Stephen Hawking doesn’t know what created the universe, but he’s sure God didn’t do it. So says Mr Hawking in his recent follow-up to his best selling book “A Brief History in Time”. In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is “not necessary”. ...
Greg Koukl recently wrote an excellent post on seven fatal flaws of relativism. One of the chief objections to attacks on moral relativism (often held by philosophical naturalists) is that morality is defined by culturally accepted norms. Thus, they argue, that there is an absolute in the sense that society holds some actions to be right and others wrong, but that morality is not an absolute in the sense that the standard of moral conduct never changes. ...
I find it utterly amazing that a small town pastor in FL, Terry Jones, has managed to garner multinational attention. So the first thing I would like to say on this subject is “shame on you” to the mass media outlets for blowing this story up far beyond it’s actual consequences. But then again, creating news to report on is what it’s all about. Since it is the premier faith issue of the moment, however, I hope we can use it to generate many good and enlightening discussions both within and without the Christian community. ...
When asked about where moral standards come from, a common tactic of a moral relativist is to attempt to ground moral knowledge in what society deems right or wrong at any given point in time. The problem this poses, however, is that in this understanding of morality, societies can never be said to be wrong. However I believe that most people intuitively understand that entire societies such as the Nazis in World War II, Stalin’s Soviet empire, Pol Pot’s regime, Islamic Sharia law and it’s subjugation of women, and even the segregated and deeply prejudiced American south (And north. It is the height of ignorance to make the claim that racism only existed or still exists in the south) to be objectively wrong. ...
A friend of mine reminded me of a clip from the TV show “ER” where a dying patient confronts a theologically liberal hospital chaplin. Here’s the clip and quote highlights: All I’m hearing is some new age “God is love” one-size-fits-all crap . . . I don’t have time for this now . . . I want a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real Hell . . . I don’t need to “ask myself,” I need answers, and all your questions and uncertainty are only making things worse . . . I need someone who will look me in the eye and tell me how to find forgiveness, because I am running out of time! ...
A friend of mine on Facebook posted the following video with the following claim: No responsibility doesn’t presuppose freedom, but responsibility does presuppose authority. Here is my initial response, along with the ensuing conversation’s highlights. It presupposes both actually. Responsibility requires both someone to be held accountable and someone to be held accountable to. Both subsiquiently require a certain amount of freedom to choose. Both to set the standard of responsibility as well as whether to even attempt to live up to the standard set. To negate the freedom of either is to render them an object and not an agent. And objects cannot be responsible or authoritative. Humans aren’t objects, and neither is God. ...
Unmitigated doubt is a cancer. What I mean by that is not that doubt itself is a bad thing. IT isn’t. Men are borne with doubts and fears which naturally lead to a sort of curiosity about the world around them and about the larger philosophical questions such as meaning, purpose, existence, origin, etc. Socrates famously put it this way: The unexamined life is not worth living. So doubt itself is not a problem. The problem comes in when we doubt and have no end in mind, no clear requirement as to what could possibly satisfy our doubt. This type of doubt is what Pascal had in mind when he wrote: ...
Some Christians maintain the notion that: “The term ID is an attempt to remove God from the discussion.” Well, that might be true… …if God were in the discussion to begin with. Intelligent design is a strategic move to break the strangle hold philosophical naturalism has on most science classrooms. In that respect the only goal of ID is to lead people to the conclusion that there is a designer. After that, we can move the discussion down the hall from the physical sciences classrooms, many/most with their presupposition of verificationism as the only or ultimate source of truth (which ID satisfies with flying colors btw) into the philosophy/metaphysical sciences classroom. You see, ID is meant to address the “how” of our existence, that being design by an intelligent being while a further discussion on “who” the designer is can and should be shifted to another classroom. ...
I ran across this story on Slashdot not too long ago which stated: “According to Newsweek, the local teachers union is infuriated over the disclosure of teacher performance metrics. Quoting: ‘Do parents have the right to know which of their kids’ teachers are the most and least effective? That’s the controversy roaring in California this week with the publication of an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times’s Jason Song and Jason Felch, who used seven years of math and English test data to publicly identify the best and the worst third- to fifth-grade teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The newspaper’s announcement of its plans to release data later this month on all 6,000 of the city’s elementary-school teachers has prompted the local teachers’ union to rally members to organize a boycott of the newspaper.’ According to the linked Times article, United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy said the database was ‘an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning.’” ...
From “the sage of Mac-O-Chee”, Donn Piatt: True education means that development of the intellectual qualities which facilitate thought. Popular education is a mere exercise of memory. To store away facts without the power to assimilate them is the grand elevating process that is to lift our youth by platoons to the same plane. Memory, however necessary it is to secure information, is not the mind. On the contrary, when made monstrous by over use and stimulation, it eventually destroys the intellectual facilities it meant to aid. ...