One of the best resources I know of for keeping track of what’s going on in the world of apologetics is the Apologetics Awareness Twitter account (and it’s also on Facebook). Apologetics Awareness shared a post from Truthbomb Apologetics that mentioned a new FREE TO DOWNLOAD book. I looked over the table of contents and the chapter authors, and I think you should download it. I did.

Here is the introduction:

Science and Faith in Dialogue presents a cogent, compelling case for concordance between science and theism. The term theism refers, in this book, to the belief in God’s existence. Within theology, the term theism is often used to convey a range of presuppositions about the nature and attributes of God. Based on scientific and natural theological perspectives, two pillars of natural theology are revisited: the Cosmological Argument and the Argument from Design. The book argues that modern science provides undeniable evidence and a scientific basis for these classical arguments to infer a rationally justifiable endorsement of theism as being concordant with reason and science — nature is seen as operating orderly on comprehensible, rational, consistent laws, in line with the conviction that God is Creator.

Here is the table of contents:

• Chapter 1 – Logical fallacies and false dichotomies in the science and faith debate: impact on worldview and public opinion – Frederik van Niekerk
• Chapter 2 – Qualified agreement: How scientific discoveries support theistic belief – Stephen C. Meyer
• Chapter 3 – Cosmological fine-tuning – Hugh Ross
• Chapter 4 – Local fine-tuning and habitable zones – Guillermo Gonzalez
• Chapter 5 – Materialistic and theistic perspectives on the origin of life – Fazale R. Rana
• Chapter 6 – Are present proposals on chemical evolutionary mechanisms accurately pointing toward first life? – James M. Tour
• Chapter 7 – Engineering principles better explain biological systems than evolutionary theory – Brian Miller
• Chapter 8 – The evidence of foresight in nature – Marcos Eberlin
• Chapter 9 – Evolutionary models of palaeoanthropology, genetics, and psychology fail to account for human origins: a review – Casey Luskin
• Chapter 10 – Rumours of war and evidence for peace between science and Christianity – Michael N. Keas

You can find biographies of the chapter authors here, on the Discovery Institute web site.

The Evolution News blog has been publishing excerpts from the book. So far, they’ve featured Stephen C. Meyer and Guillermo Gonzalez.

Here’s Stephen C. Meyer:

This chapter reasserts this classical view and argues that scientific evidence does provide epistemological support (though not proof) for the theistic worldview affirmed by biblical Christianity (see e.g. Ac 17, Col 1, Rm 1). It will develop a model of the relationship between science and theistic belief that I call “qualified agreement” or “mutual epistemic support.” This model maintains that, when correctly interpreted, scientific evidence and biblical teaching can and do support each other. While accepting some disagreement about details as inevitable given the limits of human knowledge, advocates of this model affirm a broad agreement between the testimony of the natural world and the propositional content of Judeo-Christian theism — between science and religion so defined.

And Guillermo Gonzalez:

It is helpful to split fine-tuning into two distinct types, which we will call “global” and “local.” Global tuning deals with the global properties of the observable universe. These include the masses of the fundamental particles, the strengths of the four fundamental forces, the initial cosmological conditions, and the cosmological constant.

In contrast, local tuning includes things that are not universal in their properties: planets, stars, and galaxies. Not only do we know that planets, stars and galaxies do not have fixed properties, we actually observe them to vary in their properties over a broad range. We can study how life depends on the local parameters while keeping the global parameters fixed. We can also tally their numbers. For local tuning, then, we have the hope of accurately quantifying the available probabilistic resources and estimating how much of our local circumstances can be explained by observer self-selection.

Historically, local tuning has been explored within the context of exobiology or astrobiology. Motivated by the desire to find other inhabited planets, astrobiologists have sought to determine the full range of environments compatible with life (i.e. habitable environments). Over the past 20 years, considerable progress has been made towards this end. In the following section, I review the state of our knowledge about habitable environments (Gonzalez 2005). In the section ‘Implications for global tuning,’ I return to the topic of global tuning and describe how local and global tuning are linked.

