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Psalm 14:1: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. Last time , I wrote about the inappropriate weaponization of the phrase “The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God.’” This phrase can be found in Psalm 14:1 and again in Psalm 53:1. Too many Christians use the word “fool” as a pejorative consistent with the current dictionary definition which defines “fool” as being “stupid” or “silly,” and apparently non-believers understand it in that context as well. While the Hebrew words translated as “fool” or “foolish” do not mean “silly” or “stupid,” they are not complimentary. In Old Testament times as today, being foolish is not something to be embraced. That, however, is not the way that the Bible uses the word “fool” in these two Psalms. In this post, I will focus on the broad usage of the term, and in the next I will focus on the Biblical word translated “fool” in both Psalms. Foolishness as the ant...

How do you identify a warrant in an argument? The Toulmin model breaks an argument down into six main parts: Claim: assertion one wishes to prove. Evidence: support or rationale for the claim. Warrant: the underlying connection between the claim and evidence, or why the evidence supports the claim. Backing: tells audience why the warrant is a rational one. More items... Writer's Web: The Toulmin Model of Argumentation   writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/toulmin.html Skeptics usually argue against a level of absolute proof. Some skeptics may claim that they don't demand absolute proof, but the level of most God arguments and most discussions about those arguments is undertaken with an assumption that the argument has to actually it's objective, that God exists. At least that's taken to be the objective. I understood things like way myself, yet my friends and I in our collegiate and undergraduate settings, our coffee shop...

https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2019/06/occams-razor-shaves-multiverse.html Atheists often try to use Ocam's razor or what they take to be Occam;s razor, to argue that God is not necessary. In arguing so they misuse the concept of necessity under which Occam worked. Let's look at how Occam's razor was really meant to be applied and see why Occam himself nixed it' use on God. I find that Occam;s razor would shave multi verse before it would shave God.

Does God say only fools do not Believe in Him? The last time I wrote, I closed out my post with the following: The Bible is a book filled with deep meaning on many levels, and in all sincerity I have grown rather weary of sparring with Atheists over the Bible when they are reading it like it has no more depth than Harold and his Purple Crayon . But what else should I expect from those who the Bible rightfully calls fools (and not in the shallow sense that most Atheists take that to mean)? For those unfamiliar with that reference, the Biblical passage I paraphrased was from Psalm 14 which states in the opening verse: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. So, what do I mean when I say that most atheists don’t take that verse in the sense that it was meant to be taken? On its face, it seems pretty apparent – only fools believe that there is no God. It is my contention that the prior sentence I just...

This is an blogpost that BK published several years ago. The original posting has somehow been deleted, but it is the original piece. Please note that the links are from the original, and the links may not all work as of today's date. ======= Bill Tammeus, a columnist for The Kansas City Star, has written an interesting piece entitled  "For all we know, Jesus may have been apocalyptic prophet" , in which he opines on the work of historians seeking the historical Jesus starting with Albert Schweitzer. After noting that Schweitzer concluded (wrongly, in my opinion) that history can tell us nothing about the historical Jesus, Mr. Tammeus then makes a rather interesting observation. The authors of [Jesus biographies based upon a search for the "historical" Jesus], it turned out, were using new scholarly tools called historical and textual criticism — ways to dig beneath the words to understand more about their historical context. But there was something...

The other day, my wife asked me why I have so many books written by atheists on my nightstand where I keep my reading material. I told her that I like to read through the atheist materials to better understand what they think. After all, I reason, how can one counter an argument effectively if you don’t understand it? Yet, the opposite is exactly what I find on the atheist side. I’m not saying that they haven’t read the Bible. Many have read the Bible. Many are well versed in what the Bible verses say. They can sometimes find Bible passages quicker than I can. The problem with these atheists isn't that they are not reading the Bible, it's that they lack  understanding  of the material. For example, one of the atheist books I am presently reading (although I am about to put it down because it is so bad) is a book by David Mills (who has no accomplishments in his bio other than authoring atheist books) entitled Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to ...

https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2019/06/pick-universe-any-universe.html   The fine argument tuning is one of the most important arguments for the existence of God. This argument has shown the propensity to garner the most respect from established scientific sources of any God argument,It makes use of scientific data more than any argument,, Atheists are certain hat the multiverse argument takes this out. That is the received opinion among those in the scientific know. In this article I explicate the folly of that idea,

By  BK   - Popular lore has it that in the 1400s, the world was convinced by the teachings of the Christian church (which teachings were based on the Bible) that the earth was flat. Christopher Columbus, a man of vision, sought to establish that the world was round by sailing West to arrive in the Far East. The nations of the world, it is said, laughed at him because they knew that the world was flat and that one could not sail west without falling off the edge of the world!  This lore is portrayed in such places as the  Carnaval website , where it says:  When Columbus set sail the common belief was that the earth was like platter floating in an Ocean of the Universe and that venturing to far would mean falling off the edge into darkness and perhaps boiling water or unknown monsters who would easily consume you. It can also be found in the following from  the Daily Pricetonian : Christopher Columbus was a courageous visionary. In a time wh...