An email I received this morning from a source I do not have permission to reveal:

I received the following email this morning from Rhology:

12 October 2011

David,

Well, you made Alex look like a fool. Not hard, but still.  :-)

Grace and peace,

Rhology

Rhology,

Is it that I made Alex Botten look like a fool, or rather that Botten made himself look like a fool? I think if one reflects a moment on that exchange we had, one would have to admit that I actually did very little, and thus deserve very little credit for how he appeared. He simply made two very bold claims which, frankly, I was interested in seeing him support. I mean, is that not what atheists routinely demand of those who make claims? But atheists are fatally allergic to the burden of proof; the moment it becomes clear that they cannot escape shouldering it the conversation is over, and not without gratuitous invective—a pattern to which Botten was apparently only too willing to contribute.

Let us recapitulate what those two interesting claims of his were.

First, he claimed that if young-earth creationism is false, then one must concede that the world was not created at all. This claim was found in the question that he put to those who think the universe and Earth were created in a week 6,000 years ago (emphasis mine): “Why, when he knew it would cause people to believe that the universe was not created (so leading people away from him), would your God make things look older than they are?”^[1] In other words, if people discover that the world is far more than 6,000 years old, then that will cause them to believe that it was not created. And that of course is not only a brutal non-sequitur fallacy (i.e., the latter does not follow from the former) but also defies current and historical reality, wherein there are and were people who accept both creation and a very old earth. The fact of the matter is, Botten made a blind leap that was simply contrary to reason, which I wanted to expose by having him attempt supporting that claim.

Second, he also claimed that “one cannot square biblical creationism with an old earth,” ^[2] wherein “biblical creationism” is equated with the young-earth view,^[3] such that positing an old earth view “directly contradicts the Bible.” ^[4] If I understood his point here correctly, then he was trying to support his original non-sequitur; that is, since the world being old directly contradicts what Scripture says about creation, given the young-earth interpretation, discovering its great age would cause people to believe that it was not created. That is still a brutal non-sequitur but the response I opted for was to have him support that claim, which I pursued by forcing him to provide the exegesis for the young-earth interpretation. In other words, I was not going to permit that as a given, because it would beg the very question. Obviously I disagree that the earth being old directly contradicts the Bible so I insisted that he shoulder his burden of proof.

Well, of course we cannot have that so with a parting gratuitous invective he disabled the commenting feature on the article.^[5] Thus we have Botten losing his cool—although not a Jim Gardner meltdown—because some Christian had the audacity to call him out on his claims and require that he support them, exhibiting that allergic reaction I mentioned and perhaps nowhere more clearly than by his transparent attempt at shifting the burden on to me.^[6]

So I cannot really take credit for what Botten did mostly by himself.

1. ^[1] Alex Botten, “A question for young earth creationists,” An Atheist Viewpoint (2011, October 11), para. 2. ↩
2. ^[2] Ibid., comments section, 11 Oct. 2011, 14:43. ↩
3. ^[3] Ibid., 18:12. ↩
4. ^[4] Ibid., 18:49. ↩
5. ^[5] Although I noticed this afternoon that he reenabled it at some point today. ↩
6. ^[6] “Do you claim that the Bible doesn’t give genealogies from Adam onwards, and that it doesn’t claim the Earth was created in a literal six day period, with Adam created on the sixth day?” (Ibid., 18:59); “Do you claim that the genealogies and the creation account are incorrect? If not, how can you claim the Earth to be old?” (Ibid., 19:15); “Please explain to me how the Bible can be inerrant yet simultaneously wrong. Tell me what other interpretation you would draw from the creation account and the genealogies” (Ibid., 19:52); [Describes the young-earth interpretation and then asks] “How would you interpret it differently?” (Ibid., 20:10); “Are you claiming the text of Genesis doesn’t say that the Earth and all that’s in it was created in six 24-hour days? If so, please support this claim with evidence from Genesis” (Ibid., 20:34). ↩

There is this older lady on the Dalnet IRC network who for many years has exhibited a seething antipathy for Reformed theology, and has somewhat more recently been trying to understand the presuppositionalism by which those who are Reformed tend to argue their worldview. Although I often do not bother engaging her on such subjects (given certain reasons that experience has produced), tonight I acquiesced. Since who she is on IRC is not relevant, I have chosen to give her the name “Lisa” in the following conversation.

