What is History? Reconciling the Cyclical with the Linear Part 1

In a previous posting, we saw that linearism is the accepted historical paradigm amongst Christian philosophers, historians, and theologians. We also demonstrated how linearism is rudimentary to a dispensational understanding of the scriptures. Consequently, mid-Acts grace believers should have no difficulty recognizing the importance of linear thinking to their theological construct. Now that we have demonstrated that linearism is fundamental to the Christian worldview, we can now investigate whether there is room within the Christian worldview for cyclical thinking.

A careful reading of the previous posting reveals an interesting piece of information: virtually all gentile societies have viewed time as cyclical in nature. Regardless of their geographic location or despite their lack of contact with each other, pagan cultures all possessed a circular view of life linked to the seasonality observable in nature. In fact, it was only Judaism, followed by Christianity, that embraced any semblance of linear thinking. Pagan holidays and festivals coincided with seasonal occurrences such as the winter and summer solstices as well as the spring and autumnal equinoxes’. After the so-called conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 A.D., the Roman Catholic Church slowly began the process of trying to Christianize pagan holidays. As a result, the Church positioned Christmas, Easter, and All Saints Day or All Hollows Eve to coincide with pagan festivals that celebrated the seasonal changes of nature. Where did the gentiles obtain this seasonal celestial view of the universe?

What Did Humanity Know and When Did We Know It?

The notion that early men were primitive (e.g., cave men) is an evolutionary supposition that Bible believers should reject. Adam, the first man, was not a half man/half animal creature as evolutionary pseudoscience teaches. Rather, Adam was created in the image of God as a fully functioning adult male possessing superior physical, mental, spiritual, and emotion faculties as you or I.(1) Moreover, Adam was placed into a mature, fully functioning, and perfectly created environment. Adam was given a charge to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over . . . every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”(2) Adam was given the job of dressing and keeping the Garden of Eden in which he enjoyed unbroken fellowship and communion with God.(3)

Before God created Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, He created the planetary bodies of the universe. Genesis 1:14-19 records this event:

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the
day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days,
and years: 15) And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give
light upon the earth: and it was so. 16) And God made two great lights;
the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he
made the stars also. 17) And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give
light upon the earth, 18) And to rule over the day and over the night, and to
divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19) And the
evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Note a few significant details. First, the alignment and position of the planetary bodies serve the purpose of providing light upon the earth. Second, the relationship between the earth and the celestial bodies of the firmament would not only account for the differences between day and night but would also serve as a mechanism for rendering seasons as well as for counting days, weeks, and years. Third, the dividing of day and night, seasonal differences, and the counting of days and years were designed in verse 14 to serve as signs to the inhabitants of the earth. According to Strong’s Concordance, the Hebrew word translated “signs” in the King James Bible means “a signal, a distinguishing mark, banner, remembrance, miraculous sign, omen, or warning.” Therefore, Adam was placed in an environment in which the planetary bodies served as signs of God’s existence and handiwork.

The daily rotation of the earth on its axis would bring day and night. Likewise, the combination of the earth’s yearly revolution around the sun along with the tilting of the earth’s axis at 23 1/2 degrees would produce the yearly seasonal differences. All of these natural phenomena were designed by God to serve as a sign and testimony to his existence and creative genius. Consequently, God placed Adam in an environment that had been intentionally designed to bear witness to the glory and splendor of God. Genesis further reports of humanity’s fall into sin, which not only wreaked havoc on God’s pristine creation but also clouded and distorted man’s willingness to see God’s handwork in the natural world.

