"Blind Faith"

Blind Faith Anti-Intellectualism Logic and the Message

Matt 15:14 ...when one blind man leads another, both fall into a ditch. Some message believers look at the evidence of Failed Prophecies that we and others have presented and state "You just don't believe" and then advocate a kind of "blind faith" that requires true believers to ignore any negative evidence. Isn't blind faith good? When Jesus presented Himself to Thomas, He made an important statement that is occasionally offered as an affirmation of some form of “blind faith”: After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been [f]shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” (John 20:26-29) Without any other context to understand what Jesus believed about the relationship between evidence and faith, this single sentence (“Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed”) does sound like an endorsement of faith independent of evidential support. But context changes everything. Like other declarations offered by Jesus, this statement has to be reconciled with everything else Jesus said and did before we can truly understand what He believed about the role of evidence. But the Apostle John thought evidence was important As it turns out, the Apostle John wrote more about Jesus’ evidential approach than any other Gospel author. According to John, Jesus repeatedly offered the evidence of His miracles to verify His identity and told His observers that this evidence was sufficient: “Believe Me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.” (John 14:11) “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” (John 10:37-38) “…the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.” (John 5:36) John frequently described Jesus as someone who offered the evidence of His miraculous power to demonstrate His Deity. In fact, the passage describing Thomas’ doubt is also an affirmation of an evidential faith, if it is read in its entirety: But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus *said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name. (John 20:25-31) John makes an important statement right after the line that is typically offered to “demonstrate” Jesus’ alleged affirmation of a non-evidential faith: “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples…”. What? Blessed are those who did not see and yet believed, therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples? Do you see the contradiction here if Jesus was speaking against evidence? Why would Jesus continue to provide evidence if those who believe without evidence are supposed to be blessed? The answer is found, once again, in the Gospel of John. In Jesus’ famous prayer to the Father, He prayed for unity and He carefully included those of us who would become Christians long after Jesus ascended into Heaven: “I do not ask on behalf of these (the disciples) alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” (John 17:20-21) Jesus is talking here about all the people (like you and me) who will believe in Jesus not because of what we will see with our own eyes but because of what the disciples saw and recorded as eyewitnesses (“their word”). Yes, Thomas was blessed to believe on the basis of what he saw, but how much more blessed are those who will someday believe, not on the basis of what they will see, but on the basis of what the disciples saw and faithfully recorded. Luke thought evidence was important as well So many others have tried their hand at putting together a story of the wonderful harvest of Scripture and history that took place among us, using reports handed down by the original eyewitnesses who served this Word with their very lives. Since I have investigated all the reports in close detail, starting from the story’s beginning, I decided to write it all out for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can know beyond the shadow of a doubt the reliability of what you were taught. Dear Theophilus: In my first book I wrote about all the things that Jesus did and taught from the time he began his work until the day he was taken up to heaven. Before he was taken up, he gave instructions by the power of the Holy Spirit to the men he had chosen as his apostles. For forty days after his death he appeared to them many times in ways that proved beyond doubt that he was alive... Luke's testimony shows that Jesus clearly understood the value of evidence and continually provided “many convincing proofs” (Acts 1:2-3) to His followers so they could record their observations and change the world with their testimony. Jesus commended this process. His words to Thomas were not an affirmation of “blind faith”. Anti-intellectualism I know God gve you a brain, but please don't use it. One of the offshoots of blind faith is anti-intellectualism. This is rampant in the message. If you ask a message believer why they believe the message, they are likely to respond with a simple, “Because I just believe it!” A Jehovah’s Witness believes the Watchtower Bible and a Scientologist believes in the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, but that doesn’t make them true. The Bible isn’t true because I believe it, the Bible is true and that’s why I believe it. Anti-intellectualism in the message If you follow anti-intellectualism to its logical conclusion, if and when your faith is tested, you can’t defend it, because you have divorced your spirituality from any connection to logic or reason. The only recourse is to throw out one shallow, emotional, logical fallacy after another, trying to cut the legs from under many things that a reasonable person believes to be true, in order to associate their beliefs with those “truisms”, scripture, science, etc. Anti-intellectualists pride themselves on their blind faith, when in reality, it is an indicator of lack of faith! Hupostasis, the word translated as “substance,” in Hebrews 11:1, means “that which underlies the apparent; that which is the basis of something, hence, assurance, guarantee and confidence.” The English “substance” is built from a prefix and a root which together mean “that which stands under.” 