Here is a letter from a recent anonymous leaver of Christianity that was sent to me by email from exchristian.net (a site I keep up on). I want to see your responses. 

Did the Church fail her? If so, how?

Did she ever get the true Gospel? (I know you cannot really know, but what do you think?)

Her new pastor shunned her upon hearing that she was a homosexual. Was this right? What is the right response to such a situation?

She said she cried “tears of joy” when she no longer felt judged by the church (my words, not hers). How could separation from the church cause someone to cry tears of joy?

Do you think that she was shown grace?

___________________________________________________

“I realized at an early age that something was very wrong with the Baptist church I went to. It was pretty bad when a eight year old child can tell a place is corrupt.

My first of many churches was in north Alabama, a very horrid and dim place where half the population cannot read or write. At the early age of four I was taught that homosexuality was wrong, and if you were you would go straight to hell. In fact, you would go straight to hell for lots of things it seemed. Continue Reading »

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In his book The God Delusion, the new atheist Richard Dawkins asserts that Yahweh is truly a moral monster: “What makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh—and even worse, that they should bossily try to force the same evil monster (whether fact or fiction) on the rest of us.”

In this particular blog, I would like to address a glaring inconsistency, which I mentioned in passing in an earlier blog. How can Dawkins launch any moral accusation at all? This is utterly inconsistent with his total denial of evil and goodness elsewhere: Continue Reading »

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In 2005, Brian Flemming did a sort of documentary called “The God Who Wasn’t There.” It’s a short film, only about an hour long, with a killer soundtrack. Interviews follow this and add another hour to the DVD. I’ve watched it a good half a dozen times now. Very entertaining! The essential point of the movie is that Flemming went searching for the historical Jesus and what he found was…nothing. He concludes that there was no historical Jesus. His chief witnesses on behalf of a non-existent Jesus are Robert Price (member of the Jesus Seminar), Richard Carrier (non-Christian Greek scholar), and Alan Dundes (formerly folklore expert and professor at Berkeley, now deceased).

The movie combines a postmodern, post-logical approach with a modernist, empirical and logical approach. At key junctures, Flemming switches from one to the other, depending on whether he has any argument or not. When he does not, he goes into entertainment mode. There’s lot of entertainment in this film. Continue Reading »

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New atheist Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation makes the claim that the Law of Moses purports to be an expression of “God’s timeless wisdom.” While a fringe minority (Christian Reconstructionists) believe that the Old Testament (OT) laws for national Israel are ideal and normative for all nations, the Scriptures themselves take another view on the matter. For one thing, the OT anticipates a “new covenant,” which is fulfilled in Christ. Thus Hebrews talks about something “greater” and “better.” This covenant is not nationalistically-oriented but encompasses the new Israel—the inter-ethnic church as the people of God. Continue Reading »

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[Note: This entry is subject to updating and revision. Current revision date 12/11/07.] 

Philip Pullman’s trilogy, known as His Dark Materials, consists of three books: The Golden Compass (first published in 1995 in the United Kingdom as Northern Lights), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). By 2007 these three books had sold over 14 million copies. New Line Cinema is producing film versions of the three books, beginning with The Golden Compass, which premiered in most cities today. The film is clearly riding the wave of interest in movie versions of fantasy literature, especially the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter books and films, and the recent first film installment of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. (One of the coming attractions trailers shown before The Golden Compass in my theater was for Prince Caspian, the second Narnia film, due out next summer.)

Pullman has described the trilogy as “Paradise Lost for teenagers.” Ironically, he considers the books to be works of “realism, not fantasy,” and rejects comparisons to the novels of Tolkien, Rowling, or other fantasy writers. The trilogy’s title, His Dark Materials, comes from a line in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which the conflicting elements of nature are called God’s “dark materials” from which he may “create more worlds” (Book II, line 916). Continue Reading »

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I guess Richard Dawkins didn’t read my book. . . .

Well, not that it would have mattered: Dawkins seems determined never to give religion the benefit of the doubt. In his God Delusion, he considers Yahweh an “evil monster” whose command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is “disgraceful” and tantamount to “child abuse and bullying.” Have Jews and Christians missed something all these millennia? Dawkins’s own hostility toward religion greatly diminishes his charitability quotient.

Not only can we detect hostility in Dawkins, but hypocrisy as well. In his book River out of Eden, he denies that evil exists at all:

If the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies . . . are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention . . . . The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. So we have “no evil and no good” there and Yahweh as an “evil monster” here.

So which is it? If, presumably, Dawkins hasn’t drastically changed his metaphysical outlook, what exactly is his case against an allegedly evil deity? Continue Reading »

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I’ve been reading J.P. Moreland’s superb book Kingdom Triangle, which was recently released by Zondervan. He begins with this true story by the missionary doctor to Zaire, Africa—Helen Roseveare. Though it’s a bit long for a blog, it is very inspiring.

One night, in Central Africa, I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all that we could do, she died leaving us with a tiny, premature baby and a crying, two-year-old daughter.

     

We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive. We had no incubator. We had no electricity to run an incubator, and no special feeding facilities. Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts.

     Continue Reading »

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I found this and thought it was cute:

So, being bored, I made this out of another atheism poster: Continue Reading »

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The emperor has no clothes. You all know the story. When people have an influential belief, there are reasons why it is influential, right? Of course, or it would not be influential. But the “what” of these reasons is always a case of hit or miss apologetics where consideration of their view is either asked for based upon the evidence, or demanded by a passionate appeal. Those who use the latter to argue their case have little recourse other than emotions. Continue Reading »

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What do you think? Is this a good illustration of our belief in the truthfulness of Scripture? Continue Reading »

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You believe that God heals, right? When you or a loved one is sick, you pray in such a way that evidences a belief that God, the “Great Physician,” might come to your aid and provide a miracle. Right?

I want to ask a few questions here and I want you to feel free to answer in this blog:

1. Do you believe that God still heals people today?

2. Is a miraculous cure from cancer any more difficult for God than healing someone who has lost a leg?

3. Have you ever seen either type of miracle?

4. Why, assuming that you have never seen nor heard of an amputee being healed, doesn’t God heal amputees? Continue Reading »

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Dear Atheist,

Having discussed this with you for quite some time, it would seem that we have come to an impasse in our conclusions concerning the evidence that the universe provides. I, on one hand, have argued that the intricacies of the universe from cosmology and biology compel any honest observer to the conclusion that there is a self-existent, all-powerful, intelligent, and personal force behind its genesis. This creator must be self-existent, otherwise we enter into the irrational proposition of infinite regress. Continue Reading »

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