In Romans chapter one, the Apostle Paul reports how mankind’s fall into sin distorted his willingness to see the witness God placed within creation. Paul wrote:

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed
it unto them. 20) For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal
power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21) Because that, when they
knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain
in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22) Professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23) And changed the glory of the
uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and
fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Romans 1:19-23

The following points about post-fall man are clearly observable from this passage. First, mankind clearly knew who God was through his creation. Second, based on the testimony of creation alone, mankind is without excuse for not desiring to retain God in his knowledge.(4) Third, the ultimate result of not glorifying God as God, lack of thankfulness, and vain imaginations is the changing of the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. In short, mankind took the witness of God through creation and perverted it in an attempt to escape accountability. The end result was that humanity changed the truth of God into a lie (5) for which “God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” (6)

Therefore, from the very beginning mankind was aware of the seasonal nature of God’s creation. After the fall, the sons of Adam, in an attempt to remove God from their knowledge, took the signs and seasonal markers God established when he created the planetary bodies and hijacked them as part of their religious systems. Herein lays the explanation for why virtually all pagan societies in the ancient world viewed time as cyclical. They were simply following the course of this world, a perverdion of the knowledge of God authored by Satan and his lie program. This is precisely what E. W. Bullinger argues in his landmark book The Witness of the Stars, namely, that the Zodiac is a satanic distortion of the witness God placed in the heavens when he garnished them with the various celestial bodies.
Pagan Calendar: Note the cyclical structure and polar positioning of the winter and summer solstice as well as the spring and autumnal equinox. See the examples of Pagan Cyclicality at the top of the right hand margin.

This author believes that the giving up of the gentiles to a reprobate mind that Paul speaks of in Romans 1 took place in Genesis 11. It was at Babel that God “suffered the gentiles to walk in their own way,” because in Genesis 12 God calls out Abram and made a covenant with him to bring from him a great nation that would be formed from Abram’s seed. When God allowed the gentile nations to follow after their own foolishness, he did not reorganize or restructure the physical mechanisms of his creation. Rather, God still uses the seasonality of his creation as a testimony to the nations of his existence. Consider what Paul says to the inhabitants of Lystra in Acts 14:16-17, “Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” Notice that God left the signs of seasonality in place to serve as a witness to the gentiles of his existence despite their perversion of it.

Rather than God setting up the nations to follow a cyclical seasonal progression, the nations chart their own course that follows Satan’s distortion of God’s created order. In other words, seasons continue not because pagan religious rituals bring about their passage but because God ordained his universe at creation to function in this fashion. Sin has not disrupted the seasonal patters of creation but has instead distorted mankind’s understanding of them. In Genesis 8:22, Moses says the following regarding the cyclical functioning of the seasons: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” The famous passage from Ecclesiastes 3 concurs with Moses’ statement:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2) A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up
that which is planted; 3) A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break
down, and a time to build up; 4) A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to
mourn, and a time to dance; 5) A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6) A
time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7) A
time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8)
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Initially, the passing from day to night, winter to spring, and year to year were designed as sings to manifest the genius of almighty God, but Satan’s lie program utilizes this cyclicality to promote worship of the creature rather than the Creator.

While linearism remains the predominant model for understanding history, we must also recognize that God is also the author of cyclical seasonality. Consequently, to arrive at a complete paradigm of history, we must embrace the reality that as time moves forward linearly towards its prophesied end, cycles are also occurring. A proper understanding of cyclicality is necessary to arrive at a complete Biblical paradigm of history. Stay tuned for more on this in our next posting.

End Notes:
1) Genesis 1:26-27.
2) Genesis 1:28.
3) Genesis 2:15.
4) Romans 1:28.
5) Romans 1:25.
6) Romans 1:28.

What is History? A Brief Look at the Cyclical and Christian Views of History

How to conceptualize history falls within the domain of historiography. For those unfamiliar with the term, historiography is the branch of the historical discipline that studies the history of historical writing.(1) Simply stated, historiography traces the developments in historical writing and conceptualization throughout time. Mark T. Gilderhus, author of History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction, echoes one of the conclusions reached in our previous posting, that chaotic time is not a workable historical model. Generally, all historical writing fits into one of the following three schemata: cyclical, providential, or progressive, according to Gilderhus.(2) While the providential and progressive views are similar in that they view history as linear progression along which time moves forward from beginning to end, they view history’s impetus differently. In the providential view, divine guidance was the cause, and in the progressive view, natural or metaphysical forces were the impetus.(3) Since the first Greek historians set pen to paper all written history has been either cyclical or linear in terms of philosophy of history.

