Added to the “. . . And Other Stupid Statements” series

The other day I was listening to a radio program. The speaker is someone who is very popular in Evangelical apologetics. He is someone that I have learned a lot from and whom I respect a great deal. However, he propagated something that I think is a very poor apologetic response to questions for which the individual does not have answers. It goes like this:

Apologist teacher: “We need to be ready to give an answer for our faith.”

Student: “But I am scared. What if someone asks a question that I don’t have an answer for.”

Apologist teacher: “Don’t be scared. It is okay if you don’t know. Don’t feel bad about your lack of knowledge. You just need to remedy it. Tell them that it is a good question and that you will go find the answer and get back with them about it.”

However, I find this sort of carte blanc response disturbing and quite demeaning.

I am not saying that it could not be a good answer in certain circumstances for certain questions. But when it comes to our defense of the faith we had better be more prepared and more reflective. What do I mean by this?

Think about it. Let’s put this in a particular situation. You are an enthusiastic Christian who believes deeply in the Gospel. You are talking to a co-worker about Christ one day. They begin to tell you about why they don’t believe in God. The crux of their issue is the problem of evil. “How could a good God allow evil?” That is their question. You respond, “I don’t know. Good question. I will research this some and get back to you next week.”

What you have just done here is illegitimized your faith to this person. As well, you have diminished the seriousness of the question and the person asking it. To this person, your faith is carried even though you have not dealt with one of the most serious theological questions that anyone can ask. You have just told the person, “Hmmm…Good question. Never thought of that.” Once this person (who obviously does think deeply) recognizes that you have not personally wrestled with this issue, they will see your faith as shallow and fake. By essentially saying, “I have never thought of that,” you have just lost your representation. Continue Reading »

I am normally one of those people who attempts to see the good in all things. I continually tell people that they need to calm down. “Get a grip.” I tell them. ”Things are not as bad as they seem.” “You have to look at the good.” But today is not one of those days and the issue is not one of those issues. The alarm is sounding and I don’t plan on handing out earplugs.

It has been over a decade since Mark Noll penned the piercing words: “The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind” (The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind). Sixteen years to be exact. It was a call for Evangelicalism to recover from the spiritual atrophy brought about by a neglect of the mind in favor of a shallow form of Christianity that offered no history, creed, or hope, only self-help remedies without any foundational basis.

Since this time, a lot has happened. But, broadly speaking, not too much progress toward a reformation of the mind. Biblical and theological literacy continues to shame us.  We have seen the children of Evangelicalism turn bitter and pout about their heritage, demanding that all things must change, but not really knowing why or how. They began to implement a sour change that gave birth to a short lived movement without a sustainable or defendable creed, and no certain hope. 

We have seen the iconic fall of the “seeker” mentality when Willow Creek admirably confessed that their method of discipleship was bankrupt. According to Bill Hybels, leader of Willow Creek and the seeker-sensitive movement:

“Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back, it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.” Continue Reading »

The problem of evil is certainly one of the greatest apologetic issue that Christians face today. In a postmodern world, people’s questions, objections, and problems with the Christian worldview are usually connected to the reality of evil in the world and their attempts to harmonize this reality with the seemingly contradictory notion of an all-powerful, all-good God. So valid is this issue that Ronald Nash, the late evangelical philosopher, said a few years ago (and I quote him loosely), “It is absurd to reject Christianity for any reason other than the problem of evil.”

We must be careful not to relegate this problem exclusively to the intellectual realm. I think that J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig have it right when they say we must distinguish between the intellectual problem of evil and the emotional problem of evil (Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 536). The intellectual problem of evil asks, “Is it possible for a good, all-powerful God to exist in a world where evil is present?” The emotional problem of evil asks “Why would God allow such a thing as _______?” See the difference? One question is concerned with the objective coherence of God and evil, the other is concerned with the subjective coherence of God and evil.

While I think the primary issue today is more with the emotional problem of evil, I do believe that the intellectual problem is one that must be faced before the subjective problem can be dealt with with integrity. Therefore, I believe that the two can be distinguished, but should not be separated.

The foundation for both, comes from this syllogism:

1. If God is all powerful (omnipotent) and
2. If God is all good (omnibenevolent)
3. Then His goodness would motivate Him to use His power to eradicate evil.

