The Historicity of the Bible (and an answer to a skeptic)

In my previous blog post, a reader said that he didn’t believe the gospels to be “accurate, historical documents.”  When I challenged him on his claim, he gave a few reasons that I will show have absolutely no validity at all.  This person has sadly been misinformed about that which he speaks regarding the gospels.  I’ll address his charges point by point.

1. He says the “writers of the gospel [sic] were not eyewitnesses.  They didn’t even live at the same time.”  This is simply false information.  Matthew and John were both disciples of Jesus and knew him personally.  Mark was not a disciple because of his age, but he worked closely with Peter (a disciple of Jesus) as his closest adviser for many years.  Luke was a friend of Paul, a man who knew the apostles and encountered Jesus himself.  Luke interviewed eyewitnesses in order to write his account.  So again, this charge is just absolutely false.  Two of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses and the other two knew the eyewitnesses.[1]

2. He says, “the events have not been discussed in any other source” except Josephus, “but not that he did some really great stuff, etc. [sic].”  Again this is false information.  There are several non-Christian places where events involving Jesus have been recorded.  These include works by Jews, Romans, and Greeks.  The list is as follows:[2]

–   Josephus, (Jewish)
–   Several portions of the Talmud
–   Lucian of Samosata (Greek)
–   Mara bar Serapion (Greek)
–   Thallus (Roman)
–   Tacitus (Roman)
–   Pliny (Roman)
–   Suetonius (Roman)
–   Phlegon
–   Celcus

3. He alleges supposed contradictions but never elaborates on the point.  It should be pointed out that the alleged contradictions that many skeptics refer to simply reflect natural variations that occur when a story is told by two different humans.[3]  The differences in the way the accounts are recorded do not in any way change the intended meaning of the event.  Nearly all supposed contradictions can be attributed to minor transmission error or that the Bible is based on eyewitness accounts that complement one another, not contradict each other.  Indeed if the Gospels were not the Gospels, they would be hailed the world over as the world’s most reliable text of the ancient world.[4]  The works of the New Testament are incredibly more reliable than any other ancient work in the history of the world as evidenced by the following chart:

This chart was found at http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence

After looking at this factual chart, if one dismisses the bible as historically reliable, then one must dismiss all writings of ancient history because they do not come close to the reliability of the bible.  So as we can see, the reader’s charge about contradictions is absolutely false.

4. He claims the authors of the Gospels were “primitive shepherders [sic].”  This could not be further from the truth.  I would love to know the reader’s source on this!

There are many, many, many other truths that prove the New Testament and the Gospels to be accurate, reliable, and historical.  The archaeological discoveries made thus far in human history have confirmed everything the bible has said about such things.  The New Testament shows that Jesus fulfilled all the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament such that if left to chance, the chances of a man fulfilling those prophecies by accident would be as great as the universe exploding into being out of nothing!  So I hope and pray that the individual making these erroneous charges will lift the veil of his presuppositions from his mind and see the truth of the bible.

[1] Markos, L. (2010). Apologetics for the 21st Century. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, p. 153.
[2] Turek and Geisler (2004). I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist.  Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, p. 270.
[3] Groothuis, D. (2011). Christian Apologetics. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, p. 453.
[4] Markos, L. (2010). Apologetics for the 21st Century. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, p. 151.

Was Jesus a Madman or God?

I’ve heard many skeptics and unbelievers suggest that Jesus was a great teacher but he wasn’t God. In fact, Islam and Judaism teach this idea. This kind of teaching brings up some interesting points.

Jesus said he was God (Mark 14, John 8, Rev 1, John 14). Jesus can’t be simply a great teacher if he also claimed to be God. Normal men who go around claiming to be God are not considered great teachers. They’re considered madmen! So if we want to consider Jesus as a great teacher, we must consider all his teachings are great and true, including his claim to be God. We have an abundance of evidence to show that he was God’s son.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of C.S. Lewis lately and he does a better job than I at summing up my thoughts. From Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

He is either a liar, a lunatic, a legend, or Lord. A person has to take one, and only one, postion. Either Jesus was crazy or he is Lord. I believe he is Lord.

