I Need Help with Philosophy Class Questions

I need your help, answering questions for my philosophy class. How would you answer the three great philosophical questions of life: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

Also, may I share with you the basic message of the Bible, as I have experienced it?

As a homeschool family, we’ve had to consider carefully what is most important in educating our children. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic are important skills, but they will pass away someday. Ultimately, what really matters is what lasts forever.

Why would such a powerful, just God care enough about you and I to take the form of a man—Jesus, called Christ–come to earth and die on a cross to pay for our sins?

I asked this question, before I knew God. I have heard physicians say that dying on a cross is the most painful death imaginable. Even after many years as a Christian, I still can’t totally grasp God’s love, except to say that He has proved His love to me. Jesus is the only one who ever died to save me. He proved His love for each person–me, you, and everybody.

That’s my basic understanding of what God says in the Bible. Of course, there is much more, and I don’t know everything. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all yet—we may not know everything about how a television works, but we can still watch it. So you don’t need to understand everything about God all at once, either, to know Him.

Here’s my own personal experience, that I share in the hope that it will help you. Although I believed in Christ at the age of sixteen, I also struggled with doubts and questions. Yet, when I believed in Him, I also asked Him to open my eyes (spiritually), and let me know Him. Decades later, I am still learning to know Him more intimately. After all, He is infinite.

In the late 1970s, my husband and I visited Cherokee Village, in North Carolina. We were visiting to learn more about Cherokee ancestors. While there, we had the privilege of listening to a native Cherokee lecturer. He related a story that you are not likely to hear anywhere else. When the European missionaries first told the Cherokee people about Jesus, they were met with several surprises. For one, the missionaries were greeted with open arms, and the Cherokee people immediately converted to Christianity, almost every one of them. The startled missionaries had to know why the tribe experienced such sudden conversions. The reason? The Cherokee had a story about a visitor, who when described, sounded remarkably like Christ. Proof of this story, to me, is the native Cherokee word which is almost identical to the Hebrew word for God. So God can do what He wants, but He proved His love on the cross. You can’t do any more for anyone than die for them.

Over the years of getting to know God, through His son Jesus Christ, I am learning that the Bible is a spiritual book, which God directed His people to write. God did not physically write it, but it is His Word, as if His people were taking dictation.

I wondered, if we are like ants to God, how can we possibly understand Him? We can’t by ourselves. That’s why people say all the time, “I can’t understand the Bible.” But we can understand some of it–the most important parts, and what we need to know now–if we ask Him to help us, through His Spirit. I am also learning that the Bible is a spiritual book–the Holy Spirit is how God talks to people.

I want you to know that God is calling you, just like He called me, and just like He visited (according to ancient Cherokee legend) the Cherokee. He loves you so much, that He was willing to die for you. You may not believe this yet—God understands. However, if you want to know God, you need to be willing to listen to Him. Would you pray a prayer every day? Just talk to God, in Jesus name, the way you would talk to a person. Every day, just ask God “God, help me to know Jesus.” Will you do that, because Jesus loves you? Do this, and be WILLING to believe (I didn’t say you have to have blind faith–I said you need to be willing to listen), when God helps you to understand. Simple, I know. Please let me know that you will do this, and write me when you can.

In Christ’s Love, Melissa Morgan, http://homeschoolblogger.com/eaglesnest/781930/ “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36)

Calvin always has the best answers.

Where is a location question. From and to just describe locations. Where do we come from and where are we going either have the regular meaning of Calvin or are metaphors for something else. As a metaphor, when terms are used that are ill defined, you are at the abyss of language’s usefulness. What is God? Can you give me a phone number? Where is God? Why is God? You can give all the right question words for a good essay, who what where when why and how, but when some of the important concepts are not consistent with meaning communication will fail, or at least not convey what a person is trying to communicate.

That’s why Calvin is so funny. With just a few frames, he answers the deep philosophical questions that are just illustrations of where language fails, and language is just a representation of reality, not reality itself.

God is a particular case that language is ill prepared to box into a definition. Of course just because language cannot convey something, does not mean it winks out of existence, like the joke from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The limitations of language is not the usual answer people like to hear, as people are hardwired to want answers, not question tools.

You give us 3 simple questions! So where do you start?

First,...Does truth exist? The short answer is...Yes. It can be philosophically proven by simply asking one who says there is no truth....'Is it true, that no truth exists?' So,...truth exists. What is truth? It is simply, "that which comports to its object". All truth claims are absolute, narrow, and exclusive. All truths exclude the opposite. Truth is not invented. It exists independent of ones knowledge of it. Truth is transcultural and unchanging. All truths are absolute truths.

