The School of Biblical Evangelism
The School of Biblical Evangelism is a book authored by Ray Comfort, published in 2004.
Content[edit]
The text is meant to provide readers with 101 instructions to improve their evangelical skills to "reach out to the lost." This article will provide side-by-side review that will include a brief summary of each lesson and a analysis and fact-check for each lesson.
| Comfort's School of Biblical Evangelism | RationalWiki Responses |
Lesson 10: The Ten Commandments Part 6[edit]
| Kikr's Comment: We can all agree that murder is a very serious sin. Most of us think we’re safe with this Commandment. But from God’s point of view, you and I are not so innocent. This is a sobering lesson. |
| First, Ray responds to the following statement “If abortion wasn’t legal, we’d have all those poor girls slipping off to see back-alley butchers. At least this way they’ll get counseling.” Ray answers: You’re right. Think of all those poor murderers who are consigned to slip around and kill in secret.We ought to legalize murder too! Then they can kill in a nice, clean, safe environment. They will be protected from getting splashed with blood that might contain diseases, and we can offer counseling so they won’t have any post-murder trauma from the choices they have made. |
| In this lesson we will look at the Sixth Commandment, and what it means in light of New Testament revelation: “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20:13). In the dim light of their ignorance, the world looks at the Sixth Commandment and proclaims itself “not guilty.” However, God requires truth in the inward parts (Psalm 51:6). In other words, He sees the thoughtlife— the intent, the innermost motive of every human being. If civil law can prove that you are planning to assassinate the President, you can be prosecuted and severely punished. That law, however, is limited in its search for evidence—it can’t see what a man thinks. Not so with the allseeing eye of our Creator. His Law searches the heart, and He sees “evil thoughts.” To even think hatred is to transgress the Sixth Commandment. Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said by them of old time, You shall not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say to you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” (Matthew 5:21,22). The Bible further adds that if we hate someone, we are murderers (1 John 3:15). There are many who would like to kill, but refrain because of fear of punishment. God counts them guilty of murder. |
| Even if we don’t have thoughts of physically murdering someone we hate, there is another sense in which we desire their death. John 8:44 says of the devil that “he was a murderer from the beginning.” While Satan didn’t go around physically killing men and women, by tempting Adam and Eve he did bring about the spiritual death of all mankind through sin (see Romans 5:12). If we hate someone, the last thought in our minds will be sharing the gospel with them out of concern for their salvation. In that sense, we too become a murderer, desiring the person’s eternal death, by not giving them the words of life. |
| Some states have laws that declare a bystander guilty for standing by and failing to prevent a crime. In the same way, God declares us guilty of murder if we stand by and do nothing to prevent someone’s eternal death. Their blood is on our hands (see Ezekiel 3:18). |
| Sixty people are murdered each day in the United States (FBI statistics reveal an average of around 20,000 murders per year). Homicide has become so common that it hardly merits a mention on the news. Some time ago, Thomas Lyndon Jr. of Rocky Point, Long Island, confessed to the murder of a woman during a robbery. He admitted that he held the point of a four-inch hunting knife to her throat, and then “dug it in a little deeper” after she awoke and began to struggle. He said that after Lea Greene stopped moving, “I counted her heartbeats out of curiosity to see how long it’d take her to die . . . I knew exactly what I was doing . . . I knew it was against the law. . . I felt powerful—invincible, sort of, you know?”How true are the words of Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers: “Look at fallen human nature.Whitefield used to say that it was half beast and half devil. I question whether both beast and devil are not slandered by being compared with man when he is left to his own.” |
| In our day, abortion is another common occurrence.Many people try to convince themselves that the unborn child is nothing but a “blob of tissue,” making it acceptable to destroy. But at 21 days gestation, the child’s heart is beating, and at 40 days brain waves can be measured. If by our medical criteria a life is ended when there is no heartbeat or brain activity, then surely by their presence we can assert that life has begun. The Bible tells us that taking the life of the unborn is clearly murder: “He slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave” (Jeremiah 20:17), and God vowed to punish those who “ripped up the women with child” (Amos 1:13). God, the Creator of life, commanded us, “Do not shed innocent blood” (Jeremiah 7:6). |
| Some equate capital punishment with murder, and cite Jesus’ command to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) as evidence that He did not endorse capital punishment. However, just because we have love for an enemy doesn’t give us the right to allow him to escape punishment for murder. The Bible says, “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.Whosoever therefore resists the power, resists the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation . . .But if you do that which is evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil” (Romans 13:1–4). |
| The Bible says that anyone who deliberately takes a life should lose his own: “Whoso kills any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die. Moreover you shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death” (Numbers 35:30,31). Genesis 9:6 says, “Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” This shows the value God places on human life. The seriousness of a crime is revealed in the punishment dealt to the criminal. It is interesting to note that when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh requested the death penalty, 250 relatives of the victims he killed asked to watch his execution. Their desire to actually see justice done testifies to the value they place on the loved one they lost. Despite claims to the contrary, capital punishment does deter crime. The person executed will not do it again. |
| Still, there are respected Christian leaders whose conscience will not allow them to advocate capital punishment, out of concern that innocent people may fall through the cracks of a godless justice system. That is why such extensive effort is expended to ascertain the guilt of the accused in a capital murder case. However, despite civil law’s imperfections, we are told to be subject to the governing authorities. |
| It was God who instituted the death penalty in the beginning. The Judge of the Universe pronounced the death sentence upon all humanity when He said, “The soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). |
Lesson 12: The Ten Commandments Part 8[edit]
| Kirk's Comment: This Commandment really serves to wake up the conscience. It is wonderfully effective in alerting individuals to the serious condition of their hearts. Remember, petty theft is still theft. |
| First, Ray responds to the question “Aren’t there some circumstances when violating God’s Law is justified?” Ray answers with the following: A man’s wife is dying. She needs medicine that is available at only one store, and it’s currently closed. They’re too far from any hospital, and the man doesn’t have enough money to buy the medicine even if the store were open. So he breaks in that night, steals the medicine (and doesn’t touch anything else), and saves his wife’s life. Is this morally incorrect? Is this a sin? The Bible says, “Men do not despise a thief, if he steals to satisfy his soul when he is hungry; but if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house” (Proverbs 6:30,31). If a man steals to save the life of his wife, he “steals.” He is therefore guilty of breaking both man’s law and God’s Law. However, any reasonable judge would take into account the motive for his transgression and be merciful. Obviously, God will do the same on Judgment Day with those who have found themselves in such a predicament. God will do what is right. However, if you dig a little into the motive of the person who is asking whether breaking the law is ever justifiable, you will likely find that neither he nor a loved one is in a life-or-death predicament; he is merely creating imaginary scenarios to try to justify his love of sin. |
| In this lesson we will look at the Eighth Commandment: “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). Most people don’t think that God considers theft to be theft until the value of what is taken impresses Him. However, if I open your wallet and take just one dollar, I’m a thief, and the Bible says that thieves will not enter the kingdom of God. What would be worth stealing for the loss of your soul? Jesus asked, “What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26). |
| It is a sad testimony to the wickedness of the human heart when the world honors an honest person. Someone finds a wallet filled with money and returns it to the owner—and that makes national news. It is rare when a human being does what he should. Theft comes easily to us because our spiritual father is a thief. He came to steal, kill, and destroy, and his will we willingly do... and love it. As a child I would use an eel spear connected to a piece of rope to spear apples in my neighbor’s yard and pull them through the hedge onto our property. We had apples at home, but the stolen apples tasted sweeter. |
| We don’t realize how sin crouches at the door of the human heart. Many would never consider theft until temptation arises. Take for instance the situation on May 14, 1993, in Chicago, when $600,000 fell out of an armored truck onto the interstate. Panic-stricken motorists screeched their vehicles to a halt and stuffed bills into their pockets. Motorcyclists were seen cramming their helmets with cash, and speeding off into the distance. Two paramedics handed police $120,000. They returned the cash only because they suspected it was drug money and therefore “marked.” Around $450,000 is still missing. |
| Sinners will often dig deep into the realm of fantasy to try to justify theft. They will say, “Are you telling me that if a man steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving children that God calls that theft?” The answer is yes. It is theft and the Bible says that he should make restitution for his crime. If a man is hungry, he should beg before he steals. A sinner will often admit to stealing but say that it was just a bar of candy when he was young. Or he will say that he has stolen once, but has since reformed. He must be told that time doesn’t forgive sin, and that God still sees the sins of yesterday as if they were committed today. Stop his mouth using the Law (Romans 3:19). Show him that the only way to escape the terrible consequences of his sin is the Door of the Savior. Let the hurricane of the wrath of the Law of God blow far from him the scanty leaves of self-righteousness. Have him admit his transgression by name—that he is a thief. Then point to (and have him read) 1 Corinthians 6:9,10. |
| Charles Finney said, “This Law, then, should be arrayed in all its majesty against selfishness and enmity of the sinner. All men know that they have sinned, but all are not convicted of the guilt and ill dessert of sin. But without this they cannot understand or appreciate the gospel method of salvation. Away with this milk-and-water preaching of a love of Christ that has no holiness or moral discrimination in it. Away with preaching a love of God that is not angry with sinners every day.” |
Lesson 13: The Ten Commandments Part 9[edit]
| Kirk's Comment: Is a white lie still a lie? Is half of the truth only half of a lie? If you tell a lie for a “good reason,” is it still a sin? What qualifies us as a liar? By whose standards will we be judged? |
| First, Ray responds to a question like “You mean that if some lady asks you if you think she is ugly, you have to tell her the truth—that she is?” Ray responses with: Let the person know that there is a big difference between discretion (wise self-restraint in speech) and lying (a false statement intended to deceive), and that God knows the difference.
Next, Ray asks if Christians should ever lie? For instance, would they lie to a Nazi that they are hiding Jews in their house? Ray says "Perhaps the answer is that it is the motive that matters. However, the issue depends on the conscience of each individual." Right after, Ray states the following;
| So lets get this straight,
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Lesson 23: The Reality of Hell[edit]
| Kirk's comment: Hell is an unthinkable place for my loved ones — or for anyone else. I can’t make it go away, so I will do everything I can to point sinners to the Savior, who alone can save them from going there. |
| Responding to the question “Could you be wrong in your claims about Judgment Day and hell?” Ray makes the following statement: The existence of hell and the surety of the judgment are not the claims of fallible man. The Bible is the source of the claim, and it is utterly infallible. | Where does the Bible claim to be infallible? Fundamentalists love to cite 2 Timothy 3:16; however, the “Scriptures” referred to in that verse refer to the Old Testament, and the term “inspiration” does not mean “word of God” either. (i.e. if a tree inspires me to write a poem about it, are they my words or the tree’s words?) In any case, the Bible itself does NOT even claim that all 66 books in it are infallible. Plus, if Ray is relying on faith in the statements of a book that claim to be infallible that a fiery place exists, then by Ray's logic the Hell of Islam must be real. |
| Next, Ray assumes for the sake of argument that everything in Christianity is false, he says, "Here’s the good news, though, if there is no hell: You won’t know a thing after you die. It will be the end. No heaven, no hell. Just nothing. You won’t even realize that it’s good news. Here’s the bad news if the Bible is right and there is eternal justice: You will find yourself standing before the judgment throne of a holy God. Think of it." | Basically, Ray invokes a fallacy known as Pascal's Wager, relying on a "what if" scenario, asking the reader to choose wisely. However, choices are best made under the best available data and evidence we have. What does Ray offer to show us that there is an afterlife? None. What has he shown us that there is a Hell? Just a old book.
Okay, is there evidence that life continues on after death? Science has yet to find any evidence of it at all. Life and consciousness ends at death and our metabolic processes are history. Many scientists conclude that souls do not exist, as neuroscientist Dr. David E. Comings, M.D., said in his book Did Man Create God?,
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Ray goes on to describe ell in a rather Hell-fire preaching style; stating that people who say they would be happy to go to Hell to meet their friends and famous people are like criminals who laugh at the electric chair and think it is a place to rest their feet and get a message. Ray tells hi readers to take the time to talk about Hell and its fury. Ray notes some Christians think that Hell is just "cease conscious existence" as in the state of a person's being before they were born. Ray does not like this view, because he wants people like Adolf Hitler to be physically punished. So Ray describes a visual of Hell though a few biblical verses;
By this, Ray states Hell is a real place and it is eternal torment. He states Jesus talked about it more than he did about Heaven, and if there was no Hell, then Jesus' message seems pointless because why bother warning people in the fist place if thy just cease to exist? | The word Hell appears at least 54 times in the King James Version of the bible, at least 31 times in the Old Testament from the Hebrew Word Sheol or and at least 23 times in the New Testament from the Greek words Hades, Gehenna or as it is in 2nd Peter Chapter 2 verse 4 the word tartaroō (Tartaros/Tartarus). tartaroō appears only once.
In the Hebrew Bible the word Sheol appears at least 67 times. In the Old Testament of The King James Version of the bible when Sheol is not translated as hell it is translated as Grave or Pit and in Isaiah 7:11 Sheol is not translated at all in The King James Version but it is translated in other version of the bible such as The New American Standard Bible and the New Revised Standard Version. In the Septuagint, or The Old Testament in Greek, Sheol is translated as Hades. In The New American Standard Bible and The New Revised Standard Version Sheol is properly translated in The Old Testament as Hades is properly translated in the New Testament but Gehenna and tartaroō are left translated as Hell. In The Book of Ecclesiastes (9:9,10) and Job every person, righteous and wicked will end up in Sheol and in Numbers (16:30) even the living can be swallowed by the Earth and to and go down live to Sheol but what is Sheol? In Jewish Mythology Sheol is the land of the dead, apparently under the earth (Isaiah. 7:11, Isaiah 57:9; Ezekiel. 31:14; Psalms 86:13) from which the pillars of the earth extend on which the world is set (1 Samuel Chapter 2) , a place ruled by God himself (Amos 9:2; Hosea 13:14; Deuteronomy 32: 22; I Samuel 2:6, Proverbs.15: 11), an abode of Silence (Psalms 6:5, Psalms 30: 9 Psalms 94:17, Psalms 115:17, Isaiah 38:9, 24) where God is not praised, a place from where you should not expect to return from (II Samuel 12: 23; Job 7:9, 10; Job 10:21, Psalms 6:5). In Sheol though there is apparently a place of comfort commonly referred to as The Bosom of Abraham (Luke 16:22), the place of the righteous, an idea that predates Christianity (4 Maccabees 13:17). The idea of Sheol seems removed from the idea of the separate places of heaven and hell and more closely resembles the early concept of Hades in Greek Mythology which can be confirmed by comparing verses such as Acts 2:27 or Acts 2:31 to Psalm 16:10, but what about tartaroō. In Greek Mythology the God Cronus and Goddess Rhea had Children and due to Cronus’s fear of one of his Children dethroning him as Cronus did to his father Uranus Cronus ate his children while they were new borns. Rhea angered by this gave Cronus a stone in place of the sixth child. That child was Zeus who would later drug his father. The drug cased Cronus vomit. This released the consumed children Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Zeus would challenge Cronus and eventually Cronus and the other Titans would be defeated by the Children of Cronus. Some of the Titans were cast into tartaroō, a great pit beneath the underworld, a place of torment and suffering while others were punished such as Atlas who is tasked with holding up the world. A perfect example of the type of torment that would be expected in tartaroō would be that of Tantalus who is chained to a rock. Any time he reaches for grapes or water the grape vine or river recedes. He is left to hunger and thrust forever. The punishment of Tantalus is where the word tantalize comes from. In Roman Mythology tartaroō is surrounded by the river Phlegethon, a river of flame. No one escapes tartaroō with its columns of solid adamantine, a substance as hard as diamond with the gates guarded by the great multi headed Seperent Hydra. This should bring up imagery of the Book of Revelation. Tartaroō though is not Hades, it is lower than Hades. Hades the place is the abode of the dead as well as abode of the God Hades. Just as Shoel is a gloomy place for the dead, so is Hades but how do these Greek ideas such as tartaroō apparently arrive in the bible? It is widely accepted among biblical Scholars the original texts that lead to the New Testament were likely written in Greek although there are a few who have argued Aramaic for at least some of the text, this can be supported not just from analysis of biblical text but also due to the fact that other religious sources that are Jewish in nature such as the Dead Sea Scrolls are at least in part written in Aramaic but this is beside the point. Judah became part of the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great. This brought Greek Culture to the region including Greek Philosophy. In Plato’s Socratic Dialogue called Gorgias Socrates introduces the idea that Cronos judged men just before they died which was later corrected by Zeus to have them judged after they died. The righteous were sent to the Isles of the Blessed. The unjust were sent to tartaroō. After the death of Alexander the Great Judah came under Control of Egypt until Syria took control in 198 BCE. Under Antiochus (anne Tie a Kus) IV Hellenization was forced upon the Jews which ended in the Maccabean Revolt in 166 BCE. This is during this period when apocalyptic writings begin to appear such as the apocalyptic sections of the book of Daniel. The concept of God releasing evil into the world became prevalent at this time, a subject that will be covered in another video. This leaves the final translation for hell, Gehenna. The Valley of Hinnom is a valley south of Jerusalem. In the Old Testament it is referred to as Ben-Hinnom. Gehenna is the the Valley of Hinnom where the Bible claims Canaanites offered Children as sacrifices to the Flames of the god Moloch. Gehenna would later become a garbage dump and it is claimed to be the place where dead criminals and the carcasses of animals were left. Fires were left to continually burn in Gehenna. Jewish myth has the gates to a molten lake of fire located at Gehenna. In this lake of fire the souls of most mortals would burn for 12 months to either be purified before entering the Hereafter know as Olam Ha-Ba, a spiritual Garden of Eden so to speak or consumed and completely destroyed depending on the crimes of the sinner. Olam Ha-Ba begins to appear in early rabbinic sources. This would make the idea of Olam Ha-Ba exilic or post exilic but the idea of Sheol is pre-exilic as it can be found in the non Deuteronomist sections of Isaiah which dates between 740 and 700 BCE, Yawhist source from Judah. Gehenna is not the same place as Hades as indicated in Revelation 20:11-15. As per these verses those who are not written in the book of life are brought out of Hades and cast into the lake of fire after being judged. Hades is also cast into the lake of fire. The concept of hell seems to be an evolution of a basic concept of an underworld from early Hebrew and Greek Mythology, later to be influenced by rabbinic sources then finally Greek Philosophy which cumulates in the apocalyptic writings found in the book of Daniel and later in the New Testament writings. Many New Testament writings including but certainly not exclusive to The Book of Revelation contain apocalyptic elements such as the Gospels and Paul’s Epistles. Regardless the concept of hell, Sheol or Hades has been elusive with a flat earth three tier model of an underworld of the dead, the material world we live in and celestial kingdom or a remote Mountain where the House of some God or a pantheon of Gods reside above. This idea of a three tier model was already outdated not long after the concept of Sheol and Hades, outdated by Pythagoras who deduced the earth was a sphere. This is around the time of the Babylonian Exile, later the Earths circumference would be calculated to a high level of precision for the time by Eratosthenes 250 years prior to the first Christians. Eratosthenes used no more than simple math. This there tier concept should not have been able to survive this. |
Lesson 39: The Enemy Part 1[edit]
Ray states the first enemy is the world, which Ray means it refers to the 'sinful, rebellious world system."
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Ray states the second enemy is the devil, who is the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
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Ray states the third enemy what the Bible calls the “flesh.”
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Lesson 44: The Survival Guide[edit]
| Ray provides a response to the statement “God couldn’t forgive my sin.” Ray responds with "Those who think they are too sinful for God to accept them don’t understand how merciful God is." | Does God really forgive ALL sin? Christian apologist Dr. Norman Geisler says in Chapter 4 in Lee Strobels book The Case for Faith that God allowed the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites because "the destruction of their nation was necessitated by the gravity of their sin." Geisler goes on to argue that the Canaanites were simply beyond salvation. Ray is aware of the atheist group the Rational Response Squad. In a live debate with the Rational Response Squad, atheist Brian Sapient pointed out from the "Blasphemy Challenge" that Scriptures clearly state those who "deny the Holy Spirit" have committed a grave sin that cannot and will not ever be forgiven. |
Lesson 51: The Resurrection[edit]
| Ray starts this off with a quote from Josephus: "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man . . . He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him.” | The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius was the earliest non-Christian to mention Jesus. Josephus' birth in 37 CE, well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, means he could not have been an eyewitness. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 CE, even later than the first gospels. Despite Josephus having long been a favorite of apologists, many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius of Caesarea).
Antiquities of the Jews begins “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and arduously parallels the Old Testament up to the time when Josephus is able to add equally tedious historical recountings of Jewish life during the early Roman period. In Book 18, Chapter 3, this paragraph is encountered (Whiston’s translation): This truly appears to give historical confirmation for the existence of Jesus. But is it authentic? Most scholars admit that at least some parts, if not all, of this paragraph cannot be authentic,[2] even the Catholic Encyclopedia concurring. See Historicity of Jesus; Josephus to further see a closer inspection of this quote that directly points out exactly why it is agreed to be a deliberate forgery. |
| Kirk's Comment: If Jesus did not rise physically, then what happened to His body? Did it dissolve? Did it evaporate? Was it moved somewhere? There is no biblical account of what happened to Jesus’ body other than that it was raised from the dead. Therefore, His body was raised from the dead. | Basically, it is so because the Bible says it was so, even without the slightest piece of proof. Kirk and Ray would dismiss a similar argument about Mohammad and the flying horse must be true because there is no other account of this happening except for in the Qur'an. The Bible has many stories within its pages that are evident fictions hat never happened. For instance, there is absolutely no account whatsoever of a mass resurrection of the dead who walked in the streets off Jerusalem for all to see after the death of Jesus. An incident like this has never been mentioned by anyone in 1st century Palestine. No historian, scribe, poet, letter, folklore, anything mentions such a event, and any honest person would admit that seeing a bunch of once dead folk walking down your neighborhood is definitely something people report and talk about it wherever they go. |
| Ray confronts the "swoon theory" which argues that Jesus did not die on the Cross, just merely fainted. Ray disagrees, pointing out that Jesus had been whipped and beaten, and was bleeding from his head, back, hands, and feet for at least six hours, and when he was on the Cross a soldier stabbed him in the side with a spear. | Again, the story surrounding Jesus is all based on the presupposition that Jesus of Nazareth was real and the Bible accurately details his tale. |
| Next is a quote, "“It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulcher, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening, and indulgence, and who still at last yielded to his sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life: an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could only have weakened the impression which he had made upon them in life and in death, at the most could only have given it an elegiac voice, but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.” —Strauss, New Life of Jesus (quoted in Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morison) |
The Resurrection: Miracle or Myth[edit]
| This next piece of work was written by Hank Hanegraaff. | Hendrik "Hank" Hanegraaff (born 1950) also known as the Bible Answer Man is an American author, radio talk-show host, advocate of evangelical Christianity, and current president of the Christian Research Institute (CRI), which is an evangelical association that particularly targets “pseudo-Christian groups like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Hangeraaff holds no degree in history or science. He opposes the theory of evolution in favor for creationism, but tries to distance himself from teaching a specific field of creationism. |
Hanegraff argues that the Resurrection is central to the Christian faith, and without it, it all crumbles. Hanegraaff claims he can provide evidence for the Resurrection. His proofs are the following;
| Going in order,
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| Hanegraaff then points to Dr. Simon Greenleaf, who he claims is "the greatest authority on legal evidences in the 19th century." Hanegraaff states: It is noteworthy that after examining the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Greenleaf suggested that any cross-examination of the eyewitness testimonies recorded in Scripture would result in “an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth.” | One should be highly skeptical of anyone who claims another person is "the greatest authority on legal evidences in the 19th century." Simon Greenleaf (December 5, 1783 – October 6, 1853) was an American lawyer and jurist. |
Hanegraaff then tries to counter the hypothesis that Jesus body was stolen either by the Romans, Jewish leaders, or maybe the disciples. Hanegraaff responds as follows
| First of all, this is all supposing that Jesus was buried in a tomb. Historian Richard Carrier demonstrated that if Jesus was indeed crucified according to the Scriptures, Jesus would not have been buried in a tomb nor did he resurrect in three days, due to the fact that in Jewish tradition, the next day starts at night.
