God speaks. He progressively reveals Himself and His will. Let God bring Scripture to life and tear down all theological constructs, replacing them with actual vision of reality.
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Tag Archives: Assumptions
Assumptions are things believed without knowing that they are true.
Theological Constraints
I used to think that God gave us the Bible and sort of an intermittent leading of the Holy Spirit, mostly leading us to try to figure out the Scripture with our human minds. I thought that God was leading me in a greater understanding of His word and leading me to apply this understanding in my life. At that time, I defined “understanding” as a construct of theology. The problem was that it was me applying a theological construct in my life rather than me submitting to the Holy Spirit as He led and taught me moment by moment, bringing Scripture to mind as it applied or reaching me through my conscience and giving me the faith of God which gives me access to God’s grace, then submitting the members of my body to His Anointing so that He does His works through me. Instead, I was trying to think His thoughts, say His words, and do His works by human effort rather than the moving of the Holy Spirit. This resulted in me trying to figure out the Scripture with my fallen human mind and to apply it to my life on a moment-by-moment basis using my fallen human mind. That didn’t work. It frustrated the grace of God.
One thing that God has shown me very clearly is that the human mind can’t be trusted. It’s deceitful and desperately wicked. While Christians are supposed to moving from glory to glory, we have not yet arrived at the full completion. I know that every denomination claims to have arrived. One says that they “teach the Word of God in its truth and purity.” Another says that it is the “full gospel.” Yet, God has much more for us all. He says, “Call unto me and I will answer thee and show you great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”
Every human mind is in the condition of being deceitful and desperately wicked. Mine is no better than yours. Groups of people of like minds bind together, but that doesn’t make their group-think any better than anyone else’s group-think. If we make a single assumption while interpreting Scripture, we have added to God’s Words. Rather, the Holy Spirit speaks to us through Scripture and through every means of speaking to us that He mentions in Scripture. He will correct us. Yet, we can resist His correction and yet remain Christians. Not only can we, but we do.
Every one of us has a worldview, a paradigm. That paradigm is a fake reality. It seems just like real reality. In fact, it seems more real, to us, than real reality. By it, we filter real reality, accepting some things that God is showing us and rejecting others. Worldviews, are conceptual. They are not reality. Part of your worldview and part of my worldview is our concept of Scripture. Related to that is a part of our worldviews that consist of our theologies. Theologies are always conceptual. They are not reality. They seem real, though. Often, theologies seem as if they were Scripture itself. They are not. They are conceptual frameworks that filter what the Holy Spirit can tell us through Scripture. When a brother or sister in Christ says something by the Holy Spirit that conflicts with our inner worldviews, it often seems to us as if they are saying something that conflicts with Scripture. We might even accuse them of saying things that conflict with Scripture when the Holy Ghost has merely challenged our worldviews. This is our plight. Yet, there is hope. Only the Holy Spirit can set us free from our theological frameworks where they conflict with real reality–however, our fallen natures resist Him. This is very similar to what happens to Scientists when they are looking at the Creation. They fill in the blanks from their worldviews. Their assumptions actually come out of their worldviews. However, they add to what God is saying through Creation just as assumptions from theological worldviews can add to what God is saying through Scripture. Peer reviews don’t work for scientists who limit their peers to those who agree with their own scientific theories. In the same way, peer reviews don’t work for Christians who limit their peers to those who agree with their own theological constructs. I have found that the Holy Spirit instructs me that I must hold my own theology loosely enough that the Holy Spirit is able to correct me and teach me. As Jesus said, “You can’t put new wine in old wineskins.”
Science is Knowledge
The word, “science,” must be defined as “knowledge.” pseudo-science bases pseudo-knowledge on assumptions. It claims that “scientific” assumptions are somehow different from ordinary assumptions. However, assumptions are unknown things that are treated as known things. It’s easy to see that unknown things cannot be the basis of knowledge. It’s also easy to see that it’s irrational to claim that unknown things are known things–which is what assumptions do by definition.
Once the Train of Reason has Left the Tracks
In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. Whoever is on the side of truth listens to Me. ~ Jesus
Once the train of reason has left the tracks, it can go anywhere. Consider that logic requires a true premise. Where can a Secularist find a true premise?
Truth is absolute by nature. When Secularists pull out a premise, how do they know the premise is true? They need a premise for the premise. How do they know that the premise for the premise is true? They need a premise for the premise of the premise. This problem has no end for the Secularist. It is infinite regression.
Only Divine revelation solves this problem. God speaks truth into our hearts (innermost minds) through Scripture or the various means of Divine revelation mentioned in Scripture. It seems that He generally gives this Divine revelation by several means each confirming the other, the Scripture being among the various means and having the most reliable authority. One of the means is often a brother or sister speaking by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12).
The human mind does want to get in here to interpret Scripture (in preference to what the Holy Spirit is saying through Scripture) or as an alternative to the Holy Spirit’s leading, but Christ’s sheep know His Voice. We never have an excuse when we are drawn away by our own lust. The Secularists are also without excuse, since God has revealed Himself to them through the things that He has created.
Yet, all Secularists have the same problem. They wander without a known true premise. Sometimes, they have true premises, since God reveals things to them. They think those premises are assumptions, since they refuse to acknowledge God. They think that the Divine revelation you receive from the Holy Spirit is assumption. They think that you believe the Bible is God’s Word without error because you are using circular reasoning. If you tell them that God revealed this to you, they assume that what you call “Divine revelation” is mere assumption. Everything, to them, seems to be assumption, since they are intent on denying God’s existence and they are refusing to acknowledge Him.
The sad state of the Secularist is that God turns them over to their own reprobate mind to think their own self-generated thoughts that have no basis in truth. They can’t have a premise that they can know true. They can have a true premise; they just can’t know that it’s true. It’s not that God stops revealing things to them. If God did that, they would be dead in a week. They would step in front of buses, walk off cliffs, eat poison, or do other things that would end their lives. Secularists know things. They just can’t tell the difference between Divine revelation and assumption. Assumptions consist of made-up stuff. Secularists will insist they their own assumptions are better than that–more reliable. They will “prove” their assumptions with other arguments that are based on assumptions. The Divine revelation they receive is reliable. In Christ is hidden all wisdom and knowledge. God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. However, without the ability to acknowledge Christ, the Secularist loses the ability to know the difference between what the Secularist makes up (assumes) and what God reveals as truth. The Secularist can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe. For the Secularist, every conclusion comes from made-up stuff. This is the upshot of the Münchausen trilemma.
All fallacies fall into one of two categories. First is made-up stuff. Here’s a partial list: hypostatization, bare assertion, reasoning from a presupposition, ipse dixit, outright lie, bold-faced lie, half-truth, blind authority, and hypothesis contrary to fact. Second is smokescreen. Smokescreens attempt to hide the fact that everything is being made up, that reason has left the tracks, that there’s no true premise. Here’s a partial list of smokescreens: false appeal to authority, red herring, circular reasoning, flawed evidence, coercion, false bravado, infinite regression, message control, fallacies of choice, false comparison fallacies. Of course, there are hundreds of these two types of fallacies. The point is that these two types of fallacies are the only options for Secularists. They have no other options. They’re forced to live in a land of fantasy. And, they project their fantasies on you. If God gives you something as simple as, “God is good,” they project their fantasy on that and claim that you are assuming this to be true.
It’s not just conscious thinking by the Secularist that is a problem. The human mind has several parts. There is the will. There is the conscious reasoning part. There is the part of which we are seldom aware, the heart, innermost mind, conscience, or reins. I don’t know all about this part. I don’t know whether these are all the same thing exactly, but they seem to be at least closely related. And they seem to be the place where the worldview resides. The worldview is a total representation of the entire Universe in each person. Books have been written about the limiting problem of paradigms. Every technological advance has come by someone breaking out of the paradigm. Peer review was brought in to find a way out of the problem of paradigms/worldviews, but peers are limited to those who agree, and the result is even worse than having no peer review. Now, the illusion of reality is made stronger. The confirmation bias is a group effort. Group-think takes over. Strongholds are built in individual minds and in the group consensus. These strongholds contain truth and lie all mixed together so that they are humanly impossible to sort out. Only the Holy Spirit can free us.
The worldview is a total representation of the entire Universe in each person. Books have been written about the limiting problem of paradigms. Every technological advance has come by someone breaking out of a paradigm. Peer review was brought in to find a way out of the problem of paradigms/worldviews, but peers are limited to those who agree, and the result is even worse than having no peer review. Now, the illusion of reality is made stronger. The confirmation bias is a group effort. Groupthink takes over. Strongholds are built in individual minds and in the group consensus. These strongholds contain truth and lie all mixed together so that they are humanly impossible to sort out. Only the Holy Spirit can free us.
Did I mention that we all have worldviews? Each of us has one. Denominations are built around the same sort of confirmation bias that the Secularists use. The only way out is to allow the Holy Spirit to minister truth to us. We must stop resisting the Holy Spirit. When we read Scripture, for instance, our attitude ought to be that of allowing the Holy Spirit to teach us and show us where our understanding is incomplete or in error. When we limit the Holy Spirit to only showing us those things that we already think that we know, we also confirm our bias. When we fail to acknowledge Him, we lose the ability to know the difference between reality and make-believe. He has power to tear down our own strongholds, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t force Himself on anyone–not even on us as Christians.
