If you’re not familiar with the name Dawkins, that would be the world’s most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins. He along with several others earlier in the century were Christened (pun intended) by the media as the New Atheists. There was nothing new about them, just stale, warmed over question-begging arguments that made their atheism seem a desperate attempt to convince themselves. I once tried to read Dawkins The God Delusion, and it was so painful to read I couldn’t make myself finish. If you want to strengthen your faith, I would suggest slogging your way through that book, but you have been warned.
So, when I saw the title of the post at Evolution News, I had to see how someone like staunch, atheist materialist Richard Dawkins could be knocked “sideways with wonder” by the cell. This is the same Dawkins, by the way, who has famously said that the universe indeed has the appearance of design, but that, in my words, it is just an illusion. It is all random, chance, and matter that explains everything, including the cell. You tell me as you watch this short video, what is a better explanation for the cell, Dawkins’ random, chance, and matter, or the Almighty Creator God of Judaism and Christianity:
Most modern histories of mankind begin with the word evolution, and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution . . . . There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea. As a matter of fact, it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea. Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth” even if you only mean “In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.” For God is by it’s nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. it has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else; just as many of them live under a sort of illusion that they have read the Origin of Species.
If you haven’t had a chance to read my book yet, shame on you, it’s officially become an international best-seller. I recently sat down, virtually, with a new Canadian friend of mine, Ian McKerracher for a chat about the book on the Faith Beyond Belief Podcast. Although we’re on the same continent, Canada is officially international, so I am now an internationally best-selling author! Well, I am an author, internationally best-selling, not so much. If you do listen to the discussion, which was a blast, I trust it will compel you to buy a copy so you can dig into why I’m so persuasive, and why you can be too! Seriously, all hype and hyperbole aside, it is mind-blowing how God’s provision enables us to so confidently build an enduring faith in us and our children, if we have them. As I quote on the cover and in the book, C.S. Lewis tells us why Christianity helps us do that by making sense of everything:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
We call that explanatory power, and no worldview, religion, or philosophy comes remotely close to Christianity in having such power. Praise be to God!
Somebody told me there is this thing called Father’s Day, and I couldn’t believe I actually get my own day! If greeting card companies were going to make up a day in which to sell a lot of greeting cards, having a day for fathers is a mighty fine way to do it. They probably made up such a day a long time ago when the value of fathers in American culture was unquestioned. Up until the 1960s, when all the ideas that had been bubbling among Western intellectual elites for several hundred years in the West exploded into the culture, fathers were seen not only as valuable, but as indispensable. In other words, a society, let alone a family, could not exist without fathers doing what fathers do, and doing it relatively well. What is it that fathers do? Raise boys to become men, and girls to become women. Before the sexual revolution pretty much destroyed everything, most people knew the difference. Nowadays, it’s the over educated who don’t, and average people with average common sense who do. (more…)
I’ve been a Christian for more than 42 years, and I am more blown away by the grace, mercy, and love of God in Christ than I have ever been. It continually astounds me how God in Christ can take lives wrecked by sin and guilt and shame, and turn them into something beautiful for their good and his glory. Some time last year I started listening to conversion testimonies I found online, and it’s been enlightening, to say the least. I’ve written about this previously, but I used to think testimonies were of limited value because they were essentially subjective, about a person’s experience of God, and not based on the objective truth revealed to us in Scripture. I no longer believe that because God’s work in his people’s lives is amazingly revelatory. And in every testimony I’ve heard salvation is accompanied by a desire to read the Bible and go to church. Experiences that don’t drive people to God’s word and God’s people are not from God. (more…)
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