Posts

Psalms 14:1 and 53:1 – How Should the word “Fool” be Understood?

By -
Image
Psalm 14:1: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.Last time, I wrote about the inappropriate weaponization of the phrase “The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God.’” This phrase can be found in Psalm 14:1 and again in Psalm 53:1. Too many Christians use the word “fool” as a pejorative consistent with the current dictionary definition which defines “fool” as being “stupid” or “silly,” and apparently non-believers understand it in that context as well.

While the Hebrew words translated as “fool” or “foolish” do not mean “silly” or “stupid,” they are not complimentary. In Old Testament times as today, being foolish is not something to be embraced. That, however, is not the way that the Bible uses the word “fool” in these two Psalms. In this post, I will focus on the broad usage of the term, and in the next I will focus on the Biblical word translated “fool” in both Psalms.

Foolishness as the antonym of…
Post a Comment
Read more

Stephan Toulmin and his Rational Warrant

By -
Image
How do you identify a warrant in an argument? The Toulmin model breaks an argument down into six main parts: Claim: assertion one wishes to prove.Evidence: support or rationale for the claim.Warrant: the underlying connection between the claim and evidence, or why the evidence supports the claim.Backing: tells audience why the warrant is a rational one.More items...

Writer's Web: The Toulmin Model of Argumentationwriting2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/toulmin.html

Skeptics usually argue against a level of absolute proof. Some skeptics may claim that they don't demand absolute proof, but the level of most God arguments and most discussions about those arguments is undertaken with an assumption that the argument has to actually it's objective, that God exists. At least that's taken to be the objective. I understood things like way myself, yet my friends and I in our collegiate and undergraduate settings, our coffee shops and debate squad discussions Always hinted at a notion th…
7 comments
Reactions:
Read more

on Metacrock's blog Ocam's razor shaves the multiverse

By -
https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2019/06/occams-razor-shaves-multiverse.html
Atheists often try to use Ocam's razor or what they take to be Occam;s razor, to argue that God is not necessary. In arguing so they misuse the concept of necessity under which Occam worked. Let's look at how Occam's razor was really meant to be applied and see why Occam himself nixed it' use on God. I find that Occam;s razor would shave multi verse before it would shave God.
Post a Comment
Reactions:
Read more

Psalm 14:1 – Has this Verse Been Inappropriately Weaponized?

By -
Image
Does God say only fools do not Believe in Him?



The last time I wrote, I closed out my post with the following:
The Bible is a book filled with deep meaning on many levels, and in all sincerity I have grown rather weary of sparring with Atheists over the Bible when they are reading it like it has no more depth than Harold and his Purple Crayon. But what else should I expect from those who the Bible rightfully calls fools (and not in the shallow sense that most Atheists take that to mean)? For those unfamiliar with that reference, the Biblical passage I paraphrased was from Psalm 14 which states in the opening verse:
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. So, what do I mean when I say that most atheists don’t take that verse in the sense that it was meant to be taken? On its face, it seems pretty apparent – only fools believe that there is no God. It is my contention that the prior sentence I just wrote actua…
8 comments
Reactions:
Read more

Finding the Historical Jesus

By -
This is an blogpost that BK published several years ago. The original posting has somehow been deleted, but it is the original piece. Please note that the links are from the original, and the links may not all work as of today's date.
=======
Bill Tammeus, a columnist for The Kansas City Star, has written an interesting piece entitled "For all we know, Jesus may have been apocalyptic prophet", in which he opines on the work of historians seeking the historical Jesus starting with Albert Schweitzer. After noting that Schweitzer concluded (wrongly, in my opinion) that history can tell us nothing about the historical Jesus, Mr. Tammeus then makes a rather interesting observation.

The authors of [Jesus biographies based upon a search for the "historical" Jesus], it turned out, were using new scholarly tools called historical and textual criticism — ways to dig beneath the words to understand more about their historical context.

But there was something odd about th…
2 comments
Reactions:
Read more