Category: atheism

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Why Christians are the Real Truthseekers

truth image.

I had a kind of epiphany the other night about truth and the seeking of it.

I have always felt that most believers I have known are extremely curious people, and have often considered them to be seekers of truth.

Now, an atheist hears this and maybe scorns at the idea. They think of themselves at pure rationalists, following logic and reason to their inevitable conclusions. I believe, for most of them, this is a self-deception.

I say this because you often find, especially concerning social and political issues, atheists allow emotion to override their sense of logic and reason. You often find that they believe that if a man claims that he is biologically a woman, then he just is. The traditional husband/wife/child nuclear family structure can be replaced with alternative models, and nothing of value is lost. And there many more examples such as this.

What is happening is that truth is being discarded for a false sense of self-righteousness.

I find that the majority of atheists do not believe in truth at all. They believe in good feelings, and acceptance to the point of being enablers of suffering.

Christians believe that only the truth can set someone free. It seems to me, on the other hand, that many agnostics and atheists believe that truth, in regards to social issues, such as those just proffered, should take a back seat to niceness.

The problem is, it is not nice to enable someone in their own self-destructive behavior. It is reprehensible, pernicious and evil.

Another example is the absurdity, in the atheist worldview, in being politically or socially active, at all. In a godless universe, where we are just assemblages of meaningless matter, where all morals are subjective, or a matter of cultural preference, the idea that a person should be socially or morally inclined to the point of emotionalism is absurd. In such a world, more of a selfish and self-serving moral philosophy makes sense– that is, if you determine that life is worth living out, at all.

But on Twitter and in message forums all over the internet, on any given day, you find atheists using the strongest of moral language in indignation and judgment toward those that think or believe or vote differently from them. They call their interlocutors reprehensible, racists, and even go as far as to use the word evil.

This is a great mystery and betrays an inconsistency in their reasoning processes. It is not truth that blindly follow, but their souls, in the end.

All of that said, after midnight, a couple of nights ago, I had an epiphany that put all of this together. I made two Tweets at the time to express my realization.

“Most live in a world of bad guys and good guys. Christians live in a world with all bad guys. The only natural thing left for us do is to seek truth, as we already know we won’t ever make a heaven here on earth.”

This is an important point. I’m not trying to fix the world. It is man’s heart or soul that needs fixing. I’ll leave the endless cycle of legislating morality through government to those who don’t know better. The cycle of suffering isn’t going anywhere. Governments will grow in scope and power, the people will be oppressed by the swelling power of the government, The people will either revolt or capitulate. Nothing is gained. No moral progress has been had. The world becomes no better, but more confusing to our befuddled social scientists and humanities engineers.

Believers are not sidetracked by all of this moral wrangling. We are left to seek out truth. It is all we have left to accomplish.

The other tweet:

“Being a truthseeker is what ultimately leads people to God. You can only find God by sorting through the chaos of the moral singularity inside man. But you can only find yourself there by seeking truth.“

And that is closer to the point. Unless you confront the greatest mysteries and tackle them head on, you cannot make a claim to truth. You cannot claim to be a seeker of truth. We who believe have already looked into the noisy turbulence of the cosmic eye, and found truth in it. And because the truth sets a person free, we are free of the moral and political confusion that often finds a home inside the godless man.

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apologetics atheism

Why God Doesn’t Heal Amputees

feature image.

In a previous blog post, I tackled this question directly, explaining that God does heal amputees, giving them and millions of others the greatest and most evident miracle one can find on earth. You can read this post here.

But the fact is, amputees aren’t in need of healing. They are not sick, by definition. They are disabled. But there is no disease present to be tackled by an immune response. Therefore, healing is not necessary.

What amputees may desire is regeneration of limbs. But unfortunately for us, in human beings, limbs do not regenerate. They do not grow back. Therefore there is no normal and natural healing process. So when an atheist speaks of a healing, there is no standard present in humans to account for what he is talking about. This is important, that there is no natural expectation for this kind of healing in the world. Given this, they go on to demand a supernatural intervention of which there is no precedent, either in the natural world and in the biblical literature, as well.

