Religious

Archive for Religious

Sympathy for the True Believers

On Facebook I just made my profile: “Robert Murphy wants to point out that technically, the rapture people haven’t been proven wrong. There could have been a guy in Malaysia who disappeared yesterday but nobody’s noticed yet.” After doing so, I felt a twinge of regret because I saw a lot of other people were […]

Apocalypse Soon: What Would Landsburg Do?

Sam T. sends me this profile of the people who think the world will end quite soon. I haven’t looked into this stuff too carefully, but my inner Steve Landsburg leads me to ask: For these people who think the world’s end is imminent, and who are Christians (though I don’t know if they are […]

The Irrational Doubting Thomas

I can’t put my finger on a good example right now, but over the years I have come across atheists/agnostics who praise “Doubting Thomas,” the apostle who demanded proof when the other apostles said they had seen the resurrected Jesus. To refresh our memories (John 20: 19-29): 19 Then, the same day at evening, being […]

Reconciling God’s Sovereignty, Mercy, and Justice With Our Free Will

An ambitious post title, to be sure. When I would get a really hard question in grad school, often I could “get inside the head” (actually the mind) of the professor and guess “what the answer would look like,” even though I couldn’t actually compute the answer as the Japanese guys could. I feel a […]

Guest Post: Jesus and Ethics

[Brian Shelley had made some interesting remarks on previous religious posts, and I asked him to elaborate. — RPM] What Jesus introduces in the Sermon on the Mount and then the Apostle Paul expounds on in Romans is an exposition on why personal ethics are of limited value and unnecessary. This is what separates Christianity […]

He Is Risen!

[UPDATE in the middle of the post…] Today is Easter, the greatest holiday (holy day) in the Christian year. When I was a little kid, I used to think that was nuts–everybody knows Christmas is the best holiday! And then even when I got older, I didn’t understand why they called it “Good Friday,” since […]

Why I Am a Christian, Part 2

This post is a follow-up to last week’s… Again, the standard disclaimer: I am not claiming that I am presenting an airtight, deductive proof for the divinity of Christ in a short series of blog posts. But I do want to shed light on why I call myself a Christian. First of all, some people […]

Why I Am a Christian

For some time now skeptics have been asking me in the comments of the Sunday religious posts to explain why I am a Christian and not (say) a Muslim or a Jew, or for that matter a follower of Zeus. I have been putting off the question since the full answer would literally require a […]