Grace Blogs

Here is another example of how the modern definition of science has rigged the game. This article touts in it’s headline that “Human Ears Evolved from Ancient Fish Gills.” This is based on the discovery of similarities of structures in fish fossils as well as the human ear. It is considered science to make the leap and postulate (or even outright claim) that they have found a transitional form. On the other hand it would not be considered science to postulate that these similarities are evidence of a common designer, which seems at least as reasonable of an explanation.

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On Sunday, Kevin taught from Ephesians that God is absolutely holy and all
that He does is good. There is an interesting problem that comes up when you
say, “God is good,” though. There are those who deny Christ who use this
argument to attempt to make Christianity seem illogical.

They say that if we mean that whatever God does is good simply because God
does it, then good loses it’s meaning as it relates to God. Put another way,
if good just means what God does, then “God is good” simply means “God does
what God does.” This drains one of God’s key attributes of any meaning.

If instead, we say that goodness (or holiness) is a standard that is defined outside of God that God is …

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One of the calls of the Emergent Church these days is that the Church needs be not so focused on truth (what id right what is wrong, etc.) and more focused on authenticity.

This part of the strange irony coming out of that movement.

If you had to pick one word to best capture the meaning of the word authentic, what would it be? How about true?

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Feeding your mind while driving that is.

Pensees features interviews with Christian thinkers. Most of the interviews are downloadable as mp3, but some can only be heard on-line.

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Phillip Johnson, the father of the modern Intelligent Design movement, has an outstanding three-part lecture on-line here. In the first lecture, Johnson gives an overview of the history of evolutionary theory and philosophy from the ancient Greeks to today.

In the second lecture, Johnson addresses the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory.

The third lecture, he gives an insightful analysis of where the state of the fight against Darwinism stands today.

The Q&A sessions are outstanding, maybe even better than the lectures.

Also, it’s great to hear how far Johnson has come in the recovery from his stroke in 2001. He has probably done more than any other individual to undermine confidence in evolutionary theory in the past ten years. He’s done …

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Kevin sent me this article on the current debate over how science is taught in the state of Kansas. I hadn’t been paying much attention because these fights don’t usually interest me all that much. Darwinism vs. creationism, prayer in school, and similar battles are usually partisans on each side pushing their agenda.

The interesting thing here, though, is that the fight is not over the symptoms of the problem (e.g., evolution versus creationism), but goes to the heart of the problem itself. Here is a quote from the article…

The Kansas school board’s hearings on evolution weren’t limited to how the theory should be taught in public schools. The board is considering redefining science itself. Advocates of “intelligent design” are

…

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On to challenge number three. It sounds like it would be pretty hard to hard to deal with…

If man is not omniscient and God is omniscient, how can Jesus be fully God and fully man, since Jesus cannot be both omniscient and not omniscient at the same time? It seems to violate the law of non-contradiction.

The solution is actually simpler than you may imagine, and it comes from an unlikely source, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

This material comes from Ron Nash’s excellent Life’s Ultimate Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy.

Aristotle was the first to make the distinction between necessary and merely general (or common) attributes (or essential and nonessential properties).

An essential property is one in which its loss causes the …

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Much of the four previous posts on the problem of evil have been highly philosophical and a little inaccessible to some of us (and those we are trying to reach). Greg Koukl is a master of taking difficult topics and packaging them in ways that virtually any Christian can put into use. He’s done just that in his Sixty Second Theodicy article. I highly recommend you take a look at this brief article.

NB: Those of you who do not accept the classic defense (that God’s making man as free moral agents with the possibility of doing evil is a good that outweighs the good of making mankind with out that freedom) will probably not think much of this article …

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Evil as Proof of God’s Existence

We have spent three posts (and ensuing discussion) showing that the problem of evil does not render the Christian God illogical. This know to apologists and philosophers as the deductive problem of evil.

Now it is time to turn the tables on our challenger. In order to pose the problem, he posed two potential realities that he believes cannot both exist—evil and the Christian God. The argument goes that evil does exist; therefore, God does not.

The challenger does not have to convince us that evil exists because we have immediate access to it. All it takes is simple observation of the world and the most basic functioning moral intuition. No amount of philosophical pretzel-twisting can …

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The Persistence of Evil

So far, we have dealt with God’s responsibility for evil and the nature evil itself. This obviously a difficult topic and even believers with similar theological premises struggle to find the right way to deal with it. So, we may never be able to put the refutation to this challenge on a bumper sticker. In any case we will soldier on and turn to the question of regardless of how evil entered the world, why does God allow it to persist?

Given the situation we find ourselves in after the fall of mankind, this question is actually quite easy to deal with. The only way for God to eliminate evil from this world is to destroy those who …

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