In reading your book, I found portions of it disturbed me because they brought up portions of the Bible that I too had had problems with when reading it. Mostly it was regarding the commands of God to destroy the Canaanites, men, women and children. Also the fact that God told Balaam to go with the Midianites and then threatened to have His angel kill him for going.
If you feel that such things are wrong, then it makes no sense to me that you could somehow argue that they are right (as you proceed to do).
Strong logical reasoning is part and parcel of this work. God gave man a logical mind, but I believe that it was given to help man and not to question or hold God accountable to mankind.
What do you base this belief on? It seems to me that people only abandon logic as a last resort: when they realize that their belief is, in fact, illogical.
If we disallow the use of logic in our attempts to fathom ideas about god, then we are left at the mercy of any huckster who wants to sell us his or her idea of god. I could tell you that Widget (the spirit of an ancient Scottish Highlander) is god, and he appears to me every Tuesday evening -- with a new proof of evolution. You may not believe me, but you would have no logical reason not to believe me, or to choose mainstream Christianity's beliefs over mine (since you have ruled out the use of logic in such discussions).
If you were truly abandoning logic, you should've stopped right there, instead of continuing to attempt to "reason" with me (since your reasons do, in fact, rely on logic).
I guess it all boils down to faith. Faith in God as Creator or faith in Evolution and the Big Bang Theory.
I disagree. The choice is not one between faith in God as creator and faith in evolution. Science does not make use of faith; it is a method which is the very antithesis of faith.
Science starts with a hypothesis to explain known facts (the way the world really is). It then constructs experiments to test the hypothesis and see whether it will succeed or fail. If it fails, the hypothesis is scrapped. If it succeeds, then further experiments are devised to test it. If it continues to pass all tests, then -- and only then -- is it tentatively held as "true" until proven otherwise.
Faith, on the other hand, starts with a belief and hangs on to that belief in spite of any and all reality to the contrary.
Evolution has been rigorously tested for over a hundred years. It fits the facts and it works.
So, the choice isn't between faith in one thing or another. The choice is between accepting reality and denying it.
If God is Creator then the things He created are in His control. He does not have to answer to the creation for the things that He does. If however, we just arrived here as a by-product of the Cosmic Universe, brought about by a lightning bolt in an ancient Cosmic sea, then we are right to question. I believe God’s rules are given to man and He is not governed by them. I believe God is above and beyond the rules of our earth. He does not have to answer to our logic.
If you created a complex machine, then you, as creator, have the right to say how it is to be used, who can use it and what limitations are placed upon it. As it’s creator, if it did not perform as you had intended, do you not have a right to change it or destroy it if you choose? As humans, we hold ourselves in such high regard that we think that we have the right to say how God should be and even if He is good enough for us to worship Him or put our faith in Him.
I disagree again.
First of all, having people in your control does not mean that you have no moral obligations. It does not mean that you can just do whatever you want without answering for your actions. A king may have control over his subjects, but that doesn't mean he can do just as he pleases to them. Throughout history when kings have acted that way the people have revolted and the kings have been deposed.
Likewise, "creating" something does not give one carte blanche rights to do with it whatever one feels like. I may create a bomb. Does that give me the right to explode it without regard for the destruction it will cause? I may create drugs in a "meth lab". Does that give me the right to sell them on the street?
But your analogy is poor. We are not talking about machines or other non-sentient entities. We are talking about people. People are capable of feelings. So, let's use an analogy more closely related to our topic. What if I were to "create" test-tube babies? Or what if I were to "breed" or "clone" dogs? Would I then have a right to use "my creation" as I see fit? Could I use the babies or the puppies in painful experiments until I'm done with them, and then kill them?
I'm going to assume you will say No to the above. When you do, you'll understand why I say No to your idea that our creator would have a right to do to us whatever it pleased.
If you respond to this with, "Well, you're not God, so there's no real parallel" then I will have to ask you why you brought up the argument in the first place.
Finally, I must object on the grounds that if god behaved as the Bible tells us he did, then I would never stoop so low as to worship him. I don't think it's fair to say that this means I think too highly of myself.
What if you were lost in the jungle and came upon some primitive tribe who told you that their god demanded the life of a stranger (you!) as a sacrifice to ensure a successful hunt? Would you be "judging god" and regarding yourself too highly if you entertained the notion that god would not act in such a way?
Well, that's exactly how I feel when I read of the tales told in the Bible (as written by a primitive tribe thousands of years ago). I don't believe what they say is true. With the example above, I hope you can see how someone could say that without being presumptuous.