Going in order,
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| Hanegraaff them gives his opinions on the "swoon theory." He states: this theory is hopelessly flawed. Think about it for a minute. Can you imagine that Jesus endured several trials, a crown of thorns, a Roman scourge, a crucifixion, a spear thrust into His side, the loss of a great deal of blood, going three days without medical attention or food, pushing a two-ton stone away from His tomb’s entrance, and then physically overcoming an armed Roman guard while walking on pierced feet? No! The swoon theory is ridiculous in the extreme. And yet, amazingly, some people continue to hang their hats on it. After carefully examining all the evidence, one can only come to the singular conclusion that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead and that He now lives to be our Lord and Savior (Revelation 1:18). |
Does Circumstantial Evidence Confirm It?[edit]
| As Chuck Colson reported in his Break Point commentary (April 19, 2001), philosopher J. P. Moreland was once asked, “Can you give me five pieces of solid circumstantial evidence that convince you Jesus rose from the dead?” (Circumstantial evidence is an accumulation of facts from which one can draw intelligent conclusions.) Certainly, Moreland responded. | Note that J. P. Moreland is a philosopher, not a historian. |
| 1. There’s the evidence of the skeptics. Some of those who were most hostile to Jesus prior to his death became his most ardent supporters afterwards. | This evidence is only provided in Scripture, written by an author who was not there to confirm that there were any skeptics. There is no contemporary proof, it is all based on the same story that does not provide ay support for its claims. |
| 2. The ancient Jews had a number of immensely important religious rituals. These included the offering of animal sacrifices, obeying the Mosaic law, and keeping the Sabbath. But within five weeks of Jesus’ death, more than 10,000 Jews had suddenly altered or abandoned these rituals. Moreland asked: Why would they relinquish rites that had long given them their national identity? The implication is that something enormously significant had occurred. | Bear in mind that there were a wide variety o different sects of Christians in the late 1st and early 2nd century’s. Some of them kept all the Jewish rites, since Jesus was a Jew and therefore it was required to continue obeying the Law. |
| 3. We see the emergence of new rituals: the sacraments of communion and baptism. The early Jews baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, “which,” Moreland said, “meant they had elevated Jesus to the full status of God.” | This baptism is not unique to Jesus. In fact, Jesus was not the first to introduce baptism, even the Scriptures reveal that John the Baptist did. In fact, there is a sect of followers who believe John is the real Messiah. |
| 4. We see the rapid rise of a new church, beginning shortly after the death of Jesus. Within twenty years, this new church—begun by the companions of a dead carpenter—had reached Caesar’s palace in Rome, and eventually spread throughout the Roman Empire. | It has been demonstrated that new faiths can begin ith closto noting and grow rapidly, such as cargo cults |
| 5. There’s the most convincing circumstantial evidence of all: the fact that every one of Jesus’ disciples was willing to suffer and die for his beliefs. These men spent the rest of their lives witnessing about Christ. They frequently went without food; they were mocked, beaten, and thrown into prison. In the end, all but one died a painful martyr’s death. Would they have done this for a lie? Of course not. They did it because they were convinced beyond a doubt that they had seen the risen Christ. | This argument is fallacious and does not address historicity in any way. People throughout history have, in fact, died for beliefs which turned out to be false, deceptive, or poorly understood; such as suicide bombers being rewarded with virgins. Just because these men so firmly believed that their beliefs were true that they were willing to die for them does not give their beliefs any credibility. More refutations to this argument exist.[3]
Another explanation is that some martyrs were not actually sincere, that they professed Christian ideals but were actually engaging in a form of "suicide by cop." For example, during the Diocletianic Persecution, when possession of the Bible was outlawed, many people boasted that they had copies of it; the Church specifically proscribed such people from being honored as martyrs.[4] But even that is making the generous assumption that the martyrs in question even existed. Some Christian writers are known to have fabricated martyr-stories whole cloth; the hagiography of St. Catherine of Alexandria, for example, is a partial rip-off of the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, the pagan philosopher who was skinned to death with tiles (by Christians!) because people thought she had bewitched the city governor into not attending church. |
Feathers and Arrows[edit]
| A young man once jumped from a plane for his first skydive. When he pulled his main parachute, it failed to open. As he thought on what he was supposed to do regarding the emergency chute, he hit the ground. His friends rushed up to him, thinking he was dead. They instead found that he had miraculously landed on freshly plowed ground and was still alive. As he lay there with fourteen broken bones, and a bone protruding vertically from his leg, he mumbled, “Boy, did I blow it!” He was right; he blew it. He had listened to his instructor. He had believed. However, he hadn’t obeyed. Don’t blow it for eternity. Listen, believe, and obey. |
Lesson 53: The Bible Part 2[edit]
| Kirk's Comment: The Bible is our authority on God’s will. It is very important to know why we can trust it. It is also inevitable that a true seeker will ask you to answer some questions about the Bible. |
| Answering the question “Didn’t men write the Bible?” Ray answers: Absolutely. When you write a letter, do you write the letter, or does the pen? Obviously you do; the pen is merely the instrument you use. God used men as instruments to write His “letter” to humanity. They ranged from kings to common fishermen, but the 66 books of the Bible were all given by inspiration of God. Proof that this Book is supernatural can been seen with a quick study of its prophecies. | As we will demonstrate, this evidence from prophecies fails to meet the burden of proof. |
The Bible Stands Alone[edit]
| Compiled by Jordan and Justin Drake, attempting to prove the uniqueness of the Bible. | Who are these Drakes? What are their credentials? How experienced are they? Have they ever posted their material in the academic fields, or use proper historical methods and tools to support their arguments? Multiple Christian websites contain the same exact material "The Bible Stands Alone", but none of them post anything about the Drakes. It seems professional material does not matter, as long as it is coming from a source that agrees with their position. |
| 1. It is unique in its continuity. If today just 10 people were picked who were from the same place, born around the same time, spoke the same language, and made about the same amount of money, and were asked to write on just one controversial subject, they would have trouble agreeing with each other. But the Bible stands alone. It was written over a period of about 1,500 years by more than 40 writers from all walks of life. Some were fishermen; some were politicians. Others were generals or kings, shepherds, or historians. They were from three different continents, and wrote in three different languages. They wrote on hundreds of controversial subjects yet they wrote with agreement and harmony. They wrote in dungeons, in temples, on beaches, and on hillsides, during peacetime and during war. Yet their words sound like they came from the same source. So even though 10 people today couldn’t write on one controversial subject and agree, God picked 40 different people to write the Bible— and it stands the test of time. | Does the Bible agree on controversial things? |
| 2. It is unique in its circulation. The invention of the printing press in 1450 made it possible to print books in large quantities. The first book printed was the Bible. Since then, the Bible has been read by more people and printed more times than any other book in history. By 1930, over one billion Bibles had been distributed by Bible societies around the world. By 1977, Bible societies alone were printing over 200 million Bibles each year, and this doesn’t include the rest of the Bible publishing companies. No one who is interested in knowing the truth can ignore such an important book. |
| 3. It is unique in its translation. The Bible has been translated into approximately 1,400 languages. No other book even comes close. | This is not a valid argument. If tomorrow, the issue of Spiderman is translated to 2,000 languages, that does not mean that Spiderman or its stories are true. |
| 4. It is unique in its survival. In ancient times, books were copied by hand onto manuscripts which were made from parchment and would decay over time. Ancient books are available today only because someone made copies of the originals to preserve them. For example, the original writings of Julius Caesar are no longer around. We know what he wrote only by the copies we have. Only 10 copies are still in existence, and they were made 1,000 years after he died. Only 600 copies of Homer’s The Iliad exist, made 1,300 years after the originals were written. No other book has as many copies of the ancient manuscripts as the Bible. In fact, there are over 24,000 copies of New Testament manuscripts, some made within 35 years of the writer’s death | If this was a valid argument, then every Christian should convert to Mormonism. Jordan and Justin argue that a texts validity is based on how many copies are made closer to the time it was originally made. The Book of Mormon was supposedly written (copied by Joseph Smith) in 1823 and first published in 1830, a gap of only seven years. In addition to Joseph Smith, there are signed testimonies of 11 witnesses who claim to have seen the gold tablets. Though most scholars agree that the current edition of the Book of Mormon is a trustworthy copy of the 1830 version, few if any scholars consider it to be reliable history. |
| 5. It is unique in withstanding attack. No other book has been so attacked throughout history as the Bible. In A.D. 300 the Roman emperor Diocletian ordered every Bible burned because he thought that by destroying the Scriptures he could destroy Christianity. Anyone caught with a Bible would be executed. But just 25 years later, the Roman emperor Constantine ordered that 50 perfect copies of the Bible be made at government expense. The French philosopher Voltaire, a skeptic who destroyed the faith of many people, boasted that within 100 years of his death, the Bible would disappear from the face of the earth. Voltaire died in 1728, but the Bible lives on. The irony of history is that 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society moved into his former house and used his printing presses to print thousands of Bibles.
The Bible has also survived criticism. No book has been more attacked for its accuracy. And yet archaeologists are providing more proof every year that the Bible’s detailed descriptions of historic events are correct. | Simply repeating that archeology supports the Bible does not change reality. |
Lesson 54: The Bible Part 3[edit]
| Ray attempts to counter the objection “Christians can’t use ‘circular reasoning’ by trying to prove the Bible by quoting from the Bible!” Ray responses with: The “circular reasoning” argument is absurd. That’s like saying you can’t prove that the President lives in the White House by looking into the White House. It is looking into the White House that will provide the necessary proof. The fulfilled prophecies, the amazing consistency, and the many scientific statements of the Bible prove it to be the Word of God. They provide evidence that it is supernatural in origin. | Nice try Ray, but this is not only illogical it is ridiculous. |
Archaeology and History Attest to the Reliability of the Bible[edit]
| Written by Richard M. Fales, Ph.D. | Dr. Richard M. Fales, Ph. D., Litt. D. Professor of Biblical Archeology, Education B.A. Universal Bible Institute, Georgia, 1974. |
| Manuscript Evidence. Aristotle’s Ode to Poetics was written between 384 and 322 B.C. The earliest copy of this work is dated A.D. 1100, and there are only forty-nine extant manuscripts. The gap between the original writing and the earliest copy is 1,400 years. There are only seven extant manuscripts of Plato’s Tetralogies, written 427–347 B.C. The earliest copy is A.D. 900—a gap of over 1,200 years.
What about the New Testament? Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30. The New Testament was written between A.D. 48 and 95. The oldest manuscripts date to the last quarter of the first century, and the second oldest A.D. 125. This gives us a narrow gap of thirty-five to forty years from the originals written by the apostles. | If this was a valid argument, then every Christian should convert to Mormonism. Jordan and Justin argue that a texts validity is based on how many copies are made closer to the time it was originally made. The Book of Mormon was supposedly written (copied by Joseph Smith) in 1823 and first published in 1830, a gap of only seven years. In addition to Joseph Smith, there are signed testimonies of 11 witnesses who claim to have seen the gold tablets. Though most scholars agree that the current edition of the Book of Mormon is a trustworthy copy of the 1830 version, few scholars if any consider it to be reliable history. |
Corroborating Writings. Critics also charge that there are no ancient writings about Jesus outside the New Testament. This is another ridiculous claim. Writings confirming His birth, ministry, death, and resurrection include,
| Going in order
1. Josephus is not a contemporary source, since he was born after Jesus' death. Most scholars admit that at least some parts, if not all, of the paragraph in Josephus' work cannot be authentic,[2] even the Catholic Encyclopedia concurring. See Historicity of Jesus; Josephus to further see a closer inspection of this quote that directly points out exactly why it is a deliberate forgery. 2. Again, no a contemporary source. This claim that the Talmud is poof of Jesus is based on the claim that a man called "Yeshu" in the Talmud refers to Jesus. However, this Jesus, according to Gerald Massey, is actually a disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia who lived at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus. And regardless of how one interprets the name "Yeshu", the Palestinian Talmud was written between the 3rd and 5th century CE, and the Babylonian Talmud was written between the 3rd and 6th century CE, at least two centuries after the alleged crucifixion. In other words, even if it does refer to Jesus, it is even more recent then the gospels and even less useful as an eyewitness reference. 3. Pliny the Younger was a Roman official born in 62 CE In one letter he said “Christians were singing a hymn to Christ as to a god ...” That is all. In all of Pliny’s writings, we find one small tangential reference, and not even to Christ, but to Christians. Again, notice, the absence of the name Jesus. This could have referred to any of the other "christs"[5] who were being followed by some Jews who thought they had found the messiah. Pliny’s report is only of what other people believed. Even if this sentence does refer to a group who followed Jesus it is not particularly enlightening as no one denies that Christianity was in existence at that time. Pliny's report might be useful in documenting the religion, but not the historic Jesus. 4. Tacitus depicts early Christians as “hated for their crimes” and associated with “depravity and filth.” This is not a flattering picture, so is less likely to be Christian propaganda. Tacitus claims no first-hand knowledge of Christianity, but is merely repeating the then common ideas about Christians. There is no other historical confirmation that Nero persecuted Christians. There certainly was not a “great crowd” of Christians in Rome around 60 CE, and the term “Christian” was not in use in the first century. Tacitus is either doctoring history from a distance or repeating a myth without checking the facts. Historians generally agree that Nero did not burn Rome, so Tacitus is in error to suggest that he would have needed to blame Christians in the first place. A more serious problem is that no one in the second century ever quoted this passage of Tacitus, and in fact it appears almost word-for-word in the writings in someone else, Sulpicius Severus, in the fourth century, where it is mixed in with other myths. The passage is therefore highly suspect and adds virtually no evidence even for early Christianity. There is also the problem that there has been cases of tampering with the Tacticus source. 5. There is a fragment of a personal letter from a Syrian named Mara Bar-Serapion (circa 73 CE) to his son in prison that mentions that the Jews of that time had killed their “wise king.” However, the New Testament claims that the Romans, not the Jews, killed Jesus. The Jews had killed other leaders; for example, the Essene Teacher of Righteousness. If this truly is a report of a historical event rather than the passing on of folklore, it could have been a reference to someone else. It does not mention Jesus by name. It is near worthless as evidence for Jesus of Nazareth. 6. A Roman historian, born in 69 CE mentions a "Chrestus," a common name meaning “good,” used by both slaves and free people and occurring more than 80 times in Latin inscriptions. Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ", which it generally does not. But even if Suetonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus. Suetonius wrote a biography called Twelve Caesars around the year 112 CE, mentioning that Claudius “banished the Jews from Rome, since they had made a commotion because of Chrestus,” and that during the time of Nero “punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief ...” Notice that there is no mention of Jesus by name. It is unlikely that Christianity had spread as far as Rome during the reign of Claudius, or that it was large enough to have caused a revolt. Note that "Chrestus" was not only a familiar personal name, but a name of the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis, who had a large following at Rome, especially among the common people. Hence "Christians" or "Chrestians" may be followers of Serapis. Historians know what evil repute the Egyptian people, which consisted mainly of Alexandrian elements, had at Rome. While other foreign cults introduced into Rome enjoyed the utmost toleration, the cult of Serapis and Isis was exposed repeatedly to persecution. The lax morality associated with their worship of the Egyptian gods and the fanaticism of their worshippers repelled the Romans, and excited the suspicion that their cults might be directed against the State. |
| Another point of contention arises when Bible critics have knowingly or unknowingly misled people by implying that Old and New Testament books were either excluded from or added into the canon of Scripture at the great ecumenical councils of A.D. 336, 382, 397, and 419. In fact, one result of these gatherings was to confirm the church’s belief that the books already in the Bible were divinely inspired. Therefore, the church, at these meetings, neither added to nor took away from the books of the Bible. At that time, the thirty-nine Old Testament books had already been accepted, and the New Testament, as it was written, simply grew up with the ancient church. Each document, being accepted as it was penned in the first century, was then passed on to Christians of the next century. So, this foolishness about the Roman Emperor Constantine dropping books from the Bible is simply uneducated rumor. | An uneducated rumor? This coming from a man who used hearsay accounts as proof for Jesus.
Unfortunately for Fales, the rest of the academics disagree. The Bible was indeed specially constructed by religious men who filtered out books that did not fit their views. There is no doubt that new material has been inserted and some deletions occurred in Scripture. For instance, the story of Jesus and the condemned adulterer does not appear in the Bible until approximately 400 years after Jesus died. The examples of forgeries and interpolations in the Bible are numerous. How could Fales miss the Codex Sinaiticus? It is the world’s oldest surviving copy of the Bible. Only 300 years away from the original manuscripts of the New Testament, it is highly important and considered a "very accurate copy as opposed to most of the later copies" which have "far more mistakes". It contains the complete New Testament and most of the Old Testament. Originally it contained the whole of both Testaments. The Greek Old Testament (or Septuagint) survived almost complete, along with a complete New Testament, plus the Epistle of Barnabas, and portions of The Shepherd of Hermas. |
| Fulfilled Prophecies. Prophecies from the Old and New Testaments that have been fulfilled also add credibility to the Bible. The Scriptures predicted the rise and fall of great empires like Greece and Rome (Daniel 2:39,40), and foretold the destruction of cities like Tyre and Sidon (Isaiah 23). Tyre’s demise is recorded by ancient historians, who tell how Alexander the Great lay siege to the city for seven months. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had failed in a 13-year attempt to capture the seacoast city and completely destroy its inhabitants. During the siege of 573 B.C., much of the population of Tyre moved to its new island home half a mile from the land city. Here it remained surrounded by walls as high as 150 feet until judgment fell in 332 B.C. with the arrival of Alexander the Great. In the seven-month siege, he fulfilled the remainder of the prophecies (Zechariah 9:4; Ezekiel 26:12) concerning the city at sea by completely destroying Tyre, killing 8,000 of its inhabitants and selling 30,000 of its population into slavery. To reach the island, he scraped up the dust and rubble of the old land city of Tyre, just like the Bible predicted, and cast them into the sea, building a 200-foot-wide causeway out to the island.
Alexander’s death and the murder of his two sons was also foretold in the Scripture. Another startling prophecy was Jesus’ detailed prediction of Jerusalem’s destruction, and the further spreading of the Jewish diaspora throughout the world, which is recorded in Luke 21. In A.D. 70, not only was Jerusalem destroyed by Titus, the future emperor of Rome, but another prediction of Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:1,2 came to pass—the complete destruction of the temple of God. | Here is a little detail Fales left out of this supposed fulfilled prophecy: it specifically said that King Nebuchadnezzar would be the one who destroyed Tyre. Here is the full prophecy;
In this block of text God states quite blatantly that Nebuchadnezzar would sack and destroy completely the city of Tyre. However the events given in this passage never did come to pass. After a 13 year siege Nebuchadnezzar withdrew his forces. Tyre survived quite prosperously after that for another 240 years until it was done away with by Alexander the great. The additional prophecies Fales links to Alexander are not prophecies, rather it is something called literacy analysis, where one can connect a event with that mentioned in a text to make them seem linked. Rather, the supposed “prophecies” and Alexander are two unrelated events. Fales does not even mention where in Scripture did it prophecized the death of Alexander the Great. The death of Alexander is not a impressive prediction, since he is a mortal man and commander of an army – so he was likely to be killed in combat, or gather a large sum of enemies on his road to power. Finally, the prophecy regarding Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple is another example of an inevitable outcome. Given Israel's history and growing number of enemies, the destruction of the Temple is a likely ending. What about the obvious failed prophecies not mentioned? Ezekiel 30:10,11 said Egypt would be completely destroyed and then in verse 12 predicts the Nile River will dry up. Neither of these ever happened. |
Messianic Prophecies. In the Book of Daniel, the Bible prophesied the coming of the one and only Jewish Messiah prior to the temple’s demise. The Old Testament prophets declared,
There was only one person who fits all of the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament who lived before A.D. 70: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary. Because fulfilled prophecies are so beneficial in showing the supernatural origin of the Bible, and are lacking in other religions, we will look in depth at prophecies in upcoming lessons. | Going in order,
A) "Bethlehem Ephratah" in Micah 5:2 refers not to a town, but to a clan: the clan of Bethlehem, who was the son of Caleb’s second wife, Ephrathah (1 Chronicles 2:18, 2:50-52 & 4:4). B) The prophecy (if that is what it is) does not refer to the Messiah, but rather to a military leader, as can be seen from Micah 5:6. This leader is supposed to defeat the Assyrians, which, of course, Jesus never did. It should also be noted that Matthew altered the text of Micah 5:2 by saying: "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah" rather than "Bethlehem Ephratah" as is said in Micah 5:2. He did this, intentionally no doubt, to make this verse appear to refer to the town of Bethlehem rather than the family clan.
This proclaimed Messianic prophecy is false, for a few solid reasons: The Hebrew Text Behind the King James Version: Despite the claims of its accurate rendition of the original text, the Hebrew equivalent for "they pierced" was not found in the manuscripts available to the translators of the King James Version. Indeed the word rendered in those manuscripts means "like a lion". The Dead Sea Scrolls: The evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, is ambiguous at best. The word found there, kaaru, has no known meaning and may actually be meaningless. 'Ancient Versions
|
Lesson 55: The Bible Part 4[edit]
| Kirk's Comment: The Dead Sea Scrolls are a wonderful archeological discovery. They show quite clearly that the Bible we have today has not changed over the centuries. |
| Ray tries to explain why people who read the Bible do not understand it. He uses an analogy that one not born in a Chinese family won't understand Chinese, so if on wishes to understand the Bible one must be born again,and then “The moment you become part of God’s family, the Bible will begin to make sense.” |
The Dead Sea Scrolls: “The greatest manuscript discovery of all times”[edit]
| By William F. Albright |
| Dating the Manuscripts. Carbon-14 dating is a reliable form of scientific dating when applied to uncontaminated material several thousand years old. Results indicated an age of 1917 years with a 200-year (10 percent) variant. | So here we have Ray using someone who argues for the validity of carbon dating, and yet in the Evolution section of this book, Ray argues that carbon dating is useless. It seems either Ray is wrong or Christians pick and choose when to accept carbon dating whenever it supports their case. |
Archaeology Confirms the Bible[edit]
| In 1968, for example, the skeletal remains of a crucified man were found in a burial cave in northern Jerusalem... There was evidence that his wrists may have been pierced with nails. The knees had been doubled up and turned sideways and an iron nail (still lodged in the heel bone of one foot) driven through both heels. The shinbones appeared to have been broken, perhaps corroborating the Gospel of John. A hidden burial chamber, dating to the first century, was discovered in 1990 two miles from the Temple Mount. One bore the bones of a man in his 60s, with the inscription “Yehosef bar Qayafa” —meaning “Joseph, son of Caiaphas.” Experts believe this was Caiaphas, the high priest of Jerusalem, who was involved in the arrest of Jesus, interrogated Him, and handed Him over to Pontius Pilate for execution. | Granting these are both accurate repeats of the reports, it shows us two things, 1) a crucified man was discovered in northern Jerusalem and 2) a priest is found in a tomb. Here is what that is not revealed: we do not know when the crucified man died and no estimation of when he lived is provided. |
| Excavations at Caesarea Maritama, the ancient seat of Roman government in Judea, uncovered a stone slab whose complete inscription may have read: “Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea, has dedicated to the people of Caesarea a temple in honor of Tiberius.” | Simply revealing that a governor in a story is true does not validate the entire story. Homer's Illiad tells of king and towns we have verified were real, but that does not mean cyclopes, sea monsters and Greek gods are also real. |
| A discovery in Israel in 1993 of a stone containing the inscriptions “House of David” and “King of Israel,” Time magazine (December 18, 1995) reported, “This writing—dated to the 9th century B.C., only a century after David’s reign—described a victory by a neighboring king over the Israelites . . .The skeptics’ claim that David never existed is now hard to defend.” | Bearing in mind, Time magazine can publish whatever they wish. That aside, the story of the united kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon also seems to be unraveled by archeology. According to the Bible, David’s kingdom consisted of a united Israel and Judah along with other kingdoms he conquered—Syria and Hamath to the north; Moab, Ammon to the east; Philistine to the west; and Edom to the south (2 Samuel 8:3-13; 10). Surely such a vast empire would have left immense archaeological evidence of its existence. The date normally ascribed to King David’s reign is 1005-970 BCE. And although no one doubts the existence of King David, there is no archaeological evidence for his kingdom beyond his existence. As archaeologist John Laughlin noted: “[T]here is little in the overall archaeological picture of the tenth century BC that can be connected with David.” Whatever evidence there is points to the fact that the story about the grandeur of David’s empire is a myth of a fictional golden age created by later writers. David’s “vast” empire is a myth. If David was indeed king, he never ruled over the vast regions described in the Bible. |
| Quotes Dr. Nelson Glueck, “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” Example: the Scriptures make more than 40 references to the great Hittite Empire. However, until one hundred years ago there was no archaeological evidence to substantiate the biblical claim that the Hittites existed. Skeptics claimed that the Bible was in error, until their mouths were suddenly stopped. In 1906, Hugo Winckler uncovered a huge library of 10,000 clay tablets, which completely documented the lost Hittite Empire. We now know that at its height, the Hittite civilization rivaled Egypt and Assyria in its glory and power. | The Hittite Empire is estimated to have lated from 18th to 12th century BCE. Who were these "skeptics"? It is interesting to note, apologists who often use the Hittites as examples to prove the historicity of the Bible, they never cite or identify who these "skeptics" were. Here is the real picture; for some time, scholars debated whether the Hatti or Kheta on Egyptian inscriptions might be identified with the Hittites. This is not the same as denying that the Hittites ever existed, but is simply associating the Hittite identity with the name identified on Egyptian inscription. It seems the only voice in Hittite denialism comes from M. G. Kyle, who wrote in an essay in The Fundamentals, but he does not name this mysterious denier, but he hints he was one of the best archeologists of his time. This mysterious archeologist may have been E.A. Wallis, but throughout his work he never denied the existence of the Hittites. just stated that the identification of the Hittites with the Kheta is yet unproved and the association is made on unfounded grounds. This is not the same as denying that the Hittites ever existed. After 1906, as additional discoveries proved the existence of the Hittites, Wallis updated his work. Wallis was only waiting for the sufficient evidence to become available. This is what ought to be the norm: the time to accept a proposition is when reason and evidence supports it, not before. |
| Quoting Dr. Joseph P. Free stated, “Archaeology has confirmed countless passages which have been rejected by critics as unhistorical or contradictory to known facts... Yet archaeological discoveries have shown that these critical charges... are wrong and that the Bible is trustworthy in the very statements which have been set aside as untrustworthy... We do not know of any cases where the Bible has been proved wrong.” |
Lesson 56: Contradictions in the Bible[edit]
| Kirk's Comment: Many of us are intimidated about witnessing because we’re afraid someone will point out an error in the Bible that we can’t explain. Are there contradictions in the Bible, or do they just seem like contradictions? We’ll look at a few of these together. | The only thing that is intimidating is the truth, and as this review shows, nothing in this book has revealed a hint of truth. What Kirk and Ray attempt to complete in this chapter is using faith as a tool to cover obvious Bible contradictions, which are estimated to be numbered in the hundreds (if not thousands). What Ray does in the following is pick and choose only a couple of contradictions he believes are easy to settle, but his attempts are feeble and without merit. |
| Ray responds the objection “There are contradictions in the resurrection accounts. Did Christ appear first to the women or to His disciples?” Ray responds with: Both Matthew and Mark list women as the first to see the resurrected Christ.Mark says, “He appeared first to Mary Magdalene” (16:9). But Paul lists Peter (Cephas) as the first one to see Christ after His resurrection (1
Corinthians 15:5). Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, then to the other women, and then to Peter. Paul was not giving a complete list, but only the important one for his purpose. Since only men’s testimony was considered legal or official in the first century, it is understandable that the apostle would not list the women as witnesses in his defense of the resurrection. | Women's testimony was not disregarded as Ray claims, this is simply dead wrong (both socially and as a matter of law.[6] |
Ray then gives a list of the order of people the resurrected Jesus appeared to,
| Paul does not name any one of these witnesses, except Peter and James (though he does mention "the twelve" even though there were only eleven disciples when Jesus supposedly appeared, according to all the Gospels). As for the "500 brethren" report being sent to men in Greece (too far from Palestine to have any chance of checking the account), there is absolutely no evidence that these people existed. Paul gives us no account of who they were, where they came from, what the saw, how many were adults with sober minds, an more importantly why not a single one wrote or reported seeing a resurrected man. The only answer is that these "500 brethren" s just a umber written on paper; pure propaganda. |
| The Bible has many seeming contradictions within its pages. A contradiction is an inconsistency or discrepancy, which may give the appearance of an error. The four Gospels, for example, give four differing accounts as to what was written on the sign that hung on the cross. Matthew said, “This is Jesus the King of the Jews” (27:37). However, Mark contradicts that with “The King of the Jews” (15:26). Luke says something different: “This is the King of the Jews” (23:38), and John maintains that the sign read “Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews” (19:19). Those who are looking for contradictions may therefore say, “See—the Bible is full of mistakes!” and choose to reject it entirely as being untrustworthy. However, those who trust God have no problem harmonizing the Gospels. There is no contradiction if the sign simply read “This is Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.” | However, that is not what the sign said, now was it. What Ray has done is attempt to squeeze all the contradicting accounts of what was inscribed on the cross, but what Ray is doing here is basically creating his own gospel. None of the gospel writers say the inscription Ray just conjured, therefore Ray is twisting the Bible (a serious crime in Ray's worldview). |
| The godly base their confidence on two truths: 1) “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16); and 2) an elementary rule of Scripture is that God has deliberately included seeming contradictions in His Word to “snare” the proud. He has “hidden” things from the “wise and prudent” and “revealed them to babes” (Luke 10:21), purposely choosing foolish things to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27). If an ungodly man refuses to humble himself and obey the gospel, and instead desires to build a case against the Bible, God gives him enough material to build his own gallows. | 2 Timothy 3:16 does not claim that claim to be inspired by God; the “Scriptures” referred to in that verse refer to the Old Testament, and the term “inspiration” does not mean “word of God” either. (i.e. if a tree inspires me to write a poem about it, are they my words or the tree’s words?) In any case, the Bible itself does NOT even claim that all 66 books in it are infallible. So God inserts verses that are contradictory simply to fool people, and thus condemning them to eternal punishment? This is clearly an act of deception through and through. God, according to Ray and most fundamental Christians, claim that God cannot lie, and yet Ray just admitted that God tries to confuse people. |
| This incredible principle is clearly illustrated in the account of the capture of Zedekiah, king of Judah. Jeremiah the prophet told Zedekiah that God would judge him. He was informed that he would be “delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon” (Jeremiah 32:4). This is confirmed in Jeremiah 39:5–7 where we are told that he was captured and brought to King Nebuchadnezzar, then they “bound him with chains, to carry him to Babylon.” However, in Ezekiel 12:13, God Himself warned, “I will bring him to Babylon . . . yet he shall not see it, though he shall die there” (emphasis added). Here is material to build a case against the Bible! It is an obvious mistake. Three Bible verses say that the king would go to Babylon, and yet the Bible in another place says that he would not see Babylon. How can someone be taken somewhere and not see it? It makes no sense at all—unless Zedekiah was blinded. And that is precisely what happened. Zedekiah saw Nebuchadnezzar face to face, saw his sons killed before his eyes, then “the king of Babylon . . . put out Zedekiah’s eyes” before taking him to Babylon (Jeremiah 39:6,7).
This is the underlying principle behind the many “contradictions” of Holy Scripture (such as how many horses David had, who was the first to arrive at the tomb after the resurrection of Jesus, etc.). God has turned the tables on proud, arrogant, self-righteous man.When he proudly stands outside of the kingdom of God, seeking to justify his sinfulness through evidence that he thinks discredits the Bible, he doesn’t realize that God has simply lowered the door of life, so that only those who are prepared to exercise faith and bow in humility may enter. |
| Since every word of the Lord is pure, any seeming “mistakes” are there because God has put them there, and they are therefore not mistakes. In time, we will find that the “mistakes” are actually ours. Therefore, never have fear if someone points out a “contradiction” in the Bible that you can’t answer. Simply ask for the person’s phone number, e-mail, or mailing address so you can get back to him with a solid answer. If he doesn’t take you up on it, it proves that he really wasn’t interested in an answer but rather used the “contradiction” as a smoke screen to hide behind. It’s also interesting to note that the seeming contradictions in the Gospels attest to the fact that there was no corroboration between the writers. |
Lesson 58: Messianic Prophecies Part 1[edit]
| Kirk's comment:If Jesus is God, we should worship and obey Him. If Jesus is not God, then according to His own claims of His identity, we must dismiss Him as a liar or a crazy man. | Nothing in this book, or any of the books produced by Way of the Master has proven that Jesus, if he existed, was God. |
| Ray provides a response to the objection “On the cross, Jesus cried, ‘My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ This proves He was a fake. God forsook Him.” Ray responds with: Jesus’ words recorded in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 were the fulfillment of David’s prophecy in Psalm 22:1. Verse 3 of this psalm then gives us insight into why God forsook Jesus on the cross: “But You are holy. . .” A holy Creator cannot have fellowship with sin. When Jesus was on the cross, the sin of the entire world was laid upon Him (Isaiah 53:6; 2 Corinthians 5:21), but Scripture says God is “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity” (Habakkuk 1:13). | Psalm 22:1 is not a prophecy at all. The author of Mark merely plagiarized this passage from psalms, and Matthew copied everything from Mark (and this is not the only example, the list is huge). Isaiah 53 does not refer to Jesus.[7] |
Messianic Prophecies[edit]
| Unlike any other book, the Bible offers a multitude of specific predictions —some thousands of years in advance— that either have been literally fulfilled or point to a definite future time when they will come true. Fulfilled prophecies argue for omniscience—only one who is omniscient can accurately predict details of events thousands of years in the future. Limited human beings know the future only if it is told to them by an omniscient Being. | Prophecies depend on the principle of determinism. Since the future cannot be known, due to quantum theory and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, prophecies are not valid arguments. Prophecy that are declared fulfilled are virtually always vague or inevitable (such as the Bible predicting that there will be earthquakes in the future). |
| There are two categories of biblical prophecy: messianic (those that speak of the coming Messiah) and non-messianic. In his comprehensive catalogue of prophecies, The Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecies, J. Barton Payne lists 191 prophecies concerning the anticipated Jewish Messiah and Savior. Each was literally fulfilled in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. A sampling of these prophecies follows. | There are several mundane ways in which a prediction of the future can be fulfilled:
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Messiah’s Birth[edit]
| Isaiah predicted that one called Immanuel (“God with us”) would be born of a virgin: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (7:14). This prediction was made over 700 years in advance. The New Testament affirms that Jesus fulfilled this prediction, saying, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’—which means, ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:22,23). | First of all, Matthew 1:23 says that Jesus (the messiah) would be called Immanuel, which means "God with us." Yet no one, not even his parents, call him Immanuel at any point in the bible. Compared to Isaiah 7:14, which says that his mother will call him Immanuel, in Matthew 1:23, it says “THEY shall call his name Immanuel.” Matthew fails to identify who is ‘they’? Matthew changes Isaiah’s 3rd person feminine singular into 3rd person plural ‘they shall call…” The Septuagint in Isaiah 7:14 are the same in Greek and Hebrew.
Second of all, Isaiah 7:14 does not say that a virgin will give birth to the Messiah. The Hebrew word “alma” (for which “parthenos” is an erroneous translation) simply means “young woman,” without any implication of virginity. It seems all but certain that the Christian dogma of the virgin birth, and much of the church’s resulting anxiety about sex, was the result of a mistranslation from the Hebrew. Another strike against the doctrine of the virgin birth is that the other evangelists, Mark and John, seem to know nothing about—though both appear troubled by accusations of Jesus’ illegitimacy. Paul apparently thinks that Jesus is the son of Joseph and Mary. He refers to Jesus as being “born of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3—meaning that Joseph was his father), and “born of the woman” (Galatians 4:4—meaning the Jesus was really human), with no reference to Mary’s virginity. In summary, Isaiah 7's young maiden birth is not a prophecy about a coming messiah. Period. It was a sign to Ahaz (that a boy, not a girl, would be born of the young woman) which already happened during Ahaz’s lifetime. This makes the authors of the virgin birth gospels (Matthew and Luke) in error! Paul never mentions the supposed virgin birth of Jesus or any prophesies regarding it. Bible scholars tell us that Paul probably never even heard of the virgin birth story in relation to Jesus. |
| Micah made the unambiguous prophecy, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2). Even the unbelieving Jewish scribes identified this as a prediction of the Messiah and directed the inquiring magi to Bethlehem: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod,Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel’” (Matthew 2:1–6). | Micah 5:2 The gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:5-6) claims that Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem fulfils this prophecy. But this is unlikely for two reasons.
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Messiah’s Ancestry[edit]
| God declared in Genesis that the messianic blessing for all the world would come from the offspring of Abraham: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2,3; cf. 22:18). |
| Jesus Christ was indeed the seed of Abraham. Matthew’s Gospel begins, “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham” (1:1). Paul adds, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). | Matthew believed that Jesus was born of a virgin impregnated by the Holy Ghost, so including a genealogy would be pointless. To further add to the confusion, the Scripture cannot agree who was the real father of Joseph, as told in Luke and Matthew.
Luke 3:23 – And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli. Matthew 1:16 – And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Another problem is that Luke’s genealogy of Jesus goes through Nathan, which is not the royal line. Nor could Matthew’s line be royal after Jeconiah because the divine prophecy says of Jeconiah that “no man of his [Jeconiah] seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.” (Jeremiah 22:30) Even if Luke’s line does truly go through Mary, Luke reports that Mary was a cousin to Elizabeth, who was of the tribe of Levi, not the royal line. |
| The Redeemer would come through the tribe of Judah: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his” (Genesis 49:10). | The tribe of Judah will reign "until Shiloh," but Israel's first king (Saul) was from the tribe of Benjamin (Acts 13:21), and most of the time after this prophecy there was no king at all. Plus, Jesus never was a king. Nor does he control the obedience of the nations. The verse in Genesis has nothing to do with a spiritual king (Jesus). It says a king from an unbroken line of Judah would rule this earthly world. The line of Judaic kings was broken in 586 B.C. when Jerusalem fell to Babylon, and it was never restored. Not only does this verse say nothing about Jesus, it was a false prediction. |
| According to the New Testament genealogies, this was Jesus’ ancestry: Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli . . . the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham (Luke 3:23,33,34; cf.Matthew 1:1–3). For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah (Hebrews 7:14). | Luke’s genealogy of Jesus goes through Nathan, which is not the royal line. Nor could Matthew’s line be royal after Jeconiah because the divine prophecy says of Jeconiah that “no man of his [Jeconiah] seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.” (Jeremiah 22:30) Even if Luke’s line does truly go through Mary, Luke reports that Mary was a cousin to Elizabeth, who was of the tribe of Levi, not the royal line. |
| The books of Samuel record the prediction that the Messiah would be of the house of David. God said to David: “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” (2 Samuel 7:13,14). |
| The New Testament repeatedly affirms that Jesus Christ was “the son of David” (Matthew 1:1). Jesus Himself claimed to be “the son of David” (Matthew 22:42–45). The Palm Sunday crowd also hailed Jesus as “the son of David” (Matthew 21:9). Luke 1:32,33 says of Jesus: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” | Jesus cannot be the son of God because he had no bloodline on his father's side, since he was born of a virgin. As already stated, whether you follow Luke's or Matthew's genealogy off Jesus, both hit a brick wall since they were broken or condemned to produce offspring who will not inherit the throne. |
Herald of Messiah’s Coming[edit]
| Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be heralded by a messenger of the Lord who would be “a voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God’” (40:3). This prediction was literally fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist. Matthew records: “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’ This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: ‘A voice of one calling in the desert, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him”’” (3:1–3).
Isaiah 11:2 foretold that the Messiah would be anointed by the Holy Spirit for His ministry: “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.” This literally happened to Jesus at His baptism.Matthew 3:16,17 says, “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” |
| Isaiah 61 said that the Messiah would preach the gospel to the poor and brokenhearted. Jesus pointed out His fulfillment of this ministry in the Nazareth synagogue: The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:17–19).
Jesus carefully cut off his reading in the middle of a sentence, failing to add the next phrase, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” That refers to His second coming; it was not fulfilled that day in their hearing, as was the rest of the prophecy. Isaiah 35:5,6 declared that the Messiah would perform miracles to confirm His ministry, asserting: “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” The Gospel record is filled with Jesus’ miracles. For example: “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness” (Matthew 9:35). Jesus even cited these very things for John the Baptist as His messianic calling card: “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor” (Matthew 11:4,5). |
Messiah’s Work[edit]
| Among many psalms applicable to the ministry of Jesus is 118:22, which foretells Messiah’s rejection by His people: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.”
This very verse is cited repeatedly in the New Testament. For example, Peter wrote, “Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone’” (1 Peter 2:7; cf.Matthew 21:42;Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11). |
Lesson 59: Messianic Prophecies Part 2[edit]
| Kirk's comment: History proves the reliability of the Bible. When you know that you can trust the Bible as historically sound, and you see that history was predicted hundreds of years in advance, you have a solid case for the validity of the Scriptures. | This is demonstrably false, history does not attest to the Bible. Where is the historical evidence that a vast horde of zombies walked through the streets of Jerusalem at the death of a crucified man? Where is the evidence for a giant tower or a solar eclipse? Where is the evidence for the city of Nazareth in the 1st century? Where is the historical evidence for a couple named Adam and Eve in a garden? Where is the evidence for a global flood? Bottom line, the Bible is not a historical text. By Kirk's logic, if we cannot trust its history, then we cannot trust its predictions (especially when they have been proven false or never occurred). |
The Suffering and Death of Christ[edit]
One of the most amazing predictions about Christ in all of Scripture is that of Isaiah 53:2–12. This precise description predicts twelve aspects of the Messiah’s sufferings and death, all of which were literally fulfilled (see Matthew 26—27;Mark 15—16; Luke 22—23; John 18—19). Jesus . . .
| Isaiah 53 is not about Jesus.[8] Isaiah 52 sets the stage for chapter 53 in ways that further point to Israel being the servant. Chapter 52 describes the subjugation of Israel to the Gentiles (specifically Assyria) and tells of how Israel is made to suffer mockery and abuse at the hands of its captors.
