One thing I’ve noticed in talking to atheists who grew up in Christian homes is that they often leave their Christian worldview behind because of a disappointment with God. For some reason, they get this idea that God is our cosmic butler. We can do whatever we want in order to be happy, and if we want any help in this, then we just ring for him. When we encounter disappointment, our tendency is to just leave God behind.
Paul Copan explains the high points of the problems of evil and suffering in 17 minutes. (H/T Apologetics 315)
the question itself reveals that we are moral beings
the problem of evil is the great interrupter of human well-being
every philosophy of life has to address this question
is God required to give us a life that is easy and comfortable?
evil is a departure from good, i.e. – the way things ought to be
a way things ought to be implies a plan for what ought to be
human evil implies a plan for the way we ought to be
free creatures have the ability to deviate from the plan
where does this plan for the universe and us come from?
how can there be a way we ought to be come from?
evil is the flip side of good so where does good come from?
God’s own moral nature is the standard of good and evil
where does evil from natural disasters come from?
how dangerous natural phenomena preserve Earth’s habitability
there is a benefit from tectonic activity
similarly, God lets humans freely choose knowing harm may result
people are free to try to find meaning in something other than God
God is able to use negative things to bring about positive results
e.g. – when good people suffer, they can comfort and care for others
can people be good enough on their own without God?
I do think it’s worth thinking about whether the New Testament portrays God as our cosmic butler, just waiting on us hand and foot so that we can be happy. Personally, I think you’d have to be crazy to get that impression of God from the Bible. Especially from the life of Jesus, who suffers in order to do the will of his Father. Wouldn’t it be funny if atheists were disbelieving in a God of their own making? Suffering in the pursuit of goodness has always been the center of the Christian life. I’m not sure where people get this idea that God’s job is to make us happy, according to our own desires. Seems kind of shallow. Certainly not Biblical. Do people even read the Bible any more to find out what God is really like? Maybe that’s the problem.
If you want to read two good books for beginners on Christian Apologetics that cover a range of intermediate issues, then pick up “Passion Conviction” and the companion “Contending With Christianity’s Critics”. Awesome, awesome resources. The Kindle editions can often be had for $3 each on Amazon.
Man helping a woman with proper handgun marksmanship
My friend Adina shared an article about the decline of masculinity in men. Masculinity has traditionally involved men acting according to a specific gender role. One of the components of men’s traditional roles is chivalry. Chivalry means that the man is very informed about character and morality, and he acts on these convictions.
Here’s an article about the decline in male chivalry from The College Fix. (H/T Adina)
Excerpt:
Today, boys and men are taught to shun chivalry and their natural inclination to protect and cherish women.
While oppression of women in America was the status quo for centuries, now traditional masculine qualities are under fire. Today, men are the ones in trouble.
What changed? I believe we can begin to trace the emerging “end of men” with the introduction of the welfare system, which incentivized women to forego marriage. As a result, 40 percent of children now grow up without fathers in the home as opposed to 10 percent in the 1960s.
With the disappearance of dads, little boys lost their male role models. Because of this, boys do not shed their childish ways. Without fathers, they are more likely to be sexually promiscuous, serve jail time, and use drugs, studies show. All these negative activities affect men’s emotional behaviors, which in turn ends up hurting women.
And specifically regarding the mentoring natural of traditional masculinity:
Today, men cannot voice constructive criticism without being accused of sexism or “mansplaining.” With the denial of rights — the right to be a father, the right to be chivalrous, the right to cherish women, the right to be a masculine man, the right to speak freely and defend oneself — comes the removal of responsibility. It makes sense that we see the trend of irresponsibility among men accelerate. Without responsibility, men have no purpose for which to strive.
The welfare state really upsets me. It seems to me that those programs are there to make a good husband unnecessary, since the state takes the place of the man as provider. Before, men who earned a lot were sought after by women. But now, women can easily delay marriage to high-earning men, and instead spend their 20s going after men who aren’t interested in or capable of marriage. The welfare state is there to make avoiding responsible men “work out”. But the responsible men are actually paying for these programs, but without getting any of the respect they deserve. There isn’t anything in society that is telling women that men who do traditional roles like providing and mentoring are better than a hot bad boy and a welfare check. We have a 42% out-of-wedlock birth rate right now, and a $20 trillion national debt. We’re not doing a good job of teaching women which men they should be choosing. We’re not doing a good job of teaching women how to be in a relationship with a man without giving him premarital sex. Men are keeping silent while women make important life choices without any practical guidance. And the reason why is because men have become frightened about treating women like moral agents, subject to the same concerns about morality and responsibility that men are. It is essential that men be encouraged to bring up practical concerns, moral concerns, and step-by-step planning out of life goals with women. It helps women to focus less on feelings and how they are perceived, so they can make decisions that are likely to produce the outcomes that they want.
Here’s an interesting article in the Federalist that makes a point I’ve often made about eradication gender roles. If you get rid of the idea men ought to perform certain roles in society, and then don’t give them any respect for fulfilling those roles, then don’t be surprised when they reject the expectations of society.
Excerpt:
Well, our brave new world of gender equality—in which we scoff at gender differences and men and women are encouraged to act the same—often proves harmful to women and girls. While the modern feminist movement won women tremendous freedoms educationally, professionally, personally, and sexually, it often leaves women feeling anything but empowered.
The reality is these freedoms have too often come at the expense of all values and traditions. We’ve in effect thrown the helpful social moresout with the old-fashioned bathwater. But it’s the modern feminist movement, which ushered away any hint of traditional chivalry and gendered expectations, that’s in part to blame. Certainly few want to return to an age when gender roles were excessively rigid, but feminists have gone to extremes and encouraged a culture that undermines healthy gender relationships. Men who hold doors are now viewed as part of the patriarchal society. And girls are expected to just “be one of the guys.”
But gender roles helped men and women and in times past allowed the sexes to better navigate the sometimes-rough waters of romance, courtship, marriage, and sex. Feminists view the chivalry and social mores of previous generations as anachronistic. But the reality is these traditional customs of giving up a seat for a woman on a train, or accompanying a woman in public, weren’t all rooted in sexism. They were social structures to help make men more respectful of women and to curb this kind of inappropriate behavior.
It might not have been perfect, but it had a purpose. Today’s dismissal of gender differences instead creates confusion, disappointment, and often more opportunity for harassment.
It seems to me that this article explains why men are so disappointing these days with respect to rising up to the roles of protector, provider, moral leader and spiritual leader.
If you tell women that there is nothing that men aspire to that is different than what women aspire to, then they lose the ability to evaluate men as protectors, providers, moral leaders and spiritual leaders. If men have no special roles, then the only way to distinguish a good one from a bad one is by appearance, peer-approval and tingles (feelings). Once men understand that this is how they are being evaluated, that’s where they put their effort.
I can tell you that in my experience, women who are influenced by feminism do not welcome men who focus on and excel at these male responsibilities. My new duties, as I understand them from the culture, are to be fun-loving, thrill-providing, and non-judgmental. No definite moral or spiritual opinions are allowed. That’s the job of the public schools – to teach us right and wrong and our secular religion. And protecting and providing? That’s the job of the police and the army, and the government social programs. Men don’t like it when they don’t have respect for fulfilling roles that are their responsibility. We do better when we are respected for being able to do something that others cannot do, and when we are not micro-managed by others while doing it.
Regarding chivalry, I think it’s only safe to do now with women who explicitly reject feminism. Being chivalrous to a feminist doesn’t earn her respect, so don’t bother. They’ll just get you in trouble, which can ruin your ability to be be chivalrous to the minority of women who respect you for doing that.
Can random mutation and natural selection create new functional information?
The video is here:
I have read and listened and watched a lot of material on intelligent design, but I have never seen so much value packed into such a short lecture. I really hope you’ll watch this and that it’s helpful to you.
Summary:
the big question when discussing the origin of life: where did the information in living systems come from?
Until 530 million years ago, the oceans were largely devoid of life
In a 10 million year period, many new forms of animal life emerged
New biological forms of life require new information
the discovery of DNA shows that living systems work because cells have information that allows them to build the components of molecular machines: cell types, proteins, etc.
can random mutation and natural selection create new functional information?
normally, random mutations tend to degrade the functionality of information, e.g. – randomly changing symbols in an applications code does not usually introduce useful new functions, it usually renders what is there non-functional
the majority of possible sequences will NOT have functions, so random mutations will more likely give you non-functional code, rather than functional code
example: a bicycle lock with 4 numbers has many possible sequences for the 4 numbers, and only one of them has unlock functionality, the rest have no functionality
if you have lots of time, then you might be able to guess the combination, but if the lock as has 10 billion numbers, and only one combination that unlocks, you can spend your whole life trying to unlock it and won’t succeed
how likely is it to arrive at a functional protein or gene by chance? Is it more like the 4-dial lock (can be done with lots of time) or the 10 billion dial lock (amount of time required exceeds the time available)?
the probability is LOW because there is only one sequence of numbers that has unlock function
consider a short protein of 150 amino acids has 10 to the 195th power possible sequences
if many of these sequences of amino acides had biological function, then it might be easier to get to one by random mutation and selection than it is with a lock that only unlocks for ONE sequence
how many of the possible sequences have biological function?
Thanks to research done by Douglas Axe, we now know that the number of functional amino acid sequences for even a short protein is incredibly small…
Axe found that the odds of getting a functional sequence of amino acids that will fold and have biological function is 1 in 10 to the 77th power
Is that number too improbable to reach by chance? well, there are 10 to 65th atoms in the entire Milky Way galaxy… so yes, this is a very improbable outcome
can random genetic mutations search through all the sequences in order to find the one in 10 to the 77th power one that has biological function? It depends on how much guessers we have and how many guesses we get in the time available
even with the entire 3.5 billion year history of life on Earth, only about 10 to the 40th organisms have ever lived, which far smaller fraction of the 10 to the 77th total sequences
even with a very fast mutation rate, you would not be able to reach a functional protein even with all that time, and even with all those organisms
I was once having a discussion with a woman about the research that Axe did at the Cambridge University lab. He published four articles in the Journal of Molecular Biology. I held out one of the papers to her and showed her the numbers. She said over and over “I hate the Discovery Institute! I hate the Discovery Institute!” Well, yeah, but you can’t make the Journal of Molecular Biology go away with hating the Discovery Institute. JMB is peer-reviewed, and this was experimental evidence – not a theory, not a hypothesis.
We have been blessed by the Creator and Designer of the universe in this time and place with overwhelming evidence – an abundance of riches. For those who have an open mind, this is what you’ve been waiting for to make your decision. For the naturalists who struggle so mightily to block out the progress of experimental science, they’ll need to shout louder and shut their eyes tighter and push harder to block their ears. Maybe if they keep screaming “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” over and over to themselves, they will be able to ignore the real science a little longer.
