Randal Rauser's Blog, page 47

Responding to an unfair review of my new book

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A Statement From Rick Manafo, former Programming Director for RZIM in Canada

After posting a statement from a Christian leader about the allegations against Ravi Zacharias, I was inundated with critical comments from Ravi supporters both on my blog and on YouTube. One person, in particular, even claimed without evidence that I fabricated the entire statement. This sad state of affairs prompted Rick Manafo, former Programming Director for RZIM in Canada, to send me a statement by way of the Christian leader whose statement I posted on Sunday. I have reproduced that statement in its entirety below.

This is a reply to some concerns from Rebecca and others relating to The Ravi Zacharias Sex Scandal: A New Personal Statement.

My name is Rick Manafo, former Programming Director for RZIM in Canada.  Please allow me a few observations as it pertains to Randal Rauser and the source in question.

Randal is a respected academic who treats any issue he faces fairly. I am not making any statements on Ravi Zacharias per se, but I can assure you Randal did not make up this “imaginary witness”. I know the witness. He is a very credible Christian leader and pastor.

Randal is not so immoral or unscrupulous as to make up the 1500 word posting. However, if you believe this to be the case, I urge you to inform his university that he willingly manufactured such lies.

As well, I know the sensitive and “personal” reason why the unnamed writer did not go public. It is an absolutely convincing reason and it has nothing to do with him being afraid.

A careful read of his post would glean that he did not get help from a friend who is a private investigator in order to attack or stalk RZ. Rather, he asked the friend to help figure out the truth on controversies about Ravi.

This person you suggest might not exist is known by and is being taken seriously by RZIM leaders. Various Christian leaders around the world rely on his in-depth research on other matters and take this person very seriously on his investigation into the Thompson case, the spa issue, and the abortion incident.  They know his main concerns were to find out what is true on these matters and help those who continue to be harmed by false allegations, cover-ups, etc.

I know this person well enough and am positive that he would come to the defense of Ravi and RZIM on any matter where deserved.  In fact, he has convinced Steve Baughman that he was wrong on several matters against RZ.

This Christian leader understands the weaknesses in remaining anonymous. That is why he wrote such a long post to give some indication that he exists, that he had done major work and that allegations against Ravi should be taken seriously, as should counter-evidence in Ravi’s favour. He also wrote at length because he thought that something should be said to defend Randal and Steve Baughman against nasty and false things said against them.

Last and not least, Ravi knew the person who wrote the post and respected him greatly.

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The Ways of the Progressive Philosopher: A Conversation with J.L. Schellenberg

[image error]Canadian philosopher John L. Schellenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University. He is widely lauded as one of the leading atheist philosophers working in the philosophy of religion. In the early 1990s, Schellenberg developed the widely discussed problem of hiddenness which has elicited extensive discussion among philosophers. He is the author of several books including Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason and Progressive Atheism: How moral evolution changes the God debate. You can visit him online at jlschellenberg.com.

RR: John, thanks for agreeing to have this conversation. Over the years, I have really appreciated your philosophical thinking so I’m very much looking forward to our discussion. But before we dive into your arguments, I was wondering if we could begin with some autobiography. In particular, I was wondering if you could share a bit as to how you got into philosophy and how you became an atheist. Were you always an atheist or did you argue your way into the position?

JS: I was not always an atheist. Indeed, I was a committed evangelical Christian until the age of 22. However university courses in philosophy and religious studies changed my mind. I started university somewhat late, having spent three years at a Bible institute in Alberta (Peace River Bible Institute) and then a year as associate pastor at Foothills Mennonite Church in Calgary. Music was a big part of my life back then, too, and I expected to be involved in Christian ministry, in a variety of different ways. What I was exposed to at university – for the first time – came as a shock, and though I resisted strongly for a year or so, doubts and then later disbelief replaced my Christian belief.

RR: Would you say that you reasoned your way out of Christianity? And if so, could you detail that process a bit?

