Resurrection blog

As I mentioned on Sunday, there are at least three modes of attack against the atheist/naturalist who seeks to deny the resurrection (like the guy we have been talking about in the paper who said, "There is not a person on earth who has a good reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead."). The first is to refute the atheist's own worldview and show that it doesn't hold water; the second is to show that the Bible actually is a reliable and authoritative document (and, thus, what it says is also reliable and authoritative); and the third is to give supporting evidences for the factuality of the resurrection itself. To this, I would add a fourth mode of attack: the life of the Christian! It's when we Christians live as Christians OUGHT to live (as those who have been redeemed from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light, who know that God delights in them through faith, who have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them as a deposit guanteeing what is to come, and who live joyfully in dutiful obedience to our Father) that we are an apologetic in and of ourselves--and the most convincing one at that!

I mentioned Sunday that I would tackle the first of these in a blog this week....so, here goes...

We can prove that miracles like the resurrection are possible and not just fictitious events by proving that the supernatural worldview is the only valid and consistent worldview, i.e., that the naturalistic worldview is inconsistent and absurd. So that is what we will do here...

In the most basic sense, two worldviews vie for supremacy: Supernaturalism, the belief that there is something above and beyond nature that is itself not bound by nature; and Naturalism, the belief that nature is all there is. Atheists and agnostics fall into the latter category, while theists of every kind fall into the former.

Naturalism is problematic and self-defeating, for three reasons (not, by any means, a comprehensive list). First, it gives no meaning or purpose to life. Why not eat, drink, and be merry? Why not live as you please? In other words, why be concerned for anyone other than yourself? This life is all there is...what you see is all there is. So, carpe diem! for yourself. Survival of the fittest would be the naturalist's only possible purpose, if you can truly call that a purpose.

Second, naturalism gives no basis for objective morality. The naturalist has no basis and no right to say that objective morality exists. Let me explain: if we say that there is such a thing as "right," then we also have to admit that there is such a thing as "wrong." One cannot exist without the other. If there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong," then we also have to admit that there is a moral law, by which we can differentiate between right and wrong. If there is no standard by which we can differentiate one from the other, then there is no right and wrong or it is simply our opinion that differentiates between them. And if we say that there is a moral law that differentiates between right and wrong, then we also have to admit that there is a moral law Giver, who transcends humankind and gives us the moral laws. Otherwise, the moral law is simply a human concoction and is purely subjective.

This means that naturalists cannot say objectively that what Hitler did to millions of Jews was evil. They can only say that they think that it was evil (i.e., that it is their opinion). The naturalist cannot say that it WAS evil, because this would admit that there is such a thing as "evil," which would admit that there is also such a thing as "good" and, then, a moral law to differentiate and a moral law-giver, which the naturalist seeks to deny. Naturalists also cannot say that cannibalism is wrong (they can only say that it is not their preference!). And naturalists also cannot say that what happened in 1996 in Dunblane, Scotland, when a crazed person walked into a primary school and cruelly murdered 16 children (all but one of which were 5 years old) and one adult, is undeniably evil. They can only say that it is not what they would like to see happening in our society or that it is not what our society has deemed to be acceptable behavior.

Third, and perhaps most damaging of all, naturalism, as a theory, says that my mental processes and thoughts are simply movements of atoms and chemicals (i.e., purely natural things) in my brain. But in order to come up with that theory I, or anyone else, would have had to use my/their mental processes and thoughts, which are supposed to be only movements of atoms and chemicals. There are at least two problems here: (1) There is no way to stand back from the vicious circle. It's like a mouse conducting an experiment involving himself! How do you validate the findings? And, (2) If the findings cannot be validated, then we have no way of knowing whether or not they are true. In other words, we have no way to know whether or not the thought processes of my brain, which are supposedly only movements of atoms and chemicals, actually are only movements of atoms and chemicals!

As George Roche has said: "Contriving the theory [of naturalism] required a great deal of thought and the finest scientific reasoning, only to conclude that thought and reasoning are meaningless. If the conclusion is correct, the theory is nonsense and no one need believe it. If the conclusion is false, it is just that, false; the theory is again non-sense. Naturalism, looked at philosophically, rather than through the truncated thought of science, is an insult to the intelligence."

For at least these reasons, then, I would suggest that it actually takes more "faith" (and here I'm using that word to mean "believing something when reason tells you not to") to be a naturalist than it does to be a supernaturalist. There is more REASON to believe the Christian position than the atheist's. Once we have established that the resurrection is perfectly reasonable, we can move on to talk about whether it is true or false, which is what I tried to do some of on Sunday morning.