Faith and Signs a lesson from the Cross of Jesus

Dawkins at the University of Texas at Austin

What is faith? Many define faith as “blind trust” or irrational beliefs:

[Faith] means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence. … The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry. Blind faith can justify anything. (Dawkins, the Selfish Gene, 198)

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence (Dawkins)

Is faith really blind? Continue reading

What are 6 essentials of the faith on which you would never bend?

Tim Kimberley the Executive Director at Credo House has a great series called Elder Questions over at the Parchment and Pen blog. In a recent post he posed the question (or rather he was posed the question)

list 6 core convictions concerning which you (as elder) will never give in, nor even bend on, as you lead the church and reference at least 3 scriptures [in] support [of] each one.

I think this is a great question to wrestle with. Here are my six.

1. God created all things seen and unseen
In keeping with the intent of this question, I am not necessarily addressing how long it took or even how long ago that occurred (although these are important). Here the central conviction is that God exists outside of His creation, outside of space and time, and is the First Cause of all that exists. This is probably the most central claim of the Scriptures and the one that can be seen in creation itself. Continue reading

Reading the Bible makes us more Progressive? Really?

Benjamin Corey over at Formerly Fundie offers 10 reasons why reading the Bible makes us (or at least him) more progressive. And Jesus Creed had a lively discussion on this post. In this post I wanted to share my perspective on some of his list and provide 5 things the progressive movement misses when they read their Bible.

Five parts of the Bible the Progressive movement misses

  • Power is often abused by those who have it.
  • Voluntary acts of love and giving is what God wants. Continue reading