Top 10 Tips for Atheists This Easter

Atheists should drop their easily dismissed scientific, philosophical or historical arguments against Christianity, and instead quiz believers about Old Testament violence and hell, writes John Dickson.

The Reason for God MP3s by Tim Keller

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Exclusivity: How can there be just one true religion? MP3
Suffering: If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? MP3
Absolutism: Don't we all have to find truth for ourselves? MP3
Injustice: Hasn't Christianity been an instrument for oppression? MP3
Hell: Isn't the God of Christianity an angry Judge? MP3
Doubt: What should I do with my doubts? MP3
Literalism: Isn't the Bible historically unreliable and regressive? MP3

This is a peculiar problem of the Christian gospel. If God were principally holy and righteous, and only occasionally magnanimous in special circumstances, we wouldn't be shocked by final judgment. But it is precisely because Jesus described God as a Father rushing to embrace and kiss the returning 'prodigal' that Christians wonder how to hold this in tension with warnings of hell and judgment.

To me this an easy one to answer. God loves us to death, however, if you refuse to accept his love he loses you to Satan. They are both vying for your soul, the choice as to who receives your soul remains with you because God granted you life with free choice. If you deny the existence of Satan, and only God I can see where one would see the dichotomy.

“We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our
Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
John Adams
Bottom line: WE ARE NO LONGER THAT PEOPLE and are now nearing the end of the process fulfilling Mr. Adams’ dire prediction.
It will get worse from here.

Tocqueville spoke to the same problem after his visit here, to wit:
“I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...;in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into her churches and saw pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840)

“When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect, and half paralyzes all the others. Every man accustoms himself to have only confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow-creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defined and easily abandoned; and, in despair of ever solving by himself the hard problems respecting the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more about them. Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare the people for servitude. Not only does this happen, in such a case, that they allow their freedom to be taken from them; they themselves frequently surrender it.”
-—Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America” (1840)

The end game of the secular progressives is in sight! Will we resist or submit and surrender?
BTW, If you believe this “stuff” is just so early 1800s, you are part of the problem.

If he thinks OT violence is a clinching argument then he has not read the OT or he has not understood what he read.

Exactly.

I'm one who is perfectly fine with God's command to the invading Israelites to obliterate the Canaanites. In its proper time. (The proper time is not now. The Israelite theocracy was unique, not to be repeated.)

"Leave alive nothing that breathes."

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