Tag Archives: theology

What’s Good About Monotheism, Again? What Part Of It Is Worth Treasuring And Rooting For? And Why, Exactly, Is God Always Gendered Male?

Robbed, killed, raped, enslaved–all in the name of God. Ain’t monotheism grand? Is This the End of Christianity in the Middle East? ISIS and other extremist movements across the region are enslaving, killing and uprooting Christians, with no aid in … Continue reading

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If God is Rational, Whence the Holocaust and Competing Goods (Such as the Pursuit of Beauty over Ethics)?

Thomist philosopher Edward Feser prefers intellectualism (reason leading the will) to voluntarism (the will leading reason). He thinks that neither desire nor imagination should lead our wills, and claims that God, as the supremely rational being, ought to be our example: … Continue reading

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God Exists And Evil Is Always For The Best?

Sounding like Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, the Thomist philosopher Edward Feser recently made the following statement at his blog: [I]t is not just God’s existence but also divine providence which can be known via purely philosophical arguments.  Hence, even … Continue reading

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The Devil is Real and Halloween is His Holiday?

It’s the 21st century, and you would think that educated people were done talking like this, but Richard J. Mouw, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in California–a seminary with a reputation for theological liberalism–continues to believe that the Devil … Continue reading

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The Evolutionary Universe 1, Genesis Literalism 0

Question: Five days after the creation of the universe, were there whales? Answer: Obviously not. Why? Because the earth was not here five days after the universe began. And, for that matter, it was not here a billion years after the universe began. The earth … Continue reading

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Stairway to Gilligan’s Island: Jason Rosenhouse and Auguste Comte on Theology v. Science

At EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse takes after theology’s shell game: If theology must change every time scientists achieve consensus on something, then what good is it? If it is only allowed to make assertions about things that are completely divorced from … Continue reading

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William Dembski’s Desperate Ad Hoc Move to Salvage Monotheism’s “Death Came into the World by Adam and Eve” Doctrine

There are few examples of ad hoc argumentation better than the one contained in William Dembski’s recent book, The End of Christianity. It is here that Dembski attempts to save a failed hypothesis—death came into the world by Adam and Eve’s sin—with this argument: … Continue reading

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Quote of the Day

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, in Volume 1 of his The Nature and Destiny of Man  (1964 edition, pg. 43), critiques Freudianism and, by extension, naturalism generally: The whole of Freudian psychology, not in what it declares but in what it … Continue reading

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N.T. Wright: Reason is important BUT . . .

I’m a rational person, BUT . . . The Christian scholar N.T. Wright is very smart, yet he suggests in the video below that reason, standing alone, is inadequate to arriving at truth. He wants us to consider arriving at … Continue reading

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Matthew Arnold, in 1883, on the Bible’s Hold upon the Public Imagination

In what sounds as if it could have been written yesterday, here is the 19th century literary critic and poet, Matthew Arnold, from the preface of his book Literature and Dogma, on the cultural state of play of Bible-based religion in … Continue reading

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Are Theological Languages Any Good? An Agnostic’s Perspective

I like Richard Rorty’s definition of a theory: If it gives us some predictive power, it’s science; if it doesn’t, it’s philosophy. Theology is a form of philosophizing, and therefore a form of theorizing. Theology theorizes under the assumption that IF there … Continue reading

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Richard Dawkins on “Theo-Masturbation”

Earlier today, I noticed that Richard Dawkins said of one of the featured articles at his site (on negative theology): Josh called it ‘theo-masturbation’. Excellent expression, and it perfectly sums up what Karen Armstrong, Terry Eagleton and all those pretentious pseuds do, … Continue reading

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Mike Wallace’s Interview with Reinhold Niebuhr (1958)

It doesn’t embed, but I think that this Reinhold Niebuhr interview with Mike Wallace in 1958 is interesting: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/niebuhr_reinhold.html

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Philosopher Slavoj Zizek Thinks About Islam, Christianity, G.K. Chesterton, the Book of Job, and the Limits of Atheist Materialism

I like these two segments from a long Zizek talk: And:

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An Agnostic Defends Negative Theology

Atheist biologist Jerry Coyne, of the University of Chicago, has a rather nasty post at his blog deriding negative theology, but I think that negative theology has some merits that Coyne might not be considering. In fact, if God exists (and as an agnostic I don’t … Continue reading

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As Non-Empirical Languages, Do Philosophical Systems Have Greater Epistemic Validity Than Theological Systems?

I would say no. When we are dealing with non-empirical (that is, non-scientific) languages, I don’t think that you can give substantially greater epistemic weight to the conclusions of philosophers over those of theologians. When I think of some of the … Continue reading

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N.T. Wright on Charles Darwin

Theologian N.T. Wright thinks about Charles Darwin in the light of Lucretius, Epicurianism, and 18th century Deism:

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Interesting

The transcript of a 1948 debate between Frederick C. Copleston and Bertrand Russell on the existence of God here.

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Quote for a Sunday

Physicist Paul Davies on the perplexities of the life and consciousness friendly universe and its origin: The problem with saying God did it is that God himself or herself is unexplained, so you’re appealing to an unexplained designer. It doesn’t actually … Continue reading

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Waiting for Coyne

Today I responded to biologist Jerry Coyne’s question, which he asked at his blog, about whether atheists should take theologians (or theological discussion) seriously. Here’s what I wrote: Professor Coyne: I’m an agnostic who (from my previous posts here) obviously has some intellectual … Continue reading

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