naturalism – La Vista Church of Christ

Naturalism Is an Illogical Faith

Jeffrey Hamilton — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 17:08:17 +0000

by Terry Wane Benton

Although naturalists claim to base their naturalist worldview on science, they actually do not and cannot do so.

This is so because science is limited to the study of the natural world. Science tells us what the world is made of and how and why it functions. Naturalism, on the other hand, makes claims about the origin of the natural world, something that is beyond the capacity of science.

Time began with the creation, and the creation had a beginning. But what was before time and the creation? Whatever it was, the scientific method cannot study it. It is outside of the limitations of time and the material universe.

The scientific method has yet to demonstrate that life, much less the wide variety of life forms, could invent itself just from lifeless chemicals mixing accidentally and reacting. Life comes from life, and that would imply that there is an eternal living source from which all earthly life derives. Intelligence comes from intelligence, and that would imply that there is an eternal, living, intelligent being from which all earthly living intelligence derives.

Naturalism can never account for life, mind, intelligence, conscience, moral sense of right and wrong. Naturalism is a vain effort to explain what cannot be explained by lifeless material or chemicals accidentally mixing and watching the reactions. Naturalism is a philosophy, a religious belief, but it is not a proven or probable fact. Therefore, it is not knowledge.

There is a claim that God is the Creator. There is proof that God has spoken (Hebrews 1:1-2). Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that there is a God who reveals secrets. He gave the dream of the king and then told the interpretation, showing him the far distant future. Starting with the Babylonian kingdom and arriving at the fourth, the Roman, the God of heaven would set up His own kingdom that would never be destroyed (Daniel 2:44f). The king was Jesus, and His kingdom was not earthly, but one that man could never destroy. His kingdom has stood so far about 2000 years. The church of Christ is greater than all four of those temporal earthly kingdoms. The God who sent Jesus brought down those kingdoms just as He said He would, and brought in Jesus and His indestructible kingdom just as He said He would. Those words could only be foreseen and spoken by a power and wisdom above our own. Daniel proved in time that God had indeed spoken. Therefore, God is real, and His claim to have created the universe and life is verified.

Naturalism did not and could not make itself. Naturalism can never be true or prove itself true. It starts wrong and ends wrong in its conclusions about the origin and history of the universe and life. God created the heavens and the earth is the only reasonable explanation. God’s testimony is true, and it will never be proven untrue by a blind religious philosophy of naturalism.

"All things were created by Him and without Him nothing was made that was made" (John 1:3).

Materialistic Naturalism: Is There Really a Spirit Realm?

Jeffrey Hamilton — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:10:52 +0000

by Terry Wane Benton

To show that God has spoken (Hebrews 1:1-2) from His realm into ours, we would need words from Him that would demonstrate knowledge and power over our future. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar of such a God who reveals secrets. (Read Daniel 2). He told Nebuchadnezzar what he dreamed and what the dream meant. He claimed that this was how God revealed the future. He said that his dream involved him (Nebuchadnezzar) and three consecutive kingdoms that would follow his. He told him that his kingdom would fall to the Medes and Persians, then that kingdom would fall to the Greeks, and then that kingdom would fall to a fourth, which turned out to be the Roman Empire. He said that during that fourth kingdom God would set up a different and everlasting kingdom, one that would not fall as earthly kingdoms do. This prophecy in chapter 2 combines with a detailed prophecy in chapter 9.

Now, at this point, the Israelites had been taken captive by the Babylonians, and the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and Jeremiah had said that the captivity would last 70 years. However, Chapter 9 prophesied that there would be a call to rebuild the temple, and within a certain amount of time after the temple was rebuilt, the Messiah would come to put an end to sin and bring in everlasting righteousness. He would be “cut off” (die), and on the wings of abominations, the temple would be destroyed again.

These are predictions that transcend the ability of human wisdom alone to predict. They demonstrate by coming true that there is a greater power outside of our realm that communicates words beyond the ability of human imagination. The claim of being a revelation from God’s mind to the human mind, as expressed in Daniel, is proof that “there is a God who reveals secrets.”

