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Today I want to take the time to discuss the first premise of a very popular argument for the existence of God namely the onto(il)logical argument for the existence of God or to be more precise the modal version of it.

The first premise within the argument as I want to discuss it is the following ( there are of course many versions of the argument in general):

“There is a possible world in which there is an entity which possesses maximal greatness.”

Now, for an argument to be sound only one premise needs to be invalid and I reject the premise that a being with maximal greatness can exist. And here’s why:

When we consider the term “greatness” what do we mean by that? It means that an entity has certain properties which make it great. There are properties which make people great. Among them I would say are Intelligence, Courage, knowledgability, honesty, fearlessness (at least to a certain degree in our case), generosity, strength and many others.

If there were a maximally great being, this being would have to possess all these qualities and of course many more to a maximal degree. As I will try to argue this is not possible and even if it were, we would have to conclude that this being cannot be the Abrahamic God.

Let’s for example look at being knowledgeable and being intelligent: If you have maximal knowledge then one would say you’re omniscient i.e. you know everything. However if we differentiate between what I call propositional knowledge like me knowing that the Bible has 66 books and experiental knowledge e.g. I know what love feels like because I have experienced it then omniscience itself becomes self refuting at least if that being has always been omniscient. A being that has always known everything doesn’t know what it’s like to learn, it lacks experiental knowledge of the learning experience. Additionally many Christians will say that God is unable to lie so he lacks this experiental knowledge too.

Now, it’s of course possible to escape what I outlined by defining omniscience such, that it escapes my problems. But if we hold it to be true, that an omniscient being has all propositional knowledge, then it follows that this being is unable to learn new facts and make new discoveries.

Yet intelligence requires a being to not be omniscient. Intelligence is after all our application of our limited knowledge to reason towards new conclusions to discover new facts and to apply it to get new and better results. This means necessarily that a being can only be intelligent if it is able to learn and if it doesn’t have all facts.

In other words omniscience cancels out intelligence.

Let’s look at Courage and fearlessness: If God has no fears whatsoever ( as many Christians will argue ) then he doesn’t have courage. A being can only be courageous if it stands up to its fears and looks them in the eye and hopefully overcomes them. Yet God doesn’t fear anything so his actions do never require any courage at all.

If we talk about honesty then the Christian will tell you, that God can’t lie. I think it’s not a big secret, that some lies can be virtuous. Think about parents lying to their child about Santa’s existence, because the child will be more excited that way. Yet if you have maximal honesty then any virtuous lie is impossible for you to tell. It is not good or great to always say the truth in every situation. Yes honesty is a virtue but it doesn’t remain one, when it’s applied in a maximal degree.

As far as generosity goes let me ask this: How can a being that possesses everything there is to possess be possibly generous? If God gives me a Ferrari then he isn’t generous because he owns an infinite amount of them.

I think as I established it is not possible for a being to be maximally knowledgeable, maximally intelligent, maximally courageous and maximally fearless. Furthermore maximal honesty diminishes greatness.

However one may argue, that perhaps it isn’t true that a being can possess all those properties to a maximal degree simultaneously but maybe a being can have the “perfect balance” e.g. being as knowledgeable and intelligent as it is possible to be without the two cancelling each other out.

Now if you define maximal greatness in this way, then this is a legitimate way out of contradictions but it is not without consequences. It would thereby follow that a maximally great being is not omniscient and is not all honest as for example in cases where lying is virtuous. Thereby a maximally great Being may be a god but this deity is not the God believed in by most Monotheists.

 

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation

 

 

 

Yeah I know… I haven’t written anything in weeks. The reason for that is that I lack motivation as well as inspiration currently. However this article is pretaining to a subject that I wanted to discuss a long time ago. I was either gonna write it now or not write it at all so I’m writing it now.

There is this one argument in favor of Christianity and the resurrection of Jesus, which seems to be quite popular:

I dupe it the ” Wouldn’t die for a lie” argument. What it argues is that the followers of Jesus in his day were in a unique position to know whether the resurrection indeed happened or not and they believed in it so strongly that they were willing to die for their beliefs. These disciples died gruesome martyr deaths as a result of their conviction.

