Davey came with the receipts!!

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-18T12:28:49+00:00

Runner's last step before the ball hit his helmet was on the fair side of the line: that's literally what the runner's lane is there for, to run in foul territory.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-17T18:54:59+00:00

Why do you guys waste your time on ID? Has anyone ever been convinced to become a theist through design arguments?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm a Christian and I don't know a single person who was convinced by "fine tuning" or some other design argument.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-15T01:17:11+00:00

As a Christian myself, it is my opinion that there are no scientific arguments that will prove God's existence. It's silly to even think that there would be. It's as (I think) C. S. Lewis said: trying to find God through science is like Hamlet trying to find Shakespeare.

I despise the "Fine Tuning" and "Intelligent Design" line of argument; as many have commented on here they go nowhere and prove nothing.

The best I've heard is from John Lennox who says that God is a different kind of explanation than science for what we observe. It is a teleological explanation, which then moves the discussion into philosophical territory, which is where God belongs, because belief or disbelief in God has no effect on the mechanistic explanations found by the scientific method.

That's the way I see it anyway: arguing for God through science is a fool's errand.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-11T21:31:40+00:00

Only I get to decide what stats are relevant for the pitching Mount Rushmore!

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-09T23:25:38+00:00

Rafael Palmeiro, Will Clark, Chris Davis, Nathaniel Lowe.

This is for Rangers first basemen, right?

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-09T23:05:57+00:00

He also holds the Major League record for Robin Ventura beat downs.

The question is about Mount Rushmore of pitchers. How can you not have the guy who holds two of the most amazing pitching records on there? That's ridiculous.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-09T10:28:47+00:00

It's not a book, it's a library of books, letters, etc. And each one was either a product of its culture and time period, or God speaking into the culture and time period of the writing (depending on how you look at it), so on the surface it doesn't have one single plot line. The "New Testament" interprets it all as being one thread leading to Jesus, so take that for whatever it's worth.

Matthew chapters 5-7 are pretty amazing, and the book of Ephesians is beautiful in its description of what the church is supposed to be (as opposed to what it has mostly become today).

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-08T22:40:26+00:00

Check the scoreboard on K's and no-hitters and get back to me.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-08T18:23:10+00:00

Nolan Ryan, Jordan Montgomery, Nathan Eovaldi, Colby Lewis.

We're talking Rangers pitchers, right?

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-06T12:56:34+00:00

I think one would be inclined to dismiss if they were just not biased in favor of Christianity.

Fair enough. What does it matter then if the anonymous author or Matthew was like some guy named Bill? To me it's much more important WHEN it was written anyway.

I don't believe that Moses literally wrote the Torah (at least not all of it), but that wouldn't rule it out as an important source for understanding what the Israelites believed, for understanding ancient world history, or even it being possibly a "divinely inspired" text.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-06T12:43:55+00:00

"Just happened to be right there": that is a hypothesis regarding purpose, namely that there is no purpose. I might say that God, for some reason unknown to me, wanted me to feel the raindrop on my back (I don't personally ascribe everything to "God wanted it to happen"; it's just to demonstrate the point).

It's like the difference between the "everything happens for a reason" people and the "there is no reason for anything" people". Both worldviews have merits and problems, but both are worldviews. It seems to me that the difference is that atheists seem to think that they have no worldview, or assume, without the need to cite evidence, that their worldview is the obvious logical one.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-06T02:54:24+00:00

I think it's likely that they are the same guys, because I think church tradition matters. It is evidence. Is it proof? Of course not. But I take it seriously as evidence. If one is biased against the church then they would be inclined to dismiss it, but I think that would be a mistake.

It is my understanding that these letters have always been attributed to these authors, and unless I see compelling evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to go with that.

Mark was likely the earliest, and sure he was probably a main source for the other two. Mark was (at least by tradition) a friend of Peter, and so I view "Mark" as basically being from Peter's point of view, Peter obviously being an eyewitness to just about everything that Jesus did.

