Category: Christianity Page 4 of 7

Os Guinness wrote a book titled Impossible People: Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization about what Christians should do in a world that has changed dramatically and mostly for the worse. Eric Metaxas lays it all out in an article to describe the change and why Guinness used the term Impossible People. He starts out by saying this:

In the opening scene of the 2001 film adaptation of “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel whispers hauntingly, “The world has changed. I can feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.”

Western Christians in 2016 can relate. Something has shifted. The world we inhabit seems to have become disenchanted, and so many of those around us have entered a state in some ways worse than atheism—a state of indifference toward God and the supernatural.

Then he goes on to explain in brief what Christians can, and I would say must, do. The answer is a refusal to conform and I think that is exactly right. The eleventh century stand taken by a fellow named Peter Damian is worthy of emulation and a very interesting read. What is required is not comfortable, but it is required if we want to both be right and have any hope for cultural redemption.

Update: I guess I should not be amazed that Marvin Olasky wrote an article a week back that could be a companion to the one written by Metaxas. It gives another example of what to do when caught in a culture that is diametrically opposed to your world view in very bad ways. You can read it here.

I wrote a post yesterday about the very bad direction the world is headed and a post showed up on a similar theme titled Muslim Scholars Declare Post-Coup Erdogan Supreme Leader for the Entire Muslim World. The Right Scoop has written about what is happening in Turkey for awhile now and it just seems to continue to percolate. The above linked article is written by an Arab man who has watched all of this for quite some time. The idea that what is happening in Turkey might have global, Biblical implications is pooh-poohed by many, but that it is something to be pooh-poohed is, in and of itself, something that makes all these goings on at this time and in that place very interesting. Even if you are not a little bit of a conspiracy theorist like myself (Why would you not be? How boring is that?), this is a very interesting article. It is worthwhile to read the other stuff written about Turkey at The Right Scoop, too.

Demon possession is a real thing ( e.g. Mark 5:1-20). Recently, a board certified psychiatrist  named RIchard Gallagher from New York wrote an article on current manifestations of this evil. The article is titled As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession. It describes how he differentiates between demonic possession and mental illness. It also talks a little bit about the different factions within the medical community, some who are sympathetic toward his thinking and some who are skeptical and even openly derisive . I found another article that describes the case of a woman he called “Julia” to hide her identity. I do not know what else to say about these articles other than that they were a very interesting read. I have never seen anything like this up close, but have heard first person accounts of such things in Mexico from people I trust, take these topics seriously and are not given to exaggeration.

I have written about and pointed to various things Michael Egnor has written on this blog over the past several years. I love his writing for its content, but it appeals to me even more because he seems to capture my sentiments about the topics on which he writes better than I could myself. His latest article at Evolution News and Views is titled The Rowe-Grayling Debate. It is about a debate, “The God Debate,” between a brilliant Jewish Rabbi named Daniel Rowe who did a stint in the IDF and a very much less brilliant (at least with respect to the topic of the debate), Oxford educated Philosophy professor named A. C. Grayling. You can see a video of the debate here. It was an interesting debate and well worth the watch.

The reason I write this post about Egnor’s article rather than the debate itself is because debates that feature a competent debater on the God side of this issue follow a common trajectory no matter how competent, qualified or learned the atheist or non-theist debater. There might be some rational way to argue for agnosticism, but after watching a lot of these types of debates and studying this topic off and on for several decades, I have come to the conclusion there are really no rational arguments for atheism. Equivocation is a de rigueur feature of the atheist arsenal in these debates, but that is just the tip of the incompetence/disingenuousness iceberg.

A.C. Grayling has been described as the “Fifth Horseman” of New Atheism Apocalypse. The other four horsemen are not much better–some are worse. Here is a video of a debate where William Lane Craig does the same thing to Sam Harris, one of the original four horsemen, that Rowe does to Grayling. I really appreciate Egnor’s “enough already” analysis of these kinds of debates. I am glad the debates happen because that is what got me interested enough in the topic to take a deeper dive into it, but it is very tiring to listen to the same tired atheist arguments time after time after time. It would not be so bad if the arguments were delivered with humility and good will, but they almost never are. Read Egnor’s article. It is cathartic.

Update:  Another post about the debate just appeared on Evolution News and Views that discusses a fellow radical atheist’s disappoint with Grayling’s performance. If you know anything about the particular atheist making the complaint and his utter incompetence at arguing these topics, you will marvel at the advice he gives about how to argue about the Physics (not his background) discussed by Rabbi Rowe.

…because we do not want to be associated with some others who are tacky, but believe that same right thing? The following quote from a talk by a conservative given at a left-wing Christian conference on social justice comes from this article. First he acknowledged that there are Christians who do not consider the needs of those in prison, refugees and the other “least of these.”  He noted some [Christians] are…

…afraid to speak up on a biblical view of issues of human sexuality because they’re afraid that somehow that means they will be associated with people in polyester somewhere that they don’t want to be like. How cowardly.

I think the sentiment is spot on and does not only apply to human sexuality, but to many of other issues. It cuts both ways, too. Is it hard for us to stand up for something that is right when a social justice warrior advocates who is hateful in so many other aspects of their activism advocates for that same right thing?

I was a minor participant in a discussion where Ted Bundy the notorious serial killer was brought up as an example of someone who subscribed to the view that morality is subjective. The conversation itself was very interesting and a great illustration of the evil and ignorance of that sort of world view. Particularly interesting was the link one of the commenters made to something Ted Bundy said in a discussion with one of his victims about that very subject. You can find that here. It was his premise, and a true one I think, that if moral subjectivism is true, then no values are right or wrong. In what is characterized a paraphrase, he captures the true nature of moral subjectivism when he says:

…Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong.”

That “learning” was the seminal event that allowed him to throw off the shackles of morality and pursue his own personal pleasure without having to worry about whether he was encroaching on “the rights of others.” I had forgotten about my own personal physical and temporal proximity to one of Bundy’s horrific crimes. In May of 1974, it was the end of my freshman year in college and I lived across the street from Sacket Hall on the campus of Oregon State University. My mother had lived in Sackett Hall when she was a freshman in Pharmacy back in 1948. That was the last location Roberta Kathleen Parks was seen before Ted Bundy kidnapped and murdered her. It is believed he picked her up on the street between where she lived and where I lived at the time. They found some of her remains on Taylor Mountain in Washington State in 1975.