Hmm…an interesting quote I read today on my little Quotes App on my Itouch.

“How can someone be against abortion, but be for the death penalty?”

I’m not necessarily for the death penalty, but to suggest that abortion and the death penalty are equal is beyond ignorance. To make such a suggestion is to place the innocent and potential life of an unborn child equal with that life of a convicted, guilty criminal that is a harm to society and to other innocent people. Those two are most certainly polar opposites – a innocent unborn infant and a convicted criminal (possibly a murderer, rapist, ect). Loesje, the organization accredited with making that previously mentioned quote, seems to have lost its ability to reason things out and make rational and logical declarations.

If the God of the Bible does not exist, whether you believed in him or not is ultimately irrelavant in the end. I believe that “good” things exists and that “good” deeds need to be done by all people. I believe in the basic foundational values taught by Christians as they interept it from the Bible. I mean, who can honestly say that treating others as you would want to be treated is a bad thing? Or that loving others causes terrible things and that positive hope causes destruction? See, fairness and love makes the world a better place – and that’s basically what real Christians are striving for.

See, atheists fight for “truth” to triumph over the “ignorance and stupidity” of Christians, but in the end everything dies and this so-called truth is just an idea that many people have wasted their lives fighting for. If there is no God and no ultimate and supreme standard of good and evil – why not do something that will truly change the world in a ‘good’ way (in a way that helps people and makes them happy). You can argue that Christians are idiots but are you really helping anybody? No, you’re not filling anyones stomach or quenching someones thirst. You’re not clothing the naked or sheltering the homeless – but those Christians (the real ones) are doing all these things while some atheist are standing back telling them they’re all morons.

Basically my conclusion is that whether God exists or not – the overall best things to do is to become a real Christian and help the world become a better place.

Is Abortion Murder? - Let me define my terms real quick. Murder = Ending the life of an innocent human being, killing = ending a life (of anything that is alive). Whether the unborn is alive or not cannot be the debate. By day 21 the heart is beating, day 40 the unborn can move, day 44 brain activity is detected, week 8 every organ is present and working, month 4 the unborn can feel (discomfort, pain, stretch, ect) and so on.

If you want to argue that the unborn  is not alive and is actually dead and yet still growing, moving, and that the moment he/she “pops out” it suddenly becomes alive….I think we should first argue over your sanity, in general.

So the question is basically whether abortion is murder or killing, because either way abortion is ending a life – all brain activity ceases, heart stops beating, organs die, blood slows to a stop in the veins, ect. So is abortion murder or just mere killing? (Okay, “killing” sounds bad, but that’s what it is.) Well let’s see, if it is not murder then either the unborn is not innocent or the unborn is not human. I’m not sure how we can debate the innocence of the unborn, but I think it’s safe the assume that the unborn hasn’t pulled off any crimes during its time in the womb. So is the unborn human? Hmmm….are you serious? I mean, that would be like saying “My dog is pregnant, I wonder if it’ll have puppies or cats?”. YES, the unborn is HUMAN. So where is the problem? It’s so simple (and yet so terrible) – abortion is murder.

So if abortion is murder, then why do so many people seem to support it?

Save the Mother’s Life

Between 1967 and 1990, only 151 abortions have been carried out to save the mother’s life, a figure amounting to 0.004% of all abortions. Also, there is absolutely no medically accepted circumstance where abortion is a prescribed medical procedure used in order to save the life the mother. Dr. Alan Guttmacher, a former leader of Planned Parenthood, said in 1967, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal illness such as cancer or leukemia, and if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save life.”

And also, In 1992, a group of Ireland’s top gynaecologists wrote: “We affirm that there are no medical circumstances justifying direct abortion, that is, no circumstances in which the life of a mother may only be saved by directly terminating the life of her unborn child.”

Rape, Incest, and All That Jazz

Just over %1 of all abortions are “hard case” abortions and these include abortions done because of rape or incest. How the baby was created is irrelevant to whether it deserves to live or die. I mean honestly, think about it. The baby shouldn’t be punished because someone commited a terrible crime.

The arguments for saving the mother’s life or in cases of rape/incest justifying abortion “on demand” are firstly unfounded and secondly illogical. If I argued that we should all be allowed to run red lights and stop signs and break speed limits because, well, what if someone had an emergency? They don’t need to be slowed down by traffic laws while trying to get to the hospital; therefore we all should be able to break traffic laws.” That is equal to saying “All women must be able to get an abortion whenever for any reason because what if one of these pregnancies were from rape or incest?” How about we outlaw breaking traffic laws and abortion with exceptions to each rule?

The Mother’s Choice

“Your freedom ends where my nose begins”. This quote basically means, it’s good for you to have your freedoms but when what you consider to be your “right” starts impeding upon my freedom and rights, that is where your freedom ends. Same goes with this abortion issue. The mother has the freedom to make choices about her body and future, but this freedom ends once it starts to impede upon the baby’s right to life and liberty. See, the mother has already made her choice – to have sex. Maybe it was unsafe sex or maybe they attempted to be safe but failed – either way, she made her choice to risk getting pregnant. That was her choice.

