Faith

Hey guys,

Whateverman and I have had a little interesting discussion in a random thread about faith...so I thought I would put it as a post.

Whateverman said:

Da Pilgrim, does it take faith to not believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster?

I said:

Yes,

Because you cannot confirm without a doubt that he/she/it does not exist.

Whateverman said:

So then, it takes faith to believe that the traffic light will turn Red after it turns yellow, that eating a can of mushrooms wont kill you, that a pen will work when you try to write something, that your computer will turn on when you hit the power switch, etc.

DP, if everything takes faith, why do Christians endlessly trot out their faith as evidence of God's existence? According to you, believing and not believing in things requires faith - meaning that Christian faith is no different from belief or disbelief in an invisible pink unicorn...

I replied:

My definition of faith would be something like:

A logical deduction from the evidence at hand. Faith does not glory in the absence of evidence but glories in the presence of it.

I believe Christianity for a REASON. I do not come to it and say "You know what, I choose Christianity, I don't know/care why but I choose to have faith in the christian God", if I did this that would be BLIND faith.

Since we can only speak of proof in mathematics then everything else is taken as a conclusion from a logical deduction.

I do not know whether a traffic light will continue to turn red or if my computer will turn on when I hit the power switch but I put my faith in a conclusion of the evidence I have at hand.

So you may say something like...why not just call it evidence instead of faith?
Well, when you say that you have "faith" in someone such as a wife...what does that mean? It means to trust her, but of course someone could be wrong about her trustworthiness.

I would not go around saying "I have evidence of my wife's trustworthiness".


All This is why for me to say "I don't know if there is a God" and then live like there is none, is really just like (or similar in principle) living as if there were none...which then shows what my faith would be that there is most likely no God...an atheist. An atheist is willing willing to bet his/her life on it.

I don't have the faith to choose atheism.
You obviously have an opposite faith.

DP

Pillar

More music that I like. I like many styles and this one is from a hard rock band called "Pillar". They are a christian band that have uplifting lyrics, the lyrics of a band mean a lot to me. They aren't the secular "kill yourself" type that are usually associated with hard rock of which I do not like.

Here is a song that I just really like of theirs.



Here is an anthem of faith:



Here is a song about how America needs to come back to the roots of the phrase "In God we trust" (note: the first 20 secs is not the song :))



Enjoy

Prayer

I have recently discovered from atheist friends that the evidence for God would be in things such as answered prayer.

I thought I would try and focus on giving more evidences in this area in the future because it may be a little more relevant for some of you.

First of all I would like to talk about what prayer actually is.

I'll start with a quote from BathTub.
As for evidence for God? Well prayer working would be a good start. And all the associated effects that would entail. "I also tell you this: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you." That kind of tangible prayer effects. Not the completely meaningless 'Yes/No/Wait' excuse people use.

I'll come to an answer to this quote shortly.
I see prayer as communication with God. But even though we can attempt to talk to God He will not always listen:

Job 35:9 ¶ "Because of the multitude of oppressions they cry out; They cry out for help because of the arm of the mighty.
10 But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, Who gives songs in the night,
11 Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, And makes us wiser than the birds of heaven?’
12 There they cry out, but He does not answer, Because of the pride of evil men.
13 Surely God will not listen to empty talk, Nor will the Almighty regard it."

Zechariah 7:11 "But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear.
12 "Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the LORD of hosts.
13 "Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen," says the LORD of hosts.

James 4: 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

God is not a wishlist kind of God, He is a person who happens to know what is best.
He still desires for us to communicate with Him. He even allows our prayers to influence or change his mind.

Genesis 18:23 ¶ And Abraham came near and said, "Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
24 "Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it?
25 "Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
26 So the LORD said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes."
27 Then Abraham answered and said, "Indeed now, I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord:
28 "Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous; would You destroy all of the city for lack of five?" So He said, "If I find there forty-five, I will not destroy it."
29 And he spoke to Him yet again and said, "Suppose there should be forty found there?" So He said, "I will not do it for the sake of forty."
30 Then he said, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Suppose thirty should be found there?" So He said, "I will not do it if I find thirty there."
31 And he said, "Indeed now, I have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: Suppose twenty should be found there?" So He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty."
32 Then he said, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there?" And He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of ten."
33 So the LORD went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.

2 Kings 20:4 And it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the LORD came to him, saying,
5 "Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD.
6 "And I will add to your days fifteen years. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for My own sake, and for the sake of My servant David."’"