If your god's "higher ways" allows it to act in destructive ways towards us, beyond our logical notions of right and wrong, then what good is god to us? Why would we worship something like that rather than just try to avoid it? Would you expect the child I was torturing to worship me? I don't think that would be an appropriate response! Maybe we should worship tornadoes as well.
There are statements in this treatise that one would have to take on faith also because there is no proof given.
Falling in Truth is not really a treatise at all. It is a novel. Novels are a genre of writing that are not required to offer "proof".
If you concluded that the "message" of the novel was to "take things on faith," then I'm afraid you missed one of the major points it was trying to convey.
I wrote the novel a quarter of a century ago, but if I remember correctly, the main point of the novel was to demonstrate that there are many ways of looking at things, and one needs to expose oneself to a wider variety of ideas than just what's printed in the Watchtower publications, and then decide for oneself where the truth lies. That is why the protagonist is a young innocent: looking wide-eyed at the world (yet already having one foot caught in a trap which would shut out most of the world).
I also did not provide "proof" of the superiority of women, which the Phyllis character expounds upon. This is a novel, not an academic treatise replete with footnotes and cross-references. It simply makes such issues visible, by putting them in the mouths of the characters (who sometimes -- like real people --exaggerate and don't get all the facts straight because they're not walking encyclopedias). It leaves the readers to search further and make up their own minds.
For example:
Chapter 14. “God Again” in “Falling in Truth”.
“What about the desire to cure cancer? What real knowledge does the Bible convey, anyway? It steered us wrong in astronomy, to say the least.”
What is the proof that the Bible steered us wrong in astronomy?
Pick up any history book relating to the Middle Ages. Or, consult the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on "Galileo". You can also visit any of the "flat earth" sites which are run by fundamentalist Christians.
“The female fly known as the ichneumon has a long, needle-like tube called an ovipositor because she deposits the ovi, or eggs of her young with it. It is a very 'purposeful' and 'harmonious' thing, to be sure. But she uses it to deposit these eggs deep within the body of a caterpillar. When they hatch, these 'baby flies' start to eat their way out. But there is yet another marvelous sign of God's tender kindness in this arrangement; they have enough instinct to know not to eat the vital organs at first, they eat only the fat, connective tissues, and the like, till these are all gone. Only then do they eat up the rest from the inside out. The amount of suffering the caterpillars must undergo is unbearable even to think about; imagine a horde of rats inside you eating their way out!”
Where is the proof that a caterpillar is “undergoing unbearable suffering”? Who has documented the nervous system of a caterpillar?
Biologists are the ones who have documented the nervous system of caterpillars. I don't know all of their names. Here is a quote from an educational resource on the subject:
"Caterpillars sense touch through tiny hairs (setae) that are all over the caterpillar's body. These tactile hairs grow through holes in the pinaculum (dark, flattened plates on a caterpillar's body) of the exoskeleton. These hairs are attached to nerve cells, and relay information about touch to the insect's brain."
Nerves imply sensation, which implies the ability to feel pain. If it's absolute proof you require, the only way to obtain that is to be a caterpillar. But given god's arrangement noted in my book, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
"Take your statement, echoed from this book (“Did Man get Here by Evolution or Creation”, WT Society), that life cannot come from non-life. In a justly famous experiment (which authors of such a book had no business ignoring or not knowing about) life has been 'created' from 'non-life'. It's a real experiment, which means that it is repeatable by anyone with the right equipment at any time. They induced electric sparks in an atmosphere of mostly hydrogen to replicate the conditions in earth's early history (lightning, that is, and a similar atmosphere). The result was that the atoms rearranged themselves to form simple living molecules that (and here's the most important part) could reproduce themselves. And as soon as you have reproduction taking place, you have variation, and with variation comes natural selection, and with natural selection comes evolution. These are all facts, not 'theory'
(Where is this documented?) Where was this experiment that produced life made and where are the living organisms that it produced?
I am having difficulty finding corroboration for this, and it appears that I may have confused two different experiments (thinking they were one) and so may have inadvertently overstated the case here.
Organic molecules have indeed been "created" from non-organic molecules in the manner described above. But the scientists involved did not go so far as to call this the creation of "life", nor did this particular experiment have anything to do with the issue of replication (as my fictional character incorrectly stated).
The experiment in question was done by Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago, and published in 1953.
The experiment resulted in the formation of amino acids.
So, here is the experiment that basically says you can take non-living material, material that was on the early earth--hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water--and you can provide an energy source (electrical current, which also would've been on the early earth in the form of lighting) and you can produce organic compounds. You can produce amino acids: building blocks of what we know today are proteins.