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“If you had to choose between truth and comfort, which would you choose?”

So the question is posed by Matt Oxley rhetorically to the readers of his blog as a way of introducing his thoughts on the existential tension between truth on the one hand and comfort on the other, a tension he experienced as he progressively expunged his former charismatic Christian faith, a painful process of replacing what was comfortable with what is true. Oxley is a self-proclaimed atheist who is sharing with others the dimensions and contours of his journey away from the charismatic faith that he once held dear, an itinerarium mentis in a direction opposite of mine toward an ostensibly godless view of the world and life.

“When I began recognizing this truth,” he writes regarding the deception in charismatic churches, “it was anything but comfortable.” And this former comfort he describes as a sort of uneasy truce between how he wanted the world to be and how it actually is, a cognitive dissonance maintained by a promissory note of a celestial afterlife. Now if that accurately characterizes the intellectual life of the charismatic, well then, I could hardly fault his journey away from it. In addition to the moralist burden he describes having to shoulder (i.e., “denying your carnal desires and working to please [God] all of your life”), the intellectual anorexia would surely leave me desperate for something more authentic and honest. For some of us, a group I suspect Oxley would count himself among, such intellectual curiosity is inexorable and insatiable. But just here marks a notable difference between someone like Oxley and someone like myself; we both came to a point where we lost faith in a childish understanding of God, but I did not confuse that with losing faith in God whereas Oxley did. Having said that, there is a more important observation that I should like to make about his post.

He places such a high value on truth that often he capitalizes it, almost as though the word Truth were just as good as the word God (although on his view it is better). I should think that as a former Christian he could probably define to some extent what ‘God’ means, and he certainly defined what ‘comfort’ means, but notice the odd fact that he never bothers to define what ‘truth’ means. “The way I determine what is true,” he said, “has changed dramatically,” but then notice that he never bothers to give that account. How is it that someone who esteems truth above comfort can provide an account of the latter but offer nothing on the former? He described what his perspective on truth used to be: “I used to believe that if the Bible said it [then] it must be Truth. I didn’t even have to question that conclusion; my faith allowed for that to be so.” Yes but that was when he firmly staked his yellow Gadsden flag in the soil of comfort. “It was comfortable to me and I had no reason to question it.” Things are different now, he would have us believe. Comfort was swallowed up in truth, that principle he esteems enough to capitalize but not enough to provide an account of. He surrendered comfort to pursue truth, but was that before or after determining what is true? And this issue is made all the more salient by his comment about embracing the “standard of evidence” he knew existed but ignored most of his life, which represents a potential confusion of the metaphysical (what is true) with the epistemological (how we know it).

I can appreciate Oxley’s disdain for the way he viewed the world and life in his charismatic faith, but I find myself concerned by the echoes of Eden reverberating through his equally naive approach to this new journey. Has he exchanged comfort for truth, or just one type of comfort for another? While he says that he has a very different way of determining what is true, he does not give any sort of account of that except by means of what that way used to be and no longer is. Moreover, even his description of the way he used to determine what is true is not entirely meaningful. “If the Bible said it, then it must be truth.” For that to be meaningful there must be some way of determining what the Bible said (i.e., rules and principles of interpretation). I could go on but the point has been made. I should like to offer a challenge to Oxley for an upcoming blog post:

• “Please explain the way you now determine what is true.”