Conclusion

You don’t have to be religious to believe abortion is wrong. You don’t have to be conservative to understand that abortion is wrong. If you can understand the concept that murder is wrong and that a unborn human being is indeed a human being…then you can accept abortion is wrong.

P.S. The answer to all those women who shouldn’t have gotten abortions is adoption agencies.

This is a question posed by countless number of people to discuss the existence or possibility of God. If God is omnipotent then He can do “anything” and therefore should be able to create such a rock, but then by doing this He then limits his own ability and therefore can not do anything. Or so the supposed logic goes.

But is this question really a valid question and does it prove anything about the omnipotence of God? I think not. I’m not entirely sure, but I have two possible reasons. 1) The question and implications are essentially nonsense or 2) the question presumes that God is bound by the “Laws of Logic” and He is not, therefore he can make such a rock and not be limited.

Option 1) The question presumes God’s omnipotence and then asks if God can do something that then limits his own power. If He can create such a rock, then He can’t lift it therefore making Him no longer omnipotent. If He can not create such a rock, well then obviously He is not omnipotent. But this question and its presumptions …are actually self-contradictory and meaningless. Just because a thought or idea can be formed doesn’t mean it’s a reasonable idea. This question is absurd because it is simply impossible – not because there isn’t enough power to do such a thing, but rather because the question and presumptions contradict each other and conclude being just a mere string of words that have no active meaning to them. Let me explain…

If you could do anything, could you create a round square? No! Why? Because by the time I reach the word “round” the Natural Law comes in that demands that there be no straight sides, but then I say “square” which demands that there be straight sides and we finish with a negative and a positive. Think back to elementary math class and you’ll realize that a negative and a positive cancel each other out leaving you with nothing. Same goes with the question about the rock.

Option 2) The question tries to show that omnipotence is illogical and therefore impossible; that it does very well. Yes, it does a nice job trying to show that it is illogical. It presumes that omnipotence is bound within the Laws of Thought (aka – laws of logic). If I can do anything, then that means I can fly if I wanted to, and yet this goes against the Law of Gravity. But I can break that law, because I can do anything! Therefore, if I can break the Law of Gravity, then I can also break the Laws of Logic. If I can break the Laws of Logic, then indeed I can make a rock so big that I cannot lift it and yet still not have my power limited. This second option is very complex because our thought process (and life) is bound by the idea of staying within the boundaries set by Natural Laws. But again, if I can do anything, then I can break any Natural Laws I want. Same goes with God and His omnipotence.

Personally, I think the first option is most easily understandable, but then again the second option seems very possible because we’re dealing with unlimited power (including the power to break natural law). In the end, I think both options answer the age old question that has baffled minds all over for years.

Christian: God

Me: Who made the Bible?

Christian: God inspired men, through the Holy Spirit, to write the Bible.

Me: Indeed, God inspired men to write books, letters, and poems that you now see in the Bible – but where did THE Bible come from?

Christian: Yes, he did, and it came from God!

Me: Men wrote the different books of the Bible; they wrote different letters to people all over the world, they wrote books with massive gaps of time between each writing -  but who got together ALL the books, letters, poems, ect, and put it all together in one single volume?

Christian: Uhm…I guess….God…?

Me: See, no where does the Bible claim each and every book, letter, or poem. Nowhere does the Bible say who gathered all 66 books and compiled them into each version, nowhere does the Bible even call itself the Bible! Believe it or not, decades after each book was written, men gathered together and voted on what books would be put in the Bible. You don’t usually hear that in the Sunday’s lesson do you? Indeed, they voted – they didn’t just put books together. No no, they had to vote on which books made it into the “Bible” and which books…didn’t. Yes, that’s right – which books didn’t make it into the Bible. 

Christian: Seriously?

Me: Amazing what history can tell you! Ever wonder why certain books didn’t make it into the Bible and why others didn’t? Scholars have ideas and such, but when it comes down to it, the core reason is because certain men didn’t want those particular books in the Bible. God’s will be done…if I feel like doing it.

The generic, basic, off-the-cuff response is that it’s because humans have free will. We have the ability to choose right from wrong; we are free moral agents. And this is indeed true. We do have the ability to choose. (Now whether what we choose is considered right or wrong based on a objective standard is a completely didn’t discussion than what I want to write about today. So for now, we’ll pass that idea on for another time.)

Back to the idea that we can choose right from wrong. If we choose right (narrow path, goodness, righteousness, Christ, God’s way, ect) then we are rewarded for all eternity to  enjoy paradise . If we choose wrong (evil, sin, transgressions, Satan, broad path, ect) then we are punished for all eternity. So you can choose.

