I Believe - A 9/11 Tribute

A tribute to all those who lost their lives and loved ones on September 11, 2001.

It is hard to believe it has already been 8 years since this tragedy.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away...and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.
(Rev. 21:1-4)

How Can Truth Be An Abomination?

(Upfc.org) Matt Vidovich

If you are not familiar to the many cracks that lay on the basic foundation of Mormonism, then this may come as a surprise to you. For the past two years, my research on Mormonism has left me only more confused about basic understanding on LDS doctrine. As the list of questions get longer, the list of answers fade away. Through my numerous conversations with LDS believers, missionaries, bishops, and even stake presidents, one claim rang loud in my ears that could not be ignored. “Many Churches and other religions have Truth, but our Church contains the fullness. ALL truth.” Mormons everywhere love to boast that the LDS Church does not criticize others, this includes any type of religion, or view of God. Even Mormon Publication contain ridiculous euphemisms that soften even their own doctrine.

(1) “Because the Church was no longer led by priesthood authority and revelation, error crept into Church teachings. Good people and much truth remained, but the gospel as established by Jesus Christ was lost, resulting in a period called the Great Apostasy.” http://www.mormon.org/mormonorg/eng/basic-beliefs/the-restoration-of-truth/the-great-apostasy

"Much truth remained." Not a small amount of truth but "much truth."

(2) “We have come not to take away from you the truth and virtue you possess. We have come not to find fault with you nor to criticize you. We have not come here to berate you. … Keep all the good that you have, and let us bring to you more good.” President George Albert Smith, quoted in Sharing the Gospel with Others, comp. Preston Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1948), 12-13; italics added.

Virtue you posses? Where does the Bible affirm that we posses virtue? Keep all the good that you have? What good are we without Christ? “Keep all the good that you have, and let us bring you more good.” This sounds like the motto of Masonry, “Making good men better.” Do you begin to see how the LDS church covers it’s embarrassing doctrine to fit the politically correct world around it?

They also project this pattern that “Good People” have some truth, and some is better then none. This idea “you’re not wrong, you’re just not right.” is pushed by the church, and is completely contrary to their own doctrine. A prime example of this is found in the Book of Mormon:

“And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth” (1 Nephi 14:10).

This verse in 1 Nephi gives readers a clear cut, black and white illustration of who is and who isn’t true followers of Christ according to LDS doctrine. In v.17 it tells us that if we are not a part of the true church, then our “Foundation is the devil.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a politically correct, postmodern way of presenting itself. It sidesteps the core of the issue and avoids any deep theological discussion, so as not to offend anyone.

Same statements have been made by the Church’s founding fathers. Brigham Young, John Taylor, James Talmage, Bruce McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith, and of course Joseph Smith Jr. Smith once said, “My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right — and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in His sight: that those professors were all corrupt . . .” (Joseph Smith, History of the Church, vol. 1, p. 5-6).

By cushioning the blow, the LDS church fails to be honest about their own doctrine. In closing I ask, how can any truth be an Abomination?

Marxism's Last (and First) Stronghold

(Acton.org) Samuel Gregg

Marxism, we’re often told, is dead. While Communism as a system of authoritarian power still exists in countries like China, Marxism’s contemporary hold over people’s minds, many claim, is nothing compared to its glory days between the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in October 1917 and the Berlin Wall’s fall twenty years ago.

In many respects, such observations are true. But in other senses, they are not. We need only look at Western Europe—the place where Marxist thought first emerged and took root. One trivial, albeit disturbing sign is many young West Europeans’ willingness to wear t-shirts emblazoned with the Communist hammer and sickle or Che Guevara images. If you want confirmation of this, just take a stroll through downtown Amsterdam, Stockholm, or Rome.

No doubt, in many cases the t-shirt images are simply reflections of youthful rebelliousness. But it’s difficult to refrain from asking wearers of such clothing whether they also possess a t-shirt inscribed with the Nazi swastika. They would surely be deeply offended at such a suggestion. But their willingness to parade the hammer and sickle reflects either historical ignorance or a failure to accept that it is as much a symbol of terroristic criminal regimes as the swastika: just ask any survivors of Stalin’s Gulag, Vietnam’s “re-education” camps, or the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields.

Then there is the persistent grip of Marxist-inspired mythology on Western Europe’s historical imagination. A good example is Karl Marx’s presentation of nineteenth-century capitalism as a period in which a small group became wealthy and millions were impoverished. This remains an article of faith for the European left and some on the European right.

No doubt, there was considerable upheaval as entire societies transformed from agricultural arrangements to heavy industry. But as the Oxford economic historian Max Hartwell proved conclusively in his famous debates with the Marxist scholar Eric Hobsbawm, on every measurable variable of the standard of living, the quality of life for the overwhelming majority of people improved dramatically because of industrial capitalism.

So why are Marxist myths and symbols implicitly accepted so casually by many West Europeans who would never consider themselves Communists? One obvious reason is that Western European nations were never subject to Communist regimes. Hence it was easier to retain romantic notions about Marxism and ignore or rationalize the brutal reality on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Then there is the fact that the continental European left was far more influenced by Marxism than, for example, Anglo-American center-left movements. Germany’s Social Democrat party, for example, only formally renounced Marxism as a source of ideas in 1959.

But perhaps the most significant reason for Marxism’s lingering background influence on much West European opinion is an Italian philosopher who died 72 years ago. If you ever doubt the power of intellectuals, the case of Antonio Gramsci is a useful corrective.

A rather unconventional Marxist by 1930s Stalinist standards, Gramsci argued that the key to power lay less in controlling the economic means of production than in capturing the engines of “cultural hegemony” – the universities, the media, the arts, and religious institutions. Gramsci recognized that the Russian Bolsheviks’ violent seizure of power in 1918 had been the exception to the rule. This tactic had failed everywhere else. A protracted ‘war of position’ for control of the culture was, Gramsci believed, the most effective way of establishing a leftist stranglehold over society.

After Communist parties’ failure to establish political dominance in Western Europe after World War II, Gramsci’s path of “cultural Bolshevikism” became attractive to many West European leftists. It gathered apace after the 1968 student rebellions. Reflecting on this period as one who lived through it, then-Professor Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) spoke of the violence and intellectual intimidation used by left-wing students against anyone disagreeing with them. Marxist ideology, he wrote, shook his university “to its very foundations.”

After 1968, many of Western Europe’s universities underwent a dramatic change for the worse. The professoriate became so monolithically leftist that it makes America’s reliably left-leaning Ivy League universities look like models of diversity. If you walk into most West European academic bookshops, you will find a preponderance of left-inclined work and struggle to find material presenting alternative views. This state of affairs has influenced thousands of West European students passing through these institutions.

None of this is to suggest that Western Europe is the victim of a mass decades-old conspiracy. But perhaps as the world prepares to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Communism’s defeat in Central-East Europe, West Europeans might like to ask themselves why so many of them are so blasé about the influence of a philosophy that lead to the imprisonment, torture, enslavement and death of millions.

And they might get rid of those t-shirts.

John Calvin on Spiritual Warfare

This semester I am taking a class on the theology of John Calvin. A major portion of the course is reading Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion in its entirety. At 1500 pages, the Institutes stands as a monumental and historic work in Protestant theology. In other words, a classic. Love him or hate him, Calvin was, and continues to be, one of the finest thinkers and most articulate defenders of the Protestant Christian faith.

Throughout the semester, as time allows, I will be posting quotes from Calvin on various topics. All quotes are from the Battles translation, edited by John T. McNeill. Enjoy!

