Consciencebound

Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category

 This is from the debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com blog.  Great post with many thoughtful comments afterward.  The New Testament Scholar Craig Bloomberg even poked his head in to discuss it and made for a good discussion.  The direct link to the page can be found here.

The post discusses the assumptions that we all bring to the table when looking at the Bible.  Some come with  a bias towards supernatulism and inerrancy and others come with a bias against the supernatural.  The author raises some good questions for both to consider.

A Priori Naturalism, A Priori Inerrantism, and the Bible

Christian apologists often complain about New Testament critics who bring an a priori rejection of the supernatural to their studies of the New Testament. The underlying rationale, I take it, is that such a presupposition will determine a non-supernatural historical reconstruction of Jesus before they even begin their historical investigations. But if the historical Jesus turns out to be the miracle-working, resurrected Son of God that conservative Christians take him to be, such an assumption will lead them to construct a historically inaccurate conception of Jesus. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a video version of one of my more popular posts entitled truth seeking. Let me know what you think.

This is a very thoughtful debate between two very educated and engaging men. Makes for good food for thought…

Listen carefully, follow the arguments, weigh each man’s points against the other and see who you think makes a better case. be careful not to only cheer for the man you already agree with at the start of the debate but to actually listen to the arguments and see if a solid logical case can be made for it.

Read the rest of this entry »

The question of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important doctrine of the conservative Christian religion. When you read Christian apologists, they make it seem as if the resurrection of Christ if one of the most well attested events of ancient history and that a person would be a fool not to believe it.  Most of us are honestly not qualified to make a determination in our own right so we have to depend on scholars that we read and learn from to make our decision.  This debate between the well known apologist William Lane Craig and the well known Bart Ehrman is in my opinion a wonderful exchange to listen to.  Both men are highly educated and respected in their positions and both are great communicators and debators.  I am often frustrated with debates because at times you get two individuals with very different backgrounds and areas of expertise and they both make different points that do not fully engage one another.  Although these two gentelman are not of the exact same background, they are both authorities in their fields and their fields of study are very close.

It is my opinion that Bart Ehrman wins this debate hands down and shows the great difficulty that we have when trying to understand a claim of the miraculous from 2000 years ago.  I think he does a good job explaining these subjects at a level that a common person can follow and understand.  The debate can be found here if you want to listen to it or here if you would like to read the full transcript.  Check it out and let me know what you think in a comment below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Netflix.com, I was finally able to finally watch the documentary by Ben Stein called  Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed with their watch online feature(which is getting better each month by the way).  If you have not seen this movie you should see it if for no other reason than for the value of understanding what is being said by some “Intelligent Design” proponents.  I have heard many many religious people that I know ask me if I have seen Expelled and it was apparent that they thought the movie was great and so I wanted to take the time to watch it and interact with it.  Although my own personal religious views have changed dramatically over the years, I still try to remain as open as possible to differing positions and do not want to close myself off to the possibility that I am wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

When trying to learn about what is true and what is not true when it comes to the many religions and belief systems that are available, the question of faith is often brought up as a very important and necessary component.  Faith, it would seem, is even the primary reason that many people give for why they believe what they believe and why they choose to be a part of one religion over another.  The difficulty is that many different religions which are VERY different in their conception of the world have faith as the primary determining factor of why a person should follow their teachings.  The obvious question then it would seem is this: Does Faith help or hinder the search for truth?  If I rely on faith, will I be better off in my search for knowing what the truth is than if I did not rely on faith? Read the rest of this entry »

The issue of gay marriage is one that seems to be sharply dividing down party lines.  In general, Democrats are for it and in general Republicans are against it.  Conservative Republicans fear that allowing a redefinition of marriage at the state level will undermine their beliefs about marriage being between a man and a woman only.  On a web site called nogaymarriage.com, I read a synopsis of James Dobson’s book, Marriage Under Fire where the writer points out ten reasons why gay marriage should not be legalized.  My point in this post is that the reasons that conservatives have against gay marriage are entirely missing the point and in fact they are a betrayal of some core conservative (and Constitutional) values which I don’t think they want to be against. Read the rest of this entry »

I am currently listening to an audio book by Christopher Hitchens entitled The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non Believer.  It is a collection of excerpts  of various books written by free thinking individuals such as Lucretius, Omar Khayyˆ°m, Spinoza, Hume, Darwin, Mark Twain, Marx and others.  It is actually quite enjoable reading (or listening in my case) and very thought provoking.

One of the authors that I cannot recal at the moment discusses the prevelance of superstitions thought both in our own day as well as in ages past.  He points out how common and easy it is to latch onto beliefs about the world that are simply not grounded in reality and how whole entire populations can believe such nonsense.  Beliefs such as: unlucky days, unlucky numbers, supriority of a certain race, superiority of a certain sex, superiority of a certain nation, beliefs about the afterlife, etc.  He lists a number of things Read the rest of this entry »

If you are like me and enjoy good discussion between thinking people on important topics,  I would like to recommend a podcast for you called A Christian and an Atheist.   Their web site is  achristianandanatheist.com .  Their brief description of their program is stated in these words on their web site:
“Norton and Emery are the hosts of the show. Though they find themselves on opposite sides of the God question, they remain good friends and enjoy a good old fashioned debate. Then one day they came up with the idea of recording their discussions, and distributing them as podcasts. They have a lot of fun making these shows, though their wives wonder why they have so much time to make silly recordings, and so little time for housework.”

If you would like to read more about each of their bios you can go to this link

What you will find is stimulating discussion between two good friends,  on many various topics including but not limited to the following:

Show 1: Introduction
Show 2: Moral standards, part 1
Show 3: Moral standards, part 2
Show 4: The Passion
Show 5: Sin Read the rest of this entry »

I was watching some youtube videos today about the Ben Stein Expelled movie that came out this year which made me curious about some of the claims that are made in that movie. I did not watch the whole movie yet but I plan to. I just saw some clips from it and was reminded of some of the points that are brought about not only by that movie but by the whole Intelligent Design movement that has been debated so much in the last 5 years. Some of the points made by intelligent design theorists and by Ben Stein in his movie (from what I can tell) are the following:

- Life on earth is much too complex to be accounted for by the theory of Evolution. Darwin’s theory of evolution cannot account for the complexity of life as we know it and the only thing that can is the idea that a God much have created it.

- The scientific community is akin to a good ole’ boys club that protects it’s own and shuns those outside of it who disagree with their positions IN SPITE of the evidence that is contrary to evolution. They have a faith commitment to evolution and are not open to criticism and will not tolerate those who disagree.

- Teachers who want to “teach the controversy” and tell students that good people actually believe in both sides of creation and evolution, are getting fired from their jobs and pushed out of their fields of study.

Below I have listed a series of videos which are each very short (between 3 and 10 minutes each) which has a number of current reputable scientists talking about and explaining many of these issues. It is concise and very professionally made and I would recommend it to anyone interested in this subject. Even thought these videos were made a few years before the Ben Stein Movie, they deal with most of the points made in it and I think they do a find job of it.

This is the first video, the rest can be found at this page. I have included the titles and duration of each video below.

Read the rest of this entry »