God / Theism

Much has been written about the alleged tension between faith, reason, and science. Much of this has to do with the accepted definition of “faith,” and some of the tension results from a misunderstanding about the proper role of evidence when drawing proper inferences. Melissa Cain Travis has been thinking …

Christianity describes a God who sovereignly calls believers to repentance. Does this mean humans are mere puppets under the direction of an all-powerful Being who controls all decisions and dictates the final outcome? Does the Christian God allow humans any freedom to choose for themselves? The relationship between God’s sovereignty …

On April 22nd, 1970, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson created Earth Day to raise awareness about environmental pollution. Nearly a half century later, Earth Day has reportedly become a global event, attracting nearly 1 billion people to service projects and celebrations. Over these past 50 years or so, scientists have been …

My cold cases are typically built on circumstantial evidence. Cumulative circumstantial cases are incredibly powerful when considered in their totality; the more diverse the forms of evidence (and the more abundant their existence), the more reasonable the conclusion. As jurors consider these large collections of evidence implicating a particular suspect, …

As an atheist, I considered myself a committed philosophical naturalist, and I rejected supernatural explanations related to scientific or historical inquiry. If I encountered an ancient account describing a supernatural event, I immediately rejected it as “history” and assigned it to the category of “mythology.” True history, after all, cannot …

You don’t have to be a Christian long to recognize you don’t always get what you pray for. Why doesn’t God seem to answer all our prayers? Is it because we aren’t praying properly, or have we simply failed to recognize God’s answer? Our ideas about prayer and God’s ideas …

Christians claim God is “all-powerful”. Does this mean He can accomplish anything? Skeptics often test this notion by offering the following challenge: “Can the all-powerful Christian God create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it?” The question highlights an apparent dilemma: If God cannot create such a stone (or …

As a young atheist, I denied the existence of God for practical, experiential reasons. During my elementary school years, I found it difficult to understand why anyone would believe in God without visible evidence. I knew my parents, teachers and friends were real, because I could see them and I …

Richard Dawkins, the famous English evolutionary biologist and renowned atheist, revived an objection related to God’s existence in his book, The God Delusion. In the fourth chapter (Why There Almost Certainly Is No God), Dawkins wrote, “…the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The …

The concept of Hell is daunting for many Christians. It’s not pleasant to think our unbelieving loved ones might spend eternity separated from God, regretting their decision forever. Several religious traditions seek to avoid the problem by offering a second chance to those who reject God’s gift of forgiveness. They …