Since 1953, there have been numerous experiments around the world using different model gasses, producing a variety of organic compounds.
A group at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, exposed sulfur-bearing molecules like those thought to have been present before the Earth formed to low levels of light. The presence of the light was enough to generate organic compounds - molecules containing carbon, which form the chemical basis of life as we know it.
In separate experiments, scientists have been able to induce replication at the molecular level. One such experiment was done by Manfred Eigen in Germany in the 1970's. In this experiment, RNA was observed to replicate itself spontaneously.
But the passage in my book appears to be an oversimplification and an overstatement. I don't want to bog the book down too much with technical jargon, but I do believe you have identified something that I feel needs to be changed (in spite of it being fictional, I have no desire to mislead anyone with mistaken information). I will, therefore soon change this passage to be more accurate.
[Note: The change to the book has since been made.]
"Evolution is a proven fact. It's been done in the laboratory by the biologist Demerec. He placed a certain bacteria called Esxherischia coli in cultures containing a drug that is poisonous to these bacteria (namely, streptomycin). Now, bacteria reproduce very rapidly, and it soon became evident that the drug no longer harmed the bacteria. This happened not because individual bacterium had become gradually immune, but rather, due to the amazing rate of reproduction. Certain mutants were quite accidentally resistant to the streptomycin before they were even placed in it. Only these mutants survived out of the hundreds of thousand-million individual bacteria. But these survivors passed on their peculiar resistant trait, and soon replaced the last batch.
"This is how natural selection works. It is a fact of nature, and no amount of denying it will make it less of a fact. In nature, particularly the further down the scale you go, creatures reproduce far more offspring than can possibly survive and compete for the available food. So the ones best equipped to survive are the ones that live to reproduce and pass on whatever helpful characteristic they may have had."
Now did the Esxherischia coli go on to become something else? Did it become a different organism, or did it just become resistent to streptomycin?
You missed the point: it had already "become something else" by becoming resistant. This is what evolution is: small, gradual changes. It is not the stereotype that fundamentalist make it out to be where Apes suddenly turn into lawyers.
“There is no reason to call God into the picture once it's been proven that atoms can so easily combine and start life;”
(I still see no proof that atoms can combine on their own to start life)
Well, the proof has been demonstrated. I'm sorry if you can't see it.
Just as we accept that the Bible is God’s Word on faith, the theories of how life came to be in the minds of Evolutionists has to be taken the same way. There is no proof that species evolved into other species. Yes, there are different varieties of the same species and perhaps this could be considered evolution, but to say that the whole universe came to be by an ancient explosion has to be taken on faith.
Once again, I beg to differ. There is no resemblance between having faith that the Bible is god's Word and performing experiments to verify hypotheses about reality.
One does not have to accept the theories about how life came to be on faith when one can replicate the experiments, and use one's own reason to arrive at the same conclusions. One only has to take a good hard look at the environment around one to constantly bump into the evidence for evolution.
In contrast, we have to hire all manner of clever apologists for the Bible, to continually "explain away" its abundance of contradictions (to itself as well as to known facts and common-sense). We also have to dream up excuses for the god of the Bible's atrocious behavior while we proclaim how "merciful" and "just" he is!
Of course, no one was around at the start of creation (or the Big Bang), so there is no absolute certainty as to what exactly happened. However, we can today verify that the Doppler effect shows that all of the stars are moving away from each other. This means they are still "exploding". No faith required there at all.
I believe that man has taken the Bible and the things that happened in it and has derived wrong ideas from it because of not understanding. For instance: war, slavery, degrading women and children.
Well, the god of the Bible ordered his "chosen people" to follow a very specific set of laws which condoned slavery, and degraded women and children. The Bible also consists largely of the recounting of wars in which it claims god was the instigator. I don't see how you can blame such things on men "misunderstanding" the Bible.
If God created man (which is strongly denied in this book) then He can make rules for man.
This is the argument we started with, and which I've already discussed above. But I don't know if you're making a fair statement about my book; there is only one character (out of a cast of I don't know how many) who denied that god created man. The rest of the characters are pretty much all believers in god having created man.
He can say that man is the head of woman. This does not make man better, neither does it reason that he can beat her or subject her to slavery or the man’s caprices. God also made rules that govern this headship and it is an arrangement that includes love and caring. It is not the right of the creation to stand up to the creator and object to the way He made him or to any restriction that God puts upon him.
For the reasons already stated, I disagree, totally.
There are provisions in god's "perfect law" in which a man may sell his daughter. There are also provisions where a father can force his daughter to marry her rapist. Paul tells women what they can wear, and that they must keep silent and obey their husbands.
