1 in 10 to the 157th power
A professor by the name of Peter Stoner has been able to use probability to figure out some very interesting things about Jesus. And since He is the reason for the season, I just thought I'd point out this factoid: There are many prophecies written about the Messiah in the Old Testatment prophecies. Peter Stoner took just 48 of these (there are many more than that, by the way) and determined the probability of one person fulfilling these prophecies (which Jesus did). And the number is:
1 in 10 to the 157th power.
10 with 157 zero's behind it.
That is one heck of a fraction.
This realization was very comforting to me in light of a conversation I was overhearing at a coffee shop last night. A table of three people were sitting there bashing Christianity and people who believe in God. Well, maybe they weren't so much bashing as they were raising themselves above the level of just "belief" to being people who need to come to things rationally.
I'd say that 1 in 10 to the 157th power is rational in the sense that the number was arrived at rationally, through science and math, through the laws of these areas of study.
Anyway, the one kid was making the point that you can believe anything and it doesn't make it true. He could hold a belief that there are white asparagus growing on the moon. But that is not rational to believe. And he was making the correlation between this and belief in God.
It is a) astounding to me that the world is becoming increasingly hostile to those who hold religious view and 2) insulting that the "scholars" seem to think that those of us who do hold beliefs have no reasons for believing them--that we've never thought well, never studied, never pondered, never looked for evidence (because there must not be any, you know). However, I can find nothing BUT good reasons and rational ones at that, to believe in God. But I hear things like this all day:
"Oh, you're religious? You believe in God? Well, I am so sorry that you are too stupid to think for yourself. I am sorry that you are not like me--enlightened enough to not believe in something as archaic as a supreme being. I'm sorry that you find it so easy to ignore science and rational thought. You are a danger to society and should be stopped."
This is the vibe that I get from most people my own age in the circles I tend to occupy.
It is annoying. Actually it is beyond annoying. Did you know that in Holland they are considering outlawing burkas? And there are people in our own country (The Free Thinkers) who want to outlaw all outward expressions of religion. It sounds innocuous until you realize that means that churches wouldn't be able to have crosses on them. Houses wouldn't be able to put up Christmas lights. You wouldn't be able to have the fish on your car if you wanted it. If you were a Wiccan, you wouldn't be allowed to wear your pentagram necklaces or get religious tattoes that were visible. Graves wouldn't be able to have any religious markings on them. Even on your own property, if it is visible to others, you would not be able to display any outward expression of whatever faith you hold.
My question is this: what is so threatening about all of we religious people? What is so threatening about expressions of faith? [By expression--I mean an outward sign. I don't mean proseletyzing on the street corner, I mean a cross on a church. To me, these are two different things. If the cross offends you--don't look at it. If the burka annoys you, look the other way.]
We are loosing our hold on freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country because we have a whole generation of young people that truly believe we should never do anything to offend someone else. Thereby, we should remove anything at all from public viewing and life that may possibly offend someone else. And this would ultimately include religious expressions.
Another point: There are some very prominent atheists in our culture today that would have you not be able to teach your children your own beliefs. One of them, Richard Dawkins, states that parents who are "brainwashing" their children with religious belief from birth until the age of consent are just as dangerous as the militant Muslim sects. So, you would no longer be able to instill morals or faith within your own child--the flesh of your own flesh--the thing that you created and brought into the world. Instead, all religion would, by law, be removed from all parenting, and the child would find it's moral imperatives from The State rather than his or her parents.
You think that maybe this is a far left- little held view. Well, I tell you that this very view I heard last night coming out of the mouth of a 22-year-old or so young man. He thinks it is wrong for anyone to try to influence anyone to believe anything--especially parents to their children.
Which is ironic, because in saying this, he was influencing those to whom he was speaking.
And the thing I think is most sad about this is him. I am sure he was probably raised with some kind of world view in his family--whether it was every verbalized or not. And now here he is at the age of consent, re-examining those very beliefs. Yet he does not have faith in others to be able to do the same--to re-examine the beliefs they were "brainwashed" with as a child to determine if they flush out in adult life. Oh, the irony.