Fact is, nowhere in the biblical covenants is there a promise of the regeneration of amputated limbs or missing limbs. This is not an example of God’s failure, but of an atheist understanding of the covenant contract between God and man.

But wait. Hold out on all of this.

The Bible does say that nothing is impossible with God.

There have been a few reports of amputated limbs growing back throughout human history.

Probably the most well-known is called The Miracle of Calanda. It is even documented in a Wikipedia article here.

“The Miracle of Calanda is an event that allegedly took place in Calanda, Spain in 1640, according to 17th century documents. The documents state that a young farmer’s leg was restored to him after having been amputated two and a half years earlier.”

That said, it is important to note a differentiation between an expectation of healing and an expectation of extraordinary miracles. There are many documented healings in the biblical canon. They are healed of fevers, of epilepsy, of colds and viruses and deafness.

But then there is another, higher level of miracle. This concerns the dead being raised, or someone being taken up to heaven. These are remarkable events, rare and infrequent.

I believe there is a reason for this. It really comes down to choice, and free will, and the ability and freedom to choose your own spiritual fate. If physical and extraordinary miracles were commonplace, this trend might or would impinge on a person’s ability to freely choose or reject God and his gospel message. The truth is that, believing in God means to believe in love, in Christ, in the gospel message, more than anything else. There are no shortcuts to heaven. There are no cheat codes. God probably wants your heart, and not just your head.

If you saw a man’s limb regrow under the hand of a prophet, by force of natural logic, you would have to believe. And you would have missed the point of the scriptures and God’s message completely. Which is all about charity, personal sacrifice, love, kindness, and the church.

Now, there is a reference in the New Testament to the loss of a limb. Jesus says:

“And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”

Notice that Jesus says that when you lose an arm or a leg, it has perished. Things that perish do not often return, if they ever do. They become nonexistent. There is nothing left to heal.

What atheists are really asking for is equivalent to asking that a man blown to a million pieces by a landmine be re-cogitated magically. This is a ludicrous ask, as such a man has already perished. He is gone. He has died and is awaiting judgment.

I also want to make the point that our sufferings on this earth are negligible, in the grand scheme of things. If a child is missing an arm for his childhood, and dies, and has 3 billion years in heaven whole and complete, do you think he or she will consider his time maimed on earth to be significant in any way?

Almost definitely not.

That said, some miracles require more faith than others, as Jesus constantly said: “according to your faith” it will happen to you, this when He performed miracles. I believe that it is possible for a man’s limb to be regenerated by faith in God, but who has that kind of faith? It is possible to part a sea, and it was done only once, but who has that kind of faith?

I suppose it is not hard to have faith if the Son of God is physically present in front of you.

Furthermore, we must remember that God always works persuasively, and not coercively, so as to not violate our right to freely choose to serve or reject Him.

Looking deeper into this topic, I discovered that most limb loss is due to diabetes. The loss of a limb itself does not pose a threat to a being’s life or eternal salvation. There is almost always an underlying illness, of which amputation is a treatment, in most cases.

Now, one last point is that, Jesus did perform miracles in front of many, sometimes. And still people would not believe on him. Maybe it is no different today. If you witness a miracle right in front of you, you can always justify it somehow, or explain it away, or ignore it, and many did exactly this.

In that case, a genuine miracle is of little evangelistic value. Maybe it violates freedom to reject God or choose God. Maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe this will answer the question for you:

Why won’t God heal amputees?

He will, one way or the other, sooner or later.

Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? Part 1

A new Argument for the Existence of God

Why do the Godless Converge in Cities?

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apologetics atheism

Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?

healing image.

