₦airaland Forum

chukwunweikeemi:
To the individual who does not believe in God please read carefully.
PLEASE FOR SPACE CONSTRAINTS I HAVE HAD TO SPLIT MY POST IN THREE.HERE IS THIRD(FINAL) PART OF MY POST:


Now before I drill into the nerve of the matter, I must again make apologies. The fact that so many people are placed before a full exposition of the evidence for God's existence and yet do not believe in Him has greatly discouraged us. We have therefore adopted measures of despair. Anxious to win your good will, we have again compromised our God. Noting the fact that men do not see, we have conceded that what they ought to see is hard to see. In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling. And from that fatal confession we have gone one step further down to the point where we have admitted or virtually admitted that it is not really compelling at all. And so we fall back upon testimony instead of argument. After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts. So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, that once we were blind and that now we see, and give up all intellectual argument.

Do you suppose that our God approves of this attitude of His followers? I do not think so. The God who claims to have made all facts and to have placed His stamp upon them will not grant that there is really some excuse for those who refuse to see. Besides, such a procedure is self-defeating. If someone in your home town of Washington denied that there was any such thing as a United States Government would you take him some distance down the Potomac and testify to him that there is? So your experience and testimony of regeneration would be meaningless except for the objective truth of the objective facts that are presupposed by it. A testimony that is not an argument is not a testimony either, just as an argument that is not a testimony is not even an argument.

Waiving all this for the moment, let us see what the modern psychologist of religion, who stands on the same foundation with the philosopher, will do to our testimony. He makes a distinction between the raw datum and its cause, giving me the raw datum and keeping for himself the explanation of the cause. Professor James H. Leuba, a great psychologist of Bryn Mawr, has a procedure that is typical. He says, "The reality of any given datum — of an immediate experience in the sense in which the term is used here, may not be impugned: When I feel cold or warm, sad or mirthful, discouraged or confident, I am cold, sad, discouraged, etc., and every argument which might be advanced to prove to me that I am not cold is, in the nature of the case, preposterous; an immediate experience may not be controverted; it cannot be wrong." All this seems on the surface to be very encouraging. The immigrant is hopeful of a ready and speedy admittance. However, Ellis Island must still be passed. "But if the raw data of experience are not subject to criticism, the causes ascribed to them are. If I say that my feeling of cold is due to an open window, or my state of exultation to a drug, or my renewed courage to God, my affirmation goes beyond my immediate experience; I have ascribed a cause to it, and that cause may be the right or the wrong one." (God or Man, New York, 1933, p. 243.) And thus the immigrant must wait at Ellis Island a million years. That is to say, I as a believer in God through Christ, assert that I am born again through the Holy Spirit. The Psychologist says that is a raw datum of experience and as such incontrovertible. We do not, he says, deny it. But it means nothing to us. If you want it to mean something to us you must ascribe a cause to your experience. We shall then examine the cause. Was your experience caused by opium or God? You say by God. Well, that is impossible since as philosophers we have shown that it is logically contradictory to believe in God. You may come back at any time when you have changed your mind about the cause of your regeneration. We shall be glad to have you and welcome you as a citizen of our realm, if only you take out your naturalization papers!

We seem now to have come to a pretty pass. We agreed at the outset to tell each other the whole truth. If I have offended you it has been because I dare not, even in the interest of winning you, offend my God. And if I have not offended you I have not spoken of my God. For what you have really done in your handling of the evidence for belief in God, is to set yourself up as God. You have made the reach of your intellect, the standard of what is possible or not possible. You have thereby virtually determined that you intend never to meet a fact that points to God. Facts, to be facts at all — facts, that is, with decent scientific and philosophic standing — must have your stamp instead of that of God upon them as their virtual creator.

Of course I realize full well that you do not pretend to create redwood trees and elephants. But you do virtually assert that redwood trees and elephants cannot be created by God. You have heard of the man who never wanted to see or be a purple cow. Well, you have virtually determined that you never will see or be a created fact. With Sir Arthur Eddington you say as it were, "What my net can't catch isn't fish."

Nor do I pretend, of course, that once you have been brought face to face with this condition, you can change your attitude. No more than the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots can you change your attitude. You have cemented your colored glasses to your face so firmly that you cannot even take them off when you sleep. Freud has not even had a glimpse of the sinfulness of sin as it controls the human heart. Only the great Physician through His blood atonement on the Cross and by the gift of His Spirit can take those colored glasses off and make you see facts as they are, facts as evidence, as inherently compelling evidence, for the existence of God.

It ought to be pretty plain now what sort of God I believe in. It is God, the All-Conditioner. It is the God who created all things, Who by His providence conditioned my youth, making me believe in Him, and who in my later life by His grace still makes me want to believe in Him. It is the God who also controlled your youth and so far has apparently not given you His grace that you might believe in Him.

