Arguments that Commit Suicide

By Greg Koukl

While in the process of cultivating sensible faith, we sometimes realize
that defending against an opponent takes no work on our part at all.
Sometimes the easiest way to deal with an opposing view is not to feed
him more information, but to use a tactic that reveals a flaw in his
thinking. One of the most effective approaches is what I call the
“suicide” tactic.

Someone once said that if you give a
man enough rope, he’ll hang himself. The suicide tactic makes capital of
the tendency of many arguments to self-destruct when given the
opportunity. Such ideas get caught in the noose of their own cleverness
and quickly expire.

More here.

Apparently Dostoevsky didn’t actually say it, but anyway…

The absurdity of the universe leads Sartre to another major tenet of existentialism; namely, that man is autonomous. Sartre wrote:

The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie: because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men.

Dostoevsky said, ‘If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible! That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He cant start making excuses for himself. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses (Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, NY. The Citadel Press, n.d., pp. 22, 23).

Source here.

Desiring God Video Interviews

In promotion of their 2006 National Conference (http://www.desiringgod.org/Events/NationalConferences/Archives/2006/) , Desiring God has posted a number of video clip interviews (http://www.desiringgod.org/Events/NationalConferences/Archives/2006/Videos/) with the conference speakers: John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, and David Wells. The theme of this year’s conference is “The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World.” During the interviews the speakers address postmodernism, the emerging church, Christianity and culture, as well as other topics.

The New Naysayers

In the midst of religious revival, three scholars argue that atheism is
smarter.

Sept. 11, 2006 issue - Americans answered the atrocities of September
11, overwhelmingly, with faith. Attacked in the name of God, they turned
to God for comfort; in the week after the attacks, nearly 70 percent
said they were praying more than usual. Confronted by a hatred that
seemed inexplicable, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson proclaimed that God
was mad at America because it harbored feminists, gays and civil
libertarians. Sam Harris, then a 34-year-old graduate student in
neuroscience, had a different reaction. On Sept. 12, he began a book.
If, he reasoned, young men were slaughtering people in the name of
religion—something that had been going on since long before 2001, of
course—then perhaps the problem was religion itself. The book would be
called “The End of Faith,” which to most Americans probably sounds like
a lament. To Harris it is something to be encouraged.

Newsweek Article here.

Has ‘dark matter’ really been proven?

Recently, a paper claimed that direct empirical proof of the existence of ‘dark matter’ has been finally found.1 This has been dutifully repeated in the more popular media. 2 It is claimed that this demolishes the criticisms of ‘dark matter sceptics’ (myself among them) who claim that the whole dark matter scenario is the result of incorrect physics being applied to the dynamics of astronomical bodies.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4626

No Hobbits in this Shire

University Park, Pa. — The skeletal remains found in a cave on the
island of Flores, Indonesia, reported in 2004, do not represent a new
species as then claimed but are some of the ancestors of modern human
pygmies who live on the island today, according to an international
scientific team.

The researchers also demonstrate that the fairly
complete skeleton designated LB1 is microcephalic, while other remains
excavated from the site share LB1’s small stature but show no evidence
of microcephaly, since no other brain cases are known. Microcephaly is a
condition in which the head and brain are much smaller than average for
the person’s age and gender. It can be present at birth or develop
afterwards and is associated with a complex of other growth and skeletal
anomalies.

Source: http://live.psu.edu/story/19059

New look at microwave background may cast doubts on big bang theory

A new analysis of ‘cool’ spots in the cosmic microwave background may
cast new doubts on a key piece of evidence supporting the big bang
theory of how the universe was formed….

Then, after the effect of gravitational lensing is folded in, the
resulting average size and size dispersion would agree with what WMAP
actually saw, said Lieu. “This approach is the most conservative, but
would still result in an overhaul of the standard model……

Although widely accepted by astrophysicists and cosmologists as the best
theory for the creation of the universe, the big bang model has come
under increasingly vocal criticism from scientists concerned about
inconsistencies between the theory and astronomical observations, or by
concepts that have been used to “fix” the theory so it agrees with those
observations.

These fixes include theories which say the nascent universe expanded at
speeds faster than the speed of light for an unknown period of time
after the big bang; dark matter, which was used to explain how galaxies
and clusters of galaxies keep from flying apart even though there seems
to be too little matter to provide the gravity needed to hold them
together; and dark energy, an unseen, unmeasured and unexplained force
that is apparently causing the universe not only to expand, but to
accelerate as it goes.