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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Why bother fighting Evolution and Naturalism? How Morality? Why God?



There is a treatise on the nature of morality farther down when you get past the purple letters.  I am sharing a bit of my testimony but go ahead down to the main article if you do not care.   My testimony only matters in that God can save anyone and I do mean anyone!

I was working on the sequel for the last post today as I sat downstairs and played the CMT Music Channel, trying to catch the wave of current country.   My mother was a jazz and pop singer.  I was a rock and roll musician (mostly a singer because I was a mediocre keyboards player and drummer) and I never liked country. My dad would occasionally play Johnny Cash but that never stuck.   Musicals, rock, pop, jazz, pretty much anything BUT Country interested me.  I even have an extensive classical music collection.  In fact, it was hard for me to find something I liked less than country music until Rap and PopTart music came along.   It was my oldest daughter, who is a fantastic singer, who cultivated my interest in country by getting me to go to a Toby Keith concert. 

Drugs or Jesus.  Yes, I was once a junkie, a drug dealer, a party animal, a sinner par excellence.   Talking to my oldest recently, as she was telling me what a great Dad I was (her opinion, of course) I told her that she was part of my salvation.    I was going to leave my wife and go be a rock hero.   I would either be dead, in jail or be one of those old dudes on perpetual tour still trying to lure groupies to his RV after the concert, getting AARP messages in his mail and trying to look and act 29 for the rest of his life.  Yes, I had one foot out the door but had not really left everything behind because I had that little girl in that playpen with her big blue eyes looking at me every day.  I'd felt a small hand snag my little finger as a baby in an incubator, too small, opened her eyes for the first time and I was what she saw.  Sometimes I like to say she had to be pretty brave to fight for life after her first glimpse of the world!!!

But leaving my little daughter was hard and I was so ambivalent that I was still working at the factory and coming home...eventually.  Today I remember and wonder how close I was to leaving when that Pastor Wood came to speak to a guy called they called The Caveman.  I was rough-looking and smelled like pot and beer and had a cigarette in one hand and a can in the beer in the other.   My hair and beard were long, my muscles were toned from lifting thousands of pounds each night at the steel tubing factory, my attitude was bored and dismissive.   My heart was mostly with partying and getting a rock band ready to fly but...God had not given up on me.

By God's grace the hesitation gave God just enough time to send one more guy to my door, one more guy telling me about this Jesus and God being real and...zap.   In an instant I knew it was true and in an instant I belonged to Jesus more than I did to myself and I belonged at home building a life instead of in bars making love to foolish young women through a microphone.  Both me and my wife became Christians, I have six children who are also Christian and three grandchildren being raised to be Christians as well.   God has enabled me to work in ministry for 32 years.  When I think of all the kids, and teenagers and even adults I have been able to bring to Jesus in these years and how close I came to throwing everything worth anything away...tears fill my eyes and I know it is the Grace of God and His power and not mine. 

My oldest reminded me of the years we had a family band and we would sing at churches and we would sing in the van or the car and we would sing at home and with friends and then I realized yet again that I had actually done what I always wanted to do anyway.  I had sung in churches and special meetings and on videos and on flatbed trucks in parks and always for Jesus, singing with bands and choirs and church musicians - thousands and thousands over the years.   I am retired from all but karaoke singing right now as I rehab a very bad knee but if God wills I will go back to singing in the church group again.  I did not become a rock star.  But I did become a singer for the Rock of Ages! 

 Morality?   They say the best things in life are free.   If you think about it, the best things in life aren't material at all.   Life.  Love.  Relationships.  Intellect.  Information.  Joy.  It isn't just that life is obviously designed and Darwinists pathetically misuse a logical argument to dodge the problem, it is that they do not even realize how lost and misguided they are.   How is it so many people can thoughtlessly believe the carefully crafted lies of naturalists, high priests of materialism who do not care about you or me?   How is it so many people do not even really think about it all?