It doesn't sound like a very fair deal to me.
Since Evolutionists believe that this life is all there is, they cannot see the bigger picture of eternity.
I wouldn't presume to speak for all evolutionists, but I'd say that I see a pretty big picture. Though I can't say for sure what eternity will bring.
Since they do not believe in a benevolent God or an evil Adversary, they are not able to understand that the evil or suffering in the world is not from God, nor do they believe that there can be good that comes from painful things that happen.
Again, I wouldn't speak for all evolutionists (as you seem to be able to do). There are many evolutionists who do believe in a god (and many of those even believe in the god of the Bible).
But those who do not believe in a god (such as myself) are, by definition, able to understand that the evil and suffering in the world is not caused by god. (Since we don't believe in a god, we certainly understand that evil and suffering are not caused by this non-existent being.)
In fact, it is not evolutionists, but the Bible which teaches that evil comes from its god:
Amos:3:6: Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?
Isa:45:7: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
I also do believe that good can come from painful things that happen. For instance, look at John Walsh. He turned a tragedy into a positive force for good. But does this mean that the murder of his son was a good thing, arranged by a benevolent supreme being? Not for a moment could I believe such a thing! Were there other ways to create the program "America's Most Wanted" which didn't involve the murder of an innocent young boy? Undoubtedly.
So, although good can result (eventually) from evil, that doesn't justify evil. Good can result from good as well.
If there is a God and He lives in eternity and has promised that those who love Him will live forever also, then this life with whatever suffering it brings is just a drop in the bucket in the lives of those who will spend eternity with Him. God promises that then all the things that bring suffering will be done away with. Death, sickness, disease, tears and pain will be no more. Revelation 21:4.
That's a pretty big "if"! In the Middle Ages (when Christianity had secular power) this same argument was used to justify the most horrendous torture. This torture was inflicted on "heretics" in the belief that a little torture now could save them from an eternity of torture in the "afterlife". More recently, we have the example of the "suicide bomber" religious fanatics who have been promised that they will go instantly to their version of heaven if they die in the act of killing "infidels".
These are just some of the abuses which occur when people live for an "afterlife" rather than in the here and now.
It is inferred that those who follow the Bible have no thought for others, no empathy for man or animals.
That would be a stupid "blanket statement" to make, and I know of no reasonable person who would subscribe to it.
That the Bible teaches that God is a monster and takes pleasure in killing.
The Bible teaches that god is good and just and merciful, etc, not a monster. However, the actions attributed to god in the Bible lead one, in my opinion, to conclude that he is a monster who engages in mass killing at the slightest provocation.
They also say that believing that God rewards a person for his faith makes a person selfish, self-righteous and not good people.
"Then how can you say that believing in God makes you less selfish than a person who doesn't believe? In the end, you're just as selfish if not more so (wanting the greatest possible reward for yourself rather than settling for the puny immediate rewards like the other fellow you're so much better than)."
"I guess it doesn't," Ted responded dejectedly.
"Whenever you're expecting a reward (even if it's way in the back of your mind) for 'doing right', you're not practicing goodness at all; you're just doing a job for God: so much good work for so much everlasting life. It's just a business deal. But we atheists agree with Spinoza that 'Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.' It is only when you really believe that no external or future reward exists at all that you can really be unselfish and good. You have to become an atheist before you can become a good person,"
(I do not see atheists as a group, more unselfish or better (more good) than any other segment of mankind. Show me proof of this.)
Again, this is a fictional character's exaggerated opinion. I do not see this either. What's important here is the fact that when a reward is offered for good behavior, one can never be sure that a person is acting altruistically, or is simply behaving in order to gain the reward.
"As for the purpose and value of life," Bill continued, "it's what you make it. We don't need God to give our lives value; we can get that from each other through love. And this means loving clergymen as well as politicians, Catholics as well as atheists.”
I agree that we should love each other regardless of our background, but I do not see atheists doing this more than Christians. In fact, I have seen very unloving acts by both. Loving others is a command of God. Because of this those who would please God, show this love.
Christians show love just because it's a commandment of god's? Why then do atheists show love? Since they don't believe in god, it must be out of the goodness of their hearts. The latter seems more altruistic to me since no god or reward is involved. This is the point made in the passage from my book.
It is true that just because a person is a member of a church, religion or organization that claims to worship God, does not guarantee that a person will show this love. Love comes from the heart and is not something that can be taught by religion. I believe that God made man to love. The fact that man’s heart is hardened does not prove that God does not exist.. It only proves that man does not follow the commands of God.
Some of the "commands of god" as recorded in the Bible are anything but loving.
