Paul Vanderklay is a Calvinist Christian preacher who pastors a church in Sacramento.  The fact that I need to specify that he is a Calvinist (vs. Catholic, Lutheran, etc.) should be the first clue.  He is basically, a commentator on Jordan Peterson and has a following among some Jordan Peterson fans.  Many of his videos, are basically long, uninteresting comments on Bible stories interspersed with an occasional insight.  If he were to stick to his interesting points and leave the Bible commentaries out, his videos would be more interesting, but that’s just my opinion.

A recent video however, is yet more evidence that Christianity will not save western civilization.  Here is the video:

 

If you listen to the first ten minutes of this video, you can see why Christianity will not save western civilization.  He criticizes Sam Harris for arguing against the “wrong concept of God” (as a paraphrase) while at the same time basically admitting that this is the concept of God that born again Christians have.  Why would “born again Christians” and Sam Harris have one concept of God while many other Chrisitians have a different concept of God?  As I pointed out in his comment section, if people hold both of the following views:

1. God is everything (pantheists)
2. Everything you observe isn’t God.

Then this is prima facie evidence that God isn’t clearly defined.

To be fair, I don’t know of many Christians that believe that God is everything.  However, if you can’t even define God clearly, then how do you know that the Bible came from God, or that God inspired the Bible?

Given that there are many versions of Christianity out there, if Christianity is to have any hope of saving western civilization, it would need to do the following:

1. Have a reliable method of determining what comes from God and what doesn’t.
2. If this method includes reading the Bible, to have a reliable way of determining how to interpret the Bible.  Should a given passage be taken literally or figuratively and how do you know.

If Sam Harris has the wrong concept of God, which he got from born again Christians, then why can’t born again Christians use both 1 and 2 from above to disprove their own theology?  How does Paul Vanderklay know for example, that it is incorrect to interpret the Bible through the Catholic church (which is how conservative Catholics would answer 2)?

Jonathan Pageau is yet another YouTube personality who discusses Christianity and culture from a very insightful and intelligent point of view.  Yet if you listen to enough of his videos, you can see yet again, that Christianity will not save western civilization.  Take this video for example, where he talks to Paul Vanderklay

I recommend for the purposes of time, that you skip to about the 46:30 mark and listen for about 10 minutes or so.  You will notice the following things:

• Johathan Pageau is hesitant to talk about “God” because it might be misinterpreted by the person listening to him.
• He doesn’t know what someone means when they say “Believe in Jesus and you will be saved.”
• He needs to explain to people why people refer to God as “father”, as well as explaining what “heaven” is.

But if Christianity was true and verifiable, wouldn’t the definitions of these things be clear?  Imagine a scientist saying “I don’t know what you mean by vitamin C.  I don’t know what you mean by increasing the velocity.”  Even someone who is crazy enough to believe that the moon was put there by an advanced civilization and is really a hologram will at least agree with you that the moon is this thing that comes up in the sky, usually at night, and that it looks a certain way.  He agrees with you about what the moon is. He just disagrees about specific details.  He won’t say for example, that the moon is really a red hexagon, or a blue dodecahedron.

Yet in religion, there is no general agreement over who God is, or who Jesus is, or what salvation entails.  Which is why both Jonathan Pageau and Jordan Peterson won’t answer questions such as “Do you believe in God?” or “Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead?”.  Some critics of Jordan Peterson see him dodging such questions and accuse him of being a coward, or being dishonest.  However, I see it as a natural reaction to something that has become so ill defined in the culture, that they can’t answer the question without fear of being misinterpreted. This would not be the case if these beliefs had any objective evidence.  How I would answer those questions would be as follows:

• Do you believe in God?
  • I don’t know.  I have had some experiences which seem to indicate that maybe God exists.  But I don’t have sufficient evidence to warrent a belief.
• Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead?
  • No I don’t.  To answer further, I need to clarify the difference between hypothesizing and believing.  To believe something, I would need a good reason for doing so.  I need to see evidence, preferably evidence that I can also present to someone else so that they can also check and verify it.  So if God were to personally speak to me for example, that might be sufficient reason for me to believe (depending on what he says, like “There’s a million dollars in cash hidden in the dumpster outside”).  But it wouldn’t necessarily be sufficient for someone else.  So God personally speaking to me might be a symptom of schizophrenia, or someone playing a trick on me (with a hidden speaker for example) or an evil demon pretending to be God, or any other number of things.  Without a way to rule out those other possibilities, I can’t really be certain enough to warrent a belief.

    However, in the case of Jesus rising from the dead, I have sufficient reason to DISBELIEVE such a claim.  Since there has been no observable examples in history of someone being dead for 3 days (or 2 1/2 days), and then rising from the dead, this seems to be good enough evidence to disbelieve the claim. Having said that, I hypothesize that there was a man in history named Jesus who may have said some religious things that some people liked, and so he became popular.  He may have been the Jordan Peterson of his day.

