Monthly Archives: February 2019

Can Your Worldview Withstand Scrutiny?

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This is my part of an interaction I had with an atheist. They claimed over and over that my claims of revelational epistemology were nonsense. I hope you find encouragement in reading through my comments and that they help you more faithfully share the gospel.

Revelational epistemology is a valid field of philosophy. Philosophers such as Val Til, Bahnsen, White, and Lisle did or are teaching this branch of Christian thinking. So, my statement is not nonsensical…in fact, it is the reason we can actually determine ideas to have rational value in the 1st place.

God revealed Himself in creation. Even Dawkins recognizes this fact even though the idea of design by God is abhorrent to him. Dawkins conjured up the contradictory idea of “bottom up design” in an attempt to explain the clear design of the universe out of philosophical convictions…not scientific ones

God revealed Himself in the Bible. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, & it records many prophecies that, once fulfilled, have verified its authenticity. The Bible also records historical events that forensic scientists have over and over corroborated the truthfulness of the recordings.

God revealed Himself in Jesus. Jesus claimed to be God during his earthly ministry. His claims make him either a liar, a lunatic, or the LORD of glory. Which do you think Him to be? His appearance, life, and resurrection both fulfilled numerous old testament prophecies and verified his claims of divinity. Recognizing these facts and repenting of one’s rebellion against the Creator brings forgiveness and abundant life.

Now, to get to the consistency of one’s WV. For Christians, all of these elements are both internally and externally consistent:

  1. matter – God is outside of time/space and brought all of the cosmos into existence (John 1). Because of the curse of sin, we would expect to see decay, suffering, and death in anticipation of God’s ultimate victory (Isaiah 11)
  2. truth – God claims to be source of truth (John 14:6, Prov 26:5)
  3. laws of logic/reason – Laws of logic are unchanging, abstract, and universal. God provides a foundation for LoL because He is immutable and transcendent
  4. Unchanging physical laws, uniformity of nature, induction – Like laws of logic, these laws are abstract and unchanging…like God
  5. morality/human value – Mankind is created in God’s image so has great value (Gen 1:27, Matt 22:37-40)
  6. Generally reliable senses – Although perverted by the curse of sin, senses still function to glorify God, so Christians would expect them to be generally reliable
  7. Human consciousness – God breathed life into humanity (Gen 1:27)
  8. Human ability to comprehend matter, truth, physical laws, morality – It is expected that humans be able to comprehend the things of the universe and abstractions because by doing this, humans bring glory to God.

You can dislike this line of argumentation, but it is illogical & irrational to claim that my WV lacks internal coherence. It is also externally consistent because it solves the problem of induction, provides a truth anchor and has verification through the Bible and Jesus.

Now as a test, see if your WV can withstand the same scrutiny with internal CONSISTENCY

Lastly, I want to address your statement:

“IF you say something like “X Y and Z are true, therefore I believe that God has revealed himself, ergo these other things are true”, then perhaps a conversation could be had”

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the fundamentals. Since God is my ultimate authority, there is no HIGHER authority by which to compare his revelations. He is my epistemological foundation. But it is because He provides this foundation that we can evaluate things using logic, science, evidence to determine things to correspond to rationality or not.

You very much want the ambiguous term “evidence” to be your epistemological foundation except that to evaluate evidence, you have to justify laws of logic, truth, and morality for the evaluation to make sense. Besides, everyone interprets evidence according to their worldview. So, evidence makes a poor epistemological foundation.

Air-mazing!

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trees and grass field under cloudy sky during daytime

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The idea for this post came from reading A Meaningful World by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, so I want to give them some credit for a wonderful book and for pointing out how amazing even the simple things of creation truly are.

Consider air. Following is a list of many amazing things about air that reveal the praiseworthiness of the Creator!

  • Earth’s atmosphere protects humanity from harmful radiation.
  • It’s transparent for vision.
  • It’s the right composition for controlled combustion. Too much oxygen and combustion is irrepressible. Too little oxygen and no fire is possible.
  • It’s the perfect ratio of elements for both respiration and photosynthesis. Also consider that God designed an amazing process to keep the ratio in balance. The respiration process has a by-product of CO2, which is needed for photosynthesis to take place. Conversely, the by-product of photosynthesis is O2, which is vital for creatures that respirate.
  • It’s not too dense to move freely.
  • It’s dense enough to provide lift for flight. Flight/lift is useful for birds, bats, insects, flying fish, flying squirrels, and humans. Trees and plants were designed to make use of lift to spread their seed and spores.
  • It’s also dense enough to provide thermal protection against extreme heat and cold.
  • It can be absorbed by water, so that marine organisms can use oxygen.
  • It can hold water vapor and transport it all over the world to be a key part of the water cycle.
  • It can carry scents. Scents can be sweet to create feelings of delight and strong memories. Scents can also be sour as a protective measure against corruption and disease.
  • It is an incredible medium for passing sound waves. Because sounds pass noticeably slower through air than light travels, someone with two working ears can determine the direction of the source of a sound. If sound traveled faster through air, this would be more difficult.
  • Because it is an insulator, air currents are created between areas of heated and cooled air, which can freshen and renew
  • An an insulator, it also prevents runaway lightning from electrocuting everything.
  • Air can be compressed for use as
    • Pneumatic mechanisms
    • Underwater breathing apparatus
    • Propulsion
    • Accelerating projectiles
    • Air brakes
    • Cleaning/SandBlasting
    • Flotation devices
    • Carbonated drinks

To recognize any one of these things would make air remarkable, but that all of these advantages exist within a single entity that we refer to as air speaks of a truly Grand Designer! All of creation speaks to his glory, and God is worthy of all praise.

Can you think of other design features of air? Add them to the comments.