This is a continuation of my blog on the Hitchens, Craig debate at Biola, you can read it here if you like. In this blog I will deal with some of Hitchens “reasoning’s” because I feel that Craig did not adequately deal with them, this is by no means a slight on him, no man is perfect and can deal with every point in a debate, and Craig did better in that debate than I have ever seen a Christain do against Hitchens, and I totally admire the man.
So I was thinking about time travel and discussing my reasoning’s when someone posed the question to me: “well then can God change the past?”. My initial reply is that such a statement is nonsense, which he didn’t like so let me expand on why such a thing like God changing the past or future for that matter is nonsense.
The reason for me thinking it so, is because I believe that time and existence flows out of God rather than being something apart from God. Let me put it this way: if time is something apart from God which He has set on its course, but it is now created and built upon by some one other than God namely men. It is like He started creation on its process but gave it over to men to complete, thus its substance is created by men ultimately and not Himself. In this view, God is the one reaching down and affecting things, changing things as they happen, he cannot change the past because in any view to change what has happened to something that has not happened is a contradiction. If you have problems with understanding how God cannot change the past, because to do so is to create a contradiction, well let me know and we can dive deeper into that, but for now just take my word for it. In this view God is reacting to what men do, making changes after a man does something, as to affect its outcome to God’s favor. I do not think this view is the correct view of reality. Time isn’t something separate from God, it isn’t something that is created by men ultimately where God reacts to what men do, God decrees what will happen, and it happens.
Postmodernism wants to say that there is no truth. That 2 things can both be right in the same way and manner at the same time. That you can be right that there is no God and that I can be right that there is a God. One is your truth one is my truth but there is no universal truth. The problem is they are building this on things that require truth as a foundation, namely logic and words.
If one thing can be true in one way, and the opposite can be true at the same time, well then what is to stop words from changing meaning? If you call something a chair under postmodernism, you could mean an elephant. But if this is true, than their very words in which they use to describe and argue for their position, are either meaningless, and thus their position is still not proven, or else they(the words) themselves disprove their very position.
First I am going to start out with the assumption that we believe there are morals out there. That people do believe that certain actions are wrong, and others are right. If you do not think that say torturing babies, or animals, or prisoners of war just for fun is wrong, or that to punish such people is right, well you have no moral compass and there is no point to talk with you. But if you are like most every other person in the world, namely that you believe in right and wrong namely that it is wrong if someone murdered your family, and stole your car, then we need to talk and figure out where you got this idea of morality. (Remember truth also includes moral truth, as well as natural truth, ect.)
In my previous post I made the point that it isn’t necessarily bad when someone challenges your view or someone else’s. In fact most of the time it is good to have our beliefs challenged and others challenged. Many times people use the term: Hair Splitter on anyone who comments in disagreement on an issue that they find trivial. Many times the boils down to name calling, which is not a good way to argue one’s point. The point can also be brought up, that even in small issues sometimes if you miss by an inch you will end up missing by a mile; sometimes the smallest issues are actually very important.
However, in the previous post i never made reference to the fact that there are actually legitimate times to “hair split” and times to not. I do not claim to be an expert on the subject, but i think these are a few good questions to consider when desiring to correct someone else’s ideas or desire to tell someone else who is “hair splitting” to shut up.
There are many people in this world who don’t like other people to argue Theological or Philosophical points, especially to tell them that they are wrong, but they even bristle at the idea of them telling others that they are wrong too. It seems that they don’t want anyone telling anyone else that they are wrong.
Obviously there are many views in the world and reason would show us they all can’t be right, so some one is right, someone is wrong, or everyone is wrong, but not everyone can be right. I am going to use the example from a Christian prospective, but it works for all in a way.