You may reply to this: "Then what's the use of arguing and reasoning with me?" Well, there is a great deal of use in it. You see, if you are really a creature of God, you are always accessible to Him. When Lazarus was in the tomb he was still accessible to Christ who called him back to life. It is this on which true preachers depend. The prodigal [son] thought he had clean escaped from the father's influence. In reality the father controlled the "far country" to which the prodigal had gone. So it is in reasoning. True reasoning about God is such as stands upon God as upon the emplacement that alone gives meaning to any sort of human argument. And such reasoning, we have a right to expect, will be used of God to break down the one-horse carriage of human autonomy.

But now I see you want to go home. And I do not blame you; the last bus leaves at twelve. I should like to talk again another time. I invite you to come to dinner next Sunday. But I have pricked your bubble, so perhaps you will not come back. And yet perhaps you will. That depends upon the Father's pleasure. Deep down in your heart you know very well that what I have said about you is true. You know there is no unity in your life. You want no God who by His counsel provides for the unity you need. Such a God, you say, would allow for nothing new. So you provide your own unity. But this unity must, by your own definition, not kill that which is wholly new. Therefore it must stand over against the wholly new and never touch it at all. Thus by your logic you talk about possibles and impossibles, but all this talk is in the air. By your own standards it can never have anything to do with reality. Your logic claims to deal with eternal and changeless matters; and your facts are wholly changing things; and "never the twain shall meet." So you have made nonsense of your own experience. With the prodigal you are at the swine-trough, but it may be that, unlike the prodigal, you will refuse to return to the father's house.

On the other hand by my belief in God I do have unity in my experience. Not of course the sort of unity that you want. Not a unity that is the result of my own autonomous determination of what is possible. But a unity that is higher than mine and prior to mine. On the basis of God's counsel I can look for facts and find them without destroying them in advance. On the basis of God's counsel I can be a good physicist, a good biologist, a good psychologist, or a good philosopher. In all these fields I use my powers of logical arrangement in order to see as much order in God's universe as it may be given a creature to see. The unities, or systems that I make are true because [they are] genuine pointers toward the basic or original unity that is found in the counsel of God.

Looking about me I see both order and disorder in every dimension of life. But I look at both of them in the light of the Great Orderer Who is back of them. I need not deny either of them in the interest of optimism or in the interest of pessimism. I see the strong men of biology searching diligently through hill and dale to prove that the creation doctrine is not true with respect to the human body, only to return and admit that the missing link is missing still. I see the strong men of psychology search deep and far into the sub-consciousness, child and animal consciousness, in order to prove that the creation and providence doctrines are not true with respect to the human soul, only to return and admit that the gulf between human and animal intelligence is as great as ever. I see the strong men of logic and scientific methodology search deep into the transcendental for a validity that will not be swept away by the ever-changing tide of the wholly new, only to return and say that they can find no bridge from logic to reality, or from reality to logic. And yet I find all these, though standing on their heads, reporting much that is true. I need only to turn their reports right side up, making God instead of man the center of it all, and I have a marvelous display of the facts as God has intended me to see them.

And if my unity is comprehensive enough to include the efforts of those who reject it, it is large enough even to include that which those who have been set upright by regeneration cannot see. My unity is that of a child who walks with its father through the woods. The child is not afraid because its father knows it all and is capable of handling every situation. So I readily grant that there are some "difficulties" with respect to belief in God and His revelation in nature and Scripture that I cannot solve. In fact there is mystery in every relationship with respect to every fact that faces me, for the reason that all facts have their final explanation in God Whose thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and Whose ways are higher than my ways. And it is exactly that sort of God that I need. Without such a God, without the God of the Bible, the God of authority, the God who is self-contained and therefore incomprehensible to men, there would be no reason in anything. No human being can explain in the sense of seeing through all things, but only he who believes in God has the right to hold that there is an explanation at all.

So you see when I was young I was conditioned on every side; I could not help believing in God. Now that I am older I still cannot help believing in God. I believe in God now because unless I have Him as the All-Conditioner, life is Chaos.

I shall not convert you at the end of my argument. I think the argument is sound. I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else. But since I believe in such a God, a God who has conditioned you as well as me, I know that you can to your own satisfaction, by the help of the biologists, the psychologists, the logicians, and the Bible critics reduce everything I have said this afternoon and evening to the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian. Well, my meanderings have, to be sure, been circular; they have made everything turn on God. So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy.

... I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else ...

GodHead85:
I had to come and Explain to you[/b that Religious beliefs are not Black and White. I demonstrated all this to You when I mentioned the different types of Theists and Atheists ?

You Said you don't know much of atheism. We explained to you . But you kept repeating the same lies over and over

Can you now see that you are Disgusting Manipulator who is so selfish about his own Views, and doesn't care to know what others think?

Vic2Ree:
But come oo. OP sef na hit and run . Why person go create thread come leave am waka? All these mumu Christians come dey worry us

GodHead85:
You didnt come here for A Conversation . You came to TROLL and SPREAD LIES about things you know Nothing About .