Miracles

In order for a person to believe in Christianity, he must believe in miracles.  The notion of a miracle occurring is a common objection to Christianity by atheists, agnostic people, and skeptics.  I want to offer some ways for a Christian to think about how he would answer a skeptics objection to miracles.

A miracle from God is defined as an act of divinity in which a supernatural effect is produced for the purpose of manifesting God’s kingdom on earth.  Their purpose is to reveal God’s supernatural character.  Now in order to begin to think about miracles, one must already be in a position to at least consider the notion of a created world.  A person who believes in creation believes that God created the universe out of nothing.  He created time and when it would be set into motion and he created the natural things we see all around us.  The simple syllogism goes like this:  Everything that has a beginning has a cause, the universe had a beginning, therefore the universe has a cause and the cause (God) must transcend time and space in order to create it.  When we consider these things from the cosmological argument, it is perfectly rational to conclude that the act of creation is the greatest miracle ever performed.  The skeptic should be willing to concede this point if he can for a moment allow that God is the uncaused first cause.

It’s at this time that we can demonstrate that if the greatest miracle ever performed occurred at creation, then any miracle following is certainly believable.  David Hume famously discounted miracles.  He claimed that natural law is a regular occurrence and miracles are irregular occurrences.  He further claimed that the evidence for the regular is always greater than the evidence for the irregular or rare.  The problem with this is that there are numerous things in our natural world that are not only rare but only happened once.  For example, the beginning of the universe and the origin of life happened only once.  This is a big problem for Hume’s argument.

Why do miracles occur and why are they so sporadic?  In the bible, miracles usually occur as a way for God to reveal himself to man.  Jesus performed miracles in order to prove he was the son of God.  God revealed himself to mankind in the old testament with many miraculous acts.  Miracles are a supernatural way for God to communicate his word to us and are often used to grab our attention.  We cannot answer why miracles are sporadic.  There are periods of hundreds of years in the Bible where no miracles are recorded.  One aspect of miracles is that they are usually rare.  This makes sense, because if miracles happened every day they could possibly be less effective in communicating God’s word.  Again, miracles are attention grabbers.

Of course, nearly everyone open to the evidence for miracles and God have heard of or maybe even experienced their own miracles.  We know they sometimes happen and we know sometimes they don’t (at least in this world!).  God created a good world that rebelled against him and chose evil by free will.  God can use miracles to reconnect to a lost and dying world and reveal his presence.  Although, miracles are not used by God to “fix” a defective creation.  I read an analogy recently that I had never heard before.  It said that the world isn’t a defective machine that needs fixed, but that the relationship between God and creation can be thought of like the relationship between a musician and his instrument.  The musician enjoys time with his guitar and together beautiful things can occur, but every now and then the guitar needs a little tuning.

 

Footnote:  I don’t know how to incorporate citations into the blog.  But I want to acknowledge that most of the information in this blog are from thoughts put forth by Douglas Groothuis, Frank Turek, and Norman Geisler.  I have not added much originality at all but merely unpacked some of the things these men have written.  Check Amazon or your local bookstore for their resources.  They are invaluable to me.

Just some fun for a laugh.

This is generally how I view those that believe in macroevolution and those that believe the universe created itself.  Funny!

 

3 Examples of Secular Scientists Lying To The Public. Part 3.

Krauss’s book

Part 3.

In the final part of a three part series describing how we cannot trust the words of some leading scientists, I want to focus in on Lawrence Krauss and specifically his book, “A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing.”  All book references refer to the latest known paperback edition of Mr. Krauss’s book.  This post could get somewhat deep and for that I apologize.  I want to keep it as clear and simple as possible.

