174 Comments

• Digg
• Bury

Your insults mean nothing at all to me. But I do wonder why you feel the need to insult anyone who doesn't agree with you. Do you think you can change my beliefs this way? Or is this how you reinforce your own beliefs? I use to believe the way you do until I gave it thought and found that it just doesn't add up to my satisfaction and that the Bible gives the only answers that do. If your beliefs satisfy you then by all means stick to them. I'm not trying to "convert" you, I'm only stating my own beliefs. You aren't likely to change them.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.

• Reply

• Digg
• Bury

@rog3r I think my math skills are perfectly sound, but I agree that anyone who ignores evidence is a fool. It is obvious to me however that we are looking at the evidence differently. I have spent the better part of my fifty plus years thinking about this and am satisfied with my conclusions. Although I continue to weigh evidence as it shows itself. Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.

• Reply

• Digg
• Bury

@r0g3r And yet I do still have some measure of respect for your beliefs. I may not be virtuous, but I at least have some manners. Blame my parents for that if you must.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.

• Reply

• Digg
• Bury

I do believe that God is omnipotent, however engineers always stick to a design that they have found to work best. Mankind has been building cars with the same basic design for over a hundred years now. Its not that there is a lack of alternative designs out there, but rather the current one is the simplest and most efficient (cost and manufacturing, not necessarily energy).Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.

• Reply

• Digg
• Bury

True, there are some observable flaws. However it is not by Gods doing, but rather the decay that sin brought upon the world when we disobeyed God back in the Garden of Eden.

"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." -- Genesis 1:31

"And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." -- Genesis 2:16-17Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.

• Reply

• Digg
• Bury

Carbonetc,

Your are correct in that God in His omnipotence could have you any one or multiple designs or system that He saw fit. Where you thinking "goes off the rails" is that you assume that a omnipotent creator being would have little or no use for guidelines in his creative acts. However God is the pinnacle of logic and reason (and love) so why would He design a universe that lacked logic and reason, this would be contrary to His nature.

Addressing AusJP's comment, you obviously lack knowledge as to what those on the creation side of the debate actually believe. Yes we do believe that God created the universe, earth and all of its creatures for the benefit and enjoyment of man.

"Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name." -- Genesis 2:19

As to the suffering observed on the earth, this is an unfortunate consequence of our choice to disobey God. You say that this is not fair, first I would ask you when has life ever been fair? I life those in a position of authority have a greater responsibility just as a leader of a country is responsible for the citizens under him. Man was given a position of leadership over the earth and all of its creatures, but we failed and now we all are paying for it.

The good news is God has given us another chance as stated in John 3:16, ""For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.

• Reply

• Digg
• Bury

@carbonetc

This should help your lack of understanding, now make sure to read ALL the words in these articles. I will post the shortest one so that you don't even have to click anything.

What is ‘good’?
(Answering the Euthyphro Dilemma)
R. Jorritsma from the Netherlands asks some important questions about how morality can be grounded in a biblical worldview. Dr Jonathan Sarfati responds.

Photo wikipedia.org


Socrates
Dear CMI, I am a biblical creationist, but have some inquiries regarding the nature of ‘goodness’ and ‘righteousness’.

Creationists often say that atheists don’t have an objective and solid foundation upon which to decide what is right and what is wrong. After all, we are just “rearranged pond scum”, and there is no real reason to say that, for instance, rape is wrong. I totally agree on this: atheism leads to moral relativism.
You put the argument very well. Some atheists have mispresented this argument as ‘atheists cannot be moral’, but you have stated the genuine argument. Some readers may wish to check out this feedback Bomb-building vs. the biblical foundation which explains it in more detail.

But then creationists claim that Christianity does provide a solid foundation for morals. After all, if God made this world, He owns it, He makes the rules, and we have to obey them. God’s will is then ‘good’, and everything that’s against His original intentions is ‘bad’. So health is good, illness is bad (because God originally created healthy bodies), and honesty is good, dishonesty is bad (because God forbids lying), et cetera.

So God decides what is good.
This is a restatement of Plato’s famous dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro. Euthyphro defined goodness as whatever is loved by the gods, and Socrates posed what is often called the Euthyphro Dilemma (paraphrased):

‘Is something good because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is good?’
God indeed commands things which are good, but the reason they are good is because they reflect God’s own nature. So the goodness does not come ultimately from God’s commandments, but from His nature, which then results in good commandments.

