Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists have popularized the idea that atheism, contrary to other positions, is not a belief; it is simply ‘the absence of belief’ in God or a supreme being. It almost sounds esoteric. Theists believe that God exists and atheists merely lack that belief. Well, on that view, my Chevy is just as much of an atheist as Richard Dawkins, for it, too, … [Read more...]
What is the Purpose of Atheist Apologetics?
Over the years, I have seen a lot of skeptical arguments against the Christian faith. There are plenty of websites written by people who claim to be former Christians who now have made it their life purpose to ‘disprove’ Christianity. What are the similarities between the purpose of these atheist websites and the Christian apologetic endeavor? As I have already said before, in … [Read more...]
Racism and the Anti-Supernatural Bias
I recently purchased Irving Hexham’s Understanding World Religions after meeting the author at a conference.[1] As I began to read, I was amazed to discover that “racism has clearly affected modern thinking about the nature of religious studies.”[2] Hexham identifies a rarely discussed hidden bias against African religious traditions. The Hidden Bias He writes, “Even though … [Read more...]
Convince Me There’s A God – Archaeology 3
For those of you who have studied Biblical archaeology, you'll recognize that I am not mentioning the greatest discoveries of the last 40 years during this series. That's because I'm limiting my comments to those discoveries available for me to consider during the early part of 1971. These findings, and others too many to mention in a limited series, were part of my journey … [Read more...]
Can You Step Into Your Opponent's Shoes?
I was recently reading a discussion on Facebook about the various passages in the Bible that are used by atheists to claim that the God of the Bible is immoral. All sorts of claims swirled around. Jesus commanded us to murder children. God was a premeditated murderer. For the most part, it was a group of atheists ganging up on one or two theists, and unfortunately the only … [Read more...]
GOD: The Best Explanation? Part 3
HOW DID THE UNIVERSE BEGIN TO EXIST? Part 1 Part 2 (pt.3) In this episode of our series "GOD: The Best Explanation?", we begin to investigate if the scientific fact of the beginning of our universe can be adequately explained by the existence of God. Amazingly, in the 20th century alone, we have discovered at least 5 different ways in which we can demonstrate scientifically … [Read more...]
Quantum Mechanics and the Mind
"The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles has evaporated not into the cloud of some new reality concept, but into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of the particles but our knowledge of this behavior." (W. Heisenberg, 1958) [1] In this post, I want to focus on the phenomenon of consciousness in respect to … [Read more...]
Solving The Problem of Pluralization
In this part of my series on Incarnational Apologetics, I want to explore the four key problems: Secularization Pluralization Privatization Polarization Today's video post picks up with a discussion of Pluralization. To be certain, there are many positive qualities found in Pluralization. Art / Architecture Language Culture People Food But, as I discuss in the … [Read more...]
Are You an Expert?
Now more than ever, we seem to be surrounded by experts and intellectual giants on all corners. Throw out a question on Facebook and you will get a response, often from an "expert". Google a contentious question that has plagued philosophers for centuries and you will discover reams of pages linking to the blogs of "experts". I am also often told that you don't need to be a … [Read more...]
Why Telling Your Story is NOT the Best Way to Share the Gospel
Anyone who’s ever taken a class on how to share their faith has heard some well-intentioned teacher say, “You don’t need to learn a lot of big words. Just tell them your story. Just tell them how Jesus changed your life. No one can argue with that.” Then everyone sighs a big sigh of relief because they thought they’d have to spend time learning how to answer hard questions. … [Read more...]