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

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 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 […]

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