Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

Greetings, friends, and welcome to this episode of the Chaplain’s Chair and we're continuing our studies in the Biblical doctrine and practical theology in this podcast, which is a fancy way of saying what does the Bible teach and how does it apply to my life? And we started out with why the Bible is important to your life and I'm now into the question of can I know God, this is the 4th podcast on the question.

00:00:21 Speaker 1

And we're still working on the answer to that. But we've been through showing you some general revelation from nature, some special revelation from God reaching into our world and and letting us know he is there through events and history, miracles, prophecy, not the person of Jesus Christ, who is a historical figure. He's not just a biblical figure which will flush out down the road in these podcasts.

00:00:41 Speaker 1

And the nation of.

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Well, we moved into laying some philosophical and logical groundwork last time, and we'll add a little more to it this time by covering some terms and definitions which help us to understand the study of God from other perspectives and lay a foundation of knowledge to aid you with an understanding of how to discover the answer yourself and why we should embrace the book.

00:01:02 Speaker 1

Biblical God is the only God, not just one of many gods or one of many different religions. So I want to begin by adding some philosophical terms and definitions that should have been in the last podcast, but for some reason I overlooked it just a few more terms and theories and this information and these definitions will be available on the website.

00:01:19 Speaker 1

Www.thechaplainschair.com under this episode.

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And I want to begin.

00:01:24 Speaker 1

With what is called the conditional theory of justification, or also called reliabilism, which means the belief is justified by a set of beliefs. However, this justification operates conditionally as it depends on the truth of the justifying.

00:01:40 Speaker 1

Beliefs and I'll refer you to the definitions from the last podcast in this series to kind of help you flush that out. You can believe anything you want and based it on anything you want. But if the belief isn't based on truth, is not what we would call a justified belief. It's a belief of fantasy or.

00:01:57 Speaker 1

Option and justified beliefs must be made on objective knowledge and truth. So let's look at the definition of the word knowledge justified. Belief comes from Plato. How do we know if a statement corresponds to reality? There's various ways to examine that. First of all, look at fact is some set of circumstances.

00:02:17 Speaker 1

In this world, OK, a fact cannot be either.

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True or false?

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It simply is because that's the way the world is. It's a fact that the earth rotates on its axis. Gravity is a fact. Hubble belief and opinion about those circumstances. Now a belief is capable of being true or false because it may not accurately describe the world. You may honestly believe that if you step off a tall building.

00:02:43 Speaker 1

Defy gravity. You'll not crash to the ground, but that's not factual. That's not the way the world works. You may believe it, but when you go to test it, you're going to find your belief was not justified by facts.

00:02:54 Speaker 1

Move on to the definition of coherentism from the word coherent. Justified beliefs are all evidentially supported by other beliefs, but an infinite set of beliefs is not generated because the chains of evidence or support among beliefs is allowed to move in a circle. Now, when the resulting picture oppressions, beliefs is justified.

00:03:14 Speaker 1

And it fits together with the person's other beliefs in a coherent way in which the person's various beliefs mutually support one another. And as an aside, belief systems must be coherent. They must agree. You cannot have a justified belief in one thing and then deny it in another.

00:03:31 Speaker 1

And I will point out some of the contradictions that we have in our political belief systems where it's OK for Canada A to do something because I like him and what he stands for. But that same thing is wrong and candidate B because I don't like him or what he stands for.

00:03:45 Speaker 1

And moving on to skepticism, which is the belief that there cannot be any justified beliefs, and this is for those who doubt and question everything, it doesn't have to be faith or religion based.

00:03:56 Speaker 1

Either. So let's add those to our basic vocabulary of logic and philosophy, and begin to look at some common definitions in the study of religion, which we said in the series of podcast is man's attempt to define his existence, that attempt, that search is more than legitimate. If we set what we find on the scales of justice and abide by the outcome, God's not afraid of your honest investigation. As I've said in previous.

00:04:17 Speaker 1

Broadcast. And he's not afraid you're going to expose him as a fraud.

00:04:21 Speaker 1

And this equally applies to belief about religion or any religion. A certain religion isn't true because you think it is or want to believe it is, and it doesn't matter what that belief may be. And I'm going to reference the Flying Spaghetti monster from the last podcast on the subject. You may be free to believe it, especially in a free society, but that doesn't make it true. So in summary, if a thing corresponds to reality.

00:04:42 Speaker 1

Knowledge or facts about the world. It's a justified belief and we can in most cases call it truth justified. Belief is is based on sound premises that meet the criteria for objective truth or facts, verified and corroborated, eyewitness testimony, corroborating accounts of history are reliable and verified written.

00:05:01 Speaker 1

Supporting archaeological evidence etcetera would be an idea of facts. Genuine knowledge is based on truths which are known with absolute certainty, and I mentioned reasonable doubt versus imaginable doubt in the last podcast. It serves no purpose to imagine outside what our reality is and what we know to be true. And I've heard some pretty fanciful.

00:05:22 Speaker 1

Imaginable doubt theories in various circumstances, and then we argue like this all the time in our religion and our politics and our society.

