Essay – Page 4 – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

The Ocean Sunrise and Speculation

Question

What do people who believe the earth is flat or people who believe natural processes can form stars or people who believe that computers are intelligent have in common?

Answer

None of them have benefitted much from looking at a sunrise over a large body of water.

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Flat Earth

Look at the sun on the horizon.

Notice how half of the sun is already visible on the horizon

The sun reveals its full diameter when it is only half-way above the horizon. Either the sun is looping the earth or the earth is turning. One thing is sure: the sun is not floating above a flat earth so far away that it vanishes into a dot in the distant sky at night only to grow bigger as it becomes visible in the morning.

But doesn’t Isaiah 40:22 talk about the Lord sitting above the “circle” of the earth?

We live in a three dimensional world, not a two dimensional one. If the earth were flat like a coin, it would only appear as a circle if we were looking directly at it from above. As we moved to the side, the coin would take on an oval shape. When we reached the edge, the coin would look like a line with only its edge visible.

However, looking at a sphere, from any direction, we would always see it as a circle just as we see the moon and the sun in the sky as circles. By describing the earth as a “circle”, which is how it would look from any perspective, Isaiah was describing the earth as a sphere.

I know there are people who try to deceive us with fake photographs. That’s why I did NOT ask you to look at the photo, but at the sun itself as it rises above the horizon.

As the sun rises for us there are people in other time zones. You may even know some of them. Give them a call. Ask them to describe where they see the sun in the sky as you are watching it rise. Where would those people have to be if the earth were flat?

For those who think the Bible erroneously teaches that the earth is flat, see James Patrick Holding’s response to Paul H. Seely. You will need to answer Holdings objections if you agree with Seely. This recommendation to watch a sunrise would only benefit those who themselves believe that the earth is flat based on the teachings of people like Dean Odle.

Astrophysics

Look at the surface of the water.

Notice that we see a surface on the water because of hydrostatic equilibrium

Gravity pulls water to the earth, but gravity is not so strong that water keeps falling toward the center of the earth. At some point it stops. We get a surface for the water when outward pressure balances inward gravity to keep the water in a state of hydrostatic equilibrium. What is happening is similar to what happens in a stable star where gravity and pressure are also in balance.

But what if all we have are gas clouds without any stars? Can we get stars from gas clouds? Can gravity pull the gas clouds together so tightly that nuclear fusion lights up a cluster of stars?

Gravity by itself cannot overcome the hydrostatic equilibrium between itself and the pressure pushing out on the cloud. If it could, it would be like gravity suddenly taking the surface of the water in front of us and collapsing it toward the center of the earth.

But what about dark matter which would increase the force of gravity?

Physicists describe the patterns of repeatable processes. They are not writers of fairy tales sprinkled with pixie dust to make their stories plausible. If we believed that our theory required dark matter, we would have to produce that dark pixie dust or admit that the theory had been falsified and needed to be replaced with a new one.

At least, that is how science is supposed to advance. Make an hypothesis. If it fails, make a new hypothesis. Don’t add in unfalsifiable pixie dust just to keep a dead hypothesis afloat.

As an aside, Genesis 1 provides a better explanation for why there are stars in the sky than any amount of physical theorizing could since physical theory can’t deal with life, mind or the spirit without reducing them to mindless matter.

But I’m a neutral scientist! I don’t believe in the Bible!

If you say things like that, then you only show that you are self-deluded in your belief that you’re a neutral scientist.

While at the beach notice with gratitude how gravity and pressure are balanced to give the water a surface that gravity by itself cannot overcome.

After reading Michael Richmond’s description of how the “careful balance between gas pressure pushing outward, and gravitational force pulling inward” in a stable star can be broken, I am amazed that there are any stars out there that haven’t already blown up.

Simulation Theory

Look at this photo of the sunrise.

Even those birds are more aware of the sunrise than my phone is which recorded the picture

It is a digital file showing an image of the sunrise with some seagulls. It is neither the sunrise nor is it those birds. It is only data.

The computer presenting the image for me is neither conscious nor intelligent. It only responds to data or environmental changes according to its programming. Here, it is programmed to show me the image.

