On Creationism

Lennox is a professor of mathematics who gets cited a lot by Christians because of his academic credentials. While I assume he is knowledgeable in maths, his apologetics are pretty poor! Here is a page where he discusses evidence for the resurrection (as part of an interview). https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/03/16/john-lennox-on-the-resurrection/ "You cannot argue against miracles in principle." Lennox spends a lot of time on this, and I accept his point. We cannot just rule out miracles. But that is a long, long way from proving a specific miracle happened. So let us see what he does have: "The existence of the Christian church throughout the world is an indisputable fact. What explanation is adequate to explain the transformation of the early disciples… What could have been powerful enough to set all of this going?" "If we were to ask the early Church, they would answer at once that it was the resurrection of Jesus. Indeed, they maintained that the very ...

Psalm 22 is not Prophecy Christians claim Psalm 22 is a prophecy about Jesus. It starts " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? "; Jesus' last words on the cross - so the gospels tell us - and goes on to describe the crucifixion. However, an alternative scenario is that when Jesus was crucified, none of the disciples were around to see what happened, so they made it up, based on Psalm 22 (and other sources in the Old Testament). After all, why would Jesus, apart of the trinity, lament being abandoned by said trinity? In this scenario, Psalm 22 is a prayer by King David, worried about the surrounding nations, who were all threatening to overrun his nation. Some verses that Christians are obliged to ignore: Psalm 22:2My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest. Jesus was on the cross just a few hours, not a day and a night.  More likely this is about the nation of Israel, under threat from its neighbours for many days. Psalm 22:6 But I ...

CS Lewis is popular with Christians, so it is worth looking at what he said. The World's Last Night is an essay he published in 1960. It can be found on-line here . In particular I want to focus on just two paragraphs. Here is the first But there is worse to come. “Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.” This is a good summary of the problem Lewis is trying to resolve. He goes on:  It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within f...

 To me, the idea of a God who tortures billion of people by casting them into a lake of fire for eternity is horrific. When you couple that to claims the same God is perfectly good and all-loving, you have good grounds for rejecting Christianity as incoherent nonsense. I will note in passing that many Christians reject the idea of hell, but it is well established in the Bible, so in doing so they are rejecting their own holy scripture. This post is about how Christians reconcile God torturing billions with the other claims made about God. More specifically, I am looking at how William L Craig explained it in a debate some years ago. A transcript of the debate is here. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/can-a-loving-god-send-people-to-hell-the-craig-bradley-debate On the one hand, the Bible teaches that God is love, and yet, on the other hand, it warns that those who reject God face everlasting punishment, and it contains frequent warnings about the danger of going to hel...

Picard is an MIT professor; a scientist who became a Christian. Some quotes from Picard's talk she gave on "Intellectual Assurance Christianity is Sound"... https://web.media.mit.edu/~picard/personal/ccc-talk.php "But the risks I take are insignificant compared to the issue at hand. The issue is twofold: first, what is the truth? And second, what is your response to it? By truth, I mean objective truth. Truth can be known subjectively, but it also exists outside one's subjective experience. Beware of the trendy relativism that pervades much thinking today -- if you (absolutely) believe there's no absolute truth then you need to come to grips with a problem with your thinking first." She is telling us she has objective reasons for thinking Christianity is true. Her reasons are not emotional, not because it gives her a warm, fuzzy feeling, but because there are evidence and reasons that mean we can be sure it is true. That is a high bar she is setting. In ...

Early Christians wanted to appeal to gentiles, so made up ways whereby they could just ignore the rules of the OT. In effect they were selling Judaism Lite - all the history of Judaism, but no need to be circumscribed! Modern Christians want to be able to tuck in to lobster and pork, so maintain this pretence that Jesus changed the laws of the OT. The truth is that he never did, and indeed was quite clear on that. Mat 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you t...