Response to Loftus #1

John Loftus is a former-pastor turned atheist who now writes and speaks in defense of atheism. He has been writing on his blog, Debunking Christianity, a series he has called “Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?” These are a series of seemingly unbelievable ideas that, according to Loftus, all Christians must believe. I am going to blog through all of these (so far he’s up to 23 posts) with my responses and then do my own series “Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Naturalism is True?”

1) There must be a God who is a simple being yet made up of three inexplicable persons existing forever outside of time without a beginning, who therefore never learned anything new, never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature.

I don’t think any rational Christian believes that God is simple. God does not have to be simple. Through God’s omnipotence, He can show himself in a simple way so that we, His creation, can understand Him, but that does not make Him simple. When I am talking to my 18-month-old son, I do not speak the same way that I speak to my graduate advisor. I speak simply to my son so he can understand me. That does not mean that while I am speaking to him all my speech and thoughts must be simple.

An infinite being who created the universe and exists beyond the limits of time and space would appear to us, who are finite beings living within a linear timeline, as having the characteristics that Loftus mentions above. The fact that he exists outside of time and never learned anything new does not sound like a challenge to me. This sounds like commonly accepted attributes of an eternal and omniscient God. The laws of causality demand that there must be something that exists eternally (an un-caused first cause) to stop infinite regress (more on this on a future post). I think some atheists (actually most people, atheist or not) have trouble with the concept of a being who already knows everything and does not need to learn anything new. To me, these sound like necessary attributes of a being who is powerful enough to create the universe. The concept of learning something new is a human concept, and an attribute (i.e. omniscience) which can never apply to humans can sometimes be uncomfortable. Once my son is old enough to start asking questions, I will have the answers to nearly all of them (I hope!) and he might think that I know everything. But the difference between God’s knowledge and mine is so much greater than that between my knowledge and my son’s.

The arguments that God “never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature” are human attributes that don’t necessarily apply to an infinite being. I think that Loftus is trying to say that because God already knows the future the concepts of risk and choice do not apply to Him. Choice does not involve knowledge of the future, it involves desire. A little while ago I had a choice to make: Michelle and I went to my favorite restaurant (Red’s) and I had to choose between the burger and the chopped salad. I knew that I was going to get the burger, I always get the burger. In fact, before we were seated Michelle told me that she knew I was going to get the burger. Just because both I and Michelle already knew that I would order the burger does not mean that I did not make the choice to order the burger.

The main problem with Loftus’ argument is that he is looking through atheism glasses. He already assumes that God does not exist and then interprets the data. He calls this a control belief. Christians have the same kind of control belief; Christians assume that God does exist and then interpret the data. And this is the way it has to be. God can neither be proved or disproved; we must start with an assumption either way. Atheists/naturalists are no less impartial than Christians/theists. Atheism/naturalism does not build a better case than Christianity/theism, they just view the data through different glasses. In this case, Loftus assumes that there cannot be an infinite deity who created the universe and therefore these attributes of omniscience and eternality are irrational. I start with the assumption that there must be a God and omniscience and eternality must be attributes of this God.

By Request...

Here are some recent pics of Eli.

Here we are at Disneyland.



We met Nana and Papa there.



His favorite ride seems to be the carousel right now.



We had a lot of fun.




We also went to the Long Beach Aquarium. He loved the jellyfish exhibit.



And he made friends with a diver.



Eli loved the fish petting zoo.



But his favorite part was the Lorikeet Exhibit.



As you can see, Chris likes to lurk in the background



But he came out to show off his glorious manbeardedness



The whole fam came




Why do kids sleep like this? This cant be good for his back.