The horns of the dilemma are:

1.If something is good merely because the gods like it, then goodness is arbitrary.
2.If the gods like something for its goodness, then goodness is a property that exists independently of, and above, the gods.

The first thing to note is Euthyphro was a polytheist, and their gods were merely somewhat more powerful and knowledgeable than humans, but were still flawed. Therefore it was conceivable to Socrates that there was a standard of goodness to which the gods were beholden.

However the true God of the Bible is infinitely more powerful and knowledgeable. Indeed, He is totally sovereign, and perfect goodness is an essential part of His character, not something outside Him.

Thus the dilemma can be shown to be a false one. God indeed commands things which are good, but the reason they are good is because they reflect God’s own nature. So the goodness does not come ultimately from God’s commandments, but from His nature, which then results in good commandments. As Steve Lovell concluded in ‘C.S. Lewis and the Euthyphro Dilemma’ (2002):

The Euthyphro Dilemma can be turned around on atheists: Do you approve of an action because it is good, or is it good because you approve of it? If the latter, then your moral standard seems to be subjective and arbitrary, so you complain about God’s alleged arbitrariness. And if the former, then you are back to explaining where this objective moral standard comes from.

‘The commands of an omniscient, loving, generous, merciful, patient and truthful Being would not be issued without reason, and that since these characteristics are essential to God, His commands possess a strong modal status. It was also observed that God’s possession of these attributes is sufficient to give significant content to God’s goodness.’
Indeed, the Euthyphro Dilemma can be turned around on atheists: Do you approve of an action because it is good, or is it good because you approve of it? If the latter, then your moral standard seems to be subjective and arbitrary, so you complain about God’s alleged arbitrariness. And if the former, then you are back to explaining where this objective moral standard comes from. As shown above, evolution can’t provide this, so the above Divine Nature Theory is back on the table.

Similarly for social theories of good—is something good because society makes a rule about it, or does society make a rule about it because it’s good?

But doesn’t that make it strange to say “God is good”? That would be a tautology! Of course God is good, whatever He does, because God defines good! Even if God would do ‘bad’ things, those acts would be good by definition.
Also the meaning of ‘righteousness’ becomes uncertain. Righteousness then is just whatever God decides it is. “God is a righteous judge”, it is often said. That gives no comfort at all! God’s judgement is ‘righteous’ whatever it is.
It did comfort Abraham though: ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?’ (Genesis 18:25). How did Abraham know this? It’s likely that being made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–28) includes having a moral nature. This is consistent with the explicit teaching of Romans 2:14–16 that we have a conscience and the Law written on our hearts, and we don’t even live up to this standard.

But the Bible also explains that the conscience is no longer an infallible guide because of the Fall, because it can be seared (Titus 2:4). Thus our consciences now must be properly informed, and we do that by studying God’s Law (Psalm 1:2).

“God’s judgement will be righteous” can thus be restated as “God’s judgement will be according to God’s will.” So Christian terminology contains some disturbing tautologies,
As above, there is more to it than that. But it’s worth noting that tautologies are not necessarily disturbing. All definitions and logically valid arguments are tautologies. Many scientific ideas are formulated in terms of tautologies as well:

Hooke’s Law states that the extension of an ideal spring is proportional to the force; an ideal spring is defined as one that obeys Hooke’s Law.
What is electric charge? That quality of matter on which an electric field acts. What is an electric field? A region in space that exerts a force on electric charge. But no one would claim that the theory of electricity is thereby invalid and can’t explain how motors work.
This is why we advise against the ‘natural selection is a tautology’ argument.

and we have no guarantee that God’s ‘righteous’ judgement will resemble anything that we think is ‘righteous’ (although the Bible gives some clues for certain situations).
But as stated, if there is a lack of resemblance, the fault is ours, not God’s.

So we might as well stop applying terms like ‘goodness’ and ‘righteousness’ to God, because we cannot infer any real meaning from such combinations of words.
Not really, if we correctly understand ‘God is good’ as a subject-predicate statement, not an identity statement. To explain, an example of the former is ‘my father is tall’, and of the latter is ‘my father is my male parent’. In the former, it provides additional information about my father, in the latter, ‘my father’ is by definition ‘my male parent’—there is no new information. So God is not good in the same way as my father is my male parent, but in the same way that my father is tall—goodness really is additional information about God’s character.

