Anyone who has engaged in or interacted with any public discourse on the subject of miracles in the New Testament (especially the resurrection) will have encountered this objection: How can an historian infer that a miracle is the best explanation of historical data, given that supernatural phenomena are, by their very nature, extremely improbable? One might grant that the mass … [Read more...]
Eastern Religious Views versus the Judeo Christian View of God
Introduction Not too long ago, I received a text message from one of our students in our Student ministry at church. His text was asking for my thoughts regarding a friend at school, who was tinkering with the idea of leaving Christianity for Buddhism. One of the things I learned from that early morning text, was that doing apologetics was sometimes like that of a "first … [Read more...]
ISLAM – Religious Practices (Part 2)
The Five Pillars of Islam (contd.) 4. Alms giving Zakat, the Islamic equivalent of tithes is one of the pillars of Islam. "One of the most important principles of Islam is that all things belong to God, and that wealth is therefore held by human beings in trust.The word Zakat means both 'purification' and 'growth'. Our possessions are purified by setting aside a proportion … [Read more...]
Unnaturalness of Atheism
The idea that atheism ought be assumed by default is a chimera. Atheism cannot be assumed by default, it must be demonstrated. The belief that given the failure of theistic case for God, atheism ought be assumed does not only commit an appeal to ignorance but is also against the picture painted by modern discoveries in Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). Several recent … [Read more...]
The Status of Women According to Islam
The status of women in Islam is a subject enshrouded in controversy. According to many Muslims, Muhammad was a champion of women’s rights, bestowing upon the women in his community privileges and rights that they did not have previously. The notion that women in pre-Islamic Arabia had no rights, however, is demonstrably untrue. Former Muslim Nabeel Qureshi lists some of the … [Read more...]
The Big History Project
[Somebody's] Truth about the Universe and How You Fit into It In the 1980s, David Christian, a 40-ish year-old professor of Russian history at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, became discontent teaching “just the history of one country.” “[N]ot really sure … in a sense, who I am,” he wanted to know about the history of humanity as a whole. “That question forced me … [Read more...]
Who Are We? Personal Identity and The Walking Dead
The Season Four finale of The Walking Dead attracted 15.7million viewers, 10.2 million of whom were in the 18-49 demographic, shattering the previous records (the Game of Thrones season finale garned 5.4 million; Duck Dynasty reached 6 million; Breaking Bad’s Season Four finale recorded just under 2 million, and the final show of the entire series hit 10.3 million). In … [Read more...]
What Did the Disciples See?
Introduction When it comes to the Christian faith, there is no doctrine more important than the resurrection of Jesus. Biblical faith is not simply centered in ethical and religious teachings. Instead, it is founded on the person and work of Jesus. If Jesus was not raised from the dead, we as His followers are still dead in our sins (1Cor.15:7). Explanations try to … [Read more...]
Answering An Islamic Objection: The Justice of Penal Substitution
Frequently, in dialogues with Muslim polemicists, one will encounter the charge against Christianity that the doctrine of penal substitution is unjust. How, after all, can the blame of all humanity be laid on an innocent? How can an innocent be made to carry the burdens of mankind? In this article, I want to offer a responses to this objection. … [Read more...]
Understanding the arguments in God’s not Dead: Part II of III
In part one we looked at the arguments advanced by Professor Radisson, now we come to the arguments Josh put forward as he took the floor. The first argument Josh talked about is called the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. This comes in many different versions, all of which have interesting aspects. Yet all of them have in common the idea of a first cause, … [Read more...]