Why Christians Should Stop Arguing with Atheist Progressives

I let myself be lured into arguing with an atheist friend of mine today.  First he said I must believe that Satan was behind the tectonic plate movements in Haiti, since, of course, Pat Robertson said so (which he didn't) and therefore I "must" believe it.  Then he claimed that I was "..trying to use reasoning and evidence, yet when asked for any evidence and reasoning behind the very existence of the devil you are using the defense “it’s a matter of belief.”


Except I never said "It's a matter of belief." He said that on my behalf without any help from me. Then he made some garbled comment about believing in "...talking snakes and drinking blood of dead God on Sundays."  Then, he went right on to "I would like an evidence which would not be riddled by gross logical fallacies" and offered to recommend some books for me to read that would fix me right up with my whole distorted belief system.

Oh, and then he suggested that if I were "intellectually curious" (oh, like George Bush wasn't you mean) then I might actually read some of the great books on how stupid Christians are.

I love it when progressives who are also atheists start tossing around book titles and asking you to prove God mathematically. Oh, and he made sure he pointed out that he has more education than 95% of ordinary mortals so "elitist" was an okay label with him.


The thing is, when you attack someone's belief system, they tend to get defensive. My friend's reaction was to defend his faith. I can't fault him for that. Atheism is no less passionate a belief system than any other religion.  My friend made it clear that I must prove that Satan exists if I am to believe in him.

The problem with that is he is under no similar compunction to prove that Satan does not exist. The fact is, you cannot prove a thing does not exist, only that you have never seen it yourself. I, for instance, have never seen a black hole and neither has anyone else. They can only infer the existence of a black hole by it's effect on objects around it.

I infer the existence of Satan in much the same way.  Progressivism actually began with a fine intent and had some very positive effects on society.  Crusty old capitalists were convinced to voluntarily treat their workers better. Christians began to perform organized acts of charity to improve the lot of those less fortunate than themselves.  But something happened to the movement early on and turned it a nightmare ideology based on beliefs that are totally at odds with Christian principles.  Eugenics, mass murder, persecution and tyranny sprang up from progressive roots with a speed and ferocity that was breath-taking.

The regularity with which this happens in history, points with certainty to the existence of a cool and evil intellect behind this transformation. At least it points with sufficient clarity to convince me that this evil entity exists.  Can I prove he exists? No, for I have never met him, although a person whose veracity I trust tells me she has met one of his agents in the flesh.  I have no reason to doubt her.


I am curious as to why folks like my friend even bother to argue with me.  It makes no sense. Atheists assume there is no God. Researchers like B.F. Skinner, proceed from that assumption and are led, logically, to the conclusion that men's ideas and attitudes and behaviors are entirely the product of operant conditioning. By that logic we basically have no free will.  Free will is, then, an illusion produced by our evolutionary proclivities.  The book he recommended that I read claims that people see meaning in randomness because of our evolutionary makeup and not because there is any inherent truth or meaning in life at all. 


If this is so, my friend's argument is the product of a lifetime of experiences and events that have conditioned him to believe as he believes and act as he acts - nothing more.  If that is so, then he believes what he believes quite by accident.  I, on the other hand, believe what I believe entirely by choice. Logically, he cannot help but pick an argument with me. He is conditioned to do so.  Since I am also conditioned to believe what I believe, according to his belief system, then neither of us are arguing because we want to, but because we are conditioned to.

Logically, only a person with free will could choose to stop the argument.  The responsibility, then, for ending the argument is entirely mine.  Since my belief system says that I am able to choose, I, therefore, choose not to argue.

Don't worry about my friend. He'll ramble on a while, score what he thinks are a couple of devastating points and then move on, congratulating himself on how he showed me up!

I love making atheists happy.  They have so little to be truly happy about.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King - Flint, TX

How the Devil Corrupted the Progressives

I just finished listening to John Cleese's brilliant rendition of C.S. Lewis' classic "The Screwtape Letters". What a lot of folks don't realize, if they haven't read the book lately, is what a prophetic work it is.  In the last chapter, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" Lewis explains quite succinctly how the devils went about turning the progressive movement, which had laudible goals and actually did some good at first, into the worst sort of communism and fascism.

