Hitler and Christianity

Atheists are having a lot of fun mocking Christianity these days. One of their favorite tactics is to present themselves as rational, decent people who are sincerely baffled by the irrationalities of the Christian religion. Below are some of their questions:

~ What relevance does a bronze age book have for today?

~ If God is all-merciful and all-forgiving, why doesn’t he just forgive people instead of punishing them in hell forever?

~ Why did God only give us his main revelation of himself many centuries ago in Roman Palestine, instead of in different places and at different times, so more people could know about him?

~ Why should people be punished for the sin of Adam and Eve, when they themselves aren’t guilty of anything – or at least not of anything meriting hell?

~ Why does God demand we believe in him without giving us more evidence?

~ Why is there so much killing in the Old Testament? How is this reconcilable with the claim that God is love? How is it reconcilable with ordinary human ethics?

~ Why should we believe God wrote the bible – because the bible itself says so?

~ Why doesn’t God heal amputees?

~ Wouldn’t an eternity praising and worshipping God be tedious?

~ Isn’t the creation account in Genesis totally contrary to science?

Perhaps I’ll try to respond to these and other questions sometime, but for the present, as a believer in the literal truth of the Bible, I thought I would like to raise some questions for atheists, should any happen to come across my humble blog.

1.  What about theistic evolutionists (which I am not) who say “Darwinism is a scientific fact. We have the fossils, we see it at work in the world around us, we know it’s true – but evolution works as it does because God started the process and God is guiding it to some specific end”? What empirical evidence do you have to prove they are wrong? Saying “That seems wasteful and inefficient or cruel for God” is not scientific evidence. There is no scientific evidence to refute theistic evolutionism – only philosophical bias.

2. Why is a Europe that is much more secular than America also much more subject to growing Islamic influence? In attacking Christianity, are people weakening a barrier to Islam?

3. If someone says (as I once heard) that “Elvis Presley gave us the finest music the world has ever known,” can you refute this scientifically and empirically? This leads to the related questions: “What exactly are the limits of the scientific method? Are there not many important aspects of life that cannot be dissected or placed in a test tube or under a microscope? And, if there are aspects of reality that lie beyond the reach of science, wouldn’t those who saw science as the only path to knowledge be incapable of seeing such aspects?”

4. What scientific, laboratory-based, empirical evidence is there for the argument that human life ceases at physical death, that there is no existence beyond the grave? Please note, that assertions based on a philosophical assumption of materialism are not evidence.

5. Why did Richard Dawkins write The God Delusion? Was it because of a conscious decision of will and intellect by a free-thinking moral agent, or was it because his selfish genes told him to, on the assumption that it would increase their chances of survival?

6. Were Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt vicious, cruel, despotic, mass murdering bullies? Helpful hint – be careful with your answer here. If you say “Yes,” you will come across in the eyes of many as being incapable of moral judgments. If you say “No,” then you admit that massive destruction and devastation may on some occasions be necessary and just. And, do people have more rights and power than God?

7. Scientists have created many ingenious methods of mass destruction and killing, and in the service of any master, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the Pentagon. Does this mean that science really does have no moral base, and readily lends itself to good or evil with little or no concern for people or for the implications of its discoveries?

8. Why is it that if theists kill people, that proves the badness of theism, but if atheists kill people, that does not prove the badness of atheism? Connoisseurs of tap-dancing, juggling, and magic tricks might like to study answers to this question.

9. How did love arise in an impersonal universe composed only of matter and energy? Scientific answers based on empirical evidence only please, no windy quotations from Daniel Dennett that consist of nothing but free-floating speculation.

10. It is often said that belief in God is the result of wishful thinking. Is it possible that atheism is the result of wishful thinking on the part of people who hate the idea of being held accountable to a higher power for all they have said, thought, or done? Who do not want to relinquish their independence? Whose love of earthly pleasures make them reluctant to think of anything else? Whose desire to avoid the unknown limits their speculative horizons?

11. If there were a supreme Being behind the universe, isn’t it reasonable to suppose that he would do many things beyond our comprehension? To put it another way, might not making our likes and dislikes, our judgments, our minds the moral center of the universe be a mistake?

