When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. (Revelation 8:1-2) In Western literature and especially film, we encounter certain philosophical motifs that toy with man's existential situation, as it were. From Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal to … [Read more...]
The Legitimate Use of Thomas Aquinas in Apologetics
Much has been said of the 13th-century philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, from both secular as well as religious critics alike. For instance, Bertrand Russell once wrote with respect to Aquinas that he “cannot. . . feel that [Aquinas] deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times” [1]. This is due to Aquinas’ apparent prior commitment to … [Read more...]
5 Arguments for the Existence of God
Why should one make an argument for the existence of God? Why, moreover, provide five of them? Is it that the evidence for God is so weak, that believers need multiple arguments, working together in their persuasive power, to change the minds of unbelievers? Questions of whether or not these arguments are useful, or if they can actually coerce religious belief has been an area … [Read more...]
How Should People Have Religious Conversations?
Have you ever tried talking to someone about religion? Have you shared your thoughts and opinions on man, where he’s going, and where he should be? or his relation to God, if He exists? The conversation can sometimes be frustrating and the atmosphere tends to be awkward once its all over. One prime example I remember was when I was discussing the meaning of life with someone I … [Read more...]
Criticisms of the Moral Argument
"I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidean understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that … [Read more...]
The Relevant Question
I have often been frustrated in conversations that I have about the existence of God. In these instances it is not so much that the people I converse with are themselves frustrating, or that the conversation goes no where, but rather that they don’t take the question seriously. If I am genuinely interested in their insight to the question “Does God exist?”, I feel as though the … [Read more...]
The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism
Notable atheist and Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins once remarked to A.J. Ayer at an Oxford college dinner that he couldn’t imagine being an atheist before 1859, the year Darwin's Origins of the Species was published: "[A]lthough atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” However, according to … [Read more...]
The Logical Possibility of Zombies
You read it right – is it possible for Zombies to exist? Can human beings come back from the dead and feed on the flesh of the living? While all the details of the Zombie we’ve seen in the movies can be exhausted in great detail – George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979) to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) – I want to examine a particular … [Read more...]
Belief in God as Properly Basic: An Explanation
With respect to holding certain beliefs about things (e.g., the existence of God, the existence of minds other than your own, etc.) we often hold to a criterion of knowledge regarding the grounds for the truth of the belief. Hence, let us ask for example, what might be the justifying grounds for say, believing that God exists? Is there evidence that supports the … [Read more...]
The Argument from Design Stated
We see one of the most famous presentations (though not the first) of the Argument from Design in William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802). William Paley (1743-1805) was an English philosopher of religion and ethics and had written several essays regarding Christian apologetics, such as his Truth of the Scripture History of St Paul he wrote in 1790. However, his most notable … [Read more...]