While some have tried to explain away these words of foreknowledge, they fail to prove their case. Some tried to make Daniel to have been a fake who wrote after the events, but that doesn’t work because the latest people who could claim a fake Daniel would be about 164 BC, which is way before the Roman Empire and still yet way before the Messiah and the last destruction of the temple in AD 70. They would need this Daniel to write after AD 70, but they know they can’t so they come up with another option, and that is to make these words refer to the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his desecration (defiling) of the temple in 171 BC, and then make the “Messiah” refer to the High Priest Onias III, but that doesn’t work either. While the temple was desecrated by Antiochus and Onias III was killed away from Jerusalem, the temple remained standing. The Maccabees waged war and regained the temple, claiming that all this was not “destruction” but rather a “chastening” from the Lord. So, that evil period came nowhere near fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel.

Only God could predict that series of kingdoms and say that the fourth kingdom would be when He would send His King and Kingdom (the Messiah). The Maccabean period was not part of the fourth kingdom period, and it did not coincide with the destruction of the temple. That was all connected to Jesus and Jesus alone. The temple, Jesus said, was to fall in that very generation (Matthew 24:1-35), and it did. Who could lay all of that out hundreds of years in advance? Only a supernatural power could speak it and, hundreds of years later, make it happen. So, God has really spoken!

But, there is so much more about the Bible that makes me know this is not just human wisdom put in human words. These are divine words brought into human words. You can see many more prophecies of Jesus and numerous ways that God embedded the image of Jesus’ work into the words of the Old Testament. It is as if He guided the choice of events and, underneath, superimposed the image of Jesus. Hundreds of Old Testament narratives serve a dual purpose: to recount the immediate event, yet word it in a way that reveals something about Jesus beneath the surface. This is beyond the wisdom of men and reveals a supernatural wisdom that predicted events way ahead of time, also embedding word-images of Jesus so that man could not claim every prophecy was retrofitted to make it appear as if it were fulfilled. Embedded imagery is another way God takes away the arguments that the Bible is a product of human wisdom.

Materialistic Naturalism: Is There Anything Beyond?

Jeffrey Hamilton — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:45:56 +0000

by Terry Wane Benton

Many are those today who sincerely believe that only the things we see and observe now with our senses are real. They won’t allow for God and angels or demons unless they can test them with the “scientific method,” which just so happens to be limited to one kind of evidence. I have been privy to some insiders information regarding things outside this realm. Though I cannot give the materialistic naturalist the kind of evidence he demands, he can never convince me that he knows enough even about the material universe to perceive it correctly as “the handy work of God” (Psalms 19), much less to convince me that he knows that there is nothing outside the material realm.

Most will simply say they remain unconvinced of God until or unless He provides evidence they can use their “method” of testing on. Is there merit to the idea that material naturalism is all there is because our observational tests are only designed to discover all truth through these kinds of tests alone?

Many have not been fully convinced that the Naturalist is on the right track of thought, so they have sought ways to detect “spirits” and “ghosts” with devices of human make. Some have even sat by a dying person’s bed trying to detect with photography and other devices when a spirit leaves a body, thinking this will prove that there are spirits and therefore a “spiritual” realm that really exists.

While I am sure that spirits are real and there is a spiritual realm that is not detectable through the senses and devices used to help the senses perceive this reality, I am privy to amazing testimony from that spiritual realm to this one. I would point out that the natural man cannot “know” or receive “the things of the Spirit of God” (I Corinthians 2:14) because "they are spiritually discerned." The apostles of Jesus confidently claimed “God has revealed them to us through His Spirit” (I Corinthians 2:10). Paul confidently claimed “we have the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16). He got what the Spirit revealed because “no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” and only by the Spirit revealing these things do the apostles “know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (I Corinthians 2:12).

