Category Archives: Pagan Religions

Relating to religions other than those of the Judeo Christian faiths who recognize the Holy Bible alone as the word of God.

Q.38 God vs. the flying spaghetti monster. What’s the difference?

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Laughing at the Flying Spaghetti Monster

This questions is phrased with a very telling, tacit admission. “You can believe in your god. I can believe in a flying spaghetti monster. What’s the difference?” First of all, by the way the question is phrased, if I were a betting man, I’d be willing to wager two things:

1. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not your God.
2. You don’t really believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.

While I’m at it, let me make a third observation:

3. The followers of the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) think it cute to call themselves “pastafarians”[1]. They don’t treat the cult as a serious religion, nor do they take the FSM as a real anything except a real tool of satire and mocking, which is what this farcical, nonexistent monstrosity was created to be. Supposed adherents and followers feign belief and pretend both it and their make believe religion are real, but, as you can see, their very language gives them away. So let’s take these observations one by one to demonstrate that this questioner is just play-acting at believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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Q21 How can Christians think their way is the only way? Part2: Theological Considerations

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Jesus - The Way - Wallking on Water

How can Christians think their way is the only way? Part 2: Theological Considerations

As I pointed out in part 1 of this article, followers of Jesus don’t insist on “our” way, we insist on abiding by the truth. That truth is Jesus is the only way to God. There are many signs pointing to that truth, starting with Jesus saying, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” (John 14.6)

I wrote part 1 of the answer as a Christmas meditation that focused on the signs that point to the one way that God provided: Jesus. As a meditation, it did not go beyong that single focus, but, as I mentioned in that first article, now I want to move beyond that to examine theological and philosophical considerations. These considerations are questions that are not adequately answered by any other religion, making Christianity unique among all religious belief systems. Christianity alone has both the answers to, and makes sense of, the philosophical question of why Jesus is the only way and thus why Christians are correct to proclaim that.

Theological Considerations
Question Number 1: What to do about the Sin Problem? Continue Reading

The Gilgamesh Epic – A problem for the flood?

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Gilgamesh cube vessel

Correct proportions of the vessel in the “Gilgamesh Epic – a cube, not a ship

The Gilgamesh Epic is a series of Sumerian poems that tell heroic stories about the Sumerian god Gilgamesh. Included in the poems is a story of a global flood. That story is named after the people in Mesopotamia who occupied the land after the Sumerians – the Babylonians. The stories are written in clay tablets in cuneiform – one of the oldest, if not the oldest, form of writing known. Thus the Epic of Gilgamesh has come to be known as the Babylonian flood epic, and is one of the oldest written stories known.

Secularists who (true to form) deny the existence of the supernatural of course do not believe the Babylonian flood epic either. But they use it as a means to try to disprove the Biblical flood epic since that is clearly a symbol of divine judgment. Using the story of Pandora as an example, their logic goes something like this:

The story of Pandora and the closed box of evil that she opens which releases all manner of evil upon the world is myth, not to be believed.

The story of Eve in the garden of Eden who takes a bite of the forbidden fruit, which releases all manner of sin and evil upon the world is borrowed from the story of Pandora, and thus is also a myth, not to be believed.

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Knowledge of the Holy One Part 5: The Trinity

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“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
Prov 9:10

 

Who is the Holy One?

Having laid down the foundation, we can now answer the question, who is the Holy One? Answering the questions will of course also allow us to answer who the Holy One is not.

