John
Loftus has made an underworldly discovery. He’s outed the Devil. According to
Loftus, Jeff Lowder is nothing less than Satan incognito.
Unfortunately,
the only way we could scientifically confirm Loftus’s hunch is by obtaining a
DNA sample from Jeff, a DNA sample from Mia Farrow, then compare them.
Absent
that, we have to settle for circumstantial evidence. Since I personally know
Jeff, this naturally makes me think back on whether I missed some tell-pointytail clues during
our student days. Offhand, I don’t recall Jeff whistling tunes from Gounod’s
Faust under his breath. And I never saw Jeff sporting that ultra-Goth Hellboy
look.
If you
told me at the time that his Infernal Majesty was impersonating somebody
at Seattle Pacific University, my first thought would have been one of the
religion profs. in the School of Theology. Bob Wall and Frank Spina would make
two promising candidates. Eugene Peterson might be another prime suspect. His
Father Christmas appearance would certainly catch the unwary off guard.
On the
other hand, Josef von Sternberg thought the Devil was a woman. However, Jeff
doesn’t look at all like Marlene Dietrich.
If he is Satan, I must say that Jeff is very well preserved for his age. Like those
centenarian vampires who repeat high school chemistry for the 120th
time.
But if
Jeff really is Satanic, then the Archfiend is quite the underachiever. In
fairness, the Secular Web has doubtless made a diabolical contribution to the
fortunes of the dark side. Still, if you had the Devil’s worldly resources at
your disposal, wouldn’t you aim a little higher? At least be mayor of New York?
Finally,
if Loftus is wrong, then he’s a marked man. His Infernal Majesty doesn’t
appreciate anyone else taking the credit for his deviltry. Satan is not the
kind of guy who likes to play second fiddle. Definitely not a team player.
Indeed, that’s what got him kicked out of heaven in the first place.
I
wouldn’t be surprised if Loftus begins to experience unusual happenings, like
pianos falling from third-story windows as he’s strolling down the sidewalk.
Loftus said
ReplyDeletePreviously I had briefly argued against Rauser that the size of the universe leads to atheism.
In that previous blog Loftus said
When I was in the throes of doubt in the early 90's I bought nearly a dozen poster pictures of galaxies, stars, various nebula, and the solar system itself. I hung them on the walls of my office. I was astounded by our universe and it's massive size. I read a few astronomy books too. Science tells us so much about our universe it was quite surprising as well.
I remember thinking to myself how God could be omnipresent in such a universe, how he could be a personal agent without a center for his personality in it, how he could be omniscient knowing what was going on at the far reaches of it, and how he could be omnipotent such that he could create and maintain it. I also wondered how he could care about life on this pale blue dot of ours that exists on one spiral arm in the Milky Way galaxy.
I'm amazed that he just started thinking about these types of things so late in his life and education (presumably he graduated from seminary and was already ordained). I'm also surprised that his understanding of God's omnipresence (i.e. Divine Ubiquity) seems overly simplistic. Almost as if God were literally everywhere (like in some forms of panentheism). When the truth is that God's omnipresence is understood in various sophisticated ways by different Christian theologians, philosophers and apologists. He also seems to imply that God's thoughts are discursive even though his mentor W.L. Craig denies that and affirms exhaustive omniscience on God's part.
He goes on to say
I had already come to think God was located in time in some sense, ever since the creation. So how could such a God act in the present here on earth and also several billions of light years away in a different part of the universe? Does that even makes sense?
Presumably he acquired his understanding of God being in time (in some sense) after the creation from William Lane Craig who believes that God was timelessly eternal sans creation, but temporally eternal since creation. Loftus seems to have thought that God's interaction with the universe is analogous to physical interaction of physical objections with other objects in the physical universe. Huh?
Continued:
Huh? Whaaaaaa....? O.o [I'm scratching my head on this one]
DeleteHe wrote
ReplyDeleteIf this is what he desired (for some irrational egotistical reason) he [God] could have simply created us on a flat disk in a much smaller universe like the one the ancients believed existed.
But as I've written HERE, this common objection doesn't really make sense.
The objection is sometimes stated this way...
"The universe so so vast that it's unlikely that a wise God created it because it's a massive waste of space" (cf. the book "Contact" by Carl Sagan and the movie based on it).
Yet, I suspect that if the universe were much smaller, people would probably say that it's unworthy of the God we Christians proclaim (i.e. a transcendent, great, powerful and glorious one).
[Sidenote: I'm reminded of the Star Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool.]
If we all lived on a small flat disk, would we really be inspired to worship God? Wouldn't we more likely think such a "god" who spoke to us and claimed to be our creator as being finite?
Or if God didn't reveal Himself sufficiently enough for our (sinful) satisfaction, then under those same conditions, wouldn't people naturally think it was plausible and likely (as every 7th grader has wondered) if humanity and our universe were a (forgotten?) lab experiment by some other finite species (like extra-terrestrial, or extra-dimensional or extra-universal agents)?
With many of the objections Loftus makes, I'm reminded of what Van Til often pointed out. Non-Christians often make objections to Christianity by shifting from one extreme to the other (and so speak from both sides of their mouths).
In this case, on the one hand, they complain God is too transcendent, then later on they complain God is to immanent. So, sometimes they complain our conception of God is so different from humanity (totaliter aliter) that it doesn't make sense for us to be able to speak about Him and for Him to be able to relate to us.
Then other times they complain that our conception of God is too human like the gods of Greece and Rome who have all the foibles we do. You can't seem to please such objectors to Christianity. It reminds me of Matt. 11:16-17.
Click HERE to compare the relative sizes of the things in the universe from the smallest thing to the largest. VERY COOL link.
ReplyDeleteFor myself, the origin of biological life is more mind boggling and profound than the scale of the universe. Stephen C. Meyer deals with that issue in his book "The Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design" [amazon.com link]