I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal
Scepticism, ironically, draws its life's blood from claims to have a good deal of knowledge. For example, your friends claim to know, 'Since every possible option has not been explored, nothing can be said for certain. ' That statement is itself a claim to knowledge!
If someone is of the opinion that biological men ought to use the men's room and biological females ought to use the women's room - he is regarded as a bigot. I find this absolutely astonishing. Especially since using a toilet facility is a matter of the privacy of other people who are in the room. It's not a matter of the rights of the transgender person.
I have found that the more I reflect philosophically on the attributes of God the more overwhelmed I become at his greatness and the more excited I become about Bible doctrine. Whereas easy appeals to mystery prematurely shut off reflection about God, rigorous and earnest effort to understand him is richly rewarded with deeper appreciation of who he is, more confidence in his reality and care, and a more intelligent and profound worship of his person.
It’s the combination of improbability with an independently given pattern that discredits chance.
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.
Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
I love all the '90s kind of grunge, and I love classic rock: That's where the spectrum lies.
Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.
God cannot suffer - at least not as we do. It has some roots in Greek philosophy: if God is a perfect being, suffering would reduce that perfection, so God cannot suffer. More thoughtful theologians take the phrase in the sense of one of the confessions of faith that talks of God as being "without parts or passions" - he is not physical as we are, and not subject to "passions" in the sense of uncontrollable emotions that can take charge of us at times. God is not "emotional," if that word is used as some kind of weakness.