An Apologetic Encounter with an Atheist

Z wrote,

As an atheist, I have plenty of ground to question you assertion stuff like…
Bret responds

The very ground you stand on is the ground of the God of the Bible.

Have you ever heard the joke where Scientists tell God, “We don’t need you anymore, we can create life ourselves. You’re not needed.”

God says, “Very good. Go ahead and show me.”

Whereupon the Scientists grab some dirt to make life.

God stops them and says, “Hold it right there. That is my dirt. If you don’t need me to create life you don’t get to use my dirt to create life.”

You are the same way. You’re going to try and use “reason” to disprove God and yet the very reason you’re using presupposes the reality of God, as you are about to see.

But let’s see what you have.

Z wrote,

If all laws are moral and all morality comes from religion, why do we disagree about that the law should be?

B responds

Er… Ummm … because people embrace false gods and false gods render up false religion which in turn renders up false morality which renders up false laws.

This isn’t that difficult.

Z writes,

And using scripture to prove scripture is a circular argument, and thus invalid.

B responds,

All reasoning is circular. I begin by presupposing God as my foundational axiom and you start by presupposing your own sovereign word as your foundational axiom. What authority do you have to deny God’s authority?

Only your own authority. THAT’S circular reasoning and thus according to you, invalid.

Z wrote,

And It is not necessary to appeal to a Higher Power if you understand that enforcing certain behaviors affect the peace, tranquility, and development of a society.

B responds,

By what standard are we adjudicating “peace,” “tranquility” and “development of a society?” AND if there is no God, who says that peace, tranquility and development of a society are important? If there is no God who cares as long as I get mine?

Once again, you’re like our Scientists above. You are reaching for God’s dirt while denying God. You want peace, tranquility and development of society but those things can only be defined in a world where God is the standard for the definition of what those things are or even for the desirable necessity for those things.

If there is no God, per the Atheist, then peace, tranquility, and development of society is just a subjective preference based upon the sovereignty of the Atheist’s own word. Indeed those things have no objective meaning. You might as well say, “I want 4v4d89, cjoour, 99445 cxv08re.”

Z wrote,

And Claiming religion as the source of all law and morality has been used by The Man way too often for me to accept it as proof of the morality of any law.

B responds,

LOL … yeah, man uses it because he knows without God there is no morality.

Better pause and think again Z

Answering Kevin De Young’s Six Questions on Christian Nationalism

Kevin De Young wrote,

1.) Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?

2.) When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
3.) What is the purpose of civil government?
4.) What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
5.) Was the First Amendment a mistake?
6.) What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

Kevin De Young
Six Questions for Christian Nationalists

1.) Unequivocally? No … and that because those terms are merely pejoratives that the left uses in order to shut down conversation. To the left everyone who disagrees with them are “racists, antisemites, and Nazis.” I am not going to be dictated in my beliefs by the insults of the far left.

2.) Every time it passes laws.

3.) To glorify the God of the Bible and no other God and to do so by acting as God’s enforcer of justice bringing justice by God’s standards.

4.) “The Magistrates office is not only to have regard unto and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also that they protect the sacred ministry, and thus may remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship; that the kingdom of antichrist may be thus destroyed and the kingdom of Christ promoted. Magistrates must, therefore, countenance the preaching of the word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshipped by every one, as He commands in His Word.”  (Belgic Confession Article 36)

5.) No, because the 1st amendment only applied to the FEDS and presupposed that the states would be Christian states. The states could and often did have established denominations. The purpose of the 1st amendment was to keep the FEDS from naming any one denominational expression of Christianity from being the established denomination. However, it was understood that since the State were Christian the nation would be Christian.

Listen to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Storey here,

“Indeed, in a republic, there would seem to be a peculiar propriety in viewing the Christian religion as the great basis on which it must rest for its support and permanence, if it be, what it has ever been deemed by its truest friends to be, the religion of liberty.”

“[O]r it may establish the doctrines of a particular sect as exclusively the religion of the state, tolerating others to a limited extent, or excluding all not belonging to it from all public honors, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities.”

Joseph Storey
Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1812 to 1845

6.) 1789 America w/ the one change of inserting the Lordship of Jesus Christ into the Constitution.

Continuing to Expose De Young’s Soft Underbelly

“Religious nationalism, by contrast, usually calls for the state to protect the religious interests of one group, while marginalizing or suppressing other groups. “In so doing,” Marshall explains, “it treats the members of the dominant religion and/or language, ethnicity, and culture as the core citizens and others as second class.”

Kevin De Young
6 Questions for Christian Nationalists

We already have this. We have what De Young calls “religious nationalism.” We have the state protecting the religious interests of one group (the polytheists) while it is, at the same time, marginalizing or suppressing Biblical Christianity’s demand that we should be ruled by laws and principles rooted in God’s revelation. Indeed, as I (and many others) have said ad nauseam, it is not possible to not have a state that protects the religious interests of one group while it simultaneously marginalizes the religious interests of another group. The neutrality that De Young pines for is a myth.

Right now, White Christians are being treated as second class citizens. This is what all the statistics from the white replacement reality has been pointing. White people, and especially White Christians are being treated as second class citizens. The affirmative action legislation which favors non-whites, the defunding of American whites in order to pay for the current immigrant invasion, the whole WOKE ideology pushed in Government universities all testify to the fact that De Young can’t see, and that is that we currently have a religious nationalism (humanistic polytheism) that favors non-Christians and non-Whites.

