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Transcript

Faith or Reason? Christian Responds to Atheist

What should be our ultimate authority?

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Today, I wanted to provide a loving rebuttal to my new substack friend

. He’s a professing atheist exploring Christianity, and wrote an article regarding his view on faith. He also has a nice looking substack color scheme 🔥

Reason Alone
Why Not Faith?
Sola Fide or “Faith Alone”. Of the original five Solas, this one has stood the test of time and seems to be the defining principle of the Reformation. And the reason for its prevalence I think lies primarily in its exonerative nature. This is why we see religions all over the world, not just Christianity, that have principles rooted in faith. And so tod…
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The Original Quote

This to me is the perfect example the type of faith that is dangerous to Christianity as a whole. He clearly outlines that the evidence is not the foundation, the faith that the Bible is the word of God is. And that is not subject to change by evidence.

This type of thinking is precisely the reason Christianity is losing followers. What happens is that issues are presented purely as a dichotomy. In the case of Answers In Genesis and Ken Ham, it’s that either evolution is true, or the Bible is true, with no room for other options in between.

And so kids are being fed this information, growing up and being presented evidence for evolution, and as a result leaving the faith entirely. Because they were never prepared to handle the evidence, they were raised to have faith, and then given poor evidence to support it.

Everyone Has Faith

Evidence, and science, assume the uniformity of nature, meaning that our universe is repeatable. You need to have faith in that first before you even present evidence.

On the christian view, we have an accounting because God has promised that the universe is and will be upheld by him, but on the Atheist view, we don’t have any reason to trust in this at all. In fact, every second of the day is a miracle on the atheist view.

Wanting evidence to be your leading source of truth is indeed a religious position from a materialist / empiricist worldview.

Historical vs Observable Science

Historical questions are not answered by observable science. All of the “evidence” that is tried to be brought up to support the Big Bang, evolution etc. are all based off of assumptions that flow from a materialist worldview (uniformitarianism).

Historical questions are solved by eye witness accounts. God’s already revealed to us exactly how the universe began, He is the ultimate eye witness. Stepping onto the christian worldview for a second, why would unbelievers guessing at timelines using non-eye-witness accounts be more authoritative than God himself saying what happened?

This is the same reason you would reject the bible because your foundation being on evidence / empiricism. At best, we can conclude that Christians are being consistent.

Going further, I’ve written 9 articles about how the observable evidence itself does not support an old universe, abiogenesis, macro evolution, etc. I wouldn’t just swallow the pill that people were “never prepared to handle the evidence.” We’ve taken a look at it, it’s not convincing.

Religion, Not Scientific Theory

Moving further, evolution is not a strict scientific theory, it’s a philosophy, and has been around since 500’s BCE. Many times, evolution is tossed around as if “its a closed case.” Interestingly, observing a bowling ball drop at the rate of gravity (an observable scientific fact) is not the same as a secular philosophy invented to escape the reality of God’s judgement.

For more on this, check out my article here

The kicker is; if we assume the evolutionary worldview to be true, metaphysically, then nothing in our day to day life is justified. Ethics, uniformity of nature…in fact, the very act of you writing this article is just your brain fizzing atheistic chemicals, and my response is me fizzing Christian chemicals, we’re all just stardust.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Romans 1:18–19

Primary vs Secondary Knowledge

Observable science is a grace from God to explore his creation, as a secondary vehicle of knowledge, but it cannot be idolized and become a primary source of knowledge, else everything leads to absurdity.

When you use observable science in its appropriate context, it opens the floodgates of technological advancement, and thinking God’s thoughts after him. It can be seen as one of the most intimate things we can do in the natural realm, to glory in Gods wondrous design and find out more about just how finite we as humans are.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Romans 1:24–25

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