Apologetics to the Glory of God

Category: Objections and Misconceptions

  • Without God and Without Hope: An Atheist on the Connecticut School Shootings

    Atheist Matt Oxley comments on Christian responses to the shooting in Connecticut as follows:

    Despite how angry this makes me, how silly and offensive I find these notions, suddenly I find myself envious of people with some form of a god to comfort them and answer their questions, even if those answers are shallow and ignorant, because I am simply without any answers that can even begin to make sense of this. Answers like this seem almost blissful.

    Note that Matt is angry at the application of Christian tenets to tragic events. As I mentioned in my debate with Matt, …

  • Listen to Chris Bolt on Backpack Radio this Sunday, December 16

    Lord willing, Vocab Malone will be interviewing me on Backpack Radio this Sunday, December 16, 2012 at 6PM on KPXQ-AM in Phoenix, Arizona. You can live stream the program from this website – http://www.kpxq1360.com – or catch the recording when it goes up on this website – http://backpack.podbean.com. Make sure to tune in, and don’t forget to check out other episodes of Backpack Radio!…

  • On Balance

    Think about what happens when several people are tugging on some object from different directions – the relative movement of the object, given more or less equal force being exerted from the various directions, will be close to zero.

    Now think about what happens when one person is tugging harder than all the rest – what is the result for the object then? Imagine the object as your set of theological commitments – and the people tugging as various viewpoints that all demand an answer from you. If you, as an apologist, aren’t careful – that over-focus on one particular …

  • Sola Scriptura and the Canon Revisited: Guest Post by Adam Blauser

    As I have gotten involved in dealing with Roman Catholicism and sola scriptura, I have found two things very interesting. First of all, there is a grossly simplistic view of meaning in language amongst many Roman Catholic apologists. Many of them will be willing to destroy human language in order to argue against sola scriptura, borrowing from men like Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish to argue that we cannot know which interpretation of scripture is correct. It is amazing to be able to cite deconstructionists making parallel arguments to Roman Catholic apologists.

    Second, what I am realizing more and more …

  • Evil as an Illusion

    To the average Westerner, the religious texts and teachings of the East often read like drug induced nonsense. At the same time, Eastern religions contain some insight in virtue of their very different approach to familiar topics.

    Take, for example, the problem of evil. As far as most atheists are concerned, this is the best weapon available against theism, and especially Christian theism. Of course, the problem of evil fails as an objection to the Christian faith due to the unbeliever’s inability to fashion an argument against the premise that ‘God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil He …

  • Application and Practicality

    There seems to be, at least in my experience, a common objection to Covenantal apologetics that goes something like this. Emphasizing all of these arcane and/or obscure concepts, focusing on theology proper; it just doesn’t address the real world practically. There is no application to be made – it’s all theoretical. There are a few variants, and I’ll bring up a couple. First, the objection is made that we are being “obscure” – Bahnsen, as you may know, addresses this in “Always Ready,” along with an admonishment against “obscurantist arrogance.” Here’s an excerpt.

    “In the last study we heard three

    …

  • Why I Believe

    I was in an conversation in our chat room the other day with an atheist – one that I thought was a total waste of time, until a friend of mine suggested I review my side of the conversation and encouraged me to post it as a synopsis of why I am a Christian, and what our method of apologetics “looks like” to the outside world.
    The result is the attached PDF. Hopefully it will be of some benefit to you as you think about why it is that you believe, and how to best share that with others.

    Why …

  • Is Muhammed Prophesied in the Bible? Free Debate

    http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=5236…

  • “The Problem of Non-God Objects”

    Justin Scheiber recently gave a presentation which may be found here – http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2012/08/29/rd-extra-the-problem-of-non-god-objects on a philosophical problem he believes he has developed with respect to God and creation. Let me begin by stating that I did not listen to his presentation in its entirety, though I did jot down the argument itself and the objections he attempted to answer. The argument Justin presented may be stated as follows:

    (1)    There is a possible world ‘P’ that is God existing alone and nothing else existing for eternity.

    (2)    God is a perfect being.

    (3)    Therefore, ‘P’ is the ‘Best Possible World.’

    …

  • Islam and “be[ing] civil without being feeble.”

    http://www.bpnews.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=36071…