JOHN CALVIN ON SPIRITUAL WARFARE:

1.14.13 - Scripture forearms us against the adversary

All that Scripture teaches concerning devils aims at arousing us to take precaution against their stratagems and contrivances, and also to make us equip ourselves with those weapons which are strong and powerful enough to vanquish these most powerful foes.

We have been forewarned that an enemy relentlessly threatens us, an enemy who is the very embodiment of rash boldness, of military prowess, of crafty wiles, of untiring zeal and haste, of every every conceivable weapon and of skill in the science of warfare. We must, then, bend our every effort to this goal: that we should not let ourselves be overwhelmed by carelessness or faintheartedness, but on the contrary, with courage rekindled stand our ground in combat. Since this military service ends only at death, let us urge ourselves to perseverance. Indeed, conscious of our weakness and ignorance, let us especially call upon God's help, relying upon him alone in whatever we attempt, since it is he alone who can supply us with counsel and strength, courage and armor.

1.14.14 - The realm of wickedness

Morever, in order that we may be aroused and exhorted all the more to carry this out, Scripture makes known that there are not one, not two, nor a few foes, but great armies which wage war against us.

We are therefore taught by these examples that we have to wage war against an infinite number of enemies, lest, despising their fewness, we should be too remiss to give battle, or, thinking that we are sometimes afforded some respite, we should yield to idleness.

1.14.15 - An irreconcilable struggle

The fact that the devil is everywhere called God's adversary and ours also ought to fire us to an unceasing struggle against him. For if we have God's glory at heart, as we should have, we ought with all our strength to contend against him who is trying to extinguish it. If we are minded to affirm Christ's Kingdom as we ought, we must wage irreconcilable war with him who is plotting its ruin. Again, if we care about our salvation at all, we ought to have neither peace nor truce with him who continually lays traps to destroy it.

In sum, we experience in all of Satan's deeds what Christ testifies concerning him, that "from the beginning he was a murderer...and a liar" [John 8:44]. For he opposes the truth of God with falsehoods, he obscures the light with darkness, he entangles men's minds in errors, he stirs up hatred, he kindles contentions and combats, everything to the end that he may overturn God's Kingdom and plunge men with himself into eternal death. From this is appears that he is in nature depraved, evil, and malicious. For there must be consummate depravity in that disposition which devotes itself to assailing God's glory and man's salvation.

1.14.18 - Assurance of victory!

Now, because God bends the unclean spirits hither and thither at will, he so governs their activity that they exercise believers in combat, ambush them, invade their peace, beset them in combat, and also often weary them, rout them, terrify them, and sometimes wound them; yet they never vanquish or crush them. But the wicked they subdue and drag away; they exercise power over their minds and bodies, and misuse them as if they were slaves for every shameful act.

But because that promise to crush Satan's head [Gen. 3:15] pertains to Christ and all his members in common, I deny that believers can ever be conquered or overwhelmed by him. Often, indeed, are they distressed, but not so deprived of life as not to recover; they fall under violent blows, but afterward they are raised up; they are wounded, but not fatally; in short, they so toil throughout life that at the last they obtain the victory.

For, such is our weakness and such is the power of his fury, how could we stand even in the slightest against his manifold and continuous attacks, unless we relied upon the victory of our leader? Therefore God does not allow Satan to rule over the souls of believers, but gives over only the impious and unbelievers, whom he deigns not to regard as members of his own flock, to be governed by him.

Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer Part 3 of 3

(Stand to Reason) Greg Koukl

Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer, Part 1 of 3
Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer, Part 2 of 3

A TITANIC COINCIDENCE

In 1898, Morgan Robertson published a novel entitled Futility. The story was a fictional account of a transatlantic voyage of the cruise ship Titan traveling between England and New York. The largest vessel afloat displacing 45,000 tons, the Titan was considered virtually unsinkable. Yet in the middle of the night in April, with three massive propellers driving the ship forward at the excessive speed of 25 knots, it collided with an iceberg and sunk. Since the number of lifeboats was the minimum the law required (though twice that was needed for its 3,000 capacity), more than half of its passengers perished.

Fourteen years later in April, the world’s largest luxury liner with a displacement of 45,000 tons – the indestructible Titanic – departed from England on a transatlantic voyage to New York. In the middle of the night, the Titanic’s triple screws drove the ship at the excessive speed of nearly 25 knots into an iceberg and sunk. Since the Titanic was fitted with less than half the number of lifeboats needed for its 3,000 capacity (the minimum the law required), more than half of its passengers were lost.

This real-life coincidence makes a crucial point. Regardless of the similarity between two accounts of different events, the second cannot be summarily dismissed as an invention simply because the first turns out to be fiction. Whether or not the details of the Titanic’s disaster are accurate is determined by its own body of evidence, unrelated to the fictional story of the ill-fated Titan that came before.

This is a critical procedural point, one best described by C.S. Lewis:

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.”…Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself.... If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain…how I came to be so bad at arithmetic...but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely mathematical grounds....In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.

Lewis’s insight applies to our challenge. Remember the claim in question: Ancient myths explain the origin of the Jesus myth. The second false account was inspired by the first ones. Do you see the misstep? The New Testament account is presumed false; then the ancient accounts are invoked to explain the fiction. The argument of Zeitgeist turns out to be circular, assuming what it intends to prove.

Imagine introducing yourself to a stranger and sharing bits of autobiography only to be labeled a liar and an imposter. His evidence? In the past three months, 12 other phonies tried to pawn off the same story on him. When you offer identification, he ignores it. He’s already assumed you’re a fraud like the rest, no matter what bona fides you produce.

In addition to being offended, you’d probably be mystified. Clearly, he can’t prove you are lying about your identity by citing others who lied about theirs. No imposter of the past could logically foreclose on the possibility that you might be the genuine article. That must be decided on separate grounds. To paraphrase Lewis, one has to show that a person is lying before it makes any sense to speculate on where the lie came from.

In the same way, one first has to show that Jesus is a fiction before he starts explaining how the fiction came to be. Even if someone produced a thousand parallels with Jesus from the writings of antiquity, that alone would not prove He was just another phony. If the similarities were remarkable, it might raise eyebrows (“Not another one”) and invite a closer look. But it would do nothing on its own to disqualify Christ. Only shortcomings with the specific historical evidence for Jesus can do that.

The Zeitgeist approach is an evasion, not an argument. It is not good enough to assume Jesus is a myth and then speculate on the genesis of the error. The primary source historical documents about Him – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – must be dealt with first, not dismissed with misleading talk about alleged literary relationships with ancient dying and resurrecting gods.

JESUS, MAN OF HISTORY

Professional historians do not believe the New Testament account is merely a retelling of an ancient myth. Though not endorsing every detail of the Gospel records (most academics reject the supernatural elements for philosophic reasons), scholars, both liberal and conservative, overwhelmingly agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a man of history.

Will Durant, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian, coauthored with his wife the most successful work of history in history, the 11 volume The Story of Civilization. In “Caesar and Christ,” in spite of the “many suspicious resemblances to the legends of pagan gods,” Durant concludes:

Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that many inventors would have concealed. No one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of higher criticism, the outlines of the life, character and teachings of Christ remain reasonably clear and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.

The challenge in Zeitgeist is why we should consider the stories of Mithras, Horus, Attis, and the other pagan mystery saviors as fables, yet treat as factual a similar story told of a Jewish carpenter.

The answer is simple: There is no good evidence for the authenticity of any ancient mythological characters and their deeds, but there is an abundance of such evidence for Jesus. And if the historical documentation for the man from Nazareth is compelling, then it doesn’t matter how many ancient myths share similarities.

