Christian Apologetics

"Atheism," Myers asserts, "is the default position. You don't have to do anything to be an atheist, but you have to work awfully hard not to be one..."

No rules, we might add, except for the ones Myers deems "right and appropriate." No obligations, except those that Myers is "happy" to fulfill.

Myers, however, is right about one thing: you don't have to do anything to be an atheist. It is the "natural" disposition of every human being (Eph 2:3; cf. Ps 51:5; Jer 13:23).

Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that every­thing he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted

It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff.

And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged.

So what is the secret that has eluded David Hume and G. E. Moore, and just about every professional philosopher of the twentieth century, including the present writer? It seems to be a matter of “well-being.” We value well-being and we therefore ought to promote it, both for ourselves and for others.

Moral philosophers have always realized that matters of empirical fact are relevant to moral decision making.

But what about the actual business of well-being itself? Perhaps brain science can tell us why one person likes to go to a baseball game and another to the opera, but can it tell us whether we should go to the baseball game or the opera?

There are also over 5700 ancient Greek manuscripts, including lectionaries, from the centuries prior to the invention of the printing press, with anywhere from a few verses to entire New Testament contained in them.  Add the manuscripts of ancient languages into which the Greek New Testament was translated, and that number swells to over 20,000.  Now we have only on average 20 distinctive variants per manuscript, though obviously that number will be far greater or far lower, even on average, depending on the amount of the New Testament contained in the manuscript.

The United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, 4th edition, one of the two standard scholarly reconstructions of the most probable original wording for each of the New Testament documents, thus prints only about 1200 variants in its footnotes, where there is even a small amount of significant doubt about the original reading and/or that makes even a small amount of significant difference in meaning.

English Bible translations usually choose only 200-300 of these to put in their footnotes or marginal notes as involving a significant enough question of meaning to be of interest to the average reader.  These involve less than 1% of all the words in the Greek New Testament

On the contrary, I find myself in a far better position than before to change minds – and, what is more important, hearts. For to argue that people who use animals for food and other purposes are doing something terribly wrong is hardly the way to win them over. That is more likely to elicit their defensive resistance.Instead I now focus on conveying information: about the state of affairs on factory farms and elsewhere, the environmental devastation that results and, especially, the sentient, intelligent, gentle and noble natures of the animals who are being brutalized and slaughtered. It is also important to spread knowledge of alternatives, like how to adopt a healthy and appetizing vegan diet. If such efforts will not cause people to alter their eating and buying habits, support the passage of various laws and so forth, I don’t know what will.

while my desires are the same, my manner of trying to implement them has altered radically.

My outlook has therefore become more practical: I desire to influence the world in such a way that my desires have a greater likelihood of being realized. This implies being an active citizen.

We know secretaries were used in certain letters and the idea one goes to the trouble of using a secretary but not using their skills in doing so makes no cultural sense.

proving that the mind cannot be identical to the brain does not amount to proving that the mind is capable of existing apart from some material embodiment or other.

if my mind is identical to my brain, then my mind and my brain share all properties: everything true of the one is true of the other, and vice versa. But it is clear that they do not share all properties. The brain is a physical thing with a definite mass, weight, location, size, shape. One can inject dyes into various of its subregions. One can insert electrodes into it. One can remove and discard parts of it. One can add parts.  I can literally give you a piece of my brain. (And you hope I won't.)  But can I literally give you a piece of my mind? Does my mind have a weight in grams? Is it  divisible?  Do my thoughts have a location or a volume?  if one thought has a second as its object, as when I reflect, is the second thought located above the second?  How far above?  Can we intelligibly speak of the voltage drop across a thought?

If x and y differ property-wise, then x is not y.Mind and brain differ in respect of the property of being wholly occupied with the mind-body problem.  Ergo,Mind is not brain.

Having heard of Jesus’ ministry while in prison, John did not become more convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. Rather, he becomes less certain. There was something about Jesus’ ministry that appeared deficient to John.

it’s likely that John was questioning Jesus’ ministry because it lacked the element of final judgment that John and many of the Jews had expected.

The remaining unbelief of good men may sometimes, in an hour of temptation, strike at the root, and call in question the most fundamental truths which were thought to be well settled.

Is there anything humans value more than their autonomy, including their autonomy to rebel against God? We could have been created without this freedom but then we would probably be incapable of even having this kind of conversation.

crucial to the very essence of our humanity

"Even as a woman who has terminated a pregnancy, I totally understand the author's apprehension … something about it just doesn't feel right,"

To pro-lifers and hardcore pro-choicers, this queasiness seems odd. After all, a reduction is an abortion. If anything, reduction should be less problematic than ordinary abortion, since one life is deliberately being spared. Why, then, does reduction unsettle so many pro-choicers?

the main problem with reduction is that it breaches a wall at the center of pro-choice psychology. It exposes the equality between the offspring we raise and the offspring we abort.Look up any abortion-related item in Jezebel, and you'll see the developing human referred to as a fetus or pregnancy. But when the same entity appears in a non-abortion item, it gets an upgrade.

The black hole, which floats in space, is a star so massive that it has collapsed in on itself. Nothing, including light, can escape its gravity."Its gravitational field is so powerful it doesn't only warp and distort light but also time," he explained. Time, thus, doesn't exist in the black hole.Using this as the final key to revealing how the universe created itself, Hawking explained that if you travel back in time toward the moment of the big bang, the universe gets smaller until it comes to a point where the whole universe is in a space so small that it is "in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole."He concluded, "You can't get to a time before the big bang because there was no before the big bang. We have finally found something that doesn't have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me, this means there is no possibility of a Creator because there is no time for a Creator to have existed.""Since time itself began at the moment of the big bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything."

The black hole, which floats in space, is a star so massive that it has collapsed in on itself. Nothing, including light, can escape its gravity.

"Its gravitational field is so powerful it doesn't only warp and distort light but also time," he explained. Time, thus, doesn't exist in the black hole.

the biblical statements about God not changing needn’t be taken in a way that rules out change in any sense.

So these texts arguably leave open the possibility of God changing in ways consistent with his perfect character, his eternal decree, and his covenantal commitments, and it’s plausible to think the Incarnation would fall into that category.

(What would it mean for a timeless God to become temporal?

It has been widely reported that Breivik is a “Christian fundamentalist.” Having read parts of his 1500-page manifesto (2083: A European Declaration of Independence), I must say that I have my doubts. These do not appear to be the ruminations of an especially committed Christian:

What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik’s explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.

He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al. He even singles out my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali for special praise, repeatedly quoting a blogger who thinks she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. With a friend like Breivik, one will never want for enemies.

In an on-line manifesto, Breivik makes it clear that he is not a “fundamentalist Christian.”  He prefaces one comment with, “If there is a God…” and says that science should always trump religion.

The nineteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche shrewdly observed that in his day the bourgeois elites of Europe wanted  the fruit of Christianity (i.e., moral culture) without the tree itself (i.e., the actual doctrine and practice).  Breivik is not a poster-boy for “Christian fundamentalism,” but the fulfillment of Nietzsche’s prophecy.