Choosing Hats
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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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One correction I want to make:
Before any audio goes up, or anything else, I want to correct something I said in the second-to-last Q&A section – I stated that “Christ died the first and second death at once. Think about that.” – I said it, but did not intend to say it. What I meant to say was that “Christ died the second death in place of the first, and did so all at once. Think about that.” I got garbled, and said it as I stated above, and didn’t realize I had said it until Chris responded to it. It was not intentional, and …
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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