|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
I have never accepted irrational religious beliefs. If something in my — or any — religion doesn’t make sense, I don’t accept it. That’s why my five-volume commentary on the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is titled “The Rational Bible.”
This strikes more than a few religious people as problematic, since many religious people thrive on irrational beliefs. There is a famous Latin phrase, Credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it is absurd,” which has long been attributed to the Church theologian Tertullian (early third century). Tertullian did not in fact say that. But he said something somewhat analogous: “The Son of God died; it is credible, because it is (foolish, absurd, unfitting); and he was buried and rose again; it is certain, because it is impossible.”
I do not mention this desire to believe in the irrational as a criticism. Reason may be my road to God and religion, but I respect the fact that it is not everyone’s.
I mention it solely to explain my religiosity. Because reason is my road to faith, I am religious. It is, for example, far more rational to believe in a Creator than to believe that everything came about by itself.
Which brings me to secularism.
The moral and logical absurdities the secular world advocates help sustain my faith.
I have come to understand the truth in the statement attributed to the British thinker G.K. Chesterton but probably said by someone else: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
It is, overwhelmingly, secular people who say that “men give birth.” Not all secular people say this, but just about everyone who does is secular. And I don’t know any religious Jews or Christians who say it.
In a previous column, “Who’s more irrational — the religious or the irreligious?” I provided a long list of absurd, and dangerous, beliefs held almost exclusively by secular people. So, I will only list a few here.
It is, overwhelmingly, secular people who believe that males who say they are females should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
It is, overwhelmingly, secular people who believe that a young girl who says she is a boy or a young boy who says he is a girl should be given puberty-blocking hormones.
Who was more likely to support keeping children out of schools for two years; forcibly masking 2-year-olds on airplanes; and firing unvaccinated police officers, airplane pilots and members of the military — secular or religious Americans?
How many Western supporters of Josef Stalin — the tyrant who murdered about 30 million people — were irreligious, and how many were religious?
I will add here that secularism not only breeds foolish and dangerous positions, it also breeds foolish and dangerous behavior.
It is widely believed that the primary reason people in the West are choosing not to have children is affluence. That is demonstrably incorrect. Affluence is a factor, but it is a small one compared to a much bigger factor: secularism. Affluent religious people have many children — far more than affluent secular people. If you meet a couple that has four or more children, whether you are religious or secular, you will immediately assume that the couple is either Catholic, Evangelical (Protestant), Mormon or Orthodox Jewish.
The same holds true for marriage. The marriage rate in America is the lowest it has ever been. There are more Americans 40 years of age who have never been married than ever in American history.
This, too, is related to religion. Yes, most secular people still get married — though that number is in decline — but virtually all religious people get married.
Religious people are also happier than secular people.
All these secular beliefs and behaviors argue strongly for a Judeo-Christian worldview. If doctrine A produces far more nonsense, unhappiness and support for evil than does doctrine B, the only rational response is to adopt doctrine B.
And perhaps the greatest argument for Bible-based religion and against secularism is the university. The most foolish institutions in America happen to be the most secular institutions in America — the universities. In fact, there are no wise secular institutions. There are wise secular individuals and there are foolish religious individuals, but there are no wise secular institutions. Our schools, starting in kindergarten, are radically secular and mostly teach nonsense.
It is no wonder that there is more support for Hamas than for Israel at most universities. The secular moral compass is broken.
These are all strong arguments for taking religion seriously, or, as in my case, remaining religious. I want wisdom, a community, happiness, a family life and, most important, to know the difference between men and women and between good and evil.
The Secularists and Humanists screwballs have been trying t o force their Ideas upon all of America
“It is, for example, far more rational to believe in a Creator than to believe that everything came about by itself.”
Who created your God?
If you argue that your God has always existed, that your God is eternal, that your God needs no prior creator to bring him into existence, then by what rational argument can you claim that matter and energy are not eternal?
Existence did not come about all by itself, existence simply exists, the existence of matter and energy, is eternal. Matter and energy can and do change form all the time but they do not go in or out of existence.
If the Big Bang Theory is true it does not mean matter and energy were created by your God at some magical first moment of time. It means matter and energy were changing form once again from implosion to explosion and for all we know right now eventually back to implosion in an eternal cycle.
