I'm a big fan of honesty in fiction. I don't want cookie-cutter personalities, saccharine love, or shallow stereotypes. I want the author to convince me to cheer for heroes and against villains - and I want to know why the heroes and villains are worthy of the label. I want grit and beauty, despair and hope, love and loss. If a story tells me what the world is like, I … [Read more...]
What Is Literary Apologetics?
As an apologist, I work in the field of cultural apologetics, and more specifically in imaginative apologetics -- which can be loosely defined as developing the use of the imagination, as well as the reason, as a mode of knowledge. Imaginative apologetics includes the presentation and exploration of truth through all the different art forms - painting, music, theater, film, … [Read more...]
Is Christianity Just Wishful Thinking?
One of the most honest and heart-wrenching objections to Christianity that I've ever heard goes like this: "I would absolutely love to believe that Christianity is true. The idea that I am unconditionally loved, that I will live forever in paradise after death, that an all-powerful God will hear my prayers, that someone good is looking after me, and all the rest... I would love … [Read more...]
Does grounding moral truth in God’s nature violate Hume’s is-ought?
The short answer is, no, only if you try to justify that truth by referring back to God’s nature. Here is the long answer. It is possible to blend Hume’s is-ought distinction in Ethics with Plato’s justified-true-belief theory of knowledge. A catchy name for it is the Ought-Is-Belief theory of knowledge, moral or otherwise. … [Read more...]
How To Fix Society According To Atheists
Yet another tactic that I see atheists use against God and religion, is visualized in the picture above (You'll have to click on it a few times to read it) This picture is apparently trying to convey that the quality of life in these societies is better because they're some of the least religious countries in the world. Such reasoning is quite problematic however, for various … [Read more...]
Bodily Rights Arguments
So far we’ve considered three different objections to the pro-life case: that the preborn are not humans biologically, that the preborn are human but are not persons, and that the preborn are humans biologically but are not full-fledged human beings in a morally relevant sense. That is, when someone claims the preborn are human but not persons, they agree that they are human … [Read more...]
It Won't Hurt Your Marriage
Redefining marriage won't hurt yours will it, so what's the big deal? How many of us have heard this one? What's the big deal about letting homosexuals marry? It won't hurt your marriage. This sounds like a powerful objection, but it's simply empty rhetoric. … [Read more...]
Responses to Challenges from the New Atheists and 'Nones'
Over the last few months, I have been posting responses to some of the challenges coming from the (new) atheists and the "Nones" (those who profess no religious affiliation or faith). What I have done here is provided you with a listing of those responses from the Real Issue blog, so that you have a collection of them for your reference. By no means is this an exhaustive … [Read more...]
A Response To The Resurrection Hoax
Does Kareem have a case? On a Facebook thread I'm in, someone presented the thesis that the resurrection is a hoax with a link by an Abdullah Kareen of Answering Christianity. I will include a link at the bottom of this post for all interested in reading. For now, just how strong is the case? Well, not too strong. … [Read more...]
Arguing for Deism?
One curious objection I have seen and heard to arguments for the existence of God is that these arguments apply to deism, not Christianity. For example, Michael, an atheist blogger, writes, “Note that these are effectively arguments for deism, not Christianity!” about the Moral Argument (here). The objection seems to be that an argument for the existence of God (such as the … [Read more...]