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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.

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apologetics creative essays prose poem Uncategorized

Reasons to Believe

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I believe in God because it is natural for me to do so. It is oh-so-human to believe in God, almost as if we, as a race, were born to believe in God. You cannot separate human history from the history of religion. To separate my mind from faith in God would be a perversion of the way things should be. I would become divorced from the evolutionary history of the human race, and what it means to be human.

I believe in God is because I became a Christian first. The gospel message of Christ found a home in my heart, and confirmed itself within me. I became a believer in this beautiful moral code, first. This is truly the first step of faith.

The heart came first, and then my head simply followed. I found a way to justify belief in God because I was in love. It happens every day, that people put their trust in something bigger than themselves, whether a marriage or a cause. They begin to develop confidence in this greater thing. It always starts with a seed of faith.

I believe in God because I took a small leap of faith in order to get where I really wanted to be, where my heart already was. Jesus said that the Spirit would convict the world of sin. I felt that guilt that draw on me to repent.

I believe in God because of the presence of the Holy Spirit who teaches me, guides me, counsels me, and advocates on my behalf. He is very much a person within me. I am always aware of his good nature, unspoiled by the corruption of the flesh. He is pure, righteous, innocent and clean.

I believe in God because I am so much more than an ape. I am no mere animal. I can ponder the event horizon of a black hole, and think on its intricate mysteries. I can pray to God, appreciate the form and concept of God. I can approximate God’s size and depth. I am not animal, but like a little god myself. And so I believe in my Father, God himself.

I believe in God because the infinite universe allows the existence of a God. The illimitable amount of space allows God freedom to exist in this or any other possible universe. And if the universe is real, and in reality can allow a God, than a God is probable, given an endless amount of time and space and possibilities.

I believe in God because there are dozens upon dozens of arguments for God’s existence. However, there are no arguments for atheism, for God’s non-existence. On the other hand, there is a voluminous library of arguments for God and Christ that you could build a foundation of faith upon.

I believe in God because I can find God inside of me. He is not out there somewhere, beyond the stars, or in the seventh heaven, even, but inside of every one of us that are saved. I believe in God because I don’t have to go far to find Him. I just look within, and find his Kingdom and all its glory inside of my spirit.

Again, I believe in God because I can find the Kingdom of Heaven inside of me. I have always known goodness, spiritual righteousness, and what godly love looks like, even as a young boy. What I thought true religion should look like I later discovered that Christ taught exactly that. Our spirits confirm that God is real, and that God is good.

I believe in God because, though God is indescribable, and his awesome grandeur cannot be translated into a recognizable form, still, I understand what and who God is through an intuitive understanding. It is almost as if I was designed to understand God, to know Him, to talk to Him and mentally appreciate Him. I cannot draw him, but I get him. I cannot imagine his form but I feel Him.

I believe in God because of the proof of the spirit. If you cannot find your spirit within your body, then you cannot find yourself. You do not know yourself if you cannot find yourself. If you believe that you have a soul, or a spirit, then you believe in the spiritual realm.

All of that, to say–If the spirit exists, then the spiritual world exists.

I have no choice but to believe in God, really. I believed in myself once, my own ways, my own thoughts, and all of that. I believed in human ways, secular thought, creative philosophy, and so on. It led me to self, but it also led me to self-destruction. Without God, and His ways, I don’t even exist. Therefore, I have no choice but to believe in Him.

I believe in God because of the existence of reality. Existence itself is God-dependent. Existence cannot exist of its own will or purpose. Existence cannot have being without God’s Being flooding it, permeating it, so to say. Otherwise, existence would simply not be upheld. Existence would simply not be colorized and filled out.

I believe in God because of the miracle of the Bible. The Bible is perfect, holy, anointed and irreducibly complex. It could not have come about by natural means because there are no intermediate transitional forms of revelation to be studied. Its revelation about God appears suddenly and fully formed in the historical record.

The Bible. Either none of it is true or all of it is true. If one miracle is real, then all of the miracles happened. Therefore, only one miracle needs to be proven. All of the others are then accepted on faith. And the likelihood that all of the hundreds of interconnected miracle stories being fake are minuscule, if not completely improbable.

