CADRE Comments

I'll be working my way back into the rotation here now that I've completed some obligations. For today, here's an archive item related to a bad argument I still see resurrected today. *** In terms of the authorship of the New Testament documents, an argument that is used in many contexts for the letters of Paul (but also Peter and others) makes much over alleged vocabulary differences that indicate a difference in author. In this entry, I’d like to generally discuss this sort of argument, which I consider to be of little to no use in determining the authorship of ancient documents.  My first misgiving about such arguments is that statistically, they are generally without merit . This is often illustrated by modern comparative examples. In one instance, R. C. Sproul relates the following story in at least two of his books: One of the least scientific methods used to criticize authorship is the study of what is called the incidence of hapax legomena. The phr...

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2018/09/overview-of-phenomenology-thinking-and.html This is an overview; it doesn’t have that much to do directly with Tillich or theology. The Husserl ideas I’m going to discuss really have very little to do with Tillich. It is important to understand phenomenology its attitudes and its methods, to clear up some of the basic misconceptions about phenomenology as a whole before beginning the discussion Tillich and his concept of God, because pheneomonlogical attitude is very important to Tillich, as is Heideggerian phenomenology and its relation to ontology.

Overview I. Simplistic Theories And Logical Fallacies ... A. Kane explains how the "borrowing" took Place: How this pagan-Christian thing happened is an amazing story, not often told. Around the Ancient Mediterranean Christians and Pagans lived in the same cities -- lived in the same neighborhoods, shared friendships, meeting places, jobs, families, ideas -- for centuries. But of their of their interchange of ideas and ideals we hear not a whisper. But as we have seen Most of these cults weren't even in Palestine, some of the major one's either dint' exist or lacked the key elements to have lent their notions to Christianity during the crucial early phase. Nevertheless there is such a naiveté© about this approach. The people were living near each other so they barrowed each other's ideas. While there was such fertilization, there were also strict prohibitions upon Jews eating with Gentiles and they did not take those lightly. They resented the Rom...

Yesterday a friend came to me and said his brother was in a coma. This same guy saved my life when I went into coma three years ago, His brother was on ventilator and not responding. He asked me to pray or him, I did. Two hours latter the guy reaches up and pulls out the vent and opens his eyes and says "where am I?" In my book this is rational warrant for belief. Not proof. but it is warrant,

Botticelli's concept of St. Augustine …St. Augustine’s view that God is  being itself  is based partly upon Platonism (“God is that which truly is” and partly on the Bible—“I am that I am”). The transcendence of time as a condition of full reality is a central theme…[in Augustine’s work]. [1] Of course Augustine was one of the seminal thinkers of all Church history. Along with Aquinas he’s probably one of the two most important theologians of all time. He might be called the last thinker in the tradition of the classical age. His view of the Trinity cemented the Orthodox position and set the Western view of Trinity on it’s trajectory diverging from the eastern Church. His work The City of God is one of the greatest theological master pieces of all time, and to think it’s a letter to friend (a letter the size of the New York Phone book). Augustine expresses the concept of the super-essential Godhead many times and in many ways. Augustine was a Platonis...

1. Something exists. 2. Whatever exists, does so either necessarily or contingently. 3. It is impossible that only contingent things exist. 4. Therefore, there exists at least one necessary thing. 5. If there is a necessary thing, that thing is appropriately called 'God.' 6. Therefore God exists. (revised 8/6/'18) This version understands Necessity and contingency largely in causal terms. The necessity that creates the universe must be understood as eternal and uncaused for two reasons: (1) The impossibility of ICR [1] , there has to be a final cause or nothing would ever come to be, (2) empirically we know the universe is not eternal. See the supporting material. Atheists will often argue that this kind of argument doesn't prove that God is the necessity that causes the universe. but being necessary and creator and primary  cause makes it the sources of all things we can rationally construe that as God. Finally, even if the cosmological arg...