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This Pagan Copycat Stuff is Getting Out of Hand

Check out this Easter's Foxtrot.

Pretty funny. And about as convincing!

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How Many Children in Bethlehem Did Herod Kill?

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A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the innocents. Therein, I argued that some of the skepticism about the account was unjustified. One argument I made was that the number of children killed in Bethlehem would likely have been no more than 20. Though obviously an act of great evil, the killing of 20 children would be much less likely to be noticed by historians of the time than the slaughter of thousands as later traditions speculated. In response to the post, Peter Kirby asked a few questions. He has patiently waited my response, continuously delayed by work, family, and the completion of my Acts article . Two of the questions had to do with how the amount of 20 was determined. Others with the omission of the account by Luke and the reliability of the tradition recounted by Macrobius. Peter also mentioned that there were other reasons to doubt the story's historicity beyond just the silence of other sources. I ...
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Do you say this of your own accord? (John 18:34, ESV)

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One of the most well-known events in Scriptures is Jesus' exchange with Pontius Pilate at his trial as described in John 18. In verse 38 of that chapter, Pilate asks the question that may be the most ironic in the history of the world, "What is truth?" A less known but equally intriguing saying of Jesus from an apologetics viewpoint can be found in Jesus' response to an earlier question in the same trial. It is a question that is not often quoted, but on those rare occasions when it is quoted, Jesus' response is often overlooked as not particularly important or relevant to today's world. However, it is my experience (as well as the experience of many people who have truly spent time studying the Scriptures) that little, if any, of what Jesus said in the Bible lacks significance across time. To best understand the response, it's important to see the response in context. The situation is this: Jesus has been arrested following His betrayal by Judas I...
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The Bogus Gandhi Quote

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I first made this post in 2012, and since then I've made a sort of mini-career out of tracking down bogus quotes like this one (including a video version below). It's a sort of fun microcosm of the way information is mishandled in the Information Age. ** I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. – Mahatma Gandhi A Christian can probably expect to get this quote thrown at them at least once in their lifetime, and waved in their face many more. I had it put to me recently, but my experience with this sort of thing immediately led me to wonder -- is it real? The evidence at this point seems to be no. The first signal of a problem was that anywhere I found it, no source was given. That's often a sign that something is being passed around uncritically. Whether online sources or books, no one seemed to have a source for this quote. A second warning was that the quote has been given more than one context. As ...
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Ignatius' Reliance on Paul's Letter to the Ephesians And More

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In an earlier post , I responded to the arguments of an online skeptic -- Quixie -- that 1 Clement showed awareness of none of Paul’s letters. He has since conceded that his analysis was greatly flawed and that the author of 1 Clement at least knew 1 Corinthians. Indeed, his “analysis” of 1 Clement can be fairly described as a massive failure of analysis because he simply ignored several of 1 Clement’s chapters. Nevertheless, Quixie appears to still claim that Ignatius lacked any knowledge of Paul’s letters except possibly a few allusions to the “opening” of 1 Corinthians. As an initial matter, Quixie does not explain why Ignatius’ awareness of at least part of one of Paul’s letters is insufficient to sink the “Dutch Radical” ideas with which he is enamored. If Ignatius is clearly dependent on the “opening” of 1 Corinthians -- whether by allusion or quotation -- does that not mean that Paul is a historical figure and at least one or more of his letters took a prominent place in...
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I'm kind of busy this week, so I asked our recurring fundy atheist punching bag, I. M. Skeptical, to write me a post about the best argument for atheism he could come up with. Here's what he gave me. ** There was once a slimy, snotty Christian apologist who made the argument that the banana is an “atheist’s worst nightmare” because it has so many great design features. I used to love that argument when I was a stupid, blind fundy, and now as an intellectually fulfilled atheist I think it is really stupid ! In fact, I want to argue now that if anything, the banana proves that God does not exist, or that if he does, he is evil, malevolent, and really snotty! Here’s why: The banana has a slippery peel which can be thrown on the ground, causing innocent people to slip and fall. The banana has been used for endless, cruel practical jokes (especially on me, and I have the bruises on my butt to prove it!) and this would only be a feature designed by a m...
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Disagreement Does Not Equal Hatred

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Resurrection harmony

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The purpose of this argument is merely to establish that the events described in the four canonical Gospel resurrection accounts can be construed as a coherent event. Atheists are always harping on the many differences in the accounts. They seem to feel that these amount to insurmountable contradictions, marking a totally contradictory story. But I will argue that we can pull together the events described in all four Gospels to create a unified harmony which shows that there was a single coherent event taking place.This may not mean that call differences vanish away, but most of them can be explained by the process of eye witness testimony and story telling based upon the accounts of eye witnesses. There may be a couple of loose ends, but I will argue that these are not important when one considers the over all agreement and ensuing harmony, (for harmony table click here) * my model: (1) women go to tomb find stone moved, immediately  they suspect the Romans or Sa...
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