Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

For my phil. of religion survey we began by reading a survey of the ontological arguments for the existence of God. I think that this argument is a logical proof that God exists. However, I don't think logical arguments necessarily aid one in evangelism. By the way, ontological is a study of being.

(1) God is the greatest possible being: (i) God is all-powerful; (ii) God is all-knowing; and (iii) God is morally perfect, i.e. all-loving.

(2) The greatest possible being does not depend upon its existence from anything else, i.e. it self-exists or it necessarily exists.

(3) Therefore God exists.

Though this argument looks weak and simple the premises are very resillient. The move that the atheist has to make is that it is impossible for there to be a greatest possible being with the attributes in (1). This is why so much of philosophy of religion has depended upon defending God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.

I'll post on my vagueness class later on ;)

School is in session

ahh, school is starting in 14 1/2 hours today (it's 12:28 AM) don't know if I'm ready for it or not though...

Liturgical Baptists

I have spoken to a couple of friends about this topic. Now I am very intrigued, I would like to see a liturgical Baptist church started. Why? Because churches have become self-help resource centers. A church lives and dies based upon a pastoral staff's ability to recruit and give a sales pitch. The liturgy is based upon the Gospel and is God-centered not man-centered. Now don't get me wrong, I'm still holding to distinctive Baptist theology. However, the Baptist style of worship is becoming bankrupt and is not about God.

What are some differences between a liturgical service and a typical Baptist service. A liturgical service would have the Lord's Supper every week, recite a creed, responsive readings, perhaps incense, group prayers/confession, and would not have any musical solos.

Most Baptists claim to be non-creedal people, yet all the creeds are is a summary of what the Scriptures teach. I would suggest that if one cannot affirm the early church creeds (specifically the Nicene creed) then one is not a Christian. Creeds allow new believers to discern between heresy and biblical teaching. They are a confession of the community of believers beliefs. I don't know how creeds are any different from the sinner's prayer that all Baptists are supposed to pray before they get saved. Speaking of which...

Another reason to recite creeds during church service is to allow people to determine if they will side with the community of believers or not. We are saved through belief in Christ, not praying the sinner's prayer. Most people say, I was saved when I did X - usually X is praying a prayer. Hence putting the focus upon the individual who prayed. Yet, what if we recite a creed every Sunday and one of the lines in the creed mentions belief in Christ who died for our sins. If all the people confess this aloud and really believe it and mean it when they say it but haven't prayed the sinner's prayer are these people saved? I would suggest that they are saved. This is one more method to allow people to profess their belief in Christ. Altar calls are not the only method of having a non-believer to become a believer.

I also think that a liturgical service puts a greater emphasis on the community of believers than the preacher. There is a set order of service and people come to Church with a reverent attitude, rather than an attitude of looking to be entertained.

I'll post more on this later.

Class Schedule

As the title says =)

Mondays:

3PM - 6PM Philosophy of religion survey: topics covered - problem of evil, ontological argument, and religious ethics

7PM - 10PM vagueness: problem of the heaps, if 1 grain of sand is not a heap, and if 2 grains of sand is not a heap, and if 3 grains of sand is not a heap, etc.... then 10,000 grains of sand is not a heap


Wednesdays:
7PM - 10PM Philosophical naturalism: how can we have objective standards for art, beauty, religion, knowledge, etc. if there isn't anything that transcends the physical world?

Speaking of God

I think one of the key questions for Christians today is whether Christians and Muslims refer to the same God. Both Muslims and Christians would agree that they worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However the problem is that the Christian God is a Triune God and the Muslim God is not Triune - in fact Muslims strongly explain how God is not a Trinity.

Since Christians would claim that God is necessarily a Triune God I will use this fact to explain how Christians worship a different God than the Muslims.

One thing I have yet to resolve is natural law or General revelation. I'm not sure what to do with this subject yet.

Find the nearest book

Here's something I found on another blog. Do this:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

(1) The Blessed Hope by George Eldon Ladd
(2 - 3) What Christ has accomplished on His cross is a finished work, but the salvation of God's people is not complete and will not be brought to consummation apart from the glorious return of Christ.

Life in General *thinks of MxPx album*

I have decided to post more mundane details about my life on my blog because all too often people comment that there are many posts on my blog that they don't read due to the philosophical nature of the post.

Anyway, today I didn't set my alarm and I slept til' 11:20 or so. I've set my alarm for the last 3 weeks even on Saturdays and last night I was so tired that I decided that I needed to sleep until my body felt like waking up - as opposed to allowing a pre-arranged time (alarm) to wake me up. Though, in the future I will continue to use my alarm clock to wake me up, regardless of what day of the week it is.

Shifting Gears

All this summer I have had things in a pretty low gear ... well now it's time for things to start shifting into a higher gear. I have one more free week before school starts. After that, it's going to be a very, very, busy semester.