Posts

Conflation and the War Between Science and Religion

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Back when I was giving talks on creation science, I used what has become a very popular quote by an atheist: ‘Christianity has fought, still fights, and will continue to fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.  — G. Richard Bozarth, ‘The Meaning of Evolution’, American Atheist, p. 30. 20 September 1979. The way I study on it, this quote would have been mostly forgotten if biblical creationists hadn't lassoed it and kept repeating it. "Why do you people keep repeating it, Cowboy Bob?" Thanks for asking. We repeat it because it's right. Vituperative and biased, but right. This was bac

Village Atheist Tricks

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A simple, fair, obvious question: If atheists and anti-creation evolutionists are confident in their reasoning abilities, why do they resort to unconscionable and illegal methods to silence Christians and creationists? I reckon that the days are long gone where people could discuss matters rationally. Now, we have to deal with attacks. This fits in with the rising tide of wickedness in the world, but atheopaths are behind a lot of it. Especially on the interwebs. Those of us with knowledge and experience can dismantle their "reasoning" and expose their logical fallacies, especially since most are based on assertions, intimidation, ridicule and outright personal attacks. Many atheists are materialists who are bowing to their religion of Scientism . Since many can't saddle up the horse of reason and learn to ride, they prefer to go in with six-guns blazing in different ways — primarily based on provoking emotional reactions. Some resort to criminal acts like imperso

That "Copies of Pagan Myths" Nonsense

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One of the most annoying and tiresome attacks on Christianity is when atheists will say, "You st00pid dumb Xtians are just copying ancient pagan religions!", and then they throw some outright falsehoods that they gleaned off the interwebs. Fact check, please! But no, that requires intellectual honesty. Wikimedia Commons / Ad Meskens What if a pagan god showed up at your Christmas service and said that you're really celebrating his birth, and that Jesus is just a copy of pagan myths? Here are two videos. The first is a cartoon that dispenses with the myths. The second is from Ian Juby's "Genesis Week", where he deals with the Horus manure.     Start at the 18 minutes 9 seconds mark to get right to the Horus stuff:

Atheism, Secularism and Lack of Logic

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen One of the main problems that atheists have is prejudicial conjecture. That is, they get all het up, thinking they know about something and spouting off their uninformed opinions while also trying to influence the views of others. When it comes to the Bible, many atheists not only resort to prejudicial conjecture, but many other logical fallacies including the straw man. Sorry, Cupcake, but we don't have to defend something we don't hold to or didn't say. This includes quote-mined material from the Bible.  Made at Atom Smasher Numerous fallacies can be rounded up in regards to creation science. They will misrepresent creationists, call us liars (their "proof" is essentially based on "because I said so repeatedly", but actually makes them the liars because of no real evidence), appeal to motive, poisoning the well, unfounded accusations, loaded terminology and a whole lot more. With just a little learning about informal

Atheists and Anti-Creationists Crazy from the Hate

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Edited 10-14-2014. The inspiration for this article is backwards. I saw a rant in an inconsequential forum by a vituperative but unimportant atheist. Then  I read the article on one of the sites I subscribe to that brought his childish "you deny evolution and billions of years, so you're a liar" reaction. The article in question is by former theistic evolutionist Dr. David Catchpoole of CMI, " Faith can move mountains (but it can't change history) ". He wrote a short article about the global Genesis Flood from his biblical creationist (young earth) perspective, and was given an ad hominem  attack for his efforts by the aforementioned atheopath. Dr. Catchpoole gave links in that article to some of the science articles supporting the Genesis Flood, but the critic did not seem to be interested in reading or responding to those.  The uneducated atheopath railed against Catchpoole, displaying his inability to distinguish between a

Pluto, Special Pleading and Popular Opinion

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The fallacy of " Special Pleading " is a form of "Moving the Goalposts" by ignoring important information, changing criteria to bolster one's position, appealing to emotions, and similar tactics. Christians and creationists have to deal with this quite a bit. F'rinstance, when I said that Bill Nye used bad science and logical fallacies when debating Ken Ham, I produced abundant supporting evidence. A critic cried, "...I have NOT studied it in detail. However, I note that it FAILS to quote anything Nye actually said at the debate with Ken Ham VERBATIM..." That's a clear example of moving the goalposts and special pleading (as well as the brilliant logical procedure of arguing from something not studied). Owlhoots like this tend to defend their logical fallacies with more fallacies, such as appeal to motive . So, how about Pluto, the ninth planet of the solar system. Oh, wait. It was disqualified, and with apparently good reasons . People d

