Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Steve Hays' Response to Richard Carrier
Steve Hays has addressed Richard Carrier a number of times at Triablogue over the years. The following are some recent blogposts that directly or indirectly address him and mythicism:
Carrier's snow machine
Carrier's allegorical method
Romulus
Art imitates life
The hero's journey
Is Jesus a mythical hero?
Richard Carrier: Christian apologist
"Schizotypals"
Corn gods
The "virgin birth" of Perseus
Sunday, March 18, 2018
The Reliability of the New Testament Text Videos
How Badly Has the Bible Been Corrupted?
(Daniel Wallace)
Redating the New Testament by John A.T. Robinson
John A.T. Robinson's classic work that presents some good reasons to suggest that all or most of the New Testament books were written prior to 70 CE because the destruction of Jerusalem is never clearly referred to as having occurred in the past.
http://richardwaynegarganta.com/redating-testament.pdf
or
http://web.archive.org/web/20070803221016/http://www.preteristarchive.com/Books/1976_robinson_redating-testament.pdf
or
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EAh-QzE8TxQ-7i-9ONxCg5t_1fcPgsZS
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Evidence for God and A Case for Christianity
Triablogue is one of my favorite Blogs I visit. The Triabloggers have addressed the evidence for God's existence and the truth of Christianity many, many multiple times. The following are some examples:
Evidence for God
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/12/im-going-to-list-and-summarize-what-i.html
Required reading for atheists
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/11/required-reading-for-atheists.html
Making a case for Christianity
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/12/making-case-for-christianity.html
A case for Christ
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-case-for-christ.html
See also links to the Triablogue eBooks at the right of their blogpage. They include eBooks like:
Saturday, March 3, 2018
Atheistic Objection to "Thoughts & Prayers"
Recently it's been popular on social media to object to theists stating that their "thoughts & prayers" go out to the living victims of tragedy. Usually, this objection comes from simplistic atheists. The following meme is representative of their objection.
1. The apparent fact that the phrase "thought & prayers" instead of merely "prayers" has, from my observation, arisen after the emergence of aggressive atheism [cf. The New Atheism movement] suggests to me that that addition of "thoughts" to the simple term "prayers" was an attempt by non-theists and atheists to be included in wishing the living victims of tragedy well. Especially since, a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of most prayers are thoughts. You can have thought without prayer, but you usually don't have prayer without thought [I'm leaving aside the issue of speaking in tongues whereby one allegedly can pray without knowing what one is praying about because it's not pertinent to the issue]. Given theism, the statement "Our thoughts and prayers are for/with the victims" would tend to seem to be redundant. So, if there's any asininity to the phrase "thoughts & prayers", it might actually find its source in atheism, not theism.
2. Those who object to people saying they are praying for the living victims of tragedy on account of the [alleged] fact that praying doesn't do anything to help beg the question that it doesn't help. They would have to be omniscient to know all the various ways God might respond to prayer in the short term, long term, the spiritual, the physical, the emotional, the financial, the earthly, the heavenly [e.g. victims of tragedy might end up getting "saved" because of seeing their need for God]. So, if anything, it's objectors to praying and prayers who are potentially being unmerciful toward the victims. If the atheistic objectors point out that theists who pray don't also do something tangible in this physical world, so what? Not everyone (whether theist or atheist) can do something tangible or financial (etc.) about a situation. Since, hard atheism [positive belief in the non-existence of all possible gods], as opposed to soft atheism [mere lack of a belief in gods], is impossible to prove; the logical, rational and merciful thing is for soft atheists to tolerate [or even encourage] theists to pray for victims of tragedy. But many atheists would rather not be that logical or rational.
3. Also, what's wrong with thought? An atheist or theist could be spending some time thinking of the victims and later come to some insight into how he or she CAN **NOW** help the victims, and even possibly prevent future similar tragedies. Isn't that precisely what objectors to "Thoughts & Prayers" are attempting to do when they object? Namely, thinking. That is, unless they're willing to admit that they are being UNTHINKING when they make such asinine objections to " *̲T̲H̲O̲U̲G̲H̲T̲S̲*̲ & Prayers".
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