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 […]
Entries Tagged as 'Faith and Reason'
Belief without Proof: Is Belief in God Rational if there is no Evidence? Part I
April 4th, 2009 3 Comments
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Faith and Reason
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 […]
Tags: David Brink · Ethics · Faith and Reason · God and Morality · Hermeneutics
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 […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Apologetics · Bruce Reichenbach · Faith and Reason · Paul Helm · Philosophy of Religion · Richard Swinburne · Steve Kumar · Thomas Morris · William Lane Craig
Does Pluralism Make Faith Arbitrary?
October 20th, 2008 2 Comments
Recently I have been reading Timothy Keller’s book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. (This is not like me because I don’t typically read popular apologetics books, and it is even more rare that I would lead a blog entry with one.) One thing that interested me is that when Keller […]
Tags: Apologetics · Faith and Reason · Pluralism · Timothy Keller · William Alston
Faith and Logic
October 19th, 2008 3 Comments
Recently, Patrick left the following comment in response Madeleine’s post on the Role of the State. “[L]ogic and reason are secular, even humanistic processes. Faith is neither ofthose. Logic and faith can be in conflict, I think. From a humanist viewpointthere is nothing particularly logical about believing in an invisible God.” Apologies to Patrick for […]
Tags: Apologetics · Faith and Reason · Theology
The Point of Intellectual Engagement: Why Thinking Matters
October 9th, 2008 1 Comment
For some faith and reason is an anathema; Christianity is the realm of feelings and is totally separate from academia, reason and logic. After the Craig v Cooke debate a Christian reporter asked me “aside from people being intellectually stimulated, what was the point of having a Christian Philosopher dialogue with an Atheist Historian at […]
Tags: Apologetics · Bnonn · Faith and Reason · Thinking Matters
Take Nobody’s Word for Anything – Especially Bob Brockie’s
October 3rd, 2008 3 Comments
In one of the definitive discussions of the issue, Philosophers Alvin Plantinga and Robert Pennock debated the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools of religiously pluralistic societies at the December 1998 meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. [The following is a crude rendition of the issues in the debate – […]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Bob Brockie · Christian History · Faith and Reason · Science and Religion · Urban Myths
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
