In these days of social media news cycles, one needs a dramatic headline if one is to have any hope of the story being read. It is my hope that this headline will do more than just grab your attention, I hope it will cause you to consider what you believe and why you believe it.
One of the meanings of the word ultimate is ‘the most extreme of its kind’. The word ‘arrogance’ is described as ‘an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions’. Are my choice of words correct, or even fair?
I am writing from the perspective of one who knows God. I, like billions of other Christians, enjoy (or enjoyed in past millennia) a personal relationship with God. This is not just a head-knowledge, an observed reality, an emotional relationship, or a divine revelation, no, it is all four! Do we know everything there is to know about God? Absolutely not. The more God reveals Himself to those of us who have trusted Jesus Christ as their Saviour, the more each of us realizes how impossible it is to comprehend the infinite majesty of the Creator of all that exists. That He would even choose to extend His grace to us is beyond comprehension, but accept it we have. This is what differentiates Christianity from all other religions.
If religion is summarized as a set of beliefs that result in “the service and worship of God or the supernatural.” then this definition is quite contrary to the relational focus that is emphasized by the God of the Bible. Some religions state that it is categorically impossible to ‘know God’ personally; atheism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, to name a few. James, the brother of Jesus, described religion this way, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27, but this pure form of religion is distilled from one’s intimacy with God, not as a sense of duty to a supreme deity, or simple goodwill towards one’s fellow man, rather it is a response of gratitude to being the recipient of God’s grace, an attitude of extreme thankfulness.
According to Adherents, an independent, non-religiously affiliated organization that monitors the number and size of the world’s religions, there are some 4,300 religions (22 major religions) of the world. Can all the religions and atheism possibly be wrong? You might even challenge me and ask, is it not the ‘Ultimate Arrogance’ to infer that they are and that Christianity lays hold to absolute truth? And why would I not refer to Christianity as a religion? A major tenet of atheism is that Christianity and other religions are delusions, there is no god. Could they possibly be right, or is this a presumptuous claim?
I tend to be a pragmatist by nature. I like to look at things logically, setting emotion aside, to draw an eventual conclusion. Years ago I used to own an audiovisual company and we installed sophisticated remote control systems. When we programmed these systems we first created a ‘truth table’, a simple logic program. Below is an example of a very simple logic program.
Logic relies on absolute truths. In this example, the question is, ‘Is today a weekend?’ Logic requires yes and no binary answers. In computer programs, YES is defined by the numeric value, 1, and NO by the numeric value, 0. The question was not, ‘Do I feel like today is a weekend?’, which may invoke a relative/emotional response depending on whom you ask and when you ask them.
Truth is always an absolute, YES/NO, 1/0, TRUE/FALSE condition. Logically, something cannot be true and false at the same time. The statement, “Today is a weekend” (assuming it is a weekend) is an absolute truth. The statement, “I feel like today is a weekend” is a relative truth. A relative truth can be absolutely true (I feel like today is a weekend and it is a weekend) and relatively true (I feel like it is a weekend even though it is a Wednesday) at the same time, but a relative truth can never change the state of an absolute truth.
It is self-evident that truth exists. What’s the alternative? If truth doesn’t exist, then it would be true to say that truth doesn’t exist, and once again we arrive at truth. There is no alternative; truth must exist.
Several years ago a friend at church shared his testimony of how he came to believe in God and, subsequently, become a Christian. Peter shared how he had evaluated atheism and the major world religions and came to the “logical conclusion” that God existed and that the God of the Bible had to be the one true God. Once he reached this conclusion he had to make some logical choices that also involved a great deal of emotion.
Jesus claimed, “I am.. the truth.” John 14:6. In making this statement He was inferring a number of exclusive, factual claims that are elaborated throughout the Bible:
When an atheist denies the existence of God, he, or she, is not thinking or reasoning rationally. Their god is science, often interpreted theoretically and selectively. Since God is Spirit and His existence cannot be proven by the scientific method [this is actually a falsehood – see references to the Law of Large Numbers], they choose to believe that He does not exist. It is as though they are looking down a microscope and refusing to believe what they see. Truthful, sincere scientists will explore all options in determining the facts, they will not leave out critical evidence just because it does not fit their paradigm. Further, atheists will use the evidence of the spiritual/moralistic realm, specifically the existence of evil, as an argument to deny the existence of God (or any supreme being). The following is one of their ‘false logic’ charts that can be found at ThinkAtheist.com. Their starting premise is that ‘Evil Exists’ (an absolute truth?). The chart then presents five YES/NO, 1/0, TRUE FALSE questions: Can God prevent evil? Does God know about all the evil? Does God want to prevent evil? Why is there evil? And, Could have God created a universe without evil? The chart’s creator also asks, two additional questions: Then why didn’t He [create a universe without evil]? And, Could God have created a universe with free will but without evil?
