I recently had an interaction with
an individual who so stereo-typically displayed in his notions, the philosophy
and attributes of modern atheism, that I feel I should blog about it!
There are two main elements entrenched
in atheism and they are Arrogance and Ignorance. I have always said that at the
intersection were arrogance and ignorance collide, they cry “There is no God”. However modern Atheism does not simply
reject the traditional idea of God, they replace God with something else, firmly
believing in their replacement and vigorously proselyting, making it a religion. In this gentleman’s (actually he wasn't really
a gentleman, he was simply crude and displayed very poor manners) case, his
mind is the replacement. When I pointed
out to him that he is a devoted follower of the religion of Atheism, he flatly
denied that he is an atheist and waxed philosophical about love and humanity et
cetera and so forth.
Arrogance and ignorance; we can
start at either point, but they are both very present. So much so that I want to coin a new
phrase: arrogo-ignorance. The element of ignorance is unmistakable – it blatantly
admits that it cannot see God, cannot fathom the ability of billions of people
through the ages, to believe in God. The
element of ignorance admits “I don’t get it!”, but with an arrogant laugh! The arrogance that says “I am so clever, so
important, so central to my own existence, that if I don’t get it, it simply
cannot be!” Therefor the atheist assumes
and strongly believes, that only stupid people believe in God, because they can’t
seem to reason properly. Classical arrogo-ignorance!
Then arrogo-ignorance doesn't stop
there. Many atheists feel compelled and
entitled to launch scathing attacks on the Bible, a collection of writings that
began 3500 years ago, took 40 people 1600 years to write, has of the most
beautiful poetry, is based on accurate historical facts, never contradicts
itself (claims of contradiction come from those who take verses out of context
and have poor understanding of the holistic, thematic basis), is the all-time
best seller ever, is as relevant today as it was when it was written (just think
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes)and was a forerunner of all texts in the area of
science. While other sources declared
that the earth rode on the back of an elephant, or was upheld by Atlas, the Bible
alone stated what is today common knowledge, that the earth floats in
space (Job 26:7).
While only in the 19th
century it was discovered that all visible matter consist of invisible (to the
eye) particles, the Bible stated this fact before 100 AD (Hebrews 11:3) The
Biblical explanation of the Firmament is the closest any of the historical
writings ever came to describing accurate scientific facts about our world (The
Spirit hovering over the deep – or in secular terms, Energy moving over water
creating a magnetic field that literally keeps us and everything else ‘together’
– Job also says ‘If You remove Your Spirit, everything will perish and return
to particles.”) The very Big Bang theory
(not the one with Sheldon in the lead role), has been ridiculed by scientists,
because it implies that Something outside of our known world, caused the
Bang! As the cosmos cools down, that
cooling down is measurable and traceable to a point where the cooling
began. That is: the rate the kitchen cools down from the time
the oven is opened up, implies that someone opened the oven! The
first three verses of Genesis accurately express all known aspects of the
creation. Science expresses the universe
in terms of: time, space, matter, and energy. In Genesis 1 we read: "In
the beginning (time) God created the heavens (space) and the earth
(matter)...Then God said, "Let there be light (energy)." No other
creation account agrees with the observable evidence.*
It is amazing to me that people who don’t know the Bible,
feel confident in commenting on it. They
believe what is written in today’s newspaper, that has a life-span of 24 hours,
written by journalists, people like you and me, some who might have scraped
through university on the skin of their bum, people with their own agendas and
their own, untried opinions. Truth is,
the only thing you cut and keep from a newspaper is stuff written about you or
yours! The Bible stood the test of
time! It has been studied and probed and
has provided inspiration and guidance for thousands of years! It is simple enough for a child to
understand, yet mysterious enough to confound the wisest mind.
I don’t want to continue on the
point of science, because my faith is not based on scientific fact and I don’t need
to explain God in order to believe in Him.
In fact, I love the fact that I cannot explain Him. If He fitted into my intellect, He could very
well be a making of mine and not I, a making of His.