On page XXIII Mr. Krauss admits that we do not know whether the universe is infinite but he suggests that it could be.  The mere suggestion is ridiculous as a true infinite can not be crossed.  In other words, if the past is infinitely long, then we would never arrive at today.  To illustrate it, let’s say you line up some dominoes on a table.  Now choose a domino somewhere in the middle and allow that domino to represent the present moment.  Now assume that your line of dominoes goes on to infinity in both directions.  Let’s allow the right side of the line of dominoes to represent the future and the left side will represent the past.  If we tip the “present moment” domino to the right (the future) and assume there are infinitely many dominoes actually to it’s right, then we can safely assume they will fall for infinity (proof of a possible eternity).  Now imagine if the dominoes to the left (the past) continued into the past for infinity.  If that were the case, we would never arrive at the “present moment.”  As J.P. Moreland puts it, it would be like trying to jump out of an infinitely deep bottomless pit.  So this shows that the universe cannot be eternal, it had to have a beginning.  To even entertain the notion of an infinite universe is just strange.

Also on page XXIII, Krauss discusses why there is something rather than nothing.  He says this question is usually discussed in the religious or philosophical areas.  But he claims this question can be resolved scientifically.  But in order for him to attempt this he MUST presuppose things that are impossible to explain using the scientific method such as laws of math, laws of logic, metaphysical truths, ethical judgments, aesthetic judgments, and indeed science itself.  All of these things are a slave to philosophy.  You cannot run an experiment to determine these things.  They are explained by philosophical presuppositions.  So the point is, science cannot be the only method to discover objective truth.  Why?  Because the claim itself is not a scientific claim, but a philosophical one!   The funny thing about this is at least he admits on page 149 that he assumes the laws of physics.  This admission is so huge, that it undermines his entire book!!

Krauss then proclaims that the scientific answers we have obtained “ALL suggest getting something from nothing is not a problem.  Indeed something from nothing may have been required for the universe to come into being.”  Wow, what a quote.  My first observation is to note his admission that the universe came into being.  Earlier, he posited that the universe could be infinite.  Hmmmm.  Secondly, getting something from nothing is just bizarre.  On page XXIV, he attempts to define nothing and accuses theologians of constantly changing it definition.  Theologians and apologists usually define it as “no thing” or “non-being” or “the absence of anything.”  He then says theologians are intellectually bankrupt and outrageously states that “surely ‘nothing’ is every bit as physical as something.”  Are you kidding me?  This is akin to what atheists accuse theists of doing, and that is using the “God of the Gaps” silliness.

Another important observation is that Krauss always places the word nothing inside quote marks such as, “nothing.”  What this means is that he really doesn’t mean “no thing” at all.  He claims nothing is defined as “empty space.”  But any third grade student knows that space is indeed something!  Time is also something which seems to be assumed by Krauss.  The following gets a little difficult to process but it’s important:  Whatever caused the first event could not have been inside of time.  It had to be timeless or transcend time.  Suppose an event happens such as a tree blowing and it falls.  If this occurs then we know time already exists.  Both the cause and effect are in time.  Whatever caused the first event had to first create time.  Krauss wants to presuppose that time is already there.

On page XXV he calls theists intellectually lazy.  That’s just a ridiculous rant such that a twelve year old would do.

On page 143 he admits that science is only interested in the “how” questions and not the “why” questions.  THAT my friends is intellectually lazy!  Moreover, to dismiss the “why” questions right off the top is to say, “you know what, I’m going to dismiss the possibility of an intelligent designer before anything else.”  Absurd and lazy!

On page 161, after determining that nothing=empty space, he just suggests that we should “allow for the merging of quantum mechanics and general relativity….”  So all of the sudden out of nowhere these two things just come into existence?  He admits later down the page that allowing the rules of quantum mechanics is a “tricky” possibility.  Tricky indeed.  It seems to this reader that Krauss is trying to trick his audience.

Lawrence Krauss

All of these things Mr. Krauss brings up are very interesting to explore and we should never stop exploring them.  But it is my belief that based on the best possible evidence and the use of sound logic, the study of these matters will ultimately lead us to God, the uncaused cause.  He is uncaused because he has never operated by the limits of time and space.  It’s possible he may have entered time, but he is not bound by it.  In other words, if a man creates a lake he may enter it to swim but he is not bound to stay in it.  The relationship of God and time are similar.

