Category Archives: News

News

My new pastor had a slide about the Candace Cameron Bure story in his sermon yesterday

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So, I’m trying out a new church that has held apologetics conferences in back to back years, featuring real old-Earth evidential Christian apologists! Yesterday was my first time going to the service. I was impressed. Not only did the pastor have slides about current events, but he actually quoted from books by non-Christians: Andrew Doyle and Douglas Murray.

I took a picture of the slide and then found the story in The Federalist.

Here’s what it says:

Candace Cameron Bure, the Hallmark Channel queen who rose to fame as D.J. Tanner on “Full House,” just wants to make Christmas movies that spread the joy and wholesomeness of Christmas and of her Christian faith. To that end, she recently moved from Hallmark to Great American Family, a new, smaller channel “that is positioning itself as the God-and-country alternative for holiday entertainment.”

For the crime of wanting to make a product that aligns better with her Christian faith, Bure is getting slammed as a bigot. But instead of apologizing for her convictions, Bure’s words and actions indicate she’s more interested in spreading the love of Christ than appeasing her Hollywood haters.

This is the part my new pastor mentioned:

Prompted by a question about whether same-sex relationships will be central features of her films, Bure said in her interview with the Journal, “I think that Great American Family will keep traditional marriage at the core.”

For that line, Bure was chastised by former Hallmark colleagues and other fellow stars from JoJo Siwa to Maren Morris, Chrishell Stause, and even Bure’s former “Full House” costar Jodie Sweetin, who commented her support for Siwa’s post slamming Bure.

I thought this was interesting, because Rose and I just did an episode of Knight and Rose Show to help Christians get better at defending traditional marriage, and it’s already one of our most popular episodes.

(If you like audio podcasts better than YouTube, you can find everything here)

In our episode, we covered a whole bunch of research showing why a male-female household is better for raising children. And we answered a bunch of objections against traditional marriage. Instead of arguing from any religious premises, we argued from natural law and peer-reviewed research. If you missed the episode, download it and have a listen. It was only 40 minutes long.

Church

As everyone knows, I’m very picky about churches. I refuse to attend churches that aren’t doing anything to oppose feminism, socialism and secularism. Many people in my life pick on me for not going to church, but when I tell them why, they don’t listen. Instead of trying to find me a church that has demonstrated ability in the areas where Christianity is under attack, they just say “go to church”. One woman even admitted to me that the reason I have to go to church is so that I’ll get married, because I am supposedly depriving some woman by not handing her the results of my education, career and finances.

What I want to say to the “go to church” people is that it’s not up to me to go to churches that aren’t doing anything other than pressuring men to marry women. The churches have to be doing something about the things that men care about. Then the men will show up to the churches. It’s supple-side economics. Innovation comes from the supplier, not the consumer. Every time people say “go to church” without solving the problem, it just makes me go to church less.

What actually worked was when my  practical, ex-military pro-life advocate friend Nathan sent me a screenshot of the apologetics conference, with the heads of two of my favorite Christian apologists in it. I know that one of those speakers is publicly conservative, and the other is secretly conservative. And both of them are evidentialists. I decided to give this church a try, because they hosted two apologetics conferences. I also found out from the pastor that they refused to mask up or lock down during COVID. The pastor is clearly opposed to “social justice”. He must have mentioned that phrase a dozen times in the sermon. I told a few of the guys in my office about the speakers at the apologetics conference, and they wanted to try church too.

Sadly, the church has very loud music. But they do have free ear plugs! So, I just used ear plugs to keep the music out. I was even able to sing one of the hymns, because it was classical. I love classical hymns. Everything new sucks! Still, it’s the sermons that matter to me, so I’m going to keep going. So far, so good. I’m not picky about music, I just care that the pastor fights where the secular left is pushing against Christianity.

News

Stephen C. Meyer lectures on intelligent design and the origin of life

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A MUST-SEE lecture based on Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book “Signature in the Cell“. One of my favorite 6 arguments for a Creator and Designer is the origin of the simplest replicating living system. When you look into the cell, what you’ll find is carefully sequenced components that for complex structures, like proteins. In this lecture, you’ll learn all about this “biological information”.

I highly recommend watching the lecture, and looking at the slides. The quality of the video and the content is first class. There is some Q&A (9 minutes) at the end of the lecture.

Topics:

  • intelligent design is concerned with measuring the information-creating capabilities of natural forces like mutation and selection
  • Darwinists think that random mutations and natural selection can explain the origin and diversification of living systems
  • Darwinian mechanisms are capable of explaining small-scale adaptive changes within types of organisms
  • but there is skepticism, even among naturalists, that Darwinian mechanisms can explain the origin of animal designs
  • even if you concede that Darwinism can account for all of the basic animal body plans, there is still the problem of life’s origin
  • can Darwinian mechanisms explain the origin of the first life? Is there a good naturalistic hypothesis to explain it?
  • there are at least two places in the history of life where new information is needed: origin of life, and Cambrian explosion
  • overview of the structure of DNA and protein synthesis (he has helpful pictures and he uses the snap lock blocks, too)
  • the DNA molecule is composed of a sequence of bases that code for proteins, and the sequence is carefully selected to have biological function
  • meaningful sequences of things like computer code, English sentences, etc. require an adequate cause
  • it is very hard to arrive at a meaningful sequence of a non-trivial length by randomly picking symbols/letters
  • although any random sequence of letters is improbable, the vast majority of sequences are gibberish/non-compiling code
  • similarly, most random sequences of amino acids are lab-proven (Doug Axe’s work) to be non-functional gibberish
  • the research showing this was conducted at Cambridge University and published in the Journal of Molecular Biology
  • so, random mutation cannot explain the origin of the first living cell
  • however, even natural selection coupled with random mutation cannot explain the first living cell
  • there must already be replication in order for mutation and selection to work, so they can’t explain the first replicator
  • but the origin of life is the origin of the first replicator – there is no replication prior to the first replicator
  • the information in the first replicator cannot be explained by law, such as by chemical bonding affinities
  • the amino acids are attached like magnetic letters on a refrigerator
  • the magnetic force sticks the letters ON the fridge, but they don’t determine the specific sequence of the letters
  • if laws did determine the sequence of letters, then the sequences would be repetitive
  • the three materialist explanations – chance alone, chance and law, law alone – are not adequate to explain the effect
  • the best explanation is that an intelligent cause is responsible for the biological explanation in the first replicator
  • we know that intelligent causes can produce functional sequences of information, e.g. – English, Java code
  • the structure and design of DNA matches up nicely with the design patterns used by software engineers (like WK!)

There are some very good tips in this lecture so that you will be able to explain intelligent design to others in simple ways, using everyday household items and children’s toys to symbolize the amino acids, proteins, sugar phosphate backbones, etc.

Proteins are constructed from a sequence of amino acids:

A sequence of amino acids forming a protein
A sequence of amino acids forming a protein

Proteins sticking onto the double helix structure of DNA:

Some proteins sticking onto the sugar phosphate backbone
Some proteins sticking onto the sugar phosphate backbone

I highly, highly recommend this lecture. You will be delighted and you will learn something.

Here is an article that gives a general overview of how intelligent design challenges. If you want to read something more detailed about the material that he is covering in the lecture above related to the origin of life, there is a pretty good article here.

There is a good breakdown of some of the slides with helpful flow charts here on Uncommon Descent.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

News

Theologian R.C. Sproul asks: “If there’s a God, why are there atheists?”

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Brian Auten has a book review posted up at Apologetics 315.

The book is “If There’s A God, Why Are There Atheists?”, by theologian R.C. Sproul. R.C. Sproul is one of my favorite theologians. The book in question has a very, very special place in my heart, because I think that it is one of the major reasons why I was able to resist pernicious ideas like religious pluralism and postmodernism for so long. Once you put on the glasses of Romans 1 and see for the first time what man is really doing with respect to God, you can never see things the same again. I’ll say more about this at the end, but let’s see what Brian wrote first.

The review

So often, you hear atheists complaining about religion is nothing but wish-fulfillment or some sort of crutch for people who are frightened by a variety of things. They think that God is invented to solve several problems. 1) how does the world work?, 2) is there meaning to suffering and evil?, 3) why should I be moral?, and 4) what will happen to me and my loved ones when I die?. On the atheistic view, God is just a crutch that people cling to out of weakness and ignorance. But is this really the case?

Sproul starts the book by investigating three atheists who sought to explain religious belief as a result of psychological factors.

Brian writes:

Before tackling the psychology of atheism, Sproul spends a chapter on the psychology of theism, from the perspective of Freud’s question “If there is no God, why is there religion?” What follows is an overview of various psychological explanations of theistic belief: Feuerbach’s “religion is a dream of the human mind.” Marx’s belief that religion is “due to the devious imagination of particular segment of mankind.” And Nietzche’s idea that “religion endures because weak men need it.” The author properly reiterates: “We must be careful to note that the above arguments can never be used as proof for the nonexistence of God. They can be useful for atheists who hear theists state that the only possible explanation for religion is the existence of God.” That being said, Sproul also reveals what these arguments presume:

Their arguments already presupposed the nonexistence of God. They were not dealing with the question, Is there a God? They were dealing with the question, Since there is no God, why is there religion?16

Sproul points out the weaknesses of each of these approaches and says “there are just as many arguments showing that unbelief has its roots in the psychological needs of man.”

Wow, could that really be true? What are the real reasons why people reject God? Does the Bible have anything to say about what those reasons are?

Brian cites Sproul’s contention:

The New Testament maintains that unbelief is generated not so much by intellectual causes as by moral and psychological ones. The problem is not that there is insufficient evidence to convince rational beings that there is a God, but that rational beings have a natural hostility to the being of God.

[…]Man’s desire is not that the omnipotent, personal Judeo-Christian God exist, but that He not exist.

In Romans 1:18-23, the apostle Paul explains what is really going on:

18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,

19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools

23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

On this blog, I regularly present many, many arguments for theism in general, and Christian theism in particular:

Sproul explains why atheists cannot allow themselves to live according to the evidence that is presented to them:

The cumulative effect of this knowledge that is clearly seen is to leave men ‘without excuse.’ Herein lies the basis of the universal guilt of man. No one can claim ignorance of the knowledge of God. No one can cite insufficient evidence for not believing in God. Though people are not persuaded by the evidence, this does not indicate an insufficiency in the evidence, but rather an insufficiency in man.

[…]The basic stages of man’s reaction to God can be formulated by means of the categories of trauma, repression, and substitution.

[…]If God exists, man cannot be a law unto himself. If God exists, man’s will-to-power is destined to run head-on into the will of God.

And this is the force that is animating atheists today. They don’t want to be accountable to God in a relationship, no matter what the evidence is. They have to deny it, so that they can be free to get the benefits of a universe designed for them, without having to give any recognition or acknowledgement back. If they have to lie to themselves to deny the evidence, they will do it. Anything to insulate themselves from the Creator and Designer who reveals himself in Jesus Christ.

The rest of the book review, and the book, deals with explaining in detail how atheists respond to an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing Creator/Designer. I encourage you to click through and read the whole book review. You can read the review, and the book, and then investigate for yourself whether atheists really are like that.