Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 32

Why Do Christians Follow Some Biblical Commands and Not Others?

Brett explains how some commands in the Bible were for a specific group of people at a specific time in history.

 

Ex-Atheist: The Existence of Evil Makes Atheism Implausible

French ex-atheist Guillaume Bignon has an article in Premiere Christianity explaining why he thinks the evil perpetrated against his country last week points to the existence of God:

The only option for French atheists (among whose ranks I used to count myself), is to maintain that there isn���t really any such thing as evil. When one denies the existence of God as a transcendent creator of the universe who ordains how humans ought to live their lives, one is left only with conflicting opinions about what individuals like and dislike. If there is no God then there is no objective truth about the good and the bad���.

[I]n reality, to be a consistent atheist one must affirm that the Islamic terrorists in Paris didn���t do anything 'wrong', as such. They only acted out of line with our personal preferences, (and in line with theirs). If there's no ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, that's all we are left with.

Maybe that way of reasoning about good and evil strikes you as crazy. 'Of course the terrorists were wrong and their acts were evil' the atheist says. I agree, which is why I think the reality of the evil we just witnessed makes atheism so implausible���.

But of course, maintaining the existence of God in the face of such evil isn���t without its difficulties. If he exists and is perfectly good, why didn���t God prevent this evil? ���

Hearts are heavy, and thinking objectively is difficult when it hurts. But ultimately, as the French face this seemingly purposeless evil, one side must deny that it���s evil, and the other must deny that it���s purposeless.

As a former-atheist-turned-Christian-theologian there���s no hiding which option I favour.

Bignon fleshes out these arguments a bit more in the full article. Read the rest here. And if you���re interested in hearing how a French atheist became a Christian, Greg talks about it here (starting at 9:28), or you can read about it here. It���s a great story!

Links Mentioned on the 11/20/15 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: Interview: Dr. Fuz Rana ��� Who Was Adam? (0:00)

Fuz Rana ��� Reasons to Believe
Who Was Adam? A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Humanity by Fuz Rana and Hugh Ross
Free CD/MP3 of Fuz Rana���s testimony: ���Finding God in the Lab���
Junk DNA? by Melinda Penner

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: God Is Worse than Hitler

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

Links Mentioned on the 11/18/15 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: Tolerance Is a One-Way Street on University Campuses (0:00)

Campus Cultural Revolution ���> More Culture War by Rod Dreher
Yale University student protests free speech email ��� Video (Language warning)
Reasonable Faith
Reasons to Believe

Questions:

��� Announcements:

Greg will be speaking in Ames, Iowa ��� November 20���21
Upcoming events with STR speakers
#STRask Podcast with Greg Koukl and Melinda Penner
Listen to past podcasts in our archive

1. What does the Bible teach about moral dilemmas? (0:25)

White Lies and Other Deceptions by Greg Koukl

2. Do Christians and Jews believe in the same God? (0:42)

The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders
Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? by Alan Shlemon
The Trinity: A Solution, Not a Problem Part 1 by Greg Koukl
Greg's tweet on the punishment Christ took on the cross

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.

5 Tools to Equip Your Kids ��� Watch the Live Event Here

Tonight is my live event: ���5 Tools to Help Equip Your Kids with the Truth,��� 6:30���7:30 (PT). If you'd like to ask questions during that hour, join the event on Google+. Otherwise, you can watch the whole thing live right here tonight (and anytime afterward).

The goal of tonight's event is to help parents and pastors be more focused and intentional in their discipleship of the next generation. I'll talk to you about the tried-and-true classical method of education and offer some very specific ideas and practical tools to equip families and churches. (See here for more info.) See you then!

Challenge: God Is Worse than Hitler

Here���s another challenge from ���40 Problems with Christianity���:

Hitler sent Jews to the concentration camps and gas chambers for no reason other than their ethnic identity. This was a temporal punishment; it sometimes lasted only a few days. God, on the other hand, is prepared to send good, well-accomplished, and generous people to a place of everlasting punishment and torture for the crime of not believing in something for which no credible evidence exists. The God of the Bible is, in effect, worse than Hitler.

I can see three distinct ideas that need to be responded to in this challenge. Can you identify them? Tell us what they are and how you would respond to them in the comments below, and see Brett���s video response to this challenge on Thursday.

[Explore past challenges here and here.]

Can People Be Saved through Natural Revelation?

Is belief in God through natural revelation enough to be saved? 

Random Mutation, Natural Selection, and Information

This new video from the Discovery Institute is a clear and concise explanation of why we should doubt the power of random mutations and natural selection to build new, functional information content in DNA. Here are some excerpts, but watch the whole video (below) to see the helpful way they illustrate the truth of this:

According to modern evolutionary theory, new proteins and new forms of animal life arise through random genetic mutations, sifted by natural selection. But in an alphabetic text or a section of computer code, random changes typically degrade meaning, or functionality, and ultimately generate gibberish.

STEPHEN MEYER: ���As we've come to appreciate the digital or typographic character of genetic information���it raises some really interesting questions about the efficacy of that mutation-driven mechanism���. If you start making random changes to a section of computer code, you're much more likely to degrade the information that's there already than you are to come up with a new operating system or program.��� ���

Scientists in the 1960s didn't know how many of [the possible arrangements of amino acids] were actually functional���. That didn't stop evolutionary biologists from speculating. Many argued that there must be a high proportion of functional sequences among all possible sequences so that a random search for a new functional sequence would have a high probability of success.

STEPHEN MEYER: ���The way they did that is to say, well maybe biological sequences are���not nearly as picky about which characters are where as written language is or as computer code is���. Maybe proteins don't really care which amino acid is where and there���s a great deal of variability, and therefore you can have the same function performed by a huge number of protein chains and a huge number of genes.���

But recent experiments in molecular biology and protein science have replaced speculation with data. These experiments have established that DNA-based sequences capable of making functional proteins are, in fact, extremely rare among the vast number of possible sequences���.

For even a single functioning protein fold to arise, the mutation selection mechanism would have time to search just a tiny fraction of the total number of relevant sequences���one ten-trillion-trillion-trillionth of the total possibilities. It follows that it is overwhelmingly likely that a random mutational search would have failed to produce even one new functional protein fold in the entire history of life on Earth.

Links Mentioned on the 11/13/15 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: Gender Neutral Bathrooms and Locker Rooms (0:00)

Houston LGBT Nondiscrimination Ordinance Rejected by Voters by Juan A. Lozano
What Makes This Houston Ballot Measure So Threatening by Ryan Anderson
Ambassador's Creed

Questions:

��� Announcements:

Greg is speaking at Bethel Church in Fairbanks, AK on November 14th
Upcoming events with STR speakers
STR Cruise to Alaska ��� August 6-13, 2016

1. Respond to an argument in favor of abortion. (0:17)

Unstringing the Violinist by Greg Koukl
A New Response to the Violinist Argument by Amy Hall (Reporting on an argument developed by Steve Wagner and Josh and Timothy Brahm)

2. How do you respond to this: "I'll never intrude in your space, so don't intrude in mine"? (0:30)

Apologetics Study Bible on Christian vs. New Age meditation
Arguments That Commit Suicide by Greg Koukl
A Stone in His Shoe by Greg Koukl

3. Did Jesus do all of His miracles through the Holy Spirit's power and not His own? (0:44)

4.  What do you think of fully-gifted creation and evolution? (0:53)

Drifting towards Darwin 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.