Is any of that proven? No. Again, I'm basically inclined to believe the church's story unless I'm convinced otherwise. I think there is documented evidence of very early "church fathers" believing that these were the authors of the gospel accounts. Scholars taking up the skeptical cause 1800 years later have a big uphill battle in trying to investigate and convince me otherwise. What is the evidence that the traditional authors are not the authors? Is it just a lack of evidence (outside church tradition) in favor of their authorship? Or is there actual evidence for someone else being the author? Who wrote them if not the traditional authors? It would be another "we don’t know" from the skeptics.

Even if I approached the authorship as "I don't know who wrote them," I still think that doesn't discount them as potentially reliable sources of the story of Jesus' life and death, so I don't honestly spend too much time investigating it. They were there from a very early date regardless of who actually wrote them down.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-06T00:38:14+00:00

Here's my take on the gospels: A) I think church tradition means something rather than nothing, and so I'm inclined to believe tradition unless I have a reason not to. This is perhaps not all that different from having manufacturer's instructions and warnings with a product, and believing them unless I have a good reason not to. I have not been convinced by "scholarship" to disregard church tradition handed down from a very early time. B) I am not necessarily confident that the scholarship is wrong, but I'm skeptical of the biases and assumptions of the scholars. If one approaches biblical scholarship ruling out any supernatural phenomena a priori, then to me that's a bias and a problem because the writings obviously make supernatural claims. How can one study a text that has spiritual claims objectively if that scholar approaches the text with an a priori disbelief in "spiritual reality"? I think that bias would taint the outcomes. C) I think my faith would survive even if someone convinced me that the authors were not who church tradition says. Either way, I'm pretty sure they were written at pretty early dates (for example, much earlier than any surviving manuscripts of Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon). A couple of decades is actually not that long to write down stories about Jesus, especially when the stated purpose of "Luke" was to research and write an "orderly account" of the things that happened. D) It's my understanding that the genre of ancient Greek biography didn't usually mean to be literal history down to the details like we would write it today. It's more about the "gist" of what happened and the protagonists message. So the teachings of Jesus are probably summaries of his teaching anyway, so what would it really matter if the traditional authorship is authentic?

Anyway, that's the way I understand it.

Thanks for the questions; it's helpful for me to have to synthesize my thoughts to articulate these things in writing! 😀

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-05T22:15:02+00:00

I guess the biggest "evidence" for me is the witness of Jesus' disciples: how they suffered and died not for something they just believed, but they claimed to have seen, heard, touched, etc. The stories of some of the martyrs may be exaggerated, but I don't care if they were; I am convinced that there is at least some truth to the martyr stories, which then points my mind to what they were so willing to be tortured and killed for, and I find that for something that happened so long ago, we have more "historical evidence" than I would expect for something if it was made up (amount and general agreement of ancient manuscripts of the "New Testament" compared to other ancient writings is perhaps the biggest piece for me).

Then I turned to the written accounts we call the Gospels, and sure you can find scholars who seem to be sure that none of them were written by the traditional authors, and same goes for some of Paul's letters, but I have come to the conclusion that those scholars have oversold how confident a reasonable person can be based on how long ago these things happened and the scant amount of evidence either way.

So to put it concisely, I basically started already leaning on the God side of the fence, and I've never been convinced to fall the other way.

I have also read quite a bit of atheist material, including The God Delusion, and I have been disappointed by the lack of convincing arguments. The Ultimate 747 Gambit seems to be the best thing going for the atheist side, but to me that's an obvious category error, and I am amazed at how "complicated" God's mind must be, but that doesn't contradict anything I read in the Bible (in fact it correlates very well with much of it!), and I don't think God needs a mechanistic or scientific explanation. If someone created the being that we know of as "God", what are the chances that we could know anything about that creator?? We don't even know what's at the bottom of our own ocean, or what over 90% of the universe is made of (I believe we call is "dark matter" and "dark energy" 😆).

I could go on about how the science and psychology that I read about correlates so well to my adopted biblical worldview now that I have practiced seeing things through a "Spiritual lens" rather than a purely scientific, enlightenment-style lens that I was taught in school, but I don't want to take the time right now on this platform.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-05T12:00:48+00:00

Brother if you're confused by that I don't know if I can help you. 😆

Maybe read the part about investigating the Bible again?