The Greeks and Cyclical Thinking

Many historians view the Greeks as the first practitioners of history in an organized sense. The Greek historian Herodotus is frequently referred to as the father of history. This conclusion is due in large part to the fact that other ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians, Sumerians, Assyrians, and Hittites, left artifacts recounting the deeds of great men but showed little appreciation for the effect of one event upon another and the interrelationship between them.(4) It was their view of time as cyclical that accounts for the lack of attention to cause and effect. For the ancients, time and history were rooted in observation - things occurred, went away, and then recurred, much in the fashion of days, nights, and seasons. Consequently, the familiar and predictable patterns of nature became a way of organizing the unfamiliar and unpredictable happenings in the human world.(5)

The consistency of cyclical patterns is quite prominent in Hinduism and Buddhism. The wheel of life represents an endless cycle of birth, life, and death from which one seeks liberation. Native American tribes, such as the Hopi, Inca, Maya, and Aztec civilizations of North and South America who lived in complete isolation from Africa, Europe, and Asia similarly regarded time as cyclical repeating ages that every being of the universe experiences between birth and extinction.(6) In ancient Egypt, the scarab (or dung beetle) was viewed as a sign of the eternal renewal and reemergence of life, a reminder of the life to come.(7) Greek philosophies such as Stoicism and philosophers such as Empedocles and Zeno of Citium taught the cyclical doctrine of eternal return. Norse mythology bears signs of cyclical thinking as evidenced by the symbol of Ouroboros, the snake or dragon eating its own tail, symbolizing a belief in eternal recurrence.(8) (For visual examples of the concepts discussed in this paragraph check out the Examples of Pagan Cyclicality at the top of the right hand margin.)

Despite making significant contributions to the development of historical thought, specifically in pioneering a critical method of distinguishing between truth and error, Herodotus and Thucydides never abandoned the cyclical construct of their peers.(9) Mark T. Gilderhus describes the circular thinking of Thucydides as follows:

Expressing a belief typical of his time, he affirmed a cyclical view in the
expectation that “what happened in the past . . . will in due course, tend to be
repeated with some degree of similarity.” Thucydides intended his writing
to have instructional importance as a guide to action in the future.
Although history never repeated itself exactly, he anticipated the development
of parallel circumstances and believed that the consciousness of history would
bestow many benefits. All leaders should learn from the mistakes of the
past. Indeed, they could master the arts of politics, statecraft, and
warfare only from the study of history.(10)

In the end, Thucydides, more so than Herodotus, sought to explain events in secular terms. Events happened not because the gods willed them but because of active human agents who endured the consequences of their actions. As a result, the notion of causation began to enter into the historical conversation.

The Christian View of History

Writing in the wake of the Gothic sacking of Rome by Alaric in 410 A.D. St. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in North Africa, wrote The City of God, the most influential statement of the Christian interpretation of history ever devised.(11) Augustine’s view of time was derived from a Hebrew construct that rejected outright Greek notions of cyclical movements.(12) “For Augustine, endless revolving and pointless repetitions would have rendered history meaningless—in effect, a nullification of divine influence and purpose.”(13) In contrast, he viewed history as moving along a line with a clear beginning marked by creation, middle, and end.(14) St. Augustine described why the cyclical view is unacceptable to Christians when he wrote:

Far be it, I say, from us (Christians) to believe this (the Classical philosophy
of history). For once Christ died for sins; and, rising form the dead, He
dieth no more.(15)

Thus, the Christian view of history as linear and directional created a new understanding of mankind’s movement through time. John Warwick Montgomery offers the following analysis in his book, The Shape of the Past: “Here for the first time Western man was presented with a purposive, goal-directed interpretation of history. The Classical doctrine of recurrence had been able to give substantiality to history, but it had not given it any aim or direction.”(16) The linear conception of history is simply another way of saying that all of history is meaningful because it is all directed toward a purposeful end.