The Apostle Paul readily acknowledged that if Jesus’ resurrection was a myth and the witnesses were trading in lies, then Christians were a pitiful lot (1 Corinthians 15:19). And fools too, I might add, because it cost many of them their lives.

Nothing in the Zeitgeist recycled redeemer theory, however, suggests Christians have misplaced their confidence. The skeptics’ facts are unreliable and their thinking is unsound, so their challenge is doubly dead.

According to their own testimony, the New Testament writers were not following “cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). They were testifying not to myths, but to “sober truth” about events that had “not been done in a corner” (Acts 26:25-26):

What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life – and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us – what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also (1 John 1:-3).

Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer Part 2 of 3

(Stand to Reason) Greg Koukl

Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer Part 1 of 3

"FAILED FACTS"

First, the fact is that the “facts” listed above are almost all false, nearly to the point of embarrassment. Here are a few examples:

There is no record Osiris rose bodily from the dead. Instead, he became a god of the netherworld. As one put it, Osiris is not a dying god, but a dead god, always depicted as a deceased, mummified king. He may be “alive” in the spirit realm, but this would be true of anyone passing into the next life who’s physical body lies decaying in a tomb. Indeed, Egyptian religion had no concept of resurrection, only of immortality beyond the grave. These are two entirely different concepts.

Horus was not born of a virgin, but was the son of Osiris and Isis (not Mary). Horus never dies, so he could have no resurrection, though in his union with Rah, the sun God, one could say he “dies” every night and is “resurrected” every morning. Clearly, though, this is no help to the copycat messiah crowd.

Neither the Bible nor Christianity claim Jesus was born on December 25th, so any parallels with ancient myths are completely inconsequential. The date was chosen by emperor Aurelian in the third century.

• Mithras was not born of a virgin, but emerged from a rock, and there is no textual evidence of his death, so there could be no resurrection. Mithras was a god, not a teacher, so he had no disciples.
  

• There is no evidence of an account of a bodily resurrection of Attis, the Phrygian god of vegetation.

• There is no evidence for a virgin birth of Dionysus.

• Krishna was his mother’s eighth son, so his virgin birth is unlikely.

The dating of many of the dying-and-resurrecting-god myths is the second obstacle. Here’s the problem. It is axiomatic that the recycled version must appear in history after the one it allegedly came from, not before. However, many mythical accounts of dying and rising gods actually postdate the time of Christ:

• There is no evidence of the influence of Mithraism in the Roman Empire until the end of the first century A.D.7
  

• The sacrifice of a bull by some Mithraists allegedly mimicking the substitutionary atonement of Christ first shows up in the second century A.D.

• The four texts that cite the resurrection of Adonis date from the second to fourth centuries A.D.

• The account of the miraculous birth of Zoroaster dates to the ninth century A.D.10

The most academically exhaustive work, a ponderous study entitled The Riddle of Resurrection by Tryggve Mettinger, concludes that even though some myths of dying and rising gods may predate the Christian era, the claims made regarding Jesus of Nazareth are distinct from them in three critical ways.

First, Jesus was a flesh-and-blood human whose resurrection happened in history at a precise topographical location on earth. Second, the mythical “resurrected” deities were invariably tied to the seasons of the agricultural cycle, “dying” and “rising” repeatedly every calendar year, while Jesus’ resurrection was a one-time event unrelated to seasonal changes. Third, Jesus died as a vicarious sacrifice for sins. There is no evidence of such an atonement in any other accounts.

Mettinger sums up the evidence this way:

There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions.

A SKUNK IN THE WOODPILE

In his work, The Gospel and the Greeks, Ronald Nash offers a handful of suggestions to protect the novice from being misled by dubious factual claims.

Check the evidence in the primary sources. Don’t settle for a website citing a website that cites a website. Web postings often run in a circle, with each site quoting others without ever citing a primary source document (an original rendering of the ancient myth itself ). Try to get as close to the original source as you can to reduce the chance that “facts” got distorted in the retelling. Make sure your evidence comes from an established authority in the field who has access to the original material.

Check the dates. Be sure the original records (not the original myth) predate the accounts that allegedly borrowed from them. Even ancient tales get amended over time.

Determine if the parallels are really parallel and significant. Similarities are frequently overstated or oversimplified. Many are inconsequential, like the claim ancient gods were born on December 25th. Some accounts trade on the kinship of phrases like “birth of the sun” vs. “birth of the son.” This word play only works, though, when rendered in English, a language that developed millennia after these events.

Beware of Christian language and terms being read back into the ancient account. Some refer to the death of Osiris as his “passion,” employing Christian terminology to imply a similarity that doesn’t exist. Any death can be called a passion, even when the passions themselves are wildly dissimilar. Also, no one should be impressed when Egyptian sun gods are called “The Light.”

As it turns out regarding the factual claims, once the primary sources of the ancient myths are consulted, a host of alleged similarities turn out to be fictions. The parallels remaining are usually far too general to be significant. Further, the dating of many of the ancient records completely undermines the argument because the stories appear too late in history to have any influence on the Gospels.

But that’s not the worst of it. Even if the characterizations of the myths were accurate – that Mithras was born of a virgin, and Osiris was resurrected from the dead, and Horus had a dozen disciples, and Dionysus turned water into wine, and Attis was crucified—there is something else fundamentally wrong with the Zeitgeist challenge. Even if the facts were accurate, it proves nothing. Here’s why.

Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer Part 1 of 3

(Stand to Reason) Greg Koukl

There is a reason the ancient historical accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth do not start with the phrase, “Once upon a time….” On the face of it, the authors did not appear to be writing fairytales for future generations, but rather detailed accounts of the extraordinary events in the life of a particular Jewish carpenter who actually changed the course of history.

The opening words of Luke’s account of Jesus’ life are especially clear on this point:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

In the days of Herod, king of Judea….

In John’s account we find two striking claims that bookend his record, the first found in Chapter 1 and the last in Chapter 20:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Many other [miraculous] signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

Each of these ancient “biographies” of Jesus – along with the only other accounts that give any breadth of detail about the Nazarene (Matthew and Mark) – proceed in the same fashion.

First, the authors are clearly aware they are relating a remarkable story about a remarkable man who did remarkable things. Second, it is just as clear they were convinced the events in their accounts really happened. These were not sacred stories of netherworld gods and ethereal, supernatural heroes, but reports of actual historical events involving flesh and blood people with their feet firmly planted on terra firma.

The Gospel writers intended to report history, not mythology. Their accounts include the vivid detail of an observer who had witnessed the events personally, or a chronicler who had obtained the information from people who were actually there. Yet they are not merely reports, but arguments meant to persuade, citing evidence to prove their claims.

These facts on their own don’t make the accounts true, of course. But they do seem to place these writings in a class of ancient literature that doesn’t allow them to be dismissed for frivolous reasons. Yet this is exactly what has been happening.

"ONCE UPON A TIME..."

The internet is littered with allegations that the historical records of the life of Jesus of Nazareth are examples of a kind of religious plagiarism, a mere rehashing of dying-and-rising-god fictions of ancient mythology, a recycling of common details found in dozens of mystery religions in the ancient world around the time of Christ.

Simply Google Mithras, Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, or Isis and you will be buried in an avalanche of “evidence” linking the divine teacher from Galilee with a host of characters allegedly manufactured from the same mythic material. The most well-known attempt is a flashy “documentary” called Zeitgeist – The Greatest Story Ever Told that has gone viral on the web.

