Category Archives: Thinking About Big Questions

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Did We Invent God to Make Ourselves Feel Better?

A conversation stopper we often encoutner when talking with more militant atheists is that humans invented God out of an intense need for a “father figure” or to console themselves. Alister McGrath cleverly summarizes the gist of this argument, “religion offers succor for suckers and losers, but not for serious and sophisticated people.” This argument finds its roots in writings of Ludwig Feuerback and Sigmund Freud. First of all, this argument cuts both ways. If Christians created God out of a need for a father figure, then atheists can be said to have rejected God out of a desire to kill a father figure. Paul Vitz, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at New York University, has documented a connection between fatherlessness and atheism in his intriguing book Faith of the Fatherless: the Psychology of Atheism.

As for inventing God to meet our desires, maybe this is precisely backwards. Perhaps the reason humans have desires is because something / someone exists that will satisfy them? C.S. Lewis beautifully articulates this point, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”

For more on this, see Paul Copan’s That’s Just Your Interpretation

J.Morrow
Check out Welcome to College

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Life to the Limit

One of my favorite authors is Dallas Willard. He has an uncommon ability to articulate concepts in a way that helps you connect with them. In his book The Divine Conspiracy, he reflects on what it means when Jesus says I have come so that you might have life (John 10:10):

Jesus offers himself as God’s doorway into life that is truly life. Confidence in him leads us today, as in other times, to become his apprentices in eternal living. “Those who come through me will be safe,” he said. “They will go in and out and find all they need. I have come into their world that they might have life, and life to the limit.”

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Louisiana Science Education Act Ruffles Feathers for the Wrong Reason…

Here is the latest blog from evolution news:

(from the blog) An attorney friend e-mailed me to say:

It’s so much easier to write scary stories when the legislation itself is NOT ever quoted. Isn’t there some sort of journalistic standard that should at least urge a reporter to quote the primary source?You would think that with passage of a law like the Louisiana Science Education Act, now headed to the governor’s office for signing, that the law itself would be quoted in response to bogus charges by malcontents. As we’ve learned, that just doesn’t happen much. A slew of articles have been running in which activists like Barbara Forrest make the false claim that the LSEA opens the door to religion in the classroom. Not so.

Section 1D of the bill clearly states that it:

“shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.”

Today’s Baton Rouge Advocate carries a story that repeats these claims, and while it quotes the bill’s sponsor saying that isn’t the case, it never bothers to tell readers what the bill says. If people are concerned they should read the bill for themselves and make up their own mind. (end of blog)

Now the idea of freedom of inquiry is making people of the Darwinist camp nervous, because until now, all ideas are good ones so long as they have them. But if there is SCIENTIFIC evidence (note: I did not say biblical or religious) that needs to be considered, people should be allowed to do so with out say…being fired or called a narrow minded creationist.

One of the best, and most accessible books I have read about sorting out religious and scientific issues is written by Oxford Philosopher of Science, John Lennox – “God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?” I commend it to you.

J.Morrow
Check out Welcome to College

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Internet companies legislating morality?

An article came out today “Internet companies to block child porn sites,” that raises a good question and illustrates an even better point. (for the record I think it is great that they are doing what they can to protect kids from porn and exploitation, and more of it needs to happen). Are they “pushing their morality” on the rest of us???

First, the point. Legislating morality is impossible to avoid. Often when people talk about faith and values in the public square, it quickly goes to “Christians shouldn’t legislate their morality on the rest of us.” The fact is government can’t help but legislate morality—which leads us to the question….which morality should we legislate.

For as Michael Bauman explains, “All laws, whether prescriptive or prohibitive, legislate morality. All laws, regardless of their content or their intent, arise from a system of values, from a belief that some things are right and others wrong, that some things are good and others bad, that some things are better and worse. In the formulation and enforcement of law, the question is never whether or not morality will be legislated but which one.” (for more on this, see his chapter in To Everyone An Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview ).

The above article didn’t include the moral reasoning behind this decision. Should we do it because everyone (at least right now and around this table) agrees that it is wrong or because there is something intrinsically and inherently harmful here (if the latter how do we know this?)? A very different question indeed.

Issues like this help remove the myth that “we shouldn’t legislate our morality on others.” How we go about choosing which ones is a much better conversation to have. Now obviously everything shouldn’t be legislated against, but it is unavoidable that many things will be for the good and flourishing of a society.

Post Script: Porn is addictive and dangerous for individuals and societies–Here is one person’s journey Porn Nation: Conquering America’s #1 Addiction. Most people are unaware that Pornography and sex-related sites make up nearly 60 percent of daily web traffic.

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Am I more than my brain?

Fresh off a week at Fall Creek Falls in TN, I wanted to share a little bit about the brain and the soul. Is there a soul? What is the difference between the brain and the soul? Hasn’t modern neuroscience shown that everything about consciousness is fully explicable in the language of physics and chemistry relegating discussion of the soul to the intellectual dust bin reserved for fairy’s and the like? Actually no. And in principle, it never will (for those familiar with this, only correlations between brain and soul states can be show). Take some time to read the following short articles by JP Moreland and Dallas Willard…they are important for many reasons which will become clear as you read.

“The Argument from Consciousness” by JP Moreland
“Grey Matter and the Soul” by Dallas Willard