Sometimes you’ve heard a song many times before, but suddenly actually hear the lyrics. That happened to me just now with MxPx’s song “Foolish”. Listen to the song using the widget, the lyrics are posted below:

Some people say that I threw my brain away
That I’m illogical and don’t have much to say
Some people say that it’s foolish to believe
In what we cannot see, so we’re deceived

All that I can do is listen to you
All that you can be is out there, you’ll see
Every single time that I
Explain to you my reasons why
You turn away; you close your eyes
And then you cut me down to size

Some people say that I threw my vote away
The moment I decided to live life this way
Some people say that it’s foolish to believe
In what we cannot see, so we’re deceived
I’m not here to make you all agree
But have you truly studied this historically?

Every single time that I
Explain to you my reasons why
You turn away; you close your eyes
And then you cut me down to size

Every single time that I
Explain to you my reasons why
You turn away; you close your mind
Your heart’s just not prepared to find
Some meaning, some meaning

Just wait, and listen to that voice
It calls so quietly, for you to make a choice
What will it be? What will it be?

The line that caught my attention was “But have you truly studied this historically?” I gave a talk recently at my church based on my ebook, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, which I’ll be reprising later this month. I encourage you to check it out. The ebook, I mean. I may record a video of my talk this time, and if it turns out well, I may decide to post it online.

Shouldn’t Christians just leave people alone? After all, if all religions feel fulfilling to those that follow them, why try to get people to change their beliefs? You may have heard people say that there are many roads up the mountain, but they all eventually lead to the same point at the top.

I guess it depends whether religion is like insulin or ice cream. For example, I prefer chocolate ice cream, while you might prefer vanilla, or butter pecan, or strawberry, or … great, now I’m hungry. But regardless of what your favorite flavor is, there’s nothing wrong with choosing one instead of another; it’s a personal preference. If someone told me they liked mint flavor best, I wouldn’t respond by saying “What the heck’s wrong with you?” or “How dare you choose mint instead of chocolate, you big jerk!”

The point is this:
That’s the beauty of ice cream – you can choose what you prefer. When it comes to medicine, however, it doesn’t make sense to choose what you prefer. Rather, it’s essential to choose what heals. It would be silly to choose NyQuil over penicillin simply because it tastes better. (Greg Koukl)

When choosing ice cream, you choose what you like. But when you choose medicine, you choose what heals you. Religion isn’t like ice cream, where you should choose whatever “tastes best”. You need to choose what’s true. The truth is often tough, but that doesn’t mean we should just ignore it and choose what we like.

Jesus didn’t claim Christianity is ‘true like ice cream’. He didn’t say “Come, follow me, it’ll be fun!”. He in fact claimed something very specific, contradicting every single religious (or non-religious) person who lived before him. He claimed that it’s impossible to “earn” our way into heaven, and in fact need to trust in God (who Jesus himself claimed to be in human form) instead of trusting our own failing efforts.

But isn’t that pure arrogance? Isn’t that intolerant? Doesn’t it sound presumptuous for Christians to claim they have “the truth” and all other religions are wrong? Well, only if truth is like ice cream. If someone is dying and needs medicine, you need to give them what will heal them, not what they like best. In the same way, Jesus gives us what we need, and ultimately what is best for us.

There are many different paths, but they don’t all eventually lead to the top of the same mountain. Some veer off to the left and the right; others climb entirely different mountains! And if God is real, truth about God is not like ice cream; it’s like medicine, and only what is true can heal.

Just wanted to note that tonight I finally completed my updates & additions on my free eBook, titled The Historical Reliability of the New Testament. It is still a work in progress, but having completed the one new chapter and the epilogue, I figured I’d release it again and dub it “Second Edition” since this is a fairly major update.

So, download it now!

I’ve seen it claimed, in discussions regarding differing worldviews, that atheism itself is a worldview, or even that strong (or “militant”) atheism is a religion. (For the record, I would not consider atheism a religion, though I would consider it a worldview.)

A response that I’ve seen is that atheism is not a worldview because it is not a belief, rather it is merely a “default position”. The rationale given sometimes compares belief in God to unicorns or some other such mythical animal, in the sense that unbelief in such things (or anything, really) is the default until convinced (or proven) otherwise.

While I can certainly see the reasonableness of this line of thinking and its general applicability, I wonder if it applies equally well to the question of God. There’s at least two reasons to think in this specific case things might be different. First, the vast majority of people throughout history have believed God (or gods) exist(s), a phenomenon which remains the case today. Should a belief be regarded as a default position when the majority believe the opposite?

And secondly, related to the above, if Richard Dawkins and those who agree with him are correct that human beings have evolved a natural proclivity towards belief in God(s) as some sort of survival/social assistance mechanism, should not belief in God be considered the default position, since we are supposedly “hard-wired” for such belief? Shouldn’t such naturally impelled belief be considered the default? Although I would agree with Dawkins that human beings seem to have an innate proclivity towards belief in God, I would suggest that there is different reason why so many people seem to have an innate awareness of God.