As Dostoevsky said, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.”
Theists claim that people could not do good without God. But, people do good things all the time, even without believing in God. Atheists, agnostics and people of all stripes can do good things and they do good things.
Obviously, believing in God is not a prerequisite to doing good things. A better question, is whether good can exist without God?
If God does not exist, what basis exists for determining good or bad? Right or wrong? Continue reading “Can You Be Good Without God?”
The moral argument for God is one of the basic arguments for proving that God exists. In this piece I follow a critique Dr. William Lane Craig presents of a critique done by Richard Dawkins of the moral argument for God. Continue reading “Counter-Critiquing the Moral Argument for God”
The ten statements and responses suggested below are inspired by a presentation by John Lennox, the famous mathematician, philosopher and Christian theist. Neither the statements nor the responses are comprehensive in the least, but they offer a quick look into the richly rational world of faith through a theistic (and Christian) lens. At the same time, they expose the shallowness of many atheistic objections to the idea of God.
1) Christians are really just atheists regarding Zeus and other gods. True atheists go one god further and reject the Christian god.
Statements like these reveal a willful ignorance. The Christian God (as with Allah of Islam and Yahweh of Judaism, for instance) is an exclusive claim: there are no other gods. That Christians, Muslims and Jews cannot all be correct in their understanding of that exclusive God does not negate the possibility that such a God exists. Continue reading “Ten Quick Responses to Difficult Questions on Faith with the Help of John Lennox”
What other appearances (like the sun orbits the earth) and corresponding realities (like the earth orbits the sun) exist that we have yet to debunk or lay hold of?
Some of the great breakthrough realizations in human history are that the earth is not flat, that the earth is round and rotating, that the Sun does not revolve around the earth, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the earth along with other round bodies in space rotate around each other kept in correlation with each other by gravitational pull. These realities are different than the appearances.
We appear to be standing on a stationary earth that, for all we can see, is flat. The Sun appears to rise, cross the sky and set every day. It is no great leap to understand that the sun might move around the earth, though the perception of a flat earth persisted into modern times. The moon seems to move around the earth in the same way the sun seems to move around the earth, but one does move around the earth and the other doesn’t.
Although we have known the realities for centuries, we still talk in terms of the appearances. We talk about the Sun rising and setting. We describe the phenomena as sunrise and sunset. Someone unfamiliar with our colloquialisms might hear us speak and think that we are ignorant of the truth.
The appearances have a strong hold on us. So strong that they persist in our language and how we describe things on a day to day basis. Those appearances stubbornly refuse to leave our everyday speaking patterns.
What other appearances and corresponding realities exist that we have yet to debunk or lay hold of? Continue reading “Myth, Appearance and Reality”
How the Gospels and other documents that have come to comprise the New Testament became recognized as scripture and other documents did did not, is the subject of this piece.
In this piece, I largely follow a presentation given by Dr. Danial Wallace*, but I add in some additional information about the early church to round out the information. Dr. Wallace underscores the fact that the early church was particularly concerned about the authorship of the writings they relied upon. They only trusted the writings of the apostles and associates of the apostles. We see this concern reflected in the writings of the earliest church fathers.
The original gospels, however, were anonymous, notes Wallce; that is they did not have internal references to who wrote them. They were only given names to distinguish them from each other externally, and this tradition went all the way back as far as we can trace them. The fact that the early church was so concerned with authorship, but universally accepted and used the four canonical gospels, suggests that the authorship of the Gospels was never in doubt.
This point will become more important below. How the Gospels and other documents that have come to comprise the New Testament became recognized as scripture and other documents did not, is the subject of this piece.
Continue reading “How the New Testament Canon Arose”
Take a few minutes to slow down and think about what's going on in your world...
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"The LONG VIEW ON THE HIGH ROAD" -- Intriguing perspectives on life
Using the wisdom of the past to enhance your future event
Doggedly pursuing the truth, with joy and faithfulness
Navigating by Faith 