A Letter to Clare: Apologetics 101 Part 2

In this five-part series on apologetics, Dr. Dick Jones provides a number of useful insights via a letter to Clare, a real person. Beyond its hoped-for impact on her life, this offering from the  Truth of God’s word was written so as to be equally useful for today’s Christian adults, the majority of whom have been philosophically enslaved to a faulty belief system. (This is part two of a five part series.)

PART 2

Dear Clare,

Review of 1: All of us are influenced by many people including those whose anger against God makes them want you to reject Him too. Knowing about the relationship between God’s rules and epistemology will be part of your protective mind insurance against this threat.  

Like having solid cement blocks under a house, epistemology is a necessary foundation for thought. What rungs are to a ladder is what epistemology is to your thinking process. People behave poorly or are unhappy mainly because they don’t obey God’s rules, but, not knowing  epistemology runs a close second. Christians often encourage others to follow God by using examples from history and archeology to show that the Bible is true. They also use personal stories about how God, through Jesus, changed their lives for the better. These are good things, but sometimes an even better way is to share with others that the only reason they can even do and explain something as basic to everyday life as knowing and thinking is because of God.

Even so, a lot of the new people you’ll meet, including the many atheists and angry-at-God people, insist that they have the ability, even without God, to know all there is to know about thinking and knowing and about right and wrong. If one of them says that “people think and know just because they do,” or that “right and wrong depend on the situation,” or that “everyone knows it’s good to help others and that it’s bad to steal or murder,” then they also have the duty to prove to you why these statements are true or their opinion doesn’t count for much. If they stumble around as they try to prove these things then you know there’s a problem.

What’s not good is that even by age 12, too many American kids are already victims of the bad ideas coming from people who’ve never even heard of the word, epistemology. You especially have to be on guard against them telling you that how you act is up to you and nobody else. This is also called “doing your own thing,” or that “there is no truth and no absolutes,” or “if it feels good do it.” The people spreading this stuff, especially those who weren’t taught God’s standards at home, always want you to be asking, “Hey. Why can’t I do my own thing?” The answer you know best – because mom and dad say you can’t – is always being made fun of at work, school, at parties and everywhere else. But, even so, the question of how we can know for sure if we should or shouldn’t do something is a good question and needs a good answer. Sadly, even many officials in government, in business or in the schools say we don’t need the transcendent moral measuring stick I mentioned in paragraph 2 of Part One.

Much of this confusion by people who will be influencing you in the future can be traced back to two things: Their misguided beliefs about evolution plus their total lack of awareness about epistemology. That’s why these two e-subjects must always be explained together. But, before I go any further I need to give you a key point of all this in advance.

The only way that evolutionists, skeptics and the “no-God” people are able to have an opinion about the true source of knowing, thinking, right and wrong is to borrow the Bible’s explanation even though they don’t admit it or even know they’re borrowing. I’ll explain as we go.     

There are three “automatic” beliefs (assumptions or presuppositions) that you and I already both agree on. 1. We have brains that let us think. 2. Thinking makes sense. 3. People use reason and logic when they think. But, beginning roughly about 300 years ago, many angry-at-God people, atheists, certain teachers and some science people in Europe and the United States began to not want to “waste time” talking about those three common sense assumptions. Here’s why:

They don’t like God and want Him “not to be,” so they began teaching that evolution, not God, is why we exist. But, since evolution (by their own definition) creates life by accident and chance, it also forces them to say that brains are accidents too; just a glob of chemicals and mini electric signals that never know from second to second what they might do next. But, such un-designed brains would never be able to account for logical thinking or to make those three assumptions or any assumptions at all would they? That’s why in the classroom they skip by the fact that man’s “primitive, accidental” brains actually are able to have very complicated thought-ideas like assumptions. They’d rather not discuss it. It’s too embarrassing plus it ruins their entire story.

