You didn't build that

One of my favorite things to do on a warm summer evening is sit outside on my patio, smoke a cigar, and have a beer or glass of wine and reflect on the world around me as the sun sets and darkness reveals the stars.  I have a great sense of awe when looking at the view and up at the stars and the vastness of the universe and the world around me.  The beauty of the outdoors and our universe has always captivated me.  Just soaking it all in gives me a great sense of perspective.

I think though that on a daily basis we take the greatness of the world around us for granted.  I lived in Colorado for 16 years and moved about a year ago to the desert of Southeastern Washington.  For 16 years I got to wake up and see the beautiful Rocky Mountains and the 53 peaks over 14,000 feet in elevation, known as 14ers.  When I first moved there I was taken in by their beauty.  As time passed I got used to seeing them there every time I went outside or looked out a west facing window.  It got to be where I didn't even think about it on a daily basis because it's always there, in other words I took it for granted. 

I'm experiencing the same thing after moving to Southeastern Washington near the Columbia River.  The Columbia River is a powerful river starting in Canada and running through Washington and ending at the Pacific Ocean.  Much of the power and size is due to the many dams along the river which provide roughly 80% of the electricity to the region.  It gives you pause to contemplate the raw power and beauty of the water.  I expect over time I'll lose my awe and will just take the magnificence for granted to some degree.

I think the world around us and the universe is one of those things we just take for granted.  The universe is massive.  I don't even think massive is a grand enough word to describe just how big the universe is.  There are billions upon billions upon billions of stars.  When looking up in the sky each star is an average of 3 trillion miles apart.  We see it every day and it's easy to just take it for granted because it's there day after day.  We do the same thing with God.  We take Him for granted because He's always been here and will be day after day.

I think a lot of times we want to attribute our success to ourselves and blame God for our failures, pain, and suffering.  We ignore the greatness of our world and who is responsible for that greatness.  I'm no exception to that.  I have to remind myself all the time that my house, my job, my family, my success is not because of me.  I owe everything I have as a gift from God.  Not I'm better than other people.  Not because I'm an American.  Not because I'm a Christian.  Not because I pray.  Not because I've earned it because I haven't.  No, God has given it to me because of His grace.  God's opened doors for me and He's closed doors for me.  It's all to prepare me for things here and things eternally.  I didn't build that.

In July President Obama uttered the now infamous quote, "If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”  Of course it started a fire storm of political propaganda on both sides.  Democrats saying that the 'someone else' is the federal government.  Republicans saying that it is 'no one else' responsible for a business' success other than the business owner. 

Both parties have it wrong.  Success is a gift from God not from the government or from ourselves but as a result of God's grace.  Don't forget this truth, you didn't build that by yourself.  It's not about ourselves and it's not about deifying a government (which again is ourselves).  Be humble in your success and know that it's a gift from God and give thanks.  As much as we want to think we are great and can accomplish great things on our own, we can do nothing without God's grace.

So the next time you look up in the night sky, gaze at the water, or even see great human success, just remember: You didn't build that.  But give thanks to the one who made it happen.

The Evil of the Movie Theater Shootings

As I write this in the aftermath of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado the problem of evil in the world hits close to home.  I lived in Denver for 16 years and moved last year.  Colorado still feels like home to me and I'm deeply saddened by the events that have taken place and the loss of life in the community that I still love and have a deep connection with.

I remember eating lunch one day in 1999 when the Columbine shootings were happening just a few minutes from where I was sitting and the TV in the restaurant was showing the event unfold.  The pain and sadness was very real and deep as I knew many in that community who were affected directly by it.

Many turn to God for comfort in these situations.  Some blame God and want to know where he's at during all of this and how he could let this happen.  Others say it proves God doesn't exist because no loving God would allow so much evil in the world.  Most of us do or have struggled with the problem of evil in the world.  People can do some pretty nasty things to other people.  Unspeakable moral evil has been committed in our world and this latest tragedy is a painful reminder of the broken world we live in.

Why Is There Evil?
If there is a God why is there evil?  God is supposed to be in control yet horrible things happen in our world.  When Jesus was asked by the Pharisee's what the greatest commandment of all was he replied.

'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Matthew 22:37-38

God made us to love each other and love requires choice.  The greatest command God gave us requires us to have the freedom to choose to love each other.  However, a choice means there is an option not to love.  Love wouldn't be so great if we had no choice but to love each other.  What makes love so great and touches us to our core at times is because that same person could have choosen not to love.  With freedom comes the ability to choose to hate and with hate comes evil.

Did God Create Evil?
God created love but did he create evil?  What God created was humans who had the potential for evil because we have freedom of choice.  Adam and Eve were the first created humans and they disobeyed God and ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The punishment was death and Adam and Eve did eventually die.  God couldn't have created beings capable of loving if they weren't also capable of not loving.  Man actualizes evil by sinning.  We only know evil by comparing it to goodness.  Evil isn't a thing it's the absence of goodness just like darkness is the absence of light.  If there weren't an ultimate standard for goodness, God, we wouldn't even know what evil was.  When people choose to reject goodness there is evil.  God did not create evil, people make something evil when they reject goodness.

