On God’s “Evil” Actions

/ McFormtist / 3 Comments

Probably one of the most common objections to Christianity that we hear is one that relates to the Problem of Evil. While the problem of evil asks, “How can an Omnipotent, Good God exist with evil in the world,” this particular one asks, “How can God be ‘good’ if he has done all these evil things?” Men will object to Christianity saying that God has done evil things. And from this they conclude God either doesn’t exist, or if he does exist he is not worth believing.

We answer the former problem by demonstrating from the Bible that the …

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Problems With Authority in Classical and Evidentialist Apologetics

/ McFormtist / 7 Comments

To the extent that attempts are made in order to distinguish between the “evidentialist” and “classical” schools of apologetics, in an effort to salvage the “classical” method, these distinctions nevertheless fail to dodge the criticisms leveled at evidentialism by Van Tilian presuppositionalists. It shouldn’t strike us as very coincidental that the problem presuppositionalists have with the classical/evidentialist methods primarily concerns the presuppositions of these methods. Furthermore, that practitioners of either the classical or evidentialist methods borrow aspects from presuppositionalism (which I would argue is inevitable as long as the practitioner is at least to some extent devoted to sola scriptura…

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The Bankruptcy of Skepticism and the Glory of God

/ McFormtist / One Comment

Christianity is a naturally offensive truth. Not that it offends, but it exposes the offense that is part of the human condition and dares to hold humans responsible. The sinful nature of man, such as it is, detests any effort of the person who would dare to point at that nature and speak about it for what it is. The rebellious man has knowledge of his Creator because it is in the Creator’s image that he has been created. What the Creator of everything calls “truth” involves every single minute, meticulous detail of reality as we know it. Indeed it …

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Falsificationism And Christianity

/ McFormtist / 2 Comments

Another difficulty with religious language (and hence, Christianity) that non-religious people have concerns itself with “falsifiability,” or the aspect of any claim which states it must, in principle at least, be capable of subjecting to certain scientific criteria by which it can conceivably be proven false, in order to be considered meaningful. Like Verificationism, Falsificationism assumes an empiricist worldview, and so is subject immediately to some of the criticisms of Verificationism, including for instance, the seeming arbitrariness of the foundational principles undergirding it. Falsificationism was articulated as a way to circumvent the problems inherent in Verificationism. While Karl Popper …

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Public Display of Religion

/ McFormtist / 2 Comments

Few things really irk me in this world. There’s waking up, missing church, missing the gym, slow internet connections – to name a couple. One thing in particular that always tends to turn the knob on my internal oven, and I’ve been seeing a lot of it lately, is the insistence by the non-religious that “private religion” is to be kept out of the public realm, or that religion is to be kept out of politics, etc. I understand that, particularly with regard to Christianity, there are some debates on what a Christian body politic would look like, but my …

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Verificationism And Christianity

/ McFormtist / 5 Comments

One of the many problems atheists have with Christianity involves the issue of Verificationism. They may say, “I can’t believe Christianity because it can’t be verified,” and some might include, “…scientifically.” Some may even say, “It’s not true unless it can be verified.” Greg Bahnsen has a chapter in Always Ready entitled, “The Problem of Religious Language,” wherein he deals with both Verificationism and Falsificationism. The summary of the problem is that any religious utterance cannot be considered “meaningful” unless it can be checked against real-world data. Any talk of God, for instance, must correspond to something observable in the …

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Inconsistent Atheism Better Than Atheism

/ McFormtist / 22 Comments

The other day I had an exchange with an atheist friend on Facebook. We’ve had a couple exchanges in the past, so there is a context to some of the things being said. He posted a graphic of a Christian ditty-response (in other words, not the best kind) to the recent school shooting up in Connecticut, and expressed outrage at the audacity of Christians to suggest that God did nothing to help because He’s “not allowed in schools anymore.” In any case, I attempted to draw out some inconsistency between what he said he believed, and the outworking of that …

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“Why Do So Few Atheists Take Their Faith Seriously?” – Justin Taylor, The Gospel Coalition

/ McFormtist / 0 Comments

Justin Taylor of The Gospel Coalition brings us some words from Carl Trueman, commenting on a question asked during his recent debate with Chad Trainer. Trueman highlights for us in his characteristic, poignant manner, the utter impotence of Atheism to speak to life’s most pressing and emotional concerns, as well as the unwillingness of atheists to walk their talk. When not even atheists take their faith seriously, why should anyone else?

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/12/14/why-do-so-few-atheists-take-their-faith-seriously/…

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Anything But God

/ McFormtist / 0 Comments

Well, just take a look: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/whoa-physicists-testing-see-universe-computer-simulation-224525825.html 

Notable quotations:

“‘This is the first testable signature of such an idea,’ Savage said. ‘If you make the simulations big enough, something like our universe should emerge.'”

“[I]f energy signatures in our simulations match those in the universe at large, there’s a good chance we, too, exist within a simulation.”

“Interestingly, one of Savage’s students takes the hypothesis further: If we stumble upon the nature of our existence, would we then look for ways to communicate with the civilization who created us?”

To be sure, this article was listed under a section entitled “Odd …

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Switching Prisons

/ McFormtist / 2 Comments

Not too long ago a good friend sent me this article: http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usnj&c=words&id=15275 The author is a Wiccan philosopher. I wanted to respond to it for my friend, and even for myself, as it helps to articulate a position you disagree with. The following is somewhat of a rough sketch, and I’m sure I didn’t get to everything in it. It’s not a response to Wicca per se, but to the philosophical underpinnings highlighted throughout.Here it is:

Alright so here are some of my initial thoughts. The author is clearly using a particular jargon, at times using terms only someone familiar …

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