There's no evidence for God's existence!

The most common claim of the village atheist.

Dr WL Craig suggests a quick answer:

I can think of 5 reasons for belief in God:

1. Gd is the best explanation for while anything at all exists rather than nothing, for the beginning of the universe
2. Gd is the best explanation for the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life
3. Gd is the best explanation for objective moral values and duties in the world
4. Gd is the best explanation of the historical facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth
5. Gd can be personally known and experienced

I'd add two more:

1. Gd is the best explanation for personhood within the universe that has self-conscious being
2. Gd provides the best explanation for man's (humanity's) existential condition.

In true biblical fasion, 7 good reasons.

And there's one more: God makes joy, beauty and peace real.

I'll seek to enlarge on these over coming weeks. Craig says that in his experience many people are satisfied that you have reasons.

Why did God make a world where there could be 'evil'?

The first step in this question is the misunderstanding of 'evil' as a 'thing' with its existence independent of actors.

It is not, it is a quality of acts that are not loving: acts reflective of 'not-god'.

There is no such thing as 'evil', as a source of acts against others, these come from the human heart! (Matthew 15:19). Rather, it is a description of acts not for others, but against their interests. Acts not loving, acts of  'not-god'ness.

But why did God make us such that we could be 'non-god' in our thoughts and behaviour...and ultimately, in our relationships, our love?

Because God made us for relationship with him ('in his image'). For there to be a relationship, there has to be the possibility of no relationship, otherwise it is not a relationship (of love), but an inherent unavoidable 'given'.

But why did God make us for 'relationship' when this entails the possibility of no relationship? Was it for his pleasure, for a game he was playing with us?

No, it was for our pleasure. He made us for relationship with him because we would enjoy it...more than it is possible to enjoy anything else. That's what love is. It is for the other.

See also my post We're all basically good...aren't we?

How to get your bearings...biblically

The Good News Bible edition that I read last year had a very helpful set of guides and lists of special passages and accounts in the Bible.

Part of this was a 'first 100 days' of readings, to give a view of our salvation, and a one year's readings to give a perspective on the whole sweep of Biblical content.

I can't recall having a systematic introduction to the Bible when I was a young person, indeed, when I 'officially' became a Christian at the 1968 Billy Graham Crusade ('officially' because I can't recall a time when I did not fully believe in our Lord), I vaguely remember having a booklet of studies to work through, along with a 'counsellor' who operated by mail. But no systematic view of the Bible....no view at all, come to think of it.

So  I look forward to reading these both and make notes as I go: like starting the adventure of faith.

I'm looking forward to reading the Bible slowly this time.

Oh, at the same time I'll be reading the Heptateuch rather quickly, starting with the New English Bible, I think.

Heptateuch? Pentateuch plus Joshua and Judges (If we called Jesus Joshua, we'd get a better picture of the flow of salvation history than the Greek usage).

We're all basically good...aren't we?

Denis Prager got into strife with the media mob for stating the obvious about human peccancy (also at Townhall).

He said that he didn't take (moral) advice from 16 year olds.

An extended quote below, in case the link target disappears

On your most recent Fireside Chat, you said that people are not basically good. We’ve heard you discuss this topic before. Anne Frank is quoted as saying, ‘Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.’ How do you respond to her quote?”

 Here is my response (this is a word-for-word transcription, except for the words in parentheses added for clarity): “She wrote that in her diary, the most famous Holocaust document. (She was) a teenage girl, a Dutch Jewish girl, who hid with her family until they were betrayed by someone to the Nazis, who then shipped them to death camps. And she died, murdered by the Nazis in the death camps. She was about 16 years old, maybe 15. Her diary is very famous. It gives a face to the horror of the Holocaust.

“I know she wrote that, and my answer is it doesn’t matter that she wrote it. I don’t get my wisdom from teenagers. That she was a wonderful young woman and wrote an unbelievably powerful document that will last forever is beside the point. I don’t expect 16-year-olds, unless they grew up in a religious Jewish or Christian home (where it is taught as basic religious doctrine that people are not born basically good). She was a secular Jew. Most kids believe that (people are basically good). But it is not true. So, it has never been an issue for me — ‘Well, you disagree with Anne Frank.’ So what?

And Prager is right: along with Jesus (Matt 15:19) "For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander."

and Jeremiah (17:9) "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?"

The question for anyone, indeed, for oneself, is what are you doing about the evil in your own heart? Best answer is 'turning to Christ in repentance'. Worst answer is 'trying hard.'
  
Guess which one is the most effective, and which is the most popular.

 

Genesis 1: nothing here folks, move along.

I heard a preacher say "a historical approach to Genesis 1 is not good sermon material. What can you say about it, if the history happened precisely as it is written? You might as well just read out the text".

Hard to think of anything that could be more mistaken.

Genesis 1 and 2 tell us many things about God, his creation and our relationship with each other.

For instance, that God creates in terms of the time he has made for us shows him active in the space-time that constrains us. He is not a god remote from the reality we know, he is not an imaginary god, our world is not imaginary or an illusion...it is a place where our ethical decisions are grounded in God's being, and our wilful intention is amendable to rational reflection.

And that's just the start of the theological riches in Genesis 1 and 2 as history.

It tells us that the  'first move of reality' is the God who is love and is in eternal relationship; his making us in his image joins us to the 'relation-in-love' mode of existence; we are thus not existentially adrift, but existentially secure in the love of God.

Of course, if its not history, then it allows none of this; if the creation 'just is' then it does not participate in the relation of creator and creature as the place that is made for that mutual fellowship and grounds all our being....

7 in one go!

Over the past few months I've read the New Testament in 7 versions:

• Phillips
• New English
• New Revised Standard
• New American Standard
• New International Version
• Contemporary English Version, and
• The Good News Bible, Revised Australian edition

Wonderful experience. I read them all quickly; I mean that I read as one reads a novel, not in little slices of a few verses at a time.

I commend that approach to you.

But, I've have a few versions yet to read.

My plan is every year to spend Advent reading the gospels, Acts between Christmas and New Year's day, thence the rest of the NT to see me through January.

Getting like the English civil war days

Firearms instructor took out gunman at Texas church service

Jack Wilson, a former reserve deputy, fired a single shot, quickly ending the attack that killed 2 people Sunday

Yesterday at 3:13 PM

---

Jake Bleiberg
Associated Press
WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas — A man who trained others in his Texas church to use guns to protect the congregation fatally shot a gunman seconds after he opened fire during a service, the Texas attorney general said Monday.
Jack Wilson fired a single shot, quickly ending the attack that killed two people at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the Fort Worth-area town of White Settlement. More than 240 congregants were in the church at the time.

Former reserve deputy and current firearms instructor Jack Wilson shot and killed an armed shooter who killed two congregants during a Texas church service Sunday, December 29. (Photo/Jack Wilson)

Related articles

• 3 dead, including suspect, after Texas church shooting

• What cops need to tell their families about active shooters

• Faith groups: The hidden target of violence

Wilson’s bio on Facebook listed him as a former Hood County reserve deputy and a firearms instructor. He posted about the attack a few hours after it happened, saying the event “put me in a position that I would hope no one would have to be in. But evil exists, and I had to take out an active shooter in church. I’m thankful to GOD that I have been blessed with the ability and desire to serve him in the role of head of security at the church.”
Speaking outside the church, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said authorities “can't prevent mental illness from occurring, and we can't prevent every crazy person from pulling a gun. But we can be prepared like this church was.”

From policeone.com