So when we take scripture in context God does answer prayer but the answer is not always yes, not always no, not always wait(which is another term for "no for now" :).
God is a Father and He knows what is best for us...

Luke 11: 10 "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
11 "If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?
12 "Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
13 "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"

Notice how you can grab verse ten and stretch it to mean what you want it to mean? When in context it is talking about God giving us the Holy Spirit and not just anything we ask.

Back to BathTub's verse:

15 ¶ "Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.
16 "But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’
17 "And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.
18 "Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
19 "Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.
20 "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them."

What do you notice about the context? Especially the context of the two or three? Jesus is talking about church government.
I am unsure whether verse 19 literally means "everything" when we compare scripture and context, the same applies to verse ten of Luke 11 above.

BathTub, I know your story that you shared about prayer ages ago and I am sad that it did not work out but I sincerely hope you will look past our expectations of God and trust Him to make the best decisions. Note that God has given us freewill and our actions are not to be blamed on God.

I hope I am of some help.

DP

P.S

A fresh testimony I heard the other day (Last weekend).
While out at some family friend's place having sharing times about what we have found in God's word and what God has been teaching us lately, a young lady joined us. She had just recently given her life to God but she had some struggles with depression, headaches and a lack of desire for food. Someone baptized her in the Holy Spirit and her headache disappeared instantly, her desire for food came back!
Praise God for His goodness to those who seek Him.

I'll be adding more and more testimonies as I come across ones I think are worth sharing.

cheers

Band spotlight

A random post on a band that I like to listen to.
Here is a band called "Jars of clay" and here are some of my favourite songs of theirs.
They have an acoustic rock kind of sound...awesome.
Enjoy! (I hope :D)








Jars of Clay "Liquid" (The person who put this on disabled the embed, a video clip included in this one)

Rambling thoughts on Assumptions and science in the class rooms and life,

We all have a worldview. What is yours? What is your preconceived idea about the important questions about this universe/world...even if you do not recognize that it is a preconceived idea. Think about it.

Mine is that there is a God who designed nature and its laws to a greater or lesser degree. I cannot accept that it happened blindly and by chance (more or less). I believe in meaning apart from us.
Assuming you are an atheist, what would your worldview be? Naturalism?
What do you expect to find at the beginning of our world/universe through science? God or rocks, mutations, energy etc? or if you don't accept any view, the view you "neutrally" fall to will be your preconceived idea since regarding God (and particularly the Christian God) You cannot be neutral.
Both view points are invisible literally but each one of us bring that view point to the way we look at the meaning of life and even the study of science.

For example: If I did science, I would expect it to be ordered and to be able to find evidence of God's handiwork.
If an atheist/naturalist does science, he assumes that it was not made and therefore he searches for possibilities of the universe/world making itself and somehow finding order amongst itself.

Both follow evidence, both are possible views for arguments sake.

Though, some people believe religions such as theism and atheism should be kept away from science classes. Quite reasonable to think this in some aspects.
But how is this achieved?
As I pointed out before, our worldviews affect our outlook on science and the world. How then can we keep our worldviews from science rooms? I don't think we can. Therefore why is it so bad to teach Intelligent Causation and Atheistic Naturalism as philosophical companions to science and let the children decide where the evidence points to...IC or AN? Each child's outlook will influence their search and their inferences about the origins of our universe/world.

I am annoyed about a possible bias that science will play toward a "neutral" atheism and its related beliefs about the universe.

Or am I wrong and science can be conducted without these worldviews in the background?

Thoughts anyone?

Sorry

I have stuffed up some of my posts because I was fiddling around. I lost the four comments on the Screwtape letters post.

Drat.

Screwtape Letters on Selfishness

Here is a book by C.S. Lewis that I thoroughly enjoyed, it is called Screwtape letters. It is a book about a senior demon "Screwtape" who teaches or trains his junior demon Wormwood how to bring down his christian patient. This book brought me great insight into how the devil can influence us in ways we never even knew were there. This portion from chapter 16 is about unselfishness and selfishness. My fiancee and I read this together and even recognized it as a fascinating insight into some aspects we can be aware of in our relationship. Lewis brings out a point I had not seen so clearly put before which I now see happening everywhere, so to find out read on.
Note: Since it is from the demon's point of view, when it speaks of the "Enemy" it is are referring to God.


