Author: C. L. Bolt
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Initial Thoughts On the Recent Annihilationism Debate and Some Serious Concerns About Chris Date
Here are my initial and probably only comments on the recent debate between Chris Date and Joshua “RazorsKiss” Whipps.
Chris Date struck me as someone who knew well what he was doing in terms of argumentative style and debate strategy. He was well prepared. His opening statement focused upon biblical texts that addressed the topic of the debate. He frequently utilized sources that his opponent held in high esteem. He spoke quickly but clearly and exhibited a smooth presentation throughout the course of the debate.
Joshua Whipps came out of the gate strong as well, using Van Tilian catch phrases …
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Theistic Arguments and the Necessity of God
There are many different types of necessity.
Logical Necessity and the Ontological Argument
A logically necessary entity exists in every possible world. (A “possible world” is just a logically possible state of affairs.) That is, there is no logically possible state of affairs in which a logically necessary entity does not exist.
The ontological argument seeks to demonstrate, among other things, that God is a logically necessary entity. Since God is the greatest possible being, there is no logically possible state of affairs in which God does not exist. It is greater for God to exist in every possible …
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Two Arguments for Everlasting Hell
Argument from the Infinity of God
As Augustine and Jonathan Edwards pointed out, it is not enough to ask merely what some sin is that requires judgment, but whom it is that sin is against. Shooting your neighbor’s dog does not merit as great of a punishment as shooting your neighbor, because the offense is much greater in the second case. If you have an infinitely good God then you have a great offense against that God. The greatest! (It is no objection to say that the meaning of “infinite” in the context of God’s goodness or nature is …
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The Arrogance of the “Impossibility of the Contrary”
A lot of people have problems with the “impossibility of the contrary” claim often made as part and parcel of the covenantal or presuppositional apologetic method. A lot of people. And they have problems with it for very different reasons. I will address only two of them here.
The first is exclusivity. To say that anything contrary to some given position is impossible is to make a very bold claim to exclusivity. I am not going to enter into the various senses in which the covenantal apologist might be using the term “impossibility” here. But it will suffice to …
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The “Self-Attestation” of Scripture (Part 1)
People (and I mean believers and unbelievers alike) are generally confused about the so-called “self-attestation” of Scripture. Let’s think about the concept of self-attestation outside of the context of Scripture.
To “attest” is to declare that something is the case. For example, “The sky appears to be blue.”
Now consider another example, “This sentence appears on a website.” The sentence declares something to be the case. But its declaration is about itself. The sentence makes the claim that it appears on a website. In this sense it is self-attesting.
Or consider one more example, “This sentence is true.” The …
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Paul Baird On His Informal Discussion With Me
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“The Kingdom Come” Interviews James Anderson On Presuppositionalism
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The New Atheism: Logical Positivism for the Masses
Over the course of the last year or so I have become increasingly convinced that the so-called New Atheism is merely a popular form of the now thoroughly rebutted, outdated and extinct radical empiricist philosophy of logical positivism.
In the last several weeks I have happened upon a few atheist sites that make the connection explicit.
Some time ago I left a comment on Triablogue in which I claimed, “As classical foundationalists and naive evidentialists, fundamentalist atheists are the flat-earthers of philosophy.” (Dustin Segers later used the “flat-earthers of philosophy” phrase in one of his exchanges.)
The same is …
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Finally an articulate, enlightened comment from a non-Christian blogger…
…[Chris Bolt] is probably trying to find a space in his bible that would accept him writing in his answers in crayon. Sadly those Pre-schooler crayons are so large at the tip they don’t quite look the same as the print in the actual bible… Hey I got an idea, he can grab one of those Children’s Bibles that you used to see on late night infomercials… that always seemed to bother me, why would they market a product for kids to insomniacs and drug addicts? Or are Christian children predisposed to insomnia (due to fear of God coming out
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While I’m feeling cranky…
Let me note that the norm from here on out on my posts will be for the comments to be closed. If you don’t like that, or want to address something that I write, then you can get your own blog (they are actually available for free on the Internet) or contact the site through some other means. I find that most people are skimming the posts and then writing on something that has already been addressed or they are writing about something totally unrelated to the post. Most comments are far too long and far too unhelpful for me …