Ben Joiner's Blog

Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism For our purposes, we will dispense with detailed terminology and simply use the word “Atheism” to describe someone who rejects the existence of God, souls, ghosts, demons, spirits or anything supernatural. For us, an atheist is a person who thinks the physical is all that exists. Therefore, Plantinga's argument is simply a claim that you cannot rationally believe in both atheism and evolution. It works like this. We typically think our actions are caused by a causal chain like this. Beliefs held by a rational soul ->causes-> long standing electrochemical events in the brain (neural states) ->causes - > bodily movements (behaviors) But on atheism the causal chain is very different. Neural States - > Behavior Same Neural States - > Beliefs (content property for the neural state) The key is that the neural state causes both the belief and the action in the atheist's view...

Can we know anything for sure? Let's talk about the fundamentals of epistemology. Here's the Stanford Encyclopedia definition. “Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. “ But is it even possible? Can we ever know anything? If so, what can we know? Let's examine this question first by defining some additional terms. As we define terms, we will begin to understand the subject. Plausible A belief is plausible if it is consistent with known facts. For example, blaming the society's problems on the rich and powerful is more plausible than blaming society's problems on mole men from the center of the earth. We may love that episode of superman. But the oppression by the rich and powerful is plausible because it is known to have happened before in history and the other is not. Probable This is a very common concept, and I only bring it up to make the distinction from plausibility. ...

What enemies do we face? The epistle of Ephesians tells us that our enemies are not other people (flesh and blood). It says that there are spiritual beings who are the real enemy. One way to think of this is to view the person who opposes the truth about God as the objective, not the enemy. In other words, that person is someone you want to convert. Ultimately, it's his or her choice. But the real question here is this. Who exactly are we up against? The first letter of Peter tells us that the angels have longed to learn the Gospel of Jesus from those who preach it. In other words, those women who first saw the Resurrected Christ really were the first to know about it. (other than God of course.) So angels learn things from humans? Angels learn things about God from humans? Can't say I would have guessed that one. And then there's 2 Corinthians 10. Paul tells us that although we are in the flesh, we don't wage a fleshly war. He ...

The abortion issue bugs me. The reason is because it really boils down to whether a person is religious.  If you don't believe in a soul, then there is no scientific way to justify whether a fetus/baby is a person or just living tissue without personhood.  If you are on the pro life side, the strongest argument you can make is that the atheist side has no clear defining point.  But that doesn't mean that the defining point is conception.  A three day old embryo has no nerve cells much less brain cells.  So it's definitely after conception for them.  But then the clearest scientific evidence of personhood occurs after birth (6 months).  Therefore, the law requires that if a fetus can survive outside of the womb, it must be considered a person.  To the atheist, there has to be significant brain activity do declare the fetus a person. But then what about the religious person?  To this person, when exactly does the soul enter the body?  ...

How can we know what is literal or figurative? Arguments about the Bible (as well as other writing and speech) can arise due to the interpretation of the message as literal when it was meant to be figurative. For example, imagine that you have just read a Bible passage. You think it says something. But then you are told that in this passage, the words don't mean what they usually do. In this passage, they somehow mean something completely different. The entire notion of figurative language is confusing for people when it comes to the Bible. But the first thing to understand is a simple point. We all use figurative language normally every day and understand it just fine. Generally speaking, language is not figurative. Words mean what they mean. If the words were not to be understood using the literal meaning most of the time, then we would simply need to change what the literal meaning is. Therefore, if someone wants to use language figuratively, t...