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This is the official ping list for Depths of Pentecost: I’m a Christian blogger who writes weekly Bible lessons. Topics range from Bible studies, apologetics, theology, history, and occasionally current events. Every now and then I upload sermons or classes onto YouTube.
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My two cents is that we need to distinguish between someone saying that they don’t believe there is a God and someone saying that they believe there is no God. In the former case, you have to prove it to them, in the latter case, they have to prove it to you. Of course, then you have to define ‘proof’, and then that’s a whole other can of worms all by itself.
My concern is with what I call anti-theists: militant activists who seek to destroy the First Amendment rights of Christians.
Without a Creator, there are no Unalienable Rights: none. That means none for them either. That is how absurd their logic is.
It’s more the anti-theist than the agnostic who needs some sort of proof, because their disbelief God is supposedly absolute. As proof they’ll point out that there is no counter-proof by the other side. But from a purely scientific standpoint, lack of evidence is not evidence in itself. In other words, you can’t say with certainty that there is no life on other planets just because there is no evidence to demonstrate it.
I agree that the attempt to redefine Atheism to be "lack of a belief" in a god is ridiculous. However it seems to me this this summary of Western Philosophy is screwed up. A more traditional division into three parts might be:
Metaphysics: is about how things actually are, particularly on the largest most fundamental scale.
Epistemology: is about the nature of knowledge and how knowledge is acquired.
Ontology: is about the nature of different kinds of things and systems of categorizing them. For example the difference between the nature of God and the nature of everything else. Or the difference between abstract concepts and the activity in the brain of somebody thinking of the abstract concept and the abstract concept as apprehended.
It makes no sense to say science and mathematics fall under epistemology for example. Perhaps it would be right to say the "scientific method" does though, but the nature of what is studied by science is both metaphysical and ontological.
The "Jesus resurrection story came from pagan religions" claim is formed in a total vacuum, like most of the anti-Bible arguments. First, none of the alleged pagan resurrection myths remotely resemble Jesus. The idea that the Jesus resurrection story was based on them is idiotic for that reason alone. Second, there is the logical problem that the authors of the New Testament, with the possible exception of Luke, were Jewish and it's very unlikely they knew anything at all about those pagan religions, so they couldn't have been imitating them anyways. Then the idea that four different people would all choose to concoct a story based on these pagan religions is even more preposterous. When you make up theories in a vacuum though, logical problems like that are ignored.
I read that the Roman version of Mithra does bear a striking resemblance to the Biblical resurrection, however, Romans created their version of Mithra, which originated with the Persians I think, AFTER Jesus, and was obviously imitating the Bible, not the other way around.
I don’t disagree with really anything here. I’m an Atheist (in that I don’t believe in God), however, I both acknowledge that I can be entirely wrong and fully support one’s right to worship freely. I’m not opposed to religion, or someone having faith, and am aware that our nation was founded on the Judeo-Christian belief system. Unlike the most vocal group of my Atheistic brethren, I have no qualms with any of that.
This was a very interesting read.
My proof that this article is itself inconsistent with regards to the issue of "lack belief" versus "active disbelief."
Laughable!
Regards,