The Super Bowl is a time for mindless sports and salacious beer ads. So imagine the shock of people across the nation when CBS aired the Focus on the Family ad celebrating the love of a mother and son. Shocking indeed. After all, where were the Budweiser girls?

But seriously, this was the first political ad during a Super Bowl. That is indeed disturbing. I mean, a political ad. Aren't politics important? Surely we don't want to think during major sporting events. To make matters worse, it was an ad celebrating life and family right in the midst of the preeminent celebration of sport (World Cup and Olympics excluded of course). And most disturbing of all, it was usurping 30 precious seconds of commercial time that could have been devoted to the Budweiser girls.

Not surprisingly, the National Organization for Women, which had been griping about the ad for a couple weeks prior to the Super Bowl, kept right on griping afterward. Said NOW president Terry O'Neill: "I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it." Violence against women? Because Tim's mom opted not to abort despite the medical risks? Read more

Mr. A: Do Christians need a historical Adam and Eve?

Ms. B: Need them for what?

Mr. A: To be good Christians. Read more

I have been engaging questions over the justice of the doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment with the main suggestion being that this appears deeply morally problematic. MGT2 demurs. From his perspective, people choose to be in hell as they pile up sins eternally:

Why does God allow people to continue to suffer in hell? And why does God punish people in hell? Because that is what they want. They spurn every effort by God and choose to spend eternity with the one for whom hell was made. People do not accidentally end up in hell. They make a conscious and deliberate choice.

This response introduces a whole new dimension to the topic over which Christians have long disagreed. There undoubtedly is something appealing about this response. If hell is the sum total of those who forever shake their fists at God then perhaps it is not quite as unjust as we thought. We don't lament the life imprisonment of a maniacal sociopath who shows no remorse. Why should we lament the eternal imprisonment of the irredeemably wicked? Read more

In the last post I raised the question of the justice of hell. In short, what could justify punishing a person eternally? One of my readers, MGT2, offers the following reply to this question:

I look at it this way. Two boy scouts, boy A and boy B, both standing before a bonfire with their troop leader. The boys are playing a game of chicken to see who can hold his hand in the flame the longest. The troop leader warns them that the flame is dangerous and the injury from the flame will scar them for life, even cause them to be horribly disabled. He further tells them stop playing the game and no to put their hands or any part of their bodies in the flame because of the risk of an accident.

Boy A heeded the warning, but boy B was full of pride and boasted that he is able to handle himself. Taunting boy A for being a chicken, he reached his arm over the flame, tripped and fell in. Before he could be rescued, he received severe burns over eighty percent of his body, lost sight in one of his eyes, had an arm amputated and was terribly disfigured and physically challenged for the rest of his life, no reprieve. Read more

In the last post I turned to the most difficult of Christian doctrines, the doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment. There certainly are passages that seem to suggest this doctrine. For instance, consider Jesus' chilling words in Matthew 25:41:

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."

Those are the words. And we are left to ponder them. God, by definition, is the very embodiment of justice. But how can eternal punishment be just? This seems totally out of sync with contemporary theories of jurisprudence which focus on two primary justifications for inflicting punishment: reformation and deterrence. That is, we punish people with the hope of reforming them (hence the shift in nomenclature from "prison" to "correctional institute") and we punish people to deter others from acting in like fashion. Read more

It could be a conspiracy of silence. More likely it is an egregious case of conformity to the wider culture. But whatever the reason, there can be little doubt that the topic of hell, once the mainstay of the fire and brimstone revivalist preacher, has been for some time conspicuously absent from the vast majority of pulpits.

Corroboration for the trend comes from my very unscientific polling of seminary students over the last seven years. Every year I ask students in my systematic theology class if they can remember the last sermon they heard on hell. On average only about 1 in 20 (a measly five percent) can even remember ever having heard a sermon on hell. All the other anecdotal data I have collected corroborates this trend.

