Apprentice Owl Apologetics

                As I write this, I am thinking over the past year that God has blessed me with and am pondering the things he has given me and taken away. I lost one of my grandfathers at the beginning of the year and a friend of mine committed suicide earlier in the year. While the pain was substantial during and after these events, I am comforted in the fact that both of these people had accepted Jesus as their savior and that I will see them again when God decides to call me home. I would go into more stories about them, but I have already said my piece on this blog and would like to dwell on happier things tonight.                 God has blessed me very much this year. I have been doing well in graduate school and have passed the departmental requirements for most of my second year, there is one more thing to complete in April but the biggest hurdle was a literature seminar I gave in November. My family had a brief scare with my Dad getting an infection in his leg and deteriora

                To pick up where I left off on the last left off, we have Joseph and Mary arriving at the town of Bethlehem. They are looking for a place to stay and all of the inns are full. They finally come to an inn where the proprietor allows them to stay in the barn in the back. Now Mary’s time has come for her to have her child. Jesus is delivered and they wrap him in swaddling cloth and the only place they can lay him is in a manger. I would like to take a minute to talk about the conditions Mary, Joseph, and now the baby Jesus are living in. They are in a barn meant for keeping livestock. I have been in a barn, I can’t say I have stayed in one, but I will say that it is not the most pleasant smelling of places if you have non-human residents. To focus on the manger, this is not typically used to lay newborn children. This is a feeding trough for the animal residents of the barn. Once again, livestock feed isn’t the most pleasant substance if left out and allowed to rot. This

                While the birth of Christ is a great event, the setting of the birth is important as well, as it could give some context and greater meaning to Christ’s birth. Firstly, one must keep in mind that the holy spirit has departed Israel, and God has not spoken to Israel in over 400 years. This in between period is known as the silent years. The book of Malachi concludes by saying that God would send Elijah as the forerunner for the Messiah. One of the Jewish writers of the time wrote that the altars were torn down and stored until a prophet came and give them instruction. The people of Israel were spiritually starving when Christ was born. Second, the nation of Israel has also been taken over by the Romans. Caesar Augustus has just decreed a census which requires citizens to return to their place of birth to be counted. So while Israel  was free from the slavery of the Babylonians or the Egyptians, they still had an earthly power over them instead of God alone. To come ba

                During the month of December I am going to try to write my first series, and given the major holiday of the month is Christmas, you can guess what the topic of the series will be. This first part will focus on the meaning of Christmas. Now the typical answer that most people would give for Christmas is that it is either the celebration of the birth of Christ or the celebration of the giving of gifts to one another to show love to one another. While both are well and good, the former answer provides a much more lasting gift than the new sweater that grandma just knitted for you.                 Now then, why does the birth of Christ matter? Other than the fact that one of the most famous historical figures came into being. That’s the thing, as a follower of Christ, I believe that he is so much more than just a historical figure. The birth of Christ shows that God took off his divinity and took on the mortal flesh of man to fulfill the messianic prophecies described in

               Recently, a friend and colleague of mine committed suicide. His name was Christian Taylor, and undergraduate student at Texas A&M University. Christian, in my experience, was a generally happy guy who loved to ponder scientific and philosophical questions. We shared the same office since the beginning of the summer and as a result had quite a few interesting discussions while working together. On October 15, Christian ingested sodium cyanide, he was rushed to the hospital and he went on to be with the Lord on October 17. While attending his funeral, another friend of mine asked me if suicide was a sure way to hell. I disagreed with him and explained my reasons. I would like to repeat these reasons here as a tribute to the memory of a friend.                 Now as I said, I don’t think that suicide is a sure way to hell. By my beliefs, there is only one sin that can send someone to hell. This sin is dying an unbeliever in Christ. By this, I mean that if you leave

                A common argument I hear against the gospel of Christ is that people are good enough to get along without God. They go to work, take care of their families, are civil with their neighbors, and only occasionally curse out the person who just cut them off in traffic. Now obviously the list I provided is made up and a caricature of what I have heard, but hopefully you get the idea. These people believe that by being good according to the standards of the people around them and the government; that of course they are going to Heaven! Unfortunately, I have to say that these people are wrong for a few reasons, and I would hope to be able to elaborate on these reasons here. They believe  they are good enough: Something I see quite a bit is that people will claim that there are worse people than them, so by comparison they are good enough and that God will accept them on the basis that they are better than most. Unfortunately, we are all equal in the eyes of God being guilt

