Advocatus Atheist

M yth of the Historical Jesus I have come to the following conclusion: Scholarship devoted to the question of the historicity of Jesus, while not a total waste of time, could be better spent gardening. Joseph R. Hoffmann Historically-Real Narrative In his book The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics Christian theologian and scholar Hans Frei argues that questioning the historicity of the biblical documents in the modern era has led to the loss of the integrity of the narrative structure. Basically, in searching for the historical Jesus historians have moved away from the powerful message of the Gospel narrative and have supplanted it with a framework for a historical narrative. Consequently this has shifted meaning from the patterns and structure of the narrative itself to external references. Frei argues that this takes two forms. Those who argued for the historicity of the documents found meaning in the historical events ...

The Problem With Kalam Kalam, or more formally the Kalam cosmological argument as presented by the Christian theologian William Lane Craig states: 1.      The Cosmological Argument from Contingency The cosmological argument comes in a variety of forms. Here’s a simple version of the famous version from contingency: 1.  Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. 2.  If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. 3.  The universe exists. 4.  Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1, 3). 5.  Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God (from 2, 4). Now this is a logically airtight argument. That is to say, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is unavoidable. It doesn’t matter if we don’t like the conclusion. It doesn’t matter if we have other objections to God’s existenc...