God's Existence, Science and Faith, Suffering and Evil, Jesus' Resurrection, and Book Reviews

Atheism And The Escape From Responsibility

I heard a couple of times about a theist making the claim that the only reason that someone was an atheist was so that the atheist could do whatever he wanted without being held responsible. I've also heard an atheist complain about theists making this type of accusation. What really gets me is that the theist didn't offer anything to support his claim, and the atheist did not offer anything to support the opposite (not that he even claimed the opposite was true). Either way, both people were simply complaining about the other.

The Inhumanely Cold and The Deliriously Warm

I have noticed a couple different behaviors in people. First, people who are so caught up in reality that they reduce it to a cold-hearted survivalistic, "this is reality- live with it!" world, that they forget that humanity has dignity, and the world has beauty. Second, people who are so blinded by their fantastic and utopianistic ideas of what the world could be that they forget that they live in a reality of hardship, pain, and suffering.

Judgment Day- Part 4

In Parts 1-3 I covered different types of judgment. The focus was on "discernment" and "condemnation". So, what does the Bible say about making judgments? Here's a few passages that I want to tackle:

Proverbs 3:21- "My son, preserve sound judgment and discernment, do not let them out of your sight."
Phillipians 1:10- "...so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ"
Matthew 7:1- "Judge not, lest you be judged."

I placed these purposely in this order because I wanted to show that both the Old and New Testament condone judging. The question is though, which one ("discernment" or "condemnation") does "judge" mean in these?