Theology and Christian Apologetics Archives | CrossExamined.org

What Really Happened at Jesus’ Tomb?

1. Does Truth Exist?, 4. Is the NT True?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

A Look at “The Creed” Through History & Archaeology

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as one born out of due time (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

One of the earliest records of the events surrounding the first Easter was recorded in an early saying or “creed” which the Apostle Paul mentions in his epistle (or letter) in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. It has been called the first Christian “creed” or Credo [Latin for ‘I believe’]. Although Paul refers to it, it is not original to him; it is Pre-Pauline. It very likely dates back to the earliest followers of Jesus – His first Disciples – those who waked with Him, lived with Him, those who watched the drama of His life unfold before their eyes…those who watched Him die…those who ate with Him and spoke with Him and saw Him after He reportedly arose from the dead.

Part of how we know whether or not something happened in the past or not is through eyewitness testimony. Eyewitnesses can be reliable or not. One way (certainly not the only way) we can test whether an eyewitness is speaking the truth is through internal and external evidence that is consistent with other verifiable facts in a particular time period. Unlike mathematics or deductive logic, history allows us to make inferences based on the evidence that we have at hand as we study it carefully and determined if it is reliable.

From this early creed – I would like to consider three facts[1] that it is indeed genuine and bears the key marks of an authentic record of a monumental historical event – namely that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the dead.

April 20, 2014/by Krista Wenzel

Human Design Blindly Echoes Design in Nature

Debates, Theology and Christian Apologetics

“Gears” from a plant hopping insect.

Scientists continually tell us that certain features found in nature are not “designed” but are the product of unguided evolutionary development. In his book The Blind Watchmaker biologist Richard Dawkins curiously has to remind his readers and warn them that some things in nature may appear designed when in fact they are not. He wrote that, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

A recent article posted by Christian apologist, Melissa Cain Travis, offers some compelling reasons that nature is in fact, designed. Many of these designs are copied either unconsciously or consciously (via the science of Biomimicry) by humans. The most reasonable inference is that these designs come from an Intelligent Creator.

You can read about it here

September 16, 2013/by Krista Wenzel

A Universe from Nothing? Dr. Krauss Explains Nothing

2. Does God Exist?, Atheism, Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

If Dr. Richard Dawkins is the atheist’s rock star of biology, Dr. Lawrence Krauss is the atheist’s rock star of physics (maybe only second to Stephen Hawking). An engaging speaker and winsome personality, Dr. Krauss is a theoretical physicist and professor at Arizona State University. In his book A Universe from Nothing, Krauss seeks to answer the age-old question, “Why is there something rather than nothing” without reference to God.

Dr. Krauss says the cause of the universe is not God—it is “nothing.” He cites happenings at the quantum level to dispense with the need for God. (The quantum level is the world of the extremely small, subatomic in size.)

“One of the things about quantum mechanics is not only can nothing become something, nothing always becomes something,” says Dr. Krauss. “Nothing is unstable. Nothing will always produce something in quantum mechanics.”[i]

Now, whenever you hear something that just doesn’t sound right, you ought to ask the person making the claim, “What do you mean by that?” In this case, the precise question to Dr. Krauss would be, “What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”

It turns out that Dr. Krauss’ definition of “nothing” is not the “nothing” from which the universe originated. The initial starting point of the universe was not the quantum vacuum that Dr. Krauss keeps referring to in his book. The starting point was non-being– literally no thing. Since no thing isn’t anything, there are no properties to work with. Nothing is, as Aristotle put it, what rocks dream about. Unless someone powerful intervenes, the ancient maxim still stands: out of nothing, nothing comes.

A quantum vacuum, on the other hand, is something—it consists of fields of fluctuating energy from which particles appear to pop in and out of existence. Whether these particles are uncaused, or are caused but are merely unpredictable to us, is unknown. There are ten different models of the quantum level, and no one knows which is correct. What we do know is that, whatever is happening there, it is not creation out of nothing. Moreover, the vacuum itself had a beginning and therefore needs a cause.

Lest you think I am mad to question the physics of Dr. Krauss, please note that I am more questioning his logic, which is required to do science of any kind. Dr. Krauss is committing the logical fallacy known as equivocation—that is using the same word in an argument but with two different definitions. The “nothing” in the title of Dr. Krauss’ book is not the “nothing” from which the universe came.

This critical distinction was not lost on fellow atheist Dr. David Albert. A Ph.D. in theoretical physics, Dr. Albert is a Professor at Columbia University and author of the book Quantum Mechanics and Experience. In his scathing review of Krauss’ book in the New York Times, Dr. Albert questions both Krauss’ logic and his physics. He pulls no punches and even uses his fist to illustrate.

Commenting on Krauss’ central claim that particles emerging from the quantum vacuum are like creation out of nothing, Dr. Albert writes:

But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing (emphasis in the original).[ii]

Speaking of fists, Dr. Albert lands the knockout blow to Krauss’ entire thesis this way, “But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right.” (It’s important to note that Dr. Albert and Columbia University are not known for Christian fundamentalism.)

Now Dr. Krauss didn’t take all this lying down. He got up off the canvas and fought back by calling Dr. Albert “a moronic philosopher.”[iii]

Well, that solves that then. If the guy’s a moron, the non-moron must be right. Right? Actually, on several occasions in this book, Dr. Krauss confuses even non-moronic readers when he admits Dr. Albert’s point in advance—namely, that the “nothing” Krauss is talking about is not exactly the nothing from which the universe came. Dr. Krauss even puts his “nothing” in quotation marks like I just did.

In an interview, Krauss acknowledges that no matter how one defines “nothing,” the laws of physics are not nothing (sorry to keep using the word nothing, but there’s nothing else to use!). And although he’s clearly annoyed doing so, Dr. Krauss eventually gets around to admitting that his “nothing” is actually something.

“Even if you accept this argument that nothing is not nothing,” he says, “you have to acknowledge that nothing is being used in a philosophical sense. But I don’t really give a damn about what ‘nothing’ means to philosophers; I care about the ‘nothing’ of reality. And if the ‘nothing’ of reality is full of stuff, then I’ll go with that.”[iv]

So if Dr. Krauss admits all this, why the bait and switch title: “A Universe from Nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing”? Why smuggle in the laws of physics and the quantum vacuum and then call it “nothing”? Why diss philosophers who are only trying to bring the book’s assertions back to reality?

Dr. Krauss seems to think that philosophers are not talking about reality, when in fact, that’s exactly what philosophy is—the study of ultimate reality. The problem for Krauss is two-fold.

First, reality is not merely physical stuff. Since nature and the laws of physics themselves had a beginning, ultimate reality is beyond nature or supernatural. So despite claiming to explain how the universe came from nothing, Krauss has explained nothing.

The second problem is a far more serious intellectual disease that infects the thinking of Krauss and several other prominent atheists as well. This disease is so severe that it threatens the accuracy of the very science they seek to promote. Krauss, like Dawkins and Hawking, are dismissive of philosophy.

Now, having studied a lot of wacky philosophy myself, I sympathize with them. But the existence of wacky philosophy doesn’t discredit the existence of good philosophy any more than the existence of wacky science discredits the existence of good science. While it is true that one can use bad philosophy, it is impossible to use no philosophy.

In fact—and this is the essential point—Krauss, Dawkins and the like can’t do science without philosophy. While scientists are usually seeking to understand physical cause and effect, science itself is built on philosophical principles that are not physical themselves—they are beyond the physical (metaphysical). Those principles help the scientist make precise definitions and clear distinctions and then interpret all the relevant data rationally.

What exactly is relevant? What exactly is rational? What exactly is the best interpretation of the data –including what exactly is or isn’t “nothing”? Those questions are all answered through the use of philosophy. (Perhaps that’s why the “Ph.” in Ph.D. stands for “philosophy.” The originators of advanced degrees knew that philosophy is the foundation of every area of inquiry.)

Einstein had an observation about the man of science. He said, “The man of science is a poor philosopher.” Unfortunately, if you abandon good philosophy you end up with bad science. And if you disdain all philosophy, as Krauss and company tend to do, then you put yourself in the self-defeating position of holding a philosophy that disdains all philosophy. You can’t get away from philosophy. It’s like logic. To deny it is to use it.

In the end, despite the lofty promises of his book’s title, Dr. Krauss explains nothing about the ultimate origin of the universe.

Notes

[i] Opening statement of Lawrence Krauss in his debate with Dr. William Lane Craig, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-craig-krauss-debate-at-north-carolina-state-university#ixzz2bwKlOhe1. See also Dr. Krauss’ book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, Atria Books, 2012,Chapter 10.

[ii] David Albert, “On the Origin of Everything ‘A Universe From Nothing,’ by Lawrence M. Krauss,” The New York Times, March 23, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=0.

[iii] Ross Anderson, “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?”. The Atlantic, April 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/.

[iv] Ross Anderson, Ibid.

A Titanic Failure: Never Learning from Our Past

1. Does Truth Exist?, 2. Does God Exist?, Atheism, CrossExamined, Culture CrossExamined, Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

~ Georg Wilhelm F. Hegel, from his lectures, On the Philosophy of History (1837)

Just recently my son has become keenly interested in the story of the Titanic, the steam ship which hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic on April 14, 1912. These past few days we have watched a number of very interesting documentaries, some of which recount eyewitnesses to the disaster who were passengers on board the night it sank. On board the ship that fateful night were some of the world’s most famous and prominent people – among them were the American millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Force Astor, industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, Macy’s department store owner Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida among many others. Throughout the documentaries there were historians and letters cited from people who lived at the opening decades of the 20^th century. Historian Carroll Quigley in his book Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time writes that, “The 19th century was characterized by (1) belief in the innate goodness of man, (2) secularism, (3) belief in progress, (4) liberalism, (5) capitalism, (6) faith in science, (7) democracy, (8) nationalism.”[1]

Although most people today think of the Titanic as the award-winning movie of 1997, in 1912 it was the symbol of the hopes and dreams of thousands of people around the world. For the wealthy it represented the pinnacle of technology and the triumph of science, to the poor, it represented a chance for a new life in America – itself a symbol of hope for millions of immigrants. On the evening of April 15, 1912 the huge ship struck an iceberg ripping open a huge section of the hull. In 2 hours, 40 minutes it was on the bottom of the Atlantic. 1,514 lives were lost. The world was in shock.

Sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic, April 15, 1912

The sinking of the Titanic was the first of several shocks the world of the early 20^th Century would receive. Just two short years later, (July, 1914) for the first time in history, the entire world would be engulfed in the First World War. In 1918 when the war ended, over 10 million Allied & Central command soldiers were dead, not including civilians. The results of WWI set in motion the gears which led to the Second World War when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.[2]

WW I also had a profound effect on some of the greatest artists (Picasso, M. Duchamp, etc…) and literary minds of the 20^th century. Among them was J.R.R. Tolkein whose Lord of the Rings series came right out of his gruesome experiences of fighting in the trenches on the Western Front. One of his biographers makes a telling comment. He writes:

This biographical study arose from a single observation: how strange it is that J.R.R. Tolkein should have embarked upon his monumental mythology in the midst of the First World War, the crisis that disenchanted and shaped the modern era.[3]

“The crisis that disenchanted and shaped the modern era…”

What can we learn from this and the other tragedies of the last century?

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

In conclusion, I would like to ask if there are any lessons we can learn from these opening decades of the 20^th Century? Are we, in the 21^st Century, still clinging to 19^th century ideals which lead to the disillusionment of so many? I assert that we certainly are. We are holding on to at least three of them and we are once again setting ourselves up for even greater disillusionment or even worse:

(1). Belief in the innate goodness of man. (Is human nature basically good?)

“The belief in the innate goodness of man had its roots in the eighteenth century when it appeared to many that man was born good and free but was everywhere distorted, corrupted, and enslaved by bad institutions and conventions. As Rousseau said, Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains.

Obviously, if man is innately good and needs but to be freed from social restrictions, he is capable of tremendous achievements in this world of time, and does not need to postpone his hopes of personal salvation into eternity.”[4]

If the Twentieth-Century and our own experience has taught us anything, it is that man is not innately good – but has a fallen nature. People automatically don’t do the right thing and despite all of their valiant efforts[5], atheists & materialists fail to ground absolute goodness in reality. Similarly, if there is no God – no absolute standard, then there is no ultimate grounding for right and wrong (morality). If there is no God (in reality) then (in reality), there is no difference between Mother Theresa and Hitler.

(2). Secularism (Is ‘religion’ just a hangover from our past?)

Secularists have a strictly materialistic & mechanistic view of human nature and because of this they utterly fail to account for man’s religious nature which they will never eradicate nor will they understand with the methods of the sciences. For most of human history people have had the desire to worship. This is certainly not to say that all religions are the same or that they are all equally true, but merely to point out that the desire to worship and the desire for transcendence is part of what it means to be truly human.[6] Secularism just doesn’t get it! The ultimate question is which religion is true? Which religion corresponds to reality? If the laws of logic apply to all of reality then they apply to religious claims as well. Only one can be true.

(3). Faith in science (Will “science” solve our problems?)

“Science” is touted by many today as the only true view of reality and an inoculation against the claims of religious masses who still live in ignorance & stupidity. These are the ones who still believe that “science” will answer all of our burning questions and solve all of humanity’s problems. But lest we forget, we have the 20^th Century as a guide. It is intimately familiar to us. We have lived through much of it. It is analogous to all of human history because of the simple fact that human nature remains the same and many are still trusting that “science” and the scientific worldview is the way forward.

Why are things not improving now in the first decade of the 21^st Century – the most well-informed, well-educated and scientifically minded centuries to date?

Surely the sciences and technology have brought us much good (curing diseases, saving lives, etc…), but they are ill-equipped to solve our greatest problems which are spiritual & moral in nature.

Many critics will surely point to religious extremism and the turmoil happening in the Middle East as the prime example that “religion” is at the core of the world’s problems. They fail, however, to make vital distinctions between contradictory religious truth claims (especially in the Theistic religions of Judaism, Islam & Christianity). Yet it is only in the religion of Christianity – whose message is the reconciliation of fallen humanity (made in God’s image) to the Creator by the God-Man, Jesus Christ who died on a cross for the sins of the world – that there is hope for the future.

There simply is no unity, order or peace apart from Him.

[1] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1966), pp. 24-5.

[2] And of course, WW2 ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

[3] John Garth, Tolkein and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), xiii.

[4] Summary of Quigley, p. 24.

[5] One of the latest is Sam Harris’s, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (New York: The Free Press, 2010).

[6] For an excellent study on the relationship between science and human nature I strongly recommend Brendan Purcell’s excellent work, From Big Bang to Big Mystery: Human Origins in the Light of Creation and Evolution (Hyde Park, New York: New York City Press, 2012).

September 6, 2013/by Krista Wenzel

A Not So Bright Future: Technology, Atheism & the Death of Man

1. Does Truth Exist?, 2. Does God Exist?, Atheism, CrossExamined, Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900

It is widely believed that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ushered in the twentieth century with his famous phrase, “God is dead…”[1] Nietzsche himself died in 1900. Obviously, atheism didn’t start in the twentieth century with Nietzsche. In fact, he was the culmination (the pinnacle) of a long line of thinkers which reached back into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[2] The European Enlightenment promised grand and wonderful things when human reason finally divorced itself from the shackles of faith.[3] Using the newly found tools of the “scientific method,” (via Bacon & Spinoza); a humanistic morality which was becoming increasingly devoid of God (via Nietzsche); and the burgeoning industrial revolution with its new technologies, the twentieth century was set to take mankind to new heights never before dreamt of – a utopia of sorts. Some who were wise, however, could see that “wicked things were written in the sky.”[4] The next century (the 20^th) would either be wonderful or it would be a nightmare. Enter H.G. Wells novel, A Modern Utopia (1905), the book which inspired Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future in Brave New World (1932), and later, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Both of these novels predicted a future in which mankind would be destroyed either by external oppression by a despot using technology (the big-brother of Orwell) or through technologies which would make us lazy and undo our capacity to think (Huxley).[5] In both instances, technology would somehow be used to lead to our undoing.

If there is no God (or at least since He died in the 19^th century) then humans must put their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future in something. Enter the Enlightenment 2.0 – 21st-century edition – human reason, science, and technology will surely help us solve all of the world’s problems. How are we doing 13 years into this century? Not very well. Do we ever learn? Usually not.

Neil Postman makes a brilliant observation in, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992). An observation that we should etch into our heads.

Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise from inadequate information. If a nuclear catastrophe occurs, it shall not be because of inadequate information. Where people are dying of starvation, it does not occur because of inadequate information. If families break up, children are mistreated, crime terrorizes a city, education is impotent, it does not happen because of inadequate information. Mathematical equations, instantaneous communication, and vast quantities of information have nothing to do with any of these problems. And the computer is useless in addressing them.[6]

The scientific, atheistic and materialistic worldview is utterly incapable of ensuring civilization. It can’t be trusted. Why? Because the last century has been one gigantic experiment in what it is capable of and also of what it is incapable of.

In my next post A Titanic Failure: Never Learning from Our Past, we will take a look at some epic examples of the complete failure of the European Enlightenment and materialistic atheism and what it could teach us about our future – if anything at all.

[1] See, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” in Walter Kaufmann, Editor & Translator, The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin Books, 1982).

