The Secular Frontier

WHERE WE ARE In Chapter 7 of their book Handbook of Christian Apologetics (hereafter: HCA), Christian philosophers Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli make a case for the divinity of Jesus. Here is the main argument they present in Chapter 7: 1A. Jesus was either God, liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. 2A. Jesus could not possibly be a liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. THEREFORE: 3A. Jesus is God. In Part 3 of this series, I analyzed and clarified a series of four dilemmas (four EITHER/OR statements) that they use to support premise (1A). The four dilemmas are used to try to prove that there are only FIVE possible views that can be taken on this issue. I summarized the clarified version of their four dilemmas in this decision tree diagram: In this current post, we will examine just the first dilemma: THE TRILEMMA VS THE QUINTLEMMA In Chapter 7 of Evidence that Demands a Verdict (1972), Josh McDowell presents a TRILEMMA in support of the divinity of Jesus: "Lord, Liar, o ... Read Article

I have the book now, and so will start formally blogging through it. I hope you'll join me. It should be fun. In today's short post, I would just like to share a brief passage from the book where the authors address what they will be arguing: "We show that there are, in fact, situations in which people will judge that time does not exist when presented with certain discoveries about the world. This begins to drive a wedge between time and agency... According to the general theory of relativity, spacetime is a basic constituent of reality. However, we argue that recent developments in physics present a serious challenge to the existence of spacetime in at least some sense. Next we argue that causation and the folk notion of time come apart. This sets the scene for our return to agency. Because the folk notion of time and causation come apart, it is possible to have agency in the absence of time in the folk sense. We can use causation in the absence of time as a new foundation for agency. In this way, ... Read Article

In Part 1 of this series, I showed that the main argument for the divinity of Jesus given by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli in Chapter 7 of their Handbook of Christian Apologetics goes like this: 1A. Jesus was either God, liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. 2A. Jesus could not possibly be a liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. THEREFORE: 3A. Jesus is God. In this post I will analyze and clarify the argument given by Kreeft and Tacelli in support of premise (1A). FOUR DILEMMAS GIVEN TO SUPPORT PREMISE (1A) The reasoning supporting premise (1A) is spelled out in a chart near the end of Chapter 7: I. Jesus claimed divinity ...A. He meant it literally ......1. It is true___________________________________Lord ......2. It is false .........a. He knew it was false_______________________Liar .........b. He didn't know it was false_________________Lunatic ...B. He meant it nonliterally, mystically______________Guru II. Jesus never claimed divinity__________________ ... Read Article

In Part 1 of this series, I showed that the main argument for the divinity of Jesus given by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli in Chapter 7 of their Handbook of Christian Apologetics goes like this: 1A. Jesus was either God, liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. 2A. Jesus could not possibly be a liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. THEREFORE: 3A. Jesus is God. In this post, we will analyze and clarify the first premise of this argument. PREMISE (1A): THE FIVE ALTERNATIVES The first premise of Kreeft's argument for the divinity of Jesus asserts that there are only five logical possibilities: 1A. Jesus was either God, liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. The five alternative views are as follows: Jesus was God.Jesus was a liar.Jesus was a lunatic.Jesus was a guru.Jesus was a myth. None of these claims is clear as it stands. Each claim needs to be clarified and made more specific. JESUS WAS GOD In Part 1, I have already clarified the meaning of the claim "Jesus is God", ... Read Article

"Out Of Time" is scheduled to be released May 14th, so while we wait I wanted to do one more background post that may be helpful as we try to think of fundamental cause and effect relationships without time. Kant is perhaps helpful here because he makes a distinction between a kind of temporal causality which pertains to the natural world, and a kind of causality of freedom that pertains to human beings. What did Kant mean? Causality is that which "makes possible," so Kant draws a distinction (which is what philosopher's do) between temporal causality that makes scientific causal judgments and experiences possible, and timeless causality of freedom that makes moral judgments and experiences possible. For Kant, the temporal causality we experience in nature is going to be positive, comparative, or superlative in degrees of temporal irreversibility. So, positively, a ball hitting another ball is irreversible in the sense that the thrown ball hitting the other once causes the second ball to move forward ... Read Article

So, I've been putting together some introductory thoughts in preparation for blogging through the new book on the philosophy of physics and time "Out of Time (2022)." Helpfully, one of the authors did a short article teasing the book here: https://theconversation.com/time-might-not-exist-according-to-physicists-and-philosophers-but-thats-okay-181268 Here are some highlights from the article to whet your appetite: In the 1980s and 1990s, many physicists became dissatisfied with string theory and came up with a range of new mathematical approaches to quantum gravity. One of the most prominent of these is loop quantum gravity, which proposes that the fabric of space and time is made of a network of extremely small discrete chunks, or “loops”. One of the remarkable aspects of loop quantum gravity is that it appears to eliminate time entirely. Loop quantum gravity is not alone in abolishing time: a number of other approaches also seem to remove time as a fundamental aspect of reality. We ... Read Article

Samuel Baron (Author), Kristie Miller (Author), Jonathan Tallant (Author) Format: Kindle Edition I'm going to be blogging through this new book "Out Of Time" about whether time exists from the point of view of philosophy and physics, and what that can teach us about the cosmological argument. BACKGROUND One current popular argument by theists is the cosmological argument, and its reasoning is fairly straightforward. To explain it to a child, you might give the prompt: I am your parent, and my parents had parents, and their parents had parents, ... so where does this lead us? Obviously, we keep going back in the chain of causes and effects to a first cause that did not itself, so to speak, have parents. It simply was. Now, this might be called Being, or God, or the eternal stomach vomiting up the universe into existence, but something along those lines is "obviously" the case. Now this may be obvious, but is it true? Derrida pointed out the history of philosophy has been the overturn ... Read Article

Blog Post 1 on The Myth of an Afterlife (ed Martin and Augustine) This series of blog posts will look at the question of whether or not there is a afterlife by blogging through the Augustine/Martin anthology "The Myth of an Afterlife" Steve Stewart-Williams (Foreword) Stewart-Williams points to the difference between evidence consistent with an afterlife (eg., predicting one’s own death), and evidence of an afterlife.  Such evidences seem to pile upon one another across the world to apparently give credence to the afterlife hypothesis.  Stewart-Williams suggests supernatural interpretations are completely unnecessary given reasonable naturalistic ones, and we wouldn’t even have recourse to supernaturalistic explanation except that we have such traditions from our culture.  I understand Stewart-Williams  here in the sense that we all know, for instance, it is possible to invoke an invisible, magical leprechaun to explain the mysteries in quantum gravity ... Read Article

Christian philosophers Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli make a case for the divinity of Jesus in Chapter 7 of their book Handbook of Christian Apologetics (InterVarsity Press, 1994, hereafter: HCA). Because their case for the existence of God (in Chapter 3 of HCA) and their case for the resurrection of Jesus (in Chapter 8 of HCA) both FAIL miserably, it is reasonable to anticipate that their case for Jesus's divinity will also FAIL. Furthermore, in the process of evaluating one of their objections to the Myth Theory, I examined their "scriptural data" supporting the divinity of Jesus (in Chapter 7 of HCA) and found serious problems with the conclusions they derived from that data: Defending the Myth Theory - INDEX (see Parts 4 through 7). So, I already have good reason to believe that a key part of their case for Jesus's divinity FAILS. Kreeft provides a very brief summary of this case early in Chapter 7: Jesus claimed to be God, and Jesus is believable, therefore Jesus is God. (HCA, p.156) ... Read Article