Prophecies speak in a future tense, with terms of finality, such as "in the last days" (Isaiah 2:2, Hosea 3:4-5). If Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, whom Christians consider the Jewish messiah, why are there no indications of messianic prophecy in the chapter. Even more intriguing is the fact that most of Isaiah 53 is in past tense. Christians may read chapter 53 of Isaiah and note similarities to Jesus, without noticing how it 'prophesies' the servant in past tense. To modern believers, Jesus is in the past, but for the author of Isaiah 53, Jesus would have been a few hundred years into the future. What sort of prophecy uses past tense to predict a future event? Not all of Isaiah 53 is in the past though. The first nine verses describe the servant in past tense, and then verses 10-12 shift the tense to the future, speaking of how God will reward and deliver his servant. This is an important detail, because then Isaiah 53:1-9 are NOT prophecy – they simply set the stage for the prophecy in the last three verses of the chapter. There is only reference to suffering, not specifically to crucifixion. Nothing is said about Nazareth, Bethlehem, a virgin woman, or any of the identifiable characteristics of Jesus Christ in the bible. Isaiah 53:10 states that God made "[the servant's] life a guilt offering" too, which is not an offering of atonement like a sin offering, but is the sacrifice made for restitution or compensation, such as when a person would steal, take a false oath, or extort another individual. This seems to fit nicely with the view that Israel, though innocent, was taken captive by the Gentiles, who mocked and abused God's chosen. Thus to make Israel a guilt offering for the transgressions of the Gentiles would be far more appropriate than Jesus being a guilt offering that somehow redeems the sins of all mankind. |
| Further confirmation of the predictive nature of Isaiah 53 is that it was common for Jewish interpreters before the time of Christ to teach that Isaiah here spoke of the Jewish Messiah. Only after early Christians began using the text apologetically with great force did it become in rabbinical teaching an expression of the suffering Jewish nation. This view is implausible in the context of Isaiah’s standard references to the Jewish people in the first-person plural whereas he always refers to the Messiah in third-person singular, as in Isaiah 53 (“he,” “his,” and “him”).
Predictions elsewhere about Christ’s death include:
| Going in order,
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While it wasn’t recognized until after the fact, one of the most precise predictions in Scripture gives the very year in which the Christ would die. Daniel was speaking of both the exile of Israel and the atonement for sin when he recorded a prayer of confession for the sins of his people and a vision that the angel Gabriel gave him:
The context indicates that Daniel knew Gabriel was speaking of years, since he was meditating on the “number of years” God had revealed to Jeremiah that Jerusalem would lay waste, namely “seventy years” (v. 2). God told Daniel that it would be seven “sevens” plus sixty-two “sevens” (years) after the decree to rebuild before the Messiah would come and be cut off (die). In other words, it would be 69 × 7 = 483 years to the time of Christ’s death. Artaxerxes ordered Nehemiah “to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:25; cf. Nehemiah 2) in 445/444 B.C. Adding the widely accepted date of A.D. 33 for the crucifixion would be 444 + 33 = 477. Add six years to compensate for the five days in our solar year that are not in the lunar year followed by Israel (5 × 477 = 2,385 days or 6+ years): 477 + 6 = 483 years. Daniel’s prediction takes us to the very time of Christ. |
Christ’s Resurrection[edit]
| The Old Testament also foretold the resurrection of the Messiah from the dead. In Psalm 16:10 David declares, “You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.”
This passage is cited in the New Testament as predictive of the resurrection of Christ. Peter said explicitly of David’s prophecy, “But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay” (Acts 2:30,31). Indeed, using passages such as this, “Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,’ he said” (Acts 17:2,3). This would scarcely have been possible unless his skeptical Jewish audience did not recognize the predictive nature of passages such as Psalm 16. |
The Ascension of Christ[edit]
| In Psalm 110:1, David even predicted the ascension of Christ, writing, “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” In Matthew 22:43,44, Jesus applied this passage to Himself. Peter also applied it to the ascension of Christ: “For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”’” (Acts 2:34,35). | Psalm 110:1 is not a prophecy. The simple act of a gospel author plagiarizing from a text does not make it a fulfilled prophecy. |
PROPHECY AND THE MESSIAH[edit]
| It is important to note the unique aspect of biblical prophecies. Unlike many psychic predictions, many of these were very specific, giving, for example, the very name of the tribe, city, and time of Christ’s coming. Unlike forecasts found in tabloids at the supermarket checkout counter, none of these predictions failed.
Since the 191 prophecies of the Messiah were written hundreds of years before Christ was born, the prophets could not have been reading the trends of the times or making intelligent guesses. Many predictions were beyond human ability to fake a fulfillment. If Christ were a mere human being . . .
| NONE of these prophecies are specific, and the ones Ray claims that are are not specific enough that he cannot tell that they are not even addressing the coming of a savior.
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| It is statistically impossible that all these events would have converged randomly in the life of one man. Mathematicians have calculated the probability of just sixteen predictions being fulfilled in one person at 1 in 1045. For forty-eight predictions to meet in one person, the probability is 1 in 10157. It is almost impossible to even conceive of a number that large. But it is not just a statistical impossibility that rules out the theory that Jesus engineered His prophecy fulfillments; it is morally implausible that an all-powerful and all-knowing God would allow His plans for prophetic fulfillment to be ruined by someone who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. God cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18), nor can He break a promise (Joshua 23:14). So we must conclude that He did not allow His prophetic promises to be thwarted by chance. All the evidence points to Jesus as the divinely appointed fulfillment of the messianic prophecies. He was God’s man, confirmed by God’s signs (Acts 2:22). | Who are these mathematicians? Who? How did they calculate the odds? What models did they use?
The recipe for making a very high statistical trick is simple: simply state the odds that should be calculated before an event after the event as taken place. If you want the event to appear even more unlikely, begin adding complicated factors (which is very easy to do after the fact). And then viola! There you have it; you've made an ordinary event appear extraordinary. Of all the numerous uncertain factors in this universe, the same statistical methods can be repeated to make you next morning breakfast seem impossible. Here numerous simple explanations on how one man could fulfill such predictions;
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Feathers For Arrows[edit]
| Imagine that you tried to describe the workings of a television to someone who had never seen a TV set. You show him one and say, “This is a television set.When you press this button, a man comes on and reads the up-to-date news to you.”Your skeptical friend says, “How does he get into the box?” You reply, “He’s not actually in the box.” He says, “Is he in there or isn’t he?” You answer, “Well, his image is sent via invisible television waves through the air, to an antenna, down a wire, up a cord, and into the box.” Your friend becomes a little impatient and says, “So this newsreader of yours floats invisibly through the air, slides down an antenna, crawls up a cord, into your set? What kind of simpleton do you think I am?”
Your confidence isn’t shaken because you can prove your claim, fantastic though it may sound. You pass him the remote control and say, “Push the button and see for yourself.” The claim of the Christian faith is fantastic in the truest sense of the word—repent and trust in Jesus Christ, and the invisible God of creation will reveal Himself to you (John 14:21). Our confidence isn’t shaken in the face of a skeptical world, simply because the claim can be proven. Any skeptic who will push the button of repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ will experience the miracle of conversion. | Ray fails to show any proof that God is around and will manifest in our minds. The brain is capable of creating many experiences that seem real. These experiences can be activated and occur naturally without the interference of the supernatural. Studies have shown the simulation of the amygdala and hippocampus of the limbic system produces feelings of intense meaningfulness, of depersonalization, connection with God, of cosmic connectedness, out-of-body experiences,a feeling of not being of this world, deja vu, jamais vu, and hallucinations. These have been studied many times, including Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, DMT, and more that produce intense religious experiences. The reason why they seem so real is because they happen very close to our frontal lobes, the area of the brain that operates our five senses that help us perceive thins in the real world. Bottom line, it should be understood that these experiences are the results of brain activity, not supernatural connections. |
Lesson 61: Scientific Facts in the Bible Part 1[edit]
| Kirk's comment: The evidence for the existence of God is truly overwhelming — something of which many people are completely unaware. The laws of natural science, archeology, astronomy, biology, and prophecy all point to an infinitely intelligent Creator, as the next few lessons show. | None of the statements Kirk made in this comment are true. Laws of natural science only reveal the mechanisms of a natural world that do not require any supernatural or divine guidance.
Archeology does not support the Bible as much as Comfort wishes. In fact, due to the increasing contrary evidence against Biblical stories, the term “biblical archaeology” has been discarded by professional archaeologists. Neither astronomy and biology point to a "creator." Biology has revealed that humans are simply animals. Astronomy gives no hint of an "intelligent" craftsmanship. Kirk may be implying the anthropic principle, but the principle has been discredited. Finally, prophecies are not valid arguments for a creator. Prophecies are usually vague, self-fulfilled, or predict the inevitable. |
| Answering the question “If God is perfect, why did He make an imperfect creation?” Ray answers that "the Bible tells us that the Genesis creation was “good.” There was no sin and therefore no suffering or death." Why then did God give Adam and Eve the ability to sin, knowing full well that they would sin and bring death and pain to the human race? Some believe that if Adam had been created without the ability to choose, then he would have been a “robot.” A father cannot make his children love him. They choose to love him because they have a free will. Others point out that humanity would never have seen the depth of the love of God, as displayed in the cross, unless Adam had sinned, and that fact could be one reason why God allowed sin to enter the world." | No death? How about shark babies who must eat their fellow sibling embryos to survive while in their mother's womb. Why do humans have an immune system? If there was no suffering, why would our bodies need defenses from external forces? A world without death would be far from Edenic. Either there would be no possibility of new birth, in which case none of us could be alive today, or the world would become so overpopulated with living things that most people would be buried alive under others. Death is a necessary part of life. |
| Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power, and motion. Genesis 1:1,2 revealed such truths to the Hebrews in 1450 B.C.: “In the beginning [time] God created [power] the heaven [space] and the earth [matter] . . . And the Spirit of God moved [motion] upon the face of the waters.” The first thing God tells man is that He controls of all aspects of the universe. | This is not scientific, it is merely literacy analysis - basically one can link words and make anything seem to include certain concepts like motion and time. The Hermopolitan Creation is much older that the Genesis creation (in fact, Genesis may have copied from the Hermopolitan Creation), so Ray's comment that Genesis was the first to "discover" terms like motion, space and time is without merit. Here are several unscientific claim in the book of Genesis that Ray ether overlooks or deliberately dos not share with the reader. Genesis says the earth was without form, but water did exist. From that water, God made the land rise from the depths. Next, God creates vegetation, and project Earth is done. then afterwards, God creates the sun, moon and stars. First of all, science knows that is not the order of events ho the earth came to be, and we know that the sun and stars are not younger than the earth. |
| Only in recent years has science discovered that everything we see is composed of invisible atoms. Scripture tells us in Hebrews 11:3 that the “things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” | The ancient Greeks were already discussing the natural structure of the universe, for a long time the common belief was the universe was made of four elements. If the Bible were in any way scientific, this verse would obviously not begin "by faith" but "by observation." |
| It is also interesting to note that scientists now understand the universe is expanding or stretching out. Nine times in Scripture we are told that God stretches out the heavens like a curtain (e.g., Psalm 104:2). |
| At a time when it was believed that the earth sat on a large animal or a giant (1500 B.C.), the Bible spoke of the earth’s free float in space: “He ... hangs the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7). | Ray provides no source or reference that the common belief (among the common folk or amongst scientists) that the earth sat on the back of an animal or giant. That aside, does the Earth "hang upon nothing?" Actually, no. To define nothing is to say not real or non-existent but beneath the earth (and all around it) we find empty space, cosmic dust, stars, etc. Job 38:4-6 refers to earth having a foundation and footings, in direct contradiction to the idea that it is unsupported. Job 26:11 says heaven is supported by pillars. Many verses throughout the Bible refer to a solid firmament. |
| The prophet Isaiah also tells us that the earth is round: “It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). This is not a reference to a flat disk, as some skeptics maintain, but to a sphere. Secular man discovered this 2,400 years later. At a time when science believed that the earth was flat, it was the Scriptures that inspired Christopher Columbus to sail around the world. | Isiah and the Bible does not support a round earth.[9] The Bible does say "circle" but circles are 2 dimensional and flat, not spherical. The flat-earth position was widely held belief by early Christian fathers, who taught and preached that the earth was flat. Just to name a few:
|
| For ages, scientists believed in a geocentric view of the universe. The differences between night and day were believed to be caused by the sun revolving around the earth. Today, we know that the earth’s rotation on its axis is responsible for the sun’s rising and setting. But 4,000 or more years ago, it was written, “Have you commanded the morning since your days; and caused the day spring [dawn] to know his place? . . . It [the earth] is turned as clay to the seal” (Job 38:12,14). The picture here is of a clay vessel being turned or rotated upon the potter’s wheel—an accurate analogy of the earth’s rotation.
Luke 17:34–36 says the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur while some are asleep at night and others are working at daytime activities in the field. This is another clear indication of a revolving earth, with day and night occurring at the same time. |
| God told Job in 1500 B.C.: “Can you send lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, Here we are?” (Job 38:35). The Bible here is making what appears to be a scientifically ludicrous statement—that light can be sent, and then manifest itself in speech. But did you know that radio waves travel at the speed of light? This is why you can have instantaneous wireless communication with someone on the other side of the earth. Science didn’t discover this until 1864 when “British scientist James Clerk Maxwell suggested that electricity and light waves were two forms of the same thing” (Modern Century Illustrated Encyclopedia). Job 38:19 asks, “Where is the way where light dwells?” Modern man has only recently discovered that light (electromagnetic radiation) has a
“way,” traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Science has discovered that stars emit radio waves, which are received on earth as a high pitch. God mentioned this in Job 38:7: “When the morning stars sang together. . .” |
Lesson 65: Evolution Part 1[edit]
| Kirk's comment: Evolution is a religion that is believed by men and women, boys and girls, intellectuals and fools. I was one of them until I was willing to investigate the facts. | The first piece of original text written paints the underlying theme behind these chapters - evolution is a religion. Evolution is NOT a religion. Evolution as religion has been rejected by the courts: Assuming for the purposes of argument, however, that evolution is a religion or religious tenet, the remedy is to stop the teaching of evolution, not establish another religion in opposition to it. Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause. The court cases Epperson v. Arkansas, Willoughby v. Stever, and Wright v. Houston Indep. School Dist. |
Ray attempts to answer the question “Doesn’t the Big Bang theory disprove the Genesis account of creation?” Ray responds with
| The child's logic Ray is so fond of claiming can prove God will lead you astray here. You might think that an event with "bang" in its name was an explosion, but it wasn't. Instead, it was more akin to the everything in existence being in a very hot dense state, which then expanded.[10] This expansion was not an explosion, with chunks of matter flying off at random, but rather the space itself expanding, spreading the universe apart, like spots on a balloon travelling away from each other as it is blown up. The big bang theory states that a great many things happened en-route to the universe we see today, but at no point did it "explode." Thus proclaiming that as explosions don't produce order, neither did the big bang is to make an irrelevant analogy, akin to going "if cows don't produce coke then coke doesn't exist." Like comparing the big bang to an explosion, comparing a sealed, empty garage's inability to spontaneously generate a Mercedes to the earth is a horribly flawed analogy on many levels; so to use it to dismiss evolution is a horribly flawed argument. For starters, unlike the garage, the earth is not sealed. It is an open system with huge amounts of energy pouring in from the sun and the occasional lump of space rock providing minerals. Further, unlike the empty garage, the earth is not desolate and stripped of resources. Even if you ignore life on this planet, you're still left with a plethora of chemicals, compounds and rocks which are needed for certain types of life. Finally there is the biggest problem - what you're expecting to appear in the garage is an inanimate non-biological object. What you expect to appear on the earth is very animate and very biological. |
| Ray then attempts to explain the creationist word "kind." He says "The Book of Genesis tells us that God created everything—nothing “evolved.” Every creature was given the ability to reproduce after its own kind as is stated ten times in Genesis 1. Dogs do not produce cats. Neither do cats and dogs have a common ancestry. Dogs began as dogs and are still dogs. They vary in species from Chihuahuas to Saint Bernards, but you will not find a “dat” or a “cog” (part cat/dog) throughout God’s creation. Frogs don’t reproduce oysters, cows don’t have lambs, and pregnant pigs don’t give birth to rabbits. God made monkeys as monkeys, and man as man."
Ray later on says "Each creature brings forth after its own kind. That’s no theory; that’s a fact. Why then should we believe that man came from another species? If evolution were true, it would prove that the Bible is false. However, the whole of creation stands in contradiction to the theory of evolution. Evolution is science fiction. While we do see what’s called “microevolution”—variations within species (such as different types of dogs)—we don’t see any evidence of “macroevolution”—one species evolving into another species. Microevolution is observable, while macroevolution takes a tremendous leap of faith. If Christians had as much faith in God as atheists have in the theory of evolution, we would see revival. Like little children, atheists believe without a shred of evidence." | Here Ray says “kinds” of animals do not variate into new “kinds.” Of course creationists can’t say what a “kind’ is either, because it’s impossible to identify any point in taxonomy where everything that ever lived isn’t evidently related to everything else. So they largely ignore phylogenetics altogether. If “kind” is determined of an animal producing something of itself, then there is only one kind overall: life. But the fact is Ray doesn’t get to conveniently redefine what these terms have always meant to the scientists who invented those words in the first place. According to Universities actually teaching this subject, microevolution is variation within species, and macroevolution is variation between species. The different breeds of dogs are an example of microevolution, while the different species of wolves and foxes, panthers and felines, horses and zebras, or llamas and camels –are all examples of macroevolution. Each set is definitely biologically closely-related, but they’re each different species, not different “kinds” of the same one.
Macroevolution is properly defined as the emergence of new taxa at or above the species level. The only time creationists will use the proper definition is when they are as-yet unaware of the fact that speciation has already been directly-observed and documented dozens of times –both in the lab and in naturally-controlled conditions in the field. In fact, we’ve seen it so many times we’ve had to categorize recurrent types of macroevolution we’ve seen so often repeated. Once creationists find out about all this, their first reaction is to use the excuse that some newly evolved species of fruit fly or fish somehow still doesn’t count because it’s “still” a fly or it’s “still” a fish. Well of course it is! Evolution couldn’t permit them to be anything else. Creationists demand that the new species be so different from their parents that one can’t even tell they’re related. The irony there is that evolutionary theory never suggests that one “kind” of thing ever turned into another, fundamentally-different “kind” of anything, not unless you ignore all the intermediate stages –which of course creationists do. To comprehend Evolutionary Theory, one must first understand that it’s only ever a matter of changing proportions –altering or enhancing existing features to build on what is already there. Developmental biology, genetics, and comparative morphology combine to confirm many of these taxonomic stages such that organs do not seem to have appeared abruptly or fully-formed as if out of nowhere, because there is an implied evolutionary origin evident in every case. Even the transition of fish-to-tetrapods, dinosaurs-to-birds, or apes-to-men are each are just a matter of incremental, superficial changes being slowly compiled atop successive tiers of fundamental similarities. These represent monophyletic clades which will forever encompass all the descendants of that clade. This is why birds are still dinosaurs, and humans are still apes, and both are still stegocephalian chordates. No matter how much you or your heirs may change, you obviously can’t outgrow heredity. The very concept of common ancestry is a multi-tiered and intertwined complex phylogenetic system which shows why there can’t be any distinctly separate “kinds” to begin with! At the same time, the act of speciation splits the population presenting an eventually impassable boundary between them. We often see this demonstrated live in the form of “ring species”, where different evolutionary stages exist all at once in a geographic rather than chronological distribution. Subspecies (A) may breed with subspecies (B), and (B) may breed with (C), and (C) with (D), but (A) and (D) cannot interbreed because by the time their territories overlap again, they’ve grown too distant genetically, and can’t come back. This is when we see the formation of new features, organs, or skeletal structures, each examples of new genetic “information.” What all these show is that even though a new species of perching bird (for example) is “still” a finch, it is now a different “kind” of finch, a distinct descendant species proving there is no “boundary” against macroevolution. As the evidence just pointed out, there are no “kinds” (or boundaries) at all and all life shares a common ancestry. Ray states that cats and dogs do not ave a common ancestry, but apparently they do and we can show and prove it.[11] Ray attempts to immaturely mock the theory of evolution by claiming that no “dat” or “cog” (meaning no part-dog part-cat) will ever be found. But has it already been found? Has Ray ever seen or heard of creatures like the Aardwolf? It looks like a tiny fox, and many people mistake it for a wolf based on its name. However, the Aardwolf is no a wolf at all, in fact it is more related to cats (which has been proven by genetics and taxonomy). Hyenas look like dogs, but they are not dogs. In summary, if God indeed made monkeys as monkeys (which there is no evidence for), then God made man as monkeys. Despite Ray's pleas and denials, humans are apes, biologically, definitely and definitively. Ray asks “Why then should we believe that man came from another species?” The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes, and why should we believe it? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now! And we are not saying that because some scientists want you to believe it. We say it because we can prove it, and the fact remains if you believe it or not. Just as it is a fact that humans are mammals, it is a fact that humans are apes. |
| Ray quotes Stephen J. Gould “This notion of species as ‘natural kinds’ fits splendidly with creationist tenets of a pre-Darwinian age. Louis Agassiz even argued that species are God’s individual thoughts, made incarnate so that we might perceive both His majesty and His message. Species, Agassiz wrote, are ‘instituted by the Divine Intelligence as the categories of his mode of thinking.’ But how could a division of the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of nature?” | More than anything, Ray's use of this passage should be enough to make you be skeptical of everything he says as it demonstrates he does not bother to read the sources he quotes from nor does he care whether these quotes are representative of his opponent's position. If one were to read what Stephen J. Gould is writing, you would find he is actually saying, in essence "an error in evolutionary thinking is to view it as contradicting the existence of species because it says everything is constantly changing. Species exist, so this is wrong. Evolution actually suggests there is rapid change between species, not constant change."[12] |
Ray then includes a pie from creationist Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis
| Firstly, we have Ken Ham, the founder and leader of the young-earth creationist organization [Answers in Genesis]] admit that natural selection and adaption are indeed biological facts.
