Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 25

Links Mentioned on the 2/03/16 Show

The following is a rundown of today's podcast, annotated with links that were either mentioned on the show or inspired by it:

Commentary: The Work of Writing and the Christian Story (0:00)

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Credo: The Story of Reality (DVD) by Greg Koukl

Questions:

��� Announcements:

Upcoming events with STR speakers
#STRask Podcast with Greg Koukl and Melinda Penner
STR Cruise to Alaska ��� August 6-13, 2016
AMP Apologetics Conference ��� February 12���13 (Use promo code "STANDTOREASON" for 10% off)

1. Should Christians recite the Pledge of Allegiance? (0:23)

2. A caller interviews Greg about his biography (0:40)

God's Fingerprints on Our Lives ��� Greg Koukl (First and second hour commentaries are about Greg's spiritual story.)
No Pixie Dust: Truths of Spiritual Growth (Audio) by Greg Koukl (Greg tells the story of how he became a Christian.)

3. Aren't young-earth creationists (who think there's an appearance of age) and evolutionists (who think there's an appearance of design) both rejecting the evidence they observe? (0:51)

Star Light and the Age of the Universe by Greg Koukl

Listen to today's show or download any archived show for free. (Find links from past shows here.)

To take part in the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00���6:00 p.m. PT), follow @STRtweets and use the hashtag #STRtalk.

Another Muslim-Friendly Bible Translation

Is it permissible to remove the terms ���Son,��� ���Son of God,��� and ���Father��� from Arabic translations of the Bible and insert more Muslim-friendly terms? That���s what some people do. It���s part of larger approach to reach Muslims called the Insider Movement.

My friend, Adam Simnowitz, has written a great article over at the Biblical Missiology site documenting his concerns with another Arabic translation of the Bible incorporating the ���Muslim Idiom Translation��� (MIT) approach. He writes:

As with most versions of MIT, the text of Al-Injil does not contain literal translations for ���Father,��� ���Son/Son of God,��� and ���Son of Man,��� apart from a very few occurrences. Other extreme liberties are taken with the text. These include inserting the first part of the shah��da, or Islamic confession of faith (i.e. ���There is no god but God���) in more places than occur in the Qur���an; reducing the meaning of ���eternal life��� in John 3:16 to simply avoiding everlasting punishment; and obscuring and even eliminating the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in numerous passages.

I���ve written about my concerns with these translations and other Insider Movement methods in a previous Solid Ground.

How Can One Know If They Have Been Regenerated?

Greg discusses how we can be sure of our salvation.

Why You Shouldn���t Trust the Feeling That You Don���t Deserve Hell

I was having a conversation in the comments section the other day about whether or not Hell is just, and I made the point that I don���t trust our ability as human beings to accurately apprehend our level of goodness or the punishment we deserve for our evil.

Yes, I recognize that many people don���t feel like their moral crimes deserve Hell, but the fact that people feel this way doesn���t mean the feeling is based on truth. In fact, I have reason to think the feeling is quite inaccurate���not only because of what God has said about it, but also because of what I���ve observed. As I wrote before in ���We���re Not Good at Estimating Our Goodness��� (citing research to support the claim), we human beings seem to be particularly good at self-deception when it comes to our moral condition.

And then this morning, I heard about this article on Adolf Eichmann that supports this idea once again. Eichmann, who is often referred to as the architect of the Holocaust, oversaw the deportation of millions of Jews to death camps.

But he didn���t feel guilty.

The New York Times reports on Eichmann���s plea for a pardon that recently came to light:

���There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders,��� pleaded Eichmann ��� the Nazi war criminal who oversaw the lethal logistics of the Holocaust ��� in a letter dated May 29, 1962, the day that Israel���s Supreme Court rejected his appeal.

Eichmann asked the Israeli president, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, for a pardon, arguing, ���I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.��� ���

He wrote that the judges who convicted him were ���not able to empathize with the time and situation in which I found myself during the war years.��� ���

���I am not able to recognize the court���s ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honor Mr. President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out,��� he concluded, before signing his name in blue ink on lined paper.

