, that a lot of people can’t get past: The idea that christianity claims to be true, but are convinced there is no truth. I wanna deal with that challenge. If you’re a skeptic, I just wanna get you thinking about this. I think that the claim that there is no truth is obviously false, and I think that everybody in this room knows that it’s false.

The definition of what we mean by truth - If belief is what made something true, there would be no difference between belief and make belief. When we say a thing is true, we’re not saying we don’t mean by that that we merely believe it, because we could believe false things. We don’t say that we see it or we have discovered it to be so, because that’s just how you find out whether a thing is true. if we’re just working with the concept of truth, what we mean when we say a thing is true is that our statements match up with the way the world actually is. Or our beliefs match up, or our thoughts match up. The philosophers call this the correspondence theory of truth- or that christianity matches up to the real world. That is the standard definition of what is truth.

Does that kind of truth exist? Is it possible for us to make statements about the world, and have some confidence that our statements actually match up? Can we know things about theology, about ethics? Can you actually know these things? Is it just not a leap of faith or a mere assumption, or a mere assertion? Can we have good reason that this is something we can count on? My answer to all of those things is: Yes. And I wanna show you how that can be the case. (23:00)

How can we know that the claim: There is no truth is false?

and that therefore, the claim that there is truth is a true statement.

  1. First problem: It’s suicidal, self refuting. The first reason that I reject the idea that there is no truth is that it is obviously false. When I go on campus, I am actually mystified  that this has gained such favor among people at university campuses. The minute I want to acquiesce to their view I run into a problem. The problem is that I am being enjoined to believe that it is true, in the sense I just described it and defined it, that there is no truth. Somebody says, “There is no truth.” You say, “Really? Is that true?” You’ve got to tell me what you expect me to do with your statement. Accept or reject. This is the way people are: When they say there is no truth, they don’t see the inherent contradiction in their own statement. I actually had a debate on this issue with Marv Meyer. The debate was titled: Is truth true? Meyer was arguing that there is no truth, and I was arguing with this question: There’s no truth. Is that true? That’s one of the ways to show that the statement “There is no truth” is false, it’s just obviously self refuting, and there’s no way around that. There’s just no way out of that problem.
  2. Second problem: That every single person knows things to be true. And you know that because you took an idea that you had in mind, and you compared it to the world, and you matched it up to see that there was a fit, and when your thoughts matched the way the world is, that’s a truth relation. If we are able to take statements or beliefs and in some measure match them against the world, to see if our beliefs are accurate, well, then we can find out what the truth is there. And, indeed, we do this every single day. In fact, if we could not determine truth about a whole bunch of things, we’d be dead in a day. Our lives depend on our ability to determine whether there is truth or not.

Now, I have just given you 2 reasons to believe that the statement “There is no truth” is false. (34:00 there are still 15 minutes left of the video where Koukl gives 2 examples)

Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort debate atheists

5.5.07CameronComfortBashirSapientO'ConnorByLui...

5.5.07CameronComfortBashirSapientO’ConnorByLuigiNovi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My only note on this video from 2007 is that I am a bit surprised at the tension in some of the atheists, like the questioner who seems to tremble as she yells at Ray about cancer (somewhere near the 80th minute).

Some of the questions that atheists and agnostics have:

  • If there is a Creator for everything, then who made God?
  • On the multiplicity of religions, is the existence of God a projection of a culture?
  • If God is the Creator of all things is evil not also His creation?
  • What about people who never heard the Gospel? What will happen to them?

Questions christians have:

  • If there is no God, where does morality come from?
  • How something comes from nothing- the origin of the universe and evolution
  • What if you’re wrong and God does in fact exist?
  • If God existed why does He allow disease and suffering?

Scientific Proof of God – Antony Flew & Gerald Schroeder

Uploaded by  on Apr 6, 2009

One of Britain’s most resolute unbelievers. A philosopher who for many decades has proclaimed his lack belief in any kind of God. Then late at 2004 Professor Antony Flew declared that he had changed his mind after reading Dr Gerald Schroeder’s books. (Dr Schroeder is a leading Israeli scientist ).

