Featured Apologetics Ministry- Ratio Christi

Today I wanted to highlight a great ministry that I have been made aware of in recent times. Ratio Christi is a ministry dedicated to educating our young people on how to defend the truth of Christianity.. They have been opening chapters at college campuses that promote critical thinking about the Christian worldview.

Ratio Christi's President's Blog is featuring a post by me this morning. In it I emphasize the importance of the audience that Ratio Christi is targeting. You can find it at the President's Blog.

Brian Auten (Apologetics 315) recently interviewed President Rick Schenker. I highly recommend that you listen to it to discover the resources they are making available to our college students.

You can also find them at their Homepage, Facebook Page, Twitter Feed, and YouTube Channel.

Evolution, Morality, and Transformers

Introduction
Recently I saw the movie "Transformers: The Dark of the Moon". I almost made it through the whole thing without a single thought about worldviews, philosophy, or apologetics. But, alas, near the end, something happened that my mind couldn't ignore (I pulled out my phone and immediately started taking notes).

For those who are unfamiliar with the Transformers' basic premise: there exists three species in the universe that are essentially battling for survival and a "leg up" on the others: humans, Autobots, and Decepticons. Typically, the Decepticons are trying to achieve something that would have the implication of destroying the humans and/or Autobots. The Autobots are the more "noble" of the two robotic species that join forces with the humans against the Decepticons. This particular installment had two characters that I will be focusing on here: Optimus Prime and Sential Prime (Primes are the leaders of the Autobots; they tend to be the wiser and more powerful individuals). SPOILER ALERT: the rest of this post contains storyline details that take place in the last minutes of the movie, so if you haven't seen it and plan to (and don't want it ruined), stop reading now.

Atheistic Evangelism

Today I want to talk a bit about atheistic evangelism. Specifically, the naturalistic atheism. With the presence of the "New Atheists" and many others who follow in their footsteps, it seems that there is a lot more proselytizing of atheism than in previous years. I am quite confused at this phenomenon for three reasons: according to naturalism, first, there is nothing after a person dies; second, everything that happens is determined; third, everything is meaningless and purposeless.

Atheism, Evil and Ultimate Justice

Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America. This attack shook the world. It abruptly ended nearly 3000 valuable lives and destroyed countless others. It forced people to recognize evil, ask if justice could ever be served, and challenged our ability to move on.

As a Christian it pains me to see such evil in the world. It hurts worse to see atrocities committed in the name of a religion. Many atheists share my feelings and have even become militant against all forms of religion because of it. They claim that there is no way religion can possibly be true if it causes such needless pain and suffering in the world. I want to take a few moments to discuss evil, justice, and forgiveness in the context of the events from a decade ago within both the Christian and atheist worldviews.

Providing Alternative Explanations

There have been several times that someone provided me a phenomenon that supports a specific worldview. They implied that this support for their worldview demonstrated that my worldview was false. The most recent example that comes to mind is a debate that is inside Christianity. As many, both inside and outside the Church, know, Christians debate the age of the earth/universe, and along side that debate tends to be a lesser known debate about the geographical extent of Noah's Flood (whether the flood was worldwide or localized to a single geographical area).

I currently hold that Noah's Flood was a localized event. (I'm not going to go into a huge defense of this position here because the purpose of this post is just to make a quick point, which Noah's flood being local is not it.) A friend of mine gave me two pieces of evidence that he states can only be explained by a geographically world-wide flood. These two being the large amounts of sediment all over the land and aquatic fossils being found on top of many mountains. He told me that this was evidence that the whole world was covered by water, and further concluded that could only have been Noah's flood (worldwide).