Lewis, through Screwtape's speech, gives us a preview of where the progressive movement would be taken under the machinations of Satan. He is frighteningly accurate.  I highly recommend that you read or reread the book.  Even better, find a copy of the Cleese performance of the book. Cleese captures the sneering tone, the arrogance and self-deception of Satan's followers perfectly. He does a blistering condemnation of the education systems in both England and America and described what would be the consequences of what were then the current "cutting edge" practices in education. He particularly condemned the practice then just coming into vogue of creating an everybody succeeds, nobody fails, nobody stands out system of education.

He tells the story of the dictator who took a colleague to a cornfield to teach him how to control his own people.  He went out into the field and clipped the tops off every stalk of corn that stood higher than the rest. The great thing he told his colleague is that after they become accustomed to the practice, they will lop the heads off any tall ones themselves and call it "democracy". 

A perfect description of the insipid, everybody the same socialism that is being foisted on us by our own leaders today. We are seeing the outcome Lewis warned us of when he wrote the piece way back in the early 60's. His clear picture of the real "conspiracy" in this world is not a mere theory, but a living breathing fact and if you're not afraid of the devil now, you will be once you've realized what he's done to us right out in the open, right out in front of our faces with all of us so afraid of not being like everyone else that most of us actually helped bring about this bloody disaster of a society.

Ever tease a nerdy kid that makes good grades?  Every belittle someone's big dreams?  Ever pick on someone simply because everyone else did.  Ever back down from doing what you knew to be right because you didn't want to make a spectacle of yourself? Do you jump on every fad that comes down the pike and call it individualism when all that was really going on was that you wanted to be like everyone else? Did you vote for someone because it was cool and everybody else was voting for him? 

I could go on, but you get the idea.  To have resisted the devil's work would have required a life of constantly not fitting in, of being always out of sync with the rest of the world. It would require courage and a willingness to take the consequences.  It would require living the kind of life that people find odd and naieve, silly and prudish.

And who would want you to do that (besides, Jesus I mean).

I'm just sayin'

Tom King - Flint, TX

                                 

Unholy Alliances

If you watch the news, you will soon begin to detect the subtle machinations of individuals and groups seeking power. Weaving strands upon strands into a tapestry, a master planner seems to be at work behind it all, intent on cobbling together a strategy that will bring about a single world government - all power gathered in a single authority.

I believe this is a bad thing.

"The truth shall set you free," said He whose hand created the worlds and all that in them is. Every element of the society proposed by God is long on freedom and short on rules.  Just 10 in the first one with a two word summation in the second go round. God's idea of government doesn't require 3000 pages of.regulations and powerful administrators, bosses and dictators.When God set up the government of Israel, it was long on local decision-making. There were a few judges, some priests and no kings, dukes or permanent nobility. Later, when the Israelites successfully lobbied for a King, God warned them that it was a  very bad idea.  Even then, they cast lots for a King, relying on God to influence the process.  This was unlike any other society of the time. Every kingdom in the world back then was all about accumulating power in the hands of a single person - a strong man.  The governments of the time were hotbeds of corruption and intrigue.

If you want to be Prince of this World you need the support structure, right?  So how do you do that? How do you make sure your hold on power is perfect?

The Hapsburg monarchs of Europe did it by convincing everyone that every noble family needed a little spritz of Hapsburg blood in the veins. Soon, every European monarch was kinfolk with Hapsburgs ruling countries whose languages they could barely speak.. The writers of children's stories conspired with the nobles by telling generations of impressionable peasant children tales of poor girls and boys who discovered suddenly that they we really lost princesses or the sons of kings and earls elevated in station only by the mere accident of blood.

