CalvinDude.com

One of the things I enjoy most about Triablogue is that we’re not monolithic. Each of us is a separate individual who has his own perspective on various issues. While there is great overlap amongst us, there is also quite a bit of diversity.

I bring that up because I’ve recently been reading over some essays penned by a presuppositionalist who argued that presuppositionalism is the only valid apologetic method. Now, as a presuppositionalist myself, I believe this statement is true in a very limited sense. That is, I believe that those who would use evidentialist approaches to apologetics also rely on presuppositions that they just don’t express. As a result, you cannot escape the fact that at the ultimate level you will need to deal with presuppositions.

However, that is not what this individual meant (note: this is a person I know locally and what I read is not posted anywhere online, so I’m not going to use his name). What he meant was that those who would use an approach different from the presuppositional approach were, in fact, sinning by doing so.

This view saddens me, much like the hypercalvinist view does. In fact, I think that this may be just an example of what James White termed the “cage stage” (only here it applies to someone who just read Bahnsen for the first time rather than a new convert to Calvinism).

This strikes at the heart of apologetics. Apologetics requires us to make a defense for any who should ask. And the fact is that while presuppositionalism is philosophically sound, it probably only works well at converting INTP personalities (a personality type of which I should note only about 2% of Americans are, at least according to the random website I just Googled…). Regardless of the actual percentage, it’s quite apparent that most people couldn’t care less about philosophy.

However, they are drawn toward evidentialist arguments. And while these arguments will never be as “air tight” (as far as the presuppositionalist is concerned) they are often more convincing precisely because they are easier to understand and follow. Jason Engwer does an excellent job at expounding on the evidence for Christianity in such a manner.

But that would just mean that evidentialism is pragmatic, not necessarily that it is not sinful. I would point out, however, that the Bible does use evidential arguments from time to time too. For instance, when Scripture says in Psalm 19:1 that the heavens declare the glory of God, David is referring to how God’s glory is manifested in nature. It is evidenced by nature itself. And Paul echoes that in Romans 1 as well, saying that God’s attributes are seen in what has been made.

Romans 1, by the way, is a beautiful illustration of the wedding of presuppositional thought to evidentialism. That is, we have the fact that the unbelievers refuse to accept what is plainly seen, and what is plainly seen is the evidence found in creation.

That evidence is there. If you offer an evidential claim, you have a reason to do so. Likewise, we know that no amount of evidence is sufficient in and of itself to convince a non-believer of the truth of God. Both must be taken into account.

In my experience, presuppositionalism works best at demonstrating that atheists have no philosophical standing (although see my caveat below). But when dealing with non-atheist, those who accept supernatural concepts and are not limited to materialism, then presuppositionalism is nowhere near as strong as evidentialism. This isn’t to say that presuppositionalism is impotent; just that it is more difficult to employ. To give an example, one could argue philosophically why it is impossible that Tom murdered Fred because of Tom’s nature; but it’s simpler to show the photograph of Tom on vacation in England at the exact same moment that Fred was murdered in Detroit. In the same way, one could argue that the plurality of gods in Mormonism would render the world senseless, but it’s easier to demonstrate historically that Joseph Smith was a conman.

Now for my caveat. When I said that presuppositionalism works best at demonstrating atheists have no philosophical background, it’s not strictly precise. That’s because in reality, presuppositionalism works best when it’s looking at the worldview level. This is most often expressed when dealing with atheists because their worldview is so diametrically opposed to Christianity on all fronts; however, if we got to the level of a worldview (i.e., determining what was appropriate evidence in the first place), then presuppositionalism would flourish against any religious view too. That is, once the unbeliever sees that the evidence is against his position, he will have to retreat to redefine what evidence is or jettison his view. At this point, the presuppositional argument must come into play.

When it comes to apologetics, therefore, I have observed the following (whether it is universal I know not, although it’s certainly widespread here in America). The average person does not care for philosophy, and therefore will be more impacted by an evidentialist apologetic. Those who are most vocal in opposition to Christianity, however, do focus more on philosophy because they’ve moved to the point where the very definition of “evidence” is determined, and those people will be more impacted by a presuppositional argument. In the apologetic setting that T-Blog is usually engaged in (that is, actively engaged with non-believers who are openly hostile to Christianity), presuppositionalism is probably the more effective tool. However, when you’re talking to the average person off the street and evangelizing, evidentialism is probably the more effective tool. (These are generalizations, and not everyone we deal with is a die-hard anti-Christian; T-Blog also provides pastoral posts from time to time.)

One final note. God draws His elect through both methods. There are countless saved by evidential arguments, and there are likewise countless saved by presuppositional arguments (although probably not as many in the latter group). It is not a sin to use an evidential argument. But it is a sin to think that it would be a sin to use an evidential argument. Apologetics must be person-relative. What God uses to convince one sheep to return to the fold is not necessarily what He will use to convince another sheep to return to the fold. God made each of us, and to cite the above (albeit questionable) statistic about the percentage of INTPs in America, God created both INTPs and ESFJs.

In comments on an earlier post, I made the point that theism holds the grounds to rationality. Paul C disagreed, and after giving links to some of the various posts I’ve written on logic (especially this one), I asked him to provide an atheistic backing for rationality. Paul’s response was:

1. Things are generally as I perceive them.
2. At my level of perception, the universe appears orderly.
3. If the universe is sufficiently orderly, then rationality is a useful tool.

There are several problems with this (I won’t be too nitpicky since Paul probably hasn’t taken much time to work on this, seeing as how it was a quick response in a comment field). Let us just examine his first premise.

It is impossible for us to know that things actually are as we perceive them to be. All we have is our perceptions. We do not have access to an unfiltered reality. That is, no matter what the objective universe is, we only perceive it filtered through the lens of our perceptions. So what Paul’s first premise boils down to is a simple faith statement. He believes that reality is generally how it is perceived.

Now I should point out that I agree with this premise. However, I have a reason for agreeing with it—a reason that Paul cannot have. My reason for agreeing with it is because God created the universe and He likewise created us to experience that universe, therefore He created us with the ability to perceive the universe as it actually is. Only because of sin do we sometimes err in our perceptions (and by this I include such things as degenerative eyesight and hearing, which would not have occurred without sin, not simply hallucinations brought about by such diseases as schizophrenia, etc.). But while this would also be an interesting path to go down, Paul inadvertently leads us directly back to the argument I made in the blog post I referenced earlier. Paul’s first premise, you see, is based on perception.

In the blog post I wrote (and referenced for Paul, but which I suspect he didn’t read), I stated:

I perceive, therefore I am. Even if I am nothing but a brain-in-a-vat—or even if I have no “brain” at all, it’s all simply mental hallucinations with no actual physical reality—I cannot doubt that I exist. I perceive things. Regardless of whether these things are real or not, perception occurs. Something perceives, and therefore there must be a “perceiving being.” Since these perceptions are “owned” by me, I am this perceiving being (by definition). I exist.

Now this doesn’t tell me that I exist physically, or that anything I perceive is real or not; but it does tell me that I do, actually, without a doubt, exist. I am whatever I am (as yet, undefined). I have identity. A is A (or in this case, I am me).

And if I exist, then it is the case that I do exist and do not non-exist at the same time and in the same relationship. If I exist (in whatever form I exist), I really do exist (in whatever form that may be), and the contradiction of this is not the case. Thus, my bare existence alone requires the law of Non-Contradiction.

Since I exist, logic must be valid.

So you see that both Paul and I start with perception; however, Paul’s argument requires us to accept our perceptions as valid, whereas my argument is correct regardless of whether our perceptions are valid.

Furthermore, (as I wrote in my original post), this leads to other important facts about existence. As I wrote then:

And since logic is valid, we can use logic to probe some other questions. For instance, have I always been here? It is possible that I am the only being that has ever existed, despite my perception of other beings. I do not have the self-awareness with these other beings that I do with my self; therefore, I cannot “prove” they exist in the same manner that I can “prove” I exist. So it is possible they do not exist at all and I am the only thing that exists.

But it is also possible that I have come from something else. After all, I perceive a world that functions in a specific manner, and if my perceptions are accurate then this means that I have come from my parents.

But where did they come from? Perhaps they’ve always been here; perhaps they had parents too. And if they had parents, their parents may have had parents too. This chain can go back for a very long time.

But it cannot be infinite. At some point, something must have existed without being derived from previous existence—otherwise, we are stuck in an infinite regress with no chance of ever escaping to begin logic in the first place. Thus, the fact that I exist demands that somewhere there must be a self-existent being.

I might be that self-existent being, of course. So, too, could my parents, etc. But whatever the case may be, logic requires that whatever or whoever the self-existent being is must be the cause of my own being. If it were not the cause of my own being, my being would never existed (for we would be back to the infinite regress).