So, is evolution true or not? First of all – and, just like a high-tech computer – it makes sense that creation is not an accident. The beauty and complex design of the universe is shown by the Hubble telescope and by our planet’s very reliable laws of physics and chemistry. And, science regularly demonstrates the incredible design and functioning of the human body. So, when the angry-at-God folks say God didn’t create us, they need to tell us, in fairness, where we did come from. Evolution, which they insist on calling science, says that living things popped up for the first time on earth in a swampy pond millions of years ago, not just a few thousand as the Bible says. This theory is all guesswork and there’s zero proof, but, here’s how their story goes:

The pond was a watery soup of carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia and other lifeless chemicals. (But, no oxygen. Oxygen is bad for their theory.) Once upon a time, sunlight or lightning hit the pond so that the chemicals miraculously became the micro building-blocks (amino acids) for what would become tiny living creatures like germs or bacteria. (Life from non-life – a miracle!) Over millions of more years, slightly more complicated creatures came along with slightly larger “babies.” These slowly turned into tiny minnows, bugs and worms, all of which were cousins because they were all related to the very first pond creatures. In time these little critters changed from small minnows into larger fish, then into birds, and then into new, former-bird creatures with arms, legs and stomachs like cows and monkeys. But, here’s an engineering problem for you: How does a fish gradually transform itself into a bird in little tiny steps over millions of years so that each step produces a slightly better but still workable form of life and not a useless, crippled mess? You’ll be told that fossils show how. But, after desperately searching for these “in between” fossils for over 150 years they still haven’t found any nor will they ever. And, that’s even though the earth is covered with tons of fossils, like Petoskey stones, for example.

After a few million more years (the story goes) one of the monkeys turned into a human man; another, into a human woman, thus becoming our great-grandparents according to Charles Darwin, one of the early rebels to dream up the evolution story. If evolution is true then we “animals” would never know it because our “accidental” glob-brains wouldn’t give us the power of reason or to care either way. Animals don’t care if they evolved or if God made them; they’re just animals. But, we’re not so if evolution is true and there’s no God then we might just as well be dead. The unplanned accident of evolution not only provides no foundation for epistemology, it makes it impossible for us to explain anything at all! Fortunately, the Bible does.

 

A Letter to Clare: Apologetics 101

In this five-part series on apologetics, Dr. Dick Jones provides a number of useful insights via a letter to Clare, a real person. Beyond its hoped-for impact on her life, this offering from the  Truth of God’s word was written so as to be equally useful for today’s Christian adults, the majority of whom have been philosophically enslaved to a faulty belief system. (This is part one of a five part series.)

PART ONE

This letter is very long and not nearly as exciting as a day at Disney World (to me it’s more exciting!) but, please give it a try. If someone had started sharing this information with me when I was 12, much of my life would not have been as purposeless as it’s been. Unfortunately, I was 55 (!) before I received the full story. When you get it – and I know you can – you’ll be an even finer young woman and citizen than you already are. If all 12 year olds and up understood this material, our country’s future would look a lot brighter. So, here goes:

For over 100 years, a few small but very powerful groups of deceived people in U.S. schools, colleges, the government, magazines, the movies – and more recently on TV, the internet and major media have – on purpose – used mind indoctrination, brainwashing and politics (all together it’s called “social engineering”) to harm us Americans with two big lies. First, that there is no truth, no absolute rights and wrongs and no transcendent moral rules. (Transcendent means outside of, better than and above human rules. It means God’s rules.) The second lie is that there is no God, or even if there is, He didn’t create us – evolution did.

I’m writing this because I don’t want their mind-programming plan to harm you. When your grandpa Bob was fighting with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam he protected himself with guns and ammo. I hope this letter will be a special kind of protective “guns and ammo” for you.     

Most people are OK with God, but, the powerful but deceived people I just underlined aren’t. So please be on guard. They’re angry at God and don’t want anyone else to like Him either, or even to believe in Him at all. Many blame Him that they weren’t born strong, good-looking, rich or smart enough. Others don’t like the Bible rules which seem to scold them for doing all the “fun” stuff they shouldn’t be doing. They feel guilty because they know God sees what’s going on. Some are angry because they say He doesn’t do enough to prevent wars, hunger, sickness, evil, floods, poverty and things like that. A few even think they’re better than God. But, almost all of them are little rebels (like spoiled kids) fighting against authority, especially God’s authority. They have other complaints too, but down deep their “reasons” are just one thing: Excuses.