The problem with this kind of reasoning is that the chart, and others like it, contains ‘logic statements’ that are in themselves false. False logic in = False logic out.
The first statement is EVIL EXISTS. In making such a statement, an equally valid statement, GOOD EXISTS, is missing. If we were using programming logic we would be using an AND gate (evil AND good exist). So, what distinguishes evil from good, or good from evil? Try answering the following questions: Is cold the opposite of heat, or is cold the absence of heat? Is evil the opposite of good, or is evil the absence of good?
Scientifically, there is no such thing as cold, only heat which has an absolute bottom limit of -273.15 degrees Celcius. Any number above absolute zero means the object must generate a certain amount of heat. Until one reaches this bottom limit, an object can be colder than another and yet both objects contain some heat. Until one reaches absolute zero, cold is completely subjective.
Conversely, in the Bible, good has an upper limit but no lower limit. Man’s depravity clearly shows that there is no lower limit to evil. But, Jesus said, “Greater love [good] has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” God, in the person of Jesus Christ, demonstrated this ultimate good, this ‘upper limit’ by laying down His life for the sake of mankind (you and me). Somewhere along the line of morality (the determination of good and evil), one crosses from good, through the neutral line (of an action being neither good nor bad), into the realm of bad, or evil.
Consider this: if there is a moral law then logically there must be a Moral Law Giver, an entity that is able to judge, without discrimination or partiality, between good and evil, and have the ability to impart this Moral Law to us. If there is no Moral Law Giver then morality is a relativistic construct of man’s imagination and it has no means to establish a distinction between good and evil. For example, one person may argue that abortion is inherently evil and another argues that abortion is a woman’s right to choose and therefore inherently good. Without an absolute moral law, both of these moral concepts can change on a whim. If this argument for a relativistic moral law is taken to its logical conclusion, one could make the statement ‘There is no such thing as evil.’ and be logically correct. A constant Moral Law dictates that there must be a Moral Law Giver and, in order to dispense perfect justice without discrimination that a Moral Law requires, that Moral Law Giver must be God. If there is no [need for] consequential justice then morality serves no ultimate purpose.
If the chart’s creator had started with the question, DOES GOOD EXIST, then his line of questioning would have had to take a completely different line of reasoning and he would have logically found himself coming to the opposite conclusion.
Morality is just one of many topics that need to be looked at logically [scientifically] when one investigates the reality of God. The absolute accuracy of biblical prophecy and the concept of evolution both collide with the mathematical limits of chance, that is the Law of Large Numbers. Further, a prophecy of any kind (accurately foretelling a humanly unknowable, specific future event) dictates that the one who prophesies must exist outside of ‘linear time’, just as Jesus claimed to do.
When we examine the attributes of God as described in the Bible we quickly realize that this is not the same god espoused by other religions. The following are just some of the attributes of God as presented in the Bible (additional information can be found here):
Again, using YES/NO, 1/0, TRUE/FALSE logic, any religion that excludes any one of these attributes cannot be the same god as the God of Christianity, the God of the Bible. Jesus responded to some [non-believing] Jewish teachers, even though they were steeped in head-knowledge of the Old Testament, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44.
The world’s many religions, all in some way or another, believe in a system of checks and balances… enough good deeds will balance out one’s bad deeds. So long as enough good deeds are accumulated** (I’m basically a good person) I should be Heaven bound, arrogantly assuming that God is somehow morally obliged to forgive them. The problem with this line of reasoning is that all such belief systems eventually run into a ‘brick wall’ of logic:
This is the ‘brick wall’ of morality and justice with which they must contend.
Rather than acknowledge their sinful condition before a holy God, and their dependence on God to show grace and mercy, in their pride they elevate their own ideas of what God must be like and impose their own ideas of justice on the god they have created. In creating their own imaginary gods, they become gods themselves – the ultimate form of arrogance.
**Consider this: How many old ladies must you help across the street to substitute for the penalty of failing to pay legally required taxes on that recent purchase?
Additional thoughts for consideration:
Another example concerning the [limitations] of the Law of Large Numbers is found in creation itself. According to Dr. Ken Dill [biophysicist who is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences], “You have more machines in the tip of your little finger than all manmade machines that exist in the world.” Given that the odds of 40 [preexistent] molecules lining up, in the correct order to create a single simple protein, is greater than one in all the atoms in the known universe, then imagine the odds of the trillions of proteins in your body coming into existence! Consider a somewhat more complex protein, Cytochrome c oxidase, which is essential to all life (illustrated below), made up of countless [preexistent] chemical compounds. You cannot draw a breath without it! Surely, the “4-million years of life’s existence” is but a blink in the theoretic evolution of even a single protein.
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