Oh, I have this other little question. Sarfati argues in his book, Refuting Compromise (by the way, I often recommend this brilliant work to compromising Christians),
Thanx. Hope it helps undo some of the compromise.

that animals do experience suffering. If this is true, then billions of animals are experiencing the most agonizing pains, while they are innocent (they do not know the difference between right and wrong). In contrast to some humans, they will never be ‘repaid’ for all this suffering in any way. CMI says animals don’t have an after life. How can this be righteous?

Refuting Compromise

by Jonathan D. Sarfati

With brilliant clarity, Jonathan Sarfati, author of the best-selling Refuting Evolution (Vols 1 and 2), has produced a resounding refutation of the 'progressive creationism' of Hugh Ross, whose views cause massive confusion about science and the Bible. The most powerful and scientific defence of a straightforward view of Genesis creation ever written.
The Western culture is very individualist in thinking, but the Bible was more collective, as are most cultures even today—for an explanation see Honor and Group Orientation in the New Testament World.1 This explains the frequent Corporate Punishment in the Bible. So when Adam sinned, because he was the head of humanity, we all sinned in Adam (Romans 5:12–19). But Adam also had dominion over the rest of creation, so when he sinned, the whole creation under him was cursed as well, in line with the principle of corporate punishment (see The Fall: a cosmic catastrophe).

Note, if corporate punishment is ‘unjust’, whatever that might mean in an atheistic framework, then so is corporate redemption. Yet the Bible teaches this concept: believers in Christ are saved because our sins were corporately imputed (credited) to His account (Isaiah 53:6) when He was on the cross. And His perfect righteousness was imputed to believers in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Some animals only suffer during their short, innocent, miserable lives, but they will never be compensated for this. If innocents suffer but never get compensated, that’s not righteousness, not by my definition at least. Of course you can say that God is the one who decides what’s right and what’s wrong, and that I shouldn’t be arrogant.
Yes, one could, because your knowledge is fallible and your conscience imperfectly informed. After all, you cannot prove that God hasn’t a good reason for allowing the suffering of animals, e.g. to achieve a greater good. See also the discussion in The problem of evil.

But that makes the word ‘right’ meaningless, because even the cruellest things can then be ‘right’.
Indeed, given our imperfect knowledge, you are in a sense right. Consider how a tribesperson from a low-tech culture might view the removal of an eye in a child after a minor injury that seems to have healed. The specialist knows that the patient has ‘sympathetic ophthalmia’, and if the injured eye is not removed, the patient will go totally blind in both eyes, as happened to Louis Braille. Removal of the eye (without anesthetic, if none is available) seems ‘cruel’, but is definitely ‘right’ given the greater knowledge. God’s knowledge relative to ours is infinitely greater than the disparity between the knowledge of the eye surgeon and the tribesperson.

Thank you,
R.
You’re welcome

Jonathan Sarfati

Related Articles
Bomb-building vs the biblical foundation (the Moral Argument for God explained properly vs misconceptions)
The problem of evil
‘Euthyphro’s Dilemma’ by Gregory Koukl
A Christian Answer to Euthyphro’s Dilemma by Bob Enyart
‘C.S. Lewis and the Euthyphro Dilemma’ by Steve Lovell (off–site, find by Google).
References



1.There are pluses and minuses of both types of cultures—see the secular article Shame-culture and Guilt-culture. However, the countries most influenced by the Reformation are the most individualist, with all the prosperity that individual and property rights can bring. This is due to the rediscovery of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith, which elevated the independence of the individual. So did Jesus’ condemnation of sins of the heart which no other human could see, such as anger and lust (Matthew 5:22,28). So while biblical culture was collectivist, and must be understood in this context, many of its teachings subtly addressed the downsides of this type of culture and laid the foundation for the positive aspects of an individualist one. See John Robbins, Christ and Civilisation, Trinity Foundation, POB 68, Unicoi, TN 37692, 2003. Return to Text

Published: 5 May 2007(GMT+10)

More Articles Related:

http://creation.com/review-there-is-a-god-by-antony-flew

http://creation.com/creation-suffering-and-the-problem-of-evil

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5236

I will be praying for oyu.

Devin82m on YouTube

( Devin82m@mail.com for any questions about God and or Creationism. )

Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.

• Reply