What if the world were flat?
Just bear with me here.
What if the world were flat?
What evidence could
You produce,
Concretely,
To say that it wasn’t?
You go to the age old argument about the
Greeks measuring shadows with poles, but
Given the right math,
You could easily reason it to not be the case.
If all you have are a priori arguments,
There can be just as many cohesive arguments that the world is flat
As there are that the world is a sphere.
You have to go to the evidence.
That’s where the grounds of science begins.
Well, in the realms of
Morality,
Aesthetics,
Even
Language comprehension,
The evidence
At first
Seems very natural.
There are ways in which
I want to be treated,
Therefore,
There is a way in which
To treat others.
There are things
That are naturally beautiful.
I can understand what
Someone is saying pretty clearly.
Of course, these arguments have broken down in the past thirty years.
No longer is there morality,
But there is only your subjective morality.
No longer is there beauty,
But rather beauty is subjective.
No longer is there language comprehension,
Nor the ability to accurately understand a metaphor,
But rather it cannot occur.
On first principles
We know none of this is true.
BUT—
and here’s the big but—
If men determine these things,
They [will] all get reduced to a priori arguments,
And, therefore, have nothing with which to measure
That can substantiate them.
But, in our human experience,
We know each of them to exist
—objectively.
Though, it breaks down when men determine the value of something.
Therefore, because we can observe these things
—you too—
It proves there’s a God.
It’s the very basic premise of Platonism.
That there is an ultimate good
Which determines everything.
There is plenty of evidence for
Beauty, morals and language.
The fact, though, is it breaks down
On an individual level.
It begins to become more clear
On a collective level
What is beautiful, moral or comprehensible
Until the social mores reason that away,
And that’s usually the cause of great calamities
Like WWI and the Holocaust.
Therefore, you know there are morals,
Beauty and language.
The fact that there is
Proves
That there is morality, beauty and language.
But, if it’s up to men to determine what those are,
We absolutely cannot.
That’s why there is a God
Because He determines what that
Morality, beauty and language means.
It’s why there is the concept of Word,
And in Christianity,
Jesus is that Word come in the flesh.
And the way we can test Jesus,
Is by looking at His moral claims.
Even in the Old Testament.
There is judgment for destructive and evil societies, sinners, etc.
There is blessings and rewards for beneficial societies and sinners, etc.
Therefore, the morality of the Bible is sufficient unto itself.
You might mention, “Well the Bible condones slavery.”
Consider, the slaves were all
Pedophiles, cannibals and murderers.
Then consider what to do with them.
You’d probably [just] want them killed.
But, God told the Jews to put them to work.
Much like we do in prisons—
Which is proven to make the prison population a lot less violent.
Therefore, if testing the moral claims of the God of the Bible,
They all test according to the reality
Of how actual human beings function.
The Morality is so cogent,
After analyzing it,
That to call the God of the Bible
Anything less than the Creator Himself,
It would be a hard leap.
If you study other religions,
They have similar morals,
But not quite the same morals as Christianity{}.
Each religion does not teach the same morals.
In affect,
They have similar views,
But only the God of the Bible’s actually presents itself capable of
Predicting social patterns and behaviors,
Enough to accurately predict sociological patterns,
Simply based on the moral state of [a] society.
It’s one of the reasons I’m a Christian,
Is how moral the Bible is.
Bad people are going to die.
Good people are going to be rewarded.
[You’d be surprised that it’s]
Really the only religion like it [that ever existed].
B. K. Neifert 