ORDERING PRINCIPLE LEAVES “MORAL” ATHEISTS CULPABLE FOR NATURAL EVIL

Dateline - August 8, 2009   The ordering principle of the universe, regardless of whether it is conscious or not, is a huge dilemma for the “moral,” rational atheist. And atheist John Loftus acknowledges that there is indeed an ordering principle in Chapter 5 of his book, “Why I Became An Atheist”: “Have you ever stopped to think that what exists outside of our universe, that is, what is beyond the known ORDER [caps... Read more

THE PROBLEM OF PAIN REVISITED: HOW GOD DECIDES WHAT IS GOOD

Dateline:  August 3, 2009 - Recently John Beversluis updated his critical book entitled C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion and atheist John Loftus has written a review of the updated work. Victor Reppert, whose book C.S. Lewis’ Dangerous Idea was in response to Beversluis’ original work, has not yet written a formal response to the updated work, but he has written several posts addressing some of the major points, in particular... Read more

RESPONSE TO JOHN LOFTUS ON MISCOMMUNICATION, PART II: THE LAW IS A CONCESSION TO MAN’S EVIL HEART

Dateline:  August 1, 2009   Don’t go blaming God for miscommunication.   It was man that told God to “SHUT UP!” As I noted in an earlier post, over at Christian Cadre atheist author John Loftus has raised the issue of miscommunication, the idea that if there is a God he has failed to clearly communicate his will, making him responsible for atrocities and other moral failings of man. I argued that both the Gospel and the Bible... Read more

RESPONSE TO JOHN LOFTUS AND MISCOMMUNICATION, PART I: THE MURDER OF GOD

Dateline - July 25, 2009  Not only does the Bible frankly admit the connection between murder, religion, and power, the central message of Christianity proclaims that God was murdered in the name of religion in the struggle for power. As such, it is an incredibly salient cautionary, if not an indictment, against those who would carelessly and gratuitously make religious condemnations. Any writing or gospel that points to – indeed, makes the... Read more

ACTIN REORGANIZATION AND LONG-TERM MEMORY

Dateline  July 14, 2009     The assembly of actin filaments is crucial for long-term potentiation, an increase in synapse activity which scientists believe helps store memories.  Actin reorganization occurs in two stages that are controlled by different pathways, a discovery that helps explain why it is easy to encode new memories but hard to hold onto them. Image from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/FluorescentCells.jpg  Read More →

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF JESUS CHRIST: THE PHARISEES ACCUSE HIM OF FALSE WITNESS

When Jesus proclaimed that He was the Light of the World, the Pharisees accused him of not only making claims about himself, but making false claims about himself, that is, bearing false witness, or breaking the ninth commandment. This sets up a discussion of epistemology – how do we know? What is truth and how can we know what the truth is? To witness is to testify, or present a testament, derived from the solemnity of swearing upon the testicles. ... Read more

PROBLEMS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT POSED BY HISTORICAL CRITICISM

The following summary is based on Kenton Sparks’ review in God’s Word in Human Words: The Pentateuch Was Not Written By Moses The Pentateuch account is written from the third-person. Numbers 12:3 states that “Moses was very meek, more than all men that were on the face of the earth.” Genesis 36:31 reports that certain Edomite rulers lived “before any king reigned over the Israelites.” The Problem of the Pentateuch’s Internal... Read more

JOHN THE BAPTIST ENCOUNTERS THE PHARISEE (THE LITERALIST AND THE RATIONALIST)

When John the Baptist saw the crowds coming to him for baptism – many of which were Pharisees and Sadducees – he said to them, “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: And think not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father,’ for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”This term ‘viper’ means... Read more

KARL BARTH ON HOW THE BIBLE SHOULD BE READ IN LIGHT OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM

Continuing Kenton Sparks’ remarks on Karl Barth (from Sparks’ book God’s Word in Human Words): “If God commits no error, as orthodoxy demands, then how is it possible for the Bible to be so utterly human as Barth suggests?  How does  God speak through such a human text?  Let us follow Barth’s logic through to its end.  In Barth’s view, biblical criticism was suited to explore all sorts of questions about the... Read more

KARL BARTH, PART I: THE FUNDAMENTALIST MINDSET BROUGHT BIBLICAL CRITICISM

I didn’t know I agreed so much with Karl Barth, until I read Kenton Sparks’ commentary in his book, God’s Word in Human Words.    In what follows, Sparks describes how Barth dealt with the issues raised by historical criticism of the Bible: “Barth believed that biblical criticsm was ‘both necessary and justified,’ and he expressed in the strongest possible terms that the biblical writers  and the texts that... Read more

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