Uploaded by  on Jan 18, 2009

Proof of God. Go beyond Intelligent Design with the scientific case for a Creator. Dr. Gerald Schroeder delivers a powerful scientific case proving that God’s existence is real.

Dr. Schroeder’s argument is so powerful that it influenced one of the worlds leading atheist, Antony Flew to accept the reality of an infinitely intelligent God.
To get the mp3 version of this proof that God exists go herehttp://bit.ly/hmnFMU

Ligonier interviews Ravi Zacharias

Indispensable Apologetics: An Interview with Ravi Zacharias

English: Ravi Zacharias signing books at the F...

Among different topics, Ravi talks about evangelizing Muslims and how to equip young people to remain committed to Christ in a secular world. He also recommends books by

Authors such as C.S. Lewis, John Piper, Tim Keller, yes, and my dear friend R.C. Sproul. But there are many more. One of the greatest books ever written is The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. For devotional studies, Oswald Chambers, and one of my favorites, G. Campbell Morgan, are great choices. We also have a bibliography on our website (www.rzim.org)

 Also on the Ligonier Interview page sidebar you will find links to these excellent articles by Ravi Zacharias:
  • A Reason to Love
  • If the Foundations Be Destroyed
  • Modern Consciousness and Its Cultural Control
  • Postmodernism and Philosophy
  • The Existence of God

Click here for the entire interview-

Indispensable Apologetics: An Interview with Ravi Zacharias

How Immorality Leads to Unbelief

An explanation as to why people become atheists that has a biblical nature through a recap of parts of Dr. Speigel’s book “The making of an atheist”:

Dr James S Spiegel The Making of An Atheist

The following are my notes from the lecture video below:

Dr Speigel rejects the idea that people become atheists or agnostics because there is some kind of ambiguity regarding the evidence that it is not clear in creation that there is a God. He thinks it is abundantly clear, in looking at a few biblical passages. The Bible tells us that it’s clear, so that begs the question: Why are there atheists?

Does Scripture speak to this issue? It does. Paul writes, “18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:18-20

It seems pretty clear there that Paul is saying you don’t have any excuse to be an atheist or even an agnostic. Paul’s not talking about a “flu orbed Christian Trinitarian Theism“, we need special revelation for that.You need Scripture to get a doctrine of the trinity or to know that Jesus is God incarnate. Ah, but you don’t need special revelation to know there’s a God. Even Helen Keller,  who could not hear and she could not see, when her teacher, Annie Sullivan, taught her the name of God, Helen said, “Now I know the name of Him whom I’ve known all along”. So, there’s a general revelation that even she was able to become aware of and somehow become aware of the God behind all of her tactile sensations. How much more so are we without excuse if we see and, or hear all the beauty of creation.

Here’s another passage that speaks to this Ephesians 4:17-18, Paul again says: 17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Before I unpack this, here’s a passage from one of the Gospels. This is Jesus speaking: This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of lightbecause their deeds were evil. John 3:19

Again, you have this terms of behavior impacting belief and attitude. Usually we think about it the other way around. We usually think that because a person loved darkness, they did the evil deeds. Well, it works the other way around too, apparently, according to Jesus and the other biblical writers. John 3:20- Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. Again, deeds preceding this discovery  that whoever lives by the truth will come into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what has been done has been done in the sight of God.

This is the core claim of my book “The making of an atheist”, is that unbelief, when it comes to God, unbelief is the consequence of disobedience. It is a kind of rebellion that results in atheism. And, to borrow a theme that Alvin Plantinga has been developing in recent years, particularly in his book “Warranted Christian Belief“, it is a contemporary philosophical classic. He talks about the cognitive consequences of sin, you know the fact that sin has an effect on the body, we get sick and we die. The fact that human beings die a death at all is a consequence of sin. But, we don’t immediately think of the effect of sin on the mind, the so called noetic effects of sin, but sin has had an assault on or minds as well. It corrupts us cognitively. It screws up the way we think and this is especially the case when it comes to moral and spiritual matters.