00:05:30 Speaker 1

And and we do so by not honestly investigating what we believe, what we hear, what we may see, whether it's on social media, whether it's in person, on television, radio, etcetera. And we seemingly argue on what we want to believe for whatever reason. And we seek out only those sources and people who reinforce what we want to believe and what we want to be part of.

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It's almost like a click in high school.

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One of the cool kids saying, what are they doing? What are they wearing?

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And then we subscribe to that because we want to be accepted or in that popular group. And so we embrace certain political positions because everyone believes that how much people put forth a political position, they believe, and then when they're asked why they believe it or to provide proof of it, they can't.

00:06:13 Speaker 1

So examining religion, pursuit of God, it should be honest and it can be honest and God is not afraid of honest investigation. So let's look at some common definitions and terms that are used when examining the existence of God. The existence of other religions and religious rituals to use a neutral expression.

00:06:30 Speaker 1

So let's start with some terms. The word religion. What is that? Well, it's the expression, attitude or actions of one's thoughts about God and or God's and or spirits and or the universe. And every religion has them.

00:06:46 Speaker 1

But all must be put to the test of truth. They all make claims that many of these claims contradict. Thus not all can be right. If we look at our terms of logic in the previous podcasts on this subject.

00:06:56 Speaker 1

The word divine.

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Which means God like, however, that concept is understood belonging to God or the supernatural excellent of firm like or a God. And nearly every religious claim has a connection to the divine as given here. Moving on to the word worship. And what is worship, divine honors, or religious service directed towards?

00:07:18 Speaker 1

The deity, reverence or adoration, and it may be performed individually or corporately in a group. Adoration is worshipped that belongs to God alone or bent.

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Operation honor lawfully offered to others, say the Saints or heroes.

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And underneath that, we're going to add some other terms. The word idle IDOL, which is an image of God or a concept of divinity used to pay homage to God statues. It's as an example, an icon is CON, which would be a painting or any other pictorial representation.

00:07:57 Speaker 1

You see these in churches. You see these on stained glass. You see these in books.

00:08:00 Speaker 1

Yes.

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And moving on to that, we have rituals, which is what we would define as a sequence of activities performed according to the tenants of a particular religious tradition that's ordered and established by tradition, say, honoring A feast day or a holy day.

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Prayer and meditation, a solemn request or or an imploring, an expression of gratitude addressed to a particular object or person of worship or system of worship.

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In persons, our divine honors to the dead relatives, ancestor worship the Saints, and the Roman Catholic tradition, and you see this in in Shintoism, Taoism and Confucianism also. And then we have principles honoring, revering or observing certain tenants and creeds. Of the 10 Commandments is probably the best example.

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The four noble truths in Buddhism is another example.

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The word adherent, somebody that adheres to a faith group or believer of a particular religion, usually associate with other believers in a community. It could be very tight knit or more loosely associated.

00:09:04 Speaker 1

Created so religion is not just a set of beliefs and dogmas and beliefs and dogmas, inspire or inform how an adherent thinks about themselves and the world usually, and this is true of all of religious claims, but not all are going to pass the test of logic and truth. Not all will pass the test of a justified belief based on objective.

00:09:25 Speaker 1

Criteria and rules of logic that we've given so far. You can believe it all that you want, but your belief is a blind faith, an empty faith that does not rest on objective criteria and rules of.

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Logic. It rests only on your subjective opinion, especially if you dismissed objective truth and the rules of logic.

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So let's look at some other terms. Let's start with the word theism.

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What is theism? Well, it's the belief in the existence of God. Atheist is one who believes in a God or God's plural, and we get some subcategories under that. We're going to go and cover, and one of them, the first one is deism, which is belief.

00:10:04 Speaker 1

In a creator.

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God, who has nothing to do with the creation now it's akin to say, a man makes a launch. He winds it up to, sets it in motion, and then he leaves it to one on its own according to certain principles that were built into the device.

00:10:22 Speaker 1

Monotheism, a belief in one God, and that there are no other gods really, only practised by the followers of Islam.

00:10:29 Speaker 1

Christians and Judaism, whether it's Allah, God or Yahweh, and then we have polytheism, which is belief in many gods, Hindus, Greeks and Romans, sins too numerous to list. How many gods are underneath those faiths, and they all cover a a, a different area of responsibility. And then we have.

00:10:49 Speaker 1

Henotheism, which is an inherence to one God within a polytheistic framework, and there are even Christians, sadly, that that believe this thing worship the God of the Bible, but also accept the the possibility that other gods exist de facto coexisting with the Lord God, which is in violation of the of the first command.

00:11:08 Speaker 1

But these world rules also give God and gods traits of personality and a sense of relationship with humans and the gaming of human emotions. Some of these gods up and Evolent, some are malevolent, some compassionate, some vengeful. All are present.

00:11:23 Speaker 1

Some serve their deity. I've loved many out of fear. Let's move on to the definition of atheism. One who denies the existence of God, God's spirits, or the divine.

00:11:34 Speaker 1

Don't believe any of that exists.

00:11:36 Speaker 1

And then we have the agnostic or agnosticism, which is a belief that neither the existence nor the nature of God or gods can be known by us. It doesn't say there is a God. It doesn't say there isn't. It simply says we cannot know for sure. Either way, it walks the middle Rd. animism, which is belief in spirits.