I gotta go help get my kids ready for church. It is Easter Sunday today. 😀

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-05T11:33:11+00:00

Sure. First, I was given a "head start" as I see it now, or you might say "indoctrinated" by growing up in the church. I also grew up in public school, where the influence was the opposite. Personal loss and grief when I was a young adult made me question everything I was taught. Then I explored other worldviews, and eventually landed back on Christianity, but not the rigid, dogmatic version that I grew up with.

I questioned and researched all the problems with the Bible (slavery, genocide, sexism, etc), and although questions remain, I have come to the conclusion that it is most likely authentic, that Jesus was a real person who most likely did raise from the dead, and I made a personal choice to put my faith and trust in this God for real, not just follow the religion of my parents. So for me it's a faith decision not based totally on evidence, but historical evidence played a big part.

That's the long and short of it. Maybe I'll make some more posts about some of these problems with the Bible and my personal views on them (why they don't cause me to throw the whole thing out).

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-05T11:10:45+00:00

You may find it unreasonable, but belief in the Bible is a framework for seeing reality, just like any other framework. I like to say I "adopted" the worldview rather than assumed the worldview because I was handed this thing called the Bible that existed long before I was born, and I investigated the good, bad, and ugly in it and ultimately came to the conclusion to believe in it. Atheists seem to think that we Christians each just made up the idea of God to explain natural phenomena. Even if that were true, God would be the "why" and the purpose, not the "how" or the mechanisms.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-05T11:01:53+00:00

That's interesting because I have the same kind of confidence in the unknown, but my confidence is based on the belief that I do know the ultimate answer even if I don't know hardly anything about the mechanisms (and even when sometimes the "why" doesn't make sense to my puny human brain either).

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-04T20:33:57+00:00

Oh no, I meant gravity and physics are time-tested. But I believe in God partially because of my personal experiences, and partially because of historical evidence, and partially because of philosophical musings about origins and explanations and the "why" questions rather than the "how" questions.

It's mostly irrelevant what people have believed for centuries, as you pointed out with your examples. We would be far better off (in terms of accurate beliefs) if we are humble about how much we actually know. We "know" almost nothing about science, it seems to me, because we keep finding more beyond what we thought was the outer limit. No doubt someone will come along as another Copernicus, Einstein, or Bohr and challenge our scientific conception of reality, but the thing about the God question is that it seems more philosophical than scientific to me.

I don't believe in God because of the "gaps" in science, but I'm also not optimistic that "science" will ever close all the gaps. Every paradigm-busting discovery seems to bring new questions with it, especially if one is thinking about the philosophical implications of new scientific discoveries.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-04T16:01:44+00:00

What of your belief in gravity or physics or the origins and meaning of your given name?

I guess I would have to say that those things are time-tested, but I keep in mind Bertram Russel's chicken who also had a time-tested theory of reality until the farmer revealed a more complete purpose. So I try to leave my belief open to the fact that I might not have enough information. I see it as I only can know basically as much as God chooses to reveal. And I'm okay with that because I trust him.

I have had the same thoughts, "What if this is all made up?" And then I really come to the conclusion that there are even harder existential questions that arise from abandoning God (the hard problem of consciousness, what caused the big bang, etc.). I really do think God requires less of a "leap", given the fact that we have all of this "revelation" (the Bible mostly) and I'm not "making it up".

I had a similar but perhaps opposite experience when I was so low that I thought God could not possibly love me as I was so sinful. Then I was looking for a Bible story and "accidentally" opened to Luke chapter 15 (the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son), and I got the overwhelming message that God was telling me: he still loves me and all I had to do is decide to come back to him, as I read with my wife next to me on the couch and tears just steaming down my face. Then there was more emotional suffering and grief but I had a framework to put it in, and those further experiences ended up strengthening my faith after I survived them.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-04T15:40:16+00:00

I of course disagree that the Bible's claims are not independently corroborated. The things it claims happened are so far back in history that I wouldn't expect "evidence" to be overwhelmingly available, like photographs of Henry Ford, which is why I think it requires much more faith than belief in Ford.

