The Jesus Site Blog

The Other Side of the Coin

October 20th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living, Political Issues | Comments Off

Last week, I brought up a story about going to far about keeping church and state separated. As if on queue, I just ran across another article that brings up the problem in precisely the opposite direction.

An article on OneNewsNow, another story was reported about a jail house in South Carolina that banned all literature from being allowed to the prisoners…all literature, that is, except for the Bible. This is pretty much the opposite extreme that I’ve already talked about.

More “Separation of Church and State” Issues

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 said that it was religious, it had religious overtones and they were advised by counsel that – - quote – - ‘the separation of church and state’ required them to eliminate such material from the student talent show.” (emphasis mine)

Believe. Then You Will Understand

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 you hear this from someone, please correct them. Nicely. It is not “believe and you will believe.” It is, “believe and you will understand.”

Trees

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, or the teleological argument. This argument is used to show how the universe and everything in it is so complex and shows such “obvious” signs of design that it is almost self-evident that there must have been a designer.

Weighed Down by Faith

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 in a Christian home and growing up in the faith like many his age. Then he talked about his walk away from his faith and his role in his parents loss of faith as well.

Dice, Teapots and Spaghetti Monsters – Part II

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. One being the “flying spaghetti monster” and the other, the infamous “celestial teapot.” In reality, all three of these analogies are ridiculous for largely the same reason. I singled out the dice last week mainly because there were some additional issues with that example (like attributing dice with anthropomorphic properties such as thought, desire, etc.).

Dice, Teapots and Spaghetti Monsters

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 a public access, call-in television show in the Austin, TX area called The Atheist Experience. Hosted by a former seminary student turned atheist and co-hosted by other various atheists who, in their own rights, I get the impression are quite intelligent and skilled thinkers, one co-host brought up an analogy of “invisible, transcendent dice.”

The Politics of Balance

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 where we are today. Now, I can’t presume to know exactly what the founding fathers had in mind, though we do have enough material written by them to make some educated guesses. And it seems to me that if they were to look into the future and see with way our political system works today, they would have dedicated more time to preventing certain things by making certain things a bit more clear in such documents as our Constitution.

God is…

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. There is a bit of difference between these concepts.

Discrimination Against Christianity

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 issues out there today, secularists say they’re trying to keep church and state separated and the Church cries out that their values are being obliterated and ignored. Both sides seem to perceive themselves as being discriminated against. And perhaps both sides are correct about that.

The Other Side of the Coin

More “Separation of Church and State” Issues

Believe. Then You Will Understand

Trees

Weighed Down by Faith

Dice, Teapots and Spaghetti Monsters – Part II

Dice, Teapots and Spaghetti Monsters

The Politics of Balance

God is…

Discrimination Against Christianity

Categories

Archives

Authors