JurassicGate: Chris Pratt Blasts Political Correctness

Our society claims to promote tolerance. Yet what we mean by "tolerance" nowadays seems to be "throwing a tantrum over anything that could conceivably offend anyone, until people pretend they agree on everything."

Tolerance presupposes disagreement. If I agree with your views, I don't need to tolerate them. Tolerance only comes into play when you believe something, I believe something quite different, and we want to make sure we don't start killing each other over our differences.

Yet any departure from the status quo, no matter how trivial, is now perceived as a cringeworthy offense, and is met with howling intolerance by the mindless stormtroopers of political correctness.

Chris Pratt draws attention to this unfortunate cultural degeneration in a recent Facebook post, where he apologizes for the inevitable offense he will cause in the Jurassic World press tour. Here's his scathing "apology":

Ravi Zacharias on Buddhism, Christianity, and Suffering

According to Buddhism, the source of suffering is desire. Eliminate desire, and you eliminate suffering. The goal, then, is complete detachment.

When his son was born, the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) famously declared: "A fetter has arisen." That is, he perceived his son as an obstacle to his enlightenment. The Buddha then abandoned his wife and child in order to pursue detachment.

Ravi Zacharias compares this response to suffering with the response of Christianity:

"It does not seem accidental that the night Gautama Buddha left his palace to pursue an answer to pain and suffering was the very night his wife was giving birth to their son. In his quest to eliminate suffering, he actually walked out and left his wife alone in the throes of her pain. Contrast this with the God of the Bible, who came into this world Himself in the person of His Son to suffer on the cross, to embrace pain and suffering for the sake of humanity. Buddha walked away from his son and from pain. In Christianity, God is part and parcel of the solution." (Why Suffering?, p. 131)

Rodney Stark on the New Atheists

Rodney Stark

The "New Atheists" are rapidly becoming the atheistic equivalent of Westboro Baptist Church. Oddly enough, this mass of anti-intellectuals, mindlessly repeating whatever Dawkins & Co. say, happen to view themselves as champions of science and reason.

Dr. Rodney Stark has written more than 30 books and more than 140 scholarly articles and is Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at Baylor University. Here's his assessment of the scholarly prowess of the "New Atheists":

"To expect to learn anything about important theological problems from Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett is like expecting to learn about medieval history from someone who had only read Robin Hood." (Rodney Stark, What Americans Really Believe, p. 120)

Paul Copan on the New Atheists

Paul Copan

Here's a good description of the "New Atheists" by Paul Copan:

The Neo-atheists' arguments against God's existence are surprisingly flimsy, often resembling the simplistic village atheist far more than the credentialed academician. The Neo-atheists are often profoundly ignorant of what they criticize, and they typically receive the greatest laughs and cheers from the philosophically and theologically challenged. True, they effectively utilize a combination of emotion and verbal rhetoric, but they aren't known for logically carrying thoughts through from beginning to end. Their arguments against God's existence aren't intellectually rigorous—although they want to give that impression. Yes, they'll raise some important questions concerning, for example, the problem of evil, but again, their arguments are a collage of rhetorical barbs that don't really form a coherent argument. I've observed that while these men do have expertise in certain fields (biology and evolutionary theory in the case of Dawkins and Dennett), they turn out to be fairly disappointing when arguing against God's existence or Christian doctrine. And a quick check of Dawkins's documentation reveals a lot more time spent on Google than at Oxford University's Bodleian Library. (Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, p. 17)

Debate: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? (David Wood vs. John Loftus)

Jesus' resurrection is the heart of both Christian preaching and Christian living. In 1 Corinthians 15:17, the Apostle Paul said: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless." Hence, Christianity stands or falls with the resurrection of Jesus.

In order to discredit Christianity, atheists simply need to discredit the central miracle on which it is founded. But can atheistic explanations account for the historical facts? If they can't, is atheism a worldview in crisis?

In this video, David Wood (Christian, former atheist) and John Loftus (atheist, former Christian) debate whether Jesus rose from the dead.