JS: It wasn’t a careful methodical process at all, if that’s what you mean, though of course reasoning will have been involved. And at first my reasoning was, if anything, directed to the goal of staying in Christianity. There was a lot of reading and thinking and questioning of professors, among other things. I remember arguing about the authorship of the gospels with the professor who taught us the beginnings of Christianity. I seemed to know a lot more of what was actually in the gospels than he did. But he knew a lot more about their formation and the debates that had gone on about that (and about all the other topics of the course). About then I also started my study of philosophy, which opened up so many new vistas. I was meanwhile learning to think in a more disciplined way, which allowed me to take in and integrate all the new information. I didn’t like the religious doubts that came, but above all I wanted to believe what was true, and at a certain point this didn’t any longer seem to me to include traditional Christian claims. They didn’t ‘fit’ very well within the enlarging body of my other beliefs (including beliefs about possibility — about what might be true for all I knew). Or at least that’s how it seems now, in retrospect. I remember looking toward the rising sun one morning and saying to myself “Well, at least I still believe in God!” But that belief too was gone before long.

RR: You are probably best known in the philosophy world for the argument from hiddenness. Could you say a bit about what that argument is and what role it has played in the development of your own atheistic views?

JS: At the end of my last answer I referred to losing belief in God. But one can be in that condition without disbelieving that there is a God – without being an atheist. And indeed for a time I would have called myself an agnostic instead. Even when I had reached disbelief about traditional theism, I still went back and forth for a while between atheism and agnosticism. (Belief – and also nonbelief – is that sort of thing; it can fluctuate a good deal.) One of the things I was thinking about while this was going on was what my teacher and mentor at the University of Calgary, Terry Penelhum, and John Hick before him, had called the ‘religious ambiguity’ of the world. The world often seemed religiously ambiguous to me too: open both to theistic and nontheistic ‘interpretations,’ as they would put it. But then it occurred to me that religious ambiguity might itself be evidence, and evidence that tips the balance more decisively in the direction of atheism. That was the beginning of the hiddenness argument and all the associated discussion of my book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (1993), which evolved out of this thinking about religious ambiguity over the next few years. (But I should note that there was a lot else, too, packed into the next half decade, including a year spent at the Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Indiana, to look at my doubt/disbelief from the perspective of my tradition.) The hiddenness argument, to put it very briefly and informally, has it that many more of us would believe in God if there were a God, since God would be supremely loving and thus open to personal relationship with beings like us. And you can’t very well be open to such a relationship with someone while preventing them from believing in your existence. The hiddenness argument was instrumental in the production of a firmer atheism in me. But so was the problem of evil. Even after 1993, I recall a period of greater uncertainty about theism which was eventually quashed by a powerful dose of thinking about horrors.

RR: As you reflect on the various grounds for unbelief that you’ve summarized — hiddenness, evil, moral horrors — do you believe those arguments are sufficient to disambiguate the world, religiously speaking? More specifically, do you believe they are sufficient to make atheism rational or do you take a stronger view that they succeed to make theism irrational for any person who considers them carefully as you have?

JS: Horrors (by which I mean horrifically bad things of the sort to which Marilyn McCord Adams gave special attention) are evils, so we’re talking about a single problem there – though one that generates a family of somewhat different atheistic arguments. To answer your question: I do think we get disambiguation, objectively speaking, but there are perfectly plausible analyses of ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ which allow careful theists to be rational in their belief even if the evidence objectively tilts toward atheism. A similar consideration allows many cases of nonbelief to count as nonresistant even if some theistic argument is objectively sound. That is why it’s no answer to the hiddenness argument for the theist to put forward some theistic argument he views as successful – and this even if it is indeed objectively sound!

But in recent years I’ve come to see this rather common discussion in the philosophy of religion of the rationality or irrationality of belief tokens – your individual beliefs or mine or those of Al in South Bend – as a bit superficial. Already in my 2005 book Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion I suggested that we shift to talking about belief types, and see philosophers of religion as tasked with debating the relevant evidence and seeking to reach consensus as to which (if any) belief type is worthy of being instantiated. More recently still, I’ve been exploring the possibility that, for the sake of inquiry at an early and immature stage of human development, we ought to leave the beliefs we’re so used to seeing as the results of inquiry quite outside inquiry’s door, at least where complex and controversial issues such as religious issues are concerned, emphasizing positions instead. Positions I understand as instances of acceptance of the sort that L. J. Cohen distinguished from belief, which the accepter undertakes to develop and defend, usually on the basis of the apparent verdict of available evidence (here a subsidiary role for belief remains), and to bring into conversation with other positions. This conversation of positions, one hopes, will lead in time to an informed consensus, which can be seen as helping to provide, for everyone involved, real justification from inquiry for belief of the proposition on which such agreement has been reached. (Individual belief, too, is a sort of consensus, agreement within a mind, but our immaturity gives extra importance to the notion of agreement between minds.) Of course it may take a long time for such a consensus to be reached, but if what science is telling us about deep time and also the youthfulness of our species is true, then we’ve got a lot of time! If the picture I’ve been describing here is correct – and we’ll have to see where the position goes – then our preoccupation with belief tokens is not just superficial but a symptom of species-level immaturity distorting our understanding of epistemology. 

