Bill Pratt | March 29, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt If it could be conclusively shown that the gospel accounts of Jesus were literally cribbed from pre-existing pagan sources, it would be quite damaging to the credibility of the gospels. As I was re-reading Geisler and Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist the other day, I was [...]
Bill Pratt | March 13, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt There are people who take the Gospels to be more or less reporting history, but who claim, nevertheless, that Jesus was merely a good man, and nothing more. I am not here talking about skeptics who question virtually everything in the Gospels, who believe that almost all of the material is [...]
Bill Pratt | February 4, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt One of the teachings of Mormonism is that God the Father is only one among a multitude of gods. While God the Father is creator and ruler of our world, there are other worlds where other Gods are creators, worlds with which our God the Father has nothing to do. In [...]
Bill Pratt | January 28, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt The Bible teaches, and theology argues, that God cannot change. This is called divine immutability. But if God cannot change, then why do we pray to him? After all, when we pray, aren’t we trying to change God’s mind? Norm Geisler answers this question in his Systematic Theology, Volume Two: God, Creation. [...]
Bill Pratt | January 16, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt I know this seems like a ridiculous question to normal people, but this is actually a very live and contentious debate among the professors teaching your children at the university. So you need to pay attention to these debates, lest your college expenditures be flushed down the drain! The classical Christian [...]
Bill Pratt | January 13, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt The empiricist David Hume believed so. According to Hume, who is possibly the most famous skeptic in the history of modern philosophy, only ideas that are based on direct sense experience or are true by definition are meaningful. Hume famously said the following: If we take in our hand any volume — [...]
Bill Pratt | January 9, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt All Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and many Protestant churches, recite ancient creeds during masses or services, but why? Why not just stick to the Bible? Ancient creeds were developed by the early Christian church to summarize the central beliefs of Christianity. These were understood to be the beliefs that [...]
Bill Pratt | December 19, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt There is a misconception, popularized by books like The Da Vinci Code, that the way the books of the Bible were chosen consisted of politically infused church councils voting on the books they liked, and voting out the books they didn’t like. However, a careful reading of church history totally disproves [...]
Bill Pratt | November 23, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt If you call yourself a Protestant Christian, then you’ve probably been taught at some point that Protestants believe in the principle of sola Scriptura. If you are Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, then you have been taught that you deny the principle of sola Scriptura. If we are going to have [...]
Bill Pratt | August 17, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt This is a profound question for the Christian church. Every year, there are new cults that emerge where a charismatic leader claims that he or she has received a revelation from God that must be added to the biblical canon. In fact, this is exactly what happened almost 200 years ago [...]