De Young, by not recognizing this and identifying it and by favoring a kind of bogus governmental neutrality, is bringing that mindset into the Church and calling it “Christianity.”

He is doing irreparable harm to the body of Christ.

Examining Kevin De Young’s Anti-Christian Nationalism Speech VII

“I remember the late Voddie Baucham giving a talk and saying the only two choices we have are pagan nationalism and Christian Nationalism. I don’t think that is the most helpful way to frame the debate, but that gets a lot of traction with a lot of people.

‘OK, you’re not for Christian nationalism? I guess your for pagan globalism.’

Those are the two opposites. ‘Well, no, I’m not for (pagan globalism).’

Well, if you’re not for pagans running it, don’t you want Christians? And if you don’t want Christ on the throne, who do you want on the throne.”

Kevin De Young
“I Hate Christian Nationalism” Screed
TGC conference

This kind of thinking that De Young criticizes is the thinking of what is known as “The Reformed anti-thesis.” It finds its roots in Jesus saying,

He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.  — Matthew 12:30

And again,

He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.  — Matthew 6:24

The idea here is that there is no neutral ground. As applied to this subject either one is advocating for some version of Christian Nationalism or they are advocating for some version of Pagan nationalism. Kev says this isn’t the best way to frame the matter but Kev says that because he doesn’t want that kind of clear cut demarcation. Notice that De Young never gives an alternative to this framing. He merely says it is not the best way to frame it.

Let me say it bluntly. De Young is for pagan globalism or pagan nationalism, but he wants it in a way where it is kind of diluted by some remnants of a Christian garnish. De Young is looking for a hybrid wherein we can still call what we have “Christian,” but in point of fact is thorough going paganism. He wants a pagan social order that has a patina of a Christian gloss on it. Kev, in point of fact, does not want Christ on the throne.

___

“We were talking throughout the break (and asking) what’s the bigger threat. You know, the radical right or the progressive left. The answer, of course, depends on the denomination you’re part of, and where you are. And I was, you know, I’m thinking in my head, ‘Stephen Wolfe,’ and, you know, all the guys online and the dangers of CN that I’ve written about. And these dear saints in my church are thinking people who want to drive Christianity out of the public square and don’t want prayer…”

Kevin De Young
Anti CN screed
TGC

This is an incredible admission from De Young and demonstrates how far on the left the man is. This man thinks that Stephen Wolfe’s rather tepid Christian Nationalism is a bigger threat to our current social order then those who want to drive Christianity out of the public square. Well, this shouldn’t be surprising since De Young is infected with R2K, Now, De Young isn’t as far down the drain as a R. Scott Clark or a Chrissy Gordon, but De Young definitely embraces some of the principles of R2K.

It is jaw-dropping that any member of the “conservative” clergy would even toy with the idea that the right is more of a danger to the West or, even the Church, than the left. One has to already be on the left to make that kind of statement.

Another thing to note here that we see with this statement is that De Young is seeking to navigate his position by staking out a hybrid position that he would say is neither “progressive left,” nor, “radical right,” but he is doing so as a man on the left. The only reason he sees the “right” as radical is because his Christianity has been shaped by Enlightenment left worldview. To De Young anyone who desires a “Christian Prince,” or a explicitly Christian government is on the radical right.

De Young’s Christianity has been so interpreted through a Enlightenment left lens that he can’t see that he occupies the the left and so anything that is genuinely conservative, in a historic sense, is to the man the progressive left.

This is where much of our conservative clergy is today in the US. They have reinterpreted Christianity through the grid of the Endarkenment left grid. This is a grid that forbids the God of the Bible from being alone God over the public square. These chaps really are invested in making sure the social order remains polytheistic. They understand that Christian Nationalism is a threat to our current polytheistic political order and they are screaming at the top of their lungs that anybody who disagrees with them is on the radical right and is an enemy of Christ.

Emile Durkheim’s Theory of Social Progress

One of the main arguments for the noted Jewish sociologist Emile Durkheim was his theory of the “Criminal as Evolutionary Pioneer.” Durkheim held that since crime is found in all societies, it must be performing necessary functions otherwise it would disappear in an advanced society (Hamlin, 2009). One of these necessary functions of crime, per Durkheim, is that Crime and Criminals provide is the impetus unto progressive social change. Durkheim offered that “crime” is one of the most effective sources of social change in any society. When crime routinely goes against social norms, eventually a society’s collective belief will transform thus bringing about a social change wherein that which was previously thought criminal is now embraced as legal and moral. A prime example of this is the sodomite laws in the United States that promoted heterosexuality as the norm. As society has “progressed” many people began violating the laws at the time until society reached a point where it was considered a norm for sodomite relationships in society. Eventually, sodomy as illegal was abolished and in today’s society sodomy no longer violates social norms.

In such a way Durkheim gives us the Criminal as the Evolutionary pioneer. The pervert, the misfit, the criminal is in fact the one who blazes the trail for social order progress. Durkheim here may as well be channeling the Marquis de Sade and later Nietzsche. By this theory all morality is merely generational convention. Right and wrong are in total flux and have no transcendent moral anchor. What Durkheim does here for sociology, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Christopher Columbus Langdell, and Benjamin Cardozo shortly thereafter do for the law. Oliver Wendell Holmes, for example, will contend that the Law is whatever the judge says it is. For Holmes, Realism, so called, requires that the Law change to fit the facts as surmised by the bench.