Ligon Duncan on the Non-Negotiables of the Gospel

Christian Skepticism endorses:

monergism.com

This site contains some of the most valuable God-centered resources a Christian Skeptic could ever want. Whether you peruse the copious free items or purchase something from their excellent online store, your worldview will never be the same!

Start Here to become a Christian Skeptic

We wanted to highlight this compilation by Paul Manata - The Philosophy of the
Christian Religion
- an excellent online resource for the development of the
well-considered Christian worldview.

Skeptical Insights

Good Blogroll (from Pyromaniacs)

  • Colin Adams
  • Charlie Albright
  • Aletheuo
  • Scott Aniol
  • Tom Ascol
  • Derek Ashton (TheoParadox)
  • Zachary Bartels
  • Tim and David Bayly
  • Rick Beckman
  • Tyler Bennicke
  • Bible Geek
  • Big Orange Truck
  • Andy Bird
  • John Bird
  • Bob Bixby
  • Timmy Brister
  • Fred Butler
  • Calvin and Calvinism (Classic and moderate Calvinism)
  • Cal.vini.st
  • Bret Capranica
  • Nathan Casebolt
  • Lane Chaplin
  • Tim ("The World's Most Famous Christian Blogger"®) Challies
  • The Conservative Intelligencer
  • The Contemporary Calvinist
  • The Conventicle
  • Craig's Blog
  • Deliver Detroit
  • Daniel (Doulogos)
  • William Dicks
  • The Doulos' Den
  • Martin Downes
  • Connie Dugas
  • Doug Eaton
  • Nicholas Edinger
  • Brother Eugene
  • Eusebeia
  • Stefan Ewing
  • Eddie Exposito
  • Expository Thoughts
  • Faces Like Flint
  • Reid Ferguson
  • Peter Farrell
  • Bill Fickett
  • Fide-o
  • Foolish Things
  • Chris Freeland
  • Travis Gilbert
  • Ron Gleason
  • Go Share Your Faith!
  • God is My Constant
  • Phil Gons
  • Joel Griffith (Solameanie)
  • Matt Gumm
  • Gregg Hanke
  • Jacob Hantla
  • Chris Harwood
  • J. D. Hatfield
  • Michael Haykin
  • Tony Hayling (Agonizomai)
  • Steve Hays and the amazing "Triablogue" team
  • Scott Head
  • Patrick Heaviside (Paths of Old)
  • Marc Heinrich's Purgatorio
  • Sean Higgins
  • Illumination (Rich Barcellos and Sam Waldron)
  • Inverted Planet
  • Tim Jack
  • Jackhammer
  • Craig Johnson
  • Alex Jordan
  • The Journeymen
  • Justified
  • Lane Keister (Green Baggins)
  • John Killian
  • David Kjos
  • Ted Kluck
  • Patrick Lacson
  • A Little Leaven (Museum of Idolatry)
  • Janet Lee
  • Let My Lifesong Sing
  • Libbie, the English Muffin
  • Light and Heat
  • Greg Linscott
  • Bryan Maes
  • Brian McDaris
  • Doug McMasters
  • Allen Mickle
  • The incomparable Al Mohler
  • Jonathan Moorhead
  • Ryan Moran
  • Stephen Newell
  • Dean Olive
  • Dan Paden
  • Paleoevangelical
  • A Peculiar Pilgrim
  • Jim Pemberton
  • The Persecution Times
  • Bill Pershing
  • Kevin Pierpont
  • Matt Plett
  • Wes Porter
  • Postmortemism
  • The Red and Black Redneck
  • Reformata
  • Reformation 21
  • Reformation Theology (sponsored by Monergism.Com)
  • Reformed Evangelist
  • Remonstrans
  • Carla Rolfe
  • Tony Rose
  • Andrew Roycroft
  • Eric Rung
  • Said at Southern Seminary
  • Seeing Clearly
  • Sharper Iron
  • Kim Shay
  • Neil Shay
  • Brian Shealy
  • Ken Silva
  • Tom Slawson's "Tom in the Box"
  • Tom Slawson's other blog
  • Doug Smith
  • Richard Snoddy
  • Social Hazard
  • SolaFire
  • Rebecca Stark
  • Kevin Stilley
  • Cindy Swanson
  • Talking Out Of Turn
  • Justin Taylor's "Between Two Worlds"
  • Robert Tewart (StreetFishing)
  • TheoJunkie's Thoughts on Theology
  • Theology Bites
  • Through the Veil
  • Three Times a Mom
  • Voice of the Shepherd
  • Jared Wall
  • Adrian Warnock
  • David Wayne
  • Jeremy Weaver
  • Steve Weaver
  • Über-apologist James White's legendary "Pros Apologian" blog
  • Brad Williams
  • Doug Wilson
  • Writing and Living
  • Ryan Wood
  • Todd Young
  • Wednesday, December 29, 2010

    Tuesday, December 28, 2010

    Darwin vs ID



    Pretty good stuff - Smart feller. I'd only comment that we don't know via the scientific method how life came about.

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Darwin's God - great blog


    Evolution may or may not be true, but it is not a scientific fact. No one knows for certain whether evolution is true or not, but we certainly do know what is the state of our knowledge. The claim that evolution is a scientific fact is a claim about the state of our knowledge. And while there is uncertainty about evolution, there is no uncertainty about our knowledge.

    We all know what the state of our knowledge is and, from a scientific perspective, that knowledge does not indicate evolution to be a scientific fact. Not even close.


    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Friday, December 24, 2010

    Divine Love versus Deadly Poison on Display

    Christmas is beautiful time of year celebrated by many, but not by all. This was evident in Richard Dawkin's response to Pope Benedict XVI's message in a piece entitled "A Shameful Thought for the Day"

    In this post, Dawkins with utter audacity and unbridled shamelessness, stemming only from the bowels of the very sinful nature he himself seeks to deny, displays none other than the antithesis of godliness as he with full understanding regarding the strategic intent and timing of his release spews forth nothing other than the poisonous spiritual & rhetorical venom of a present day viper who with a dead and hardened heart has inclined and bound himself with unrelenting commitment to opposing, throwing off and trampling without cease the name and glory of his creator and eternal ruler, and in the process is found doing no other than seeking his own glory and trying to build a name for himself among men, which eventually in time and eternity will be seen as not only temporal and sadly displaced, but to have evidenced rebelliousness and treason of the greatest kind, should he not turn and repent before this same God, who even now in the face of all his misdirected acts and ambitions, holds out and displays most openly and vividly especially at this time of year, the most loving and selfless and gracious and sufficient display of divine love and salvation the world has ever known, and yet at present while it's revealed for all the world to see, it lies not only beyond Dawkin's aspirations and affections, but as the object of his profaning and damning imagination and condemnation.

    To be simple and brief:
    1. Dawkins errs in both failing to understand the method of the propagation and nature of sin and hence fails to see the necessity of redemption. To our chagrin though lamentable, it's laughable that Dawkins would assert it Christian theory that sin (which is of a 'spiritual' origin and nature) is bequeathed and passed on simply by Adam's physical or "bodily semen". While it's true that mankind was changed as a result of Adam's sin (posititionally before God as well as "condition"-ally as we became sinners) and while it's true that in nature both nature as well as genes are passed through conception and birth, Dawkin's fails to recognize both man's federal relationship to God in Adam and in Christ as well as the fact that sin ultimately has meaning only in relation to God. Shouldn't one who is so forthright and venomous in his attack be the least bit careful to understand the opposing position before publicly attempting to criticize and condemn it, especially knowing the worldwide nature of the exposure?

    Additionally, if original sin is not true, then why do all men possess the nature of Adam, participate in the acts of the sinful nature, prove powerless to change (apart from Christ) and incur the consequences, even death itself? It's not enough to heap insult at the premise if you cannot as well explain the corollaries.

    2. Dawkins also errs and shows blind ignorance when suggesting the manner of God's redemption to be "one of the most repugnant ideas ever to occur to a human mind". Dawkins states "For heaven's sake, if he [God] wanted to forgive us, why didn't he just forgive us?" But to state this is to fail to account for the holiness of God of whom it would be impossible to unjustly turn the eye and fail to reckon with the sin itself. As Paul explains in Romans 3, God accomplished salvation not only in such a way as to be just (i.e., and deal with the sin) but one who also justifies the sinner (which He is able to having provided both forgiveness and righteousness by His own atoning sacrifice and offer of righteousness).

    What's clear this time of year, a time when the star of Bethlehem shines so brightly, is that NO ONE should be led astray by Dawkin's present rantings and ravings, the writing of no less than a madman, but rather every reason this season in keeping with the veracity of God's truth and Word points us to the only one in whom both original sin can be dealt with and redemption accomplished by the shedding of blood, that being Jesus Christ himself, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, our holiness and our redemption! May not only the contrast but the attack itself which has been set before upon Christ and Christmas in this example lead to none other than the glory of God's wondrous name, though the redemption and faith of those who believe!

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Thursday, December 23, 2010

    Perhaps another Fizzling Wish

    oops... could it be another wishful hope fizzling out?

    Did 'Martian' methane signal come from Earth?

    ... perhaps, the better hope is the one found in the good news of Christmas!

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Tuesday, December 14, 2010

    Atheist Bus Ads

    “It can be pretty lonely for a nonbeliever at Christmastime around here." (Terry McDonald, chairman of atheist group in Fort Worth running bus ads)

    ... Immanuel (God with us!)

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Monday, December 13, 2010

    Skeptical of ET Abiogenesis

    Should the discovery of a "potentially habitable planet" really be considered as "Evidence for ET"?

    Evidence for ET is mounting daily, but not proven

    I have no idea of life exists on other planets or not. However, the above article seems to cheapen the miracle that is life, assuming that life can (and necessarily will) emerge from abiotic material just as long as a planet can be found to support it.

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Friday, November 12, 2010

    CS Apologies

    Our apologies to our readers for the various LinkedIn and Spam email posts which have been showing up on our blog. We believe the technical issues have now been resolved and apologize for the inconvenience.

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Friday, October 15, 2010

    Update on Earth-like planet found - oopsie!

    Remember Gliese 581g, the Earth-like planet whose discovery scientists announced two weeks back, saying it could potentially sustain life? Bad news: Not only were the initial reports that "the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent" overblown; now, new data suggests that the planet may not actually exist.

    Steven Vogt, the researcher who led the team that announced the Gliese 581g discovery (and the utterer of the now-infamous "chances for life on this planet are 100 percent" line, which he clarified was a statement of personal belief rather than of scientific evidence), based his discovery on a mix of his work at Hawaii's Keck Observatory and previously published data.

    But the publishers of that old data used by Vogt, who collected it using Chile's High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), have come out with new data which lacks evidence for Gliese 581g.

    uh-huh...

    link to article

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    No Heaven on Earth - Skepticism that resonates with this Christian Skeptic

    While I don't agree with the worldview - I do resonate with the logic against "technological triumphalism".

    Singularity-level technology changes the world to the point where the things our ancestors wanted are not the same things we want. Today, we are trying to roll back the effects of industrialization. We are trying to undo the damage that penicillin did. If history, real history, teaches us any lesson it's that new technologies do not cause us to transcend. They fix some things, and then cause new problems we hadn't anticipated.

    Link to full article

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Thursday, September 30, 2010

    ‘Potentially Habitable’ Planet Discovered Orbiting Nearby Star

    File under: Funding ploy...

    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-30/-potentially-habitable-planet-discovered-orbiting-nearby-star.html

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Saturday, September 25, 2010

    Excellent Article on the "New Atheism"

    The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that today's most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants, or a great lover because he can afford the price of admission to a brothel. So long as one can choose one's conquests in advance, taking always the paths of least resistance, one can always imagine oneself a Napoleon or a Casanova (and even better: the one without a Waterloo, the other without the clap).

    full article here
    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Saturday, September 11, 2010

    Al Mohler on Stephen Hawkings

    The God of the Bible is not merely a First Cause — He is the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of all that is, who rules the universe by His Word. Christians must recognize the "God of the gaps" as a false idol of theological surrender. Furthermore, Christians must also understand that any scientific admission of God as a possible First Cause without continuing rule over creation is no cause for celebration. The triune God cannot be reduced to a First Cause among other causes.

    Full article here

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Saturday, September 04, 2010

    Amazing insight into Stephen Hawkins - by his former wife

    As Stephen became more famous, his associations changed to more and more eminent scientists, which Jane had to admit she did not find appealing. The contrast between her old friends and the world's leading scientists who became their friends (as Stephen became increasingly renowned in his field) was enormousTheir old friends were able to talk intelligently about many things and show a 'human interest in people and situations'. In contrast, as a whole, their new friends were 'a dry, obsessive bunch of boffins', little concerned with people, but rather very concerned with their personal scientific reputations. She adds, 'They were much more aggressively competitive than the relaxed, friendly relativists with whom we had associated in the past' (p. 296). Their old friends' dedication to science verged on the dilettante in comparison with the 'driving fanaticism' of their new friends (p. 296). Jane stresses that she concluded that
    'Nature was powerless to influence intellectual beings who were governed by rational thought, [but] who could not recognize reality when it stood, bared before them, pleading for help. They appeared to jump to conclusions, which distorted the truth to make it fit their preconceptions' (p. 312).

    Although many other women might have left Stephen because of his intolerable attitude toward her, and especially what she represented, she stuck by her husband through everything. It was he who left her for another woman. She tried in vain to reconcile with Stephen—his terms were, he would live at home with his family for part of the week, and the rest of the week he would live 'with his ladylove' (p. 574). This was unacceptable to Jane. His selfishness and hedonism had shown through again.


    Article here

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Symbaloo.com is a great link management site!


    I like Symbaloo.com - iPod like interface to organize your bookmarks online - I even added a Reformed, etc webmix - give it a try!

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Good article on Stephen Hawkins latest pronouncement

    I will gladly listen to Stephen Hawking when he holds forth on matters of theoretical physics, but he’s as qualified to talk about philosophical and religious issues as any college freshman. There is a qualitative difference between the sciences, which speak of objects, forces, and phenomena within the observable universe, and philosophy or religion which speak of ultimate origins and final purposes. Science, as such, simply cannot adjudicate questions that lie outside of its proper purview—and this is precisely why scientists tend to make lots of silly statements when they attempt to philosophize.


    article here

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Friday, August 27, 2010

    Shai Linne on Faulty Doctrine



    This guy is blowing me away!
    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Wednesday, August 25, 2010

    Al Mohler on Michael Dowd's propaganda atheism

    We are engaged in a great battle for ideas that Christians understand to be a battle for hearts, minds, and souls. Dowd and his fellow evangelists for evolution are certain that they own the future, and that biblical Christianity will simply fade and disappear. "Ours is a time of space telescopes, electron microscopes, supercomputers, and the worldwide web," he asserts. His conclusion: "This is not a time for parsing the lessons given to a few goatherds, tentmakers, and camel drivers."
    Well, give Michael Dowd credit for reminding us where the rejection of biblical Christianity inevitably leads.

    full article here

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Al Mohler on Darwinian capitulation

    "If your intention in Saving Darwin is to show "how to be a Christian and believe in evolution," what you have actually succeeded in doing is to show how much doctrine Christianity has to surrender in order to accommodate itself to evolution."


    Full article here

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Saturday, August 14, 2010

    Excellent response to: Does God exist?

    Very presuppositional approach - shout out to Swordbearer for the video!

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Monday, August 09, 2010

    New Blog: Christian Swordbearer

    I've started a new (additional) blog here for those who are interested.
    http://christianswordbearer.blogspot.com/

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Thursday, August 05, 2010

    An excellent secular argument against gay marriage...

    To me, what is at stake in this debate is not only the potential unhappiness of children, grave as that is; it is our ability to maintain the most basic components of our humanity. I believe, in fact, that we are at an "Antigone moment." Some of our fellow citizens wish to impose a radically new understanding upon laws and institutions that are both very old and fundamental to our organization as individuals and as a society. As Antigone said to Creon, we are being asked to tamper with "unwritten and unfailing laws, not of now, nor of yesterday; they always live, and no one knows their origin in time." I suspect, moreover, that everyone knows this is the case, and that, paradoxically, this very awareness of just how much is at stake is what may have induced, in defenders of those same "unwritten and unfailing laws," a kind of paralysis.


    full article here

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Saturday, June 05, 2010

    William Lane Craig is skeptical of science's omnipotence...

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Tuesday, May 18, 2010

    Interesting "Coincidence": Matter over Anti-matter

    A New Clue to Explain Existence

    "If confirmed, the finding portends fundamental discoveries at the new Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, as well as a possible explanation for our own existence....Sifting data from collisions of protons and antiprotons at Fermilab’s Tevatron, which until last winter was the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the team, known as the DZero collaboration, found that the fireballs produced pairs of the particles known as muons, which are sort of fat electrons, slightly more often than they produced pairs of anti-muons. So the miniature universe inside the accelerator went from being neutral to being about 1 percent more matter than antimatter."
    I would suggest that the discovery of the origin of matter hardly gives an "explanation for our own existence", unless one were to conclude that we are merely material beings without free wills or rational thought processes, governed only by the determinate laws of nature. But rather than invoke a "god of the gaps" approach, what we have a vision of here is the God of natural law and matter, ie. of everything between the gaps.

    "Joe Lykken, a theorist at Fermilab, said, “So I would not say that this announcement is the equivalent of seeing the face of God, but it might turn out to be the toe of God.”"

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Well, why not?

    After all, they do seem to really love each other.

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Tuesday, May 11, 2010

    Anyone surprised? - babies know the diff between good and evil

    Six months old and he can tell good from evil


    Mothers and fathers might think they have few higher duties than teaching a sense of right and wrong to their children. But research suggests that their offspring may already be a step ahead of them.

    Scientists have discovered that babies can start to make moral judgments by the age of six months and may be born with the ability to tell good from bad hard-wired into their brains.

    link

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Tuesday, May 04, 2010

    Chimp "Sex Toys" As Evolution Evidence

    This is not a joke, but an actual article in the New York Times suggesting that male chimps, by using leaves to attract females to certain body parts, show us an "evolutionary leap" and delivers the "most devastating blow yet to human self-esteem."

    Caution: Link does contain suggestive material

    When It Comes to Sex, Chimps Need Help, Too

    "I couldn’t imagine how chimps managed this evolutionary leap. But then, I couldn’t imagine what they were actually doing. Using blades of grass to tickle one another? Building heart-shaped beds of moss? Using stones for massages, or vines for bondage, or — well, I really had no idea, so I called Dr. McGrew, who is a professor at the University of Cambridge.

    The tool for sex, he explained, is a leaf. Ideally a dead leaf, because that makes the most noise when the chimp clips it with his hand or his mouth."

    So, how is your self-esteem now? Apparently I don't know what I'm missing.

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Monday, May 03, 2010

    PCA Geologists and the age of the earth

    As I have said - not sure I buy the presuppositions (for the earth to be old, God must be a deceiver) and the conclusions (anyone that doesn't adhere to the Old Earth position is propagating that conclusion), but this is still an interesting study.


    link here

    --
    Respectfully,

    JD

    Qui cantat, bis orat (to sing once is to pray twice!) - St Augustine

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Saturday, April 03, 2010

    ...and yet another one...

    Missing link between man and apes found

    "It is thought that the new fossil to be unveiled this week will be identified as a new species that fits somewhere between Australopithicus and Homo habilis."

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...

    Tuesday, March 30, 2010

    Biblical plagues really happened say scientists

    Interesting article, just in time for our yearly Easter Present from the National Geographical Channel.

    Biblical plagues really happened say scientists

    "The Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption, scientists have claimed...The cause of the final plague, the death of the first borns of Egypt, has been suggested as being caused by a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings and so been first to fall victim."
    I guess either the Israelites didn't eat grain, or were cured by putting lamb blood on their doors.

    "But Dr Robert Miller, associate professor of the Old Testament, from the Catholic University of America, said: "I'm reluctant to come up with natural causes for all of the plagues.

    The problem with the naturalistic explanations, is that they lose the whole point.

    "And the whole point was that you didn't come out of Egypt by natural causes, you came out by the hand of God."

    click here to see full post and any posted comments...