_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Conclusion

Posted by Caleb Coy on

_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Conclusion

As Mitch Stokes reasoned in his book, there are three evidential reasons for why belief in God is rational:

  1. The universe is rational, and we are rationally able to comprehend and communicate it’s rationality, which reflects a rational being, a perfect form that created the physical world to be rational.
  2. The universe looks designed, and not only that—it also has no physical (non-supernatural) explanation for why it looks designed, which leads us to accepting a supernatural explanation for the designed universe.
  3. Humanity comprehends and communicates absolute moral standards, concepts of good and evil that have no physical explanation or, more importantly, physical reason for an ought, which points us to a supernatural being that has instilled a sense of morality.
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 3: “Evil and Suffering Show There’s No God”

Posted by Caleb Coy on

_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 3: “Evil and Suffering Show There’s No God”

“Many of the atheists’ grievances are moral ones, founded upon an acute sense of ethical superiority,” says Stokes.  Sometimes it’s not about science at all, or at least not primarily.  Sometimes it’s about the heart.  Atheists have decided that the world is not to their liking, and that it is either God’s fault, or he’s not real to begin with.

[See the last post on whether science proves God doesn’t exist]
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 2: “Science Has Shown There is No God”

Posted by Caleb Coy on

_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 2: “Science Has Shown There is No God”

An official statement from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences:
“Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”
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Billy Nye, Ken Ham Debate on Creation: Questions I Wanted to Ask

Posted by Caleb Coy on

As Bible students like me come across various debates such as these, questions arise that sometimes are not addressed.  Here are some I wished would have been asked:

Questions I wished they asked Bill Nye:
1) How did matter arise in the universe, if no extra-physical/supernatural entity brought it about through extra-physical means?
2) If there is no creator, how do you explain why the universe is rational and we as conscious beings an understand it as rational?
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My blog, also, is taking an intermission

Posted by Caleb Coy on

Greetings all.

In the interest of, well, several things, my blog will take an “intermission” that couldn’t be more well timed, as my last post was on the “intermission” of a book I’ve been blogging about.

Several things are going on this week, and likely one of them I may quickly post about.  But if you are looking for another installment in my blog series on A Shot of Faith to the Head, be patient.  It will arrive in the next week.

Cheers.

_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Intermission

Posted by Caleb Coy on

_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Intermission—Argumentation and Defense

“Objections”
But wait.  Aren’t we ultimately saying, if we follow the line of reasoning from our previous post, that the Christian definition of faith is belief without evidence?  Recall that everyone operates on faith of some sort.  Also recall that not in every field does absence of evidence prove evidence of absence.
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 1—”Belief in God is Irrational”

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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 1: “Belief in God is Irrational”

Evidence
Mitch Stokes is bold.  He begins his “shot” into our heads by challenging the notion that rational beliefs must be supported by evidence, a belief known as evidentialism.  This might at first sound like a bad move, as if to say to tell Sherlock Holmes that you just have to believe you know who stole the diamond, and that’s ok.  But retrace the steps of human reasoning.  Go quiz the philosophers (and even the scientists) on this issue.  We have always used reason as long as we have used writing, and earlier.  What is evidence, though?  And how does it factor into our reasoning?  Is it just a matter of things that are there for us to find, things that obviously point the way toward true things, so long as we are rational?  Simply put,
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Intro

Posted by Caleb Coy on

My brother bought it for me as a Christmas gift, this book I had never heard of, A Shot of Faith to the Head, by Mitch Stokes.  It was an accidental discovery, for him and for me.  I didn’t know it would become a book that I would want to hold on to, one that surprisingly bolstered a faith in the very existence of God I already thought was solid enough.
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Mining for Ore: A Poem Inspired by The Hobbit

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Mining For Ore

In the depths, diamonds and demons:
Mine at your own risk.

Chisel and plumb and plunder
As does the prisoner
To light and breath.

Touch nothing,
But look on.

Something hums and burns beneath.

Lift up your candle and call out,
For it has broken through.
Pray that you pried loose
What you can bear to see—
Bear it up alone
And alone you will sink.

Let the eye that opens be yours,
For in the deepest of halls
No headlamp or torch can discern
Sovereigns from scales.

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