Tag: kalam

Book Plunge: The Lazy Approach To Evangelism

What do I think of Eric Hernandez’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Meh. I don’t feel like writing this now.

Okay. Maybe I should.

First, this is a sort of introduction book. I would consider it an advanced form of Tactics combined with I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist. If you’re been familiar with apologetics for awhile, you won’t find much new here, which is okay. If this is your first go at learning and you want to go do evangelism, this is a great start.

To begin with, Hernandez critiques how we do evangelism. Our evangelism is often based on our experiences and our emotions. “Go out there and tell them what Jesus has done for you!” “Go out there and tell them about the joy you have in Christ!”

What’s the problem with this? Consider that one day you are at your house and your Ring tells you you have visitors at your door. You see these two nice looking men in black paints and white shirts with name tags on. They ask if you have some time to talk about God.

You agree and invite them in and before too long, they tell you that the Holy Spirit has spoken to them and given them a testimony that Joseph Smith is a prophet and in these last days God has revealed His will through the Mormon Church. They know this because they prayed and God gave them a burning in the bosom. They tell you you can have the same experience by praying with a sincere heart to see if the Book of Mormon is true.

You say you already have a relationship with Jesus and you talk about how your life has changed because of Jesus.

“Wonderful!” they reply. “We don’t want to take that away from you! We just want to offer you something deeper!”

Now if your argument here is just your experience, on what grounds can you deny them theirs? Especially since they haven’t denied you yours. They have even affirmed your experience!

There are other groups you could encounter. You could encounter Sufi Muslims who tell you about the joy of Allah. You could encounter New Agers who tell you about finding out about their past lives and that they are really gods and they are one with the universe. The problem with your experience is it is yours and everyone else has one as well.

Hernandez rightly points out that we need to have reasons for what we believe. We can’t just go on an emotional high. Besides that, many of us make horrible decisions both when we’re feeling great and when we’re feeling awful. You shouldn’t say “This left me feeling great, therefore it’s true!” It could be true, but it is true on other grounds.

From here, Hernandez goes on to deal with other worldviews. He focuses on atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, scientism, postmodernism, and naturalism. I would have liked to have seen interaction with other religions and new age beliefs, but one cannot cover everything. He gives you some brief information about the worldviews and then tells about general replies.

He calls his approach the lazy approach because it is more a method of asking questions and letting the person who makes the claim back the claim. It is not really lazy at all. It just seems like you don’t have to do a lot of studying. On the contrary, you do, but with this method, if you don’t know about something, you can just ask and see if it logically holds up.

At this point, Hernandez starts giving arguments for God. I really didn’t find this section convincing as most of these arguments I reject from a Thomistic perspective. While I do think the universe had a beginning, classically, the Kalam did not depend on that. Also, I disagree on the moral argument when we are told that the good is God’s nature. That doesn’t really explain anything. If I want to say “Hernandez’s book is a good book” what does good mean? “Hernandez’s book was a book like the nature of God?” All you have done is given me the phrase good, which hasn’t been defined, and replaced it with God’s nature, which also hasn’t been defined. When we say God is good, what do we mean? That God is His nature? It becomes meaningless.

A Thomist like myself would say the good is that at which all things aim such as Aristotle told us and then show the correlation between goodness and being. God is good because He is the fullness of being and has all perfections in Him. Something is good insofar as it fulfills the nature of what it has and since God’s nature is to be, then He fulfills what it means to be.

But I will be fair. These are starting points. They’re good ones. They’re where I started.

Finally, he ends with the resurrection argument largely using the minimal facts approach. I know some people criticize that approach and I’m not interested in that debate, but it is effective for evangelism and I think most of us would agree that if someone comes to Christ through the minimal facts approach, we should rejoice.

So in the end, this is a good book if you’re starting out. It is one I would encourage for a church small group or Sunday School class on evangelism. I would also recommend it for college and seminary students studying how to do evangelism. Give it a try.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

When Vs How

What makes the two arguments different? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was recently engaged with someone on the Kalam argument who was arguing with someone else. I jumped in asking if he was arguing against the horizontal form or the vertical form. He didn’t know the difference, but he said it doesn’t matter since the whole premise is faulty about the universe beginning to exist.

Pro-tip: If you admit you don’t know the differences between two arguments, it’s highly recommended to not act like you know what the premises are to the unknown argument.

Many of you know the Kalam from someone like William Lane Craig.

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
The universe has a cause.

The form is entirely valid. I don’t know anyone who disputes the form. There might be some atheist out there who does, but I haven’t seen it yet.

The problem is a number of atheists ask a lot of questions.

“How do you know the universe began to exist?”