Earlier Paul said that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard” the things which God prepared for those who love Him (I Corinthians 2:9). So, using this method, many call the “scientific method”, knowledge gained only through the senses of sight and sound, observation, etc. one could not know the things of God. This was not the way to gain this knowledge. That is for natural world studies, but this knowledge comes from God’s mind to the apostle’s mind through revelation, not imagination, nor through observational science.

Now the apostles wrote it down for us to read so that we can know what they knew by direct revelation (Ephesians 3:3-5). Therefore, the so-called “scientific method” does not apply to this type of knowledge. To know God and the things of God, we must turn to finding and learning what God has revealed. Paul also recognized that the “carnally (earthly and fleshly) minded” and the “spiritually minded” are poles apart in outlook and viewpoint (Romans 8:6). He said, “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7). The “spiritual mind” has already opened to seek and find the things of God by virtue of believing in spiritual things.

Testimony from God is in the form of revelation, and revelation is left for our study in the inspired scriptures. The scriptures walk us through various times that God has “spoken” to us “at various times and various ways” (Hebrews 1:1) and how He has finally “spoken to us through His Son.”

Can we be certain that the spiritual world truly exists? Can we be certain that revelation really comes to us from a real God who knows all things? When we put the Bible to the test, it shows foreknowledge, knowledge that men cannot project, guess, or read from world events. Foreknowledge is an ability beyond this world. Someone beyond this world can see the past and future and arrange for the future to unfold in our favor. We can plan things within the range of our time, skill, and ability, but have no real control over what will happen. It may work out, or it may be altered and changed due to circumstances beyond our control. However, someone who can predict the future and ensure it happens is proof of otherworldly capabilities.

Genesis Challenges Naturalism

Jeffrey Hamilton — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 19:09:53 +0000

by Terry Wane Benton

The opening chapters of this revelation to Moses defied the premises of naturalism and superstitious paganism. Genesis announced to the Israelites who saw the Red Sea open for them and close on the Egyptians that the same God was the One who originally created the heavens, earth, and all manner of life. Moses writes Genesis to get the Israelites, who had been slaves in Egypt for a long time, to begin separating from their thoughts the phony and superstitious gods of Egypt and understand the Almighty Creator God who also delivered them. There has always been one Almighty Invisible Creator, and all the gods made by human hands were no gods at all.

One thing we can realize from the claim that God created all things is that it makes as much sense as the fact that “every house is built by someone” (Hebrews 3:4). Observational knowledge makes us aware that no house builds itself. Every house is built by someone, and from that we can easily discern that this universe did not build itself, and life did not build itself.

Put all the parts of a house in close proximity, nails, boards, electric wire, fixtures, plumbing, sockets, shingles, etc. Just watch “nature” work to build that house on its own. Well wait! In time, it will assemble itself, won’t it? Give it a million years! Surely we could see a house in a million years? Well, no! What we have now is the wood rotted away, the nails rusted away, and nature did nothing but destroy the parts. No house ever builds itself. You will need an intelligent designer and worker to build the material into a functioning house. Naturalism is not an argument for a house, and a house is not nearly as complex as a living cell.

Genesis postulates that only God could have started our universe of space, time, and matter, as He is outside of space, time, and matter, and only He is living and eternal, the two qualities that must be eternally self-existing in order to create our universe and life.

Genesis is a testimonial declaration that nature itself had a start, but nature could not and did not start itself. The claim of God is not the proof of God, but the claim with the evident design and functionality of the house (our heaven and earth with intelligent life) is proof of the claim: “every house is built by someone” (Hebrews 3:4), and naturalism is but an empty claim with no proof.

We don’t have to see or know who built the house to know that the order and design show a living intelligence was at work, and naturalism wasn’t.

You Believe the Bible? Hilarious!

Jeffrey Hamilton — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:28:54 +0000

by Terry Wane Benton

They looked at me as if I was some odd, foolish, and gullible person who got conned into believing a fairytale. Because of my studies, I look back at them with pity and sadness, and they don’t realize that they were the ones conned into believing the fairytale that everything got here by accidents of a “nature” that itself formed from nothing by accident. Their “book” of nature is pure fiction. In contrast, my book is history of how the Creator created the universe, the world, and life and interacted with man to reveal and confirm with eyewitness testimony the historical interactions.

