If you present the cosmological or design arguments to skeptics at least a few times, it’s extremely likely that you’ll hear the words “That’s a ‘God of the gaps’ argument.” This objection is rooted in the idea that because a number of things throughout human history have been wrongly attributed to the supernatural activity of God or gods, we can now safely dismiss God as a … [Read more...]
William Lane Craig on Three Types of Cosmological Arguments
I am privileged to be one of the general editors of the upcoming Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Zondervan, April 2017). Paul Copan, Tremper Longman, Michael Strauss, and I–along with our excellent team at Zondervan–have endeavored to create a reference work that tackles the most important terms, concepts, people, and debates at the intersection of Christianity and … [Read more...]
The Facts on Christianity: A Quick Examination
Source of image from CrossExamined.org “The Bible encourages people to put their faith in God. Unfortunately, many people equate faith with a blind leap in the dark or wishful thinking. But the faith that the Bible requires is intelligent faith. It is neither blind nor irrational. Biblical faith is a committing trust with an object (God) who is worthy of our faith. No … [Read more...]
The Importance of Set Theory to Apologetics
Argumentum ad mathematicum Growing up as a young lad, I had an interest in mathematics. This interest waned a bit, starting in pre-calculus (doing summation the long way just doesn’t jibe well with time constraints). Nevertheless, apologetics has brought me back to studying the basics, as it were, of mathematics. Increasingly, those arguing for the truth of Christianity … [Read more...]
Book Review: Who's Afraid Of The Multiverse?
Introduction As a Christian who is deeply interested in the sciences and what they bring to the table for defending the existence of God (and the truth of the Christian worldview, specifically), I have often encountered the idea that multiple worlds may exist, which seems to explain away the beginning of the universe and its designed features. When I heard that astrophysicist … [Read more...]
Cosmological Dialogue Concerning God’s Existence
Jane: Leibniz stated that “[w]hatever is not from something else is from itself, or from its own essence.”1 Would you agree with the axiom that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause? John: Yes. Given the Principle of Sufficient Reason, I would agree with that axiom. Jane: Would you also agree … [Read more...]
Principles in Revolution
A Review of The Principle Shortly before his death in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in which he proposed that the motion of the planets could be better explained by assuming that the sun, rather than the earth, sits at the center of the universe (the Solar System being the extent of … [Read more...]
Objection(s) to the Ontological Argument
It may be strange to some that there are philosophical objections raised by Christians against arguments for belief in God. For example, St. Anselm's "Ontological Proof" (as it would come to be called) was taken under a critical lens when Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) took consideration of the argument in his epic Summa Theologiae (ST hereafter). Over the last year or so, I have … [Read more...]
Understanding the arguments in God’s not Dead: Part II of III
In part one we looked at the arguments advanced by Professor Radisson, now we come to the arguments Josh put forward as he took the floor. The first argument Josh talked about is called the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. This comes in many different versions, all of which have interesting aspects. Yet all of them have in common the idea of a first cause, … [Read more...]
Is There a Way to Avoid a Universe with a Beginning?
After examining the evidence, cosmologists and physicists have largely embraced the fact we live in a universe that began to exist at a point in the distant past. At this point of “cosmic singularity” all space, time and matter came into existence abruptly, beginning in an extremely hot and dense state and expanding rapidly. Everything came from nothing. This view of the … [Read more...]