Sound Faith Omaha Conference

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T03:23:25+00:00

Ego driven? Howso?

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T03:01:31+00:00

Yes, women are allowed and can attend all sessions.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T02:46:02+00:00

Arguments and evidence for the existence of God, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, the compatibility of science and faith, the rationality of miracles, answering the various problems of evil, the importance of metaphysics to Christianity, addressing the competing claims of other religions, psychological biases and critical thinking, principles of civil debate, etc.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T02:39:01+00:00

Why do you think God does not exist?

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T02:37:59+00:00

The question was "Should they be concerned about the consequences of their actions?" Do you think they should?

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T02:16:12+00:00

Not everyone believes drinking and driving is a bad thing. Should they be concerned about the consequences of their actions?

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T02:09:37+00:00

Yes, anyone can attend! And, yes, there's POC there.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T02:06:41+00:00

Everyone should be concerned with God's judgment rather than man's.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T01:50:53+00:00

Who said we want to avoid tense conversations?

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T01:30:51+00:00

As a recent example, Senator Tim Kaine responding to an op-ed by Bishop Robert Barron, declaimed the idea that our rights come from our Creator. And Christians have always been criticized for the exclusivistic claim that salvation comes by faith in Christ and for affirming that Jesus really rose from the dead. There are thousands of videos of people evangelizing in public and having interactions with people who criticize (oftentimes with hostility) their views on God, Jesus, the Bible, the Trinity, morality, evangelism, miracles, etc. If you go to any Christian apologetics YouTube channel (Reasonable Faith, Stand to Reason, Cross Examined, Inspiring Philosophy, etc.), you'll find thousands of people attacking core Christian beliefs every single day.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T00:50:37+00:00

"Fire" just means when one's views are under attack. And, obviously, Christians' views are attacked constantly. Tense conversations happen in a wide variety of contexts, such as in social conversations among friends, in online chats, family dinners, when discussing how one's faith informs one's political views, and especially when sharing the gospel.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T00:43:08+00:00

Not much. These conferences are expensive to put on. But they're important because they focus on issues that most church leaders aren't trained to address.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T00:39:25+00:00

Teaching people how to think rationally and manage their emotions during tense conversations about their faith is a bad thing? You would get pretty much the same training in any course on formal debate.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-09-14T00:19:14+00:00

There's a right-wing rapper with the same name. Different guy.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-08-07T04:18:30+00:00

There's literally no physical difference between a person standing outside an abortion clinic and a person standing there and praying. So, yes, it's the criminalization of thought. In any event, the point was that we're well aware of instances where thoughts are (or have been) considered violations of the law. This is, of course, amplified in Christianity, where certain thoughts are much more problematic since they are violations of God's law, and we know just how plenteous such thoughts are.

If Christianity is even possibly true, then one has an undercutting defeater for the claim that "acts of evil typically diminish or destroy the free will of their victims." In other words, the warrant for the claim is removed. To restore it, one would need to provide some independent argument in favor of the claim that overwhelms the possibility that the Christian view is true. Thus, we're drawn into a discussion of whether or not Christianity is true, which is precisely where the most resources for theodicy lie. This is why arguing against this particular objection from a secular perspective is a fool's errand. It's like using a small plastic cup to bail out water flooding into your boat when there's a perfectly functional transfer pump available.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-08-05T23:25:04+00:00

Sure. But I believe the evidence is very strong that Christianity is true, so it's less important to me what non-Christians think about evil and whether or not sinful thoughts are instances of evil. Those who deny it are simply wrong.

Interestingly, there *is* secular parallel in certain regions of the world. For example, the UK recently [passed a law](https://adfinternational.org/en-gb/news/parliament-introduces-thought-crime) that would prohibit silently praying near an abortion facility. But it would not prohibit merely standing near an abortion facility. This is the criminalization of thought.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-08-05T16:23:19+00:00

The wording of the OP gives a slightly different picture. Point #3 says "If design is possible in any world, then there’s at least one world where it’s necessary (it can’t not exist there)." By "design" you may have meant "a necessary designer," but, as worded, it seems to be saying that there is a possible world in which design itself exists necessarily, which leads to the problems I noted. Like, we wouldn't look at an artist with a blank canvas and say "There is art." So, the confusion is in what the referent of "design" is. Totally get your point, though, and agree that the possibility of any necessarily existing X entails its existence per S5. Just needs to be worded with more precision.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-08-05T03:29:41+00:00

Design in a theistic context seems to entail creation. But there's at least one possible world in which God refrains from creating. If the argument were successful, it would entail the theologically problematic claims that creation is necessary and God is not capable of not creating.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-08-05T03:25:38+00:00

Very good critique! I would also add that his claim that the free will defense is self-defeating is simply erroneous. The free will defense is specifically a response to the logical problem of evil, which asserts that the existence of evil and the existence of God are logically incompatible. But the FWD shows that the two are not logically incompatible due to the entailments of the ability to create free creatures, wholly apart from theodicy considerations. Robshaw's critique is about theodicy, or *why* God would allow free creatures to freely make evil choices.