There are strong cases to be made for God being the first cause as opposed to “nothing” being the first cause.  Very briefly, design is evidence for a personal cause to the universe.  When my wife prepares the supper table, I can see that she has the ability to set it in a precise way.  It doesn’t just become that way out of nothing.  It took intelligence.  It took ability and intention to set the table.  Also, there is order and fine-tuning all over the universe.  Science has a major problem in this area because science ALWAYS presupposes order before it can explain anything at all.  The only way science can explain order is to cite other examples of order.  It’s circular.  This is very important to understand.  Furthermore, information in DNA is great evidence for a creator.  DNA isn’t just randomness which would exude no structure.  DNA provides information.  Information is orderly and provides instruction such as the words in this blog.  DNA contains VAST amounts of information similar to the way humans express information as instruction.  This is great evidence for a creator.

There are many more ways to think about this subject, but it’s important to see why we simply cannot always take the words of scientists at face value.  As we have seen in the three articles, there is usually some hidden “gotcha” presupposition or oftentimes just outright lies.  We need to learn to detect these things so that we can become better thinkers.

I hope you enjoyed the three part series.  As time moves forward, I want to shift our stance from a defensive one to an offensive one and describe the vast amount of evidence for why someone should believe in God.  I will still give defenses anytime the need arises.  If there is anything you’d like for me to write about as it relates to Christian apologetics, please let me know!  I’m enrolled in Biola University’s Apologetics Program and I have learned a great deal that has been added to my near decade of personal study on these matters.

 

A Brief Hiatus From the Three Part Series to Comment on Incest.

I was recently questioned by an atheist about Adam and Eve and their children committing incest.  We know that their children must have had relations with each other in order to multiply.  There are reasons why we believe this form of relations between close kin in early humanity would have not had devastating genetic effects.  As we all know and agree upon, it’s the copying of two bad genes (to state it simply) into children of incestual relationships that causes defects.  It’s possible that in the early years of humanity, shortly after the act of God creating a perfect universe, that the sinful effects upon genetics that were brought upon humanity as the result of sin had not been expounded enough to cause genetic mistakes, defects, and such.  While this notion is not provable beyond all doubt, it is believable beyond reasonable doubt.  Even anti-Christian science has tended to presume that genetic mistakes were less numerous in the early years of humanity.  Biblically speaking, incest wasn’t prohibited until the time of Moses.  This would seem to support the fact that it took several thousand years for harmful genetic mistakes to develop.  As such, God instituted rules against sexual activity with close kin.

But those things aren’t what concerns me.  Atheists create a great problem when they use the incest accusation to refute God’s creation of man.  Think about this from the atheist’s point of view.  There had to be a specific point in time where the first human “evolved” into being the first human.  There weren’t thousands or millions of humans that evolved at exactly the same time and traveled to differing regions so as to avoid incest.  No.  Even from an evolutionists point of view, incest had to have occurred among the earliest few humans.  There is no way to avoid this except flat out denial or false fabrications with ridiculous faith-based guesses.  So their fetish with invoking incest places them in a trap of their own making.

Moreover, while the Atheist will use the incest issue to refute the Genesis account, he will also say incest is simply taboo, and in reality there is nothing wrong with it.  Freud even taught that humans have an overwhelming natural desire to commit incest with their mothers and siblings.  That’s oddly contradictory.  Many of Richard Dawkins’ followers believe there should be no limits to one’s desire to commit incest. In fact, one of them posted this on Mr. Dawkins’ website.  Furthermore, Charles Darwin himself married his first cousin.  I believe three of their children passed early in life.

Pardon me for interrupting the next installment in which I am writing about Krauss.  It will be posted soon.  I felt the need to put this out there for my fellow believers in case someone attempts this silliness upon you.

3 Examples of Secular Scientists Lying To The Public. Part 2.

Part 2.