My Amazing Winning Wife

Michelle is the luckiest woman alive, and not just because she married me! She wins so much stuff from radio stations. I think its a combination of incredible, odds-defying luck and a huge number of attempts to win stuff. She will be flipping through radio stations in the car and if she hears "Call now to win" she'll have already speed-dialed the radio station before the DJ even finishes the sentence. Today she won Dave Matthews tickets and we're going to see them at Verizon Amphiteatre on August 21. Here is a list of things she has won from radio stations in the past couple of years:
- Front row center tix to see Dave Matthews Band at the Hollywood Bowl
- Another pair of tix to see DMB at the Hollywood Bowl on another night
- Backstage passes to see the Goo Goo Dolls at Verizon which included wine tasting and pics with the band
- A pair of tix to see Nickleback at Verizon
- A set of four tix to Knotts Berry Farm for answering the question "What is the name of the restaurant that serves chicken at Knott's?"
- A pair of tix to see a screening of Hitch with the cast which included the soundtrack and a t-shirt
- A set of four tix to see Princesses on Ice which included a tea party with the princesses
- A set of books and cds from Greg Laurie and Harvest
- And most recently another pair of tix to see DMB at Verizon

Lost Ramblings

Some things you may have missed so far this season if you are only a casual watcher of Lost and have not yet taken it to the same unhealthy level that I have:

- Jin and Sun are not married in the alternate universe: they are not wearing wedding rings and the airport employee calls Sun ‘Ms. Paik’ which is her maiden name
- Desmond is married in the alternate universe: he’s wearing a wedding ring
- Jack does not have a problem with alcohol in the alternate universe: he only has one bottle of alcohol instead of the two that he had in the season 1 flashbacks, and he spills it and doesn’t drink it.
- The title of last night’s ep “What Kate Does” mirrors a season 1 ep titled “what Kate Did.”
- The infection that Dogen said that Sayid had sounds like the infection from the early seasons that made Desmond wear a hazmat suit to go outside the hatch.
- Ethan was Claire’s doctor in the alternate universe and he tried to steal Claire’s baby in the original storyline. He was introduced in season 1 as Ethan Rom, but we later found out that he was the son of Horace Goodspeed and he introduced himself last night as Ethan Goodspeed. Also, he was born on the island, so I think his appearance last night is going to be important.
- The stuffed killer whale that Kate saw in Claire’s bag in the off-island timeline is the same stuffed killer whale that Kate gave to newborn Aaron in season 2.

Snow

We took Eli to the snow for the first time last weekend. My family rents this cabin up in Blue Jay every year and this year was Eli's first. I know I am totally biased, but isn't this the cutest kid you've ever seen??? The last picture is in the cabin when Eli tried to kiss Michelle through a window.

Poor Neglected Blog

I'm back to blogging. I don't think anyone's reading this anymore, though. To anyone who still reads this little blog, here are a bunch of thoughts rolling around my head:

- I just turned 29. I don't want to call it a mid-life crisis, but this was a tough birthday for me. I have a list of things that I want to accomplish by the time I'm 30 and I only have 360 more days to finish it.

- Emotions overwhelm over the crisis in Haiti; so tragic. It makes me proud to be an American that disaster aid is something that we take so seriously, and it makes me glad to be a Christian when I hear of faith based organizations showing God's love to Haiti. Pat Robertson ticks me off and he mis-represents Christianity. He doesn't represent me or anyone else that I know when he says stupid things like this. His theology is dangerous. If one thinks that when tragedies happen, the victims are being punished by a vengeful God, then help will be slow if at all. Ideas have consequences.

- Eli is at an awesome age. He is really active, very curious, and just mobile enough to be able to hurt himself. He gets really excited about certain things and starts running, but he cant quite control it yet, so he trips a lot. He is so cute, though. I think he might be starting to get ready for a sibling though. (this is merely an observation, not an announcement.)


More blogging later. Here's a picture.

Our Christmas Music Video

We won funniest video last night at the Calvary-Church-high-school-group-"White-Christmas"-Christmas-party.

Feel free to laugh at my running man dance moves.

Good Article

Everyone should read this article by Jeff Bleich, chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees, even if you are not a CSU student.

The Fifth of November

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd (or by God's mercy*)
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring. (Holla*)
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!

I love that Eli already loves books!

Countdown to LCROSS

This morning NASA will be shooting a probe into the moon at 6000 mph. The probe will shoot a huge plume of debris which will be analyzed to see if the moon has water. This is important as NASA moves towards building a permanent lunar base. For any who are interested, you can watch the impact live via the probes onboard camera here. You have to really want to see it live, because the impact is scheduled for 4:31 PDT.

Nuts!

