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Welcome to Foothills Fellowship
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Apologetics Class
Week 2 Notes
Last week we talked about atheism – the doctrine that God does not exist.
Today we will talk about agnosticism and relativism,
First, agnosticism:
Agnosticism says, “If God does exist, we cannot know it. Nothing can be known about the existence of God”
Three basic types of Agnosticism
- Agnostics who make the absolute statement that it is impossible to know if God exists.
- Agnostics who don’t care if God exists
- Agnostics who don’t know if God exists, but would be open to the evidence.
The ones in the first group have the same problem as atheists – they are appealing to an absolute position that cannot be defended, because such knowledge would require omniscience, an attribute of deity.
The ones in the second group are a real puzzle, since God is the most important subject there is.
Pascal, the French genius that we talked about last week, had little sympathy for them. He couldn’t understand them. He thought that it was silly that a creature who doesn’t know how he got here, can’t explain how he can think or feel, doesn’t know why he was born, or why he exists at one point in time rather than the other, and only knows for certain that he will face death, has no interest in finding out what will happen after he dies”
The third type of agnostic is open to the evidence. These ones have to be careful.
C.S. Lewis said “A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere. Bibles laid open, millions of surprises. Fine nets and stratagems. God is, if I may say, very unscrupulous”
Relativism:
Most people today will say “ Whatever one’s religion, it is right and true for them”
Relativism is the belief that each individual determines truth and reality for himself.
Possibly the most dominant philosophy in the West – in America.
What the Relativist fails to realize is this:
If relativism is true, than everything is irrelevant and absurd, including their own philosophy.
If all truth is relative and everyone is right, than no one is ever wrong, no matter how ridiculous, perverse, or immoral their beliefs. People who believe in a square earth, human sacrifice, or anything else you can think of, are just as right as everyone else. In fact, if relativism is true than reality is contradictory and meaningless. The holocaust is both a fact of history and a myth. Men went to the moon, and they never did. In fact, since no one can be wrong, the relativist cannot challenge the absolutist, because he’s just as right as the relativist. (Usually you can prove that a relativist is saying there is only one absolute truth, that there is no absolute truth. That is illogical – it doesn’t work.)
In fact, if no one can be absolutely right, then neither can the relativist. You will find out pretty quickly that relativists do not fairly apply their relativism.
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