“What about the multiverse?”

“What caused God?”

To get into any of these, you often have to go beyond science into metaphysics.

Which is why I value the vertical way. It doesn’t depend on modern science at all. I don’t think the universe is eternal, but that wouldn’t change the Kalam working that I use. Now some might think that Aquinas used this and he did believe that the universe had a beginning. Indeed he did, but that wasn’t a premise he used in his arguments for the existing of God that were based on empirical knowledge alone.

If we look at Q. 46 Art. 2 of the Summa in the “On the contrary”, he says:

On the contrary, The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things “that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, “I believe in one God,” etc. And again, Gregory says (Hom. i in Ezech.), that Moses prophesied of the past, saying, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”: in which words the newness of the world is stated. Therefore the newness of the world is known only by revelation; and therefore it cannot be proved demonstratively.

Thus, Aquinas says you need revelation to know that the world had a beginning. He even wrote a short book on this topic. His contention was that you couldn’t know this by logical argument and empirical knowledge alone. You could say “He was wrong on that!” but that’s irrelevant. The whole point is that his argument for God, his Kalam, does not depend on the world having a beginning.

So what is he arguing?

Imagine you’re at your home one day minding your own business and you hear some strange music. You step outside of your residence and try to follow the sound. Where is it coming from?

What is causing that?

Now in another scenario, you wake up and you look outside and it looks like it’s a beautiful day. Why not step outside? You do so and right on your driveway is a giant orb.

What caused that?

It makes sense to us. The orb being placed was a one-time event so you asked “What caused that?” but the music is continuous. “What is causing that?” Aquinas says, “But you can ask ‘What is causing that?’ about the orb also.”

How so?

The orb doesn’t exist by its own nature or power. Something is holding it in existing. Think of how Scripture says in a passage like Col. 1:15-18 that Christ upholds all things by His power. If He ceased holding them, they would cease existing.

But could something eternal still have a cause of its existing?

Yes.

I tell people to picture this scenario. You have a man who has existed eternally and he is standing in front of a mirror. The mirror is also eternal. The man has been eternally looking into the mirror. He sees eternally his own reflection.

Question: Is the reflection eternal?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is the reflection caused?

Answer: Also yes.

The reflection in the mirror is still dependent on the man and the mirror both even if eternal.

Aquinas is not saying “The universe came to be, therefore it had a beginner.” Odds are, he would not disagree, but his argument is different. He doesn’t want to know when the universe came to be. It’s irrelevant to him. He wants to know how the universe continues to be.

If I was making a Kalam, I would make it something like this.

Whatever does not have the basis of its existing in itself depends on something else to exist.
The universe does not have the basis of its existing in itself.
Therefore, the universe depends on something else to exist.

Now that is God who is the exception not because of special pleading, but because God is the only being whose nature is simply to be. If He depended on something else, that something would be God. Aquinas spends the rest of that part of the Summa on the doctrine of God describing this God based on that.

This is also the form of the argument I prefer. It’s simple and powerful and honestly, most atheists don’t even attempt to understand the argument at all. I usually try to get them to tell me what Aquinas is arguing in the first way in their own words and it’s always some quick attempt to refute it and not even understand it.

Back to a pro-tip: Before you refute an argument, make sure you understand it and the best way to assure your opponent you do is when you can repeat it to him in your own words to his satisfaction.

If you can’t do that, don’t try.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Improbable Issues With The God Hypothesis Part 5

Is the universe Godless? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this one, we’re asking the question of if the universe is godless or not. Brucker starts off with a clear position on the matter.

But ever since God was the most plausible option, scientific thought and exploration have demonstrably proven those archaic beliefs as false. In the past, these hasty speculations were accepted rather quickly amongst these populations because there hadn’t existed differing and testable facts.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 83). Kindle Edition.

How these beliefs have been proven to be false is not shown. Also, scientific work had been going on for quite some time. Had Brucker just read some ancient works and some medieval works, he might have learned something.

As I’ve suggested and offered as an objective criticism, I would postulate the idea that if God were, in fact, the author of truth and that the writings he inspired were literal, what has been established throughout the centuries would be an accurate representation of reality as God is the creator of all and the Abrahamic texts would correspondingly agree.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 84). Kindle Edition.

What is the hang-up with literalism? It is a modern way of thinking and certainly not the way Jews and Christians always interpreted. The Jewish people had a number of ways of reading the text as did the early church fathers.

I find it humbling that my purpose in life is what I make of it, and the reason I’m here is a miracle, not in a metaphysical sense but because of the sheer odds that were trumped for my presence to exist.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 90). Kindle Edition.