What Ham objects to is that mutations adding information. So the question is: do mutations add information? Apparently, they indeed do and we can demonstrate and prove it. The evolution of life is analogous to the evolution of language. For example, there are several languages based on the Roman alphabet of only 26 letters. Yet by arranging these in different orders, we’ve added several hundred thousand words to English since the 5th century, and many of them were completely new. The principle is the same in genetics. There are millions of named and classified species of life, all of them based on a variable arrangement of only four chemical components. For another example, we know that Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese all evolved from Latin, a vernacular which is now extinct. Each of these newer tongues emerged via a slow accumulation of their own unique slang lingo –thus diverging into new dialects, and eventually distinct forms of gibberish such that the new Romans could no longer communicate with either Parisians or Spaniards. Similarly, if we took an original Latin speaking population and divided them sequestered in complete isolation over several centuries, they might still be able to understand each other, or their jargon may have become unintelligible to foreigners. But they won’t start speaking Italian or Rumanian because identical vocabularies aren’t going to occur twice. It works the same way in biology. Mutations are degrees of variation which are usually quite subtle but cumulative, normally harmless, and occasionally advantageous. Any change in information is different information, not already present, and therefore can only be considered “new”. But of the many types of mutations known to occur, there are additions and duplications as well as deletions and the rest. So yes, genetic material can be added or taken away. But as to whether “information” has been added as opposed to lost, we can’t really tell because creationists won’t tell us what they think “information” is or how to measure it. They’ll readily state (as if it had somehow been confirmed) that it takes more "information" to make a bird than it does a dinosaur, but if you ask 'em how much more, they’ll shut right up. And if you demand to see the data that justifies how they could even make that claim in the first place, they’ll to change the subject. Do reptile genes contain the “information” for feathers? Apparently the do, and has already been demonstrated through the fact of adaptation (which Ken accepts). Genetics as well the fossil record have shown us that dinosaurs did indeed develop feathers (which may not have flown at first, but feathers none the less). |
| Ray the talks about vestigial organs "Evolutionists also claim that the human body has vestigial organs — worthless leftovers from evolution—such as the appendix and tailbone. The truth is that these do have a purpose: the appendix is part of the human immune system, and the “tailbone” actually supports muscles that are necessary for daily bodily functions." | The misconception about evolution in this paragraph is that it claims vestigial organs have no purpose. This is not the case, a vestigial organ is merely something which has lost its original purpose.[13] It doesn't have to have no purpose at all, just lack its original use. The tailbone may very well support muscles but its no longer a tail and the appendix may play a role in our immune system but it is no longer used to digest leaves.[14] This provides evidence for evolution because it demonstrates that the organism in question has changed. The tailbone has been altered from its original format, demonstrating humanity evolved.[15] What they changed into isn't useless but that doesn't mean they haven't changed. |
The Peppered Moth: Evolution Comes Unglued[edit]
| For the large bulk of this section, Ry quotes Mark Verney. “However, this ‘clearest case’ of purported Darwinian evolution by natural selection is not true! The nocturnal peppered moth does not rest on the trunks of trees during the day. In fact, despite over 40 years of intense field study, only two peppered moths have ever been seen naturally resting on tree trunks! So where did all the evolution textbook pictures of peppered moths on different colored tree trunks come from? They were all staged. The moths were glued, pinned, or placed onto tree trunks and their pictures taken." | he problem with this passage is it conflates the staged images used to illustrate the study with the study itself, akin to arguing that since an artist's depiction of what a dinosaur looked like is fake the fossil itself doesn't exist. The photo is not the study, it is merely a staged example to make it easier to understand. There are several actual investigations into how Peppered Moths have changed which have shown that the two variants of the species (black and white) have changed throughout time. In the 1800s white was the overwhelming majority but in the 1900s the balance swung the other way. The idea being that as the environment got increasingly more polluted the white moth's stood out more and were eaten more often by birds. There is some debate over if that is the correct answer for why the change but the discussion has absolutely nothing to do with text book photos being posed.[15] And for the record, a single study observed 12 Peppered Moths resting on tree trunks, the other 35 in the study were found on branches.[16] |
| Ray quotes Harvard professor and evolutionist Steven Jay Gould, making it appear that there is a scientific bias: “Facts do not ‘speak for themselves’; they are read in light of theory.” Even Charles Darwin concedes, “Alas, how frequent, how almost universal it is in an author to persuade himself of the truth of his own dogmas.” When scientists proclaim the theory of evolution as “fact,” keep in mind that they are not unbiased observers who are simply reporting the evidence." | Ray shies away from making an actual argument against change here because doing so would expose an absurd hypocrisy in his thinking - since all of science involves interpretation to use its existence to argue solely against evolution is inconsistent. Instead, he merely raises the issue and then leaves it hanging, failing to explain how all of science is vulnerable to this and how, as such, all of science works to compensate for it. |
| Ray ends this section with a quote from Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote in the Foreword to Origin of Species (100th edition), "Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.” | This is quite simply 100% ficticious[17] and an example of one creationist making up a lie, and it being spread from creationist to creationist without any of them verifying it. Perhaps the most hilarious part is that this quote is supposed to be from a book published 4 years after Sir Arthur Keith died. Sir Arthur Keith did write a foreword for Origin of Species, in 1928, but the quote is not related to that at all, or representative of Sir Arthur Keith's actual views on the Theory of Evolution. All signs are that the quote is simple creationist dishonesty. |
Feathers for Arrows[edit]
| Ray gives a scenario of a lion devouring a doe, going into grim detail of the slaughter. Next, Ray states the following: It is a strong consolation to know that this isn’t the way God planned it in the beginning. Animals were not created to devour each other; they were created to be vegetarian (Genesis 1:29,30). The original creation was “good” and was not filled with violence and bloodshed. We live in a fallen creation (Romans 8:20–23). As a result of Adam’s sin, the perfect creation was cursed and death was introduced into the world (Romans 5:12). The day will come when the entire creation will be delivered from the “bondage of corruption” and there will be no more curse. In the new heaven and new earth, “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock . . .They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain” (Isaiah 65:25; see also Isaiah 11:6–9). | All animals create to be vegetarian? So animals with sharp teeth (like sharks, dinosaurs, lions, piranha’s, snakes, etc) use their sharp teeth to crush and grind grass? No, sharp teeth are meant to devour meat and bones. Why would snakes be made with fangs that inject venom? Were they meant to poison or paralyze their salads? While still in their mother's womb, shark babies must eat their fellow sibling embryos to survive. This is simply cannibalism, and every shark is born a predator. Many animals have strict diets that they can only be carnivores and scavengers. And why should man be given the blame for all the suffering in the world, especially if God is all-knowing and made man in the first place? |
Lesson 66: Evolution Part 2[edit]
Questions and Objections[edit]
| “Where did Cain get his wife?” Ray answers that Cain and Abel must have married their sisters, until God later outlawed marriage between immediate family members. |
Man's Dominion[edit]
| Ray says that man was created “without understanding” (Ps. 32:9) and human beings are different than the other animals because we are made in the “image of God” and we are aware of our awareness. Ray says only humans appreciate creation (sunlight, Grand Canyon, music, etc). Man has the ability to discover natural laws and appreciate special metals.
Ray says we are more than just animals in the evolutionary chain, because God gave man domain (authority) over the other animals because we have a higher intellect. Ray then gives examples of animals tamed by humans and how certain animals provide for humans. Ray then quote mines Stephen Hawking. | Our “awareness of our awareness” can be explained by evolution with no need to include magic or the supernatural.[18] Man does not have “authority” over the rest of the animals kingdom because humanity was given permission from some divine entity. |
Low Probabilities Refute Evolution[edit]
| Here, Ray argues the extreme probabilities of abiogenesis refute evolution. Ray quotes Sir Fred Hoyle “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from materials therein.”
Ray then says a famous mathematician (no name given) says that the likelihood of life forming naturally is 10^40,009 and thus refutes Darwin's theory, and states there never was a primordial soup on this planet nor any other. The source for this comes from Evolution From Space Ray then brings up Michael Behe, while noting he supports evolution, says that Darwin's theory cannot explain the cellular systems that are too complex to have evolved randomly. | Hoyle's Boeing 747 analogy does not affect the theory of evolution, it also fails to represent abiogenesis.[19]
The odds against abiogenesis does not affect the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution only explains how life diversified after life came about (however it did - which turns out to actually be abiogenesis). Evolution From Space was written by Sir Fred Hoyle, an astronomer not a mathematician. Every objection brought forth by Behe has shown to be false. Every complex system has been shown and proven to evolve naturally. |
Earth's Population Refutes Evolution[edit]
Ray provides a paragraph from Grant R. Jeffery. Jeffery states the following;
| The traditional date for the Flood is 2350 B.C.E. with only eight survivors (Noah and his family). In 1446 B.C.E., Moses was said to be leading 600,000 men (plus women and children) on the Exodus (this is not including the population of the Egyptians and over every human civilization across the globe. So we have a 900 year gap. Assuming that every generation is 43 years apart with 2.5 children, bu the time Noah's family multiplied, less than a hundred people would be left. So based on this mathematics, the Bible is completely wrong. However, the truth is this mathematical formula is deeply flawed. For one thing, it is too concrete, and does not take into account wars, plagues, famines, infertility, murder, accidental death, and such. |
Preachers Progress[edit]
| Ray provides a scenario of an evangelical preacher meeting two environmental people who both accept evolution. The environmentalists are trying to save the trees because they are the lungs of the earth. The evangelical then asks what do they think about abortion? The answer it is a woman's choice. Next, the evangelical asks them “what is the number one killer of drivers in the United States?” They answer drunk driving, but the evangelical answers trees. Ray then provides in italics “Living the highways of America are millions of trees. When a car goes off road and hits a tree, the tree doesn't move, the driver does – into eternity.” | Blaming trees for the death of drivers is like blaming the ground for killing sky divers or people who trip and hit their heads. We don' do that. Rather, we blame the cause of what made people fatally collide with the trees or ground. Drunk or distracted driving, faulty brakes, rainy or slippery road, parachute had a hole, and so on and so on. |
Lesson 66: Evolution Part 3[edit]
| Ray begins with a quotation from Michael Ruse. “An increasing number of scientists, most particularly a growing number of evolutionists . . . argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory is no genuine scientific theory at all . . . Many of the critics have the highest intellectual credentials.” MICHAEL RUSE, “Darwin’s Theory: An Exercise in Science,” New Scientist | Ruse's claims are 3 decades old, and many prominent evolutionary biologists call him clueless.[20] [21] |
| Quote from Kirk: The earth is a masterpiece of God’s design and creativity. Even scientists stand in awe and wonder of this beautiful display of God’s handiwork. | "Masterpiece" "design" and "creativity" are very poor choice of words. Volcanoes, disease, tsunamis, cancer, earthquakes, and so on does not point to the handiwork of a all-loving deity. |
| Starts off with the objection "Adam was a mythical figure who never actually existed." Ray responds that Adam is a key figure in the bible, and him as well as his descendants are described in the Bible as literal people. Ray says if Adam did not exist, then neither did his descendants. Jesus claims to be a descendant of Adam, and Ray claims "it is impossible to be descended from a myth. | The claim of being descended from a mythical person does not give credence that the said mythical person was actually not a myth at all. Augustus Caesar claimed to be a descendant of Aphrodite, he claimed that he had actual genealogical proof. While we can verify that Augustus existed, his self-description of his heritage does not prove the existence of Aphrodite. Likewise, it is easy to claim that Adam was a myth, as well as Jesus (see Jesus myth theory). |
| Ray argues the rejection of the Bible’s account of creation as given in the Book of Genesis could rightly be called "Genecide." Ray says this "intellectual genocide" has given the godless "a temporary license to labor to the extremes of their imagination, giving birth to painful conjecture about our human beginnings. They speak in speculation, the uncertain language of those who drift aimlessly across the endless sea of secular philosophy." Whereas, as Ray states, the Bible speaks in a matter-of-fact style regarding man's origins and purpose. Furthermore, Ray says "Genesis explains the origins of sin, the curse, death, marriage, the family, government, and so on." Ray only emphasizes on marriage, claiming "In teaching about the significance of marriage (Mark 10:6–9), Jesus confirmed that the creation of Adam and Eve was a real historical event when He quoted Genesis 1:27 and 2:24." |
Creation in Six Days[edit]
When addressing the actual creation of the planet, Ray turns to Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis who claims that the universe and Earth is a mere 6,000 years old and was created in 6 literal 24 hour periods. Ham says the following,
| For the sake of argument, allowing Ken Ham's interpretation of Genesis claiming the earth was created in 6 literal 24 hour days, then by that alone Genesis and Scripture would be completely false since there is not a single shred of evidence that the Earth formed in such a way via magically. |
Next, Ray introduces Dr. James Barr (professor of Hebrew at Oxford University) and provides a quote from Barr,
|
Points to Ponder About the Flood and Noah’s Ark[edit]
| To address Noah's Flood, Ray turns to the incarcerated "Dr." Kent Hovind. Hovind first quotes 2 Peter 3:3-8, calling those who scoff at the Bible are people who are "willingly ignorant. Hovind offers 23 "points" that he claims make the flood a fact of geology and history. | Most all of these points are addressed at Talk-Origins. |
| 1. Over 500 Flood legends from all parts of the world have been found. Most have similarities to the Genesis account. | 1. Floods, like volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes and lightning, are natural disasters with unknown causes. In ancient era, humans blamed the unknown on the supernatural. Mr. Hovind interpretation of these flood myths actually do not represent the Noah flood myth at all (see Kent Hovind's Creation Seminar: Dinosaurs and the Bible for details). |
| 2. Noah’s ark was built only to float, not to sail anywhere. Many ark scholars believe that the ark was a “barge” shape, not a pointed “boat” shape. This would greatly increase the cargo capacity. Scoffers have pointed out that the largest sailing ships were less than 300 feet because of the problem of twisting and flexing the boat. These ships had giant masts and sails to catch the wind. Noah’s ark needed neither of those and therefore had far less torsional stress. | 2. |
| 3. Even using the small 18-inch cubit (my height is 6'1" and I have a 21-inch cubit), the ark was large enough to hold all the required animals, people, and food with room to spare. | 3. |
| 4. The length-to-width ratio of 6 to 1 is what shipbuilders today often use. This is the best ratio for stability in stormy weather. | 4. |
| 5. The ark may have had a “moon-pool” in the center. The larger ships would have a hole in the center of the bottom of the boat with walls extending up into the ship. There are several reasons for this feature:
a) It allowed water to go up into the hole as the ship crested waves. This would be needed to relieve strain on longer ships. b) The rising and lowering water acted as a piston to pump fresh air in and out of the ship. This would prevent the buildup of dangerous gasses from all the animals on board. c) The hole was a great place to dump waste into the ocean without going outside. | 5. The moon pool, according to the British term this: 2-tonne Square Wheel Syndrome. This 2-tonne wheel will roll if you find a steep enough grade, utilize a large block and tackle, a few pry bars, a chainfall, 2 logs, 3 come-alongs, a few dozen strong men... you see the problem. |
| 6. The ark may have had large drogue (anchor) stones suspended over the sides to keep it more stable in rough weather. Many of these stones have been found in the region where the ark landed. | 6. Actually, these stones are found throughout Armenia. The "anchor" stones likely had nothing to do with Christianity or the ark. Such stones were known to have been crafted by pagans for their worship before Christianity came to Armenia. The "rope holes" were niches for lamps. When Christianity came to the region, the stones were Christianized by inscribing Christian symbols on them.[22] The rock from which the anchor stones are made is volcanic rock found around Mount Ararat where the anchor stones were found, but not found in Mesopotamia (Iraq) from which Noah is alleged to have departed (Collins and Fasold 1996). If the stones were crafted by Noah, they would have come from the region where Noah came from, not where he landed. |
| 7. Noah lived for 950 years. Many Bible scholars believe the pre-Flood people were much larger than modern man. Skeletons over 11 feet tall have been found. If Noah were taller, his cubit (elbow to finger-tip) would have been much larger also. This would make the ark larger by the same ratio. | 7. it is impossible for the human body to live 900 years. Only about 25 11 foot-tall skeletons have been found. They are statistically irrelevant when you consider the world population ranging in the billions. Should a rare trait found to exist in 25 individuals compared to 6 billion as anecdotal evidence? No, it proves nothing. When you consider these 25 skeletons represent the entire population of giants throughout history, Mr. Hovind's hypothesis is laughable. There is no clue or evidence determining the height of Noah because Noah is a fictional character to begin with. That aside, speculating on his height to keep the dimensions of the Ark a mystery is a typical creationist method - vagueness. In this case, creationists like Kent Hovind and Ray Comfort do not actually think and create testable models. Rather, their best response is a vague scenario leaving the details out and including several unverifiable factors. |
| 8. Noah brought two kinds of animals onto the Ark (sometimes seven of each kind), not of each species or variety. Noah had only two of the dog kind, which includes wolves, coyotes, foxes, mutts, etc. The "kind" grouping is probably closer to our modern family division in taxonomy, which would greatly reduce the space need for the Ark. Animals have greatly diversified since the Flood 4,400 years ago. This "diversification" is not anything similar to the great claims that evolution teaches. | 8. |
| 9. Noah did not have to go and get all the animals, God brought them to him. | 9. How??? That is the central question: How did God escort the animals to the Ark. How did the flightless New Zealand Kiwi reach the Middle East? |
| 10. Only land-dwelling animals had to be brought aboard. | 10. Where the dinosaurs brought unto the Ark? Even if not, could they all fit? |
| 11. Many animals sleep, hibernate or become inactive during cold weather. | 11. Most animals do not hibernate, and most of the ones that do are small animals. The large animals are the ones that require the most food and care. Among them, hibernation would probably have been an insignificant factor. According to the Global Flood, the highest mountain was flooded. In order to cover the highest mountain today, Mt. Everest, the sea level would have to rise to 29,055 feet. Virtually all animals in an environment at that height which they are not accustomed to would die instantly. Even animals that could survive in severe cold weather would die due to lack of oxygen. |
| 12. All animals and people were vegetarians before and during the Flood. | 12. This cannot be, because certain creatures have strict diets, often times carnivorous. How would a family of eight even feed all the animals? Three hundred and twenty full-time employees are needed to care for fewer than 3000 animals at the Washington National Zoo. On the ark, there were eight people to tend more than 15,000 animals (assuming Noah's crew were not needed to do maintenance and bail water). They would have had to work more than fifty times harder than professional zookeepers. Double shifts are not enough to make up the difference. |
| 13. Pre-flood people were probably smarter and more technological developed than people today. They had longer life-spans and Adam had direct contact with God. | 13. There is absolutely no evidence that ancient Bronze Age civilization was more technological or smarter than present day people. |
| 14. The Bible says the highest mountain was covered by 15 cubits of water. Hovind says "This is half the height of the Ark. The Ark was safe from scrapping bottom at all times." | 14. So the Ark was only 30 cubits tall? |
| 15. The larger mountains that exist today did not exist until after the Flood. | 15. How high was the highest mountain then, and were is the geological evidence that mountains did not rise as high as Everest? |
| 16. There is enough water in the ocean to flood the world by 8,000 feet, if the Earth was smoother. | 16. This is speculation, because they would have to flatten the whole surface of earth to such a large degree. |
| 17. Hovind says many claim that the Ark has been found in recent times. Two schools of thought: one says that the Ark is on Mt. Ararat covered in snow (CBS showed a special on this in 1993), the other says that the Ark is 17 miles south of Mt. Ararat in the “valley of eight.” | 17. |
| 18. The continents were not separated until 100-300 years AFTER the flood (Genesis 10:25). People and the animals have had plenty of time to migrate across the world since then. | 18. No date is provided when exactly the Flood ended. There is no geological evidence that the continents separated to their present location in a mere span of 100-30 years. Rather, it would have taken several million. |
| 19. The top 3,000 feet of Mt. Everest (26,000-29,000 feet) is made up of sedimentary rock packed with sea shells and other ocean-dwelling rocks. | 19. Shells on mountains are easily explained by uplift of the land. Although this process is slow, it is observed happening today, and it accounts not only for the seashells on mountains but also for the other geological and paleontological features of those mountains. The sea once did cover the areas where the fossils are found, but they were not mountains at the time; they were shallow seas.
A flood cannot explain the presence of marine shells on mountains for the following reasons:
|
| 20. Sedimentary rock is found all over the world. Sedimentary rock is formed in water. | 20. |
| 21. Petrified clams in the closed position (found all over the world, even on the top of Mt. Everest) testify to their rapid burial while they were still alive. | 21. See point 19 above. |
| 22. Bent rock layers, fossil graveyards, and polystrata fossils are best explained by a Flood. | 22. Polystrata fossils are not explained by the flood.[24] Single floods can deposit sediments up to several feet thick. Furthermore, trees buried in such sediments do not die and decay immediately; the trunks can remain there for years or even decades.[25] |
| 23. People chooses not to believe in the Flood because it speaks of the judgment of God's on sin (2 Peter 3:3-8) | 23. This is not an argument or positive proof for the flood. |
One Common Ancestor[edit]
| Ray claims that science has proven that we all come from a single ancestor. Despite us all being descendants of Noah, we are all descendants of Adam. Ray quotes a U.S. News and World Report stating “Researchers suggest that virtually all modern men – 99% of them, says one scientist – are closely related genetically and share genes with one male ancestor, dubbed 'Y-Chromosome Adam.' We are finding that humans have very, very shallow genetic roots which go back very recently to one common ancestor... That indicates that there was an origin in a specific location on the globe, and then it spread from there.” (December 4, 1995) | This video will explain why this "Y-Chromosome Adam" as well as "Mitochondrial Eve" is not what creationists imply what it means. "Y-Chromosome Adam" is not the only male in the human species (Within his own generation and the male humans before him), nor is he alive around the same time "Mitochondria Eve" is alive (rather, they are 70,000 years apart). Same for "Mitochondria Eve" - she is not the first female woman (more exist within her generation and had existed long before she existed). "Y-Chromosome Adam" and "Mitochondria Eve" did not live at the same time (and likely not the same place). |
Lesson 67: Evolution Part 4[edit]
We Are Wonderfully Made[edit]
| Ray introduces Michael Behe, noting that Behe accepts the theory of evolution, claims that there are several mechanisms in living organisms that are too complex to have evolved randomly. He provides the mouse trap as an example. Removal of any part, and the mouse trap loses its function. | Every mechanism Behe has objected to being too complex to evolve has been shown to be false. Even his mouse trap analogy is flawed. For instance, it is possible to form a mouse trap with four or three parts.
