Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

There are things about God that people cannot see—his eternal power and all the things that make him God. But since the beginning of the world those things have been easy to understand. They are made clear by what God has made. So people have no excuse for the bad things they do.

• Romans 1:20

The Word was full of grace and truth. From him we all received more and more blessings. The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No man has ever seen God. But God the only Son is very close to the Father. And the Son has shown us what God is like.

• John 1:16-18

“Furthermore, Aristotle did not believe that we could find any firm ground outside this world on which to stand, and from which to pursue philosophical enquiries. Whatever is outside all possibility of experience for us can be nothing for us. We have no validatable way of referring to it, or talking about it, and therefore it cannot enter into our discourse in any reliable way: if we stray beyond the ground covered by experience we wander into empty talk. From this standpoint Aristotle was dismissive of Plato’s Ideal Forms: he simply did not believe that we have any good reasons to believe that they exist, and what is more he did not believe that they do exist.”

• Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Aristotle (384-322BC) has been mentioned a few times recently, with the author of this latest book suggesting that Aristotle could be a pre-Christ Christian from Plato’s Theory of Ideal Forms, but here, the quote said that Aristotle did not wish to discuss such things that we cannot quantifiably observe.  Although I dismissed the concept of a pre-Christ Christian, at least in a few philosopher’s cases, denying the unobservable or measurable kind of argues against any belief in an unseen God.

I have also mentioned before that when I was in school, the science classes never covered the origins of mankind, whether Creation or Evolution.  The exception is that I took a Bible class one year and Creation was covered, but that was the Bible class, not a science class.  Science was a class devoted to what Aristotle was saying here.  We discussed what was measurable, observable, repeatable.  In some cases, we discussed the history of scientific thought and theory from the standpoint of what theories were observed in concept, but then once measuring tools were invented, the theory became law in that it was observable, measurable, and repeatable.  The case in point were the ancient astronomers who were persecuted by the church until there was enough evidence to prove that the earth revolved around the sun.

We cannot prove most of Darwin’s theories.  We can disprove much of the requirements he made to have all species evolving from one source.  There is a lot of evidence to show that the earth is not millions of years old.  Yet, their theories, which require a great deal of faith to believe, are taught in schools to brainwash young minds into thinking that there is no God.  And somehow the theory becomes fact because they wish they had the evidence that they do not have.  This is not sloppy science, it is willfully rejecting God.

If we adhered to Aristotle’s philosophy, we might have to consign Creation to Bible class, but providing the atheistic belief of a great void would be inadmissible.  If we cannot see it, measure it, then it need not be taught.  If you cannot create an experiment that demonstrates it, and then have that experiment produce reliable repeated results, then why learn about such theories that may easily be disproven.

The evidence is out there, but the secular world has a strangle hold on the education systems of this world.  When someone publishes scientific reports that prove a cherished theory to be false or implausible, they bury the report.  It is like fake news.  If it does not match your way of thinking, it is not reported.  The truth then fades into nothingness because the people never heard about the discovery.  But then the latest missing link gets front page coverage, and the proof that it was a hoax is reported but quickly buried by the media.

This discussion has focused around evolution and millions of years, but it can be applied to a variety of issues that we have in the news today.  How often does the media grab onto a report with no evidence to back it up, just because it meets their agenda.  Within days, it is proven wrong, but the two narratives still exist.  People often believe the first thing that they hear and are not willing to change their minds once the truth is discovered.  So, Iran’s nuclear threat was badly damaged.  But early reports said “hardly damaged at all.”  Some reports have been made that the Kerr County flood in Texas was a staged hoax.  Tell that to the people who lost loved ones.  Back many years ago, they reported the stage in the southwest, Arizona or New Mexico I think, where the moon astronauts faked the moon landings, but the reflectors on the moon, left there by the astronauts are observable from earth.  Yet, how many people believe the fake news?

Aristotle has his point, and we have ignored it.  Yet, there is that time in each of our lives that we must wrestle with the unseen.  And the Apostle Paul tells us none will have an excuse.  We will be unable to use the excuse that this fallen world blinded me to God’s glory.

God’s glory shines forth.  If we do not see His glory, we have blinded ourselves to that glory.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.