I am not sure I can entirely relate to Oxley’s experience of existential tension between truth and comfort. I am a critical skeptic by nature, an intellectual attitude that I had not only prior to my conversion to the Christian faith but one that has been deeply cultivated by that faith; that is to say, I have always pursued that which shakes me up from intellectual comfort, constantly seeking out things that challenge my beliefs. I am not sure why someone would prefer comfort over truth the way Oxley did; it is a foreign concept to me. But that just goes to underscore the point I had implicitly made earlier, that one does not need to lose faith in God in order to abandon a childish understanding of faith in God. Truth, logic, reason, knowledge, science, etc.; such things thrive under Christian theology, notwithstanding some weak charismatic faith that cowers with a contrary opinion. I applaud Oxley for turning his back on an intellectual wasteland, but I do not understand his choice of embracing another one.

———-

Matt Oxley, “Truth over comfort,” RagingRev (2011, August 25).
http://ragingrev.com/2011/08/truth-over-comfort/

It gets worse. In addition, an omnipresent and omniscient (all-observing) God, as bound into his creation as his creation is bound into him, must be able to observe everything. We know from quantum mechanics that observation collapses the wave-function of photons, leading to no superposition. But we know superposition exists, therefore this God with those attributes cannot.

Since I speak English and not mathematics I tend to avoid delving into quantum mechanics. This subject loses its precision when translated into English, and I am simply not fluent in mathematics. But I will indulge your point briefly in order to show how it fails to achieve the ends to which you put it.

First, we do not “know” that the wave-function collapses, much less due to observation. Although that is consistent with the familiar Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, it does not feature in the many-worlds interpretation, for example, nor the de Broglie-Bohm theory (in which the universal wave-function never collapses, only the conditional wave-function of a subsystem and is strictly an epiphenomenon) and so forth. As such, unless you are unfamiliar with epistemology, which is possible, it is disingenuous of you to pretend we “know” something that is theoretical—especially when it does not exist in competing theories.

Second, even granting you the Copenhagen interpretation, the observer effect in quantum mechanics is predicated on the ‘observer’ being constituted by matter—even if it is only a single electron. Thus the God of Scripture necessarily fails to represent the problem your point attempted to construct, for he is transcendent and immaterial.

Dear Dr. Esposito,

I just recently read through your article New Narrative for 9-11 and Muslim Americans. It is an interesting piece of writing, and I am always looking for people who are willing to give an apologetic for their viewpoint. In your article, you try to make the case that fears of Islamic extremism in the Muslim American community are unfounded, and that Muslims in America as a whole are well integrated into the rest of western society. I must confess that I am not convinced of your article’s thesis, and I would like to explain why. Read the rest of this entry

One of the theological debates that takes place between orthodox Trinitarian Christians and heretical cultists and other non-Trinitarians of various stripes is whether the Old Testament confirms or contradicts Trinitarian doctrines such as the existence of plurality within the Godhead and the reality of the incarnation. A full treatment of this subject is outside the purview of this article, partly because there are already plenty of excellent articles that tackle this topic (Such as this and this), and partly because there are too many verses that are relevant to this, that we will only be focusing on one. In particular, there is one verse in 1 Kings that contains a statement by King Solomon which is sometimes cited by non-Trinitarians (particularly Muslims) against the idea that God could enter into His creation:

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27).

As the argument goes, if God cannot be contained by heaven and earth, then it is impossible for God to enter into His own creation, since that would limit Him to a specific point in time and space.

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In the comments section of Fisher’s post John Calvin on Fatalism, the conversation seemed to have found its way to 1 Tim 2:4. And since this verse seems to generate a lot of debate these days, at least from my perspective, I thought it would be a good idea to explore 1 Tim 2:4 a little bit more thoroughly.

1 Tim 2:3-4 “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth”

The key part is “who will have all men to be saved” (KJV). Other versions state it as “who desires all men to be saved” (NASB) and “who wants all men to be saved” (NIV) but it essentially means the same thing.

