(This is the second part of a three-part series. The first part can be read here.) As I mentioned in the first part, a good story has five elements: the setting, the characters, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution. The setting is basically the container for the other elements of the story. In God's story, the setting is earth, although it also includes the backdrop of the rest of the universe. Earth is where God has revealed Himself to the characters of His story. The setting also includes the laws by which things in the story function. In God's story we have natural laws such as the law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, and the law that each …Continue reading →
(This is the first of a three-part series. The second part can be read here.) Introduction How do you go about explaining who God is to a non-believer—either someone who has never heard of Him or someone with a flawed or limited understanding? How do you, a finite being, explain to another finite being the infinitely incomprehensible God? While it's true no one can fathom the heights and depths of who God is or what He has done, we can know Him enough to love, trust, and obey Him. This knowledge typically begins with basic biblical doctrine about the attributes of God such as His omnipotence, His omniscience, His holiness, His love, and so on. But straight biblical doctrine, repeated …Continue reading →
Years ago, when I was building my apologetics library, I bought a short book by Bill Cetnar called “Questions for Jehovah Witnesses.” It contains photocopies of pages from various Watchtower publications, with questions for the Jehovah Witness to answer. If you’ve ever had visits from these people, you know you can’t teach them anything from the Bible. They just won’t listen. They’ll only accept what their organization teaches. But they do like to answer questions. For this reason, the approach used in this book works very well. Atheists are also like Jehovah Witnesses: you can’t teach them anything from the Bible. But many atheists are willing to research evidence, so I put together a short book that uses a similar …Continue reading →
“If God is everywhere, how can anything else exist outside of Him? For example, how can God and Satan occupy the same space?” God is everywhere, but that is not the same thing as saying He is everything. God is not a physical being. He is not part of this universe. God is spirit. Physical laws only apply to what is physical. If God chooses to reveal Himself in a physical body (as He did with Jesus – John 1:1,14, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:20-23, 1 Timothy 3:16), that body can only be in one place at a time. When Jesus was physically present in Jerusalem, He couldn’t physically be in Galilee at the same time. But His physical manifestion does …Continue reading →
About 30 years ago, I acquired a white cat named Peewee. As you can see, he looks like a normal cat, and for all intents and purposes, he was normal. But notice the little bend near the tip of the tail. This was a genetic defect inherited from his mother, for she had the same bend in her tail. If Peewee had ever fathered kittens, some or all of them would likely have had that same defect. But this was a completely harmless mutation. It had no effect on Peewee or his mother, and it would have had no effect on his offspring. It gave no advantage or disadvantage over other cats. I think this points to a serious problem …Continue reading →
We Christians believe that God is all powerful, all knowing, all present, all good, and worthy of our trust. At the same time, we also believe there’s an abundance of evil in the world. Now God could eliminate evil and suffering immediately, …but He doesn’t. The fact that He doesn’t seems to create problems in many people’s minds. Some see it as a logical inconsistancy: that it is impossible for an all powerful, all knowing, good God to allow evil to exist. Rather than earnestly searching the Bible for the answer, they take the easy way out by concluding God isn’t all powerful, all knowing, all good, or He doesn’t exist. But God does exist, and there is much evidence …Continue reading →
(The following is another approach to my argument for the necessity of the human spirit given in More Than Matter, and Independently Conscious. Imagine you are an X-Man like Charles Xavier, but with much more extreme capabilities. You also have a Cerebro-like machine that allows you to see every human being in the world and know everything there is to know about them. With your superhuman powers, you look at Cerebro’s screen and see billions of human beings at once in infinite detail. You know each person’s exact physical makeup. You can see their every neuron firing. And you fully comprehend what you see. You also know virtually every human being on the screen is self-aware. Each has an independent …Continue reading →
(I’m collecting all of my Personal Apologetic blog posts, and a couple other related posts. into this all-in-one page. It’s not finished. I have more sections in various stages of completion, and the writing quality varies a bit. As I post on the blog, I’ll add them here as well. Eventually, I’ll reword parts of this so it doesn’t sound like a bunch of blog posts stuck together. Introduction (What follows is the beginning of a series of blog posts I’m putting together on the defense of the gospel. Because my intended audience is those who have a purely materialistic world view, I’m going to use what I believe are reasonable arguments, personally convincing if given serious thought. My approach …Continue reading →
(First, a little insanity. Bear with me on this one…) Atheism is a very optimistic belief system. After all, look how far we’ve evolved! As our intelligence and power increase, we are better able to control ourselves and our environment. Many well-known atheists and agnostics have given us exciting glimpses of where mankind is heading. The Star Trek series revealed Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the eradication of poverty and war open to us after man abandons the concept of God. Friedrich Nietzsche saw mankind eventually evolving into a race of supermen, again without God. Yes, atheists are very optimistic! The Bible, on the other hand, is a very depressing book. Its pages are full of negative and offensive words like …Continue reading →
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’ … And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” – Matthew 25:41,46 Probably the biggest problem people have with accepting the idea of eternal punishment is the degree of punishment compared to the crime. There are some unbelievably evil people out there, committing the most heineous acts. But surely, the sins of even the worst of humanity don’t deserve eternal punishment in hell. There has to be a limit – a few days, a hundred years, even a billion years – and then the soul will have paid his …Continue reading →