The intellectual problem of evil is easier to answer since evil’s existence does not, in reality, present a logical contradiction as the syllogism suggests. In other words, the conclusion is not a necessary conclusion, only a possible one. While God could use His power to eradicate evil, His goodness does not necessitate such an act. The following will attempt to explain.

There are three possible defenses to the problem of evil:

1. The free-will defense: Many would say that God cannot create a world where there is true freedom, yet determine all that happens. In other words, being all-powerful does not mean that God can do anything. There are many things that God cannot do. For example, God cannot make a square circle, He cannot make a rock so big that He cannot pick it up, He cannot sin, He cannot commit suicide, and He cannot lie (Titus 1:2). In short, God cannot do anything that is inconsistent with His character and He cannot harmonize logical contradictions (since they are by definition that which are beyond reconciliation). It would be a logical contradiction to say that God can create a world where true freedom exists, yet evil is guaranteed not to exist.

Positives: Continue Reading »

I have argued in the past that the possibility of an argument does not necessitate probability. The idea is that just because someone offers an alternative explanation for something, this does not make it likely. For example, if I were to point my remote at the TV and push the power button and the TV turned on, the most probable explanation is that the radio waves from the remote triggered the TV’s main power switch. Are there other possible explanations for this? Sure. There could have been a glitch in the TV. My neighbor’s remote could have somehow activated my TV at the exact same time as when I pushed the power button. There could have been a timer set on the TV to turn on and it happened to be when I pushed the remote. There are infinite possibilities. The question is, what is the most probable?

When it comes to the resurrection of Christ, there are an infinite number of possible alternative explanations for the rise of a belief in a risen Christ other than opting for the most obvious (i.e. Christ actually rose from the grave). For centuries skeptics and non-believers have offered their possibilities, but, in my opinion, they are never a probability.

Recently I read these possibilities:

1) Jesus’ body was taken straight from the cross to the criminal graveyard by a devout Jew. We know that the Jews did not want to leave a person hanging on a tree or a piece of wood overnight. Deuteronomy 21:23 says: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged [is] accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee [for] an inheritance.

Is this a possibility? Absolutely. Probability? I don’t think so. How could it be? There is simply no evidence to believe such. It would take a blind leap of faith to turn this possibility into a personal creed. 

2) Jesus’ body was taken straight from the cross and thrown into Gehenna. Perhaps a Roman soldier did this. Louis Feldman has argued that it was the Romans who put Jesus to death and that the Jews had nothing to do with it. See Who Really Killed Jesus? A Critical Response to “The Passion” , 2004. Feldman maintains that the gospel accounts, which place the blame on the Jewish leaders, are so full of mistakes that it obviously did not happen the way they describe it.

Here we are again with a possibility without any historical warrant to make it responsible to believe. (Notice the overstatement here: it “obviously did not happen the way they describe it.” Obvious to whom? Continue Reading »

If you consider yourself a non-Trinitarian believer in Jesus, do I have a challenge for you!

With the permission and support of Michael Patton, I am proposing a formal debate on this blog on the subject of the doctrine of the Trinity, to be conducted over a six-week period (beginning sometime after the New Year; scheduling is flexible). I am looking for one individual to argue for a position contrary to the Trinitarian position, while I will argue for the Trinitarian view.

Here is how I propose we proceed:

Week #1: My opponent and I would set forth our understanding of the nature of God (his attributes, e.g., omnipotent or not, omnipresent or not, incorporeal or corporeal) to make sure everyone understands what, if any, differences we have on that subject.

Weeks #2 and #3: The two of us would each set forth our understanding of the identity/person of Jesus Christ.

Week #4: The two of us would each set forth our understanding of the identity, status (person or non-person), and/or nature of the Holy Spirit.

Week #5: The two of us would each set forth a case for our position with regard to the Trinity (I would be for it, my opponent against it).

Week #6: Each of us will post one closing statement, with those blog entries open for questions from anyone.

Continue Reading »

I’m excited about a new book that was delivered to my door two days ago, God Is Great, God Is Good, co-edited by William Lane Craig and Chad Meister (InterVarsity Press).  Of course, I’m pleased to have contributed an essay for the volume, “Are Old Testament Laws Evil?” 