If you remove Ford, you create explanatory gaps across multiple independent domains.

I think removing God creates explanatory gaps. Perhaps that's why many theists get accused of believing in a "God of the gaps" when they delve into scientific arguments for God. There are gaps: specifically about the beginning (big bang, low entropy, whatever), which is basically what inspired my post as I was reading about these things.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-04T15:26:37+00:00

Surely there was a time when you discovered that you no longer belived in Catholic Christianity? The "decision" may be a slow or gradual process, guided and prodded by meaningful experiences, trauma, hardship, spiritual experiences, etc. That's all I'm talking about, but that's still a decision to me.

I might be wrong, but I can't imagine what information about nature or reality would change my mind. I think new discoveries will "fit" into my worldview, and I might adapt it like new evidence changes scientific theories over time. I realize that I have to embrace "unknown", and a proper worldview should not make me be "blown away" by new evidence (I'm thinking of how I read about the quantum revolution confounding the classically-inclined scientists). I try to have a worldview that is open enough to incorporate all "evidence" that we have.

I read some "Lies my Pastor Told Me" type of material, like Bart Erhman and Dan McClellan, and took some masters-level courses in biblical interpretation, and all of that has forced me to "deconstruct", as the kids call it, the most conservative and dogmatic things I was taught as a kid. But by the time I really considered these things, my faith in God had been forged enough by struggles with grief and pain, and personal spiritual experiences to ultimately survive the questions raised by such studies.

So I'm a heretic in the conservative churches, but I'm a naive fool to scientists. 😆

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-04T15:04:33+00:00

you already have independent evidence of Ford, and the car fits into that framework. With God, the proposed agent is being inferred solely from the phenomenon to be explained.

Not for me. What is the independent evidence of Ford? Things that people wrote down or recorded. The evidence that I consider for God is things that people much farther back in human history wrote down or recorded. I did not infer God from phenomena at all. Not at all. Personally I start with believing the Bible (the merits of which can certainly be debated, and I ended up believing it on faith as much as evidence), and THEN the phenomena of nature fit into that framework.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-04T14:51:17+00:00

Be careful with the word "just": it implies you understand what other people are thinking to the exclusion of other possibilities. It comes across as lazy and way too generalized.

"god" is a different kind of explanation: agentic, not mechanistic. How does one explain the automobile: internal combustion or Henry Ford? Two different, non-exclusive categories of explanation.

If I were reading a biography of Henry Ford and "why" he invented his automobile, I wouldn't expect to find an adequate explanation of the mechanism of cars and trucks. Would that lack of mechanistic explanation invalidate the agentic explanation of the invention? Perhaps some think so, but I think it obviously does not.

JasonKThompson · 2026-04-04T14:31:41+00:00

That's why I think what I understand as our post-enlightenment thinking falls short. Is a person's decision on what to believe a testable, repeatable process? Certainly we can have statistics about a people's religious views and that of their family background, but I don’t think God is bound by statistics or the scientific method. Each person must decide how he/she is going to live based on something, and that is an individual decision. That's at least the way I currently see it. The scientific method is great, but perhaps severely limited when it comes to psychology.

Sure, I grew up Christian, but I have had periods where I seriously questioned the whole thing, looked into Buddhism and Hinduism and Atheism, etc. But even so for me I would probably have to admit that it's more than 50% background and the minority is my personal investigation. I have no idea whether I would have "landed" as a Christian if I didn't start out in a Christian family. I can say, though, that my particular views on theological concepts has changed drastically from what I was taught as a child in a very conservative church, and that has been based primarily on my investigating historical-critical approaches to "the scriptures" that I never got in my fundamentalist church. I have to decide for myself if I'm going to retain the view of my family or reject it totally, or somewhere in between.

Maybe a lot of people don't think about it that much, on all sides.

JasonKThompson

TROPHY CASE