Truth and Religion
The Priest and Paris Hilton
The Don Johnson Show, 6-22-07 Don and Brandon offer their take on the Paris Hilton story, including: Why is it that Paris thinks that a trip to jail has been good for her? What was wrong with her life before? Paris took three books with her: The Bible, The Secret and...
THE FLAW IN CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS’ ARGUMENT
Atheist Christopher Hitchens has been getting a lot of press lately, so I watched a couple of his appearances on YouTube. Amazingly, I actually found myself agreeing with some of his arguments! As I’ll explain below, I think he is right to oppose hate-speech laws,...
WHO CREATED GOD?
Dinesh D'Souza defends Aquinas against atheists Hitchens and Harris.
TOLERANCE AND SLOTH
I attended an interfaith open forum the other night. It was dreadful. Six panelists, ostensibly members of six different world religions, all nodding their heads in agreement with absolutely everything every other panel member said, no matter how blatantly...
THE NEW ATHEISTS
Here is an interesting take on the "new atheists" from The Wall Street Journal.
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN VERIFIABLE AND UNVERIFIABLE HISTORICAL TRUTH CLAIMS
One of the main areas of confusion regarding the Christian truth claim seems to be an inability to see the difference between an historical truth claim that was verifiable when it was made and one that was never verifiable. For example, Tomer emailed me this question:...
PARAKEETS WALKING ON ICE
Here is a response to Allan, who commented on the previous post. His remarks are indented:To begin with, I do not reject the account of the resurrection in particular simply or solely because I wasn't there to witness it myself. Whatever happened 2,000 years ago did...
The Unique Empirical Nature of Christian Evidence
There is a common perception that religious claims are all rather weak epistemologically. That is to say that when it comes to supporting their truth claims, people expect that religions all ask for the same thing: a pretty big leap of faith. Religions, it is...
MORE PROSELYTIZING, PLEASE
Islamists and "tolerant" Americans may not like it, but as Mark Joseph explains in this excellent column, we need more evangelizing, not less.
MY MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE BEATS YOUR DNA FINDINGS?
In previous posts about Mormonism I have suggested that it is a religion based not on evidence or reason but on fideistic blind faith. For example, just this morning I posted a response to a radio show listener which said:[There is] an important distinction between...
QUESTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIAN TRUTH CLAIMS: A RESPONSE TO LISTENER EMAIL
I received this nice email from a listener to the podcast (click here for iTunes) of some of my radio show debates and thought it was worth posting here. My response follows.Dear Mr Johnson, The evidence you proposed, as far as I understood it, was that it is more...
ISLAM, REASON AND THE WEST
I wrote below about the difference between Christian and Mormon epistemology. Simply put, Christianity accepts reason and evidence in discerning truth about reality and Mormonism does not. Unfortunately, the same is true of Islam (and most other religions, as far as...
DOES JESUS LOVE YOU ENOUGH TO TELL YOU ABOUT HELL?
I found an interesting exchange in the comments section of a previous post. Greg had been accused of not being very "loving" or "Christ-like" in trying to convince some other readers that they were wrong about reality and in danger of hell. He...
SCHOOL BOARD COMPARED TO TERRORISTS
I have often warned in this space against blaming the terrorism problem on "extremism" because the label is so easily applied to non-terrorists. As I wrote below, "people are considered extremists if they believe God speaks to them and are willing to...
SKEPTIC ON THIS WEEKS RADIO SHOW
I am looking forward to talking with Dave Thomas on this Saturdays radio show. Dave is a physicist, contributing author of Skeptical Odysseys and the president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason. You may have seen him quoted in this week's Time...
Are Religious People Morons?
The Don Johnson Show, 8-6-05 The prevailing take on such current events as the Intelligent Design Movement, Muslim terrorism and stem-cell research is that the battle is between faith and reason. On one side you have intelligent rational folks and on the other you...
SUICIDE BOMBERS AND THE SEARCH FOR MEANING
Tim Lott offers a devastatingly accurate picture of what drives Muslim suicide bombers and the difference between them and their typical Western contemporaries: The Muslims have lives with meaning.The meaning said this: my life is not futile and my death is not final....
The Suppression of Religious Free Speech and Rise of Propaganda in the West, The Killing of Babies to get a “Baby-Smooth” Face and Some Advice for Tom Cruise on How to Evangelize on Behalf of Scientology
The Don Johnson Show, 6-25-05 From ridiculous "hate-crime" laws in Australia and Britain, to fake documentaries in America, truth seeking and open debate are on the way out. This week's Jonathan Swift Award goes to the Russians who are extracting stem cells from the...
On Tom Cruise, T.D. Jakes and Wiccans, Among Other Things
The Don Johnson Show, 5-28-05 From Tom Cruise's Scientology to T.D. Jakes' Mega-church Evangelicalism, people are turning spiritual for no good reasons.
DO ALL ROADS LEAD TO HEAVEN?
According to this article, beliefs about Heaven are changing. In the name of tolerance, people now accept that there are many as many paths to Heaven as there are beliefs. We examine this trend on today's radio show.
FACT OR VALUES?
As reported by the LA Times, a recent UCLA study of "College Students Search for Meaning and Purpose" found that students showed a generous level of religious tolerance and acceptance for those outside their own beliefs. More than 80% of students agreed that...
DON’T RSVP
The Air Force is requiring their staff to go through an RSVP (Respecting the Spiritual Values of Others) program to make that branch of the armed services more "sensitive." On yesterday's radio show we explain why this approach to religion is ridiculous and...
Why You Shouldn’t Respect the Spiritual Values of People who Disagree with You
The Don Johnson Show, 4-30-05 The Air Force is requiring their staff to go through an RSVP (Respecting the Spiritual Values of Others) program to make that branch of the armed services more "sensitive." We explain why this approach to religion is ridiculous and have a...
PRIEST OR WITCH DOCTOR?
Thomas Bray with some good insight:...the new pope is clearly on to something when he worries that the pendulum in the West -- and not just in Western Europe -- may have swung too far in the direction of moral relativism and its offshoots. On university campuses,...
RELATIVISM PERSONIIFED
For a good example of the thinking behind Pope Benedict's "dictatorship of relativism" (that "which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires"), listen to yesterday's radio show. I...