Would you like a platter of paradise or a dish of torture? Is that really a choice? I mean, technically, it is a choice - but would any sane person, knowing fully all the options, choose the dish of torture? When you get down to the bottom of the bucket, to the end of it all, God is giving us some form of choice – but to us it isn’t a choice at all. It’s a demand, a demand that we must meet or else we suffer for all eternity. But we can choose to meet the demand or not, but to the human mind there really are no reasonable options. You must meet the demand.

So technically, we do have “free will”, but when you add in the human element…there is nothing free about it.

A few weeks ago at a Wednesday night Bible study; the man leading the study noted this common question. He said that most people have problems believing in God because “A good and loving God wouldn’t send people to hell.” His response to this was “If you sent your very own son to suffer the most agonizing, humiliating, and brutal death in order to save someone and they completely rejected it and let your son die in vain – wouldn’t you want them to go to hell?” And of course, everyone in the room murmurs and nods yes – except me.

I don’t think most people recognize all the aspects of hell. Think about it. If a man kills another man, he is sent to jail and serves lots of time. Would you, being a merciful and just person, say that this murderer deserves to be beaten and totured for the rest of his life (10+ years) until he dies? I doubt you’d say that. Would you say that this a man who beats his wife should be burned and totured for 30+ years nonstop? I doubt you’d say that’s merciful justice.

So why do we think it’s loving merciful justice for God to send all non-Christians to an ETERNAL punishment of misery, burning, and gnashing of teeth? The worst punishment of all time – for ETERNITY. And why would a person be sent to this horrible place? Because he didn’t accept Christ’s offer of salvation. Someone denies a gift and gets punished for all eternity. Sounds like justice.

Why do atheist seek to crush their dreams? Sure, they may think it’s false and ridiculous – but it’s not like the majority of Christians are doing any harm. Millions of churches and religious organizations around the world help people and do good. Doesn’t it seem kind of pointless, and down right cruel, to ruin someone’s dreams and try to destroy the very reason they live “good and moral lives – for Christ”.

I mean, whats so good about atheism; that they want to, in essence, convert Christians over to….nothing. The belief in nothing. No God, no religion, no ultimate good, no eternal love – kinda bleak idea to me.

Now for those who have already fallen into doubting (me) we can’t help but to keep looking because as long as we are sane people we will recognize that doubt and want to figure it out. But for those stuck in their religion, why be a jerk and ruin their lives and believes. You don’t tell a little kid that Santa doesn’t exist just because he doesn’t.

1) The universe is eternal, 2) The universe is not eternal and therefore something outside of the universe must be eternal, or 3) The universe and something outside of it is eternal.

The Big Bang Theory itself, with the discovery of the cosmic background radiation and the detection of the universe expanding  (along with all other evidence used to support the big bang theory) - strongly suggests that the universe is not eternal. The theory and supporting evidences insists on a beginning of the universe and that at this Great Beginning: all of matter, time, space, and natural laws came into existence. Therefore we can logically conclude that we’re left with one option, number 2.

The universe is not eternal and therefore something outside of the universe must be eternal.

Something that is eternal, by definition, doesn’t have a beginning. The Big Bang Theory tells us that this universe had a beginning and therefore options 1 and 3 cannot be right. So something outside of the universe must be eternal. Why must something outside be eternal? Because before the Big Bang there was nothing and what comes from nothing? My friends, nothing comes from nothing. So something must have caused the Big Bang to occur, something outside of nauture (because nature wasn’t in existence yet) and that which is outside of nature is rightly called ‘supernatural’.

God. *Everyone freaks out*

Maybe not God of the Bible, maybe not God of any religion – but something supernatural must’ve caused the universe. Something outside of nature, something before nature, something to cause the universe to come into existence.

So who made God? Well…maybe another God. So then this Greater God is eternal. See, something MUST be eternal. You can keep going back to who made what, ect, ect, but sooner or later something was there and was always there and will always be there. The First Cause Uncaused.

“Doubt is a good thing. Everyone doubts what they believe sometime in their life, and this is a good thing. Let’s not have blind faith!”

This is the gist of what my preacher said this past sunday in class. This class was about doubt; how to handle doubt, how to put doubting thoughts to constructive use and how to eventually get rid of doubt and be secure in your beliefs. It was a very good class, I must say. But one thing that interested me was that he said “We can’t prove God exist. No one can hand you God on a platter and say look there is God – He’s real.” This is where he said your faith comes in, faith that God really does exist. At that time I thought ‘that’s blind faith! A faith in something no one can prove is blind faith.’ But no, it’s not blind faith. It’s a faith based on evidences, not proofs. You have evidences, but evidence can only take you so far and then faith fills the rest to create that secure passionate belief.

The same is with atheism. It’s a faith or belief based on evidences that God doesn’t exist. They can’t possibly prove that God doesn’t exist, but they can show evidence that He doesn’t and then their faith in unbelief takes them to the conclusion that God definitely isn’t there.

Just a thought.