I Was On Dogma Debate with David Smalley
My segment appears at the 50:35 mark. Enjoy. Link
Labels: Daily Devotional
Labels: "Debate Craig"
Most nations, at the time the Old Testament was written, believed in slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious persecution; and it is not wonderful that the book contained nothing contrary to such belief. The fact that it was in exact accord with the morality of its time proves that it was not the product of any being superior to man.
“The inspired writers” upheld or established slavery, countenanced polygamy, commanded wars of extermination, and ordered the slaughter of women and babes. In these respects they were precisely like the uninspired savages by whom they were surrounded.
They also taught and commanded religious persecution as a duty, and visited the most trivial offences with the punishment of death. In these particulars they were in exact accord with their barbarian neighbors.
They were utterly ignorant of geology and astronomy, and knew no more of what had happened than of what would happen; and, so far as accuracy is concerned, their history and prophecy were about equal; in other words, they were just as ignorant as those who lived and died in nature’s night.
In this powerful book, former preacher and veteran scholar John Loftus demands to know why so much time and energy is still being wasted analyzing and debating fringe details of a thing no one has yet shown to be real. This passionate, hard-hitting, and important book will enlighten and inspire readers to think in new ways about an old battleground of thought. It’s clear that Loftus is running out of patience when it comes to the faithful but he certainly has not run out of steam.--Guy Harrison, author of Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser and 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian. He's not the only one to say such things. So do others, for which I am extremely grateful:
Why would anyone embrace a male-dominated religion in today’s world, or any religion for that matter? Specifically, why would women embrace the religion of their male oppressors? Given the stories told in this wonderful tell-all book they shouldn’t. It’s one of the main reasons I argue against the Christian faith. I bid all readers to follow the reasoning and examples of the authors in this book. Their stories are quite revealing and fascinating. Highly recommended! --John W. Loftus.I encourage my readers to check out Dr. Garst’s blog at www.faithlessfeminist.com and to order this excellent book, now available on Amazon and other online stores.
Reading the Bible is like playing the game of telephone: One person whispers a sentence to another person. The second person whispers it to a third, and then the third person to the fourth, and so on. By the end the original message has been garbled and often bears little resemblance to the sentence announced by the last person. “I haven’t got a gun,” for example, can end up as “I have bought a bun.” But in the biblical game of telephone, the original message is further garbled by the time that has passed between the life of Jesus and the time the New Testament was written, the foreign culture that filtered the message of the biblical writers, and the human fallibility of those who chose the books of the Bible and designated them asthe inspired word of God.
In Philosophy of Religion (PoR) one finds very little to count as a success. In fact, in PoR there aren’t any successes. Not one of the many PoR arguments of the distant past is accepted as put forth in its original form by modern philosophers of religion. This includes anything from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Descartes or the lot of them. All of the previous arguments in PoR lacked some important distinction, or failed to handle future objections adequately or needed to be revised due to the discovery of new evidence. So in order to understand the current state of PoR budding philosophers of religion must study its failures, because that’s all they’ve got to study! The whole discipline is a failure. Why then is it important to study Descartes if we want to gain knowledge about matters of fact? It has some minimal historical value to it, sure. But the PoR has never produced a fact. LINK.
Labels: "Avalos"
In this inspirational storybook written in rhyme, Annabelle asks,
"Why do we look, the way that we do?
With hands and feet, in neat sets of two?
What made my eyes? And what made my nose?
And the shape of my body, from my head to my toes?"
A wise owl answers by taking the characters on an incredible journey through Darwinian evolution. Join our characters as they visit outer space, watch the Earth go through its earliest stages, and gaze in wonder at the earliest forms of life. Young readers will gain a basic understanding of evolution, and perhaps more importantly, what we can learn from it: to be kind to one another, as we are all related in the same family tree. LINK
Labels: "Avalos"