Scripture teaches in Genesis 1:1 that time and history had a beginning and are not eternal. The scriptures also teach in Revelation 21-22 that what began in Genesis 1 will to come to an end. The current heavens and earth will be replaced with a new heavens and new earth with Christ as the head of all things when the dispensation of the fullness of Time is ushered in.(17) Thus, linearism is inescapable for the Bible believer, especially a mid-Acts dispensationalist. Herbert Schlossberg, author of Idol for Destruction, offers the following summation of the Christian view of history:

Christianity . . . is by its nature historically minded. It rejects both
cyclical theories of history and notions of the eternality of the
universe. The doctrine of creation and of eschatology are explicit
statements that history has both a beginning and an end and that it is possible
to say something intelligible about both. Events between these two termini
are also intelligible, and, being relation them, have meaning.(18)

While St. Augustine taught much that mid-Acts grace believers would find abhorrent his views regarding the linear nature of history mesh with our dispensational understanding of the scriptures. Right division of the word according to the Pauline pattern outlined in Ephesians 2 establishes a clear linear progression of how God is going to accomplish his eternal two-fold purpose of reconciling the governmental structures of heaven and earth back to himself through Jesus Christ.

William Strauss and Neil Howe authors of The Fourth Turning, correctly observe that linear history has dominated Western historiography. Furthermore, they are correct in their assertion that the Protestant Revolution cemented linearism as the paradigm of choice throughout Western Europe and the United States.(19) However, they err and threaten the clearly observable teachings of scripture when they assert that linearism needs to be overcome in favor of cyclicality. To abandon the linear model in favor of the cyclical is to violate the clear precepts of dispensational Bible study. Consequently, it is the view of this author that cyclicality cannot overcome linearism. Rather, linearism must continue to be embraced as the predominant framework through which to view history, and to the limited extant that cyclicality is true, cyclical concepts can be incorporated into a linear framework to arrive at a workable paradigm.

Endnotes:
1) Mark T. Gilderhus. History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000), 15.
2) Ibid., 51.
3) Ibid., 51.
4) Ibid., 13.
5) Ibid., 13.
6) Time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time.
7) Eternal Return http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return.
8) Eternal Return http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return
9) Gilderhus. History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction. 15.
10) Ibid., 17.
11) Ibid., 21.
12) Ibid., 22.
13) Ibid., 22.
14) Ibid., 22.
15) Whitney J. Oates. Basic Writing of St. Augustine. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1980), 192.
16) John Warwick Montgomery. Where is History Going. (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1969), 42.
17) Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:16-20.
18) Herbert Schlossberg. Idols for Destruction. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1983), 29.
19) William Strauss and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny. (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), 9-15.

What Is History? Three Views of Time

Dots, Lines, and Circles

Generally speaking there are three theories of time chaotic, cyclical and linear. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny, chaotic time was the dominant view of primitive man.(1) As history unfolded changes in how humanity viewed time occurred. Ancient and traditional civilizations replaced chaotic time with a cyclical paradigm while modern Western societies particularly America, have conceptualized time in linear terms, according to Strauss and Howe.(2)

Before we can construct a workable historical model, we must first understand the differences in how time and therefore history have been conceptualized. These divergent views regarding time can be summarized by looking at three geometric shapes: dots, circles and lines. Please consider the following explanations of each model along with their corresponding illustrations.

Chaotic Time = Dots

According to the chaotic view of time, human events are random resulting in the notion that history has no path. As a result, any attempt to impute meaning or causal linkages between events is futile. "This was the first intuition of aboriginal man, for whom change in the natural world was utterly beyond human control or comprehension."(3) Chaotic time can be compared to a bunch of random dots on a piece of paper. Without lines connecting the points they remain random and meaningless in relation to each other. The notion of pathless time can still be found in many eastern religions. For example, Buddhism teaches when one reaches Nirvana, the religions ultimate goal, he is free from any connection to space, time, or selfhood.(4)