The book contains a wide-ranging response to the arguments of the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and so on). The list of contributors includes fine thinkers across a range of disciplines such as Alister McGrath (theology), Charles Taliaferro and Paul Moser (philosophy), John Polkinghorne (physics), Gary Habermas (history), Michael Behe (biology), Scot McKnight (New Testament), among others.

Here’s the blurb from InterVarsity Press’s website: Continue Reading »

In a recent debate on the topic of design, I expressed amazement at all the huffing and puffing by anti-design proponents. Though they assert that a design hypothesis is “unscientific,” they say things in other places that make me suspicious. That is, many of these naturalists express profound astonishment at the universe’s precision-tuning for life, life’s emergence from non-life, or at the remarkable “engineering” of biological organisms, organs, and cells. Why then do scientists of all stripes and disciplines repeatedly use design language while repudiating design as a legitimate interpretation of the evidence? 

Let me hasten to add that one doesn’t have to oppose the process of evolution in order to defend design.  Indeed, if evolution from a bacterium to homo sapiens took place, then it would be an excellent argument for design!  Noted cosmologists Frank Tipler and John Barrow calculated that the chances of moving from a bacterium to homo sapiens in 10 billion years or less is 10^-24,000,000.  What kind of numbers are we talking about?  A decimal point with 24 million zeros to the left of 1.! [1]  We’re not even addressing the origin of the universe (something coming from absolutely nothing—whose chances of happening are exactly zero). Nor are we speaking of the fine-tuning of the universe (non-theist Roger Penrose calculates this as being one chance in 10^10(123)).[2] Nor are we speaking of getting the precise DNA sequence of the necessary 250 proteins to sustain life (whose chances have been calculated as 1 in 10^41,000).[3] We are stacking such outrageously remote possibilities on top of more outrageously remote possibilities on top of still more. The naturalist must stake everything on an anti-design random process to produce what we see today in all its beauty and complexity. Never before have I seen such faith!  If the design idea is a live option, however, all the shock evaporates.  After all, getting from nothing to homo sapiens in 13.5 billion years isn’t a problem if design has taken place. 

Let’s set that all aside now. Let me just focus on how naturalistic scientists actually help support that idea that design and science in nowise conflict.  Here is a sampling of quotations.

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Atheist Steven Weinberg (physicist): “sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.”[4] 

Pantheist Eugene Wigner (physicist): The “uncanny usefulness of mathematical concepts” in the natural sciences is “something bordering on the mysterious” and “there is no rational explanation for it.”[5]

ORIGIN OF LIFE

Alfonso Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak (in a recent Scientific American): “Every living cell, even the simplest bacterium teems with molecular contraptions that would be the envy of any nanotechnologist….It’s virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines could have formed spontaneously as life first arose.”[6]

Atheist Francis Crick (Nobel Prize winner, biologist): “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which had to have been satisfied to get it going.”[7]

Jacques Monod (biologist): “…we have no idea what the structure of a primitive cell might have been…. the simplest cells available to us for study have nothing ‘primitive’ about them.”[8]

BIOLOGY IN GENERAL

John Wheeler (physicist): “When I first started studying, I saw the world as composed of particles. Looking more deeply I discovered waves. Now after a lifetime of study, it appears that all existence is the expression of information (my emphasis)” [9] Continue Reading »

For my intro students…

I often play this game with my kids that drives them crazy. Sitting in the room, with no one but us, while they are not looking I will slap them on the rear and act like I did not do it. They turn and say, “Daddy! I know you did that.” I say, “I did not.” ”Then who did it?” they respond (thinking they have settled the issue with this one question).  I say, “A guy ran into the front door and slapped them and then ran out.” They look at me like I am crazy. “Look!” I respond to their skepticism, “The door is not locked. It is obvious that someone could have come in since the door is not locked.” Upon further looks of skepticism, I have them go check the door to see if it is locked or not. Once they check and see it is unlocked, I have won the day. I have poked a hole and their certainty and even caused them to confirm it. No longer possessing the indubitably that I have required for their epistemic verification, they now have lost poise in their former confidence. In other words, I tricked them into thinking that one has to be absolutely certain about something before it can be believed.

