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Asking Questions to Reveal Answers

While it is helpful for someone to give his or her viewpoint in detail, the good stuff comes after they've finished a presentation. This can be seen in formal debates during what is sometimes called the "cross examination" period ( here is one example ), and audience questions after a press conference or something similar. Credit: Pixabay / Gerd Altmann Most of us don't commence to speechifyin' or debating very often, so how about questions in a more personal setting, without the crowds? Much better. People can ask questions to clarify meanings and positions, and even get to know the other person a little better. On social media, it gets difficult to have a good discussion with someone unless it's in private messages, else other people chime in. Greg Koukl has something he calls the "Columbo Tactic", based on the television detective, that helps you (and often the other person) get to the heart of a discussion. Two short articles on the subje

Those Dying Leaves

In my neck of the woods — well, North America — it's autumn. (I reckon some folks call it fall because that's what leaves do.) This time of year has been used in many songs, often denoting sadness. Others are fond of this time of year, even planning to drive through areas on "color tours". You might want to consider taking route 209 which comes up here to Kingston, NY and runs down past Port Jervis into Pennsylvania. Kind of a difficult two-lane road, though. How about going off 209 into Ellenville, then onto Route 52 past Cragsmoor and into Pine Bush? You'll clip some of the Shawangunk Ridge State Forest , see some Catskill Mountains, and get lasso yourself some colored leaf viewing. Image credit: Pixabay / pixel2013 I kind of wandered a mite. So, what about those leaves? People like looking at them, but get irked when having to rake their yards and clean the gutters by their roofs. We agree that they're dead leaves. Or are they? Death came into the wor

The Biblical Response to Racism

Bigotry exists in many forms, and people have had fear, suspicion, and even hatred of those who are different in some way. It can even be based on geographical locations. (I've been snubbed by people in the Southern United States for being a "Yankee" — I knew an American of German ancestry who detested people in France! Strange.) The most common form of antipathy toward people who are different is commonly called racism , and I believe that both skin color and cultures are distinguishing characteristics to make it easier to hate people of other "races". The race issues will be the limiting factor for this post. Credit: Pixabay / Rhythm_In_Life Today's politically-charged climate brings racism to the fore in ways that are unprecedented, many times with loaded terms and false accusations leading to violence. The racism issues seem to be either excessively complicated or oversimplified, often prompted by people having political and cultural "tunnel v

Handcuffed by Evolutionary Indoctrination

Darwin's disciples have done an excellent job in promoting their materialistic viewpoint, with the conflation of  evolution with science  as one of their main tools. This provides these owlhoots with an emotional manipulation tool, since people do not want to be seen as "science deniers" when they reject minerals-to-misotheist evolution. The propaganda is everywhere we turn, whether textbooks, television documentaries, entertainment... A scene in the 1977 movie High Anxiety  has Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke (Mel Brooks) giving a lecture and saying, "...that each patient is a supreme individual endowed with those qualities that distinguish the human being from the slime from which he emerged". Even Bugs Bunny used it when he was told to start at the beginning: "...in the beginning, there was no life. The earth was forming..." To appear intelligent and sciencey, add evolution. Just keep your eyes and ears open and you'll see what I mean. Credit: P

Heresies, Modern Thinking, and Evolutionism

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen People who want to slap leather with biblical Christianity may think they have some new concepts, but they are actually reworking old false teachings. This applies not only to those things that have been condemned as heresies, but the remarks of mockers and "skeptics" are often rehash hoary thinking from past centuries. Fausto Sozzini (Faustus Socinus) was cracked Derived from a public domain image at Wikimedia Commons Before I go further, I must say that I'm doing something I've done before: taking material from smarter people and adding thoughts that pertain to my own areas of study. This article was heavily influenced by Phil Johnson's series on five major heresies (linked below). I hope you'll ride the trail with me and you'll see how some things come together. There have been several times in Christian history when the faith appeared to be on its way to becoming hopelessly corrupted. God raised up faithful men to uph

Doubting the Authority of God's Word

Christians are concerned that young people are leaving the church, causing a rise in the "nones" category (people who claim "no religions affiliation"). Atheists are gleefully trumpeting this increase, inaccurately claiming that the survey proves an increase in atheism. (What they conveniently ignore is that yes, some people do renounce the faith, but others are not currently attending a church while still having strong Christian beliefs. In some areas, it is difficult to find a Bible-believing church.) Various studies and surveys have been made in an attempt to determine why young people are shunning church attendance. Credit: Freeimages / Sufi Nawaz One of the main reasons Christianity becomes unpalatable is when adherents treat it like a buffet-style religion. "I'll take some mercy, resurrection, verses out of context that make me feel good, social justice, being inclusive, compromise with atheistic science interpretations, those are nice. Don'

Dinosaurs, Evolution, and Christianity

Dinosaurs are often used to promote evolutionism, which in turn has caused some professing Christians to jump the fence and run off into compromise — and even outright atheism. Christians need to know what and why they believe, and be able to reason from both Scripture and true science when confronted with what seems to be evidence against their beliefs. One of these apparent contradictions that puts a burr under the saddles of some folks is the idea that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, and not millions of years apart. Credit: Pixabay / aitoff Christians who are grounded in the Word and have some critical thinking skills will strap on the feedbag of serious investigation. After all, we have the internet and a large number of printed material, videos, and more from biblical creation science ministries. Then we can see the assumptions and just-so stories behind evolutionary pronouncements, and learn that creationary accounts correctly handle not only Scripture, but

The Most Self-Absorbed Generation?