The fact is that the Christian who is serious about the Bible, and the teachings of Jesus and John of the Apocalypse in particular, must also be serious about the doctrine of hell. It is not a doctrine readily expunged and it is ignored at our peril. Like it our not, we need to consider this doctrine more closely.

Read more

The horror of major disasters like the recent Haiti earthquake are best viewed from the air, or through the safe distance of an endless catalogue of mind-numbing statistics. As of today, Tuesday January 26, estimates are perhaps 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured, and 1.5 million homeless. The numbers simply transcend our ability to calculate the misery and horror, the hopelessness and anger, the sadness and utter agony. Paradoxically, to take in the horror "from the air" all at once, in a cascade of dizzying statistics and the broad sweep of a decimated landscape, is to keep it at arms length.

But drop down to ground level, and walk among the ruins, rub shoulders with the walking dead, see the rotting bloated corpses, and we face difficult questions. Terrifying questions. Agonizing questions. Questions that scream at us with such intensity that every ounce of our being longs to turn back to the mundane triviality of Leno vs. Conan or the latest sorry audition on "American Idol".

If we dare to descend to ground level, and refuse the temptation to turn back to the triviality of "American Idol", Haiti's misery hits us all in the solar plexus, knocking the wind right out of us. And this regardless of our view of the world. Read more

Film critic Roger Ebert clearly did not like the film adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. While I haven't read the book or seen the movie, I certainly found Ebert's review revealing. Ebert is one of the most interesting film critics to read, especially in reviews like this where he dons his moralistic hat. (As you read the excerpts of the review, keep in mind that this is a critic who enjoyed American Psycho.)

"The Lovely Bones" is a deplorable film with this message: If you're a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to. You can get together in heaven with the other teenage victims of the same killer, and gaze down in benevolence upon your family members as they mourn you and realize what a wonderful person you were. Sure, you miss your friends, but your fellow fatalities come dancing to greet you in a meadow of wildflowers, and how cool is that?"

Part of Ebert's moral indignation arises from the tactlessness of the film as it attempts to juxtapose images of gross horror and violence with sweet sentimentality. Another part seems to be the triteness of director Peter Jackson's vision of the afterlife. Says Ebert, if there is a heaven, "it will not resemble a happy gathering of new Facebook friends." Read more

I took upon myself a most modest task. Critique the monstrous claim of Pat Robertson that the terrible earthquake that has decimated Haiti was a result of God's providential judgment on the nation. Apparently Robertson has more support among conservative Christians than I had wanted to believe. Four of the respondents in the thread came out actually defending the aging fundy. And they weren't just saying "He's a senile old man, so just leave him alone." No, they actually defended his claims.

Ososami mused: "The worldview hates any hints at divine judgement because it scares them ... this may be a call for repentance and soul searching as we do everything in our power to help Haitians...and could be a wake up call for all(not just Haitians)..."

With these rather cryptic words, Ososami seemed to be suggesting that just maybe this was God's judgment. Read more

I will not soon forget the image on the news last night. Arms desperately waving for help from between huge chunks of concrete. I thought with a shudder about the people inside, trapped, covered by several tons of rubble. How many would be saved, and how many more would die?

Then as the world stood on in shocked horror, along came Pat Robertson and declared the unthinkable: the earthquake was in part the fault of the Haitian people. Why? Because, according to Robertson, the nation of Haiti apparently made a Faustian pact with the devil two centuries ago. As Robertson declared, "They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."

(The clip is available here: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2010/01/14/jb.robertson.haiti.cnn?iref=allsearch) Read more

Many Christians assume that God loves all people. This is hardly surprising since scripture declares that God loves all creation (John 3:16-17) and desires to see all people saved (1 Tim.2:4; 2 Pe.3:9). Indeed, the notion that God is loving to all, a doctrine known among theologians by the fancy name "omnibenevolence", would qualify for many as a basic axiom, a starting point for all further theological reflection.

