Category Apologetics

Taking Nabeel Qureshi to task over morality

Nabeel Qureshi is great; he is a great resource for critiquing Islam, Muhammad, the Qu’ran and the Hadith. He is an ex-Muslim who converted to Christianity and now runs and MA course at Biola and runs his own ministry. His knowledge of Islam is super and his videos have certainly helped me in my exegesis and talks on Islam.

Reply to Matthew Flannagan on Biblical Moral Relativism

Apologist Matthew Flannagan has criticised my points made on the recent post “Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism” which can also be expressed as “Covenantal Moral Relativism” as Justin Schieber has stated it. In this post I declared that the moral obligations being different between the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT) amounted to moral relativism (MR). Here is what Flannagan had to say:

Do the Bible and Qu’ran need commentaries?

Over on a recent thread about the challenges I have met in my claims of Islam, a Catholic commentator asked this question:

I agree with you that Islam has problems. I have a quick question: do you read commentaries and theology books written by Muslims to offset your bias?

To which I said:

“Faith” as a redundant term

Faith is a term which is bandied about with carefree abandon, but what does it really mean? As I wrote to Christian apologist David Marshall some years back:

David
Part of the problem is that you are extracting these issues from their real world application and in a sense making them irrelevant. Let’s apply the faith vs reason to real life instances:

William Lane Craig’s Reply: A series from notes about infinity, IV

Here is Part IV of James A. Lindsay’s series on infinity. The first three can be found here, here and here. I edited his fantastic book, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly, which is available form the sidebar over there.

As previously noted, I’m writing a series of blog posts that are adapted from notes I made as preparation to talk with philosopher and author Peter Boghossian’s Atheism class at Portland State on November 19, 2013. This is the fourth and final post in this series. I visited his class to address infinity and God, following from the theme presented in my new book, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly.

An attack on egalitarianism and the worst post and comments I have ever seen

I have recently had a conversation on facebook that left me truly flabbergasted. I think it qualifies as the most jaw-dropping conversation I have had. It was with someone whom I did teacher-training with (though who chose not to finish the course). Now I wouldn’t normally go into detail about personal matters when evaluating somebody’s claims and positions, but I think it explains so much in terms of cognitive dissonance, and is so relevant to the topic, that it does need mentioning. The person in question has certain tendencies which are deemed sinful to the Catholic Church. He lives in Brighton, ironically a city in Britain known for its diversity and sense of equality.

Randal Rauser has a pop at me

A few weeks back, theologian, author and blogger Randal Rauser had a pop at me. We have previously had a few cross-posts and whatnot, and even debated on US radio/Reasonable Doubts podcast on the subject of the Nativity, which can be found here. Luke, a theist who regularly comments here,, also comments at Rauser’s blog, and I got into a revived debate about libertarian free will and the Kalam.

William Lane Craig is either lying, or getting things very wrong.

William Lane Craig is ubiquitous in conversations about theistic and Christian apologetics. Being the foremost modern philosopher/theologian still operating, he is often called upon or used as a source for theistic and Christian arguments, winning many debates in the process (on technique and rhetoric, in the main). I have part critiqued his Reasonable Faith book here.

Heaven and the Fine-Tuning Argument

I came across this quote in response to someone posting my notes on fine-tuning on the Why Doesn’t God Heal Amputees forum. I like it a lot:

The biggest problem I find with the fine-tuned argument is that it is incompatible with dualism, and therefore Christianity.

David Marshall gets owned in debate so the church refuses to post video…

A moment of Schadenfreude: David Marshall recently debated Phil Zuckerman on the issue “What provides a better foundation for civil society: Christianity or Secular Humanism?” and Marshall apparently got creamed. The debate was recorded and the church that organized it planned to upload it. But after their guy lost, they changed their mind on that. Zuckerman asked them when they will finally keep their word and upload the video material of the debate, this is the reply he got:

Quote of the Day – Trq Atallah – atheists are ungrateful, drunk, horrified of death, terrified, dead-eyed…

So there was an interesting comment on another one of my posts the other day that was entirely, every word, inane, insane, irrational nonsense. It was so good (bad) that I thought I would post it.

Of course, atheism, as a lack of belief in God or a positive belief that God does not exist, MUST cause these characteristics necessarily. Drivel. Enjoy:

William Lane Craig – “Consequentialism is a terrible ethic” – could he be more incoherent?

Craig has been involved in a series of discussions in Australia with Laurence Krauss regarding philosophy and science. Unfortunately, Krauss is no great philosopher which is what most of this discussion revolved around. However, both Craig and the annoying moderator claimed the “consequentialism is a terrible ethic” and that utilitarianism and consequentialism had been “renounced” by the Abrahamic faiths.