The first thing we need to do is look at the context of this verse. According to John MacArthur (from whom I’m getting this explanation), this verse falls in the middle of a section of scripture addressing Evangelistic Prayer (verses 1 through 8). So given the context of this section, we should remember that Paul is addressing how we, as believers, should be praying for the lost to be saved as this lines up with Gods desire. It is Gods desire that all be saved so therefore it should also be our desire that all be saved.

The full explanation can be found here, but I just want to look at the words will, desire and want as used in verse 4 of the various english translations. In each case we find it has been translated from the Greek word “thelo” into will, desire, or want. Now, working back to the Greek from will (KJV). There are two basic Greek words for will and they are “thelo” and “boulomai”. So what does each of these words mean? “Thelo” reflects the will of desire springing from feeling and inclination while “boulomai” speaks of a will that comes from precise determination.

So the will/desire/want used in 1 Tim 2:4 is not the will/desire/want in the “boulomai” sense; that God has precisely determined the salvation of all men. It is not a sovereignly ordained fact that everyone is going to be saved. 1 Tim 2:4 is not talking about that kind of will but that of “thelo” which is the word used in the original Greek text.

It’s not simply a “What God wants he gets” in some sort of universalistic salvation or that we have some sort of impotent God who is unable to fulfil His will. There’s a distinction between God’s sovereign will and His moral will.

To put it another way, we would all agree without equivocation that God does not desire people to sin. Could we agree with that? We do not believe that God desires people to do evil, to sin, to be disobedient, to be unholy, to fail to give Him glory. No, we would all agree with that. In fact the spectrum of evangelical theology would agree to that. We know God desires men not to sin. We do not for a moment advocate anything different than that. So turn the table a bit. Would we would all agree then that God desires all men to be holy? No one would argue against that, right? God desires all men to be righteous. God desires all men to be sinless. God desires all men to give Him glory and give Him honour and give Him respect. God desires all men to be obedient. I mean, He commands men over and over and over and over to be obedient. He calls for righteousness. He calls for holiness. He calls for sinlessness. He calls for everyone on the face of the earth to give Him honour and give Him glory. He calls for all men everywhere to repent. Nobody debates that. We all know God wants men to be holy.

Therefore, we conclude that people sin though God does not want them to. That’s obvious. People are unholy though God does not want them that way. People do not give God glory though God does not want them not to give Him glory. Then why is it such a hard thing for some people to realise that people also go to hell though God does not want them to? God wants all men to be saved. That is the desire of God.

Men sin and they go to hell, not because it is God’s express sovereign purpose for them. They go to hell because they denied God’s moral will for their life. He calls them to repent. He calls them to be saved. If anyone goes to hell, they go there not because of the predetermined choice of God, but because of the rejection of Jesus Christ. That’s what He’s saying. He wants all men saved.

In the exact words of John MacArthur;

I believe in the sovereignty of God, I believe in election, I believe in predestination, beloved, I also believe that God wills men to be saved and by their choice they are not saved and that is their responsibility not God’s. And if you ask me how those two things harmonize, I say I’ll tell you our first day in heaven, I’ll explain the whole thing. But I know this, God has a broken heart because He desires salvation from the ends of the earth, why else would Jesus weep over Jerusalem. “O how often I would, I willed to gather you together but you would not.” He said that. You wouldn’t do it. Why will you die? Why will you reject?

So in tying this with the challenge in the comments of Fishers post, I believe the will of God espoused by John Calvin, Ryft and Fisher with regard to the issue of choice, election and predestination is the will of “boulomai.” It is not the will of “thelo” that we find in 1 Tim 2:4.

The debate over the increasing acceptance of LGBT lifestyles in mainstream culture is one issue which — at least in Canadian society — has been more or less dominated by one side, which seeks to label all dissenters as “bigots,” “homophobes,” and even “extremists.” If you do not give them your unconditional assent and affirmation, they will level the most relentless forms of criticism against you. And this is precisely the case in the recent controversy over Toronto city mayor Rob Ford’s decision not to attend the annual Pride Parade.