Despite the endurance of chaotic time in some religious worldviews this model possesses serious shortcoming as a historical paradigm. First, chaotic time's disregard for cause and effect relationships dissolves society's connective tissue. Without cause and effect, people cannot be held morally culpable for their poor choices or to any system of moral or societal obligations. Even Buddhists who aspire to attain a state where time is meaningless are nevertheless bound to an orderly world of cause and effect in this life through the doctrine of karma.(5) Consequently, chaotic time has never gained much traction as an explanatory historical model.(6)

Cyclical Time = Circles

From the perspective of human viewpoint, eventually ancient civilizations linked observable natural cycles such as lunar months and solar years with related cycles of human activity.(7) Strauss and Howe offer the following explanation of how cyclical thinking conquered the randomness of chaotic time in classical societies. They write:

Cyclical time conquered chaos by repetition, by the parent or hunter or farmer performing the right deed at the right moment in the perpetual circle, much as an original god or goddess performed a similar deed during time's mystical circle. Eventually, great cycles came to mark the duration of kingdom and prophecies, to coming of heroes and shamans, and the aging of lives, generations, and civilizations. Cyclical time is endless, yet also endlessly completed and renewed, propelled by elaborate rituals resembling the modern seasonal holidays.(8)

As the name implies, cyclicality is best diagramed with a circle representing the doctrine of Eternal Return. Eternal Return is the notion that the universe has been recurring and will continue to recur in a similar form for an infinite number of times.(9)

Unlike the chaotic view, cyclical thinking enabled classical civilizations to adopt a moral and legal dimension. As a result, present generations possessed a mechanism whereby they could compare their life experiences with those in previous generations. While cyclical time offers apparent advantages over chaotic time as an explanatory model it still offers no explanation for where time and history are headed. For this reason pure cyclicality alone is unacceptable for Bible believers because Scripture clearly teaches that time is advancing forward towards a prophesied climax.

Linear Time = Lines

Beginning with Judaism a new paradigm for understanding time began to emerge. Driven by theological ideas time and history were straightened out into a model that possessed an absolute beginning as well as an absolute end. "Time begins with a fall from grace; struggles forward in an intermediate sequence of rails, failures, revelations, and divine interventions; and then ends with redemption and reentry into the kingdom of God."(10) Initially, linearism struggled to gain a foothold in the ancient world: however, with the onset of the Protestant Revolution linearism became the predominant historical paradigm in Western Europe and eventually the United States.

The great achievement of linear time has been to endow mankind with a purposeful confidence in is own self-improvement. "A linear society defines explicit moral goals (justice, equality) or material goals (comfort, abundance) and then sets out deliberately to attain them. When those goals are reached, people feel triumphant; when they aren't new tactics are applied."(11) Consequently, the Industrial Revolution cemented linearism as the preferred historical paradigm. In fact, it was during the Industrial period, that Marxian philosophy described the future of humanity without God. According to Karl Marx, history would end with the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than righteous governance of Jesus Christ in heaven and on earth as the Christian view of history teaches.

Thus, having ruled out chaotic time and pure cyclical time alone as workable models, in our next posting we will focus our attention on the details of both the cyclical and linear views of history as well as begin exploring how they might be combined into a single workable paradigm.

Endnotes:

1. William Strauss and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny. (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), 8.
   
2. Ibid., 8.
   
3. Ibid., 8.
   
4. Robert S. Ellwood and Barbara A. McGraw. Many Peoples, Many Faiths: Woman and Men in the World Religions. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005), 138.
   
5. Strauss and Howe. The Fourth Turning. 8.
   
6. Ibid., 8.
   
7. Ibid., 8.
   
8. Ibid., 8.
   
9. Mark T. Gilderhus. History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000), 51.
   
10. Ibid., 9.
    
11. Ibid., 11.
    

What Is History? Introduction

How Should Believers View History?

Even a novice student of history is familiar with George Santayana's famous quote, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(1) While many are familiar with Santayana's statement, few have given it much though beyond its common application to convince high school history students that history is important. However, if one subjects the contents of this quote to critical analysis it demonstrates why the information in this new series of articles is critical for believers to consider.

