Tag Archives: belief

The “5 Step Plan” and the Gospel: Part 3—Looking at Each Step

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Part 3: Examining Each Step in Focus

We last looked at the history of how the “5-step plan of salvation” developed, shaped Church of Christ teaching, and was challenged over the last hundred years.

Now let’s look at each step and examine it for its own merit as a “step to” salvation as an event:
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A Shot of Faith To The Head: The Full Review

Posted by Caleb Coy on

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

Below are all my review of A Shot of Faith to the Head, a good book with a bad title:
Intro
Part 1:  Is Belief in God Irrational?
Intermission: The Art of Rational Self-Defense
Part 2: Does Science Prove that God Does Not Exist?
Part 3: Does Evil Prove that God Does Not Exist?
Conclusion
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_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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_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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