19th century famous preacher Charles Spurgeon said that faith consisted of three intertwined elements, a “triune faith” if you will: knowledge, assent, and trust. You can’t have faith in something you have no knowledge of. Let’s take a plane flight as an example of the knowledge component: If I am about to fly for the very first time, I might be very, very, nervous. Why? Because my faith in that plane to get me safely to my destination is very weak. If you are a frequent flyer, your faith is much higher, and you might share with me your experience, and to the extent that I accept that knowledge, my faith in the plane will rise. If the veteran pilot who was a former plane mechanic and an engineering enthusiast comes out pre-flight and spends 10 minutes sharing some of his intimate knowledge of the technology, the multiple levels of mechanical redundancy, the statistics of flight safety, and his absolute confidence in that plane, my faith may be increased substantially. Combine that with a few years of flying myself, and I may well be helping some other newbie get over their fear of flying. What is the point of all of that? At no point did my faith in the plane go up simply by telling myself to “have faith” or chanting “planes are safe,.. planes are safe!!”. My KNOWLEDGE of the object of my faith increased. But knowledge is not the end all/be all of faith, otherwise the most intelligent folks in the world would be the most dedicated Christians. There has to be an ASSENT, an “amen” from the heart that accepts the validity of that knowledge. If my fear of flying reached phobic proportions, no amount of insight from the pilot, my friend, or any other source will increase my faith, because there is no assent, I have rejected the validity of the knowledge, however irrational that may be. The trust factor is a byproduct of proportional and harmonious growth of knowledge + assent. The more I learn about the object of my faith, and the more I accept that knowledge, the more at peace I am with the expected outcome, though I cannot empirically know that it will be that way.. I have faith. And the higher the faith, the more assured I am, the less stressed I become, and I rest… in faith. See the difference? Real faith is far from illogical. You can’t “defend the faith”, if your faith is some mystical notion that requires an emotional trigger for activation and an absence of resistance for survival. Paul didn’t walk around the Parthenon in Athens screaming “Jesus is Lord”. No! Paul was supremely gifted in logic, and is described by Luke nearly a dozen times, as “reasoning with his listeners”. Recently one well known message minister stated that we can't prove go and se can't even prove that we have a brain. We believe we have a brain by faith alone. But if you seriously believe that I don’t have proof that I have a brain, I will tell you that, having viewed an actual human brain myself, having seen countless scans of others brains, read literature about the brain, and seen evidence in my own thought that leads me to accept this coherent set of clues to an inducted, non-empirical, conclusion that, yes “I have a brain.” If you seriously believe that there is no proof of God, I will tell you to watch a single debate between a knowledgeable Christian apologist and an atheist. Though, again, empirical data cannot prove in a deductive sense, that God exists, you cannot bat an eye or study any subject at all without being in contact with a million inductive pointers that lead to his existence. Add to that the illumination of the Holy Spirit while seeking his nature through his Word, and accept Him at his Word… it’s called faith. ...And here is the final distinction between blind message faith and true Christian faith - Every scientific discovery brings more evidence of His existence and strengthens our faith in God. Every archaeological finding brings increased veracity to the providence of God in forming and protecting the canon of scripture for almost 2,000 years. Meanwhile, every single discovery of fact in the life and ministry of William Branham does just the opposite, making the position of “message believer” an increasingly untenable position. Logic and the message The rules of logic are like the rules of mathematics or physics, they are not opinions that can be disregarded, they have always existed, and they follow a structure that God set up, he is a rational God, a God of order, and not confusion. For instance, it is not illogical in and of itself to believe in the supernatural, but if you have to break a dozen rules of logic while reviewing the evidence in order to support a single occurrence of the supernatural, then it is not spiritual or faithful to continue to believe that event occurred, rather, it is obtuse. The existence of God, the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the authenticity of scripture are all Christian elements that face much