Yes; courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which will grow up ten years
later into domestic hatred. The enchantment of unsatisfied desire produces
results which the humans can be made to mistake for the results of charity.
Avail yourself of the ambiguity in the word "Love": let them think they have
solved by Love problems they have in fact only waived or postponed under the
influence of the enchantment. While it lasts you have your chance to foment the
problems in secret and render them chronic.
The grand problem is that of "unselfishness". Note, once again, the admirable
work of our Philological Arm in substituting the negative unselfishness for the
Enemy's positive Charity. Thanks to this you can, from the very outset, teach a
man to surrender benefits not that others may be happy in having them but that
he may be unselfish in forgoing them. That is a great point gained. Another
great help, where the parties concerned are male and female, is the divergence
of view about Unselfishness which we have built up between the sexes. A woman
means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving
trouble to others. As a result, a woman who is quite far gone in the Enemy's
service will make a nuisance of herself on a larger scale than any man except
those whom Our Father has dominated completely; and, conversely, a man will live
long in the Enemy's camp before he undertakes as much spontaneous work to please
others as a quite ordinary woman may do every day. Thus while the woman thinks
of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex,
without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically
selfish.
On top of these confusions you can now introduce a few more. The erotic
enchantment produces a mutual complaisance in which each is really pleased to
give in to the wishes of the other. They also know that the Enemy demands of
them a degree of charity which, if attained, would result in similar actions.
You must make them establish as a Law for their whole married life that degree
of mutual self-sacrifice which is at present sprouting naturally out of the
enchantment, but which, when the enchantment dies away, they will not have
charity enough to enable them to perform. They will not see the trap, since they
are under the double blindness of mistaking sexual excitement for charity and of
thinking that the excitement will last.
When once a sort of official, legal, or nominal Unselfishness has been
established as a rule—a rule for the keeping of which their emotional resources
have died away and their spiritual resources have not yet grown—the most
delightful results follow. In discussing any joint action, it becomes obligatory
that A should argue in favour of B's supposed wishes and against his own, while
B does the opposite. It is often impossible to find out either party's real
wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants, while each
feels a glow of self-righteousness and harbours a secret claim to preferential
treatment for the unselfishness shown and a secret grudge against the other for
the ease with which the sacrifice has been accepted. Later on you can venture on
what may be called the Generous Conflict Illusion. This game is best played with
more than two players, in a family with grown-up children for example. Something
quite trivial, like having tea in the garden, is proposed. One member takes care
to make it quite clear (though not in so many words) that he would rather not
but is, of course, prepared to do so out of "Unselfishness". The others
instantly withdraw their proposal, ostensibly through their "Unselfishness", but
really because they don't want to be used as a sort of lay figure on which the
first speaker practices petty altruisms. But he is not going to be done out of
his debauch of Unselfishness either. He insists on doing "what the others want".
They insist on doing what he wants. Passions are roused. Soon someone is saying
"Very well then, I won't have any tea at all!", and a real quarrel ensues with
bitter resentment on both sides. You see how it is done? If each side had been
frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the
bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and
each side is fighting the other side's battle, all the bitterness which really
flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and the accumulated grudges
of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official
"Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it.
Each side is, indeed, quite alive to the cheap quality of the adversary's
Unselfishness and of the false position into which he is trying to force them;
but each manages to feel blameless and ill-used itself, with no more dishonesty
than comes natural to a human.

Waipu Highland Games

New Year's Day was an awesome time this year. My family and I went to what is called the Waipu games found here http://www.waipugames.co.nz/events.php.

It was a day based on Scottish games such as athletics, throwing a big stone (like shotput), casting a hay bale or similar over a high bar, also they throw as a competition what they call a "caber" which is a long wooden poll...different though cool.
My little sister who is 13 came second in a sprint race! and my little brother's 10 and 8 also had a dash. Though poor Jeremy (ten year old) was a bit late for the ten year old's race so he joined in with the 12 year old boys...he being a little fella even for ten fell in last place though not too far behind the others. I was so proud of him for giving it a go and should it have been 10 year olds I think he could have possibly cleaned up, though short, he is a speedy little fellow.
So cute to see the 4 year olds race! Most of them have no concept of winning, they just run with big grins on their faces! LOL.

I have a few Scottish roots so it was neat to be part of that day and I even managed to find our clan the Stewarts! We even got dog tags :D with their emblem on it. It is so amazing to consider where we all come from, all the different countries and cultures.