Column: An Old Absolute Newly Discovered – (A continuing series) — Part 8 – THE JEWS AS EMPIRICAL PROOF OF GOD’S EXISTENCE. How can the mere existence of a people constitute empirical proof that the biblical God is an existing “real,” as real as any other real? This, briefly stated, is the question to be addressed in this Part 8 of my ongoing series on atheism. It is to be expected, understandably so, that atheists (at least the self-hardened variety) will surely not be convinced of what is said here.
But in the context of this theological discussion, the thoughts and opinions of self-hardened atheists are irrelevant. This is true, since according to Holy Scripture, such atheists, by their hardened, free will to disbelieve “no-matter-what,” have already passed a point of no return and are thus already doomed to hell and judgment. Wherefore, such atheists will never inherit the kingdom of God in the afterlife (for a full explanation of this dilemma for hardened atheists, see Part 6 of this series).
Moreover, by way of analogy, as U.S. felons have no right to vote and thus to make a meaningful contribution determining the political course of the United States, so hardened atheists, through their deliberate self-hardening and intractable blind unbelief, have forfeited their relevance as those who are properly fit to voice meaningful opinions about the biblical God and what this God has ordained.
After all, no adverse opinion voiced by convicted felons concerning the judge who condemns them can scarcely be thought to have any meaningful weight at all. Thus, opinions of hardened atheists concerning the biblical God are necessarily irrelevant and must therefore be treated as such.
In other words, this presentation is not intended for the eyes and consideration of hardened atheists; it is intended only for those who in total unbiased and unfeigned sincerity are maintaining an open mind. Hardened atheists, because of their intransigence in unbelief, cannot possibly fit into this category, regardless of how much they disingenuously insist that they have an open mind.
In this Part 8, the following topics will be discussed:
1. A reasonable expectation from the biblical God
2. Who are the Jews?
3. The Jewish Enigma
4. The Strength of the Jews as Eye Witnesses
Faith: A Juridical Decision
1. A REASONABLE EXPECTATION
For me, the thought has always seemed reasonable that if this whole physical universe of ours is the product of a great Creator God as the cause behind it, it would make sense that this God would present credible evidence of it to his creatures. At least, this is what has appeared to me as the most reasonable thing this God could do so as to prevent a particular cruelty to his hapless creatures, namely, that of leaving them to wonder without a firm measure of certainty that this God is indeed the cause behind the whole spectacle of an infinite universe with all that this would imply for human life and behavior.
In this part of my atheism series, I intend to advance the biblical notion that the Jews as a people and nation, who have been with us in continuity to the present from the very beginnings of rational human history, are the credible, rational “proof” that the biblical God has given his human creatures to show that he is the one who has caused all of universal existence.
The Jews as a people may not be the proof everyone would like to have of the biblical God’s existence. But as the autocratic, sovereign being and Deity that this God is, he will do as he pleases, without apology or consideration of any second guessing from his creatures. In this context, and as mere creatures of this God, we therefore either accept what he gives and ordains, or our rejection becomes our problem by choice and default.
That the biblical God is so autocratically sovereign, see for example the following biblical testimony:
Daniel 4:34-35 NRSV: “For his sovereignty is an everlasting sovereignty, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does what he wills with the host of heaven and the inhabitants of earth. There is no one who can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What are you doing?'”
Job 9:12 NRSV: “He snatches away; who can stop him? Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?'”
Romans 9:19-20 NRSV: “For who can resist his will? But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say [prevailingly] to the one who molds it, ‘Why have you made me like this?'”
In any case, whatever others will make of the Jews, I will still assert that in placing the Jews in humanity’s midst, the biblical God has given us a visible, physical, and thus real object we can empirically examine and evaluate as evidence of God’s existence.
In what way can we do this? The answer to this question is found toward the end of this Part 8.
