DagoodS has an interesting summary of the basis for claims regarding the martyrdom's of some of the earliest disciples. We all know that Paul was beheaded by Nero, right? It's almost axiomatic. This all comes from the Acts of Paul, which includes the earliest account of how he was killed.
What you may not know is that this same account tells us that milk spurted forth when he was beheaded, and afterwards he approached Nero (perhaps clutching his own severed head, though we're not told) to inform him that he was next. Paul then made some additional post-mortem appearances to his own followers.
Why don't the apologists discuss those details? It's almost as if they have an anti-supernatural bias or something.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
You Don't Say
Jason Engwer has evaluated the White-Barker debate and he finds that James White was the victor. By a wide margin. In other news Tom Cruise thinks L. Ron Hubbard has a lot of worthwhile things to say.
This is very useful information. Jason has in the past calmly deliberated over his own performance in debate against me, John Loftus, and various other skeptics (for instance see his recent evaluation that I discuss here) and he's decided that he was victorious. Likewise he's convinced that Arif Ahmed lost to Gary Habermas. Come to think of it I don't recall him ever observing that a skeptic out performed a Christian in debate.
I love this image of inerrantist Christians calmly deliberating over the available evidence and drawing their conclusions as if it was a discovery based upon that evaluation rather than their commitment to the party line. They pretend to be scholars. But real scholars are always probing, interested in discovering new possibilities. They're interested in knowing if the way things have been understood is wrong. How does a real scholar square this with dogmatic commitments? For the inerrantist it's all one big damage control operation, not scholarship.
Here's Greg Koukl admitting that for most Christians the commitment to the Bible as the Word of God comes first and the arguments come second. Scholars don't start with their conclusions. They derive their conclusions by looking at the facts. Does Jason behave more like a scholar or a dogmatist? You can't be both as far as I'm concerned.
This is very useful information. Jason has in the past calmly deliberated over his own performance in debate against me, John Loftus, and various other skeptics (for instance see his recent evaluation that I discuss here) and he's decided that he was victorious. Likewise he's convinced that Arif Ahmed lost to Gary Habermas. Come to think of it I don't recall him ever observing that a skeptic out performed a Christian in debate.
I love this image of inerrantist Christians calmly deliberating over the available evidence and drawing their conclusions as if it was a discovery based upon that evaluation rather than their commitment to the party line. They pretend to be scholars. But real scholars are always probing, interested in discovering new possibilities. They're interested in knowing if the way things have been understood is wrong. How does a real scholar square this with dogmatic commitments? For the inerrantist it's all one big damage control operation, not scholarship.
Here's Greg Koukl admitting that for most Christians the commitment to the Bible as the Word of God comes first and the arguments come second. Scholars don't start with their conclusions. They derive their conclusions by looking at the facts. Does Jason behave more like a scholar or a dogmatist? You can't be both as far as I'm concerned.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Compendium of McMurtry Arguments
I took some notes when I went to see "Dr" Grady McMurtry. You can peruse this for a sense of what he's offering in his frequent lectures in churches, which seem to be well attended.
1-Evolutionists live and die by the following 8 words. "Give me enough time and anything can happen."
2-If you rolled dice a billion times a second you would never get 7's 27 consecutive times even if you rolled a billion times every second (I didn't note if he put a time limit on it. This sounded surprising to me, so I plan to check the math).
3-The big bang has been disproven by evolutionists. See Grady's website.
4-You can make opel, diamonds, and gold very quickly artificially.
5-In 1942 a WWII aircraft was ditched in Greenland. When people went to recover it they found it was buried under 250 ft of ice and snow. Apparently this proves that ice and snow accumulate quickly, countering the old earth argument regarding ice core samples.
6-If someone tells you that they dated a dinosaur bone to be 65 million years old using C-14, respond by laughing in their face. Let's all practice laughing at these evolutionists. (Which evolutionists think C-14 dating works when the object is over 60 million years old?)