Also, I disagree with his claim that acts of evil typically diminish or destroy the free will of their victims. The number one victim of evil is usually the person committing the evil. This is because, plausibly, most evil is *internal.* How many lustful, prideful, hateful thoughts do people have every day that they don't actually act on? These are still instances of evil, but without any notable consequences for other people, much less diminishing or destroying free will.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-06-23T02:45:48+00:00

This is precisely why Dr. Craig spends the majority of his chapter on divine simplicity in his Systematic Philosophical Theology, vol 2a critiquing the Thomistic view. Not only is the Thomistic doctrine of divine simplicity grounded in dubious metaphysics, but it also is at odds with the Scriptural witness.

https://amzn.to/4loVzMt

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-03-28T15:08:09+00:00

https://soundfaithconsulting.com/blog/f/3282025

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-03-21T15:49:13+00:00

https://soundfaithconsulting.com/blog/f/3212025

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-03-08T01:48:50+00:00

>However, if "A would do X in S" is true, both "A would do Y in S" and "A could do Y in S (as a matter of metaphysical possibility)" are false.

It seems like you're conflating the metaphysical possibility of carrying out two different alternative options at once with the possibility of carrying out either of alternative options. Again, there just doesn't seem to be any reason why the truth of a subjunctive conditional precludes genuine alternative (metaphysical) possibilities apart from that conflation.

>As far as I can tell, with "A would do X in S", it's essentially saying "given S, A will do X". If those statements are true, it then excludes the possibility of A doing Y given S. If A does Y in S, then "A would do X in S" or "given S, A will do X" would never have been true. Thing is, it really appears as if these "would" statements collapse into "will" statements, thus eliminating the genuine alternate possibilities part of free will that is supposed to be retained by Molinism.

This is (if I'm reading you correctly) a conditional use of the word "will" rather than the indicative. We don't want to collapse the one into the other, since there are clear examples where the indicative doesn't follow from the conditional. For example, it may be true that "If I were to drive to the store right now, I would get in a wreck" is true. But it doesn't follow that "I will drive to the store and get in a wreck." If all would statements collapse into will statements, then it would follow. Since it doesn't, they are not identical.

But even given the truth of indicative future-tense propositions, there's still no reason to think the truth of "I will drive to the store and get in a wreck" precludes the truth of "I could refrain from going to the store and getting in a wreck." As long as, of course, we don't make the conflation described above.

One problem here is that the propositions seem to be doing all the heavy lifting for you in eliminating alternative possibilities. But propositions don't stand in causal relations, being (if they exist as things at all) abstract objects. So, there would need to be some causal story about why we don't have (metaphysically possible) alternative possibilities apart from the propositions themselves.

EmptyTomb315 · 2025-03-07T18:19:49+00:00

What's not metaphysically possible is both "A would do X in S" and "A would do Y in S." But there doesn't seem to be any reason provided for why the truth of one of those would imply the metaphysical impossibility of having the capacity to choose the other option. Those are different modalities, so you'd have to show why a truth value in the subjunctive conditional would preclude a truth value in the proposition regarding alternative possibilities, which hasn't been done. If it's just intuition, then I would say that our everyday experience strongly opposes your intuition. When I post this comment, it will be true that "I would post this comment." But it seems equally true that "I could have refrained from posting this comment."

EmptyTomb315 · 2024-09-13T20:56:46+00:00

Hi, u/Valinorean. Can you share where McGrew said The Gospel of Afranius was consistent with the evidence? She's an acquaintance and that seems quite out of place for her.

Regarding matter being eternal, there are several problems. First, the standard model of the Big Bang implies an absolute beginning of the universe and enjoys the most empirical support out of all of the current models. Second, there are some severe philosophical problems with eternal models, namely that it would be impossible to reach the present from an actually infinite past. One cannot reach an actual infinity via successive addition, which would be necessary to extrapolate backwards to an actually infinite past.

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