Plus, nature is fully capable of creating a "trap" naturally — not for mice, but for flies. The Venus Fly trap is a great example, that developed through small gradual steps. The theory of evolution says that small gradual changes develop into complex mechanisms. Still using the mousetrap, starting with the base. The base alone can serve a wide range of purposes, but as far as killing mice, natural selection would favor any development that would assist the trap. Keep this process up, and before you know it, you have a conventional mouse trap with 5 parts. |
| Next, Ray brings up the human eye. Ray says that any removal part of the eye, and the rest is “worthless.” Ray quote-mines Charles Darwin on the eye, “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” Ray says the eye contains 137 million light-sensitive cells, and this could not have evolved naturally. Ray quotes Darwin again, “If it can be shown to not evolve through gradual steps, then my theory would completely break down.” Based on this, Ray says Darwin admitted evolution cannot be true and we are therefore fearfully and wonderfully created. | The quote is taken out of context. Darwin answered the seeming problem he introduced. The paragraph continues,
Darwin continues with three more pages describing a sequence of plausible intermediate stages between eyelessness and human eyes, giving examples from existing organisms to show that the intermediates are viable. |
Evolution and Blood[edit]
| Ray brings up the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting system, particularly the blood platelets. These platelets promote the clotting process to release proteins called “clotting factors.” To form this requires 12 specific individual chemical reactions. Ray says “If evolution were true, and if 12-step process did not happen in the first generation, no creature would have survived. They would all have bled to death.” | Blood clotting is not irreducibly complex. Some animals -- dolphins, for example -- get along fine without the Hagemann factor [26], a component of the human blood clotting system which Behe includes in its "irreducible" complexity (Behe 1996, 84). Doolittle and Feng predicted that "lower" vertebrates would lack the "contact pathway" of blood clotting. Work on the genomes of the puffer fish and zebrafish have confirmed this[27] |
God Made Them Male and Female[edit]
| Ray notes that almost all forms of life come in male and female. Ray asks which came first according to the evolutionary theory. Ray says neither of them could have come before the other. Ray then asks how could these two spontaneously come to be with their complex complementary reproductive systems already intact? |
Ray says there are several other problems with the evolutionary theory;
| Did the first bird breathe air... absolutely yes. By definition, avians like us, breathe air. At no point in evolution does it hint that avians lived without lungs. |
Lesson 68: Evolution Part 5[edit]
| Starts off with the question, "Where do all the races come from?" Ray responds with "The Bible informed us 2,000 years ago that God has made all nations from “one blood” (Acts 17:26). We are all of the same race—the “human race,” descendants of Adam and Eve, something science is slowly coming to realize." |
Missing Link Still Missing[edit]
Starts off with naming evolutionary "hoax" Archaeorapture.
| Only a handful of scientists ever saw Archaeoraptor, but every one who did noted that it was composite piece, and the artistic amateurs who paid for the fossil were repeatedly warned that some parts of it might not even belong to the whole. Popular press foolishly scooped the story prior to peer review, where it was instantly exposed as a fake by multiple experts, and each submission to scientific journals was immediately rejected. Archaeoraptor therefore fooled no one in the scientific community at all. The irony there is that the tail of the alleged Archaeoraptor turned out to belong to the as-yet undiscovered Microraptor, a four-winged and apparently gliding feathered dinosaur which turned out to be even more compelling proof of avian evolution from dinosaurs than Archeopteryx was in Darwin’s day. |
Evolutionary Fraud[edit]
Ray talks about Piltdown Man
| The British museum touted the “Piltdown man” as authentic, but the American Museum of Natural History displayed it only as a “mixture of ape and man fossils”, which is what it eventually turned out to be.
There was no way to adequately examine such things back in 1915. Chemical tests –common today- didn’t yet exist and we didn’t yet have a practical understanding of radiation. And before the first australopiths were discovered, we didn’t know exactly what to expect of the links that were then still missing between humans and the other apes known at that time. But as we began filling in the gaps in human evolution with thousands of legitimate fossils, a pattern emerged which left Piltdown an increasingly obvious anomaly. Consequently it was taken off display and stored away almost continuously for decades. It lost importance in most discussions because, in light of everything else we discovered over the next few decades, it just never fit, and was eventually dismissed from the list of potential human ancestors for that reason. As the years wore on, criticism arose against everyone who ever promoted the Piltdown collection because there seemed to be so much wrong with it. Finally, in the 1950s, it was taken back out of the box and scrutinized via more modern means. First fluorine dating revealed that it was much too recent, and it was shown to have been chemically-treated to give a false impression of its age and mineral composition. Then it was finally determined that the jaw must have come from an orangutan, and that it had been deliberately reshaped with modern tools in a well-crafted and deliberate forgery. |
Ray goes on to say;
|
Evolutions Circular Reasoning[edit]
| Ray introduces "Dr." Kent Hovind as explaining that there are 6 different radiometric dating systems and the assumed age of the sample will dictate which dating method is used because each will give a different result. Hovind says when a dinosaur bone is found, they do not carbon date it because the result would place the bone less than 10,000 years old. | Convicted fraudster and charlatan MISTER Kent Hovind is actually wrong. The reason why carbon dating is not used on dinosaur bones is for this simple reason: THERE IS NO ****** CARBON IN IT![28] |
Life’s Origins: The Ever-changing Mind of Science[edit]
Ray says "According to an NBC News report in August 1999, there was a “remarkable” discovery in Australia. They reported that, according to the Journal of Science, scientists had found what they considered to be proof that life appeared on earth 2.7 billion years ago — a billion years earlier than previously thought." Ray points out the scientists were off by 1,000,000,000 years, which could change upon their next discovery.
|
Ray quotes Charles Spurgeon addressing the fallibility (and folly) of science:
| Turns out Spurgeon is no more smarter than Ray Comfort. Spurgeon is factually wrong about many things. Going in order;
|
Lesson 69: Atheism[edit]
| Here Ray makes a case against atheism. He makes the following statement: I don’t believe in atheists. This isn’t because I haven’t met anyone who claimed the title, but because such a person cannot exist. After giving examples that it is impossible to know exactly the weight of all the sand on Hawaii, or how many hairs are on the back of a Tibetan yak, Comfort then goes on to say:... let’s say that the atheist has an incredible 1 percent of all the knowledge in the universe.Would it be possible, in the 99 percent of the knowledge that he hasn’t yet come across, that there might be ample evidence to prove the existence of God? One who is reasonable will be forced to admit that it is possible. Somewhere, in the vast knowledge that he hasn’t yet discovered, there could be enough proof that God does exist.... Let’s look at the same thought from another angle. If I were to make an absolute statement such as, “There is no gold in China,” what is necessary for that statement to be proved true? I would need absolute or total knowledge. I must know that there is no gold in any rock, in any river, in the ground, in any store, in any ring, or in any filling in any mouth in China. If there is one speck of gold in China, then my statement is false and I have no basis for it. I need absolute knowledge before I can make an absolute statement. | In this lesson, Comfort has said.
Basically, Ray's entire premise is false, since Ray claims that atheism makes an absolute statement that "there is no God" when the truth is atheism is defined as simply the lack of belief in god(s). Also, Ray has shifted the "burden of proof" fallacy. Ray is the one making the positive claim that there is a God, and thus the responsibility is on him to prove that there is a God, not argue that those who do not accept his belief are not infallible, thereby attempting to give credulity to his position. Claiming that God could exist in the knowledge not yet obtained is a fallacial argument. Based on this logic, theoretically an infinite number of gods could exist, and the claim that "God exists" is no more reasonable to true than the claim "universal invisible sky pixies exist." Finally, one does not require omniscience to prove something does not exist. for example, one does not need omniscience to prove that spherical cubes do not exist. By definition, a cube has 8 corners and a sphere has zero corners. It is impossible for both to exist. Likewise, an atheist can point to the philosophical contradictions in the attributes of God. Example, how can perfect being create imperfection? Why would a perfect being, when perfect by definition is something that is whole and complete, require praise and companions (followers, angels, etc.) How can God be omnipotent and omniscient; can God change his mind? How can God have omniscience and have free will? How can a all-good God knowingly create future suffering? How can a infinitely merciful God send people to eternal punishment for a finite crime? Why does God have emotions (psychologist Valerie Tarico makes a very solid argument that all gods have human psyches, and are just creations of the human mind and thus do not exist). |
Lesson 70: How to Prove the Existence of God[edit]
| This lesson is first started with a quote from Dwight Eisenhower, "It takes no brains to be an Atheist." Atheists, Kirk says, "... don't want to be confused by the facts." Comfort follows up by quoting Psalm 14:1 ("The fool has said in his heart, There is no God"), and then says that Atheists deny common sense. |
Here's Comfort's proofs:
That's it. | going in order,
|
Lesson 71: Atheist Obstacles[edit]
Comfort does not create a list of such obstacles, so here they are, properly picked out.
The next paragraphs aren't an Atheist objection. The first piece is about "Odd Rant about Idolatry." In these paragraphs Comfort says, "If men will not embrace the biblical revelation of God, their nature is to predictably go into idolatry." Finally Comfort finishes with a paragraph about the, "Adamant atheist April Pedersen". Here Comfort says he sent a copy of the Atheist Objections to Ms. Pedersen, who responded by saying that they were, "...worded with impeccable logic..." and "...nearly impossible to find holes in your premise...." | Going in order,
|
Lesson 72: Atheist Questions Part 1[edit]
| Kirk's Statement: Read this atheist group’s questionnaire. It is really insightful and wonderful material to have ready for your next encounter with an atheist. | There is nothing "wonderful" about this material, rather it is a repeat of very old theist arguments that have been shown to be false many times long ago. |
| Question 1) "How would you define God, and why are you so convinced that there is one?" Ray answers: God is the Creator, Upholder, and the Sustainer of the universe. He revealed Himself to Moses as the one and only true God. | The historical evidence for Moses is actually very feeble. In fact, the historical search for Moses is considered dead, and it is widely held that Moses is simply a fictional character of the Old Testament. Basically, Ray is convinced their is an invisible deity because said deity revealed himself to a fictional character, which is similar to believing Albus Dumbledore is a real person because he revealed himself to Harry Potter. |
| Question 2) "If everything needs a creator, then who or what created God?" Ray answers: No person or thing created God. He created “time,” and because we dwell in the dimension of time, reason demands that all things have a beginning and an end. God, however, dwells outside of the dimension of time. | When Ray states that "reason" demands that everything had a beginning and end, and yet Ray presents something that does not have a beginning and end, then clearly reason never did demand such a thing, or that God is indeed a created being. |
| Question 3) "How can something that cannot be described be said to exist?" Ray answers: The color blue cannot be accurately described to a man who was born blind. Just because it cannot be described doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. There is plant life on the bottom of the deepest oceans that has never been seen by man, let alone described by him. Despite this, it still exists. Does the (unseen) far side of a planet fail to exist merely because man cannot describe it? | Blue can be described, for starters a very simple definition would be something like “it is a color whose portion of the color spectrum lying between green and red” or a colored figment the eye transfers to the brain, which then interprets the light density picked up and then gives it an appropriate colored tone. God is defined as many many things, such as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, transparent, eternal, AND God has sentience. Philosophically, an entity that has more than one of these attributes cannot exist (and this has been pointed out to Ray, who has not provide a justifiable response to). |
| Question 4) "Since countless religions in the world today claim to be the one true religion, why do you think yours is truer than theirs?" Ray answers: No religion is “truer” than another. “Religion” is man’s futile effort to try to find peace with God. The Christian doesn’t strive to have peace with his Creator. It was given to him in the person of the Savior. The uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth is His statement, “The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.” No religion of man can do that. Christianity is not a manmade “religion,” but a personal relationship with the one true God. | Christianity is a man-made religion, written and constructed by men who credited their work to their personal deity. The Bible was put together by men through debate and vote, it was not simply faxed to humanity through heaven. |
| Question 5) "Can more than one of these religions be right?" Ray answers: In one sweeping statement, Jesus discards all other religions as a means of finding forgiveness of sins. Jesus, who claimed to be God, said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The Bible says about Jesus, “There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5) and,“Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). See also Answer #4. | Not a very satisfying answer. There are thousands of religions throughout human history, and many more that can be created. They all cannot be right, BUT they can all be wrong. |
| Question 6) "If you feel in your heart that your religion is the right one, how do you answer those of other faiths who claim the same thing?" Ray answers: Christians don’t base their faith on feelings; their feelings are irrelevant to truth. If I am flying from Los Angeles to New York, my feelings about whether I am going in the right direction have nothing to do with that fact. We can know with our intellect that Christianity is true, regardless of our feelings. The Bible’s thousands of fulfilled prophecies, historical accuracy, and many infallible proofs attest to its reliability. | Every prophecy proposed by Christianity has shown to not be a prophecy at all, incorrect, or rather predict the inevitable. What historical accuracy? Nothing in this book has provided an valid example. What is more interesting is that pieces Ray does not bring up when and where the Bible is historically inaccurate. Such as: there was no Exodus, no city of Nazareth, Herod did not slaughter thousands of children, the grand consensus never took place, David's kingdom did not stretch as far as it proclaimed in Scripture, nor did the wall of Jericho did not fall around the time Scriptures claimed it did. There are numerous other examples, but the bottom line is that the Bible is not a history text, rather it is a theological text (and Ray knows this). |
| Question 7) "How do you settle the debate and find out which of these religions, if any, is the right one?" Ray answers: Jesus promises that He and the Father will reveal themselves to all who love and obey Him. This is the ultimate challenge to any skeptic. If you repent and place your faith in Jesus Christ, He will give you eternal life and you can know that your eternity is secure. | This is not more of a satisfying than a ghost-skeptic being told just accept without evidence that they are real. Simply believing ghosts are real does not prove they are real. Similarly, the Flying Spaghetti monster promised to reveal himself if you follow him and put your faith in him. You could raise a community of children to believe in Cthulhu if you always insist that he’s true. If you make them worship him regularly, and pray to him in fear begging for signs or impressions revealing his existence to them, then at least some of those children will eventually claim to have experienced that god despite the fact that he only ever existed in fiction.
Occultists, transcendentalists, and faith-healers of every religion know the auto-deceptive power of faith. It doesn’t matter which gods or spirits they pray to. No matter which devotion one practices, if the ambience of the ritual is right, then faith can prepare the mind and psyche the senses into perceiving or experiencing whatever the subjects want to believe. Seemingly miraculous feats and visions occur in every faith because faith itself is the cause of them, rather than whatever devotees may have faith “in”. That has to be the case, because faith is the only common bond between all religious beliefs. Believers often say they “know for a fact” that their beliefs are the “truth”. They “testify” to things they don’t know anything about. They pretend to “witness” things they’ve never really seen, and they like to use other confident-sounding terms like “conclusively proven” when they’re really only talking about baseless assumptions, (and vice versa). They often claim “absolute truth” when they’re really talking about bald-faced lies, and all too often, they will continue to repeat and appeal to arguments they know have already been proven wrong. But if you believe in truth at all, then you should make sure that the things you say actually are true, that they are defensibly accurate, and academically correct. And if they’re not correct, you should correct them! You wouldn’t claim to know anything you couldn’t prove that you knew, and you wouldn’t talk about anything being “proven” at all, unless you’re clearly using that term in the sense that a court of law would use. But in either case, it doesn’t matter how convinced you are; belief does not equal knowledge. The difference is that knowledge can always be tested for accuracy where mere beliefs often can not be. No matter how positively you think you know it, if you can’t show it, then you don’t know it, and you shouldn’t say that you do. Nor would you if you really cared about the truth. Knowledge is demonstrable, measurable. But faith is often a matter of pretending to know what you know you really don't know, and that no one even can know, and which you merely believe -often for no good reason at all. |
| Question 8) "Why does God allow all these false religions to exist?" Ray answers: Because God wants mankind to worship and love Him, He gave Adam and Eve the free will to choose whether to obey or disobey Him. People have chosen to reject God’s way and instead seek to establish their own righteousness through works-based religions. God allows these false religions and atheism to exist for the same reason He allows sinful humans to exist. The Bible tells us that God is not willing that any should perish (regardless of whether they are religious or profess atheism), but that they all come to repentance. | Adam and Eve are fictional characters, and this story Ray is repeating is without evidence. In order for a person to make a “choice” they must be aware of their options. Christianity was no an option for centuries amongst humans before Judaism, and certainly not an option for many human civilizations across the globe after the supposed Christ died. So why punish people (good people) who did not know anything about Jesus or God? |
| Question 9) "Is the bloody history of Christianity consistent with what is supposed to be a religion of love, or does it simply illustrate the consequences of abandoning reason for faith?" Ray answers: The Bible commands Christians to love their enemies and do good to those who spitefully use them. The terrorists in the World Trade Center tragedy carried out their agenda in the name of Allah (their god). This is nothing new. The Crusaders and others who have committed atrocities in the name of Christianity were also evil men who were carrying out their depraved agendas. A thinking person can distinguish between those who use the Christian faith for their own political or “religious” ends and those who are true followers of Jesus. In other words, just because someone claims to be a Christian doesn’t mean that he is. He could be what is commonly known as a hypocrite, or an impostor. | If a Christian is a person who follows Jesus, while others who don't are hypocrites, then Ray Comfort is a hypocrite. Ray violates numerous laws he claims to be true and nor does he follow the words and teachings of Jesus. Does Ray do any of the following?
You must sell everything.(Matthew 19:21-24, Luke 14:33, Matthew 6:19 and 6:24, Matt 13:22, and Luke 12:33 couldn’t be any clearer) You should abandon your family.(Matthew 19:28-29 and Luke 14:26-33) You should cut off your hand. (Matthew 5:27-30) You should eat flesh and drink blood. (John 6:53-54) Jesus encourages more eunuchs. (Matthew 19:12) "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." -- Mark 16:17-18 (Wow, drink poison and heal cancer with your bare hands…. How many modern believers fulfilled this one?) "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you." -- Luke 10:19 Many Christians may object to Mark 16:17-18 above, claiming that it was never part of the original bible ad was later inserted in. However, this does not fly for the simple reason: if you are a Christian, if you believe your God is infallible and wrote every word in the Bible (inspired by the Holy Spirit), and accept every word in the Bible as it is as completely true, then by this alone you must accept every word and letter in the Bible – this includes handling snakes and drinking poison. Even if you do not like it, you cannot dismiss it because your infallible all-knowing all-good God commands it. |
| Question 10) "If everything is the product of a “grand design” by an omniscient, benevolent designer, why is the history of life a record of horrible suffering, blundering waste, and miserable failures? Why does this God go through billions of years of such carnage without yet arriving at His goal?" Ray answers: God’s original creation was “good,” but because of mankind’s sin we now live in a “fallen” creation. Before sin entered the world there was no suffering, disease, decay, or death. The Bible’s explanation of suffering actually substantiates the truth of Scripture. | No suffering or death before the Fall? This is absolute nonsense, for the simple reason that many animals have strict diets that require consuming other animals. Claiming that they were all once vegetarians does not cut it either, because their teeth and digestive system reveals that certain animals are strictly carnivores.
Here is something that inescapable show that death had to exist before the Fall: sharks. They prove that death had to exist for them to simply breed. While still in their mother's womb, shark babies must eat their fellow sibling embryos to survive. This is simply cannibalism, and every shark is born a predator. For something to die, life must be lost. Plants, fruits and vegetables are living things. Ray claims there was no death in the world before Adam brought sin into the world. However, in the book of Genesis, God told Adam and Eve they were free to eat whatever they wanted from the trees (with the exception of one). Trees bear fruit, which are living things, and once they are consumed their life is lost. Basically, life had to be lost and consumed for others to live (this is the exact definition of what it is like to be an animal, and humans ARE animals). Ray says there was no disease either until man sinned? Then why would God create and design humans as they are (and God said it was “good”) with an immune system if there was no disease? The purpose of the immune system is to defend the body from infections, diseases, and other external harmful forces. So why would God create man with this if there was no such thing as diseases? Why do organisms have defenses against pathogens in the first place if they weren't needed or necessary? It seems God already knew long before he created humans that sin would enter the world, meaning he knew this would happen and did nothing to stop it. Finally, no decay before the Fall? What about fungi? Fungi, by their very nature, cause decay. Did they exist in the original creation? If they did, then there was indeed decay before sin. If they did not, then creationists like Ray Comfort have just demonstrated that new “kinds” of animals can evolve. |
| Question 11) "Why did God intervene so many times in human affairs during antiquity (according to the Bible) and yet not do anything during the Holocaust of the Second World War?" Ray answers: No human can claim to know whether or not God intervened in the affairs of humanity at any time between 1939 and 1945. However, the Old Testament makes it very clear that there were times when God didn’t intervene in the affairs of His people. He purposefully allowed their enemies to overpower them so that they would turn back to Him. | So God allows millions of people to die just to satisfy his own ego? Despite promising to be there for those who believe in him and follow him, despite the pleas and prayers of the Jewish people, God remained silent and inactive just because he wanted what ever was of them to worship him? |
| Question 12) "Why should one’s inner convictions about the existence of God indicate that He/She/They/It exists outside of that person’s mind?" Ray answers: The Bible says that God has placed eternity in the hearts of men and given all people everywhere an awareness of Him so that they are without excuse. He created us to know Him. Throughout history and throughout the world, all cultures acknowledge the existence of God. Besides, why should one’s inner convictions about the non-existence of God indicate that He doesn’t exist outside of that person’s mind? Our personal convictions and beliefs do not affect reality. God simply is. | Not all cultures acknowledge the existence of God, especially not the Abrahamic God. For instance, Buddhists acknowledge no God, certain Native American tribes hold a similar philosophy, Shamans hold a godless view, and finally Chinese ancestor worshipers do not believe in a god. God is not simply “is” without evidence to show that he even is, anymore than Allah, Thor, or universal time-less eternal sky pixies. |
| Question 13) "Can a God who would abandon His children when they needed Him the most still be considered “all good”?" Ray answers: One of humanity’s great errors is to misunderstand the meaning of “good.” A “good” judge will pronounce a stiff sentence on a vicious murderer. A “loving” judge who dismisses a case against a vicious killer because he loves him is not a good judge. Justice and goodness are inseparable. Many times God chastened Israel (gave them their just dessert) because of His goodness. He wanted them to turn back to Him for their own good. | A judge who dismisses a case against a criminal is not “loving” but merciful. The Abrahamic god is claimed to be infinitely merficul. |
| Question 14) "If the God of the Bible is “all good,” why does He Himself say that He created evil (Isaiah 45:7)?" Ray answers: The word translated “evil” in that verse (“I make peace, and create evil”) means “calamity” or “suffering”—God uses both good and bad events in our lives to bring us into a right relationship with Him. However, because God is sovereign over all events, He did allow evil to come into being. God gave mankind a choice to have a loving relationship with Him. The original sin was when Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once man knew both good and evil, he had to choose between the two. Because God wants people to worship Him freely out of love and enjoy His incredible blessings, He tells each one of us: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil . . . , therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:15,19). | ”He [God] did not allow evil to come into being” how can this be when God is the creator of all things? |
| Question 15) "If something is not rational, should it be believed anyway?" Ray answers: At one time, the concept of a thousand-ton aircraft flying through the air seemed irrational and absurd. But after man studied the laws of physics, it was discovered to be quite rational and believable. If one studies God’s Word and understands His Law, Christianity is seen to be infinitely rational and believable. Atheism, on the other hand, rejects logic and evidence and is the epitome of irrationalism. It should be abandoned by any rational person as being foolishness. | The question was asked if something is not rational, should it be “believed.” A massive flying plane was not “irrational” but rather at one point implausible. Many doubted that the Hercules would fly, despite the debate amongst pilots, engineers, and such on both sides. Studying physics played a role, but it was mostly aerodynamics, but simply studying was not enough. They had to test everything. Unlike massive planes, nothing in Christianity can be tested (accept for perhaps prayer, which has been shown numerous times to be completely ineffective.)