Problems with Secularist Theories of Knowledge

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Back in college, I was not fond of philosophy and often cut class. One day, I showed up and it was test time. Essay  test time. So I pulled out my mental shovel and piled it on and aced the test. Perhaps if we had started with theories of knowledge and presuppositions, I would have appreciated such things more. It took people like Jason Lisle and Greg Bahnsen to prompt my thinking in such areas. Are there absolutes? How do you know what you know? What is your epistemology ? Can we know things? How can we know anything? If we can't know things, then why can't we know them? We all have our starting points and use basic logic (such as the Law of Contradiction ). Atheistic worldviews tend to be arbitrary and self-refuting in nature. Skepticism (the philosophy, not the modern stripped-down definition), Empiricism, Scientism, Rationalism and more are irrational and inconsistent. We all have our ultimate starting points for our worldviews. The biblical Christian worldview is

Semantics, Logic and Anti-Christian Bigotry

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen A "meme" that I used on a post 1 provoked some amazingly obstreperous and arrogant comments from anti-creationists. They misused logic and presented some remarks that were saturated with hate. These were predicated on what they considered a misuse of "science", the current definition of the Big Bang. My introductory remarks in the post said that the Big Bang was an explosion, and the article that I linked in the post had did not discuss the Big Bang, it was about other explosions. But they apparently didn't bother to read that one, they wanted to rip the "anti science" of calling the Big Bang an "explosion". Well, was the Big Bang an explosion? Or, more importantly for this article, is it justified to make such a remark? Yes, definitely. First, the Big Bang is called an explosion (or inferred by words like "cataclysmic") in dictionaries 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , but some must have received the memo that t

The Increase of Christian Persecution

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Disclaimer: I do not endorse all opinions on all sites found in supporting links. This article is another of those times when several things came together for me that had been in the works for a while. I think God does that, just brings things together like that. The Arabic letter that begins their word for Nazarine has become a social media event. Moslems are using it to mark the homes of Christians in Iraq (if there are any left there now), which is reminiscent of the way Nazis marked property belong to Jews. People are using this symbol and variations on it in social media to express solidarity 1 . However, this is not anything new or unusual. Persecution of Christians is happening worldwide, especially in atheist and Moslem countries. There are ministries dedicated to spreading information and giving support to the persecuted Christians 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . Some of the threat to Christians is the increased Islamization in the West, but the more current

Logic Lessons: Arguing from Silence

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  In a previous "Logic Lesson", I touched on the Argument from Silence , but I forgot that I did it! Diddly dur hay. Anyway, this is a more complete treatment. Arguments from silence, like other fallacies, have some clear-cut examples that are easily identifiable. The basic form is that if someone does not answer a question or give a response, it is taken as confirmation that the other person is right. Unfortunately, I do not have screenshots of one of my favorite examples. An atheopath on Twitter was attacking me for something or other, and I had better things to do (such as watching television). When I came back to Twitter, I realized that I had lost a "debate". The guy had been firing of questions and comments. Because he did not get responses from me, he declared victory for himself — I lost a debate that I did not know I had! Here is another one. It was posted in a forum, and I found out that it was e-mailed to me from a spammer-stal

Why Can't Atheists Find God?

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— Cowboy Bob Sorensen  The simple answer to the question of why atheists cannot find God is that they really do not want to find him. However, that raises several other questions and issues. Many times, atheists claim to have rejected belief in God because of reason (as if theists somehow were automatically irrational because of their beliefs, which is a logical fallacy right there, and many atheists frequently demonstrate a grasp of basic logic). If they had used some of the logic they claim to like, they would be confronted with some problems that they cannot escape.  Atheists cannot account for logic itself , and they are unable to answer the question of existence . Although some think that evolution solves some problems and helps them become intellectually fulfilled, evolution is a failure. Materialists have attempted to scientifically locate a place for free will and the soul in the brain , and they try but fail to account for morality through evolution . The truth is tha

The Other Anti-Christian "F-Word"

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Because humans are complicated beings, we respond to a number of different stimuli. Some are at very basic reflex and chemistry levels, such as "fight or flight". At the other end of the spectrum, we can intelligently consider various pieces of information and arrive at reasonable conclusions. Somewhere in the middle is the complication of emotions. Although they can respond to logic when recognized and a decision is made to bring them under control, they often arise unbidden. People have been "thinking" through their emotions for a very long time; I believe it is worse now than it used to be. There are people who want to manipulate others through emotions (whether deliberately or intentionally) , and we need to be on guard against such tactics. That is one reason I wrote a series about common logical fallacies . By recognizing fallacies and the way so many are based on appeals to emotions , we are less likely to fall for tricks, and can