“Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.” John A. Hutchinson
“Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. “ Philippians 4:5-7
Do you have the ‘peace of God that passes understanding?’ Many Christians do not. As Christians, certainly we are called to walk in faith, not fear, and trust in the Lord. Does that mean that we need not use our minds? On the contrary, faith without a base in evidence is not Biblical faith at all, and we are not likely to find the peace we desire without evidence behind our faith.
We are sometimes told that ‘blind faith’ is adequate for the Christian. “New Atheist” Richard Dawkins defined faith as a religious term and all faith as blind faith. These ideas are wrong. Atheists who take this view do not seem to realize, or at least admit, that they operate from faith as much as any Christian. Faith = trust, and a scientist, a car driver or factory worker all operate with faith. Consider the act of driving a car. This requires you to have faith in other drivers doing what they need to, either by law or prudence, to avoid an accident. That faith came from the trust in the laws and signals, and the experience that most people adhere to at least reasonable driving practices. Without that experience-based faith, we would not venture out of the driveway.
Though a materialist might deny it, being able to do science requires faith as well. At the very least, the scientist has faith that the world is rationally intelligible, and that we have the faculties to comprehend it. Because of that, repeatable and objective experimentation can be used to determine how our world works. Maybe we’ll explore why Christian faith is evidence-based some other time. For now, I’ll assert that not only is Christianity supported by evidence, but that as time goes by, more, not less evidence affirms that view.
Perhaps many of us do not have the peace of God we seek because we are choosing ignorance instead of knowledge. Ignorance is certainly easier because it does not require much of us. However, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” can only go so far. Ignorance is not bliss. The toll of ignorance is severe. Our peace affected, the quality of our relationship with God is diminished and our witness is less effective. You must come to know someone to begin to trust them. That takes effort. Maybe grappling with evidence, ramping up worship, studying the Word, prayer and fellowship with more mature believers will put us on a stronger path with greater peace. In a world which seems to be utterly chaotic, might spending a bit of time understanding our culture give us a better basis to help us trust more thoroughly in our God and Savior?
If we choose ignorance, we will have the anxiety and fear that comes from the unknown and be ineffective in our witness. It is more work and may at times be uncomfortable, but if we choose knowledge, we can better discern what we need to put into the hands of our Creator, and what might be ours to take care of.
Choose knowledge, not ignorance. Find peace.
Random Thoughts 
faith does not equal trust, not in the way theist mean faith. Trust is earned, and supported by facts. Theists have nothing to suport their claims, each using what the others also use to make their claims about their imaginary friends.
Science doesn’t require faith either. Science is done by asking questions and following the evidence where it leads. That is anathema to religion.
“or now, I’ll assert that not only is Christianity supported by evidence, but that as time goes by, more, not less evidence affirms that view.”
an entirely baseless assertion. Unsurprisingly, you have presented no evidence to support this claim, just like all of the theists who make it.
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Thanks for your comments, clubschadenfreude. Obviously I disagree with your assessments, but I’m glad to have your thoughts here for others to see. I appreciate your keeping it reasonably civil!
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you may disagree with me, but can yuo show I’m wrong?
This struck me as interesting “If we choose ignorance, we will have the anxiety and fear that comes from the unknown and be ineffective in our witness. It is more work and may at times be uncomfortable, but if we choose knowledge, we can better discern what we need to put into the hands of our Creator, and what might be ours to take care of.”
It seems a variant of the claim that some god helps those who help themselves. Unfortunately, your bible says the exact opposite, that one can trust this god for literally everything (the lilies speech). If you are taking care of things yourself, you know your god isn’t going to do what you claim it will.
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Stay tuned. This question is more than I wish to work in the comments. Watch for further posts. Be patient with me.
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I get constant promises by christians that they’ll address my points at a later time *honest*. Amazingly that never happens. Hopefully you’ll be the first to come through.
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As you would know from reading my landing page, my purpose for this blog was to evince opinions, for people who were interested. It was not and is not to argue theology. I’m not interested in debate on-line. This being the case, though you are welcome to post opinions in the comments, you will not normally get a direct response. It is my belief that over time you will probably receive the answers to your concerns about my posts. However, since I put out at most one post each week, and not every post is theological, you might be waiting much longer than you want to. I said that you would have to be patient. That said, to give you something to ponder, let me offer you some of the authors that have influenced my opinions. If you’re sincerely interested in answers, they will offer you more than I can in short posts anyway. Let me suggest C.S. Lewis, ‘Mere Christianity’ to address the concept that morality indeed suggests a supernatural being outside of our material experience. and the mechanics of Christianity. Try Stephen Meyer’s book ‘Darwin’s Doubt’ for suggestions as to why Darwinism/Neo-Darwinism, while accounting for variations within species, does not adequately explain the origins of life. His book ‘Return of the God Hypothesis’ looks at why modern scientific discoveries in physics, astronomy and microbiology seem to provide evidence better suited to theism than atheism. It would be worthwhile to read ‘God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God’ by John Lennox. He points out the challenges presented by dueling worldviews, what the roots of science are and the limits of scientific inquiry. He also delves into the challenges to Darwin’s evolutionary theories and why information technology and human genetic code suggest that a ‘mind’ is behind the origin of the universe. It might be useful to take a look at David Berlinski’s book ‘The Deniable Darwin’ for a Jewish agnostic mathematician’s take on why Darwinism fails as well. The short book ‘How Should We Then Live’ by Francis Schaffer gives an interesting history and commentary on the rise and failure humanism going back to the Roman Empire and covering to the 80s. These men all have the wisdom and humility to realize that the scientific realm is not static and it is possible that new discoveries in the hard sciences may change their views, but they believe that evidence points to an intelligently designed world. They also realize that while they believe that the various forms of evidence point to a theistic worldview being superior to an atheistic view, it is impossible to ‘prove’ theism any more than it is possible to ‘prove’ atheism with mathematical certainty. Finally, ‘Authentic Christianity’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones gives a good picture of Christianity by examining the book of Acts. Hopefully you will find these things helpful while you patiently wait to see if I will meet your expectations.