But computers can behave so much like people that they can fool you!

Since you know that computers can be used to deceive, be cautious when people send you information through them. Just because someone tells you that a computer is a mind or that it is intelligent in some artificial way does not make it so.

Almost 45 years ago John Searle published the Chinese room argument undermining artificial intelligence. Back then few people (maybe no one for all I can remember) had a laptop or a mobile phone. We might have been fooled by simulation theories or movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey—back then, but today such devices are so common that no one should see them as more than mindless machines.

The source of any problems with computers rests with people who deceptively use them to manipulate others. By contrast, when someone provides arguments exposing those deceptions, those very same computers become valuable tools providing us with access to the information that deceivers don’t want us to see.

To get a few of the references for this post I used search engines. It took time to come up with something interesting, but I was asking questions like why haven’t all the stars blown up by now. Even with my poor questions and even with search engines possibly programmed to lead me astray, I found most of what I wanted in minutes. That computers could help me with this search doesn’t mean they are intelligent or smart. It only means that they and the databases supporting them are effective, like hammers, to help me get a job that I wanted to do (not something they wanted to do) done.

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If you believe the earth is flat or if you believe that gas clouds can be compressed by gravity to the point where they start shining on their own or if you believe that computers are minds, then spend a weekend at the beach. Take a few pictures of the sun rising above the horizon with birds flying over the surface of the water.

Bring a Bible along, perhaps as an app on your phone, to help you understand what you are looking at.

Proverbs 26:4-5 KJV
4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

Catastrophic Plate Tectonics and the Genesis Flood

Sarah Peterson presented for Logos Research Associates an explanation of the geology of western North America using catastrophic plate tectonics (CPT) informed by the Genesis flood.

CPT shows that a global catastrophe occurred which formed the geology of western North America. No breathing creature would have survived such a catastrophe without miraculous intervention. Genesis tells the miraculous side of the story.

The Miraculous and Modern Unbelief

There is no such thing as a Christian worldview that rejects the miraculous.
Daniel Kolenda (video 9 in his series on cessationism at 1:05:19)

Most Christians would agree with Kolenda until one gets specific about what counts as a miraculous event. There are two forms of Christian unbelief which sometimes act as polar opposites.

Unbelief in the Bible as history
The events reported in Genesis 1-11—the Creation, the Fall, the genealogies, the Global Flood and the the Babel Dispersion—really happened. When you hear a Christian try to allegorize these events away because they are embarrassed by them, you are witnessing unbelief no matter how committed that Christian is to the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.
Unbelief in the ongoing miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit
When you hear Christians argue that the gifts of the Spirit no longer occur today you are witnessing unbelief no matter how committed that Christian is to the events in Genesis 1-11. Such unbelief should not be confused with an appropriate discernment when testimonies are given: each reported claim of a miracle, whether a healing or a prophecy or whatever, must be tested. The unbelief that is a problem here is the total rejection, in advance, of all modern miraculous testimonies.

A Pentecostal or Catholic Charismatic can not get by with mere belief in the continuation of the miraculous gifts without also accepting Genesis 1-11 as history that really happened. A Reformed Protestant can not get by with mere belief in Genesis 1-11 without also believing in Acts and Paul’s presentation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in his letters as ongoing today.

They go together. They are both biblical. Reject any of this and the Christian who does so undermines belief for himself and for others in the New Testament.

The rejection of the miraculous, either as unbelief in Biblical history or as unbelief in the ongoing miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, is grounded in an atheistic worldview that gullibly trusts in its own rationalized construction of the so-called natural world. Modern unbelief pits a depersonalized and dying natural world against a wondrous reality given to us through its miraculous Creation.

One way to counter this is to reject the construct of the natural world except as a convenient, useful fiction, a crude approximation to reality that allows one to build deterministic, human technology. That is its only value. Then we can look at reality with continual childlike wonder. It really is all miraculous. It is all wonderful.

At the same time we need to be wary of the serpent, that lover of death and deception, even though, thanks to the Resurrection of Jesus, it has been defeated. There are liars still desiring to manipulate or fool others as Ananias and Saphira tried to do. One of the wonderful, miraculous gifts of the Spirit that is still with us today is our ability to discern the truth as Peter did long ago should we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us.