He did not feel guilty. His circumstances weren���t taken into account. The judges lacked empathy. His penalty wasn���t just. Sound familiar?

���But,��� you say, ���I���m not a monster!��� Did Eichmann appear to be a monster? Not according to one witness of his trial, Hannah Arendt. From the Guardian:

In her famous account of the trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt described Eichmann as a small-minded functionary, more concerned with the managerial hows of his job than the moral or existential whys. According to Arendt, Eichmann wasn���t a man for asking difficult questions, he just got on with the job of managing timetables and calculating travel costs ��� thus her famous phrase ���the banality of evil���.

From another article in the Guardian on Arendt���s phrase:

[I]f a crime against humanity had become in some sense "banal" it was precisely because it was committed in a daily way, systematically, without being adequately named and opposed. In a sense, by calling a crime against humanity "banal", she was trying to point to the way in which the crime had become for the criminals accepted, routinised, and implemented without moral revulsion and political indignation and resistance.

If man has the ability to turn this kind of evil into something ���accepted, routinized, and implemented without moral revulsion,��� simply because ���everyone���s doing it��� (just as we see happening in our own day), it���s not hard to imagine how much of our own evil remains undetected by us. Everyone is doing it. Everyone, that is, except God, who can see all of our evil perfectly because He has no evil within Himself. Such a perfect being will punish perfectly.

Eichmann���s excuses didn���t help him in the end, and neither will ours. We don���t need excuses; we need grace.

(HT: The Briefing)

What Is the Ultimate Source of Morality?

In the PragerU video ���Where Do Good and Evil Come From?��� philosopher Peter Kreeft explains why objective morality can only come from a source higher than anything in the natural world. Enjoy!

(HT: Joe Carter)

Links Mentioned on the 1/29/16 Show

The following is a rundown of today's podcast, annotated with links that were either mentioned on the show or inspired by it:

Commentary: Is God a Christian? (0:00)

Questions:

��� Announcements:

STR Cruise to Alaska ��� August 6-13, 2016 
AMP Apologetics Conference ��� Use promo code "STANDTOREASON" for 10% off
Upcoming events with STR speakers

1. When can a Christian remarry? (0:10)

The Divorce Dilemma by John MacArthur

2. Thoughts on how the decreasing age of viability for the unborn will affect the abortion debate? (0:23)

The FAQs: Grand Jury Indicts Filmmakers Who Secretly Recorded Planned Parenthood by Joe Carter
3 Things You Should Know about the Daleiden Indictment by Joe Carter
Medical Equipment Determines Human Value? by Amy Hall

3. How do you persuade someone to trust that their senses can apprehend reality? (0:41)

Naturalism: Bumping into Reality by Greg Koukl (Video, Audio)

Listen to today's show or download any archived show for free. (Find links from past shows here.)

To take part in the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00���6:00 p.m. PT), follow @STRtweets and use the hashtag #STRtalk.

Challenge Response: Diversity of Evidence Prevents Us from Knowing What Was Written

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

Bad Design Is a Bad Argument against ID

One of my favorite things to talk about is the evidence for intelligent design. In particular, I���m fascinated by the work of Stephen Meyer in Darwin���s Doubt and Signature in the Cell. When I speak about intelligent design to secular audiences, there is always some pushback. Probably the most common objection to my case is the claim there are examples of bad design. Critics of ID are quick to point to the specific features in the biosphere that they believe to be poorly designed. The human esophagus, junk DNA, the panda���s thumb, and the human eye are just a few of the many examples cited.

Although each example of bad design should be carefully considered, I think there are three broad reasons why this kind of argument is weak.

First, this is not a scientific objection; it is a theological objection. The challenge is a shot against the designer���s intelligence, not intelligent design proper. Critics of ID cite how if they were the designer, they would do things differently. For instance, they would engineer an eye without a blind spot. But just because they would design something differently doesn���t mean there was no design to begin with. Many of the criticism of design presume to know the intent of the designer. The designer is criticized on a failure to meet that intention.