“You Jehovah's Witnesses have a long way to go on that route. You still think it makes some sort of difference what a person believes: as if you were somehow a better person for believing that God is not a Trinity, and the world were a better place for it. That's a lot of nonsense, and you both should be grown-up enough to realize it. Beliefs make no pragmatic difference to the world unless they are fanatically held; and that means loving your beliefs more than the people around you, including loving God more than mankind. That leads to war, that leads to hate, and even to allowing those you love to die. That's when beliefs make a difference, and that's why they shouldn't.
"That's a very lovely speech," Richard said sarcastically, "but nothing you've said today has persuaded me to stop believing in God."
"I didn't expect that it would. God is something people believe in if they want to, and don't believe in if they don't want to. It's as simple as that. All our knowledge comes to us through our five senses, and since we can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell God, your saying that he exists or doesn't exist is all the same to me. We cannot know; it's impossible for us to know. It lies without our senses, and hence outside of our knowledge, where anyone's guess is as valid as another's. It's best to listen to your own guess. Mine is that there's nothing out there, but I don't expect that to change yours.”
This man did not prove to you that there is no God. His strong argumentation merely caused you to believe him.
Well, no. This man does not exist: he is a product of my imagination (and, unlike most of the characters in the book, was not even based on any individual.) It is not possible to prove that god exists or does not exist, and that is the point the character makes.
However, it is possible to prove that a specific, inherently self-contradictory notion (such as the mainstream Christian "official" definition of god) does not exist.
He showed no proof that Evolution is true, because there is none. It all boils down to faith. We have a choice: Faith in God or faith in Evolution.
These three statements are completely untrue, as I have previously explained.
I believe there is a God because I find it hard to believe that the universe in all its complexities just happened.
It is hard to believe, but that's what the evidence points to. Lots of things are like that in life. It's certainly not as hard to believe as the things in the Bible.
The fossils that are found do not prove evolution but speaks of creation.
I can't begin to fathom how anyone who knows the facts could make such an absurd statement.
The order in the universe says to me “Creator”, not an accidental explosion that created a spark of life and everything evolved from that. To me it is far more credulous to believe in Evolution than to believe that there is a God. There are lots of things in the Bible that I wonder about. But there are also things that speak to me of God’s love. Logic can be manipulated to make us believe things that later we do not believe. When I was a JW, I was made to believe their logic. Today it seems ludicrous to me. Whenever I am persuaded by someone else to believe something by logic (their logic) very often I find that it falls short.
Well, I think you're confusing "logic" with sophistry. Logic is the best and most reliable tool which one can use to distinguish truth from sophistry.
Each of us must decide for ourselves what we will believe.
At last we agree on something!
I learned a long time ago that logic can fool you. It may not be logical that God is and that He created the universe, but it fills a need in my life that nothing else can. I do not believe that I am selfish in believing the promises of God. I have a peace and joy and hope for my life that I would never have if I did not believe He exists. I love my fellow man not because I am a good person, but because I allow God to work in my life.
Well, I sincerely say: good for you! Few people find happiness in life. You seem to have found something that works for you (whether your beliefs are objectively true or not). I must say, personally, that this does not work for me. I am much happier and saner without a belief in god.
“You still think it makes some sort of difference what a person believes: as if you were somehow a better person for believing that God is not a Trinity, and the world were a better place for it. That's a lot of nonsense, and you both should be grown-up enough to realize it. Beliefs make no pragmatic difference to the world unless they are fanatically held; and that means loving your beliefs more than the people around you, including loving God more than mankind. That leads to war, that leads to hate, and even to allowing those you love to die. That's when beliefs make a difference, and that's why they shouldn't.”
I do not see the logic in this argument that “beliefs make no pragmatic difference to the world unless they are fanatically held; and that means loving your beliefs more than the people around you, including loving God more than mankind.”. If I believe that God is and He says “Love your neighbor as yourself”, how can that fail to make a difference in the world? If I love someone as myself, I will not harm him in any way, will I? Does not my belief make a difference in the world? How can my belief in loving my neighbor lead to war and hate and death? Some beliefs do lead to this, but I think you are going too far in saying that it doesn’t make a difference what a person believes.
I agree: this fictional character has (again) overstated his case. It is true that believing god is a trinity or not makes little or no pragmatic difference. And any belief that doesn't inspire an action probably has no pragmatic value. But he takes this idea to an unjustified extreme by stating that beliefs must be "fanatically held" in order to make a difference.
I agree that the simple idea of loving your neighbor cannot, of itself, lead to war and hate and death. However, a "fanatically" held belief in the Bible has led to exactly those things throughout history.
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