The Intellectual Retreat of Christianity
Brian Holtz
Created Apr 2004
- Weakened claims
- Errantism
- God of the shrinking gaps
- Retreating from the justness of Hell
- Christian academics no longer invoke Christ as a goal/purpose
- Less speculation about afterlife
- Methodological retreat
- Calling disagreement subjective
- Naturalists have faith
- Accepting skepticism, logic, scientific method
- No expectation of empirical support in cosmology, neuroscience,
biology, archaeology,
- Don't try to test efficacy of prayer
- double-think
- Holy Spirit is best evidence
- Impossible Faith
- Divine Shyness
- Best of all possible worlds
- tentative: this "might be" the best of all possible worlds
- Asymmetry of conversion
- Revelation not perfect, but subject to spatiotemporal and
sociological constraints
- Don't try to mandate Christian salvation or behavioral codes