Entropy, Evolution, Devolution, Creation

Entropy

Change leads to decay which can be described as entropy. With real natural processes doing their thing, things run down. They don’t run up.

Erosion washes the landscape into the oceans. People grow old and die. Species undergo mutational meltdown leading to extinction. Even stars blow up.

The universe is overrun with death at all levels. Death through disobedience is what the fall in Genesis 3 is all about. If you want to own the universe without the Lord you will have to hold it together all by yourself. Entropy is your enemy.

Evolution

Although entropy is all around us, what we don’t see is evolution (except in the imaginations of some biologists). We don’t see stuff becoming more complex through some natural process before the real natural processes leading to entropy, decay and death expose the fictitious ones as fantasies.

We don’t see pond scum turn into fish, dogs or dragons. Various kinds of living creatures do go extinct because they suffer genetic entropy which leads to mutational meltdown. Dinosaurs (better known in the past as “dragons”) simply died off. They did not evolve into chickens or tooth fairies. They went extinct and some of them left their remains as fossils. Indeed, some of those fossils still contain soft tissue showing that all of this happened not very long ago giving evolutionary magic no time at all to work.

In a similar way we don’t see stars form out of gas clouds (except in the imaginations of some astronomers). They do blow up. Entropy is real; evolution is not.

Devolution

If evolution didn’t happen, what about devolution, the flip side of evolution? If there are no natural processes for evolution (except in the imaginations of evolutionists), then there would be no mechanisms for devolution either. Things just run down, decay, blow up, erode or die. They don’t devolve.

We don’t see dinosaurs turn into pond scum. Pond scum, already present, might eat a dead dinosaur, but dinosaurs don’t devolve into pond scum. Dragons (aka “dinosaurs”) simply died off. They did not transition into an evolutionary biologist’s tooth fairy.

Creation

We do see the effects of creation. We see stars. We see the world around us. We experience ourselves. How do we know the world was “created”? God told us so in Genesis 1.

Someone might ask, “Are you asking me to believe the Bible?”

Sure. Why not? It is the best explanation for what we see around us and why we are here. It is more plausible than the pseudoscientific magic tricks offered in its place to waste our lives.

Conclusion

If you’re an atheist thinking you can overcome entropy, then get off your butt and do so. Stars are exploding all over the universe. What are you waiting for? Species have or will undergo mutational meltdown. Follow the serpent’s lead and hold this universe together all by yourself.

Or, smarten up. Realize that the Lord loves you, even you. He wants none to perish. Stop wasting your life on fantasies.

If you’re a Christian with a pastor, with a Bible school teacher or with a seminary professor promoting the pseudoscience of people like Hugh Ross or the big bang idolatry of people like William Lane Craig, find a real church. Find a real Bible school. Find a real seminary. God has a plan for your life. Follow His lead, not the lead of rebellious men.

If you’re into New Age spirituality, how has that sentimental nonsense been treating you? Gaia does not exist. Neither does the tooth fairy. The devil, on the other hand, does. The only thing the devil wants to do is to get you to waste (that is, abort) your own life. This present life is shorter than you think. Only the real thing, only Jesus, is worth your attention. He won’t lead you astray. Thank Him. Praise Him. You will never be the same again.

No matter who you are, make sure you are on board before the last days end and the Lord shuts the door.

The Speed of Light, Simultaneity and Genesis

Jason Lisle made some amazing predictions about the data that would come back from the James Webb Space Telescope.

On January 21, 2022, he made his predictions less than a month after the mission launched on December 25, 2021. In July the results began coming in. On September 9, 2022, he announced that his predictions were confirmed.

Essentially, he predicted that there would be more galaxies at further redshifts than anticipated. He predicted that the composition of the stars would contain heavier elements than expected. He also predicted that scientists would claim that stellar evolution went further into the past than they previously thought.

Lisle’s predictions were not randomly contrary to what many scientists expected to see. They were grounded on Hans Reichenbach’s conventionality of simultaneity thesis for relativity theory and Genesis 1.

