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Entries Tagged as 'Faith and Reason'

Contra Mundum: Fairies, Leprechauns, Golden Tea Cups & Spaghetti Monsters

July 8th, 2010 23 Comments

That belief in God is on par with belief in fairy tales is a fairly common charge levelled at Christianity. Highly regarded atheist Philosopher Michael Tooley argues, If there is no evidence in support of the existence of God, then it is reasonable to believe that God does not exist. The essential line of thought [...]

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The Theology of the Declaration of Independence

July 4th, 2010 27 Comments

As I write this it is just beginning to be the 4th of July in the United States now, though its been 4th July for some time here in New Zealand. The 4th of July is, of course, Independence Day. Typically in New Zealand, those members of the secular blogosphere, who consider themselves to be [...]

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Ronald Hendel on Pascal, Evangelicals and The Society of Biblical Literature

July 3rd, 2010 5 Comments

Ronald Hendel, of the Biblical Archeology review, has written a critical piece entitled “Biblical Views: Farewell to SBL“. His beef appears to be that the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is allowing into its membership, heaven forbid, various “evangelical and fundamentalist groups.” This, he suggests, compromises the group’s scholarly integrity. Much could be said about his [...]

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Contra Mundum: Richard Dawkins and Open Mindedness

May 6th, 2010 145 Comments

The bold statement “Richard Dawkins opens minds” leaped out at me from the newsletter sitting on the University of Auckland’s Law Library counter. The article went on to sing the praises of Richard Dawkins and mentioned his book The God Delusion. On reading the piece one could be forgiven for concluding that Dawkins’ works are [...]

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Showing Christianity is True at Apologetics 315

May 1st, 2010 8 Comments

Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 has run an essay series through the month of April on the topic “Why is Christianity True?” Brian has accepted 23 submissions from various apologetics bloggers from around the world and has each day posted 1 essay in the series along with a podcast of each. At the end of [...]

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Science and Religion: Theism and Explanatory Idleness

April 20th, 2010 50 Comments

A few weeks ago I was a panelist at a forum on Science and Religion at the University of Auckland, the podcast of that forum is available here. After this forum a member of the audience sent me the following email. I have reproduced my response below. Hey Matt Unfortunately I didn’t have time to [...]

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Christianity on Trial – Tuesday Night

March 15th, 2010 1 Comment

Just a reminder to come to tomorrow night’s event at the University of Auckland where Matt will be part of a panel along with scientist Dr Jeff Talon, theologians Joe Fleener and Michael Drake, whom you can fire questions at around the topic “Christianity on Trial – is belief in God delusional, is it a [...]

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“My Ways are Not Your Ways” Notre Dame Conference

November 10th, 2009 2 Comments

In September this year, the centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame hosted a conference entitled “My Ways Are Not Your Ways”; the proceedings of the conference can be seen at the previous link and is a good resource. The theme of the conference, as outlined on Notre Dame’s webpage,  is [...]

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Guest Post: Dan Brown’s History of Science

October 23rd, 2009 135 Comments

This guest post was submitted by Dr James Hannam. Dr Hannam is a UK based historian with degrees in physics and history from the Universities of Oxford and London and a PhD in the history of science from the University of Cambridge. He blogs at Quodlibeta. The film adaptation of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons [...]

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Common Historical Myths About the Church

October 19th, 2009 5 Comments

This post is part update, part recycle. Earlier on in this blog’s life, I ran a small series of posts last year on common historical myths about the Church that  are so pervasive in society that most Christians fall for them. Anyway, after receiving some correspondence, I have updated this post, More on the “Dark [...]

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