Now, there are many stabs at the game I could take. One of which would be disputing, that their martyrdom is actually sufficiently established by history. While I do not think that this is actually the case, I want to take a different, more difficult and hopefully more fun approach:

I will concede, though I don’t think this is established, that the disciples did in fact die gruesome deaths that they were martyred as a result of professing Jesus resurrection.

I still don’t think the argument succeeds and here’s why:

I think there are at least 2 assumptions within the argument which aren’t spelled out and which would need to be established:

The first assumption is that the disciples only possible motivation for allowing themselves to be martyred was the bodily resurrection of Christ.

See I’m perfectly willing to accept, that they were martyred. What I cannot accept or at least not accept without a supporting argument is that the motivation for their martyrdom and the only possible explanation was the resurrection.

Let’s look for instance at another motivation which I take to be possible:

Maybe they were sacrificing themselves for their loved ones. Who knows maybe the disciples had children or a wife or whatever and out of love for them they were willing to die for them. Many people are willing to die for their children, why isn’t that a possibility in this case.

Now another apologist might respond with the following:

“Sure Rene, parents die for their children husbands die for their wives. But where is the connection? What plausible scenario do you have, under which there’s a connection with their martyrdom and the martyrs loved ones?”

So allow me to present a scenario:

Right after the events that led to Jesus death and supposed resurrection, the disciples started their church and they started to preach the Christian message. Why would they do that if it didn’t actually happen? Simple: Monetary reasons. The disciples were fishermen and peasants and didn’t make much money presumably. Now, if you start a religion and find adherents to it, then you can make more money and provide a better life for your loved ones. It’s evidently true, that the idea of a man being the son of God and coming back from the dead sells well. After all Christianity is still the dominant religion in the world. So what if the disciples just made it all up, in order to make money off of the people who would come to believe it? Later then, they reached a point where they were knee deep into the story. After all preaching is a full time job. They became financially dependent on their activity and they needed to financially secure their family. The only way to do that, was to continue. If the family is to survive and thrive they needed to continue preaching, even at the risk of their own death. For that they were martyred later.

This is just one scenario which I take to be a possible natural alternative to the resurrection. There might be other explanations but this is one of them.

There is a second assumption though within the argument:

There is the assumption that they were under the impression that had they stopped their preaching and had they recanted their statements that Jesus rose from the dead, they would’ve been spared their fates.

See if they had thought that they were going to be tortured and killed anyways regardless of whether they stopped preaching the gospel or not then they had no motivation at all to stop their activities.

For this argument to succeed the disciples must’ve believed that they actually had the opportunity to escape their fate. But maybe in their mind the damage had already been done. The world and especially the ancient world doesn’t work that way, that once you recant and admit that you lied you can get off scot free especially not after causing so much drama for the state. I mean just imagine the dialogue:

Persecutor: So did Jesus rise from the dead or not?

Disciple: Fine I admit it, he didn’t. We made it all up.

P: Oh in that case you can go. Never mind all the trouble you caused. Have a good one buddy.

D: Thanks, I’ll be on my way then. Gotta bake some cookies for the family. You too!

That is not how it works. When you cause trouble for the state, then it won’t just be forgiven. You will be punished whether you now admit to the lie or not is irrelevant and it’s not implausible to think, that the disciples knew that too.

Hell, maybe they even did recant, though History is silent about it but it just didn’t matter anymore. Maybe they were killed regardless of it.

There is tons more that could be said about this argument and maybe one day I will return to it but I want to end this with one final point:

Believe it or not but there are people out there to whom belief matters more than truth. There are people who will intentionally lie to you, in order to make you hold a false belief which they know to be false but they still think it’s virtuous that you believe it. One famous example are of course the Professional Creationists:

They know that they’re lying to children, they just don’t care. It’s so important to them, that they believe in Creation that they have no problems with it. Some of them know that they are wrong in their worldview but they believe it anyways.

It could be the case that the disciples intentionally lied, because other people believing it mattered more to them than the truth. Likewise if we look at some people today, maybe they even deceived themselves into believing it happened. Maybe they preached the story for so long, that they actually started to buy into it. Convinced as many people can be, conviction in and of itself is not evidence of whether the proposition believed in is actually true.

