Jeff Hester Debates William Lane Craig On The Topic “Is Belief In God Rational In A Scientific Age?”

2. Does God Exist?, Apologetics, Atheism, Christian Apologetics, debate, Evidence, existence of God, Jeff Hester, Reasons, science, Skeptics, Theology and Christian Apologetics, william lane craig, Wintery Kinght
By Wintery Knight  I was very excited to see a recent debate by Christian philosopher William Lane Craig against atheist astronomer Jeff Hester. When I summarize a debate, I do a fair, objective summary if the atheist is intelligent and informed, as with Peter Millican, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, or Austin Dacey. But the following summary is rated VS for Very Snarky, and you’ll soon see why. The debate itself starts at 29 minutes: [embedded content] The audio is very poor. Dr. Craig’s opening speech Dr. Craig went first, and he presented four arguments, as well as the ontological argument, which I won’t summarize or discuss. He later added another argument for theism from the existence of the universe that does not require an origin of the universe. A1. Counter-examples Theists who…
Read More

Is Earth Just A Pale Blue Dot?

2. Does God Exist?, Apologetics, Atheism, atheist, beginning of the universe, Bible, Christianity, Creation, Does God Exists, earth, God, JesusIsNotAFakeNews, objections, Ryan Leasure, Skeptics, theology, universe
By Ryan Leasure  In his book Pale Blue Dot, the late astronomer Carl Sagan had this to say about the above photograph taken aboard Voyager I: Because of the reflection of sunlight… Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it’s just an accident of geometry and optics… Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Sagan reiterates what is commonly known as the Copernican Principle, or the Principle of…
Read More

Don’t the Resurrection Narratives Contradict?

3. Are Miracles Possible?, Apologetics, Christianity, Erik Manning, Evidence, God, IsJesusAlive, Miracle, New Testament, objections, Resurrection, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Erik Manning The apostle Paul said that if Christ hasn’t risen, Christianity is a sham. (1 Corinthians 15:17) Many atheists agree and will happily point to the gospel accounts. Just how seriously should they take the claim of the resurrection? After all, aren’t the accounts riddled with contradictions? How can they possibly be trusted? Historians don’t normally conclude that just because individual accounts have apparent contradictions that the event in question didn’t occur. But let’s allow that to pass for now. I think the majority of the discrepancies that critics bring up can be easily resolved. Here’s a list of four of the most popular contradictions in the resurrection account that skeptics like to point to. #1. HOW MANY WOMEN WERE AT THE TOMB OF JESUS? How many women…
Read More

Is the Historical Jesus Fact or Fiction?

Apologetics, Bible, Christianity, Evidence, Fact, Fiction, Free Thinking Ministries, Gospel, history, Jesus, Jesus Christ, New Testament, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics, Tim Stratton
By Tim Stratton As a pastor who spends a lot of time on the college campus, I hear the following challenges quite often from young skeptics: “There is no good evidence to think that Jesus ever existed,” or “Christianity has pagan roots!” One might put these common challenges as two questions: (1) Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist? (2) Are the gospel records of this man merely fictional mythology? In this essay, I want to explore several lines of evidence that will show that the answer to the first question is a clear “Yes!” and to the second “No!”       i. Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist? Though there are many “street atheists,” or “internet infidels” who espouse their unqualified views and who in the process influence many…
Read More

Is Joe Blow “Anti-Intellectual”?

AIDS, anti-intellectual, babies, climate change, conception, Darwinists, DDT, eugenics, Evolution, fossil fuels, gender, global cooling, global warming, Jeffrey Epstein, life, malaria, materialism, men, moral purity, Paul Ehrlich, polar bears, polar ice caps, schoolchildren, schools, science consensus, scientists, Skeptics, Steven Novella, truck driver, women, Y2K, Yale University
It’s a common claim among Darwinists that people who question “expert” scientific opinion on such topics as evolution, global warming, and the mind-brain relationship are “anti-intellectual” science deniers. Steven Novella, a Yale neurologist and credulous Darwinist and materialist makes the claim in a recent post: As science-communicators and skeptics we are trying to understand the phenomenon of rejection of evidence, logic, and the consensus of expert scientific opinion.  Ironically, Novella, who considers himself a skeptic, decries the skepticism of people who don’t agree with him. Purity and Consensus How can it be, scientific experts ask, that so many people doubt scientific experts? Novella: There is, of course, no one explanation — complex psychological phenomena are likely to be multifactorial. Decades ago the blame was placed mostly on scientific illiteracy, a…
Read More