Is There a Solution For Evil?
The punishment for evil is mortality (death).  We all die and there's no escaping that and that's God's punishment for our sin.  Jesus dying on the cross is the solution but why?  God's standard is perfection because God is holy and God is perfect.  God's nature has no sin, God is not capable of sinning.  He can't let unholiness be in his presence.  We are unholy because we fall short of God's standard of perfection.  That sounds pretty harsh but God can relate to us because he sent his son, Jesus, to earth to live along side us and live a perfect life for us.  God's justice is perfect and therefore sin requires punishment.  Jesus loved us and took the punishment in our place.  The reason he could take it in our place was because he was sinless.  He willingly took the sins of the entire world for all time on his shoulders so that we didn't have to bear the punishment.  Jesus rose from the dead three days later to prove that he was the Son of God and had the authority to take our punishment.  We still die a physical death by we live eternally in the presence of God if we ask Jesus to forgive us and accept the sacrifice he made for us.

There will be a point in the future that God separates those that accept Jesus from those that don't and we'll each get to live in the presence of that which we've chosen, either evil or good.  God's solution is Jesus and we all have the opportunity to accept or reject him.  Jesus comes along side to comfort and love us.  He knows how we feel because he's been through it and he's felt pain and loss.  God uses all things to point to his good though.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28

Good will come out of this tragedy but there will also be lots of pain.  People will come to know Jesus through this.  Christ followers will come along side those who are hurting and show the love of God.  I'm not even going to pretend that I know the exact purpose of this event or how God will use something that he didn't cause to point others to him.  I do know that he comforts us in our time of need.  If you don't know that comfort ask Jesus to comfort you.  If you do know that comfort go give the same comfort to someone else.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5

Why Atheism is Self Defeating

Here is a blog post titled Why Atheism is Self Defeating by Scott Youngren.  It reasons that there is no basis for trusting reasoning in an atheistic worldview including atheism itself.  Why should we rely on our reasoning if it's just a product of evolution because evolutionary processes are based on survival not truth?  Reasoning and logic are all about truth but survival is not.

Psychology and God: The Genetic Fallacy

I was recently in a conversation with an atheist on FB who I've known for probably 35 years.  He's an intelligent guy and is pretty feisty (as am I.  Feisty that is, me being intelligent could be questionable).  It got a little heated but he did throw a challenge my way that after considering it I thought I'd do a little more homework.  His interest lies in the area of psychology and the basic claim is that God is something people have made up to fulfill emotional needs.  I'm boiling the claim down but I think that captures what he was trying to say.

I've studied the psychological arguments atheists make but my real interests are in the area of the cosomological, teleological, or moral arguments in favor of theism.  So I thought I'd give some treatment to my thoughts about the idea that God is made up in our minds to help us cope with our world.

Ludwig Feuerbach was one of the first to suggest that God was the product of the human mind.  He certainly hasn't been the only prominent figure to assert that.  Nietzsche, Marx, and  Freud all followed along those lines as have others after them.  One of the problems with this argument is the genetic fallacy.

The genetic fallacy is when an idea is rejected because of where it came from.  This is a disapproval of the source of the idea rather than the content of the idea.  So how does this relate to people wishing God exists?  Let me give a couple examples and maybe it will be more clear.

Pythagoras was a Greek thinker who was also a religious mystic who worshipped numbers and geometry.  However he also is the father of the Pythagorean theorem.  Suppose someone were to reject the Pythagorean theorem because Pythagoras had some wacky mystic ideas.  That would be fallacious because it doesn't follow that because the source, Pythagoras, had mystical ideas about numbers that his theorem is wrong. 

Here's another example from CS Lewis in God In The Dock:

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is 'wishful thinking.' You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself....If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at arithmetic...but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely mathematical grounds....In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. C.S. Lewis

Whether someone wishes God exists or it gives them comfort that God exists has nothing to do with the actual truth of whether God exists or not.  People have all kinds of crazy ideas about things that are actually true.  Psychological motivations have nothing what so ever to do with whether something is true or not.  The truth has to come from somewhere else outside of psychology.  Saying that psychological motivations prove something is true or not is committing the genetic fallacy.

Challenging Atheism's Definition of Faith

Many atheists portray the Christian faith as being ungrounded in evidence.  Faith is portrayed as being something that's exercised in spite of the evidence.  However that's not how the Bible defines faith.  This post at Ratio Christi explains what the Biblical definition of faith is.

Discovery of Higgs boson particle

The apparent discovery of the Higgs boson particle nicknamed the God particle is exciting (this link explains a little more about it http://bit.ly/N8P3GP).
At first when it was released that there would be an announcement on the discovery of Higgs boson I saw several atheists jump all over this.  It surprised me because to my recollection this discovery would do nothing to disprove the existence of God.  Come to find out it was a case of some not understanding science and assuming because of the particles nickname they it would be proof of no God.  (The article explains the nickname http://bit.ly/N8P3GP).
I find it ironic that a vocal group that opposes the existence of God based on science has very little knowledge of science.  Clearly not all atheists are this uniformed about science but many of the one's who make noise are especially the "celebrity" atheists we see in the media.  I even saw it called Higgs Dixon (boson is the particle that Higgs predicted.  I'm not sure who Dixon is.) by an atheist who said they'd been following it closely.  To be fair many theists show similar ignorance on their own position and I'm equally critical of them.
The discovery of the particle that was predicted is a huge one that should be celebrated.  A Noble prize may even come out of this.  However don't believe all the proclamations you read or are implied that this somehow does away with God.  Read up on it and decide for yourself.

EDIT: The person who called it Higgs Dixon let me know that was just a mistake.  They had made multiple posts on Higgs boson within a FB dicussion but corrected me and said they had never claimed to follow it closely they were just following it.

Why a Vast Universe Makes Sense

Why is the universe so mind bogglingly huge?  Here's a blog post at PleaseConvinceMe.com exploring the question:  PleaseConvinceMe Blog: Why a Vast Universe Makes Sense