We’ve had a recent television follow-up of Carl Sagan’s 1980 series, “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.” The beginning passage caught my attention which prompted me to go back and watch the original opening by Carl Sagan himself which I have posted below.

 

I want to point out a couple of reasons why we simply cannot believe the things this man says. He makes truth claims that just cannot be proven. For example, he opens the video with the following:

“The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”

Now how can he make such a claim? Why in the world should one believe this statement? As I move forward in time with this page, I will lay out a case for why belief in the Biblical account of origins is far more reasonable than the account that the Darwinist religion of one Carl Sagan posits. But for now, allow me to explain why we shouldn’t believe Carl Sagan whether we have a Biblical account or not.

“The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”  This quote is a truth claim. How does Sagan know this to be true? Obviously, he doesn’t. He has made it up to explain away the need for God. In fact, in his writings he capitalizes the word “cosmos,” essentially allowing the “cosmos” to be his god.

It’s only logical to apply the same presumptions we applied to Richard Dawkins in my previous blog post. In order to determine the validity of Mr. Sagan’s “truth” claim, we should allow one (or more) of the following statements to apply to him: 1) He is all-knowing. 2) He has time traveled into the past AND into the future! 3) He is lying. 4) He is a fool. We know one and two are not possible. That leaves three or four as valid possibilities. Now, this is not to say that even Christians do not make truth claims. We do. But, we have far better evidence for our position that Mr. Sagan does for his. As I said, we will explore this in depth as time moves forward but here is one quick way to think logically about Mr. Sagan’s claim:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. (We have empirical evidence for such a claim).
2. The universe began to exist. (As evidenced by the Hubble Telescope)
3. Therefore the universe has a cause.

This simple syllogism (known as the cosmological argument) easily and logically explains away Sagan’s “truth” claim and exposes it for what it is, an unprovable opinion based on faith. There is not one bit of science involved. It’s a faith-based claim. We all know the cosmos did not invent itself. Nature cannot create itself. Since nature cannot create itself, it must be created by something that transcends nature, in fact a supernatural cause.

Mr. Sagan later says in the video that “we wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both.” Hmmmm, how convenient. There’s nothing too difficult to believe when one throws in a little imagination and skepticism. LOL.

He further states, “We will not be afraid to speculate but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.” WOW!! Did he really just say that??? Because isn’t funny how his opening line to the video is PURE speculation offered as fact? LOL!

Then he plays on the emotions of the audience by saying we will be “drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies.” I wonder where Mr. Sagan would say musical notes originated. After all, music was discovered, not invented.

As you can see from this very brief post, it is not reasonable to believe Mr. Sagan. In fact, he is lying in order to pass his religion off as fact.  We need to understand that these “scientists” are playing with our minds in order to gain a hearing with us.  Do not fall for it.  THINK!!

Next up, Lawrence Krauss.

 

3 Examples of Secular Scientists Lying To The Public. Part 1.

Part 1.

Over the course of the next three posts I want to show why statements made by modern, secular, atheistic scientists should always be held in high skepticism.  I will demonstrate that these so-called “promoters of knowledge” will outright lie to you, concoct fantasies in their imagination and pass them off as fact, or use enormous amounts of faith that would make a Christian hide in embarrassment and disgrace.  To get started, let’s examine the darling of modern biological science, Mr. Richard Dawkins.

I read Richard Dawkins’ book “The Greatest Show on Earth” after reading an interesting review about it online.  This is what Dawkins says about evolution on page 8 of the paperback version:  “Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eyewitnesses to the Holocaust.”  That’s a strong statement.

To begin the book, Dawkins has to define his terms so the reader knows what he means by the word “fact.”  On page 14 of the paperback version he uses the Oxford definition which goes like this:

Fact:  Something that has really occurred or is actually the case; something certainly known to be of this character; hence, a particular truth known by actual observation or authentic testimony, as opposed to what is merely inferred, or to a conjecture or fiction; a datum of experience, as distinguished from the conclusions that may be based up on it.  (emphasis added).