There is nothing rational about Christianity any more than Islam, Scientology, Mormonism, Hinduism, or any other faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of irrationalism. All it does is show that the theistic burden of proof has not been met. Ray thinks that the existence of his god has been established through the argument from design, but this argument has been shown to be wrong and fallacious many times. Anyhow, is it rational to believe in something that is irrational? Of course not. There is nothing rational about believing gnomes exist hiding under your garden or believing green whales swim underneath the surface of the sun. In fact, it is rational to doubt these things and be skeptical until the burden of proof has been met. Basically, Ray is saying that anyone who denies the existence of the green whales in the sun are the “epitome of irrationalism” and are being “foolish.” Any reasonable person reading this can see why Ray is wrong in calling atheists and doubters of the green whales in the sun as “irrational.” |
| Question 16) "Is there a better way than reason to acquire knowledge and truth?" Ray answers: No. That’s why the Bible says, “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the LORD.” That’s why when the apostle Paul spoke “the words of truth and reason,” King Agrippa said, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian.” That’s why Paul “reasoned” with Felix (the governor) about “righteousness, self-control, and judgment to come.” And that’s why Felix “was afraid.” | The message the Bible encourages is nothing but blind faith. It may mention reason in a passing moment, like Isaiah, but what is reasonable of putting faith in a book written by superstitious men who thought they knew more about the universe than people in the 21st century? |
| Question 17) "If you would answer #16 with “faith,” then why are there so many contradictory faiths in the world?" Ray answers: There are many faiths because all nations recognize that there is a Creator. However, in their ignorance they worship the moon, the sun, or an idol. No one has ever found an atheistic tribe, because people are not that ignorant. God has given light to every man. | “No one has a ever found an atheistic tribe, because people are not that ignorant” how about the Buddhists? Buddhism is an atheistic philosophy. Ancestor worship is a godless form of religion as well, such as certain Native American tribes. |
| Question 18) "Is comfort more important to you than intellectual integrity?" Ray answers: No, it’s not. That’s why I am a Christian. | There are several reasons that brought Ray to Christianity, but it was not intellectual integrity. Among the top things that likely drove him to Christianity could be any or all of the following;
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Lesson 73: Atheist Questions Part 2[edit]
| Kirk's Comment: Atheism may seem intellectual, but intelligent people should also be reasonable and honest about the facts. If you’ve ever felt nervous about discussing the facts for the existence of God, don’t be. The evidence is on the side of God. After reading this lesson, you’ll be better equipped to talk with skeptics. | As this review (as well as the review of all of Ray and Kirk's material here on RationalWiki), the evidence is not on their side at all. The only thing they possess are presuppositions they try desperately to prove, but all they have to offer is blind faith and delusional beliefs, but no actual empirical, testable, observable facts. |
| Question 19) "If you believe, as many do, that all religions worship the same God under different names, how do you explain the existence of religions which have more than one god, or Buddhism, which, in its pure form, has no god?" Ray answers: All religions do not worship the same God. People who reject the one true God of the Bible can find any number of gods, of any type, to suit their tastes. They may choose to worship a small wooden god that asks only for shelf space, one that promises paradise in exchange for a certain number of daily prayers, or one that demands specific offerings or good deeds. People who reject the one true God have always been able to devise a replacement. | And those who claim to have accepted the “one true God” can devise any form of him as they wish, and since there is no established or proven one true God, then the unknown variable can take any form as anyone see fit. In this case, Ray has devised a God that forsakes everyone unless they live a certain life in order to please said God to get a reward after death. What Ray has done is no different than what he states people of other faith do. Is it curious at all that whatever form God usually takes, it is almost perfectly clear that this entity has a human mind? Why does God have emotions? God gets angry and wrathful, or likes the smell of burnt offerings, but why? Does God have a nose? Most Christians would say no God does not, and for the same reason God would have no need for emotions. Emotions are natural intricate chemical reactions that activate and direct bodily responses to the external environment. As Dr. Valerie Tarico demonstrated in her work, God is simply a human invention. Ever wonder why gods take human forms? Egyptian gods with human bodies but heads of animals, Greek and Norse gods have human bodies, Hindu gods often have human bodies, and so on. Some say that if dogs had a god, their god would be a dog. The point being, Ray says that people can easily find their own version of God to suit their needs, and this is exactly true and is the whole case (and Ray is no exception). |
| Question 20) "What would it take to convince you that you are wrong?" Ray answers: I have already been convinced that I was wrong. I was wrong for my 22 years of unconverted life. Conversion to Christianity is when a fallible human being admits that he is wrong and that the infallible Creator is right. | Ray completely dodges the question. How did Ray “know” he was wrong? To have knowledge means that you can demonstrate it, otherwise if you cannot then you do not know it. Any honest nonbeliever and skeptic will straight forward tell what it would take to pass the test for burden of proof, but Ray Comfort and many Christians constantly dodge the responsibility of providing proof, and usually repeat the same old tiring arguments that have already been refuted a thousand times (unfortunately, just repeating debunked arguments while expecting a different result is not only a waste of time but also ludicrous). When all else fails, theists like Ray Comfort just demand nonbelievers to simply just “believe.” Unfortunately, this is not good sufficient enough for any rational thinker. It is very easy to simply believe anything, but does not change the rest of reality. For instance, the person reading this may think he or she is 1) the King of Persia, 2) the reincarnated Prince Hamlet of Denmark himself or maybe 3) Cleopatra of Egypt. Obviously and clearly, anyone who accepted they were any of these, they would immediately be branded insane. All this comes to show, mere belief is not good enough and people understand that. Likewise, belief in the existence of a “infallible God” or “universal eternal sky pixies” or whatever is not enough to establish that said entity or entities are even real. This is why actual empirical, testable, observable proof is demanded, and Ray has still failed to present any. Therefore, the question still stands. What would it take to convince Ray Comfort that he is wrong? However, in the very next question, Ray reveals his closed mindedness by stating that “nothing can convince me that I am wrong—but my belief is still true.” |
| Question 21) "If nothing can convince you that you are wrong, then why should your faith be considered anything other than a cult?" Ray answers: A cult is defined as “a system of religious worship and ritual,” which would seem to describe every manmade religion. Christianity, on the other hand, is not a strict adherence to ritual, but a personal relationship with a living God. When a person repents of his sin and places his trust in Jesus, God fills him with His Spirit—the person becomes spiritually alive. He has moved out of the realm of belief into the realm of experience. Once he knows the truth, nothing can convince him otherwise. Besides, why should adherence to the truth be a determining factor in whether a belief is valid? I believe in gravity and nothing can convince me that I am wrong—but my belief is still true. | Christianity is not a strict adherence to ritual? How about prayer? Reading the Bible? Does Ray celebrate Christmas?
Ray states that upon conversion, they experience a wave of divine interference. How does Ray know that this is coming from God and not an imposter who claims to be God (to make it worse, this imposter has fooled every Christian with the lie that “God cannot tell a lie” thus trapping them all to believe this imposter without question). A number of investigations have shown that deep temporal lobe stimulation in the area around the amygdala and hippocampus of the limbic system produces feelings of intense meaningfulness, of depersonalization, of a connection with God, of cosmic connectedness, of out-of-body experiences, a feeling of not being in this world, déjà vu (a feeling that something has been experienced before), jamais vu (a feeling something is happening for the first time even though it has been experienced before), fear, and hallucinations. Based on this, we know that mind is capable of experiencing things that feel so real, but rather they are simply stimulation’s of brain synapses. This can happen naturally or through the aid of traumas, seizures, drugs, and such. Example, Michael Harner, and anthropologist who lived among the Jivaro Indians of the Ecuadoran Amazon, described his experience with ayahuasca as follows:
Granted, if we did not know the detail that Harner consumed ayahuasca, his “experience” testifies that he did encounter dragons and bird-people. How would Ray distinguish this feeling with his “experience” with God's spirit that entered him upon conversion? For that matter, how can Ray demonstrate, test and show that his experience was not only genuine but also different from the “experiences” of Muslims, Hindus, pagans, etc. Ray says that he believes in gravity and nothing can prove him wrong. Here is the difference between Ray's dogmatic mindset with a rational freethinker. Gravity is a scientific law, and science demands that everything must not only testable but also falsifiable. This is why scientific facts are accepted (not believed) to be true until they are demonstrated to be false. Say for instance that tomorrow, scientists demonstrate that the theory of gravity was completely wrong. Ray says that “nothing can convince me that I am wrong” shows his closed mindedness. Truth is based on evidence, and to deny truth is dishonest. This is why Ray is incredibly dishonest when it comes to science, history, and philosophy. |
| Question 22) "If an atheist lives a decent, moral life, why should a loving, compassionate God care whether or not we believe in Him/Her/It?" Ray answers: No matter how decent and moral we think we are, we have all sinned by violating God’s holy Laws. To see how you fare against God’s standard, review the Ten Commandments (given in Exodus chapter 20). God’s concern isn’t whether or not we believe in Him; the Bible says that even the demons believe—and tremble. God commands that we repent of our sins and trust Jesus Christ alone for our salvation. If we refuse do that, we will be given justice on the Day of Judgment and we will perish. | It is common for religions to say that no one is innocent or without excuse. For example, Islam says that we are all sinners, Scientology says we are all born with defects, and so on.
Ray is asking us to review ourselves through the Ten Commandments given in Exodus 20, but what about the actual Ten Commandments in Exodus 34? By that standard, Ray is not only in trouble with God, but he has been preaching a false message. How can Ray say that it is not necessary to believe in God, and yet the first Commandment in Exodus 20 states that we have to believe the Abrahamic god and no other? In order for us too fulfill the second Commandment (taking his name “Yahweh” under a false oath) requires belief in him. And yet, Ray states that we must believe that Jesus is our path to salvation. |
| Question 23) "Should any religion that demands we elevate faith over reason be trusted?" Ray answers: Never elevate faith over reason. Exercise faith because of reason. A man who has to jump 25,000 feet out of a plane exercises faith in a parachute because he reasons that he will perish without it. | All faith is blind, and cannot be supported by reason of any sort. Faith is by definition belief in something without any evidence or belief in something contrary to the evidence. We develop knowledge, the basis of knowing things (which is the exact opposite of faith), through experience, observation, and testing. Before skydivers jump out of a plane, their parachutes are checked for any flaws. After the jump, based on experience and statistics, the possibility of a parachute failure is miniscule. Skydivers do not require faith, rather they rely on the preparations of expertise based on the knowledge of their skill. |
| Question 24) "How can the same God who, according to the Old Testament, killed everybody on Earth except for eight people be considered as anything other than evil?" Ray answers: Look at the lifestyle of those people—they deserved death because of their evil actions. That’s what happens when men reject God. We will all die because God, the Judge of the universe, has pronounced the death sentence upon us: “The soul who sins shall die.” Criminals rarely speak well of the judge. To them, he is “evil.” | “They deserved death”! How can anyone make such a heartless statement? Does Ray have a clue of what these people did in their lifetimes that was so offensive to the ego of an all-powerful being? How can a collection of primates (carbon-based lifeforms on a small planet in the far dark corner of the vast universe) offend this almighty being that supposedly gave these people free will? Basically, Ray is stressing the point that disbelief in his particular narrow-version of God leads to all the troubles of society, and yet whenever given an example of an extreme Christian country full of devoted believers, the same troubles remain or escalate. How about the Roman Empire, became the worlds largest and powerful Christian empire in the world, and yet it failed. Likely, Ray would respond that these are either 1) not real Christians or 2) they slowly turned away from God. Basically, it is a circular argument: Belief in some entity or not, life is full of suffering. It seems that the belief in a deity is not even necessary at all, and the Buddhist were on the spot: life is suffering. If a person would wish to deal with suffering, prayer and belief in God or universal eternal sky pixies won't change a thing. |
| Question 25) "Must we hate our families and ourselves in order to be good Christians (Luke 14:26)?" Ray answers: No. Luke 14:26 is what is known as “hyperbole”—a statement of extremes, contrasting love with hate for the sake of emphasis. Jesus tells us that the first and greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37,38). As much as we treasure our spouse and family, and even our own life, there should be no one whom we love and value more than God, no one who takes precedence in our life. To place love for another (including yourself) above God is idolatry. | By what criteria do we determine what is a hyperbole or not? This is one answer that Christians fail to provide a satisfactory answer. With over 30,000 denominations within Christianity, each proclaiming to be the true faith and know how to correctly interpret the Bible all the while following the Will of God exactly the correct way, how can we determine what is meant to be taken literally or figuratively in the Bible? Are we to take the phrase “love thy neighbor” as another example of not taking his word literally and not practicing it? In this passage in Luke, Jesus gives no indication that he is speaking in a hyperbole. The language being used is too literal. In Luke 22:36 he told his disciples that “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” |
| Question 26) "Since the ancient world abounded with tales of resurrected Savior-Gods that were supposed to have returned from the dead to save humanity, why is the Jesus myth any more reliable than all the others?" Ray answers: I have never heard of any such “tales of resurrected Savior-Gods.” Any myths there have been have died out for lack of proof. The “Jesus myth,” however, has endured through the ages in cultures all around the world because it is true and provable. Simply read John 14:21 and then try it . . . if you dare. If you place your trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation, He will come into your life and reveal Himself to you. | Never heard of a “resurrected Savior-Gods”? How about Hercules? Surely everyone knows the mighty Greek hero, we know him for his legendary strength and epic tales. How about Dionysus? Greek God of wine, who was born of a human virgin and later died and resurrected to Mt. Olympus? The Jesus Myth is not the only tale of a savior God who was humiliated and then killed. The Greeks had numerous examples of even full-blooded Gods forced to endure humiliating acts before returning to heaven. How about the Sumerian god Inanna, the “Queen of Heaven” who was stripped naked and crucified, yet she triumphantly rose from the dead. History is laced with hundreds of heros and gods who died and resurrected, creating large groups of followers believing that they will one day join their deity in the afterlife.
The reason why the Jesus Myth has not died out is because it was established as a mandatory faith in the powerful Roman Empire, causing it to endure for centuries and continue on through established churches and converting kings – who would later bestow the faith on his subjects. There is no proof needed for the Jesus Myth to survive, in fact there is no proof at all to provide. Ray's example of reading a certain passage, daring us to drop to our knees and pray is pointless. Anyone can convince themselves that any fictional deity is true, because that is the power of faith. Telling us to seek something that does not have any proof is no more better then asking to “seek with (insert name here) all your heart” - that name could be Allah, Odin, ghosts, Big Foot, UFOs, invisible universal eternal sky pixies, and so on and so on. However, simply convincing yourself that whatever entity revealed itself to you is not proof of their existence. For instance, George Harrison, the guitarist for the Beatles was a Bhaki Hindu. He believed in a personal god, and he said that if one chants the mantras with devotion, Lord Krishna would visibly appear and speak to him in an audible voice. Many pagans are similarly convinced of having met their deities too. For example, a cat fancier in Texas insists he began worshiping Bast only after the Egyptian goddess dramatically appeared physically manifest, having personally chosen him to become her disciple. Every religion boasts their own miracles and prophecies proving theirs is the truest faith. So its no surprise that Christians say the same things about their versions of God too. No religion is significantly different from any other in this respect. But whatever else may be going on, when men claim revelation from God, it usually means is that they’ve decided to promote their own biased and unsubstantiated opinions as if they were divinely inspired. |
| Question 27) "If the Bible is the inerrant word of God, why does it contain so many factual errors, such as the two contradictory accounts of creation in Genesis?" Ray answers: There are not two accounts of creation in Genesis. Chapter 1 gives the account of creation; chapter 2 gives details of the same creation. I have been reading the Bible every day for thirty years (without fail) and I am not aware of any “factual errors.” | The two different accounts are indeed contradictory, and Ray has done nothing to solve the problem (despite himself insisting that he has, but his arguments are without merit).
If Ray has been reading the Bible for so long, how can he miss the factual errors, such as in Genesis 1 when it says the sun, moon, and stars were created AFTER the Earth. Here is the order of events: water, land rising from the water, and then vegetation and bingo its Earth. Only AFTER that, it says the stars and two illuminating lights (Sun and moon) were created. So if Ray is not aware of the factual error that the Earth is NOT older than the stars, then he has not gotten past the first chapter in the first book of the Bible (so what book he has been reading for 30 years is quiet a mystery). For more examples of factually incorrect errors in the Bible (historically and scientifically), here are some links; |
| Question 28) "Why isn’t the Bible written in a straightforward way that leaves no doubt about what it means?" Ray answers: The Bible is very clear to those who obey God. It says of itself that it is spiritually understood, and that the “natural” man cannot receive the things of God. To someone who hasn’t been born spiritually, “they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). However, we can all understand enough to realize that we have sinned against a holy God and need to repent. Once we do that, God gives us the ability to understand His Word. | This does not really answer the question. All it is saying is that you have to be “spiritual” to piece together the tales in the Bible. Well, there are millions of spiritual Christians, they have been reading the Bible for centuries, and if the Bible was an easy read to spiritual followers, then why are there more than 30,000 denominations within Christianity? Based on this fact, the Bible is NOT very clear to those who obey God. It is difficult to think off another book that has caused mass confusion than the Bible. Even today, spiritual Christians can and interpret the Bible, pray for hours, and yet come to different conclusions regarding certain issues. |
| Question 29) "The last time Christianity attained total power, it resulted in the Dark Ages, so why should we expect anything different from Christian fundamentalists today?" Ray answers: It was not Christianity but the Roman Catholic church that had power during the Dark Ages. The doctrines of the Roman Catholic church and the Bible are opposed to one another. It was the Roman Catholic church that opposed Galileo, was responsible for the Inquisition, and refused the common people access to the Bible during the Dark Ages. The Christian Church isn’t seeking “total power.” Its agenda is not political. | Basically, Ray is playing the No True Scotsman fallacy by attempting to portray Roman Catholics as non-Christians. Nice try. Ray does not give any clue when, where and how the doctrines of Roman Catholicism is opposed to the Bible.
Ray seems to portray all the dark history of Christianity unto the Roman Catholics. How about the Puritans persecuting the Native Americans and Quakers. How about the Baptists kidnapping, sodomizing and murdering children in India (even to this day). How about the 30 Years War of Christians on multiple sides slaughtered each other. Or how about Christians within the Bible itself. Jesus cursed a fig tree, violently drove out people from the Temple, told his disciples to steal a horse, and so on. According to the book of Acts, when Peter (a disciple) came to power, he issued forced collectivism upon a village, however when a couple refused to give up their possession, Peter had them killed. He could have imprisoned them, exiled them, or any lesser evil, but instead he had them put to death. Christian church is not seeking “total power” and is not politically driven? Why then do Christians want their faith recognized above all others? How about Ann Coulter who said on September 13, 2001 “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” There are numerous examples of Christian ministers and Christian politicians fighting to have Christianity dominate the United States, and they often reveal their plans of what will happen once that goal is achieved. Introducing the American Taliban: Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, an organization for intimidating abortion providers.
Terry was here referring to doctors who provide abortions, and his Christian inspiration is clearly shown by one more of his statements, (emphasis added)
This ambition to achieve what can only be a Christian fascist state is entirely typical of the American Taliban; it is almost an exact mirror image of the Islamic fascist state so ardently sought by many people in other parts of the world. There is one more preacher I would like to mention: Gary Potter, President of Catholics for Christian Political Action, had this to say:
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| Question 30) "Has anyone ever been killed in the name of atheism?" Ray answers: Yes. Atheistic Communist regimes have slaughtered 100 million people. In China an incredible 72 million were murdered, in the Soviet Union 20 million, Cambodia 2.3 million, North Korea 2 million, Africa 1.7 million, Afghanistan 1.5 million, Vietnam 1 million, Eastern Europe 1 million, Latin America 150,000. | Actually, this does not answer the question. The question was asked has anyone every killed in the name of atheism? What is the answer? Zero. Ray's examples are actually not the mas killings of people in the name of atheism, rather they were the result of power-hungry dictators under the guise of communism. |
Lesson 74: Relativism Part 1[edit]
| Kirk's comment: “Relativism” is just a fancy word for believing that “truth is what feels right for you.” Or, “there is no real right and wrong, just whatever you personally feel is best.” While this may seem ridiculous, many people embrace it because it gives them license to act any way they want.” |
| “There is no absolute truth. You can’t be sure of anything!”
