A Brief Series on Ken Ham’s Book, “How Could a Loving God?” (Part 4: How I’ve Come to Answer the Question of Suffering”

We now come to my final post on the topic of Ken Ham’s book, How Could a Loving God?, in which he attempts to address the topic of suffering and death. In my first three posts, I gave an overview and critique of Ham’s answer. In a nutshell, the problem with Ham’s YECist answer to…

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A Brief Series on Ken Ham’s Book, “How Could a Loving God?” (Part 3: Accepting Suffering, but no, Ken, We’re Not Going Back to Eden)

Ken Ham’s book, How Could a Loving God? addresses the topic of theodicy: how can one reconcile the idea of a loving God when there is so much suffering and death in the world? In my previous two posts, I have given a brief overview of each chapter in his book and have critiqued the…

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A Brief Series on Ken Ham’s Book, “How Could a Loving God?” (Part 2: Secular Humanism, and a Wrong Reading of Genesis 1-3–Whose Fault is It?)

In his book, How Could a Loving God? Ken Ham attempts to give what he feels are biblical answers to the problem of suffering and death in the world. In my last post, I provided a brief overview of the book and a critique of chapter 1. In this post, I will take a look…

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Suffering, Death, and Ham: A Brief Series on Ken Ham’s Book, “How Could a Loving God?” (Part 1): An Overview

This week I am going to look at Ken Ham’s book, How Could a Loving God?: Powerful Answers on Suffering. It is a relatively short book (192 pages) that Ham wrote back in 2007 on the topic of suffering—namely, that age-old question, “How could there be a loving God if there is so much suffering…

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“Mere Morality” by Dan Barker (Part 7): Thus Concludes the Matter

We now come to the end of my critique of Dan Barker’s book, Mere Morality. In all honesty, it hasn’t been a fun series to write—it wasn’t because Barker’s arguments were challenging or even offensive. Rather, it was because his arguments were simply pedantic and rather childish. Simply put, after awhile, writing, “No, that is…

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“Mere Morality” by Dan Barker (Part 6): Rebellion, Curses, and Evil (Why Dan Barker Misunderstands Them All)

We are moving on to yet another post about Dan Barker’s book, Mere Morality. As I said in the previous post, the second half of Barker’s book really just amounts to agenda-driven rants based on decontextualized passages from the Bible. Therefore, the rest of this book-review series is going to be a simple process of…

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“Mere Morality” by Dan Barker (Part 5): God, Morality, Ethnic Cleansing?

We now come to the point of Dan Barker’s book, Mere Morality, where it essentially devolves into an exercise in over the top condemnations of the Bible and Christianity based on really bad biblical reading and interpretation. It certainly feeds into the common narrative and stereotype many people have regarding the Bible and Christianity, but…

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“Mere Morality” by Dan Barker (Part 4): Reason, Law, and Rebellion…and why the New Atheists really are just secular ultra-fundamentalist cult

After his elaboration on his belief that morality and culture are a result of evolutionary forces, Dan Barker then addresses the issues of Reason, Law, and Rebellion. If you remember, Barker borrowed his image of what it takes to discern what is moral from the image of a man with an angel on one shoulder…

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MY NEW BOOK IS OUT! (Yes, you need to buy it!)

ANNOUNCEMENT: Today my new book, Christianity and the (R)evolution in Worldviews in Western Culture came out. It is available on Amazon.com. I thought I’d share a section from chapter 10. On September 11th 2001 the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda high-jacked four planes. The passengers on Flight 93 were able to overpower the high-jackers, but Flight 93…

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“Mere Morality” by Dan Barker (Part 3): Morality Genes, Cultural Memes, and More Assertions From the “Evolution of the Gaps”

In my previous post on Dan Barker’s book Mere Morality, I responded to Barker’s attempt to draw a distinction between “religious values” and “human values,” as well as his claim that morality is solely a social issue. In this post, I am going to address Barker’s comments regarding his own “trinity” of what constitutes morality:…

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