2. WHO ARE THE JEWS?
Looking over quickly, thoughtlessly and superficially at the rich array of world ethnicities, some will surely ask, “What could there possibly be about the Jews? Who are they as a people and nation? What do they have that other people and nations do not have that would make them so unique as to constitute, in themselves, proof of the real existence of the biblical God?”
The answers to these questions have tragic and positive aspects. Together, these aspects form an enigma that makes the Jews stand out uniquely from among all other peoples and nations.
The Jews have been highly exalted by some and profoundly hated by others who would have them utterly destroyed and even wiped off the face of the earth. Hitler made such an attempt and failed. Yet, tragic and lamentable as these latter historical events may be and have been for the Jews, the fact that no other people or nation has drawn to itself from their human environment as much virulent social reaction throughout history as have the Jews, has in itself become the focus of unique historical attention.
This tragic aspect concerning Jewish history is one of the most and, in this case, unfortunate, aspects of what has uniquely set the Jews apart from all other people or nations of the world since their conquest by the Romans.
In his “City of God,” Book VI, Ch. 11, Augustine (354-430 A.D.) observed incidentally how the Jews were held in deep contempt socially by the Romans who considered the Jews to be the dregs of society. But it seems, from other things Augustine reveals elsewhere, that Christians fared even worse under pagan Roman rule. The Jews as a despised, vanquished people among the Romans carried a low, undesirable reputation in that ancient society.
Christians, on the other hand, posed the real threat to pagan Roman society in view of the fact that in the conversion of multitudes to Christianity, many such converts were turning their backs on the state-sanctioned polytheism of the Roman masses and accepting instead a Christian monotheism that rejected the Roman, morally depraved, polytheistic way of life. If this trend was not reversed, Rome eventually would cease to be the obscene and decadent Rome the majority of Romans had come to love.
It is universally true that moral living has a way of arousing a hostility born of guilt from those who prefer the pleasures to be found in immorality. Such a stance fulfills Jesus’ saying with respect to people steeped in immorality, that such people “love the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds are evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (John 3:19-20 NASB).
Rome wanted to retain the “freedom” it had found in polytheistic debauchery, and a growing moral-minded Christianity threatened this. Hear, for example, how Augustine described (in Book II, Ch.20) the freedom Roman society was delighted to possess. This was a culture which, in defense of this freedom, set itself out to hound and persecute Christians because of the righteous living they preached and upheld in their behavior:
“There should be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes, for the benefit of all those who prefer them, and especially for those who cannot keep private mistresses. It is a good thing to have imposing houses luxuriously furnished, where lavish banquets can be held, where people can, if they like, spend night and day in debauchery, and eat and drink till they are sick: to have the din of dancing everywhere, and theatres full of fevered shouts of degenerate pleasure and of every kind of cruel and degraded indulgence.
“Anyone who disapproves of this kind of happiness [as a growing moral Christianity did] should rank as a public enemy: anyone who attempts to change it or get rid of it should be hustled out of hearing by the freedom-loving majority: he should be kicked out, and removed from the land of the living. We should reckon the true gods to be those who see that the people get this happiness and then preserve it for them.”
Thus, becoming and being a Christian was made a Roman capital crime (punishable by death). To be “removed from the land of the living,” Christians were strapped to poles and set on fire to burn as lamps, or thrown into the midst of arenas, there to be devoured by wild beasts to thus entertain the bloodthirsty Roman crowds who watched this.
Eventually, however, such murdering and persecution of innocent, righteous people, which in modern times would easily be classified as a brutal and scandalous attempt at genocide (as has happened to the poor, defenseless people of Darfur and Rwanda), and the pervasive social guilt this generated among the Roman population, had the effect of turning the tide, until, finally, Rome accepted Christianity and banned polytheism.
