Category: Answering Atheists Questions

Our lives are very much ethic-centric. We typically try to cut immoral people out of our lives. If we do something morally unjustified, we often find ways to justify ourselves or make amends lest we live in a tumultuous contradiction. That is why the moral argument is a favorite among Christian apologists. But in a recent debate with Kent Hovind, the atheist YouTuber Negation of P tried to turn the tables. He suggested that if Christianity is true, we would have no basis for our moral duties, and in fact,…

Do you ever wonder why people believe the things that they do? If you do not share those beliefs, then you might be inclined to assign nefarious or otherwise unsavory reasons for these beliefs. The psychology of religious thinking is of particular interest. Most religious people never actually see a miracle or anything transcendent invading the physical world. All that we can see is nature. It would seem almost like common sense to believe only what our eyes and ears report. Yet there is this impending desire to believe that…

Christians share the gospel. During Jesus’ public ministry, he told men to repent and believe the gospel, because the Kingdom of God was near. But repentance is about changing your attitude. When somebody repents, she will change her mind about sin and about Christ, submitting herself to the gospel. It is something that happens internally, in the blink of an eye, and it is the free gift of God. When Christians share the gospel, there is a sense in which we want men to change their mind, knowing that if…

In the Showtime hit Dexter, the lead character by the same name suffered from a sociopathic personality. With that came the urge to express his inner-rage against other people. It was described throughout the series as something like an addiction. He felt a need to kill in the same way that people feel the need to smoke cigarettes. With the help of his father, Dexter developed a code that would help him to avoid getting caught by the police or bringing people to harm who did not deserve it. This…

The Christmas tradition that we see today did not just pop into being in its’ fullest form. People did not wake up one day and place a pine tree in their living room and convoke the big man in a red suit. It is similar to many other social customs and holidays. It evolved over a long period of times with minor variations and mutations, eventually becoming what we know as Christmas. However the Christmas tradition would seem bland and lame without the towering and beloved figure known as Santa…

The concept of unintelligent design is a response to the creationist movement and philosophy of intelligent design. It proposes that there are too many flaws in the universe to have been created by an intelligent agent. If this argument is successful, it leads to the conclusion that an omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator is not the cause of these things. Yet it does raise an interesting point. As we render our argument that the universe is designed, how can we explain that there are some things that are designed…

Dan Linford recently published an article about the moral argument, stating that it was guilty of the is/ought fallacy. While I was interested in the topic, I did not respond directly to Linford because I was more interested in rendering a general response to the argument. So I did some research on this objection and composed an independent article. Thinking that it was a response directly to him, Linford made a point to take time and respond to my article and demonstrate that despite my objections, the moral argument is…

It is often said by Christian apologists that the atheist cannot live consistently within the framework of their worldview. They will adhere to their ethical convictions and act as though they really were binding. They will object to the evil in the world and labor to make the world a better place. As such, atheists and non-believers are often good and moral people. That is not contended. The contention of the Christian apologist is rather that atheists have no right to make ethical claims. So the argument goes, if one…

Does free will solve the problem of evil? Burdened by the issue of the evil in the world, many Christians will turn to free will. God allows men to make immoral decisions, even when it brings about suffering, because he wanted us to have free will. He wanted us to turn to him freely in love, and in general, he just wanted us to have the gift of libertarian freedom as we inhabit the earth. But since men are free to choose either good or evil, some will inevitably choose…

Sometimes religious people will claim that they were healed of cancer, or some other illness. They will have great joy that this sickness has departed their body. Then the atheist, almost in an attempt to steal that joy and put other people down, will come in and say, “ah, so God healed you. But why doesn’t God heal amputees?” The implication is that what the Christian will call a miracle, is not really a miracle. Why doesn’t God heal amputees, and show a real miracle that we can all see…