Actual people and places, confirmed by archaeology, with the genealogy and essential details of prophecy, types, and shadows of the larger plan, come together in the records of the Bible to present a credible historic case for God and the plan to bring Jesus into the world for our deeper internal needs. Failure to read the testimony leaves people listening only to the doubters and critics and forming opinions without studying the evidence presented. The critics assume their position regarding the Bible is reasonable without actually studying its testimony as testimony. Those who laugh it off are like those who laugh off the truth that threatens their intellectual smugness. They trust men who told them that doubt in the Bible is reasonable while belief in it is unreasonable. They swallowed the prejudice and laughed at the ignorance of Bible believers. All the while, they are ignorant, without knowing how ignorant they really are. (See Ephesians 4:17-21).

If you start by assuming that nature developed itself naturally without supernatural involvement, then you tend to build on that assumption for the rest of your assumptions. The starting domino in your outlook set up the rest of your philosophical dominoes, and now you have become smug in thinking it is the only legitimate outlook. But there are certain scientific facts you conveniently forgot. Facts like order does not form itself from disorder and chaos, an explosion, and the material that exploded had to come from something eternal since the material is not itself eternal in nature. Life can only come from life and cannot form itself from lifeless matter. Therefore, something was eternally living for life to be.

Naturalism is a philosophy, not a scientific fact. To assume that nature is all there is or ever was is an unprovable and unscientific assumption that it is a pure fairytale. It is like a prince coming from a frog, a frog turning into a prince by a kiss. It says that we may assume that matter does not need an explanation as to its origin, and life does not need explanation as to its origin, and we can start with it already in place and assume the already formed “nature” is all there is. From that quite laughable assumption, men have ruled out even giving God a fair hearing when God is the only reasonable starting point. Hearing His testimony in the Bible is quite reasonable and the only reasonable beginning point. This is why the Proverb writer declares, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). If you don’t start there, you will not know the truth, and you will not be truly wise. You will actually be basing your whole outlook on the most foolish fairytale of all, that nothing can start something, give it life, give it mind, give it conscience, and all without an eternal supernatural source.

The philosophy of naturalism is passed around as knowledge, but it cannot hold any validity. It builds human pride and plants intellectual snobbery, but the laughs that look scornfully at the very idea of God is foolishness (Psalms 14:1) that is without excuse (Romans 1:20; Psalms 19). Scholars and Bible archaeologists know that the Bible is a very reliable source of testimony. Humble students of the Bible are amazed at how credible and powerful that testimony is, and they live seriously by it.

In the words of one of Jesus’ many eyewitnesses, Paul, who had been unbelieving Saul, said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16) and “faith comes by hearing the word of God” (Romans 10:17). How real and powerful is that amazing testimony!

The Evolutionist’s Creation Story, Inspired by Naturalism

Jeffrey Hamilton — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:29:00 +0000

by Abraham Smith

Naturalism: A theory denying that an event or object has a supernatural significance.

Once upon a time billions of years ago, everything that has ever been came from a little ball called the cosmic egg. At that time it was heated to trillions of degrees. It was so hot that not even elements could exist. No one knows where it came from. No one knows how long it sat around. For some strange reason it exploded and began to expand. No one knows why.

In that explosion, only two things were created, hydrogen and helium. There was no carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, nickel, iron or uranium. These gases expanded equally and evenly throughout space in all directions. The universe was mainly just hydrogen. Somehow from these molecules racing out evenly at enormous speed stars created themselves. Then galaxies created themselves. Our solar system created itself. Life evolved on this planet. And that first speck of microorganistic life evolved all the way into people. No God is to be included in explaining this universe according to this story, because everything can be explained without him.

We have 30 trillion cells in our bodies of more than 200 kinds. Included in that number is 12 billion brain cells. Since each brain cell is connected to 10,000 other brain cells, we have about 120 trillion connections in the human brain. Regardless of our imperfections, our brains can interpret and process the amount of information from our eyes in a 10th of a second, where a Cray Supercomputer would require 100 years to do the same.