A great and worthy tribute to the uniqueness of the Jews, which reflects both their astuteness and sagacity as a people, is an interesting parallel found in modern times of what the Jews learned from observing what happened with the “Christian Holocaust” in ancient Rome. Here is how the Christian-Jewish Holocaust parallel can be seen:
As a growing and deepening “mass guilt” in Roman society emerged because of the persecution and slaughter of innocent Christians, this became, paradoxically, Roman Christianity’s most powerful weapon to bring down Rome in its favor. In modern times, we find this same principle of the Jewish Holocaust as a powerful weapon paradoxically applied in modern Jewish history to nip persecution in the bud before it rises and gets out of hand. This, as I have said, is a great and worthy tribute to the uniqueness of the Jews, reflecting both their astuteness and sagacity as a people.
Actually, the principle the Jews learned from the Christian Holocaust in ancient Rome is nothing new and unknown that cannot be found in text books of modern sociology, social psychology or political science. So it is not a case of me advancing something new or novel.
The whole world witnessed how hapless, innocent Jews were herded together as sheep to the slaughter and the world did nothing until it was too late. Because of this, a heavy burden of guilt was generated internationally over this most horrible thing the world allowed to happen in the Nazi Holocaust.
As a result of the real existence of this international guilt, and with the Jews having observed the Christian Holocaust in Roman times and what the resulting Roman guilt accomplished, the Jews have now, paradoxically, a powerful “nuclear-like” weapon in the Nazi Holocaust. Because of this Holocaust that in some aspects parallels the Christian Holocaust, nobody now dares to lay a hand on, or mess with the Jews. I am, of course, referring to the rational world as a whole, not to a minority few who are driven by blind, irrational hatred.
Again I repeat the point because it is so important: the paradoxical principle the Jews learned from the Christian Holocaust in ancient Rome is nothing new and unknown that cannot be found in text books of modern sociology, social psychology or political science. So it is not a case of me advancing something new or novel that I happen to have cooked up in my dull and humble brain. I would be exceedingly immodest, if not downright conceited, if I were to attempt taking credit for this observation already widely known in academia.
In the case of scorn against the Jews, Augustine cited the opinion, common in Roman society, which was recorded by the Stoic Roman philosopher Seneca, who said of the Jews: “The customs of this detestable race have become so prevalent that they have been adopted in almost all the world. The vanquished have imposed their laws on the conquerors.”
3. THE JEWISH ENIGMA
Seneca, in his opinion, actually revealed an enigma about the Jews that further draws unique attention to these people, unlike anything else that can be said of any other nation or ethnic group. Here’s the enigma: How can such a universally despised and scorned people at the same time have such a force in their ways so as to compel such serious attention that their biblical, moral code (epitomized in their “Ten Commandments”) has so influenced and affected the legal systems of the world?
Such are the Jews and such is their enigmatic uniqueness: despised but powerful by God’s design. Thus, in my personal opinion, there is just no doubt about it, the Jews stand out uniquely as a people like no other nation or people can claim of their history and/or culture. As a Christian and a Gentile, I firmly believe that I can say without hesitation that you can hate the Jews all you like, like Hitler and his Nazis did, and like Iran’s Mahmud Ahmadineyad does along with other radical Muslims, but you cannot destroy the Jews.
The reason why you cannot destroy the Jews is because the Jews were called into existence, and have been established on the earth as an indestructible people, by the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Such a God will not spare the “rod of discipline” to punish his covenant people profoundly in the case of extreme disobedience. He has done this in the case of Old Testament idolatry.
But even in the midst of such disobedience and punishment, God will never irrevocably and utterly forsake the Jews. He will see to it that they are never destroyed. That’s the long and the short of why the Jews have been around for over 4,000 thousands years, why they are still with us, and why they will just not disappear.
But why did the Lord God so raise and establish the Jews as an indestructible people? In different language, this same question was asked in a Library Journal review of Max Dimont’s book, “The Indestructible Jews”: “The vitality and longevity of Jewish culture raises the question: How did this tenacious people survive throughout history when many other cultures and religions were annihilated or absorbed?”
