Part 2 -The Doorway to Belief: How FAITH Opens the Proof of God!

In Part 2, I will deal with the previous part as too the Skeptic's Dictionary definition of FAITH!

While it makes some good points about Religious ideas and their silliness, at the same time the Author makes similar silly comments and misconceptions available to view. I do not throw out the baby with the bath water as he seems to do on some concepts, concerning faith and the existence of God, so the concept of faith is viewed very differently by two viewpoints. 

This IN NO WAY disproves anything, it simply shows that we have completely different points of contrast concerning the same doctrine!

What I want to do here is to take apart what was said and put in a true biblical light, NOT a religious false light, this where he has bleed the two concepts together. I'm not saying that his points are not valid, they are but ONLY in the concept of man-made religion not real biblical Faith.

Religion as I have PROVED many times before is NOT a true reflection of the truth of biblical faith simply because religion has ADOPTED the World's definitions of Biblical concepts and thus twisted their meanings to be mush too simplistic and powerless from what God himself has defined them as! 

Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond 

Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, 2nd Edition 

Scientific Creationism 

Creation As Science: A Testable Model Approach to End the Creation/evolution Wars 

 The New Creationism: Building Scientific Theory on a Biblical Foundation 

Old Earth Creationism on Trial: The Verdict Is In 

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (8th Edition) 

Ultimate Proof of Creation 

Science, Evolution, and Creationism 

The Privileged Planet 

Introduction to Scientific Creationism 

Thousands not Billions: Challenging the Icon of Evolution, Questioning the Age of the Earth 

Michael Girouard, Fascinating Design: Evidence for Creation (VHS) Creationism 

The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded Edition 

Unlocking the Mystery of Life

The true definition of Biblical Faith is found in Hebrews 11:1 as I explained in the first blog on this site HERE!

Please read this first as it will make things clearer as to what true Christian Doctrine is concerning faith and how it applies to our Belief system, any definition of biblical Faith MUST include this wording or it fails to meet God's requirements for Belief!

Notwithstanding the silly parody of Mark Twain: "Yet it was the school boy who said, Faith is believing what you know ain't so." which is not to be taken as Gospel in any form, other statements in this Article are just as silly as Twain's was.

"Faith is a non-rational belief in some proposition. A non-rational belief is one that is contrary to the sum of the evidence for that belief. A belief is contrary to the sum of the evidence if there is overwhelming evidence against the belief, e.g., that the earth is flat, hollow, or is the center of the universe. A belief is also contrary to the sum of the evidence if the evidence seems equal both for and against the belief, yet one commits to one of the two or more equally supported propositions."

 

What makes this silly is that there is absolutely no evidence that Biblical Faith is NON-RATIONAL, sure...the religion men make these non-rational jumps all the time with its circular reasoning. But true biblical Faith isn't defined in this way so his conclusions are false based upon a presupposition of guilt! He is doing here just what he accuses us of doing.

Second of all he assumes that "there is overwhelming evidence against the belief " when there is not, there is nothing out there that would contradict biblical defined Faith. I mean sticking to it strictly speaking and not redefining it to fit your understanding. 

It is only FAIR to use the proper definition of Faith going forward is it not?

From Hebrews 11:1 

THIS IS WHAT FAITH IS, HOW IT WORKS AND WHAT IT CONTAINS:

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

So we can plainly see that NOW FAITH, present tense Faith is FILLED with SUBSTANCE, of what? THINGS hoped for, in other words the answer to our prayers is CONTAINED in our Faith as well as the PROOF or EVIDENCE needed to believe. This is far from his weak definition of faith from a man-written document, defined by man's perceptions NOT God's!

Now let's see it from the Amplified bible which reveals the Greek Original:

"NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, [a]the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]."

Faith as defined in scripture contains the Contractual agreement between you and God for the things your praying for, The Title Deed of your ownership to them. It also contains the PROOF of their reality, all the Evidence needed to draw your conclusions as to their reality, all this is contained in a seed the size of a pepper speck!

Faith perceives as real fact what is not revealed to the senses, as yet. Not that it will not be revealed but that it is so-far unseen in the world. All the proof and Evidence that the skeptic needs is there inside "The God Seed of Faith" given when Obedience is fulfilled.

God requires FIRST obedience THEN He'll reveal the details, just as Life requires you to live it before the details are revealed!