As such, it may be surprising to discover that theologians within the Calvinist tradition reject the doctrine of divine omnibenevolence. There are two ways that they do this. To begin with, some affirm that God loves all people but that he has a special love for the elect, or those he has chosen for salvation. (Thus, he is not maximally benevolent toward all, as omnibenevolence declares.) This position affirms a passage like John 3:16-17, but clarifies that the general love God has for all creation is different from the saving love he has for his elect creatures.

The other position stakes out a more unambiguous position by declaring without qualification that God does not love those he does not save; indeed, he hates them. And why does he hate them? I will argue in a subsequent post that the reasons are arbitrary. That is, he could just as easily have loved those he hates and hated those he loves as hated those he hates and loved those he loves. That, I would submit, is a deeply disturbing implication, both theologically and pastorally. But more on that later. Read more

Yesterday I was at the dinner table with my wife and daughter Jamie eating a tasty meal. As I crunched the crispy romaine lettuce dressed with croutons, parmesan cheese, lemon juice and the rest, I exclaimed to Jamie, "Nobody can make a better Caesar salad than your mom!" to which she replied: "Jesus can!"

Well I admit, according to Christian beliefs Jesus presently exists in a glorified state and as such can indeed now make a better Caesar salad than my wife. But Jamie's comment raises an interesting question: was Jesus able to make a better Caesar salad than my wife two thousand years ago, prior to his glorification?

Perhaps you find the question to be silly, even irreverent. But it actually pinpoints a very important point: what does it mean to say that Jesus was God incarnate? What does that imply for his knowledge and abilities whilst walking the dusty roads of Palestine? Was Jesus, that very average looking son of a carpenter in the backwoods of the Roman Empire, the smartest, wisest, most logical man ever to walk the face of the earth? Was he the greatest mathematician, poet, scientist, pianist, Olympic marathon runner, cook? And what would it mean to say that he was not? Read more

After some years in the hinterland of North American evangelicalism, Calvinism is once again on the rise. (For a good synopsis of the trend see Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed (Crossway, 2008).) One of the reasons people become Calvinists is because Calvinism, we are told, upholds God's sovereignty. In particular, it upholds God's sovereignty much better than does Arminianism. But is this true? Let's take a closer look.

Let's begin with a rough and ready definition of sovereignty. For our purposes I offer a defintion of sovereignty by degree according to which one is sovereign to the degree that one is able to actualize states of affairs. In other words, the more states of affairs one is able to actualize, the more sovereign that individual is. (Sovereignty is here closely aligned with the concept of power.)

Consider a simple example. When you find a bandaid in your Big Mac you don't complain merely to the cashier but to the manager because you know that he has authority to rectify the stituation that the cashier does not. And if you're really perturbed you ignore the manager as well and instead begin a letter writing campaign directed straight at the head honcho: the CEO. The manager has more power and so is able to actualize more states of affairs than the cashier. (E.g. a refund on the burger.) And the CEO is likewise able to do more than the manager. (E.g. a large cash settlement.) As a result, the manager is more sovereign than the cashier, but the CEO is the most sovereign of all. Read more

Another reason to think Jesus had false beliefs

The debate on whether Jesus had false beliefs usually centers on evidence from scripture. (Hence, my previous token post on the topic.) Here I'm going to shift the ground and offer another reason to think that Jesus probably had some false beliefs. My argument builds on the amply demonstrated fact that human testimony is fallible and that we often reasonably accept the false testimony of others.

Here's an example. My daughter's grade one teacher told her that Canada is the largest country on earth by landmass. My daughter believed her because she has been taught that her teacher is an authority and should be believed. As a result, my daughter acquired a false (though rational and justified) belief. (It is false because Russia is by far the largest country by landmass. It is rational and justified because her teacher was a generally trustworthy authority figure and the teacher's statement was plausibly true [at least for a first-grader].) Read more

A brief recap

In this post we return to our exploration of the omniscience of the incarnate Son of God. To recap all too briefly, we saw that a blastocyst cannot be omniscient, and therefore at the point where Jesus was a blastocyst (or fetus, or neonate) he could not be omniscient. Further, our intuitions on deity leave us to conclude that omniscience is a necessary property of divinity such that if a creature is not omniscient then that creature cannot be divine. But the church has declared that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem he was Immanuel (God with us). According to the theologians this meant that Jesus was born both human and divine (that is, with a human nature and a divine nature). But how is this possible?