So, the fact that I exit proves the necessity of some object with self-existence that caused my existence. This object could not have been created by anything else (for the same reasons of the infinite regress). The “first” object to ever exist must be self-existent.

If an object is self-existent, it is a necessary object. It holds the power of its own existence, and therefore nothing can keep it from existing. If nothing can keep it from existing, then it always has existed.

Some problems arise when we include time. After all, time is measured by physical objects that move. Thus, one pendulum swing on a clock = one second. One rotation of the Earth = 1 day. Etc. These physical processes define the length of time.

But we’ve already shown that a necessary, self-existent object must always exist. If this is the case and if that object is physical, then we have an actual infinite of time. If time extends an eternity backwards, it would take an eternity for the past to have gotten here. Thus we must conclude that time isn’t eternal, but instead it must have begun at some point.

So how do we reconcile this apparent tension of an eternal self-existent object in a temporal time frame? Logically, this is satisfied by either jettisoning our definition of time (in which case we have no meaningful way to speak of time) or by acknowledging that the self-existent necessary object is immaterial. Since time is measured by physical objects, an immaterial object would not cause time to exist co-eternally with itself. This immaterial object must still exist in such a way as to provide the basis for my own existence, however. (After all, remember that the self-existent object is a logically necessary requirement due to my own existence.) Thus, in order to stay rational, we must acknowledge an immaterial self-existent necessary object that can cause my own existence.

It is important to note that due to the necessity of the immaterial aspect of this object, it is impossible for secular science to speak meaningfully about this object. If science is limited to the physical world only, then science cannot speak to this. As such, we have demonstrated a necessary being that extends beyond the limits of science. Thus, the fact of my existence proves that science cannot answer the questions of something that necessarily must be true!

Other attributes can be logically deduced from this same being. For instance, omnipresence (all existence derived from this self-existent source must come from this self-existent source, so the source must be omnipresent–there is no existence outside of the existence of this self-existent [object]); omnipotence (all power is derived from existence, so all power flows from the self-existent source—without that source, there is no power); and immutability (since logic is immutable, the source of logic must be unchanging as well).

Thus far, the only real difference between this object and God Himself is that we’ve yet to prove any kind of consciousness in this object. But that too is simple enough to deduce. After all, this entire time we’ve been using logic. Logic works because existence is based on laws, and laws imply a law giver.

Why is it that “nature” acts the way it does? We can give a list of reasons, but these reasons are likewise subject to the same question: Why do these reasons act the way they do? Once more, we cannot engage in an infinite regress here. At some point we must reach the level where we are left saying, “That’s simply the way it is.”

And at that level, laws will still exist. And again, laws imply law givers, so the very aspect of the “law-giving” (i.e. the consciousness) must be necessarily basic to this object as well. This law giver must be the same self-existent, immutable, omnipresent, omnipotent, atemporal being I have already demonstrated must exist. This being fits the definition of “God.”

But even if someone does not like the above, we can always turn the tables and use some empirical evidence (which, following induction, cannot be known for “certain”). Assuming that our perceptions are valid, that we see the world as it really exists, etc. we know the following. All consciousness we have ever observed has come from previous consciousness. There is no evidence that consciousness can come from non-consciousness. Since I am conscious, whatever the source of my being is would logically be conscious as well, for we have no warrant to believe consciousness could have ever come from non-consciousness–there is no proof, no evidence, no observation of this ever.

Now all of this follows regardless of whether we agree that our perceptions are valid. This means that even if we grant the entirety of Paul’s first premise and agree that our perceptions really do accurately represent reality, then the above follows. That is, the existence of anything necessitates the existence of something that is self-existent, eternal, omnipresent, etc. In other words, all the attributes that we commonly ascribe to God.

Thus, as soon as Paul uses his first premise, he is granting to the theist that God really does exist.

Now that I’ve demonstrated this for Paul once again, I would be happy to allow him to try again at demonstrating how rationality can occur without the existence of some kind of diety…

Some have made the claim that it is irrational to believe in a mind separate from the brain. The materialist argues that there is no real mind because everything reduces to a tangible physical object. Thus, our consciousness is merely a by-product of electrochemical reactions in the brain. Duelists, on the other hand, believe that there is a distinction between the brain and the mind. That is, while the mind most certainly is linked to the brain, the physical attributes of the brain are not the totality of the mind.

This post will not delve deeply into these subjects, nor will it attempt to prove one position over the other. Instead, I want to ask a more basic question: Suppose that we grant the materialist claims as they regard the empirical dimensions that we experience on a daily basis. Is it irrational, under that system, to believe there is a mental aspect that is separate from the empirical brain?

I should point out that I am asking a very narrow question. I am not asking what the likelihood of such a mind would be. I am merely asking whether an immaterial mental realm is actually incompatible with the materialistic worldview. If it is not—if mental existence remains viable even under materialistic concepts—then the materialist’s claim that belief in the separation of mind and brain is irrational is itself irrational, because even granting everything the materialist is forced to concede the possibility of the immaterial mental dimension.

As one might be able to surmise from the use of the term “dimension” I will begin by examining a planiverse. The planiverse is just like our universe, except instead of existing in three dimensions the planiverse exists in only two dimensions (i.e., a plane—hence, the planiverse). Compressing dimensions in this manner helps us to visualize the effects of added dimensions since each of us are able to view two dimensional representations using our three dimensional empirical faculties. If the mental dimension exists, it would be a fourth (or higher) dimension; therefore, if we examine how a three dimensional object would appear to a two dimensional observer, that can yield information as to how an extra-dimensional object would appear to a three dimensional observer such as ourselves.

To think of the planiverse go no further than getting a piece of paper. Let us stipulate that the piece of paper is the entire planiverse. Nothing exists beyond the edge of the paper, just as we believe nothing exists beyond the edge of our universe. Now draw a circle on the paper with a radius of, say, one inch. That is our two-dimensional observer. This circle cannot view depth: it can only view length and width. Therefore, if you had another circle that approached the first circle, it must go around the circle or else through the circle—it cannot go over the circle (i.e. “stacking”) because that requires the third dimension.

Because of that requirement, however, interesting things can occur. Place a coffee cup on your piece of paper. The coffee cup is three dimensional. The circle, however, only sees the portion of the coffee cup that exists in the plane of the piece of paper (for the sake of argument, we will say that the layer of the coffee cup that touches the paper moves into the plane of the circle so that it would become visible to our observer). The circle would view the coffee cup as another circular object rather than as a “cup-shaped” object.

We, however, as three dimensional observers can see that the coffee cup extends beyond what is observable in the two dimensions that the circle can see. Now, if you were to grab the top of the cup and push it from one edge of the planiverse to the other edge (without going through the circle so as to not terrify our observer!), the circle would observe another circular object move through the planiverse. However, the observer would be unable to find what caused the movement. The forces occurred in the third dimension, not in the two dimensions the circle has access to.

With this example in mind, we can extrapolate back to the three dimensions. If a mental dimension exists in, say, the fourth dimension, then immaterial consciousness could be just as much a physical object as a three dimensional coffee cup is physical even if a two dimensional observer cannot see it in its entirety. If the mental object in the higher dimension is really a physical object then it remains a material object. While it exists “above” the three dimensional space so that it cannot be empirically viewed as such, it nevertheless remains just as materialistic as a rock in three dimensions because there is nothing “special” about it. It just happens to exist in a different dimension than what we can observe.

Furthermore, it is easy to imagine that this fourth dimensional physical object is connected to an object that we can view in three dimensional space just as the circle of the coffee cup that broke the plane of the planiverse existed as a full physical object in three dimensions connected to the two dimensional observable existence. A fourth dimensional object therefore can exist fully in three dimensions just as well as it exists in the fourth dimension. But three dimensional observers can only view the portion that occurs in three dimensional space. Nevertheless, the object remains purely materialistic in nature. There is nothing supernatural about it at all. Therefore, no rules of materialism have been violated.

Finally, we can argue that if the portion that exists in the fourth dimension can exert force to cause effects to occur in the three dimensional portion of the object, then we have all that we need to prove the possibility of a materialistic mental realm.

Let us put this in a concrete example then. Take an average human being. Let us stipulate that in addition to the body that we see in three dimensional space there also exists a fourth dimensional aspect to that person which is the mind. This mind is physically attached to the three dimensional body; it cannot be removed from it naturally. Furthermore, this mind is where all the “thoughts” of the individual reside, all the motives and impulses, and dreams.

