Apologetics and Evidence

Travis Dickinson, Ph. D., is a professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University, and recently put a YouTube video out titled, “ Why the Christian/Muslim/same God question is a BAD Question .” In one theological sense, we Christians do not worship the same God, because of the difference between a unitarian view (Muslim) and a Trinitarian view (Christian). But in another sense, as far as philosophical reference is concerned, we are discussing the same necessary being to some degree. The idea is that the being we call “God” can be described in several different ways, and though some of those ways can be false, we are still philosophically pointing to the same “thing.”   Dickinson briefly mentions that sometimes Jews are included in the first part of his discussion, and I think this is actually a steelman argument for this first part, simply based on the fact that it is likely that more people will say that Jews and Christians worship the same God (see below for more), as opposed t...

A couple years ago I wrote an article called  the Jehovah’s Witness training videos . The article was meant to be humorous in a sense, because there are likely not any actual training videos, but it seems that they have all watched them. We can suspect this because they all often have the same points of conversation. When you talk about the Trinity, they will use the Bible like a machine gun and shoot you with verses. The verses are always the same: Colossians 1:15, Mark 10:18… So, there is an implication that they all have the same information. There is one source from where they gather their patterns and behaviors. Similarly, I think we can see the power behind the system of the world as well. We can see what this power is like by the tracks he leaves behind. The contrast of the two systems is really seen in Revelation 14:8. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.” John is using the word  Bab...

It seems to me that some Evangelical Christians have taken a certain biblical passage in the wrong direction. Perhaps I, considering myself to be an Evangelical Christian, am guilty of such as well. Romans 12:1-2 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Verse 2 is where we get the phrase,  be in the world, but don’t be of the world . What this means is that we should know our place. Our place is in heaven. The Bible says that we are citizens of heaven, and that we should think and act as if we are. Philippians 3:20-21 says, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his gloriou...

You may have heard of the phrase,   Classical Apologetics , from studying under people such as, William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, Norman Geisler, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, B.B. Warfield, R. C. Sproul, and others, and perhaps you wondered what it means.   Classical Apologetics is one method of doing apologetics… I personally like to think that it is classical for a reason. Some other methods of doing apologetics are first,  Presuppositionalism , which is that a person presupposes that God exists, and that the reason that a person does not believe in God is because he does not believe the Bible is the word of God. The issue is that from an unbeliever’s perspective, this is circular reasoning. It emphasizes revelation as opposed to reason.  Another method of apologetics is  Evidentialism , which is essentially to follow the evidence where it leads and using this evidence to support Christian claims. Sometimes people refer to it as being a subtype as Classical Apolo...