12. Did David Hume on the one hand undermine scientific law by denying the reality of causation, and then say miracles were impossible because they violated scientific law? I am open to correction if I misunderstand something here.

13. Why are atheists more concerned about a small number of deaths 3500 years ago, than they are about a much greater number of deaths in our own modern times? Is it because they really do not care about human life at all?

This is the 4th part of a series responding to 10 arguments supporting the false teaching that homosexuality is compatible with biblical Christianity.

8. Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed due to homosexuality.

It says in Ezekiel that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of “pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness . . . they were haughty and committed abomination.” Their pride, idleness, and excessive prosperity encouraged sexual immorality and deviancy, as well as many other sins. This clearly applies to America, the world’s blind and foolish superpower.

9. Christians should not worry about the private lives of others.

Christians should not worry about the private lives of others, that is true. We have enough problems of our own. We should however be concerned with the eternal destiny of human souls, and make some effort to share the truths of Christ. This includes God’s condemnation of sin, without which grace and forgiveness are meaningless.

10. Some people can’t help being homosexual. They were born that way – some will say God made them that way – and they should not be denied the consolations of religion.

Someone who had a troubled childhood, inadequate relations with his parents, a weak or absent or harsh and domineering father, an aloof and uncaring or critical or domineering mother, can pick up bad attitudes when he is too young to understand what is going on. These can then result in various personality disorders that seem inescapable – and there are many sins that people would like to break free from, but cannot.

Instead of saying that their sin problem – whatever it might be – is not a problem at all, but is natural and normal, they need to consider the final penalty of sin levied on the day of judgment, when unrepentant evildoers are excluded from God’s presence and sent to eternal punishment. They also need to consider that Christ has the power to set them free from whatever sin might be plaguing them, and give them a new heart, a new life, a new start, and victory. This cannot be accomplished by human will power. People try and try but experience only failure. This is because they really do love their sin more than they hate it. As was just said, Christ has the power to set people free from this. If they cannot find this power and victory they need to keep seeking until they do find it. As David said, the Lord delivers the poor “from him that is too strong for him,” and, “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.”

Churches, Christian leaders, and writers need to confront these issues more directly. This can be done in more depth and with more effectiveness than my brief comments might indicate. More of such teachings would especially be helpful to young people in the turmoil of adolescence who are being increasingly presented with the devilish doctrine that homosexuality is normal, a legitimate option, and that those who are opposed to it have something wrong with them.

Pastors in Bible believing churches may not be sufficiently mindful of the extent to which young people in their congregations might be puzzled by these issues or even troubled by them. Christians can be tempted by many different sins, sometimes even by thoughts of homosexuality. I don’t see mature Christians having trouble with this, but it may be an issue for some immature Christians – especially when the world is telling people “The reason you are experiencing such thoughts is because you really are gay. Don’t fight it. Be yourself. Try it, it’s healthy, it’s normal. People who tell you it is wrong are mistaken.” By the way, people can be Christians for years yet still be immature.

Christians should not assume that the idea of Christian homosexuality is so self-evidently wrong as to require no detailed discussion. More and more non-Christians who know nothing about the Bible are hearing falsehoods in this area. Sincere young Christians who maybe never had a good relationship with their father, or even older Christian men who have been damaged by a lifetime of Feminism, may have a weak self-image. Satan might sense vulnerability there even where none is outwardly evident, and begin to trouble someone with thoughts they do not understand or know how to evaluate. An occasional sermon that exposes the world’s lie that homosexuality and other forms of immorality are natural, normal, and acceptable to God, and that stresses the holiness of the Christian life that should follow salvation might, if given in the spirit of love, yield unexpected fruits.

A concise description of these matters is found in II Peter. The apostle says, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.”

Peter has words for the homosexual Christians that are equally suitable. They “walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness.” They “speak evil of the things that they understand not” (God’s righteous laws) and “shall utterly perish in their own corruption.” “Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings . . . Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin.”

They promise liberty and salvation with “great swelling words of vanity” but “they themselves are the servants of corruption.” They even entice people who had previously escaped from their sins, causing them to be entangled again and overcome. No one who truly looks “for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,” who is diligent to be found in Christ “in peace, without spot, and blameless,” can possibly be deceived by the fables of the homosexual Christians.