Origin

All philosophies and religions attempt to answer life's most basic questions.

Origin: Where do we come from? What is eternal and responsible for everything else that exists?

Destiny: Where are we going? What happens to us after death?

Meaning: Who are we in relationship to our origin and destiny? Does our personal existence fulfill an ultimate purpose?

Morality: How do we determine right from wrong in relationship to our origin and destiny? Does evil exist--why?

There are only three systems of thought that give answers to all four question.

Atheism: A disbelief in God or gods. All that exists is nature. God and the supernatural do not exist accept as an illusion or a product of human imagination: Humanism, Nihilism, Existentialism.

Pantheism: A belief that everything is God and everything is eternal or God is in everything. All that exists is the supernatural. Nature does not exist except as an illusion or a product of God's imagination. God is an impersonal force: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, New Age.

Monotheism: A belief in God as a personal being. Both the supernatural and nature exist: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

There are beliefs that combine elements of atheism, pantheism, or monotheism: A synthesis of various theisms: Bahai, Krishna, Sikhism.

Logic and the Laws of Thought

Fundamental to necessary knowledge are three laws of thought enumerated by Aristotle. They are presupposed whenever anyone thinks about anything whatever:

1. Law of identity. Any entity whatsoever is what it is and not something else. If a proposition is true, it is true. "A rose is a rose."

2. Law of non contradiction.

No entity whatever can be both what it is and not what it is with the same specification. It cannot be true both that a proposition is true and also false. "A rose cannot be not a rose"

3. Law of the excluded middle.

Any entity whatever is either some particular thing or it is not. "A thing is a rose or not a rose."

These laws cannot be proved or disproved. In order to demonstrate them they must be assumed. To deny them is self-contradictory

We are a

chance collision of impersonal atoms and nonrational, amoral energy.

We are the incarnations and reincarnations of an impersonal; irrational, amoral world soul.

We are created in the image and likeness of a personal; rational moral, infinite being.

Our unplanned existence serves no ultimate, meaningful purpose. Life is a brief departure from eternal impersonal reality

The realization that

everything is God renders our personal existence, morality, and rationality to be meaningless.

Eternal existence as

a distinct individual gives us meaning. Rationality and morality connect us

to God.

Subjective to self,

relative to culture and the survival of the fittest. Natural selection is amoral, might is right, no absolutes, no love, no justice.

There's no ultimate and eternal distinction between God and self nor good and evil when everything is God.

Absolute morals define love create justice and govern relationships for everyone. Evil is the perversion of good and the opposite of love.

Personal nonexistence and eventual extinction of the human race on earth.

A return to the impersonal world soul when desire for personal existence is abandoned.

Day of judgment for all humanity to receive eternal life or eternal death.

Hindu Upanishad

Know that nature is an illusion and the great Lord the illusionist. The whole world is filled with what are his members...who being one only rules over every germ, in whom all this comes together and comes asunder again. He is more subtle than subtle, in the midst of chaos creating all things, having many forms...hidden in all beings.

Bertrand Russell

Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving...his origin, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collections of atoms...no intensity of thought and feelings can preserve an individual beyond the grave...all the brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system.

Genesis

God said, "Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness...So God created man...male and female he created them.

New Testament

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Koran

The pious shall be in gardens

and pleasure, their Lord will save them from the torment of hell.

What can I prove to be true? I can't prove that God exists, nor can I prove that God does not exist. But I can say that it is absolutely true that either he does or he does not exist. One belief is true and the other is false. See the Laws of Rational Thought at the bottom of this page in fourth argument.

How I define God may be correct or incorrect.

I may define him as personal or impersonal, but he cannot be both at the same time, in the same relationship, that would be irrational. It would be rational to say that God is love and personal--if I accept that an aspect of being personal is the ability

The following chart provides an overview of the three major world theisms in relationship to the four basic life questions. The answers that I have proposed in the chart are only short statements. After the chart I present four arguments in support of my conclusion that only a personal God can explain our existence.

If our origin and destiny is impersonal atoms and energy, or an impersonal world soul, then being a person with aspirations for love, freedom, and meaning make no sense. Life as we know it is merely a brief, irrational, and meaningless departure from an eternal and impersonal reality. Tragically, there is no real fulfillment to our personal desires and no lasting purpose for our individual existence.

Even if there exists an eternal "world soul" that has a mind we still do not exist in ultimate reality as distinct individuals--It and only it exists. The illusion of individual existence finally comes to an end and the cycles of reincarnation stop only when the desire for it has been abandoned from a self realization that there is no self.

Beckett, "How am I, as a temporal being imprisoned in time and space to escape from my imprisonment, when I know that outside space and time lies nothing, and that I, in the ultimate depths of my reality am nothing also?"

In a universe where the ultimate and eternal reality is impersonal matter and energy or an impersonal world soul, there exists no distinction between good and evil. Natural selection and Brahma perform the same function, they generate and destroy temporal life without love or passion because the individual human soul simply does not exist as an entity to be valued, protected, or cared for. In atheism there is only survival of the fittest--might is right.

Nietzsche, "What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness."