This is a very good definition but wait until you see what Dawkins does to it.  Apparently he thinks he is a dictionary editor as he takes exception to the “merely inferred” part of the definition.  He really gets hung up on Oxford declaring a fact to be something more certain than what can be merely inferred.  He then says, “Careful inference can be more reliable than ‘actual observation’ no matter how strongly our intuition protests at admitting it.”  He proceeds to define actual observation as “eyewitness testimony.”  This is sleight of hand because of the way he defines eyewitness testimony.  The way the Oxford dictionary uses the term “actual observation” is to describe something that has really occurred or is actually the case.  When talking about “eyewitness testimony” the way Dawkins does in his book, he defines it by asking a human to remember the way events happened in his memory based upon a past event.  So we can see here that “actual observation” and “eyewitness testimony” are NOT synonymous in the way Dawkins defines them.  Mr. Dawkins has to indeed change the definition of words in order to propagate his religion of evolutionism.  He must essentially change the Oxford definition of the word “fact” in order to persuade his audience into his corner.

I LOVE this next quote on page 18 of his book.  I love it because it gives the readers actual observation of the amount of faith this man uses in order to believe in his faith-based assertions.   Dawkins says, “The aids to inference that lead scientists to the fact of evolution are far   more numerous, more convincing, more incontrovertible, than any eye-witness reports that have ever been used, in any court of law, in any century, to establish guilt in any crime. Proof beyond reasonable doubt? Reasonable doubt? That is the understatement of all time.”

Did we read that correctly???  The mere inference that leads to the “fact” of evolution is more reliable than ANY eyewitness testimony in the history of the cosmos???  I’m literally laughing as I type this!  We can place his assertion into at least one of four categories.  1) He is all-knowing.  2) He has time traveled into the past.  3) He is lying.  4) He is a fool.  Your choice!!

As you can infer (lol), I immediately became skeptical of the book.  But there’s more.  One glaring omission is that he never defines evolution.  From what I can tell, he uses evolution and natural selection interchangeably.  They are clearly two distinct ideas. We can observe what we call natural selection. Natural selection is NOT evolution!  Evolution (on the macro level) is species changing into other species.  This has never been observed and by using probability and logical reasoning about the world we see around us one can surmise that it will never happen.  Proponents of evolutionism LOVE to cite the mutations in bacteria.  This is merely natural selection.  At the end of the day, after all the mutations and battles against antibiotics have ran their course, the newly mutated bacteria is still……BACTERIA.  This is not evolution.

Have you ever considered Darwin’s doubt?  He doubted his own theory in his book because he knew intermediary species are mysteriously absent from the fossil record.  Intermediary species, if they existed, would be one of the species that would fall in between two known species as they “evolve.”  While the fossil record shows evidence of natural selection, it has nothing to say about the intermediary species in Darwin’s theory.  We do not have fossils of frog-like creatures with wings or fish with feathers.  A fish with feathers could not survive in the water or outside the water.  These are unreasonable assertions, folks.  Get these things in your mind and think about them.  It’s so important!

As I have demonstrated, this man, Richard Dawkins, lies and manipulates in order to pass his religion off as fact.

On deck for the next two posts:  Carl Sagan and Lawrence Krauss

You Came From NOTHING?

Do you think it’s possible for something to come from nothing?  Seriously.  Can a car come from nothing?  Can a book come from nothing?  Can a complex rocket propulsion system come from nothing?  Of course not!  We know these things are the products of intelligent minds.  Would you believe there are people who think the vast complexity of life came into existence from nothing?  If you’ve been through the public school system, you know these kind of assertions are taught as fact.  I posed the following question to myself several years ago:  Is it reasonable to hold to the belief that life came from nothing?  I want to tell you why I asked myself this but first let us examine the meaning of nothing.

Webster’s dictionary defines nothing as “not anything, no thing.”  Aristotle provided a pithy definition.  He said, “Nothing is what rocks dream about.”  We know the universe had a beginning.  Many secular scientists believe the Big Bang was caused by nothing.  In my estimation, that’s an absurd notion living inside the mind of a simpleton.  Other secular scientists believe the universe was caused by natural forces. Natural forces certainly aren’t nothing, they are something.  This requires the question of how did the “natural forces” originate?

