Tag Archives: worldview

Case For Atheism: Incompatibility of Bodiless Person?

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God

In Philo, the Society of Humanist Philosophers published journal of Philosophy, Theodore M. Drange presented 10 incompatible properties arguments against the existence of God. In this article I explored Drange’s 7th argument, namely the incompatibility of a nonphysical person.

Drange outlined “The Nonphysical-vs.-Personal Argument” as follows:

  1. If God exists, then he is nonphysical.
  2. If God exists, then he is a person (or a personal being).
  3. A person (or personal being) needs to be physical.
  4. Hence, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1-3).(Drange 1998: url) Continue reading →

Cosmic Genesis And Grousing Of Religious Atheists

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Cosmos

Michael Palmer’s The Atheist’s Creed records the first article of faith, which characterizes what I call religious atheism, namely “I BELIEVE THAT the cosmos is all that is or ever was and ever will be.”(Palmer 2012:5, emphasis in original), which is contrary to modern cosmology. I recommend reading the first part: Cosmic Beginning And Grousing Of Religious Atheists, before reading its second.

In The Beginning And Religious Atheists’ Fear

Religious atheists’ fear, as echoed in Steven Hawking’s prerecorded speech played on his 70th birthday, is that “[a] point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God.” (Grossman 2012: 6).

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Renaissance 2.0

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A Review of Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, by Nancy Pearcey

Nancy Pearcey knows the captivating power of secular ideas because she used to hold them herself. As a teenager, she rejected the religion of her childhood and embraced a host of “ism’s” from moral relativism to scientific determinism to New Age spiritualism. But she persisted in her quest for truth only to find that the biblical worldview offers far better and more complete answers to the real world questions those philosophies attempted to address. For those of us who lack such intellectual stamina, her books serve like a museum tour of the long and winding journey by which she arrived at that conclusion.

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Consistency Among Disciplines

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Every day thousands of scientists around the globe perform experiments and observations of the natural realm. They note a certain condition, make (or allow) a change, then note the new condition. Many times, the same experiment or observation is conducted repeatedly to be certain the results of the first (second or third) were not just “flukes.” Scientists combine many of these to come to conclusions about the natural realm. But what is it that allows these conclusions to hold any validity? They are based on experiments and observations, but what allows those to be trusted to reflect the natural realm?
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Eternal Cosmos Is Dead, Don’t Tell Stenger

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Andrew David's Russell

A retired elementary particle physicist Victor J. Stenger, contrary to contemporary cosmology, still stands firm in a possibility of eternal universe.

In his talk given on November 7th 2012 at the Boulder Socrates Café, “How Can Something Come From Nothing?”, Stenger echoed Bertrand Russell’s 1948’s objection rose in a debate with Frederick C. Copleston while discussing the cosmological argument. Stenger contended,

A common question I get from religious believers is “How can something come from nothing?” They seem to think it’s the final clincher proving the existence of God—or at least some form of supernatural creation. Of course, they don’t say how God came from nothing. Or, if they do, they claim God always existed and so did not have to come from anything. But then, why couldn’t the universe have always existed? In fact, modern cosmology suggests that it did—that the universe is eternal. (Stenger 2012: n.p underline original) Continue reading →

Atheism: Insufficient Evidence For Belief in God?

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Andrew David's Russell

A belief that atheism is true because of insufficient evidence for belief in God is feeble and unwarranted. Kai Nielsen, an atheist philosopher, correctly explained that “[t]o show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false”(Nielsen 1971: 143-4).

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On an idiosyncratic faith

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Bear with me as I offer some thoughts on why I think so many criticisms of Christianity – along with so many versions of Christianity – miss the mark.

Consider this list:

  1. God (the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) exists

  2. God is uniquely revealed to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whom God raised from the dead

  3. By having a relationship with God though Jesus, who is God’s own son, we can have eternal life, and know and enjoy God forever

  4. God is the ultimate basis of objective moral facts

  5. People to whom God revealed himself one way or another wrote the Bible, which on the whole presents a reliable picture of who God is

  6. When I talk about believing in Jesus “as a matter of faith,” that’s my way of saying that it’s not about having good grounds for belief, or accepting evidence for the truth of those beliefs.

  7. A big part of my conviction that Christianity is true arose (and maybe is still sustained) by powerful, moving religious experiences that I attribute to the work of the Holy Spirit.

  8. In addition to my faith that I will have eternal life eventually, I trust that God will always “look after” me in this life because I am his child, and he has a wonderful plan for my life that will make me happy and fulfilled.

  9. When I pray, or even better, if I can get a lot of people to pray, and even better, if I can get them to pray really hard, God is more likely to give me what I ask for.

  10. It’s really important to me that my understanding of the origin of the universe or the precision with which the biblical writers recorded all the events that they record is correct, otherwise the way that I think about my whole worldview could be mistaken.

  11. It’s important to me that I know and can explain why X exists (where X is some feature of the universe, whether something in biology intersecting with the question of design, or X is the existence of suffering, or the existence of widespread ignorance or disbelief in my God). Otherwise, there’s a serious hole in my view of God. Continue reading →

The Day After The End Of The World

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2012 end of the worldAs I write this article it’s still Friday December 21st 2012, but I will have to finish it tomorrow the day after the end of the world. I’m still relaxing in my bunker and have made myself hidden like a groundhog. Actually, I have a gym workout yet to do and some errands to run, to get Santa ready for Christmas. All joking aside, I’m saddened by the various people worldwide who have been deceived once again by propaganda. I have read reports of people committing suicide and in China over 600 members of a cult group were arrested for their shenanigans. These are just a couple of issues that I could cite concerning this supposed event, that at best, was a self-fulfilling prophecy for those that believed the hype.

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Flew, Dawkins And God

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In “There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”, the British philosophy professor, late Antony Flew, shared his reasons for converting from atheism to deism.

“We must follow the argument wherever it leads”, a principle that Plato attributed to Socrates, was the norm to which Flew followed (Flew 2007: 46). With increasing evidences of the teleological argument, Flew had to change his position. Continue reading →

Tetragrammaton And Jehovah’s Witnesses

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Unwarrantedly Watchtower Society’s Translation Committee added “Jehovah” in 237 places in New Testament. By doing so, New World Translation (NWT), Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Bible, blurs many passages that depicts Christ Jesus as Lord (Kyrios) of Old Testament.

In Journal of Biblical Literature, Kurt Aland showed that the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, does not appear in any of the 5,255 known New Testament Greek manuscripts (Aland 1968: 184). The Tetragrammaton is also absent in the writing of the early Christians. For example, Clement’s epistle to the Corinthians written ca. 100 A.D quoted Joshua 2 cf. Heb. 11:31(“I[Rahab] know assuredly that the Lord(“κύριος”) your God hath given you this city [...](1 Clement 12), Ezekiel 33:11 “For as I live, said the Lord (Ky′ri·os), I do not desire the death of the sinner so much as his repentance”.(1 Clement 8). NWT’s unwarrantedly added “Jehovah” in front of “Lord”. Continue reading →