In a recent debate with the Christian apologist William Lane Craig, the atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg put out a challenge: “If Dr. Craig could provide me with any kind of logical, coherent account that could reconcile the evident fact of the horrors of humanity…with the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent agent, then I will turn Christian.” … [Read more...]
The Wonder of Unbelief
The ability for a human being to not believe the truth about something can be breathtaking. Atheists and skeptics of Christianity consistently say that the reason they don’t believe in God is because there is no evidence for Him. If there were just good evidence for God and for the historicity of Jesus, atheists say that would make all the difference in the world – they’d … [Read more...]
Deconstructing Humans
The horror genre has a long history of terrifying us with distortions of humanity. Some of the monsters are inhuman ("Silence of the Lambs," "Saw," "Hostel"). Some are superhuman ("Nightmare on Elm Street," "Halloween"). Others are subhuman ("The Descent," "The Walking Dead"). The subhuman zombies of AMC’s "The Walking Dead" have reanimated a hot philosophical topic: What does … [Read more...]
Renaissance 2.0
A Review of Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, by Nancy Pearcey Nancy Pearcey knows the captivating power of secular ideas because she used to hold them herself. As a teenager, she rejected the religion of her childhood and embraced a host of “ism’s” from moral relativism to scientific determinism to New Age spiritualism. But … [Read more...]
Does Truth Exist And Is It Knowable? – PT. 2
Part 1 (pt.2 of 4) Does Truth exist? Even if it does, can we know it? Are we in the dark like Kant said that we are? Should we be absolutely skeptical as Hume told us we should be? This is Lesson #3 of our “Reason To Believe” Video Apologetics Class. Here we will begin to discuss the all important question of truth, and whether it can be known at all. We will be examining the … [Read more...]
Are the Creeds the Cure for the Chaos?
Cultural engagement is essentially the objective of gospel preaching and the ministry of apologetics. Ultimately both are about conversion, seeing lives conformed to the image of Christ in terms of justification as well as sanctification. Today, a great deal of the cultural engagement embarked upon is motivated by the moral decline of society. Christians are in battle on a … [Read more...]
Becoming an Ambassador, part 3
Third post in a series. Part one and part two. In this post I want to deal with the third leg of my metaphor for evangelism, knowledge. Again from Stand To Reason’s article on the ambassador model, at a minimum an ambassador “…must know the character, mind, and purposes of his king.” The scope and depth of subjects one could study is, candidly, staggering. Thus in this post I … [Read more...]
Consistency Among Disciplines
Every day thousands of scientists around the globe perform experiments and observations of the natural realm. They note a certain condition, make (or allow) a change, then note the new condition. Many times, the same experiment or observation is conducted repeatedly to be certain the results of the first (second or third) were not just "flukes." Scientists combine many of these … [Read more...]
Literary Apologetics: Planet Narnia and The Narnia Code by Michael Ward
It might seem odd to put Planet Narnia (Oxford University Press, 2008) on my list of recommended “literary apologetics” books, since it’s a study of CS Lewis’s use of medieval planetary imagery in the Chronicles of Narnia — not a specifically apologetic work. However, anyone who’s serious about understanding how a story can show forth the truth of the Christian faith would do … [Read more...]
"A New Kind of Christian" Critique – Part 2
Part 1 McLaren continues with his criticism. The modern view of Christianity is not the absolute, ultimate truth; it is rather a “view from a point”. As modern Christians, what we thought of as objective certainty is really reliant on our subjective preference for our personal viewpoint.[i] Instead of our faith being compared to a building (an allusion to foundationalist … [Read more...]