Which is a quite scary statement. We could say that any mass-murderer in history said that their purpose in life was what they made of it. On what grounds could he said to be wrong? That would assume that there is some objective purpose to life, but that’s a teleology that atheism has to deny.

Not a single article of scripture suggests that each star has its solar system, or that there are close to 1,000,000,000,000 stars within each galaxy. In our universe, it is believed to contain roughly 1,000,000,000,000 galaxies, bringing the total number of stars to an estimated 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Also, let us refer to the scale of known planetary and solar objects. A neutron star, essentially a star to have already exhausted its internal resources after a supernova has occurred, is roughly 10,000 times bigger than a human. The Earth is approximately 1,500,000 times larger than the average human. The sun is roughly 10,000 times larger than the Earth.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 91). Kindle Edition.

And why should they? What would anyone care? How could anyone find this out? What would it mean to anyone who read that?

The largest know star, VY Canis Majoris is almost 100,000 times larger than our sun, making it 1,500,000,000,000 times larger than ourselves. I find it impossible to imagine that this universe was designed specifically for us, as this star is almost 5,000 light-years away with a circumference so great that it would take a Boeing jet 1,200 years to complete a full circle, which doesn’t allude to an intentionally created universe. I can agree it is a very daunting proposition, that we are significantly unimportant and that we may not have an absolute purpose. But to arrogantly claim that it was created for us is undeniably wrong.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 91). Kindle Edition.

There is no connection between the data and the conclusion. “We live in a big universe, therefore it wasn’t made for us to inhabit.” How does that follow? He can say that to claim it was made for us to inhabit is undeniably wrong since I do deny it as do and would several others.

But what about arguments for God? We all know where this is going.

1. Everything that exists or begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe exists and began to exist. 3. The universe must have a cause. 4. The cause of the universe is God.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 94). Kindle Edition.

No one has ever defended the idea that “Everything that exists or begins to exist has a cause.” Somehow, atheists think the argument is “Everything that exists has a cause.” To this, Edward Feser’s post is still essential. As Feser says:

Here’s the funny thing, though.  People who attack this argument never tell you where they got it from.  They never quote anyone defending it.  There’s a reason for that.  The reason is that none of the best-known proponents of the cosmological argument in the history of philosophy and theology ever gave this stupid argument.  Not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Aquinas, not Duns Scotus, not Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne.  And not anyone else either, as far as I know.  (Your Pastor Bob doesn’t count.  I mean no one among prominent philosophers.)  And yet it is constantly presented, not only by popular writers but even by some professional philosophers, as if it were “the” “basic” version of the cosmological argument, and as if every other version were essentially just a variation on it.

But now let’s get back to Brucker:

What I find troubling about this is that the essence of God is often left alone, believed that God is outside the realm of creation as he has always been. This, of course, fits well within the line of reasoning held by the monotheistic individual, but if they wish to argue such a claim they must first prove that this creator exists; and if he does exist, they must also demonstrate how he can exist without the need of a first cause.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (pp. 94-95). Kindle Edition.

So in order to make an argument for the existing of God, you first have to show that God exists. To this, I’m only going to accept arguments for atheism if Brucker can first show that atheism is true.

All of which must be answered or else the cosmological argument holds little weight. There is also nothing to suggest that if the cause was a supreme being, that it, in fact, is the God of Abraham behind the conception of the universe. When I’m faced with an argument of this sort, I often attempt to stress the fact that while the first cause for matter may hold weight, there is nothing to suggest that it was any specific deity; nothing about the argument carries any defining traits of the Abrahamic deity.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 95). Kindle Edition.

Let’s go back to Feser:

People who make this claim – like, again, Dawkins in The God Delusion – show thereby that they haven’t actually read the writers they are criticizing.  They are typically relying on what other uninformed people have said about the argument, or at most relying on excerpts ripped from context and stuck into some anthology (as Aquinas’s Five Ways so often are).  Aquinas in fact devotes hundreds of pages across various works to showing that a First Cause of things would have to be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and so on and so forth.  Other Scholastic writers and modern writers like Leibniz and Samuel Clarke also devote detailed argumentation to establishing that the First Cause would have to have the various divine attributes.

Of course, an atheist might try to rebut these various arguments.  But to pretend that they don’t exist – that is to say, to pretend, as so many do, that defenders of the cosmological argument typically make an undefended leap from “There is a First Cause” to “There is a cause of the world that is all-powerful, all-knowing, etc.” – is, once again, simply to show that one doesn’t know what one is talking about.

Also, no one who made the argument ever said it gets you to one particular religion. Maimonides, Avicenna, and Aquinas in the middle ages, the Jew, the Muslim, and the Christian, could all use the argument to establish a first cause. Then they would use other data to debate who the first cause is. What He is was not the question so much as who He is.

Now the question comes: How could energy spontaneously exist without cause for its existence? First of all, the idea of causation – as we understand it – must be erased, as Lawrence Krauss has explained that what we assume to be “logical” may not apply to the universe because the universe existed long before our brains developed the ability to decide what was logical and what was not. After years of dedication, scientists have found the evidence in our universe that suggests that the formation of energy, both negative and positive, happens without intention or guidance. All matter is consisted of positive energy as it is needed to maintain the integrity of the atoms, of which an object consists.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 96). Kindle Edition.

You gotta love it. Here we have the one saying he is championing rationality saying the universe might not be logical at its start. So God can’t be accepted if He has a logical contradiction, which is true, but if the universe has that, it’s cool. The argument doesn’t even make sense. Logic doesn’t apply until humans show up?

What a train wreck.

Next time, we’ll start looking at history.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Plunge: Still Unbelievable Part 3

What about the cause of the universe? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I will say in his defense that chapters by Skydive Phil tend to be well-researched and better than most other chapters. That’s not saying a lot, but that is something. Unlike many other authors, he does have a copious list of notes for what he says. Seeing as this chapter is largely scientific, as you all should know by now, I will not comment on science as science. However, when we get to philosophical points, I will say something.

So let’s get to one:

When we think of causes though, we always do so in the context of time. We could say all events that have causes have prior moments in time. If the universe had a beginning then there was no prior moment of time and hence we have no right to demand there must be some prior cause. Causality may also be a consequence of the laws of physics and the arrow of time. If we had some state with no space or time, no laws of physics and no arrow of time, are we really in a position to demand there must still be a cause?

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

Ah, but this is assuming chronological causation. Now I fully grant that there is time in that A causes B. My hands are typing on this keyboard which is causing letters to pop up and my hands typing were caused by my willing them to type. That is all well and good. Could it be possible for something to be eternal and still have a cause?

Yes.

Imagine a mirror that has been standing for all eternity. In front of this mirror stands a man who is also somehow eternal. This man is eternally looking in the mirror unmoving. The man sees his reflection eternally in the mirror.

Is his reflection caused?

Yes, and yet it is eternal.

Hard to fathom and get your head around? Sure, but it doesn’t change reality.

The point is all of this is in the context of the Kalam and Phil deals with the modern version that is about the origin of the universe. The historical version of it is not.

In Q. 46 and article 2 of the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologica, it is asked if the beginning of the universe is an article of faith. This doesn’t mean blind belief. It means if this is something that is taken on authority revealed from God. Now were people like Phil correct, Aquinas would say “Of course not! Our argument shows the universe has a beginning!”

He does not.

On the contrary, The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things “that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, “I believe in one God,” etc. And again, Gregory says (Hom. i in Ezech.), that Moses prophesied of the past, saying, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”: in which words the newness of the world is stated. Therefore the newness of the world is known only by revelation; and therefore it cannot be proved demonstratively.

Ah! But doesn’t he in his first way assume a beginning?

No. He does not. After all, the ways are built on truths that can be known from reason alone. Therefore, Aquinas’s arguments do not depend on the universe having a beginning. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t nor does it mean that were he here today he would hold the same opinion on if the universe had a beginning. We don’t know what he would say today, but we know what he said then.

Phil goes on to say:

What then caused God? Theists must agree that there is something that doesn’t need a cause. And whilst acausal interpretations of quantum mechanics are still on the table it seems they have the advantage over God because at least we know that quantum mechanics actually exist. The theistic response is that only things that begin to exist need causes. As God didn’t begin to exist then he doesn’t need a cause. An obvious question to ask is how do theists know this? It seems to me like a pure assertion. But what if the universe didn’t begin to exist? Then it wouldn’t need a cause and we will not require God.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

From a Thomistic perspective, we know this because God’s nature is to be. His nature is existence itself. What does it mean to be? Look at God. What does it mean to be limited in being? Look at everything else. Saying “What made God?” is like asking “What created existence?” It is by no means an assertion. The great classical theists gave arguments for it. You might think they were wrong, but it was by no means an assertion.

And as for the final part, I have argued that that is just wrong. Saying the universe is eternal does not mean it doesn’t have a cause. Unless the universe contains within itself the principle of its own existing, in other words, it exists somehow by its own power it needs a cause.

From a Thomistic perspective, since the universe is changing, it is limited in its being, and thus needs a cause. My formulation of Kalam in the style of a syllogism goes like this.

That which has passive potential which is actualized depends on something else for its being.
The universe has passive potential which is actualized.
The universe depends on something else for its being.

Passive potential is capacity for change and being actualized means the bringing about of that change. This doesn’t apply to God since He has no passive potential.

When the steady state theory was popular, theologians appealed to passages that describe God’s continual sustaining of creation to make the bible compatible with that too. So it seems that it is not so hard to find passages in the bible whose meaning can be molded to support whatever narrative suits.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

This can be done, unfortunately, but that is not the fault of the Bible, but of modern man. It’s why I reject Concordism. The Bible is not meant to be read as a modern scientific text and Christians and atheists both make this mistake.

As for design arguments:

What about design? Well the problem here is that Justin isn’t just asking us to believe in a designer, but an immaterial one. Whenever we see design by agents we see they are physical, they need external energy to do their design work. We also see that complex creatures capable of design arise after long periods of evolution. We also see that the more complicated a designed object is, the more the number of designers are needed. Think of the Large Hadron Collider, one of the most complex objects on Earth. It wasn’t designed by one person. So if cosmic design is like Earthly design, shouldn’t we presume there are many designers? Design by a single immaterial being that didn’t undergo evolution and doesn’t need any external energy source, doesn’t seem to fit what we know about design at all. Theists merely appeal to the similarities that suit and ignore the ones that don’t.  As an atheist then it seems this type of design is the least plausible of Justin three explanations.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

The problem here is that this is a sort of part to whole fallacy. All designers we see are material designers, therefore all designers are material. That doesn’t follow. It depends on the nature of the designer and again, classical theism argues for a God who is simple since He is not material and has no parts to Him. Were it otherwise, He would need a designer. Whether design arguments work overall, I leave to my friends who are more scientifically inclined.

In a later statement on miracles, Phil says:

If God frequently performs miracles, can we really say  there is so much regularity in the world? We are being asked to believe that God sets up immutable mathematical relationships in the world only to suspend them every time he does a miracle.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

As said in earlier posts on this, not only can we, we have to. If there is no regular order, there is no way to recognize a miracle. Miracles only make sense if there is a regular order where all things being equal, A consistently causes B in C.

There is a whole lot in this chapter I have not replied to because I realize I am not trained in the area to do so. I leave that to the more scientific among you. Next time we look at this book, we’ll discuss morality.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Atheists: Please Get The Argument Right

What happens when you misrepresent an argument? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I had an atheist get in touch with a ministry I work for and the conversation was cordial enough. Anyway, he recommended I come to his blog and subscribe and give my thoughts since they wanted to see intelligent theists. I subscribed and yesterday responded to something about blind faith including the Richard Dawkins idea that faith is believing something without evidence.

In the comments section, somehow it came to the cosmological argument, which I had not advanced, and the pointing out of how silly it was. After all, it’s silly to say that everything that exists has a cause. Why is it that God is the exception? The blog owner and another atheist said this and a third showed up to celebrate what a great response it was.

Yes. Absolutely wonderful.

Except, you know, that’s not what the argument is.

I know of no serious defender of the cosmological argument who is a scholar of the field and/or teaches at an institution of higher learning who advances this argument. None of them say “Everything has a cause.” The argument traditionally given is “Everything that begins to exist has a cause.”

To say something like this would be like me going to a group I was giving an apologetics lecture to and saying, “Do you want to know how stupid evolution is? Let me give you an example. Evolutionists believe that a fish crawled out of the sea and turned into a puppy dog and that puppy dog gave birth to a lion who gave birth to a human being. Isn’t that stupid?”

It definitely is. The problem is that evolutionists do not present arguments like this. This is not the way evolution is formulated. Keep in mind that this does not mean evolution is true nor does it mean that evolution is false. The atheists misrepresented the Kalam, but that does not mean that the Kalam is an airtight argument that works. The Kalam must still stand on its own two feet.

What it does mean is when dealing with any argument, one must deal with the argument as it is and not as one would like to have it. Do the latter and you can dispatch with any argument. Just turn it into something completely ridiculous and refute that and your work is done.

It’s also quite ironic to have atheists talking about blind faith and yet believing simply whatever is read in a book or on a web site by an atheist without looking to see if the argument is right. Were any theistic philosophers consulted to see if they used this argument? You know the answer to that as well as I do.

This has been going after atheists, but keep in mind this is entirely unacceptable for Christians. We are people who do want to take down our opponents’ arguments and we should, but let’s make sure we are taking down their arguments. There is no victory in making a fake argument and it’s dishonest and an insult to the cause of Christ.

And to atheist readers of this, if you have done this, stop it. Deal with the real argument. When I see the fake argument put forward, I just conclude that you’re an atheist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In Christ,
Nick Peters