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation

Ever since becoming an Atheist I debated a lot of Christians on the existence of God and while not all of them were Presuppositionalists I was frequently accused of hating God and my Atheism being a result of my love for my sin. It seems to be the case that a lot of Christians think that everyone knows that a god exists and that Atheists are purposefully denying the Christian God specifically.

I can only say that this is not the case. However I do want to look at certain passages that Presupps provide in order to “show” that everyone knows God. I can inform everyone reading this, that if the Bible endorses Presuppositionalism then the Bible is wrong and the God of the Bible most certainly does not exist. My argument for this would be the following:

-P1: Either the God of the Bible exists or he does not exist

-P2: The Bible, proclaimed to be God’s word says that everyone knows that God exists

-P3: There are existing Humans who do not know that God exists (e.g. me)

C: The God of the Bible does not exist

The argument above is a strong deductive argument known as Modus Tollendo Ponens which means that if we have two options both of which can’t be true at the same time but one of them must be true and one of those two options is negated then the other one must be true by necessity.

There are two premises under dispute namely 2 and 3. If you are a Presuppositionalist then you can reject 3 and be done with the argument. If you’re not then you’ll have to reject 2.

Since this article is addressed to non-Presuppositionalists I’ll have a look at certain passages Presupps provide in order to support their conclusion that everyone knows God and whether their position has merit.

By doing this one of two things will happen: Either I conclude that the Bible does not support the Presuppositional stance in which case I know that their position is not biblically sound and I shall use this article in order to demonstrate this to them or I will conclude that their position is sound in which case premise 2 is supported and I know that the God of the Bible does not exist.

For this purpose I want to take a look at the Passage Presupps quite frequently pull out: Romans 1: 18-20.

Let’s look at Romans first. It is a letter from the Apostle Paul to Roman Saints.

At first Paul explains some tenets of his belief in Christianity and discusses his views on Jesus namely that Jesus was God’s son. After his introduction then he wants to teach the gospel to the people he writes to in this case the Romans. Then he starts preaching and this is where we approach the relevant part:

 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1: 18-20)

Similarly to my last post I once again want to examine a few relevant words in the orginal language in this case Greek. The words in question are “revealed” “known” “manifest” and “understood” .

the first word in question is “revealed”  ἀποκαλύπτεται ( apokaluptó ) and it means to bring to light or to uncover or to reveal.

The second word in question in is “known” or “to know” . the word used in this passage is γινώσκω (  ginóskó) and as you may have guessed it does translate to knowing something or  to realize something.

Up next is the word “manifest” in greek φανερός ( phaneros ) and once again we have definition which would seem to support Presuppositionalism as it means apparent or clear or evident or even well known.

Last but not least let’s look what we can find for the word “understood” . the word in question is νοέω ( noeó ). It has a few definitions such as “to perceive” or “to think” but one usage is also “to understand” which seems to make the most sense.

I think with what we read in Romans we have an open and shut case that the Bible indeed does support the notion that everyone knows that God exists. The implications of this are significant for Christianity:

When the Bible claims that the Bible is wrong and I can know that for certain and so can every nonbeliever in the world.

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation

 

 

 

Everyone reading this blog probably already knows that I’m an Atheist and a very outspoken one at that. As such it often happens, that I challenge Christians on certain verses, that I find irreconcilable with science and reality in general. One Christian challenged me to write a blog post about the verses I find to be problematic and while this list is far from extensive I do think these verses can certainly cause one to seriously doubt the accuracy of the document known as the Bible.

Let me warn you right away, since I am in the process of writing this: This post will be significantly longer than the others. I hope you don’t mind.

Before I however get into specifics, I want to lay down the law for this discourse or rather, let the Bible establish it. I am a strong believer (pun intended) that Christians should hold to Proverbs 30: 6 which says the following:

“Do not add to His words Or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar. ”

In other words when engaging in dialogue about certain verses we, both the nonbeliever and the Christian should extrapolate the meaning from the text not add to it. Now it is true, that the Bible needs to be interpreted but we should do so without adding things to the scriptures which aren’t indicated. For example it would be a valid inference to say that “the Kingdom of God” can be understood to mean “Heaven” based on Psalm 103: 19 where it says this:

“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, And His sovereignty rules over all.”

