by Dr. Jason Lisle | Mar 6, 2026 | Refuting the Critics
We have been examining the philosophy of presentism – the claim that “only present things exist.” In its strong form, presentism would insist that “only present things exist, have existed, or will exist.” Of course, biblically, presentism is false because past things and future things are real according to Scripture (and are known by God). Thus, the Bible endorses eternalism – the claim that past, present, and future are equally real. But Phil Dennis has criticized eternalism and insists that presentism is true. Yet nearly all of his arguments are strawman fallacies – criticizing a misrepresentation of eternalism as if it claims that past, present, and future all exist now – in the present. Sometimes a presentist will retreat to a trivial claim that “only present things exist now – in the present.” But no one would disagree with this. Eternalists accept that only present things exist in the present. But we maintain that the past and future are just as real (true to the mind of God) as the present. Let’s continue to analyze Dennis’s claims.
by Dr. Jason Lisle | Nov 7, 2025 | Physics, Refuting the Critics
We have been analyzing the claims of Phillip Dennis and his criticism of the ASC model. In particular, Dennis claims to have refuted the conventionality thesis – Einstein’s claim that the one-way speed of light “is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity” [emphasis in original] (Einstein 1916). Conversely, Dennis claims that Einstein is wrong and that the one-way speed of light is necessarily the same as the round-trip speed of light: c = 186,282.397 miles per second in vacuum. However, we have already shown that Dennis’s previous attempts to prove this were fallacious because they begged the question. That is, Dennis had used equations that tacitly assume the one-way speed of light. In his latest article, Dennis claims that the one-way speed of light has been empirically measured in two independent experiments. We will examine the first of these here. We will again show that Dennis has once again begged the question. That is, he unwittingly assumed the one-way speed of light is isotropic in his argument.
by Dr. Jason Lisle | Oct 24, 2025 | Apologetics, Physics, Refuting the Critics
In this article, we review – at a layman level – the original argument that Phil Dennis made against ASC and my refutation of his claims. This is important for two reasons. First, Dennis’s first article contained a great deal of mathematics, and this required me to reply in kind. Therefore, my goal here is to explain the disagreement between us without using any equations so that the layman may understand the essence of the dispute.
by Dr. Jason Lisle | Sep 26, 2025 | Astronomy, Physics, Refuting the Critics
This article series will be very important for those interested in the distant starlight issue. Secular astronomers claim that the light from the most distant galaxies has taken billions of years to reach Earth. We can see these galaxies in our most powerful telescopes. Many people conclude from this that the universe must be billions of years old, and therefore that the biblical description of creation is false. But the notion that light takes billions of years to get from distant galaxies to Earth is predicated upon a particular modern convention of how we choose to define the timing of distant events.
by Dr. Jason Lisle | Mar 7, 2025 | Apologetics, Refuting the Critics, Theology
We have been examining the claims of Liam, who denies the Trinity in general and who, in particular, denies that Jesus is God. This ultimately is not an intellectual exercise but a spiritual one. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that a person can declare with conviction that Jesus is Yahweh – the Lord. 1 Corinthians 12:3b states, “And no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Furthermore, confessing Jesus as Lord is a requirement for salvation (Romans 10:9-13), for there is no Savior besides the one and only Yahweh (Isaiah 43:11). Therefore, if Jesus is not Yahweh, then neither can He be your Savior.
by Dr. Jason Lisle | Feb 21, 2025 | Refuting the Critics, Theology
Our feedback this week comes from someone we’ll call “Liam.” He rejects the Trinity and specifically rejects that Jesus is God and that the Holy Spirit is a Person of the triune God. The interesting thing about Liam’s response is that most of his arguments were already refuted in the very articles he’s criticizing. It always seems strange to me when a person responds to a refutation of their argument by simply repeating the argument. For example, there is the fallacy of claiming that the Holy Spirit isn’t a Person of the Trinity because in many instances only the Father and Son are mentioned in a greeting. That is the fallacy of the argument from silence as I demonstrated earlier. But there were a couple of new arguments that will be addressed here and in the next article.
