Polemics

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

5 Comments

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

News

He just wins: DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education bill survives legal challenge

Leave a comment

Do you remember how angry the corporate news media was with Governor Ron DeSantis when he signed a Parental Rights bill into law? DeSantis didn’t want LGBY activists imposing their views on children in Florida schools. The corporate news media were MAD! They mocked the bill as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But the bill didn’t say that. It actually just banned grooming children.

So, there was a big legal battle over it, and DeSantis won.

This was reported by The Blaze:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) ratified House Bill 1557 in March 2022, making the Parental Rights in Education Act the law of the land despite sustained opposition and mischaracterizations by woke corporations, the liberal media, and radical leftists in the Biden administration.

After the bill’s passage, critics’ hopes centered on a legal challenge brought against Florida by a band of LGBT activists keen on nullifying the law. The challengers’ desperate two-year effort to scale back parental rights and ensure that sexualizing propaganda could thrive in the classroom did not ultimately have the impact they likely hoped for.

The DeSantis administration and the LGBT challengers filed a settlement Monday, bringing the legal battle to an end.

[…]”We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” stated Ryan Newman, general counsel for the DeSantis administration. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

Do you know what’s better than people who just talk about things that they would like to do? People who do the things that they would like to do. And even better: when people who do things fight and win against people who want to destroy their good work.

According to the Governor’s official web site, the law:

  • Prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in K–3 classrooms, and after 3rd grade, these conversations need to be age-appropriate.
  • Ensures that at the beginning of every school year, parents will be notified about healthcare services offered at the school, with the right to decline any service offered.
  • Ensures that whenever a questionnaire or health screening is given to K–3 students, parents receive it first and provide permission for the school to administer the questionnaire or health screening to their child.

That’s the law of the land in Florida, now.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a president who stands up for conservatives, passes intelligent laws, defends those laws from the secular left in court, and then WINS. Of course it would.

Related posts on DeSantis’ achievements

News

Children will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers in the UK

4 Comments

I have been following the progress of the transgender agenda in different countries. Some left-wing countries that started out strongly in favor of transing children are now reversing course. I wrote before about how this was happening in France, Finland and Sweden. The UK National Health Service even lost a lawsuit to former patients who regretted transitioning as children.

Well, today we have fresh good news about the UK.

Here’s the story from GB News:

Children will no longer be prescribed controversial puberty blockers – medicines used to postpone puberty in minors – at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed.

The government said it welcomed the “landmark decision”, adding it would help ensure care is based on evidence and is in the “best interests of the child”.

Puberty blockers, which pause the physical changes of puberty such as breast development or facial hair, will now only be available to children as part of clinical research trials.

The move follows a public consultation and an interim policy on the issue, which stems from a 2020 NHS England review of gender identity services for under-18s.

The review “pointed to a lack of long-term evidence and data collection on what happens to children and young people who are prescribed medication.”

The UK is only the latest country to get more cautious as they learn more about how these things really work.

The New York Post reported on Sweden last month:

 In February, Sweden — a progressive country previously on the cutting edge of providing medical services to transgender youth — also reversed course. The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare updated its guidelines for treating trans youth, scaling back the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, saying there hasn’t been enough research on their efficacy or side effects.

The Epoch Times reported about France and Finland  in May 2022:

France’s National Academy of Medicine posted in March this year (pdf) that “great medical caution must be taken in children and adolescents, given the vulnerability, particularly psychological, of this population and the many undesirable effects and even serious complications that can be caused by some of the therapies available.”

[…]Finland also announced in 2020 a policy shift for gender dysphoria treatment, with the Finnish Health Authority issuing new guidelines backing psychotherapy rather than puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children.

I think that sometimes, people in America see these issues through the lens of the corporate news media. We think that conservatives are losing everywhere, and that the secular left has all the momentum. But, if you look at some of the countries that are even further to the left, you realize that the pendulum is already winging back to the right.

Yesterday, I blogged about how Canada’s  secular left government is seeing record unpopularity. Even the young people are turning against them, because they can’t afford homes or get timely health care. Even feminism has run into a brick wall, as young women find that by discriminating against men in schools and workplaces, they have actually cut off the supply of men who can protect and provide. Many single mothers who bought into the lies of feminism are watching the slow-motion destruction of their kids who are being raised fatherless.

I think there are some dark times ahead, but already we are seeing signs of a recovery. So keep up your spirits.