The Basis of Creationism versus Evolutionism
The anti-Creation side asserts that the following assumptions are necessary for science, even claiming that not accepting these assumptions makes science or engineering impossible to do:
- the assumption that assumptions are necessary for scientific conclusions (the conclusions can be based on assumptions).
- the assumption that we can use assumptions to establish knowledge
- the assumption that there’s no difference between knowledge established by direct observation and knowledge established by arbitrary assumptions,made-up stories, plus direct observation so long as a majority of scientists accept the assumptions and stories
- the assumption that anyone who won’t accept the anti-Bible assumptions can’t do science or engineering
- the assumption that anti-Bible assumptions aren’t arbitrary like all other assumptions but are based on “experience”
- the assumption that there’s no Creator God enforcing all the natural laws, but rather random chance–Naturalism, and the laws of nature just happen to be the way they are for no particular reason
- the assumption that God didn’t create but everything just happened
- the assumption that the big bang happened even though we don’t know how nothing could have caused everything
- the assumption that God sent no worldwide, catastrophic Flood (the arbitrary assumption of Uniformitarianism as opposed to Catastrophism)
- the assumption that the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story is science and to question it is unscientific
- the assumption that all the thousands of other arbitrary assumptions and stories that are needed in order to keep big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man alive are valid and to be accepted as true without any evidence
- the assumption that science will eventually find ways to explain how matter could have created itself, how information could be added to cells, how the first self-replicating life could have formed, where the laws of nature came from, and all the other unanswered questions (mysteries) that seem to indicate that the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story is just a lie
The Creation side asserts that the following revelation (which God speaks through the Bible and through personal experience with Jesus Christ) is the necessary for science, since not accepting this revelation results in science based on arbitrary assumptions:
- the revelation that assumptions are arbitrary and not a valid basis for conclusions
- the revelation that when we go beyond what can be observed or what God has revealed through Scripture, we ought not to be dogmatic
- the revelation that God is the source of all the laws of science and the reason that we can know that those laws will be faithfully upheld
- the revelation that God created the Heavens and the Earth and everything in them in six days
- the revelation that mankind fell into sin, and having been given dominion over the Earth, brought Creation into the Fall
- the revelation that the curse of death and sorrow is the natural consequence that followed from the Fall into sin
- the revelation that God sent the worldwide, catastrophic Genesis Flood as the consequence of sin
- the revelation that God caused the confusion of languages because of the rebellion of mankind
- the revelation that mankind was, and is, not able to fulfill righteousness by obeying rules
- that God came to Earth in the form of Jesus to save us by paying the price of sin and God’s plan to remove sin from anyone who will come to Him
- the revelation that God will ultimately judge of every person according to His wisdom and holiness
- the revelation that part of science is logic. If logic is used in a way that creates the illusion of being able to know something when the thing claimed isn’t really known, then logic is useless. It’s a fallacy. It’s a lie.
Why Depend on Assumption?
God tells us to acknowledge Him and not to lead on our own understandings. He tells us not to add to His Words, yet we try to interpret Scripture using assumptions. Why, when we have the Infinite Creator of the Universe dwelling within to lead and guide us moment by moment?
Sola Scriptura
Sola Scriptura: “Scripture alone as authority.” “Scripture alone is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, not the traditions of men or even the Church.”
Some have twisted sola Scriptura to mean that the Scripture is the only way that God speaks. However, Scripture doesn’t say that Scripture is the only way that God speaks. God, speaking through Scripture, tells us that Scripture is not the only way that God speaks. In fact, we can’t know that Scripture alone is the inspired, inerrant Word of God unless God reveals this to us, and God doesn’t specifically say this in Scripture. He says that Scripture cannot be broken. He says that Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Some have implied that this means that Scripture is they only way that a servant of God may be equipped for every good work. That would be to leave Christ out of the matter. In this way, a dedicated Atheist who studies Scripture so he can claim that God doesn’t exist is being equipped for every good work. If Scripture is all that is needed, that would be the result. It’s true that no one can read Scripture or hear it being read without interacting with the living Christ, but rejection is also an interaction. Acknowledgement of the Christ must occur, not just acknowledging that the Bible exists. The Holy Spirit revealed which books belong in the cannon of Scripture and He has revealed that Scripture alone is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, not the traditions of men or even the Church.
Sola Scriptura is one of five solas that Martin Luther received by the Holy Spirit. None of the solas stands on its own. The solas are interdependent. For instance, if we declare that Scripture alone holds the key to knowing certain things, we need to know why Scripture alone holds the key. If Scripture is the foundation, what is the foundation of Scripture. The foundation of Scripture is the Writer of Scripture, the Triune God. He is the One Who wrote Scripture. He is the only One Who can interpret Scripture. He tells us, through Scripture, that Scripture can be falsely interpreted by Satan or by the human mind. It can be twisted.
