Reading Time: 12 minutes The Empty Tomb has, for years, been a mainstay for Christian apologists, who claim Jesus rose from the dead in a glorious Resurrection. The Empty Tomb was used as one of the “minimal facts” to “prove” the resurrection of Jesus. So, what exactly is the Empty Tomb apologetic? According to all four gospels (attributed to […]
Refuting Religion
Posted inReligion
Did Jesus die by crucifixion?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Easter is fast approaching… Apologists like William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, and Mike Licona often use the “Minimal Facts” argument to “prove” that the Resurrection of Jesus can be shown to be a historical “fact.” This approach seeks to establish—or take as givens—certain claims that most everyone will agree to, and these then supposedly lead […]
Posted inReligion
Answering Dan Barker’s Easter Challenge
Reading Time: 7 minutes With Easter not far away, I thought it would be instructional to examine the Easter story in some detail, and how the four Gospels seem to contradict one another on crucial details, and whether the different accounts can be harmonized. This situation inspired Dan Barker, a former evangelical Christian preacher, to issue a challenge to […]
Posted inReligion
Jesus as the new Moses
Reading Time: 8 minutes Jesus is many things to many people. To the early Christians, authors of the Gospels, he was certainly a construction of sorts. For example, for Matthew, Jesus was written in a way that emulated Moses in order that he appealed to Matthew’s Jewish audience. The use of this formula for a theological agenda strongly calls […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Can you even calculate a best possible world?
Reading Time: 5 minutes One of the arguments in my most recent book 30 Arguments Against the Existence of “God” concerns OmniGod creating this world, and that this world must be the best of all possible worlds. This is because OmniGod is constrained by his characteristic of being all-loving. In being omnibenevolent, God’s actions must always conform to this […]
Posted inPhilosophy
One cosmic incarnation or (very, very) many?
Reading Time: 3 minutes I am in the throes of writing a book with Dr. Aaron Adair with the working title of Aliens And Religion: Where Two Worlds Collide—Assessing the Impact of Discovering Extra-Terrestrial Life on Religion and Theology. It’s turning out to be a very interesting writing process since the discipline of “astrotheology” (yes, that’s a thing) is […]
Posted inPhilosophy
The problem of dysteleology for God belief
Reading Time: 4 minutes In the philosophy of religion, we often hear teleological arguments from theists to propose the probable existence of God. These are arguments that concern design and purpose. Theists like to look at the universe and see the hallmarks of design all over the place. “The universe is fine-tuned for life,” they say, while ignoring that […]
Posted inReligion
Noah’s flood is a heinous story
Reading Time: 2 minutes There are a number of events that take place in the Bible that Christians don’t really evaluate carefully enough. The Ten Plagues of Egypt constitute one of these stories and another one is Noah’s flood. There are many problems with the story of Noah’s flood that render it completely nonsensical story when put under close […]
Posted inPhilosophy
God is not great at seeking informed consent
Reading Time: 4 minutes No, I will be not talking about the dubious circumstances involving Mary’s pregnancy while Joseph was out carpenting, though I could. Instead, let’s talk about skeptical theism as a mechanism for excusing all of the suffering in the world. Skeptical theism is the “God moves in mysterious ways” gambit that believers provide in the absence […]
Posted inReligion
Phenomenal conservatism: It seems like suffering is gratuitous
Reading Time: 5 minutes Skeptical theism is defeated by phenomenal conservatism. Big words, phrases, terminology, jargon. But also, big ideas. If you’re not familiar, skeptical theism is the philosophical term for “God moves in mysterious ways.” When confronted with the problem of evil (why does so much suffering exist given “OmniGod” is all-knowing, -powerful, and -loving?), the theist often […]