According to Zeitgeist, ancient hieroglyphics tell us this about the anthropomorphized Egyptian sun God, Horus:

Horus was born on December 25th of the virgin Isis, Mary. His birth was accompanied by a star in the east which, in turn, three kings followed to locate and adore the new-born savior. At the age of 12 he was a prodigal child teacher. At the age of 30 was baptized by a figure known as Adep, and thus began his ministry. Horus had 12 disciples who he traveled about with performing miracles such as healing the sick and walking on water. Horus was known by many gestural names such as “The Truth,” “The Light,” “God’s Anointed Son,” “The Good Shepherd,” “The Lamb of God,” and many others. After being betrayed by Typhon, Horus was crucified, buried for three days, and thus resurrected.

“Many other gods,” Zeitgeist claims, “are found to have the same mythological structure”:

• Attis (1200 B.C.) – Born of a virgin on December 25th, was crucified, was dead for three days and resurrected

• Krishna (900 B.C.) – Born of a virgin with a star in the east to signal his birth, performed miracles, died, and was resurrected

• Dionysus (500 B.C.) – Born of a virgin on December 25, performed miracles like turning water into wine, was referred to as “the King of Kings” and “God’s only begotten son,” died, and was resurrected
  

• Mithras (1200 B.C.) – Born of a virgin on December 25, had 12 disciples, performed miracles, was dead for three days and resurrected, was known as “the Truth” and “The Life,” and was worshipped on Sunday
  

Osiris, the husband of Isis in the Egyptian pantheon, is another popular contender for a dying and resurrected god. The broad claim, simply put in the words of Sir Leigh Teabing in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, is, “Nothing in Christianity is original.”

This is a taxing topic because of the sheer volume of alleged comparisons advanced by skeptics. The process is complicated by the many variations of these ancients myths generated in
their retelling.

Books like Ronald Nash’s scholarly The Gospel and the Greeks or Lee Strobel’s popular work The Case for the Real Jesus spend time answering the particulars. In the interest of space, I want to advance a general response to this broad challenge to the reliability of the canonical accounts of Jesus’ life.

In general, the dispute entails a factual claim – certain mythical accounts that predate the Gospels contain elements matching the details of Jesus’ life – and a logical/literary claim – the existence of the older accounts proves that the account of Jesus is myth as well, being cobbled together with bits and pieces of these old stories.

There are at least three significant problems with this argument that should be enough to silence it forever. The first two speak to the factual claims. The last – and most decisive – addresses the logical assertion.

The Zoolander Objection Part 1 of 2

“But who created God?”, is what I call the Zoolander Objection to the cosmological argument for the existence of God. I argue here that this common response to the cosmological argument, whether given sarcastically or seriously, can only come from someone who does not fully grasp the argument. Furthermore, it is very similar to a memorable scene in the film Zoolander. But in order to make the Zoolander connection, I must first layout the argument. The goal of this argument is to show that an eternal first cause of everything, exists.[1]

Below are some key features of this argument, followed by an explanation for the naming of the Zoolander Objection.

I. Actual infinites cannot exist.

A. “Infinite/eternal” distinction.
How can the premise "Actual infinites cannot exist" be used in an argument for the existence of God? Isn’t God infinite? What needs to be clarified here is what is meant by ‘infinite’. The term ‘infinite’ means an infinite set of finite things. This is not synonymous with the term ‘eternal’. An infinite is a quantity, while eternity is a duration. (One could say that an eternity is a quantity of time, but this slightly misunderstands the concept behind the word 'eternity'. The concept of eternity refers to the passing of time. That is, it refers to how long the time goes for; the duration of it.) An infinite is eternal, but an eternal thing is not necessarily an infinite. (Much like all apples are fruit, but not all fruits are apples.) An infinite would be eternal because it would be a quantity that goes on forever if it were to be counted. So since eternity has to do with duration rather than quantity, an eternal thing can only be one of two things: An infinite set, or a single thing that simply always exists.

B. “Potential/Actual Infinite” distinction.
Mentioned above is how an infinite set would be eternal because it would be a quantity that goes on forever if it were to be counted. In this sense, it is potentially infinite. If it were actualized, then it would be infinite. It would therefore be eternal by going on forever if it actualized its potential.

C. ‘Cannot exist’
Although the concept of a potential infinite set can be utilized in mathematics, an actual infinite set cannot really happen. The non-crossing-over feature of actual infinites leads to the conclusion that they cannot actually exist. The occurrence of a particular thing in the set would always be waiting for its turn to occur. Because there is an infinite amount of things before it, the sequence would never ‘cross over’ to the time it takes place. It would never happen. This is the case for every part in the infinite series and makes an infinite series impossible in actuality.

For example, imagine going to dinner at a local restaurant. You show up and the hostess tells you there are two people in front of you and you’ll be seated after them. You wait a few minutes, and then you’re seated. You come back the next night and are told ten people are to be seated before you. You wait longer than the night before because there are more people in front of you. You come back a third night and there are 30 people to be seated before you. This time, you wait even longer. But just like the nights before, you actually do get seated. You get the picture: the more people before you, the longer you wait. Now imagine that there is an infinite amount of people to be seated before you do. How long would you wait? The answer is forever. You’ll always be waiting, and will never actually be seated. Because there is an infinite amount of people to be seated before you, there will never be a crossing over in the seating sequence to your actual turn.[2]

II. Our world cannot be part of an infinite series.

If the world we live in were part of an infinite series of events, then the past would never cross over to now. If the past events were infinite, we’d always be waiting for now to happen. In fact, now wouldn’t happen at all and we wouldn’t be here. Therefore, because we’re here, we know the past could not have been an infinite series of events.

III. Conclusion

If we were to trace the sequence of events from now backwards into history, we realize that there are a few different options to explain how this sequence of events came about. There are three options: 1) the events are an infinite set, 2) a single eternal thing started them, or 3) they started from nothing.

Option 3 is obviously impossible, so we can discard it. It cannot be the case that nothing existed and then something did. How can nothing cause something to happen? There’s nothing to do the causing. Therefore, since something exists, and something cannot come from nothing, something must have always existed.

This brings us to options 1 and 2. The sequence of events that we trace from now back into the past either 1) has no beginning and is an infinite set of events, or 2) began from a single eternal thing. These two options both have eternal histories to meet the criteria of always existing. Furthermore, they are the only two logical possibilities to explain how something could have always existed (i.e. they are the only two ways something can be eternal): either the sequence of events from now, back throughout all of history, rewinds into the past forever with no beginning, or rewinds into the past and terminates in a single eternal uncaused thing.

This is where the impossibility of actual infinites is crucial to this line of reasoning. Since it is impossible that the sequence of events that go from now back into history be infinite, then they had to originate from a single uncaused eternal thing. This is not merely a postulated conclusion being suggested because the other two options are impossible. This argument demonstrates that things could not be any other way than what the argument concludes in addition to the other two options being impossible. Again, there had to be a beginning to the sequence of events that make up all of history. They couldn’t have come from nothing, so they had to come from something that has always existed, but not as an infinite set. Therefore, an eternal first cause of everything is the answer. This is demonstrated by the key features of the argument: Something exists, actual infinites cannot exist, but something has to have always existed. It has to be this way. In poor grammar, an eternal first cause of everything cannot-not exist.

The Zoolander Objection

Now, after going through all this, to hear the question on what created this single eternal first cause of everything, is to assume the questioner either wasn’t listening or doesn’t understand the argument. To ask this question, is to ask what caused this uncaused thing to exist.