Reichenbach’s thesis claimed that the constant speed of light posited by relativity theory was best represented by the two-way speed of light, not its one-way speed. No one can measure the one-way speed of light given relativity since two clocks can’t be kept synchronized when one of them moves away from the other. However, the two-way, round-trip speed of light could be measured with a single clock and a mirror.

It is that round-trip speed, the only measurable speed, that is the constant called the speed of light. That means that the speed of light going to the mirror does not have to be the speed of light coming back. So, for example, the speed of light going from the earth to a galaxy 13.8 billion round-trip light years away from the earth could go at half the round-trip speed on the way out taking 27.6 billion years to get there, but come back almost instantly on the return trip. The total distance traveled would be the distance to the galaxy (13.8 billion light years taking 27.6 billion years) plus the distance back (13.8 billion light years taking 0 years) for a total of 27.6 billion light years travelled in 27.6 billion years.

Because of Reichenbach’s thesis what we see in those space telescopes may be happening right now, not billions of years ago. From relativity theory alone, properly using the round-trip speed of light, one cannot tell.

If light from those distant galaxies arrived on Earth almost instantaneously then what we would be seeing would be how those galaxies actually look today. Such galaxies would not be expected to show any hypothesized stellar evolution and, indeed, they don’t. Their light shows heavier elements than lithium, significantly oxygen which with hydrogen are the elements of the water molecule (see Genesis 1:2, 6-8). Their size is too large and orderly. They are too close to that God-surrogate, the big bang.

But if the speed of light incoming from space were nearly instantaneous that would mean that the Earth is very, very, very, very special.

I have wondered if one could save the big bang by acknowledging as nearly instantaneous the speed of the incoming light to the earth. All of that hypothesized stellar evolution would no longer have to be there. However, that would likely be too much for secularists (or even Christians trapped by the charm of the big bang’s unbiblical beginning) to pay. They would no longer be able to assert how old the universe was. They would no longer be able to say that the Earth is just some insignificant blue dot lost in space. Rather they would be admitting that such light were specifically aimed toward the earth. And although it might save the big bang in the eyes of its followers it would demote it to an unfalsifiable, pseudo-scientific myth. So, I guess that wouldn’t save it after all.

Jason Lisle could make his predictions with confidence not only because he accepted Reichenbach’s conventionality of simultaneity thesis, but also because Genesis 1:14-19 told him that the heavens were set there “to give light upon the earth”. And, as soon as God spoke the heavens into existence, “it was so”. When the heavenly lights reached the earth, they did what they were told to do that very day, that very moment, nearly instantaneously.

Genesis 1:14-19 KJV
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Genesis 1:2, 6-8 KJV
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
…
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

The Liar: Paradox or Deception

In the 19th century logicians simulated, and thereby simplified, the real world understanding of truth by assigning true/false (one/zero) values to logical connectives in truth tables. Although this was ingenious, the ancient liar paradox remained to haunt the simulation.

The liar paradox gets started by assuming the existence of a Liar who always lies. It immediately reaches its punchline by having that Liar assert as true: This statement is false.

What was forgotten in modern attempts to sanitize the liar was that a truth table only discerns between true and false, one and zero, not between truth and lie. The real world ethical understanding of truth gets covered by a coat of white paint in modern logic. Even in the ancient paradox, the ethical problem got a white-wash as well because a real world deceiver is worse than this hypothetical Liar. A real world deceiver is even more deceptive because he doesn’t always lie.

There’s an older story than the Greek one about the Liar. In Genesis 3, we read about the first deception with death being its real world consequence.

There are many today who see themselves as too “rational” to believe that the deception and fall as mentioned in Genesis 3 actually happened. I suspect that their belief in modern rationality has led them to prefer reality white-washed into truth tables containing only ones and zeros. With a truth table it is easy to forget that a falsehood is the word of a lying deceiver. Speaking such deception is an act of evil, not just a zero in a computer program.

A solution to the Liar paradox would be to reject the Liar without taking seriously anything he had to say. This is what people do in the real world. When they hear lies, they reject the liars. They don’t fret about the English language’s ability to express garbage. People are free to lie. The structure of language itself doesn’t stop them.

