CADRE Comments

The old saying is that it's not polite to discuss religion and politics. However, the problem isn't discussing these issues, it has become discussing these issues politely. Regardless of whether it is religion or politics being discussed, it often degrades into an exchange of insults using the coarsest language that the parties can dredge up to throw at each other. Discussions between Christians and atheists have turned every bit as ugly as the discussions between Republicans and Democrats. Certainly, since I began engaging in Christian apologetics the conversations have certainly become much more contentious and the volume level has risen sharply. In the area of religion, I personally put much of the blame for the negative turn on the New Atheists and their take-no-prisoners approach to attacking religion and religious belief. After all, it is hard to have a calm, lucid conversation with someone when their position (as advocated by people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Har

rose window Notre Dame, Paris The New atheists constantly mock the SN as though they know what it is. When they discuss it they include anything not naturalistic. The modern conception is that SN is everything from Bigfoot to the resurrection, include  ghosts, UFOs and Psychic Powers. It never occurs to them Christians were using the term before the modern concept of naturalism so it can't just mean everything that's not naturalistic. Jerry Coyne is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. He is also an apologist for atheism. Coyne says something more interesting than than Dawkins does, however, he says that SN could be studied by science. [1] Although, I'm sure Dawkins probably agrees with his reasoning. If SN could not be so studied it would be unreasonable to fault the notion for not having scientific evidence. Coyne asserts that modern science's tendency to set religion aside as belonging to a different order of reality (magisteria) thus being

As I prepare to join my local Walk for Life this morning, I came across an article by Dr. David Hershenov, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo entitled " Ten (Bad, But Popular) Arguments for Abortion ." As someone who teaches college level courses in Political Science, I found that Dr. Hershenov is confronting the same arguments that I deal with when teaching on the Right to Privacy, which extended to include a Right to Abortion, as allegedly found in the United States Constitution. While I enjoyed the entire article, the arguments that I want to emphasize are arguments 3 (The inability of men to become pregnant) and 4 (The burdens of pregnancy and childrearing are not equally distributed). Let me take them one at a time. The inability of men to become pregnant Dr. Hershenov states the basic argument this way: Some students sincerely suggest that since men cannot get pregnant, they shouldn’t enter the abortion debate. Since their bodies won’t be

A few days ago I stumbled upon an article published on a website named Haaretz which appears to be a news site for Israeli news. The article entitled " Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live: A Murderous Translation ," discussed the correct understanding of Exodus 22:18. According to the Haaretz article (authored by Elizabeth Sloane), the word "witch" may have been an erroneous translation. And, to read into Ms. Sloane's argument just a bit, the erroneous translation contributed to the deaths of many innocent witches. Specifically, she notes: This quote, found in the King James Version of the Bible, has been widely held responsible for the witch burnings that plagued Europe, and later America, in the Early Modern Period (1450 C.E. – 1750 C.E.). But the murderous practice may have all been the result of a Biblical mistranslation. Now, as I am not an expert on ancient Hebrew, I need to approach translation issues such as this by accessing sources readily

Of course Christians and Jews have the same God. This issue was never a problem for the Church. It was a problem for the Jewish segment of Christianity in the early days of the Trinitarian dispute, during the formation of the doctrine. Heggisepius tells us that there were Jewish-Christian groups that called Paul the anti-Christ and that did not accept the Trinity. Such groups receded into history and were probably assimilated back into Judaism .[2]   The gentile Christians formulated doctrine's of God in the image of Plato's forms and rewrote the Hebraic aspects of the faith through Greek ideas. But it was supposed to be the same God. It was the redeemer of Israel (Messiah) Jesus claimed to be. That was the premise when Paul went to preach to the gentiles. The development of Christian doctrine was  ad hoc,  tackeling each issue as it arose. So they slowly began change to Greek idea .  [3] The gentile Christians had lost touch with the Hebrew theology and as they began to