No, we are talking about the
arrogo-ignorance of Atheism. The fact that through the ages, very wise and
intelligent people were fully capable of a relationship with a living and
loving God, is overlooked by the modern atheist. The assumption is that only stupid people,
only those who are weak and afraid, need and believe God. This interesting interaction with the person
who sparked my desire to blog about atheism, began when a friend posted his
re-write of Psalm 23, replacing “The Lord” with “My Mind”, on Facebook. I pointed out that if your mind is your
shepherd, all you need is a good bump to the head and all of a sudden your mind
is no longer your shepherd, but a soft blob of drool on top of your neck and
seeing that he somehow believes that if you are really clever, you won’t
believe in a Lord who loves you, guides you, interacts with you and – heaven forbid
– tells you what to do - I responded! I pointed out
to him that I am probably one of the cleverest people he will ever meet and
still I am fully capable of enjoying a very fulfilling relationship with God
and that life without faith is sadly lacking in dimension.
Of course I told the story of my
intelligence with a tongue-in-the-cheek and wink of the eye, that he was not
privileged to as the discussion was not face to face and so he didn't seem to
think it was very funny. I don’t usually make a habit of explaining how
clever I am, as I don’t believe that being clever is in itself much of an
accomplishment. When one uses one’s
intellect and combine it with hard work and study and gets accolades, one might
mistake it for accomplishments, but the fact is that all of that has been
graced upon us (or not). It is
unmerited. The grey matter that one
starts out with, the ability to study, the ability to ‘hold’ knowledge and
apply it… those are graces. I certainly
did not make myself clever and that I am able to study, remember what I studied
and apply it to my life, those are things that God blessed with me. It is nothing to be proud of. It is not as if I obtained something by my
own strength. I arrived on earth with a
brain. I inherited it from a very
clever, witty and beautiful woman and alas a very clever and hilariously unscrupulous
man. But it is not my brain that I take
pride in, it is the other things that I inherited from my mother – the unwavering
faith in God the Father, the beauty of being in love with Jesus and the joy of
dependence on the Holy Spirit. That is
my story, not the fact that I happened to blow a couple of IQ tests out of the
water!
I feel it is only fair that I
answer some of the questions this man posed at me in his attempt to get me to
doubt God. I quote verbatim:
“Meleney Kriel: I am happy to
know that you are so intelligent. I just
have a few questions for your intelligent mind. {1} how do you know that god is
a male, did you check to see for yourself and if you did how big was his
private part?”
See why I don’t bestow the usual ‘gentleman’
title here?
So first of all, lets quickly
correct the grammar (seeing that this is man whose mind is his shepherd): The
question should read “How do you know that God is male?” not “a male”. (That one is for free.)
I believe in the God of the Bible
and He introduced Himself as “Father”. He
says “I will be your father and you will be my sons and daughters”. It is not the gender, but the role
that He fulfills in the Godhead. I
understand fully how the image of a perfect father has been tainted by our own
fathers and it is hard for most of us to relate to the beautiful father-heart
of God. My own father had little
scruples and he was master at excuses when it came to providing for us,
resulting in me finding it difficult to ask God for anything. However, I have the coolest stories about how
God provides for me in His process of proving to me that He is my
provider. No coincidences, just hilarious
detail in the smallest and biggest ways.
For instance (and I have LOTS of these stories), when we were
missionaries in Swaziland, we were in a mountain village called Hlatikulu. One night I told my husband “I wish I had
fillet steak!” He laughed and said, “The
people in this area only eat beef when they have a marriage or a funeral and
then they are not going to cut T-bones and fillet. They chop up the whole cow and cook it all.” We know, because we were privileged to be
invited to some of these feasts. That night,
there was a knock on our caravan door and a gentleman stood there with a brown
paper packet and asked for me. My
husband told him that he can give it to me, but he insisted and said “No this
is for Mama Baine” (My son’s name). He handed me the packet and said, “I am
bringing this for you.” Guess what? He was a butcher from a nearby town and came
home the weekend with a FULL beef fillet – just for me!! Yes, so God set out to heal the wounds of a
child whose father told her that the maintenance money flushed down the toilet
with his whole wallet!!