7-Various lava flows and rocks are known to be younger than a few hundred years (Sunset Crater, Hualalai in Hawaii) yet radiometric dating methods claim they are millions of years old.
8-In 1944 in Upshur County, WV a bell was found embedded in rock that is 300 million years old.
9-A distance referred to as the "Roche" distance shows that the moon should have broken up and formed a ring based on old earth assumptions. Also at the moon's rate of regression from the earth if you back up in time it would have hit us 1.6 billion years ago.
10-Dr Barry Setterfield, and some other Russian scientist apparently have shown that the speed of light was 10,000,000 times faster in the past. (Consider the e=mc^2 implications).
11-The spinning rate of galaxies is too fast. If the universe were older they wouldn't still be spinning at this rate. The Milky Way "rotates" at 245 km/sec (this is not a rotation rate, but a linear rate, but that's what he said).
12-Star formation has never been observed.
13-The sun's rotation rate is too fast. If it were 4.5 billion years old it would have slowed to the point where it wouldn't spin as it currently does.
14-Comets lose material as they pass by the sun. If our solar system was really 4.5 billion years old long period comets wouldn't exist anymore. (The answer is the Oort Cloud, though I know young earther's ridicule that explanation because it can't be directly observed.)
1-Evolutionists live and die by the following 8 words. "Give me enough time and anything can happen."
2-If you rolled dice a billion times a second you would never get 7's 27 consecutive times even if you rolled a billion times every second (I didn't note if he put a time limit on it. This sounded surprising to me, so I plan to check the math).
3-The big bang has been disproven by evolutionists. See Grady's website.
4-You can make opel, diamonds, and gold very quickly artificially.
5-In 1942 a WWII aircraft was ditched in Greenland. When people went to recover it they found it was buried under 250 ft of ice and snow. Apparently this proves that ice and snow accumulate quickly, countering the old earth argument regarding ice core samples.
6-If someone tells you that they dated a dinosaur bone to be 65 million years old using C-14, respond by laughing in their face. Let's all practice laughing at these evolutionists. (Which evolutionists think C-14 dating works when the object is over 60 million years old?)
7-Various lava flows and rocks are known to be younger than a few hundred years (Sunset Crater, Hualalai in Hawaii) yet radiometric dating methods claim they are millions of years old.
8-In 1944 in Upshur County, WV a bell was found embedded in rock that is 300 million years old.
9-A distance referred to as the "Roche" distance shows that the moon should have broken up and formed a ring based on old earth assumptions. Also at the moon's rate of regression from the earth if you back up in time it would have hit us 1.6 billion years ago.
10-Dr Barry Setterfield, and some other Russian scientist apparently have shown that the speed of light was 10,000,000 times faster in the past. (Consider the e=mc^2 implications).
11-The spinning rate of galaxies is too fast. If the universe were older they wouldn't still be spinning at this rate. The Milky Way "rotates" at 245 km/sec (this is not a rotation rate, but a linear rate, but that's what he said).
12-Star formation has never been observed.
13-The sun's rotation rate is too fast. If it were 4.5 billion years old it would have slowed to the point where it wouldn't spin as it currently does.
14-Comets lose material as they pass by the sun. If our solar system was really 4.5 billion years old long period comets wouldn't exist anymore. (The answer is the Oort Cloud, though I know young earther's ridicule that explanation because it can't be directly observed.)
Yet Another Fossil Find
Apparently this one is believed to be a member of human ancestry that lived just after the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees, so it's really telling us a lot about human evolution. Watch the inset video for some informative commentary.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Another Sweet Fossil Find
Friday, September 25, 2009
Free Copy of Origin of Species
If you want a free copy of a large, important book, keep an eye on Ray Comfort's plans to distribute 100K copies, along with his 50 page introduction linking Darwin to Hitler, slavery, and general wickedness. Otherwise the main text is unmolested. You might be able to pick up a copy when they are distributed in November at college campuses across the country.