So much about life has nothing to do with the material world.  This Universe could not have created itself, life cannot make itself, so much of the garbage you get spoonfed in school is utterly ridiculous religious nonsense.   Now I hurt for other people and their desperation, for others who are seeking and not finding, for those who are smugly sure that they know it all and they nothing at all worth knowing.  Too many seek something in a snort of coke or a dozen coke-and-crowns or a hit of acid or a joint, too many seek refuge in sex or money or fame or indulging in endless fantasies.   How many crackheads will lose their families, their minds, their lives?   How many babies are murdered in the womb?  It is the hopeless meaningless of Darwinism that underlies so much of this!

Richard Dawkins is a poor, sad fool.   He challenges God and calls Him names and thinks he is all that.  In the end he will be broken and horrified and will realize the gravity of his mistake too late.  The irony of it all is that he accuses both God and Christians of immorality!   It is no surprise that he is ignorant concerning the Bible.  Atheists of all stripes seem to go to a few sources to find pat answers and supposed slapdowns aimed at Christians and creationists.  Each and every one of them, Jesus died for and holds out the gift of salvation to them until they take their last breath.  Will they go down cursing or crying?  I do not know but I keep hoping and praying they will not go down at all.

Scott Stapp of Creed sang "I'm down on my knees, begging you to rescue me.  Please don't let me run, surround me surround me!"   God found him and Scott found God.   God found me and I found God.  Now I will appeal to your heart through your mind with this article.   Jesus Christ is always calling, He calls with the stars and the evidence and the Bible and the millions of changed lives and he also calls with logic:

Monkey Morality: Can Evolution Explain Ethics?

Article ID: DC753

By: Gregory Koukl










Wired for Morality








Social Darwinism





Conduct, Motive, and Intent






Morality: Explained or Denied?




Why Be a Good Boy Tomorrow?












Four Observations about Morality







Narrowing Our Options










One Remaining Answer







The Final Verdict





2 Ibid., 58.
3 Ibid., 59.
4 Ibid., 56.
5 Ibid., 88.
6 Ibid., 13.
7 Ibid., 377.
8 Ibid., 31.
9 Ibid., 102.
11 Wright, 212.
The contents of this article are available for PDF download HERE!

There is a song that says that "He could have called ten thousand angels" and well He could have.  Jesus did not have to come and He did not have to suffer and die but for love.  It was love that brought Him to this Earth to dispel the folly of naturalism and paganism and narcissism and bring relationship with God back to mankind with love.  It was love that brought Him here. 

This is why Dr. Henry Morris gave his life over to teaching people that creation and the Noahic Flood and the Biblical genealogies and in fact the Truth of Salvation was indeed Truth.  This is why many successful scientists and teachers have stood for God and been fired or denied tenure, why they have formed their own peer reviewed journals and organizations to study and understand science from the point of view of a created world.   Evidence needs to be inspected and understood,  opinions change, facts can be misleading but there is Truth.   Truth does not change, Truth stands forever, Truth is worth fighting for until the very end.   Jesus Christ is Lord.  This is Truth!


Anonymous whatsit said...

Man, this is like dormroom banter back in college. I'll dig through this nonsense in more detail when I have time, but the summary alone is completely incoherent:


No, it does exactly the opposite: it assumes an evolutionary morality that is not transcended by any other morality.

“(2) it cannot explain motive and intent,”

No, it does exactly that.

“(3) it denies rather than explains morality, and”

No, it explains what we perceive as morality. It does not deny it.

“(4) it cannot account for the “oughtness” of morality.”

What exactly is the basis for the “oughtness” of morality? In other words, how is the “oughtness” of “oughtness” established?


Givent that these premises, as stated here, are fundamentally flawed, the conclusion is highly questionable.

radar said...

Anonymous, you are giving answers without reasoning. You are basically saying "nyuh-un!"

Why should your opinion without any reasoning or evidence be considered at all? Evolution cannot have a morality, it is not a being nor does it have intent. It only explains selfish motives if it explains any at all. I guess back in college you neglected to take any classes in philosophy?

DogMaBlog said...

So whatsit, should we throw out the United States Constitution? From where do we get our unalienable rights? There has to be a moral authority above just arbitrary consensus. Without a Creator our whole system of law falls apart. There has to be a standard beyond the government to appeal to.