I recently scanned over a ridiculous website called whywontgodhealamputees.com, run by “Marshall Brain.” Upon reading over it, I found what I expected to find, which was a flurry of rather simplistic and juvenile arguments against the existence of God. So I’m taking my shot here.

First of all, thousands upon thousands of amputees have been healed by God. God heals broken souls and spirits. He does this every day through his Holy Spirit. Each time it happens, it is a genuine and remarkable miracle. Bad people, thoroughly debauched and given over to evil– become saved and turn their life around, and experience a miraculous transformation at the heart level. This is actually the greatest evidence for God’s existence that there is.

This is not something to push away with a wave of the hand.

I have never seen a truly bad person have a change of heart except through a religious, spiritual experience with God. I have never heard or seen of a person struggling with a sexual sin overcoming it by anything but a miracle.

For example, in state after state, un-american leftists and socialist democrats have banned the use of secular and religious programs that help people overcome their sexual issues. They have recognized that all of their science and their whole psychological field is powerless and ineffective in helping these people, though they want to be helped.

Yet within the church, you will find former homosexuals and thousands upon thousands who overcome sexual fetishes. You will hear their testimonies and witness the newfound joy in their lives and on their faces.

You keep looking at missing arms and legs. I give you Nick Vujicic, missing arms and legs, he is a christian preacher and evangelist, who believes in physical healing, to boot!

What is it that secular atheists offer people with broken souls?

They offer them drugs. Anti-depressants. Anti-psychotics. They offer to fully transform them into drooling zombies.

They offer them bread, a monthly check from the government, a lonely existence on the margins of society.

They offer them a quick path to nihilism and existential sickness.

With all of their degrees, their higher learning, and all of their science, they have never once been able to turn a bad man into a good man. They have never once, in the history of mankind, been able to affect a real and lasting change of heart.

All they offer are new social programs that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the money being poured into high crime areas for decades with no visible positive effects. They have built thousands of prisons for those sick in their souls. They have turned countless people suffering from anxiety into drug addicts, alcoholics and into the homeless.

They don’t have or possess the ability to heal anyone.

They have never witnessed a miracle or performed one because they don’t have the holy spirit of God inside of them.

A man who loses an arm or a leg is not sick. He is not in need of healing. Jesus himself said that it is better to be without a hand or arm than lose your eternal soul.

In all, they ignore the miracles that are all around them, focusing only on physical losses. They are the blind leading the blind. They have ears, but cannot hear. They have eyes, but do not see.

Part 2 is here!

If there is No God…
Faith Keeps the Human Race Going

A Thought on White Privilege

A link to the page of “Marshall Brain”

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apologetics atheism Uncategorized

Why Atheism is Wrong in Two Worlds

silhouette photo of person standing in neon lit hallway
Photo by Naveen Annam on Pexels.com

We have all heard about the “assumption of atheism.” It is the idea that, all things being equal, one is born with an assumption of atheism, and that this is man’s initial resting state, as it were. This post is not designed to be a logical rebuttal to this idea, as William Lane Craig has annihilated this premise here. But in thinking about this, it is difficult for me to imagine a world where atheism comes naturally, in fact. So what we have here is a tale of two worlds.

The first world is pre-industrial. You are born before the titans of industry, before the highways and automobiles and the airplanes and the digital age. Before the theory of evolution, before Einstein, before the professional naturalists and trained philosophers. All we had was common sense, accumulated wisdom in holy texts, and a wide array of philosophies in their infancy stages We herded sheep and made campfires. We sharpened sticks, slept on rooftops, and some even lived in caves.

In this world, superstition is prevalent.We know this as a historical fact. Hell, even cro magnum man and the neanderthals showed signs of having superstitious beliefs and afterlife ideas about death. I’m not sure that atheists will challenge this idea. If you were born in these times, it is likely you would believe in gods, the arrangements of funereal stones, the afterlife, and some form of magic or prayer.

It is interesting to note that we find religion appearing in different parts of the world, independent from each other.

So, let us fast-forward to today.