00:11:57 Speaker 1

Spirits of dead persons, animals or other objects in nature are largely practiced in in Africa. The Primitive Tribes Australia, primitive tribes, they are the Aborigines and Native Americans, and by various tribes in South.

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America and Earth worship would fall under that category.

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And we have pantheism, which is believed that everything is part of 1 eternal self, existing being or all pan means all all is God.

00:12:27 Speaker 1

Which is practiced in in Hinduism or Panentheism and not to be confused with pantheism as opposed to all as God panentheism means all.

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As in God think.

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Of the universe as a babe in the mother's womb.

00:12:42 Speaker 1

And then we have dualism or believe in two equal forces or two equal gods, one good, one evil, each competing for control. I think Star Wars is probably the best example of that. We have the the, the dark side of the force, and then we have the good side of the force.

00:12:58 Speaker 1

A secular humanism, or humanism, which is man or yourself, is the final authority. Man is the center of the universe. Man is the standard by which all life is measured and judged.

00:13:11 Speaker 1

And it completely rejects any supernaturalism. Humanism rejects a divine moral standard. It has very vacillating.

00:13:18 Speaker 1

Can change from generation to generation country to country and it stems mostly from atheistic evolution or survival of the fittest. You know, values are whoever is the the strongest influence gets to decide what the values are. So those are some basic definitions in the Broadview of what we call religion.

00:13:38 Speaker 1

And when asking the question, can I know God, it's important to understand the terms that are the basic foundation of the discussion. And I say basic because only.

00:13:48 Speaker 1

Giving us scratching the surface introduction here some basic tools to allow you to start getting into the research and asking the question yourself to settle it in your own mind. I don't want you to believe a certain thing because I said it. I want you to believe it because you have examined it and found it to be true. So I want to look at some facts concerning the existence of God.

00:14:09 Speaker 1

And I want to start with Romans 119 to 21. It says because that which may be known of God is manifest in.

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Them.

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For God hath showed it unto them, for the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen being understood by the things that remain, even as eternal power and.

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Godhead. So they are without.

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News now because that when they knew when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. Neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. Now what we take from this is.

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That we have a.

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An understanding of God because of the intuition that he's put in every single one of us, and David Livingston the great.

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Missionary that went to the Dark continent, went to Africa, was considered the first missionary in Africa.

00:14:51 Speaker 1

You know, he said. And this is a continent that I'd never heard of God had had had never heard of. Jesus. You know deep well, not the whole continent, but deep down into the jungles of Africa. But David Livingston said the existence of God and of a future life is everywhere recognized in Africa. These are people that did not have the revelation of the Bible. And so the scriptures.

00:15:10 Speaker 1

Soon.

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Them the existence of God. They don't argue it. William Evans.

00:15:15 Speaker 1

In his book The Great doctrines of the Bible says it does not seem to have occurred to any of the writers of either the old and the New Testaments to attempt to prove or argue for the existence of God. Genesis 11 simply says in the beginning, God, it does not try to convince you. It does not try to explain how he got here. It's simply assumed.

00:15:33 Speaker 1

And so this is also corroborated by some of the naturalistic arguments that that we have, and I'm going to go through just a few of those to give.

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You kind of an.

00:15:41 Speaker 1

Understanding the first naturalistic argument is what we call a cosmological argument, and that argument basically says the universe is an effect which requires an adequate cause.

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And the only sufficient cause is God. So this universe existed. It it had to have had a cause. Something had to had to create it. It didn't just.

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Show up.

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And behind that, we have the teleological argument which says the universe not only proves a maker, but also a designer. The intricacies of the creation point to a designer. So the cosmological argument says OK, everything has to have a first cause, the.

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Design.

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In the universe says something had to have designed it.

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And then we have the anthropological argument, which says, since man is is a moral and intellectual being, he must have had a maker who's the same also.

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No.

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Moving on, we have the ontological argument which man has the idea of the most perfect being, which includes the idea of existence.

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Behind that, we have the moral argument on the basis of the conscience, there must be freedom, immortality and God.

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And the final one, which we call the argument from congruity, the belief in the existence of God Best explains the fact.

00:16:58 Speaker 1

Of our mental, moral and religious nature, as well as the facts of the material universe, every man thinks essentially the same way and with all this in mind, we'll be moving into the next podcast of this series to what it's God like. We'll look at some of those characteristics and attributes of God that are important for us to know. But before we do that, we're going to be paused for a couple of weeks to speak to the passion of Christ.

00:17:19 Speaker 1

Those things most important to discuss during the upcoming Easter season. I hope you'll join me for those, but this is the last podcast that I'm going to take to lay down some basic terminology foundational thinking logic.

00:17:32 Speaker 1

Etcetera to help us have the intellectual tools to examine some of the some of the information in the podcast. We're going to be sharing down the road and I hope you continue to join me for those too. But but for today, this is chat with Tim signing off. I want to thank you for stopping by and May.

00:17:47 Speaker 1

The Lord bless you and good day.