Introduction                 If you have recently graduated from University just like I have, you are very much aware of what goes on there in and out of the classroom. One thing that stays consistent is that it is normally the time that many students embark on a spiritual journey to find themselves, discover truth, liberate their minds, etc. There are many spiritual/religious groups that are found on University campus, but a trend that I have noticed is that, at least in the United States, that our generation is leaving the Christian church. For all the so called “tolerance” that is preached by most universities, I seem to notice a growing hostility toward the Christian faith, at least at my alma mater. Now don’t misunderstand me, there are still believers in the university, but the majority is not vocal, either through apathy to what is going on, fear of being ostracized by their peers for asserting their faith, or other reasons. In the departments that I studied in, Chemistry and

                Unfortunately this week one of my best friends had his mother pass away, and at the end of this past year my grandfather passed. I am a rather young man at 23 years old compared to the apologists I like to listen to (William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, John Lennox, Hugh Ross, etc.) and I have been blessed to not have to deal with much death in my lifetime. I have only had a handful of relatives and friends pass away and they have all been reported to be Christians. Don’t get me wrong I was sad to see them go but I had hope in the fact that I would see them again when my time comes. I stumbled across a video from The Thinking Atheist youtube channel on the afterlife, as well as a Christian response on the Inspiring Philosophy youtube channel (I will probably post them together on my facebook page closely after I post this on the site). These videos got me seriously thinking on the nature of the ultimate destination of man on this earth, and where we go after we leave ou

                If you watch a lot of evangelists on television, I imagine quite a few of them are like Joel Osteen and they preach what I am going to call the prosperity gospel. For those of you unversed in this, the prosperity gospel says that God is waiting to bless you with material wealth; you just have to believe hard enough that He is going to give you this wealth, as well as donating to that certain minister who happens to be speaking at the time. While there are certain characters in the Bible, such as Job, who God blessed with material wealth and health, I think this line of thinking grossly misrepresents the character of God and the reasons behind what we as Christians do what we do. Christians are called to make disciples and serve where we may be needed. We are also told numerous times in the New Testament that the life of a Christian will be a hard one, and that we may be persecuted and outcast for our beliefs. While here in the United States we do not face much pe

                A common argument that the gay community uses when one calls their lifestyle sinful is that they were born this way, so no choice is involved. Why would God make someone a certain way then call that way wrong? While this argument seems to hold water at first glance, I believe it falls apart once analyzed. Before I go to far into this article, I want to emphasize a few things. I hold no hatred towards the gay community; believe it or not, I love you equally to everyone else. I just happen to disagree with your lifestyle choice and believe it to be spiritually and psychologically harmful. What I present here is not supposed to be hate speech, though if anyone quotes me in an attempt to promote hate speech toward the gay community, let me say it right here that this is not my intention. My intention here is to examine the “born this way” argument and see if it is the end-all argument for this subject.                 To start off, let us examine the evidence invol

People like to generalize topics in life. Generalization makes life easier and saves people time of explaining the intricacies of each and every situation that may arise within the topic at hand. Unfortunately, not all generalizations are good. Bad generalizations, or stereotypes when we are referring to people groups, typically serve as comedic devices to make people feel better at the expense of certain people groups. When taken to extremes, stereotype jokes become serious racism, where people outright hate other people groups for one reason or another. Unfortunately, racism does exist and it causes all of us to fall back on the preconceptions we have of others every now and again. These assumptions may sometimes be true, but more often than not, at least in my experience, they are hurtful and way off the mark. The ideal situation is that we can take the time to get to know each and every individual and have deep fellowship with everyone. Unfortunately as I said, generalizatio

                Recently I have seen a surge of memes over the internet and quotes from people like Ricky Gervais (English comedian/actor) that atheism is not a faith or religious system, but merely the result of critical and rational thinking. Naturally given my position on this blog I was puzzled by this statement. I would like to take a few minutes of your time to ramble a bit over some of my avenues of thought that I have pursued to provide an answer to this statement.                 So to begin, one should probably start with a fundamental assumption, being the definition of atheism. From the Greek “atheos” meaning “without gods”. So by this framework, one would assume that atheism means literally no God or gods. Atheism to me is the belief that the Christian God or any other gods exist. Also by this anyone who claims that monotheists are atheists many times over with the exception of the God of their choice I argue is making an erroneous statement by way of categorical error

                I just got back from seeing the new movie “God’s Not Dead” and I was pretty impressed with the movie as a whole. I will preface this by saying that the style of the movie is very clichéd in places and some people may view the set up as unbelievable. Please understand that this is a movie and that I believe that the message is what is important here, and there are quite a few messages to be had. Before I get there I should back up and start from the beginning.                 The movie opens up at the beginning of every main character’s day. The characters involved are Josh Wheaton, a Christian freshman starting at university (I can’t recall if they ever name what university this is set at, but I do recall LSU apparel in the background so maybe it is in Louisiana), Philosophy Professor Jeffery Radisson, Mina, a Chinese student named Martin, a news investigator/blogger Amy, and Reverend Dave. Each character is going about their morning routine, and the scene fina