At that point I presented a two minds theory of incarnation according to which the human mind of Jesus was finite in knowledge (it had a normal, human psychological development) while the divine mind was omniscient. I haven't finished with that model yet, but first I want to consider a related issue: did Jesus have any false beliefs?

Here's the problem. Remember that a standard definition of omniscience is "believes all truths and no falsehoods". We have already seen that if there is evidence that at T1 (blastocyst stage) and T2 (fetus stage) and T3 (neonate stage) that Jesus did not know all truths, then it would seem that Jesus could not be omnsicient. Here we see that it is even more of a problem if at T4 (toddler stage) and T5 (teenager stage) and T6 (young adult stage) Jesus acquired beliefs that were false. Now we see that in two ways it seems Jesus cannot be omniscient. Read more

The Problem

The line between atheist and agnostic used to be clear. Atheists believed that no God or gods existed. Agnostics didn't have any belief as to whether God or gods existed. But today people have taken to calling themselves atheists simply because, as it is commonly said, they "lack belief in gods". In other words, agnostics now call themselves atheists.

I offer three reasons why they should refrain from this confusing practice. Read more

In my last post I pointed out that certain claims do not require evidence. Rather, their denials do. Such is the case with

(1) There are minds other than my own.
(2) An external world exists.

The solipsist who denies (1) owes us an argument as does the idealist or antirealist who denies (2). But then I pointed us to (3) God exists. Is it at least possible that it could be the denial of (3) which shoulders the evidential burden as is the case with (1) and (2)? Read more

First off, something that doesn't relate to anything: I saw "Sherlock Holmes" yesterday. Enjoyable, stylish movie, but also forgettable in a "Star Trek the Reboot" kinda way. I did uncover a blooper but nobody I have told cares. Indeed, they think I need to get a life. Nonetheless I will share it with you all. Ready? (drum roll) There is a modern bulldog in the film, but that animal didn't exist in the 1890s. Indeed, the breed standard wasn't fixed for several decades afterward. (fizzle) What? Not good enough for you? Fine, down to business.

There is so much packed into the "On Pulling Teeth" thread, it is tough to know where to enter in. I'm indebted to the usual suspects as well as some new voices, and in particular Paracletus who has set a new standard for dedication and analytic precision.

Here I'm going to comment briefly on the comment by Ebonmuse: Read more

There is a chilling scene early in the blockbuster horror flick "Paranormal Activity" where Katie walks into the kitchen in the morning and finds keys on the floor. We've all been in a similar situation. Our keys (or some other personal item) is not where it should be. And so we seek for an answer. What ... or who moved my keys?

Unfortunately for Katie, she was in a horror movie and so it turned out that an angry demon moved her keys. For most of us the cause is not quite so exotic or (shiver) malevolent. But we still ask the same question.

Note the form of this question: What ... or who moved my keys? It assumes a very basic set of options: either the cause of my keys moving is an agent cause or it is a non-agent cause. An agent cause is one that is produced by an agent (an agent being a substance of a rational nature which acts with intentions, ends or purposes so as to achieve those ends). Human beings are agents that produce agent causes. Katie's boyfriend Micah is an agent and he could have been the cause of her keys falling on the floor. (Sadly he wasn't.) The demon that is tormenting her in the film is another example of an agent that acts causally. So is Neil Diamond, perhaps some higher primates, and certainly God. Read more

In the thread to "An Atheist Pot, a Christian Kettle, and an ironic charge of blackness" I critiqued atheist inconsistencies. Who would have thought that the thread of the discussion would provide further evidence for these ironic consistencies?

In the thread I noted some of the evidence I had provided for Christian theism.

"I have discussed innumerable grounds for the existence of God in the last several months, everything from the information in DNA to Kevin's experiences."

AnAtheist.net was unimpressed, and so he replied: Read more