My answer: No, I did not have to check if God is male,
He chose to call himself my father and I gladly accept.
Next question:
“{2} why
would a god need to have a gender shouldn’t an omnipotent being be beyond
gender?”
You reason like a human, because
you are human. So I will explain in
human terms: The Bible says God made us
in His image – male and female He made us.
This means that men are made in His image and women are also made in His
image. We have to deduct that He has all
the attributes of the two genders in Him, for it to flow out of Him. It is actually one of the beautiful mysteries
of marriage. He also says that in
marriage, the two become one. We can
speculate why He wouldn't just make a being that is both male and female in
one. Personally I celebrate the
differences and find it would be rather boring, but think about it: it is an amazing thing to find that person
who completes you (corny and cheesy I know), but in reality, those elusive and
scarce souls who happen to have been married for decades and whose marriage
have stood the test of time, would perhaps be able to explain how the two are
one. I have been married for only 28 years
and already I can’t imagine being alone.
I could be reduced to tears in a minute if I imagine losing my husband and
having to carry on as one half of a whole.
I know he feels the same as he was positively lost when I went to India
with my son last year for 4 weeks!
My answer: God is indeed beyond gender, just because
Jesus came in the form of a son and the Father calls Himself the Father, does
not mean He is confined to gender as we know it.
Next Question:
“{3} you
said that god’s hand has been in your life, why would god need a hand, and how
big are his hands, how do you know it was god’s hands and not his devil’s hand.
How did he identify himself, and how would you know it was him if you have
never seen or met him before?”
For someone whose mind is his
shepherd, I am rather amazed that you cannot understand that I refer to the
amazing things that happen in my life as “God’s hand”. But if you are incapable of lateral thought,
or common idiom, we can get literal and I can say: Big!!
So that’s my answer: God’s hands are very big. Huge.
The Bible says He spans the universe between His fingers. It is quite amazing that He does not squash
us like a bug right? The reason for that
is that He is love. God’s nature, His
very being is LOVE. His patience is
unending, so is His kindness, His grace, His compassion and that, is why the infinite
God takes the time with us finite people.
Secondly, how I know it is not
the devil’s hand? Please! That is a stupid question. Have you ever seen the Satanists? They worship the devil who asks them to sacrifice
blood, their pets, other people and mostly, themselves. They jump off bridges in groups, in sacrifice
to him. No the devil asks more, more,
more! God gives! The Bible says “For God so loved the world
that He gave…” I can be pretty sure that
the many blessings in my life are not the results of the devil’s ‘hand’. I have seen the devil’s hand though. I see it all around me. Those who hate God are his prey. The Bible says he came to kill, steal and
destroy. Do you see death, robbery and
destruction? That, is the hand of
the devil.
You ask how I know it is His hand
if I never seen or met Him before? You
assume that I have never seen or met Him before. My life has a fourth dimension. I see in the Spirit. Do you know quantum physics? Oracle Thinkquest says: Quantum
physics is a branch of science that deals with discrete, indivisible units of
energy called quanta as described by the Quantum Theory. There are five main
ideas represented in Quantum Theory: namely that Energy is not continuous, but
comes in small but discrete units, that the elementary particles behave both
like particles and like waves, that the movement of these
particles is inherently random and
that it is physically impossible to know both the position and
the momentum of a particle at the same time. The more precisely one is known,
the less precise the measurement of the other is. The atomic world is nothing like
the world we live in. While at a glance this may seem like just another
strange theory, it contains many clues as to the fundamental nature of the
universe and is more important than even relativity in the grand scheme of
things (if any one thing at that level could be said to be more important than
anything else). Furthermore, it describes the nature of the universe as being
much different than the world we see.