Nietzsche, "We no longer derive man from 'the spirit' or 'the deity'; we have placed him back among the animals. Descartes was the first to dare to understand the animal as machine...our knowledge of man today goes just as far as we understand him mechanistically. Formerly man was given a "free will" as his dowry from a higher order: today we have taken his will away altogether...the word "will" now serves only to denote a resultant, a kind of individual reaction to...stimuli."

Humanist Manifesto,

"Moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics

is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction."

That we can create our own morality destroys all sense of justice. How can I accuse anyone of injustice when I have given everyone the right to their own perception of right and wrong as stated in this manifesto?

Only if I am the cause of my own actions can I say that I am free.

I am not the cause of my own actions if, as pantheism contends, there is no distinction between God and me. If God is in everything then God is the cause of all that happens. If atheism is true, and a personal God does not exist, then we are no more than biological machines.

New Testament

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Only the Biblical understanding of morality makes sense. Absolute moral law defines love and creates justice. It guides our personal relationships and demands that we treat each other with dignity and respect and promises eternal life--see Your Salvation.

to feel or to experience emotion, and that this is the opposite of being impersonal. Then it would be irrational to say that God is love and impersonal.

To believe that God is personal and love is an act of faith. I can't prove it to be true, but it is a rational faith. To believe that God is love and impersonal is an irrational faith.

Faith and rationality or irrationality are not the same thing. Faith is what we believe in that we can not prove, i.e. handle, feel, and see. Coherence to the different aspects of our beliefs make faith rational and contradictions make faith irrational.

Only if we are the creation of a personal, rational, and moral God does life have meaning. We are all significant because we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We will not comprehend the infinite dimension of God, but we can understand and relate to the personal attributes that we share with him. Being a person make sense only when it connects us to a personal eternal reality and nothing could be more important than to have an opportunity to experience eternal life.

A theology that says we are condemned by God for being unwilling to do what we are not even able to do, is not only absurd, it's not even Biblical. Christianity has long suffered from the theologies of Augustine, Aquinas, and John Calvin. Their synthesis of Greek philosophy and Biblical revelation is explained in Dynamic Freewill Theism.

Biblically, our eternal destiny is provided by God by the atonement of Christ but we must make the decision to believe in Christ or not to believe. Faith is not the gift of God for our salvation, salvation is the gift of God to be received by our faith, not by our good works.

We cannot trust our thoughts if they are the product of irrational causes. Atheists would have us believe that a universe of irrational atoms has accidentally produced rational thinking.

Christ is Dead--Buddha Lives

Eastern Religions in the

Electric Age, "Hallucinogenic drugs have "turned on" thousands of young people to Eastern religions. LSD produces a feeling of oneness with the universe, and an awe-filled, reverent consciousness that marvels at God in everything. This is very close to fundamental Eastern beliefs--a kind of instant chemically produced Buddhist consciousness. You don't necessarily think in the same logical way. Things that are thought of as being opposite can now exist together and are not seen as opposites. For example, black and white become equal, or good and bad frequently become equal. Time sense is affected

too! Past, present and future frequently get mixed up."

Stephen Jay Gould, "Natural selection...could scarcely be less available for any hope that evolution might be cosmically rational. Natural selection is not about "improvement" or "progress" in any global sense. It is a remarkably inefficient, even cruel process. We never should have sought either solace or moral instruction in Nature, who was not made for us, or even had us in mind. Darwin's revolution remains incomplete until we face the cosmic insignificance that our own evolution truly implies--thus liberating us to grasp the deeply human meaning of our lives and most curious brain power."

Bhagavad-Gita, "Neither he who thinks the living entity is the slayer nor he who thinks it is slain is in knowledge, for the self slays not nor is slain. He who is in knowledge of me surrenders unto me, knowing me to be the cause of all causes and all that is."

Even from a monotheistic point of view, it is irrational to speak of freedom if our human depravity means we are never able to do what is right or do God's will from our own willingness.

Gould tells us the process of evolution is an irrational process, without a plan or purpose for our existence. Then, absurdly and irrationally, he states that we are now free to grasp our deeply human meaning, in light of our cosmic insignificance. If we have evolved, our lives are utterly meaningless. We can never be absolutely certain about anything because there are no absolutes, things that do not change, in a universe where everything is evolving or changing.

In Pantheistic thought nothing can be proven to be true or false, right or wrong, etc., Rationality must be abandoned before we can become "one" with an impersonal universe.

You may not agree with Jesus statement, but it is a rational one. The Biblical concept, that God is not the world, is the basis for rational thought. The concept of Trinity is not a contradiction when it is seen that "God is One", means unity, "Let us make man in our image". The Trinity tells us that there is an eternal personal unity with diversity. God is love because it is intrinsic to the trinity--the Father loves the Son.

This is an interactive web site. At the bottom of this page, go to Let's talk. Sign the guest book, ask questions, add quotes. Enter your own commentary, and see how others have responded. Make an argument for your own belief or argue against mine. Participate in the web poll or send me an e-mail.

Francis Schaeffer

"What has happened to man? We must see him as one who has torn himself away both from the infinite-personal God who created him as finite, but in His image, and from God's revelation to him. Made in God's image man was made to be great, he was made to be beautiful, and he was made to be creative in life and art. But his rebellion has led him into making himself into nothing but a machine."