    I bring up hypothesizing vs. belief because my idea that Jesus was a man similar to Jordan Peterson has no evidence.  Yet since we see many examples of men throughout history who become popular religious leaders, this hypothesis is not far fetched.  It doesn’t warrent belief though because there is no evidence for this.  Jesus could also be a totally made up person.

    The idea that Jesus rose from the dead doesn’t even qualify as a hypothesis in my view because such an idea totally contradicts what we observe in normal reality.

There is probably no great confusion over what my answers mean except for the possible quibble that I should say that I don’t believe in God since I admit that I don’t have enough evidence to warrent belief.

Yet, according to Jonathan Pageau, there is so much confusion over what Christians mean by “God”, “salvation”, “trinity” and so forth, that he can’t even answer the question.  I on the other hand, can answer those questions.  I don’t claim to be the greatest communicator in the world, but if I can communicate an answer to such questions that is at least somewhat clear, why can’t God do this?

Again, if Christianity is to have any hope of saving western civilization, there needs to be enough objectively verfiable evidence so that “God”, “salvation”, “trinity” (or maybe the trinity is a heretical idea), and so forth, have clear meanings.  Demons are supposedly fallen angels.  According to Thomism, angels are created with full knowledge (of who God is, what salvation is, what mankind’s role is, and so forth), yet they decided to rebel.  What if they know something about this “God” that we don’t know?  What if God is really a jerk and not really worthy of our worship?  Or maybe God really is good and the demons just want to be evil.  Without an objective way of testing these hypotheses, how can we be certain?

 

Ryan Reeves has a number of YouTube videos.  He is obviously a very intelligent man and has done a lot of research into the personalities, and arguments used in the history of Christianity.  I encourage anyone to check out his YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrI5U0R293u9uveijefKyAA

However, I have noticed something consistent in all of his videos.  Just as a for example, take the following video:

He goes into why Arius was denounced as a heretic.  As usual this video is well researched, and he goes into what Arius taught in a very accurate way.

Here is the thing though. was Arius disproven to the point where nobody believes his arguments today?  In the field of science, we have scientific theories that have been discredited so that no scientist believes them today.  Some examples are:

Phlogiston theory
Preformationism
Caloric theory
Everything is made from the classical elements (Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Ether)
Aristotelian physics
Luminiferous aether

However, we still have people that believe Arius today.  Even though there is no historically continuous line from Arius, to anyone today that I know of, should that be our criteria for truth?  If I were to try to revive preformationism in science for example, we already know how to disprove that by observation.  What if anything, did they “observe” in the 4th century, that we can observe today, that would disprove Arius?

As far as the idea that Jesus isn’t god.  Well many people believe that.  Muslims believe it, Hindus believe it, Buddhists believe it, Unitarians believe it.  If they could produce evidence, just like scientists can produce evidence to disprove preformationism, then pretty much everybody would agree that Jesus isn’t god.

If a theory can’t in principle, be discredited then you can’t possibly have any unity in Christianity.  Some people will believe that the bread and wine literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus and some won’t.  In fact, the test act in Britain (from 1672 and into the 19th century) forced public officials to deny the theory of transubstantiation in order to hold public office.  Without an objective standard, this wouldn’t be necessary.  A scientist today that would seriously posit the theory of preformationism, would be simply laughed at.

So the obvious strategy, should Christianity gain too much power, is to simply set Christians against each other.  In fact, many court cases in the US involving the seperation of church and state, involve one Christian group being forced to participate with another Christian group over some prayer, teaching, or some other event or situation.  As Jesus said, a house divided against itself can not stand.  Given that Christians are divided, this would prove that Christians ignore Jesus’s teaching.

Back to the subject of Ryan Reeves.  In all of his videos, NOWHERE does he give evidence that Arius was wrong, or Luther was wrong, or Calvin was wrong and therefore, nobody follows Calvin today.  In fact EVERY theological position he discusses, is still held today by some Christians.  There are Calvinists that exist today.  There are Catholics (which couldn’t be the case if Calvin could be proved to be right).  If you listen to many of his videos, you will notice this.

I created this site primarily for the purpose of discussing why Christianity will not save western civilization.  My target audience consists of:

• Former atheists who have been inspired by Jordan Peterson, Ryan Reeves, or other speakers on Christian culture.  It was actually the lectures of Ryan Reeves that have partially inspired me to write on this site.
• Christians who want to influence culture.
• People from other religions.
• Anyone else who is interested in the current culture war going on in the west.

Looking at it from the point of view of history.

The main problem with looking at it from the point of view of history is that things that worked in the past, won’t necessarily work today. For example, if you bring up a Chinese battle in the 14th century where they used guns and assume that since it worked in the 14th century it would work today, you would be making a dumb argument.  We know how guns work today and we already know how to fight with them.  More importantly, we know how to fight against people who have guns.

