http://www.alibris.com books

Don’t you just love it when you try to buy some books from overseas, and you have to fill in a myriad of details before they tell you the shipping costs.

Here is a truly great example from http://www.alibris.com where 9 second hand books are not really worth buying.

Perhaps they are all coming from different suppliers or perhaps they are flying them over here on the space shuttle?

Update: I see they do have a shipping page. In hindsight I should have looked at it first — but wouldn’t something a bit smarter be a good thing, like on-the-fly updating of shipping costs? I guess the technology is not quite there yet. Never mind; Alibris looks pretty good apart from shipping.

Dr. Ken Boa

Dr. Ken Boa is not terribly well known in the apologetics community, perhaps because he is more involved in evangelism than pure apologetics. He does have a very slick website with daily bible readings and more via RSS feeds and a FREE full-text apologetics book available here.

From the preface:

In this introductory textbook on Christian apologetics—the study of the defense of the faith—you will be inducted into this two-millennia-long discussion. You will overhear the greatest apologists of all time responding to the intellectual attacks on the Bible in their day. You will take a guided tour of the four major approaches to apologetics that have emerged in the past couple of centuries. Along the way you will pick up insightful answers to such questions as:

• Why is belief in God rational despite the prevalence of evil in the world?
• What facts support the church’s testimony that Jesus rose from the dead?
• Can we be certain Christianity is true?
• How can our faith in Christ be based on something more secure than our own
  understanding without descending into an irrational emotionalism?

George Orwell’s New Europe

William Dembski

Here are extracts from the Council of Europe’s Draft Resolution against ID, Creation, and anything that does not toe the materialist line. Note the passages in bold.

Source here.

More here.

Is it time for atheists to own up?

Atheists are on a recruiting drive in the USA (see this page for example) and certainly feel they are surfing the wave after selling 1,000,000+ books over the past year or so (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens).

But in Christian circles, or at least within a small section of the church, there is also a resurgence going on (listen to the short Reasonable Faith podcasts on this page for an overview).

So what about Alice Shannon and her Letter to the Editor? She shares the same concerns, frustration and anxieties as many Christians (and non-Christian conservatives too) who see western society going down the drain. But is her response Christian? Let’s examine it.

Firstly, how does she suggest we ’stomp’ out atheism? Should Christians use force against atheists? Hardly — that may be the Islamic way, but it is simply not Biblically acceptable (although the atheistic worldview could hardly condemn that sort of behavior — it is just survival of the fittest).

And what of Alice’s “If you don’t believe in God…then get out”? Does she mean that an Islamic America would be ok?

And “In God We Trust” on the currency? What if it was Caesar’s, or the Queen of England’s head? This is hardly a compelling or objective reason to get angry with atheists.

Read more

DNA unraveled — Darwinism or Intelligent Design?

A ’scientific revolution’ is taking place, as researchers explore the genomic jungle

By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff  |  September 24, 2007

Snippets from the full article below…

The science of life is undergoing changes so jolting that even its top researchers are feeling something akin to shell-shock… they find themselves confronted by a biological jungle deeper, denser, and more difficult to penetrate than anyone imagined…

“To our shock and consternation, we’re learning how little we know about the parts of the genome that may matter most,” said Dr. David M. Altshuler, associate professor of genetics…

“The picture that’s emerging” of how living cells actually operate and evolve “is so immensely more complicated than anyone imagined, it’s almost depressing,” Rigoutsos said…

But few had predicted the complex orchestration of genes and nongenetic DNA suggested by the Encode research…

“We were looking at droplets,” she said. “Now we’re suddenly viewing the ocean. It will take time just to get our bearings.”

Source here.

Meeting: October 2007

October 2007 Meeting Agenda

• 7pm start, welcome and general introduction (RW)
• DVD Resources
• Quiz: recent atheist book authors; Michael Ruse quote re Richard Dawkins (RW) (~5 minutes)
• Brief overview of the ID movement and where it fits with apologetics (RW) (~5 minutes)
• Wikipedia and criticism of Jonathan Wells; practical importance of knowing the genetic and poisoning of the well fallacies (RW+CG) (3 minutes)
• Icons of Evolution DVD – Jonathan Wells (CG) (~60 minutes)
• Recent Biology books (e.g. year 2000) — STILL have Haeckel’s embryo (CG)
  

Read more

ExPELLED - No Intelligence Allowed

This movie, due out Feb 2008, looks really exciting in the context of the culture wars going on at present.

There is a website you can visit to get a preview of the movie here:

http://www.expelledthemovie.com

In case you don’t know, a number of very good scientists have been denied tenure because of their support of ID and skepticism of Darwinism. See a recent case on www.uncommondescent.com for example.

Update: More here.