According to this evolution creation story we have gone from hydrogen gas to people. We may thus conclude that the definition of hydrogen gas is an odorless, tasteless and invisible gas that if given enough time will become people.

Living cells are composed of many interdependent parts. Not one molecule in existence can replicate itself apart from a living cell. Then how did the first living cell come into existence? As the story goes, there was a massive buildup of organic molecules.

No one knows how this happened. If the early atmosphere had free oxygen, the oxygen would have destroyed the organic molecules. If the early atmosphere had no free oxygen, then there would have been no ozone layer and the molecules would have been destroyed by radiation. But as long as our faith in this creation story is strong enough, this unsurpassable difficulty will not matter.

Scientists who believe in evolution say that the rocks that allegedly predate life are totally absent of any of the massive amounts of organic products necessary for life to begin. Some of that material would have certainly been trapped in those rocks if in fact the organic products ever existed. But faith in evolution will solve that problem too!

Since no cell could exist without proteins, which are assembled from amino acids, and since no molecule apart from a living cell can replicate itself, we should calculate the probability that one such protein could create itself by chance. Ribonuclease is a digestive enzyme and is also one of the smallest proteins with only 124 amino acid links. The probability of this enzyme coming into existence by chance is one in a number that starts with two and is followed by 161 zeroes. If one trillion such amino acid chains were formed every second, the number of years needed for just the right one to happen once begins with 1 and is followed by 141 zeroes: zillions times zillions the alleged age of the universe itself! If you have strong faith in the evolution creation story, you will accept that it must have happened somehow.

If one such protein formed by chance, we need at least 2,000 others to have a working cell. All of these proteins would have to form at the same place and time, and they would have to form inside the safe haven of the immensely complicated cell membrane. No one knows how this could happen.

Evolutionary scientists tell us that they have found microscopic fossils embedded in rocks predating all other forms of life. Then, all of a sudden, nearly every major group of organisms appeared. This is the famed Cambrian explosion. Where did these animals come from? Our evolution story says that they evolved from animals that existed before them. But the problem is that there are absolutely no fossils predating these animals from which they could have evolved. If microscopic organisms can leave fossils, surely any animal could have as well.

Evolution scientists tell us 100 million years transpired between these invertebrates of Cambrian time and the arrival of fishes. 100 million years of evolution and no one has the slightest idea of what invertebrate was ancestral to these fishes. Suddenly they appeared in the fossil record without a trace of what they could have evolved from. But if your faith is strong enough in evolution, this will be no problem for you.

There are other unbridgeable gaps the rest of the way through the fossil record from amoeba to man. But never mind, just use your imagination. So much for the creation story of evolution.

There is no credible evidence that supports the evolutionary creation story. Creationists have always acknowledged that there have been small changes like those in fruit flies or those because of diet. We acknowledge that God in creating basic kinds has allowed for changes within those basic types. Evolutionists without justification have assumed that evidence of these small changes necessarily implies evidence that a microbe could change into you.

We agree with Phillip Johnson when he said, "We can point to a mystery and call it 'evolution,' but this is only a label. The important question is not whether scientists have agreed on a label, but how much they know about how complex living beings like ourselves came into existence,"["Darwin on Trial"].

Often, objections to the theory of evolution are dismissed as nothing but the echoes of religion. But as we can see from this story, there are substantive scientific issues at stake. If as Richard Dawkins has said, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist," then the evolutionists are hardly in any position to look down their collective noses at a large majority of people who don't buy their version of creation.

naturalism – La Vista Church of Christ

Naturalism Is an Illogical Faith

Materialistic Naturalism: Is There Really a Spirit Realm?

Materialistic Naturalism: Is There Anything Beyond?

Genesis Challenges Naturalism

You Believe the Bible? Hilarious!

The Evolutionist’s Creation Story, Inspired by Naturalism

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