Well, I guess if they want to label me fanatic, that's fine. If they want to assume that I am not smart, not rational, heretical, they'd be wrong, but they'll think and say it anyway. But 1 in 10 to the 157th power is rational and scientific enough for me to take the "great irrational leap" into faith. And if in our quest to never offend someone we are going to remove all color, conversational, and culture out of our culture, then I don't want it. Go ahead and offend me. Disagree with me. Show me something different than what I think. But don't take all belief out of culture. Be brave enough to live with disagreement and dischord--and to react intelligently instead of going into a sort of cultural denial. This is what it takes to have a free society--a society with diversity, color, interlude, life.
1 in 10 to the 157th power.
10 with 157 zero's behind it.
That is one heck of a fraction.
This realization was very comforting to me in light of a conversation I was overhearing at a coffee shop last night. A table of three people were sitting there bashing Christianity and people who believe in God. Well, maybe they weren't so much bashing as they were raising themselves above the level of just "belief" to being people who need to come to things rationally.
I'd say that 1 in 10 to the 157th power is rational in the sense that the number was arrived at rationally, through science and math, through the laws of these areas of study.
Anyway, the one kid was making the point that you can believe anything and it doesn't make it true. He could hold a belief that there are white asparagus growing on the moon. But that is not rational to believe. And he was making the correlation between this and belief in God.
It is a) astounding to me that the world is becoming increasingly hostile to those who hold religious view and 2) insulting that the "scholars" seem to think that those of us who do hold beliefs have no reasons for believing them--that we've never thought well, never studied, never pondered, never looked for evidence (because there must not be any, you know). However, I can find nothing BUT good reasons and rational ones at that, to believe in God. But I hear things like this all day:
"Oh, you're religious? You believe in God? Well, I am so sorry that you are too stupid to think for yourself. I am sorry that you are not like me--enlightened enough to not believe in something as archaic as a supreme being. I'm sorry that you find it so easy to ignore science and rational thought. You are a danger to society and should be stopped."
This is the vibe that I get from most people my own age in the circles I tend to occupy.
It is annoying. Actually it is beyond annoying. Did you know that in Holland they are considering outlawing burkas? And there are people in our own country (The Free Thinkers) who want to outlaw all outward expressions of religion. It sounds innocuous until you realize that means that churches wouldn't be able to have crosses on them. Houses wouldn't be able to put up Christmas lights. You wouldn't be able to have the fish on your car if you wanted it. If you were a Wiccan, you wouldn't be allowed to wear your pentagram necklaces or get religious tattoes that were visible. Graves wouldn't be able to have any religious markings on them. Even on your own property, if it is visible to others, you would not be able to display any outward expression of whatever faith you hold.
My question is this: what is so threatening about all of we religious people? What is so threatening about expressions of faith? [By expression--I mean an outward sign. I don't mean proseletyzing on the street corner, I mean a cross on a church. To me, these are two different things. If the cross offends you--don't look at it. If the burka annoys you, look the other way.]
We are loosing our hold on freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country because we have a whole generation of young people that truly believe we should never do anything to offend someone else. Thereby, we should remove anything at all from public viewing and life that may possibly offend someone else. And this would ultimately include religious expressions.
Another point: There are some very prominent atheists in our culture today that would have you not be able to teach your children your own beliefs. One of them, Richard Dawkins, states that parents who are "brainwashing" their children with religious belief from birth until the age of consent are just as dangerous as the militant Muslim sects. So, you would no longer be able to instill morals or faith within your own child--the flesh of your own flesh--the thing that you created and brought into the world. Instead, all religion would, by law, be removed from all parenting, and the child would find it's moral imperatives from The State rather than his or her parents.
You think that maybe this is a far left- little held view. Well, I tell you that this very view I heard last night coming out of the mouth of a 22-year-old or so young man. He thinks it is wrong for anyone to try to influence anyone to believe anything--especially parents to their children.