An instance where one might be adding to the text is when one proclaims that it was merely Jesus spirit that resurrected not his actual physical self. This would be blatantly contradicted by verses such Luke 24: 42-43 among others.

It is certainly true, that we have to interpret the Bible but adding words in order to fit it with modern science when no such thing is implied by the text is at least in my view dishonest to the nonbeliever, to yourself and to the historical text.

With that said, I’m certainly not perfect or beyond error but I try my best to stay honest to the text and I try to avoid Eisegesis (I like that word) i.e. adding to the text in order to fit my agenda as much as possible. I expect believers to do the same.

The first verse I want to address is Matthew 4: 8 . In order to address it though some background is in order:

In Matthew 4: 1-11 Jesus was to be tempted by Satan. Satan wanted to test whether Jesus was indeed the son of God by first asking him to turn stones into bread and then by throwing himself off of an exceedingly high temple, supposedly the highest temple of the holy city. Then “the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” (Matthew 4: 8) The devil then offered him all the Kingdoms if Jesus worshipped him. Jesus didn’t give in to the temptation.

So now that we know the context of this verse what problems do I see with it? Basically my problem is that showing someone all Kingdoms of the world from a high mountain is not possible on a sphere.There are many shapes on which it would be possible for example on a Pyramid if you are at the top and the bottom of it had no kingdoms, on a cone again on the top of it provided that there are no Kingdoms on the bottom or on 2D objects.

I have run this verse by believers recently and I got two objections basically:

The first one was basically that Jesus just had a vision of all those Kingdoms that the devil gave him.

For this purpose let us go back to the original language of the gospels namely Greek and look up the word in question here namely to “show” or in greek δείκνυμι ( deiknumi) . According to BibleHub this word translates as “to show” or to “demonstrate” or to “point out” or even to “expose to the eyes” .

Now Jesus merely having a vision rather than having the Kingdoms demonstrated to him doesn’t jive with the the original words of the author.

The second objection that came up is that despite the Earth being round Jesus could still see all the Kingdoms as could the devil, because they don’t have the limited sight that we have. I was instantly reminded of the Eagle vision from Assassin’s creed but if you’re going with that reasoning, then I’d have to point out, that taking Jesus up on the mountain was utterly redundant. There was no need to go on top so why would the devil bother? Furthermore adding “eagle vision” to Jesus’ skillset is not something that is in any way indicated by the original text. It’s basically adding to it (for whatever reason) rather than extrapolating from it and taking the Bible at its word. The last point and really a devastating one at that is that Satan wanted to test whether Jesus was indeed God’s son. In his first two temptations he always starts his sentences with “If you are the Son of God” . The Devil wanted to see a demonstration of Jesus’ abilities so presumably the devil didn’t know how far Jesus’ abilities reached. Therefore how could he have known of Jesus ability to see the entire world?

The next verse which I would like to address is Matthew 16: 27-28.

Again let me put it in context for you:

Jesus starts off by telling his disciples that he will have to go to Jerusalem in order to suffer and in order to die and be raised from the dead. Peter starts to doubt, that this will actually happen to Jesus but Jesus quickly turns down his concerns. Jesus then warns his disciples that they have to deny themselves in order to follow him. They have to give up their earthly lives and devout it to him, in order to earn eternal life. Then Jesus preached the following message

“For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. ( Matthew 16: 27-28 )

The problem I see here should be rather obvious. Jesus tells his disciples that some will not “taste death” (i.e. die) before Jesus Kingdom is to arrive. Yet God’s Kingdom has yet to arrive. The end times have not yet happened. So what is going on?

I would say in these verses the words we ought to take a second look at are “taste” “here” “son of man” and “his kingdom” .

