Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Objections and Misconceptions

  • Pragmatic Point: The Failure of the Cartesian Method of Doubt

    In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes utilizes a method of doubt in order to determine whether or not there is any such thing as certainty. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce later critiques Descartes not necessarily on the basis of what many other philosophers find fault with in Descartes, but rather on the very method of doubt itself. While there appears to be plenty of room for debate about whether or not Peirce is fair to Descartes with respect to parts of Descartes’ method of doubt, Peirce is justified in the main point of his critique which …

  • Attributal Argument for God’s Ordination of Possibility

    This argument is an attempted formalization of the discussion found in my recent post God is Sovereign over Possibility. It’s intent is to demonstrate that the “all possible worlds” framework that is very commonly used is incompatible with Christian doctrine and the Scriptural revelation of the nature of the Triune God. If you have any possible defeaters, please post them in the comment section. Thanks!…

  • On Divine Simplicity and Malformed Arguments

    Reformed theology, as properly expressed, considers the doctrine of God’s unity not as the classical formulation used by Aquinas and the Scholastics, but as a unity of being; in which all attributes of God are distinct in their display, necessarily interrelated but not identical to each other, despite being differentiated expressions of God’s singular, essential nature. The Scholastics (following the lead of earlier writers) may be summed up as follows: “It is commonly said in theology that God’s attributes are God himself, as he has revealed himself to us… It was further asserted by the Scholastics that the whole essence …

  • Anthropic Arguments and Assumptions

    If God is morally perfect then He must perform the morally best actions, but creating humans is not the morally best action. If this line of reasoning can be maintained then the mere fact that humans exist contradicts the claim that God exists.

    HT: urbanphilosophy.net

    Look at the assumption required for the second half of this sentence. “creating humans is not the morally best action”. Says who? By what standard? As usual, I think we can guess what that is.

    Walker suggests that God is morally culpable for creating human beings with defective natures (defective in comparison to God’s).

    Is …

  • Tu Quoque Argument Advanced as a Primer for the Presuppositionalist Response to Evidentialist Critiques of Method

    Arguments which cut both ways are not always self-refuting, but are significantly weakened by their hypocritical nature. The activities of traditional non-presuppositionalist apologists almost always fall prey to the same objections the proponents of the traditional method advance in their critiques of presuppositionalism.

    Just today I heard a professional apologist and philosopher argue that the Transcendental Argument for God, an argument utilized within the presuppositional method of apologetics, may more or less be dismissed because an unbeliever might quite easily claim that logic is something other than what the presuppositionalist needs to portray logic as in order to make his …

  • User Error and Insufficient Requirements

    In a conversation earlier today, the objection was made that God’s Word lacked sufficient clarity, since men were always arguing over what it meant. Second, the objection was made that if Scripture was sufficiently clear, we would not need teachers in order to properly understand it.

  • The Problem of Religion (Part 2): Hume and Freud

    David Hume

    Hume is similar to Nietzsche in that he attacks philosophical norms, but what is pertinent to this article is that he likewise attacks religion. Hume finds many philosophical worries with religion. One of these worries is with the inadequacies of supposed proofs such as arguments from experience and miracles, which are at the core of many religions.

    Hume presents a proof for the existence of God from experience through the character Cleanthes. This is the popular argument from design, which contends that since there is in the universe design and order there must also be a designer. After …

  • The Problem of Religion (Part 1): Introduction, Descartes, and Nietzsche

    Introduction

    From within the Non-Christian worldview it may be rather easily seen that the term “religion” is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define. This is no doubt due to the subjective nature of the term once it is divorced from the Christian worldview. A number of thinkers will be discussed in this series in order to show the great difficulty of even involving oneself with philosophy of religion without a solid foundation to work from. People tend to cast upon the term their own ideas and experiences of a particular religion or philosophical categories they think pertain to religion. …

  • The Problem of Evil – Part 4

    Two Considerations for a Solution

    There are two considerations when offering a solution to the Problem of Evil from a Presuppositional standpoint. In order to look at the first, let’s reconsider the formalized statement of the problem:

    a) God is all powerful
    b) God is all loving
    c) God knows that evil exists
    d) Evil does exist
    e) Therefore, God does not exist

    Notice that this takes the form of a deductive argument, meaning that the conclusion “God does not exist” follows with necessity just as long as every one of the premises is true, and just as long as …

  • More on the Free Will Defense

    The article below on the Free Will Defense to the Problem of Evil has generated some interesting comments. Here is one that caught my attention:

    Perhaps in heaven God’s immediate presence naturally produces the desire to remain as such, which consistently trumps any potential desire to sin.

    I don’t think it is God’s presence so much as it is the fact that we have been changed from the inside out.

    Chapter 9 of the Westminster Confession of Faith states the following:

    Chapter IX

    Of Free Will

    I. God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is …