The Cross & Crescent Conference

For those who are interested in Islam, The Cross & Crescent Conference is running in Tauranga on the 6-8 August. It is intended to give you a clearer understanding of Islam and an overview of what God is doing worldwide. It will help you consider the Christian response to Islam in today’s society and impart necessary tools to assist you in conveying the message of Jesus in a relevant way. It will also help you value Muslim people more and to reach out with God’s love. Inspiring, encouraging, equipping and challenging. This conference is invaluable and should not be missed.

Click here to download the conference brochure which includes dates/times and a registration form on page 2. Cost is $50 for the full conference, or the Friday evening session is free and open to the public.

If you can’t make the whole conference, the speakers are teaching at various churches on Sunday the 8th at no cost – click here for details.

Christianity rejected, nonsense accepted

The claim that Christianity’s decline within a culture leads to the re-emergence of superstition is an interesting one that I would like to see some stats on. At face value, it makes some sense, as the Bible forbids dabbling in superstitious nonsense like modern astrology, tarot cards, and star signs, as these are replacement for the true God, and are thus idols.

Here is a classic from Stuff dealing with possums on the Coromandel Peninsula.

Heavens aligning for fiery possum cure

Read the article yourself — it is short — but basically a group of people want rate-payers to fund $330,000 so they can test their “possum peppering” technique.

Certainly it sounds like pseudo-scientific nonsense, but the answer is simple.

He who makes the claim bears the burden of proof.

So go ahead. Make the claim. Bear the burden of proof. Show the evidence. And probably make a heap of $$$ by getting the patent. How ’bout “Fairy Dust Technology”?

Freedom to Believe

http://www.opendoors.org.nz/page/214/free-to-believ
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Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science (Paperback)

There have always been challenges to belief in God as he is revealed in the Bible and each new year seems to add more questions to the doubter’s arsenal. In Evidence for God, leading apologists provide compelling arguments that address the most pressing questions of the day about God, science, Jesus, the Bible, and more, including: Is Intelligent Design really a credible explanation of the origins of our world? Did Jesus really exist? Is Jesus really the only way to God? What about those who have never heard the gospel? Is the Bible today what was originally written? What about recently publicized gospels that aren’t in the Bible? and much more.

FREE worldwide delivery if you buy from here, and utilize the weak UK pound!

Prof. Granville Sewell on Evolution: In The Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design

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H/T to http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/in-the-beginning/

Random feeds from Thinking Matters New Zealand

• A Familiar Conversation: Part 1
• Closer to Truth Interviews William Lane Craig
• A Familiar Conversation: Part 2
• Thinking Matters Forum at Auckland University
• Debate: Women in the Bible and the Qur’an
• Free Resource – Study Guide to Biblical Doctrine
• Audio Resources from J. P. Moreland
• Genesis, Myth and History
• Crowns Rolling in the Dust
• Talk Is Moving

Random feeds from Apologetics 315

• Apologist Interview: Matt Slick of Carm.org
• Why Won't God Heal Amputees? MP3 Audio from GotQuestions.org
• Book Review: Inference to the Best Explanation by Peter Lipton
• Uninformed, Misinformed, Illogical, Incomplete
• The Bible and Apologetics Mp3 Series by R.C. Sproul
• Terminology Tuesday: Polemics
• An Islam Primer: Five Parts MP3 Audio
• Terminology Tuesday: Quest of the Historical Jesus
• Weekly Apologetics Bonus Links (07/09 - 07/16)
• The Meta Ethical Argument for Theism MP3 Audio by Peter S. Williams

A New Day for Apologetics

Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/14.29.html

People young and old are flocking to hear — and be changed by — winsome arguments for the Christian faith.

by Troy Anderson

Despite all the recent attacks on faith ?or, perhaps, because of them? these are definitely the best of times for Christian apologists such as Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, Ben Witherington III, Darrell Bock, and J. P. Moreland. They are making documentaries, writing books, giving media interviews, attending debates and conferences, and presenting the public with what they say is a growing mountain of scientific and archaeological evidence documenting the truth of Christianity.

“There has been a resurgence in Christian apologetics as a direct result of the challenges Christianity has faced in the form of militant atheism in college classrooms, on the Internet, and in TV documentaries and best-selling books,” says Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and most recently the author of The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ.
Read more

*UPDATE* Asylum for Mosab Hassan Yousef (6.30.10)

Mosab Hassan Deported? (6.29.10)

Son of Hamas Founder Granted Asylum in U.S.

