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Showing posts from January, 2021

Trusting God in Apologetics

There are Christians who are excited about using apologetics to defend and present the faith, and there are others who think that is a job for experts. All Christians are commanded to present the faith (2 Cor. 10:5, Col. 4:5-6, 1 Peter 3:15, Acts 17:22-31), but some are called to be more intense with it. And "tense" can apply to many of us. Mostly made at The Keep-Calm-O-Matic  using an image from NASA (Usage of images does not imply endorsement of site contents by anyone) It is indeed unfortunate that some are intent on winning arguments rather than helping the lost come to Christ. Similarly, we can expend mental energy trying to analyze (and sometimes rehash) situations so we can give the most devastating arguments. Yes, by all means, do the best you can. Sometimes we may feel that we botched it. That happens. However, convicting of sin and saving people is the work of the Holy Spirit; we do not do the saving. It is not up to our brilliance (1 Cor. 2:1-5), which can lead to

Distinguishing Between "Make" and "Create" in Genesis 1

There are some professing Christians who insist on finding ways of adding long ages into the Bible, but they ignore the context. While the context is frequently the surrounding verses, it can also mean culture, languages, and more. We look now at make  and create . Credit: Freeimages / Fernanda Ferrari Those owlhoots have attempted to bushwhack the plain meaning of Scripture by saying that they are different aspects of creation, and that make  means using material that was already created. Their eisegesis becomes heinous when their alleged distinction is used to give them license to add millions of years. Some even try to shove evolution into the picture. It won't work, especially when the greater context includes the New Testament. Many people who have written on Genesis 1 have attempted to make a very significant distinction between two Hebrew words found there: bara (בָּרָא, to create) and asah (עָשָׂה, to make or do). Theistic evolutionists (TEs) and old-earth creationists (O

Secularists Using Dinosaurs to Indoctrinate Children

Now there is a provocative title! Believers in an old Earth, evolution, and similar things are probably clutching their pearls while expressing their outrage. Secularists (and many professing Christians, unfortunately) insist that deep time is a scientific fact . We must teach children real science, right? Credit: Flickr / Marco Verch ( CC BY 2.0 ) What is actually happening is that children (as well as the rest of us) are being given stories based on naturalistic interpretations about the past; there is no actual empirical evidence that obliges us to believe that the earth is billions of years old. Children have been enamored with dinosaurs for many years, and this has been increasing in recent years. It is not surprising to find a youngster who can rattle off the names, secular dates, locations, and more of those terrible lizards. Movies and merchandising helped fuel the interest of many people. (I wonder how many were annoyed when the Jurassic Park movies made the Velociraptors

The Category of Evolved Religion

While categorizing and labeling can be helpful points of reference, it can also be very misleading. Misotheists often say that they hate "religion", but commit the hasty generalization fallacy to justify their own rebellion against God. Categorizing in this manner is disingenuous and harmful. Background image: Pixabay / Ro Ma , modified with Clker Clipart If you slip on your wading boots and trudge through the slough of an atheist social media location, you are likely to find fringe religious people (usually professing to be Christians) singled out to confirm their biases that everything in the "religion" category is bad; the exception is not the rule. Ironically, they have apoplectic fits when it is pointed out that atheism itself is a religion , and evolutionism is like it . Each religion is different. I'll allow that many have some things in common, but categorizing based on superficialities and exceptions is foolish. Also, there are people who claim to be me