CADRE Comments

For the two of you who may be awaiting the third part of my series responding to the question of why God would create an atheist knowing that he would be sent to hell, I apologize. I had a series of other projects that have come up that have taken priority. I will be posting the third part (hopefully shortly), but in the meantime, a friend reminded me of an article that I thought would be of interest to those of the Apologetics bent, like me. He initially directed my attention to the video called the Star of Bethlehem  that makes the case as to what the Star of Bethlehem may have been. He stated that he had doubts about the video because it required that Jesus be born after 4 B.C., and he noted (correctly) that the present historical consensus is that Herod the Great died in 4 B.C. This reminded me that I had seen an article a while ago that made a very strong case that Herod had to have died later than 4 B.C. In fact, the article makes the case that Herod had to die in 1...

In part 1 , I noted that a Rumplestiltskin phoned a radio station asking the following question: Hey, Jim, I can prove that God doesn’t exist. God’s omniscient, right? Well I’m an atheist and that means that God knew when he created me that I would be going to hell, right? Having laid the groundwork, it is first important to understand that Rumplestiltskin’s question has a lot of hidden premises. These premises, if spelled out, might read as follows: Premise 1 : Christianity teaches that God is a loving and good God. Premise 2 : Christianity teaches that God is omniscient. Premise 3 : Christianity teaches that people who are not Christians go to hell. Premise 4 : If God is omniscient, he knows which people will become Christians at least as early as the time that they are created. Conclusion 1 : God knew at the time that I was created that I would not be a Christian and would be going to hell. Premise 5 : A loving and good God would not create people knowing that th...

Two Major issues I'm going to address here: (1) Was Jesus wrong (in the Olivet discourse) in that he predicted the end of the age and his return with an army of angels in the sky within the life time of some listening to him in that day?  (2) Is it the case that all modern scholars agree with this?  As an extension of the no 2 I will also take up the issue about method, is it valid ethological procedure to speculate about the nature of the text's development without textual evidence to back it up? ....... A friend ask me about this passage:"If I demonstrate to your satisfaction that the historical Jesus believed in the end of the world within the lifetimes of his followers, what will that do to your faith?" It wouldn't do anything to it because I have accepted that he could be wrong about he said he didn't know!  I think this is clearly the issue for most atheists becuase they are looking for a slam dunck victory over all of Christianity. What b...

The so called olivet discourse (from mount of olives) is held up by atheists as an example of a Jesus prophesy that did not come true. In it Jesus seems to say that the current living generation wont pass away until the son of man returns with angels in the sky to end the world. He also says this will occur at the same time as the destruction of he temple. A thread where the CARM atheists argue Jesus was wrong (a false prophest in fact becasuse his prophesy of the end times didn't come true). They quotes form five schoalrs to alleged "prove" this and none of them offer any real proof. All they offer is opinion. Only a couple of them are Chrsitains. Jesus of Nazareth had expected to see the Temple destroyed, the Kingdom come, and the new Temple established in 30, at or as the climax of his own mission, and Mark’s community preserved the memory of Jesus’ proclamation of this belief. --Paula Fredriksen. From Jesus to Christ, Second Edition (New Haven: Y...