Why Most Doubts About God Are Emotional, Not Intellectual (Part II)

Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Christians, Doubts, Emotional Doubts, Evidence, Mike Taylor, MikePTaylor.net, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Mike Taylor How to Deal with Emotional Doubt Most of the time in our lives, it’s not the facts of the situations around us that are important; it’s how we process those facts. Similarly, the worst kind of a pain in our lives is not from what happens to us but how we download it or process it. For people dealing with emotional doubt, when something bad happens, they give themselves permission to let those events determine why they have problems. However, beliefs (i.e., the way we download information) are the things that stand between those events that happen to us and the consequences that come from them. Events alone rarely cause all the consequences we experience. Events plus negative or detrimental beliefs about those events often cause excessive…
Read More

Could The Universe Be Eternal?

2. Does God Exist?, Apologetics, beginning of the universe, Creation, creator, Eternal Universe, existence of God, God, JesusIsNotAFakeNews, objections, Ryan Leasure, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics, universe
By Ryan Leasure One of my favorite arguments for God’s existence is the Kalam Cosmological Argument. While this argument has historical roots, contemporary Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has popularized it more recently. The argument goes like this: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. This is a logically airtight argument. That is, if we can demonstrate that both premise (1) and (2) are true, the conclusion (3) necessarily follows as true. Let’s consider the premises in turn. (1) Everything That Begins To Exist Has A Cause. This first premise seems intuitively obvious. To reject it, one would have to posit that something can come from nothing. But that view has to be the height of absurdity. Nothing can’t…
Read More

Why Most Doubts About God Are Emotional, Not Intellectual (Part I)

Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Doubts, Doubts about faith, Doubts about God, Emotional Doubts, Evidence, Mike Taylor, reasons to believe, Skeptics, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Mike Taylor If we’re honest, we would all admit that we have doubts about God to some degree or another. I mean, on some level, it almost feels like human nature to resist fully trusting anything. We doubt ourselves, we doubt other people, and more than anything, we doubt God. Doubt is normal. No matter who you are, you’re going to have doubts. Even biblical heroes such as Job, Abraham, David, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Thomas, and Paul had doubts about God. But for some reason, too many of us think that doubts should be avoided. I think we get the idea that doubt is bad from a misapplication of Scripture. In Matthew 21:21, Jesus said we should pray without doubt, and incredible things will happen. So doubt must…
Read More

The Death of Judas: A Hopeless Bible Contradiction?

4. Is the NT True?, Answering objections of skeptics, Apologetics, bible contradictions, Christianity, Death of Judas, Erik Manning, Is Jesus Alive, IsJesusAlive, New Testament, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
Skeptics accuse Christians of not paying attention while they’re reading their Bible. If they didn’t rush through their daily devotional, they’d catch some obvious contradictions. One of the more famous of these contradictions is the two accounts of the death of Judas. Here’s Biblical scholar and critic Bart Ehrman: “The two reports give different accounts of how Judas died. However mysterious it may be to say he fell headlong and burst open, at least that is not “hanging” oneself. And they are flat out contradictory on two other points: who purchased the field (the priests, as per Matthew, or Judas, as per Acts?) and why the field was called the field of blood (because it was purchased with blood money, as Matthew says, or because Judas bled all over it,…
Read More

William Lane Craig Lectures on The Evidence for The Resurrection of Jesus

Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Historical Evidence, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Resurrection, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics, william lane craig, Wintery Knight
By Wintery Knight Here is Dr. William Lane Craig giving a long-form argument for the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus and taking questions from the audience. The speaker’s introduction goes for 6 minutes, then Dr. Craig speaks for 35 minutes, then it’s a period of questions and answers with the audience. The total length is 93 minutes, so quite a long period of Q&A. The questions in the Q&A period are quite good. Introduction: Many people who are willing to accept God’s existence are not willing to accept the God of Christianity Christians need to be ready to show that Jesus rose from the dead as a historical event Private faith is fine for individuals, but when dealing with the public, you have to have evidence When making…
Read More