Part 2 of critique on Zuckerman is on Atheistwatch

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Don't be a sucker, man part 2

I will be posting part 3 tomorrow. This second part is a lot better than the first part. Part 2 has a study that demonstrates Northern Europe is not as "atheist" as people generally think. Part 3 will show that Japan is a very religious nation and not an atheist nation.
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Where did Jesus say "It is better to give than receive?"

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A visitor to the CADRE site recently sent a question about Paul's statement in Acts 20:35 which records Paul as saying, "And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is better to give than to receive'." The reader wanted to know where Jesus said this. This was my answer:

You are correct in noting that this saying of Jesus quoted by Paul is not found anywhere in the four Gospels. My own study Bible says "This is a rare instance of a saying of Jesus not found in the canonical Gospels."

Does the fact that it isn't stated in the Gospels mean that it isn't reliably from the lips of Jesus? I don't think so. The Apolstle John said at the end of his Gospel (John 21:25): "Jesus did many other things as well.If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." Obviously, this is exaggeration for the sake of making a point, but it means that Jesus di…
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More evidence for the Historical Truth of David and Goliath

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Even people unschooled in the Bible know the basics of the story of David and Goliath – if for no other reason then the analogy is used whenever something small takes on something large and powerful. Just to prepare to write this blog, I searched for “David and Goliath” on Google News and found stories about residents in a small town in Ireland fighting a large developer, a battle between McDonald’s and a small Irish food chain over the trademark to Big Mac , and the violent stoush resulting when a large galaxy and a small galaxy get too close to each other among other stories. Yes, the story of the future King David, while still too young to join his brothers in a fight for the new kingdom of Israel, against the biggest, baddest Philistine of the time is well-known even to those who have a stunted education of the Bible.


Of course, many will say, the story is nonsense. A 9 foot-tall giant being defeated by a young boy and his sling? There couldn’t be anything to it, right?

As with…
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Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus, Jonah and U2’s Pride in the Name of Love

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As we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I have been thinking about U2’s song Pride (In the Name of Love) (hereinafter, "Pride"). The song, of course, concerns MLKJr. (According to U2 Sermons, U2 formerly ran a video of MLKJr giving his “I have been to the mountaintop” speech during the playing of the song.) However, the lyrics of Pride are quite apparently not exclusively about MLKJr.

Unfortunately, I have found little over the Internet where Bono, U2’s lead singer who penned the song, has commented in-depth about Pride. In fact, I have found only one instance where Bono, who is a professing Christian and whose Christian faith is one of the motivating factors behind his humanitarian acts, has commented about the song. In an article entitled Hit Song Breakdown: Pride - U2, the unnamed author quotes from Bono’s statements about Pride in a Rolling Stone interview (with emphasis in the original).

Although Bono is a glorious douche bag, I do love his music and will defend him …
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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 h…
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On the Significance of Simon of Cyrene, Father of Alexander and Rufus

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One of the most interesting passages in Mark’s Passion Narrative, from a historiographical perspective, is Mark 15:21:

A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country and they forced him to carry the cross.
First let us compare the passage to its parallels in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew (it does not appear at all in the Gospel of John).

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.
Luke 23:26.

As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross.
Matt 27:32.

Matthew and Luke retain the reference to Simon as well as describe him as being from Cyrene, but drop the reference to Cyrene being “the father of Alexander and Rufus.”

It is notable that Mark identifies Simon by name. This is rare for Mark unless the author is referring to the disciples and some famil…
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Is Science one Gene away From Defeating Religion?

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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…
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A Simple Illustration of the Trinity

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Too often I have sat in churches where teachers have tried to illustrate the Biblical concept of the Trinity. The problem is that almost without exception, these illustrations are wrong, wrong, wrong! (Please note, that my repeating wrong three times is not the simple illustration of the Trinity -- just emphasis.)

Common but Bad Illustrations

I remember one pastor using the example of a man being a Father to his son, a son to his father and a husband to his wife. See? A Trinity. Yes, it is a Trinity, but it is not the Biblical Trinity because it is an example of Modalism or Sabellianism. The Trinity is not God presenting himself in three different forms or modes. The Trinity teaches that each of the three persons of the Trinity are separate persons each of which is fully God.

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Cosmological Argument: from contingency

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1. Something exists.
2. Whatever exists, does so either necessarily or contingently.
3. It is impossible that only contingent things exist.
4. Therefore, there exists at least one necessary thing.
5. If there is a necessary thing, that thing is appropriately called 'God.'
6. Therefore God exists.
(revised 8/6/'18)

This version understands Necessity and contingency largely in causal terms. The necessity that creates the universe must be understood as eternal and uncaused for two reasons: (1) The impossibility of ICR[1], there has to be a final cause or nothing would ever come to be, (2) empirically we know the universe is not eternal. See the supporting material. Atheists will often argue that this kind of argument doesn't prove that God is the necessity that causes the universe. but being necessary and creator and primary  cause makes it the sources of all things we can rationally construe that as God. Finally, even if the cosmological argument is sound or cogent, the difficu…
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Refuting the "No Body" Theory of The Resurrection

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Resurrection of Christ by Noël Coypel, 1700, 
using a hovering depiction of Jesus


Corinthians 15: 50 Now this is what I am saying, brothers and sisters: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen,29 I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—52 in a moment, in the blinking of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.54 Now when this perishable puts on the imperishable, and this mortal puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will happen, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 55 “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
 The "no Body" theory comes in two versions: 1) that Jesus was an historical figure, but his resurrection was non-bodily; he didn't leav…
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The Criteria of Embarrassment and Jesus' Baptism in the Gospel of Mark

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Scholars frequently pronounce the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist as one of the firmest historical facts about Jesus’ life. See, e.g., James D.G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Vol. I, pages 350 (“This is one of the most securely grounded facts in all the history of Jesus.”); Robert H. Stein, Mark, page 55 (“Jesus’s baptism by John is one of the most certain historical facts we possess concerning the life of Jesus.”). This post will focus on the account of Jesus’ baptism in Mark and a challenge to its historicity from Neil G. at Vridar. Here is the relevant passage.

John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey.

And he was preaching, and saying…
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