For some fun and easy on the eyes atheistic commentary watch Christina from Romania. I have a Romanian friend that's not too impressed with her, but to each his own I guess. Atheists have been digging her for a while, probably because there are so few women involved in counter Christianity. Like engineers maybe we just are prone to going kind of nuts over the few females in our midst.
For some fun and easy on the eyes atheistic commentary watch Christina from Romania. I have a Romanian friend that's not too impressed with her, but to each his own I guess. Atheists have been digging her for a while, probably because there are so few women involved in counter Christianity. Like engineers maybe we just are prone to going kind of nuts over the few females in our midst.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Obama the Leftist
Small government minded Republicans endured 8 years of government expansion and intrusion under Bush. For me it was enough to drive me out of the Republican party. My hope is that the coming 4 or 8 years of war mongering and big business pandering under Obama will drive some peace loving leftists out of the Democratic party.
One leftist cause for a long time has been the plight of the Palestinians. Bible thumpers tend to side with the Israeli government, but secular leftists didn't. As Obama has disappointed them by expanding wars throughout the Middle East Obama likewise has disappointed them with regards to the Palestinians. He has backed off his demand that Israel freeze settlement construction.
For those that don't understand how outrageous settlement construction is, here's some quick background information. In 1948 Israel declared itself an independent state and Arab nations responded by declaring war on it. Israel won the war and used the opportunity to drive the indigenous population out. 750,000 people were driven from their homes into a couple of refugee camps as well as neighboring states, such as Lebanon. Today these refugee camps are called the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinians would like to return to their homes from that period, but that's unlikely to happen. But what would be great is if they could at least retain control of the refugee camps. Instead some Israeli's, induced by subsidies from their government, have crossed into the refugee camps and began building homes for themselves, diverting most of the water to their own much smaller population, and built walls to protect those homes. They've likewise constructed walls and checkpoints to make movement within these refugee camps difficult for the Palestinian inhabitants.
Now obviously if anybody wants to have peaceful relations with their neighboring state they can't just ignore borders and grow. Settlement expansion is pretty much a guarantor that there will not be peace. Obama is fine with settlement expansion.
These Democrats I'm afraid will not get it. After all, Obama is pro-choice. And that's critical. I mean, suppose I'm a New York liberal and while I'm driving through South Dakota I need an abortion? If Roe was overturned I might have to drive to Minnesota to get a legal abortion!! So inconvenient. Screw the Palestinians.
One leftist cause for a long time has been the plight of the Palestinians. Bible thumpers tend to side with the Israeli government, but secular leftists didn't. As Obama has disappointed them by expanding wars throughout the Middle East Obama likewise has disappointed them with regards to the Palestinians. He has backed off his demand that Israel freeze settlement construction.
For those that don't understand how outrageous settlement construction is, here's some quick background information. In 1948 Israel declared itself an independent state and Arab nations responded by declaring war on it. Israel won the war and used the opportunity to drive the indigenous population out. 750,000 people were driven from their homes into a couple of refugee camps as well as neighboring states, such as Lebanon. Today these refugee camps are called the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinians would like to return to their homes from that period, but that's unlikely to happen. But what would be great is if they could at least retain control of the refugee camps. Instead some Israeli's, induced by subsidies from their government, have crossed into the refugee camps and began building homes for themselves, diverting most of the water to their own much smaller population, and built walls to protect those homes. They've likewise constructed walls and checkpoints to make movement within these refugee camps difficult for the Palestinian inhabitants.
Now obviously if anybody wants to have peaceful relations with their neighboring state they can't just ignore borders and grow. Settlement expansion is pretty much a guarantor that there will not be peace. Obama is fine with settlement expansion.
These Democrats I'm afraid will not get it. After all, Obama is pro-choice. And that's critical. I mean, suppose I'm a New York liberal and while I'm driving through South Dakota I need an abortion? If Roe was overturned I might have to drive to Minnesota to get a legal abortion!! So inconvenient. Screw the Palestinians.
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