On Creationism

Plantiga's argument can be found here: https://www.bethinking.org/atheism/an-evolutionary-argument-against-naturalism Now for the argument that it is irrational to believe N&E: P(R/N&E) is either low or inscrutable; in either case (if you accept N&E) you have a defeater for R, and therefore for any other belief B you might hold; but B might be N&E itself; so one who accepts N&E has a defeater for N&E, a reason to doubt or be agnostic with respect to it. If he has no independent evidence, N&E is self-defeating and hence irrational. It can be summed up (from here ): (1) P(R/N&E) is low.  (2) Anyone who accepts (believes) N&E and sees that P(R/N&E) is low has a defeater for R. (3) Anyone who has a defeater for R has a defeater for any other belief she thinks she has, including N&E itself. (4) If one who accepts N&E thereby acquires a defeater for N&E, N&E is selfdefeating and cannot rationally be accepted. To explain "P(R/N...

 Most Biblical scholars believe Paul's epistles were written AD 50-60, Mark AD 65-80, Matthew AD 80-100, Luke AD 80-130 and John AD 90-120 (dates from here ). This is, in my view, very important in understanding what might have happened. Jesus' crucified? I am not going to dispute the crucifixion; I find it perfectly reasonable. I find it hard to see how Christianity could start without it and no reason for anyone to invent it. However, it is important to realise that Jesus was crucified for claiming to be the messiah (or perhaps for being proclaimed the messiah). The messiah was understood to be the new king who would lead the Jews to glory - and from the Roman perspective that meant someone who would lead the entire Jewish people into rebellion against the state. Mark tells us clearly what his crime was: Mark 15:26 The written notice of the charge against him read: the king of the jews. To be sure, the gospels do also put the blame on the Jews, and there is a definite trend t...

This is a response to an article by  Jason Dulle. You Can't Know Atheism is True Unless God Exists It tries to make the argument that without God to create us, we could not have the ability to reason. It is an argument CS Lewis also tried, but to my mind it fails badly. The nature of wholly material entities is that they function according to predictable patterns as determined by natural laws. This is simply not true. At the quantum level, it is all random. See here for example, which discusses using the unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics to generate truly random numbers. For example, consider the boiling of water. ... We might also consider a chain of dominos. Chaos theory tells us this is not true either. Complex systems can behave in strange and surprising ways. That the author can think of some analogies where the consequences are predictable is hardly proof that that must always be the case. This is just shoddy thinking, and all to common among those wanting to shore u...

 The Background From Wiki: After the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean king Jehoiakim.[1] In the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute, which led to another siege of the city in Nebuchadnezzar II's seventh year (598/597 BCE) that culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile to Babylonia of his successor Jeconiah, his court, and many others; Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and others were exiled when Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem in his 18th year (587 BCE), and a later deportation occurred in Nebuchadnezzar II's 23rd year (582 BCE).  What I want to discuss here is how the Babylonians treated civilians after conquering another nation. I do not doubt women and children were killed during the fighting; the Allies killed women and children in WW2. After the fighting, the Babylonians did not slaughter the entire ...

There is a theological reason and a historical reason, and while the theological reason is arguably more important, this is about the historical reason. Was Jesus executed by the Jews or the Romans? And on what charge? Blasphemy? The Jews may have convicted him of blasphemy, but Jesus was crucified; it was the Roman's who did the did, therefore he necessarily must have been found guilty of breaking Roman law, and the Romans would not care one jot if he blasphemied against the Jewish religion - Pilate did that himself! That is not to say the priests did not find him guilty of blasphemy, and then frame him for sedition; that is a possibility. But even if that is the case, he was not executed for blasphemy, he was executed for sedition. Note that the Bible tells us the Jews were allowed to execute blasphemers; if Jesus was accused of blasphemy, they had no need to hand him over to Pilate, they could deal with it on there own, just as they did with Stephen. Acts 7:59 They went on stoni...

 Pilate was an extremely powerful man. He answered to the Legate of Syria, who in turn answered to Emperor Tiberius, so was far, far up the chain of command. He was in charge of a region that encompassed, butwas larger than, the Jewish kingdom of Judah. He even issued his own coins . He was a long way from being merely a petty Roman official. But what was he like? Josephus mentions him in both Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War. He recounts the same events in both works, and we read of a man who did not care about Jewish sensibilities and had no qualms about killing Jews who stood against him. 1. But now Pilate, the procurator of Judea, removed the army from Cesarea to Jerusalem: to take their winter quarters there; in order to abolish the Jewish laws. So he introduced Cesar’s effigies, which were upon the ensigns, and brought them into the city: whereas our law forbids us the very making of images.6 On which account the former procurators were wont to make their entry into...

Way back in 1996 Behe published a book, Darwin's Black Box , claiming that so-called "Irreducibly Complex" (IC) systems disprove evolution. An IC system can be defined as one in which removing a part stops it working altogether. This supposedly means it cannot have evolved. The argument has been soundly trashed , including in a court of law, but IDists still use it because... well what else do they have? The modern argument involves two different definitions of IC, changing between them as convenient. Definition 1: A system is IC if it fails if a component is removed. Definition 2: A system is IC if there is no evolutionary route, direct or not, to it. We see systems that fail if a component is removed, and they are IC, by definition 1. Then we quietly swap to definition 2. If the system is IC then it cannot have evolved. The Bacterial Flagellum One such system is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tail-like structure in some bacteria that spins to provide forward motion....