Myths & Mischief – HillFaith

MYTH-BUSTERS: No, The God Of The Old Testament Is Not A Moral Monster

A common objection heard from atheists, agnostics and other skeptics these days is that the God of the Old Testament was immoral because He allegedly endorsed such horrors as forced servitude, genocide and rape.

As RZIM’s Brandon Cleaver explained recently in a lengthy analysis of the issue, “slavery in the Bible was vastly different. First, according to many scholars, the Hebrew word (ebed or eved) that is often translated as slave in the Old Testament is more reasonably rendered as servant.

“Furthermore, slavery among the Hebrews in the Old Testament often occurred when individuals sold themselves into servanthood to pay off debt. Therefore, it was voluntary.”

In the following video, crossexamined.org’s Dr. Frank Turek makes that point and more in responding to a series of questions that taken together frame the argument that the God of the Bible is a moral monster:

MYTHS & MISCHIEF: You’ve Heard About ‘Pay-To-Play;’ Now What About ‘Pay-To-Pray?’

“Pay-to-play” is a phrase one hears from time to time around Capitol Hill and it’s usually not as a preface to good news or a compliment. Now comes a study of whether and how much are people willing to pay for prayers.

This is no joke. The study was conducted following Hurricane Florence in September 2018, according to Reasons to Believe, which reported that “Linda Thunström, an economist at the University of Wyoming, [who] teamed up with Shiri Noy, an anthropologist-sociologist at Denison University in Ohio.”

The study was designed as “an incentivized experiment on 482 North Carolinians who suffered some kind of hardship as a result of the hurricane. Thunström and Noy preselected the 482 North Carolinians so that they would fall into one of these two groups: Continue reading “MYTHS & MISCHIEF: You’ve Heard About ‘Pay-To-Play;’ Now What About ‘Pay-To-Pray?’”

MYTHS & MISCHIEF: Can You Trust The New Testament?

Even Bible critic Bart Ehrman doesn’t agree with himself

One of the most frequently heard objections to Christianity is the claim that the Bible is full of errors and contradictions because it was copied and re-copied countless times, making it inevitable that variations in text and meaning would creep into it.

The critics are both right and, profoundly more importantly, wrong, as Dr. Frank Turek — co-author with Dr. Norman Geisler of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist” — explains in his answers to questions put to him by a student during a 2016 presentation at Southern Methodist University (SMU).

This video is especially important because Turek also provides “the rest of the story” about famous biblical critic Bart Ehrman, author of the best-seller, “Misquoting Jesus.” Turns out that Ehrman, brilliant though he is, doesn’t agree with himself!