I’m familiar with all of those chapter authors by name, and I’ve read most of them. These are some of the best authors on this topic. I’ve added the book to the right column of the blog, where I always display the book I’m currently reading. You can check my What I am Reading page to find out what I’ve been reading.

The Biden administration, including federal law enforcement, seems to be ignoring crimes against Christians, but the number of those crimes is climbing. There’s a new report about it put out by the Family Research Council, a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank. Here’s an article from the Daily Signal that talks about it.

Excerpt:

Last week’s mass murder of six people at a church-run Christian school constitutes 2023’s deadliest act of violence against churches, which have increased nearly three times this year compared to last year, a new report from Family Research Council finds. The number of anti-church attacks in 2022 had already tripled over four years, a previous report found.

In all, assailants attacked churches 69 times in the first three months of 2023, compared with 24 such acts during the same period last year, a 288% increase. The rising tempo of anti-Christian assaults—which includes arsons, bomb threats, vandalism, and sacrilege—has affected places of worship in 29 states. The motives behind such desecration run the gamut from pro-abortion activism or controversies over transgender ideology to apparently senseless acts of destruction.

“American churches are increasingly bearing the brunt of anger and aggression, whether that’s from political or other motivations,” the report’s author—Arielle Del Turco, assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council—told The Washington Stand. “This contributes to an environment of hostility toward Christianity.”

The acts of anti-church aggression documented between January and March of this year include:

• 53 incidents of vandalism.
• 10 suspicious fires.
• Three gun-related incidents.
• Three bomb threats—including a pipe bomb recovered outside Philadelphia’s 127-year-old St. Dominic Catholic Church.

“If this rate continues, 2023 will have the highest number of incidents of the six years FRC has tracked,” the report notes. The number of church attacks in 2023 already exceeds “the entirety of 2018, in which we identified only 50 incidents, or 2020, in which we identified 54.”

Now, this hostility against Christianity is largely caused by Christians refusing to celebrate and affirm behaviors that are self-destructive, or destructive of others, or both. The culture today seems intent on doing what feels good “in the moment”, and they aren’t able to think about what happens next. So, you have people causing permanent damage to their reproductive organs, then being surprised to find out they no longer have the ability to enjoy sex. Rather than admit that they are responsible, the people who do this turn to those who warned them, and attack.

And the people who hate Christians and churches aren’t capable of defending their views rationally.

Here’s an article from Daily Wire, about a transgender professor with multiple degrees from Harvard, who agreed to debate Michael Knowles:

Deirdre McCloskey, a trans-identifying professor, no longer wants to debate Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, dropping out of an event that was scheduled for next Tuesday at the University of Pittsburgh.

Knowles was set to appear with the University of Illinois Chicago professor at Pitt to debate “transgenderism and womanhood.”

McCloskey is utterly uninterested in finding the truth and only interested in stirring up hatred and violence towards people who do not fit his own views. That’s why he refused a formal debate.

More:

Knowles suspected that McClosky learned it would be tough to win a debate against someone who brings arguments based on truth and love after discovering that Knowles isn’t the hateful bigot the media often portrays him to be.

“Perhaps he has learned that I’m not the loose cannon that the liberal media have dishonestly portrayed,” Knowles added. “Perhaps he’s learned that my opposition to transgenderism derives, not from hatred, but from love of the truth, in this case regarding epistemology and anthropology. Despite reiterating his willingness to debate, Professor McCloskey seems to have understood that his arguments would not have survived scrutiny, so he chose to concede rather than lose in front of CSPAN’s cameras.”

If you can’t articulate a case for your views with reasons and evidence, then what’s left? What’s left is vandalism and violence. Death threats and shouting insults. That’s what the secular left teachers and administrators in our public schools have produced. A generation of anti-intellectual barbarians with no self-control, and no rational basis for objective moral values or duties.