One of the common attacks on the reliability of the Bible, and the New Testament in particular, is the idea that “people back then were a lot more gullible about things like miracles and people rising from the dead.” A commenter on a BBC internet thread put it like this, “Were the disciples just gullible? Aren't the followers of all religious leaders?” Or as Rudolph Bultmann … [Read more...]
Fallacy Friday: The Ubiquitous Ad Hominem
In my previous posts, What is an Argument? and Assessing Arguments, I spelt out some basics as to what an argument is and how to assess arguments. There I noted that a sound argument is one where the premises of the argument is trueand the argument is valid. It is impossible for an argument which is sound to have a false premise, this fact means that one cannot rationally … [Read more...]
Video Response #1 To 18 Questions – My Atheist Friend, Michael
Can the Atheistic Worldview Answer 18 Questions of Fundamental Human Experience? Is Atheism An Effective Explanation for what we observe in the Universe? This is a video response to my atheistic friend, Michael, who recently began a dialogue with me regarding the evidence for the Christian Worldview. In this video, I respectfully respond to the answers he gave me, and try to … [Read more...]
A Flowchart on How to Handle Objections to Intelligent Design
Graceling: On Monsters and Grace
Publishers Weekly listed Graceling,the debut novel from Kristin Cashore, in its Best Book of the Year list in 2008. Since then, Cashore has published a sort-of prequel called FIre and a sequel titled Bitterblue. Here's Wikipedia's list of awards: Graceling was shortlisted for the ALA's William C. Morris YA Award, is an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, was a Cybils finalist … [Read more...]
RC Misunderstood: It Is All About Evangelism (Part Two)
By Rick Schenker, President of Ratio Christi One of the main reasons I left public office in 2006 was because I wanted to be more involved in evangelism—the spreading of the gospel. Yet, in a self-assessment of my own abilities, I knew I would make a pretty mediocre preacher. I figured the last thing the world needed was another mediocre preacher. Not knowing what to do, I … [Read more...]
Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination by Malcolm Guite (book review)
For as long as people have written, sung, and told stories about God, literature has been a means by which the Holy Spirit has moved individuals to draw closer to Christ. However, the role of the imagination in apologetics and theology has received, until lately, little attention from Christian scholars and apologists. Fortunately, this situation is now being remedied by a … [Read more...]
New Atheism and its Challenge to Prove the Existence of God
New Atheist and physicist, Victor Stenger, laments that most atheists don’t challenge and ridicule religious belief. Therefore, he lays out several put-up-or-shut-up challenges for theists. (However, he seems to have Christians in mind.): • Many of the attributes associated with the Judaic-Christian-Islamic God have specific consequences that can be tested empirically … [Read more...]
5 Things To Remember When Interpreting the Bible
Today’s post comes from my friend Lee Boryczewski. I cannot tell you how necessary his words are for us Christians to remember, simply from the fact that I have been guilty of reading my own views into the scriptures and have witnessed all Christians doing so at some point or another. It is our natural proclivity to do so but we must caution ourselves against doing doing … [Read more...]
On the Importance of Terminology: Species and Speciation
This post is focused on two terms used in discussions about the history and origins of life. The terms “species” and “speciation” are used extensively to demonstrate that modern evolutionary theory, neo-Darwinism (a.k.a. “molecules to men” via natural processes alone) is a fact. Similar to the previous post I would like to inoculate the lay reader from being bullied by the … [Read more...]