It seems that every person who has a strongly held opinion about a certain interpretation of Scripture considers his or her opinion to be the right opinion. That person will consider any other interpretation to be a form of twisting Scripture. Some twisting of Scripture is obvious. Often, you end up with two theologians each accusing the other of twisting Scripture. Both of them have added to Scripture through interpretation. Interpretation, by it’s very nature, must add to Scripture.
This is a quote from a theologian:
But the Bible says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17, emphasis added). This means the man of God needs no outside help to mature. The Bible alone is sufficient for faith and practice. By it alone we can know what Jesus desires of us.
Adding to God’s words goes like this: God said A. This means B. B is not A. B is a modified version of A.
In this case, adding to God’s words goes this way. God says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17, emphasis added). This means “The man of God needs no outside help to mature. The Bible alone is sufficient for faith and practice. By it alone we can know what Jesus desires of us.”
Let’s test this. Suppose that a young person is considering two different careers. One is the career as a Java programmer. The other is a career as a Dot Net programmer. Where, in the Bible, do you look for the answer? You aren’t allowed to pray to God for guidance in the issue, remember. Remember what the theologian has said. “By it (the Bible) alone we can know what Jesus desires of us.”
Some people solve this by saying that there are many things God just doesn’t care about. You can do whatever you want. When choosing a wife or husband, there’s no need to ask for guidance. Just read your Bible. Write down the criteria and pick someone who meets the criteria in the Bible. Don’t add to the Bible at all.
Well, the human mind tends to interpret Scripture. It tends to add to Scripture through interpretation. That’s a big part of why we have denominations, divisions, in the Church. My own interpretation appears to be pure Scripture to me. Your own interpretation appears to be pure Scripture to you. You can’t understand how I get my interpretation when your own interpretation is obviously correct. That’s because interpretations are filtered through worldviews. Worldviews appear to be reality. However, worldviews are not reality. They are concept. They are not accurate. Yet, they seem to be reality. Second Corinthians chapter three mentions this problem, referring to a veil through which Scripture is seen.
It Is Assumed
This is from a post by Biblical Creation & Apologetics Ministries: “Because these sediment layers can be many hundreds of meters thick, and because it’s assumed that sedimentation rates have always been slow, secular scientists believe the sediment deposition required many millions of years.”
“because it’s assumed” Human’s assume automatically. This is how we add to what God is saying to us. However, we don’t have to add to His Words, whether He is speaking through Creation or through Scripture. The Holy Spirit will reveal to us where we have left reality and have gone to the world of make-believe through our hidden assumptions. We must pray that He demolishes the strongholds of our minds as He leads and teaches us moment by moment throughout our lives. We must not artificially limit God with our assumptions.
Assumptions quickly are converted into presuppositions. Assumptions are suppositions. They are things we suppose, yet we don’t know them. We just treat them as if we know them. Then, we forget that they were assumed or we never become conscious that they were assumed. They seem to be real. So, we add them to our worldview, our conceptual inner world. The problem is that once these assumptions become part of that inner worldview, they seem real. They are make-believe, but they seem to be part of reality. We have lost touch with reality and instead are dealing with a land of make-believe within our minds. This happens to Christians and to skeptics alike. These concepts are strongholds in our minds. We look for ways to strengthen them up, and we’re able to strengthen them through confirmation bias. Groups of like-minded people gather together for the purpose of strengthening their confirmation bias. Group-held confirmation bias is even more difficult to overcome. We see this among skeptics. We see this in Secular science. We see this in denominational doctrines that add to God’s Words.
Adding to God’s Words
For those who add to God’s words, the goal is to elevate the human mind. If we accept that rather than listening to the Holy Spirit, we sear our own ability to discern God’s voice. That’s what happens with any form of ungodly counsel or adding to God’s Word. Even a single assumption adds to what God is saying. This alternative is to press toward the mark of our high calling in Christ Jesus, which gives discernment of reality.
What if a Speculation Doesn’t Conflict with Scripture?
The mindset of some theologians is, “If I can make something up that I can rationalize as not necessarily conflicting with Scripture, that’s fair game. One old-Earther said that the Bible doesn’t address such and such, so it’s fair game for speculation. God says not to add to His Words. That’s pretty clear. If God didn’t reveal it, we don’t need to know it. God reveals through science, by the way. Scientists get into trouble when they go beyond what God is saying through His creation. Yes, God even reveals things to those who refuse to acknowledge Him. He reveals physical things of course, but read Romans one and we see He reveals spiritual things as well. And He reveals historical things of which they are willingly ignorant.