We are told that critics of ID are the champions of science, yet they offer a non-scientific rebuttal to ID. If they want to persist with this theological challenge, then they shouldn���t be surprised to get a theological response. The orthodox Christian must take into account the effects of the fall. It is clear from Scripture that ���the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now��� (Rom. 8:22). This isn���t the very good creation that God created in the beginning. The Christian, who holds to ID, isn���t surprised at spoiled design. But spoiled design is not no design. This leads nicely to the second point.

Second, bad design is still design. The 2001 Pontiac Aztec is arguably one of the worst cars ever invented. We can all name cars that are better designed. But does the 2001 Pontiac Aztec need to function as well as a 2016 Chevrolet Corvette for us to conclude that it���s designed? Obviously not! You do not need to have maximum optimality to exhibit design. Different designs have various levels of optimality. In a world of physical constraints, all design will entail trade-offs.

In fact there will come a day when the 2016 Chevrolet Corvette will look like a flawed design. Therefore, design is not nullified just because you can think up a better design. Flawed design is not no design.

Third, many examples of bad design have turned out to be examples of good design. It is ironic that often-cited examples of bad design turn out to be great examples of good design. For example, Junk DNA was the poster child of bad design. ID critics of all stripes have asked, ���Why would an intelligent designer litter our genome with junk?��� However, new developments in genetics, especially from the ENCODE Project, have discovered that much of the so-called junk DNA isn���t junk at all. Therefore, just because something might appear to be bad design at first glance doesn���t mean it actually is bad design.

So the bad design argument turns out to be a bad argument. First, it doesn���t address intelligent design proper. Second, bad design is not the same thing as no design. And, third, many of the examples touted as bad design have turned out to be just the opposite when more information was discovered.

Links Mentioned on the 1/27/16 Show

The following is a rundown of today's podcast, annotated with links that were either mentioned on the show or inspired by it:

Commentary: Pro-Life in the Public Square, and Spiritual Warfare in the Trials of Life (0:00)

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
The Thomas Factor (Also available for free online) by Gary Habermas ��� This book teaches how to combat emotional doubt by replacing the lies we tell ourselves (e.g., "Our situation proves God doesn't really care about us") with the truth about God.

Questions:

��� Announcements:

Upcoming events with STR speakers
AMP Apologetics Conference ��� Use promo code "STANDTOREASON" for 10% off

1. Is a church's emphasis on "hearing from God" a criterion to consider when choosing a church? (0:26)

Does God Whisper? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 by Greg Koukl
If the Holy Spirit Doesn���t Speak to Us, What Does He Do? by Greg Koukl (Video)
Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God���s Will by Kevin DeYoung (Book)

2. Your response to John Piper's view on carrying a gun? (0:49)

Should Christians Be Encouraged to Arm Themselves? by John Piper
How Should Christians Use Guns? by Tim Challies (Includes responses to John Piper)

Listen to today's show or download any archived show for free. (Find links from past shows here.)

To take part in the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00���6:00 p.m. PT), follow @STRtweets and use the hashtag #STRtalk.

Challenge: Diversity of Evidence Prevents Us from Knowing What Was Written

This week���s challenge is from an Atlantic article on the new Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.:

In copying an earlier text, a scribe missed a word here, misread another there, or decided to correct obscure grammar and word choices and clarify what he saw as the true meaning of the text. Whether you classify the differences among the many fragments of the New Testament as mistakes, well-intentioned clarifications, or corruptions, the sheer diversity of the evidence makes it awfully difficult to discern what the authors of the Bible actually wrote down.

Does the diversity of Bible manuscript evidence prevent us from determining what was originally written? How would you explain textual criticism to a friend who posted this claim on Facebook? Let us know how you would answer this objection, and come back to the blog on Thursday to hear Brett���s response.

(If you���d like to learn more about textual criticism���i.e., how we determine what was originally written���see this free course by Dan Wallace on iTunes U.)