Tag Archives: philosophy

Apologetics

Retirement ministry ideas

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Hey all you Christian apologists, here’s something you can work in your schedule when you retire: Take college philosophy or science classes where the professors have an agenda to bully Christian students and spread their false views.  You could be good ambassadors for Christ by graciously exposing their impure motives and errors.

We know from the movie Expelled! and countless other examples how many professors aggressively work their false, anti-Christian worldviews into their classes.  A family friend was taking a philosophy class at a local junior college and the teacher launched into an anti-God tirade the first day.

So wouldn’t it be enjoyable and productive to be in those classes and destroy their arguments?  It sounds almost biblical:

2 Corinthians 10:5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ

Seriously, apologists could go in and be polite but firm in refuting what the professors say.  It wouldn’t take long for them to go back to teaching the actual subject material — you know, the thing they are paid to do.  And who knows, if you go in as good ambassadors it might just change the professors’ minds.

Christians never retire.  Whatever you do after you stop working for a paycheck, strive to advance the kingdom. (Of course you should serve in many ways while you are working, but you probably don’t have the flexibility to take daytime college classes.)

Roundup

Roundup

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Great post by the Bumbling Genius about worldviews and voting.

Older people now, by handing their healthcare over to the government, is in essence handing it over to the up and coming generation, a generation that has been taught by the same older people that there are no absolutes, not even that everyone should absolutely get taken care of when they’re sick or broken.

But wait, it is even worse: That same generation has also been taught that it is all about their self-esteem and happiness and how wonderful they are. Combine that with their moral relativism and it will take about 15 minutes for them to rationalize away taking care of old people.

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I noticed that the Leftist media is working to keep the Akin rape comments issue alive and trying to pin it on Romney.  But Romney rapidly refuted Akin’s comments in a clear and thorough fashion.  That only leaves two options.

1. The Left agrees with Akin.  After all, if Romney strongly opposed Akin and the Left strongly opposes Romney, what other option is there?

2. The Left knows Romney disagreed with Akin but is so desperate to destroy Romney and avoid accountability for Obama that they have no choice but to lie.

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Should Anyone Be Surprised That MSNBC Cut The Speeches Of Republican Minorities?  If you only get your news from the Leftist media you are part of the problem.

(Red Alert Politics) MSNBC wants you to think the Republican Party hates minorities. So much so that the liberal news network cut minority speeches from it’s convention coverage.

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Hebrews and 1 Timothy Small Group Guides — they look good — and free!

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Responding to the top 10 excuses used to justify homosexuality — Hat tip: GCM Watch

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New study: smoking marijuana/cannabis permanently lowers IQ — Joints are called Stupid Sticks for a reason.

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Code Pinkos Descend on RNC Dressed as Giant Vaginas — They are so tone-deaf that they miss their obvious hypocrisy.  Shouldn’t they use these same arguments against those insisting that we pay for their birth control and abortions?

The protesters carried signs saying such things as, “Read my lips. Leave my vagina alone,” and argued that pro-life Republicans are waging a war against women.

 

Christian worldview

Turning the tables: If evil exists then atheism and moral relativism are both wrong

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circle-slash.jpgThe “problem of evil” is a classic argument used against the existence of God, but it is self-refuting. If evil exists — real, universal evil and not just people’s opinions that some things are evil — then that defeats the foundations of both atheism and moral relativism.

  • Atheism – Universal moral laws require a universal moral lawgiver.  Even if Darwinian evolution was true, it could account for feelings of morality but not objective morality.
  • Moral relativism – Making universal claims about right and wrong goes against their worldview.

Both groups rarely go three sentences without making moral claims that they expect you to adhere to, but their worldviews can’t support them and give you no reason to take them seriously.

Evil doesn’t disprove the existence of God, it supports it. Even if it didn’t fail in these ways it still wouldn’t disprove the existence of God.  Atheists can’t prove that God couldn’t have a morally sufficient reason to permit evil for a time.

Hat tip: Stand to Reason

Christian worldview, Financial, Politics, Pro-life

Why do liberals agree with Ayn Rand?

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No, not her economic views and insight into the problems of economic liberalism, but her pro-abortion views.  False teacher Chuck “Jesus is not the only way” Currie, who is pro-legalized abortion and wants taxpayer-funded abortions but hypocritically mentions Jesus’ concern for the “least of these” in many of his posts, tries to put down the GOP for agreeing with Rand’s identification of our economic problems — see The GOP’s Love Affair With Ayn Rand.  But who really has the love affair with her godless worldview?

The irony of him agreeing with Rand on abortion is lost on a pro-abort like Chuck.  Legalized destruction of unwanted human beings is the opposite of social justice and about the love Jesus taught about, but it is the #1 goal of fake Christians like Currie and the un-believing liberals who agree with him.

This is a sample video by the deceptively named American Values Network.  They pretend to care about the Bible, but their real god is big government.  And even if they did care about the real Jesus, why aren’t the liberal ACLU-types criticizing them?  Oh, because the only oppose authentic Christianity and/or religious views they disagree with.

Friendly reminders: 1. Conservatives give more money and even blood than notoriously stingy Liberals.  2. Liberals fail at basic economics

Christian worldview, Intelligent Design

Darwinist philosopher says ethics are an illusion

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I disagree with his premise of Darwinism, of course, but I think he is being consistent with his worldview.  If the nothingness-to-molecules-to-Angelina Jolie worldview is correct, then universal ethics would be an illusion.

