Evan Minton's Blog, page 38

Responding To An Anti-Christian Meme: Little Timmy and The Man Who Murdered His Family

The Bible teaches that "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). God took on human flesh (John 1:14, Philippians 2:5-8), and died a bloody, slow, torturous death on the cross to atone for our sins (Isaiah 53, 1 Corinthians 15:3, Romans 5:8), and moreover, Jesus died to atone not only for the sins of some, for the sins of all humanity (John 3:16, 1 John 2:2, 1 Timothy 2:4-6, 2 Corinthians 5:15)....

Should We Let Science Influence Our Doctrine Of Creation?

Science is an amazing thing! It's enabled us to transcend so many of our previously existing barriers, from being able to walk on the moon to being able to carry on a live conversation with someone on the opposite side of the planet, from helping us know what makes fevers run hot to knowing what makes stars hot, from giving us the flashlight to the strobe light to the blacklight. It's an amazing thing, but unfortunately, many seem dedicating to pitting science against Christianity and vice ve...

Is An Evidence Based Belief On Shaky Grounds?

"If you were talked into your belief, you can be talked out of it". This is what I read from one theologian in a book a while back. I cannot remember who said it, but that was a direct quote from the book. I think it came from one of the volumes of A.W Tozer's The Attributes Of God, but I'm not entirely sure. I only remember what was said, not who said it. Anyway, the point this preacher was making is that if one rests of arguments and evidence to justify their belief in Christianity, then th...

Christians Are Opposed To Science! -- What Do You Mean By That?

In any debate or argument, it's very important that you understand the terminology that your opponent is using and that your opponent understands the terminology that you're using. If you don't define your terms, you'll just end up talking past each other and you'll end up attacking straw men. As the philosopher, Voltaire put it: "Define your terms or we shall be like two ships passing in the night." 1

Often, you'll hear atheists and anti-theists say things like "Christians don't believe...

Why Did God Write A Book?

Why did God write a book? By that, I mean why did God inspire authors to write documents which make up a compilation we call The Holy Bible? What were God's purposes in doing that? Obviously, He had reasons of some sort. All authors write books for reasons. For example, when I sat down to write Inference To The One True God, my purpose was to give arguments for why belief in the Christian God is warranted as opposed to any other so-called deity. In my book A Hellacious Doctrine, my purpose wa...

Responding To Free Will Critics

My article "5 Arguments For The Existence Of Free Will" became very popular. Tim Stratton liked it so much that he featured it as a guest post on his blog FreeThinkingMinistires.com, Martin Glynn specifically asked me to post it to The Society Of Evangelical Arminians' website, and Jorge Gil Calderon published it as a guest post on CrossExamined.org. In the case of the latter, several comments came flooding in as pushback to the things I said in the article. This isn't surprising given how po...

Tackling The Problem Of Evil - Part 8: The Emotional Problem

In this blog series, I've been addressing the atheist's argument from evil. In part 1, I tackled the logical version and established that the atheist has not and cannot affirm that God and evil are logically incompatible. In parts 2 through 7, I've been addressing the probabilistic version of the problem of evil. In Part 2, We've seen that there are good philosophical and biblical reasons to believe that God has given mankind free will, and therefore, the reason there's so much suffering in...

Tackling The Problem Of Evil - Part 7: The Scale Leans Even More

In this series, we've been addressing an argument for atheism called "The Problem Of Evil" or "The Problem Of Suffering". In parts 2-6, I've been addressing the probabilistic version of the argument; which is that the presence of evil and suffering renders God's existence improbable. In the previous blog post and in this one, my argument is that relative to the full scope of the evidence, God's existence is very probable, in spite of the existence of suffering. If you were to imagine a scale...

Tackling The Problem Of Evil - Part 6: Tipping The Scales In God's Favor

In this blog series, we've been addressing the atheist's argument from evil. In part 1, I tackled the logical version and established that the atheist has not and cannot affirm that God and evil are logically incompatible. In parts 2 through 5, I've been addressing the probabilistic version of the problem of evil. In Part 2, We've seen that there are good philosophical and biblical reasons to believe that God has given mankind free will, and therefore, the reason there's so much suffering in...

Tackling The Problem Of Evil - Part 5: Suffering As Character Development

This is part 5 in a blog post series on the problem of evil and suffering. In the past 3 posts, we've been dealing with the probabilistic version of the problem of evil. In Part 2, We've seen that there are good philosophical and biblical reasons to believe that God has given mankind free will, and therefore, the reason there's so much suffering in the world is because people abuse the free will God has given them. Even though God knew ahead of time that we would abuse our free will, He gave...