In the previous articles the ground work was laid for stating explicitly what scripture presents implicitly. We see God revealed in a number of ways in scripture. The revelations we are given are of a holy, transcendent God who exists as: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Yet there is one God. Not three Gods, one God. Three persons sharing one divine essence with all its qualities: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. Not one God switching between three roles (modalist Unitarianism), rather we see God revealed as one God eternally existing as three distinct persons. This is the Holy One presented in scripture. From the time he first refers to himself, God does so using plural pronouns:

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,”
Gen 1.26

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Is the Bible full of fantastic creatures? Part 2: Satyrs, devils and demons

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We continue now into our investigation of a claim made by an atheist who charges that the Bible is full of what he considers unbelievable natural and supernatural characters and creatures:

“He follows a holy book with a jealous & genocidal god, ghosts, zombies, seers, devils, demons, witches, satyrs, unicorns, talking animals, a man who lived in a fish and a 7 headed dragon.”[1]

In my previous article I dealt with unicorns and his misunderstanding of God as a “jealous & genocidal god.”  Now we move onto satyrs – and as it turns out devils and demons fit in here too, so we’ll cover them instead of Jonah as I indicated in the previous article. Continue Reading

A tale of two stories – a Christmas day meditation

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The Nativity (Detail) by Franz von Rohden (19th century)

A Christmas Day Meditation

The word “story” is a rather ambiguous word.  It’s ambiguous in that the word itself does not tell you whether the story is true or not. Thus we’ve come up with phrases to help us with that.  When the story is true, we use phrases like ” the true story of…” or   ” (story name), a true story”,  or “the real story of” – to differentiate true stories from stories full of common misconceptions.

We also have ways identifying stories that are not true. When we tell “fairy stories” we’re telling a story we’re acknowledging to be a fanciful, made up fictional string of events.  Or we may end an explanation with “… that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”  Most people understand this as a tacit admission that parts or all of the story might not true, but the teller of the story is unwilling to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” as you would in a court of law. Continue Reading

Total Eclipse: The Sign and the Wonder

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Total Eclipse March 20, 2015

We’re all aware of the total eclipse of the sun on August 21st, 2017. But perhaps you’re not aware why so many are excited:

Image archive

For us Americans, this will be the first total eclipse of the sun viewable in the states since 1979. So we don’t have to fly half way around the world  to see a total eclipse as astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez did in 1995, flying to Northern India to see the eclipse on October 24th of that year. Continue Reading

Are Biblical accounts copied from pagan religions? Part 2. The Resurrection

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Depiction of the empty tomb of Jesus

Depiction of the empty tomb of Jesus

Since the original sin in the garden of Eden, mankind has searched for reasons not to believe God so he could live a life independent of God. In the garden, the serpent convinced Eve not to trust God. Why? Supposedly because God was holding back the knowledge of good and evil to the detriment of Adam and Eve. The serpent suggested God was wrong f0r withholding that knowledge, but that if they were to discover the truth, they would be “like God”. (Gen 3.5) That was a big lie. God was indeed withholding the knowledge of evil, but he was not wrong in doing so because he knew that (experiential) knowledge of evil (like disobeying God) would lead to death.  And the biggest irony is – they were already like God (Gen 1.26),  there was nothing to be gained from what the serpent offered.

Today there is another lie circulating to destroy belief in God: The claim that the biblical accounts are not history, but rather stories borrowed or stolen and then adapted from the made up stories of pagan religions. If there’s no reason to believe the pagan religions, then there’s no reason to believe a made up story based on it either. Continue Reading

Are Biblical accounts copied from pagan religions? Part 1. The God of Creation

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Recently while at work I overheard a discussion among some of my co-workers. They were agreeing among themselves that the Biblical accounts of things like the creation of the universe and the major events of Christianity – like the birth of Jesus and his resurrection – were all just stories borrowed (or copied or plagiarized – whatever you want to call it) from the stories of the religions of other cultures.

I’ve heard that charge before, and as a Christian, I find the entire idea repugnant. It’s not like they’re talking about something inconsequential like a comic book or the like. After all scripture reminds us the biblical accounts “are not just idle words for you–they are your life.”(Dt 32.47)  The fact that such discussions are still being entertained and the idea affirmed is proof that many people are still taking the bait and falling for the trap: being persuaded that this lie is true. Since people’s eternities are a stake the only question is how best to respond? Continue Reading