CADRE Comments

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 first 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 argument is sou...

In part I of this post , I introduced the idea of Undesigned Coincidences from the book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts by Linda McGrew. For those previously unacquainted with the idea of Undesigned Coincidences, I wrote about how the inclusion of minor details in the Gospels and Acts not only provided evidence that the books were written by eyewitnesses, but can also add depth to Biblical understanding when reading the details in conjunction with information found in the other Gospels, Acts and the Epistles. Just to review, an undesigned coincidence is defined by Ms. McGrew as: An undesigned coincidence is a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that doesn’t seem to have been planned by the person or people giving the accounts. Despite their apparent independence, the items fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Destroying and Rebuilding the Temple One example of an undesigned coincidence discussed by Ms. McGrew not...

Not long ago, I was listening to the Old Time Radio program Richard Diamond, Private Detective, starring Dick Powell as the wise-cracking, singing detective with a love for understanding criminal psychology. In the episode entitled The Cover-Up Murders , Diamond joins with the police to track down a killer who calls the police office nightly to announce that he will kill a random person that very night somewhere on the streets of New York City, and to chide the police for their failure to be able to stop his random killings. As people are murdered night after night in various parts of the city, Diamond and the police interview the families, friends and co-workers of people killed at random by this wildcat killer. Try as they might, they can find no connection – nothing from the interviews connects the individuals killed together in any way that they police move closer to solving the murder. The entire endeavor appeared hopeless until they went to the home of a victim named Arthur...

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2011 I have a standard sort of God argument that I used to make all the time. It began as an version of the cosmological argument and I called "cosmological necessity." (1) The Universe is contingent upon "prior" conditions (conditions that existed "prior" to our understanding of space/time: (a) Prior condition being space/time, or gravitational field. Matter, energy, all physical phenomena stem from 'gravitational field' the prior condition of which is he big bang, the prior condition of which is the singularity, the prior condition of which is...we do not know. (b)All naturalistic phenomena are empirically derived, thus they are contingent by their very nature. "There is not a shred of evidence that the universe is logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders for realit...

Does anyone out there know about the change in Google and blogger?I am expecting most of my blog to be eliminated

Jean-Paul Sartre ( 1905–1980 ) The other day I was struck by an affront to my love of continental philosophy so grievous it must be avenged. Where else but that bastion of analytical philosophy would this occur but among my friends at  Secular Outpost?  This is no mere sectarian squabble among arcane academics, it has profound implications for theology and apologetic, The real real issue here is the mystification of knowledge through the illusion of technique, which analytical philosophy is bad about lending itself to, vs. a discursive understanding of issues that is accessible to people of all walks of intellectual life.  Ryan M was making a point with which I basically agree. Certain figures such as Nietzsche and Sartre are no longer regarded as major voices of atheism in the atheist community or in American philosophy a (so say the Analytical types). Nevertheless, The stature of these thinkers must nevertheless be und...

Atheists think it is. I've seen many a knock down drag-out fight, multiple threads, lasing for days, accomplishing nothing. I wrote that dilemma off years ago before I was an internet apologist, so long ago I don't remember when. I wrote it off because at an early date I read Boethius who, in his great work  The Consolation of Philosophy  (circa 524), puts to rest the issue by proving that foreknowledge is not determinism. In this essay I will demonstrate not only that this is true but the atheist error about omniscience and omnipotence contradicting are actually hold overs from the pagan framework which Boethius disproved. ___________________   Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480?-524)   Aurthor The Consolation  of Philosophy ___________________ For years my debates on the matter were marked by silly repetition. I would constantly argue that just knowing that someone does something is not controlling it. But atheists were alw...