You might say, “Well, that’s their problem,” and normally it wouldn’t matter, but too often they’re very influential people in those places I underlined in paragraph 2 – powerful places from which they’re able to try and get you to reject God just like they do. That’s so they’ll have plenty of company when they disobey. They also have access to a lot of political influence to harm you and your friends’ minds. They do it (often with money) by getting Washington politicians to pass laws against God using a dishonest interpretation of the 1^st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I call their dishonest, anti-God plan the false “separation of church and state” game.

A different, separate group is also harming you although not exactly on purpose like the first. They do believe in God, but usually aren’t that much into church or the Bible. But, being sinners (like all of us!) they often feel guilty and are afraid their sins will keep them out of heaven when they die. So, they hope that if they do more good things in life than bad that God will let them in. Politics is the main tool in their “good works” plan and it works like this: In the months before elections and also on voting day they “show their compassion” by helping politicians who promise to pass laws that take tax money from one person to give for free to two or three others who might be poor or needy. These politicians are the kind that just love to get re-elected!

This might sound like compassion but it’s not. The Bible says it’s the church’s job to assist the needy, but every time politicians do it a culture of dependency happens, and those receiving the money grow lazy and stop helping themselves. Worse yet, they also vote for the exact same re-election-loving politicians that the “I need a ticket to heaven” voters do. This “two against one” set-up means there are two votes to your taxpaying dad’s one. It’s unfair when hardworking taxpayers like your dad have less money for their families and for churches that want to help the poor like they always did earlier in U.S. history. Sadly, most folks who think “compassion” in the voting booth will get them into heaven are in for a shock since their good works plan is not the Bible way. Both the “angry” and the “compassionate” people use your dad’s money and bad laws to try and deal with their own personal issues. But, please be especially on guard against the “angry” group # 1. They want to control your mind and soul more, even, than group # 2 wants your money. Group # 1 needs your company while they shake their fists at God.

As you get older you’ll be sharing ideas back and forth with many folks about careers, marriage, right and wrong, love, hopes, etc. – people who don’t realize how much they’ve been harmed by the two lies of no truth and no God. You’d like them to see that you’re a wise and thoughtful person, so the more you know about God’s rules, the legend of evolution and the epistemology lesson I have for you, the better friend you’ll be to them. I’ll start with epistemology, but don’t worry, it’s not complicated. You already know that biology is the study of living things (“bio”= life and “logy” is Latin for “study of.”) Epistemology is the study of knowledge. (In Latin, episteme =’s knowledge.) Professional scholars also call it the study of how we know what we know, and how it is that we’re able to know. Please memorize that definition – J.

You might be asking: “Aren’t knowing and thinking so automatic that they don’t even need any explaining?” Well, to protect you from harmful ideas it’s important to know if the person you’re speaking with has a base for thinking and knowing that comes God and the Bible or if the base is the “tadpoles to monkeys to you” theory of evolution. That’s because each one of us has the unwritten duty to account for (explain) why we have the ability to know and to think. You can compare it to a surgeon’s unwritten duty to let you know that his training and experience enables him to do good surgery. If he won’t or can’t explain then you probably won’t let him operate. Can you and I agree that good thinking and good knowing are just as important as good surgery? What you’re most often not told is that evolution doesn’t allow for any explanations about epistemology at all. As this letter goes along you’ll see why this fact is kept hidden from you.

If epistemology is so important, why is it still discussed by thousands of professors, intellectuals, scholars, etc. They keep asking. “Are people and brains created by God (which would explain why we can think and know) or does God not even exist?” Those who say He doesn’t also say that we and our brains came from somewhere else, and, you guessed it, evolution is their most popular answer. This needless (to me) debate is a big reason why the world is so messed up, with slipping standards and with too many people doing whatever they want, whenever they want. When God’s rules about morality (right and wrong) are canceled or ridiculed as they are in 2012, too many people start acting goofy. You can see this kind of bad behavior for yourself every night on TV news and in the make-believe TV action shows. It’s not a pretty sight.

Part 1 of 5