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Unsurprisingly, despite your claims, you present your false claims as facts, which is not just providing opinions. And most theists aren’t interested in supporting their claims since they have nothing to support those claims.
And gee, more baseless claims that “someday” you’ll provide evidence for your nonsense, which of course never happens. Isn’t that convenient!
It’s obvious that C.S. Lewis has influenced you, an apologist who had no more evidence than you for baseless opinions, and who advised Christians to lie to potential converts about the contradictions and splintering of Christianity (that’s in the preface of Mere Christianity, btw).
Lewis made the claim that morality requires his imaginary friend but never supported it with evidence. As we can see, Christians themselves don’t’ agree on what morals their god wants, with each having a different set, so your claims of objective morality fail as soon as one looks as chrisitanity. You can’t even answer how one would even tell how a moral was objective, other than the presupposition that god gave it.
Meyer’s book is full of similar failure with his baseless claims that his god is the creator, when he cannot show his god merely exists nor that his god is the right one. All cults make similar claims. It’s also hilarious that Christians keep lying and insisting that evolutionary theory can’t account for abiogenesis. Yes, dear, we already know that and it was never intended to. All Meyer’s has are first cause argument, which never get to your particular bloodthirsty god, and god of the gaps arguments, assuming god has to do something since we don’t know *yet* how it happened. That’s typical of Christian deceit.
John Lennox also fails rather amusingly, since he also tries the lies about objective morality and his baseless claim that we somehow need this god of his to know anything, a claim that is easily dismissed since he cannot show his god exists, is needed, or that we don’t already interact correctly with our environment, and have for millenia, showing that any god of his is needed at all.
The lies that DNA is some code have yet to be supported, and the Christian must explain why that supposed code is so inept. Was this god just stupid or malicious? No mind needed, just lots of trial and error.
Berlinski also fails with the typical lies of a creationist and he is not a mathematician, he has a doctorate in philosophy. He’s quite a fraud, trying to claim that astrology is rational too. It’s hilarious to see him try to claim evolutionary theory fails, with no evidence, but also try to distance himself from the lies of creationism. It’s even better when Berlinski still claims that evolutionary theory says that giraffes got their long necks from stretching them. It’s always just so sweet when creationists lie and lie incompetently. He also lies that there are no transitional fossils (there are many), he claims that since sharks haven’t evolved majory, evolution is wrong (showing he has no idea what the theory of evolution actually says), and has the typical god of the gaps arguments, claiming that if evolutionary theory can’t immediately explain everything, then it has to be wrong. That takes some stupid. He also lies and claims that evolutionary theory led to Nazism, which is rather pitiful since Hitler had books on evolution destroyed since they didn’t match his lies about it.
Unsurprisingly, that book by Francis Schaffer is just more lies. Unsurprisingly, Schaeffer was just one more cultist with baseless presuppositions. He lies about evolutionary theory, the enlightenment, etc and repeats the usual lies about objective morals coming from his imaginary friend, which, as above, has been shown as a complete lie. As usual, we have an ignorant crank with nothing more than lies pretending that things would be so much better with him in charge. As is common with chrsitians, he lies about history.
These men were all liars and made baseless claims, so your claims of “wisdom and humility” are simply false, yet again. As always, neither they, nor you, can explain why this god was evidently a moron or malicious when it comes to supposed “intelligent design”. You make excuses which all fail rather amusingly. Lots of people of all religions claim their lies are superior to an atheist world, and gee not one of you can show those lies to be true. You all conrtradict each other.
I also love how theists conveniently claim that theism is impossible to prove, when they claim they have evidence their god exists. Reality doesn’t work that way. You can’t even show it is more likely that any one of your many imaginary friends exist than not.
Every one of you cultists claim that only your version is “authentic” so one more Christian lying about that in a book is just silly. Curious how not one of you can do what jesus promised, so you are all evidently terribly wrong. Lloyd-Jones was a calvnist, and surprise, plenty of Christians are more than sure he’s completely wrong. He claimed anyonen who didn’t agree with him wasn’t a Christian. AS usual, he made up his own version of this nonsense.
So, to wrap up, if you think these baseless claims and outright lies are useful, you fail badly.
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Well, I guess if my opinions and are founded on baseless sources and lies, our interchange must be at an end.
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