Ideas about the value of certainty are currently on the theological stage of debate. With the postmodern push toward perpetual skepticism that gives way to necessary compromise and a redefining tolerance, along with many in the church responding by appealing to a fidist approach to the faith (ignore the evidence, just believe), Evangelicals are found scratching their heads, wondering why we are checking the door to see if it is locked.

“You can’t be certain that Christianity is true. Some have said that it borrowed from other ancient religions to get its story.”

“You can’t be certain Christ rose from the grave since his body might have been stolen.”

When a suspicious world says that we cannot be certain about anything because of the alternative possibilities, we find ourselves defending a position drunk with its own form of compromise. When people poke holes in our beliefs with arguments no better than “look, the door is not locked” we find ourselves missing the big picture, attempting to argue about the security of the door.

How did we get here?

The father of the so-called Age of Reason, Rene Descartes, was commissioned by a cardinal in the church to find a way of attaining a level of certainty that went beyond mere probability. With skepticism on the rise, probability was looked at as the ugly step-sister of the indubitability that accompanied absolute certainty. Indubitability equates to infallible knowledge—knowledge that can’t be wrong. Prove without a shadow of a doubt that God exists by mere intuitive resources. That was Descartes commission.

(Let me repeat as this may be a new word to some of you. Indubitability describes the impossibility of being wrong due to an exhaustive and infallible method of inquiry; beyond the possibility of question or doubt.) 

There was celebration at Descartes seeming defeat of the skepticism of his day. His “I think therefore I am” looked as if it provided a bridge to attain the type of certainty to which humans have never been privy.  His methodology, which became known as “the Cartesian method,” was adopted in large part by those in the West. And thus began the Age of Reason, where certainty—indubitable certainty—reined supreme.

Christianity was never bound by any sort of indubitably from a human perspective. We have never been required to check the lock on any door. In fact, no one actually can or does live by such a method in the acquisition of truth.

But alas, we often think we are supposed to. We have turned “the evidence that demands a verdict” into “the evidence that produces indubitably.” At least that is what we are pressured into doing. Continue Reading »

We are currently uploading our new course “The Historic Jesus” as part of our apologetics (defending the Christian faith) by Robert Bowman. These are all free.

Available in “The Apologetics Program” by Robert Bowman:

• Introduction to Apologetics
• Apologetic Methods
• Understanding Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses
• Science and the Bible
• The Historic Jesus (currently being produced and updated)

You can access them on iTunes.
Or, here is the RSS feed.
Or…you can get them on the Reclaiming the Mind internet toolbar.

In my opinion, these are some of the best apologetics works that Christian and seekers need to read.

If you are having trouble with your belief, “apologetics” is the defense of the Christian faith. Each of these books defends the Christian faith in different ways, from different perspectives, from different people, dealing with a variety of issues.

Apologetics alone will never convince anyone of the truth of Christianity because people’s beliefs are not determined by reason and human wisdom, but as reason and human wisdom are used by the Holy Spirit to change a life. These works qualify as those that follow the path of 2 Pet. 3:15 “Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you.” God uses apologetics to changed the the hardened heart.

These are numbered one to fifteen in importance. Drum roll please . . .

15. Pensees, Blaise Pascal (can be read through Peter Kreeft, Christianity of Modern Pagans)

Pascal’s book is as timeless and as relevant as many ancient proverbs. In fact, it serves more like a proverbial apologetic work with short pithy statements of life and truth designed to get one to think. Not an apologetic work in the classic sense,  but one for those who are looking for a different approach through the path of wisdom before reason. Pascal was Catholic, but, as one Catholic has put it, too Protestant to be Catholic.

14. Letters from a Skeptic, Gregory Boyd

An incredibly engaging work that is a published account of Greg’s letters back and forth with his father who was an unbeliever at the time. While I disagree with Boyd’s contention that God does not know the future in his defense of evil, it is a great book and will make you think and believe more deeply.

13. How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong, Paul Copan

Paul Copan deals with common objections to Christianity that most Christians find hard to answer. From “Animals have rights just like humans do” to “You can’t prove that scientifically” Paul helps the Christian as well as the skeptic get answers that represent a Christian worldview.

12. Reasonable Faith, William Craig

A master at dealing with the existence of God, Craig provides a good, readable apologetic at an intermediate level. Continue Reading »