Because this fourth dimensional object is physically linked this means that the mind can influence the body. It has direct access to it. It cannot be seen in the three dimensional realm (just as hovering an atom’s width above the circle in the planiverse renders you invisible to the circle), yet the connection is there. When you think, therefore, even though this is something that occurs in the fourth dimensional aspect of your being, it manifests itself in your body as well. You brain has certain electrical and chemical changes that result.

Likewise, one can reverse the normal flow. One can stimulate certain portions of the brain and cause changes in the fourth dimensional portion of the being. What the brain “sees” remains locked away in the fourth dimension, yet there is a physical link to the three dimensions that are observable.

This idea would obviously work even under a materialistic universe. It is therefore not accurate to say that an immaterial mental dimension is irrational, even if we grant every single presupposition of the materialist. But there is something else that this theory has to make it even more robust. It explains phenomena that are quite difficult to explain under the usual materialistic theories. Just a few examples would include out of body experiences, near death experiences, astral projection, and the like. While it is obvious that not every claim of such experiences can be substantiated, there is enough evidence of people who have been clinically dead who can describe things that occurred in different areas of the hospital that they had no access to (for example) that not all claims can be easily dismissed as hoaxes, and it stretches credibility to assume voices that no one except the person who was clinically dead could hear bounced through the heating vents!

This is not problematic if the fourth dimensional aspect of a human being (the mind) can survive for even limited amounts of time if “severed” from the three dimensional body (just as severing an arm will not instantly kill the arm, and it can later be reattached).

Given all of this, even if it cannot be proven true (and even if we say it’s not even likely to be true), the materialist cannot claim that the mental dimension is irrational. It could exist even under materialistic premises.

The direct theological implication of this is that we instantly have a possible explanation for the spiritual realm as well. A spiritual realm could exist in the fourth dimension (or any higher dimension) and be rendered invisible to us. But while atheists like to claim that a spiritual entity cannot interact with a physical object, we can see that objects that exist fourth dimensionally can interact with physical objects if the physical objects in the three empirical dimensions also have existence in the fourth dimension (all without violating any rules of materialism). Naturally, I’m not arguing that this actually is how the spiritual realm exists; however, the materialist’s claim that it is irrational to hold to the existence of such a realm is disproven by this possibility alone. It is not irrational at all, even given all the claims of materialism.

Since the fine folks over at BHT have suffered a complete meltdown (despite what you’re thinking, this happened years ago—the effects are merely continuing through today) and do not allow thinking on their blog, it is rather fun to argue with them. It’s not much unlike discussing anything with any other liberal. You give them a fact and they emote. You give them reason, they whine. I did honestly try to see things from their point of view, but I just couldn’t get my head that far up my rectum.

Steve and I have offered several posts on prayer since Ted Kennedy was touched by an angel. We’ve actually put forth exegesis of Scripture as well as logical arguments using propositions. The response that BHT has given us is less than underwhelming.

In comments on this post, Randy McRoberts of the BHT said:

The thing is, Peter, that you don’t realize that arguments don’t always matter. It’s character and integrity and love that matter more. You can win arguments all day long against me. So what? You can speak with the tongue of men and angels, too, for all I care.

I don’t care to mount an argument. That’s not what I’m all about. If it works for you, have a ball with it. Don’t expect most people to care a whole lot. You might win the argument, but it’s an empty win.

Think about that for a moment. Randy has admitted that he doesn’t care about thinking, about intellectual consistency, about truth. It’s all about “character and integrity and love” not whether or not you’re actually, you know, correct and all. Mormons probably feel the same way, and I have to say they’re a heck of a lot nicer than the BHT folks are.

Reality has this weird property though. It’s real. It doesn’t change because you’re a nice person. It doesn’t change because you feel warm fuzzies.

So I responded with the following parable:

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Randy. Randy loved everyone and everything as much as possible. If his cruel, cold-hearted Dad was about to crush a spider, Randy would rescue the spider and lovingly toss it outdoors where it had a chance to live.

One day, an early spring day, Randy was walking down the sidewalk with his evil father when they saw a baby bird lying on the ground. It had obviously fallen from its nest.

“Leave it,” the wicked adult said. “It’s mother will come for it.”

But that was unacceptable for Randy, who loved the poor little bird. So when the demon-in-human-form wasn’t looking, Randy scooped up the baby bird and put it in his pocket.

When they got home, Randy rushed straight to his room. He took out the bird and placed it in an old shoe box. The bird chirped because it was very hungry. So Randy decided to feed the bird.

He asked his less-wicked-but-still-not-quite-loving-because-she-was-a-Presbyterian mother what baby birds ate. She said they ate worms. But Randy knew that couldn’t be the case–worms were icky little creatures (that still deserved to live, mind you–that was why Randy would rescue them before his diabolical father went fishing).

There was a better solution. Randy liked Butterfinger candybars and Dr Pepper to wash them down with. They were his favorite treats. Because he loved the bird so much, Randy shared his favorite things with the bird.

The next morning he awoke to find a very dead bird in the shoe box. Because, you see, poor Randy never grasped the concept that love without knowledge is dangerous. If you love someone or something but you have no clue what they need then you will not be able to satisfy their needs and your love will condemn them to death.

Sadly, this episode did not teach Randy his lesson. Later, he would grow up to believe that it did not matter if a sinner was hell-bound. The important thing was the love them, not to argue with them. The important thing was to make sure the had a sugar buzz before they spent eternity in hell.

And as a result, Randy decided to attack those who were trying to rescue sinners by calling those apologists intellectual elitists in a Big-Brained Blog. And lo, he felt good about himself, and those who were hell-bound enjoyed his taunts. And merrily they continued on the path to destruction.

At least on the day of judgment Randy can say, “I loved everyone I ever put in hell, unlike those bastards at Triablogue who actually convinced a few sinners to change direction by using arguments.”

Naturally, Randy didn’t bother to respond to this here on the T-Blog because he’s a coward and knows he’d get shredded. Instead, he retreated to the BHT (where comments are not allowed because Groupthink must prevail) and whined:

This is a response to a comment I made over there. (Should have known better.) See? I have love, but no knowledge. I’m putting people in hell by loving them. I don’t know what birds eat. I’m attacking those who rescue sinners by arguing with them. I feel good about myself for all this. I’ve learned a lot about myself today.

I don’t think it would take more than about three verses of “Just As I Am” to get me down front. I feel so bad about myself for feeling so good about myself.

Oh, yeah. In another comment I learned that for me to say that there are other ways to converse without putting forth an argument is “in itself an argument”. Now, that’s heavy. I’m not sure I get it, since I’m not intellectual at all.

Well it is obvious that Randy is no intellectual since he cannot grasp a simple parable. Instead, he thinks he needs to read everything literally. Frankly, I would be ashamed to speak in public if I was as dumb as Randy brags about being.

But to clear up the record, when Randy says “I have love, but no knowledge” he is wrong. He has just as much love as he has knowledge: none.

I, for one, have never read a loving remark from Randy about me. No, I just get his hate poured out upon me. (These are the same people who complain about us when we debate Arminians because “we should treat brothers in Christ better than non-believers” yet they have no qualms treating the “TR”, as they call us, as badly as possible. Then again, you shouldn’t expect consistency from those who hate intelligence in the first place.)

Secondly, I wouldn’t say that Randy is attacking apologists by arguing with us because nothing Randy’s ever said could be misconstrued as an argument.

Naturally, the other bored skulls acted shocked by what went on. For instance, JS Bangs said:

Wow. I mean, wow.

To which I respond: “Like totally! I mean, TOTALLY!

Bangs continued:

What exactly gave any of them the impression that we don’t care about the salvation of the lost?

The fact that you’re not trying to convince the lost they’re on the wrong path is a great indication that you don’t care where they’re headed. Then again, I use logic.

The fact that several people admitted they had trouble grokking the concept of Hell?

Well, it is kinda hard to see how someone not going to Hell needs to worry about going to Hell. Then again, I use logic.

Or the fact that we actually pray for the unsaved?

Except I don’t believe you. You claim to pray for the unsaved, yet you do everything in your power to impede those who are seeking the unsaved. What exactly do you pray regarding the unsaved? And frankly a general prayer “Lord save the unsaved” is no substitute for genuine prayer either. Then again, I use logic.

I have zero interest in reading any TR blogs, so I honestly don’t know what they’re trying to say.

And this, of course, is the first sign that you’re dealing with a moron. Ask questions, and then say, “I’m not going to listen to the answer.” This works when you’re three years old, but we expect more from adults. Then again, I use logic.

Not content to leave it at that, Strawfoot said:

Is he actually saying that he and his BBB fellows have actually talked people into becoming Christians?

Yes, I am.

