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The Need for a New Apologetic that Responds to the Relativism

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I began to engage in Internet apologetics back in the early 1990s and continued to engage skeptics multiple times weekly until the late 2000s. If you are like me, you may remember those days: it was the time of the rise of the New Atheism led by Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins (two of whom have now died). Its proponents used harsh rhetoric against Christianity. These New Atheists believed that theism generally and Christian belief in particular deserved mockery. They argued that it was irrational for someone believe in the “big sky daddy,” and they somehow thought that the counter-example of the “flying spaghetti monster” somehow made Christian belief foolish. (Hint, it didn’t.) It was difficult and required both study and imagination to respond. But respond Christian did, and as we responded, it seemed to make no difference. Those who were adamant New Atheists clung to their non-belief. (Of course, they would say that those of us arguing for Christianity were the ones who clun...
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on metacrock's blog

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christianity is a personal relationship with God https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2025/02/christianity-is-personal-relationship.html,
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The Fine Tunng Argument For God

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The argument says simply that the universe must be structured in very exact ways to produce life. It's so exacting as to be totally improbable. Because it's so improbable that gives us a good reason to think the game is fixed. This differs from the ordinary design argument because we have something to compare it to, all that is not the target level, A. Universe Displays purposive order Max Planck (1858-1947), Nobel Prize winner and founder of modern physics. 5 "According to everything taught by the exact sciences about the immense realm of nature, a certain order prevails--one independent of the human mind . . . this order can be formulated in terms of purposeful activity. There is evidence of an intelligent order of the universe to which both man and nature are subservient." ......(1)laws have simplicity and elegance. "The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance, and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that ...
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On The Historicity And Morality Of The Canaanite Conquests (Part 2 Of 2)

By Jesse Albrecht -
Discussion:           -James Bishop created a series of  posts  explaining what he thinks is problematic with traditional defenses of God commanding the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. The second installment of this series continues on the work of the first by answering a few other objections to this narrative. Following are a few excerpts from the author along with a critique:             "...If we swapped “Canaanites” with “Jews” in the Old Testament, and Joshua with Hitler, we would have Archer defending Hitler on the basis that the Jews cancerous, including their infants and children. If we swapped “Canaanites” with “Jews” in the Old Testament, and Joshua with Hitler, we would have Archer defending Hitler on the basis that the Jews cancerous, including their infants and children."           This is a false analogy. Israel was a theocracy, not a dictatorship. Classes of people were not b...
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On The Historicity And Morality Of The Canaanite Conquests (Part 1 Of 2)

By Jesse Albrecht -
Discussion:           -James Bishop created a series of  posts  explaining what he thinks is problematic with traditional defenses of God commanding the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. This two part series attempts to show that a number of those objections do not hold water when put under scrutiny. Following are a few excerpts from the author along with a critique:             "...Wesley Morriston agrees writing that there “is nothing uniquely “Canaanite” about them. All, or nearly all, of these practices—from sexual intercourse during a woman’s menstrual period to homosexual behavior to bestiality—are still common. Is there any real reason to believe that these things were more common among the Canaanites in the ancient world?”           Some cultures in the ancient world were worse than others. It is not even claimed that Canaanite culture was the worst that ever existed. There are other ...
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A Textual Critical Analysis Of Mark 16:9-20

By Jesse Albrecht -
          Most modern English translations of the Bible place into brackets or footnotes the text of Mark 16:9-20, which is about Jesus appearing to the disciples and giving them instructions to carry on the work of preaching the gospel. The text records Jesus appearing first to Mary Magdalene who was not believed after telling others the news of Him being resurrected after His crucifixion. He then appears to two other disciples bodily and later for a third time to the eleven while they were supping. Scholars generally do not consider Mark 16:9-20 to be part of the original text of the gospel of Mark.            Two key witnesses consulted in reaching this conclusion would be Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Their importance lies in them containing the oldest full copies of the Greek New Testament. In regards to textual defects, Randall Price writes, "...there are thousands of variants between them [Sinaiticus and Vaticanus], b...
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A Textual Critical Analysis Of John 7:53-8:11

By Jesse Albrecht -
          Most modern English translations of the Bible place into brackets or footnotes the story of the woman caught in adultery, which can be found in John chapter seven verse fifty-three through the eleventh verse of the next chapter.           The story of the woman caught in adultery has value because it sets in stone the superiority of Jesus Christ over the Law and portrays the cross as being the fountain of mercy that washes away iniquity. It powerfully emphasizes grace over law; justification rather than condemnation before God. The scribes and Pharisees tried to set up a trap for Christ. If He answered them by saying outright that justice should not be administered to this woman, then that would violate the Law of Moses and cause a negative reaction amongst the Jews against Him. If He were to take the administration of justice into His own hands, then that could have been viewed as a challenge to Caesar's authority. Rather than...
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A Critique Of The Secular Humanist Worldview

By Jesse Albrecht -
Discussion:           - Following are a handful of excerpts (in bold) from a classic humanist manifesto titled,  The Philosophy of Humanism , by Corliss Lamont:             "There are, as I see it, ten central propositions in the Humanist philosophy: First, Humanism believes in a naturalistic metaphysics or attitude toward the universe that considers all forms of the supernatural as myth; and that regards Nature as the totality of being and as a constantly changing system of matter and energy which exists independently of any mind or consciousness. Second, Humanism, drawing especially upon the laws and facts of science, believes man is an evolutionary product of the Nature of which he is part; that his mind is indivisibly conjoined with the functioning of his brain; and that as an inseparable unity of body and personality he can have no conscious survival after death.”           It is interesting to not...
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The Web of Historicity

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Most Jesus myther arguments are based upon phony standards that real historians don't use. They expect direct documentation like a birth certificate. They did not have birth cirtificates for rural Jewish pesants in the Gallalee so that is an unrealistic expectation. Using the lack of it as proof that Jesus didn't exist is silly. In the absense of such documentation there are two methods: (1)Demonstarting the historicity of the places and people around Jesus then infurring his existence. (2)Direct attestation by people who knew him or less directly by those who knew people who knew himm. I use both. This article,however, deals with the former. The approach taken is that everything around Jesus, thepeople and places is historical, It's a bog web and Jesusis at thecenter, Why would it be that this web of historicity has as it;s cemteran empty space? We know that the basic story of the manger and the virgin Mary and Jesus himself circlated in the first century. Early on J...
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My New Book Is Out:God. Science, And Ideology

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This is a review of the book from Philosophy in Review Vol. 42 no. 2 (May 2022). Joseph Hinman. God Science Ideology: Examining the Role of Ideology in the Religious-Scientific Dialogue. Grand Viaduct 2022. 647 pp. $59.99 USD (Hardcover ISBN 9780982408766). If any area of current philosophy is so incendiary as to teeter on violence, it is argument about an omnipotent divine being’s existence. The ‘debate’—too gentle a term here—becomes so vehement it echoes the doctrinal tree-shaking that led to so many religious wars. Certainly, professional philosophers tend toward protocols of respect and charitability among one another. But the internet has provided history perhaps the most immense battlefield for doctrinal dispute. Hinman’s lengthy, vehement, if generally sober offering to this battle is almost definitive of the field. It is likely one of the most thorough religious apologetics in contemporary times. It merits a serious consideration and is certain to draw some rabid fi...
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