Ping did well on his military running tests that he had to pass. He was just 3 seconds off from achieving the silver for the 2.4 km run.
The most exciting news is that Melanie just delivered their baby at 10:20AM this morning!!! I will have to post some pics of the baby when I get some.
I had a great week last week teaching and am looking forward to another full week. I will be speaking on prayer again this Wednesday (since Ping will be busy with the new baby). Aside from the normal Saturday youth club, S.S. and Sun. eve service (as well as a back-up message for Sun still) I will be teaching a workshop at the Teacher Conference on September 21st: “Ready to Answer Difficult Questions: What are the Young People Struggling with Today”.
I especially enjoyed hanging out with the college and career. We went bowling (the condo of one of the church members has a bowling alley – two lanes that we were able to reserve) and had tons of fun cheering on each others amazing bowling skills. We also started our discussion on worldviews with the Topic (trick question) How would you prove God’s existence to an unbeliever? We discussed different ways that one would seek to demonstrate God’s existence and then I stretched their minds a little by trying to explain as simplistically as possible Greg Bahnsen’s Impossibility to the Contrary argument (see or rather listen to his debate on Youtube – Bahnsen v. Stein The Great Debate).
Here is my attempt to give a presuppositional approach to God’s existence:
Two sources contribute to mankind’s knowledge that God does indeed exist. The first source of knowledge is the innate cognition (a grid that ideas must conform to by the design of the human nature) of every human being. However, mankind’s nature has been corrupted to the extent that it is totally depraved. When God displays his deity, attributes, and power through general revelatory means (creation, providence, and conscience), the evidence is suppressed by mankind’s totally depraved nature. Therefore, while every human being does have the innate grid that the evidences of God’s existence should conform to, the evidences have been suppressed (to varying degrees in each person) and further evidence may cause only further suppression (Thus, rational arguments for the existence of God are tenuous at best to the mind of a totally depraved person. Rom 8:7; Eph 4:18). Since the totally depraved nature of a human being must suppress the truth that God has revealed to him in general revelation, he is held responsible and without excuse (Ultimately, he does know innately that he is just suppressing the truth and that God does exist. Rom 1:18-20). Only submission to the second source of knowledge will bring about the ability of a person to accept the truth revealed in general revelation so that it matches up with his innate cognition.
The second source of knowledge is God’s special, self-revelation in which he declares his own existence (It is assumed from the very first verse of Scripture. Gen 1:1). Since he has spoken (Heb 1:1; Ex 3:14), he does not need to prove his own existence. Although God’s existence can be demonstrated to be logical by evidence such as creation or providence (when evidence is correctly understood, it will correspond with the Bible but does not strengthen or confirm the Bible), a believer does not depend on rational proofs to confirm his belief; rather a believer trusts in the witness of God’s self-revelation (John 1:1; 2 Tim 3:16).
Summary of Bahnsen’s argument as best as I can explain it succinctly
How can I demonstrate to an Atheist that the Christian worldview that accepts God has warrant while his worldview that does not accept God does not have any warrant?
Piling up evidence will never convince someone coming from a different worldview (which interprets all the evidence based on their own fallen worldview presuppositions).
None of the evidentialist arguments work logically—all of them eventually break down b/c every argument in our world is ultimately based upon a pressupositional worldview.
The evidentialist statements might in fact be true (e.g. God was the first cause of everything else that has been caused), but you cannot argue backwards from everything that is caused to a first cause (the logic falls apart – if you allow for one thing to be uncaused then it opens up the possibility for other things in the universe to be uncaused – same thing with the design argument and other evidential arguments [at least 11] that are really based on a presupposition where you already assume your conclusion to interpret the evidence).
The only argument that is logically tenable is to demonstrate to the Atheist The Impossibility of the Contrary (Transcendental argument). I say that God exists and for them to say contrary is impossible because they have no basis for a logical argument upon which they can base any argument to the contrary of my position. In fact in order to support their own worldview they have to borrow from the Christian worldview.
Where does the atheist get certainty about the laws of logic, science, morality…? He has no basis for this kind of absolute uniformity. Yet without absolute laws he cannot do science or argue for laws of logical consistency or for laws of morality.
An atheist has to use the laws of logic to make his arguments. However in so doing he must borrow from the Christian worldview which allows for these laws of logic to exist. These are abstract (metaphysical), universal, non-varying concepts, which cannot extend from the atheistic worldview – which only allows for material, always evolving, and varying/relative concepts that are based on sociological agreement.
Example: Mathematics’ rules are not just a convention that people make up that works – people discovered these laws that are inherently true (whether or not someone believes them or knows about them)– the atheistic worldview cannot justify the laws of mathematics (even though they might believe them) because they have no valid basis for any universal, invariant, abstract entities that exist. A naturalist can never justify something being universal, invariant, abstract – yet they use these laws to try to make their logical arguments (they use these laws to argue for their worldview which rules out any true justification for those laws). What accounts for this – they borrow from my Christian worldview which says that this is one example of the existence of God – since these laws extend from the mind of the Creator God that made our world this way.
The bottom line of the Transcendental Argument: God is in fact a precondition for the experiences that we have (in order for our experiences to be possible). God exists. To say contrary is impossible. The reality of this world can never support that logically because of the absolutes that God built into this world cannot be accounted for otherwise.
This is demonstrated by many examples. One being the existence of the laws of logic for which an atheist cannot justify or account for (all the while trying to use them)–the same is true for accounting for laws of science and morality. The laws of logic are justified in Christianity because they are derived from God and it must be the God of the Bible b/c that is the only self-coherent religious worldview (which is another matter of discussion in and of itself).
Filed under: Ministry
