web analytics

Tag: naturalism

Barker’s Rebuttal to Kingsley’s Easter Answer: A Dud

Not too long ago I posted a review of Stephen Kingsley’s The Easter Answer (Amazon– www.easteranswer.com) and at that time Barker had not yet issued his response.  And no wonder:  not to be outdone in any respect, Barker issued forth a 69 page answer to a book that was only 82 pages in the first place.   I am glad for Barker’s exhaustive treatment as it exposes a whole heap of flaws in Barker’s ‘Challenge’ and most importantly gives us explicit insight into how Barker analyzes potential answers.

Probably the fundamental issue exposed by Barker’s reply is that … continue reading...

Scientism: The Atheist’s Religion of Faith

I’m getting some hits regarding scientism but don’t actually have any posts dedicated to it.  I thought if I’m going to be looked at on the subject I should make at least a few deliberate comments.  They should not be construed, however, as exhaustive.

Scientism can refer to a few different ideas and I denounce them all. 🙂  It goes without saying that people who exhibit ‘scientism’ would not use the word to describe themselves and they will resent the suggestion that they are as described.

Because this post is pretty lengthy here is a list of the headings in … continue reading...

Literary Apologetics Key to Turning the Tide

Hat tip to Charles for pointing this article out to me.

Recently ChristianityToday had an excellent article on the use of science fiction to communicate a distinctly secular and atheistic world view.  If you are a Christian that cares for the state of the Church today and our modern challenge, you should read the article.

The article correctly says:

… viewers don’t leave movies such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hancock, X-Men, and Contact—or television programs such as The X-Files or Heroes—scratching their heads in confusion. We are intrigued, but

… continue reading...

The Regularity of Natural Laws is a Pre-Condition for Reliably Detecting God

… and therefore not proof positive that a presumption of atheism is valid.

Below I have a youtube presentation I did on this.  I tried several attempts with the goal of keeping it short as in three minutes or so.  Brevity is not my spiritual gift.  🙂  Finally I typed it out and forced myself (and even then not always successfully) to stay to what I had written.  In the end it was four minutes.  Oh well.  Since I typed it out, I thought I could also include the text of the presentation, too, so it is below the youtube … continue reading...

Response to Clark on Naturalism, Faith and Reason, Revelation and Miracle

Tonight’s entry will be the latest in an exchange of cordial blog entries between myself and Curtis Clark, an atheist.  His latest, which I will be responding to, expands on my request for his thoughts on the ‘presumption of atheism.’

There are three basic parts to my response today.  First on Mr. Clark’s distinction between ‘faith’ and ‘reason.’  Simply put, I do not accept it.  About the only people who do accept his distinction are atheists themselves and Christians like myself sit around scratching our heads for most of us do not view ‘faith’ the way that atheists think … continue reading...

One Atheist Admits I’m Right, Another Responds to Big Bang Post

Atheist One.

It is not very often that you get an admission as clear as the one that was posted on my forum today.  I asserted in this post on my blog that at the bottom, most atheistic arguments against the existence of God are based on the ‘presumption of naturalism’ with   The atheist on my forum said:

At the conclusion, you argue that the evidence will show God’s existence if only we give up our assumption that all explanations must be natural.  What you fail to give us is any compelling reason why we must abandon that assumption.… continue reading...

Response to Curtis Clark on Naturalism- A Breath of Fresh Air

Recently an atheist stumbled upon my site and in the course of corresponding with him I have discovered that our different points of view aside, he is a gentleman that I can have a conversation with.  His site is called The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism and he recently put up a post responding to a post on my own blog on the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ‘special’ revelation.   Normally I try to direct correspondents to my discussion forum but in this case, an atheist who has actually announced that I am a rational thinker, I must make an … continue reading...

Equivocation on the word natural by atheists and philosophical naturalists

Has anyone else noticed this?

As a case in point- in part because atheists have accused me of ‘inventing’ atheistic positions- consider this entry on my blog and the comments that follow.  But to be clear, I run across this phenomena all the time as I read and debate theism or ‘intelligent design.’

Let me illustrate what I mean by the real world quest for the origins for life.  Scientists are working like mad to recreate life from scratch.  It is requiring all their technology, all of their accumulated knowledge, and all of their expertise.  There have been some ‘successes’ … continue reading...

Atheism and Facts and the Escape from Oneself

A recent commenter said:  “Well I don’t believe in invisible entities like gods, angels, spirits, or pixies, faeries,etc…”

I immediately thought to myself all the invisible things that he does believe in.   I thought of the invisible things that the scientific community believes in- like all the missing dark matter and the millions of years which life is said to have evolved in which is ever and always invisible to direct observation- and realized with a start a fact which of course I have long been aware of… atheists who hide behind science in their mockery of those who believe … continue reading...

Global Warming and Evolution: Intimidation the New Step in the Scientific Method

I must at the outset admit that I haven’t delved into the data that I am told substantiates the view that the earth is steadily warming. That is one reason why I have not said anything about Global Warming. I shall say that here in Wisconsin we just came off of a mighty cold spell with snows as late as April, and last year was about the same. As Wisconsin is part of the globe, I feel I can anecdotally chime in that to this point I am skeptical about the Global Warming argument. Moreover, there clearly are several different … continue reading...

Presuppositional versus evidential apologetics and naturalistic bias

I don’t very often get into debates about this but it did come up recently (by a person I make out to be an atheist no less) in the comment section of one of my blog posts.   I’m not sure what his final purpose was… did he mean to convey that we really should assume our beliefs are true and then work from there?  And that is ok?

For reference sake, he quoted this article by a presuppositionalist and for the purpose of this post if you want to know what a presupper believes that article is a good … continue reading...

Searching for the Atheist that Believes the Resurrection Happened

A recurring theme of late is that even if you believed the resurrection happened, that would still not justify the inference that there is a God or that the resurrection was a supernatural event.  There are some 500 posts or more (I kid you not) arguing about the ‘divine inference’ and a recent commenter has issued the same challenge.  It is worth reading the comments on this post of mine about my academy’s course on the historicity of the resurrection.

Now, to me the most telling thing about such lines of argumentation is that they seem geared to perfectly … continue reading...

Course on the Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus: Against Naturalism

My recent blog posts discussing philosophical naturalism really show that this course is relevant.  Here is the question:  on the historical evidence alone, unfettered by the presupposition that there is a God or that there isn’t one, and unfettered with baggage that reasonable people MUST interpret everything in naturalistic terms, can it be shown (again, on the historical evidence alone), that Jesus rose from the dead?

If he did, that is a prima facie case for the existence of God, and not just any God, the Christian God, and it also undermines naturalism.

The Athanatos Online Academy’s course on the … continue reading...