I am confused about something and I want to see if anyone in cyberspace agrees with me because so far everyone that I've talked to in real life about this looks at me like I'm crazy.

I understand that a shelled nut means the shell has been removed, but it sounds so counter-intuitive to me. If you took the shell off wouldn't it be un-shelled or de-shelled??? A shelled nut sounds like a nut with a shell. If I say I "covered" Eli, that doesn't mean that I took a blanket off of him. That means that I put a blanket on him. I think that the description "shelled nut" needs to be changed because I cannot be the only one confused by this. I am going to start a petition to send to the nut industry. Who's with me?!?!

It was hot today!

Am I in Arizona? Someone needs to remind the weather that summer is over now.

Cooking

I very recently (in the past month or so) have been really interested in cooking. In the 3 years that Michelle and I have been married, I can count the number of times that I cooked dinner on 1 hand. And each time I cooked, dinner consisted of overdone scrambled eggs and underdone toast. I hated to cook. Cooking was the most stressful thing to me. Everything happened so quickly and I was never prepared. But I recently tried to make a couple things and it turned out ok which gave me a lot of cooking confidence. I made a decent batch of divinity and a decent batch of peanut butter fudge. Then Michelle and I saw Julie and Julia and I started making dinners. So far I've only got me feet wet with casseroles, but they have all turned out pretty well. Cooking is no longer stressful and I really enjoy it now. I'm going to crack open The Joy Of Cooking and try my hand at some of the fancier kinds of cooking. Occasionally I'll share some recipes that worked. Today, I'll share the easiest peanut butter fudge recipe in the world (from Alton Brown):

1 cup peanut butter (I recommend chunky to add texture)
1 cup butter
1 lb powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Microwave peanut butter and butter on high for 2 mins. Stir and microwave for another 2 mins on high and stir again. Add vanilla extract and (sifted) powdered sugar and mix into peanut butter/butter mixture. Pour mixture into lightly greased 8 X 8 inch pan and cover with wax paper and refrigerate until chilled. Slice into pieces and store in air tight container for up to 1 week.
***Warning: this recipe creates an insanely sweet fudge. I used about 3/4 lb of powdered sugar and it was still so sweet that you bypass the sugar high and go straight to sugar coma.

Easy peasy. I added melted chocolate to the top for a Reese's effect and it was pretty good.

Religulous

Bill Maher has made a less than flattering documentary about religion which he has cleverly titled Religulous. Maher admits in his documentary that his mother was Jewish, his father was Catholic. His family chose his father’s religion and he was raised Catholic, but he was only really Catholic when he wanted something from God. He asked his mother why they went to church while he was growing up and his mother responded with “that’s just what you did back then.” So according to his own confession, Maher is not religious. However, he understands the basic doctrines of Christianity and often quotes the Bible in his documentary, but he is to be taken less seriously than one who has truly investigated the claims of Christianity and chosen not to believe (like Bart Ehrman). While he harpoons all three monotheisms, he focuses most of his documentary on Christianity.
Maher believes that all religion is bad and needs to be eliminated before mankind can progress to our next intellectual stage. He gives some thought provoking reasons for this belief: religious fundamentalism results in war, religion leads to racism and a new type of class warfare in which classes are divided by belief instead of wealth, and religious creeds are crazy. He asks how anyone can believe that a second millennium b.c. religious mystic talked to God through a burning bush that wasn’t really burning, or that God impregnated a first century AD virgin teenager to give birth to His son who is also God, or that the Trinity is monotheistic. Maher, like most other modern critics of Christianity, falls victim to the logical fallacy of reductio ad absurdum in which he reduces the doctrines of Christianity to their simplest form and criticizes them as absurd. The same method can be used to make evolutionists look crazy. “Do you actually believe that the tree in your backyard, or your dog, or your body and your mind all came out of a bunch of rocks?” Of course evolutionary theory is more complex than that! An evolutionist has a right to get offended if I say that they are naïve, crazy, or just plain stupid to believe in something so preposterous. Christianity is the same way. If you reduce Christianity’s beliefs into their simplest form and then criticize Christians as stupid for believing them, then you commit the same offense as I just mentioned. And this is what Bill Maher does in Religulous. Most of Maher’s claims about Christianity can be refuted with a little common sense and independent thought.
Bill Maher is no better than Michael Moore. Both make pseudo-documentaries that support a conclusion which they’ve determined before they started. Both edit their documentaries to portray people on the fringe who make themselves and their organizations (in the case of Religulous, Christianity) look crazy and make the narrator/interviewer look intelligent. Both use hot-button issues in a spectacle of disingenuousness that becomes mere entertainment with no intellectual value. But don’t get me wrong; it is entertaining. Its entertaining like Favre’s retirement announcements and Kanye’s apologies: they’re fun to watch, but you just don’t take them very seriously. I enjoyed Religulous not as a documentarian look at religion, but as a representation of how some non-Christians view Christianity.

