Tag: philosophy
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We’ve got mail: Are the senses reliable?
…I do not know if this is the right place to ask this question but regardless, I have a question regarding presuppositional apologetics and how the Christian knows what she/he knows. I have been studying apologetics (classic/PA) for a while and I feel as though I have come to somewhat of a roadblock in epistemology. So here’s my question. Does the Vantillian approach to apologetics rely on sensation and if so, how does it account for the reliability of sensation. Usually when I ask this question the answer is “God has made our senses reliable” but I am equally aware
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Rhology Responds to Reasonable Doubts (part 2)
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Annihilationism, Conditionalism, Monism, et al.: The “Musty Canard” of the Alleged Platonic Dualistic Interpretive Lens
Adherents to a number of theological positions that are often related to annihilationism posit that the vast majority of Christians throughout history have incorrectly read the anthropological and eschatological teachings of Scripture through the Greek lens of Platonic dualism such that they have also settled upon unbiblical conclusions regarding the constitution of the human being, the intermediate state, and the eternal punishment of the wicked.
Even Greg Bahnsen gave some credence to this accusation (http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pa143.htm), though he continued to hold that there is an immaterial aspect to the human mind, an intermediate state in virtue of a temporary …
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“Christianity is a Man-made Religion”
It is always amusing to hear some of the language that non-Christians, and especially atheists, use in their assaults on the Christian faith and defenses of their own position.
Presumably the atheist thinks it is somewhat problematic and perhaps even insulting to the Christian to dismiss his or her position as “man-made.” We can set aside the obvious “problem” with using “man” this way in the current academic climate. We can also set aside that the unbeliever almost always merely asserts without argument that Christianity is man-made. We may then note that the statement as it stands is no insult …
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Two New Apologetics Books
First, Jamin Hubner has released the Second Edition of his The Portable Presuppositionalist.
Second, Clifford B. McManis has published Biblical Apologetics: Advancing and Defending the Gospel of Christ. Several people have let me know about this book prior to its release, so I excitedly read everything I could in its online preview. I have some initial concerns with respect to the rhetoric and tone of the work.
McManis makes rather large implicit promises about putting a different spin on apologetics, but the portion of the book that I read contains very little, if anything, “new.” Of course McManis …
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Behind the Scenes: Notes from my debate with Michael Long
Some readers might be interested in seeing the very beginning of preparation for my debate with Michael Long (found here – https://choosinghats.org/2011/08/is-there-good-reason-to-believe-that-the-christian-god-exists). What is posted below is by no means the entirety of my notes for the debate but does provide an idea of how I initially go about preparing for a debate. The quotations are from the Goodness Over God podcast and are as close as I could get them to the originals which may be found here – http://goodnessovergod.blogspot.com. Each quote is followed by a time stamp and episode number.
Michael Long is a philosopher and …
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Atheist Justin Scheiber on Bible Translation
After highlighting a difference between the way the NRSV, ESV, NASB, KJB, and WEB translate a particular text of Scripture versus the way the NIV, NLT, and God’s Word “translate” it (This is according to the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, but note that the second list of versions provided are not all translations. Some are paraphrases, and it can make a difference to this particular objection, but for the sake of brevity I will move on.) Justin Scheiber of Reasonable Doubts writes:
…I should perhaps presume that the ‘real’ Christians have their ducks all in a row – that
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The Argument from Atheistic Activism: “The Achilles’ Heel of Internet Atheism?” Revisited
Introduction
In a recent post here – https://choosinghats.org/2012/02/the-achilles-heel-of-internet-atheism – I made the following observation:
…It takes somebody really, really … special … to spend hours upon hours blogging, podcasting, and commenting about an imaginary concept of deity with no more intellectual credibility than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. And yet there are people who do exactly that day after day! Think of all those grown men sitting at their computers wasting their time lashing out at people for believing in God when they could be partying it up before the worms eat them.
Are we really supposed to