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What Does Faith in Jesus Rest On?

Always have a ready defense for the hope within you, says 1 Peter 3:15. What is that defense?

Some Christians will tell you they believe God’s Word, and he is God, and that settles it. But this kind of argument is no defense. It isn’t even logical. It presupposes the very thing it sets out to defend.

Growing up in a variety of churches, I had the chance to hear diverse perspectives. What is faith? Why should we have faith? Some people told me it was wrong to ask too many questions or to have doubts. Others said questions and doubts were part of the process of taking an idea seriously. It’s not bad to doubt, if you work through that doubt and find the truth.

Top 10 Lessons in Thinking

Here are my favorite principles of logic and reasoning, collected from Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

While these do stand on their own, they become most useful if you study them individually and in depth. For that, I recommend Peikoff’s book.

Was Thomas’s Doubt Reasonable?

“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Was he right to say this? Thomas didn’t tell us his epistemology. We don’t even know his attitude as he said those words. I suspect he was trembling, not indignant.

Was Thomas being reasonable? It seems ambiguous.

Does Philosophy Bow the Knee to Scripture?

One of the most important questions for the Christian thinker is:

How does the truth of Scripture relate to the truth of philosophy, or science, or history?

If we put it in terms of “revelation,” it becomes: How does special revelation relate to general revelation?

Inductionism: What’s the Plan?

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Where are we headed? Today I want to show a brief outline of the philosophic system I advocate, which I call Inductionism.

My philosophy has three main normative principles:

1) Seek your own life by gaining knowledge.

2) Gain knowledge by inductive reason.

3) Base your faith on facts.