Tag Archives: Defense

Podcasts

Is the Bible we have now the Bible they had then?

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OK, I think Dan Wallace is the best guy out there on the reliability of the New Testament documents. He even debated Bart Ehrman and cleaned his clock.

One of the set of 32 lectures I just ordered was given by Dan Wallace on the reliability of the New Testament.

So what does Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 do?

He finds you a free version of that same lecture!!!

Here is the MP3 file.

I had to pay $5 for mine, but Brian found you a free one! Not fair!

Here is my post on Bart Ehrman, a prominent skeptic much loved by the media and liberal Christians, who argues against what Wallace says in the lecture.

UPDATE: This thing is 42 minutes long and it is AWESOME! Filled with humor, really entertaining. If you guys want to get the 2008 debate between Dan Wallace and Bart Ehrman, you can get it here. I got the MP3s, they’re cheap!

By the way, check out the topic for 2010 Greer-Heard debate: atheist John Dominic Crossan vs Ben Witherington.

Videos

Sen. Jim Demint denounces the Democrats’ new Hate Crimes amendment

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UPDATE: NEW MUST-SEE Jim Demint video has been posted here on the the failed stimulus bills and Obamacare!

UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from the Corner (National Review)! Thanks for the link from Mark Steyn!

UPDATE: Welcome Canadian readers from Blazing Cat Fur! Guess what? The Democrats are trying to pass laws that will make us just like you!

Canadian readers, pay close attention, the second half of the video is all about you.

Here’s the video of my favorite Senator Jim Demint: (11:44)

You can read about how Christians are persecuted in Canada here:

But what about the right to free speech here, in the USA?

Why did some Christians vote (indirectly) for anti-Christian policies?

There are 3 themes on the Wintery Knight blog.

  1. Christians must appeal to public knowledge when defending their faith
  2. Social conservatives need to become fiscal conservatives
  3. Fiscal conservatives need to become social conservatives

Regarding point #2. It has come to my attention that some well-meaning Christians, who are apparently socially and theologically conservative, nevertheless voted for Obama, because they are opposed to fiscal conservatism and small government.

Specifically, they don’t believe in things like:

  • lowering taxes
  • decreasing government or union regulations
  • shrinking the size of government
  • preserving the rule of law
  • protecting private property
  • protecting the free market and free trade
  • protecting liberty and personal responsibility

Here is a breakdown of which Christian denominations voted for Obama:

2008 voting broken by religious groups
2008 voting broken by religious groups

(Click for full-sized image, courtesy of Pew Research)

For the record, I am an ethnic evangelical Protestant. You can read all about how I became a Christian and the list of arguments for and against Christian theism.

On this blog, I examine policies like cap-and-trade, socialized medicine and tariffs. I argue that these policies are bad for the poor. All it takes to understand the economics is a little bit of study. Christians need to study these issues so that they are not deceived by their emotions when it comes time to vote. Otherwise, we will not only hurt the poor, but we will also lose the freedoms we need to live our lives as Christians.

We should not be so envious of our neighbor’s prosperity that we are willing to sell our religious liberty and free speech rights in order to punish their success. We should not be coveting our neighbor’s goods. We should not be stealing from our neighbor, either. Instead, we should try to improve the nation’s prosperity without involving the government. And we can start by working harder, saving more and spending less.

Further study

You might be interested in Jim Demint’s book “Why We Whisper“, which I bought but have not yet finished.

If you’d like to hear more from Jim Demint, he did a 51-minute Town Hall for the Heritage Foundation on the Sotomayor nomination.

For more about free speech in Canada, see these previous posts:

For two technical articles discussing property rights and the poor, take a look at these two articles from New Zealand philosopher Matt Flanagan.

And here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. His new book is called “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem“. To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture about the book. Here is a series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics?.(a PDF outline is here)

Mentoring

What can you learn by reading apologetics books?

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For beginning apologists, I wanted to recommend a series of 3 books designed to give you coverage of most of the issues. Each book is a collection of short chapters designed to introduce you to the various areas that are likely to come up in disputes.

Here they are:

  1. “The Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel
  2. “Passionate Conviction” edited by William Lane Craig and Paul Copan
  3. “Contending with Christianity’s Critics” edited by William Lane Craig and Paul Copan

I just wanted to show you the table of contents so that you could get an idea about what you might learn by reading through these books.

The Case for a Creator

Here is the table of contents. (Watch the book’s DVD on YouTube)

  1. White-Coated Scientists Versus Black-Robed Preachers
  2. The Images of Evolution
  3. Doubts About Darwinism: An Interview with Jonathan Wells
  4. Where Science Meets Faith: An interview with Stephen C. Meyer
  5. The Evidence of Cosmology: Beginning with a Bang; An interview with William Lane Craig
  6. The Evidence of Physics: the Cosmos on a Razor’s Edge; An interview with Robin Collins
  7. The Evidence of Astronomy: The Privileged Planet; An interview with Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Wesley Richards
  8. The Evidence of Biochemistry: The Complexity of Molecular Machines; An Interview with Michael J. Behe
  9. The Evidence of Biological Information: The Challenge of DNA and the Origin of Life; An Interview with Stephen C. Meyer
  10. The Evidence of Consciousness: The Enigma of the Mind; An Interview with J.P. Moreland
  11. The Cumulative Case for a Creator

Passionate Conviction

Here is the table of contents. (Sample chapter in a PDF)

PART 1 WHY APOLOGETICS?

  • In Intellectual Neutral by William Lane Craig
  • Living Smart by J. P. Moreland

PART 2 GOD

  • Why Doesn’t God Make His Existence More Obvious to Us? by Michael J. Murray
  • Two Versions of the Cosmological Argument by R. Douglas Geivett
  • The Contemporary Argument for Design: An Overview by Jay W. Richards
  • A Moral Argument by Paul Copan

PART 3 JESUS

  • Revisionist Views about Jesus by Charles L. Quarks
  • What Do We Know for Sure about Jesus’ Death? by Craig A. Evans
  • Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins by N. T. Wright

PART 4 COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS

  • Christianity in a World of Religions by Craig J. Hazen
  • The East Comes West (or Why Jesus instead of the Buddha?) by Harold Netland
  • Christ in the New Age by L. Russ Bush
  • Islam and Christianity by Emir Fethi Caner

PART 5 POSTMODERNISM AND RELATIVISM

  • The Challenges of Postmodernism by J. P. Moreland
  • Is Morality Relative? by Francis J. Beckwith
  • Reflections on McLaren and the Emerging Church by R. Scott Smith

PART 6 PRACTICAL APPLICATION

  • Dealing with Emotional Doubt by Gary R. Habermas
  • Apologetics for an Emerging Generation by Sean McDowell

Contending with Christainity’s Critics

Here is the table of contents. (Sample chapter in a PDF)

PART 1 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

  • Dawkins’s Delusion by William Lane Craig
  • At Home in the Multiverse? by James Daniel Sinclair
  • Confronting Naturalism: The Argument from Reason by Victor Reppert
  • Belief in God: A Trick of Our Brain? by Michael J. Murray
  • The Moral Poverty of Evolutionary Naturalism by Mark D. Linville
  • Dawkins’s Best Argument Against God’s Existence by Gregory E. Ganssle

PART 2 THE JESUS OF HISTORY

  • Criteria for the Gospels’ Authenticity by Robert H. Stein
  • Jesus the Seer by Ben Witherington III
  • The Resurrection of Jesus Time Line by Gary R. Habermas
  • How Scholars Fabricate Jesus by Craig A. Evans
  • How Badly Did the Early Scribes Corrupt the New Testament? An Examination of Bart Ehrman’s Claims by Daniel B. Wallace
  • Who Did Jesus Think He Was? by Michael J. Wilkins

PART 3 THE COHERENCE OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

  • The Coherence of Theism by Charles Taliaferro and Elsa J. Marty
  • Is the Trinity a Logical Blunder? God as Three and One by Paul Copan
  • Did God Become a Jew? A Defense of the Incarnation by Paul Copan
  • Dostoyevsky, Woody Allen, and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution by Steve L. Porter
  • Hell: Getting What’s Good My Own Way by Stewart Goetz
  • What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism by David P. Hunt

Before you can mount a detailed defense on any of these questions, it helps to be able to recognize them all!

By the way, you can get a head start on the first one if you just connect to YouTube and watch the movies “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” and “The Privileged Planet”.