Category: Objections and Misconceptions
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The Significance of God’s Sovereignty
…The Sovereignty of God is an expression that once was generally understood. It was a phrase commonly used in religious literature. It was a theme frequently expounded in the pulpit. It was a truth which brought comfort to many hearts, and gave virility and stability to Christian character. But, today, to make mention of God’s Sovereignty is, in many quarters, to speak in an unknown tongue. Were we to announce from the average pulpit that the subject of our discourse would be the Sovereignty of God, it would sound very much as though we had borrowed a phrase from one
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Open Theism and Pacifism?
Molinism advocate and apologist Wes Widner quoted Open Theist Gregory Boyd earlier today, concerning non-violence. The quote was as follows:
Any peace achieved by violence is a peace forever threatened by violence, thus ensuring that the bloody game will be perpetuated.
This is cited (but not in the tweet, for obvious reasons) from Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation, pg 27. (Excerpt of the book linked here) As no context was provided by Wes, I asked him, via Twitter, the same format I saw the quote in.
In the meantime, while waiting his reply, I performed a cursory …
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A Fristian Strikes Out
As I was browsing the Internet today I came across the following from a “John Calvin”:
“All right. So all the Fristian needs to do is to say that ‘Fristianity’ is whatever subset of Christian claims the TAGster thinks we need for preconditions of intelligibility, *except that* the Trinity is a Quadrinity.”
How does someone disprove a worldview that has the same propositions as Christianity except for the additional proposition that there is a fourth person in God?
In my view, thinking of the “preconditions of intelligibility” as a “subset of Christian claims” may be a rather substantial error, but …
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The Possibility of Middle Knowledge
I’m going to include the transcript of a discussion I had (along with several others) with a Middle Knowledge proponent that frequents AOMin’s chat channel. The reason I do so is in order to give an example of how the argument I advanced recently functions in an actual discussion.
The discussion was fairly wide-ranging, but I think demonstrates the ability of a consistent return to the nature of God as the foundation of a reply to the assertions advanced by proponents of MK and other similar philosophical systems, over against the Biblical conception of God’s nature and the modal collapse …
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Science Is Not That Simple
Science is often thought of as involving facts that are directly given to unprejudiced observers through their senses, facts that precede and are independent of theory, and facts that provide a firm basis for scientific knowledge. A.F. Chalmers argues against these widely accepted ideas.
It is widely believed that facts concerning the world around us come to us directly through the senses. This would lead us to believe that observing the world around us and recording what is seen or otherwise experienced through the senses is all there is to observation. In this way it is thought, what is seen …
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A Further Example of the Importance of Divine Simplicity
My comment: “God is not “driven by” wrath – wrath is an attribute of God’s nature.”
CMP: No, wrath is a response of another attribute, namely righteousness. But that is not really the point of this post.
…Jugulum: I actually agree w/him on “wrath”. Wrath isn’t an attr. because God’s wouldn’t be wrathful if he hadn’t created. God was/is/will-be eternally holy/righteous, which includes the trait, “I will be wrathful toward sin”. You might call that a “attr. of wrath”, but I think that was the distinction CMP was making. Similarly, God wasn’t eternally merciful, apart from a sinful creation. Mercy
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Is 2+2=4 just ink on paper?
Anna:
There is truth outside of Scripture sure, but most of it can’t be proven. There are only those things which can be scientifically proven. (1) It must be physical (touchable visible), (2) able to be observed, and (3) able to be repeated. If anything does not include these three things then we don’t know whether it is true.
We believe the Bible because it is God’s word-and everything God says is true because God is righteous, although we have no proof that there is a God – we have faith. So archeology is our only proof of the Bible.… -
Ryft Braeloch’s Response To Mitch LeBlanc Regarding TAG
Ryft Braeloch at The Aristophrenium has written Part 1 of a response to Mitch LeBlanc’s article “The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God” which is certainly worth a read.…
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Answering A Profane And Inadequate Response To The TAG
The powers that be at Choosing Hats have decided against allowing comments which contain profanity. The very nature of the site should incline people toward keeping their comments clean. However, there is still an occasional comment that requires moderation. Do not expect your comment to be given any attention if it contains profanity.
Someone wrote a “question” in response to this post regarding the self-evident nature of the basic laws of logic being “enough” to show that TAG is “a trick built upon expectations about what atheists will attempt to do out of ignorance and lack of experience with rhetoric” …
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Answering An Objection To Christian “Worldview”
There have been concerns about using Christian “worldview” in a loose fashion, or using it at all. Using the term might downplay the importance or significance of the Gospel, or imply that some people are not Christians when they really are. The danger is in taking Y to be the only position on X that is consistent with the “Christian worldview” where it is dubitable that any position on X is either consistent or inconsistent with the Christian worldview because, as one example, Scripture does not address X.
Yet it is not too difficult to see that the person raising …