Don't like that, Mr. Atheist, Agnostic or Skeptic? 

Tough, that's how it works, and no amount of crying and amassing vast amounts of contrary evidence based upon a false assumption will change it. Life works this way and saying it shouldn't won't change the outcome in the least.

What if the evidence seems equal both for and against the belief, this is a loaded request because NO matter how much evidence is given they'll explain it away and thus a quandary is created, this is like a self fulfilling prophecy for them! Its a trap we as believers fall into, chasing our tails around a straw man principle. 

If you think about it this creates the same issues for the skeptic, they just don't let you know it, so it seems insurmountable to the believer, if they have just as much counter evidence to my evidence no one wins. BUT the real question all along is HOW good is their evidence, is it circumstantial or based on SOLID SCIENTIFIC FACT! There is a great difference between SOLID facts based in scientific study and "Factual innuendos" used in their "non existence"arguments to defer a response, stating FACTS like a machine gun at you as if those facts were part of the answer when most of the facts are unrelated to the question.

What about the statement: 

By Richard Spencer, Ph.D., associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis and faculty adviser to the Christian Student Union.

"There is no God, and there can't be a god; everything evolved from purely natural processes" cannot be supported by the scientific method and is a statement of faith, not science."

 What's wrong with this statement? He says "The error or deception here is to imply that anything that is not a scientific statement, i.e., one supported by evidence marshaled forth the way scientists do in support of their scientific claims, is a matter of faith. To use 'faith' in such a broad way is to strip it of any theological significance the term might otherwise have."

That is a total misreading of what he said in the first place, what he is saying is the statements made concerning Evolution and God are not based upon science but the fanciful speculations of those who BELIEVE in the natural explanations vs. the actual data available to prove that. There is NO evidence that PROVES ONCE AND FOR ALL THERE IS NO GOD OR THAT THE WORLD CAME INTO BEING BY PURELY NATURAL OCCURRENCES. 

What he's saying is THEIR VIEW of faith and ours is different so they take things in "faithful assumption" that one day there will be the evidence to support, RATHER than rejecting it as unproven, that's what "a statement of Faith" is in regards to science.

No side in this debate can say that, that in itself is dishonest and can easily be disproved simply by seeing the state of the debate as it is today. LOTS of things are taken on faith in this debate, Evolution is the biggest offender as the Missing Links are VAST and getting bigger, anyone who states in the Church that "Some things are just to be taken by Faith!" is being equally dishonest, as this form of "Faith taking" is not in any way biblical, no where in scripture does God require a "Brain Freeze" in regards to belief or for that matter knowledge, HE WANTS PEOPLE TO KNOW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW CONCERNING WHAT THEY ARE TO BELIEVE, IF THEY NEED TO KNOW IT HE REVEALS IT! 

Where? 

In scripture, seek it out, ask the questions He's a God of answers but according to FAITH not according to DOUBT and SKEPTICISM.

Again, the same bad defining is used here:

"Physicist Bob Park explains this difference in a way even the most devious casuist should understand. 

The Oxford Concise English Dictionary, he notes, gives two distinct meanings for faith:

 "1) complete trust or confidence, and

2) strong belief in a religion based on spiritual conviction rather than proof."

A scientist's "faith" is built on experimental proof.

The two meanings of the word "faith," therefore, are not only different, they are exact opposites."

 He's right by defining faith the way he does, they are different because he has assumed that we have complete "Trust and Reliance" upon NOTHING real, its just "Dreams and Mist" as others have stated. BUT that's NOT TRUE, real faith REQUIRES the opposite to mean anything at all. This meaning is not the FAITH we are talking about here, but.... 

 rather than proof." where is that found in Hebrews 11:1

This is what's called a "Straw-man argument" setting up a false idea and defeating it like it was a real issue in the first place, maybe he's unaware that he's done it because he's parroting others who defined Faith the same way or maybe he is dishonest, I don't know!

All I know is that NO Atheist site defines Faith in the proper way, is it because they fear their ideas can't hold water under the true definition? Only your friendly Atheist knows for sure! 

Here's more based on a false premise:

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"an erroneous view of faith

If we examine Dr. Spencer's claims, the error of his conflation of two senses of 'faith' should become obvious. He claims that the statement 'there is no God and there can't be a god; everything evolved from purely natural processes' is a statement of faith. There are three distinct statements here. 

One, 'there is no God'. 

Two, 'there can't be a god'. 

And three, 'everything evolved from purely natural processes'.

Dr. Spencer implies that each of these claims is on par with such statements as 'there is a God', 'Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior', 'Jesus's mother was a virgin', 'a piece of bread may have the substance of Jesus Christ's physical body and blood', 'God is one being but three persons', and the like.

The statement 'there cannot be a god' is not an empirical statement. Anyone who would make such a claim would make it by arguing that a particular concept of god contains contradictions and is, therefore, meaningless.

For example, to believe that 'some squares are circular' is a logical contradiction. Circles and squares are defined so as to imply that circles can't be square and squares can't be circular.

James Rachels, for one, has argued that god is impossible, but at best his argument shows that the concepts of an all-powerful God and one who demands worship from His creations are contradictory. 

The concept of worship, Rachels argues, is inconsistent with the traditional Judeo-Christian God concept."

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 This argument is nothing new, and shows a complete ignorance of true Doctrine in the Bible, mixing the facts up with FALSE doctrine doesn't make his arguments any better. How could we have an erroneous view of Faith when he's using an erroneous definition to start with?!

How can the concept of Worship be inconsistent with our view of God? It can't, if you have revealed to you the God of scripture but that CANNOT happen unless your FIRST SAVED, FIRST THE OBEDIENCE THEN THE UNDERSTANDING.

Are we working on Blind Faith? CLICK HERE to find out!

All understanding outside of biblical faith is limited greatly by a darkened mind controlled by the shadow of sin, now, I know; they don't think their thinking is darkened but that doesn't change the fact it is! My mind was so polluted by wrong thinking concerning God's Love I wouldn't know truth if it stood right in front of me singing Dixie! 

Ephesians 4:18

"Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:...."

 Romans 1:21

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened."

What about our Worship and our God? Does how we define our God (The Doctrine) even matter when we worship him?

"The concept of worship, Rachels argues, is inconsistent with the traditional Judeo-Christian God concept."

Mark 12:33

"And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

Sounds to me as if God requires a whole LOT more than religious worship affords, our worship of God is to be ALL OR NOTHING, our whole person is to be involved not a once a week, and Holidays worship. So it would seem that HOW we define our God is as much a part of us as we are to be of him. So the doctrine comes with the package.

"The statement 'there cannot be a god' is not an empirical statement. Anyone who would make such a claim would make it by arguing that a particular concept of god contains contradictions and is, therefore, meaningless."

Would that same Argument be in force if I found the many contradictions of Evolutionary theory to make Evolution meaningless? Of course not, it only applies to us not them! Good reasoning applies to every argument no matter the side but BAD reasoning knows no bound of dishonest approach. And to often there are bad reasoning's on both sides, with or without knowledge of it.

The whole idea of their use of the Trinity in arguments offends my knowledge of God greatly, not because it weakens my position but because I know as a former Pagan that it IS NOT a Pagan doctrine at all, pagans worship TRIADS not trinities the concept of ONE God in Three persons distinct from each other yet one in nature is unheard of in Paganism. So the matter of its incompatibility with Christian Worship is a false premise.

CLICK HERE to read my views on the Trinity! 

CLICK HERE to read my views on Religion! 

CLICK HERE to read my views on Intellectual Dishonesty

Transubstantiation or Wafer Worship and the Virgin birth of Mary's Mom and so on and so on as taught wrongly by religion are false concepts used to excuse bad doctrine.  With man-made lies it is required to make more lies to uphold the original lies. Religion is not the answer to any of man's questions, let alone a life changer like God is!

The Absolute Impossibility of Transubstantiation Demonstrated 

Twelve Letters On Transubstantiation, Containing Two Challenges to Dr. Cahill 

Christ's Discourse at Capernaum: Fatal to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation On the Very Principle of Exposition Adopted by the Divines of the Roman Church ... Remarks On Dr. Wiseman's Lectures On the 

The Idol Demolished by Its Own Priest; An Answer to Cardinal Wiseman's Lectures on Transubstantiation 

The History of Popish Transubstantiation 

 Graven Bread: The Papacy, the Apparitions of Mary, and the Worship of the Bread of the Altar

 The Two Babylons: Or, the Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod