Faithful Thinkers: Stephen Law's "Evil God" Argument

Luke Nix has posted his insights on the Stephen Law debate against William Lane Craig. He outline the problems with Dr Law's arguments very well. Read the article at the following link.


Faithful Thinkers: Stephen Law's "Evil God" Argument

Oil, the modern world's lifeblood [infographic]

Oil, the modern world's lifeblood [infographic]

Truthbomb Apologetics: One Minute Apologist Interviews with Dr. Gary Habermas

Image by Vasile Tomoiagă via Flickr I really appreciate Chad posting links to Dr Gary Habermas answering four questions regarding theodicy. If anyone can talk from both academic and experiential perspectives on human suffering, Dr Habermas can. Some great vids.


Truthbomb Apologetics: One Minute Apologist Interviews with Dr. Gary Habermas

FacePlant - Epic Fail: Tisk Tisk, Johnny P Response #16

Well, Johnny P returns. Hurray! I needed to see another great faceplant. His words are in black and my annotation are in red.

I love the horrible exegesis that Marcus has.

I don't think Johnny P even knows what exegesis is. When I use the term I refer to drawing meaning out of the Biblical text. Let's see if Johnny P understood that?

His exegesis is this:

Presuppositionally believe everything the bible says and then frantically google for hours on end to find some utterly implausible and ad hoc manner in which he can still delude himself that the bible is true. The very definition of cognitive dissonance. If he went to NASA, NAAS, the RD or any other scientific organisations with his theories, he'd be laughed out of the room. The funny thing is, he cherry picks his cosmology and the punts to rings of frozen water around the earth to justify a literal Genesis.

A theory about how the earth was like when it was first created is NOT an exegesis. Further, Johnny P has done nothing but show that he cannot prove that Bible is not true. If my theory is not true about Genesis 1 referring to the rings around the earth, that does not mean the Bible is not true,. Nor does it mean that Genesis 1,2,3,4, or the rest of the book cannot be taken literally.

And then has the audacity to claim OUR exegesis is horrible.

You prove all the time that your Biblical exegesis is horrible with every word you write - digging yourself deeper and deeper into the hole.

He has no threshold for plausibility for believing biblical passages. He will only choose science which coheres with the bible, and as soon as it doesn't, it gets presuppositionally trumped by a 2000 year old book.

Johnny P seems to forget that no where in the Bible does it say that the world is 6000 years old. And he has failed to provide any science that contradicts the Bible. And the account of Noah is a lot more than 2000 years old.

But apparently, that evidence is amazing and self-authenticating, it's just that we poor fools are unable to interpret it correct;y. By correctly, I mean in exactly the way Marcus does.

Johnnny P also seems to fail to realize that my Biblical Hermeneutic is not unique to just myself. Many Christians and Jews have interpreted the Bible the same way. I'm still waiting for him to challenge my interpretations and show how the Bible does not say what I have said it says.

Spot on Ryan with this: "And believe it or not, there is actually not much we can argue with if you simply claimed “God magically created a lot of water, magically prevented the earth’s crust from collapsing, magically prevented the atmosphere from boiling away, but then magically prevented evidence of this event from being seen in the geological record, and then magically made all the water go away, magically preventing the crust from exploding outward from the release of pressure, of course. After all, he’s God”. We could still call you a deluded moron, but we couldn’t actually argue with the statement."

Well, I've answered Ryan's objection so I won't repeat it here. Instead I'd like to point out that Johnny P should thank Ryan because he's obviously more intelligent but just as wrong as Johnny P.

The old logical trumps utterly probable shenanigans. I'd love to see you sit a geology or astrophysics course. You'd get howled at.

I haven't said anything contradictory to modern and established geology or  astrophysics. If theory from science contradicts the Bible, then I know I should keep looking for Science to reorient itself so it's correct.

Here's a guy who thinks he's all that and a bag of chips; who thinks he knows philosophy.

