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TechnoratiPOST PUBLISHED INApril, 2010
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You ain't convinced me yet!
April 29th, 201006:48 PM ETIt is a common theme. AcesLucky observes (in the thread to "Believe propositions p and q and thou shall be saved"): "I have asked you before to demonstrate knowledge of such a supreme being. Of course you could not, I knew that and so did you, and yet you ACT as an authority of such knowledge." This reminds me of Kent Hovind. Back before he was i... -
Belief in God vs. belief in pink unicorns. Yawn.
April 28th, 201011:14 PM ETI have been asked by TheOtherSorcero to finish what I started in "Keeping an Open Mind about what exists". Being a congenial fellow, I agreed to revisit this aging post (now four weeks old which is positively ancient in blogosphere terms). But what to respond to exactly? Hmm. Well here's what AcesLucky posted (apparently quoting some bloke na... -
Believe propositions p and q and thou shall be saved
April 26th, 201009:50 AM ETIt all started when Ken Pulliam asked "What do you think that a person must believe in order to be saved?" Then came the substance of my subtle and richly nuanced response:) "I cannot provide a simple answer on the terms I have been given because I don't think the foundation of a saving relationship with God is found in belief at all." This hardly... -
Is salvation a matter of believing the right things?
April 23rd, 201005:59 PM ETKen Pulliam asks a most reasonable question in the blog, a question concerning the relationship of belief to salvation: "What do you think that a person must believe in order to be saved? I am having difficulty categorizing your position, you seem to be much different than the evangelicals I am familiar with. That is a good thing, actually, becaus... -
Five reasons conservative Christians should care about the earth on earth day (and every other day too)
April 22nd, 201011:52 AM ETYes folks, it's Earth Day once again. In commemoration of this illustrious occasion I offer five reasons for conservative Christians (not traditionally known as being among the first guard of radical environmental activism) to care about the earth. 1. Just to spite those "liberals" Here's the scene. You're at a stop light in your Dodge pick-up (t... -
Who wants to go to hell?
April 21st, 201004:16 PM ETTo say that the traditional doctrine of hell presents a theological problem would be a striking understatement. I know that most Christians haven't begun to wrestle with the problem, not least because one rarely hears of hell these days. Gone are the days of fire and brimstone hellfire sermons. Today's progressive Christian tends to be a ... -
Does doctrinal disagreement demonstrate God's incompetence?
April 17th, 201010:47 AM ETWe have been discussing the theology of atonement for the last couple weeks. In "Mysteries for Poets and Skeptics" I quoted AnAtheist.net who quipped in one of those threads (with a mischievous chortle, no doubt): "I wonder if He [God] gets a certain amount of pleasure (as much as I do) from watching all of these theologians wrestle and disagree w... -
Mysteries for Poets and Skeptics
April 15th, 201002:20 PM ETA partial response to the thread of "Do you go to hell for having the wrong theory of atonement?" AnAtheist.Net enjoys watching theologians continue to dispute a theology of atonement after two millennia: "This seems like something that God could have clarified from day one. I wonder if He gets a certain amount of pleasure (as much as I do) ... -
One dying savior and one tin soldier
April 11th, 201011:12 AM ETHere's a rush transcript of the theoretical account of atonement with which I am most sympathetic. It is a Girardean view, and I base my telling on the 1960s anti-war song "One Tin Soldier" which was recorded by "The Original Caste" and "Coven". It was a heady time of civil unrest spurred on by a pie-in-the-sky idealism combined with a gritty... -
Do you go to hell for having the wrong theory of atonement?
April 11th, 201010:54 AM ETJust before Easter I began a critique concerning a particular understanding of atonement, that encapsulated in the legal metaphor of Christ paying our debt of sin, as well as the penal substitutionary metaphor of Christ dying in our place. It is not that I deny these are metaphors of scripture. Rather, I deny that they provide a theoretical account... -
Organic cigarettes and other great ideas
April 10th, 201012:08 PM ETI was flipping through a copy of "Mother Jones" magazine yesterday (always time well spent) when I came across an ad for "Natural American Spirit" cigarettes made with 100% organic tobacco. Wow, what a great notion! Indeed, it gave me a good idea: perhaps I can finally sell that box of uranium paperweights sitting in the basement by labelling them... -
On the love of atheists
April 09th, 201012:01 PM ETIn "Is love a many splendored thing, or is it just a way to get what you want?" I pointed out that love -- the love of which poets write, inebriated lounge singers sing, and starry-eyed newlyweds share -- fits ill with a dysteleological Darwinian view of the universe in which "love" is a mere product of biological evolutionary history. I wasn't di... -
Is love a many splendored thing, or is it just a way to get what you want?
April 06th, 201002:22 PM ETWhen my brother was in university, one of his English professors defined love as "two people agreeing to use one another." Seems a little bit cynical, no? But depending on one's worldview, it may not be that crazy after all. Andrew Brown opens his book The Darwin Wars (Touchstone, 1999) with an account of the suicide of George Price. As Brown expla... -
Why cannot God just forgive?
April 03rd, 201002:25 PM ETIn my last post "God was in Christ reconciling the world, but how exactly?" I explained and critiqued a Judge Judy analogy of the atonement. Some of the subsequent discussion focused in on the plaintiff Suzy. Who is this individual and what role does she play in the analogy? beetle496 attempts to summarize the discussion in the thread on Suzy's ro... -
“God was in Christ reconciling the world, but how exactly?”
April 01st, 201002:50 PM ETAccording to Paul, God was in Christ "katallassō" or "reconciling" the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19). But what exactly is that supposed to mean? The Greek word refers to an exchange of equivalent values, a settling of accounts, with the result being a reconciliation of parties. The term draws on an economic metaphor in which our alienation from ...
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An exploration of faith, knowledge, reason and doubt (with the occasional trite pop culture reference thrown in for good measure).
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