Atheists don’t see God anywhere, or room for superstition anywhere in our modern world of big tech, big science, theoretical scientists and modern philosophical thought. Though, to be fair, more than a billion people do. The common atheist line here is that the common man is uneducated, ignorant, clinging to his relics, religion, the bible, and his guns. The modern evangelistic atheist is an elitist, privileged to hold beliefs that the common man isn’t savvy enough to own, and capable of affording a belief system that the lumpen masses cannot.

Everything can be explained, they might say. They speak of the “god of the gaps,” which is the idea that in the gaps of our knowledge of how the world and the universe works, believers use God to fill in those gaps. They also claim that these gaps are becoming smaller and thinner all of the time. They speak of the march of knowledge, even.

But the point is, even in today’s world of science and discovery, there is a lot of room for belief in God. Because with the progress of science, theology itself has kept pace, arm in arm and neck in neck. Theology has evolved and matured with the advance of secular knowledge. In fact, in my opinion, they have not merely kept pace, but superseded the march of atheism.

Right off the top of my head, I can come up with 4 or 5 arguments for the existence of God, all taken seriously in academic, theological and philosophical studies. There are new arguments arising each year. Even old, antiquated arguments that are hundreds of years old are being constantly resurrected, updated, upgraded and being thrown back into play. I have two posts right here at John Claudio world where I creatively free write and document reasons to believe, some questionable and others not.

So basically, in all, when you consider all of the philosophical arguments, the prophetic evidence, the witness of personal testimonies, and all of the modern-day logical work, you find that, in some ways, faith in God is easier to justify today than it was 1,000 tears ago. 1,000 years ago, God only had gap-filling power, much like the theories of atheists today. In today’s world, you have a plethora of arguments in the positive for the existence of a God, that don’t seek to be explanatory, or gap-fillers, but seek to prove, through logic, philosophy and theological work, that God exists and Jesus is the Son of God.

There are more and better reasons to believe in God now, than there were in the old, ancient world.

The fact that the old philosophical formulas are still in widespread use today by theologians and philosophers are evidence of their natural, long-term immunity to serious critique. Instead of dying off, they have grown stronger and become more-defined through time. They have been strengthened by opposition, and some of their formulations have evolved under scrutiny, but still they persist to exist as a gadfly in the atheist’s ointment.

This is hardly an exhaustive list, but here are 8 arguments for the existence of God.

  1. The cosmological Argument
  2. The moral argument
  3. The teleological argument
  4. The Ontological argument
  5. The argument from Design
  6. The argument from Consciousness
  7. The argument from Testimony
  8. The Argument from Faith

Here is a small list of helpful philosophical resources:

William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith.

Inspiring Philosophy’s You Tube channel.

Christian Philosopher Robert Koons.

How an Atheist Argued His Way Back to Christianity
Reasons to Believe
A New Argument for the Existence of God

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atheism Uncategorized

How an Atheist Argued His Way Back to Christianity

The truth is that, it was all a happy accident.

I was on an internet message board one day, in the religion forum, scanning through some debate threads. It was the usual back and forth between a Christian and a gaggle of atheists. Sadly, I do not remember what the debate was about. But I remember actually feeling bad for the brave Christian, as he was outnumbered and outclassed.

I remember noting that the Christian was falling back on Bible verses and platitudes, and not faring well. I remember wondering how I would fare, as a Christian, in this hostile climate. I created an account. I examined the arguments that the atheists and secularists were making.

Then something amazing happened.

I suddenly worked out a rebuttal to their counterpoints on the spot. It just came to me, almost as an epiphany does or a personal revelation. I wrote it up, posted it and came to the Christian’s defense. A few more scattered objections followed, which I quickly dispatched of– the matter was settled. Score one for theism and Jesus.

I really got down to thinking about what had happened later that night. I had, on the spot, countered an atheist’s argument without much effort, to be frank. I did so, as an atheist.