I'm not a philosopher. I'm an engineer. I'm a minister of the Gospel of Christ.  I'm just a sinner save by grace. Johnny P is hell bent. Literally. 

Look at this post on oughts and morality.

So Johnny P is still reading my blog!!!! Hmmmm.

He simply asserts. He starts from assertions and goes on. He doesn't realise that 'ought' is simply a prostasis to a hidden apodosis and has no intrinsic meaning.

I  extremely disagree. If I walked into his house and took everything he had, he would most definitely say "I ought not to do that." But he could not tell me why I ought not to do that.

He doesn't realise that to even argue that, he needs to prove reasons externalism (over reasons internalism).

So does Johnny P mean that I should have a reason external to oneself not to hurt anyone?

He doesn't realise that objective morality is harder (you need to jump more hurdles and get over more assertions) to philosophically argue objective morality, or moral realism than to argue consequentialist or utilitarian ethics.

The video defined the definition for objective morality and argued against it. You know ? What Johnny P refused to do about "perfect world" and "correct".

He doesn't realise that the term 'objective' is hugely problematic and he needs to prove its internal coherence first.

 Hmmmm. Maybe he didn't watch the video.

He doesn't realise that God is a consequentialist moralist, thus either invalidating objective morality or making its intrinsic value worthless in comparison to consequences. This is proven by God himself in the bible.

Objective morality is referring to morality for humanity and not God. God has set the standard we must follow. And if you think God does not follow that standard, your exegesis is really horrible.

No, what does he do? Appeal emotively to Hitler like some bad dinner party conversation.

Again no answer to the question: Why was Hitler wrong? Instead we get dodging, bobbing, and weaving.

As I have sadi before, if you are going to deal with philosophy in a serious manner, get a philosophy qualification or at least do some serious reading and research. You'd get shot down in flames in a moral philosophy course with such 'reasoning'.

I can answer the question about why Hitler was wrong and Johnny P can't without borrowing from a religious worldview. Johnny P's "philosophy" leaves much to desired. Not only has Johnny P failed to add anything useful to the post to which he refers, but he has not bothered to show where my reasoning is wrong only that he thinks that I don't define my terms that was defined in the video I was referring to.

Johnny P can always be counted upon  for a FacePlant.I can't even find any proof that Johnny P has ever had any university training himself. He should get some before advising others.

What had happen' was.....: FacePlant - Epic Fail: Tisk Tisk, Johnny P Response #15

Face Off: Occupy Wall Street vs Tea Party [infographic] | Daily Infographic

What do the two biggest political movements of the past 4 years have in common? What do they see differently? Who are they? This infographic makes a good score card!




Face Off: Occupy Wall Street vs Tea Party [infographic] | Daily Infographic

Related articles

• Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party (constitutionclub.org)
• Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party: Is There a Bridge Over America's Troubled Waters? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Occupy Wall Street vs. The Tea Party (blacknright.wordpress.com)
• Occupy Wall Street vs. Tea Party Google searches: Who wins? (csmonitor.com)
• Google Data: 'Occupy Wall Street' Now Tops 'Tea Party' In Recent Searches (mediaite.com)

Answering Muslims: Former Muslim C. L. Edwards: The Qur'an Says the Sun Orbits the Earth

David Wood posted the following video from C. L. Edwards about how Islam teaches a geocentric solar system.




Answering Muslims: Former Muslim C. L. Edwards: The Qur'an Says the Sun Orbits the Earth

John Dominic Crossan on Jesus' Death - Apologetics 315

Brian Auten has posted a very interesting quote from Dr John Dominic Crossan. Crossan is as heretical as they come, yet he recognizes that Jesus truly existed

"Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. For if no follower of Jesus had written anything for one hundred years after his crucifixition, we would still know about him from two authors not among his supporters. Their names are Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus."