The first word to  “taste” γεύομαι ( geuomai ) and it roughly translates as To “taste” or to “experience” . Secondly let’s look at “here” ὧδε (  hóde ). Here we can find that it this word seems to apply in the present tense at the certain location of at which the event was supposed to take place. “son of man” is the next expression in question, which translates as “Υἱὸν τοῦ  ἀνθρώπου” ( Huion tou anthrōpou ). The first word “son” is self explantory as is “of” so the critical one is “man” which translates as one man or the human race. If we assume the latter then this description would work to indicate him as the Messiah since Adam was the first man of whom all are descended (at least supposedly) and Jesus is often refered to as the last Adam i.e. the last in the chain of the human race our representative. Last but not least we need to address “his Kingdom” which would seem to imply to be the Kingdom of God.

With the hard legwork out of the way we can confidently say, that the “Kingdom of God” i.e. Heaven was to arrive before some of the disciples experienced death and it was addressed at the people at that time and place.

One common objection that I did get a few times is that this arrival of the Kingdom wasn’t literally the end times but rather referred to the transfiguration six days later, as outlined in Matthew 17. The obvious problem of course it that it would’ve been noteworthy, had someone tasted death within these 6 days yet it isn’t mentioned.

Moving on to the next passage which would be Joshua 10: 13 . Once again some context is in order.

Basically the situation at that time and place was that Gibeon was under attack as the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon joined forces. Joshua who had previously conquered Ai was informed of this and he went out with his troops. God spoke to him and told him that he would win the battle. True to his word Joshua with God’s help did manage to win. God handed the souls of the Amorites to the Israelites and Joshua praised him for it. As a not too unimportant side effect of this seemingly succesful battle it just so happened that “the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.” (Joshua 10: 13) .

This verse is problematic for one really simple reason: If the sun did indeed stop in the sky then it would inevitably result in a mass extinction. It is estimated that the Earth rotates at a speed of 1675 km/h . If it stopped to rotate then we would experience a similar effect as if we drove a car and then suddenly stopped, only that we wouldn’t have buckled up and the speed would be about 10 times faster. As I write this I’m sitting in my room in front of a window and if the Earth stopped rotating right now I would fly right through the window and out into the parking lot which is 5 meters beneath me. I’m fairly certain that this would kill me, especially since all my other stuff in my room would take a simlar route as me.

Let’s take a look at the original text though this time it is in hebrew. I think the words under discussion are “stand” and “sun” . The first one to “stand” (or rather stood in the past tense) translates as  וַיַּעֲמֹ֤דor ( way-ya-‘ă-mōḏ ) and it means to stop or to stand still secondly the “sun” הַשֶּׁ֙מֶשׁ֙ ( haš-še-meš ) is indeed the sun rather than a metaphor of some sorts.

So indeed the Bible does proclaim that the sun stopped in the sky i.e. that the Earth stopped rotating. Most often when confronted with this problem Christians tell me that God invoked a miracle to stop the disaster. However in the Bible the incoming destruction isn’t even hinted at and neither is a miracle that would have prevented it. To invoke one would once again be Eisegesis in an attempt to save the Bible from falsifiction. Once again in that case I point you towards Proverbs 30: 6 . The second solution many offer is to question whether a crash would actually happen if the Earth stopped. This answer shows a significant lack of imagination ( as the Earth would be analogous to a car stopping ) and is indicative of that person’s understanding of science. Or they block me which is also an option.

Last but not least let’s have a look at the most controversial book in the entire Bible. I am of course talking about Genesis and specifically Genesis 1.

My aim when taking a look at Genesis 1 is to investigate whether the Bible really does teach a recent 6 day Creation just 6000 years ago or whether the days could be longer periods of time stretching over billions of years. Furthermore I want to compare Genesis to what I take to be the history of our Universe and see if they’re compatible. In order to save space however I will this time merely link to the verses in question.

So let’s address first the history of the Universe as I see it (it pretty much lines up with what mainstream science claims):

About 13.7 billion years ago the Big Bang initiated the Universe as we know it, then light is born just a few seconds after the Big Bang, a few minutes later we get the first atoms aproximately 150 million years later we get our first generation of stars, then stellar nucleosynthesis happens which leads to heavier elements forming, then the milky way galaxy is born and within it our sun about 9 billion years after the Big Bang, dust from the formation of the sun leads to planets forming about 4.5 billion years ago Earth has formed it gets hit by another planet resulting in the birth of the moon, comets hit the Earth to give us water plus the chemicals from which the first life arises about 3.8 billion years ago, then we get fish land animals and birds (in that order) and about 200.000 years ago the first humans arise.