Book Review: Letter to a Christian Nation #1

A Challenge to Faith

By Sam Harris
Foreword by Richard Dawkins
New York Times Bestseller

Being rather busy at present, I thought this book would be good for a review, and a rebuttal, since it is a mere 91 pages (and small pages at that). I expect that I will require at least a dozen posts to cover the entire book which has but one large chapter and numerous sections therein, a foreword and a Note to the Reader.

As I work through this book, I will be responding to it primarily using a presuppositional apologetic. That is, I will be presupposing the Bible to be the true word of God and presupposing the Christian worldview to be true. These things can and have been debated; you are welcome to use our forum for these purposes should you choose to.

I should point out that all people have presuppositions, otherwise known as axioms, which cannot be proven. These axioms are taken on faith, and can be thought of as pegs, driven into the ground, upon which all your subsequent truth-claims are tied. To discover your axioms, take a belief you have and ask how you know it is true. Then ask how you know that, and so on. Eventually you will arrive at an axiom.

This book is not the first time I have come across Sam Harris; previously I watched him on some videos from an atheist conference where I thought he came came across as articulate, dogmatic and at least in part, wrong. However, we will come to that in due course.

Further, I should say that I appreciate these atheists (Harris and Dawkins et al.) to some degree, having the guts to put their beliefs plainly on the table. Unlike many people in the churches I have attended over the years, these guys have determination and conviction, and they are prepared to stand up and be counted. That is not to say I am going to agree with them; it is to say that many Christians are effectively useless in this arena because they a too busy being entertained by the world Jesus told them not to be ensnared with, rather than pouring over books and studying and getting an education.

Ok, so let’s get into the book.

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Apologetics.com podcasts

There are some great discussions on the Apologetics.com podcasts.

See the picture to the right? This is what you see in iTunes (www.apple.com/iTunes) if you subscribe to the free podcasts.

Then you probably want to grab an iPod and plug in in to your PC (or Mac) and it will automagically upload the podcasts on the iPod ready for listening!

Thanks www.apologetics.com !

What’s wrong with Bishop Spong?

“…Spong does not believe in a God who intervenes in history; rather he believes that we become “[Gods] … by having the courage to be the self God created each of us to be. (RBF p. 206-7)” Jesus wasn’t virgin-born; he was the product of rape. He was not divine, but a fallible human, a good social teacher, was married, suffered the criminal’s death of crucifixion. His body was not buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, but thrown in a common criminal’s grave. He was not resurrected bodily, but his body rotted along with the other corpses.”

“…Spong portrays “fundamentalists” as bigoted ignoramuses, whereas those who agree with him are highly learned and intellectual. However, how solid and credible are Spong’s arguments? Is the Bible really littered with the problems and contradictions that Spong claims it is? How reliable are the arguments Spong draws from history or science?”

“…Spong prides himself on being scholarly and on spending hours studying the Bible. Yet, as we have seen in his study of Gal. 1:15f., he makes basic mistakes about the content and meaning of the Greek text. Also, he erroneously asserts that “render undo Caesar” is found only in the Gospel according to Luke; whereas it is also found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Such basic mistakes do not enhance the credibility of a professed scholar.”

Source: http://www.christian-apologetics.org/html/Whats_wrong_Spong.htm

On iTunes —> Podcasts

iTunes have lots of podcasts, including quite a number of apologetics series.

To access them requires iTunes which is free from www.apple.com.

While there, check out “Apologetix”.

Qur’an and Crusades

Jihad or Crusades: Which came first? A nice short PDF journal article by Elliot Miller here.

Is the Qur’an Credible? A nice short PDF journal article by Hank HaneGraaff here comparing the Bible and the Qur’an.

What would it take for a Darwinist to change his mind?

A free-for-all contest on the central issues of the Intelligent Design controversy.

October 4

Intelligent Design theorist Dr. Paul Nelson takes on a preeminent Darwinist philosopher, Dr. Michael Ruse in a wild, head-to-head debate on the most controversial aspects of the scientific and philosophical issues.  This could be the most entertaining and informative evening you experience this year!

Where: Sutherland Auditorium, Biola University

When: 7:30-9:30 pm

Cost: $20

Seating very limited for this rare debate, tickets will sell out quickly.

Source: http://www.biola.edu/academics/professional-studies/apologetics/events/

Alister McGrath goes after Richard Dawkins

I am disappointed. I would have expected an Oxford professor to use a much more careful, scholarly approach, always trying to see an opponent at his best, and not using simplistic generalizations. I can entirely understand why Michael Ruse and many other atheists are embarrassed by The God Delusion. What concerns me most, however, is what this book shows us about today’s atheism. I think this book is being read primarily by atheists who want to bolster their faith, when all around them God is being taken more seriously than he has for many years.

Source: here.