opposition and doubt in the secular world. But, while none of these things can be proven deductively from empirical data, all of them have a substantial base of inductive data which stands up to logical scrutiny, and is used regularly in debates between Christian apologists and atheists, for instance. In the end, no amount of inductive evidence is going to cause a conversion, as it is a work from God that brings the ultimate revelation, but a Christian does not have to suspend logic or reason to arrive at that place of faith. God does not break his own rules. It is not possible to support an inherently false position however, without breaking the rules of logic and reason, by committing a logical fallacy. An encyclopedia of logical fallacies could be filled each week by reviewing the sermons of prominent message ministers. Their position cannot be supported logically, or from scripture, so they resort to any number of logical fallacies to keep their congregations in the dark. Here are a few favorites of message ministers: 1. Ad hominem – attempts to counter an opponent’s claims by attacking the opponent, rather than addressing the argument itself. “poisoning the well” is a form of ad hominem. “you watch, its these carnal, spiritual babies, that couldn’t get the pastor to do what they wanted, it’s them that’s out there attacking the word of the hour. Don’t you lend an ear to that garbage!” (not only is this a logical fallacy that addresses none of the issues that have been raised, but also lumps all ex message believers into a very narrow, very negative stereotype that is, by its very generality, reckless, irresponsible, and false.) 2. False dilemma or False dichotomy – Artificially reducing a set of possibilities to two, usually while casting one of the two in such a negative light that the “obvious” choice is the other one. “There, you see all of these contradictions in the Bible. I can’t explain them, can you? So are going to throw your Bible away? If you’re going to leave the message over something like that, just go ahead and throw your Bible away.” (This is a manipulative favorite when speaking to bible believing Christians. The pastor knows they believe the Bible and aren’t going to throw it away, therefore many will make a decision that they are also, not going to leave the message, for no reason at all! The contradictions in the Bible can and have been logically explained, while many questions about the message cannot.) 3. Reductio ad absurdum – reducing the premises in an argument so that it leads to an absurd conclusion. “You don’t believe it because you didn’t see it? Well, in that case, you don’t have proof that you have a brain, and certainly don’t have proof that there is a God!” (the premise has been artificially reduced to ‘you don’t believe because you didn’t see it’. In reality there is a mountain of inductive evidence for the existence of your brain and God, and a mountain of inductive evidence to refute many message claims.) 4. Straw Man – attempts to counter a position by attacking a different position than the one his opponent actually holds, one that is easier to refute. “These people attacking the message would have you believe that you should go back to the harlot… back to the denominational slop you come out of.” (This is not the position of any message critic that I am aware of. The message is simply that you are following a false prophet and therefore are in a false system. Where you go from there is a matter of prayerful consideration, and is inherently individual. Btw, equating all churches with harlots and slop for the simple fact that they belong to a denomination is also fallacious, in case common sense didn’t kick in there automatically, as it should ) 5. Slippery Slope – argues that to accept A means that you must accept B, or Z, or some other extreme. “You go clicking around on them websites and listening to the devil’s lies, you might just find yourself being an enemy of God, stuck with no way back.” (…… do I really have to explain why this is stupid? Which fallacy do I address first, the illogical connection between looking at a website and being an enemy of God, or the assertion that a website contains the “devil’s lies” without a single shred of evidence to back up such a monstrous claim.) 6. Moving Goalpost – the method of moving the criteria for “proof” out of the range of whatever evidence currently exists. If new evidence comes to light meeting the prior criteria, the goalpost is pushed further back. Sometimes impossible criteria are set up at the start for the purpose of denying an undesirable conclusion. “You weren’t there when the cloud happened, so you don’t know how it happened.” (Since we can’t go back in time and “be there” there is no possible way to prove it didn’t happen as William Branham said, though the evidence in this particular case is so strong, you could actually argue not only for an overwhelming inductive case, but also for an empirical, deductive refutation of his claim, because of the law of non-contradiction) These are but a few logical fallacies, and nearly all I have seen have been implemented over the last several months by message ministers in a desperate attempt at a defense. References Parts of this article were adapted from an email by J. Warner Wallace, the author of Cold-Case Christianity - Stand to Reason Navigation Home Our Podcast The List of Problems Life Story Prophecies & Visions Seven Seals Was William Branham Honest? 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