The answer to this question is found in the same Holy Scripture (the biblical Old Testament) that Muslims, Christians and Jews subscribe to. The answer, according to the words of the biblical prophet Isaiah, to why the Jews are around and are indestructible is because their existence, putting aside for the moment the issue of the grand physical universe itself, represents the most empirically direct evidence we have that the Lord God of the Bible does indeed exist.
In other words, according to the holy prophet Isaiah, the one and only reason why the Jews exist is because their one and only purpose for being is to be, through their recorded history and present existence, a direct witness to the existence of the biblical God: “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD. “I have chosen you as my servant so that you can know and believe in me and understand that I am the one [God]. No god was formed before me, and there will be none after me” (Isaiah 43:10).
The prophet Isaiah addressed these words to the Jews themselves; but the same words now serve as public notice to the world explaining why the Jews exist and why over 4,000 years no one has been able to annihilate their existence.
To annihilate the Jews would therefore be equivalent to proving that the biblical God, who established and protects the Jews’ survival, even in the midst of threatened extinction, does not exist. Given this, radical Muslims and all other Jew-haters who at the same time say they believe in the Old Testament words of Scripture and, specifically, the words of Isaiah the prophet, are therefore in need of coming to terms with this ineradicable reality.
Based on this knowledge and understanding, and especially as confirmed by the utterance of their prophet Isaiah, the Jews as testimonial or testifying witnesses to the reality of the biblical God is what the Jews throughout their history have unequivocally asserted and testified of themselves to be. The consciousness of this is deeply ingrained in Jewish experience. This, to repeat the most important point being made, is the sole reason for the Jews’ existence. It is the one overarching commission they have received from the biblical God. This is so much the case that apart from this function as witnesses to the reality of the biblical God, it is as if there was no other reason for the Jews’ existence.
Does this mean that the Jews can do no wrong as a nation simply because they are God’s chosen witnesses? Not according to the Jews’ own Holy Scripture, the Torah. For in the Torah’s warnings of curses to come in the case of extreme disobedience (see Deuteronomy 28:15 ff.), such warnings already presuppose the possibility of Jewish disobedience and wrongdoing.
4. THE STRENGTH OF THE JEWS AS WITNESSES
According to recorded Bible history, God actually, literally, directly and personally chose the Jews as an entire nation to be his eyewitnesses, to tell the whole world of the reality of his existence, of his nature and of his will.
As Americans living today, we never saw George Washington or Benjamin Franklin or were there during the revolutionary war against the British that finally achieved American independence. But, unless we are candidates for the insane asylum, any properly educated American with a sound mind will trust without question the testimony of American history recorded in the school books that the American founding fathers literally existed and that the events surrounding their lives actually took place.
Likewise with Jewish recorded history, every person who becomes acquainted with the Jewish witness (or testimony) to the biblical God has to make the choice of whether to believe the correctness or authenticity of Jewish history with respect to the biblical God, as recorded in the biblical Old Testament, or not to pay serious attention to it. The Jewish “witness” may come either directly from the Jewish community itself or through Jesus Christ, who as the Jew that he was, himself testified to the veracity and reliability of Jewish biblical history.
Faith: A Juridical Decision
In a sense, faith in the biblical God of the Jews is definitely not a faith in faith, a blind “I believe because I believe” proposition. It is instead a decision arrived at on the basis of a juridical process. By “juridical process” I mean that the process is like a courtroom jury deciding on whether to convict or acquit someone, in this case the Jews, based on their testimony as witnesses who testify concerning what they saw and/or heard and then comparing their testimony with what one already knows directly about human nature, human existence and the whole physical universe.
This process, in other words, is one of a rational deliberation leading to a decision, for or against, biblical faith which is ultimately based on Jewish biblical history. In this case, however, it is a matter of convicting or acquitting an entire nation of bearing false witness. Moreover, there are personal consequences that are forthcoming to each individual “juror” regardless of which way they decide.
