Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller are atheists and evolutionists who also happen to be talented magicians. While taking on any number of liberal iconic beliefs, most recently environmental hysteria, they also have attacked the Bible, Creationism, and Intelligent Design, describing them as “impossibilities.” As stage magicians schooled in the art of illusion and diversion who are in the debunking bu [...]
Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller are stage magicians. Their act is a mix of comedy, irreverence, and skill. They are also known for exposing quacks, frauds, and claims of the supernatural in the tradition of Harry Houdini and James Randi. In their highly acclaimed and usually entertaining “Bulls***!” program that airs on Showtime, they have ventured into the realm of politics by taking on global w [...]
Today’s preoccupation with eschatology has led some to advocate a wholesale abandonment of this age, stating that there is no relationship between the temporal kingdom and the eternal kingdom. There is no prescription for the transformation of this world based on the certainty of the next, so some want us to believe. The transformation of the present social structure is built “upon the concept of [...]
There are no spoilers in this review. I saw The Dark Knight, the new Batman film, this weekend. It’s everything the reviewers have been saying about it and more. Heath Ledger’s performance is certainly worthy of an Academy Award and not because of sentimentality over his premature death. The role was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and he played it perfectly. You will believe he is the Joker. I [...]
Former theist and now self-avowed atheist Dan Barker, who is co-president of the Freedom of Religion Foundation, is promoting a “Beware of Dogma” campaign using billboards that also include the line “Imagine No Religion.” The line is taken from John Lennon’s atheist national anthem Imagine. I wonder if the FRF’s call for everyone to “beware of dogma” includes the dogma of atheism which is funded b [...]
A stone tablet written in Hebrew is getting a great deal of media attention. The tablet is unique because the inscription is written in ink rather than carved into the stone. It’s been dated to the first-century B.C. While broken, it’s about three-feet tall and contains 87 lines in two columns. As usual, there is debate on what it says and its meaning. Of course, this has not stopped the reports I [...]
Fred the Atheist continues to email me with his demands. He acts like a fourth grader who hasn’t had his nap. His ability to argue well has been muted by his constant use of unsupported internet sources and his unwillingness to consider counter evidence. I mentioned in an earlier article about how after 20 emails challenging him to send me the source from one of his cut-and-paste jobs, he still wo [...]
‘Apocalyptic thinking is in the air,’” University of Connecticut psychologist Kenneth Ring said as we approached the year 2000. “Images stored in the collective unconscious begin to populate our dreams and visions.’”[1] The year 2000 was thought to be a significant eschatological date for sociologists, utopians, New Agers, cultists, psychics, and even some Christians. The late Robert A. Nisbet (19 [...]
In his book The Population Bomb, first published in 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich made a number of predictions about the future of our planet based on his understanding of population growth and food supplies. Ehrlich’s projections were not new. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), a British political economist and mathematician, proposed that population growth would outstrip any increase in food supplies in [...]
The response to Monday’s article was a hit! We received nearly 140 replies from homeschool students and parents from all over the country, and they keep coming in. It’s also been picked up by other web sites and homeschool organizations and distributed widely. I am amazed at the wonderful accomplishments of so many young people and the dedication of their parents. The e-mailer who made the “cleani [...]
When I heard about the 17 students at Gloucester High School who are expecting babies, it reminded me of the movie Village of the Damned, based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos, written by English author John Wyndham and published in 1957. The title of the novel refers to the way brood parasite cuckoo birds place their eggs in the nests of other birds that do not notice the “invasion.” Even after [...]
Critics of the Bible begin with the premise that they know more about the geography and times of the Bible than those who actually lived during the history of the period. Dogmatic claims are often made based on incomplete archeological evidence. This has been happening for a long time. How many years have we heard there was no mention of David outside the Bible? In 1987 archeologist Kathleen Kenyo [...]
“Is God Dead?” With a black background and bright red lettering, Time magazine’s April 8, 1966 cover**[1]** dared to question the existence of God in a nation where “In God We Trust” is its motto. Screenwriter Edward Anhalt, quoted in the Time issue, sums up the worldview of the God-is-dead worldview: “God is an infantile fantasy, which was necessary when men did not understand what lightning was. [...]
The latest attempt by an elephant thrower to pass off fiction as fact is a bogus statement supposedly made by James G. Watt. (More about this below.) Watt was Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1983 until he made the following remark to a group of lobbyists in which he said that his coal commission’s decisions would be upheld because, quoting Watt, “I have a bl [...]
What does it mean to “throw the elephant”? A person responds to an argument by dumping loads of seemingly relevant information on it, calls it a “refutation,” and declares himself the winner, all the while hoping his opponent won’t notice how faulty much of the information is. The internet has made throwing the elephant a favorite tactic of anti-Christian bigots. It used to be that a response requ [...]
How should Christians respond to reform efforts under political regimes where they have no rights, no freedom of religion, speech, press, or assembly? For the most part, prior to the fall of most of Eastern Europe’s Communist governments and the former Soviet Union, Christians behind the iron curtain had little say in the way their nation operated. This was true of nearly all citizens. Christians [...]
Ever since human beings first walked the earth, they have attempted—whether by extension of logic or through the use of magic—to divine what the unknown future holds in store for them. For a variety of reasons—to comfort themselves, to prepare themselves—human beings have been eager to know what tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the next month, the next year, the years to come, will do to them and [...]
“You can’t get away with blaming the Holocaust on a person who was dead for decades before this event occurred. This is a blatant attempt to obscure the role of your religion and its inbred anti-Semitism in the Holocaust. Trash like you cannot be aloud [sic] to get away with these kinds of inflammatory untruths on the public airways. You need to get on the air and apologize for this lie and do it [...]
“The ‘atheist nation’ of China mourns for their dead and undertakes a huge humanitarian effort which proves their system of shame and honor is vastly superior to the Christian system of dogmatic and silly superstitions. Christians absolutely hate it when other people show more concern for their fellow humans than the Christians do. Christians only pretend to love their fellow humans and do so only [...]
We saw in yesterday’s article “Whose Common Sense?” that the call for a Common Sense approach to apologetics is naïve and counterproductive. Competing worldviews are not “willing to work inductively, from particular facts to general conclusions” unless both sides agree (maybe) on the starting point of inquiry. Of course, establishing the starting point is the fundamental problem, the very thing th [...]
