CADRE Comments

On Christmas Eve a couple of days ago I did a piece called "Christmas and the crucified God." It was received pretty well but it's the third time I ran it. The last time was Christmas 2013. Looking back at it that copy I noticed a comment that was ironic and heart breaking.

This blog, comments, Dec. 13, 2013:

I will admit that having read you for a while now I do get confused about a particular thing - most of your theology seems to be based around a more nebulous, all-encompassing, almost deist view of god (vs the big man in the sky) and metaphysical transitions that are only hinted at in the Bible narrative, which you normally regard as allegory and mythology. Yet at one point or another, you will make a statement that implies a commitment to the Bible as a literal document demanding worship, water baptism, sinner's prayer, etc. If you hit a slow point in your writing next year I would love to see an explanation of how you marry these concepts. For me, if you don&…

Colin Blakemore (Neuroscience, Oxford) argues that Science is just one gene away from defeating religion.[1]Despite his great advancement in that scientific field he demonstrates a very callow understanding of religion. Thus we must once again assume that is just another case of the golden ghetto. Or perhaps the ivory ghetto. A very advanced person in a scientific field is not necessarily qualified to apply scinece to religion. This post modern age reveals more and more the tower similarities between culture and the tower of Babel story.

Blakemore reveals in his opening paragraph that he says the relationship bewteen religion and science as "a ches match." It's adversarial, it's a combat. Thus advances in science are automatically viewed as detraction for religion. He intimates this when he says that the discoveries of Watson and Crick were a defeat for religion because previously life was a mystery that implied spiritual magic. So this guy is not on bard with under…

Much of Apologetics work is really about making sure people who are critical of the Bible understand that the Bible is internally coherent. One biblical account that I have seen pointed out as showing God not to be consistent is the story of Balaam and his donkey as recounted in Numbers 22.

Of course, the main problem that some people have with the passages is that God opens the mouth of the donkey to have it speak to Balaam. But the idea that God -- the one who created and animates all life -- could allow a donkey to speak what was on its mind is surprising but not logically impossible. Usually the person who rejects the Biblical narrative on that basis is merely stating his or her pre-existing worldview as an unbreakable barrier to belief in a Biblical worldview. So, as a practical matter of Apologetics, I would never try to counter their objection to the talking donkey as the first step in speaking to such a person. They need to first come into an appreciation that if God exists, H…

Over at the secular outpost Blog Bradly Bowen has announced a 10 year plan to investigate the truth of Christianity. Why do I feel that this is more like a 10 year siege? In any case he had already done one piece on "what is Christianity?" I will answer that on the CADRE blog, but this part 2 I think will be of interest to readers of this Blog.[1] Bowen argues that those who say "Christianity is not a religion but is a relationship with Jesus," are "stupid," (he uses the word. Why does he want Christianity to be a "religion" instead of a relationship? You can't disprove a relationship. He does a bait and switch  replacing religion with system, reading system as philosophical system, then it's disprovable.

I do not think there is a conflict between religion and relationship. Before I get into that let's briefly examine Bowen's case. His argument works in three basic steps: (1) He quotes Paul, "..."the mystery of our relig…