Prove God

I'm occasionally asked if it's possible to "prove God", my usual response is to point to one or more of the proofs that have been offered for God's existence and to ask the questioner to demonstrate why those proofs fail.   So far, I've yet to have anyone even make an attempt to do so.

But, a couple of posts over at the Wintery Knight blog raise a different question.

Is proving atheism wrong a substitute for proving that God exists?  

At this point, I'm not suggesting anything other than theism.

https://winteryknight.com/2019/04/26/how-the-wmap-satellite-confirmed-nucleosynthesis-predictions-and-falsified-atheism-7/



https://winteryknight.com/2019/04/25/how-the-discovery-of-the-cosmic-microwave-background-radiation-falsified-atheism-6/

I'm not suggesting that these scientific discoveries prove atheism false, but I'm asking the question "If atheism is proven false then aren't we left with theism?".

“To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible is offensive assumes if there is a God he wouldn't have any views that upset you.”

“As A.W Pink once put it "To think you were never opposed to this GOD WHO made you is to imagine a GOD of your own."

How is allowing non citizens to vote not encouraging foreign interference in our elections?

Sometimes

I was really impressed by the number of people on social media who vehemently disagree with Rachel Held Evans, who are front and center praying for her during her health crisis.

Food for thought

"As Christians, our goal is not to avoid being like the big bad “other Christians,” but to strive to be like Christ Himself. This is one of the advantages to having an Incarnate God. He went around acting and speaking and teaching and generally functioning in our realm, thereby giving us a model to follow. This is the model of a loving and merciful man, and also a man of perfect virtue who fought against the forces of evil, condemned sin, defended his Father in Heaven with sometimes violent force, spoke truth, and eventually laid down His life for those He loved (which would be all of us).
[…]This is what it means to believe in Christ. Not just to believe that He existed, but to believe that Christ is Truth itself, and that everything He said and did was totally and absolutely and irreversibly true forever and always. Many Christians today — not only the ones in the video, but millions alongside them — seem to think we can rightly claim to have “faith” in Jesus or a “relationship” with Him while still categorically denying much of His Word. This is a ridiculous proposition. We can’t declare, in one breath, that Christ is Lord, and in the next suggest that maybe God got it wrong on this or that point. Well, we can make that declaration, but we expose our belief as fraudulent and self-serving. We worship a God we either invented in our heads, which is a false idol, or a God who is fallible, which is a false idol."

Video

I keep seeing the video of one girl beating the crap out of another girl who’s unable to get out of her desk and run away or fight back.   While it’s horrific, and I’m sure there will be punishment, I can’t help but wonder about those other students who sat and watched/filmed.

I’m guessing there were boysyoung men in that classroom, who sat and did nothing.   One wonders if being told that masculinity is “toxic” and that violence is bad had anything to do with it.  Maybe all the boys were white and the girl was a POC, and they were afraid they’d be branded racist.

Most of all what happened to that old fashioned masculine ideal that men should protect those in need of protection?

I know we were raised with “don’t hit girls”, but hitting wouldn’t have been necessary to protect the defenseless victim.  Besides, gender is a BS social construct anyway and girls are now equal to boys in the being hit department, aren’t they?

The Sermon on the Mount

We've spent the last few months going through the Sermon on the Mount, and I've noticed that there's much more there than a lot of people like to admit.  It's one of the longest orations by Jesus to be recorded, which probably means that it has some value to us.   


I've noticed that progressive christians, atheist christians, and those who don't actually claim to be christians, tend to really like the Sermon on the Mount.   Or at least, they really like parts of the Sermon on the Mount.  " Blessed are the peacemakers.", love that.  "Blessed are the poor.", love that too.   Although of you add "in spirit" behind "poor", the love goes away.   They'll cling tightly to "Don't judge others.", even as they ignore the following verses that talk about how we are to judge.

Yet it's the same folx who claim that "The Bible isn't a rulebook", or similar things.   How then do we ignore the fact that there are more that 60 commandments (rules) in the SOTM?   How do we reconcile "All roads lead to God" with "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."   For that matter how do we reconcile "leads to destruction" with those who embrace a universal salvation?