In The Nature of Nature , Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse offers us his take on ethics: “Ethics is an illusion put in place by natural selection to make us good cooperators.” (—Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, 1985), p. 855)

. . .

“Substantive morality stays in place as an effective illusion because we think that it is no illusion but the real thing. Thus, I am arguing that the epistemological foundation of evolutionary ethics is a kind of moral nonrealism, but that it is an important part of evolutionary ethics that we think it is a kind of moral realism.”

via From The Nature of Nature – Ethics as illusion put in place by natural selection? | Uncommon Descent

Financial, Politics

Atlas Shrugged, the movie

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This should be interesting.  I’m not a big movie fan but I may go see this– Atlas Shrugged Part 1 Trailer.  I finally got around to reading the book last year.

Mini-review: Ayn Rand did a magnificent job of identifying the failure of Liberalism and how destructive it is.  If I wasn’t so familiar with the people represented by the characters she skewered I would have accused her of creating straw men. But many decades later the same horrific thinking dominates academia and much of politics and “religion” (the fake kinds).

Her solution is better, but far from good enough.  Ironically, she was ahead of her time in identifying the intellectual bankruptcy of postmodern thinking but fell prey to a bit of it herself.  Even if her economic worldview was better than her ideological enemies — and it certainly was — she still had no universal grounding for her ideals.  And of course I oppose her pro-legalized-abortion stance, though I wonder if she would have changed her views if she had seen how abortion rights played out after Roe v Wade.

I hope that the movie stimulates discussion about the key economic concepts that it rightly advances.  And I do know of one blogger who has probably purchased multiple advance tickets to the show . . .

Miscellaneous

Update

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I updated the Are you sure you want to bring Jesus into this? post based on an encounter with a philosophy professor who doesn’t handle losing very well (Richard Brown, a PhD candidate in the Cognitive Science and Philosophy program at The Graduate Center, CUNY and an Instructor (tenure-track) at LaGuardia College, CUNY).  I did exactly what I recommended in the post and it worked well.  Too well, in fact. 

I didn’t use any religious arguments, but he kept bringing them up.  So I asked him to support them.  He refused to acknowledge his ignorance of the Bible and wouldn’t back up any of his “religious bigotry” comments.  He gave the predictable challenge that I should just live out what the Bible says and everything would be better, and I asked them to please explain what that was and why.  I also offered my summary of the Bible (you know, the sinners in need of a Savior thing) and I think that is what really set him off.

So he deleted a comment.  No big deal, but then he started saying false things about me and then completely changed one of my comments to say something I never said (something rather crude, in fact).  I’ve never seen anyone do that before.  Then he “responded” to the fake comment.

But when I pointed out that I had made a copy of the comment thread he panicked.  He deleted everything he could find on his page: All of my comments, all of his comments answering mine and a whole new post dedicated to saying false things about me.   Then he hid the original post from his main page, though you can still access it directly from the link above (at least until he figures out how to delete it).

Wow, talk about taking the fun out of blogging!  I was going to give the guy a pass and gave him multiple chances to avoid all this.  But then he came up with another post with an “anonymous” comment of mine and wouldn’t provide a link to all the comments.  He can criticize me all he likes, but to hide any links to the discussion in question is cowardly.  He is trying to pretend that a comment part way through the thread was just so darn offensive and religiously based that he has to do all this. Sure. The comment wasn’t even religious in nature.  And if it is so bad, why I am glad to have it displayed in the link above?  Why can’t he link to the whole thread?  Why change my comments? 

So I decided to respond. 

This is a glimpse of what many college professors are like: Hostile to Christianity but woefully ignorant of it and with no desire to learn about it.  Sadly, the students have to listen to the authority figures and don’t know how to respond to them. 

Read the whole comment thread at the bottom of the post if you have time.  It covers quite a bit of ground on the civil union topic, as well as how to address many logical fallacies.

And pray for this guy.  I forgive him, but felt that I needed to flag this as a public service.

Christian worldview, Miscellaneous

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

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vegetables.jpgOur associate pastor had the following on a list of questions for our Acts Bible study (I’m not sure what the point was . . . we never got around to answering this one):

If you could share a meal with any four historical figures (besides Jesus), who would you choose?

I assume he excluded Jesus because He is busy (more likely because everyone would pick that “churchy” answer).

My first reaction was this: I’d invite the young Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot.  And I would poison them.

Seriously, I’d invite the Apostle Paul, my birth mother (I’m adopted), a comedian (for some laughs . . . maybe Steve Martin – I just read his stand-up autobiography) and Paul McCartney for some music.  It would be fun watching Paul (the Apostle) share the Gospel with the others.

Who would you invite?

Miscellaneous

6 words

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six.jpgSome former co-workers did an exercise where they tried to tell about their life in a six word sentence. 

Background: Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story, using only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

Here are two versions for me.  The first isn’t a sentence, so technically it didn’t qualify.

1. Faith, family, friends, firm, fitness, fun

2. Updated: Lost, now found; blessed, to bless.

What are yours?  Can you tell a life memoir in six words?