https://hesedyahu.wordpress.com/2019/10/15/silly-desperate-and-christian/The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. (Tehillim [Psalm] 111:10)
The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and discipline. (Mishlei [Proverbs] 1:7)
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: This is the separation of the fundamentals of knowledge, and what shall be for you first, preceding knowledge: Before your wisdom, first fear your Creator, and that will give your heart the desire to engage in wisdom and in knowledge, for the fools, who do not fear the Lord, despise wisdom and discipline. (Rashi’s commentary on Mishlei 1:7)
The fool says in his heart, there is no God. (Tehillim [Psalm] 14:1)
The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of His being. (Law 1, chapter 1, Foundation of the Torah, Mishneh Torah, Maimonides)
When I criticised a God-rejector for the utter lack of truth and knowledge that he has because he has no basis for either, a response I received was that this is simply a Christian ploy that was silly and desperate. Let me break that down.
To this God-rejector… Let me just say now that a theist can be a God-rejector, just as those who worship Baal as god or Jesus as God have rejected God although they are theists.
So, to break it down, to this God-rejector, pointing out that God-rejectors have no basis for truth is used by those who follow Jesus as if no one else does it, or as if Christians have gained a monopoly on the usage of such a method to discredit the arrogations of the impious.
In addition, pointing out the foundationless nature of the God-rejecting worldview(s) is silly, lacking sense or judgement, foolish, or is superficial, or absurd. And to point out this baselessness is desperate, the last resort, when all else has been tried, and one feels back to a corner due to the superiority of the opponent and/or the relative feebleness of one’s own stance, this is an argument thrown out in desperation.
Such is the confidence in the strut of the God-rejector, whether such boldness is known to him or unbeknownst. And be aware, I’m not singling the guy out. It’s an epidemic I see in many an Internet personality. If expressed confidence was all that was needed to win an argument, the God-rejectors would be more of a challenge.
If you would take a look at the quotes I started the article with, you’ll notice a certain conclusion from most of them, that the foundation, the beginning, of wisdom and knowledge is fearing God, knowing that the First Cause started everything. This is a principle found in Torah, in the Jewish Bible.
Now what does this mean for the God-rejector? Well, it means he has no basis or foundation for knowledge, wisdom or truth. Sure, he may use them, just as most people use their smartphones, without understanding any of the first principles of their making or construction. But without that foundation, if a person rejects the notion that intelligence was needed for the making of the phone, then nothing else makes sense as to how the phone was made. If intelligence and directed effort is thrown out of a person’s mind with regards to how a phone is made, and they call on mindless and stupid forces to make the phone, then, based on that erroneous thinking, a lot of doubt can be placed on the reliability of the smartphone, especially when news arises about exploding batteries and melting phones, or phones with terrible overheating problems or bootloop issues, amongst other problems.
The normal God-rejector of today espouses forms of philosophical naturalism, that matter and energy is all there is, or only the study of that can be depended on whereas experiences of the supernatural is normally (meaning always) hogwash, nonsense. Even if the God-rejector claims to be theist, many times, his mind has been programmed by school-indoctrination and the secular media to inculcate naturalistic philosophy into his mental framework. It’s normally revealed in the acceptance of atheistic creation myths, like the mentally constructed story of the gradual development of all of the world’s ecosystem and living organisms over hundreds of millions of years, the more complicated arising through simpler ones. This story, the majority of it, is outside of human experience, outside of the independent, dependent and controlled variables needed for actual natural science, outside of much of the scientific method, yet it is taken on faith and impressed upon young minds before critical thought appears.
In this story so widely accepted, what is the human? A modified bacteria still bent primarily upon genetic survival, slightly removed from monkeys. What is human intelligence? Simply a product of a mindless, stupid, unintelligent process that has no memory or goals. It’s the brain chemicals of another animal trying to survive. Yes, in that story, there’s nothing more than matter and energy and routine physical patterns. And what is human morality? Whatever anyone chooses to make it. Since there is no superhuman or supernatural, there’s nothing to hold one brain’s conclusions over another’s.
It’s odd when one who adopts this story is puzzled or insulted or taken aback when I reduce all thinking, including my own, to chemicals and molecular or electro-chemical fizzing on the assumption that his story is “true,” whatever that word means in his worldview. Maybe I’m more faithful to the basics and logical consequences of his story than he is.
So then the God-rejectors says, maybe reason, the product of this brain made by unintelligence and geared for survival, can lead us to truth, something we can trust. Maybe the argument can be made that “at least it works.”
So let me get this straight. For me to ask to know the basis of truth in such a worldview, or to even doubt it or laugh at it, for me to do that is called “desperate and silly.” I’m literally laughing while I’m typing that. Sorry, but ridiculing the presuppositions (yes, I’m not afraid to use the word) of truth, knowledge and morality, even personal perception, in such a worldview isn’t the last thing, the last desperate thing, to be done. It’s one of the first things. To ignore the “bedrock” of such thinking is foolhardy. To not have it in one’s mind as a God-rejector asks you to trust his reasoning as he tries to tell you what is right and wrong, true and false, could spell disaster since you can end up giving way too much respect to foolishness. I guess that’s another reason why the writer of Proverbs warned “don’t answer a fool according to his folly so that you don’t become like him.” To believe such a thing as a brain made by the stupid, unintelligent, survival-driven and undirected could even recognise objective truth if it tried to perceive it is beyond laughable.
You can see by the quotes I gave that looking at the foundations (presuppositions) of thinking is not a Christian method. It’s something the Jews did, something that any person who wants to have truth and morality in the world would do.
You know, what is funny is that another God-rejector had the gall to call me a liar recently. Again, keeping in mind what exactly Godless morality is based on, such an attempt to start a confrontation is only grounds for more laughter.
I don’t see any reason to prolong this.
For now.
Topic: Silly, desperate and Christian (Read 1639 times)