Which is ironic, because in saying this, he was influencing those to whom he was speaking.
And the thing I think is most sad about this is him. I am sure he was probably raised with some kind of world view in his family--whether it was every verbalized or not. And now here he is at the age of consent, re-examining those very beliefs. Yet he does not have faith in others to be able to do the same--to re-examine the beliefs they were "brainwashed" with as a child to determine if they flush out in adult life. Oh, the irony.
Well, I guess if they want to label me fanatic, that's fine. If they want to assume that I am not smart, not rational, heretical, they'd be wrong, but they'll think and say it anyway. But 1 in 10 to the 157th power is rational and scientific enough for me to take the "great irrational leap" into faith. And if in our quest to never offend someone we are going to remove all color, conversational, and culture out of our culture, then I don't want it. Go ahead and offend me. Disagree with me. Show me something different than what I think. But don't take all belief out of culture. Be brave enough to live with disagreement and dischord--and to react intelligently instead of going into a sort of cultural denial. This is what it takes to have a free society--a society with diversity, color, interlude, life.
posted by Erin at 11:01 AM
4 Comments:
The funny thing about "free-thinkers" is that they refuse to accept the idea that there are things that occur outside of human comprehension. This is why you occasionally see a National Geographic special on the miracles of the Bible explained. The new one is how Jesus walked on water. Their not disputing the fact that the miracles occured, only that they did not happen on a supernatural level. I would also contend that secularist and atheists need God as much as believers do. What would they have to bitch about, since presumably without any organized religion the world would be perfect as God..er I mean a random series of evolutionary events spanned out over 4 billion years would have it be.
Thank you for writing this, Erin. I had a similar conversation last Friday with a fellow therapist in the Twin Cities who is a Christian and who has been told there will be NO expression of belief in the office this "holiday" season. In fact, there will be no Hanukkah representations, no Christmas lights, no Kwanzaa banners, no nothing. The funny thing is that all these atheists and free thinkers or whatever they call themselves still buy each other gifts this time of year, I'm guessing. I feel that if people are not going to participate in the Christian holiday of Christmas, maybe they need to skip the gift buying as well, because the reason we give each other gifts is to reflect the Gift that God gave us, his Son, as Savior from our sins. If they really want to get rid of Christmas, maybe they need to take a look at what their actions are saying. And the sad fact is that the retailers report that for the most part they do more than 50% of their annual business between the weeks from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Apparently Christmas is still palatable enough to keep our economy floating, but you better not call it that.
I like reading your blog. It's always so interesting. Thank you.
I would have to say that in order for one to say there is no God, one would have to have complete and absolute knowledge of the entire universe (omniscience). If you possessed this you would be God. Free thinkers, atheist, I like to refer to them as imbeciles, will say, "There's no evidence to support the existence of God" (which is absolutely untrue, there are tons of logical and even scientific evidence)You would have to have seen all the evidence in the entire world in order for you to make that claim. So how can you state there is no God? You can't. Therefore they hold a negative position and we all know you can't prove a negative.
An example of proof for the existence of God would be the universe. Is the universe eternal or did it have a beginning? Well, it couldn't be eternal because that would mean that an infinite amount of time had to be crossed to get to the present. But, you can't cross an infinite amount of time, it wouldn't be infinite. So therefore, the universe had a beginning. Something can't bring itself into existence. Therefore, something brought it into existence. Now, what is this "something" that brought in into existence? It would have to be greater than the universe and it would have to be a sufficient cause to it. The Bible says this sufficient cause was God. What do the imbeciles offer instead of God? Nothing, so atheism can't account for our existence.
Another thing, the universe can't be eternal because all of our usable energy would have been long gone by now (entropy) and this hasn't happened yet.
These are just a couple of examples of proofs to support the existence of God, there are a lot more. They can't account for objective morals, rationality, the laws of logic, etc...
Atheist, free thinkers, imbeciles are easy to take on because they don't think logically and the position they hold is 100% intellectually indefensible. They don't have a leg to stand on.
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