Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: religion

  • Where’s the Data?

    Although I don’t spend as much time in apologetic discussions as I used to, I do, on rare occasions, find the time to have a short conversation here and there. One recent encounter I had provided me with a text book example of the potential problem with making self-referencing universal statements; that is, statements which are unqualified in their extent, and are worded in such a way as to include themselves as referents.

    By way of example, consider the statement “any assertion is a statement which implies its own truth”. Since the statement “any assertion is a statement which implies …

  • The Consequences of Evidentialism

    If you were able to go back in a time machine and witness the tomb of Christ only to find that Christ did not raise from the grave, what would that do to your Christian faith?

    (A Quick Question – @Parchment and Pen)

    Note the poll to the side, and the responses.

    What’s wrong with this? My wife nailed it in about 8 seconds. (She gets an A in my apologetics class!)…

  • 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 …

  • Faint Inconsistencies and Heightened Sensitivity to the Obvious

    One of the difficult things about arguing against a presuppositionalist is that the use of the presuppositional method necessitates an emphasis upon discerning contradictions within a worldview even when those contradictions are implied by a manner of speaking utilized by an individual. Two immediately apparent dangers associated with such an approach are that of finding contradictions where none exist and that of revealing one’s inconsistencies through the habit of speech. The latter may be spoken of in a positive sense and an example given in the case of a naturalist ascribing intentionality to nature. Heightened sensitivity to such error stems …

  • The Problem of Religion (Part 3): James, Kierkegaard, Buber

    This is the last installment for this series. Search the title for the previous parts.

    As mentioned in the introduction, William James really does not care a great deal about dogmatic theology or philosophy of religion as it is often presented by people like Descartes, as he is a pragmatist. Dogmatic theology and philosophy of religion are often unsuccessful and impractical. The only exceptions are when religious experience (the kind Freud dislikes as justification for religion) and philosophy are put together to help with the experience.

    Of course there are large differences between what Freud is after and what James …

  • Collision – A Brief Review

    I received my copy of Collision yesterday from Amazon, but didn’t get a chance to watch it until this evening.  I must say I was captivated throughout the entire 90 minutes.  Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens are the two “characters” (which is a truly accurate characterization) of this documentary/debate/discussion that left me wishing I was present in-person for the interchanges between them, instead of having to watch it replayed without a chance to interact with either of them.  Both are intelligent, witty, quick on their feet, and passionate about their opposing beliefs.

    Doug Wilson is a Presuppositionalist who, in …

  • 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. …

  • Theologians All

    A rather humorous exchange between Dr. James White and Dan Barker is posted below. Atheism is just as “religious” as any other system we might typically label a “religion”. There is no such thing as a person who does not believe in God, but there is such a thing as a person who claims to not believe in God. Such a claim requires a great deal of bad theology.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTR6y_HkINM&hl=en&fs=1&]…