I believe in the devil because of the argument from death. Death exists. Beings should not die, being in league with time, which will never end. Therefore death was manufactured by someone or something, and the devil seems the likeliest answer. Therefore the devil exists, and he brought death to the world.

But the biggest reason I believe in God is because God believed in me, first. There is no other explanation for my existence, unless the universe itself is malicious and cruel. I could only have been created for redemption, to be saved. Otherwise, I am the best I will ever be, and others, too. And that is not a good sign for the world.

Without God, we are the devil.

Let us not believe that, friends.

Go to Part Two

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

A Thought on White Privilege

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creative essays politics revelation Uncategorized

Why all Christians should Oppose Big Government

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All Christians should oppose the rapid growth of the government that we are seeing in the United States, keeping in mind that– the larger the reach of the government into American lives, the smaller the reach of the church.

The bigger the government, the more intrusive the government, the more the people become like the government, taking on its character and its traits. We see this in nations run by tyrants, despots, and especially communist regimes, where the people seem spirit-less, the arts dead, religion controlled and suppressed, and the citizenry neutered, prone, apathetic, accepting, uncultured and reserved.

You almost never find heroism in these places. You find an emasculated citizenry, hushed up, tamped down, walking around like robots and zombies, given only to work, competition, honor and pride.

The issue is that the government is faceless, and void of what people truly need. It can offer a signed and stamped check, but can a check replace a father? Can a check replace a family unit? Can a check replace domestic tranquility and stability in the home?

The answer is in the negative. When we switched over to government itself being the social arm of the masses, we lost much, as a society. Because the government is not part of our community. The church is. The government’s face is lacking character and compassion, and the church’s isn’t.

The government can feed children, can financially support a mother, and can pay her medical bills, it is true. The government can be a provider. But it cannot be a dad, a father, a friend or a encouraging acquaintance. It cannot be a Christian friend. It cannot be a comforting and holy spirit of truth.

It cannot give truth. And only the truth leads to freedom. Jesus said: “and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” True freedom for a people or a community or an oppressed race starts with a turn to the truth. Then freedom comes. But truth must come first.

The church must come first. The gospel message must come first. Without it, freedom will die. Because freedom relies on a man knowing what is true in his heart. When a man knows the truth in his heart, he will be willing to die for that truth. A society of men not willing to die in defense of the truth is a society of speed bumps, of emasculated automatons, and nothing more.

The secular state breeds such men, nurtures and raises such men, devoid of faith, of a blessed hope, of true religion. Because the state is godless, its children are likely to be godless. Because the state is not heroic, the people are not going to be heroic. Because the state is not good, the people are not going to be good.

Government programs foster dependency, not freedom.

The citizens that are under the influence of the government, and the secular government priesthood (democrats, leftists and socialists.) all display the signs and symptoms of being alive, and growing up, but growing up without paternal instruction and wisdom. They are overemotional, always in some kind of emotional distress. Their father is faceless, nameless, and absent except for material support.

When the state transitions into a paternal role, the nuclear family suffers, and society begins to descend into violence and anarchy. Man is to answer to God. When man only answers to the godless state, man really answers to the void within himself.

The more the state becomes the paternal presence, the more its children will remain as children well past their appointed age. The state makes children of men and women. It stunts their natural growth process, and juvenile characteristics are retained in them.

They would rather be dependent, at some point, than to be free individuals. They do not know freedom, and fear it the same way a young child does his first day away from his mother at school.

The critical point is that the government is a natural competitor with the church. The vast resources of the church used to be distributed with a catch–you had to attend in order to pick it up. Your benefactor had a face, a smile, and a blessing to impart. People went to the church for help, received physical goods in their time of distress, but also a spiritual feeding.

The church was literally the center of every community once. A common counter by those who worship the state is that government can respond more efficiently and with more resources, during an emergency. But fact is, huge and unwieldy responses aren’t going to be often needed with a limited government, as the people will be more self-sufficient, and the church will reap what the governing structure leaks out.

