Sorry that I haven’t been posting lately … that “real life” thing has started eating up most of my free time now that I’ve actually started working (still part-time at this point) with TruthMedia and serving actively at my church.

Lately though I’ve been trying to get back into reading more often, and the current book I’m working through is Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. It was recommended by a couple different blogs that I frequent (independently of eachother) so I figured I’d pick it up. It’s quite well written so far (I’m only about 20% done at this point) and I like the fact that it is sort of a reply to Dawkins/Harris/Dennet/Hitchens without actually being presented that way (as merely a rebuttal or defense). He brings a scholar’s mind and a pastor’s heart to his writing which helps to make it intellectually rigorous while at the same time compassionate and humble.

I recently also saw an interesting post about Tim Keller speaking at Google headquarters about his book. Apparently it was the largest turn out ever for a Google “Author Talk” event. Hopefully the talk will be posted on YouTube or something soon. Quote: “Weak faith in a strong object is infinitely better than strong faith in a weak object.” Check out the book if you haven’t already, it’s good stuff.

Update: The write-up by the various scholars is now available on the official Princeton university site along with a list of signing scholars here: Symposium on Afterlife and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism

Recently TIME Magazine reported on a conference held in Jerusalem to discuss (again) the Talpiot Tomb, aka the “Jesus Tomb”. In their story titled Jesus ‘Tomb’ Controversy Reopened, it implies strongly that the case on the Talpiot Tomb is still open, and that the chances that this really was Jesus’ tomb are quite plausible: “After three days of fierce debate, the experts remained deeply divided. Opinion among a panel of five experts ranged from “no way” to “very possible”.”

However, a post by the conference participants on the Duke University Religion Department blog (Update: See here also) clears up TIME’s muddle significantly for us. Besides citing a few of the reasons already covered ad nauseum that this is highly, highly unlikely (to the point of ridiculousness) to be Jesus’ tomb, the blog post also throws a bit more light on TIME’s “smoking gun”. TIME said:

There was a revelation of sorts. The widow of Joseph Gat, the chief archeologist of the 1980 excavation electrified the conference by saying: “My husband believed that this was Jesus’s tomb, but because of his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, he was worried about a backlash of anti-Semitism and he didn’t think he could say this.”

The scholars reply:

The smoking gun at the conference was the surprise appearance of Ruth Gat, the widow of the archaeologist who excavated the tomb in 1980 and died soon afterwards … However, Joseph Gat lacked the expertise to read the inscriptions. His supervisor and other members of the Israel Antiquities Authority believe that Gat could not have made such a statement in his lifetime since the inscriptions seem to have been deciphered only after he had passed away.

I have already written previously on the so-called Jesus Tomb here: The Jesus Tomb (now moved from a separate HTML page to a proper WP blog page) and another good resource is Gary Habermas’ The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Response to the Discovery-Channel Documentary.

If you really need more information, Habermas also has a new book out on the subject: The Secret of the Talpiot Tomb: Unraveling the Mystery of the Jesus Family Tomb … but personally, I have better ways to spend my time than reading more about this nonsense.

[Thanks to this Christian Post article for the heads-up re the Duke University blog post.]

Streaming video: Dr William Lane Craig speaks about the properties the cause of the universe must possess. I have commented on natural theology before and the attributes God must possess, and in fact add a few others to Craig’s list that he does not mention, but I think his brief talk is quite well done as far as it goes. (After the break, 2:22 long.)

Watch the video »» (more…)

I can understand why a person would choose to be agnostic. I myself was agnostic for many years. I would have called myself an atheist, though in reality I was in fact agnostic.

Though I’ve written on agnosticism before and in particular whether the “we cannot know anything about God” hypothesis is a good one, but I wanted to make an observation re agnosticism that I’ve been thinking about recently. This may not be a particularly well crafted argument as I’ve written it, but such is the nature of blog posts!

Agnosticism is, in my humble opinion, the least reasonable position with regards to God’s existence (if having a lack of opinion can truly be called having a position, that is). Here I am referring to “closed” or “strong” agnosticism which is content to not believe nor disbelieve in God’s existence, not actively seeking agnosticism.

First of all we can ask whether it is more important to a) Discover truth, or b) Avoid error. In my opinion it is more important to try to discover truth. The process of discovering truth may lead sometimes to error, while avoiding even searching for truth may avoid error but will never find truth. Often it is through making mistakes that we learn, so it would seem that making errors (while the error in itself may be negative) will often have a positive end result. As Adam Osborne supposedly said, “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake - you can’t learn anything from being perfect.” (Thank you ThinkExist.com!)

Now apply this reasoning to the agnosticism question. Note that in regards to God’s existence, there are only two possible options: Either God exists or God does not exist. God cannot “kind of” exist. (I am here not referring to any particular conception of God, merely whether God of any kind exists or not.)

Here then is the situation regarding the God dilemma: The theist has a chance of being right and the atheist has a chance of being right. They will of course differ on their appraisal of the odds, but regardless, at least by taking a position they have a chance of being correct. The closed agnostic, however, has no chance of being right, because they take no position one way or the other. Therefore, since the strong agnostic has no chance of being correct, it seems to be a poor (lack of) position to uphold.

However, as I said earlier, I can understand why someone might have strongly held agnostic (lack of) beliefs. “Don’t you think it’s arrogant,” the argument might go, “to think that YOU have the truth about God?” Thus sometimes strong agnosticism may be the result of the perceived modesty of the position. But agnosticism of the closed or strong variety turns out to be rather arrogant when it supposes that it is impossible for anyone to really know that God exists or what God is like. Is it really humble to suggest that no one, anywhere, at any time or any age or under any circumstances, has really got it right about God? Or is it more humble to say, “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and I may be wrong, but here’s what I think.”? I’d say the latter is more reasonable.

Please check out my previous post Is God unknowable? for further discussion on whether the claim that we cannot know anything about God is well founded.