Tag: religion
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Why Dr. Jason Lisle of Answers in Genesis Does Not Understand Presuppositional Apologetics
In a recent post I mentioned that, “I have heard a fair amount about a book by a Dr. Lisle but have not had the opportunity to read it” while referring to presuppositionalist strains in Answers in Genesis material. Someone commented here to affirm that, “Dr. Jason Lisle (astrophycisist) does indeed hold to a Van Tillian, ‘presuppositional’ apologetic method.”
Today I read a post by Lisle wherein he addresses a reader’s questions about presuppositional apologetics. Unfortunately I find his answer to be completely out of line with the method. I quote the relevant portion of his post below and then …
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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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Initial Thoughts on the Upcoming Debate
I’m finding lots of commentary by folks who want to somehow separate the doctrine of the soul’s immortality from the doctrine of eternal punishment. Since, after all, we believe in Sola Scriptura, that necessarily includes “Tota Scriptura”, and the necessary relation of every doctrine to the others. This is a fundamental point of Reformed theology. No doctrine exists in isolation. The denial, or modification of one doctrine will quite necessarily have an effect on a host of others, due to the nature of Scripture, and the theology we affirm from it. In the introduction to Van Til’s Christian Theistic Evidences…
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A Fantastic Insight into Redaction Criticism and the Islamic use of it
Two brief excerpts:
…I can tell you, without hesitation, that the vast majority of those who embrace form and redaction criticism in all of its flavors and kinds do so out of tradition, not out of having examined the case set forth in defense of these methods. In fact, very, very few of those who glibly repeat the party line have ever even given thought to any other viewpoint. Anyone who thinks there is a fair, open dialogue in “the academy” over these topics is simply misinformed. To “get ahead” in Christian scholarship you must—not should, MUST—toe the line when
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Paul Jenkins, Naughty Children, and Hell
Introduction
Somewhat understandably, our friend Paul Jenkins categorizes the discussion of, “whether Hell is ‘eternal conscious punishment’ on the one hand, or ‘annihilation’ on the other” as, “Not just piffle, but risible piffle.”
The alternative that occurs most obviously to me is, “Hell doesn’t exist — it’s a horror story told to children to stop them being naughty.”
One might question how Paul is so dogmatically certain that hell doesn’t exist. Of course it does not matter how certain Paul feels he is with regard to the alleged non-existence of hell if hell does in fact exist. It does …
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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
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We’ve Got Mail: What about various other worldviews?
Matt B writes:
Hello, I’m a Christian and am very fond of presuppositional apologetics, but I’m wondering if you could help me a bit. I feel I can confidently articulate the basic premise of Van Til’s apologetic, and the implications of it for atheistic/polytheistic worldviews, but could you help me explain why this particular apologetic is only applicable to the God of Christianity, rather than various other worldviews (e.g. open theism, deism, agnosticism, etc.)? Thank you, your answer will be much appreciated.
Open theism may be dealt with philosophically, but since open theists make a claim to our God and …
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Praxis Presup: Episode 20
Chris makes some initial comments on the second podcast in the series on presuppositional apologetics at Reasonable Doubts.…