Darrell | January 30, 2010
Post Author: Darrell One common atheist argument against Christianity is known as The Problem of Evil. It can be stated as follows. 1) God is said to be omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. 2) If God is omnipotent, He has the power to defeat evil. 3) If God is omniscient, He knows when and where evil exists. 4) [...]
Bill Pratt | January 30, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt I have previously written a post on why all religions cannot be true, but I wanted to revisit this topic and add another perspective. Religions are commonly composed of three parts: code, cult, and creed. Code is the moral code that a religion teaches. For Christianity, it would include “love your [...]
Bill Pratt | January 27, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt One of the most common complaints against God is that he allows evil to occur in the world. Christians respond that God has good purposes for allowing evil, but can we back this up with Scripture? Actually, there are many good examples from Scripture, but one of the best is the [...]
Bill Pratt | January 25, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt About a month ago, columnist Russ Douthat wrote a brilliant column about pantheism, the religion of Hollywood. Pantheism is the belief that the world is God and God is the world. The pantheist God is not personal, but is Nature itself. Douthat notes that this view of God has been popular [...]
Bill Pratt | January 20, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt By now I’m sure most of you have heard about Brit Hume’s comments regarding Tiger Woods. After listening to what he said, I had a hard time understanding the hysteria. One person told me that Christians ought not be putting down other religions in order to gain converts (Hume mentions that [...]
Bill Pratt | January 20, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt We pick up from part 1 of this post to see why Paul could not have invented a version of Christianity foreign to Jesus’ teachings. McFarland continues making his case: The point is this: the key teachings of the Gospel (Jesus is the sinless Son of God; He died for our [...]
Bill Pratt | January 18, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt Recently I’ve run across people who believe that the apostle Paul effectively hijacked Jesus’ teachings and invented most of what we today call Christianity. Even though this seems to be a view with few advocates, it is still an important charge that is being made. How do we answer this question? [...]
Bill Pratt | January 13, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt So we’ve seen that the Bible does teach that some sins are more serious than others and that some virtues are greater than others. There is a moral law hierarchy. But what does this practically mean? First, let’s look at debates over public policy. When determining where to focus your efforts [...]
Bill Pratt | January 11, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt In a sense, yes, but in another sense, no. Evangelicals often point out that all sins will send you to hell, that God demands moral perfection, so whether you steal a stick of chewing gum or murder your spouse, both sins will equally damn you. This is really just a way [...]
Darrell | January 7, 2010
Post Author: Darrell I recently had a conversation with Seth over on Markcares’s blog regarding God’s foreknowledge. Seth believes that man’s freedom is incompatible with God’s foreknowledge. As a result, he believes that God cannot know the future. Here are a couple of his comments. A being is not “free” unless capable of acting otherwise [...]