So, how can we come to know the truth? Are we to declare truth based on sociological reasons or physchological reasons or religious reasons? No, no, no. Consider philosophical reasons. Philosophical demand consistency, coherence completeness, and and explaination (epistemic and ontological). Epistemic rationals order justification and warrant for truth and does not simply make unwarranted declarations. So, how is truth known. The process of discovering truth begins with the self-evident laws of logic and are called First Principles. They are called First principles because there is nothing behind them. They are not proved by other principles of logic. (Please carefully examine Natural Law...things which we cannot not know.) To learn issues regarding theological truths we employ the same philosophical reasoning as those trying to understand science...we use logic, observation, and induction (inductive reasoning). We learn truths about God the same way as we do everything else (though there are additional influences,too).

So, how are we to answer the question, "Does God exist'? We examine the question in the same manner used to investigate other things. For example we cannot observe gravity, but rather we observe the effects of gravity. Likewise, we observe the effects of God.

So, let us begin at the beginning. The origin of the universe. The twentiety century has largely been an attempt by atheistic scientists to disprove the existence of God. However science has largely proven, by induction, that God does exist. Einsteins General Theory of Relativity propounded an expanding universe, and thus if someone was outside the universe videotaping for the beginning to the present he would witness, first 'Nothing', then something, then inflation of the universe. Creatio ex nihilo? Yes, that is postulated by Einstein. Then the Second Law of thermodynamics seems to inductively imply that the uninverse is not eternal....for if it had been it would surely have run down like a clock. Arthur Eddington,1921,proved Einsteins theory, and Edwin Hubble discovered the 'red shift' of light in the oldest stars and proved the universe was expanding. In fact, in 1928, Hubble invited Einstein to Mt. Wilson observatory and look at the prove for himself. Wilson and Penias measured the cosmic background readiation imprint from the moment of creation...the afterglow and heat from the initial radiation. COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) discovered the ripples of background radiation and temperature which would be expected from such an unimaginable and powerful explosion. Then WMAP went further, and codified those findings to a greater specifity. So, here we have the initially, atheists, Einstein,Eddington, Hubble, Hoyle, Wilson, Penzias, and Smoot, as well as many others, who proved a beginning. They had worked hard to disprove a beginning. But by induction they concluded that the universe was created, and whatever created it, it could be inductively concluded that that entity was unimaginably powerful to create this vast universe, that it was timeless (time began at creation), self-existent, nonspatial (there was no space prior to creation), immaterial (matter had not been created prior to creation), First Cause, and personal, in order to choose to convert nothing to something. Impersonal forces do not make decisions.

There is so much more regarding the origin of the universe, but I will leave it there.

Your second question, 'What was the cause of life?' Simply, the beginning of life requires a definition of life. Physical life is an expression of ones genetic makeup. But life is more than that. Let me explain something. J.P.Moreland was asked by his 5 year old daughter, "Wouldn't it be easier if God would just appear, and so there would be not question and everyone would know?" Moreland told her no. But he said something even more explicative. He said you have not even seen your mother (who was there in the dining room). He said if you could painless take apart your mother, cell by cell, you would never arrive at a structure or appendage where you would finally say, "There! There is your mother!" Because your mother is a soul. He was explaining that which C.S.Lewis said when asked if he believed he had a soul. Lewis responded, "No I do not have a soul. I AM a soul. I have a body." Now that said back to biologcal life. Most biologists, myself included, have not offered a complete answer to the question. Materialism makes science an irrational user of reason and logic. You see, materialism says, all there is, is matter, time, and energy. So logic and reason, universal abstract entities, to be consistent, but be denied by materialist. (That is not to say they do not use it, they simply cannot account for it). So, briefly, life is not a bag of chemicals. Biological Life is specified complexity as an expression of genetic makeup. Specified complexity is information and information is always the result of the order of mind. (I will leave the second quesiton for now).

Your third question regards purpose. It seems clear if the Darwinists are correct there is no purpose to life (see Dawkins quotes). Purposelessness leads to a conclusion of absurdity of life. For if there is no God, as Niesche said, there is no hope. Without God there are no absolute, objective moral truths and we are all left to ourselves to serve self with no regard to any others. (You must study Moral Law to helf answer your third question. See Dostoevski, Aquinus, Leibnez, St.Augustine. Read Geitner's "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist", Craigs, "Rational Theology". I have brushed the simplistic and superficial explainations to your questions. Read Plantiga's "First Principles". Youtube has several debates on "The Great Debate (does God exist). I am not proofreading this as I had to type fast, and have a lot of work to do today....sorry).

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