Source

Mosab Hassan was more shocked than anyone when a Department of Homeland Security official announced in immigration court today that government officials had changed their mind about him.

Yesterday they saw him as a “threat to U.S. national security.” Today they say he’s welcome to stay in the United States and become a citizen.

Why the change of heart? DHS officials won’t say, but public pressure, Congressional support for Hassan and the word of an Israeli intelligence agent likely all played a part.

Mosab Hassan was born in the West Bank, the son of one of the leaders and founders of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group considered a terrorist organization by the US.

In his early 20s, Hassan became disillusioned with Hamas, and ultimately became a spy for Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence agency.

His handler, Gonen Ben Itzhak, told Fox News that Hassan saved American, Jewish and Palestinian lives. We aired our exclusive interview with Ben Itzhak on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning Homeland Security had changed its position on Mosab.

What is strange is that one would think the information we reported could have been found and corroborated by Homeland Security with a few phone calls to their Israeli counterparts. Instead they pursued a long and expensive legal case against a man who appears to be a hero, who appears to be committed to fighting terror. And a man who now promises to help the US fight the threats against it. Common sense it seems has finally prevailed among the bureaucrats of Homeland Security.

Israel and the Surrender of the West

From The Wall Street Journal:

One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past—racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on.

Kim Hill interviews Ex-Muslim Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali

National Radio,
Saturday 19th June,
11:05am.

Kim Hill interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim atheist whom Time Magazine listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005.

This was an excellent interview, giving insight into Islam and how Westerners should consider it, especially in light of her experiences in Europe.

She has had death threats following involvement in the Dutch film Submission by producer Theo Van Gogh who was later murdered by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim.

The MP3 podcast is here: http://podcast….Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali_Islam-048.mp3

Ali’s Wikipedia page is here.

Also fascinating is Kim Hill’s take on Truth near the end of the interview. Unlike Kim, I do believe there is True Truth (thanks to Francis Schaeffer for that phrase), and shock, horror, so do Muslims. Seemingly it is only Western academics and their followers who buy into such self-refuting silliness.

New iPhone – iPod Touch app from Stand to Reason

New iPhone / iPod Touch app from .

Get it here.

Atheists no longer believe there is no God, apparently

This is a nice post from Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason:

Atheists no longer believe there is no God, apparently. Instead, they merely lack belief in the divine. They are not un-believers. They are simply non-believers. And non-belief is not a claim, so it requires no defense.

This, atheists think, makes their job easier by relieving them of any responsibility to provide evidence for their view, er…their non-view. After all, no one is obliged to give evidence for the non-existence of fairies. Thus, atheism secures the inside lane as the default view for reasonable people. Or so atheists claim.

For example, if you asked me which Rugby team was the best in England, I wouldn’t know where to start. Since I have no interest in the question and no information on the issue, I cannot form a belief one way or another. Because I have no beliefs about the quality of Rugby competition in the UK, I am truly a non-believer regarding the question. I am neutral.

This is not the case with atheists. It’s true, atheists have no belief in God, but they are not neutral on this question.

For an atheist to enter a debate, he has to take a position. If he takes a position, he asserts a belief. And when he asserts a belief, he makes a claim. When he advances an argument, presumably he believes the conclusion that flows from his own reasoning. Theists say there is a God, and atheists argue they are wrong. This is not neutrality.

To say you do not believe in God is very different from saying you lack belief about God. Anyone who has a point of view has a belief. And atheists have a point of view. This makes them believers of a very particular stripe: They believe God does not exist.

There’s another problem, though, that apparently has escaped the notice of those atheists who claim the high road of reason as their own. Given any point of view (e.g., “God exists”), there are only three possible responses to it. You can affirm it (“God does exist”), you can deny it (“God does not exist”), or you can withhold judgment (“I don’t know”), either for lack of information or lack of interest.

In the God debate, the first is called a theist (of some sort), the second an atheist, and the third an agnostic. The alleged non-believers in question here are neither theistic nor agnostic. Only one logical option remains: They deny God exists, which is why they are called atheists to begin with. An atheist (a = not, theist = regarding God) is a person who holds there is not a God. That is an active claim, not a passive non-belief.

Close-Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers (With Sound)

Has Craig Venter Produced Artificial Life?

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/05/has_craig_venter_produced_arti.html