Opus 2025-547: Whom Do You Blame?

I’ve been listening to a Matt Fradd interview with David Wood?  It is three hours long but it might be worth your time.

In the conversation they were talking about Muslims who converted to Christianity and the question was asked what percentage of the Muslims who leave Islam when they find out the deceptions and false teachings move to atheism instead of Christianity?  Wood said it was a good question and he did not really have any statistics on it, but he knew that it was a good portion that did not embrace Christianity, that went on to reject all religion.  What got me interested was that their reason is the conviction if one religion lies to me, then all religious lie to me.  That’s my paraphrase.

What would happen in our world if we took that same attitude toward everything?  Now being one who doubts what climate change scientist tell us, I would be one who would simply ask if we can prove that the climate scientist are lying to us does that mean that we discount everything that all scientist say?  Some cynics would say yes.  Some skeptic you say yes.  Some open minded people might even say yes, but most of us would realize that that’s not really a fair analysis of the situation.

Move on to politics.  If we’re convinced that one politician is corrupt, does that mean that all politicians are corrupt?  As you can see this comes from the other side because most of us would tend to say yes.  But that’s not a fair comparison; not a fair way to look at things.

So we need to be looking into each situation ourselves instead of just taking other people’s words for it.  One reason I think that many people move to atheism instead of embracing Christianity is that the truth of Islam, or the false Islam, was right there in front of them.  All they had to do was read the Quran.  If they were really concerned, they could go into the Hadith.  The evidence was there, it was documented, and if they simply believe what somebody told them in the face of other people claiming it was not true, then whom does the blame lie on.

If you tell me that my favorite apples are on sale at the local grocery store and I go and order a big box of those apples, when I get the invoice and find out the actual price is not a bargain, but it’s full price, whom am I going to blame.  Am I going to blame you because they were on sale yesterday when you were there?   Am I going to blame you because you made the whole thing up?  Or am I going to be honest about it and say, “I should have looked at the price myself.”

Ultimately, the choices we make, and the direction we may go in life are based on our own personal decisions.  Yes, there are other influences and sometimes we’re forced into things we don’t want to do, but most of the time we have more to say about things that we want to admit.

So man up. Or maybe we should say person up. Above all grow up.

homo unius libri