Historical Science, Deception, and Blind Faith

Introduction

As I have mentioned in a couple posts in the past (here and here), it is important that apologists investigate theological questions and details of the Christian worldview. Without such investigation, inconsistency in the worldview that is being defended will easily creep in. Because consistency is a feature of reality, unbelievers will seize the inconsistency as evidence against Christianity as the true worldview. This can have detrimental effects in public places where honest seekers may be listening to and watching conversations. One of the detailed areas of the Christian worldview that must be consistent is God's character (one area of theology). If God's character is found to be inconsistent with what we are defending, then it serves as evidence that we have something wrong (in part or in whole- see the post Is Your View Falsifiable for more on this). Today, I want to focus on God's moral character, specifically His perfect honesty (Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2; and Hebrews 6:18).

The Challenge

One of the most contentious debates in the Church today focuses on the age of the universe and the length of the days of creation in Genesis 1. One of the most influential arguments against the young-earth creationist position (YEC) is that if nature reveals an ancient age (~13.7 billion years, as the evidence powerfully [and some would say "only"] supports) yet the universe is actually young (6,000-10,000 years) then God has given us a false revelation in His creation; this means that God is ultimately deceiving us and the truth is not found in Him. If a view of God necessitates that He is lying to us, then the god necessitated by that view is NOT the God of the Bible. And if we defend such a view, we are found to be false witnesses of God and the truth is not found in us. This challenge is not one to be taken lightly and it must be addressed.

Book Review: The Only Wise God

Review Introduction

This reviewer has long been fascinated with the debate about God's knowledge of the future and man's free will. William Lane Craig has done much theological and philosophical research into the attributes of God and the nature of time. He condensed his research into a relatively short and concise presentation that focuses specifically on how to reconcile the scriptural claims that God knows what every person will do, yet every person is free to do something else. The book is "The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom'. It is only 154 pages and is broken down into two parts with 12 bite-sized chapters.

Book Introduction

William Lane Craig prepares the reader for his presentation by distinguishing between determinism and fatalism. He recognizes that in the attempt to reconcile God's knowledge of future events with man's free will, many have decided to give up the pursuit and appeal to theological mystery- the idea that its not something we can know now, but will know when we get to heaven. He looks at the proper and improper use of mystery in Christianity and concludes that this debate does not need to end in an appeal to mystery.

Pain, Suffering, and Purpose

The Emotional Problem of Evil

This past weekend the On Guard conference was held in Oklahoma, which gave me the opportunity to go. William Lane Craig was speaking on the problem of evil- both the intellectual version and the emotional version. He did an incredible job demonstrating how the intellectual problem has been overcome and that even atheists recognize that. The emotional problem of evil is where he stated that the problem is still quite persuasive.

In my notes on this talk I wrote down three initials. They represents a powerful and popular resource that I wanted to highlight for the apologetic community. I have been dealing with apologetics for several years now, and I cannot remember seeing this resource come up a single time. It seems to be left untapped, yet I'm not certain why.

Stephen Law's "Evil God" Argument

In a recent debate with William Lane Craig, Stephen Law proposed an interesting argument in defense of atheism. He provided many examples of "good" in the world and from those concluded that an evil God does not exist. He then challenged Craig to show how one can believe that a good God can exist when one believes that an evil God does not exist. In a very simple form, the argument looks like this:


1. An evil God does not exist.
2. An evil God and a good God are the same
3. Therefore, a good God does not exist
4. Craig's God is a good God
5. Therefore, Craig's God does not exist

At this time, I'm not going to focus on the first premise (although it will play a part). I think that Craig handled it adequately in the debate (Randy Everest at Possible Worlds addresses the concerns with the premise and Craig's responses in his analysis of the argument). However, premise 2 is the one that did not receive much attention from Craig and where I think that he could have also shown the argument's weakness. I want to quickly go over a few observations about the second premise.

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.