Friday, March 17, 2006

03/14/2006—
I want to know why I doubt. I want to know what I doubt. How do I thoroughly analyze my doubts and beliefs, and why I doubt and why I believe? Where do I start? Perhaps I should start with the Resurrection. Did it happen? If I say yes, then where’s my evidence? Did he appear to his apostles? Did he appear to the women? To the men on the road to Emmaus? Are the documents which record it reliable? Does it prove Jesus to be God? If so, what kind of God is he? Is that even a pertinent question? How about the other resurrections Jesus performed? If they’re true resurrections, doesn’t that make his own more likely?
But why do I doubt? Are the doubts emotional or intellectual? Or is my problem the unwillingness to believe, consciously or unconsciously? Or does the answer lie in some of all three?

Friday, March 10, 2006

03/10/2006—
Greg Koukl made some comments a while back on the evolution/creation matter. He thought it likely that pain and animal death did exist before the fall because he saw pain as being good, though we may not like it. He also thought God would’ve had to have created the natural deadly weapons of animals by the time the creation was finished, because after God called the finished creation good, and stopped creating.
My response is this, that God may have, as other creationists have suggested, preprogrammed into our genes during the creation the possible weapons and instincts to maintain nature’s balance after the fall, anticipating our fall. I mean, if these weapons and instincts hadn’t existed after the fall, then maybe God’s creation would’ve experienced wholesale chaos. Animals attacking other animals and their own environments—for no apparent reason except to cause pain and destruction. There’d be no balance in nature. So God gives us instincts and weapons to establish a balance—we attack animals for constructive reasons, to eat. We destroy trees to build houses and make paper.



When old-earthers ask young-earthers how there could’ve been 24-hr. days and morning and evenings before the sun, moon, and stars were created, the young-earther response is that God created a light—I was going to say he created light, but Genesis doesn’t say what’s it’s extent. It could’ve surrounded the earth. But now I’m remebering that God divided the darkness from the light. But there was a point when there was only the light. So what was it? Why was it there before the sun? He calls the light “day,” and the darkness “night.” It seems apparent that he’s referring to a literal 24-hr. day. And why mention morning and evening if the days weren’t literal? Those seem to be very concrete details. Why didn’t Moses just say “one day passed?” I don’t really know the answers.



If pain is a bad thing, then why did God design us with a nervous system that delivers painful sensations whenever we’re injured? See 02/20/2006.



Can God take a thing that is inherently bad and use it for good?

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

03/04/2006—
Still reading The Historical Jesus and The Thomas Factor. Sometime I’ll do book reports on them for the blog. What I’m not reading is The Bible. Not often enough, that is. Something like a few minutes every week or two.