Christian Apologetics

What is Christian apologetics?  Christian apologetics is the defense of the Christian faith.  It has been my hobby to study the logic and facts that show the Christian faith to be not just blind faith, but a reasonable faith and based on the evidence.

In my research I've come across several good websites.

Christian Research Institute - The Christian Research Institute exists to provide Christians worldwide with carefully researched information and well-reasoned answers that encourage them in their faith and equip them to intelligently represent it to people influenced by ideas and teachings that assault or undermine orthodox, biblical Christianity.

Reasons to Believe - Whether you are looking for scientific support for your faith or answers to questions about God and science, and Reasons To Believe exists for you.

Renewing Your Mind - Ligonier Ministries is run by R. C. Sproul.  Their purpose is to awaken as many people as possible to the holiness of God by proclaiming, teaching, and defending God's holiness in all its fullness. R C makes logical sense of many aspects of the Christian faith.

Stand to Reason - Stand to Reason, run by Greg Koukl, trains Christians to think more clearly about their faith and to make an even-handed, incisive, yet gracious defense for classical Christianity and classical Christian values in the public square. Greg is an excellent source for tactics in arguing for the Christian faith.

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries - Ravi Zacharias International Ministries seeks to reach and challenge those who shape the ideas of a culture with the credibility and the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To the questions of the skeptic and the believer they offer an apologetic – give an answer – to the counterclaims of secularism and other worldviews. They address the intellectual and essential assumptions of our culture, realizing that for some, the door to the heart is through the mind, and for others through the imagination.

Ken Collins - Ken Collins is a pastor of the Garfield Memorial Christian Church in McLean Virginia. His website has over 760 articles about various aspects of the Christian faith as well as liturgy. It is an excellent resource for information about the Christian faith.

 

Four Arguments that Support the Resurrection of Christ

1) There is no credible historian today, Christian or skeptic, who denies the fact that Christ was tortured by flogging and crucifixion, and died from that infliction of punishment.  The Scriptures are reliable history, but they are also supported by non-Christian historians on this and other points.

2) There is also wide agreement, even by non-Christian scholars, that Christ's tomb was found empty on the third day.  That's what helped ignite Christianity.  The Jews had no body to drag through the streets of Jerusalem to refute the resurrection.

3) There is almost universal agreement among New Testament scholars that many people experienced appearances of Jesus days after His crucifixion.  He appeared to them in Jerusalem several times, in Galilee, and back in Jerusalem, over the course of several weeks.

4) The ringing testimony of history is that people were transformed radically by their belief in the resurrection.  Not only were the ragtag band of disciples utterly transformed into world-changers willing to die for their belief in the resurrection, but tens of thousands of Jews were rapidly transformed - they confessed Christ, stopped worshipping on the Sabbath, stopped sacrificing - in the very location of these event.

 

Thoughts on Atheism versus Christianity

Posted July 24,2002

People purporting to be atheists are cheering the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance.  This has generated quite a bit of editorial comment in the Press.

 

I’m here to make the case that Atheism, rather than a benign philosophy, has the potential to wreak great suffering on the human species.  I further contend that Christianity is not, as many contend, a blind faith, but a reasonable one borne out by the facts.

 

Atheism claims there is no God.  It concludes that this whole world and all the creatures in it, including man, are simply a result of natural causes.  From an atheistic point of view the only difference between man and a roach is our greater number of genes.

 

Atheism has no basis on which to make a moral law.  It stops at its assertion of God's nonexistence.  Since there is no God to deliver a moral law, then moral law is whatever we decide it is.

 

If we make up our moral law as we go along, then we cannot criticize anyone for anything they do.  We can never claim that anyone ever did anything immoral because their moral code would be no more arbitrary than our own.

 

The students who murdered at Columbine High School, from an atheistic viewpoint, would not be judged to have committed an immoral act, only an illegal one.

 

Any moral code developed by atheists; when you follow it back to its source, starts as an arbitrary personal presumption.

 

Religions in general, and Christianity in particular, have been roundly criticized for some of their actions.  While I make no defense of some of the atrocities committed in the name of God, I would suggest the atheism has an even bloodier history.

 

Look in the Guinness Book of World Records under world’s greatest murders.  The unholy Trinity of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung make the top of the list.  All three were committed atheists.  Together, they are responsible for the death of more than 100 million people – and that’s a conservative estimate.  That’s the equivalent of the east coast population of this country from Maine to Florida.

 

This is not to say the atheism causes atrocities.  This is to conclude that atheism, as a philosophy, allows these kinds of atrocities.

 

I'm sure there are many atheists that are nice upstanding individuals.  But they are not that way because of their atheism, but rather in spite of it.

 

For those who would denigrate Christianity as blind faith, consider the evidence.  Our smartest cosmologists tell us that in the beginning there was nothing.  Then suddenly, the universe sprang into existence.  A whole lot of something came from absolutely nothing.  Scientists have never had something come from nothing.  When a Christian claims that God created the universe, at least it’s an explanation that fits the Big Bang theory.

 

The fossil record shows that something called the Cambrian Explosion occurred over 500 million years ago.  New species appeared at an average rate of one new species every year.  A new species every year from a random mechanism like mutation that is 10,000 to one against an improvement?  At least a model of God creating new species fits the fossil record.  For overwhelming scientific evidence that supports the creation model, visit www.reasons.org.

 

The Bible is frequently criticized as not accurately transcribed over the centuries.  Although the Bible has indeed been copied many many times by many many people, it has been copied very accurately.  We have over 24,000 pieces of the Bible, sometimes whole chapters to compare with each other.  Through a process called textural criticism, the Bible has been reassembled.  Modern Bible translations, like the New International Version, are accurate to within 99% of the original text.  The Bible is known with greater accuracy and precision than the Iliad, the Odyssey or even Shakespeare's plays.

 

Atheism has it feet firmly planted in midair.  It has no solid bases from which to construct a moral code.

 

Based on the scientific evidence, a conclusion that God created the universe, this planet and all life on it, fits the facts.  The modern Bible is a 99% exact reproduction of the original text.  Christianity is a reasonable belief, when the facts are fairly examined.

 

Then, if Christianity is so reasonable, why don’t more people believe it?  The answer is simple.  It’s not the facts or lack of them, that gets in the way.  It’s the desire.

 

The reasons people give against Christianity are only smoke.  The true reason is, they don’t want Christianity to be true.  Christianity does not promise to make you rich, improve your sex life, or even give you a clearer complexion.  It asks its followers to sacrifice in this life for the next one.  As Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  That’s not a very popular message in 21st century America.  I should know, I struggle with it daily.

 

Ted Armstrong