From this comes the notion of a ‘quantum
leap’ – if you think it means ‘a very large leap’, you would be wrong. It is a robust and essential shift from one mind-set, outlook or
mentality, to another. I have to
explain things to you that you have no frame of reference for and if your mind
is as shut tight as it seems from your questions and philosophy, it will be
very hard for you to understand when I say, I see visions. I have met God when I was a little girl. My mother found me staring at one of those
old-fashioned dimensional pictures, of Jesus knocking at a door. She explained to me that the door depicts the
door of my heart and there is no handle on the outside. Jesus is a gentleman, she said and he
knocks. He doesn't barge in. It is up to me to open up from the inside and
let him in. She referred to the
scripture that says “Behold, I stand at the door and I knock. If anyone opens up for me, I will enter and
we will have communion”. Not the wafer and
the wine type of communion, but the companionship kind, the camaraderie, the attachment
between friends. If you can’t understand
how amazing that must be, then you are the poorer for it.
I
went to my bedroom and there, this 5 year old child cried out to God and said: “I
want you to come into my life.” And He
did. I can’t explain it in any terms
that you will understand. You will have
to make the quantum leap. You will have
to open your mind and your heart and believe.
Faith is the key. It isn't something
that you can explain. But I do see
Him. I meet with Him. I sit at my piano and begin to worship. I sing and speak in tongues (nice shocker for
you there!) I am able to ascend into
this higher dimension and it doesn't take hours, it doesn't require deep
meditation and beating of my body. I can
move in and out of that place at will and if you have never experienced it, my
heart bleeds for you. It is the source
of my inspiration, it is where I find peace and it is where I hear what God is
saying to me.
{4} How do
you know it was not Allah or one of the hundreds of other god that is messing
with your head.
No-one is messing with my head. I am in my right mind. I am a fully functional and contributing
adult human, a citizen of the world, a South African by birth and I don’t discriminate
against people who think differently than I, people who sin differently than me
and who believe, or experience and comprehend differently than what I have come to believe, experience
and comprehend.
As for how I know it is not Allah, I have to say
that I am not an expert on Islam, but the word Allah is derived from Al-ilah
(The-deity). Some people believe Allah
is another name for the same God, but historically in pre-Islamic Arabia it is
the name of one of many gods that were worshiped. Some say that the prophet Mohammed chose from other gods,
Allah, the god of the desert. But once
again, I am not an expert on this topic.
I just know that I believe in the God of the Bible, who reveals Himself
to me as a triune God, namely Father, Son and Spirit and as such I know it is
not the hand of Allah per se, nor one of hundreds of gods. It would be the One I ask and the One I
trust. If you want to worship science or
knowledge you might say you see the ‘hand’ of science, or knowledge in your
life. But science evolves and knowledge is
a very relative and changing concept.
What is knowledge today is foolishness tomorrow. Hence my concern that ‘your mind is your
shepherd’. One good knock on the head
and your world falls apart!
Question: {5}How do you know that you don’t need to see
a psychiatrist for your issues of seeing and believing in spirits & that an
invisible man lives in the sky? And finally why can’t your god once and for all
speak for himself for a change? Please use you profound intelligence and answer
these basic question for me.
People believe that their ancestors guide
them. Are they in need of a
psychiatrist? You believe your mind is infallible. Do you need a psychiatrist? Will you ever be able to admit that you don’t
understand everything? You reason and
inquire on a very linear basis. A man
living in the sky, would be unusual, unless you refer to the Mir and other
manned space craft. I do not believe in
a man living in the sky and never said I do.
I believe in a God who is capable of holding the universe and in fact
the cosmos, in His hand and yet makes my heart His home. If you don’t understand it, don’t feel
bad. Neither do I. Faith is not based on knowledge or
understanding – it goes beyond human knowledge and understanding. If it fits in your head, it isn't God. Because like I said, one good knock to your
skull and there it goes!!
The truth is that mankind is capable of faith – it is
what distinguishes us from apes. It is
what distinguishes me from apes anyway.
*http://www.raptureforums.com/BibleProphecy/101science.cfm
and http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/10-amazing-bible-facts/
[cited 11 March 2013]
*http://library.thinkquest.org/3487/qp.html