- John Dominic Crossan
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 145

John Dominic Crossan on Jesus' Death - Apologetics 315

Related articles

• Leading Jesus Scholar John Dominic Crossan Unveils the Revolutionary Call to Action in New Book - The Greatest Prayer (prweb.com)
• John Dominic Crossan on finding the historical Jesus (zaknafein81.wordpress.com)
• Non-Biblical Sources which Document the Historical Jesus (compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com)

FacePalm of the Day #145 - Debunking Christianity: Morality 3: Of objectivity and oughtness

John Loftus has posted the 3rd video on series in which the video maker attempts to rescue atheist philosophy on morality from the abyss it has sunk into. It attempts to dodge the point that there are things that we know are wrong no matter what we may think about them and that we have moral obligations and responsibilities that we ought to live up to. Does this video does any better than the previous two? Nope.






Where to start? How about where it goes of the rails - the beginning - because there is a major flaw at the beginning throwing the whole video into FacePalm territory. The video says that people like William Lane Craig is wrong. The point is asserted that what a person thinks about what they are doing is not irrelevant as to if the action or thought is evil. It is stated that we don't hold consider a person evil if they don't know what they are doing is wrong. I disagree, but for the sake of this blog post, let's grant that and ask a couple of follow up questions: If a man kidnaps, rapes, tortures, and murders a little girl, is the action not evil if he did not know it was wrong? Was Hitler evil because he was responsible for the deaths of innocent millions in concentration camps? Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. If it's true that we don't condemn an action if the person does not think what they did was evil, then the only consistent thing you can do is to say that in both these instances no evil was committed. I don't think anyone sane would do that because we know that such actions are evil - no matter who does it or why they did it. Therefore you can't really take the arguments in this video seriously. There are things that are wrong. There are things that are right.

The thing is that the video fails to take into account is the fact that God's standard of morality is not the same as ours. The fact  is that there are things that He considers really evil that left to yourself you would not consider evil - things we rationalize and ignore, but we are still accountable. For example, in God's economy lust is just as harmful and sinful  and evil as adultery - even if it's never acted upon. We also tend to look down on people who commit things we think are evil and wrong but ignore the things we do. Things like gossip. Things like slander. Remember that God is not going to be judging us by our own relativistic I'm-good-but-you-are-a-piece-of-garbage standard by which we judge one another - but God will be judging us according to his own standard by which we are guilty and deserve hell. Do you want to be judged through Jesus or on your own?


Debunking Christianity: Morality 3: Of objectivity and oughtness

The “Science Club of Long Island” claims that Jesus broke His promise to return | True Freethinker

One of the truly lame "go-to" arguments of atheism is that Christianity can't be true because Jesus didn't return like he promised in the lifetime of his disciples. Can't really blame them - desperately grasping at straws like that. Otherwise, they'd have to bow the knew and cry out for Jesus. Mariano has written a great response to their "argument". I know it's been answered before - completely and since 2 Peter was written in the 1st Century AD, but considering that people today are still trotting out such nonsense, we still need to give them the answers even if they won't listen to those who wrote them down first. Read Mariano's article at the following link.


The “Science Club of Long Island” claims that Jesus broke His promise to return | True Freethinker

Randal Rauser’s Mistake: A Defense of Calvin’s Doctrine of Election | MandM

On the Flannagan's blog, MandM, there is a great article written by Andrew responding to Radal Rauser's criticism that the way Calvinist's view election is wrong because he says that Calvinists say that it's arbitrary. I disagree. Fortunate so does Andrew who wrote a response worth considering. Follow the link to read more.


Randal Rauser’s Mistake: A Defense of Calvin’s Doctrine of Election | MandM

Related articles

• Reformation Month Excerpt 4 (justificationbygrace.com)
• Baffling Comment (arminianperspectives.wordpress.com)
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86-Year-Old Veteran Chronicles His Life in Heartwarming Rage Comic - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews

Here is a gem for Veterans day. I mini-comic by an 86 year-old man who was a veteran of WW2 and it's kind of a diary of his life. What he's seen. What he's experienced. What he has seen. This is really awesome.