Sometimes, this statement is raised in a sarcastic fashion attempting to point out that the cosmological argument is either incomplete or leads to an infinite regress of causes. This sarcastic presentation of the “Who created God then?” question still very much qualifies as a Zoolander Objection. This is because the person raising the objection can only do so if they do not fully grasp the argument. There is still a failure to see that a single uncaused eternal thing exists.

Here now, finally, is why I label this objection the Zoolander Objection. In the film Zoolander, J.P. Prewitt (David Ducovany) provides Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) with an exhaustive explanation of how and why male models have been used as assassins. He gives examples of incidents when they were used and gives all the reasons why. He says it is because male models are in excellent physical shape, can gain access into the most secure facilities, and because they will do anything they’re told. So after hearing this complete explanation of exactly why male models have been used as assassins, Derek, in his innocent and comical, but slow witted way, asks, “But why male models?”. Prewitt, surprised at the statement, replies, “Are you serious? … I just explained that.”

So when the cosmological argument demonstrates that a single eternal first cause has to exist and cannot be caused by something else, is followed by the objection, “But what caused it?”, I am immediately reminded of Derek Zoolander. And since this objection is so unfortunately common, I think giving it a name is warranted.

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Footnotes:

[1] For thoroughness, the formal argument skeleton has been included in the appendix. For space and time constraints, this blog post will just be going through the argument in a quicker way by explaining its key features.

[2] Chad V. Meister, Building Belief (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI.), 99.

APPENDIX:

Formal Argument Skeleton

The argument presented here is my version of Samuel Clarke’s cosmological argument for the existence of God. He calls it the argument from contingency.[3]

1. If the universe exists, then it either came from nothing or from something that exists eternally.
2. The universe exists.
3. The universe either came from nothing or from something that exists eternally.
4. Something cannot come from nothing.
5. The universe came from something that exists eternally.
6. If the cause of the universe is eternal, then it is either an infinite series of events, or a single uncaused eternal thing.
7. The cause of the universe is either an infinite series of events, or a single uncaused eternal thing.
8. Actual infinites cannot exist.
9. The cause of the universe is a single uncaused eternal thing.
10. If the cause of the universe is a single uncaused eternal thing, then a single uncaused eternal thing exists.
11. A single uncaused eternal thing exists.

1. P ) Q v R
2. P
3. Q v R
4. ~Q
5. R
6. R ) S v T
7. S v T
8. ~S
9. T
10. T ) U
11. U

[3] Samuel Clarke, “The Argument from Contingency,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, ed. Louis P. Pojman, 4th ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson, 2003), 5-6.

Why Evolution is True

Recently I re-posted a blog by Sean McDowell entitled An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design.

One reader left a comment on the blog recommending the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne in order to help non-scientists "understand the thousands of pieces of evidence for evolution." As it turns out, Sean had already reviewed this book as well. My thanks to him for allowing us to re-post it here.

(Conversantlife.com) Sean McDowell

• “Evolution is a fact. And far from casting doubt on Darwinism, the evidence gathered by scientists over the past century and a half support it completely.”
• “Today scientists have as much confidence in Darwinism as they do in the existence of atoms, or in microorganisms as the cause of infectious disease.”
• “Evolution is far more than a scientific theory: it is a scientific fact…scientists need no more convincing.”

These quotes all come from Professor Jerry Coyne’s recent defense of Darwinian evolution entitled Why Evolution is True (Viking Publishing, 2009). Like most books that defend Darwinian evolution (if not all), the author acts as if the evidence for evolution is simply overwhelming and conclusive. From his perspective, it’s only scientific novices or cranks that believe in creationism or intelligent design (ID). And the future of science itself rests upon defending Darwinian evolution against its critics.

Whenever I picked up a book of this sort I used to wonder, “What new evidence has been found? What does the author know that I don’t?” In the back of my mind I used to wonder if the author had discovered some evidence that would genuinely support Darwin’s theory. Now, since I have been doing this for some time, my fears have abated. I have read enough books of this sort to realize that most of the arguments are simply recycled from previous works.

Evidence for Evolution

The evidence Coyne offers for evolution includes vestigial organs, embryological similarities, the fossil record, imperfect design, and the geographical distribution of species. With the exception of the last point, William Dembski and I respond to ALL of these points in our book Understanding Intelligent Design (Harvest House, 2009).

Let’s consider one example from Why Evolution is True. Coyne says, “It is a remarkable fact that while there are many living species, all of us—you, me, the elephant, and the potted cactus—share some fundamental traits. Among these are the biochemical pathways that we use to produce energy, our standard four-letter DNA code, and how that code is read and translated into proteins. This tells us that every species goes back to a single common ancestor, an ancestor who had these common traits and passed them on to it descendants.” There are two problems with this “evidence” that Professor Coyne conveniently ignores.

First, evidence for common descent is decidedly not evidence for Darwinian evolution. There are many proponents of ID who believe in common descent, but they doubt that Darwin’s mechanism (natural selection acting on random mutation) is a sufficient causal explanation for all the diversity and complexity within the biological world. Coyne needs to show that a blind material process can generate all the biological information that pervades the natural world. The only evidence he offers is finch-beak variation and bacterial resistance, which demonstrate minor genetic shuffling rather than the generation of novel information and structures.

Second, it is true that the arguments Professor Coyne makes here are consistent with Darwinian evolution. But here’s the problem he overlooks: these considerations are also consistent with intelligent design. Here’s why: If there is a common designer, then it should be no surprise that we find a common “fingerprint” over all nature. Since the evidence Coyne cites is consistent with BOTH Darwinian evolution and ID it cannot be used as evidence solely for one.

Just-So Stories

In the final section of the book Coyne criticizes evolutionary psychology for trying to explain all human behavior through a Darwinian lens. Evolutionary psychologists try to explain everything—including altruistic behavior and sexual preference—as adaptive results of natural selection acting on our ancestors. Coyne is strongly critical of evolutionary psychology, claiming that “Imaginative reconstructions of how things might have evolved are not science; they are stories” (228).

Ironically, though, Coyne offers many imaginative reconstructions in defense of biological evolution throughout the book. For example, he offers a “possible” scenario for the evolution of the eye (141) and a “feasible” explanation for the evolution of the blood-clotting system after admitting, “We don’t yet know for sure…”

Coyne says that evolutionary biologists don’t need to give detailed explanations of the evolution of biological features. Rather, they merely need to give a “feasible” explanation (138). This raises a troubling question: How can Coyne get away with offering merely “feasible” scenarios in evolutionary biology and yet criticize evolutionary psychology for not giving detailed explanations? One can’t have it both ways.

Evolution is a “how” not a “that”

I am amazed at how frequently Darwinists admit that there is debate about HOW life evolved but not THAT life evolved. Coyne puts it this way: “These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve” (209). Once again, this raises a troubling question: If there is debate about the how of evolution, then what right do Darwinists have to claim that we evolved with such confidence (as we saw above)? Evolution is a theory specifically about how life developed. The significant debate (and lack of evidence) for the mechanism of evolution undermines the theory itself.

I’m tempted to close this article by claiming that the evidence for evolution is underwhelming, weak, disputable, and unconvincing. But that would be to use the very tactics I criticize in Coyne. So here’s my question: Why can’t we have a balanced, thoughtful, non fear-mongering discussion about the question of our origins? What are (many) Darwinists afraid of?