If falsehood is a lying deception, what then is truth? The truth has been white-washed as well. We find it easier today to think of truth as an “it”. But if one wants to recover the real world significance of falsehood as deception, as I do, then truth would have to be ethical as well.

Only a living person can be ethical. Only an ethical person can show others through His true words the way to life. Such a Person could be seen as being the truth.

It’s Not Just Dinosaurs Anymore

I was aware that soft tissue had been found in dinosaur fossils.

What I didn’t realize until watching this 11 minute video is that soft tissue has now been found all over the fossil record including tissue from a worm that allegedly lived over half a billion years ago.

What can I conclude from this?

Well, for one thing, when I told my aunt decades ago that chickens came from dinosaurs, I was wrong. The only things that come from dinosaurs are more dinosaurs.

Another conclusion I can safely make is that the earth isn’t anywhere near as old as “scientists” claim it to be.

The Trinity and First Order Logic with Identity

In Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought Vern Poythress attempted to write a textbook on western logic from a Christian perspective. Although he discussed other logics, his main focus was on justifying first order logic with identity (FOL⁼) as a platonic reflection of “God’s logic” and, because of that, personal and loving.

This reflection bridges the Creator-creature distinction. However, when he sets up this reflection between FOL⁼ and “God’s logic” he assumes that FOL⁼ is not just another example of man’s desire for autonomy from God. This is where he makes a mistake.

To see why this characterization of FOL⁼ is problematic, consider that Poythress would not want to describe the Tower of Babel as a reflection of “God’s tower”. Because the Tower of Babel is an example of man’s desire for autonomy from God, it should not reflect anything from God.

Poythress knows that almost no one, Christian and non-Christian alike, thinks FOL⁼ is personal in any way. To counter this anticipated objection, he accuses those who might reject his argument as being “massively guilty” of “idolatry”. For example, consider this comment about guilt and idolatry on page 84:

Christians too have become massively guilty by being captive to the idolatry in which logic is regarded as impersonal. Within this captivity we take for granted the benefits and beauties of rationality for which we should be filled with gratitude and praise to God.

By committing to FOL⁼ Poythress blinds himself to seeing it as another attempt by man to gain autonomy from God. Given that commitment, perhaps better described as compromise, he now has to defend FOL⁼ even when it attacks the Trinity. We will see how that attack goes next.

FOL⁼ is Non-Trinitarian

If I assume the Trinity in FOL⁼, I can derive a contradiction using rules for manipulating equality. Here is how such a proof might look:

(1) Assume the Father is God.
(2) Assume the Son is God.
(3) Assume the Father is not the Son.
(4) Derive from (2) that God is the Son using symmetry.
(5) Derive from (1) and (4) that the Father is the Son using transitivity.
(6) Derive a contradiction from (3) and (5).

Note that the above is a presuppositional argument that could be used by an atheist to undermine belief in the Trinitarian God. The atheist assumes the Trinity since it would be my admitted presupposition. Then he uses FOL⁼ to derive a contradiction. Finally, the atheist insists that I reject my belief because it is irrational.

Since FOL⁼ forces me to reject the Trinity (or else reject parts of FOL⁼ itself), I can characterize any mathematical formalization of this logic as non-Trinitarian. A non-Trinitarian logic does not “reflect” the Trinitarian God.

Poythress is aware of the contradiction, but he tries to get around it by invoking “mystery”. He writes on page 67:

The Bible also teaches that God is one God, in three persons. How do we understand how these things can be? Do these mysteries violate the laws of logic? Though there is mystery here for us as creatures, there is no mystery for God the Creator. If logic is ultimately an aspect of God’s mind; what for us is a mystery is in full harmony with the logic that is in God.

Call it what you like, a “mystery” is nothing more than a contradiction in FOL⁼. In the context of FOL⁼, the laws of logic are the laws of derivation in FOL⁼. Accepting a contradiction as true would violate the laws of FOL⁼, hence the laws of logic.

How does one get around this? Easy. Don’t take FOL⁼ so seriously. Don’t commit yourself to it the way Poythress does. Don’t think it is neutral ground upon which you can safely compromise. Recall that FOL⁼ is a work of man. It is not a work of God. It can change just as any other man-made philosophy or scientific theory can change when there is something wrong with it.

