CADRE Comments

Patrick McNamara straddles the line between science and religion. He's
a professor of neurology at Boston University as well as editor of a series of books about Where God and Science Meet. He asks:
But surely it is POSSIBLE that religion MIGHT yield some sort of worthwhile knowledge for humankind. After all would not Coyne agree that music yields a form of knowledge for humankind or that poetry does? What about novels? Surely science is not the only reliable way to knowledge that there is?1
The question was directed at Jerry Coyne, self-described stableboy to the Four Horsemen of new atheism2 and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. Coyne was having none of it: 
...music, literature and poetry don’t produce any truths about the universe that don’t require independent verification by empirical and rational investigation: that is, through science (broadly interpreted).  These fine arts don’t convey to us anything factual about t…

Originally posted Nov 20,2015
Bradley Bowen of Secular Outpost, argues William Lane Craig can't prove that Jesus died on the cross. His ultimate goal is to negate Craig's proofs of the resurrection, he does that by arguing that there is no proof that Jesus died on the cross. No death = no resurrection.  My point here is to argue that Jesus' death on the cross is well warranted for belief. That is the only point with which I will concern myself. Moreover, I will not defend Craig but come at it from my own perspective.
Bowen points out that Craig assumes that scholarly acceptance (of Jesus' death) proves the evidence for it is strong. He then argues that this is not proof that the evidence is strong, he then argues that Funk and Johnson doubt it. He uses them to leverage the idea that there are a lot more doubters of that point than Craig knows. [1] I doubt that that Craig doesn't know that, he studied with Ernst Kasemann who was a student of Rudolph Bultman and a majo…

Baciccico's Women at the Tomb



Let's go back to bread and butter apologetic. The resurrection debate. One of the most hackney and ridiculous arguments is the "swoon theory" the kind of thing that was big among 19th century liberals who were trying to naturalize the Gospel. Nineteenth century atheists ate that stuff up, and late 20th century internet atheists dug it up and tired to make it live again. The swoon theory says that Jesus didn't die on the cross he was just unconscious and latter taken away by followers, This argumemt is answered  efficiently (if not unnecessarily) Peter Kreeft.[1]  The argument is defended from Kreeft's refutation by the wise old vetran of the message board apologetic wars,  that champion of reason Bradley "literally right" Bowen, in his magnum opus in 32 parts, Here we will examine Defending the Swoon Theory – Part 7: The “Break their Legs” Objection  (july 2019 Bradley Bowen) https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/…

On August 8, 2019, Ravi Zacharias, founder of RZIM ministries, tweeted the following observations in response to those who claim that religion is somehow more responsible for the slaughter of people than the non-religious. Since I have recently posted comments to the speech of Archbishop Chaput who raised this same issue, I thought that his comments add to what Archibishop Chaput had been saying. Pastor Zacharias writes:
I sometimes hear critics say, "Religion has slaughtered its thousands." Such an overgeneralization reveals a bankruptcy both in one’s knowledge of history and philosophy. Are they forgetting the two atheistic regimes of Russia and China?

The difference between the killing in the Crusades and the slaughter by atheists is that those who kill in the name of God are violating his character. Those who kill in the name of man are being consistent with secular humanism's bankruptcy in finding absolutes. Christ did not teach Christians to kill those who disag…

The New York Times always seems poised to publish any opinion piece that discredits Christianity. One such article was published on March 25, 2019 entitled “The God Problem” by Peter Atterton, professor of philosophy and associate dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University.

Dr. Attenton’s article seeks to make the belief in the existence of God irrational by claiming that both God’s omnipotence and His omniscience are incoherent. I want to focus on the charge of incoherence against God’s omniscience in this post. Dr. Attenton’s charge against omniscience begins:
Philosophically, this presents us with no less of a conundrum [than God’s omnipotence]. Leaving aside the highly implausible idea that God knows all the facts in the universe, no matter how trivial or useless (Saint Jerome thought it was beneath the dignity of God to concern Himself with such base questions as how many fleas are born or die every moment), if God knows all there is to know, then He…

"God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad." ~ C.S. Lewis This past week, we had two horrendous shootings in El Paso and Dayton. It saddens me to think of the evil that people can inflict on each other. Sometimes they do it in the name of religion, but there are multiple reasons (illogical though they may be) for someone to shoot someone, blow someone up or drive a car into a crowd that have nothing to do with religion; rather, they have to do with our sinful nature.

Some will ask “where was God” during these events. That is the problem of evil in a nutshell. How can a perfectly loving, all-powerful God allow someone to hurt and kill innocent people?

As I have written previously, the intellectual problem of evil has long ago been solved. C.S. Lewis’ qu…

Multiverse is the idea that our space/time is merely one "universe" in a huge limitless number of parallel worlds. Atheists often use this concept to argue against the fine tuning argument by saying with all those universe out there the odds of hitting one that can bare life is not so great. Our life bearing universe is not as improbable as the FTA would have us believe because when we consider that it's just one of a limitless expanse of other worlds then it's not so improbable that one would have life. We just happen to be it, if we weren't we wouldn't know about it. We would not be here. Sometimes they also argue that against the cosmological argument on the grounds that the universe is eternal and infinite and parallel words have been popping up forever. Then there's no way to say "here's the moment of creation."

Atheists have another favorite tactic and that is to argue that Occam's razor rules out God because God is not the simple…