Apologetics – HillFaith

DID YOU KNOW? Here’s Why Jesus Is Nothing Like The Pagan Deities

Oxford Professor Emeritus John Lennox addresses a fascinating question: How are the countless pagan gods of the ancient world different from the God of the Bible who came among us as Jesus Christ?

For one thing, Lennox points out, all of the pagan gods came from creation in some manner, out of the primordial soup or thrown down from Mt. Olympus, and so forth. Jesus, the Bible tells us, didn’t come from creation, He created it! See Colossians 1:16.

That’s pretty profound when you think about it, but it’s just one of many ways in which Jesus is absolutely and unqualifiedly unique. And Lennox, mathematician and philosopher that he is, has much more to share with us in this delightful video:

THINK ABOUT THIS: Friday’s Poached Egg

Then Jesus said:

“I tell you that on the day of judgement people will have to account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned.“ — Matthew 12:36-37

And C.S. Lewis said:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

“You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

No, The Multiverse Theory Does NOT Explain Intelligent Design

To counter the otherwise overwhelmingly convincing evidence for Intelligent Design (ID) of our universe, critics often claim that there are actually millions of universes and it just happens that one of them has all of those characteristics cited by ID advocates as evidence for the guiding hand of a designer.

J. Warner Wallace (Screenshot from Youtube).

Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace tackles the multiverse theory in the following video produced as part of his lecture series based on his book, God’s Crime Scene.

The crime scene refers to Wallace’s prior career as a cold-case detective who was so good at unwinding decades old homicides that he made multiple appearances on NBC’s “Dateline” show.

Are Moral Truths More Reliable Than The Claims Of Science?

The headline above no doubt strikes more than a few of its readers as impossible to prove or, worse, just plain non-sensical and therefore not worthy of serious consideration.

But, as Erik Manning asks in a recent post, which of the following two statements put forth by Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland would you say is more certain to be the Truth?

Electrons exist.
Torturing babies is always and everywhere wrong.

Before you answer, did you know that there was a time not that long ago when the way electrons were described by reputable scientists would make no sense to today? Now ask yourself how that compares to the certainty that it is always and everywhere evil to torture babies?

Why should somebody working on Capitol Hill for a senator or representative ponder this stuff? Because you are part of the law-making process in this country and it is crucially important that those who make the law understand the nature of reality as fully and logically as possible.

So take a few minutes to read and ponder Manning’s analysis. It may even help you resolve the issue the next time your boss asks you “how should I vote when this issue comes to the floor?”

Go here for the full Manning.

No, God And The Flying Spaghetti Monster Are Not The Same

Among the most powerful ways of demoralizing or belittling an opponent is to mock their position. It’s not one I recommend, but it is the source of a particular kind of argument one hears from time to time from atheists in discussion with Christians.

“Believing in God makes about as much logical sense as believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster,” is one form of mockery that, as cold-casechristianity.com’s J. Warner Wallace points out, was first heard in 2005 during debates in Kansas over whether to include Intelligent Design evidence as an alternative to evolutionary theory in public schools.

The most unfortunate aspect of this retort is the fact that Christianity, unlike any other world religion, is based on a fact in history for which there is significant evidence that can be assessed, verified and then accepted or rejected. And that makes all the difference:

THINK ABOUT THIS: Friday’s Poached Egg

Then Jesus said:

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die — ever.” John 11:25.

And C.S. Lewis said:

“You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

Former Agnostic Andrew Klavan On How He Met The Messiah

Andrew Klavan is known to millions of Americans as a best-selling author (“Empire of Lies” and much, much more), as well as host of a superb series of video commentaries for PJ Media, “Klavan on the Culture.”

I’ve long been a Klavan fan because he invariably makes me think in unexpected ways, he breaks me up with his wonderfully peculiar humor, and he’s just such an irresistibly articulate, thoughtful guy.

In the following video, Klavan reveals a side of himself that may come as a complete surprise to many, and perhaps a shock to quite a few as well. And in the process of doing so, Klavan shares the deepest, most important thing he ever could:

THINK ABOUT THIS: All Religions Can Be False But They Can’t All Be True

How often have you heard or thought “all religions are essentially true, they all say the same basic stuff, and in the end, when all is said and done, they all lead to God?

