Archive for the ‘ Elenctic Apologetics ’ Category

The Illogic of Pluralism, Pt. 2

Author: Fisher

Aug 19

This article is a continuation of a rebuttal to Balgrim Ragoonanan, a writer for the anti-Missionary website Crusade Watch which argues vehemently against Christian evangelistic efforts. In another one of his articles, entitled, The Insidiousness Of an Only Pathway to God,[1] he attempts to twist Jesus’ teachings in order to promote Hindu Pluralism. It would seem that the author believes that he can reconstruct Jesus in order to get around His clear teachings regarding salvation through Christ alone by reading into His statements things that He never taught:

Can it be true, according to the Bible, that God can only have one human form? The answer is obviously no, because Jesus said he will come again as a thief in the night, meaning that he will not be recognized in his new form, but only by his works they shall know him.

It is very clear that Jesus credits God with more than one human form and was fully aware of the principle of other forms of God. He was speaking about another one of his coming as God, consistent with the Hindu principle of the manifestation of God at other points in time for a special purpose at the time.

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Filed under: Apologetics, Ecumenical Dialogue, Elenctic Apologetics, Religion, Society & Culture, Witnessing

The Illogic of Pluralism, Pt. 1

Author: Fisher

Aug 16

For those who are unfamiliar with Crusade Watch, it is a website with multiple contributors who all write with the express purpose of denouncing evangelism and missions as an evil act that must be banned and legislated against. Of course, the vast majority of the articles published on this website have no real intellectual merit; being comprised primarily of shoddy logic, unwarranted assumptions and undocumented assertion after undocumented assertion. One of the recurring themes among the writers, though, is the idea of pluralism; the ideology that all paths to God are equally valid, and that none of them can assert itself to be correct over and against any other path. In particular, it will be well worth documenting the claims of one Balgrim Ragoonanan, an author from Trinidad and Tobago who strongly favours Hindu ideas of plurality over and against religious exclusivity. The rest of this will be dealing with his article entitled, Religious Bigotry and Exclusivity.[1] We will begin by examining the author’s thesis, which appears in the first few paragraphs of his article:

This presentation may also reflect an aspect of the narrow and restrictive pathway offered for salvation by the Christians versus the broad and expansive pathway of the Hindus, although it is not the gist of the paper.

This paper is to be taken only as a working framework for further discussion against religious proselytizing and the Christian one way doctrine to salvation.

Those who do not support religious proselytizing can find the appropriate lawyers to develop a case against religious proselytizing as an abuse of human rights versus the freedom of speech and the freedom to practice a religion in peace without intrusions.

The freedom of speech argument is a false one when it comes to religious proselytizing and must be debunked at the onset. We know that although freedom of speech is sacred to many, it is still over-ruled under certain conditions that incite violence and family and community disturbances.

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Explaining and Defending the Incarnation

Author: Fisher

Aug 14

I recently ran into this video by a fellow named Farhan who attempts a response to David Wood’s video entitled How Can God Die? I have decided to post a video response of my own, so here it is:

Please excuse the less than perfect video editing. I used a different editing program than I usually use for making this video.

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Filed under: Apologetics, Christology, Elenctic Apologetics, Metaphysics, Religion, Soteriology, Theology

James Two in Relation to Sola Fide

Author: Fisher

Aug 9

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
(James 2:14-26, ESV)

For many of those who reject the historic Protestant doctrine of Justification through faith alone (such as Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Churches of Christ, and Latter-Day Sains, among others), James 2:14-26 is generally brought out the most commonly cited passage against Sola Fide in favour of a doctrine of Justification that includes meritorious works in addition to faith. Now, this verse (or at least the works-based interpretation of it) would appear to contradict other parts of scripture, such as Romans 3:28, which states that “a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” This has even led some to conclude that James was actually trying to contradict Paul (ignoring the fact that James and Paul were addressing two different audiences with two very different problems at hand). Thus, the apparent contradiction between James 2 with other passages such as Romans 3:28 should be resolved by careful exegesis and looking at the entirety of scripture in its proper context. Perhaps this would be a good time to take a look at James 2 and how this relates to justification.

