Religious

Archive for Religious

Yes Virginia, the God of the Christian Bible Is Omniscient

In the comments of my last religious post, some people stated matter-of-factly that the Bible provides different views of God, and that anyone claiming God is omniscient is ignoring the text in favor of a preconceived philosophical notion of God. No, that’s not correct. If you want to say, “God does some crazy sick stuff […]

God’s Character

On the Sunday posts lately there has been a lot of sarcastic commentary about the supposedly awful character of God. Among other things, He is accused of murder, since (after all) if human rulers did some of the things He does, they would be murderers. I have said this before, and don’t recall anyone even […]

That Herod Was Not a Nice Man

This part of the Christmas story has always astounded me (Mt 2: 1-18) 2 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have […]

My Favorite Christmas Song Lyric

“Long lay the world / in sin and error pining” I love every word of that. It reminds me of my favorite Bible verse (Job 28:28): And to man He said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, And to depart from evil is understanding.’” Sorry kids if you can’t stand her, but […]

C.S. Lewis on The Problem of Pain

An excerpt from his wonderful book, where he’s showing that a “loving God” wouldn’t just sit back and let us persist in our natural state and try to just let us “be happy”: Another type [of love that humans understand] is love of a man for a beast–a relation constantly used in Scripture to symbolise […]

Respecting Sacred Cows

There is a strain of libertarians who revel in their atheism, such that they actively go out of their way to offend theists. They might explain their consistency along the lines of, “I respect no rulers or gods.” Or they might say, “At this blog (Facebook page etc.), there are no sacred cows.” That has […]

Dr. Pangloss Was Right

I have made this point before, and been denounced by atheists and theists alike: This really is the best possible world. Yes, “free will” is involved in understanding why, but when the atheist critic says, “If your God is so good, why does He allow suffering?” it is correct to say, “Because it’s better that […]

Noah Smith Uses Theology to Draw Political Conclusions: God Help Us

[UPDATE: I removed an analogy because it would have drawn attention away from Noah’s point. UPDATE #2: In the comments, Scott Sumner objects that I have misunderstood him. I had thought Scott, in his original post, was being tongue-in-cheek, and giving a mock benefit of the doubt to Noah, since it’s crystal clear what Noah […]