The church has stepped up in times past. We forget this. They were the ones who raised the orphans in the 30s through the 50s. They were handing out loaves at the bread lines. They built all of the homeless shelters and women’s shelters. They ran free health clinics and immunization programs. They built a vast network of charitable organizations that kept Americans afloat during the rise of America.

In all, what we are seeing today, is the coming to fruition of a truth that Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago: Man cannot live on bread alone.

But that is exactly why this country is in the predicament we are in regarding our inner city neighborhoods and ghettos. They can only give bread, but not other types of sustenance that are just as vital and necessary. It cannot encourage with an arm around the shoulder. It cannot pray with you or instruct in wisdom. It cannot commune with you, break bread with you. It doesn’t mail you a sympathy card when a close relative dies, or call every night to check up on you. The greater the role of government, the lesser the strength of community for a nation and people.

Go Home.
Why the Left LOVES Civil Disorder

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

A Thought on White Privilege

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creative essays racism revelation Uncategorized

Something Happened to Men

I don’t know when it happened, but some kind of mood shift occurred in the last 40-100 years. Americans in particular seem unhappy now, as compared to 50 years ago, say. How do I know this?

Because I collect baseball cards…

As I shuffle through my cards, as I am wont to do, I can’t help but notice the different levels of joy between then and now. It is the most obvious and remarkable thing that jumps out at me every time I compare cards from different eras.

Players in the 50s and 60s showed teeth in their smiles. There were something endearing and genuine about their joy. There was innocence and a humility present at the corners of their mouths. They seemed thankful, even happy.

Even the black players, in the midst of the turmoil of the civil rights era, possessed this charisma and glow upon them that I can’t find today in their modern day counterparts. It is just a something, call it an anointing, or a blessedness, or a christian contentedness. Something has happened between then and now, and whatever it is, it wasn’t positive.

It seems like their faces become disturbed, suddenly uneasy with themselves, right around the rise of the civil rights era, to be frank. It is uncanny the timing, perhaps. But maybe there is something to it.

Maybe they were living in non-ideological times, without the bloodthirsty 24-hour media every night stirring up rancor and ill will between parties, classes and races.. But whatever it was, I think something has been taken from mankind, and most of us don’t even know we have lost this birthright.

It seems our joy has been taken from us. Perhaps taken from us by the educators, our political leaders, by the race hustlers, the marxists, the atheists, the stuffy psychologists, the secular philosophers and the bearded naturalists.

It is almost as if a light has been put out in man. A once-friendly smile has been replaced by a thin grin. A childlike faith and a booming optimism replaced by anger, discontent, factionalism, and a fractured psyche.

Pills have replaced prayers. Votes have replaced charity.

We are no longer trusted as free men to determine our future, and the future of our states. We are slowly having the screws tightened on us. Even our moral freedoms are being taken from us. We are expected to live according to societal prescription. But all prescriptions have side effects.

I don’t see genuine joy any more. I feel like I haven’t seen a smile light up a room in ages. I haven’t seen a clean smile, one that approaches godliness, seemingly full of the holy spirit, as it were. I think we are growing cold, and angry, and resentful. We are made for so much more, but are being led astray by worldly systems and an atheistic nihilism.

One senses an explosive violence simmering inside of our countrymen. One feels uncomfortable in their presence, as if you were not among your kind, your tribe, your people. You look in their eyes and see straight through to the void in their souls. Deeply troubled, you may even back away slowly with hands up.

But what happened?

I think men have lost a sense of themselves, of who they really are, and who they are supposed to be. I think we have too many men raised by women alone. They are pretzeled up in emotional knots, anxious, and angry. It is not that they have lost their fathers, but that they have never known their fathers; but most importantly, they don’t know that God is their Father. They don’t commune with the Holy Spirit inside of them, don’t speak to God any more, and don’t listen to God’s voice inside of them.

They have been made angry by race hustlers, spiritual eunuchs, godless political maniacs and politicians. They don’t have perfect peace inside of them. They are not appreciative for the gift of existence that God has graced them with, and they are acting like their angry mothers who raised them.

