“By the way, if I make this assertion: ‘I do not try to convince people that God *is not real* because I am already convinced that everyone already knows that.’ Would you accept my word as true? If not: Which evidence should I provide you to show my assertion is true?” –Daniel
“For not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified; 14 for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, 15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.” –Romans 2:13-15
Each person, whether he wants to admit it or not, has a God-given conscience that helps him to discern right from wrong and true from false when it comes to moral issues. Because of the conscience, everyone automatically knows that it is morally wrong to lie, steal, murder, commit adultery, etc. I would hate to live in a world where no one had a conscience because that would be a world of rampant, uncontrollable crime.
It is the conscience that helps a young child to learn discipline. A child does not have to be taught to lie; it comes automatically. The child’s conscience works with his parents to help teach him the importance of honesty and other moral values. However, without the conscience that child would be absolutely impossible to teach because he would have nothing to convince him that his parents were right and he was wrong.
I think it important to point out, however, that the conscience only deals with moral issues, and always works in favor of God’s Word. I once had an atheist tell me that his conscience told him that God’s Word is not true. That was not his conscience. To be completely honest, it is Satan himself that speaks against the Word of God. In fact, that person had to actually fight against his conscience in order to tell me that.
So to answer the above question posed by Daniel, I have to say that I would agree with him, if that is what my conscience told me. However, my conscience tells me that God is real and His Word is true. If evolution were true, there would be no need for the conscience because there could be no right or wrong; and without right or wrong, a person has no need for something to tell him what is right and what is wrong. That is exactly why atheists believe what they believe.
I strongly urge every unbeliever who reads this post—no matter what kind of religious background you have—to listen to the conscience that God has given you today. If you do, you will realize that God is real and you really do need Him in your life. If someone who has never heard of God’s Law can obey it by only listening to his conscience, then I have no doubt that everyone who reads this can believe too because you have heard both God’s Law and your conscience.
What about sociopaths? These are people who have been clinically evaluated and have nothing of what and I would normally call a conscience. Did God overlook them when he was handing out our sense of right and wrong?
ReplyDelete@Tommy:
ReplyDeleteFirst, it is nice to see this from a Christian:
”[Tommy says:] Each person, whether he wants to admit it or not, has a God-given conscience that helps him to discern right from wrong and true from false when it comes to moral issues. Because of the conscience, everyone automatically knows that it is morally wrong to lie, steal, murder, commit adultery, etc.” (Emphasis added)
So, each person means everyone. And everyone has a conscience (given by God or not is debatable, but I suppose we agree everyone have a conscience). And you assert that conscience automatically evaluates what is right and what is wrong. Automatically.
So, when theist people say that atheist and non Christians cannot have a decent life, that without believing in God we are savage animals that cannot behave morally, I could paraphrase you: “Each person has conscience, and because of the conscience everyone automatically knows was is wrong and what is right”.
My own conclusion is that there is no need for any supernatural being to say us what is wrong and right. Because for example we already have a conscience that automatically works in that.
Now, regarding my question, thank you for trying to address it, but I don’t think you answered it at all; Because you cherry picked half of my question and even failed to answer that part. I said:
ReplyDelete“[Daniel says:] By the way, if I make this assertion: ‘I do not try to convince people that God *is not real* because I am already convinced that everyone already knows that.’ Would you accept my word as true? If not: Which evidence should I provide you to show my assertion is true?” (quoted at the beginning of this post).
But in the original comments that was HALF of my question/argument; That is why I assert that when you start a new post taking affirmations from older comments that puts them out of context, and in practice you are avoiding the real questions and real arguments being made to you. I am lying? Let’s look to what I actually said immediately in the original comment:
“[Daniel says:] After you have an answer for the previous questions regarding the piece of evidence I need to show you... Now: Could you show me the same kind of evidence for your own assertion?.”
That part of my argument (that is actually my real question) was fully ignored by you.
And reading your answer at this post: Which kind of evidence should I provide you? No idea, you did not answer that at all. Look at your own answer:
“[Tommy say:] So to answer the above question posed by Daniel, I have to say that I would agree with him, ‘if’ that is what my conscience told me. However, my conscience tells me that God is real and His Word is true.”
What you are saying is that you just think exactly the opposite to what I said; I actually make the sentence you quoted paraphrasing you but with the exact opposite you said in the old post, so I already KNOW that what you think, because you did assert the positive sentence. Do you see why context is important? But you now simply added a reason for your assertion: you believe what you believe because your conscience says so. Good for you, but useless for everyone else.
What evidence you asked me for in your answer? None, so the first part of the question, even the part you also quoted in the post IS NOT ANWERED. You also NEVER answered the second part of my question; And if your answer was that “what your conscience says proves it”, well, my conscience says there is no God at all. Does that count as a proof?
But just because my conscience or your conscience says whatever they says does not proves anything regarding the beliefs and knowledge of anyone else. What you believe does not make true that “everyone already know what I believe” as a fact.
That is why I ask you for positive evidence to support your claims that what you original sentence was true. So far you have given none.
But your answer continues and again you introduced evolution...
ReplyDelete“[Tommy says:] If evolution were true, there would be no need for the conscience because there could be no right or wrong; and without right or wrong, a person has no need for something to tell him what is right and what is wrong. That is exactly why atheists believe what they believe.”
Why is so bad that evolution could be true? I do thing the reason is this:
“If evolution were true [then there is no God because that would prove Genesis biblical account is false, therefore…] there would not...”
That is exactly why I think theist people are scared to death about evolution theory: They don’t want to accept that science so far has proven evolution theory right ad nauseam. They don’t want to accept that evolution is supported with tons of real physical evidence.
And your answer is implicitly falling into two logic fallacies: Ad Consequentiam (also known as Appeal to Consequences: I don’t want to accept the consequences of evolution being right, therefore it is wrong) and an argument of personal incredulity (I can’t believe it is true, therefore it is false). None of them helps even a little to disprove evolution.
That is why theist NEED to believe evolution has no real basis. That is why theist NEED to believe evolution is just a belief, therefore they could just not believe it and then they feel their religious beliefs are safe.
But, sorry, I already showed in other of your post that evolution is not another empty belief, it is a fact supported for tons of evidence. You could not want to even look at the evidence; that is your problem. You could scream and swear evolution is false, but science until today has proved it right every time, with every piece of evidence fitting to the theory.