Americans and American History

It seems like every year a study comes out showing how abysmal Americans' knowledge of American history is. Jay Leno frequently show us how little we know in a humurous way with Jay Walking. We even make light of it with shows like Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader. Surveys of college students have been conducted that show how most college graduates know very little of our country's history. (Click here for an example) Here are some results from this study:
"Approximately 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 schools nationwide were given a 60-question, multiple-choice exam on basic knowledge of America’s heritage. Both years, the students failed. The average freshman scored 51.7% the first year and 51.4% the next. The average senior scored 53.2%, then 54.2%."

In response to this survey, I would like to take my own survey. Please indulge me and take my short 15 question quiz on American history and politics.


U.S. History Quiz
1.) Which came first, the Revolutionary War or the Civil War?
2.) What decade did the Civil War take place in?
3.) How many presidents have there been?
4.) Name the original thirteen colonies.
5.) Which came first, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? (extra credit for naming the years that either were drafted)
6.) Name the branches of government.
7.) What was the Monroe Doctrine?
8.) How many amendments are there to the Constitution? (extra credit if you can describe them all)
9.) How many presidents have been shot? Assassinated?
10.) How long can a president serve? What are the prerequisites to become president?
11.) Who said “Give me liberty or give me death?”
12.) Who/what is America named after?
13.) On what ship did the Pilgrims sail to America?
14.) What significance is there to the date June 6, 1944?
15.) Who is the current commander-in-chief of the armed forces?

Music vs. Lyrics

Do you listen to the lyrics of a song, or do you listen to the beat/instruments/other aspects? Do you have a song that you love, but the lyrics are bad? One of my favorite songs of all time is Say Goodbye by Dave Matthews Band, but it is about how this guy is cheating with another guy's girlfriend. Its all about making love to a girl for one night and then she has to go back to her man the next day and they have to be just friends. The live versions are even better than the studio, but the lyrics are even worse. But I still love the song and it remains on my top 5 greatest songs of all time.
Can you disassociate the lyrics from a really good song? What songs do you love that have bad lyrics?

Meca-leca-hi-meca-hiney-ho.

Good news for all you Pee-Wee Herman fans
Here and here.

Happy Anniversary, Honey!!!

Today is Michelle's and my three year anniversary. Three years ago today we were standing in the gazebo at the Huntington Beach Hilton proclaiming our love for each other through marriage. A lot has happened in the last three years, the best thing is this little guy.




Michelle, if its possible I love you now more than I did then. I look forward to every day with you. I thank God every day for blessing me with you. I love you!

Eli Update

Eli just had his 9-month well baby check-up. I cannot believe he is 9 months old already! He is 31.5 inches: the doctor said that he is above the 99.9 percentile which I'm pretty sure means that he is the tallest boy in the world. He is 22 lbs, 4 oz which is in the 67% so we have a little string bean. The doc said he's doing really well, which for some reason means a lot more when it comes from a doctor than when you think it for yourself.

Yesterday he climbed the stairs by himself!!! He climbed all the way up! I was behind him to make sure that he didn't fall back (obviously!) but he climbed them by himself, I did not help him at all! He can climb the stairs on his hands and knees better than I can! I could not believe it. And he knew that he shouldn't be doing what he was doing because when I brought him back downstairs he looked at Michelle like "Ha Ha, look what I just got away with!" We're going to have to be careful with him. I have a feeling he's going to get into a lot of trouble.