April 3, 2016
If you have been following this series, you know that we have covered a lot of ground, including various lines of evidence that generally — and, in some cases, quite strongly — support the case for Jesus Christ having been physically raised from the dead on the third day after his death and burial. We […]
Tags: C. Behan McCullagh, coherence, Colossians 2, context, disciples' belief, dissimilarity, embarrassment, embellishment, empty tomb, evidence for Jesus' resurrection, explanatory power, explanatory scope, Gospel message, inference to the best explanation, Jesus is Risen, Jesus Seminar, Justifying Historical Descriptions, Messiah, multiple attestation, objective criteria, plausibility, postmortem appearances, Resurrection, Resurrection Hypothesis, rival hypotheses, testing historical explanations, William Lane Craig
Posted in Religion |
March 31, 2016
Origin of the Disciples’ Belief in Jesus’ Resurrection To say that the death of Jesus on the cross was devastating to the disciples would be gross understatement. Despite Jesus’ warnings, they had no concept of a Messiah that would die, much less rise up again. Without the resurrection, Jesus’ shameful death could only be seen […]
Tags: distraught disciples, evidence for Jesus' resurrection, foundation of Christian belief, glorified Jesus, hallucination, historical credibility, historical explanations, I Cor. 15 formula, inference to the best explanation, Jesus is Risen, Jewish doctrine of resurrection, Jewish religious thought, Jewish tradition, Messiah, Pharisees, plausibility, post-resurrection appearances, Resurrection, Resurrection Hypothesis, Romans, Sadducees, vision, weakness of death-translation model, William Lane Craig
Posted in Religion |
March 27, 2016
Postmortem Appearances We have four lines of evidence for the historical reliability of Jesus’ appearances to people after His death. 1) *Paul’s testimony shows that the disciples saw appearances of Jesus.* In I Corinthians 15, Paul lists several people to whom Jesus appeared after his death, beginning with Peter individually and the Twelve Apostles (as […]
Tags: A.N. Sherwin-White, evidence for Jesus' resurrection, hallucination, historical credibility, historical explanations, I Cor. 15 formula, inference to the best explanation, Jesus is Risen, Jewish custom, Jews, John, legend, Luke, Paul, Peter, plausibility, Resurrection, Resurrection Hypothesis, resurrection visions, spiritual body or physical body, the Empty Tomb, William Lane Craig, witness of the Apostles, women at the tomb
Posted in Religion |
March 24, 2016
Empty Tomb Let’s start with the ten lines of evidence that support the factuality of Jesus’ empty tomb: 1) *Historical credibility of the burial story.* The two are closely connected. If the burial story is basically correct, both Jews and Christians would have known the site of Jesus’ tomb. If the body was still there, […]
Tags: evidence for Jesus' resurrection, external clues, Gary Habermas, Geza Vermes, historical credibility, historical explanations, I Cor. 15 formula, inference to the best explanation, internal clues, Jacob Kremer, Jesus is Risen, Jewish custom, Jewish polemic, Jews, John, Paul, Peter, Pinchas Lapide, plausibility, Resurrection, Resurrection Hypothesis, Romans, the Empty Tomb, William Lane Craig, women at the tomb
Posted in Religion |
March 20, 2016
“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.” — Sir Antony Flew, distinguished British philosopher and renowned non-theist Last year around this time, some of you may recall that I did a 4-part series called, “On Jesus’ Death”, followed by a […]
Tags: abductive reasoning, ad hoc, background knowledge, C. Behan McCullagh, disconfirmation, evidence for Jesus' resurrection, explanatory power, explanatory scope, Gary Habermas, historical explanations, inference to the best explanation, Jesus Christ, Justifying Historical Descriptions, minimal facts, observable data, plausibility, Resurrection, Resurrection Hypothesis, William Lane Craig
Posted in Religion |
March 13, 2016
Yeah, yeah, I know. I should be writing about the current primaries and crop of presidential candidates, not the disappointment-in-chief now in office. But, hey, he’s still in office, and the issues are still relevant. Plus, it’s always good to learn from history. Others of you may be thinking that I, a white man, have […]
Tags: Barack Obama, black unemployment, black-white economic disparity, Blacks in America, civil rights, Jason Riley, leftist agenda, liberal policies make it harder for blacks to succeed, NAACP, Obama Administration, Obama's popularity among Blacks, Please Stop Helping Us, progressive policies, racial identity, racial solidarity, racism, supporting Obama despite failure, symbol of triumphant black achievement, symbolism over substance
Posted in Politics |
March 6, 2016
“Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government… can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppressive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.” — Gen. George Washington I just got home from […]
Tags: Creator, critical thinking, Donald Trump, GOP debate in Detroit, Hillary Clinton, ID theory, income disparity, intelligent design implications, Marco Rubio, Mollie Hemingway, objective data, Paranoid Politics, PLos ONE, presuppositional bias, racism war on women, retraction of research paper demanded, scientific censorship, Ted Cruz, the Federalist, Thomas Sowell
Posted in Politics, Politics / Science / Religion, Religion, Science |
February 28, 2016
I am really behind in my podcast listening. I just can’t keep up. In fact, I am more than a year behind on my Stand to Reason podcasts by Greg Koukl. Up until mid-2015, Koukl did a weekly 3-hour show, and I can typically only get in two hours on the weekend. So, I’m constantly […]
Tags: bare essential, Christian orthodoxy, classic Christianity, Cross, Fallen Man, foundations of Christian belief, God, Greg Koukl, heresy, human soul, Jesus, mere Christianity, most basic Christian doctrine, objective morality, Resurrection, sine qua non, Stand to Reason, STR podcasts
Posted in Religion |
February 21, 2016
It is not uncommon nowadays to hear some people talk very cynically about “banksters”, with the obvious implication that banks and those who run them are merely corrupt, even criminal, profiteers. Throw in terms like “predatory lending” and add stories of exorbitant fees, home & farm foreclosures, fraud and exploitation, and it’s a wonder anyone […]
Tags: banks, banksters, Basic Economics, finance industry, financial institutions, Thomas Sowell, wealth creation, wealth-building
Posted in Politics |
February 14, 2016
“Now that we have the detectors to see these systems, now that we know binary black holes are out there — we’ll begin listening to the Universe.” — Prof. Gabriela González, Louisiana State University I was looking for something science-y to write about this week, and “fortune” smiled upon me with the announcement of something […]
Tags: Albert Einstein, Bernard Schutz, Big Bang, black hole binary, black holes, cosmic fine-tuning, evidence for the biblical account of cosmic creation, Gabriela González, general relativity, gravitational waves, Hugh Ross, interferometers, Karsten Danzmann, Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, LIGO Scientific Collaboration, merging black holes, probable Nobel Prize, ripples in space-time, Sheila Rowan, Stephen Hawking
Posted in Religion, Science, Science & Religion |