Tag: Theology
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Debate: Annihilationism, with Chris Date
Chris Date is the host of the Theopologetics podcast, and says that he has been convinced over the past year of the truth of annihilationism, sought out the best arguments he could find, and found them lacking. He will be defending the following:
Resolution: “The final punishment of the risen wicked will be annihilation, the permanent end to the conscious existence of the entire person.”
The debate is tentatively scheduled for June, with a fairly standard debate format, to include Q&A from questions submitted beforehand.
Format:
…- 20-minute opening affirmative
- 20-minute opening negative
- 10-minute rebuttal affirmative
- 10-minute rebuttal negative
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Point of Contact and Human Reason
It’s quite common to find the following objections made – just check out who is answering them as well as giving them for consideration.
…What has been said up to this point may seem to be discouraging in the extreme. It would seem that the argument up to this point has driven us to a denial of any point of contact whatsoever with the unbeliever. Is it not true that men must have some contact with the truth if they are to receive further knowledge of it? If men are totally ignorant of the truth, how can they even become
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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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New Atheism, Intentional Ignorance, and Apathy
Over at erstwhile atheist blogger Paul Jenkins’ site, he posted the following:
…At Choosing Hats, contributor McFormtist considers what constitutes successful apologetics. As the type of apologetic usually in question at Choosing Hats is “covenantal” or “presuppositional” apologetics, and my own limited encounters with presuppositionalists have led me to the conclusion that presuppositonal apologetics is spectacularly unsuccessful in the declared purpose of apologetics in general, naturally my interest was piqued.
Early on in the piece comes this:
Our theology dictates to us that it is God who changes men’s hearts. As Reformed Christians, we understand that God in
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Some thoughts on the upcoming debate
In my preparations for the debate on Sunday, and in dealing with the quite providential example Paul Copan gave us last week of the importance of the subject, I felt it might be valuable to give a few impressions I’ve had along the way. My opening statement has been written for a week or so now – prior to Dr. Copan’s comments, in fact – and my first thought after reading it was this. I wouldn’t change anything I had to say. First, because Dr. Copan’s comments weren’t anything we hadn’t seen before. Second, because I’m giving a positive presentation …
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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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Modified Common Consent Argument
One of my favorite, fun little arguments for the existence of God is formulated by Roman Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft and is called, “The Common Consent Argument.” You may read the argument here – http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#19. Kreeft states the argument as follows:
- Belief in God—that Being to whom reverence and worship are properly due—is common to almost all people of every era.
- Either the vast majority of people have been wrong about this most profound element of their lives or they have not.
- It is most plausible to believe that they have not.
- Therefore it is most plausible to believe
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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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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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Atheist Andrew’s Misreading of Exodus 21:20-21 On Beating Slaves
A visiting atheist fanboy of Richard Dawkins named Andrew wrote:
Oh dear – have you not actually read the bible? It clearly says you can beat your slave to death as long as they take longer than three days to die.
Rather than addressing some difficult questions posed to him by Rhology, Andrew jumps immediately into a passage that is typically touted by Internet atheists who want to pretend as though they know the Bible better than most believers by virtue of their having read, say, the Skeptics Bible or visited Evil Bible. Now let’s address Andrew’s misreading of …