Grace Blogs

C.A. sent me a link to a story about the American Humanist Association spending $40,000 on an ad campaign asking: “Why believe in a god?” I was especially intrigued by this because our Gospel Conversations class is paying a lot of attention to the sort of questions people ask, and here’s a big one gift-wrapped and served up on a plate.

Rather than serve up some pat answers here, I’d rather hear from you, Grace Fellowship (especially you Gospel Conversationalists out there)… Why believe in a god?

(P.S. Please do a better job than the American Family Association’s representative, who said, “It’s a stupid ad.” He said some other things after that, but by then I wasn’t

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Friday night, Taylor and I went to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the new film by actor Ben Stein (you might remember him as the devastatingly boring teacher in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off). Here’s a synopsis from CNS News:

“Expelled” calls attention to the plight of highly credentialed scholars who have been forced out of prestigious academic positions because they proposed Intelligent Design as a possible alternative to Charles Darwin’s 150-year-old theories about the origins of life. Instead of entertaining a debate on the merits of competing theories, the scientific establishment has moved to suppress the ID movement in a “systematic and ruthless” way at odds with America’s founding principles, the film asserts.

This film employs humor and artistic filmmaking techniques …

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The blogs are abuzz with perspectives on The Golden Compass. Some of these were referenced in Dan’s earlier post about The Golden Compass, but I thought I’d compile a bunch of them here in one place.

Amy Hall of Stand to Reason writes:

And so we come to the one, core argument about the real world made by Pullman through these novels: the God of the Bible is not good. …In the midst of all the sensational plot details that could easily sidetrack our objections, this is the point we need to respond to as Christians. And this won’t be accomplished by picketing

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If you have read my previous blog entry regarding the upcoming release of The Golden Compass, that is based on the award-winning writer Philip Pullman, you may wonder what you might say to combat the ideology of Pullman when he asserts: “When you look at organized religion of whatever sort - whether it’s Christianity in all its variants, or whether it’s Islam or some forms of extreme Hinduism - wherever you see organized religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and tyranny and repression…” “It’s almost a universal law.”

Is that true? Is Christianity to be accurately viewed as a wrecking ball on humanity? Is that then why Pullman views religion and a belief in …

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Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion (currently on the best sellers list), has been added to the long list of books that tout atheism as the only “smart” choice. However, Dawkins has moved from a mere voice in the choir of atheism to a lead singer with a particular song. As of late, Dawkins has made media appearances on everything from the mainstream media to Comedy Central. Although it is unusual for an atheist to get such broad attention, it is Dawkins strategy that is creating ripples in the media markets. Dawkins is not so much attempting to convince God-believers that they should no longer believe in God. To the contrary, Dawkins is attempting a very …

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