I've asked people how does one parse out a passage that is obviously one coherent narrative and cherry pick out only the parts that align with the worldview of the picker?  I've never gotten a good answer.

For example, why would the text demand that the word "poor" be exclusively translated to mean only the materially poor?  Why should any other reasonable translation be automatically excluded?    By the same token why would you assign a meaning to "destruction" that means something less than destruction?

Personally, I've learned quite a bit and I hope others dig deeper as well.

Multiples

I guess Dan has been in multiple discussions of reparations, because his recent post doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to the thread he bailed on here.

I'll simply point out, that if he is referring to the thread, I guess he feels it's appropriate to make thinly veiled accusations about people who he has banned from his blog.

It's interesting that he bailed on the conversation here, where his comments are freely published, to re locate it (and the soon to follow personal attacks by his pet troll), to a place where he censors disagreement.

As I said, If I'm going to listen to someone about reparations, I'll take Dan's advice and listen to Thomas Sowell, instead of Dan.

What if all of the hoopla over this massive increase in "hate crimes" isn't actually an accurate statement of the way things really are?

Apparently, some data might suggest that it's not.

The (clearly racist, Trump loving, KKK supporting) Detroit News suggests that data suggests that the "hate crime' epidemic might be over blown.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/nolan-finley/2019/04/07/finley-americas-hate-crime-surge-hoax/3374192002/

The story cites the research and data compiled by (again, a racist Trump loving Klan supporter) professor named Will Reilly.

The truth, edited

I embrace Truth.   Unlike people who share political philosophies,worldview, theological perspectives, and opinions with Dan, I acknowledge the existence of transcendent Truth.  I acknowledge that Jesus is The Truth.   I even embrace Truth when it contradicts my opinions and prejudices.

What I have a problem with is faux truth.  With lies masquerading as truth.  With people who claim to speak truth, yet speak from a position of ignorance.

Truth is a wonderful thing, lies and personal attacks pretending to be truth, not so much.

Tragedy

We had a horrible tragedy up here the other day, that could have been much worse.  I young boy was thrown off a third story balcony at a well known local mall.  Given the knee jerk reaction to the injury of some innocent children, I feel like some response is necessary.  Some call to action.   I feel like something should be banned, or we need protests and chanting?   But what? What should be banned?

The perpetrator was a young African American man, so we can’t ban all young African American men.
We clearly can’t ban malls, it’s simply impractical and probably impinges on someone’s private property rights.
It seems pointless to ban balconies or multi story buildings.
Perhaps we could ban escalators.

Or perhaps we could acknowledge that fallen sinful humans engage in acts which mystify and baffle most of us.  That the ultimate answer is not banning things or people, but in following Jesus.

Following Jesus doesn’t look good on social media, it’s not going to make you popular, it’s not as visceral as a good protest, it certainly doesn’t allow as much room to demonize your opponents , but it’s still the best path.

2020

Two things about the 2020 DFL presidential field amuse me.

The old, white, millionaire is one of the front runners and another creepy, old, white, millionaire is leading in polls even though he’s not officially in yet.

Did the DFL learn nothing from the GOP in 2016?   18 is too many primary candidates, it’s going to be carnage.


Bonus

Old, socialist, white, multimillionaire, says everyone can be a multimillionaire through capitalism.

Beto

Beto, the Irish Hispanic, thinks that all white people should pay reparations to black communities for slavery.

Based on my research, I’m pretty positive that the only branch of my family that was in the US prior to slavery being outlawed, was Cherokee.  

That makes all kind of sense.   I’m sure my dad who grew upon a farm in the depression, earned his college in Korea, and started his own company would be glad to know about all the privilege he had.

What a bunch of crap.

More silence from the left

Joe Biden, engages in creepy inappropriate touching of multiple women.
Brunei begins stoning homosexuals.
Twitter screws around with groups/causes/people they don"t agree with.
AOC says more stupid/false things.