Plantinga also talks about something the reformer John Calvin talks about in the Institutes of the Christian Religion. That is the “sense of the divine”, we’re all born with a kind of innate sense or awareness of God. I am sure a lot of you are parents and some of you with small children are going through this right now, kind of introducing them to the very idea of God, telling the Bible stories, starting when they are very young. It certainly (also) bears out the idea that if we are image bearers of God that we would have a special awareness of God.

But, this is something that like all of our cognitive abilities it can be damaged, it can be corrupted, it can be warped. And it can be undermined by various factors, not the least of which is indulgence in sin. And so, all of the clear evidence for God and creation when we sin and we indulge over and over in certain sins and we are unrepentant, we’re going to be less likely to perceive the clear evidence for God because our sense of the divine has been dampened and tampered.

And, so I will explore some of the psychological research to unpack this thesis and there is a very provocative claim that was made by a psychologist, a former atheist Dr. Paul Vitz and other former atheists I have had discussions with, colleagues of mine at Taylor, I have asked if this tailors to their experience and I haven’t met anyone that said “No”.  Paul Vitz says that there is a unique dynamic here, or a kind of correlation between atheistic belief or attitude and a certain broken relationship with his father. He is really taking the cue from Feuerbach and Freud. Freud is well known for trying to reduce religious belief and belief in God, to try and explain it away in a cosmic projection of one’s feelings or thoughts about one’s father. But could it be that it’s actually atheists who are making sort of projections to the absence of God because of a significantly broken father relationship? He calls it a defective father hypothesis. Atheism is precipitated by broken relationships with fathers. One needs the nuance to be very careful here. He is not saying, he makes it clear over and over in his book. He is not saying that anyone who has a broken father relationship is going to be an atheist. But rather, those who are atheist, and particularly the more militant sorts, in every one of those cases, apparently there is some sort of broken relationship with the father either because the father died, the father was abusive, the father left home, some significant break. And the reason he comes to this conclusion, he looks at dozens of major atheists in the modern period, all the way up to the 20th century and in every case- Hume, Feuerbach, Camu, Dewey, Russell, Freud, Marx- all of these guys, either their dad died when they were very young or their dad left or was extremely abusive, everyone of them.

And then as a kind of control he looks at the major theists, in particular, Christian theists of the period and everyone of them had a decent father relationship or if their dad did die, there was a really strong, positive male father figure in their life. And again, this is not saying that if you have a defective father it’s guaranteed or that it’s even likely that you’re going to be guaranteed that you will be an atheist. But, rather that if anyone is an atheist, then there is some sort of causal connection with a defective father situation. At least food for thought; it’s a very interesting thesis.

Then, there is Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals”. It, too is very provocative. He looks at a number of intellectuals in the modern period, notes that in so many cases where you have scholars that are often presented as authorities on how human beings should live, so many of them were absolutely debauched in their personal lives, from Russo, to Shelley, to Ibsen, to Hemingway that their philosophies, their moral ideals were in so many ways attempts to kind of try to rationalize their own behavior. E. Michael Jones said the same things in degenerate moderns. He picks up where Johnson leaves off. The books are important studies of some of the leading figures in western thought. Even as disturbing as they are, in reading both of these books I felt almost dirtied learning about the person and the lives of these people, but it helps you understand why their thinking is so skewed on so many issues that they researched and wrote upon. It’s the whole range: political, philosophers, poets, novelists, theologians, psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists like Margaret Mead, etc.

So the lesson here is that what appears to be rational inquiry may actually be rationalization of one’s own bad behavior. Again, provocative and even controversial idea, but I really think that their data and their arguments are sound and it certainly helps to fill out this biblical model of atheism, or even more generally, skepticism about the existence of God as being the result of bad behavior.

