In order to understand where the Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau really came from, you have to first “bridge the gap” between what happened with the Protestant Reformation and its connections with the Machiavellian strategies of some secular rulers at that time, along with the growing scientific discoveries that were happening as all that…
This week, I am continuing in my walk through of Inside the Nye/Ham Debate by Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge, in which they “analyze” the debate that took place between Bill Nye and Ken Ham three years ago. The purpose of these posts is not to rehash the debate itself, but rather take a closer…
For the past 200 years, ever since the so-called “Enlightenment,” there has been a false narrative that has held sway over Western culture. Consider the very terms we just take for granted as being historically accurate: the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment—these were terms coined by secular atheists who were hell bent on convincing successive generations…
In my last post on Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge’s take on the Nye/Ham Debate that took place in February 2014, I took a look at the way Ham and Hodge (HH) attempted to frame Ken Ham’s opening statements in a favorable light. As I noted, nothing in Ham’s statements or HH’s analysis of them…
If you have ever spent any time in one of the many “creation/evolution” debate forums on Facebook, you can attest to the fact that many of the debates get pretty toxic pretty quickly. Indeed, it is easy to get frustrated and to allow yourself to get sucked into the pettiness. It is hard to stick…
At the same time Hobbes was putting forth in England his theory regarding the absolute authority of a secular ruler, Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was in the Netherlands doing something very similar. Spinoza is actually seen by many to be one of the first men to advance what is called “historical criticism” of the Bible. At…
Almost 150 years after the publication of The Prince, another book of tremendous influence was published in 1651 AD: Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes’ political outlook and aims regarding Church/State relations closely resembled those of Machiavelli, in that he grounded his outlook upon a presuppositional materialistic worldview. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes believed that it was a huge…
Even though the waves of reform in the 11th and 12th centuries had swept much of the corruption out of the Catholic Church, by the 1400’s the Catholic Church had once again been steeped in corruption at the hands of highly political and degenerate popes, not to mention the Borgia and Medici families who gained…
Three years ago [Check that…FIVE years ago], Bill Nye “the Science Guy” and Ken Ham debated each other at the Creation Museum. The topic of the debate was this: “Is Creation a Viable Model of Origins in Today’s Modern Scientific Era?” By that time, I was already pretty convinced that young earth creationism was not…
If it seems I have been too harsh regarding the Protestant Revolution, I want to explain the reason. I am assuming that most of my audience is predominantly Protestant/Evangelical. Therefore, the common narrative found within the Protestant tradition about the roots of Protestantism is that of a glorious “coming out of the Catholic dark,” led…