Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Objections and Misconceptions

  • All Hail Cosmic Broccoli!

    Let’s talk about ignorance. The sort that makes you drop your jaw and stare. I really couldn’t care less about the opening line; it’s the things that he says are “not in the Bible” that are amazingly bad. If what he says weren’t reposted so often by atheists, it might even be hilarious; akin to Silverman’s infamous “Bear Theism” performance he gave during the closing statement of his debate with James White in August of last year.

    The next time believers tell you that ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop

    …

  • The Atheist's Burden of Proof

    I was in a discussion today with an atheist, and the subject turned to the idea of burden of proof. It is a common claim that Christians own a burden of proof to prove that God exists, but that atheists do not own any burden at all.  Here’s my response, that outlines the reason I disagree with this:

    Many (and probably most) atheists will say they have nothing to prove at all, because atheism (a-theism) is merely being without a belief in the existence of any gods. Therefore, the only *positive* explicit assertion they are making is about their belief,

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  • skopein uses "TAG"

    Sometimes presuppositionalists are mocked for holding what they do concerning their own view being right and others being wrong. We can expect this in a largely postmodern context. After coming in on a discussion where some atheists were speaking negatively about TAG because of its affirmation of exclusivity and problems with non-Christian positions, I tried to put the point back to the atheist. A few other topics came up during the discussion. This is not the greatest of conversations but maybe someone will find something useful.

    skopein: it’s the Transcendental Argument for God.

    skopein: here is a good summary of …

  • Dr. Oliphint And The Clark/Van Til Controversy. But Wait, There's More!

    Reformed Forum had Dr. Oliphint on to speak on the Clark/Van Til controversy which I found helpful as an introduction to the issues at hand. This seems like a good discussion to start out your perusal of this controversy if you are so inclined. However the more interesting part of this discussion for me were the following locations:

    • Minute 37 God and Logic – What is the relation? What about paradox?
    • Minute 43 Transcendental Arguments and the Impossibility of the Contrary (as a methodological approach) used in non-Christian Theism.

    In the time after minute 43 the answer Dr. Oliphint gives …

  • The Phantom Menace

    One of the complaints against the use of the Transcendental Argument for God involves a denial of the claim that there are fundamentally only two worldviews. The Christian claim is that all non-Christian worldviews have at root the principle of autonomy. Autonomy is not only rebellion towards the Christian God but an active suppression of the personal knowledge of Him and a turning away to worship the creature instead of the Creator. It is a rejection of the authority of the Creator over all of reality. Van Til illustrated this using Eve and her reasoning at the time of the …

  • "Getting to God" – Thomistic Misconceptions of Van Tilian Presuppositionalism (Updated)

    David Gadbois from Green Baggins wrote the following in a comment on Fides, Ratio, et Mysterium:

    I’m definitely in the camp that doesn’t believe that Christianity is transcendentally necessary. I think the VanTilian presuppositionalists overreached in trying to make Christianity, as a package deal, into a transcendental necessity. The various transcendental arguments that have been offered really only get you as far as God’s existence, a personal and just God, not [sic] doubt, but really nothing beyond what is revealed in general revelation. God’s acts of redemption in time and space, as recorded in special revelation, were

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  • Commenting on Canon

    “Do you mean why should we accept Hebrews rather than the Gospel of Thomas as canonical?

    Well, the primary reason is because Hebrews *is* canonical, whereas the Gospel of Thomas is not.

    But then I guess you’re asking how we know that.

    I would say that it is self-attesting.

    See, self-attesting is always objective.

    This is strange to me – people usually take that to be subjective.

    I’m not talking about a subjective mark, but an objective one.

    But it presumes itself authoritative in the same way as other Scripture.

    And is qualitatively the same.

    I’m not talking about the …

  • A Stop On the Way

    Last week a few of us from CH spent some time visiting The Confessional Outhouse, a blog run by one who calls himself RubeRad. Rube asked for input on his assertion that “Christianity is falsifiable”, after appealing to I Cor. 15:14. Some great discussion ensued, and during the course of that discussion a number of tangents were launched, one of which started with the following statement by a contributor named “Michael Mann”:

    In terms of any logical transcendental argument, they could get no further then generic theism i.e, a powerful Creator and Designer is a necessary presupposition of intelligibility

    …

  • Consistency: It Burns!

    An atheist links to one of our intro posts, with the title; “The Stupid! It Burns! (covenantal edition)”. He quotes one section, and makes only a single comment.

    Lots more stupid in the original article.

    From a few posts prior, he says:

    …embeds a couple of paragraphs of argument in a dozen paragraphs consisting of ***ing and moaning that no one likes him, and gratuitous insults directed at the New Atheists: …

    He finally does mention an argument:

    So, isn’t that nice. The obvious consistency issue concerning the “gratuitous” insults complained about and then promptly offered himself is …

  • Did Van Til set Christianity alongside other worldviews?

    I was sent a link to some sort of “progressive” podcast, called “Homebrew Christianity”, with a guest named Peter Rollins. Mr. Rollins, supposedly, is a “Christian atheist”, in some existential sense. His self-description, frankly, was rambling, confused a host of categories, and was quite unintelligible. The host(s) were equally confused, rambling, and made a riproaring shambles out of every theological topic they touched. I’m more than happy to link to the podcast so you can see for yourself, being quite confident that the ideas expressed therein are self-refuting. Be that as it may, I was interested primarily because he …