Bill Pratt | March 8, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Lest anyone forget, Christianity was born out of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew and his disciples were Jews. Immediately after Jesus died, and his teachings were carried forward by his disciples, they continued to attract mostly Jewish followers. The Book of Acts even reports Jewish priests and Pharisees joining the movement [...]
Bill Pratt | December 21, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Historical scholar Mike Licona, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, asks just this question. His answer is important to understand. A priority must be assigned to Paul because he is the earliest known author to mention the resurrection of Jesus, and there are numerous extant texts he wrote that [...]
Bill Pratt | November 29, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this series Philosopher Edward Feser demonstrated that reason, not faith, brings us all the way to the conclusion that Jesus is divine. Once we arrive here, where do we go? Feser explains: Suppose you know through purely rational arguments that there is a God, that He raised [...]
Bill Pratt | November 28, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt A typical accusation of atheists toward Christians is that we only believe what we believe because of blind faith. In other words, we have no rational reasons for believing in God or believing that Jesus died for our sins. The person who believes in fairies or unicorns is no different than [...]
Bill Pratt | October 10, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Mythicists claim that the stories about Jesus were merely copied from other pagan myths circulating around the Roman Empire in the first century. If this is true, it does cast some doubt on the uniqueness of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and it certainly makes one wonder if all the stories [...]
Bill Pratt | October 5, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Mythicists claim that the stories about Jesus were merely copied from other pagan myths circulating around the Roman Empire in the first century. If this is true, it does cast some doubt on the uniqueness of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and it certainly makes one wonder if all the stories [...]
Bill Pratt | August 1, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt I am aware that there are philosophers who employ Bayesian analysis to determine probabilities that historical events occurred, but I am becoming skeptical of the value of these analyses. A Bayesian analysis requires a calculation of the prior probability that a historical event occurred, without considering any of the evidence we [...]
Bill Pratt | July 20, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In this final post in the series, we will review apologist Rob Bowman’s final thoughts on Joseph Smith’s golden plates. Bowman writes: Whereas the resurrection of Jesus and his appearances were obviously miraculous, supernatural occurrences, there is nothing supernatural or miraculous about a set of metal plates with engravings on them. [...]
Bill Pratt | July 18, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 2, we continued looking at Rob Bowman’s online exposition of how the witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection and the witnesses of Joseph Smith’s golden plates compare to each other. In part 3, we will compare the lives of the witnesses after their experiences of either the resurrection or the viewing of [...]
Bill Pratt | July 14, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1, we started looking at Rob Bowman’s online exposition of how the witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection and the witnesses of Joseph Smith’s golden plates compare to each other. We pick up where we left off. Bowman next looks at the “contrast between the makeup of the collection of publicly [...]