And where would the hiddenness argument or my personal atheism end up, on a picture like the latter? The hiddenness argument is an argument I personally believe to be sound, and its apparent force contributes to the maintenance of my atheistic belief; the latter happens quite involuntarily, given the psychology of belief. But in the context of present inquiry, none of this is what really matters. What really matters is whether, given how the relevant evidence looks to me, I am willing to take as my position the view that the hiddenness argument is sound or that atheism is true, and also how I conduct myself in inquiry with this (or any other) position. Intellectual virtue is of course what one hopes to display. Now, other people – theist or non-theist – may well have different epistemological stances, and for them the rationality and irrationality of belief tokens may still loom large. That’s fine. They will view the function of my arguments differently. Meanwhile the happy bedlam of much inquiry – it can hardly be other than bedlam where our immaturity is deepest – continues.

RR: I’d like to follow-up with a question about your proposal of leaving beliefs aside in favour of positions. And in particular, I’d like to get further clarity on how this might relate to beliefs that one takes to be properly basic or foundational. Let’s take an issue like the existence of objective moral good and evil. One could view objectivism about moral value to be complex and controversial in the way you describe. So if a person has deeply-seated moral intuitions that there are such things as objective moral good and evil, does your proposal require that one set aside those beliefs and thus not include those powerful intuitions in their ethical theorizing? Does it mean that one can only appeal to those intuitions after one has an independent argument for them?

JS: Here it will be good to distinguish between the fact that one believes moral objectivism, if it is a fact, and the intuition which helps to generate that belief. The latter may come into a discussion of moral objectivism as evidence, and it may be evidence that one’s interlocutor also possesses, but whose weight she disputes. For one who accepts the epistemological picture I’m exploring, the conversation about this matter is properly devoted to reaching consensus on what view the available relevant evidence best supports. Whether one is now rational or irrational if one believes or disbelieves moral objectivism is not the issue, as one has shifted to a new plane of discussion which requires leaving that preoccupation behind (though whether there are views we all involuntarily believe that provide a kind of ‘foundation’ for all systematic human inquiry may become an independent topic of conversation).

RR: Many philosophers today believe that the best hope of a future consensus is tied to a project often called ‘naturalism’. Of course, how naturalism is defined varies, but it appears to be tied — epistemologically and/or ontologically — to that which is the object of scientific study. Perhaps we might put it provisionally like this: naturalism is the view that all that exists is that which is described by a hypothetically completed future science. Naturalism is also often associated closely with atheism to the extent where many people seem to think that to be an atheist just is to be a naturalist. So as an atheist, what do you think about naturalism and its prospects at building a future consensus?

JS: I think science is tremendously important, intellectually speaking, in part because here we humans have shown ourselves capable of reaching consensus. Consensus views in science contribute a good deal to my own thinking, particularly in connection with species-level immaturity, since views about evolution and geological time help to clarify where we are now as a species and where in time we might be. But it seems a clear mistake to infer, from the fact that here we humans have found some light, that everything else we ever learn we will owe to its illumination. Perhaps the latter claim is true, perhaps not. Indeed, in part because of what science itself helps us to see about our limitations and immaturities (take the cognitive biases we’ve only been learning about recently), the impulse to accept a science-based naturalism can be strong even in the absence of rational support, and so we owe it to inquiry to subject naturalistic claims to careful testing. Notice here that naturalism is a comprehensive view, saying how things stand in respect of all reality (or all concrete reality). Views that ‘big’ deserve special scrutiny; at our stage they could well be premature. Now, perhaps over time science will progress much further, successfully dealing with issues which today are still rightly perplexing, such as problems of consciousness, and so provide naturalism with more support. This might eventually lead to a consensus on naturalism. But things could also go in a variety of non-naturalistic directions, say, on the basis of inquiry in philosophy of religion that has freed itself from the present ‘theism versus naturalism’ fixation. As we go forward, we might still expect that, given how the available evidence strikes them, some inquirers will accept naturalism and thus defend it in various contexts of inquiry. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But for the discussion to be intellectually valuable, we should also want to see people developing non-naturalistic positions, in particular ones that have so far received little or no discussion. Notice that in such cases one may take up a position not because of how the available evidence strikes one but so as to get more evidence – to enrich the body of evidence available to the community of inquiry.