To give a little background to people who are unfamiliar with this issue, Rob Ford is one of the most Conservative city mayors that Toronto has had in a long while. This particularly manifests in his policies regarding LGBT issues. He has publicly stated that he disagrees with same-sex marriage during his mayoral campaign, has refused to show up at a Pride flag raising at a public square, and has at least once threatened to cut public funding to the city’s annual Pride Parade. After all, why should the city spend public funds on such a parade anyway? Shouldn’t the LGBT community get its own funding if it wants a parade? Mayor Ford isn’t even targeting the LGBT Pride Parade in particular on this issue, since he has said in an article for The Star that “the public sector shouldn’t be funding parades, no matter what parade it is … The private sector should be sponsoring these parades.”[1] Be that as it may, the Pride Parade still got the funding that it wanted. There is just no stopping the LGBT agenda these days.

That being said, however, the biggest faux pas he has made recently (at least from the standpoint of the politically correct Left) was his refusal to attend the pride parade which took place earlier this month, on the grounds that it conflicted with a family tradition where he would spend the long weekend in a cottage away from the city. The responses that have been produced by Leftist pro-LGBT commentators and activists on newspapers and blogs have been merciless; most of them show relentless criticism of Mayor Ford for his personal choice. Now, if that isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is. These activists who demand society to affirm and support their ungodly lifestyles and personal preferences become very militant when others make personal choices that contradict the party line that LGBT activists force everybody else to follow. It seems that these days, their unofficial slogan is, “Support our campaign against bullying. If not, we’ll bully you until you do.” Read the rest of this entry

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful (Sura at Tawba 9:5).[1]

Although there are over a hundred ayat (verses) in the Qur’an that that pertain to jihad and warfare against the unbelievers, Sura 9:5 is perhaps the most well known among these. For this reason, it has often been called the “Ayah of the Sword.” This comes right in the heels of Sura 9:1-4, which declares the cancellation of any treaties between the Muslims and the Pagans (except those who cooperate with the Muslims), as shown in the preceding four verses:

A (declaration) of immunity from Allah and His Apostle, to those of the Pagans with whom ye have contracted mutual alliances:- Go ye, then, for four months, backwards and forwards, (as ye will), throughout the land, but know ye that ye cannot frustrate Allah (by your falsehood) but that Allah will cover with shame those who reject Him. And an announcement from Allah and His Apostle, to the people (assembled) on the day of the Great Pilgrimage,- that Allah and His Apostle dissolve (treaty) obligations with the Pagans. If then, ye repent, it were best for you; but if ye turn away, know ye that ye cannot frustrate Allah. And proclaim a grievous penalty to those who reject Faith. (But the treaties are) not dissolved with those Pagans with whom ye have entered into alliance and who have not subsequently failed you in aught, nor aided any one against you. So fulfil your engagements with them to the end of their term: for Allah loveth the righteous (Sura at Tawba 9:1-4),

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a star

and under it,
would the men who rode to bethlehem
have caught joseph
playing at peekaboo
with the child at mary’s breast?

perhaps

perhaps they knelt–
like we see them in shop windows–
and gave their gifts
of gold and myrrh and frankincense,
their wandering
having led to wonder,
to the baby at rest
in the manger

and if i had stole away
in a pack on the mule’s back
of the men who rode to bethlehem,
and if i had seen what they saw,
or if i had known what they knew,
or had brought what they had brought
for Him,
i’d go up to Him too, i reckon
but having stole away,
what would i give Him,
the drummer-boy that i am?
i could give Him my thanks,
yes,
i’d thank Him
if i were with those men
who rode to bethlehem,
i’d thank Him,
‘cause now we no longer have the need
to go chasing after stars

Download and listen to an mp3 of the poem being read