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Disagreement Does Not Equal Hatred

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Today, two children were killed and multiple other children and adults were injured during morning mass at a Roman Catholic church/school in Minnesota . The perpetrator was a trans woman who had transitioned from male to female in approximately 2019. The news also reported that the perpetrator had apparently attended that school. I don’t know why the perpetrator chose to shoot children. According to the news report I saw, he had posted a video manifesto either last night or earlier in the day saying how much he enjoyed shooting children. Having been a father to four children, and now being a grandparent to even more, I am heartbroken for the families of the victims – both the two young children who were killed as well as the other adults and children who were hit in the hail of bullets. We don’t yet know why the perpetrator acted in this way. I do know that if it is true that he just liked shooting children, he was a very evil individual. People who want to harm children are evil, p...
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In Memory of Joseph Hinman, aka Metacrock, My Brother in Christ

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Just over a week ago, I received a phone call from a woman in Texas. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voicemail. The voicemail the woman left told me that Joe Hinman, a man who posted on the Internet under the Pseudonym of Metacrock, had graduated to be with the Father in Heaven. I was asked to come to the funeral and share some memories about Joe. I don’t plan to go to the funeral – it is a long way from where I live, and I have other obligations on the day in question – but I didn’t want to pass up on the moment to share a few thoughts on Joe. I never met Joe face-to-face. We did talk on the phone a few times, but never for very long. And I haven’t talked to him either over the phone or on the Internet for 10 years - not because I didn’t like him, but because my interest in doing apologetics online had waned for a number of reasons I won’t recount in this post. (I am still strongly Christian, so please don’t take my loss of interest in online Christian apologetic...
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The Need for a New Apologetic that Responds to the Relativism

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I began to engage in Internet apologetics back in the early 1990s and continued to engage skeptics multiple times weekly until the late 2000s. If you are like me, you may remember those days: it was the time of the rise of the New Atheism led by Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins (two of whom have now died). Its proponents used harsh rhetoric against Christianity. These New Atheists believed that theism generally and Christian belief in particular deserved mockery. They argued that it was irrational for someone believe in the “big sky daddy,” and they somehow thought that the counter-example of the “flying spaghetti monster” somehow made Christian belief foolish. (Hint, it didn’t.) It was difficult and required both study and imagination to respond. But respond Christian did, and as we responded, it seemed to make no difference. Those who were adamant New Atheists clung to their non-belief. (Of course, they would say that those of us arguing for Christianity were the ones who clun...
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on metacrock's blog

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christianity is a personal relationship with God https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2025/02/christianity-is-personal-relationship.html,
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The Fine Tunng Argument For God

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The argument says simply that the universe must be structured in very exact ways to produce life. It's so exacting as to be totally improbable. Because it's so improbable that gives us a good reason to think the game is fixed. This differs from the ordinary design argument because we have something to compare it to, all that is not the target level, A. Universe Displays purposive order Max Planck (1858-1947), Nobel Prize winner and founder of modern physics. 5 "According to everything taught by the exact sciences about the immense realm of nature, a certain order prevails--one independent of the human mind . . . this order can be formulated in terms of purposeful activity. There is evidence of an intelligent order of the universe to which both man and nature are subservient." ......(1)laws have simplicity and elegance. "The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance, and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that ...
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On The Historicity And Morality Of The Canaanite Conquests (Part 2 Of 2)

By Jesse Albrecht -
Discussion:           -James Bishop created a series of  posts  explaining what he thinks is problematic with traditional defenses of God commanding the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. The second installment of this series continues on the work of the first by answering a few other objections to this narrative. Following are a few excerpts from the author along with a critique:             "...If we swapped “Canaanites” with “Jews” in the Old Testament, and Joshua with Hitler, we would have Archer defending Hitler on the basis that the Jews cancerous, including their infants and children. If we swapped “Canaanites” with “Jews” in the Old Testament, and Joshua with Hitler, we would have Archer defending Hitler on the basis that the Jews cancerous, including their infants and children."           This is a false analogy. Israel was a theocracy, not a dictatorship. Classes of people were not b...
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On The Historicity And Morality Of The Canaanite Conquests (Part 1 Of 2)

By Jesse Albrecht -
Discussion:           -James Bishop created a series of  posts  explaining what he thinks is problematic with traditional defenses of God commanding the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. This two part series attempts to show that a number of those objections do not hold water when put under scrutiny. Following are a few excerpts from the author along with a critique:             "...Wesley Morriston agrees writing that there “is nothing uniquely “Canaanite” about them. All, or nearly all, of these practices—from sexual intercourse during a woman’s menstrual period to homosexual behavior to bestiality—are still common. Is there any real reason to believe that these things were more common among the Canaanites in the ancient world?”           Some cultures in the ancient world were worse than others. It is not even claimed that Canaanite culture was the worst that ever existed. There are other ...
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A Textual Critical Analysis Of Mark 16:9-20

By Jesse Albrecht -
          Most modern English translations of the Bible place into brackets or footnotes the text of Mark 16:9-20, which is about Jesus appearing to the disciples and giving them instructions to carry on the work of preaching the gospel. The text records Jesus appearing first to Mary Magdalene who was not believed after telling others the news of Him being resurrected after His crucifixion. He then appears to two other disciples bodily and later for a third time to the eleven while they were supping. Scholars generally do not consider Mark 16:9-20 to be part of the original text of the gospel of Mark.            Two key witnesses consulted in reaching this conclusion would be Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Their importance lies in them containing the oldest full copies of the Greek New Testament. In regards to textual defects, Randall Price writes, "...there are thousands of variants between them [Sinaiticus and Vaticanus], b...
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A Textual Critical Analysis Of John 7:53-8:11

By Jesse Albrecht -
          Most modern English translations of the Bible place into brackets or footnotes the story of the woman caught in adultery, which can be found in John chapter seven verse fifty-three through the eleventh verse of the next chapter.           The story of the woman caught in adultery has value because it sets in stone the superiority of Jesus Christ over the Law and portrays the cross as being the fountain of mercy that washes away iniquity. It powerfully emphasizes grace over law; justification rather than condemnation before God. The scribes and Pharisees tried to set up a trap for Christ. If He answered them by saying outright that justice should not be administered to this woman, then that would violate the Law of Moses and cause a negative reaction amongst the Jews against Him. If He were to take the administration of justice into His own hands, then that could have been viewed as a challenge to Caesar's authority. Rather than...
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A Critique Of The Secular Humanist Worldview

By Jesse Albrecht -
Discussion:           - Following are a handful of excerpts (in bold) from a classic humanist manifesto titled,  The Philosophy of Humanism , by Corliss Lamont:             "There are, as I see it, ten central propositions in the Humanist philosophy: First, Humanism believes in a naturalistic metaphysics or attitude toward the universe that considers all forms of the supernatural as myth; and that regards Nature as the totality of being and as a constantly changing system of matter and energy which exists independently of any mind or consciousness. Second, Humanism, drawing especially upon the laws and facts of science, believes man is an evolutionary product of the Nature of which he is part; that his mind is indivisibly conjoined with the functioning of his brain; and that as an inseparable unity of body and personality he can have no conscious survival after death.”           It is interesting to not...
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