RR: As we conclude this interview, I’d like to get your thoughts on the role of philosophy in the wider culture. When I received my PhD close to twenty years ago, the job market in philosophy was certainly competitive, but sharp young philosophers nonetheless had a good chance of securing a teaching position somewhere. However, the shrinking of humanities departments which has been ongoing for several decades now has continued apace. In that time, many philosophy departments have seen a decline in funding, enrollment, and as a result, new faculty positions. In short, we are a society in which the study of philosophy — and the humanities generally — seems to be in decline.

At the same time, it seems like democratic institutions are increasingly being challenged in recent years throughout the West and that is a real matter of concern to me. As we wind down, I was hoping you could leave us with some thoughts on the enduring value of studying philosophy and the relationship it might have to inculcating the kind of intellectual virtues that help secure the open society and classical liberalism.

JS: It would be no surprise if a challenge to democratic institutions went hand in hand with a challenge of the sort you describe to philosophy, given the latter’s insistence on probing every corner of a topic and its willingness – at least when things are going well – to listen to anyone who might have a good idea. What I said earlier about seeking out neglected or overlooked positions and aiming for an informed, matured consensus instead of personal vindication on religious matters will, I hope, be seen to reflect this orientation.

A link can be made here to what I’ve called ‘passionate indifference,’ a strong desire to make cognitive contact with the truth, no matter what that might turn out to be. Philosophy at its best reflects passionate indifference. Here also the value of philosophy in relation to other cultural goods may come into focus. For if students of philosophy sharpen not just their technical skills but their intellectual desire in this way, as in a good philosophy course they may, then given that philosophy by its very nature gets you thinking about everything, they will likely take this orientation with them into social and political contexts, and be more likely to be broadminded, openminded, fairminded, and intellectually humble citizens too, helping to move us beyond the deep macro- and micro-level immaturities (intellectual, emotional, social, moral, and so on) still rather clearly discernible in the public square today.          

Going back to what I said a few moments ago about philosophy’s orientation leading to the seeking out of neglected religious positions, let me add that, in the religious domain, theism and Christianity are far from neglected! There is a challenge here for you and other theists in philosophy. A broadly democratic impulse might be expected to lead to the serious discussion of – or serious support for the discussion of – many new religious possibilities, formerly overlooked or presently receiving short shrift, and thus to take us beyond the current tendency to travel back and forth along religious and non-religious paths already well worn.

This is the emphasis that I would like to be identified with. And so I was thinking today, reflecting on your introduction of me, at the beginning of this interview, as an “atheist philosopher,” that it would be better to be identified in some other way. It struck me that perhaps the first word in my recent title Progressive Atheism does a better job of indicating what I am about than the second, which really reflects the preoccupations of others more than what I myself have been mainly concerned with in the years since 1993. ‘Progressive philosopher.’ Hmmm. Not bad —  though only if, in this case, we give at least as much attention to the second word as to the first!

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Resurrection and History: A Conversation with Counter-Apologist

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Whatever Happened to the Bereans? My Response to Ravi Zacharias Defenders

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Hey, Liberal Christian Scholars have Biases Too

[image error]It is very common to hear that conservative Christian scholars have a bias. For example, they are biased when they insist that Paul wrote the disputed epistles. They are biased when they claim that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony. They are biased when they date Mark before 70 CE. And so on.

My problem is not with the idea that conservative Christian scholars may have a bias that informs the positions they take. My problem is with the implication that other scholars, whether Christian or not, don’t.

Consider, for example, the case of Morton Smith, a scholar who infamously promoted the idea of a “Secret Gospel of Mark,” one with deliciously scandalous gnostic and homoerotic themes. The evidence for that gospel was always scanty and it turns out it was, in fact, a hoax. (See Stephen Carlson, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark.) Despite this fact, Smith did manage to win over several scholars, some of whom promoted the Secret Gospel as the oldest of all gospels.