Genesis as you are surely aware has a different order:

First the Universe and Earth were created along with water, then light is born, then the atmosphere was created, then we get dry land along with vegetation, then the sun and the moon are born along with the stars, then God created fish and other sea animals as well as birds and every other creature which can fly, and finally he created land animals along with man.

So I would say right away that if you take Genesis to be a literal account of the history of the Universe then it is incompatible with evolution and the other theories Creationists deny.

There is however a bigger issue which is the question of how old the Earth is according to the Bible. If you add up the lineages from Adam to Jesus to today then you’ll arrive at roughly 6000 years. So the big question is whether the days in Genesis are six ordinary days or longer periods of time. For this purpose I’ll have a look at the words “evening” “morning” and “day” in Genesis.

Evening in Genesis can be translated to עֶ֥רֶב ( ‘e·reḇ ) and it is an ordinary evening . Secondly morning  בֹ֖קֶר ( ḇō·qer ) is an ordinary morning . Last but not least day י֥וֹם ( yō·wm ) is flexible in its definition so it can mean day or ages etc. in this context however it seems to be indicated that the Creation days were indeed ordinary days according to the Bible which is of course irreconcilable with what science tells us.

Furthermore in Exodus 20 the forth commandment says this:

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work,  but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.  For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.” (Exodus 20 8-11)

All in all I think the case for a Young Earth being indicated by the Bible seems to be made beyond reasonable doubt.

Those are just some of the reasons why I reject the Bible. Thanks for your time and feel free to offer me your take on what I presented.

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation

For those of you who are unaware I joined a Google Hangout on YouTube last night which if you’re interested can be accessed here .

Within this post I want to basically elaborate on my impressions and how it was like to join in on the conversation.

Right of the bat I must say I was a little uneasy going into the conversation, because it was clear that my side of the topic of God’s existence (the Atheists) would be outnumbered. I also knew, having had contact with 2 of the participants and knowing myself pretty well, that there was potential for a shouting match and the friendly conversation could’ve easily turned into a debate, where I had to be at my best with my counter-apologetics.

I am glad to say that this was not the case. While I still held to a minority view within the hangout, it was a really civil calm and respectful discourse.

I think it was a good idea to start with some brief introductions, since I didn’t actually know where everyone was coming from beforehand, concerning their theological position but also concerning other relevant positions like the age of the Earth and the Universe and whether or not evolution is true or not.

After that we talked about some of the Bible characters (and historical figures within the Bible). I actually enjoyed the question, because I was familiar with it and my answer was of course the character of Adam since he’d pretty much be the only person in history who ever had real personal contact with God (or at the very least is among the few who did). The other responses were interesting as well, seeing that some Christians see themselves in the historical figures and have made them their heroes and heroines.

While it wasn’t a debate in any sense of the word there were some heated moments which I want to address.

It felt like you could cut the tension with a knife when Peter my partner in crime so to speak brought out some verses, that concern slavery and human rights in general. While I do hold to the view that the Bible does promote slavery (even IF all the verses under dispute could be explained away by the way) but it never escalated in any way.

The other moment was basically when Peter addressed the Young Earther Jason within the Hang-out and challenged him on checking the sources that Answers in Genesis uses for their articles. At that point I jumped in as well and explained why I don’t AiG at all and why I find them dishonest, namely because they lie for Jesus and I used their tendency to quote mine authorities as an example.

After that then I challenged Sy on “the evolutionary problem of evil” which means that God if he was good would’ve used five major extinction events to achieve his Creation. I find that incompatible with a good God but I do applause his general attempt to reconcile the known science with the scriptures, however a futile attempt I think it to be, at least it has the potential to bring about a situation in which more Christians will accept the theory of evolution which is in my view evidently and obviously true.

Those were some of my general impressions that I took away. Stephanie, if you’re reading this, as I think you will do some day, I would once again like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate in yesterday’s coffee talk.

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation