Why Christians should apologize for using apologetics

Hello ThereforeGodExists audience! According to WordPress statistics, people are still finding my website from Google or just typing it into their browser hoping I have updated. The last post that I wrote was over a year ago. Between working full-time and finishing a masters degree, I just have not had the energy to write any new blogposts. Also, my interest in apologetics has been waning over the years. I think that theology is far more important. Ideally, I’d like to write at least one post every couple of weeks, but…

The Subjectivity of The Moral Argument And Why It Is Popcorn

“Read CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity.” Throughout the years, young believers have received that recommendation and eagerly combed over Lewis’s most important work. While it was not a testimony or autobiographical akin to Surprised By Joy, he did share what brought the most reluctant convert in all of England to the breaking point. He wrote on page 38 of Mere Christianity, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a…

My King Is A Brown, Middle Eastern Jew

There was a pretty significant paradigm shift 2000 years ago that forever changed culture, religion and theology. When Jesus came on the scene, he came bearing the message that the kingdom of God had come in himself – which is what he referred to as the gospel. Isaiah anticipated the coming of Christ when he recorded God’s words to his Messiah. “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will…

Why Christians Should Stop Doing Apologetics And Start Doing Real Scholarship

It is trivially easy to convince somebody that she was right all along. I am afraid that this mindset is one of the dangers of Christian apologetics. Obviously on a site called Therefore, God Exists, I am in favor of apologetics. But it is very easy for overzealous apologists to be exposed to the arguments and start crusading. They might focus more on their conclusions than learning anything new. A possible resolution to this problem is to start doing real scholarship. Here is why Christians should stop doing apologetics: the…

How Christian Thinkers Can Earn A Seat At The Atheists’ Table

It can be difficult to convince people on the other side of the ideological spectrum to take you seriously. But that is part of the challenge of being a Christian. Jesus told his disciples to preach the gospel and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Sometimes we have a tendency to limit that to just backsliding believers who we want to return to the fold. Atheists would not be worth our time because they have secularism too thoroughly ingrained in their minds. But as rational, free creatures, atheists could…

A Few of The Worst Arguments In Arminian Theology

Secularists are sometimes surprised when they learn about the long-standing intellectual tradition of the Christian church. There are thousands of books that have emerged containing our different philosophies, theological points of view, critical reviews, and rigorous intellectual content. Today, Christians owe much of the way that they think to these great philosophers and theologians. Arguments that were penned thousands of years ago are recited today on blogs, in modern books and on social media. While some of these arguments truly are insightful, others lack the muscle to withstand serious scrutiny.…

Can Man Be Free If Determinism Is True?

The doctrine of freedom of the will is a very important theme in Christian thought. For many, it is the primary method of explaining how there is evil and suffering in the world. However, many have pointed out that there are other core doctrines of the Christian faith that seem to compromise freedom of the will. How could God truly be sovereign over all of our actions if in fact we are free? How could predestination be true if man is free? Can man truly be free if divine determinism is…

Why Do People Who You Love Have To Leave?

We live in a world that is full of despair, pain and suffering. Every day, there are tragedies across the world that take the lives of loved ones. People die unexpectedly. Sometimes the day after a wedding, when the bride and groom are looking forward to their lives together, one is tragically taken. When a family seems stronger than ever, an unexpected flood overwhelms one’s home and somebody dies. The only remnants of their death is a report on the news that says, “One dead” and they are hastily forgotten.…

What Is A “Jesus Only” Church?

Ancient diversions from orthodoxy seem to sprout up throughout the generations of church history. Christians have classically maintained strict trinitarianism. Any departure from this has been looked upon by the historic church as a heresy. A non-trinitarian model of God would hence be seen as idolatry. Nonetheless, there are some Christian groups who maintain a form of unitarianism. While a trinitarian is a person who believes that there is one God, eternally presented in three persons, a unitarian is one who believes that there is one God, who is one…

Did The Islamic Jesus Fail?

In a labored attempt to appeal to Christians, Muslims will often tell us that they believe in Jesus just as we do. They will tell us that they revere and adore Jesus as a prophet of God. They will tell us that there are two faiths that historically believe in Jesus and believe in what he says, and they are Islam and Christianity. The difference, so they will tell us, is that Christians have distorted the teachings of Jesus through the centuries so that now we worship him as God,…

The Easter Challenge

Dan Barker issued the Easter Challenge a few years ago as an indicator of the demerits of the Christians’ Easter tradition. While we use it to commemorate that Christ had risen from the dead, there are serious flaws in the Easter story that many Christians do not realize. This aligns with what is known as the Synoptic Problem. The Synoptic Problem points out the contradictions between Matthew, Mark and Luke. Since they overlap in the events that they record, a good Christian will assume also that they overlap precisely in…

Does God Know The Future?

The traditional conception of God among monotheistic faiths is that God is utterly perfect in every way. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, all-present, all-good, and so on. But some Christians (hereafter referred to as open-theists) wrestle with these attributes and wonder how it is that they fit into their systematic theology. So when they come across God’s absolute knowledge, contrasted against human freedom, they tend to recoil, and take the position that because human beings have libertarian freedom, that therefore, God must not be able to know their future decisions.…

Why Are Christians So Mean?

People with views that oppose Christian doctrine often mount the accusation that Christians are mean-spirited and obnoxious. It is not necessarily so much that these groups are merely disagreeing with each other, but Christians are utterly disagreeable, unable to have a friendly conversation and listen to the beliefs of those with whom they disagree. I have seen Christians who are mean-spirited toward homosexuals, Muslims, liberals, and even other Christians. Pretty much anybody who calls into question one of their beliefs and practices. Rather than intellectually criticizing the doctrine of Islam,…

Are Oneness Pentecostals Saved?

I am not the judge. But I can ask what the Bible says. Evangelicals often take the stance that for a person to be saved, they must believe in the doctrine of the trinity. I can certainly sympathize with this, because the doctrine of the trinity is usually tied in so closely with the deity of Christ. If we hear somebody denying the doctrine of the trinity, we assume that they are also denying the deity of Christ. Of course, one needs to believe that Jesus is God to be…

3 Reasons Atheists Are Afraid To Read Isaiah

Often referred to as the 5th Gospel, the writings of the Prophet Isaiah are very theologically loaded. I suspect that if it were part of the New Testament canon, liberal scholars would strive to post-date it as late as they could. There are affirmations of Christian theology that Isaiah just would not know, absent divine inspiration. There are long-range prophecies that are so absurdly clear that any reader would see in the text. Thus I suggest that there are at least 3 reasons atheists are afraid to read Isaiah. I…

5 Ways To Tell If You Are A False Convert

What is the difference between Judas and Peter? When the time came, both of them failed Jesus. Judas sold him to his enemies, which led to his being nailed a cross. Peter denied even knowing him and fled when he was most needed. He fled when he promised that he would stay with him even if everybody else fell away. Yet Peter went on to write several books of the Bible and become a great evangelist and apostle. To him, Jesus said, (Matthew 16:19), “I will give you the keys…

5 Reasons That Atheism Is Weird

Suppose one of your friends tells you that they think that there is a ghost in their house. But it is a friendly ghost, who helps them find things and has an interesting sense of humor. Suppose another friend tells you that they lost their keys, but used an ouija board to locate them. Yet another friend tells you that they went to a psychic and they exposed secrets and mysteries about them that they could not possibly know. You would be inclined to think that these things are weird,…

Does Hebrews 6:4-6 Teach That It Is Possible To Lose Salvation?

In my view, the crowd of 5 point Arminians seems to be quickly dissipating. Most people who I am aware of do not think that it is possible for a true believer to lose their salvation. In fact, even Jacob Arminius thought that it was an open question and too difficult to answer. But those who want to hold fast to this view will usually use Hebrews 6:4-6 as a proof text, arguing that it teaches that these people are born again, experiencing the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, and…

Is Atheist Activism A Religion?

Is atheist activism a religion? Sometimes believers like to suggest that atheism is a religion, and as such, atheists are religious believers. However I do not think that is true. Atheism, defined as just the position or view that there is no such being as God, is not a religion. In fact, even theism is not necessarily a religion. Some people can believe that God exists, and still not be religious. Holding the belief that God exists or God does not exist, does not make one religious. In fact, even…

College Athlete Claims Faith In A YouTube Messiah

One of the most accomplished NCAA running backs of the day, Adam Muema, recently summoned the national spotlight when he left the NFL Scouting Combine just months before the draft. He did this because, he said, God told him to. Now one could expect that after such an endeavor, Muema’s intentions would be to leave his football career behind. But nonetheless, he intends to be an NFL prospect, and even has written in his twitter bio, “Seahawks #8.” Of course he has neither been drafted nor promised a position on…