William James is my all time favorite philosopher. He is an American pragmatist, late 19th, early 20th century and he wrote the classic “Varieties of religious experience”. You wanna read something that’s scholarly, but riveting? It will keep you up, it’s a page turner. He’s got all these accounts of people who have had these amazing mystical experiences, not just within the Christian tradition, but in others as well. This guy was open minded because he came to believe very fervently (that) there had to be some kind of supernatural reality that Christianity and other religions are informed by.

There’s another essay he wrote called “The will to believe”, where he argues that in many cases, our beliefs are the result of a kind of willing, active desire. In many cases, people don’t arrive at their beliefs as a result of dispassionate review of the evidence, it’s a result of willful choice and this can be on the positive side or on the negative side.

How is it that atheists become so obstinate? Some are more open minded, but others don’t want to take seriously or engage with the evidence  in a fair minded way. Here I borrow from philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn and his idea that we all are operating in light of theoretical paradigms or models, and I say worldview. He is the one that introduced the concept of paradigm into the now popular parlance, but this was a strictly philosophical term up until the 1980′s. His idea is that scientists always view their data through their theoretical paradigm and so they are blind to evidence  that might undermine their theory. And this is why theoretical paradigms hold on so long and why, in spite of counter evidence, old paradigms die hard because people are passionate and emotional and not just hawk like totally objective scientists.

Kuhn talks about this: you can get hardened into a paradigm where you are really blind to counter evidence and I call this paradigm induced blindness. I am not saying it just applies to the atheists either; it applies to the marxist, it applies to the hindu, it applies to the Christian and everybody else. I tell my students I am closed minded on at least the creedal points. In fact, at this point in my worldview career I can’t even imagine a world without God; I can’t even imagine life without Jesus as Lord and without Him having risen from the dead. So, I suppose my mind is closed on those things too. I think that’s paradigm induced insight.

On self deception – there’s a lot of interesting research that’s been done on this phenomena and there’s a number of different paradigm theories on models of self deception. The one that I find most convincing is the one that says that self deception is a kind of motivated bias where someone believes that in some sense they know it isn’t true because they have a motivated bias against the truth. So a classic example of this would be the mother or the father whose son or daughter has been arrested for dealing drugs, not for the first time, but for the 3rd or 4th time, and they’re still saying,”Oh, it’s just the crows they’re running with, the drugs were planted in the car again”. You would say that he or she is self deceived; they have a motivated bias to believe their son or daughter is innocent. Who wants their kid to be guilty of such a thing? But this can apply to a level of worldview and if you are so devoutly indulged in a sinful lifestyle, whether it’s sexual or otherwise, they would not want to give an account to a God who exists.

The positive side of all that is, if we obey as Christians and live virtuously, we will experience a kind of cognitive benefit. And the Scriptures, particularly in the Wisdom literature refer to the fact that, as we obey God He will grant us wisdom and understanding. That God grants wisdom and understanding to the simple. This is just a fulfillment of the biblical promise that if you obey God He grants understanding and insight. Even Jesus says, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will (and here’s the cognitive fit) find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak of my own”, and there are other passages that point in this direction. As you read Scripture, keep an eye out for their recurrent theme that obedience brings insight and understanding, cognitive benefits.

Lastly, if you are a theist, you have a right to complain to God about things that go wrong and Psalms are full of them. We are blessed with the privileges to ask, “Why o Lord?…is this happening in my life” and we have the privilege to thank Him for all the beauty and the wonder of nature and that’s something the atheist doesn’t have, but can have, of course, if they come to God and repent and find forgiveness in Him.

Why is there no visible proof of God ? Here’s one opinion

Why is there no visible proof of God?

People believe that the fact that God hides (or can’t be seen) shows either that God doesn’t exist or He doesn’t love us enough to make Himself known to us in order to prevent us from going to hell.

Published on Apr 2, 2012 by 

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