The secret to true peace: Keep short accounts with God. In doing so (honestly that is) you will find you tend to do the same with everyone else.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Ravi Zacharias on the definition of "atheism"...
...Atheism comes from literally the Greek "Alpha" the negative and "Theism" the word Theos for God, negative God, there is no God, that's what the word "Atheism" really means.
It is not saying, "I do not think there is a God." It is not even saying, "I do not believe there is a God" it is affirming the non-existance of God, it affirms a negative. Now you know we don't need to take too long into that because anyone with an introductory course in philosophy recognizes that it is a logical contradiction, "How can you affirm a negative in the absolute?"
It would be like me saying to you, "there is no such thing as a white stone with black dots anywhere in all of the galaxies of this universe." The only way I can affirm that is if I had unlimited knowledge of this universe!
So to affirm an absolute negative is self-defeating because what you are saying is, "I have infinite knowledge in order to say to you there is nobody with infinite knowledge." Atheism as a system is self-defeating!
Bertrand Russell recognized that so he did a quick two-step on it, he moved to agnosticism. Agnosticism is very easy to defend, all you have to prove is that you don't know. Now you see agnosticism actually sounds rather sophisticated when it comes from the Greek, because the alpha is the negative and gnosko is "to know" i.e "one who doesn't know" from the Latin it sounds much more uncomplementary because it literally is a one on one equation with being an ignoramus, "one who doesn't know" Agnosticism/ignoramus, same idea...
It is not saying, "I do not think there is a God." It is not even saying, "I do not believe there is a God" it is affirming the non-existance of God, it affirms a negative. Now you know we don't need to take too long into that because anyone with an introductory course in philosophy recognizes that it is a logical contradiction, "How can you affirm a negative in the absolute?"
It would be like me saying to you, "there is no such thing as a white stone with black dots anywhere in all of the galaxies of this universe." The only way I can affirm that is if I had unlimited knowledge of this universe!
So to affirm an absolute negative is self-defeating because what you are saying is, "I have infinite knowledge in order to say to you there is nobody with infinite knowledge." Atheism as a system is self-defeating!
Bertrand Russell recognized that so he did a quick two-step on it, he moved to agnosticism. Agnosticism is very easy to defend, all you have to prove is that you don't know. Now you see agnosticism actually sounds rather sophisticated when it comes from the Greek, because the alpha is the negative and gnosko is "to know" i.e "one who doesn't know" from the Latin it sounds much more uncomplementary because it literally is a one on one equation with being an ignoramus, "one who doesn't know" Agnosticism/ignoramus, same idea...
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