Those who say that there are no absolutes are often very adamant about their belief. If they say that they are absolutely sure, then they are wrong because their own statement is an absolute. If they are not 100 percent sure, then there is a chance that they are wrong and they are risking their eternal salvation by trusting in a wrong belief. God tells us that there is an objective, absolute truth that is not subject to man’s interpretations or whims, on which we can base our eternity. That truth is the Word of God (John 17:7). | In reality, there is no such thing as “absolute truth”. Everything within the capacity of human understanding contains a degree of error, and everything men know to be true is only true to a degree. Everyone is inevitably wrong about something somewhere. We don’t know everything about everything. We don’t know everything about anything! And what we do know, we don’t know accurately on all points nor completely in every detail. Honest men admit this. Anyone claiming to know the absolute truth is not being honest, especially not when they claim to know anything about things which can only be believed on faith. Even if men were given genuine revelations by truly omniscient beings, they must still be filtered and interpreted by weaker minds influenced by our limitations, biases, and misimpressions, as well as linguistic and cultural barriers. |
Relativism[edit]
| The following section is taken from an article by Matthew J. Slick. |
Relativism is the philosophical position that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual. This means that all moral positions, all religious systems, all art forms, all political movements, etc., are “truths” that are relative to the individual. Under the umbrella of relativism, whole groups of perspectives are categorized:
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| Unfortunately, the philosophy of relativism is pervasive in our culture today. With the rejection of God, and of Christianity in particular, absolute truth is being abandoned. Our pluralistic society wants to avoid the idea that there really is a right and wrong. This is evidenced in our deteriorating judicial system which has more and more trouble punishing criminals, in our entertainment media which continues to push the envelop of morality and decency, in our schools which teach evolution and “social tolerance,” etc. In addition, the plague of moral relativism is encouraging everyone to accept homosexuality, pornography on TV, fornication, and a host of other “sins” that were once considered wrong, but are now being accepted and even promoted in society. It is becoming so pervasive that if you speak out against moral relativism and its “anything goes” philosophy, you’re labeled as an intolerant bigot. Of course, this is incredibly hypocritical of those who profess that all points of view are true, yet reject those who hold the view that there are absolutes in morality. It seems that what is really meant by the moral relativists is that all points of view are true except for the views that teach moral absolutes, or an absolute God, or absolute right and wrong. |
| Some typical expressions that reveal an underlying presupposition of relativism are comments such as “That is your truth, not mine,” “It is true for you, but not for me,” and “There are no absolute truths.” Of course, these statements are illogical. Relativism is invading our society, our economy, our schools, and our homes. Society cannot flourish nor survive in an environment where everyone does what is right in his own eyes, where the situation determines actions and if the situation changes, lying or cheating is acceptable—as long as you’re not caught. Without a common foundation of truth and absolutes, our culture will become weak and fragmented. | In a relativistic society, lying and cheating is not allowed simply if you get away with it. If that was true, we would not bother trying to hunt down a bank robber who got away, nor would we try to track down forgers. The situation always determines how we measure an act as god or bad, even in the Bible. For instance, Ray Comfort, Slick, and fundamental Christians say that the 9th Commandment prohibits all forms of lying, and yet people openly and shamelessly admit that they would lie to a Nazi if they were hiding a Jew in their house. The same thing happens in the Bible, where the woman Ruth lied to the authorities that she was hiding wanted men in her house. Even though Ray's interpretation of the Bible, God's Law says all forms of lying is a violation of the Law. And yet, God did not punish Ruth, in fact the Book of James calls Ruth “righteous.” |
| I must admit, however, that there is validity to some aspects of relativism. For example, what one society considers right (driving on the left side of the road) another considers wrong. These are customs to which a “right and wrong” are attached, but they are purely relativistic and not universal because they are culturally based. Childrearing principles vary in different societies as do burial practices and wedding ceremonies. These “right and wrong ways” are not cosmically set in stone nor are they derived from some absolute rule of conduct by some unknown god. They are relative and rightly so. But, their relativism is properly asserted as such. It doesn’t matter which side of the road we drive on as long as we all do it the same way. |
| Likewise, there are experiences that are valid only for individuals. I might be irritated by a certain sound, where another person will not. In this sense, what is true for me is not necessarily true for someone else. It is not an absolute truth that the identical sound causes irritation to all people. This is one way of showing that certain aspects of relativism are true. But, is it valid to say that because there is a type of personal relativism that we can then apply that principle to all areas of experience and knowledge and say that they too are relative? No, it is not a valid assumption. First of all, to do so would be an absolute assessment, which contradicts relativism. |
| Furthermore, if all things are relative, then there cannot be anything that is absolutely true between individuals. In other words, if all people deny absolute truth and establish relative truth only from their experiences, then everything is relative to the individual. How then can there be a common ground from which to judge right and wrong or truth? It would seem that there cannot be. | There can be common grounds for determining right and wrong; for instance how does nature provide the basis of value? We all need water for survival, and since humans want to survive, withholding or poisoning water can be considered immoral. There is nothing cosmically “good” about water or cosmically “evil” about the lack of it, it is all relative to natural human needs. What if we evolved to drink arsenic and drinking water would be fatal? We would make serving water a crime. |
| Of course, the issue that is important here is whether or not there are absolute truths. Also, can there be different kinds of absolute truths if indeed there are absolute truths? We might ask, is it always wrong to lie? Or, does 1 + 1 always equal 2? Is it always true that something cannot be both in existence and not in existence at the same time? Is it always true that something cannot bring itself into existence if it first does not exist? If any of these questions can be answered in the affirmative, then relativism is refuted—at least to some degree. | Clouds are not discrete objects. Combining two clouds yields one cloud. Does that mean that 1+1 = 1, and one of the first two clouds no longer exists? (Answer: it depends exactly on what you mean by "exist.") |
Ethical Relativism[edit]
| A continuation of the work by Matthew J. Slick. |
| With ethical relativism, truth, right and wrong, and justice are all relative. If all moral views are equally valid, then do we have the right to punish anyone? In order to say that something is wrong, we must first have a standard by which we weigh right and wrong in order to make a judgment. If that standard of right and wrong is based on relativism, then it is not a standard at all. In relativism, standards of right and wrong are derived from social norms. Since society changes, the norms would change and so would right and wrong. If right and wrong change, then how can anyone be rightly judged for something he did wrong if that wrong might become right in the future? | Absolute morality postulates that what is moral and what is immoral is unchanging and can be laid down well in advance. Thus it is very popular with religions and their reliance on holy texts to determine moral and ethical guidelines and commandments. Moral relativism (which should under no circumstances be conflated with relativity) on the other hand postulates that morals can be somewhat flexible and develop as education and understanding progresses, and accepts the subjective nature of morality. This acknowledges that cultural differences across different times and different regions may mean that what people consider moral can change. This change, particularly over time, is sometimes known as the moral zeitgeist, from the German "spirit of the times". Hence once slavery was accepted in parts of the western world, it now is not - or at least it has been outsourced to poorer countries and prisons. |
| Just because a group of people thinks that something is right does not make so. Slavery is a good example of this. Two hundred years ago in America, slavery was the norm and morally acceptable. Now it is not. Of course, a society involved in constant moral conflict would not be able to survive for very long. Morality is the glue that holds society together. There must be a consensus of right and wrong for a society to function well. Ethical relativism undermines that glue. |
| Relativism also does not allow for the existence of an absolute set of ethics. Logically, if there are no absolute ethics, then there can be no Absolute Ethics Giver, which can easily be extrapolated as being God. Therefore, ethical relativism would not support the idea of an absolute God and it would exclude religious systems based upon absolute morals; that is, it would be absolute in its condemnation of absolute ethics. In this, relativism would be inconsistent since it would deny beliefs of absolute values. |
| However, I do not believe that the best ethical patterns by which societies operate (honesty, fidelity, truth, no theft, no murder, etc.) are the product of our biological makeup or trial and error. As a Christian, I see them as a reflection of God’s very character. They are a discovery of the rules God has established by which people best interact with people because He knows how He has designed them. The Ten Commandments are a perfect example of moral absolutes and have yet to be improved upon. They are transcendent; that is, they transcend social norms and are always true. | Rooting morality into a being "beyond our comprehension" only pushes morality beyond our comprehension. It is even worse when what we choose as a model is a god of ancient scripture depicting moral principles we hold being most basic (such as Ez. 9:5-6, God commands "slay the little children without pity.") When we tell ourselves there is an all-powerful entity that can do this, and still be "morally perfect," we create the very conditions that far from leading us to moral truths guarantee a moral confusion. Even if a god created our universe, nothing about the act or power of grand creation requires moral perfection. And even if the universe was created by a god somehow 'intrinsically good' no logic would require the being still to exist. Imagine if such a god existed yesterday but destroyed itself today, would torture suddenly stop being a moral issue? If so, then this god can't have embodied values of enduring relevance. Severing any connection with any objective moral values. If not, we admitting that this god does not need to exist, destroying this moral argument's conclusion for the existence of god. There would be equally overwhelming problems with claiming that "moral values and duties are transcendental in nature, and therefore require a supernatural creator." As soon as we require things to be viewed supernaturally with "goodness" "badness" or "oughtness," as soon as we allow the supernatural feature in any of our explanations, the idea of a single supreme deity becomes just one of countless unknowable untestable concepts, all with their unhooked justifications. |
| I was once challenged to prove that there were moral absolutes. I asked the gentleman whether or not there were logical absolutes—for example, whether it was a logical absolute that something could exist and also not exist at the same time. He said that it was not possible, so he agreed that there were indeed logical absolutes. I then asked him to explain how logical absolutes can exist if there is no God. I questioned him further by asking him to tell me how in a purely physical universe, logical absolutes, which are conceptual, can exist . . . without a God. He could not answer me. I then went on to say that these conceptual absolutes logically must exist in the mind of an absolute God because they cannot merely reside in the properties of matter in a purely naturalistic universe. And since logical absolutes are true everywhere all the time and they are conceptual, it would seem logical that they exist within a transcendent, omnipresent Being. If there is an absolute God with an absolute mind, then He is the standard of all things—as well as morals. Therefore, there would be moral absolutes. To this argument the gentleman chuckled, said he had never heard it before, and conceded that it may be possible for moral absolutes to exist.
Of course, as a Christian, as one who believes in the authority and inspiration of the Bible, I consider moral absolutes to be very real because they come from God and not because they somehow reside in a naturalistic universe. | Not getting an answer from an unnamed fellow do not mean there are no valid answers o that your position wins by default. The Bible tells us that Yahweh not only permitted but endorsed rape, slavery, killing of babies and children, familial cannibalism, and mass murder. It is Yahweh that permits everything.
But what if we were brought up to think that Yahweh really exists and it morally perfect? How do we respond to these acts? Declare them just? We know killing those known not to be responsible for the sins being punished is quintessentially unjust. Do we concoct an elaborate justification for anything Yahweh did? No, when we indulge any impulse to excuse or defend these acts, we are already going dangerously astray. If we justify these acts, what won't we justify? Do we brush Yahweh's atrocities under the carpet of symbolism, claiming they are not meant to be taken literally? Nothing in the Bible makes clear that Yahweh is acting symbolically, but even if they were the idea of an omni-benevolent baby punisher makes no more senses as a symbol than as a literal being. Do we claim that these particular passages are just merely beyond our understanding? Not only is that unconvincing, when we condemn humans who act this way without hesitation, it represents one of the most deplorably irresponsible attitudes towards morality and justice we encounter. We can't paper over these serious issues by declaring the existence of a supernatural being with such immoral behavior. Nor should we be duped into thinking response shows humility. Admitting that we do not understand everything about the universe is humble. saying that we do not understand how making people eat their children is a depraved punishment even if it is ordered by a god, is an inexcusable abdication of critical judgment. But if there is a person who argues that God works in mysterious ways, ways that utterly contradict our notions of moral behavior, then its nature is clearly not the source of our morality. If according to the Bible that Yahweh's nature is familial cannibalism a just punishment, yet when we call any human who provides such a law as depraved, then these positions are in direct conflict. And invoking divine mystery does nothing to resolve that conflict. Responding to these atrocities with examples of mercy does not work either, it just shows that the Bible contains both atrocities and mercy. Non-Christians who cite biblical cruelties are often accused of cherry-picking. In fact, non-Christians can freely acknowledge both kindness and cruelties in the Bible. Particularly the cruelties that should concern any decent person are those who ignore and overlook the immoral content of religious scripture, who are truly cherry-picking. Theists who discard the less palatable parts of Scripture should at least be honest about the standards by which they do this and concede that they are applying their own independent judgment to Scripture. Obviously when we use our own moral sense to separate god and bad in Scripture, when we revise our interpretation of it to reflect the more enlightened view of our time, it is not Scripture guiding our morality. It is our morality guiding our perception of Scripture. The Bible is an extraordinary set of texts, however what it gives us is not the way of the perfect being, but a fascinating record of the inconsistencies of ancient beliefs and customs described by fallible authors writing centuries ago, borrowing extensively from others mythology and giving frequently conflicting versions of events never witnessed by the authors, and have been circulated through decades of word of mouth. Many of these authors felt the massive extermination of lives was honorable behavior for a god, confusing morality with power, and they poured this flawed understanding into their writings. But if their ancient minds fail to see the cruelties and contradictions in what they wrote, it should not be invisible to us now. We do ourselves grave injustice if w enshrine their ignorance in our morality. They did not know better, we do. Religious scripture is fixed in distant history, and it many endorsements of cruelties we do not tolerate today make this abundantly evident. It is not a virtue of religious dogma that it doesn't change, it is the most profound failing. Moral systems that can't develop in response to our advances in our understanding cannot edify, they ossify. Moral considerations, far from leading us to embrace the 'good books', are exactly what should lead us to reject them. |
Feathers for Arrows[edit]
| The thought may enter the mind of the sinner that perhaps God will overlook his sins. Perhaps God, in His mercy, could just look the other way. If He does so, then He is unjust. Think of it in connection with civil law. Can a judge look the other way when a criminal is obviously guilty, and be true to what is right? Even if the judge feels sorry for the criminal, he must stay true to the law. Justice must be done. In the ten years between 1980 and 1990, in the United States alone, there were more than 60,000 murderers who were never caught. At least 60,000 murders were committed, and the murderers got away totally free. No doubt the figure is higher as many “accidents and suicides” are actually murders in disguise. These are people who have raped, tortured, and strangled helpless victims. Their victims’ bodies have been cut in pieces, dissolved in acid, or burned in flames. Police have no body. . . just evidence of a missing person. Should God overlook their crimes on Judgment Day? Should He turn a blind eye? Should He compromise Eternal Justice? | So basically, God is limited to the law. Despite Ray and the basic teachings of Christianity that God is infinitely merciful , he cannot be merciful to sinners. Ray says even if God, the judge, feels sorry for the criminal, he is powerless to simply forgive the criminal or change the law. And yet, when criminals rape, burn, or dissolve their victims, God can easily overlook their crimes on Judgment Day if they simply repent first. This is the utmost “get-out-of-jail-free-card” since Christianity promotes even the worst type of person can do whatever they want and enter heaven simply by repenting on their death bed. According to Ray, most people think that God will simply forgive them for breaking the law. Ray objects, saying the law is absolute and God cannot forgive those who break it. But there is a discrepancy with their line of reasoning and what is actually in the Bible. The law, according to Ray, prohibits all forms of lying, and yet in the Bible we have God forgiving liars. For instance, Ruth lied to the authorities that she was hiding fugitives, and yet the book of James calls Ruth “righteous.” |
Lesson 75: Relativism Part 2[edit]
| Kirk's comment: This lesson explains why the concept of relativism has taken root in our society, and provides several ways you can easily counter its claims. Truth really is logical, so don’t be intimidated by the arguments presented in this lesson; they’re simple and effective in helping people see the illogic of their beliefs. You can then appeal to their conscience using the Ten Commandments. |
| Ray responds to the claim “I am too big a sinner.” Ray says: Nobody is too big a sinner. The love of God and the sacrifice of Jesus are capable of cleansing the worst of all sin. Even Hitler could have been saved if he would have turned to Christ. Your sins are not too big for God to wipe away. Sin has no power over God, only over you.
Do you think murder and adultery are serious sins? David, who God called “a man after His own heart” (Acts 13:22), was a murderer and an adulterer. He even tried to hide his sin from everyone. But God knew his sins and exposed them. David repented and threw himself on the mercy of the Lord, and God forgave him. God will forgive you too if you put your trust in Jesus Christ and ask Him to forgive you of your sins (Romans 10:9,10). | So even an evil man like Hitler can enter can enter Heaven imply by turning to Christ. Btw, God may have known of Davids sins, but God did not punish David for his crimes. Rather, God punished David's child. How bout that, God punishes children for the crimes of the father. |
Cognitive Relativism[edit]
| Written by Matt Slick. |
Cognitive relativism, which affirms that all truth is relative, would mean that there is no objective standard of truth to be found or claimed. It would, naturally, deny that there is a God of absolute truth. It would also deny the belief that rational thought can discover and verify truth. Many believe that this relativism is self-contradictory. But, why has relativism gained a foothold in modern society? I think there are several factors contributing to its acceptance.
| Going in order,
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| The problem I see with cognitive relativism is that it denies the possibility of absolute truth. Furthermore, I believe cognitive relativism is easily refutable with the following example of a logical absolute: Something cannot bring itself into existence.
My proposed logical absolute is indeed logical and always true. For something to bring itself into existence, it must first exist. If it first existed, then it cannot bring itself into existence because it already is existing. Likewise, if something does not exist, then it is not possible for it to bring itself into existence since it isn’t there to do anything. |
| This is an absolute truth and it is knowable. Since it is absolutely true, cognitive relativism, which states that all truth is relative, is false. What if relativism were true? Relativism is the position that all points of view are as valid as any other points of view and that the individual is the measure of what is true for that person. I see a big problem with this. Following is an illustration to demonstrate it.
The setting: A thief is casing a jewelry store so he can rob it. He has entered it to check out any visible alarm settings, locks, layout, etc. In the process, he has unexpectedly gotten involved in a discussion with the owner of the jewelry store whose hobby is the study of philosophy and believes that truth and morals are relative.
If relativism is true, then was it wrong to pull the trigger? Perhaps someone might say that it is wrong to take another life needlessly. But why is that wrong, if there is no standard of right or wrong? Others have said that it is a crime against society. But, so what? If what is true for you is simply true, then what is wrong with killing someone to protect yourself after you have robbed him? If it is true for you that to protect yourself you must kill, then who cares what society says? Why is anyone obligated to conform to social norms? Doing so is a personal decision. Though not all relativists will behave in an unethical manner, I see relativism as a contributor to overall anarchy. Why? Because it is a justification to do whatever you want. |
Refuting Relativism[edit]
| The proposition of relativism, that all points of view are equally valid and
that all truth is relative to the individual, is not logical. In fact, it is self refuting.
| In reality, there is no such thing as “absolute truth”. Everything within the capacity of human understanding contains a degree of error, and everything men know to be true is only true to a degree. Everyone is inevitably wrong about something somewhere. We don’t know everything about everything. We don’t know everything about anything! And what we do know, we don’t know accurately on all points nor completely in every detail. Honest men admit this. Anyone claiming to know the absolute truth is not being honest, especially not when they claim to know anything about things which can only be believed on faith. Even if men were given genuine revelations by truly omniscient beings, they must still be filtered and interpreted by weaker minds influenced by our limitations, biases, and misimpressions, as well as linguistic and cultural barriers. |
What is Truth?[edit]
| “What is truth?” is a very simple question. We can offer definitions like “Truth is that which conforms to reality, fact, or actuality.” If there is such a thing as truth, then we should be able to find it. If truth cannot be known, then it probably doesn’t exist. But, it does exist. For example, we know it is true that you are reading this. Is there such a thing as something that is always true all the time? Yes, there is. For example, “Something cannot bring itself into existence” is an absolute truth. |
| If we are to ever hope to determine if there is such a thing as truth apart from cultural and personal preferences, we must acknowledge that we are then aiming to discover something greater than ourselves, something that transcends culture and individual inclinations. To do this is to look beyond ourselves and outside of ourselves. In essence, it means that we are looking for God. God would be truth, the absolute and true essence of being and reality who is the author of all truth. If you are interested in truth beyond yourself, then you must look to God. | Why does looking for something beyond ourselves must result in looking for God rather than Allah, Zeus, or even aliens. |
| For the Christian, the ultimate expression of truth is found in the Bible, in Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). | This is assuming that Jesus, if he existed, spoke these words.
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| Of course, most philosophers and skeptics will dismiss His claim, but for the Christian, He is the mainstay of hope, security, and guidance. Jesus, who walked on water, claimed to be divine, and rose from the dead, said that He was the truth and the originator of truth. If Jesus is wrong, then we should ignore Him. But, if He is right, then it is true that we should listen to Him. | Where is the evidence that Jesus did any of these things? Nothing in this book has provided a shred of evidence to support that Jesus performed any of the above. The Gospel writers were not eyewitnesses to write anything that Jesus said, if what we have are even his words at all. If such a poor validation were coming from any other religion, it would be reasonably dismissed. Likewise, as Slick suggests, the best option is to ignore that which has no proof to support it. |
| The eyewitnesses recorded what they saw. They were with Him. They watched Him perform many miracles, heal the sick, calm a storm with a command, and even rise from the dead. You either believe or dismiss these claims. If you dismiss them, that is your prerogative. But, if you accept them, then you are faced with decisions to make about Jesus. What will you believe about Him? What will you decide about Him? Is He true? Is what He said true? | The Gospel authors are not eyewitnesses, and all contemporary witnesses did not record anything. Jesus, as told in the Gospels, was surrounded by people who were well-known and could write or at least had servants who recorded everything. Jerusalem was the center of education, with low levels of illiteracy. And yet, not a single Roman executive, scribe, poet, historian, scholar, etc. records anything about a man who entered the Temple in Jerusalem on Passover to start a riot one time. Note that Slick says you either “believe or dismiss” these claims. Why does he say you either believe or don't. While this whole section was focused on what we can and cannot know (and rather flawed throughout), but now Slick resides to belief. Unfortunately, belief does not grant knowledge. |
| Truth conforms to reality. The reality is that Jesus performed many miracles and rose from the dead. | The reality is that we have no proof whatsoever that Jesus, if he existed, performed as much as a coin trick. |
See also[edit]
External Links[edit]
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ Comings, David E. M.D. Did Man Create God? 2008, pg. 295.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 [1], Testimonium Flavianum
- ↑ http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Would_someone_die_for_a_lie%3F
- ↑ http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05121a.htm
- ↑ “Christs”
- ↑ “Not the Impossible Faith” by Richard Carrier, pg 297-321
- ↑ http://www.godlesshaven.com/articles/isaiah53.html
- ↑ http://www.godlesshaven.com/articles/isaiah53.html
- ↑ http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Debunking_Christians/Page9.htm
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang
- ↑ http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/2/317.full.pdf+html
- ↑ http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part3.html
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality#Coccyx
- ↑ http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB601_1.html
- ↑ http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-4.html#quote81
- ↑ http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB400.html
- ↑ http://www.ebonmusings.org/evolution/tornado.html
- ↑ http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2009/06/ruse_news.php
- ↑ http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/06/in_which_andrew_brown_gets_eve.php
- ↑ Merling, David, n.d., Has Noah's Ark been found? [2]
- ↑ Gould, Stephen J., 1998. The upwardly mobile fossils of Leonardo's living earth. In: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, New York: Three Rivers Press, pp. 17-44.
- ↑ http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate.html
- ↑ http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html
- ↑ Robinson, A. J., M. Kropatkin, and P. M. Aggeler. 1969. Hagemann factor (factor XII) deficiency in marine mammals. Science 166: 1420-1422.
- ↑ Davidson, C. J., E. G. Tuddenham, and J. H. McVey. 2003. 450 million years of hemostasis. Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis 1: 1478-1497.
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbvMB57evy4