Thoughts on ethics, society, politics, religion, philosophy, theology, and everything in between
One common argument for the existence of God, developed by Medieval Muslim philosophers, is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. In its basic form, it runs as follows: The only way to avoid this argument’s conclusion is to claim that the universe is eternal, and so never began to exist. Indeed, many atheists have claimed … Read more
In my previous two apologetics posts, I defended the biblical accounts of creation and primeval human history found in the early chapters of Genesis from criticisms that they are unscientific. These are not the only parts of the Bible that have been criticized as unscientific. There are numerous other aspects of biblical teaching that skeptics … Read more
The Coherence of the Biblical Creation Account(s) It is sometimes argued that the Bible contains different creation accounts which contradict one another. The Psalms and the prophets sometimes speak of God establishing order by defeating a mythological chaos monster, Rahab or Leviathan (Job 26:7-13; Ps 74:12-17, 89:10-13; Isa 51:9-10); this resembles creation stories of other … Read more
Anti-Christian skeptics frequently make claims that belief in the supernatural, and Christianity specifically, is fundamentally contrary to science. In this previous post, I have responded to some of these claims, pointing out that the methodological naturalism of science in no way necessitates metaphysical naturalism, the belief that nothing supernatural exists. In this post, I will … Read more
Harris, Sam. Letter to a Christian Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. I originally wrote this commentary for a friend who told me that this book had inspired him to leave Christianity. The fact that someone could, over a decade after it was written, point to this book as a primary factor in their … Read more