Emotions vs. Reason

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | Comments Off

For Easter this year, my family and I were out of town. We ended up attending Easter services at Central Christian Church in Henderson, NV. After the opening worship band left the stage, there was a young man who came out and presented a monologue/poem/rap that highlighted a good deal of what Christianity is about. I was impressed at the broad spectrum of doctrine, challenges and truths that were professed during this brief presentation. While following ...

The God-Man

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | Comments Off

If you've been around Christianity long enough, you've probably heard someone say that Jesus was "fully man and fully God." Perhaps you've heard some other variation. Perhaps you've wondered how that is possible. Hopefully, at the very least, you took it on faith. Better than that, hopefully you've wrestled with it a bit in order to get an understanding that you feel comfortable with intellectually. One way that I have seen this characterized is that Jesus ...

Inconsistent Skepticism

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | Comments Off

It seems that the more I read or listen to many of the common arguments from non-believers, there is a very narrow range of types of objections to Christianity or any sort of theism. One such argument has to do with the level of skepticism they have regarding any claims of a divine being. What I have found, however, is that this argument tends to be every bit as inconsistent as many others. For example, one ...

Knowledge Puffs Up

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | Comments Off

The world is full of irony. Of the many things people use against Christians, much of the ammunition non-believers use against us has been provided to them...by us. Not always on purpose, of course. Often it can be a simple mis-application of scripture. For example, one of the charges leveled against the Church is that Christians are anti-intellectual dolts who's faith is blind and irrational. To a large degree, for a sadly large number of Christians, ...

The Third Day

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | Comments Off

If I were smart, I'd wait until we were coming up on Easter before I posted something about the resurrection. But, here I am writing about it now...just before Thanksgiving. I guess I could make an argument that it still makes sense since, as a Christian, the empty tomb is something I'm thankful for. One question that is debated quite often about Jesus' death, burial and resurrection is what day He was crucified and what day ...

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 ...

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 ...

Open Minded

Thursday, July 15th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Belief | Comments Off

Have you ever heard someone tell you that you need to be more open minded? The most interesting part about that is that most of those people don't actually realize what they're saying. What does it actually mean to be open minded? In general, to be open minded means that you have a willingness (or openness) to listen to, and perhaps even entertain, thoughts or ideas that may directly conflict with your already established beliefs. But that ...