Some atheists reject the claims of Christianity because the God they read about in the Bible seems harsh. Implicit in such a step, however, is that the Bible must be the word of God. Otherwise, the logical thing to do would be to reject the Bible as being authoritative about God; not to reject God. […]
Read more...Category: Materialist Doctrine
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving would seem to be a perplexing concept for one who has rejected any possibility of there being something beyond the here-and-now of daily experience that presents itself to our sense impressions. Of course the question is: to whom would I be giving thanks? The idea of gratitude – motivating thanks-giving – is closely tied […]
Read more...Lane Encroachment
In Science and Anti-science, we looked at two theses. One: that exclusion of any possibility of the supernatural is bad science. Two: that some atheists depart from science altogether, subverting its principles, by attempting to brand their opponents “anti-science.” An astute comment to that post occasions this expansion of it. The suggestion is made that theists […]
Read more...The Problem of Good
“The Problem of Evil” Possibly the greatest impediment to theistic belief is the presence of evil in the world. For atheists, it is “the problem of evil,” by which they mean that the existence of evil refutes the existence of God. When they say “evil,” they don’t just mean immoral bad things, but all bad […]
Read more...If There is No God
Atheists’ Affirmative Beliefs Your friend has rejected religion. There is not a God, he believes. There is not a Creator of the universe. There is not a Sustainer of it. There is not a God present among us in some way. There is not a God component to our conscious self-awareness. There is not a transcendent […]
Read more...Origin of Life
The question of the origin of life poses a far more formidable challenge to materialism than does the inconsistent evidence for evolution. This is important to remember, because evolution and origin of life are often lumped together as though they were parts of the same question. They aren’t. Irreducible Complexity One of the reasons for […]
Read more...The Materialist Epoch
The Pagan and Christian Epochs The predominant worldview in the west before Christianity was paganism, which assumed the existence of something beyond the here-and-now of matter in space and time; gods who must be honored in their prescribed ways and seasons, for orderly human life. We discussed this in The Pagan Epoch. That “something beyond” […]
Read more...Materialism Is Not Religious Neutrality
In “Nothing” is Not Religious Neutrality, we suggested two competing ideas, A and Z. A and Z are mutually exclusive, and together they comprise the only two possibilities concerning the subject matter. If we disbelieve A, we should believe Z, and vice versa. Non-belief Does Not Create Neutrality We discussed how muddled thinking might cause […]
Read more...Modern Gnosticism
We have remarked on the curious phenomenon of declaring anything outside of nature to be unknowable. This is the frame of mind we adopt when we declare ourselves to be “agnostic” on the question of God’s existence. Many tend to say that they don’t know whether God exists, and seal off the question as being […]
Read more...Review (Part One): The Experience of God–Being, Consciousness, Bliss, by David Bentley Hart
This book is a rare find. Hart eloquently puts forward what is fundamentally wrong with the materialist point of view that lures so many into a blinkered perception of reality. Part One: “God” The Straw Man Here we consider the first of the theses Hart pursues: that the new atheist argument against God is a […]
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