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A Look at Alleged Biblical Corruption, Pt. 2

Author: Fisher

Aug 4

In part one of this article, we discussed the manuscript evidence for the Bible, and how the allegation of wholesale editing in the fourth century (which is a very popular argument) does not hold any water. Yet, this is just the shallow end of the pool when it comes to the textual issues of the Bible. There have been more scholarly and nuanced attacks upon the integrity of the New Testament, which carry more weight to their arguments than the average layman who has only heard of Michael Baigent or Dan Brown. To this, we shall now turn.

Textual Criticism and Alleged Corruption

Anybody who knows anything about textual criticism of the New Testament has undoubtedly heard of Bart Ehrman and his bestselling book, Misquoting Jesus. When he published his book back in 2005, Ehrman became one of the oft-cited textual scholars by both atheist and Muslim critics of the bible because of the case that he attempts to present against the textual reliability of the New Testament. Ehrman’s case can be summed up in what he wrote in his introduction to the book:

It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we don’t have the originals—so saying they were inspired doesn’t help me much, unless I can reconstruct the originals. moreover, the vast majority of Christians for the entire history of the church have not had access to the originals, making their inspiration something of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have the copies of the copies of the originals, or the copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, these copies differ from one another so many places that we don’t even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.[1]

This is the man who is often lauded these days as the one who has “exposed” the secrets of textual criticism to the light of day. However, most of the arguments in the book have more to do with shock value (sadly, most Christians are ignorant about these issues, so its easy to shock them with these kinds of things) and misinterpretation of facts (which we will be delving more into as we go along). Most of the things Ehrman says is really nothing new for those who are familiar with textual criticism. Many textual critics, such as the Alands, Nicholas Perrin, Daniel Wallace, and Bruce Metzger (whom was actually Erhman’s mentor), have known about these issues for decades, and they do not interpret the facts the way Ehrman does. Dr. Daniel Wallace, one of the few textual scholars who can hold a candle to Ehrman in terms of influence in the field of New Testament textual criticism, wrote a comprehensive revew of his work entitled, The Gospel According to Bart. Here, Dr. Wallace shows the various flaws in Ehrman’s thinking, especially the unbalanced view that he holds concerning the reliability of the Bible:

What strikes me as most remarkable in all this is how much Ehrman tied inerrancy to the general historical reliability of the Bible. It was an all-or-nothing proposition for him. He still seems to see things in black and white terms… There thus seems to be no middle ground in his view of the text. In short, Ehrman seems to have held to what I would call a ‘domino view of doctrine.’ When one falls down, they all fall down.

…it seems that Bart’s black and white mentality as a fundamentalist has hardly been affected as he slogged through the years and trials of life and learning, even when he came out on the other side of the theological spectrum. He still sees things without sufficient nuancing, he overstates his case, and he is entrenched in the security that his own views are right.[2]

Aside from this, it should also be pointed out that he does not even go as far as many who wish to use his writings to attack the reliability of the Bible go, as evidenced by certain portions of his own writings where he shows a bit more conservatism in his view of the Scriptural text:

These are questions that plague textual critics, and that have led some to argue that we should abandon any quest for the original text—since we can’t even agree on what it might mean to talk about the “original” of, say, Galatians or John. For my part however, I continue to think that even if we cannot be 100 percent certain about what we can attain to, we can at least be certain that all surviving manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts, which were themselves copied from other manuscripts, and that it is at least possible to get back to the oldest and earliest stage of the manuscript tradition for each of the books of the New Testament. All our manuscripts of Galatians, for example, evidently go back to some text that was copied; all our manuscripts of John evidently go back to a version of John that included the prologue and chapter 21. And so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether or not we have reached back to the “original” text. This oldest form of the text is no doubt closely (very closely) related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the basis for our interpretation of his teaching.[3]

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A Look at Alleged Biblical Corruption, Pt. 1

Author: Fisher

Aug 1

(Note: Due to the length of this article, I am dividing it into two separate posts. This will be part one of the article. Part two will be posted later this week, Lord Willing)

Introduction

In the past few decades, one of the staple arguments used by those who seek to discredit the authority of the Bible has been to allege that the scriptural text has become lost due to corruption. This may have happened over the course of the centuries, or during a decisive period in the history of the Christian church.And this kind of attack can come from almost any angle. Anybody who has encountered Islamic apologists, for example, will undoubtedly have heard the charge that the Bible (which was inspired by God in its original form) has been changed. The level of knowledge these apologists actually have, of course, varies. Some are absolutely clueless regarding the textual history of the bible, and are merely repeating canards taught to them by their imams. Others are a bit more sophisticated, and may rely on liberal scholarship to substantiate their point.

But how well does this argument stand when the claims in question are actually examined? It is well worth going over the textual history of the bible and the manuscripts that have come down to us over the centuries in order to see whether we still have the bible that God originally revealed to us, or whether it has been “lost in transmission” during the course of time.

Counting the Manuscript Evidence

The Bible did not always exist as this book with a leather cover, gold-gilded pages and thumb-indexing that one can simply buy at any bookstore today. Like any other ancient document, the Bible has a textual history. It has been handed down to us through generations of constant copying. The result of this is that we have thousands of manuscripts of the bible. As Drs. Norman Geisler and William Nix put it in their General Introduction to the Bible,

The fidelity of the New Testament text rests on a multitude of manuscript evidence. Counting Greek copies alone, the New Testament is preserved in some 5,656 partial and complete manuscript portions that were copied by hand from the second through the fifteenth centuries.[1]

And yet we did not always have this wealth of manuscripts. Back in the 19th century, we did not have as many manuscripts available to us. They have been accumulated over the past two centuries by various persons who have worked hard to locate these ancient manuscripts. In The Text of the New Testament, Bruce Metzger recounts the story of how the 19th century textual scholar Constantin Von Tischendorf discovered one particularly important biblical manuscript from an old monastery:

In 1844, when he was not yet thirty years of age, Tischendorf, a Privatdozent in the University of Leipzig, began an extensive journey through the Near East in search of Biblical manuscripts. While visiting the monastery of St. Catharine at Mount Sinai, he chanced to see some leaves of parchment in a waste-basket full of papers destine dto light the oven of the monastery. On examination these proved to be part of a copy of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, written in an early Greek uncial script. He retrieved from the basket no fewer than forty-three such leaves… The forty-three leaves which he was permitted to to keep contaianed portions of I Chronicles, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and Esther… In 1846 he published their contents…

A second visit to the monastery by Tischendorft in 1853 produced no new manuscripts because the monks were suspicious as a result of the enthusiasm for the MS displayed during his first visit in 1844. He visited a third time in 1859, under the direction of the Czar of Russia, Alexander II. Shortly before leaving, Tischendorf, gave the steward of the monastery an edition of the Septuagint that had been published by Tischendorf in Leipzig.

Thereupon the steward remarked that he too had a copy of the Septuagint, and produced in his cell a manuscript wrapped in a red cloth. There before the astonished scholar’s eyes lay the treasure which he had been longing to see. Concealing his feelings, Tischendorf casually asked permission to look at it further that evening. Permission was granted, and upon retiring to his room Tischendorf stayed up all night in the joy of studying the manuscripts… He soon found that the document contained much more than he had even hoped; for not only was most of the Old Testament there, but also the New Testament was intact and in excellent condition…[2]

Of course, this was not the end of the story. The manuscript came into the hands of the Soviet Union, and remained in their possession until England bought the manuscript for one hundred thousand pounds.[3] Today, this manuscript is known as Codex Sinaiticus, and is one of the most valuable early witnesses we have of the bible.[4]

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Mitchell LeBlanc and an Argument for Atheism

Author: Ryft

Dec 18

Mitchell LeBlanc, owner of UrbanPhilosophy.net and Philosophy of Religion student at University of Toronto, has recently proposed “A Possible Disproof of God’s Existence,” which is basically a slight reformulation of an argument presented by Michael Martin about twenty years ago, [1] wherein LeBlanc simply replaces all instances of “omniscient” with “triune” instead. In this argument he attempts to prove that God does not exist—indeed cannot exist—by reason of a logical contradiction. Whether or not his argument achieves its aim shall be the subject of this brief article.

Although I will not be analyzing Martin’s argument directly here, I will be doing so indirectly since LeBlanc’s argument is essentially identical to it; therefore, any criticism that applies to one will apply to the other. The argument LeBlanc constructs is as follows:

(1) If God exists, then God is necessarily omnipotent and necessarily triune.

(2) If God is necessarily omnipotent, then God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs.

(3) If God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs, then God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune.

(4) If God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune, then God is not necessarily triune.

(5) Therefore, God does not and cannot exist

What LeBlanc is attempting to argue for here is that God possesses attributes which logically contradict each other. To fashion an argument which proves that God cannot exist is something of a Holy Grail to many atheists, and continues to be every bit as elusive as that mysterious chalice. In this argument LeBlanc reaches out to grasp it but finds only air, for his argument commits a substantial error in reasoning.

Given the first two premises (which must be given, as we are confronting orthodox Christian theism), his third premise ought never obtain; i.e., in order to obtain (3) LeBlanc is forced to contradict (1) and (2)!

How so? Consider what it is that (3) asserts: that God necessarily can bring about some X such that it was brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune. But given (2) which defines omnipotence as being able to “bring about any logically possible state of affairs,” and given (1) which defines God as “necessarily triune” (it is not logically possible for God to not be triune), we therefore observe that (3) contradicts these very premises—so that it is not God who vanishes in a puff of contradiction but rather LeBlanc’s argument.

[1] Martin, Michael. Atheism: A philosophical justification (1990), pg. 310, as cited by LeBlanc.

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Filed under: Atheism, Elenctic Apologetics, Philosophy

Transcendental Argument for God: Mitchell LeBlanc, Pt. 1

Author: Ryft

Dec 13

Over at UrbanPhilosophy.net is a Philosophy of Religion student from the University of Toronto, Mitchell LeBlanc, who has been endeavouring to make a case against presuppositional apologetics. Coursing a new direction from his original first three drafts, [1] perhaps due to the daunting scope of such a task or perhaps due to the criticisms from Chris Bolt and others at ChoosingHats.com, [2] the final draft version of the article [3] targets the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG) as argued for by the late philosopher Greg L. Bahnsen from Covenant Media Foundation.

As did his mentor Cornelius Van Til, Bahnsen defended the transcendental argument as singularly the only cogent and self-consistent Christian apologetic method by virtue of being uniquely grounded upon the distinctive presuppositions of revelational epistemology. [4] Van Til’s extensive work is considered by some to be a contribution to Christian philosophy of Copernican dimensions, [5] wherein he demonstrated by indirect proof the existence of God as the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of reality and the human experience thereof, such that God, as affirmed by Christian orthodoxy, is not a conclusion drawn from rational argument (evidentialism) but is logically prior to any reasoning at all (presuppositionalism). [6] As Van Til framed the matter in his An Introduction to Systematic Theology, “Unless God exists as ultimate [and] self-subsistent, we could not even know anything; we could not even reason that God must exist, nor could we even ask a question about God.” [7]

LeBlanc at this point holds a considered view that the TAG is not merely debatable but in fact false, taking as his point of evaluation the fundamental laws of logic, concluding that they “cannot depend on the Christian God” and therefore the TAG “is not sound”—and must remain so “pending further defense” thereof. His bold conclusion notwithstanding, we may inquire with skepticism whether or not LeBlanc really has successfully defeated the TAG as it already stands, never mind its further defense.

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Twitter debate with Sinasohn

Author: Ryft

Dec 11

On Tuesday of last week I had posted on Twitter the following introspection:

“Atheism is conceit in ignorance. Christianity is humility in knowledge.”

Now it seems that an atheist named Roger Sinasohn, who I do not know, discovered my post and decided it deserved a critical response, and soon we were engaged in what can be called my first Twitter debate. (Let me tell you, nothing can force you to articulate and defend your position with succinct clarity like a 140-characters restriction!) The following is the material content of that debate. I hope you enjoy it. It will be updated until completed.

8 December 2009 — Present (updated 16/Dec/09)

Sinasohn: Thinking that the entire universe was created just for you is humility? Wow. I’m sure glad you’re not conceited.

davidinbc: God did not create the universe for the universe (‘we’ are part of it). He created it for himself.

Sinasohn: I see. You’re saying god is the conceited one. All this is just his playground & we’re one of his toys. Makes sense.

davidinbc: Given the word’s definition, God can’t be conceited. Still waiting for a reply that can stand rationally.

Sinasohn: You believe in an all-powerful god. You think he likes you (humans/christians) best. You think that makes you humble.

Sinasohn: I don’t believe in god. I think the universe is huge and that I am not even as important (in the grand scheme of things)…

Sinasohn: …not even as important as bellybutton lint. And you say that atheism is conceited. See No. 1: http://bit.ly/8gXjPr

davidinbc: Christianity confesses that mankind are sinners deserving of God’s wrath, the antithesis of that definition you cited. Next?

davidinbc: (P.S., That you don’t believe in God proves the conceit, not refutes it.)

Sinasohn: I am no sinner; I’ve done nothing wrong. What did you do? And why do you think god cares?

Sinasohn: There are billions of people on this planet alone — what makes you so special that god gives a rat’s ass about you?

Sinasohn: Do you believe in Thor? Zeus? Ra? Ganesh? No? Does that make you conceited?

davidinbc: The definition of ‘sinner’ is one who disobeys God’s commands; ergo, you are a sinner by definition. We all are, including me.

davidinbc: And there is nothing special about me. God’s love is in the context of Christ alone, about whom much is special.

davidinbc: And my disbelief in idols has nothing to do with my self-estimation. A brutal non-sequitur, there.

Sinasohn: But you are claiming it is my disbelief in idols that makes me conceited. How is your god any different from anyone else’s god?

Sinasohn: So you’re are saying that god knows nothing of you, cares nothing about you, doesn’t even notice you, tiny speck in the universe?

Sinasohn: If that’s the case, why notice him? Why care about, let alone worship god? Or are you saying that god does pay attention to you?

Sinasohn: If you think god cares about you, then you are conceited, like an obsessed fan thinking a rockstar notices them in the crowd.

davidinbc: God cares about me because of who Christ is and what he did, not because of who I am or anything I’ve done (not conceited).

davidinbc: Either God is the authority over human reason (not conceited), or human reason is the authority over God (conceited). So, next?

Sinasohn: You’re saying that god (or his kid) cares about you personally out of the billions on this planet, not to mention elsewhere?

Sinasohn: Again, that’s like being in the crowd as the president drives by and thinking he’s smiling at you specifically. That’s conceit.

Sinasohn: And if you’re going to say god (all-powerful, ‘member?) can care about everyone, then I’ll ask why doesn’t he?

Sinasohn: god is auth over humans or humans over god… or god don’t exist. I’ll take door no. 3.

davidinbc: It’s conceit only if God’s caring has to do with who I am or what I’ve done, which it doesn’t. Look at the definition again.

davidinbc: And he sent his only Son to justify the ungodly, even though we deserved condemnation. How much more caring do you need?

davidinbc: Door 3: human reason is the authority over God, by assuming him out of every category.

Sinasohn: god sent his son to be killed just to absolve you? Wow. He likes you more than his own kid. You both sure think a lot of you.

davidinbc: God’s love for anyone is BECAUSE of Christ. He thinks highly of the Son, in whom sinners are saved because of it.

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Filed under: Atheism, Christian, Elenctic Apologetics

Examining a Boston Examiner

Author: Ryft

Oct 5

There is a writer at Examiner.com who is also a member of the AtheistForums.org web site, Jacqueline Lavache (Eilonnwy), who frequently draws attention to the articles she writes as the Boston Atheism Examiner. (Since the web site compensates its writers in a fashion similar to that of Helium and Associated Content, I certainly do not begrudge her frequent solicitations.) There is a particular article she wrote about three months ago that she has made some references to in recent conversations, so I decided to give it a look and review what she had to say. The article is entitled “Standards of Evidence: Why the Bible is not proof of God.” Click on the link and give it a read, helping her earn a buck, and then switch back to here for my review.

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