CADRE Comments

The problem stems from the basic tendency of Dawkins to try and turn God into a biological organism and make him subject to physical law. I think he does this because the kind of naturalistic that Dawkins is can't think creatively. Be that as it may, I have a word about design before I get into the issue of complexity and God. The using of organized complexity as an argument for the existence of God must be done very sparingly and very carefully. This is because the design argument is not a good argument. I have found some specialized uses for aspect of the design argument, and I say must be done carefully,but by and large I don't use the design argument because it's based upon a fallacy. It first of all treats God like a big man, a big city planner in the sky. The problem with "planning' is it's a human thing. It's also a problem because you can't base belief upon the appearance of the word, since we do  not have a designed world (or one that we know ...

Richard Dawkins.net posts an article:saturday setp 12, 20 article entitled: "Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do" Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend  William Paley, in "Natural Theology," that the creation of life was  God's greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today  we'd amend the statement: Evolution is the universe's greatest work.  Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most  surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have  ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous  well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.  Here we see the atheist willing to take the prescriptive side of physical law, whereas most of them time they will demand that physical law is only descriptive. Notice how Dawkins seems offer physical law and evolution almost as an er zots alternat...

 Atheists are fond of dismissing Atheist Watch (My "other" blog) as my own private hate fest. But the truth is I've been using it to construct a theory of atheist psychology. The major conclusion I've reached so far is that there is a calculated ideology that someone constructed (not to sound so mysterious--by "someone" I don't mean atheists "men in black" just the normal evolution of argument and the contributors to the same). One of the standard leavers of that ideological/propagandist approaches used in their movement is development of a standard for proof which enables them to constantly raise the bar so no amount of evidence or reasoning can ever count against their position. It's a rhetorical device not a rule of logic! Carl Sagan made this statement popular in its current form, it was originally used by Hume, Laplace and other early theorists, but atheists have sense taken it as a major slogan for their decision-making paradigm....

Doherty compiles the different understandings of the early church in its attempts to come to terms with what the events of Jesus life and death meant, and plugs into them Gnostic interpretations and uses the fact of theology itself to imply that the church didn't have the story of the cross and the tomb when it began. Between these two poles lie other incongruent conceptions. In the earliest layer of the Gospel of John, Jesus is the mythical Descending-Ascending Redeemer from heaven who saves by being God's Revealer; later he is equated with the Greek Logos. Jesus is the heavenly High Priest of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the non-suffering intermediary servant of the Didache, the mystical Wisdom-Messiah of the Odes of Solomon. Paul hints at divergent groups in places like Corinth who "preach another Jesus." In the diverse strands of Gnosticism Jesus (or Christ) is a mythical part of the heavenly pleroma of Godhead, sometimes a revealer akin to John's...

CT Direct has published an article entitled The End of Religious Freedom concerning the case of Christian Legal Society v. Leo Martinez presently pending in the United States Supreme Court. The case concerns the refusal of Hastings College of Law to grant recognition to the local chapter of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) as an active organization on the grounds of Hastings Law School. The denial of recognition keeps the local chapter of the CLS from receiving any funding through the law school or from using its facilities. Why would this notoriously liberal law school located in ultra-liberal San Francisco take this action? Of course, it has to do with the belief widely held among liberals that Christianity is bigoted for taking a stand based on moral principles (specifically, Biblical principles) against homosexual marriage. As described in Religion and Ethics Newsweekly's news article on the case (hereinafter, the R&E Newsletter): The chapter at Hastings opens its meeti...

Finally, Doherty brings up the lack of suffering in Q sayings: But the most telling feature of the Q Jesus has proven to be the most perplexing, for he seems to bear no relationship to Paul's. Scholars continue to puzzle over the fact that Q contains no concept of a suffering Jesus, a divinity who has undergone death and resurrection as a redeeming act. Q can make the killing of the prophets a central theme (e.g., Luke 11:49-51) and yet never refer to Jesus' own crucifixion! Its parables contain no hint of the murder of the Son of God. Yet it is not sure that Q doesn't refer to Jesus' suffering or death. Suffering and death are implied all over Q as David Seely ("Jesus Death in Q" ) tells us (see page 4). Death is frame by cynical view point that reflects the current events through the lives of the prophets of the past. That would be a good reason why the Q saying source does not refer one. (Doherty goes on) "About the resurrection, Q breathes not a ...