Some people say that America has a mass incarceration problem: Too many people are in prison. That’s only possible if one of two things is true: (1) Large numbers of incarcerated persons were wrongly convicted; (2) We are incarcerating people for frivolous reasons.
Regarding (1), human epistemic limitations will always result in some people being wrongly convicted of a crime they did not commit. However, given the safeguards of our judicial system (innocent until proven guilty, appeals process, etc.), this is bound to be a very small percentage of the incarcerated population.
Four years ago, I wrote a post titled “
A lot of modern evangelism focuses on the love God. We rarely hear it preached that God is angry at us because of our moral rebellion, and we rarely hear about the coming judgment. And yet, when you look at what the early church preached in Acts, it was a lot about judgment and not a word about the love of God or inviting people to have a relationship with God (see 
The final argument for God’s existence in my podcast series, Does God Exist?, is a version of the existential argument. I argue that our deepest existential longings can only be explained by and satisfied by a theistic God: the desire for meaning and purpose in life, objective morality, immortality, free will, and love. People must either (1) believe there is a God who can satisfy our deepest longings or (2) believe there is no God and that our deepest longings are misguided and can never be satisfied.
An increasing number of professing Christians will acknowledge that the Bible is opposed to some practice, but then claim that God has evolved regarding the issue and the Spirit is speaking something different to the church today. Apart from the epistemological problems that such a claim entails, isn’t it interesting that the Spirit is always being more permissive today (just like our culture)? That’s quite strange, because when God has given new revelation in the past, it was not in the direction of moral permissiveness, but in the direction of moral stringency.
The truth of a doctrine is not determined by its age or by a historical consensus, and yet we naturally assign great weight to doctrinal tradition. After all, there’s something to be said for a historical consensus, and it should not be dismissed lightly. We should not ignore the understanding and insights of the majority who have preceded us. And in general, we should not dismiss a doctrinal tradition unless we have compelling reasons to do so.
The design argument for God’s existence that I presented in my “Does God Exist?” podcast series could be succinctly summarized as “the universe looks designed because it was designed.”
“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (ESV).
I just wrapped up my podcast discussion of Aquinas’ Five Ways by examining his Fourth and Fifth Ways. The Fourth Way argues that the grades of perfection we observe in the world can only be explained by the existence of a maximally perfect being. The Fifth Way argues for the existence of an intelligent being who guides everything towards their natural ends.
There are so many ways to summarize the moral argument for God’s existence that I have a hard time boiling it down to just one or two. The most concise summary of the deductive moral argument for God’s existence could be stated as follows: “If objective morality exists (and it does), then God exists.”
My episode on Aquinas’ Third Way is now live. This is his argument from contingency. Aquinas argues that the existence of contingent beings can only be explained by the existence of a necessary being whose essence is identical to His existence.
I published my episode on Aquinas’ Second Way for God’s existence on Friday. Aquinas argues that a causal series can only be explained by a first, uncaused cause who is the source of all causation (which we call “God”).
As I continue to examine additional arguments for God’s existence, I have finally come to Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways. The first episode on the First Way went live today.
It’s been common in the last couple of decades for atheists to attempt to redefine atheism as a “lack of belief in God” as opposed to “a belief that God does not exist.” I’ve examined the errors of this endeavor before (
Here is my most concise summary of the contingency argument for God’s existence: Things that don’t have to exist, but do, can only be explained by something that does have to exist.
Here is a very concise version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument:
Now that I have concluded my podcast discussion of six major arguments for God’s existence, I’m going to post short summations of each argument. Today’s summation is for the argument from the impossibility of nothingness:
Thinking to Believe 