Saturday, March 31, 2012

Folly Of The Earthly Erudite

    It is a formidable feat for an intelligent young person to go through the modern college system and come out with unshaken faith in the God of the Bible.  There are a plethora of professors who are so convinced that God is a myth and the Bible a fable that they unceasingly make assertions (sometimes implicitly,  sometimes explicitly) with the express purpose of debunking all credibility in the Bible.  To make matters more difficult, it is usually the doctorate-holding professors (the more intelligent, and therefore, those lent more credence) that iterate these slanders.

    One employed tactic that I have witnessed is to exploit apparent injustices of the Bible.  One professor of mine made a claim that the Bible condones slavery, for example.  While in the Old Testament there were instructions regarding the treatment and/or liberty of slaves, it is not any more condoned by the Bible than polygamy or killing.  The fullness of the true will of God was not realized until the time of the New Testament.  It was the hardness of men's hearts that necessitated God's commandments along those lines, but from the beginning it was not meant to be so.  In short,  the only people who have ever made such accusations against the uprightness of the Bible are they who have not read the Bible in its entirety.  Those who have read all of it find no confusion in the state of things past and God's abhorrence of the sin of slavery.  To pick out a part of the Bible without consideration of its counterparts is like leaving off the negating clause of a sentence.  The entire meaning is misconstrued to represent the opposite of the intended message.

    Another method of calling the Bible into question which is often used is the pointing out of alleged contradictions in the Bible.  I have heard so many of these through the years and have yet to find one that can stand the test of scrutiny.  Rather than go into the many examples I have heard throughout my scholastic life, I will simply make an offer that if any can find even one contradiction in the entire Bible, please present it to me and I will admit the error of my misplaced faith if there is no reasonable and clear solution.  Those who make these claims in a setting of higher learning have only ever proven to me the depths of their prejudiced, unyielding affinity for ignorance.

    Perhaps the most difficult storm to weather in a ship made of faith is the atheist science professor.  I have witnessed these men and women exhibit some of the most malicious calumny seasoned with hard bitterness against the Bible than I have scarcely witnessed from anyone else toward anything else.  Science is knowledge, and yet so much is taught as    known that is really only believed, and therefore NOT (in the strictest sense) science.
I have seen scientists exhibit more faith in their incomplete data and unprovable theories than I have seen Christians display faith in their own God.  And the latter is the only one that claims to have faith.

    Students, be informed and apprized: the principal point that an atheist/evolutionist will use to disparage the veracity of the Bible is the age of the Earth.
  • Evolutionists claim that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old
  • The Bible's timeline makes the Earth out to be about 6 thousand years old
There are countless angles at which this claim of the Bible is lampooned.
  1. Fossils
  2. The distance of the continents
  3. The rock layering of Earth's crust
    All of the above, among others, are used as points of discrediting the Biblical authority.  Most of these are explained by the great flood of Genesis.
  1. The ideal condition for the creation of a fossil is quick burial, copious amounts of water, and lots of pressure.  All these and more would be the case in a great flood.  That is why as we speak, fossils are not being made.  They do not continue to be found younger and younger than the previously found.  Fossils indicate Biblical authenticity.
  2. Pangea is the name we ascribe to the giant, united landmass surrounded by ocean in which form the world was created.  It is a fact that the continents are drifting apart at the approximate rate of human toenail growth.  At this rate, the continents could not have drifted so far apart as they are in the span of 6 thousand years.  Yet the history of the flood accounts for it.  In the Bible, God is said to have "destroyed the world" by water.  It says that when the flood came, the fountains of the deep were broken up.  It seems therefore that the Earth was literally destroyed, that is to say, broken up and reformed.  The Earth after the flood was not the same as the Earth before the flood.
  3. Needless to say, a worldwide flood which ravaged the Earth so, also made deposits of unparalleled proportions, which account for rock layering in the magnitude and fashion in which it is now laid.

    Notwithstanding the countless and interminable arguments that can be bandied about on both sides, all the discrepancies regarding the age of the Earth can be explained with one simple concept:
God created everything with age.

    Has no one noticed that God did not create a baby from the dust of the Earth?  He created man.  He created Adam with age and Eve likewise.  He created fully developed animals and plants, yet are we to suppose that the Earth itself was created without any intrinsic age?  It is indeed an unorthodox concept, and yet no one seems to have problems with the concept that God created a fully grown man with intrinsic age when his actual Earth age was zero.  The Earth itself is the same.  It and indeed the whole of the universe were created with age.
This removes that subject of ridicule which is so pleasurably ascribed to the Bible as its folly by the ignorant who claim erudition.

    Philosophers beware the worldly wise!  If your philosophies have carried you to any place, pray God that it should have taken you to the following revelation: 
  • Reasoning often cycles in the form of a circle.  Much thought and enlightenment averts one's opinion toward the reciprocal.  However, further education and simple sense coupled with experience and wisdom often enlighten again one's opinion back toward its primary disposition.
    Beware the intelligent.  Beware the learned.  Indeed they may have more terrestrial perspicacity than you, but this, a true philosopher must concede, in no way gives them a greater monopoly on the truth, as they may be one more revelation away from taking the next 180 degree turn in their cycle of wisdom back to the point at which they tried so poignantly to dissuade others.

The Bible itself characterizes such a philosophy: 
  • "The foolishness of God is wiser than men...not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise."

7 comments:

  1. I totally agree! so tired of listening to these nonsense lies. Can't believe people who consider themselves smart and logical are still believing these theories. I remember when I had biology class, although I enjoyed it for the most part, I felt so mad when teacher was explained everything from the evolutionary position, as if that was 100% truth.

