Thinking to Believe

As you know, I’ve been doing a podcast series on relativism. I began the series by examining relativism writ large, demonstrating why it’s false that we can’t know any truth at all. Then I moved on to explore the claim that we can’t know moral truth. Now I’m in the last phase of the series, exploring the application of relativism to religion. Religious relativism (RR) holds that religious truth cannot be known (or does not exist), so religions can only be true in a relative sense of the word.

I discuss three different forms of RR, how RR impacts the religious conversation, the reasons people subscribe to RR, and offer an extended critique of the view. Catch the latest episodes at https://thinkingtobelieve.buzzsprout.com or listen wherever you get your podcasts from.

Check out my latest article, “How divine appearances and the angel of YHWH can illuminate the meaning of ‘the form of God’ and shed light on Jesus’ prayers.”

My conclusion sums it up best:

The human-like appearances of YHWH in the OT, including His appearances as the angel of YHWH, help us understand what Paul meant when he said Jesus existed “in the form of God” prior to the incarnation. He was identifying Jesus as the YHWH’s visible image in the OT, similar to Jude’s identification of Jesus as the angel of YHWH who led the Israelites in the wilderness.

These divine appearances also provide an analogue to the Father-Son communication in the NT. We see a distinction between YHWH’s invisible and visible modes of existence, and yet YHWH visible is still identified as the one and only YHWH. YHWH was active in both His invisible and visible modes simultaneously. Invisible YHWH could even communicate with visible YHWH, illustrating the possibility of communication between two modes of YHWH’s existence.

This phenomena is similar to what we see in the NT. Invisible YHWH (Father) communicated with visible YHWH (Son) and vice versa, even though the Father and Son are both YHWH. In the same way we would not say YHWH was talking to Himself in the OT, we should not think YHWH was talking to Himself in the NT. Jesus’ prayers, and the Father-Son communication generally, is due to God’s assumption of a human nature in the incarnation. When God became a man, He assumed a human nature, allowing Him to be a human being and function as a human being, including a genuine human psychology. In Jesus, YHWH is conscious of Himself as a human being. He has the mental life of a human being. In such a state, communication with the Father is not only possible, but expected.

It’s obvious to anyone who reads the comment section of my posts that I do not interact with the comments very often. It’s not for lack of desire. In the past, I used to respond to virtually every comment. However, over the last 5 years, I have been working 70 hour weeks. For a while, I hardly posted anything. Lately, I’ve been able to write a bit more, but unfortunately, I can’t both write and interact with the comments. It’s one or the other, and since you can’t have comments without new posts, I focus my attention on generating new content.

That said, I had to fly recently, and I was able to read through many of the comments on the last 10 posts or so. I couldn’t respond to everything, but I did respond to some. If you’ve been waiting for my feedback, take a look at the comments section again. Feel free to respond to my responses, but just know that I probably won’t be able to reply back in return.

It’s common to hear theologians and apologists claim that Jesus’ self-designation, “son of man,” is a reference to the divine/exalted figure in Daniel 7:13-14. As such, Jesus’ use of “son of man” is a claim to deity. However, there are two problems with this conclusion. First, while Jesus referred to Himself as “son of man” many times, He only connected the term with Daniel 7:13-14 on one occasion (Mt 26:64-66; Mk 14:62-64; Lk 22:67-71). Is it reasonable to think that Jesus’ understanding of this phrase is based entirely on Daniel 7 when He only connected the phrase with Daniel 7 on one occasion at the end of His ministry? While I do not doubt that Jesus saw Himself as the son of man figure of Daniel 7, I do not think this exhausted His understanding or use of the phrase.

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The Left is always advocating that we raise taxes on the rich. It’s common to hear them say “the rich should pay their fair share in taxes.” I agree that people should pay their fair share in taxes, which is why I oppose raising taxes on the rich. In fact, I propose that we lower taxes on the rich and raise taxes on the poor (by which I simply mean the “non-rich”). Why? It’s because the rich already pay more than their fair share while the poor pay less than their fair share. As of 2017, the top 1% U.S. income earners made 21% of the total income, but pay 38.5% of all federal income taxes. If they were paying their fair share, they would be paying 21% of all taxes, not 38.5%. In fact, the top 1% pay more in taxes than the bottom 90% combined (29.9%). Even if you widen the net to the top 50% of income earners, this group pays 96.7% of all taxes. That means the bottom 50% of income earners only pay 3% of federal taxes. While the top 1% pay an average of 26.8% of their income in taxes, the bottom 50% only pays an average of 4% (6x less).[1] Does this sound fair to you? So on what grounds can one legitimately claim that the rich are not paying their fair share, and need to be taxed even more?