I remember getting back up and reentering the forum. I had full intention on trolling the heck out of this forum. I looked for another argument to attack, and waded in.

Two weeks later. I had debunked not one, but multiple arguments on the site. I was heavily involved in 5 or 6 ongoing threads, defending certain scriptures, speaking to the Kalam Cosmological argument, and even coming up with my own rebuttals to common atheist criticisms.

Now, this is an important point that I need to stop and make here: The arguments and rebuttals I was using were my own, created on the fly, except for maybe rechecking the context of a scripture or double-checking a definition.

I didn’t want to consult Reasonable Faith or the Christian theologians or apologists of the past or current. I didn’t want help.

I felt by intuition that if Christianity is worth defending, the arguments and evidences and backing for it should be apparent and available to everybody. You shouldn’t need a priest or a teacher to tell you why you should believe in God.

By doing it this way, I was able to create a few novel and original ideas in apologetics.

It also has to be understood where I was coming from, which was strong atheism. I was a fundamentalist atheist, so to say, actively debating on the internet against Christians and for atheism and secular free-thought as I saw it. I was booked up on Darwin, Gould, Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins. My favorite book at the time was a tattered and underline-ridden copy of the Selfish Gene.

Here I was, night after night, an atheist, taking the Christian position, debunking atheist arguments.

But I was also learning a lot about truth and belief itself. I had a series of revelations during this period of light trolling.

Slowly it began to dawn on me that my objections to the faith were not without resolution. Resolution and understanding was there for the taking, if I chose to take it.

I also realized that these resolutions were not beyond my grasp, or anybody else’s. If anyone chose to believe in God and Christ, they could overcome any interior objections without consulting anybody else, but just by utilizing their own god-given sense and logical capabilities.

Looking back now, it is humbling, because at the time, I was full of pride. I fashioned myself as an intellectual. I talked constantly of evolution, punctuated equilibrium, secular free-thought, bible contradictions, constitutions and regulated societies. I was full of worldly knowledge, you might say, brimming over with it, and it was always spilling out of me everywhere I went.

For God sake I remember going on a date at a bar and talking about Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle.

But I didn’t have an original thought to my name. I was drunk on the old wine of others. I was regurgitating, but not thinking. I was collecting and shining up theories and facts, but creating no theories of my own.

For the first time in my life, I was using all of my creative abilities, all in defense of a faith I did not own myself. I was forming my own theology, my own ideas and opinions. I began to read the bible, slowly at first, and would receive epiphanies and revelations as I studied the passages.

It made no sense to me, and I was befuddled. Mentally, I was stagnant. Spiritually, I was impoverished. Somehow, though I thought myself an intellectual giant, I was nothing more than a collector of facts, a repository for information, a chest that held the dried and brittle bones of others.

If atheism is the natural state, the resting state of man, then the mind is at rest, too. The mind is in a state of atrophy. Therefore, it cannot be right that the natural state of man is atheism.

Also, I began to question the intellectual capacities of my atheist brethren. Even if they couldn’t discover responses to objections on their own, they could consult a vast library of theological and apologetic resources available to them through search engines and the local library.

So why don’t they?

Because they choose not to.

I realized, that belief is a choice. It is a decision. Those who decide for faith will fight for their faith and defend it, spirit, soul, mind and body. Those who decide for a godless existence will fight for it, defend it all the same.

The responses to your doubts are there for the taking, within you.

Eventually, faith began to flower up within me. It happened gradually, but it was happening nonetheless. And eventually, I find myself at an impasse. How far was I going to go with this? If this is all a choice, that changes everything…

Not much later, I discovered a verse in the old testament that provoked a life-altering decision for me.

O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. (Psalm 34:8)

I vowed to give one year of my life to God.

I vowed to try it, to taste and see.

That was 11 years ago.

Move on to: Reasons to Believe
Why all Christians should Oppose Big Government
If there is No God…
Revival is coming.