Internal Debates and Apologetics

Internal Debates Versus Apologetics
Not too long ago I was in a discussion with a fellow apologist. We were discussing several different controversial topics in Christianity (age of the universe, Calvinism vs. Arminianism, and God's attributes). After a while he made a very strange statement. He told me that these discussions about science, philosophy, and theology weren't really important to apologists and only served to divide and cause unbelievers to run from Christ.

He took the position that apologists really only needed to defend the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to establish the truth of Christianity. His main support for that claim was that no other worldview can accommodate the resurrection of Jesus, so if it can be shown to be an historical event, all other worldviews are eliminated from the possibility of being true.

Book Review: Cold-Case Christianity🕵

Introduction

Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook) is one of the latest books to examine the evidence for the reliability of the New Testament. Homicide detective J. Warner Wallace was an atheist before he began putting Christianity to the same tests that he places witnesses and suspects to in his investigations of crimes. He split his book into two sections. The first deals with the methods used in detective work. He uses his own experiences to illustrate and applies them to the different aspects of Christianity. In the second part, he specifically targets the reliability of the four gospels as eyewitness accounts of history. This review will be a chapter-by-chapter summary but should not be taken as comprehensive of Wallace's presentation:

Section 1: Learn to Be a Detective

Chapter 1: Don't Be a "Know-it-All"

In the first chapter, Wallace begins his training of the reader by speaking a bit about presuppositions. He explains that presuppositions are ideas that we come to an investigation with prior to any investigating. They usually determine our conclusion before we examine the evidence. Though everyone has these, it is required that an investigator or juror set them aside to be able to come to an objective conclusion. The consequences of allowing our presuppositions to guide our investigation are that we are likely to come to a conclusion that is not accurate. This goes for investigating murders and investigating truth-claims of worldviews.

Top Posts of 2012 #1: Race and Homosexuality

The final week (maybe, I'm getting used to this) of my vacation and the Top 5 posts of 2012!

Today is Top Post #1: Ravi Zacharias On Race and Homosexuality


Previous Winners:
#5: Hunger Games: The Atheist's Utopia Revealed
#4: Book Review: This is Your Brain on Music
#3: The Fear of Atheism
#2: Who Created God?

Thank you to all my readers who tweet and post the articles for others to see. 

Thank you, too, to everyone who has been willing to offer constructive critique of my posts. The posts in the list are still open for comments...feel free! :)

A Special Thanks to Apologetics 315, The Poached Egg and The Christian Apologetics Alliance for their fantastic apologetics ministries as they have been instrumental in getting the content of Faithful Thinkers, and most importantly the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to the thinking masses.

Happy New Year!!!!!