[2] For an excellent book on the philosophical battles which ensued between various German thinkers on the role of reason during the era of the Enlightenment see, Fredrick C. Beiser’s, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); for a Christian analysis of the Enlightenment see, James Collins, A History of Modern European Philosophy (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1954).

[3] Interestingly, the modern Internet & Wikipedia had its birth in the Enlightenment with the idea of the Encyclopédie which was published in France 1751-1772.

[4] To borrow the line from Chesterton’s poem “The Ballad of the White Horse” – a poem about England’s Saxon king, Alfred the Great.

[5] I am indebted to Neil Postman for this observation in his excellent book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). Postman’s thesis is that Huxley was right. History has proven that he was correct.

[6] Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p.119.

September 5, 2013/by Krista Wenzel

Three Apologetics Conferences Coming Soon

Theology and Christian Apologetics

You have three outstanding opportunities to participate in apologetics conferences over the next several weeks.

Your first opportunity is to join me, Doug Groothuis and Mary Jo Sharp online this Saturday, September 7, for the “Is Christianity Actually True?” conference put on by the C.S. Lewis Society of New Zealand. There will be time for Q&A. Again, this is an ONLINE event, so you have no excuse. Click here for details: http://www.truthsayer.org.za/is-christianity-actually-true-why.html

Your second opportunity is the “Truth for a New Generation” conference led by Alex McFarland September 27-28 in Charlotte, NC. Alex has a great lineup that includes Lee Strobel and Eric Metaxas. He even has a session on religious freedom moderated by Lauren Greene of Fox News. Click here for details: http://www.truthforanewgeneration.com/

Your final opportunity is the 20th annual “National Conference on Christian Apologetics” October 10-11 also in Charlotte, NC. I will be emceeing this along with Southern Evangelical Seminary President, Dr. Richard Land. This lineup is also impressive and includes Josh McDowell, Hugh Ross and Jay Richards. There are several debates during this conference as well. Click here for details: http://conference.ses.edu/

September 3, 2013/by Frank Turek

Archaeology, the Bible & the Great Dating Debate

4. Is the NT True?, CrossExamined, Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

An article posted by the Biblical Archaeology Society cites a recent report published in BASOR (the Bulletin for the American Schools of Oriental Research) which calls into question the dating of the Siloam Tunnel which was supposedly excavated during the reign of the biblical king, Hezekiah. According to references in the Old Testament (specifically 2 Kings 20:20 & 2 Chronicles 32:30), the water tunnel was dug by Hezekiah in preparation of a siege to Jerusalem which was led by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in the late eighth century B.C..

Hezekiah’s Tunnel

The significance of this new study by Israeli geologists, Amihai Sneh, Eyal Shalev and Ram Weinberge, is the re-dating of the tunnel to the time of Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh. According to these scholars, there simply wasn’t enough time for Hezekiah’s workers to have excavated such a long tunnel. The three geologists from the Geological Survey of Israel maintain that it would have taken about 4 years to dig the 533 meter (approx. 1748 ft.) tunnel. But as archaeologists, Aren Maeir and Jeffrey Chadwick rightfully point out:

“In marshaling evidence to support their model, however, the authors entirely ignore the only contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous textual sources that shed light on Jerusalem in the Iron Age II (and that specifically mention aspects of the city’s water system)—namely the narrative passages in Isaiah 7–8 and the historical allusions in Isaiah 36 and 2 Kings 18. The only reference to Biblical material in the article is the authors’ after-the-fact quotation of the single verse in 2 Chronicles 32:30, which recalls that Hezekiah stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon and brought it down to the west side of the City of David.”[1]

In addition to this oversight, another glaring omission of the geologists is information gleaned from Assyrian inscriptional sources.[2] According to a reconstruction of this period based on Assyrian records, Judah’s revolt against Assyria began at about 705 B.C., exactly four years before Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem – exactly the amount of time that the geologists said that Hezekiah’s workers needed to complete the tunnel!

Siloam Tunnel inscription records when workers from the 8th Cent. B.C. met when digging from opposite directions. The inscription is now located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

There are two observations I would like to make about this:

As I have stated in my previous posts on archaeology – one of the major areas of debate in Old Testament archaeology is dating and not a lack of material evidence. We have seen this sort of thing crop up in other debates in the Old Testament such as the dating of the Exodus and the Conquest – specifically the debate over Tel es-Sultan (or ancient Jericho) between John Garstang and Kathleen Kenyon and the recent work of Dr. Bryant Wood.

Skeptics of the Bible and theological liberals complain that the stories in the Bible are mostly fabrications but when we do find archaeological corroboration then they move the goal-post back by re-dating the discovery to an earlier or later date.

The second observation is that this episode highlights the prevalence of an extreme bias against the historical trustworthiness of the Biblical text in professional scholarly and archaeological circles (specifically ASOR – the American Schools of Oriental Research and their peer-reviewed publication BASOR – the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research).

If the article was “peer-reviewed” before it was published, then how could they have missed such an oversight of basic historical knowledge?

I suspect that there will be more dating debates in the days ahead, as ongoing research and excavations in Bible lands reveal even more corroboration and affirmation that the Biblical text is indeed trustworthy when it records events that happened in the past.

As the late novelist Michael Crichton once wrote, “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ”

All of the “leaves” of the New Testament are connected to branches which reach down to the trunk and roots of the Old Testament. As Jesus taught, “…if they would not believe Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead” (Lk. 16:31).

[1] http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/regarding-recent-suggestions-redating-the-siloam-tunnel/?mqsc=E3610342&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHDDailyNewsletter&utm_campaign=E3B827, (accessed August 30, 2013).

[2] See, A. Kirk Grayson and Jamie Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704-681 BC), Part 1 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012).

August 30, 2013/by Krista Wenzel

Top 100 Universities Go with Liberal Graduation Speakers

College Events, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Most of our top universities continue their liberal learning right through the graduation ceremony. Todd Starnes provides a complete listing of university graduation speakers from Harvard on down. This despite the fact that many of these universities were founded by Christians on Christianity.

For example, Harvard, whose namesake was clergyman John Harvard, was founded to train ministers of the Gospel. This is from a website affiliated with Harvard:

Harvard University was founded in 1636 with the intention of establishing a school to train Christian ministers. In accordance with that vision, Harvard’s “Rules and Precepts,” adopted in 1646, stated (original spelling and Scriptural references retained):

“2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Prov. 2:3).

3. Every one shall so exercise himselfe in reading the Scriptures twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein, both in Theoreticall observations of Language and Logick, and in practical and spiritual truths, as his Tutor shall require, according to his ability; seeing the entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130).”

The motto of the University adopted in 1692 was “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” which translated from Latin means “Truth for Christ and the Church.” This phrase was embedded on a shield as shown to the right, and can be found on many buildings around campus including the Widener library, Memorial Church, and various dorms in Harvard Yard. Interestingly, the top two books on the shield are face up while the bottom book is face down. This symbolizes the limits of reason, and the need for God’s revelation.

Consistent with “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” and the purpose of Harvard’s founding, our fellowship is dedicated to discovering and experiencing Truth (Veritas) for the sake of Christ and his church.

Is it any wonder why the majority of students fail to attend church during college and many walk away from Christianity permanently? Students are fed liberalism throughout their college experience.

But why have our universities and much of our country gone liberal? It’s not because the truth supports liberalism or is contrary to Christianity. It’s largely because Christians went anti-intellectual and failed to defend the truth. When you turn out the light, darkness is right there.

May 17, 2013/by Frank Turek

You Can’t Preach the Gospel without Freedom

Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Theology and Christian Apologetics

When I hear Christians saying we ought not get involved in politics but just “preach the Gospel,” I show them this satellite picture of the Korean peninsula. Here we see a homogenous population of mostly Koreans separated by a well-fortified border. South Korea is full of freedom, food and productivity—it’s one of the most Christianized countries in the world. North Korea is a concentration camp. They have no freedom, no food, and very little Christianity.

What’s the primary reason for the stark difference between these two countries? Politics. The South politically allows freedom, while the North does not.

Ironically, Christians who shun politics to supposedly advance the Gospel are actually allowing others to stop the Gospel. How so? Because politics and law affects one’s ability to preach the Gospel! If you think otherwise, visit some of the countries I have visited—Iran, Saudi Arabia and China. You cannot legally “preach the Gospel” in those countries—or practice other aspects of your religion freely—because politically they’ve ruled it out as they have in North Korea.

In fact, politics affects virtually every area of your life through the laws made by government. So if you care about your family, business, church, school, children, money, property, home, security, healthcare, safety, freedom, and your ability to “preach the Gospel,” then you should care about politics.

Politics affects everything, which is why leaders throughout the Bible—including Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Nehemiah, Mordecai, Esther, John the Baptist, and Paul— “went political” to influence civil governments to govern morally. Even Jesus himself got involved in politics when he publically chastised the Pharisees—the religious and political leaders of Israel—for neglecting “the more important matters of the law.”

Unfortunately, our lawmakers today are doing the same thing. They use the force of law tell us what light bulbs to use and what the school lunch menu should be, but neglect to put any restrictions on the taking of human life by abortion! What could be more important than life? The right to life is the right to all other rights. If you don’t have life, you don’t have anything.

But what can Christians do? After all, we can’t legislate morality, can we? News flash: All laws legislate morality! Morality is about right and wrong and all laws declare one behavior right and the opposite behavior wrong. So the question is not whether we can legislate morality, but “Whose morality will we legislate?”

The answer our Founding Fathers gave was the “self-evident” morality given to us by our Creator—the same Moral Law that the apostle Paul said that all people have “written on their hearts.” In other words, not my morality or your morality, but the morality—the one we inherited not the one we invented. (This doesn’t mean that every moral or political issue has clear right and wrong answers. It only means that “the more important matters of the law” – life, marriage and religious freedom for example—do have clear answers that we should heed.)

Notice our Founders did not have to establish a particular denomination or force religious practice in order to legislate a moral code. Our country justifies moral rights with theism, but does not require its citizens to acknowledge or practice theism. That’s why Chris Matthews and other liberals are wrong when they charge that Christians are trying to impose a “theocracy” or violate the “separation of Church and State.” They fail to distinguish between religion and morality.

Broadly defined, religion involves our duty to God while morality involves our duty to one another. Our lawmakers are not telling people how, when, or if to go to church—that would be legislating religion. But lawmakers cannot avoid telling people how they should treat one another— that is legislating morality, and that is what all laws do.

Opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage, for example, does not entail the establishment of a “theocracy.” Churches and the Bible also teach that murder, theft, and child abuse are wrong, but no one says laws prohibiting such acts establish a theocracy or are a violation of the “separation of church and state.” In fact, if the government could not pass laws consistent with church or biblical teachings, then all criminal laws would have to be overturned because they are all in some way consistent with at least one of the Ten Commandments.

Second, there are churches on both sides of these issues. In other words, some liberal churches, contrary to scripture, actually support abortion and same-sex marriage. So if church-supported positions could not be put into law, then we could not have laws either way on abortion or same-sex marriage. Absurd.

Finally, most proponents of same-sex marriage argue as if they have some kind of moral right to having their relationships endorsed by the state. They claim that they don’t have “equal rights” or that they are being “discriminated” against. Likewise, abortion advocates claim they have a moral “right” to choose an abortion. None of these claims are true, as I have explained elsewhere. Nevertheless, their arguments, while flawed, expose the fact that independent of religion they seek to legislate their morality rather than the morality.

If you have a problem with the morality, don’t blame me. I didn’t make it up. I didn’t make up the fact that abortion is wrong, that men are not designed for other men, or that natural marriage is the foundation of a civilized society. Those unchangeable objective truths about reality are examples of the “Laws of Nature” from “Nature’s God,” as the Declaration of Independence puts it, and we only hurt others and ourselves by suppressing those truths and legislating immoral laws.

When we fail to legislate morally, others impose immorality. For example, totalitarian political correctness is already imposed in states such as Massachusetts where the implications of same-sex marriage override the religious liberties of businesses, charities and even parents. As documented here and illustrated here, same sex marriage prevents you from running your business, educating your children, or practicing your religion in accord with your Conscience. And soon, as is the case in Canada, you may not be able to merely speak Biblically about homosexual behavior. That is because those who say they are fighting for “tolerance” are often the most intolerant.

Unless Christians begin to influence politics and the culture more significantly, we will continue to lose the very freedoms that enable us to live according to our beliefs and spread the Gospel all over the world. That’s why you should not vote for candidates because of their race or religion, but because they will govern morally on the more important matters of the law—life, marriage and religious freedom. (To see where all the major candidates stand visit the non-partisan website http://www.ontheissues.org.)

If you are a pastor who is worried about your tax-exempt status: 1) you have more freedom than you think to speak on political and moral issues from the pulpit; 2) if you do not speak up for truth now, you will soon lose your freedom to speak for anything, including the Gospel; and 3) you are called to be salt and light, not tax-exempt.

November 1, 2012/by Frank Turek

The End of Moral Relativism: A Chain of Perverts

Theology and Christian Apologetics

If you are not familiar with the name Alfred Kinsey, you might want to look him up, and you might want to start with Judith Reisman‘s, Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America. In it, Reisman chronicles Kinsey’s recognition as the America’s expert on “sex education” whose studies have influenced our cultural institutions since 1948 when his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, along with his 1953 follow-up, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female hit the higher education marketplace. In these books Kinsey pronounced untold “facts” about human sexuality that many in the culture and education have used as the standard by which the topic is addressed in academia to this day.

Here’s the problem. Kinsey’s studies were conducted on test cases made up of:

“… draft dodgers, violent felons, homosexuals and other aberrants … By 1946 Kinsey added ‘1400 convicted sex offenders in penal institutions,’ ‘two hundred sexual psychopath patients’ and well over 600 sexually abused boys. In sum, 86% of deviant ‘subjects’ [were used to define] the Libido of The Greatest Generation … [As for women], Kinsey selected — and paid — prostitutes to represent American womanhood. He loosely defined a ‘wife’ as someone who had lived ‘at least a year’ with a man.”*

And what about Kinsey himself? In perversions that are unrepeatable here, Kinsey began “sexual experimentation” at age 7 in the basement of his Hoboken, New Jersey home. I’ll spare the details but suffice it to say that by the time he conducted the studies that became his books, Kinsey had assembled a staff where “everyone was a bisexual, homosexual, pedophile, pederast, or just wholly amoral … [and whose studies involved] 214 children ranging in age from 1 to 14 years.”**

That’s not a typo. Age ONE to FOURTEEN. And, yes, that means that Kinsey’s “research” involved a staff who arranged and observed “sex play” in children age 4 to 15. As Reisman puts it, “Kinsey fed America a pack of lies, starting with his claim that sexual behavior widely accepted as wrong was, in fact, commonplace. From there, he pushed the lie that such behavior was normal, and finally, he advanced the lie that it was good, healthy, and to be encouraged. Thus, by degrees, Kinsey and his minions turned America’s moral compass upside down …”***

On Kinsey’s cue, Hugh Hefner began to mainstream pornography. But what is worse, Hefner and other Kinsey disciples founded the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). If that acronym sounds familiar it is because SIECUS is the foremost provider of sex education in American public schools.

So what am I getting at?

Well, in 1972, a man named Graham Spanier endorsed Kinsey’s research to the Midwest Sociological Society and, in 1976, under a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development, he also validated Kinsey’s data on “childhood sex play” for similar “scholars.” In 2002, Spanier also approved Pat Califia, a “transgendered advocate of sado-masochism and pedophilia” as the keynote speaker for a women’s health conference at his place of employment. The year before he allowed the group, Womyn’s Concerns to hold a “Sex Faire” at the same location which featured activities like “orgasm bingo” and “the tent of consent.” When asked if the “fair” was morally wrong, Spanier replied, “It depends on what your definition of immoral is.”****

That location was a college campus. Spanier was the President of Penn State University — the leader of the gang of cowards who knew about, covered for, and lied about the activities the child rapist, Jerry Sandusky.

There has been a lot written about the disgusting story of the Penn State football program. One of my favorites comes from Rick Reilly’s self-confessed failure to not see the hagiography that was going on at PSU for so many years that allowed such a thing to occur. Many have commented on the deceit and perversion, but I haven’t seen any attempt to expose the chain of perverts that leads from Kinsey to Spanier to Sandusky. Nor have I seen anyone try to explain why someone like Joe Paterno, who had no apparent tolerance for the despicable actions of his defensive coach, would be willing to stay quiet about it. I believe this goes beyond his being embarrassed for, and trying to protect, the school or his football program. At its core, this is one of the many fruits of moral relativism — the unwillingness to acknowledge that something is objectively wrong in and of itself.

In 1993, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan put forward the thesis that:

“…over the past generation, the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can ‘afford to recognize’ and that, accordingly, we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard. This redefining has evoked fierce resistance from defenders of ‘old’ standards, and accounts for much of the present ‘cultural war’ …

The American Scholar, (Winter 1993)

Our culture has surely been “defining deviancy down” for quite some time. We are willing to “exempt conduct previously stigmatized” because it has become more unacceptable to be thought an arrogant or oppressive defender of objective moral truth, than it has to become complicit in the rape of little boys.
_______________

* Marcia Segelstein, “Lie Charts,” Salvo (Autumn 2011, p. 36)

** Ibid, 40-41.

*** Ibid, 36.

**** Judith Reisman, “It’s Academic,” Salvo (Spring 2012, p. 40-41)

July 15, 2012/by janthony