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Is the Bible’s definition of faith opposed to logic and evidence?

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Probably the biggest misconception that I encounter when defending the faith is the mistaken notion of what faith is. Today we are going to get to the bottom of what the Bible says faith is, once and for all. This post will be useful to Christians and atheists, alike.

What is faith according to the Bible?

I am going to reference this article from apologist Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason in my explanation.

Koukl cites three Biblical examples to support the idea that faith is not blind leap-of-faith wishing, but is based on evidence.

  1. Moses went out into the wilderness and he had that first encounter with the burning bush, and God gave him the directive to go back to Egypt and let his people go. Moses said, Yeah, right. What’s going to happen when they say, why should we believe you, Moses?God said, See that staff? Throw it down.Moses threw it down and it turned into a serpent.God said, See that serpent? Pick it up.And he picked it up and it turned back into a staff.God said, Now you take that and do that before the Jewish people and you do that before Pharaoh. And you do this number with the hail, and the frogs, and turning the Nile River into blood. You put the sun out. You do a bunch of other tricks to get their attention.And then comes this phrase: “So that they might know that there is a God in Israel.”
  2. [I]n Mark 2 you see Jesus preaching in a house, and you know the story where they take the roof off and let the paralytic down through the roof. Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven.” And people get bugged because how can anyone forgive sins but God alone?Jesus understood what they were thinking and He said this: What’s harder to say, your sins are forgiven, or to rise, take up your pallet and go home?Now, I’ll tell you what would be harder for me to say : Arise, take up your pallet and go home. I can walk into any Bible study and say your sins are forgiven and nobody is going to know if I know what I am talking about or not. But if I lay hands on somebody in a wheelchair and I say, Take up your wheelchair and go home, and they sit there, I look pretty dumb because everyone knows nothing happened.But Jesus adds this. He says, “In order that you may know that the Son of Man has the power and authority to forgive sins, I say to you, arise, take up your pallet and go home.” And he got up and he got out. Notice the phrase “In order that you may know”. Same message, right?
  3. Move over to the Book of Acts. First sermon after Pentecost. Peter was up in front of this massive crowd. He was talking about the resurrection to which he was an eyewitness. He talked about fulfilled prophecy. He talked about the miraculous tongues and the miraculous manifestation of being able to speak in a language you don’t know. Do you think this is physical evidence to those people? I think so. Pretty powerful.Peter tells them, These men are not drunk as it seems, but rather this is a fulfillment of prophecy. David spoke of this. Jesus got out of the grave, and we saw him, and we proclaim this to you.Do you know how he ends his sermon? It’s really great. Acts 2:36. I’ve been a Christian 20 years and I didn’t see this until about a year ago. This is for all of those who think that if you can know it for sure, you can’t exercise faith in it. Here is what Peter said. Acts 2:36, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” There it is again. “Know for certain.”

What is faith according to Bible-based theologians?

I am going to reference this article from theologian C. Michael Patton of Parchment and Pen in my explanation.

Patton explains that according to Reformation (conservative, Bible-based) theologians, faith has 3 parts:

  1. notitia – This is the basic informational foundation of our faith. It is best expressed by the word content. Faith, according to the Reformers must have content. You cannot have faith in nothing. There must be some referential propositional truth to which the faith points. The proposition “Christ rose from the grave,” for example, is a necessary information base that Christians must have.
  2. assensus – This is the assent or confidence that we have that the notitia is correct… This involves evidence which leads to the conviction of the truthfulness of the proposition… This involves intellectual assent and persuasion based upon critical thought… assensus… says, “I am persuaded to believe that Christ rose from the grave.”
  3. fiducia – This is the “resting” in the information based upon a conviction of its truthfulness. Fiducia is best expressed by the English word “trust.”… Fiducia is the personal subjective act of the will to take the final step. It is important to note that while fiducia goes beyond or transcends the intellect, it is built upon its foundation.

So, Biblical faith is really trust. Trust(3) can only occur after intellectual assent(2), based on evidence and thought. Intellectual assent(2) can only occur after the propositional information(1) is known.

The church today accepts 1 and 3, but denies 2. I call this “fideism” or “blind faith”. Ironically, activist atheists, (the New Atheists), also believe that faith is blind. The postmodern “emergent church” denies 1 and 2. A person could accept 1 and 2 but deny 3 by not re-prioritizing their life based on what they know to be true.

How do beliefs form, according to Christian philosophers?

I am going to reference a portion of chapter 3 of J.P. Moreland’s “Love Your God With All Your Mind” (i.e. – LYGWYM).

J.P. Moreland explains how beliefs form and how you can change them.

  1. Today, people are inclined to think that the sincerity and fervency of one’s beliefs are more important than the content… Nothing could be further from the truth… As far as reality is concerned, what matters is not whether I like a belief or how sincere I am in believing it but whether or not the belief is true. I am responsible for what I believe and, I might add, for what I refuse to believe because the content of what I do or do not believe makes a tremendous difference to what I become and how I act.
  2. A belief’s strength is the degree to which you are convinced the belief is true. As you gain ,evidence and support for a belief, its strength grows for you… The more certain you are of a belief… the more you rely on it as a basis for action.

But the most important point of the article is that your beliefs are not under the control of your will.

…Scripture holds us responsible for our beliefs since it commands us to embrace certain beliefs and warns us of the consequences of accepting other beliefs. On the other hand, experience teaches us that we cannot choose or change our beliefs by direct effort.

For example, if someone offered you $10,000 to believe right now that a pink elephant was sitting next to you, you could not really choose to believe this… If I want to change my beliefs about something, I can embark on a course of study in which I choose to think regularly about certain things, read certain pieces of evidence and argument, and try to find problems with evidence raised against the belief in question.

…by choosing to undertake a course of study… I can put myself in a position to undergo a change in… my beliefs… And… my character and behavior… will be transformed by these belief changes.

I think definition of faith is important, because atheists seemed to want to substitute their own definition of faith as blind belief for this Biblical definition, but there is no evidence for their view that faith is belief without evidence. I think this might be another case of projection by atheists. Blind faith is how they arrive at their views, so they are trying to push it onto us. But the Bible is clearly opposed to it.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

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New survey: high school boys twice as likely to be conservative than high school girls

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Did you know that women tend to be further to the left than men? According to surveys, women are more leftist than men on abortion, same-sex marriage, and a host of other policies. I’ll show you a few surveys below. But even more interesting is that there is a link between support for leftist policies, and higher mental illness. Let’s take a look at it.

First, here is an article from The Hill:

Forty-four percent of young women counted themselves liberal in 2021, compared to 25 percent of young men, according to Gallup Poll data analyzed by the Survey Center on American Life. The gender gap is the largest recorded in 24 years of polling. The finding culminates years of rising liberalism among women ages 18 to 29, without any increase among their male peers.

That article is a bit old, here’s a new one from this week in The Post Millennial:

In annual surveys over the last few years, data pulled from Monitoring the Future has shown that about a quarter of high school seniors identify as conservative or very conservative. Only 13 percent of the 12th grade boys identify as liberal.

[…]The graph excludes moderate students, but of those high school seniors that do identify politically, around 65 percent of boys were conservative while only around 31 percent of girls identified that way.

According to surveys, young women are also more likely to support abortion under any circumstances (40 to 27) and more likely to support same-sex marriage than men.

I don’t support abortion because I favor the rights of unborn babies over the happiness of adults. I don’t support same-sex marriage because studies show children do better when they are raised by a mother and a father. And I think that’s why most of these men are with me, they follow that same reasoning, and side with the children against the adults.

I thought this part of the article was interesting:

As one Politico analyst put it, “Democrats have a masculinity problem.” Citing trends among black and Latino voters, the analyst pointed out that even in minority communities that have voted majority Democrat, men have been turning to the Republican party at higher rates than women.

Some conservative figures such as Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager (through PragerU) have millions of followers on YouTube, a platform where the users are majority male.

In addition, one of the more popular conservative political podcasts, The Ben Shapiro Show, has an audience that skews overwhelmingly male at 86 percent. The audience also skews younger, 18-44, in comparison to Fox’s former show with Tucker Carlson, 25-54, which skews slightly female at 53 percent.

This is good news. Boys are finding themselves role models who they see as “strong”. And those new role models are conservative. These stronger role models champion truth, and they make moral judgements. Even if it hurts other people’s feelings.

Let’s go on to the second point. These leftist policies are having a bad effect on young women’s mental health.

Feminist web site Evie Magazine reported on the some 2020 findings by Pew Research (left-wing pollster):

A 2020 Pew Research study reveals that over half of white, liberal women have been diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point.

[T]he study, which is titled Pew American Trends Panel: Wave 64, was dated March 2020 — over a year ago.

The study, which examined white liberals, moderates, and conservatives, both male and female, found that conservatives were far less likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those who identified as either liberal or even “very liberal.”

[…]White women, ages 18-29, who identified as liberal were given a mental health diagnosis from medical professionals at a rate of 56.3%, as compared to 28.4% in moderates and 27.3% in conservatives.

I found an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about how one leftist policy concern (global warming alarmism) is tied to higher rates of mental illness.

It says:

A study in 2021 of 16- to 25-year-olds in 10 countries including the U.S. reported that 59% were very or extremely worried about climate change, and 84% were at least moderately worried. Forty-five percent claimed they were so worried that they struggled to function on a daily basis, the definition of an anxiety disorder.

The study found that the mental illness was more common in younger people:

Climate anxiety and dissatisfaction with government responses are widespread in children and young people in countries across the world and impact their daily functioning.

So now we are looking at a direct link between the policies of the left, and the lower mental health of the left. And we know that more women than men are on the left. And we see more mental illness among women.  Interesting, isn’t it?

And this has consequences. Leftist women are noticing that men are more conservative than they are, and it’s affecting their dating:

Date Woke Women Feminism Feminist Marriage

The marriage rate is also declining. Could this decline in marriage be related to the increase in leftist women, and all the related mental illnesses that leftist women have? Does it make sense for a conservative man to enter a relationship where he pays all the costs and bears all the risks, but all the decisions are being made by a leftist woman? It’s dangerous for a man to do that.

Consider that the divorce rate is very high right now, and divorce takes away a man’s money, his access to his kids, and his freedom. Women initiate 69% of divorces. College-educated women  – who are especially leftist – initiate 90% of divorces. This high divorce rate cannot be blamed on men, because the divorce rate of lesbians is the highest of all. No man to blame in that situation.

Why would a man sign up to be controlled by feminist institutions, like the divorce courts? Men are not interested in projects where they have to pay for everything, but someone else is making the decisions. Especially if they get blamed when things go wrong.

Facing all of these risks, a man would have to be crazy to even talk to a leftist woman – much less date her. Unfortunately, we aren’t making enough young conservative women for these conservative young men to marry. And so, the marriage rate is declining. Young women today are not as conservative as previous generations.

I know a lot of people today are worried about young men falling under the influence of bad role models. But the surveys show that boys tend to have the right role models, and the right political views. So, we need to work on making young women more conservative.

News

New study: 81% endure pain in the five years after sex-change surgeries

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One reason why Christians are devoted to the moral law is because we think that these boundaries are in place for a reason. We think that if we just do what makes us happy, then we will end up worse off. Sadly, the secular left in America are so addicted to “don’t judge” that they want to smash all those moral boundaries. What happens when harm follows? Do they offer to fix it or pay for it themselves?

Here’s an article from the UK Daily Mail, about the pain you can expect if you let secular leftists cut parts of you off, in exchange for insurance company money and virtue signaling rights.

Keep in mind that the UK Daily Mail is far left, and 100% on board with transgenderism – including sex-change surgery.

It says:

One of the first studies into the side effects of transgender surgeries has revealed alarmingly high rates of post-op pain, aching during intercourse, and bladder problems, raising troubling questions for this new frontier of medicine.

A huge majority – 81 percent – of those who had gender-affirming surgery in the past five years said they endured pain simply from moving around in the weeks and months after going under the knife.

Researchers from the University of Florida and Brooks Rehabilitation, a health non-profit, showed that more than half of trans surgery patients endured pain during sex, and nearly a third could not control their bladders.

Here are some details:

UF researchers studied 21 trans and non-binary people aged between 20 and 70 who had undergone trans surgeries in the past five years — mostly mastectomies and vaginoplasties.

81 percent endured pain in their lower back, groin, pelvis, chest, or shoulders in the weeks, months, and even years after their procedures, researchers found.

Another 57 percent found sexual intercourse painful.

Meanwhile, 29 percent suffered urinary incontinence or a frequent and urgent need to go to the bathroom, researchers found.

Likewise, many male-to-female transitioners who get a neo-vagina created are surprised to discover that they have to insert a ‘dilator’ into their canal for up to an hour each day after surgery.

Without using a dilator, which resembles a sex toy, the neo-vagina can gradually shorten in depth, said Dr Hill. Some trans women must use them for the rest of their lives.

‘That’s something a lot of people don’t realize,’ she added.

Now, you might ask yourself what happens when these surgeries result in a lot of pain and suffering for the victims. Maybe it’s only in heartless, cruel America where the victims have to suffer. Maybe in wonderful, tolerant Canada, the victims get free health care, to alleviate the pain of having their body parts sawed off by greedy ghouls.

Let’s see, using this article from the UK Daily Mail:

An indigenous transgender woman has slammed Canada’s healthcare system for rejecting her euthanasia request despite the pain she endures from a surgically-built vagina.

In social media posts, Lois Cardinal, a self-proclaimed ‘sterilized First Nations post-op transsexual’ said regret over her medical transition led her to apply for a lethal injection in January.

Cardinal, who lives on a native reserve near St. Paul, Alberta, posted her medical records from the request online this week to draw attention to radical gender ideology.

Her case underscores the perils of Canada’s ultra-liberal healthcare system — one of the world’s most permissive for both euthanasia and affirming an individual’s chosen gender.

‘I’m in constant discomfort and pain,’ the 35-year-old told DailyMail.com.

So, in Canada, after the government-run public schools have brainwashed people into wanting to change genders, then they deny you treatment for the mess they caused. But you can apply for a free government-funded murder though. But you might have to wait, and re-apply.

We can do better than letting the “don’t judge” secular leftists run our country. They are not authorities on what is wise. And they shouldn’t be elected to government.