Posted on 08/01/2006 12:42:58 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
In the first chapter of their new book, 20 Compelling Evidences that God exists, Ken Boa and Robert Bowman write, “We don’t mean to discourage you from reading the rest of this book. But in the interest of full disclosure, we should tell you that, in a sense, there is only one good reason to believe that God exists: because it’s true.”
That statement is both profound and well expressed. Unfortunately, these days it’s not the kind of statement you can make in public without having scorn heaped upon your head. As the authors jokingly point out, the popular viewpoint regarding truth is, “Anyone who believes that he is right and others are wrong is intolerant.” Now that’s self-contradictory on its face, but it’s almost certain to be thrown at you if you assert a truth claim.
That’s why Boa and Bowman have titled their book 20 Compelling Evidences that God Exists—because they recognize that for any claim to truth to be taken seriously in today’s culture, it needs solid evidence to back it up. As the authors write, “There are many such evidences, but they all have value because they help us see that the God of the Bible is real.” In fewer than two hundred pages, they clearly and concisely examine some of today’s most pervasive worldviews and their flaws. Then they present their case for God’s existence and His revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ.
What kind of evidences are they talking about? There’s an amazing variety. They don’t state it right upfront, but they are organizing their “20 compelling evidences” in a way that takes readers through the doctrines of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—the four basic elements of the Christian worldview that I set forth in How Now Shall We Live?
They start with evidence about the universe and the origins of life. And they talk, for example, about how finely our solar system and our planet had to be calibrated to support life. At “an extremely conservative estimate,” they say, the probability of our planet being capable of sustaining us is about one in a billion. It had to be at just the right place in the solar system, which had to be at just the right place in the galaxy. Even the expansion of the universe had to happen at just the right rate in order for all of us to be here today.
From evidence about the universe, the authors move on to evidence of humanity’s sinful nature; then evidence of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; and finally, evidence of those who have lived and died for Christ. Examining concepts ranging from Greek philosophy to archeology to the Big Bang theory to postmodernism, the authors make a powerful case for the existence of a loving Creator.
In short, I highly recommend Boa and Bowman’s book. They provide in a very readable form an excellent apologetic resource for Christians wondering how to defend their faith in a world that’s “tolerant” of everything except Christianity.
Ken Boa is a great apologist—one of the most engaging and popular teachers in our Centurion’s training program. You can visit our website, BreakPoint.org, to find out how you can get 20 Compelling Evidences that God Exists. While you’re there, be sure to check out some of our other Christian worldview resources.
"Yes, but then we're left with the question of why those levels of killing did not go on in lands that did embrace worship of a Creator."
There's a problem with that. Consider the Islamic countries. They certainly worship a creator, yet are quite warlike and destructive.
I fear that the mere belief in deities does not preclude a society from being warlike or even genocidal.
I will give you another: me.
Well, I served in the military, too, but was never in combat, so I can't claim myself as an example. I did have dogtags that said "Atheist", though.
To quote the wise Calvin:
"Sometimes I think the most sure sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is the fact that it hasn't tried to contact us yet."
I still have mine. And I did have to jump into a foxhole once during combat (I hate artillery, at least on the receiving end), so I qualify.
Really? A majority of Stalin's victims were either starved to death or shot, not killed via bombs or artillery.
If you think one example disproves the statement, you're not understanding it. The point of that saying is not that THERE ARE NEVER ATHEISTS IN FOXHOLES EVER EVER. "There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an absolute statement; it's hyperbole to make a point.
Except when one man's truth is another man's heresy!
If there is only one "truth", why so many schims, sects, denominations, cults?
The old way was better--the rain god, the sun god, fertility gods, etc.--at least you can see whether it rains or not. The sun god is pretty reliable.
Yes and no. They have been a distinct groups for that long, in fact longer, out to some 400 million years. And most all would have been outwardly recognizable as "sharks" to the average observer. Yet "unchanged" seems a totally inappropriate word to apply to sharks. Within the broad paradigm of "sharkiness" they've proven highly adaptable and variable.
In modern sharks you have everything from the "normal" mid water predators (some of which must remain constantly moving to "breathe"), to lugubrious bottom feeders like the nurse shark, to huge behemoths like the "whale shark" that filter feed on plankton at the surface like baleen whales. There's similar diversity, with the occasional "odd ball," among ancient sharks. (IIRC there are well over 2,000 species of fossil sharks. Compare to well under 1,000 species among all dinosaurs.)
Please do.
Yes, but you're dodging the issue raised, which is that those with Atheism as their official religion are the worst, by an order of magnitude by far, when it comes to murder.
Because of the vast size of the galaxy it's entirely possible for life to be common in terms of absolute numbers, but yet to be so thinly dispersed in space that we are too far away from the nearest neighbor to readily contact or detect it.
Also possible that life as such is common, but the evolution of intelligence (and technological civilization) is rare.
Even if intelligence and civilization is common, it's possible that interstellar travel is a practical impossibility, or too costly to be a desirable activity. Communication by radio or other electromagnetic signal might also be too expensive (if you want to make the signal detectable over really long distances). Even if this is not so it's possible that civilizations might decide, once they have the ability to broadcast strong signals ubiquitously, that it might not be such a good idea to betray their location to unknown others.
"A majority of Stalin's victims were either starved to death or shot, not killed via bombs or artillery."
And most victims of the Khmer Rouge were killed in even lower-tech ways (clubbing or hacking to death) to save ammunition.
It isn't just "creationists" who make these estimates. Physicists and cosmologists think that tiny changes in a number of fundamental physical constants (like the charge of the electron, etc.) would have resulted a universe in which life of any kind would be impossible.
(The Truth is the truth and there is no other Truth.)
>Except when one man's truth is another man's heresy!<
God gave man free will. You make your choices and you earn the consequences.
Romans 1:21-23
For although they knew God they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, and their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
That goes to population. There weren't 20 million expendable people in one geographic location under anyone's control at that time. I doubt there were many more than 20 million people in all of Europe at the time of Charlemagne.
The only animal that can have faith or needs faith is one primate..
I remember when I used to be a primate back before I was born again..
Even then God was a question I accepted or rejected by faith..
Faith is an expressly human trait.. and its true those that have faith in nothing will/can beleive anything.. Consider Tom Cruise..
Have you read any of Gerald Schroeder's stuff, or Francis Collins'?
Schroeder is a nuclear physician; lives in Israel. Came to believe in God after years of scientific atheism. Collins is interesting. He headed Int'l Human Genome project and after working on that came to believe in God also (the 3.1 billion did it for him).
Just an FYI. I think I recall that you are an atheist or agnostic. I think what you said is interesting; that apologetics don't constitute evidence, but if you think logically about what comprises evidence, most of what is used as evidence in apologetics, indeed, is legitimate evidence. Just like in a court of law, not all evidence is forensic.
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