In fact, if you know the core beliefs of the world’s five most popular religions, you know there are a bunch of claims that just plain flat out contradict each other. Buddhism, for example, teaches there is no personal God, while Christianity insists there is and His name is Jesus.

Biola University Professor Sean McDowell takes up the claim that all religions are true, shows a bunch of the contradictions among them, then provides the solution to knowing which one is the only one that can be true for all eternity:

Is God Hidden Or Are You Just Not Seeing What’s Right In Front Of You?

We get up everyday and all things seem to be just as they have always been, so where’s the evidence for God, some ask. If this god you keep talking about is so wonderful and all-powerful, why can’t we see Him?

Good question but, as Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace explains in the following video, the answer may well have more to do with you than with God:

Fermi’s Paradox And Why Can’t The ‘Fine-Tuning’ Of The Universe Have Some Slack Here And There?

You may have heard of Enrico Fermi. He’s the Italian physicist who invented the first nuclear reactor. He also asked a rather pointed question that ought to challenge the best thinkers among advocates and critics of intelligent design.

That question — AKA “Fermi’s Paradox” — is simply this: If the universe is infinitely old, or billions and billions of years old, and there are multiple life forms out there, why haven’t they found us yet? Why haven’t we turned up at least a little evidence of their existence? (Yes, I know, maybe they/we have and we just don’t know it).

Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace explains the significance of Fermi’s Paradox in the great debate between those who claim the universe’s marvelous perfection is accidental and those who argue that it’s that way because its Creator designed it like that:

God And Mathematics Are Why The Universe Adds Up

Being a journalist by trade, I am a right-brained person. That’s why I never did well in mathematics in school, except for Geometry where the spatial relationships seemed to make intuitive sense to me. Maybe if I had studied more …

Anyway, you may not know this but mathematics is the foundational blueprint for reality. This is no recently discovered fact. As Galileo put it, “the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.” Remember that the next time you bite into a delicious ear of Silver Queen corn on the cob and wonder what the formula is for such deliciousness.

In the following video from Philosopher William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith outfit, a succinct case is made for the proposition that the direct relationship between mathematics and the universe is powerful evidence that the blueprint didn’t just happen:

Is Earth Just A Pale Blue Dot In A Hostile Universe?

Look back at Earth from the furthest distance you can imagine in our solar system and it does indeed look like a pale blue dot in the vast blackness of the universe.

So why on this one pale blue dot among the billions and billions of galaxies and stars and planets is there human life? Former Los Angeles Police cold-case expert J. Warner Wallace explains:

THINK ABOUT THIS: Do You Think ‘Nothing’ Caused Our Universe To Exist?

It’s among the most basic questions of all and how we each answer it shapes our thinking on everything else, often in ways we don’t realize. And it involves the most basic law of logic, non-contradiction, as well as the law of cause and effect.

In the following video, Kyle Butt of the Apologetics Press analyzes the claim of materialists that the universe (the effect) had no non-material cause. Pay close attention to the explanation offered by Stephen Hawking, who surely was one of the smartest men who ever lived:

Here’s The Dilemma Humanism Can’t Solve But Christianity Can

Had a birthday a few days ago. How old am I now? Let’s just say, as President Reagan often did, that it was the 41st anniversary of my … okay, moving right along. It doesn’t really matter how old I became, what is really important here is that the occasion means I completed another of my allotted years, however many that may ultimately be.

But we all know what happens when we reach that final day and breath our last. We die. What then? Is that all there is to it? What happens after we die? If you are a secularist/humanist, there are, in the final analysis, what appear to be two possible answers but which are actually variations on a *theme:

Here’s one of them, according to author David Levithan: “Ultimately, the universe doesn’t care about us. Time doesn’t care about us. That’s why we have to care about each other.” Continue reading “Here’s The Dilemma Humanism Can’t Solve But Christianity Can”

Why The Truth Matters Even More Today Than Ever Before

There is no such thing as absolute truth. What’s true for you may not be true for me. It’s all relative. It’s impossible to know what is truth because there are so many different opinions, so why bother?

You’ve heard all of those claims, or variations thereof, especially if you pay attention to the news, politics, cultural trends, advances in science and/or debates among philosophers about weighty questions such as “what is truth and how do we know it?”

Biola University Professor Sean McDowell takes up that question in the following video and in the course of analyzing it explains why truth exists and it’s never been more important: