Tag Archives: Learning

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New books of interest to Christian apologists

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These might strike your fancy:

  • God Is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible,
    by William Lane Craig and Chad Meister (InterVarsity Press, 2009)
  • God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades,
    by Rodney Stark (HarperOne, 2009)
  • Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress,
    by Richard Weikart (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
  • Life After Death: The Evidence,
    by Dinesh D’Souza (Regnery Press, 2009)
  • Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem,
    by Jay W. Richards (HarperOne, 2009)
  • The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism,
    by J.P. Moreland (SCM Press, 2009)
  • Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design,
    by Stephen C. Meyer (HarperOne, 2009)

Rodney Stark is an agnostic, but he does a good job of telling the truth about the history of Christianity. If you want to see a good book added to this list, leave it in the comments and I’ll take a look.

Oh, by the way, check out this quiz that The Way the Ball Bounces found from Apologetics.net.

News

A practical method for understanding intelligent design in two weeks

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ECM sent me this awesome post from Uncommon Descent. The post explains how someone who doesn’t want to read about intelligent design can learn what intelligent design by doing. That’s right – you can learn about intelligent design by practicing intelligent design.

Excerpt:

Of course a good example of design would be engineering in all its specialties. Unfortunately almost all fields of engineering are inaccessible to laymen for many reasons. But the good news is that there is a field that is theorically and practically available (at least at a basic level) to almost all people (or at least to scientific-minded people as most ID deniers are): computer science. Our suggested patent-pending method to become IDer is based on computer programming. Developing programs gives ID refuters a lot of advantages to learn ID.

(1) Computer programming is an activity where, differently from literature, philosophy, journalism and so on, a severe control overarches all the design cycle. In programming errors matter, also the minor ones are never condoned. This is good discipline for the student, to be always forced to correct his errors. If you write a book filled with errors, no worry, it will be published the same. If you write a program with one error nothing works. This is the difference between storytelling and programming. Usually there are at least two kinds of control or filter: at compilation time and at run-time. Any program works only if it passes the two filters.

[…](2) Computer programs don’t arise by unguided evolution. They entail CSI and only intelligence can create CSI. Whether software were generable by mean of randomness and machines, software houses wouldn’t need to pay legions of expensive programmers. When you are programming you see directly your intelligence at work. Eventually other programmers can help you but no other unintelligent thing can do the job for you.

(3) To develop programs is a good exercise to learn CSI, IC, nested functional hierarchies, sub-functions, structures, dependences among parts, meta-information, libraries, etc.

Intelligent design is nothing more than sequencing a large number of parts into a chain that has function. That’s it – that’s all it is. God is a software engineer. And if you’re interested in seeing some of the published research done by ID theorists, check out this list of their publications in scientific, peer-reviewed research journals. (H/T Truthbomb Apologetics)

There is only one problem with the post at UD, though. They recomment Perl and PHP for the exercise. Perl and PHP are crappy languages for any program longer than 100 lines that needs to be maintained longer than 2 months, or maintained by another developer who did not write it. The readability and maintainability of Perl and PHP are atrocious. Stick with languages like Java, Smalltalk or C#.

Other arguments for a Creator and Designer

To learn more about arguments for a Creator and Designer, check out some of my favorites below, taken from the big list of arguments and counter-arguments:

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Mentoring

What I’m reading and listening to these days

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Guess what?

The Wintery Knight Blog got listed on a prestigious list of apologetics sites compiled by the Internet-King of apologetics, Brian Auten, who runs Apologetics 315. Go pay him a visit and bookmark his site!

By the way, if you are a regular reader, please take a moment to tell your friends about the blog! If you like the blog, chances are that your friends will like it, too! I don’t advertise, so you are my only hope of getting any new readers!

Well, in honor of Brian’s list, I thought that I would write a post explaining what resources I am working through right now!

Books

Right now, I am reading the following books:

  • Lunches at work: Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse “Love and Economics:It Takes a Family to Raise a Village” (autographed!)
  • Lunches not at work: Dr. Regina Hertzlinger “Who Killed Health Care?: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem – and the Consumer-Driven Cure“
  • At home in bed: Theodore Dalrymple, M.D. “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass“

And I just received books from two of my favorite ID theorists:

  • Dr. Stephen C. Meyer “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design“
  • Dr. Jay W. Richards “Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem“

Lectures

I got Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse‘s 3-CD set “Smart Sex” in the mail, and I’ve been listening to that. It’s awesome! You can get it from the Ruth Institute. If you want a sample of her thinking, listen to this 29-minute clip about the effects of same-sex marriage on children.

I also like learning apologetics by listening so today, I ordered an apologetics lecture set from It’s a New Day. This is a perfect set for beginners, as the conference was held in a churches! So, if you go to church, this is for you! Try to make your church buy one! I would recommend burning a backup copy for the church library and saving the originals.

Here are the 32 lectures on CD in the set, grouped by topic:

Historical Jesus
Daniel B. Wallace – Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?
Paul Rhodes Eddy – The Criteria of Authenticity
Craig Evans – Fabricating Jesus
Lee Strobel – The Case For the Real Jesus
Ben Witherington, III – Knowing the History of Jesus
Gary Habermas – The Resurrection of Jesus: Knowable History

Postmodernism:
Sean McDowell – Truth or Tragedy
Brett Kunkle – Moral Truth: True for You, but Not for Me?
R. Scott Smith – The Emerging Church: The Promise and the Perils
James Stump – Deconstructing Postmodernism: Truth, Rationality, and the Gospel

Science:
Sean McDowell – The Case for a Creator
Steve Davis – The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God
James Sinclair – Science and the Cosmos: Prospects for the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments
John A. Bloom – Darwin & Design

Apologetics Advocacy:
Craig Hazen – To Everyone An Answer
Glenn Scorgie – Smash-mouth Apologetics vs. Grace-filled Persuasion

The New Atheism:
Chad Meister – Answering the New Atheism
William Lane Craig – The Dawkins Illusion

Philosophy of Religion:
J.P. Moreland – Argument from Consciousness
Michael Murray – Is Belief in God Hard-Wired in the Brain?
R. Douglas Geivett – Wrestling With the Problem of Suffering
Michael Rea – Why Doesn’t God Show Himself?
David P. Hunt – What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism
Charles Taliferro – The Coherence of Theism

Philosophical Theology:
Steve Porter – Did Jesus Have to Die? Defending the Christian Doctrine of Atonement
Paul Copan – The Incarnation of Christ in Philosophical Perspective
Garry DeWeese – Making Sense of the Trinity
Brett Kunkle – Is One Way the Only Way?
Paul Copan – Why I Believe in Hell: A Philosopher’s Reasoning

Cults and World Religions:
Kevin A. Lewis – Cults and Crimes: The Limits of the First Amendment
Josh Lingel – Standing Up To Islam

Questions and Answers:
Sean McDowell & Brett Kunkle – Ask Your Toughest Questions

The set was $159. Pretty soon Obama will be confiscating that money for elective abortions paid for by Obamacare, so I thought I’d better splurge now! If this sounds like a lot of money to spend on apologetics, you should pick up the book “Passionate Conviction”, which is based on an earlier conference. This is my favorite apologetics book to give to beginners! Or cut out cable for 3 months! I don’t even have a TV!

Lee Strobel – The Case For the Real JesusJ.P. Moreland – Argument from Consciousness

Paul Rhodes Eddy – The Criteria of Authenticity

Michael Murray – Is Belief in God Hard-Wired in the Brain?

R. Scott Smith – The Emerging Church: The Promise and the Perils

Sean McDowell – Truth or Tragedy

James Sinclair – Science and the Cosmos: Prospects for the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments

Ben Witherington, III – Knowing the History of Jesus

Craig Evans – Fabricating Jesus

Chad Meister – Answering the New Atheism

Steve Davis – The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Glenn Scorgie – Smash-mouth Apologetics vs. Grace-filled Persuasion

Brett Kunkle – Moral Truth: True for You, but Not for Me?

Craig Hazen – To Everyone An Answer

William Lane Craig – The Dawkins Illusion

Daniel B. Wallace – Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?

Sean McDowell – The Case for a Creator

Steve Porter – Did Jesus Have to Die? Defending the Christian Doctrine of Atonement

R. Douglas Geivett – Wrestling With the Problem of Suffering

Charles Taliferro – The Coherence of Theism

Paul Copan – The Incarnation of Christ in Philosophical Perspective

Garry DeWeese – Making Sense of the Trinity

Michael Rea – Why Doesn’t God Show Himself?

David P. Hunt – What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism

James Stump – Deconstructing Postmodernism: Truth, Rationality, and the Gospel

Brett Kunkle – Is One Way the

Gary Habermas – The Resurrection of Jesus: Knowable History

Sean McDowell & Brett Kunkle – Ask Your Toughest Questions

Kevin A. Lewis – Cults and Crimes: The Limits of the First Amendment

Paul Copan – Why I Believe in Hell: A Philosopher’s Reasoning
John A. Bloom – Darwin & Design
Josh Lingel – Standing Up To Islam