William Lane Craig has a newish, 30-page essay online, which you can read in PDF or HTML. He interacts with Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Craig makes five arguments for God’s existence: (1) the cosmological argument (from contingency); (2) the kalam cosmological argument (based on the beginning of the universe); (3) the moral argument (based upon objective moral values and duties); (4) the teleological argument (from fine-tuning); (5) the ontological argument (from the possibility of God’s existence to his actuality). So if you’re looking for a concise introdu...

1. Preunderstanding fallacy: Believing you can interpret with complete objectivity, not recognizing that you have preunderstandings that influence your interpretation. There is no such thing as a “white-coat” interpreter. In other words, there is no one who comes to the text as a scientist who objectively interprets the data. We all are influenced by many things including our upbringing, culture, personality, and others preunderstandings. Once we recognize this, we are better equipped to interpret the text honesty. Otherwise, our preunderstanding will always rule over our interpretation. 2...

This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Detached From RealityUpdate: I have edited this post to omit the name of a person that I incorrectly placed in Dr. Caner’s camp. My sincerest apologies for this mistake. Over the weekend, this story broke, and it just makes the whole Ergun Caner scandal that much weirder. Almost immediately, Dr. Caner’s minions came out from the woodwork and said it couldn’t be their precious Dr. Caner who did this. It “had” to be someone out to hurt him. That someone must be really desperate to drop $500+ just do damage the reputation of a ...

This entry is part 2 of 8 in the series Detached From RealityOn June 29th Tim Rogers over at SBC Today posted “To Clear from Accusation or Blame“, a post attempting to explain why he used the word “exonerated“ when describing Liberty University’s press release about removing Ergun Caner from his position as President of their seminary. It is a very interesting read and certainly qualifies as using some of the tactics outlined previously. The first three paragraphs are Mr. Rogers complaining about the response he got when using “exonerated” and itR...

This entry is part 1 of 8 in the series Detached From RealityOver the course of the Ergun Caner scandal, there have been some who are so blind to truth (i.e. that which corresponds to reality) that they delude themselves into actually believing that Dr. Caner didn’t lie. How they come to this conclusion is really remarkable and a very good lesson in how not to apply logic and reason so as to achieve your goal of believing what you want. A few of their tactics: - Words? Bleh. We’ll make’em mean what we want’em to mean. Never-mind them fancy contraptions like dictionari...