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How Do You Know?



Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)
For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."  (Romans 1:17)
We live by faith, not by sight.  (II Corinthians 5:7)
Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith." (Galatians 3:10)
    "How do you know?" Believe it or not, this ha been an issue of debate for centuries. Someone once challenged me to read David Hume's "Cause and Effect" (Cause and Effect) The essay maintains that it is impossible to know that a given event or factor causes another. While there are some mathematical relationships that can be reasoned out, the bread that apparently nourished you yesterday may in fact poison you today, for all you know. What I recall of the conclusion is that with regard to knowing, it was despairing. We must simply cope and hope for the best.
       While we might bristle at the notion that we can't know must of anything, he is correct. We cannot actually know these things. The only way we can function in this world is by living as if we can know and that what we do know is correct, even though that knowledge is a lie. Some evolutionary scientists have admitted the same idea. They protest that people are nothing more than biological robots and that love is nothing more but chemical reactions, but they find themselves unable to live that philosophy. Their children are seen as being more than a sack full of chemicals and their love for them is beyond what they would give to a different "sack of chemicals." 
        Mr. Hume had little for Christianity except distain. Yet what he argues in his essay is the Scripture for the day: the righteous man shall live by f.a.i.t.h. He takes it even one step further, that all men live by faith. Some live by faith in God. Others live by faith merely in the material. Either way, they live as if what they believe to be true is actually true. Were it not the case, the atheist would have to spent every moment of the day wondering whether this breath will be the one that suffocates him, or the next.
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Birthday of
Amelia Jenks Bloomer
Rachel Carson
Isadora Duncan
Julia Ward Howe




 


 

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