If you are looking for a recent book that encapsulates the case for Darwinian evolution, then Why Evolution is True is probably a good place to start. Just make sure you balance it out with a book such as Understanding Intelligent Design, or The Design of Life (by William Dembski and Jonathan Wells). Don’t let the confident statement above fool you—the case for Darwinian evolution is not closed.

Richard Dawkins is releasing a book soon in defense of evolution called, “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.” Maybe this will finally be the conclusive evidence in favor of Darwin’s theory. I’m not holding my breath.

Did God Send Saul An Evil Spirit?

One particular passage in the Old Testament that has bothered Christians and fueled critics is found in 1 Samuel 16:14-16:

Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD terrorized him. Saul's servants then said to him, "Behold now, an evil spirit from God is terrorizing you. Let our lord now command your servants who are before you. Let them seek a man who is a skillful player on the harp; and it shall come about when the evil spirit from God is on you, that he shall play the harp with his hand, and you will be well." (1 Samuel 16:14-16)

What are we to make of this passage? Did God really send Saul an evil spirit?

Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard provide excellent insight into this passage in their book Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. This book serves as an excellent introduction to hermeneutics.(1) Regarding this passage, they state:

The report that God sent Saul an "evil spirit" (1 Sam 16:14-16, et al.) illustrates how easily we may read later information into our reading of the Old Testament. In the NT an "evil spirit" is a demon (e.g., Mk 1:26 par.), so we naturally assume that the same term identifies the tormentor of Saul as a demon. This assumption overlooks two points of background: to read the OT phrase as "an evil spirit from God" implies that God sends demons on people, a theological assumption unsupported by Scripture because it conflicts with the biblical teaching that God does not associate with "evil." In addition, it wrongly assumes that the OT has an awareness of the demonic world, which does not seem to be the case. Instead, we might better translate the Hebrew as "bad spirit" (i.e., "foul mood" or "depression"; cf Judg 9:23).(2)

In other words, when we engage in biblical interpretation, it is important not to read New Testament theology back into Old Testament passages. This can lead to mistaken interpretations of Scripture.

What these authors are pointing out is that the phrase "evil spirit" needs to be interpreted with the original author and audience in mind. In addition, any legitimate interpretation of this passage must be consistent with the rest of Scripture. The "evil spirit" which came upon Saul is not necessarily a demon but may more accurately be regarded as a foul or depressing mood, such as seems to be the case in Judges 9:23.

Is there anything else in the passage which supports this interpretation? Does this interpretation fit the larger context? I think so.

Notice what it says just a few verses later:

So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand; and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him (1 Sam 16:23).

Given this verse, which interpretation of "evil spirit" better fits the context? Does it make more sense to think that a demon would depart from Saul whenever David played the harp? Or, does it make more sense to think Saul's depressing and foul mood would leave whenever David played the harp?

In terms of theology, I have no reason to believe that demons are somehow annoyed by the sound of harps and forced to leave whenever they hear them. On the other hand, I think we all have personally experienced the power of music in being able to lift our spirits and bring us out of a depressing or foul mood.

Therefore, not only does this later interpretation fit the context of the passage as a whole but it also seems to do greater justice to the original author and audience, as well as our own personal reflection on the matter. In light of this interpretation, neither skeptics nor Christians should be troubled by the idea of God sending an "evil spirit" on to Saul.
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(1) Biblical hermeneutics is the art and science of biblical interpretation.

(2) Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, 12.

Moral Grounding

(Stand to Reason) Greg Koukl

A common objection to God’s existence is the existence of evil. How could there be a God if there is so much evil in the world? My observation is that in order for that objection to gain any traction, there has got to be real evil or a violation of a real good. You can’t be a relativist and ask this question without being disingenuous. It’s intellectually dishonest if you don’t believe in objective morality to ask about the objective evil in the world. So if there’s a real problem of evil, there has to be real evil. In order for evil to be real, there’s got to be real good. That is foundational.

The objection makes use of a moral standard. If evil is real, then there’s a standard that allows us to identify what is good and what is evil. I think we have the standard built into us and that is why we can look at acts of injustice and immediately know that they are wrong. Our conscience has this ability. I refer to it in the Relativism book as “moral intuitions.” Moral intuition is a way of knowing that’s built into us that we can grasp something that’s true. The thing we grasp is not physical. We’re not looking at it with our eyes. We’re looking at it with a different faculty, but it’s still just as real. This is why people spontaneously react when they see examples of injustice and react, “That’s wrong.”

What makes it so? How is it that things like injustice or cruelty to people or animals are wrong?

We see an act of goodness and it moves us deeply. I think goodness is one of the things that touches us deeply when we watch films that are effective. There is something deep and morally good about an event, a look on the face, a gesture, something noble that happens and it moves us. Consequently, we are deeply touched and maybe even tempted to weep at that moment in the film because something real and truthful that is morally good has been awakened in our heart. So our awareness of objective morality expresses itself both in our awareness of evil and of good.

The grounding question is: Given that there is real evil and good, as well, why is the world the way it is? What properly accounts for this moral feature of the world?

If you are a materialist you cannot answer that question, you cannot explain how morality emerges from material things. There’s no adequate explanation for morality in a purely physical world.

When you reflect on the nature of morality, it has a certain incumbency to it, an oughtness to it. There is an obligation. It isn’t just descriptive, what people did do. It’s what we ought to do. So what best explains this? And obligations seem to be the kinds of things that are held between persons. Therefore, if we have moral laws it seems to suggest there must be a moral law maker, who is the adequate sovereign to make that kind of law obligatory on us.

The existence of objective morality that entails obligation on human beings seems to be best grounded, or accounted for, by the existence of another personal being who himself is the moral law maker and the appropriate sovereign to make such laws that make such demands upon us. That sounds to me a lot like what Christians mean when they say God.

I got some push-back on this particular point from a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy from Purdue when I spoke there recently. He said that just because you have standards it doesn’t mean you have a standard-maker. I said that that wasn’t my argument, that all standards require standard-makers. My argument is more precise than that. My argument is that moral standards, which are a peculiar kind of standard, require a moral maker or one that stands behind it and grounds it in some sense.

Let me give you an illustration that I think makes sense of how this grounding problem works. You can read a newspaper because the skills needed to read newspapers are things that we are capable of developing. So we have the ability to read the information. But what if you said that there are no authors to newspaper articles; there are no delivery boys; there are no editors; there are no headline writers. Those don’t exist. You acknowledge there are newspaper articles, but you deny that there needs to be an explanation for them.

Now that sounds very odd because when you consider the kinds of things that newspaper articles are. They seem to be the kinds of things that require authors. There are thoughts communicated, there are propositional statements that are functions of minds, not matter. No propositions are made of matter. They can be tokened with matter, like ink on a page, but the propositions themselves are not material. Newspaper articles represent the information and propositions, but you say that there is no mind needed for this. That strikes me as really odd.

Newspaper articles, if there are such things, require an explanation. They need grounding, a source. They suggest the existence of authors because that is an adequate explanation for newspapers. I think it’s a perfect parallel with morality. Morality is the kind of thing we also have discovered exists, and it seems to be the kind of thing that requires an author adequate to explain its existence.

So I’m within my epistemic rights to say someone like God is the grounding for morality.

By the way, a common response from atheists to the grounding question is to object that he could be just as moral without God as the theist. Atheists say this all the time. That’s like saying there doesn’t need to be any authors. How do you know? Because I can read really well. Well, the ability to read really well doesn’t have anything to do with the question of whether what you’re reading needs an author. And the ability to behave really well, be moral, and be aware of what moral guidelines doesn’t obviate the need for a moral lawmaker. Those are two separate issues.

An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design

(Conversantlife.com) Sean McDowell

One of the most stereotypes of intelligent design (ID) is that it is an evangelical Christian movement intent upon forcing religion into the classroom. The release of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Bradley Monton, Broadview Press, 2009) officially puts this claim to rest. Defenders of ID do include evangelical Christians, but also Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, and now even atheists! University of Colorado philosophy professor Bradley Monton is ultimately not persuaded by the arguments of ID (which is why he’s an atheist), but he says that they do have some force, and they make him less certain of his atheism.

For those of you who have followed the ID movement, this should come as quite the surprise. Yes, an atheist actually defends the integrity and merits of ID! Monton argues that criticisms of ID—whether from atheists or theistic evolutionists—are largely unfounded, misplaced, and erroneous. Monton doesn’t so much defend the truth of ID, but he believes it is a reasonable, (somewhat) persuasive, and legitimate scientific project.

The best part of the book (from my perspective) is that Monton sees right through much of the rhetorical tactics commonly used by ID opponents. For example, critics frequently conflate ID with creationism so as to make it an easier target to defeat. Monton rightly observes that some ID arguments are not related to creationism at all and that such comparisons are “sloppy” (31). Critics also love to claim that ID makes no predictions and is not testable. According to Monton: “I would say that intelligent design proponents are making a prediction: they are claiming that, if one looks, one will find evidence that there is a designer” (72).

Monton also criticizes Judge Jones’ ruling against ID in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005). Darwinists have continued to herald this ruling as an overwhelming defeat for ID. However, says Monton, Judge Jones’ arguments were “fundamentally flawed.” In his attempt to discredit ID, Jones argued that it is not a legitimate science because (among other reasons) it postulates supernatural creation.

Surprisingly, Monton argues that postulating supernatural causation is actually compatible with science! He gives a fictional example of a pulsar that pulses out Morse code. The message claims to be God, and can answer any questions that scientists formulate in their heads. If such a thing happened, shouldn’t the “God” theory be a legitimate option? This is a highly unlikely scenario, but it shows that at least (in principle) science can explore supernatural causes, despite the ruling by Judge Jones.

Ultimately, says Monton, we shouldn’t get caught up debating whether or not ID is science. The most important question is whether or not the claims are true (73). Monton recognizes that proclamations against the scientific status of ID are largely meant to suppress debate so the actual truth-claims of ID can be avoided.

Professor Monton challenges both atheistic and theistic opponents of ID. For example, he critiques theistic evolutionist Kenneth Miller (author of Only a Theory) who claims that intelligent design closes down scientific investigation. According to Monton: “While theistic scientists could choose to stop investigating the world, and be satisfied with the answer ‘God did it,’ they need not. What theistic scientists can do is investigate questions like: ‘What structure did God choose to give the world?’” (112). Miller’s claim that ID is anti-science “doesn’t hold up.”

Surprisingly, Monton agrees that intelligent design offers the best explanation for certain features of the universe. He admits that there are currently no naturalistic explanations for why the universe exists, for the nature of consciousness, and a detailed scenario for the origin of life. Yet rather than believing in design he says: “The truth of the matter is that there’s no explanation at all” (37). To avoid the conclusion that God exists, Monton is forced to accept that certain features of reality simply don’t have an explanation. Rather than offering an alternative explanation, Monton challenges the notion of explanation itself.

Much more could be said about Seeking God in Science. It is certainly refreshing to read someone who desires to transcend the culture wars and to communicate his ideas in a respectful and generous tone. Supporters of ID can learn much from his style and substance, even if they ultimately disagree with his conclusions (as I do!). This is a watershed book in the history of ID, and is hopefully a sign of more to come.

Emerging vs. Emergent

Whenever the topic of the "emerging church" comes up in a conversation I always like to begin by distinguishing what could be called the "emerging church" from the "emergent church." Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason sums this up nicely:

At this point a critical distinction is necessary. I have been speaking in general terms about the emerging church, which is a broad and multifaceted group, culturally and theologically. Even so, two distinct streams seem to diverge. Scot McKnight, a friendly but thoughtful critic of the movement, distinguishes two major forces in the emerging church: a missional force and a postmodern force.

This difference, it seems to me, is one of method vs. message. The vast majority of those in the emerging church – as high as 90%, according to Kimball – are engaged in a cross-cultural, missional enterprise that aggressively seeks to contextualize the timeless message of the Gospel using methods more friendly to postmoderns.

This move alone has drawn fire from the old guard. In my opinion, much of this criticism has been shallow. Far too much blood is being spilt on inconsequentials: order of worship, style of preaching, type of music, seating arrangements, and the like.

Though these functions are biblical, no particular forms are mandated. Most of these objections are little more than vindication of the cultural status quo. We have much bigger fish to fry.

My own concerns are theological and philosophical, not cultural. My uneasiness with the movement is not with the emerging church in general, but with a subgroup on the vanguard that I fear is being seduced by a postmodern culture God intended them to transform, not be transformed by. This subgroup goes by the name “Emergent,” a proper noun identifying those following the lead of the Emergent Village.

Neither of these groups – the emerging church nor the Emergent Church – is a monolith, true enough. I appreciate that many are sensitive to broad generalizations that may not fit them. But singling out specific people on specific offenses also has its perils. Some writers are notoriously vague and equivocal in their language. Others seem to cry “foul” regardless of accuracy if they’ve been cited in criticism.

Therefore, rather than spotlighting personalities, I’ve chosen to focus on a handful of specific ideas where the meanderings of some Emergent thinkers give me pause.

In sum, this is how I would distinguish emerging from emergent:

The emerging church may be applied to a broad group of church leaders and ministries who seek to take the gospel message and contextualize it for our "postmodern" generation.

The emergent church, on the other hand, is a subgroup of individuals and organizations within the much broader emerging church movement who have accepted postmodernism as a philosophy and have sought to interpret and preach the gospel from within a postmodern worldview. They contextualize the gospel to a point where the actual content of the gospel is distorted. This results in heretical and aberrant theology, as well as a false gospel.

Here is the key: All emergent are emerging, but not all emerging are emergent (sort of like all Boston Celtics are basketball players but not all basketball players are Boston Celtics).

Most within the emerging church movement are orthodox in terms of theology. Their methods or forms may be different but they remain faithful to the content of the biblical gospel. It is those within the emergent church movement who give the rest a bad name.

Why is this important? A few reasons:

First, it is important for dialogue. When someone says they are part of an emerging church do not automatically assume this is a bad thing. This may simply mean they use candle lighting, sip coffee, and sit on sofas during their church service. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. These are simply different forms of the same function. Always ask the person what they believe personally and find out where they stand theologically and philosophically before bringing out the big apologetic guns. A person who says "I'm postmodern" may just like a certain style of architecture!

Second, it is important for discernment. Some Christians have not been careful to distinguish between emerging and emergent and have therefore lumped everyone together as heretics, regardless of their beliefs. For example, I have seen some Christians throw Dan Kimball and Dallas Willard into the same pile with Brian McLaren and Tony Jones. This is unfortunate. Even if you don't agree, for example, with Willard's view on spiritual formation, this is no reason to classify him with postmoderns who deny the objectivity of reality, truth, value, and reason. I think this reflects a lack of discernment and familiarity on the part of those Christians who fail to make these distinctions. We need to be able to distinguish essential Christian doctrine from secondary and even tertiary beliefs.

