CrossExamined Blog
Tackling today’s toughest questions, these posts explore topics on God, morality, science, and culture.
Whether you’re a skeptic or believer, each article challenges your worldview and sharpens your thinking. Engaging, thought-provoking, and unapologetic, this is a place to dig deeper and follow the truth wherever it leads.
The Wisdon Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon 201. CONSTANT LEARNING “Know that when you are through learning, […]
Is Atheism a lack of belief in God?
Atheism, Theology and Christian ApologeticsIt’s been fashionable lately for atheists to claim that atheism is “a lack a belief in God.” So when a theist comes along and says that atheists can’t support their worldview, some atheists will say something like, “Oh, we really don’t have a worldview. We just lack a belief in God. Since we’re not making […]
But We Can’t Even Define Life
2. Does God Exist?, Philosophy of ScienceIn my previous blog I addressed some important issues in making the case that fine-tuning supports theism over atheism. Today I want to look at the objection against fine-tuning that says we can’t assess fine-tuning claims because we can’t even define ‘life’ – or put another way: “fine-tuning claims don’t properly account for other possible […]
The Wisdom Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon 191. MUSIC, LOVE & SEX “Plato taught us to “mark […]
Important Objections in the Fine-Tuning Debate
2. Does God Exist?In my previous blog I dealt with objections to fine-tuning based on misunderstandings of the nature of the argument or of probability theory. In this blog, however, I attempt to deal with important issues in the debate. If either objection succeeds it would undermine the design inference based upon the fine-tuning evidence. Could the Laws […]
Mistaken Objections that Seek to Trivialize Fine-Tuning
2. Does God Exist?This is my third blog in a series on fine-tuning as evidence for God. Here are the first and second blogs, which deal with the philosophical background. Before I share the evidence I want to refute or at least rebut a few objections seen at the popular level but rarely in scholarly circles – otherwise, […]
How Does Fine-tuning Provide Evidence for God?
2. Does God Exist?In my previous blog, I defined the following fine-tuning claim: “In the set of possible physical laws, parameters and initial conditions, the subset that permits rational conscious life is very small.” I pointed out how this fine-tuning claim is widely accepted within the physics community and that some skeptics even admit that it’s not unreasonable […]
If You Don’t Want God, You Better Have a Multiverse!
2. Does God Exist?Such is the advice from Bernard Carr in grappling with the fascinating discovery that the physics of the universe had to be fine-tuned if it were to support life. Carr views the only viable options as being either God or a multiverse (the theory that there are a vast number of other universes). Stanford physicist […]
The Wisdom Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon 181. “GENTLEMEN’S” CLUBS “The average “gentlemen’s club” is not actually […]
The Jewish Temple that may Prevent World War III
CrossExaminedIsrael is the most contested piece of real estate in the world. And the most contested piece of real estate within Israel is the temple mount in the old city of Jerusalem. Nearly every Jew believes that the Muslim Dome of the Rock, which dominates that thirty-six acre site, sits on the spot of all […]
The Wisdom Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon 171. DATING “Who can I date?” question has two […]
In 1948 an English professor at the University of Chicago penned a book whose main idea resonates well into the modern world and into today’s news headlines. The professor was Richard Weaver and his book was Ideas Have Consequences. The main thesis of Weaver’s book is that philosophy undergirds all of society. What we believe […]
The Wisdom Chronicle
Wisdom ChronicleThe Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon 161. CHILDREN “When Jesus said you have to enter the […]
Five Archaeology Books Every Christian Should Read
Israel, Theology and Christian ApologeticsThe Bible is not just one book, but sixty-six books composed over a period of around fifteen hundred years. The stories recorded in the Bible are not a myth, but real events recorded by real people who lived in real places in history. This means two things: First, as a science, archaeology can often provide […]
The Wisdom Chronicle
CrossExamined, Wisdom Chronicle151. YOU RETIRING? “Don’t put a period where God is putting a comma. Let Him punctuate your life story as He sees fit.” — Unknown 152. TAKE ACTION “Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” –Thomas Carlyle 153. WHAT MAKES A […]
Philosophical Arguments that the Universe had a Beginning
2. Does God Exist?This is my last blog dealing with the origin of the universe as an argument for the existence of God. I’ll examine the issue of whether new physics might be discovered to enable the universe to be past eternal. I’ll offer a couple of philosophical arguments against the possibility of an eternal past. If these […]
Footsteps of Jesus: Our First Day
IsraelAt this very moment I am sitting at a small wooden desk. To my left is a window that looks out onto a body of water. It’s no ordinary body of water. Mountains surround it on almost all sides. As the sun goes down my eyes soak in the beauty of the gray surface of […]
Much Ado About Nothing
2. Does God Exist?In my blog series on scientific evidence for God, I’ve initially focused on the origin of the universe. I defended the Kalam cosmological argument and argued that since currently known physics shows that the Universe had to have a beginning there must be a transcendent cause possessing some attributes of the classical understanding of God […]
Has Joshua’s Ai Been Discovered?
Debates, Theology and Christian ApologeticsLast year Christianity Today named their top ten archaeological discoveries of 2013. On the top of the list was an object that looks like a small insignificant amulet carved from stone. As it turns out, the object was a scarab from the 18th Dynasty of Egypt – very likely from the reign of Thutmose III […]
Objection to Premise 1 of the Kalam: Doesn’t Quantum Mechanics Violate the Causal Principle?
2. Does God Exist?It depends on what you mean by causality. A philosophically-informed physicist would say Quantum Mechanics (QM) doesn’t do away with causality: “In fact, QFT[Quantum Field Theory] is constructed in such a way to explicitly preserve causality. Any QFT textbook devotes 10 pages of chapter 1 to explain why the square root of the Klein gordon […]
Does The Origin of the Universe Point to God?
2. Does God Exist?A logical starting place for consideration of scientific data that may serve as evidence for God is the origin of the universe. William Lane Craig has made famous the following ancient argument known as the “Kalam cosmological argument[1]:” Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The Universe began to exist. Therefore, the Universe was caused. […]