When a scientific theory SEEMS to coincide with Holy Scripture, like the Big Bang Theory SEEMS to do, the religionists rejoice. But when a scientific theory smashes Holy Scripture to bits, like the Theory of Evolution does, the religionists get their panties in a bunch.
“The religious view of the world, though it has been abandoned by most philosophers, is still entrenched in the public mind. Witness the popular question “Who created the universe? “—which presupposes that the universe is not eternal, but has a source beyond itself, in some cosmic personality or will. It is useless to object that this question involves an infinite regress, even though it does (if a creator is required to
explain existence, then a second creator is required to explain the first, and so on). Typically, the believer will reply: “One can’t ask for an explanation of God. He is an inherently necessary being. After all, one must start somewhere.” Such a person does not contest the need of an irreducible starting point, as long as it is a form of consciousness; what he finds unsatisfactory is the idea of existence as the starting point.
Driven by the primacy of consciousness, a person of this mentality refuses to begin with the world, which we know to exist; he insists on jumping beyond the world to the unknowable, even though such a procedure explains nothing. The root of this mentality is not rational argument, but the influence of Christianity. In many respects, the West has not recovered from the Middle Ages.” – Leonard Peikoff
He is successful. His message resonates with Christians and Jews, always positive.
Your excuse for a message, always negative, lands on the sidewalk where the dogs sh*t.
How long have you been trying this shtick with him. 5 years…..10 years? Do you think he even reads your crap. Do you think he even knows you exist?
You are nothing in the overall scheme of things.
The complexity, specificity and integration of everything happening in the universe is evidence of an intelligent designer. The human genome alone is so complex that linear evolution could never have created mankind with the required multifunctional, integrated systems necessary and functioning simultaneously together for life.
Man, in his endless desire for self worship often takes his sorely limited assumptions about the nature of reality as gospel. Years of the theoretical physicists presumptions about the universe have been detonated with the evidence recorded by the James Webb telescope’s deep-space pictures sending them all back to their drawing boards!. Well if sentient beings (mankind) are the pinnacle of intelligence then one could rationally deduce that mankind would be able to understand all of the workings of the universe and that of our planet and it’s inhabitants but we cannot.
Quite often we have witnessed the short sightedness of mankind’s operational assumptions creating more harm than good precisely because we do not understand all of the ramifications of what we do. The mRNA vaccine a case in point. Advertised as a lifesaver against a genetically manipulated virus, this gene-therapy “vaccine” infiltrated the cell nucleus rewriting the cellular code, proliferated in the body while also destroying significant functions of our inherent immune systems allowing for a plethora of destructive neurological and biological problems. Why? Because we are NOT the original designer and we didn’t and don’t understand everything.
To place man’s consciousness as able to limit the truth that may be beyond his complete understanding as therefore non-existent is both arrogant and fallicious.
Chovos Halevavos has already anticipated and answered your questions.
According to quantum mechanics the universe is made of though not matter. Lookup THE MENTAL UNIVERSE by Richard Conn Henery. That presupposes a thinker (God).
Thank you Dennis!
I am very thankful for your continuous partnership with G-d Almighty!
I just heard that Trump won the election. First, I thanked G-d Almighty for loving humanity and giving us in America yet a new opportunity to change course and remain a light on the hill for future generations here and to remain a hope for those still living under repressive regimes.
Though the secular death cult worships self, we who love G-d and wish to restore our country to follow the Constitution of the United States, preserve our G-d given inalienable rights and return to a government of, for and by the people salute you and your many successful ventures. You are a gift and a treasure to all who love G-d and may you receive continual blessings from HaShem for all you give to others to heal the world.
Shalom Aleichem!
I think Prager agrees that reason alone can’t actually prove the existence of God, although it can and does lead us in that direction. However, there is one truth that is self-evident, once expressed by Dostoevsky; “If there is no God, then all things are permitted”. That means literally “all things”. There are good people who are atheists but they are living off the remains of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the way one might live off a family trust fund. And eventually the trust fund runs dry.
Some atheists seem to think that you can remove the pillars of the house and still have the roof remaining. It doesn’t work that way. There is no justification for morality without God, and any society that denies God eventually descends into tyranny and evil.
PS: Thank God Almighty for giving us our country back. May we deserve it.
‘The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.’ Been there done that, and then one day I realized sin is not only playing the fool it’s also just plain stupidity. I know these things from experience, and the wisdom of Scripture.