And now we have Ariel Sabar’s new book Veritas: a Harvard Professor, a Con man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife. Veritas tells the story of how Karen King, a respected scholar from Harvard, was tricked into promoting a forged papyrus document that referred to an alleged ‘wife’ of Jesus. From an outsider’s perspective, it appears that King was an unwitting dupe because she was so interested in looking for evidence — any evidence — that could justify her rewriting the origins of Christianity in a way more favorable to her particular brand of feminist interest.

The simple lesson here is that everyone — conservative Christians, liberal Christians, atheists, skeptics, and the rest — has a bias and we all need to be careful not to let our biases, whatever they may be, distort our scholarly work.

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The Ravi Zacharias Sex Scandal: A New Personal Statement

The other day, I posted “New Allegations that Ravi Zacharias engaged in Sexually Predatory Behavior” courtesy of Steve Baughman. In his new statement, Baughman provided serious allegations that Mr. Zacharias exploited women for his sexual gratification in a spa that he operated. In his video, Baughman also referenced a Christian leader with whom he had spoken about the new allegations.

Today, I was contacted by that Christian leader. While I do not know this individual personally, I can say that he is a respected academic and Christian leader and I have known of him by way of his academic and popular writing over the last twenty-five years. In short, he is a very credible source. He forwarded a statement which he wanted me to share with my readers as it provides a more fulsome understanding of these allegations and the evidence supporting them. I have reproduced that statement below.

Hi. I am the Christian leader who heard directly from the three witnesses in relation to the spa cases.

I have studied all aspects of the controversies about RZ, talked with many witnesses to the issues and events involved, and also used a leading private investigator who is a friend. I did not do all this in order to prove Ravi guilty or innocent. All things being equal, I wanted him to be what he claimed, an apologist with total moral integrity. I took pains in all this investigation in order to figure out truth. My ultimate aim was pastoral. I am an ordained Christian minister and I saw quite quickly the need to provide a pastoral role to various people involved in the various aspects of the controversies. Part of my pastoral and counselling responsibility involved getting at the truth.

On the spa case, I find the witnesses very, very credible. I trust them based on phone calls, emails, text messages and supporting documents. Each of these witnesses had nothing to gain by talking, writing emails, etc.

On the Thompson matter, I trust Brad and Lori Anne. The idea that they were suffering financially and plotted together to get money out of RZ is ludicrous. RZ lied in his lawsuit against them.

I find Shirley Steward’s testimony about Ravi telling Ramesh (his brother and Shirley’s boyfriend at the time) to get her (Shirley) to have an abortion to be very credible. I have interviewed her at length.

On the credentials issue, Steve B. has been proven right by the fact that RZIM employees and the organization itself faced up to Ravi’s carelessness and duplicity. I do think Steve overstates the credentials issues at points but he was basically properly concerned. RZIM should have listened to him sooner.

For the record, I am not a Steve Baughman clone. I disagree with him on various matters and have convinced him he is wrong at points. He listens to arguments. All in all, one of my factors in being involved in these controversies is to show Steve than not all Christians resort to name-calling in the face of objective evidence. Likewise, I continue to urge Steve to believe in God and trust in Jesus.

I have shared my concerns about things with a top RZIM leader.

Some other points, to put the above in context:

I value RZ’s contribution to apologetics and Christian faith.
I think RZIM is basically an incredible organization but…
RZIM hurts apologetics and Christian witness by avoiding careful scrutiny of the controversies.
My views above about the Thompson case are based on extensive interaction with Christian leaders and lay people who know them and who know the details of the matters involved. These people believe (like me) that the view that Brad and Lori Anne made up the whole plot to get money from Ravi is absurd. I still remember the moment a Christian leader who knows the couple laughed out loud when I asked him whether Brad and Lori Anne were short on cash. [Yes, I know they were in a legal tangle with a previous pastor but that episode did not create a need for going after RZ]. Ravi needed some “explanation” for why the Thompsons made up the plot to squeeze him for money, so he and his lawyers went with the “poor” couple theory.
Ravi even argued that the couple pretended to be counsellors to write him a leading email about his suicide threat. In fact, the counsellors involved wrote the email. I know this from direct evidence independent of what Lori Anne and Brad say. They are telling the truth. Ravi lied about it.
I believe the evidence readily supports the view that the Thompsons were both attracted to Ravi’s ministry. This led to a friendship and then over time Ravi developed an inappropriate relationship with Lori Anne. Out of guilt she confessed to Brad in late October 2016. Ravi threatened suicide before she told Brad. After she told Brad the three of them had emails back and forth until Ravi declared he was totally innocent in early 2017. This was what radically altered their view of Ravi and led to legal action.
I do not believe he was innocent given the ordinary meaning of his threat of suicide, the content of his emails in October 2016 through early 2017, and his repeated calls to Lori Anne through 2016, etc.
I think Ravi broke his side of the NDA in late 2017 by the release of the press release which threw the Thompsons under the bus in several ways. The idea (given in his press release) that Ravi went 16,000 days without being alone with a woman other than his wife or daughters is hard to square with his regular times alone in a spa room with females. The three witnesses I talk to all agree that Ravi was alone with females in the spas. Now, maybe Ravi and RZIM want to argue that being alone in a spa room with a woman is not a point against his claim since it was a necessity due to his back problems. [But he could have used male therapists…]
CT magazine should have checked into various claims in the press release and not printed it without scrutiny. I believe sites that quote the press release in full should remove it or at least do an investigation into its accuracy. CT should add a disclaimer to their earlier reporting.
Various RZIM leaders and academics should have checked into the accuracy of the press release or looked objectively at all the evidence related to the Thompsons. I know from people inside the RZIM world that leaderhsip  do not encourage any honest probing about RZ.
I have shared my ongoing look into RZIM matters with quite a few famous Christian leaders/academics that I trust. Not one of them has dismissed my concerns.
Yes, this is all very, very painful stuff and especially in light of his recent passing.  Parts of his funeral service brought tears of my eyes and it is painful for me to think about the pressures on his family and ministry then and since. So, why my concerns?
Well, if Ravi had apologized for his credentials puffing, if he had apologized for his part in the abortion case, if he had apologized to the Thompsons for his power moves against them, if he had apologized to the people at the spa, and if all of the individuals that he hurt over the damage were over things, I would have dropped my concerns easily and quickly. However, the relevant individuals in the spa case, the Thompson case, and the abortion case are still victims.
In my view, RZIM should release Brad and Lori Anne from the NDA since Ravi already broke it. RZIM should apologize for the hurt that the press release did to them. It is nothing but tragic to hear details of what Ravi’s fans said about Lori Anne and what the Christian community said to their children! Thankfully, Brad and Lori Anne have learned that their faith should be anchored in Jesus and not depend on the credibility of various Christian leaders

I have not released my name because of deeply personal reasons that have nothing to do with RZ and RZIM.

I write at length here to help Randal Rauser readers have a long reply that offers a view from someone who has spent enormous time checking into these matters.

Since RZIM leadership know my identity and they will probably read this, I want them to know that I am willing to have extended dialogue with RZIM leaders and scholars and staff in order to assess these very serious matters. If I am proven wrong on anything, I will be ready to apologize in this forum and others. For the record, I wrote a leader at RZIM on August 27th, had a few long conversations that day and the next day, and have heard nothing since.

My main concern is for those who were hurt by Ravi and continue to be traumatized by what was done to them. Of course, I have never lost sight of the enormous impact of Ravi and the continued great work of RZIM. One night I was watching MMA and one of the fighters gave a shout out to Ravi’s impact on his life. Ravi’s strengths and impact must not be forgotten. Sadly, he was the one who most hurt this legacy.

I would like to see an independent investigation by Christian scholars and leaders on all of the above. This should be done in participation by a few non-Christian figures who are experts in evidence analysis, etc.

Thanks for reading.

You have a couple of choices in interpreting this post. You can either believe it is from a real loser who likes making up stories or I am the Christian leader who spoke to the three spa people and writes at such length because I care about Christian ministry, values, and integrity.

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How can the God of the Philosophers be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

You can read the chapter on this topic from my new book over at Strange Notions. Check it out!

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How can reasonable people of good will continue to support Donald Trump?

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New Allegations that Ravi Zacharias engaged in Sexually Predatory Behavior

Just this morning, Steve Baughman (author of Cover-Up In the Kingdom) posted a new video in which he outlines new allegations that Ravi Zacharias used a spa under his ownership to exploit women for his own sexual gratification. These are serious allegations that should be investigated carefully, not least by RZIM.

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