Santayana's statement encapsulates one of history's great debates regarding the philosophical nature of time itself. Is time and therefore history cyclical like Hinduism and indigenous religions teach, or linear possessing both a beginning and ending toward which humanity is advancing? A thoughtful reading of Santayana highlights the following paradox; history is both cyclical and linear. Implicit within Santayana's comment is the notion that if humanity forgets about their past mistakes, their forgetfulness will condemn the species to a cyclic fate of revisiting past mistakes. Conversely, cyclical reoccurrence can be avoid and linear progress continued by acknowledging past mistakes thereby allowing mankind to avoid the same missteps in the present as well as future.

Recent months have seen much discussion amongst grace believers regarding philosophical views of history. In April 2009 Brother Richard Jordan taught a series of seminars entitled Welcome to Winter in which he argued for a seasonal view of history. The life of a nation follows the changing seasonal patterns (winter, spring, summer, fall) thereby establishing a cyclical paradigm of history, according to Jordan. Brother Jordan married Biblical teaching with the seminal historical work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of Generations: The History of America's Future and The Fourth Turning, to argue for a cyclical approach to history.

While seasonality is clearly observable in history, the acceptance of cyclicality at the expense of linear progression leaves the believer with an incomplete historical paradigm. Mid-Acts Grace Believers utilize a strict linear model when teaching how to rightly divide the Word of Truth. When we speak about how God has worked in the past (time past), how God is working in the present (but now), and how God will work in the future (ages to come), we are utilizing a strictly linear view of history. Time originated in Genesis 1 and is advancing forward in linear fashion toward a prophesied end, the establishment of the new heavens and new earth. When the Dispensation of the Fullness of Time arrives the purpose for which God created time will have been fulfilled. One could argue that mid-Acts dispensationalists are the most linear thinkers around.

How then do we reconcile the cyclical with the linear? Is there room in our linear dispensational understanding of time for seasonality, and if so where and how does it fit? Herein lies the goal for the forthcoming articles in this series, to reconcile cyclical and linear historical concepts thereby developing a more complete and functional paradigm of history. Second, we will tackle recent attacks on the objectivity of history in an attempt to demonstrate how Biblical Christianity is predicated on the notion of objective history. The Gospel of Grace is based upon the objective historical reality of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. Any attack on the knowability of history is an assault upon our faith. Grace believers need to be equipped to answer those who would seek to distort history for the furtherance of their own agendas.

Endnotes:

1. George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905.
   

The Root of All Evil Part 2

In part two of his documentary Dawkins steps up his rhetoric regarding the viral nature of religion. In fact, Dawkins calls the religious indoctrination of children a form of child abuse. Dawkins and his fellow atheist would have us believe that humanity through the use of reason has evolved and no longer needs God. Accordingly, it is humanities stubborn cling to the notion of a divine being that holds back progress in the modern world, according to the New Atheists. Despite their claims to the contrary, the Atheistic Trinity and their followers are exercising faith when they chose not to believe in God. Psalm 14:1 states, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Scripture depicts Atheism for what it truely is, a system of belief that requires faith to believe. Christian Apologist Norman Geisler summarizes the situation when he writes, "every world view including Atheism requires faith to believe."(1)

"Even skeptics have faith. They have faith that skepticism is true. Likewise,
agnostics have faith that agnosticism is true. There are no neutral positions
when it comes to beliefs. As Phillip Johnson so aptly put it, One who claims to
be a skeptic on one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of
beliefs. In other words, atheists, who are naturally skeptical about
Christianity, turn out to be true believers in atheism."(2) That is why
according to Dr. Geisler Atheism requires more faith to believe than
Christianity.(3)

To view part two of The Root of All Evil click on the picture of Richard Dawkins above. Don't forget to leave your comment.

Endnotes:

1. Norman L. Geisler. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 27.


2. Ibid., 27.
   
3. Ibid., 27.