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Entries Tagged as 'Faith and Reason'

Contra Mundum: God, Proof and Faith

October 1st, 2009 11 Comments

Since the 17th century one of the most common sceptical objections to the Christian faith is the claim that belief in God is irrational because his existence has never been successfully proven. For centuries theologians and philosophers have proposed a range of arguments for the existence of God; sceptics not only contend every one of [...]

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Darwinian Evolution, God and Ockham’s Razor

September 11th, 2009 31 Comments

In a previous post, Darwinian Evolution, Chance and Design, I argued that the contention that Darwinian evolution occurs by chance does not entail that it shows the world was not designed. Once one sees how the concept of chance is defined in evolutionary theory one can see that it does not rule out design. It [...]

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Darwinian Evolution, Chance and Design

August 28th, 2009 39 Comments

In a previous post, God, Darwinian Evolution and The Teleological Argument, I argued that evolution does not refute the teleological argument. Also, even if it did, a lot more significant philosophical work over and above any appeal to natural selection would be needed to infer from this that theism is rationally untenable. There is, however, [...]

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Video of Matthew Flannagan on Apologetics: Answering Objections to the Christian Faith

May 28th, 2009 6 Comments

Matt spoke at the Thinking Matters Auckland Launch on 8 March 2009 on Apologetics: Answering Objections to the Christian Faith. If you missed it or wish to see it again or if you have been thinking about attending a Thinking Matters seminar or booking Matt as a speaker and you are not sure if he [...]

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Guest Post: The Virtue of Christian Dogma

April 17th, 2009 24 Comments

The following is authored by Dominic Bnonn Tennant, of the blog Dominic Bnonn Tennant – Developing the Mind of Christ. Please support Bnonn by clicking through to his site. Bnonn writes: Damian over at ‘And Slaters Go Plop’ has recently written on Dogma, arguing against its intellectual legitimacy, and asking how we can avoid it. [...]

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Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part III

April 7th, 2009 3 Comments

In Part I of this series, I criticised the rationalist objection to belief in God. In Part II I set out an alternative view of faith and reason defended by Alvin Plantinga. In this final post, I want to address two common objections to the view of faith and reason I have been sketching. Argument [...]

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Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part II

April 6th, 2009 2 Comments

In my previous post I criticised the rationalist objection to belief in God. In this post I want to sketch an alternative view of faith and reason defended by Alvin Plantinga. In my next post I will address two common objections to this conception.Belief in God as Properly BasicIn several of his works Alvin Plantinga [...]

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Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part I

April 4th, 2009 3 Comments

This series is effectively the talk I gave to Thinking Matters Auckland on Belief without Proof; It will be split into three posts. First, I will examine a common objection to belief in God, the objection that it is irrational to believe in God without proof; I will unpack this objection and argue that it [...]

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Brink on Dialectical Equilibrium

February 5th, 2009 2 Comments

In my last two posts, I have criticised David Brink’s appeal to scripture in order to argue against the appeal to divine commands in ethics. Brink anticpates the kind of argument I have offered and states, A common theistic response to these interpretative puzzles is to endorse the interpretation of tradition and scripture that yields [...]

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Some Autobiographical Remarks: How I Discovered Christian Philosophy

October 23rd, 2008 6 Comments

Increasingly so of late, I find myself in conversations, in the receipt of email requests or blog comments asking where to begin and how to expand one’s Christian philosophical understanding. I have been asked to recommend books and places to study and to share my own journey in this area. I started my studies at [...]

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