    Regarding creating the Earth with age - very interesting point, never thought of it in this way.

    Today in the class when we went over the Semitic languages it was mentioned that the oldest findings of the language records were found to be about 6,000 years old. I found it to be so cool because it makes perfect sense. First man was created intelligent from the day one, knowing how to speak, and he passed it to his children, and making some writings which reached our days. All of these happened when Earth was just created and man populated it. This is why they don't find any records older than 6,000 years - there was no one to leave them, and there was no place to leave them at :)

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  2. "Beware the intelligent. Beware the learned. Indeed they may have more terrestrial perspicacity than you, but this, a true philosopher must concede, in no way gives them a greater monopoly on the truth, as they may be one more revelation away from taking the next 180 degree turn in their cycle of wisdom back to the point at which they tried so poignantly to dissuade others"

    In your opinion, is there a point in life where one finds a fine line between wisdom and intelligence? As you said, they may be 'one revelation away' from doing a 180 and finding wisdom. Do most intellects reach that point? Where they discover science cannot answer everything? Where they find out for themselves that there is a power which is greater. (God). Also, on the point of being wary of those who have knowledge, couldn't you also say that although secular knowledge may be a sort of weakness or distraction, knowledge in the right areas can also be a weapon? What I mean is, if one person says they would rather just have faith and follow in the footsteps of their 'wise' forefathers, but then another person backs up their actions with the Word of God and actual facts.......who really has a more credited argument? All I want to present to the table, is that knowledge and intellect can come in handy when wanting to have a 'monopoly on the truth', as you stated before. College students should equip themselves with what knowledge they can in order to fight the good fight:)

    Thoughts?

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    1. Yes I believe there is a fine line between wisdom and intelligence. Intelligence is more terrestrial and wisdom is more celestial. Intelligence is the level of facility with which one learns; wisdom is applied knowledge predicated upon perspective.
      I cannot speak with complete erudition on whether or not most intellects reach that complete reversal of opinion to find wisdom, but it seems to me that the vast majority never do. I have not witnessed many if any of the worldly wise admit that science cannot answer everything, and have rather heard many assertions affirming the reciprocal.
      My admonition to be skeptical of the highly educated comes only with the caveat of applying such hesitation of credence to those who are convinced of that which is not necessarily true and are determined to carry away with them the unwitting pupils to the chasm of faithless knowledge. Intelligence is attractive to those who aspire to be educated, but even knowledge itself can be dangerous since NO ONE has all of it.
      That said, I agree completely that knowledge ought not to be despised but attained and revered. But make a clear distinction between unequivocal knowledge and glorified conjecture.
      Knowledge is something to which to aspire. This truth is in no way assuaged by the warning: "Beware the intelligent." If they speak the truth, your precautions will not cause you to reject it.
      Annotated Observations Of Life's Truths was begun for the purpose of utilizing knowledge coupled with simplistic logic to make more "credited arguments" on the behalf of those who see fallacies in the supposed wisdom of the erroneously learned.

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  3. I would like to ask if you are aware of any refutations on the two laws of thermodynamics. The first being there is no new thing being created in the universe or nature. The second law being all that has been created is not evolving into a greater form, but is actually breaking down. I read somewhere of their being challenged and desire clarification concerning any arguments against what I see as factual. Also I commend your use of intelligence along with faith. Jesus Christ is the door, but as Christians we are not asked to check our brain at the door. My thought is why should Satan have all the intellects.

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    1. Regarding the first law of thermodynamics, I have only heard that the property of causality is the reason that nothing can be created or destroyed. If we remove the aspect of cause and effect from our universe, then there is no restriction on these concepts. (The problem is that neither can there be any such concepts as creation or destruction without causality.) Nevertheless, since all of this is theoretical, some suppose that if there were no universe, and no universal laws, matter could be created without a cause, but as soon as this takes effect, it could never be repeated, for now universal law forbids that matter should be created (or destroyed). The only other possibility is that matter was created because there exists an entity with the ability to break the laws of thermodynamics (any such being we must automatically categorize as a god). Occam's Razor demands that I favor the latter explanation.
      With respect to the second law of thermodynamics, I have heard that (discounting the slow evolution of species) mutations best explain how favorable change can occur naturally in time, reversing the natural law of atrophy. For example, certain animal test subjects with sickle cell anemia could not contract certain deadly strains of diseases. This was viewed as a favorable mutation. This is a little ridiculous as it is similar to saying, because I was born without the ability to grow teeth, I cannot get gingivitis. This is not exactly favorable. No mutations in the history of scientific test (and I have searched) have ever proven to be beneficial.
      So it seems the first and second laws of thermodynamics are firmly reliable, though challenged. Theism is supported by these laws. Atheism and evolution are threatened by them, perhaps especially by the second.
      Your thoughts on intelligence are quite quotable. Many people like to cite the biblical passage, "Knowledge puffeth up," which is unarguably true since it is contained in the Bible, but then it must be equally true the ignorance is abhorred by God, for I cite the Bible in response, "So is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men." So the key is a temperate plain abounding as much in knowledge (so as not to violate the second quotation) as humility (so as not to violate the first quotation).

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  4. I wish to extend my thanks for the reply to my inquiry. If it would be welcomed and as the Lord leads I would appreciate further opportunities to pose further questions and/or comments.

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    1. Further questions and comments are welcomed with eagerness, and are a principal purpose of this blog. I have an standing offer to address any question with (God-willing) promptness, conciseness, clarity, and wisdom. I am thankful for all comments and questions I have received in this forum.

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