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen It has been said that every generation has a dim view of subsequent generations, but seldom with good reason. Some of this frowning is based on rejection of cultural traditions, changing etiquette, new methods of socialization, and other less consequential areas. More importantly, however, is the way morality has declined, as have critical thinking skills, in younger generations. This is very apparent in the group called the Millennials. I'd better reign in for a spell and make a couple of points. First, sometimes we just have to say that when discussing a people group, generalities are necessary. Second, while stereotypes exist for a reason, I'm not saying everybody in younger generations (or whatever group I'm talking about) behave, think, believe, or whatever according to their age, ethnic group or demographic. People can't be pigeonholed so neatly, you savvy? Credit: Pixabay / Gerd Altmann A recent sermon called "Lovers of Sel

A Variation on the Question of Cain's Wife

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen One of the most common questions in biblical creation science apologetics is, "Where did Cain get his wife?" I'll allow that it's a fair question, especially to people who are unfamiliar with having this kind of material presented in more than a cursory manner. On the other hand, we get folks visiting The Question Evolution Project that want to ridicule us and waste our time with insincere questions that they could easily look up themselves on biblical creationary sites. Those people inspired this graphic, and now I have an excuse to show it off: However, I do not believe that the question that I awakened to this morning was intended to mock or waste time. But if so, it was interesting and I hope my answer will be useful to the enquirer and other readers.  Corey asked, I'm sure most of us will agree that a 4.5 billion year old Earth or a 70 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex is such a shot in the dark based on assumptions that

Unbelievers Use Word Games to Reject the Bible

It is common for people to use tropes and exaggeration to make a point, even when the original meaning has changed or been forgotten. I referred to my current employer as the Thieves Guild because they cheat employees out of their pay. People can pick up the meaning even if they are unaware that the term came from various fantasy stories, and is used in role-playing games. My wife likes to put peanuts outside for the blue jays, nuthatches, and titmouses. A few minutes ago, she did this, and told me, "I had 500 blue jays out there!" Uh, no. She was using exaggeration to add color and make her point. Writers of the Bible used expressions that were not meant to be literal (such as sunrise and sunset,  words that are regularly employed by many people who know full well that the sun does not actually rise or set). Some owlhoots are playing the "Gotcha!" game by saying that phenomenological language means the Bible has errors. This somehow gives them license to insert

Signs in the Heavens and Prophetic Significance

In one respect, this post will be outdated very quickly, as September 23, 2017 will come and go. However, the principles that are expressed in the articles linked below are applicable to other events as well as the excitement and confusion they will generate. Credit: Pixabay / Ulrike Bohr Although the Bible clearly tells us that no one can know the time of Christ's return, some folks like to commence to doing "date setting", and think they've figured out some special message or code. These consistently fail. Yes, Genesis 1:14 has the word "signs", but that is not a call to use the heavens for divination on Revelation instead of their real purpose: timekeeping.  "But there's a tetrad of blood moons!" Yes, the moon turns read during a lunar eclipse. Has to do with refraction. The four blood moons thing has happened before, too. Pass the cheese curls, willya? "The sun will be in Virgo, the sun and some planets will be in it, and

Genesis and the Fall of Man

Liberal theologians and compromising theistic evolution sidewinders (you can't get more liberal and compromising than an "evolutionary creationist") have bushwhacked Scripture for many years. They cannot tolerate the creation account in the first two chapters of Genesis, so they say that it was allegory or myth. But that's not enough for some folks, and they attack the doctrine of the Fall in the third chapter of Genesis. Credit: Pixabay / Activedia These compromisers are telling us that that the Fall was not in Genesis, but was added later on. One contention is that certain words were not in the third chapter, such as guilt and sin . Those words do not need to be there, since the concepts are clearly taught. Further, if you study on it, you'll see that original sin is affirmed elsewhere in Scripture, as are death and the Curse. They need death before sin so they can force in millions of years and evolution. That's eisegesis, old son, and does violenc

Rapid Plant Growth in Creation Week

Seems like some professing Christians look for excuses to shove long ages into the plain reading of Scripture (like some atheists, who claim to reject it altogether), but the only way to get millions of years out  of the Bible is to first put them into  it through eisegesis . It's interesting that these same people claim to believe other miraculous things, especially the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but they get all het up about Genesis. Never could figure why they want to compromise on the Word of God, but I suspicion it's to look smart in the eyes of secularists. Credit: Freeimages / Viktors Kozers I reckon that it's a fair question, though to wonder about plants can accelerate from zero to fruit in such a short time. Part of their confusion may occur from expecting that plant growth then should be  like plant growth now. If you study on it, you'll realize that we're talking about creation week — the whole thing is a series of miracles in a c