In this sense, this process of decision-making is different than that of a conventional jury because, in this case, each “juror” will themselves receive a “judgment,” depending on how they decide. But insofar as the analogy fits that of jurors making a judgment based on the credibility of eye witnesses, the biblical God may indeed exist because the testimony of the entire Jewish nation is not one to be lightly dismissed as false witness.
Unlike, for example, what is world opinion of nations like Somalia with its piracy, ruthless warlords and violent, chaotic political life and of Nigeria with its unfortunate reputation for scams and frauds, there is much to the Jewish people that attests to their integrity as a people and nation. Let me now mention a few such things that make the Jews stand out head and shoulders above all peoples when it comes to a highly civilized integrity.
The Jews are an exceedingly moral and spiritual people with great zeal for the biblical God, whose eyewitnesses they are. They are unstoppable and indestructible and they thrive wherever history takes them. No matter who puts them down, they always rise again. Out of their ranks have come the most illustrious leaders in all fields of endeavor and their intellectual capacity is always top-notch and second to none.
The history of the Jews is a history that has fulfilled biblical prophecy which is thousands of years old; this attests to the special attention that the biblical God in unbroken continuity continues to place on the Jewish nation; it is all to fulfill and preserve the special calling for which the biblical God ordained their existence.
1. It was prophesied that, in spite of all their extreme disobedience and all the suffering God would allow to happen to them as a result, the Jews would never be annihilated as a nation; they would be preserved by God and continue to exist, no matter what; and it happened:
Jeremiah 30:10-11 NASB: “But as for you, have no fear, my servant Jacob, says the Lord, and do not be dismayed, O Israel; for I am going to save you from far away, and your offspring from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease, and no one shall make him afraid. For I am with you, says the Lord, to save you; I will make an end of all the nations among which I scattered you, but of you I will not make an end.”
Thus, by God’s doing, Israel or the Jewish nation has become an eternal, indestructible nation that God will preserve “by any means necessary” because of his covenant with them and because they are his indispensable eyewitnesses.
2. It was prophesied that a day would come when the Jewish nation, dispersed and split apart as it was throughout the nations of the world, would once again be gathered and assembled together and it happened. It happened when the Jews were set up again in their former lands in Palestine, as tragic a disaster as this proved to be for the Palestinians who were displaced in the process of biblical prophecy fulfillment.
However, because the world seeks a peaceful resolution to this dilemma and Israel has expressed that it seeks such a resolution, we must all, Christians, Muslims and Jews, keep struggling, hoping and praying until some agreeable compromise between the contending parties somehow evolves.
Alas! Who can resist God’s non-rational will to do, with absolute sovereignty, what he wants, where he wants, when he wants, though grievous human suffering may be caused by this. Even Muslim doctrine teaches that nothing happens except what Allah wills to happen and that he in his sovereign determination will do what he wants and all must submit to his sovereign will. With Muslims believing that their “Allah” is the same “Jehovah” God of the Jewish Old Testament under a different name, then I would respectfully request all Muslims of good will to consider the following prophesy of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah:
“[God] will raise a signal for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth” (Isaiah 11:12 NASB). In fulfillment of this biblical prophecy, many biblical scholars are of the opinion that this is what happened when God caused the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland.
At this point, I am compelled to express that, in my most humble opinion, a final, enduring solution to the currently ongoing Jewish-Muslim peace process, which is now at an impasse, cannot be attained by a political settlement alone. I believe it will also require some kind of dramatic religious accommodation or adjustment hammered out between Muslims, Christians and Jews. I have an idea of how this might work out, but it is beyond the scope of this article to set this forth.
In any case, to return to the Jews as eyewitnesses of the biblical God, the witness of the Jews to the reality of this God include eyewitness testimony of many recorded special events attesting to the real existence of such a God. These special events were events that these rational, intelligent and moral people saw with their own eyes (as an entire nation).