And, besides, as I will point out next, theologians seeking to rationalize the Trinity are not the only ones who have problems with FOL⁼.

There Are Alternatives to FOL⁼

CONSTRUCTIVIST LOGICS

Although FOL⁼ cannot derive the Trinity it can derive the existence of sets whose cardinalities represent ever increasing transfinite numbers. The logical rules used to derive these sets are the same as those used to reject the Trinity: (1) assume the contrary to what you want to show, (2) derive a contradiction, and (3) given that contradiction, reject the unwelcome assumption as false.

Poythress approves of these set theoretic proofs in part E2. They derive a “ladder” or sequence of sets with each set having a strictly greater infinite cardinality than the one below it. He remarks on page 630,

The ladders reflect the glory of God, who is transcendent. They reflect the original imaging and creativity in the Father eternally begetting the Son.

Rather than seeing these sets as representing an “imitative transcendence” (page 630), Poythress should have warned the reader that such derivations can also be viewed as a red flag that something is wrong with FOL⁼ especially given that FOL⁼ rejects the Trinity.

Constructivists are mathematicians who want nothing to do with these ladders. They see the red flags waving. One of the logics they have created is intuitionistic logic. This logic modifies FOL⁼ to prevent the derivation of such infinite sets.

Although constructivist logics won’t help us rationalize the Trinity they do demonstrate that FOL⁼ is not the only game in town.

QUANTUM LOGICS

FOL⁼ doesn’t handle quantum particles any better than it handles the Trinity. Absolute identity in FOL⁼ requires that we can tell the difference between individual members of a domain, the set of elements which FOL⁼ will range over.

Absolute identity is defined as A = B if and only if all properties of A are also properties of B and all properties of B are also properties of A. A and B are identical because they are indiscernible based on checking all of their properties. Such discernment can’t be done with quantum particles. To get around that some have proposed quantum logics as a modification of FOL⁼.

Although the statistical solutions quantum logics provide don’t help rationalize the Trinity they do point to absolute identity as the problem with FOL⁼ that those attempting to rationalize the Trinity have to face. They also help us see that rationalizing physical reality in FOL⁼ is as problematic as rationalizing the Trinity.

RELATIVE IDENTITY LOGICS

P.T. Geach offered relative identity as an alternative to absolute identity to correct the problem of the falsification of the Trinity in FOL⁼.

Daniel Molto, who continues Geach’s work in support of the consistency of the doctrine of the Trinity, drew the following conclusion in “Relativizing identity” (page 9):

Most actual languages can express no universally reﬂexive relation that satisﬁes the Indiscernibility of Identity without contradiction.

We now have the possibility of a logic that can rationalize the Trinity. This blocks the atheist’s objection to Christianity.

Taking FOL⁼ Too Seriously

One of the dangers of taking FOL⁼ too seriously is that it leads people to think it holds the essence of intelligence. Proof assistants mechanize the search for and validation of FOL⁼ derivations. If we can mechanize the derivations of proofs and intelligence can be reduced to FOL⁼, then we should be able to mechanize intelligence. But if we were able to do that (which we are not), that would reduce us, who have been made in the image of God, to machines.

The use of the term “artificial intelligence” exposes the real “idolatry” with regard to logic that Poythress warned about. He thinks this idolatry has to do with us not seeing FOL⁼ as personal and loving. Just the opposite is the case.

FOL⁼ is an impersonal, even unintelligent, tool that can be mechanized. It gives the atheist hope that he can reduce men and women, made in the image of God, to machines. It also gives the atheist a means of expressing his autonomy from God.

Why Bother Rationalizing the Trinity?

The benefit of rationalizing the Trinity is not to learn anything about God. We already know God is Trinitarian from Scripture. The benefit comes from deflecting presuppositional arguments coming from atheists that Trinitarian theism is irrational because one can derive a contradiction from it in FOL⁼.