86-Year-Old Veteran Chronicles His Life in Heartwarming Rage Comic - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews

THEOparadox - The Biblical Paradox Blog: Can Biblical Paradoxes Be Reconciled?

Here is an awesome article. Very, very insightful!

Of course they can. By definition, a paradox is not an actual contradiction but an apparent one.

When we say that paradoxes are apparent contradictions, and not actual contradictions, we affirm that they can be logically reconciled. The important question is not whether they can be reconciled, but by whom. We must always affirm that any collection of true statements are logically reconciled in the mind of our wise and omniscient God.

Read the whole article at the following link.

THEOparadox - The Biblical Paradox Blog: Can Biblical Paradoxes Be Reconciled?

The augmented reality of techno-magic [Video]

The augmented reality of techno-magic [Video]

the a-atheism blog: Richard Dawkins: "I am ashamed of my university!"

Image by Shane Pope via FlickrRichard Dawkins continues to run his mouth without anything important to say. Really sad. But I thought that this was a very insightful article. Read the article at the following link.

the a-atheism blog: Richard Dawkins: "I am ashamed of my university!"

Richard Dawkins Exhibiting Neo-Paganism-Atheism, Childhood Rejection of God, Self-Professed Erudition, etc. | True Freethinker

Image by Shane Pope via FlickrMariano has posted a really great blog post regarding an interview of Richard Dawkins. I highly recommend reading Mariano's insights. Here is my favorite part. Mariano wrote:

In part 3 Dawkins is asked about morality and falls apart as he recalls his incendiary and illogical atheist talking points about how troublesome those religious people are who think that morality extends into what people do in private and or with their sexual organs.
This is the blind leading the even blinder into taking an ice-pick in their hands and bursting their eardrums while they are at it—have a go at your tongue as well and end up completely senseless? (hint, are pedophilia and rape in private are perfectly acceptable?!?!)

Richard Dawkins Exhibiting Neo-Paganism-Atheism, Childhood Rejection of God, Self-Professed Erudition, etc. | True Freethinker

Frank Turek Interviews William Lane Craig at Southern Evangelical Seminary (October 29, 2011) - YouTube

Well, William Lane Craig is back in the United States. Recently, Dr Frank Turek interviewed him on his experiences and the debates. It was nice hearing Dr Craig in a conversational atmosphere and hear his insights. I do not agree with him on Molinism (which did not come up in the interview), but he said a whole a lot great things. I also agreed with is opinions of his debates that I have seen. He was right Millican did a much better job than Law. Millican still lost, but he was a better debater that Stephen Law.








Frank Turek Interviews William Lane Craig at Southern Evangelical Seminary (October 29, 2011) - YouTube

Answering Muslims: Is Jesus God?

Here is a ( debate between Diaa Mohamed from mypeace.com.au) and Samuel Green from October 25, 2011 at the University of Techonology Sydney.




Answering Muslims: Is Jesus God?

Things To Do When The Internet Is Down [Pic]

Things To Do When The Internet Is Down [Pic]

Answering Muslims: Qur'an Error: Does the Sun Set in a Muddy Spring? (Surah 18:86)

Here is part 2 of David Wood's series of videos pointing out errors in the Qur'an.




Answering Muslims: Qur'an Error: Does the Sun Set in a Muddy Spring? (Surah 18:86)

Is God a Delusion? William Lane Craig in Oxford - Apologetics 315

So what do you do when you travel thousands of miles on a debate tour but a potential debate opponent is too chicken to show up and defend his printed work? You lecture instead. That's what William Lane Craig did a couple of weeks ago when Richard Dawkins offered excuses for why he refuses to debate people who can beat him. instead of arguments.





Is God a Delusion? William Lane Craig in Oxford - Apologetics 315