CADRE Comments

The truth : Even ancient thinkers recognized that the earth was tiny in relation to the immense cosmos. In any case, size doesn’t necessarily mean significance, as many theologians and philosophers recognized. ~ Dr. Michael Newton Keas Last time , I posted about a book dealing with science, history and Christianity that had graciously been made available for free both through Academia.com and Amazon.com by Dr. Michael Newton Keas entitled Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion . As part of that blogpost, I quoted part of the book’s introduction where Dr. Keas raised the supposed problem for God’s existence arising from the existence of an insignificantly small Earth in an almost incomprehensibly vast universe. He identified the myth: “Premodern scholars in the Western tradition thought the universe was small—a cozy little place just for human benefit. Modern science displaced this Church-sanctioned belief with a vast cosmos that revealed humans ...

I have always contended that the primary reason to believe in Christianity is because its true. I have said in prior blogposts that if Christianity were false, we should abandon it. Why? Because Christians, who are followers of the one who identified himself as "the way, and the truth and the life" (John 14:6), should be dedicated to the truth above everything else. Frank Turek, proud purveyor of Cross-Examined , has posted a video entitled "One Question You Should Always Ask an Unbeliever." It is pretty insightful, and the question that should always be asked really does get to the heart of the earnestness of the unbelievers in their views. If If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? It's a pretty straightforward question. The straightforward answer should be either yes or no. In a sane world, I would expect almost anyone answering the question in an equally straightforward manner would answer yes, but Turek points out that some of the p...

It's safe to say that many Christians have an ambivalent stance towards paranormal activity. Many Western Christians have been culturally conditioned to posit a stark dichotomy between two realms: the natural world, which they define in terms of the everyday, humdrum, physical reality we experience most of the time, and the supernatural world, more or less limited to God and angels. If they allow for the possibility in our day and age, they take miraculous healings and visions to be signs of God's direct intervention in human affairs, with immediate evidential value in arguing for Christianity. Further along towards the charismatic end of the spectrum, demonic influence and exorcisms may enter the picture. This world-picture is problematized, however, by the fact that seemingly supernatural occurrences, including dramatic healings, visions of the departed, precognitive dreams, etc. are not confined to Christian saints or even Christians in general. In fact, they're not ev...

A few days ago I came across a fascinating blog post by a prominent atheist blogger, Leah Libresco...except that it was a post announcing her conversion to Christianity and specifically Catholicism (HT: Stephen Bedard ). This conversion account is worth noting for several reasons. For one thing, it was motivated entirely by intellectual concerns, as is clear from Libresco's About page on her blog. She has been contemplating Christian and other truth claims for a long time, taking them with the seriousness they deserve and with a clear-sighted acknowledgment of their evidentiary force, which is such a refreshing alternative to the usual ignorance and laziness one encounters among atheists, who should look to Libresco as a model for the homework they have to do in order for their atheism to be even remotely rationally respectable. Her testimony shows conclusively that people do not convert to Christianity only for psychological reasons, atheist slanders to the contrary (and w...

"I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." ~ Mahatma Gandhi Yes, it is the battle of the ages: Christianity versus Christ. And virtually everyone agrees that Christ wins hands down. After all, almost everyone likes Jesus Christ. But Christians? They're judgmental! They're hypocrites! They do very unchristlike things! So, liking Jesus is easy because he taught love and forgiveness. Christians, on the other hands, talk about love and forgiveness, but many neither forgive nor love all that much, right? So, one can follow Christ without being a Christian, right? Gandhi was right when he said, "…to be a good Hindu also meant that I would be a good Christian. There is no need for me to join your creed to be a believer in the beauty of the teachings of Jesus or try to follow His example." This is, in sum, the argument made in an article in the Washington Times by Frank Raj entitled Gandhi glimpsed Christ, reje...

The following is a post sent to me by contributor J.L. Hinman. For whatever reason, he is having difficulties signing onto Blogger, so I am putting this up for him with just a small amount of editing. BK ================== Atheists have of late been harping on the slavery in the Bible issue. I just got through dealing with the post of an unusually ignorant one who claimed that Christianity contributed nothing to the progress of Western Civilization! I can't believe people are so ignorant they are still spewing such tripe. This person tried to make an argument, with no backing, that the direction of social progress is away from religion! Religion is riding high at this juncture in human history. Not only has it produced a paradigm shift in medicine but it has also produced a paradigm shift in philosophy. One might have thought that philosophy would be the last area in which religion could score big, in reality, however, its really leading the way thanks to Plantiga and the back to G...

From our good friend and former blogging partner, Weekend Fisher, at Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength : Would you say, in the death of Socrates, that Greece had shown its true colors as being against philosophy? I'd expect not; Greece is the birthplace of many branches of philosophy. The death of Socrates can be understood various ways, but the record as a whole shows there is not a general Greek reaction against or opposition to philosophy; in fairness, few cultures have supported philosophy more. But that is exactly the same variety of argument that anti-Christians make about Christianity's supposed opposition to science based on the imprisonment of Galileo. It does not matter to them that Christendom is the birthplace of many branches of science. The record as a whole shows there is not a general Christian reaction against or opposition to science, and in fairness few cultures have supported science more than Christian cultures. The modern sciences grew up in Christian culture...

Evolution News and Views has posted an entry entitled Phillip Johnson Gives State of the Debate Report in Think Philosophy Journal . In it, Professor Johnson says something that corresponds to my own view: Today authoritarian rules ban the hypothesis of intelligent design from scientific discussion and fiercely suppress it by lawsuits. A genuinely confident scientific culture that was making continual progress in confirming its theories and solving problems would not need or want to rely on intimidation to silence dissent. It may require many long years of struggle before the hypothesis of real design in biology will be able to receive a fair hearing, but the day of that fair hearing will arrive, and eventually people may wonder how a materialist theory as shaky as Darwinism was able to captivate so many minds for so long. * * * I am still convinced that the possible role of intelligent causes in the history or life will eventually become a subject that leading scientists will want ...