Dec 30, 2015 | Explanatory Power
What is the materialist creed? Modern materialism denies that we have a soul and reduces us to a mere body. In doing so, it assumes that all our actions are determined by physical forces, and therefore denies that we have free will. It therefore declares to be unreal our everyday experience of freely choosing this or that action, and in doing so, removes the possibility of moral action. It reduces love and hate, courage and cowardice to chemistry, and makes of human adventure and human history predetermined paths marked out from the beginning by the laws of nature. And finally, based upon the notion that the universe is a great self-winding, law-driven machine, materialism declares that miracles are impossible and God does not exist.
–Benjamin Wiker, “The Greatest Story, Because It’s True!”
Dec 18, 2015 | Apologetics
Came across this piece today, “A Christmas question: Are the Gospels more reliable than scholars once thought?” And the answer is a resounding yes! The Gospels, and the Bible in general, have been under attack since forever, but especially since German Higher Criticism in the 19th Century, which a priori ruled out any supernatural input to the biblical text. Secular critics presuppose the Bible is a completely human document, so can’t come to the text in anything approaching objective analysis. Yet just like in science, the more that is learned the more credible the biblical sources become.
There are many resources to build a foundation of confidence in the biblical text, but a couple that are worth having easy access to are Michael J. Kruger’s website, Canon Foder. Another scholar to be aware of is Daniel B. Wallace, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, the purpose of which is digitizing all known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament via digital photographs.
Christians have an embarrassment of riches in all kinds of apologetics resources today, and it is well worth building confidence in the book we stake our life and eternity on. God has made that abundantly possible.
Dec 2, 2015 | Explanatory Power
I came across an article today entitled, “The Astounding Truth About the Hubble Space Telescope’s Most Famous Image.” In it was an image pretty much like the one on the left. We learn in the piece that:
The specks of color and light you see are not stars; they are galaxies — 10,000 of them in fact! It is the deepest image of the sky over obtained, gazing back approximately 13 billion years.
You might be thinking as I was, 10,000 galaxies! That’s a lot of galaxies! We’re not talking stars, or solar systems; we’re talking 10,000 Milky Ways! And our galaxy isn’t a small place. In fact, it’s 100,000 to 120,000 light years in diameter, and one light year is six trillion miles! Is your brain scrambled yet? Well, that isn’t even the one-forty millionth of it! (more…)
Recent Comments