Over at 4Simpsons, Neil takes a United Church minister to task for upholding the policies of the Democrats. I thought it was a great summary of why Christians should not be voting for the Democrats. We cannot live authentic Christian lives when our money is taken from us and spent by a secular-leftist state that has no sympathy for our Christian goals and ideals.
We need to keep our own money, have a choice of employers, a choice of service providers, and our fundamental freedoms must be secured by unbiased courts that strictly interpret the law. At a minimum, I need to be able to choose how my children are educated. I will not marry or have children if the state is going to confiscate my money and indoctrinate my children.
No, Democrats support socialism and job and wealth destroying policies. Some of them have good intentions but know nothing about history, economics or basic human nature.
Democrats support unrestricted destruction of the “least of these,” the unborn.
Democrats ignore the incredible success of the United States and capitalism, which has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other -ism.
Highly recommended, especially the last paragraph. There is only one group of people that can cause me to become upset, and it is fake Christians who are lazy, ignorant and cowardly.
This is a follow-up to my previous post on Walter Bradley’s lecture about the scientific evidence for an Creator and Designer of the universe. Dr. Walter L. Bradley (C.V. here) is the Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor, and a great example of the integration of Christian faith and a stellar academic career.
Is there truth in religion?
Another one of Bradley’s lectures is on the question “Is There Objective Truth in Religion?“. In the lecture, he describes a book by Mortimer Adler, called “Truth in Religion”. In the book, Adler makes a distinction between two kinds of “truth”.
Trans-cultural truth – also known as objective truth. This is Adler’s term for the correspondence theory of truth. A claim is true if and only if it is made true by corresponding to the state of affairs in the mind-independent external world. It is irrelevant who makes the claim. The claim is either true or false for everyone, e.g. – “the ice cream is on the table”. Either it is, or it isn’t, for everyone.
Cultural truth – also known as subjective truth. This is Adler’s term for claims that are arbitrarily true for individual and groups of subjects. For example, your personal preference for a certain flavor of ice cream, or the cultural preference for a certain style of dress or cooking. The claim is true for the person or group, e.g. – “I/we prefer chocolate ice cream and wearing tuxedos”.
The question that Bradley addresses in the lecture is: are religious claims trans-cultural truth or cultural truth?
Why do people want to believe that religious truth claims are subjective?
People want to believe that religious truth claims are subjective because religious claims differ, and people lack the courage to tell some group of people that their beliefs about the world are wrong. By reducing religion to personal preference, no one is wrong, because everyone who believes in any religion, or no religion, is just expressing their own personal preferences.
But, if religious truth claims are trans-cultural claims, e.g. – the universe began to exist, then some religions are going to be wrong, because religions disagree about reality. It’s possible that no religion is right, or that one religion is right, but it is not possible that they are all right because there is only one reality shared by all people. Religions make contradictory claims about reality – so they can’t all be true.
Suppose religious claims are trans-cultural? How would you test those claims?
I credit E.J. Carnell with a test for truth that I still use today. It is the same test used by Adler and Bradley.
Logical consistency (the claim cannot violate the law of non-contradiction)
Empirical verification (the claim is verified against the external world)
Adler says that other trans-cultural truth claims, such as those from math and science, must all pass the test for logical consistency, as a minimum. And so with religion, if it is like math and science. Once a proposition passed the test of the law of non-contradiction, then you can proceed to step 2 and see if it is empirically verified.
Adler surveys all the major religions in his book, and concludes that only 3 of them – Judaism, Islam and Christianity – pass the test of the law of non-contradiction. He ends the book by recommending to seekers that they proceed to evaluate the historical claims of these 3 religions, in order to see which if any passes the empirical tests.
Conclusion
Bradley concludes with the claim of the resurrection of Jesus could be investigated using historical methods, in order to decide which of these 3 religions might be true, if any. He also mentions the stories of a few people who performed the investigation and changed their initial opinion of the resurrection in the face of the historical evidence.
WINTERY KNIGHT 