WHAT?! How can this be? Well, Strawfoot, it’s really quite simple if you actually cared about what the wicked TRs believed (which you don’t, cuz God forbid you’d actually have to talk with one!). God uses…are you ready for this now?…MEANS to enact His will.

I know, revolutionary concept. Not found in any Reformed literature except for all of it.

And since I get e-mails sent to me, I know that there do indeed exist people who’ve been convinced of the truth of Christianity by way of some of the arguments that I’ve presented. God’s used me to bring some to Himself, and I am honored to be of use to Him.

The BHT is a great example of what happens when Politically Correct thinking runs amok. They preach tolerance by being intolerant of everyone who disagrees with them. They teach that love is most important by being as unloving as possible toward other Christians. They think that something’s wrong with you if you use the brain God gave you.

Frankly, if their version of Christianity was true, I’d be an atheist. And that’s something that Randy and other BHTers don’t get. They think that everyone is as emotive as they are and that no one cares about thinking correctly. But I do. My mere existence refutes their notion that everyone agrees with them. I do enjoy thinking, I am intellectually oriented, I do study, I do use my brain. And because of that, I can actually interact with the atheists in our world who are likewise intellectually oriented.

That’s something that none of Randy’s self-serving emotive bleating will ever be able to accomplish.

One thing that I will admit that Roman Catholic apologists have got right is that they recognize that Protestants have Traditions too (note the capital T). The difference between Catholic and Protestant Traditions (qua Traditions) is this: the Catholics admit to theirs, whereas the Protestants don’t.

Since Steve first responded to John Mark Reynolds, we’ve been treated to one particular Protestant Tradition: the Obligation to Pray for the Enemy (OPE). Much has already been said in the original post (including the comments), as well as in Steve’s follow up post. Naturally, the responses that Steve received (as well as responses to me, which surprised me somewhat since I figured everything I had said was, you know, obvious and all) consisted of much hot air and no content. In fact, this was the main reason that I penned my Out of the Closet satirical post since one of the objections that we received was that we at Triablogue (affectionately known in BHT circles as the BBB for the “Big-Brained Blog”) were too intellectual, as if somehow accusing someone of using logic and thinking through a position was an insult.

I don’t want to belabor the point too much, especially since Steve’s response is sufficient to demonstrate the lack of intelligence our detractors have displayed. Yet I must add that the anti-intellectualism expressed in our culture today has infiltrated deep into the church as well, and it is a sad day indeed when Christians think their best response is to embrace irrationality.

But just as God always keeps a Remnant, I know that there remain Christians who actually care about what the Bible says. There are Christians who are able to think and who can draw logical inferences from passages of Scripture. There are Christians who are not satisfied with the knee-jerk spleen venting and pseudo-piety offered by those who would be righteous if they weren’t such harpies. For those dozen or so readers, I offer the following texts of Scripture as we determine whether the OPE Tradition is legit.

Let us start in an unusual place. Rather than the obvious imprecatory (yes, I know how to spell it now) Psalms and Proverbs, let’s begin in a different place: 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel deals with the nation of Israel in her attempts at gaining a king so they could be like the other nations. Before the first king of Israel existed, the nation was ruled by various priests and judges. As 1 Samuel begins, we find out about how the prophet Samuel came about. We learn about his mother, Hannah, who would offer prayers to God, beseeching Him for a son. She promised to dedicate her son to God in the temple. When God blessed her with Samuel, she obeyed her promise and gave Samuel to the temple which was currently under the care of Eli. So here in 1 Samuel, we already have an instance where God answers prayer to the benefit of His followers.

But not all is well. Eli had wicked sons who refuse to submit to God’s laws. In 1 Samuel 2:22-25 (all passages are from the ESV) we read the following:

Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the LORD spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death.

Now there are a couple of things of interest in this passage. First, the last sentence has got to make our LFW friends squirm. The reason that Eli’s sons would not listen to Eli was because “it was the will of the LORD to put them to death.” In other words, LFW is thrown right out the window. Eli’s sons did not have the possibility of listening to Eli. Yet compatibalism remains intact, for it was both God’s will that Eli’s sons be put to death and it was their desire to continue to do the behavior that would lead to death even after being warned of it.

But I didn’t quote this passage for that sentence. Instead, we are looking at how this passage relates to the concept of prayer, specifically relating to the OPE theory. Eli states a simple fact: “If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him.” Naturally, there is implied in this the repentance of the sinner and such. However, Eli then asks the rhetorical question: “But if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?”

What isn’t as clear to modern readers is what is meant by a mediator. Despite the fact that Christianity is based on the mediation of Christ between sinners and God, most of the time we don’t really consider what this means. In the customs of the day, mediation was far more important though. Two parties in dispute would turn to a mediator to help resolve the dispute; but the mediator, in order to have any legitimacy, would be required to have more authority than either of the two parties involved in the dispute (this is what we do now using the court system with judges, backed by the authority of the law, for our mediators). This is why it is possible for God to mediate when one party sins against another party. In this instance, God has more authority than both of the parties involved and His judgment therefore holds weight. But when God is one of the parties involved (and because God is righteous, He is only involved if He has been sinned against), then there is no higher authority to mediate. Thus the question: “If someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?” The answer is clearly implied: no one.

Naturally, in the New Testament we discover there is a mediator: Jesus. But since Jesus had not yet been physically born, the question stood in Eli’s time.

So how does this relate to the OPE for the Christian now that we have Christ as a mediator? It relates in this manner: are there people who have sinned against God? This answer is an obvious, yes. We are all sinners. More critically: are there people for whom Christ does not intercede? Unless you are a universalist, then you must answer this question in the affirmative as well (and if you are a universalist, you have bigger problems than this one to contend with).

Remember that the O in OPE stands for obligation. Do we have an obligation to pray for our enemy? Given the above, there will be people whom Christ does not intercede for who fall under the rhetorical question: “who can intercede for him?” No one can. And as a result of this, we cannot intercede either. If we say that we are obligated to pray for our enemies, and we know that this included people who are damned, then we are saying that we are obligated to intercede on behalf of those for whom none can intercede. This is frankly irrational.

Of course one could try to avoid this problem by saying we could pray for their physical benefit rather than for a spiritual benefit. But someone once asked: what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet forfeits his soul? (I only wish I could remember who said that….)

The next question that we must ask is this: does God always listen to every prayer? By this, I do not mean “Is God cognizant of every prayer?” because, being omniscient, He is. Instead, I use it in the Biblical sense. Does God care about and respond to every prayer?

Well, we don’t have to turn too many pages in 1 Samuel to find the following passage:

And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.

1 Samuel 8:18

Here we have the promise that God will ignore the prayers of the Israelites. Why? I think a strong case can be made that it links directly back to the above referenced passage in 1 Samuel 2. If someone sins against God (which is what the people did by demanding a king so they could be like the other countries) then there remains no one who can intercede on their behalf.

But this passage is not alone. Indeed, we likewise read:

For what is the hope of the godless when God cuts him off,
when God takes away his life?
Will God hear his cry
when distress comes upon him?

Job 27:8-9

Here we have in mind a specific group of people: the “godless.” Once again, a rhetorical question is asked: “Will God hear his [the godless] cry when distress comes upon him?” Again the answer is an obvious no. God will not listen to the prayers of the godless who have sinned against Him.

This is made explicit in other passages too:

Therefore, thus says the LORD, Behold, I am bringing disaster upon them that they cannot escape. Though they cry to me, I will not listen to them.
–Jeremiah 11:11

When you spread out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
–Isaiah 1:15

Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
–Proverbs 1:28

They cried for help, but there was none to save;
they cried to the LORD, but he did not answer them.
–Psalm 18:4

Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.
–Ezekiel 8:18

Then they will cry to the LORD,
but he will not answer them;
he will hide his face from them at that time,
because they have made their deeds evil.
–Micah 3:4

These passages could be multiplied many times over. It is clear that God is under no obligation to listen to the prayers of the wicked. I therefore ask, if God will not listen to the prayers of the godless, what makes us think that God will listen to our prayers on behalf of the godless?

To answer that question we can do another examination of Scripture. Are there times when God has said that He will not listen to prayers offered by believers on behalf of non-believers? Indeed, there are:

As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.

Jeremiah 7:16

We cannot get more explicit than this. God commands Jeremiah specifically NOT to pray for Israel. He commands Jeremiah NOT to intercede. Why? Because “I will not hear you.”

We’ve already seen how God does not listen to the prayers of the godless. But here we see that God will not listen to the prayers of righteous Jeremiah if they are prayers on behalf of those whom God has condemned. Another passage from Jeremiah juxtaposes both themes together:

The LORD said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.”

Jeremiah 14:11-12

Here we see both the command for Jeremiah to refrain from prayer and God’s promise to ignore the prayers of those who are to be punished.

With these passages in mind, the OPE easily crumbles into nonsense. But it’s only nonsense in one particular part. The O. That is, the obligation to pray for our enemies. We cannot be obliged to pray for something God has promised not to listen to. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pray for it anyway. We certainly can do so.

Of course, God will still ignore us. In fact, this point is something that has caused some Christians to doubt God: “Why won’t God save my father?” or “Why won’t God save my best friend?” If your father, best friend, etc. is an enemy of God and is reprobate, then there is none who can intercede on his or her behalf. God will ignore your prayers.

But we do not know who God has Elected and who He has not. We certainly are allowed to pray for our heart’s desires. After all, Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane when He prayed: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). But He did not stop there: “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

We are free to pray for things that God will not grant as long as we remember “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

So feel free to pray for your enemies. They may very well be only temporary enemies. They may, indeed, be lost sheep that Christ will return to the fold. But if they are not, your prayers will be futile and pointless…unless you remember “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Then your prayers will still have value, as they will be both a Godly act of worship and a means of submitting to the will of God in all things.

The obligation is to remember God’s will be done, not for us to pray for our enemies.

One of the best offenses against Darwinism is the teleological argument. In fact, that is what Intelligent Design is (teleology = the study of design). This is most damaging to the Darwinist position because on the one hand Darwinists will repudiate teleology, but on the other hand they will employ it at every corner. To give examples of both in the same book, Ernst Mayr wrote:

Another widespread erroneous view of natural selection must also be refuted: Selection is not teleological (goal-directed). Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long-term goal. It is a process repeated anew in every generation.

Mayr, E. (2001). What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books. p. 121

Yet Mayr also writes:

When the selective advantage of a skeleton developed among the ancestors of the vertebrates and of the arthropods, the arthropod ancestors had the prerequisites for developing an external skeleton, and the vertebrate ancestors for developing an internal skeleton. The entire evolution of these two large groups of organisms has since been affected by this choice among their remote ancestors.

(ibid, p. 141, emphasis added).

Evolution is an opportunistic process. Whenever there is an opportunity to outcompete a competitor or to enter a new niche, selection will make use of any property of the phenotype to succeed in this endeavor.

(ibid, p. 221, emphasis added).

Likewise, we read:

The legitimate use of the term adaptation is for a property of an organism, whether a structure, a physiological trait, a behavior, or anything else that the organism possesses, that is favored by selection over alternate traits. But the term also has been used quite incorrectly for the process (”adaptation”) by which the favored trait was actively acquired. This view can be traced back to the ancient belief that organisms had an innate capacity for improvement, for steadily becoming “more perfect.” Also, if one accepts an inheritance of acquired characters, activities such as the straining of the neck by giraffes “adapts” the neck to an improved construction. In this view, adaptation is an active process with a teleological basis. Some recent authors still seem to look at adaptation as such a process and therefore reject the whole concept of adaptation. But this is not defensible.

(ibid, p. 150).

Yet of adaptations, we read:

The shift from the quadropedal locomotion of a lizardlike reptile to bipedalism and flight in birds initiated a considerable restructuring of the body plan: a compacting of the whole body to have a better center of gravity, the development of a more efficient four-chambered heart, restructuring of the respiratory tract (lungs and air sacs), endothermy, improved vision, and an enlarged central nervous system. The acquisition of all of these adaptations was a matter of necessity.

(ibid, p. 219, emphasis added).

But Mayr is not the only one who falls prey to this. Indeed, when trying to describe their theories Darwinists are forced to use teleological representations. For instance, Gould wrote:

The model of the grabbag is a taxonomist’s nightmare and an evolutionist’s delight. Imagine an organism built of a hundred basic features, with twenty possible forms per feature. The grabbag contains a hundred compartments, with twenty different tokens in each. To make a new Burgess creature, the Great Token-Stringer takes one token at random from each compartment and strings them all together. Voilà, the creature works–and you have nearly as many successful experiments as a musical scale can build catchy tunes. The world has not operated this way since Burgess times. Today, the Great Token-Stringer uses a variety of separate bags–labeled “vertebrate body plan,” “angiosperm body plan,” “molluscan body plan,” and so forth. The tokens in each compartment are far less numerous, and few if any from bag 1 can also be found in bag 2. The Great Token-Stringer now makes a much more orderly set of new creatures, but the playfulness and surprise of his early work have disappeared. He is no longer the enfant terrible of a brave new multicellular world, fashioning Anomalocaris with a hint of arthropod, Wiwaxia with a whiff of mollusk, Nectocaris with an amalgam of arthropod and vertebrate.

Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. p. 217-218

Naturally, Gould was trying to be poetic; but one wonders if it is even possible for him to explain his “grabbag” idea without resorting to the teleology of a designer (in the above case, the “Great Token-Stringer”). One suspects not. And those outside the field of biology are oblivious to the fact that evolution is supposed to be non-teleological. In fact, they see quite the opposite. For example, James Gleick in his book on the Chaos Theory wrote:

In science, on the whole, physical cause dominates. Indeed, as astronomy and physics emerged from the shadow of religion, no small part of the pain came from discarding arguments by design, forward-looking teleology–the earth is what it is so that humanity can do what it does. In biology, however, Darwin firmly established teleology as the central mode of thinking about cause. The biological world may not fulfill God’s design, but it fulfills a design shaped by natural selection. Natural selection operates not on genes or embryos, but on the final product. So an adaptationist explanation for the shape of an organism or the function of an organ always looks to its cause, not its physical cause but its final cause. Final cause survives in science wherever Darwinian thinking has become habitual. A modern anthropologist speculating about cannibalism or ritual sacrifice tends, rightly or wrongly, to ask only what purpose it serves. D’Arcy Thompson saw this coming. He begged that biology remember physical cause as well, mechanism and teleology together. He devoted himself to explaining the mathematical and physical forces that work on life. As adaptations took hold, such explanations came to seem irrelevant. It became a rich and fruitful problem to explain a leaf in terms of how natural selection shaped such an effective solar panel. Only much later did some scientists start to puzzle again over the side of nature left unexplained. Leaves come in just a few shapes, of all the shapes imaginable; and the shape of a leaf is not dictated by its function.

Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Penguin Books. p. 201-202

Because of this cognitive dissonance, teleology works well against Darwinists. If something looks designed, the simplest and straightforward reason is that it’s because it was designed. It is because of how much design is apparent in the living world that Dawkins had to take the time to pen The Blind Watchmaker in the first place. If nature didn’t have the designed appearance of a watch, Dawkins wouldn’t have needed to try to come up with an alternate explanation for it.

So teleology has found a niche in anti-Darwinian circles. I, however, would like to expand it out a bit further than that. Most recently, I’ve been studying cryptology as part of my endeavors to better understand such things as information theory, etc. Cryptology is also important since I enjoy dissecting Darwinist arguments and DNA happens to be very prominent in many of them. Since DNA is a “living code” understanding certain principals of cryptology can be beneficial.

Surprisingly, however, my thoughts have strayed from their original course in biology. The living order is teleological, and it is difficult for anyone to honestly look at it and yet still deny the inherent design. But so too is the non-living universe. Teleology surrounds us everywhere we look. It is not just in living systems, but anywhere that there is a system. And because of that, my original focus and my original purpose for reading up on cryptology (besides the fact that I’m weird and actually enjoy the subject) has expanded somewhat.

All reality is teleological.

Since my thinking has come about as the result of reading on cryptology, it perhaps wouldn’t hurt if I gave the specific example that got me thinking on this issue. William Friedman, who was instrumental in the US breaking of the Japanese cipher PURPLE in World War II, wrote The Index of Coincidence and Its Applications in Cryptography in 1920 when he was 28 years old. It was later updated somewhat after Friedman found the solution for a cipher machine using cryptographic rotors. David Khan, in The Code-Breakers, illustrates the theory in this manner:

Imagine an urn containing one each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. The chance of drawing any specified letter, say r, is one in 26, or 1/26. Now imagine another, identical urn. The chance of drawing an r is equally one in 26, or 1/26. What are the odds of drawing a pair of r’s, one after another, in a two-draw situation? The likelihood of drawing the second r is 1/26 of the chance of drawing the first, which is 1/26. So the chance of drawing two r’s in a single event, or “simultaneously,” one from each urn, is 1/26 x 1/26. Similarly, the probability of drawing two a’s is 1/26 x 1/26, of two b’s 1/26 x 1/26, and so on. Consequently, the chance of drawing a pair of letters—any pair of letters, no matter which pair may come up—is the sum of all these probabilities. It is (1/26 x 1/26) + (1/26 x 1/26) + … + (1/26 x 1/26), repeated 26 times, or 26 x (1/26 x 1/26), or 1/26. This quantity may be written as the decimal 0.0385.

Assume now an ideal cryptosystem whose ciphertexts yield a perfectly flat frequency count—one with as many a’s as b’s as c’s…as z’s. Polyalphabetics approach this in varying degrees and may, for practical purposes, be regarded as generating such ciphertexts. These texts are called “random” because they are what would be obtained if letters were drawn at random from the urn (each letter being replaced after being noted and the urn shaken to mix the lot, chance alone dictating their identities). If two such random texts are superimposed, the chance that the letter above will be the same as the letter below is the same as the chance of drawing a pair of identical letters from the two urns. This is 0.0385, or, to put it another way, there will be 3.85 such coincidences in every 100 vertical pairs. Experiment will confirm this.

Now imagine an urn filled with 100 letters of English in the proportion in which they are used in normal text—8 a’s, 1 b, 3 c’s, 13 e’s, and so on. The chance of drawing a specified letter is now proportional to its frequency. The probability that an a will emerge is 8/100ths, that a e will is 13/100ths. With two such urns, the chance of drawing two a’s is, as before, the product of the individual probabilities, or 8/100 x 8/100; the chance of drawing two e’s is consequently 13/100 x 13/100. And the probability of drawing a pair—any pair—of identical letters is the sum of all these pair-probabilities: (8/100 x 8/100) + (1/100 x 1/100) + (3/100 x 3/100) …, and so on through all 26 letters. This calculation has been made (with a slightly different frequency table). The result is 0.0667.

These two plaintext urns may likewise be replaced by two strings of plaintext. If they are superimposed, there will be as much likelihood that two letters will coincide vertically as there was that two identical letters will be drawn from the two urns. This probability is 0.0667, or 6.67 coincidences per 100 paris. For example:

text A wheninthecourseofhumaneventsitbecomesnecessaryforo
text B fourscoreandsevenyearsagoourfathersbroughtforthupo

text A (cont.) nenationtodissolvethepoliticalbandsthathaveconnect
text B (cont.) nthiscontinentanewnationconceivedinlibertyanddedic

There are just seven coincidences in the 100 pairs—precisely what theory predicts.

…[O]ne must recognize first that the superimposition of two monalphabetically enciphered texts will result in the…figure of about 6.67 coincidences per 100 vertical pairs, or 6.67 per cent of coincidences. This is because the coincidences will occur whether the letters are clothed in ciphertext disguises or not. The calculation does not ask the letters for their identities. It merely notes their coincidence. By the same token—and this is important—two polyalphabetic cryptograms enciphered in the same key and superimposed so that the two occurrences of that key are in synchronization with one another will also show 6.67 per cent of coincidences. The reason is this: In a correct (in-phase) superimposition, the two letters of each vertical pair have the same keyletter. Thus whenever a coincidence occurs in the plaintext, the letters of the pair will be identically enciphered. This results in an identical pair—a coincidence—in the ciphertext. It does not matter that a pair of e’s may be enciphered into V’s at one point and into Q’s at another, or that a coincidence of a’s becomes a coincidence of L’s here and a coincidence of F’s there. The toal number of coincidences will remain the same as the number in the plaintext.

On the other hand, if the two cryptograms are improperly superimposed, so that the keys are not in step, any coincidences will result from different keyletters operating on different plaintext letters to accidentally produce the same ciphertext letter. The coincidences will be caused, in other words, by chance. Chance alone will produce 3.85 coincidences per 100 vertical pairs in random text, and polyalphabetic ciphertext is equivalent to random text. Hence an incorrect superimposition should yield about 3.85 per cent of coincidences. But 3.85 per cent is substantially less than 6.67 per cent, and so a comparison of the percentages of coincidences at various test superimpositions should show which superimposition is correct.

An example should make things clear. A cryptosystem with the Vigenère running key THE BARD OF AVON IS THE AUTHOR OF THESE LINES…starts the key for the first message with the first keyletter, but starts the key for successive messages with the third, fifth, and so on, keyletters. If plaintext 1 is If music be the food of love, play on, and plaintext 2 is Now is the winter of our discontent, the encipherment will be these:

key             THEBARDOFAVONISTHEAUTHOROFTH
plaintext 1     ifmusicbethefoodofloveplayon
ciphertext 1    BMQVSZFPJTCSSWGWVJLIOLDCODHU

key         (TH)EBARDOFAVONISTHEAUTHOROFTHESE
plaintext 2     nowisthewinterofourdiscontent
ciphertext 2    RPWZVHMERWABWKVJOOKKWJQTGAIFX

A cryptanalyst, receiving these two cryptograms, will superimpose them so that they start at the same point:

ciphertext 1  BMQVSZFPJTCSSWGWVJLIOLDCODHU
ciphertext 2  RPWZVHMERWABWKVJOOKKWJQTGAIFX

Since there are 28 vertical pairs, the cryptanalyst would expect 28 x 0.0667 coincidences or 1.8676, or about 2, for a proper superimposition. But in fact he finds none, so he shifts the second cryptogram one space to the right and tries again. There will now be 27 vertical pairs. The cryptanalyst again calculates the theoretical expected number of coincidences for random and for correctly superimposed texts of this length so that he may compare the values with what he actually observes. Thus, a wrongly superimposed text would yield 27 x 0.0385 = 0.9695, or about 1 coincidence that would produced by chance alone, while a correct superimposition would yield 27 x 0.0667 = 1.2369. (These fractional differences become more pronounced with longer texts.) One coincidence appears….

Since the differences between the chance and the caused values are so slight with so few letters, the cryptanalyst might wonder whether this is not in fact a random result (which in fact it is…) and try the next superimposition. Here the number of coincidences immediately jumps. This superimposition is obviously correct.

ciphertext 1  BMQVSZFPJTCSSWGWVJLIOLDCODHU
ciphertext 2    RPWZVHMERWABWKVJOOKKWJQTGAIFX

If the cryptanalyst wishes to continue, he will find that at the next superimposition the number of coincidences falls again, to 2, and will return to begin his attack with the third superimposition…

Kahn, D. (1967, 1996). The Codebreakers. New York: Scribner. p. 377-380.

With this as the immediate background, I’ll simply note how my train of thought has progressed. When dealing with language, we are dealing with something that we know is designed. Language requires intelligence, and this is even more evident when it comes to written text. Because text is a product of intelligence, it will always display the hallmark of intelligence. One will be able to differentiate between that which is designed and that which is random.

The above examples demonstrate it beautifully. Take the illustration of putting the opening line of the Declaration of Independence above the opening of the Gettysburg address. Because both texts were written in English, and because English is designed rather than random, English traits will carry through. There will be vertical alignment of almost 7%. Random texts only have 3%. Because this is the case, even hiding English within a cipher does not destroy these traits, although it obscures it at first glance.

Design, therefore, is something that would permeate everything. It might not be immediately apparent at first glance, but there will be traits that can be sought mathematically that will yield results nowhere near what random results would give us.

Now obviously when one thinks about living systems, one can see that there are processes at work that are not random. Even the relatively simple actions of an ion pump inside a cell demonstrate values that are not what one would find in a random environment. A cell becomes charged due to the existence of these ion pumps (which is how the electrical pulse can travel the nerve), but under random circumstances the charge would dissipate.

Indeed, when thinking of what is truly random one immediately must think of entropy. The less entropy there is in a system, the less random it is. If a room has low entropy, it is because everything is ordered. If it has high entropy, it is randomized. The more ordered something is, the less random it must be.

This brings us immediately to questions of the universe as a whole. And not just in terms of entropy amongst galaxies and such. Instead, I want to ask more foundational questions.

Suppose we see iron filings arrayed on a table next to a magnet. The filings will lay in a particular pattern and won’t lay randomly. Why is this the case? Of course the immediate answer is because magnetic forces have arranged the iron filings in that manner. But why is it that magnetic forces would act in that manner? We can dig into the quantum levels, perhaps. But that merely begs the question: why is it that those quantum particals act the way they do? What is it that causes electrons to be repulsed from one another? What is it that causes protons to attract electrons? Why is it that these things always happen this way, that there is no variance…no randomness to it?

Even things that are apparently random turn out to hide hidden order. Take radioactivity for instance. Radioactive elements are used to produce random cipher keys even, because no one can predict when an alpha particle will decay. But despite how “random” the decay is, radioactive elements always decay at a specific rate. Despite the random nature, there is an over-riding law that stipulates what the half-life of that radioactive element will be. We may not be able to predict when the next alpha particle will decay, but we know that after a set amount of time exactly half of the element will have decayed.

Is that not an instance of the non-random showing itself? Like the cipher text that cannot help but display the design of the English language, if one but knew where to look, don’t the underlying laws that govern all the universe scream out that there is underlying order to even what we think is chaos?

Earlier I quoted Gleick’s comment about the shape of leaves, which are governed not by forces of Natural Selection but instead by fractal designs. The key there is “designs.” All of reality is based on these deep, inherent designs. And these designs cannot be random because they are, in fact, distinct from what we would see in a purely random field.

Naturally I know that some chaoticians say that order springs from chaos, and they will use mathematical representations of chaos to illustrate this…all the while ignoring the fact that the mathematical system that they are using to generate those fractals is itself non-chaotic. Indeed, as some may already know I’ve spent lots of time playing with what I call the “Factor Field.” It’s an Excel program that I made (you can e-mail me if you want a copy using my yahoo account. Simply put “petedawg34” and follow it with “@” and finish with “yahoo.com”, and yes defeating spambots is always fun). The Factor Field is simply a graphical representation of integers. The left-most column counts by 1. The second column by 2s. Etc. Because I used Excel, it only shows 256 wide, but it goes 65,536 deep. Here is but one example of what you can see at cell number 60,480:

This shows what I call a “starburst” pattern. You can also see the skeletons of parabolas in there, as well as many different lines of various slopes. All this was created by putting integers in patterns next to each other.

If you were to isolate some of the pixels on the right side of the graphic, the dots would look very chaotic. There would not appear to be any particular rhyme or reason for any of them to be where they are. Yet they came about due to a specific rule. There is an underlying order that created the seeming randomness that is seen. And stepping back, viewing it from the distance where one can see the whole starburst, the order is obvious.

Likewise, the factor field can make it easy to find if a number is a prime number, but it doesn’t make it any easier to predict prime numbers that aren’t shown on the graph (although via observation, I hypothesize that all prime numbers greater than 3 are numbers that end in either 1 or 5 in base-6, but that’s another blog post for another time). One can tell that previous portions of the graph affect later portions, but it is so complex that it is difficult for humans to predict how the effects will play out “off screen.”

This interplay of chaos and order is only possible because the structure of the factor field is built on order. It’s an order that displays chaotic behavior later on, but it remains order. Likewise, all the representation of chaos theory are built on mathematical models that are, themselves, strict. Math doesn’t randomly make 1 + 1 = 7. It cannot happen. And the rules of chaos mean that doing the same math formula over with the exact same data will yield the exact same result. That there are wild differences if the data is even minorly tweaked doesn’t change the fact that not tweaking it yields identical results.

In other words, even in the most random systems we can think of, because they are real, have order underlying them. Reality is not random. Reality is, at heart, the opposite of random. And what is the opposite of randomness?

Design.

I saw the headline: ‘Basic Instinct’ Director Makes Shocking Jesus Claim and I was like, “Hmm, I wonder what that was.” Turns out:

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, “Basic Instinct” director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee.

This can only be shocking to people who have no concept of history. This claim isn’t new. In fact, it’s been used to “explain” the virgin birth since roughly 35 AD….

In fact, the Roman soldier is supposedly named Pantera. Indeed, this is even in the Wikipedia article called Criticisms of Jesus:

For example, that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was raped by a Roman soldier named Panthera, Pantera, or Pandira. Mary became pregnant as a result, and she claimed that she was carrying the son of God in order to hide the rape.

The only thing shocking about this is that anyone thinks such a claim is shocking. But of course if we slap the word “shocking” onto it, it might make it seem relevant. It makes people fear. It doesn’t matter how little evidence there is to the whole Pantera theory. We’ll just say it’s shocking.

So I’ll make a shocking claim now. This story is the best one ever written!

A poster by the name of Robert left comments on my Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? post. Unfortunately, I haven’t had free time to respond…until NOW! First off, I believe that this is a different Robert from the Robert who often posts on Triablogue. That Robert is an Arminian, but this Robert seems to be an atheist, based on the nature of his comments.

In any case, Robert said:

So these “professed Christians” are not actually Christians? Is there a standard, a metric, or a test one can pass for achieving the status of “true Christian”?

Yes, you can be a professed Christian without being a genuine Christian. And the standard for discerning this is found in the text of Scripture. Jesus Himself stated that we would know a tree by the fruit it produces. If someone claims to be a Christian but produces non-Christian fruit, then we have reason to doubt that person’s claims.

Robert said:

Nonetheless, the comparison seems a bit…odd. It’s like bragging that Christians commit less adultery than non-Christians.

A) There is a difference between pointing a truth out and “bragging.”

B) Why is it odd to think that Christians should commit less adultery than non-Christians?

This actually goes back to your previous comment too. In what way can a Christian be a Christian if he does not even obey what the founder of his religion commands? If a Christian is committing adultery, he is sinning. If he shows no signs of repentance for that sin, there is no reason for us to treat his spiritual claim seriously. In other words, we are warrented in rejecting his claim to be a Christian in as much as he is disobeying Christianity.

Robert said:

Shouldn’t the divorce rate among Christians (however defined) be near zero?

Your question is ambiguous. In a perfect world, the divorce rate shouldn’t be “near” zero; it should be zero. Nonetheless, we do not live in a perfect world and Christians can sin. Therefore, there will be some Christians who divorce (and I’m talking about marriages between Christians too, not between “unequally yolked” partners).

The difference between the genuine Christian who lapses into a sin and the false convert who is not a genuine Christian in the first place is what happens to that person after the sin occurs. A true Christian will seek forgiveness and repentance. The non-Christian will persist in sinful behavior.

As a result, the genuine Christian should, on the whole, live more consistently with the Bible than the non-Christian who may even profess to be a Christian. Thus, those who live more consistently with the Bible will do those things taught in the Bible–such as refraining from adultery, etc.

This seems to be a no-brainer. Those who seek to pattern their life after a religious structure that commands them not to divorce except in extreme circumstances ought to have a lower divorce rate than those who do not seek to pattern their life after that religious structure. If it is not the case, that’s pretty good evidence that those who claim to be seeking to pattern their life after that religious structure are lying.

Robert said:

In other words, divorce isn’t a specifically prohibited act among the non-religious, unlike in Christianity.

Indeed, which is why we should expect genuine Christians to have a lower divorce rate.

This correlation is true even if Christianity is false, since those who believe Christianity ought to act in a manner that is consistent with Christianity, whereas those who do not believe Christianity would have no problem not living consistent with Christianity.

Robert said:

Beliefs on the efficacy of prayer come directly from the Bible, and the author of whydoesgodhateamputees.com cites several scriptures in support.

I’ve addressed his misuse of those passages too. Again, I don’t blame him for misunderstanding them. He’s not interested in the context in the first place.

Christians who misunderstand these texts have no excuse, however. And the fact that they provide fodder for folks like that author is a travesty.

Robert said:

True, but then, God never specifically excluded amputees from those whom He would heal. Thus the question, why does God hate amputees? Why has no amputee ever been deserving, while many others, apparently, have?

Again, God never heals anyone because they are deserving. Furthermore, that God does not heal someone is not an indication that God hates that person. Paul asked for a “thorn from the flesh” to be removed, but God did not do so in order to keep Paul humble. Paul understood this, and recognized that it was to his benefit that God not answer the prayer in the manner requested.

Robert said:

Slow torture, then death, is more merciful than instant death?

Illness that leads to death is more merciful than God’s instant exacting of judgment, yes. God allows sinners to live so that they have time to come to Him. Those that refuse to do so have no excuse.

Having examined the logic of the Why Doesn’t God Heal Amputees? argument, I want to move on to address the specific verses misquoted during the course of the argument. The main verse that we will look at here is John 14:13—“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (ESV).

As a result of the above verse, the tradition has become that virtually every Christian prayer ends with the words, “In Jesus’ name, Amen” (or some variant thereof). This, however, is a misapplication of the passage.

Indeed, even a cursory reading of the Scriptures will show us that the use of a name is far different than a “tagline” at the end of a prayer. God is infinitely concerned for His Name. For instance, Ezekiel tells us twice:

You will know that I am the LORD, when I deal with you for my name’s sake and not according to your evil ways and your corrupt practices, O house of Israel, declares the Sovereign LORD.’ ” (Ezekiel 20:44)

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone.” (Ezekiel 36:22)

Furthermore, Jeremiah pleads on behalf of Israel:

For the sake of your name do not despise us (Jeremiah 14:21)

Daniel states:

O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.” (Daniel 9:19)

Even the first petition of the Lord’s prayer is “Hallowed by thy Name.”

The examples could easily be multiplied. And before we get further, one thing ought to be glaringly obvious already. When Jesus commands His followers to ask for things in His name, He is claiming divine authority. This passage is first and foremost an indication that Christ did indeed view Himself as divine. (Another indication that is often overlooked is the fact that all the prophets who spoke from God would says, “Thus says the LORD” whereas Christ always said, “Truly, truly, I say to you…”)

Any Orthodox Jew alive at the time of Christ would have recognized that Christ’s words were blasphemy…unless He was God. No mere man has the right to have petitions brought before God in his name. Consider for example what is being said if we use someone who is not divine: “In the name of Todd, I ask for this.” This illustrates how ludicrous this would be in any other context. The only explanation that makes sense is if Christ is claiming divinity.

The second thing to note about this passage is what it means to pray “in the name of Jesus.” This is not simply adding the words, “In Jesus’ name” at the end of a prayer. Instead, praying “in the name of” someone has a more legal sense. While this isn’t used as often these days, it is by no means absent from English either. For example, Rage Against the Machine has a song called Killing in the Name with the chorus “Killing in the name of” with the implied philosophies being the reason for killing (yes, I own Guitar Hero II). And of course there are other songs that fit this: Stop in the Name of Love for instance.

Our legal system still uses this concept. Judges act in the name of the law such that judicial pronouncements must be obeyed. When a judicial order is executed, the authority of the order comes from the law. But consider what would happen if someone served a judicial order that did not come from the law but instead was invented whole cloth by the person serving the order? What happens to that person?

He himself is judged by the law. Now suppose what would happen if someone prayed for something in the name of Jesus when Jesus Himself does not want it. Would that prayer be answered in the affirmative? Obviously not.

(By the way, using the judicial example above could cause some confusion here, so I want to be clear: praying for something that is not God’s will is not inherently evil, as masquerading as a judicial employee is. After all, Christ prayed that the cup be taken from Him. However, the key is that in all things you end the same way Christ did: “Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done.” A Christian can pray for what he wants regardless of whether it is in the will of God as long as he remembers that in the end we have to submit to God’s will, not our own.)

Again, praying in the name of Jesus is not the adding of magic words to the end of a prayer in order to get the formula to work right. It is to submit to the will of Christ and to pray for what He wants to occur. Praying in the name of Christ is not a trick way of getting whatever you want; the terminology is precise and accurate, regardless of how badly the words have been misused by atheists and Health & Weathers. When we pray in the name of Christ, we are praying with His authority, His will, and His goals in mind, not ours.

In keeping with Gene’s recent theme on Triablogue about reasons why we’re not Arminians, I’m going to add another one. I was looking at YouTube today (it was Saint & Sinner’s fault for providing the link to the Machine Video) and happened to stumble upon Ten Questions That Every Intelligent Christian Must Answer. It was put forth by http://whywontgodhealamputees.com. After the philosophical naivety that led off the video wherein we are told how wonderful our college education is and how it enables us all to think wonderfully (I really must wonder what this guy would do if he ran into a nihilist, let alone an empirical skeptic), we finally get to the questions which are, indeed, rather devastating.

If you’re an Arminian.

But for Calvinists there’s not a single problem with any of the questions posed by the video. In fact, the basic gist of the argument can be defused by one simple point: sin is real.

Arminians do understand this to some extent (thankfully), but it does take a Calvinist to understand just how bad sin is. We have this built in with the doctrine of Total Depravity. Sin is serious, and as a result a sinful world gets what a sinful world deserves.

Despite the fact that atheists will use it as an excuse that I’m avoiding the other “hard” questions, I’m only going to look at the main question, as found here. Why won’t God heal amputees?

The claim is made:

Does God answer prayers? According to believers, the answer is certainly yes.

For example, at any Christian bookstore you can find hundreds of books about the power of prayer. On the Internet you can find thousands of testimonials to the many ways that God works in our lives today. Even large city newspapers and national magazines run stories about answered prayers. God seems to be interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.

It is indeed true that God answers prayers. However, I must point out from the start that most of the claims of answered prayers in the world are not true. That’s right, all those Internet testimonials and national news magazines…Christians shouldn’t put any more stock in them than atheists do.

In fact, God most certainly does not seem to be “interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.” And logically no Christian should assume this is the case. After all, God has never promised to answer the prayers of the non-believer.

And this brings up another point. In the video, the last question asked was “Why do Christians divorce at the same rate as non-Christians?” The answer to this question is relevant here: they don’t. Instead, what you have is professed Christians divorcing at the same rate as non-professing Christians. If you instead correlate the divorce rate to how mature a Christian is in his or her faith (as evidenced by Church attendance, reading of the Bible, etc.) the divorce rate is far less. But given the fact that every American is de facto a Christian, this will automatically skew the data since everyone is a “Christian” even when they only attended Church once in 6th grade.

So already we see the question is posited on a false understanding of why God would answer prayers in the first place. The site continues, giving the example of Jeanna Giese, the first (known) person ever to recover from rabies without a vaccine. We’re told:

According to the article, a global prayer circle helped Jeanna survive. Once she got sick, Jeanna’s father called friends and asked them to pray for Jeanna. People around the world heard about her story through the press and by word of mouth. They prayed. They sent emails. They passed the word along. Millions of people heard about Jeanna’s plight and they said prayers for her.

And the prayer circle worked. Through the power of God, Jeanna recovered. Jeanna was the first human to survive rabies without the vaccine.

Of course, the “global prayer circle” didn’t work. Whether God was active in healing Jeanna or not is irrelevant to the number of people who were praying for her. God either did or did not heal Jeanna for His own purposes, which He is under no obligation to inform us about.

Now I do not blame the atheists for thinking that Christians believe the above. If I went by the tripe that was published in the Christian book stores and by those same articles on the Internet I’d come to the same conclusion that this is what Christians believe. Thankfully, however, I get my prayer theology from the Bible and not from Family Christian Bookstore. As a result, the proposed experiment that Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? proposes doesn’t phase me. The experiment is this:

For this experiment, we need to find a deserving person who has had both of his legs amputated. For example, find a sincere, devout veteran of the Iraqi war, or a person who was involved in a tragic automobile accident.

Now create a prayer circle like the one created for Jeanna Giese. The job of this prayer circle is simple: pray to God to restore the amputated legs of this deserving person. I do not mean to pray for a team of renowned surgeons to somehow graft the legs of a cadaver onto the soldier, nor for a team of renowned scientists to craft mechanical legs for him. Pray that God spontaneously and miraculously restores the soldier’s legs overnight, in the same way that God spontaneously and miraculously cured Jeanna Giese and Marilyn Hickey’s mother.

If possible, get millions of people all over the planet to join the prayer circle and pray their most fervent prayers. Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving amputee. Then stand back and watch.

Now the first problem with this experiment is of course the fact that it is a logical fallacy to assume that because God does one thing one time that means that He must do the same thing another time. This is the same problem that we find in The Prayer of Jabez (just because God answered Jabez doesn’t mean He’ll answer you in the same way), so again the atheists can be excused for their misunderstanding. The experiment is flawed because it doesn’t treat God as an agent, but instead as a scientific law. That is, the experiment is predicated on the belief that God must be mechanistic and must respond to all prayers in the same way at the same time.

But think about people instead of laws. Suppose that you were told, “I e-mailed Bill Gates and asked for $100 and he gave it to me.” You say: “I don’t believe you. And I’ll prove you’re wrong by e-mailing Bill Gates and asking for $100 and showing he won’t give it to me.” You then e-mail Bill Gates and he does not give you $100. Does that prove Bill Gates did not give the other person $100?

Of course not. So the logic of the experiment is already flawed. But there is a deeper problem that Calvinists can immediately spot. The experiment is based on finding “a deserving person” for the healing. Now we’re dealing not only with groups of non-Christians whom God has never promised to answer, but we’re also dealing with a non-existent entity in a “deserving person.”

No one deserves healing from God. The fact of the matter is that the wages of sin is death, and part of death is the decay of our bodies in illness. A whole and complete body is not owed to anyone. God does not have to heal anyone at any time. If He does, it’s because of His mercy. But if He does not, He has not done any injustice. In fact, by simply using illnesses to slowly kill us, God is already acting mercifully by not instantly doling out justice. Instead, He is patient and slow, such that no one has an excuse for continuing in evil.

And it is this fact that healing is not owed to anyone wherein the atheist has made his largest mistake:

God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he is answering millions of other prayers like Jeanna’s every day, God should be answering the prayers of amputees too.

God should be answering the prayers of amputees too? Such language is grating on the nerves of the Calvinist!

So we see yet another reason why it’s a good thing to not be an Arminian.