Animals act like animals
The Virginia Tech shooting brings it all up again, doesn't it? Murder, suicide, endless mayhem - sounds crazy, doesn't it? No wonder people have unanswerable questions. They're stuck dumb with wonder. They wonder why God allows such things to happen. They wonder why God's tornado strikes down this church and spares that topless bar, or vice versa. They blame themselves or others as sinners.
People have been putting blame or reading godly purposes into the cosmos since forever. They never get a satisfactory answer and the mayhem goes on. It's so simple, really. The only explanation that fits all the facts is that there is no "God," no "godly" purpose in any event and never has been. If their were a heavenly plan, would it look like this?
All mayhem is the result of natural accidents or of human animals, recently evolved from nonhuman animals, with the consciousness of hunter-gatherers who find themselves in a modern society they don't quite fit into yet.
They keep trying to understand the problem with the wrong set of instructions. If they want answers that fit the facts, they need to put down their holy books and read up in the cognitive sciences.
George Thomas
Vancouver
Thomas implies that there is something bad in these events and that a heavenly plan would not have bad events but good. But where does he find this notion of mayhem? As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity:
"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?"[1]Thomas' worldview cannot account for objective right and wrong. He tells us we've evolved from nonhuman animals. We're nothing more than animals ourselves. There is no objective standard outside ourselves. We animals make the rules. Thomas says we should "put down [our] holy books and and read up in the cognitive sciences." My question is why?
What gives Thomas the animal more moral authority over the animals who pick up holy books? Who is Thomas to say the Virginia Tech killings are an example of mayhem. If there is no objective standard then there is only personal preference, that is, what someone likes or dislikes. A "human animal" has a personal preference of ending the lives of "human animals" on a campus. Thomas dislikes that. Why is that bad or mayhem? Thomas' evolutionary atheology has no answer.
"Murder, suicide, endless mayhem" only make sense if there is an objective standard by which actions are measured. Thomas knows this. That is why he can say those actions are bad. He is denying the very thing his argument requires (an objective standard from a transcendant source) to be rational.
Thomas believes:
"The only explanation that fits all the facts is that there is no 'God,' no 'godly' purpose in any event and never has been. If their were a heavenly plan, would it look like this?"In reality, the only explanation that fits all the facts is that there is a 'God,' with a 'godly' purpose in any event and always has been. And the Creator's heavenly plan, rejected by the creation, would have consequences that look exactly like this! The endless mayhem doesn't just include murder but every single moral crime that we have ever committed, no matter how small. I'm guilty. Thomas is guilty. Everyone reading this blog is guilty.
But there is good news. In an act of mercy and love, God provided a solution for us to escape His judgement.
He became a man himself and took the punishment on himself. He's the one who took the sentence for the crimes we committed so we can be pardoned, released, and go free.
That's why Jesus is important.
[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Collier Books, MacMillian Publishing Company, New York, 1960, p. 45.
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