About a month or so ago, my life dramatically improved after I basically stopped arguing with people on social media. First I announced that I was leaving Facebook entirely, only to have my wife talk me out of it, by surprise. But I did hold true to my promise to remove myself from all the “debate” forums where I wasted WAY too much of my life in ultimately fruitless conversations with people uninterested in reason and evidence when it might have an adverse effect on their current thinking.
In fact, one of the most ridiculous arguments that I have had to deal with during my time spent as a Christian pugilist (never been very apologetic about my own thoughts and opinions) on the internet has been the claim by a few of the more outspoken atheists that miracles do not ever occur because God does not exist. It is ridiculous to argue about miracles because (a.) the definition of one is nebulous and (b.) people who don’t believe in miracles can easily reject them as failing to meet their nonexistent criteria for one. To an atheist, a miracle probably requires them to see a physical manifestation of divine intervention, and even then they might dismiss their witness of a miracle as a hallucination their mind imagined because most atheists don’t want to believe in God.
Why would I say that? It sounds kind of harsh and judgmental, I suppose, but I said it because it is true. Atheists have made up their mind, and just like everybody else, they don’t want to be wrong. This explains why there are so many atheists wasting their lives on social media arguing with people like me, even when their argument comes in direct opposition to logic, reason, and common sense.
For ten years, I’ve listened to the very best arguments that atheism has to offer, and the best shots they can throw at theism boil down to one real problem: evil exists. Even more confusing, innocent people have been allowed to suffer and experience tragedy in this world that God created. The key word in the previous sentence is not suffer; it is experience.
If we never feel pain, how do we understand pleasure? If we’re never sad, what would happiness mean? I personally think the biggest problem of atheism is a failure of the imagination, because the atheist thinks he or she knows what a wonderful world might be, substituting their own wisdom for God’s. They demand a world created by God without hurricane Dorian while remaining curiously silent about the problem created by Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda. In case you’ve forgotten or never knew, he’s the sorry excuse for a human being who threw a young boy from a forty-foot balcony to the mall floor below, only because he wanted to kill another human being and five-year-old Landen Hoffman was an easy target. It is very disturbing to think that anyone would do something like that for no reason.
Now I’m not saying that Mr. Aranda is an atheist, or that we should be worried that atheists would throw our children from balconies without provocation if given the first opportunity, but I think we might all agree that Aranda was not showing brotherly love or the love of God to Landen Hoffman. I also don’t know why God created a world that has hurricanes, volcanos, earthquakes, and tornados, but I think I do know why God created a world with people like Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda in it.
My answer is simple, two words: free will. The argument for determinism and against free will becomes rather silly with this example, because to say Aranda had no choice but to throw an innocent boy he’d never met and who’d done nothing to him from a balcony in an attempt to murder him is both offensive and absurd, as well as unprovable. Not to mention if we truly believed that, how could we punish him? How would we justify incarcerating Aranda if he literally couldn’t help himself, and just had to throw a child from a balcony because his genetics and environment left him with no other option? That’s the beauty and the ugly aspect of free will.Atheists can argue that miracles don’t occur until the cows come home for all I care, because I’m not interested in correcting the typical atheist’s misunderstanding of miracles or free will.
I shall continue to say without reservation that it is a miracle Landen Hoffman survived the fall. If you think otherwise, you’re entitled to your opinion. He has recovered enough to be discharged from the hospital, but only time will tell if he will ever fully recover from his gruesome physical injuries, not to mention the emotional scars the horrific experience must have caused.
So where is the miracle? Was it God and prayer, or modern medicine that healed Landen? Yes, there were many prayers offered for Landen to be sure, and yes, doctors and nurses were instrumental in his recovery. Without question, expert care helped Landen recover but also giving credit where it is really due, our bodies have been remarkably designed by God to heal themselves. The family issued a statement that said, “Thank you to all of you who prayed for us and loved us during the past 4½ months. You helped to give us hope and show us the Glory of God’s great love here on earth even during the darkest of days.”
There’s your miracle, right there. In spite of this unspeakable and incomprehensible horror, the family only speaks of love and the glory of God. There is no talk of revenge, nor any suggestion we should think about tossing Mr. Aranda off the same balcony (I must confess that while the idea does have a certain “eye-for-an-eye” appeal of symmetrical justice in this case, it doesn’t sound like something Jesus would do.) Instead, they speak of love and hope and focus on the good, not evil.
It’s true that God did not intervene and dispatch his angels to spare Landen from his pain as some who argue He should have, and the boy suffered far worse than just dashing his foot against a stone. My sarcastic antagonists would surely point this out, not realizing that God allowed Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda to exercise his gift of free will and make a choice. He chose poorly, and he will suffer the consequences in a prison cell for the next nineteen years. The only question I don’t know how to answer is why Landen Hoffman had to become the victim.
When I said I was quitting Facebook, I promised to look for good news and write about it more often. I asked readers to share their own stories of good news in the world with me so I could spread the wealth. I’ll admit that it’s hard to find a silver lining when stories like this of a violent unprovoked attack on a small child are the only headlines to be found. I’m afraid we’re going to have to start digging a little deeper to find the diamonds in the rough, but maybe not too deep: in this particular story it only took four paragraphs to discover that many others were moved by the same story. Those people made more than $1 million dollars in contributions into the GoFundMe account set up to help pay Landen’s medical expenses. It is good to know that many people with good hearts and good intentions still exist in this world, even though stories about evil or tragedy will always get the majority of the headlines.
In the old days, having made my point about good and evil in regard to free will, the goalpost would be shifted and subject changed to “why does God allow the innocent in the Bahamas to suffer from the effects of hurricane Dorian?” This makes me glad to know I’m no longer in the old days of social media. Also notice I did NOT refer to them as the “good” old days, because pointless arguments aren’t useful or constructive. Instead they are quite frustrating and ultimately futile, in essence the philosophical equivalent of a “whack-a-mole” game.
I no longer have any desire to play “whack-an-atheist” with logic and reason. To be brutally honest, your opinion about whether or not Landen Hoffman is alive because of a miracle doesn’t really interest me. No one is going to pay me to change your mind, even if it is possible. So why don’t I care about the soul of the atheist? Well, I do, or I wouldn’t have wasted ten years of my life trying to convince them when you strip atheism to its core and fully grasp the implications of a uncreated universe, atheism is a kind of an absurd, even bizarre way to see the world. Quite ironically, most atheists aren’t stupid and can be fun to engage in conversation, but not all of them and even then, only up to a point.
However, there is much more to life than social media, and it feels wonderful to limit my visits to Facebook to less than fifteen minutes per day. I get a lot more work done. We’ve got quite a few new novels almost ready to be released, and a major revision of my first Mercer novel with a much improved narrative and dialog for the same story. We don’t need to become rich, but it will be nice if we are rewarded handsomely with the fruits of our labor.
Why do I suddenly care about earning more income? The people in the Bahamas are going to need all the help they can get. I also plan to donate blood. After a catastrophe, they always need blood. I’m not bragging, just reminding others, and many people feel the same way. We see people who need help, and we want to help them. I know enough about existential physics, chemistry, and biology to understand that this universe, this world, and even my own life are miracles in themselves because divine intervention must have happened. The only other explanation is impossible good luck.
And if you think about it that way and when we do what we can when a crisis becomes an opportunity to show grace, we might ourselves become part of a miracle, and the answer to a heartfelt prayer.
What could be better than that?
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