The way God set it up is that humans can choose and then deal with the consequences. Moral choices tend to lead to a better life. You choose to wait until marriage to have sex. Then you will never get a STD or have a child without support. You don't steal, you will not worry about anyone coming after you to get his stuff back. You don't murder and you don't have to worry about someone taking revenge on you. You don't commit adultery and you don't destroy your home. You don't lie and you don't have to worry about being exposed. What we see all around us is cause and effect. If you are at all logical, you would assume that morality not only works but is good.

Evolutionary theory has no rationality it is arbitrary, just chance with no evidence or cause. It can't prove or predict anything and cannot qualify "good". DebB

Anonymous whatsit said...

"There has to be a moral authority above just arbitrary consensus."

What makes you say that the consensus is arbitrary, and what is your basis for claiming that there has to be a moral authority above the consensus?

"Moral choices tend to lead to a better life."

Correct, which is why it is perfectly logical to say that they can have evolved in society. The so-called "moral law" that your "moral law-giver" has allegedly imposed happens to coincide with what societies over time have found to be the best way for a society to function. This viewpoint also happens to explain that morality has evolved over time, whereas a religious fundamentalist viewpoint would dictate that it not change at all from about the time of the New Testament onwards.


It's quite common for creationists/religious fundamentalists to confuse the scientific theory of evolution with a philosophical stance, I'm guessing because their own worldview blurs the borders between a religious framework and something they think is "science" to such a large extent.

Still: the theory of evolution is rational and based on observable evidence. It combines random chance (mutations) with the non-random filter of natural selection. There is plenty of evidence (you would benefit from not just listening to your husband, who is nowhere near as intelligent as he sometimes boasts, but also checking out some information for yourself from other sources) and there are plenty of falsifiable, verifiable predictions that confirm the theory of evolution.

Can the theory of evolution qualify "good" in a moral sense? No, but that's not what it's there for.

Anonymous whatsit said...

"Anonymous, you are giving answers without reasoning. You are basically saying "nyuh-un!""

No, I was responding to a summary with summarized responses. Like I said, I'd pick through it in more detail when I have time. And because nobody was commenting until just now, I had just left it.

I haven't read the book that the above article is in reaction to. Its arguments may well have flaws. But let me point out some of the arguments made by the author of the article:


Evolutionary "morality" is based on two things: one, what has evolved genetically over many generations well before recorded history, including feelings of sexual love (fostering reproduction), parental instincts (fostering reproduction/survival) etc., and two, what has evolved as a societal consensus regarding what is the best way to live together (don't murder, don't steal, etc.).

With these two elements in place, there is no need for a "moral law-giver" or a "transcendent morality", though what is referred to as "transcendent morality" here - the "oughtness" - can be said to be an aspect of the morality that has formed as a societal consensus that has frequently also been codified in religious texts.

Consider this: is there ever an instance in which the moral law-giver commands you to do something that is bad for your tribe?

Re. explaining motive and intent: of course morality evolved as societal consensus with a view to optimal ways for the members of a tribe to interact with each other would explain motive and intent. Somebody who trips someone else by accident is not in general a danger to the coherence of the tribe. Someone who trips someone else on purpose can stand in the way of the tribe being a coherent unit, which is why such thoughts are to be discouraged.

Re. whether morality is explained or denied: based on the misunderstanding or lack of understanding re. the previous point, the author of the article draws the wrong conclusion here as well, in that he doesn't think it can explain motive/intent and therefore evades dealing with a large part of morality. Given that morality by societal consensus in combination with genetically evolved morality does explain these things, he is simply mistaken.

Re. the "oughtness". Societal consensus does address the "oughtness". We "ought" to do the right thing because it benefits the survival of our tribe. Occasionally, religions have codified this "oughtness", but because they now have a code tied to certain mythological elements (a deity, a holy book), they think that these items are absolute prerequisites for such a morality to benefit the tribe to exist.

Anonymous said...

Get back to me about the unchanging morals of Christianity when Christians finally take a Bible-appropriate stance on usury.