Mainstream Science De-Capacitates Atheism

                 Today’s mounting trend to dismiss the God of the Bible is more fragile (rationally speaking) than is commonly imagined.  Many skeptics urge the claim, “God can’t be proved!” as their way to imply that the God of the Bible is a myth.  Yet in reality, the non-provability of God’s existence places the degree of theism’s certitude at virtually the same level in principle, as is scientific certitude (likewise being not-provable).  Indeed, the posture of mockingly belittling the Bible, is indicative of a non-scientific spirit (the refusal to face evidence).  My goal is indeed to highlight the absurdity of those who demand proveability as a criterion for any statement to qualify as trustworthy.  By way of example, the conclusion of philosopher David Hume’s essay regarding Human Understanding, entailed a glaringly reckless directive:

“Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment. Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived … When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. [Then] Commit it…to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

Notice that, based on his own criteria, this lauded intellect routed his own philoso-phical essay to the furnace since it too fails the truth-test that he deemed is demanded in order to escape “the flames.”

Now hear ye this!  Science is not provable.  Since frontier science firstly confronts interactions between occasionally unpredictable forces and obscure entities, and also faces the reality that observers must trust by faith that our very perceptions are correct, science is not provable.  Only abstract claims consisting of mathematics and logic are provable.  Consequently scientific theories are instead deemed to be “justified” insofar as they align with evidence that is superior in measure and quality to competing hypotheses.  Hume’s demand that all claims must conform to “quantity” etc. in order to qualify as true, is absurd since, by his own standard, defining even what the term science means, fails to meet his requirements for truth statements.  Indeed his strictures, if obeyed, invalidly deem it impossible to even assess the ramifications that logically follow from scientific data.  But Hume was wrong.  Rationality indicates that non-scientific statements too are trustworthy if they are logically framed and affirmed by relevant evidence.  If that wasn’t so, then social speech, even Hume’s, would lack any capacity to convey truth.

Similarly, the thesis of Stephen Jay Gould’s (SJG) book, Rocks of Ages, lays out his claim that the disparate concepts of science and religion constitute “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA) in which only the realm of science illuminates “the factual character of the natural world and develops theories that coordinate and explain these facts,” while the realm of religion by contrast, “operates in the…realm of human purposes, meanings, and values” to the complete exclusion of physical facts and realities.  By the term “non-overlapping,” SJG disallows the notion that these realms are reconcilable.  In other words, he denies potential reciprocal relationships between science and religion.  Indeed, since he is a practical materialist, he refuses even the possibility of intelligent agents impacting the physical realm.  Yet it is at this very point that Gould violates the standard boundaries of science by usurping its authority to referee his denial of that possibility.  In actual fact, the purview of science is limited solely to particulars of physical nature, to the complete exclusion of concepts concerning potential spiritual realities.

You may read my entire article complete with footnotes at my website: www.christianityontheoffense.com/articles

The Infantility of Leftism's Willful Ignorance

The Jubilation of Hamas is Symptomatic of  Academic Gangrene (2 Timothy 2:17) 

               For the reason that both  faculty at our nation's most prestigious law schools and the students seated under them, embrace a nazified agenda by celebrating atrocities against Israeli families on October 7, 2023, the "Free Gaza" placards they marched under (thereby making them “useful idiots”), heightens the urgency to expose them to the light of purging clarity.  Their naivety entails both moral and rational failures, the first of which is evident to all of us who rely on the rightful authority of morality in our conscience, while the latter while the latter betrays the gullibility of the protestors since, in actuality, Hamas would target every last one of them for death.  Yet the absurdity of their error is easily exposed by the following facts that can be known with full conviction to be “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”:

1.      Israelites have inhabited their present location in the Holy Land for the last about 3,500 years.

2.      In 136 CE Rome banished Israel (IS) from Jerusalem and out of spite renamed Judea, Palestine.   

3.      Arabs only began settling in the Holy Land after the founding of the religion of Islam in 622 CE.

4.      After the close of WW 2, it was not Israel’s decision, but the United Nations’ Balfour Declaration (UNBD) to create both of the independent homelands of Israel and Palestine.

5.      The Holocaust happened in part with the encouragement of Muslim leaders to see Jews killed.

6.      On numerous occasions Egypt, Syria, and Jordan simultaneously declared war on Israel.  Israel prevailed in every battle.  Indeed insofar as IS could ensure its safety, in contrast to every other nation, they gave back the spoils they rightfully won (land, oil, etc.) back to the avengers.

7.      In “Black September” of 1970, Palestinians living as refugees in Jordan under the independent fist of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) turned against their hosts by seeking to overthrow the Jordanian government.  Thousands of Palestinians killed each other in the clash.  

8.      In 2005 Israel “handed over the keys” to Palestinians to fully govern Gaza for themselves.

9.      While Israel agrees to cooperate with a Palestinian state, it is the firm goal of Hamas to utterly annihilate Israel. The discovered tunnels packed with weapons is physical proof that it is so.  

10.   That Hamas hides behind civilians as shields during conflict proves both that they don’t value their own children, and that the mounting Palestinian casualties are the fault of Hamas alone.

It is not our government that compels Leftists to embrace fascism, but instead infantile thinking.  Indeed,  the 1^st Amendment of the Bill of Rights states to the contrary says, “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.”           

There is clearly an “elephant in our room” (society) in regard to life’s most fundamental question, “What’s wrong with our world?” In reply, many causes (poverty, ignorance, prejudice, finitude, etc.) are suggested except for the most basic one, which confronts our human proclivities with respect to truth.

To be continued... For my completed article which contains my footnotes, visit my website at www.christianityontheoffense.com

The Choice: Flawed Liberators? or Clueless, Ruthless, Thugs?

        “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye .” (Jesus in Matthew 7:5)  

It is an absolute fact that every disciple Jesus called, and indeed every human author of Holy Scripture, was a miserable sinner, just like me…and you too.  I don’t state this to anger anyone.  But if anyone imagines themselves to be righteous before God, they are not allowing God’s law to expose the inner truth about themselves (1 John 1:7).  Indeed any dismissal of evidence of any kind that favors the existence of God renders such a person guilty of the first sin St. Paul mentions (Romans 1:18f).  Further-more, whoever imposes their expectations onto others while failing to adhere to the same standards (again, of their own design), is both a hypocrite and a violator of the golden rule.  Despite doubts by critical textual critics, I am convinced Jesus said the words recorded in John 8 for the reason that his challenge to the woman’s judgers is morally superior, in the manner that is be expected only of the true Son of God.  Similarly, people participating in toppling statues of our Founders have neither the moral authority nor the right to do so.  They are to the contrary imposing on historical figures criteria that are far more stringent than God applied to the biblical writers.  We all should plead for His mercy instead. 

 

               Neither do these self-appointed “revolutionaries” demonstrate any potential qualification to lead anyone, let alone an entire society, into uncharted waters.  Their credibility indeed is undermined right up front by their track record (televised) of refusing to submit their agenda to intellectual scrutiny.  To the contrary they merely out-shout and  bludgeon their dissenters.  For similar reasons, they offer no grounds at all for why anyone should trust that their brand of defiance of people in authority has any capacity to usher in a harmonious new world, or even a society remotely as just as our own admittedly imperfect one.  Recently I saw on TV one rioter berating police with his presumptive taunts that police don’t have intellectual skills to do “college-level” thinking.  I judge to the contrary that his obnoxious presence merely raised doubts about the credibility of universities as a whole (see below), even as he exposed as questionable the intellectual weight behind the college degree(s) that he claimed to earn. 

  

               More to the point, anarchists’ agenda depends on the distorted parody of US history that they impose.  Firstly, their methods of highlighting what they judge as the “unsavory” aspects of our record, reject classical academic methods of truth-seeking by censoring all arguments that thwart their goals.  And their “motivational” tools rely on pressuring for a compliance that is enforced by threats of harm.   

  

By contrast, authentic truth-seeking, as opposed to brain-washing, seeks out all substantiated evidence that is relevant to a given question.  It also frames the historical details correctly in light of its larger context.  And it debates in complete freedom the relative merits of each relevant hypothesis.

My entire essay can be accessed by the same name, and includes a substantial mumber of footnotes, can be at my website: www.christianityontheoffense.com/articles  

  

Transgender Societal Agendas Stands On a House of Cards

               "…they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened." (Romans 1:21) 

               With taunts evocative of the "huffing and puffing" of the "Big Bad Wolf," the transgender (TG) societal agenda is currently plowing roughshod through society with a degree of boldness suggesting that its tenets are grounded in truth.  Is that assumption correct?  Brashness of this level must surely appeal to some sort of grounds for surety as to the rightness of its cause.  Yet I ask, is the impulse that drives its touters legitimately grounded?  The sciences have strict rules which distinguish between either factual conceptions or mere emotions and opinions. Consequently, it is high time societal movers face the question whether the TG agenda is based on facts that justify the upheaval that it leaves in its wake.           

               The guidelines certifying that knowledge is scientific are strict and clear.  Firstly, science draws a sharp distinction between observation (science) and boundless pondering (fiction).  Secondly, scientific insights are gathered without regard for either the wishes or the loathing of its researchers since only by its conformity to the facts is its validity secured.  Thirdly, qualities which attest that data is scientific include that it is both measurable AND observable.  Only claims that can be reconciled with data that fulfills both factors qualifies as being scientifically sound.  Fourthly, it is fallacious to suppress data in order to force a desired conclusion.  These parameters do not mean that non-scientific statements are necessarily false.  Far from it! (only materialism (MT) limits truth statements to just scientific discourse).  How ironic it is that by their own definition MTs disqualify their own views as unscientific!  Nevertheless, if any conception is subjective (sourced inside one's head) then it lacks the required grounds that justify imposing onto NON-TGs, demands that its' champions allege, can redress what are just fantasies!

               It is urgent that these guidelines be rigorously observed.  The clarity they bring is like the colored lines drivers look to in order to stay within their lane along a winding road on a stormy night.  Firstly, they hinder erroneous claims from getting a hold on audiences due to the seductiveness of charming, though ill-informed voices.  Secondly they boost the likelihood that principled scientists will focus their declara-tions on the verifiable realities that their academic curricula convey, thereby highlighting the actual facts of the matter under discussion as opposed to "poisoning the well" through ploys such as gaslighting. 

To be continued...

My complete essay is posted complete with footnotes on my website: www.christianityontheoffense.com/articles

The Scientific Impossibility of a Universe Creating Itself, revised edition, 03,15,2014

The Failure of Dr. Peter Atkins to Back Up His Claim that “God Isn’t Necessary”   

              In Dr. Peter Atkins’ separate debates with Drs. William Lane Craig and Hugh Ross, he conceded that he cannot actually "prove" the non-existence of God.  Instead he proclaimed that no god of any conception is needed to account for the existence of the cosmos.  Yet in so doing, Atkins, the self-acclaimed guardian of scientism ineptly exposed his own vulnerability to refutation by means of the very same intellectual foundation that he claims to champion in his relentless disparagement of "religion."  

          Empirical evidence, which by definition pertains to data that is perceivable, measurable, testable, and reviewable, convincingly indi-cates that the physical cosmos came into existence out of a “zero… volume beginning."  Renowned physicist Dr. Paul Davies writes, "If we extrapolate [backwards into the past in regard to the ongoing expanding of the cosmos] we reach a point when all distances…have shrunk to zero…For this reason cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe.”  Furthermore he says, "On this view the Big Bang (BB) represents the creation event…not only of all matter and energy in the universe, but also space and time itself."  Indeed, other leading physicists have further tightened the certitude of the beginning of the universe out of nothing.  Even conjectures that prior to the BB, other “powers” caused it, lack valid rational backing since, prior to the BB no data at all is accessible to anyone.  

                          

This body of facts in and of itself renders the notion of an atheistically-caused beginning of the universe to be conceptually impossible.  The grounds for this stricture is framed solely by scientific limitations that are distinct from religious dogma.  For example, in order for given events to qualify as scientific they must necessarily entail (1) physical entities that interact with each other (2) by forces that propel (or impel) them (3) within spatial regions (4) over a duration of time.  All of these factors were nonexistent prior to the zero-volume beginning that kicked off the creation of the cosmos.  In light of this privation of the four factors prior to that beginning instant, there was simply no conceptual aspect of existence to draw on through which any scientific event could conceivably have occurred.  Consequently, the causer of the events that followed after the BB moment must have had a super-natural existence.

Yet having begun this paper with a focus on the impossibility of a materialist account for existence, I will now lay out a positive case for the BB creation of the cosmos...  

               You may continue this article of the same title which also includes a visual illustration of the BB plus my footnotes at my website: www.christianityontheoffense. com/articles