The rise of the United States of America nearly wrecked it for the noble classes.  America was a nation built upon the revolutionary ideas of John Locke (and coincidentally on the principles of the new and old Testament). These principles held that all men were created equal and that God gave each man the right to achieve and accomplish all that he might wish by dint of hard work and perseverance. The noble classes were abolished, despite how uncomfortable many Americans were with that idea, especially the wealthy landed gentry. It is not an accident that it has become fashionable in the press of late to dismiss Locke and his contemporary revolutionaries as passing cranks that are overdue to be replaced.  

We are once again witnessing the rise of a new nobility, a political and economic elite with pretty much the same cast with the same intent as always - to secure power in their own hands and to keep the peons quiet.

Historically, this was done with money, soldiers and a firmly entrenched class system. Read the history books. They keep plugging away at the same old dream - world domination, all power in the hands of a few. All ordinary men, not equal, but all the same and all safely kept down where they can do no harm to the elite and powerful nobility.

Sadly, they have the tools now that they need to carry it off thanks to the technological revolution. We have the computers and networks, databases and tiny little chips they need to mark us, label us and track us, to control what we buy and sell, what we eat and where we travel. Does anyone really believe they aren't trying all over again to revive the old dream of power?

And remember what other political power has traditionally been brought into the any serious grab for power?

Anyone?

Anyone?

If you said the "Church", you've read your history well. The enlistment of the political church in support of the new world order, the green, global, socialist, progressive movement is an essential step in bringing about the conditions that will lead to the end of the world. Not that that's what the plan is, it's just how Revelation says it will work out.

The church organization has always been vulnerable to being used by the powerful as a power base. Historically, churches of all sizes have been co-opted by corrupt leaders as a tool to beat down and control the populace. It is not the perfect tool because churches often have actual Christians in them and real Christians are frightfully independent and courageous. The don't like anyone who takes the authority on themselves that belongs only to God and will oppose those persons.  Protestantism's huge breakaway from Catholicism was the consequence of corruption of the clergy and the use of church power for political purposes.

I see a movement in the liberal churches today to unite, to share clergy and ceremonies, not only with similar Protestant churches, but also with the Catholic church and with neo-pagan, African, Middle-Eastern and Eastern faiths. The environmental movement and it's Wiccan and pagan elements are finding alliances in the apostate Protestant church.

At this point, the Roman Catholic church is putting out feelers, not only to other Christian churches, but also to the environmentalist movement.  It's leaders send ever more distinct signals of support to the progressive/socialist new world order movements as well. The Catholics so far, still remain officially aloof form the progressives due to the abortion issue, but you wonder how long that will last, with the Pope calling for a single world government. The question is, are they doing like senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska and waiting to see what the payoff will be before they set aside their principles and climb aboard the New World Order Choo-Choo.

Me,  I'm waiting to see and watching the news.

Tom King - Flint, TX

Watching from the Bushes

My friend, Jay and I watched Glenn Beck yesterday - a practice that does not benefit our blood pressures. I am of the opinion that the world is coming to an end.  Jay doesn't think so.  Three prominent Democrats have withdrawn from their respective senate races in the last couple of days, opening doors for Republicans. I'm betting it won't matter.

I hate being pessimistic when I am an optimist by nature, but I fully expect to be either jailed or hunted down by the Gestapo along with other Christians and conservatives in the coming decades. Seriously!

I have been watching things happen over the past 30 years that I used to read about in Revelation and think "How will that ever happen?"

Now not so much. I have a regular blog that started out grim, went light and humorous and now has slid back toward grim again. I'd like for my regular blog to be funny again, so I've decided to move my notes on the on-going Apocalypse to this page.  So here goes.....

January 7: Flint, TX:  Democrats have been dropping like flies in the past week. Three senators have announced they won't run in 2010. The wheeling and dealing behind closed doors, give us a hint of where things are going as the 2010 elections come on. This president has gone totally opaque after once promising to be the most transparent in history Something's up. I don't know what, but the Democrats aren't planning to lose this election. I wonder if there will ever be another free election in America's future.  It's going to be a horse race from now to November between the forces of good and evil and the bad guys don't play fair. There's a reason for the closed doors.

Tom King