More “Separation of Church and State” Issues

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Political Issues | 10 Comments »

Once again, the idea of the separation of church and stately is grossly misunderstood, mis-applied and mis-used. In a news article on OneNewsNow.com, Bill Bumpas writes about a problem at a Chicago school talent show. The problem? Two girls wanted to perform a song with Christian lyrics. According to the article, Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver reported that "[w]hen it was learned that the song they wanted to sing was 'Call on Jesus,'..."the school principal and superintendent ...

Believe. Then You Will Understand

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | Comments Off

If you've never heard that before, or something that basically means the same thing, I would guess that you either haven't been a Christian for very long or are not one now. That is probably one of the most common things I hear with regards to understanding the Christian faith. Often, I've heard non-believers respond to this, derisively, with something like, "Oh, just believe and then I'll believe? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"  If ...

Trees

Thursday, September 30th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Apologetics, Belief | Comments Off

For many non-believers out there, if you ever want to get them riled up when they ask you for why you believe God exists, just bring up trees. I've heard many non-believers get to the point that I start do wonder if they might pop a blood vessel when someone uses an argument for God because of trees. The standard argument from trees seems to be derived from two different arguments. One is the design argument, ...

Weighed Down by Faith

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief, Christian Living | Comments Off

Last week, I wrote a post on my blog with my feedback of a debate I heard on Apologetics315 between Matt Slick of CARM and Dan Barker. The debate topic was "Is There Reason to be Good Without God?" I won't repeat my comments here, but you can read the entire post if you like. There was something else, however, that caught my attention when listening to this debate. Barker talked about his background, being raised ...

Dice, Teapots and Spaghetti Monsters – Part II

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Apologetics | Comments Off

Last week, I took a look at an example used by non-believers to show how ridiculous it is to believe in the God of the Bible. The example used jars of dice, one set of which were "invisible" and "transcendent." I showed several reasons why this analogy was a very poor argument against God, but you can read that for yourself. This week, we'll take a look at the other two analogies I've heard about often. ...

Dice, Teapots and Spaghetti Monsters

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Apologetics | Comments Off

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone argue against the existence of God using some crackpot analogy, I wouldn't need to write blogs any more. While I'm sure there are dozens more out there, there are three that I've heard repeatedly from various sources. Many of the attributes (and problems) with these analogies are consistent among the lot, though some may have some more unique issues. One such analogy was presented during ...

The Politics of Balance

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Political Issues | Comments Off

The United States of America is approaching it's 250th year of existence. I hadn't really thought of it that way until just now. But, really, it's only 16 years away. That's not really all that far, when you think about it. It'll be here in the blink of an eye. When I think back over the last couple hundred years of American politics, particularly as it pertains to our political parties, something strikes me profoundly about ...

God is…

Friday, August 27th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in God's Character | 1 Comment »

God is love. We hear that a lot. And I think that's absolutely true. God is love. However, I sometimes wonder if we are understanding the entire scope when we say things like that. To say that "God is love" carries with it a rather distinct meaning from it's inverse, "Love is God." Those two things are not the same. This is very much unlike one of the mathematical theorems that says if a=b then b=a. ...

Discrimination Against Christianity

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | 3 Comments »

One of the ironies in the area of politics and religion seems to be that those people who strongly profess a faith of some sort feel as though they are being persecuted by the secular minority and the secular minority feels as though they are being persecuted by those who are religious. It's an interesting predicament. Every time I read and article or hear a conversation about abortion or same-sex marriage or the myriad of other ...

The Convenience of Money

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Society & Culture | Comments Off

I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, and perhaps I'm showing my age a bit, but do you remember what life was like before debit cards? I still remember what it was like when we didn't have the Internet (or at least the World Wide Web), or cell phones, or ATMs. The more I think about that, the more I can't help but wonder if all the conveniences and advances in technology actually ...