After my series of posts on the Hallucination Theory, where I showed that every one of Peter Kreeft's objections against that theory FAILS, I started another series where I examined each of Kreeft's objections against the Myth Theory. I also showed that every one of Kreeft's objections against the Myth Theory FAILS: Because The Secular Outpost had shut down, I published that entire series of fifteen posts on my own blog: Thinking Critically about: God, Jesus, and the Bible I have also published an article that has links to all of the posts where I defended the Myth Theory: Defending the Myth Theory - INDEX ... Read Article

In Chapter 8 of their Handbook of Christian Apologetics (1994, InterVarsity Press, hereafter: HCA), philosophers Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli attempt to prove that Jesus really physically rose from the dead. The idea of trying to prove the resurrection of Jesus in just twenty-two pages (without a single footnote or endnote) is ridiculous, but most Christian apologists believe they can prove just about any extraordinary claim in just a few paragraphs or in a few pages, so the pathetic attempt by Kreeft and Tacelli to prove the resurrection of Jesus in one short chapter is actually above average in terms of intellectual effort typically made by Christian apologists. Kreeft and Tacelli identify FIVE Theories concerned about “what really happened in Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday…” : 1. Christianity: “the resurrection really happened” 2. Hallucination: “the apostles were deceived by a hallucination” 3. Myth: “the apostles created a myth, not ... Read Article

If we go back to the earliest statement of Jesus' resurrection, in the letters of Paul, we find something very problematic. Paul quotes a creed or piece of poetry that says: That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. and that he was buried; That he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Why is this a problem? The New Testament thinkers were in the habit of inventing material about Jesus copying Old Testament scriptures. So, for instance, Mark copies material from the story of Elijah to present John the Baptist as the new and greater Elijah. Likewise, Mathew's story about Jesus recapitulates the story of Moses to present Jesus as the new and greater Moses. That is what the above "Corinthian Creed / poetry" that Paul is quoting seems to be doing with the Old Testament story of Jonah and the huge fish. In Matthew regarding the resurrection we read: The Sign of Jonah ... Read Article

One thing I try to argue against is the sin debt/penal substitution interpretation of the cross. When we think of the wooden cross in Mark, we think of the easily enraged crowd, corrupt religious elite, and indifferent to justice Pilate. When these people saw Jesus on the beams of the cross as a criminal, what they should have been seeing is their own deep rooted flaws for executing him. Matthew and Luke express this sentiment in the following way invoking the image of the wooden beam/plank/log, making us think of the cross: 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5) 37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and yo ... Read Article

My name is John MacDonald, and I am the President of Internet Infidels/Secular Web.  I am one of the bloggers who will be posting here at the new Secular Frontier blog.  So, some initial thoughts: The God of the Bible is reported to have done such a poor job in creating mankind that not only did He have to wipe out evil humanity with the flood, the end result of the second attempt was God’s chosen Jewish people were inescapably under the Roman imperial thumb.  In a world of pestilence, famine, natural disaster, etc, which is to say a world so obviously not the effect of a benevolent, wise creator, the Gnostic Christians proposed that the world was created by an evil or stupid demiurge, not the true God. But there was hope.  In Gnosticism, the Divine Spark is described as the fragmented portion of the divine that resides within each human being; it is the light contained in each individual, the potential of their illumination. Gnostics believe the purpose of life is to illuminate t ... Read Article

At the end of November 2021, I published Part 17 in a series of posts defending the Hallucination Theory of the alleged resurrection of Jesus. At that point, The Secular Outpost shut down. However, I continued to write and publish further posts in that series over at my own blog: THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT: GOD, JESUS, AND THE BIBLE I published Part 18 of this series on December 9, 2021, and then continued to publish posts in this series until I completed refuting every objection raised against the Hallucination Theory by Peter Kreeft. In Part 45, which was published on February 10th 2022, I finished refuting Kreeft's final objection. I also published an INDEX article that has links to the first 17 posts published at The Secular Outpost, and also links to the rest of the posts (Part 18 to Part 45) that I published on my own blog: Defending the Hallucination Theory - INDEX ... Read Article