Man’s soul has been poisoned. Now he appears as a freak, unrecognizable from the man he would have been if he was born 30 years earlier.

Jesus said that the eyes are the lamp of the soul. You can sense that a man’s soul has been darkened by looking into his eyes. They are restless, turbulent, striped with blood; they have something of a falsity to them, as if they are always lying.

The sun of man being darkened. The moon of the eye no longer giving its light.

The eyes are bald. The charismata gone from the face. The face is even twisted, contorted into pain at all times.

Something happened along the way, to our social fabric, there was a deleterious event along the way, something that scarred the soul of man so. A moral shift occurred, away from truth, perhaps toward the toleration of lies for the sake of niceness.

The government became self-interested, almost self-aware, and became an enabler of godlessness.

When you don’t have faith in God, you don’t have faith in anything, especially your fellow man. Everywhere you turn you see evil, wickedness, doom. You see enemies surrounding you, circling you like wild dogs. The eyes that glow are under suspicion as fakes, as charlatans, as counterfeits, as men of artifice. Their eyes are different from yours, therefore they must be the eyes of your enemy.

They lost sight of the Father and his ways. Men today don’t know who they are and who they are supposed to be because they don’t know their heavenly Father.

I am not talking about a return to toxic masculinity, or anything like that. Because God is love. A real man is a man of love, and not hatred. But the societal loam has been poisoned, as it were, by hatred, which brings discontent, which breaks up the peace of God that is supposed to be in a man’s heart.

This is important, that if a man hates anyone, then he does not love.

I see it. I know that you see it, too.

The question is: what are we going to do about it?

Or is too late?

Go Home.
Why the Left LOVES Civil Disorder

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

A Thought on White Privilege

Categories
creative essays revelation Uncategorized

Theory: The Real Reason for World Chaos, Riots and Violence

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Violence. Rumors of war. A global pandemic.

Riots, protests and social disturbances. Tear gas and rolling tanks and pitched battles between the police forces and young, masked Marxists.

It definitely seems like crazy times, and we are living through them. Usually we are just living, but for once we feel like we are living through history.

But don’t look toward racism, oppression, ideological forces or political or social theories to explain what is going on today. They will all offer contradictory explanations, using their own secular theories and reasoning and logics, but instead, as a spiritual people, it is important to remember what Saint Paul the Apostle said:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Look for the spiritual cause, not the social cause.

I want to put forth the idea that all of this is easily explainable…

Think back to the ministry of Christ. What was it that harassed Christ at almost every turn, besides the Pharisees and the Sadducees?

It was demons. Everywhere Christ went, he ran into the demon-possessed, whether they followed him and cried out to him or presented themselves as dumb spirits. He was constantly pestered by evil spirits during his earthly ministry.

Years ago, I wondered about that, why there seemed to be so much demonic activity around Christ during his ministry, but we don’t see that level of activity today. After thinking about it for a bit, I concluded that it actually made perfect sense for this to occur, as Christ was on the verge of the greatest victory over the forces of evil in all of history. The swarming of demons toward him was a last-ditch, controlled attack to stop him. It was a focusing and a marshaling of all of the demonic forces in one area, centered about the destruction of one person’s goal and plan.

I propose that we are seeing the exact same thing happen today. Soon enough, this pandemic will be over. People will be out in the streets again, and back in the pews. And in all likelihood, it will be more people than ever before. We are on the verge of a revival.

Everything you see is a desperate, focused last-ditch assault to hamper the progress toward that revival. It is The Unites States, the leader of the free world, where this attack is taking place, in order to stop the upcoming spiritual revolution about to break forth in this country.

Sides have been drawn. The armies have amassed in the battlefield in columns and divisions. The truth is, we have an opportunity now to deal the devil a serious blow while most of his forces are assembled in one place, on one field of battle.

Arm yourself with the sword of the spirit. Defend with your shield of faith.

The enemy is desperate. He fears what is to come.

Now is the time of our greatest victory.

Read about why I believe Revival is coming.

What it will look like. (video)

Existence is all Wrong Without a God.