It also helps us see the difference that a logic offers, even one that can rationalize the Trinity, from what we have as born-again Christians. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes truth very personal for the Christian. Logic by itself does not. As John 14:6 reveals, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Christians after Pentecost follow a truth-filled way of life by obeying the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.

Conclusion

Since FOL⁼ has decided against the Trinity, I am faced with a choice: Do I accept the Trinity or do I accept FOL⁼ which rejects the Trinity? Let me make sure my decision is clear:

I choose the Trinity over FOL⁼.

Choosing the Trinity means I will not attempt to view FOL⁼ as reflecting the Trinitarian God. It also means I need to be aware of the limitations of FOL⁼ so I am not deceived by any presuppositional argument coming from atheists.

Because I do not want to encourage fantasies that we can be reduced to machines, I will also not characterize FOL⁼ as loving or personal. I will not create an idol out of it. Atheists have done enough damage already with their promotion of “artificial intelligence”.

If you are a born again Christian, remind anyone who speaks massive guilt over you that you have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

Does the Lord Know Everything?

Hebrews 8:10-12
¹⁰For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
¹¹And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
¹²For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

For those in His new covenant, the Lord remembers our sins and our iniquities no more.

The important questions are Whom do we know? Has His laws been written in our hearts? Are they in our minds? Are we in His new covenant?

Star Formation vs Star Creation

SlimJim reviewed a book by R.J. Rushdoony, The Word of Flux, so I searched to see if Rushdoony believed in a six-day creation as reported in Genesis 1. Not only did he support it (see The Mythology of Science), but he clarified what was at stake. God performed a creative act in Genesis 1. What He did NOT do was participate in a creative process involving natural laws.

If God were merely guiding some natural processes, what were those processes? There is no point in claiming, as Alvin Plantinga has done, that God guided natural processes, if those natural processes do not exist.

In the video from Answers In Genesis below Dr. Terry Mortenson brings home the point that the problem with star formation is that there are no natural processes that permit star formation. In particular at (20:00), he quotes Neil deGrasse Tyson:

The scary part is that if none of us knew in advance that stars exist, frontline research would offer plenty of convincing reasons for why stars could never form. (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007, p. 187)

On the other hand, the origins of stars as a creative act of God, as Rushdoony would put it, is not a problem. An act of creation (when God does it) does not require a natural process to explain it. All it requires, which is more than any atheist and even some Christians can tolerate, is accepting a Creator Who can do what He says He did in Genesis 1.

Some people I know are attracted to the creative process (rather than creative act) views of Hugh Ross. They like to think they are being “rational”. Dr. Mortenson puts a special focus on Ross (starting about 3:30) showing how he exaggerates what naturalists themselves claim they know to justify his own handwaving. If one takes being rational seriously, one would no longer trust anything someone had to say who is willing to exaggerate.

Bottom Line

If you want to accept the atheist fairy tales, the handwaving stories, that naturalists and Ross want you to believe, then you might as well give up on Christianity as many have already done as a result of such philosophical diversions.

Why? Because Jesus said “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” (Mark 10:6 and other verses).

If the fairy tales are right then Jesus got that wrong, because the beginning of Ross-style process creation happened a god-awful number of years prior to the appearance of men and women.

Now continue that deductive chain to see what else it entails.

If Jesus got something wrong, then He is not God.
If Jesus is not God, then the Trinity is false.
If the Trinity is false, then the death of Jesus could not have been the sacrifice that Christianity has made it out to be.

So, who are you going to believe?

If you are at all tempted to believe atheists because they like to portray themselves as “scientists” (more accurately, pseudo-scientists which is all one is when someone abandons operational science) consider that the earliest “historical date of any real certainty” goes back no further than 5000 years which falls in line with a global flood of about 5300 years ago.

If you are tempted to doubt that a global flood occurred, consider the signs of a global catastrophic water event: glaciers, continent wide sedimentary strata, catastrophic plate tectonics, planation surfaces.

If you are still tempted to think that naturalistic processes can pop a universe into existence, then which natural process gets us something from nothing? And which natural process takes us from pond scum to human beings before the observable natural process of genetic entropy drives humanity to extinction?

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And if you are still tempted after that, remind the devil (for me) that he’s a doofus and soon it will all be over.