As we find America’s unfolding history faithfully recorded in school history books, so this Jewish nation faithfully recorded the authenticity of their historical events for posterity, faithfully passing the information from generation to generation.
These events have been attested to by the Jews as a nation throughout their history. It is not the testimony of single, individual Jews or of a few Jews on the fringes of the Jewish community; it is instead the testimony of an entire nation of highly moral, highly educated, highly professional, reliable and industrious people. The recorded special events include the account of their great leader Moses having had a literal and personal confrontation with the biblical God when at Mt. Sinai, this God personally dictated and gave Moses the renowned “ten moral commandments.”
In addition, there have been spectacular miracles performed by the God of the Jews that are attested by this nation as having literally happened. These have been miracles performed by various of the Jewish prophets, one of them, for example, is the following in which the biblical God proved his existence to his chosen Jewish people:
The Jewish prophet Elijah, in order to prove to his people that the God of the Bible was real and that Elijah was his prophet, first built an altar in which to offer ox meat as a burnt offering to the biblical God. To build the altar, Elijah took 12 stones and arranged them together to make the altar with wood piled on top. Elijah then dug a circular trench around the stone altar, making it deep enough to hold about 11 quarts of a type of vegetable seed. After this, he cut pieces of ox meat and placed them on the wood on top of the altar. Finally, he had the people pour much water over the ox meat and the wood until the water cascaded down into the trench around the altar, filling the trench with the seed already there.
Then the following events are recorded in biblical Jewish history as to what followed:
1 Kings 18:36-39 NRSV: “At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, ‘O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.’ Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even evaporated the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.'”
I repeat again that this is the testimony of an entire nation of people and not just that of a few individuals. It is, to repeat again, the testimony of a highly moral, highly educated, highly professional, highly civilized, highly reliable and industrious people. Following are more characteristics that make this Jewish nation so credible in its testimony:
In spite of repeated attempts to annihilate them from the face of the earth, the Jewish people have survived intact for thousands of years. From the time of Abraham (the first Jew) to the present, Jewish history spans a length of approximately 4,000 years at least. There is no other people or nation in the world whose history can be compared to that of the Jews in the unbroken continuity they have maintained as one and the same people and in their determined witness to the reality of the biblical God. The very fact they are still around, while other peoples or nations that existed early in Jewish history have disappeared as the uniquely identifiable people that they were is a miracle in itself; this in itself may be considered compelling evidence that the biblical God has preserved and is preserving the Jews, against all odds, to absolutely assure that their God-given mission to be his eyewitnesses may never fails.
It is true and worth repeating that other human groups or peoples have appeared in history and lived for a time, but they eventually intermarried and mixed themselves with those of other ethnic groups and thus were absorbed and disappeared as the uniquely identifiable nations that they were. The Jews, however, represented by a core remnant of all Jews who ever lived, did not mix with other nations and thus did not disappear; their witness to the biblical God, as well as their traditions, have therefore remained intact and consistently the same throughout their total history from the time they began as a people at the beginnings of rational human history several thousands of years ago to the present.
In conclusion therefore, as one member of a “jury” of millions of rational people who have considered this testimony out of recorded Jewish history, I have decided to acquit the Jews of falsehood in their recoded biblical history. It is for this reason at the foundation of all other reasons that I have concluded that the biblical God of the Jews exists; it is all based on what I deem to be credible Jewish national testimony for the reasons above stated. Included here is my acceptance that the biblical God is real, invisible though he may be (objections to the invisibility of the biblical God were addressed in Parts 2 and there’s more to come).
This is the basis of biblical faith; but, specifically, of MY biblical faith that serves me quite well (for all practical purposes) to transcend the existential non-rational. My faith, therefore, stands or falls on the testimony of the Jews as to the veracity of their history and of their God as it is recorded in the Bible’s Old Testament. If you can prove beyond all doubt to the Jews as a nation that their biblical testimony amounts to utterly false witness, then you will have succeeded in shaking my faith in the biblical God.
