As a result of several factors, Steve and myself have decided to take a hiatus from blogging (which the one or two regular readers have probably already realized from our month-long lack of activity). For one thing, we have both been somewhat busy, and it has been hard to keep up with our commitment of one post per week. For another thing, we feel ...
Several years ago, a blogger for The Secular Outpost name Keith Parsons wrote an article titled The Strongest Argument for Christianity. If you are unfamiliar with Keith Parsons, he is a very outspoken atheist who taught philosophy of religion for a number of years, and published several books on the subject. So unfriendly to Christianity is Parsons, that ...
from apenotmonkey.com Whether science and religion are compatible has been a debate for some time (probably ever since modern science got rolling). Anyone who has written a book, been a part of a debate, or given lectures on the subject of science, religion, or philosophy has taken a stand on the issue. There are many differing views. ...
A recent conversation with a friend initiated some reflection about the value of truth. It started with us sharing what we'd been reading as of late; I mentioned that I recently started The Book Thief and that it has reminded me of how much I love fiction. This began a bit of a debate where we were trying to determine the value of reading, especially ...
While Part IV of this series covered the Exodus itself, this post will focus on the Sinai covenant. This will be the last post in the series for a while, as I'd like to take a break and cover some other topics. The importance of the covenant formed at Sinai is that it established a formal relationship between the people and their deity ...
As noted in a previous post, the understanding of many Christian doctrines has been influenced by an eroding faith in the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. While we have seen that a strict adherence to biblical inerrancy is not necessary for salvation, it is surely an important doctrine for the health of the Church at large. I have recently quoted ...
This is the fourth part in the series on Kenneth Kitchen's On the Reliability of the Old Testament. For some introductory remarks on the Exodus, see Part III of this series. Now on to the exodus itself. First off, from the 18th century (BC) onwards, there were several attempts (some successful, some failed) by people groups to move out of their rulers' land. This provides ...
Continuing on with my series summarizing the book Four Views of Divine Providence, this post will cover the the view of Molinism, defended by William Lane Craig. Previous posts in this series can be read here, here, and here. Craig begins his section by noting that orthodox theologians have always agreed that God's omniscience includes his "hypothetical ...
After a hiatus, we continue with our series on the book On the Reliability of the Old Testament by Kenneth Kitchen. Before diving into everything about the time of Joshua, it is important to note one thing Kitchen stresses in the section bridging the time of Joshua and that of the judges. With respect to overall archaeological background, ...
I will now summarize the objections to Paul Kjoss Helseth's view on divine providence, discussed in my previous post. William Lane Craig (Molinism) Before getting into the Reformed view as stated by Helseth in the chapter, Craig comments that he thinks AA Hodges' six point summary fails to give an adequate account of the "radical distinctives"1 of that ...
There are few more pathetic lives we see a glimpse of in the Bible than that of the thief on the cross, yet it has fascinated me recently. Luke mentions relatively little about him, though there are some things that can be gleaned from the passage. Unfortunately, the center of the story is often overlooked as the passage is usually used to draw implications about the necessity of baptism. ...
As it is difficult and time-consuming to write an entire post on every interesting idea that one of us comes across in our reading of various authors, we will begin posting occasionally to simply relay longer quotations which we feel convey interesting or thought-provoking ideas. The following quotation was written by B.B. Warfield, on how hard it is to deny that the ...
Check out this excellent post from The Gospel Coalition: "Who cares what Aristotle thinks about a severed hand," retorted an exasperated philosophy student on a wintery night in a Midwestern university. My lecture screeched to a halt. As the class stared at me, enjoying the showdown, the subtext of my student's comment was not lost on them or me: "Aristotle's ...
A recent discovery in cosmology and the associated excitement in the scientific community has stirred up the debate related to the Multiverse Hypothesis. Let's take a look at the new discovery, how it relates to the multiverse, and some of the shortcomings of the multiverse hypothesis. But first, a little history ...
Upon finally finishing up my series of posts on Robert Kane's A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will, I will continue on with a related subject: the theology of providence. While the previously mentioned series discusses the philosophy of whether or not man has free will, and in what sense he has it, this series will cover what sort of relationship God ...
Since it took so long to finish up my series of posts on Robert Kane's A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will, I thought I would do a quick recap post, linking to each of the posts in the series. In this post from November 18, 2013, I introduced the so-called Freewill Problem, and explained the classical compatibilist position attempting to solve it: http://pairopatetics.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-free-will-problem-and-compatibilism.html In ...
This is the second part in a five part series on the reliability of the old testament, based on the book by Kenneth Kitchen. Here are links to the introductory post and Part I. The last post ended with Saul's rule over Israel. We now continue studying the United Monarchy by looking at the ruling periods of David and Solomon. This is a long ...
While it may require an uncomfortable amount of effort due to such a long break, the reader should try to recall where this blog left off in its series on free will. In the case that the reader has failed to achieve this, let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Most recently in our epic, we have seen that the libertarian must come up with some ...
This is the first part in a five part series on the reliability of the old testament, based on the book by Kenneth Kitchen. For more, check out the introductory post. The Divided Kingdom The divided kingdom is recorded in both Kings and Chronicles, as well as bits from some of the prophets. To measure historicity, external historical ...
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield has become a bit of a hero of mine, which is odd, because until tonight I had not finished a single complete work of his. B.B. Warfield, as he is known, was a professor of theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887 until his death in 1921. He is considered by many to have been the last of the great conservative ...
The reliability of the Old Testament is at once a fascinating subject and a contentious issue. It is maligned by some for its historical inaccuracies, while at the same time it is praised by others as being a valuable primary source for ancient history. Needless to say, it is also held by those within the church to be the very word of God. If ...
After having finished Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction by Robert Kane, I quickly jumped into another called Four Views of Divine Providence. This is a book that I purchased several years ago when I started going to an Evangelical Presbyterian church because I had become internally conflicted on which view of God’s providence was likely correct. Growing ...
The work of Alvin Plantinga has not garnered much attention outside the world of philosophy. I thought it worthwhile to spend some time on his work, so that readers could gain an appreciation for some of his arguments and realize the profound influence he has had on Christian philosophy. While most of his work has not entered the general public's ...
I recently read the book Unended Quest which is an intellectual autobiography of Karl Popper. Karl Popper is likely the most influential philosopher of science ever. The book is a good mix of details of his life, accounts of his interactions with some famous scientists and philosophers, and explanations of his own big ideas. I highly recommend it. One ...
Part IV of this series ended with somewhat of a cliffhanger. Marx and Freud seemed to think that religion arose through purely naturalistic processes. Not only that, but the aim of religion was not truth, but something less legitimate - for Marx it was an escape from the harsh reality of existence, and for Freud it was "wish fulfillment." ...
It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. -Prov. 25:2, ESV Often when studying theology, especially some of the more controversial doctrines of Christianity, I can get pretty discouraged. Occasionally, it will get bad enough that I even begin to doubt the Christian faith as a whole. If Christians ...
In Part II, we looked at Plantinga's analogy between belief in God and belief in the existence of other minds. In this post we will look at some later work of Plantinga that also deals with the rationality of belief in God. Obviously, his earlier work could not tackle all the possible objections, and some of his work in epistemology since then ...
In this installment on the philosophy of free will, I will be discussing libertarianism, which is an incompatibilist position. In previous posts, I discussed mainly the compatibilist attempts to show that free will and determinism are both true. While this position has its share of problems, the reader will soon see that the libertarian position is not without ...