Third, it is important for doctrine. At the other end of the spectrum, some Christians are either ignorant or naive (or both) and have accepted everyone within the emerging church movement, no questions asked. I was recently told of a church leader saying there is nothing wrong with the teachings of a prominent emergent church leader and that it is safe for the youth to watch his videos and read his material. And at my Christian high school alma mater a video of this same individual was shown during chapel. The dangerousness of the emergent church is that it is a movement which has sprung up from within Christianity itself. Their books are sold on the same shelves and their teachings are commonly labeled "Christian." Church leaders must be ready to "exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict" (Titus 1:9).

So is the "emerging church" bad? That all depends.

Postmodernism as a philosophy is bad. It is a false, man-made, self-refuting worldview which should be rejected by all Christians. Therefore, any emerging church or church leader who holds to postmodernism should be rejected as well. Paul warned us of this type of philosophy when he said "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ" (Colossians 2:8).

In conclusion, there is nothing inherently wrong with a church movement which seeks to contextualize the gospel for our current generation. Rather, this is something we should actively engage in. We should be ready to "become all things to all men, so that [we] may by all means save some" (1 Cor. 9:22). What we must never do is compromise truths of Scripture in an attempt to make Jesus or the gospel more palatable.

If you have not done so, check out this series of Solid Ground from Stand to Reason (note: you need an ambassador login to view past issues of solid ground. You may obtain a login for free at www.str.org)

Truth Is a Strange Sort of Fiction Part I
Truth Is a Strange Sort of Fiction Part II: Belief and Faith
Truth Is a Strange Sort of Fiction Part III: The Postmodern Turn
Truth Is a Strange Sort of Fiction Part IV: Postmodernism Self-Destructs
Truth Is a Strange Sort of Fiction Part V: Christianity and Postmodernism: The Emerging Church

Did God Condone Slavery?

(Stand to Reason) Amy Hall

Since God regulated slavery in the Old Testament, does this automatically mean that He approves of slavery? Just as some answer "yes" today, the Pharisees also jumped to a similarly wrong conclusion in Matthew 19 when they asked Jesus a question:

"Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?" And [Jesus] answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?...What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."

They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?" He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way."

Notice what happens here. The Pharisees come with a legal question about which regulations ought to govern divorce, and Jesus responds in a very unexpected way, saying there shouldn't be any divorce. The Pharisees are immediately confused. "But how could it be that there shouldn't be any divorce if God regulated it? Doesn't that mean He thinks it's hunky-dory as long as it's done right?"

Jesus makes it clear that this is not the case.

The Pharisees had missed something very important about law: there's a difference between what's legal and what's moral--between the practical need to deal with reality and the existence of an ideal. The Law was not meant to be an exhaustive list of everything moral and immoral. It functioned as every national set of laws functions--as reasonably enforceable rules to govern their society. And the Pharisees had made the mistake of focusing on merely staying within the regulations instead of going beyond them to seek the goodness of God's ideal.

As with divorce, the same was true for slavery. The rules regulating slavery were added "because the hardness of the hearts" of humanity had created a situation where slavery existed and served certain functions in their societies, "but it was not that way from the beginning." In the beginning, there was human dignity and equal value resulting from the fact that every single individual--young or old, rich or poor, royal or commoner--was made in the image of God. But after the Fall, the ideal society was out the window, and God had to deal with what was actually there.

Deeply ingrained cultural patterns don't change overnight, but must be redeemed over time. Slavery was intricately woven into the cultures of the day, so, as with divorce (neither being the situation God desired), God made rules to keep the evil of the practice to a minimum. For example, if you kidnapped someone and made him a slave, you were put to death. If a slave escaped from his master for whatever reason, you were not allowed to return him. If you harmed so much as a tooth of your slave, you had to let him go free--in other words, no person was allowed to keep a slave if he mistreated him or her. Slavery in Western countries would never even have gotten off the ground had these rules been followed; the first rule alone would have prevented it.

Regulating a bad situation is not a foreign concept to us. We see some people using this same principle today regarding abortion. They say it's too much a part of our society at the moment to enforce a complete ban, though abortion is immoral, so they support regulating certain things about it for now in order to reduce the evil of it (banning only partial-birth abortions, or third trimester abortions, or regulating the issues surrounding abortion, for example). That doesn't mean either that they think abortion is fine or that they intend for the situation to remain in that same state forever.

God regulated divorce, and yet He explicitly said He hates it, so the regulation of the practice did not mean He condoned it. Therefore, one cannot assume that God's regulation of slavery meant God condoned slavery.

All that said (and much more could be said), the question remains: If God opposed slavery and would need to redeem the culture from it slowly over a long period of time, why not just prevent it from ever existing in the first place? The same question could be asked of all suffering that results from human sin--why does God allow it? Since the Fall, suffering has served an important purpose in this world. God's highest goal for us is not our comfort, but our more intimate knowledge of, appreciation of, and love for Him. The existence of suffering around us has long been used by God to remind us of the ugliness of sin--a physical illustration of the fact that our hearts are far from God's perfection, and a reminder of our desperate need for Him and His mercy.

Slavery has served this same purpose. Freedom is God's ideal --the kind of freedom found in the Garden at the beginning before the Fall (that is, the freedom to follow God openly and completely, without hindrance). And God's rescuing the Israelites from slavery served for them (and for all generations) as a physical illustration of a spiritual truth. Because they understood the meaning of physical slavery, the invisible truth of their spiritual slavery to sin and their need for redemption could be made visible for all to see and understand. And because they knew God orchestrated their release from slavery, they knew not only that slavery--physical or spiritual--was not the ideal, but that He cared about their condition and desired to release them from it.

The existence of slavery in the world taught God's people both the condition of their own hearts and a crucial truth about their great, good God. This is why it was Christians in the 18th and 19th century who not only worked to see that others were freed from their spiritual slavery, but who also led the way in following God's desire to free others from physical slavery.

As with the other suffering of history, God did not prevent slavery from ever existing, though He could have. But this was neither random, senseless, nor in vain. Just as Joseph said of his own suffering as a slave that "[they] meant it for evil, but God meant it for good," slavery did not pass through this world without accomplishing a purpose even greater than the suffering.

6 Facts Proving Abortion Is In The Health Care Legislation

(Americanprinciplesproject.org) Thomas Peters

The Family Research Council is in the cross-hairs of many organizations for arguing that abortion is part of health care legislation.

This morning Speaker Pelosi said "People must be allowed to learn the facts" about health care.

Well, Family Research Council provides six facts about abortion in health care:

1. The House bill specifically includes it. The Capps amendment explicitly allows abortion coverage in the public health plan and subsidizes health plans that cover abortion. (Passed 30-28 in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, July 30)

2. Senate Democrats admit it. "[The health care bill] would include, uh, it would include, uh, Planned, uh, Parenthood clinics." (Sen. Barbara Mikulski, July 9, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions-HELP-Committee meeting-Planned Parenthood is the No. 1 U.S. abortion chain.)

3. Senate Democrats refused to ban it. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah): "Madam Chairman, would you be willing to put some language in [about] not including abortion services? Then I think you would have more support."Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.): "...No, I would not, uh, be willing to do that at this time." (July 9, Senate HELP Committee meeting)
4. The mainstream media confirms it. ("Government insurance would allow coverage for abortion," Associated Press, August 5, 2009).
5. The Obama administration includes it in its definition of reproductive health care. "Reproductive health care includes access to abortion." (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, July 19)

6. Every amendment to exclude it from health care legislation was defeated by the liberal sponsors. The following is a list of pro-life amendments that would have prevented abortion funding or prohibited abortion mandates for covered services. (For vote tallies and details, see our complete list at www.frc.org here)