This is an awesome example of GOOD Christian Apologetics being applied against an agnostic scholar (Bart Ehrman). The best part about it is the fact that it is Stephen Colbert telling Bart Ehrman that an agnostic is just an atheist without balls! 🙂
Here it is… Enjoy! Please comment and share your thoughts and reactions.
Notice the dichotomy that Miller brings to the forefront by claiming the Bible is a spiritual document and therefore cannot address scientific ideas. This may seem true at first glance, but it is only a bad ploy that many evolutionists use to snuff out the Bible’s claims about the creation account. It is true that the Bible is not a sciencetific document and that the Bible is not trying to give scientific details about the creation. BUT, please note the BUT…
The Bible is an historical document. This is very important for people to understand. If we do not ackowledge that the Bible records accurate historical material about the creation account, then where does that leave us with the rest of the 66 books of the Bible? You don’t have to be a scienctist to record the fact that God made the world in 6 days… I mean, come on people!
On the point of creation/evolution, the Bible has much to say about this in terms of the historical record. Both modern evolution and Biblical creationism are addressing the issue of history and where man came from. Therefore, on that point, the two must either agree or one of the two be proven wrong and thus a lie.
If evolution is true, then man is not made in God’s image. If evolution is true, then we humans are not special creatures made to rule the creation by reflecting God’s glory into it.
Here’s the video:
[HT: Christendom]
Genesis 19:23-29: “The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.
So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.”
Well, isn’t it amazing when we discover records from the past. Read the news article here. Below is an excerpt:
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700BC copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as “white stone bowl approaching†and recorded it as it “vigorously swept alongâ€.
Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC.
In honor of Holy Saturday, here is a good interview with N.T. Wright regarding the resurrection of Jesus.
Below is an excerpt…
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At the National Pastors Conference in San Diego, PreachingToday.com’s Brian Lowery got to interview N. T. Wright about his latest book—Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church—and how it relates to preaching. Since we are all in the midst of the Easter journey, his words are timely, challenging, and above all else, hopeful.
Preaching Today: In your book Surprised by Hope, you talk about a deeper understanding of hope “that provides a coherent and energizing basis for work in today’s world.” How has that deeper understanding influenced your preaching through the years?
Bishop N. T. Wright: [Studying] the Resurrection for an earlier book, Resurrection of the Son of God … ended up rubbing my nose in the New Testament theology of new creation, and the fact that the new creation has begun with Easter. I discovered that when we do new creation—when we encourage one another in the church to be active in projects of new creation, of healing, of hope for communities—we are standing on the ground that Jesus has won in his resurrection.
New creation is not just “whistling in the dark.” It’s not a kind of social Pelagianism, where we try to improve things by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. Because Jesus is raised from the dead, God’s new world has begun. We are not only the beneficiaries of new creation; we are the agents of it. I just can’t stop preaching about that, because that is where we’re going with Easter.
For me, therefore, there’s no disjunction between preaching about the salvation which is ours in God’s new age—the new heavens and new earth—and preaching about what that means for the present. The two go very closely together. If you have an eschatology that is nonmaterial, why bother with this present world? But if God intends to renew the world, then what we do in the present matters. That’s 1 Corinthians 15:58! This understanding has made my preaching more challenging to me, and hopefully to my hearers, to actually get off our backsides and do something in the local community—things that are signs of new creation. (more…)
Justin Taylor has pointed out an excellent series of articles addressing the very reasons why Europe is going in the direction it is going in, regarding the eventual overpopulation of Europe with Muslims. Here is an excerpt from those articles:
With just a single exception, the non-Muslim population of every country in Europe now has a birth rate at below replacement levels. (The exception is Malta, and God bless it.) Why, I ask Bruce Thornton today on Uncommon Knowledge, do Europeans so steadfastly refuse to reproduce?
Because, replies the author of Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow-Motion Suicide, “children are expensive. They require you to sacrifice your time and your interests and your own comfort. If your highest good is pleasure, if your highest good is a sophisticated life, then children get in the way. Why would you spend so much money and so much energy on children if your highest good is simply material well-being? That’s sort of the spiritual dimension of the problem.”
“The spiritual dimension of the problem.†There are so few children in Europe, in other words, because there are so few believers.
There’s more. (Look for Chapter 4 of 5).
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Here are the links to the videos:
Here is a very helpful article for those of you interested in the conservative and orthodox churches of the Global South that exist withing the World Wide Anglican Communion. Peter Toon has a good summary that is well worth your reading. Please pray for the Anglican denomination, as it is going through a crisis that seems to be leading towards its ultimate demise and death for those we desire to maintain the unity of the Church in the bond of sexual immorality and abominable practices.
Here is a portion from Toon’s blog entry:
Though the expression, “Global South,†has been in use for a decade or more in the spheres of international relations, global economics, third-world development, and the like, its use in Anglican ecclesiological discourse is very recent. To refer to “The Global South†as one of the various constituencies of the Global Anglican Communion of Churches is now common; but; it has only been so for four or five years. (see the essay by Dr Poon listed at end of this article.)
Further, the economic and political use of the expression refers solely to the poorer countries of the world, the so-called developing nations, situated south of Europe and the U.S.A. (see for details of all this the work of “The Center for Global South†at American University in Washington D.C. founded in 1992); but, the Anglican use strangely includes both the provinces that are in developing countries and one or two that are in developed countries (e.g., S E Asia).
Today, 2008, the constituency called the Anglican Global South is generally associated with both a conservative theology and also opposition to the liberal-progressive agenda in sexuality of provinces in the West, especially North America. This has not always been so, for the original stance of this grouping was a continuation of the former South-South Encounters of representatives of Anglican Provinces not in the West or the North. As such it had admirable aims and sought primarily to do justice to the vocation and experience of being Anglican outside of the West and North and after colonialism. This explains why the relatively affluent province of S E Asia is in The Global South.
Totally separate from the work at, and between, the South to South Encounters, and beginning before the Lambeth Conference of 1998, continuing during that Lambeth Conference, and then more intensely afterwards, has been the persistent work of various American “ambassadors.†They have both made visits to Africa and Asia, and also invited to the U.S.A. bishops from these continents. The aim was to enlist these overseas bishops as orthodox allies in the battle being fought in and around The Episcopal Church over the innovations in sexual practice and ethics.
Well, after several months of waiting, the new podcast is actually complete! 🙂
This third podcast is on the topic of What Saint Paul Really Said , a book by N.T. Wright. In the podcast we cover the first chapter of the book where Wright deals with the 5 most influential Pauline scholars of the 20th century. You will certainly learn something new in this podcast, so I encourage you to listen to all of it. Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions about the information I summarized. Next time I hope to push even further into Wright’s book.
What Saint Paul Really Said
Today is the day in the Western Church that we celebrate one of the most well known martyrdoms in all of early Christian history. Here is the reading from my Church Year calendar produced by the Fellowship of St. James:
March 7: The eyewitness accounts of the martyrdoms of Perpetua, Felicity, and Companions were so popular in North Africa that Augustine had to protest against their being read publicly along with Scripture in church. While certainly not Scripture, they serve a purpose stated in the opening apologia: “If ancient examples of faith kept, both testifying the grace of God and working the edification of man, have to this end been set in writing, that by their reading as though by the showing of the deeds again, God may be glorified and man strengthened; why should not new witnesses also be set forth which likewise serve either end?
In other words, let us always remember those well-known faithful who gave their lives in service of the truth, but let’s also make room for the new faithful who give themselves up for the Gospel, setting to paper their witness as well and remembering them in the congregation. For further reading on the topic I encourage everyone to visit this site, which gives much more information about their lives and martyrdom.
In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,
From the Times Online:
Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.Pope Benedict will issue his findings on Luther (1483-1546) in September after discussing him at his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians — known as the Ratzinger Schülerkreis — at Castelgandolfo, the papal summer residence. According to Vatican insiders the Pope will argue that Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy, was not a heretic.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the head of the pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said the move would help to promote ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Protestants. It is also designed to counteract the impact of July’s papal statement describing the Protestant and Orthodox faiths as defective and “not proper Churchesâ€.
The move to re-evaluate Luther is part of a drive to soften Pope Benedict’s image as an arch conservative hardliner as he approaches the third anniversary of his election next month. This week it emerged that the Vatican is planning to erect a statue of Galileo, who also faced a heresy trial, to mark the 400th anniversary next year of his discovery of the telescope. (more…)