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Theology tells us who we are in a relationship with, what the person we are relating to is like, and how He wants us to relate to Him. That’s why one can’t have a relationship with God without theology.

When people say they want a relationship with God rather than theology, what are they seeking? A mere feeling? An experience? Is that what a relationship with God means to you? These sorts of things are fleeting – they are not what a relationship is built on. Relationships are built on trust, and trust requires knowledge. That’s why theology is so important. You can’t have a relationship with God without a basic level of theological knowledge, and you can’t grow in your relationship with God without additional theological understanding. So if you truly desire to deepen your relationship with God, you’ll need to start reading the Bible more and studying theology.

We detect design in a number of ways: the purposeful arrangement of parts, specified complexity, and irreducible complexity. All of these features are present in the biological world, and thus it is reasonable to conclude that life was designed by some intelligence. The most likely candidate for such an intelligence is God. If you are an atheist, this option is not open to you. So you have to explain how life could arise through purely natural processes without the aid of a mind.

This is a tall order. To see why, just consider what it would take to form just a single, small protein consisting of 150 amino acids by chance alone. The odds of such a protein forming by chance alone is 1 in 10¹⁶⁴. That means you would only get one functional protein for every 100 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion attempts (assuming that each attempt tries a unique combination of amino acids). Written out, that is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 attempts. What are the chances of this happening?

The actual conditions on the early earth make this very unlikely due to the low numbers of amino acids and harmful contaminants. So let’s increase the chances by stocking the oceans to capacity with amino acids (all atoms on earth including carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur so that there is enough materials to form 10⁴¹ complete sets of amino acids used to build proteins) and altering the laws of nature to protect these building blocks from harmful ultraviolet light and chemical contamination. And let’s say it only takes 1 second to form each protein chain attempt, resulting in 6,000 million billion trillion trillion combination attempts every minute. After 4.6 billion years (the estimated age of Earth), there would have been 10⁵⁸ attempts made to build a functional protein. While that’s a lot, it is nowhere near the 10¹⁶⁴ needed.

How much time would be needed, then? Imagine an amoeba that travels round trip across the entire length of the universe (90 billion light years in diameter) at a pace of one foot per year. It would take 10 billion billion billion years for him to make the round trip (1,000 million trillion miles), and yet, no functional protein would form by the time he returned. To make things interesting, on the next trip the amoeba transports a single atom to the other side of the universe, drops it off, and returns to his starting point. Would a protein have formed during this second trip? No. So the amoeba transports more atoms, one by one. The amoeba would be able to transport every atom in the entire universe (100 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion atoms, and hence, 100 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trips) – not just once, but 56,000,000 times over the course of 56 million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion years before chance would finally produce one small functional protein.[1] And yet, even after all that time and effort, there would still be no life because the simplest life requires at least 1500 proteins (among many other biological parts). The amoeba would have to transport 84 billion universes atom-by-atom before all 1500 proteins would form to create the simplest living organism (84 billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion years).

This is why chance cannot explain the origin of life. Life is based on highly specified information. Functional proteins are extremely rare. To create all of the proteins necessary for life requires an intelligence who knows how to arrange the chemicals in a functional manner without having to try every possible combination. It’s similar to writing a book. If we had to rely on chance to create Moby Dick it would take countless eons, but an intelligent mind can arrange the letters in the precise order needed in months or even weeks. Likewise, chance alone cannot account for the origin of life in such a short period of time. The only known cause of information is mind. Only personal, intelligent agents are capable of producing highly specified information such as we find in the biological world, and thus it stands to reason that a personal, intelligent agent created life.

See also:

Signature in the Cell, Part 4: Assessing the Chance Hypothesis for the Origin of Life

The origin of life is not a lottery

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[1]Origin: Design, Chance, and the First Life on Earth. Video, Illustra Media, 2016. Excerpted from 21:30 – 28:07. The illustration was adapted from the work of Dr. James F. Coppedge in Evolution: Possible or Impossible?.

More Americans favor the legalization of marijuana than not.  40% of Americans think recreational marijuana should be legal whereas only 32% disagree.  The shift in public opinion is clearly ideological and generational as support for legalizing marijuana is supported mainly by the non-religious, the liberal, and the young.