About eight years ago I was asked by an atheist why I believed the Biblical account of life’s origins.  I am embarrassed to admit that I did not respond well.  I replied that I believed it because the bible said it and that settles it.  This person began to pick apart my worldview with scientific explanations in which I had very weak responses.  After getting literally beat down, I had to ask myself why I believed what I believed.  I had a personal revelation of God and I knew him personally but it bothered me that I didn’t have sufficient responses to a person who could seemingly rip my belief in God to shreds, so I began to dig.  I dug deep and I read a lot.

I wasn’t searching to discover if God exists.  I personally know him.  He is as real to me as the keyboard I’m using to type this.  Rather, I was looking for ways to respond to arguments that I knew ran contrary to the truth. I wanted to know what evidence existed to defend my worldview and I wanted to present the evidence in a logical and intelligent manner.

I’m a child of the 1980’s.  In the 1980’s and 1990’s, reverence for the Bible was widespread.  Most people in western society accepted God’s existence and would respect biblical teachings even if they were not practicing Christians.  Things are different today.  The Bible is viewed as an ancient Bronze Age piece of literature that is no longer relevant to the modern (or post-modern) culture.

Great Christian nations of the past, such as Great Britain, are now extreme agnostic or atheistic in their views of the world.  Craig J. Hazen wrote a revealing piece about why this happened.  He says that for years, “theist, agnostic, skeptical and pluralistic professors at all the great British universities had been hammering on the faith for years… — and there were very few defenders in their midst” (emphasis added).

The Bible teaches Christians in 1 Peter 3:14,15 to not be afraid of those who come against you.  It says to worship Jesus as your Lord and if someone asks you about the hope that is in you, always be ready to make a defense or give them an answer.  That was my problem.  When posed with the question about my beliefs, I could not present a sufficient defense.  Jesus said in Matthew 22:37 that “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.”  This is very important.  It’s essential to know God spiritually, but it’s also important to train your mind in the ways of God and be able to do what 1 Peter 3:15 says and give a defense for truth.

Jesus and Peter are not saying that we should involve ourselves in foolish arguments and quarrels.  Instead we should use patience and intelligence to gently instruct those who oppose truth.  See 2 Timothy 2:23-26.  Arguments about science and faith have probably led few people to Jesus.  The real work of people coming to Jesus is through the power of the Holy Spirit. But in an age of skepticism, the Holy Spirit can use logical reasoning to remove barriers of unbelief in people’s hearts and minds. Paul did these very things in Ephesus, and many other places.  See Acts 19:8-10.

For several years I have felt an urging within my spirit to pursue loving God with all my mind in order to help people find meaningful answers in an ever-increasing skeptical culture.  I have suppressed it for a long time mainly because of confidence issues and fear that the urging is simply a “feeling.”  But God has dealt with me strongly since January 2014 and I will be obedient.  In order to solidify my qualifications to minister to people in this area, I have enrolled in a program at Biola University.  I do not feel I am called to be a full-time minister or that I will do this for pay.  I am already where God has called me to be in my career.  I’m simply called to be a person who can help people understand why belief in God and his creation is far more reasonable than what this world tries to posit into their minds.  And to be honest, I love to further my education!

The point of the new blog site is that I may write about some of the things I’m learning along the way.  It helps me to learn and absorb if I write out my thoughts, so why not share my thoughts with others?  I don’t necessarily expect to offer any new revelations or conclusions, but maybe there is a chance I may say something in a way people haven’t yet heard.  So, look for writings on truth, evolution, intelligent design, morality, historicity of the Bible, miracles, Jesus’ resurrection, biblical inerrancy, etc.

So, did we come from nothing? No, we didn’t. Stay tuned to this page and I’ll address bits and pieces of why this is true as time moves forward.

Until next time…