You misrepresented her Position (which funnily enough, She predicted), and after dem catch you pants down, you wan run

Happy Running !

Dtruthspeaker:
"I had to come and Explain" (Thank God He Speaks the Truth here)

1. And after, you explained, did your explanation not reflect in my response to you, clearly showing my own opinion prior to your enlightenment?

2. Then, in response, you unfairly rained insults.

3. So how am I to proceed after all these?

Dtruthspeaker:
You spoke too soon

Dtruthspeaker:
oh! oh! ooh!

DLiePeddler

Sabr1na:
Martinez39s, LordReed, Vic2Ree

Did any of you actually read this

This man said

Yet in the same (over long over-verbose article) mentions "miracles" and invisible beings and "logic" in the same post.

Literally LOL

GodHead85:
1. NO. It did Not Reflect ! And I hate repeating myself.
There are different kinds of Atheists. The Atheists you are complaining about are The Strong Atheists. OP, and most people here are Weak Atheists . Knowledge is the deciding factor here. Strong Atheists know there is no god. Weak Atheists do not.

Likewise there are many kinds of Theists (Xtians, Muslims), Xtianity also has many kinds based on differing doctrines (7day Adventist, Protestant, Catholic). Even Mormons are variations of Christians.
You just skipped all of this to repeat your flawed Two way street analogy

2. Like I said I Hate repeating myself, especially if I sense Pride and Arrogance in my Partners tone. The way you write is Very condescending.

3. It's up to you Are you ready to listen And Have an Honest Conversation . Or Are you going To keep making Assumptions about things you don't understand ?

Dtruthspeaker:
You spoke too soon

Dtruthspeaker:
I have already listened and I heard you loud and clear and I do understand.

Sabr1na:
Martinez39s, LordReed, Vic2Ree

Did any of you actually read this

This man said

Yet in the same (over long over-verbose article) mentions "miracles" and invisible beings and "logic" in the same post.

Literally LOL

Vic2Ree:
You even had the patience to read all that crap

bigname23:
guy u get time oh only u dey argue with over 3 pepo, Bros stop to dey waste ur time dis pepo nor go ever agree with u, u self nor go ever agree with them..Bros save ur energy na insults una go throw give each other for here..

Martinez39s:
I stopped reading halfway because that crap is an eyesore. It's a pathetic and sad, yet amusing, attempt at self-deception.

Sabr1na:
Martinez39s, LordReed, Vic2Ree

Did any of you actually read this

This man said

Yet in the same (over long over-verbose article) mentions "miracles" and invisible beings and "logic" in the same post.

Literally LOL

1000WaysToLive:
Lol!

You just read a snippet of the OP and are obviously very hurt by it. You didn't bother to read to the end. She's not even directly attacking your god

Bros abeg you're not actually saying anything. You're just being emotional


Not a new thing with you Christians though!

Vic2Ree:
Why use your brain or your ears, when you can just make things up?

Its been a looong time but I've come to realize that arguing with Christians is a Lose-Lose situation. No amount of rational thought can penetrate their heavy skulls.

I don't even try to argue nowadays. I'm comfortable mocking their ridiculousness

Sabr1na:
Martinez39s, LordReed, Vic2Ree

Did any of you actually read this

This man said

Yet in the same (over long over-verbose article) mentions "miracles" and invisible beings and "logic" in the same post.

Literally LOL

DaughterOfAllah:
When making a case for their gods, theists love to employ lots of strategies and gimmicks just to win you over.

Sabr1na:
Dear OP, you forgot -- "AtHEiSm iS a ReLIgiON" -- Hands down the most retarded claim they love to make. They think the whole world revolves around their myopic views. In a way it ties in with your first point though.

Chosen1984:
Let me shoot my foot but get what Matters!

What Matters is the Truth that you and I and Everyone needs!

What Matters is having JESUS Christ before you leave this Earth..

Chosen1984:
Heaven or Hell! We all Must end up in one of them.

We didn't create ourselves! We have a Creator, GOD ALMIGHTY! He has given us the way to life and Death.

The way to Heaven is to Accept JESUS CHRIST
The way to Hell is to Refuse to Accept JESUS CHRIST.

You can choose to argue all you want. But once you drop dead, you will face it squarely!

There is a Way that seemeth right to a man, the End is Destruction.

budaatum:
Its been a while Sab, welcome back.
You were missed.

Vic2Ree:
I noticed something about the way you write. I could be wrong but please answer with honesty:

Are you the owner of the monickers Jesusjnr, Jesusjnr2, jjresurrected and the likes? Are they your alts?

checkingpeking:
I think he is an old member called Blackfyre

Dtruthspeaker

Am I right?

Cc Sabr1na, LordReed, Martinez39s

checkingpeking:
I think he is an old member called Blackfyre

Dtruthspeaker

Am I right?

Cc Sabr1na, LordReed, Martinez39s