CADRE Comments

I apologize for language in this post. I think it's important for all to see the true colors of the atheists. If BK wishes to take it down it will be on my blog too and I will understand. On Debunking Christianity , a site devoted to bullying Christians, to mocking and ridiculing all who do not cow-tow to mob rule, an atheist named Ty starts a dialog with me. Supposedly he intends to rationally discuss my arguments. He says this: On your website you wrote, "I'm no longer an inerrentist." This was in an argument of how to handle God's atrocities against the innocent in the Bible. Okay, this is a fairly liberal view by your own admission. I respond thusly: No it' not. Real liberals tell me I'm neo Orthodox. He says this: So, I want to know what standard you use to determine what is true in the Bible and what is not . Now I wrote three long responses. Three because his overall post long, at this point it was all very civil. I said this: same way you would det...

Yesterday afternoon, I happened to be channel-surfing while driving when I came across The Michael Medved Show . His guest was atheist poster-child Dan Barker who was discussing his group, the Freedom from Religion Foundation's, campaign to erect billboards in various cities with a line derived from John Lennon's childish ode to Utopianism, "Imagine". The line used? Why, "Imagine No Religion" , of course. (The phrase, "Imagine no religion" is actually not directly stated in the song, but in the second verse Lennon actually sings, "Imagine there's no country/it isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." So, the sentiment is there even if the words aren't exactly as stated on the billboard.) Now, personally, I could care less about the sign. After all, the founders of this group seem to believe that I will sit back in my car as I drive by the sign and say, "Gee, wouldn't the world be a better plac...

In this volume, edited by prominent Internet apologist James Patrick Holding, a team of Christian authors provide a series of essays giving detailed answers to those who argue for the "Christ myth." CADRE members Dr. James Hannam, Kevin Rosero, and I are contributors. Dr. Hannam wrote the introduction, which compares the Christ Myth to the theory that Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him. He also provides a historiography of the Christ Myth. Mr. Rosero examines the contention that an early sect of Christians who denied a historical Jesus gave way to Christians who affirmed a historical Jesus. I contribute the first chapter, arguing that Josephus wrote twice about Jesus in his History of the Jews . The first reference is partially authentic in the form it came down to us. The second reference is completely authentic and also refers to Jesus' brother, James. "Here's a clear and compelling rebuttal to fallacious claims that keep resurfacing ...

In Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them , Thom S. Rainer shares the results of his in depth research of a group he calls the formerly unchurched. Rather than ask the unbeliever what might make them want to go to church, his team interviewed over 350 people who previously did not go to church but now do so regularly, regarding the cause of their change of heart and mind. The idea is that surveying such people gives an important insight into factors that are actually leading people to join churches and become Christians. Dr. Rainer also interviewed pastors of “effective evangelistic churches,” churches that have had at least 26 conversions per year and a conversion ratio of less than 20:1 (membership/annual conversion). The churches and interviewees cross denominational and geographical boundaries. I have read through and read again the part of the book dealing with interviews with the formerly unchurched. I am still working through the rest of the book w...

For at least the past decade, many churches have been turning to a process that is called visioning for the purposes of planning the future of the church. Personally, I believe that this process is contrary to the manner in which God would have us deal with the church, and so I have decided to set forth my thoughts in this blog entry. I have been through these visioning processes at least three times that I can recall. On two of the occasions, I was on the church council at the time of the visioning. Without exception, each visioning was a failure. Each of the churches that turned to these visioning processes were in decline, and contrary to the hopes of the councils involved, the visioning process ultimately added to the decline. In my view, there are several reasons why these visioning processes fail, but the primary reason is that it is an effort to place man's principles on the church. You see, the visioning process is a good one in a business environment. After all, the purpos...

This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th--the day in 1776 we declared, a bit preemptorily, our independence from Great Britain). Freedom and independence are words with great political and cultural meaning for us; and not only for us, but for the numerous nations who (more-or-less following our lead) also declared their independence from sovereign rulers whom they believed were oppressing them, both socially and (not-infrequently) religiously. Sad to say, Christianity was just-as-not-infrequently the religious oppression the people were revolting against. To some extent this is even true of the United States: even though our own national revolution was grounded on a mixture of orthodox Christianity and nominal deism (such as Franklin’s and Jefferson’s), the history of our country’s settlement in the centuries before the revolution was typically based on fleeing religious (as well as financial) oppression in Europe. And it can hardly be argued th...

CT Direct has just put out a new article written by William Lane Craig, Ph.D., entitled God Is Not Dead Yet: How current philosophers argue for his existence . As the sub-title promises, Dr. Craig takes a brief look at some of the current arguments of natural theology (including the cosmological argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, the Moral Argument and the Ontological Argument) and examines argumentation for God in a post-modern age. Here is a sample: However all this may be, some might think that the resurgence of natural theology in our time is merely so much labor lost. For don't we live in a postmodern culture in which appeals to such apologetic arguments are no longer effective? Rational arguments for the truth of theism are no longer supposed to work. Some Christians therefore advise that we should simply share our narrative and invite people to participate in it. This sort of thinking is guilty of a disastrous misdiagnosis of contemporary c...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (of all circuits) has just issued a rather significant free speech case related to the right to protest abortion. According to the L.A. Times story : The 1st Amendment rights of two anti-abortion activists were violated when they were ordered to stop circling a Rancho Palos Verdes middle school in a truck displaying graphic photos of aborted fetuses, a federal appellate court ruled Wednesday. Overturning an earlier district court judgment, a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled that school officials and sheriff's deputies violated the men's free speech rights by ordering them to leave the school's neighborhood. The court in its ruling on a lawsuit brought by the activists cited the concept of a "heckler's veto," which states that free speech cannot be limited based on listeners' reactions to the content. The activists' "speech was permitted until the students and drivers around the school rea...

Atheists want to think that they are smarter than people who hold religious convictions. This belief is reflected in the decision of some of their numbers to refer to themselves as "brights." Recently, another atheist has drummed up the old canard that atheists have a higher IQ than most people. According to an article published at Telegraph.co.uk entitled 'God is not just for the stupid' say Christianity's clever people , "Professor Richard Lynn, Ulster University's emeritus professor of psychology, said that more members of the 'intellectual elite' considered themselves to be atheists than the national average." A related article entitled Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God' ,expands on Professor Lynn's comments. A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers. * * * Professor Lynn said most...

I woke up this morning thinking about this. I mean in that state where one is dropping out of a dream, this idea was already running in my head, like a word document you get to exist before you go to bed. I guess it's "heavy on my heart" as they say. It was a fully hatched idea as I did my morning "business." But by the time I got the coffee brewed I had already forgotten it. The time between dawn and now, which is 6:29 has been an attempt to salvage the fragments I remember. I have thought of all of these things before. There's really nothing new here for me, but it somehow seems more fresh and its impressed upon my mind. I guess the place to start is with the impossibility of proving the existence of God. This is a premise I have long since accepted, since my usual tactic is to argue for "rational warrant." I'm not sure that this is even a meaningful phrase, much less a possibility. I think the urge to produce a heuristic structure capable of...