Similarly, most people already know about Christianity in the west.  We know the basics of the Trinity, Jesus, the Bible, and so forth.  So if you tell a Muslim that Jesus died for his sins, you aren’t telling him anything that he hasn’t already heard hundreds of times before.  If you tell an atheist that the Bible says that God can be seen through nature, you aren’t telling him anything he hasn’t already heard hundreds of times before.

Why assume that something that has failed hundreds of times, will succeed when you try it again?

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” G. K. Chesterton

Let’s look at this quote from a historical and rational perspective.  Christianity has been around for 2000+ years.  Some of the great geniuses in history have been Christian such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Issac Newton, Johann Sebastian Bach, and others.  There are even Nobel prize-winning scientists and artists who are Christian, living today.  Yet Christianity is failing in the west.  If after 2000+ years, we see it failing, despite the fact that some Christians are geniuses, we must conclude that if there is some “untried” Christianity out there it would be impossible to “try” it even if you are a genius.

Also, given how many Christians fail, assuming God exists, why would a God create a system where so many fail to be able to implement it?  What if I told you that in order to go to heaven you have to be able to run at 100 km/hr without the help of a machine?  After 2000+ years of trying to run and so many people failing to reach 100 km/hr. what would you conclude?  That this system hasn’t really been tried?  Or that the system is impossible and unfair?

Which Christianity?

Many people coming to this site from an atheist perspective will appreciate this question.  Christians believe a whole lot of various things.  Even ones that claim that they only follow the Bible.  Some Christians believe the traditional trinitarian formula.  Some Christians, such as the Oneness Pentecostals, believe that God is one person and that Jesus was God.  If you talk to a Oneness Pentecostal preacher, he will tell you all about the verses in the Bible that disprove the Trinity.  If you then take these verses and show them to a Methodist, or a Catholic, they will tell you how the Pentecostal minster is either taking those verses out of context, or he is misinterpreting them.

If the Bible really is from God, then shouldn’t there be pretty much only one correct interpretation of it?  Even if the Bible says something you don’t like?  I think the Bible says pretty clearly that homosexual sex is an abomination.  I happen to think the Bible is incorrect about this issue.  However, you can find Christians out there who will tell you that those verses are taken out of context or have been misinterpreted.  If you want to see an example of this, look up Truluck’s interpretation of these verses.

The fact that I think what the Bible says about homosexuality is incorrect (as well as being incorrect about a number of other things) isn’t my main point.  My main point is that there is no consistent objective standard with which to judge what the Bible says or doesn’t say.  Without being able to consult the original authors, we can’t tell whether a plain reading of the passages on homosexuality are correct, or whether Truluck’s interpretation is correct.  Personally, I think that Truluck’s interpretation is very convoluted and his method could probably be used to have the Bible say pretty much whatever you want.  The important point though is that I can’t prove it.

Unless you can prove that the Bible says X instead of Y, all you have is your opinion vs. my opinion.

My message to atheists

Recently I had an experience (that I don’t want to go into any details about) that made me question whether God exists or not.  It has made me look into Christianity again.  However, after looking at Christianity, despite the fact that it has a lot of good things, I just can’t wholeheartedly embrace it.

If you find yourself considering Christianity because of some personal experience, or from listening to YouTube videos, I would encourage you to review some of the things that made you an atheist in the first place.  A good website I saw recently is this one?

https://sufficientreasons.wordpress.com/

My message to Christians

Whenever I talk to Christians, I always have to ask them what kind of Christian they are.  This should be your first clue.  The first question I would ask you is, what kind of Christian are you?  What I mean is, what are your beliefs?  The reason I ask is that I have met Christians who have all different kinds of beliefs.  So for example, if I give you arguments against the Trinity, maybe you will tell me that you don’t believe in the Trinity.  Or if I tell you that I think the Bible is wrong about homosexuality, maybe you will tell me that those verses have been taken out of context.

Depending on what your answer is to the above question, I would then tailor my discussion based on that.

But my main point is, I shouldn’t have to ask you what kind of Christian you are.  If you say you are a Christian, I should pretty much know what that means, right?  Yet I have been in many discussions with Christians and have argued that I find teaching X to be ridiculous, only to find out that the Christian I am talking to, also thinks that X is ridiculous. I could understand this happening maybe a few times, but why would it happen so often that I find I have to ask you what kind of Christian you are as my first question?

I would also ask you, what is your objective evidence for whatever it is you believe?  What is your objective evidence for the Trinity, or that there isn’t a Trinity?  For example, if you had objective evidence against the theory of evolution, I could give that evidence to a scientist who currently believes in evolution and if the scientist is honest, he would change his mind.  What evidence do you have, to someone who is honestly seeking the truth, that whatever it is you believe is true?  I would also have to ask you, are you honest enough to change your mind should I find evidence against your beliefs?

This should be sufficient enough for my first post.  Please leave your comments below.