Apprentice Owl Apologetics

               Recently, Dr. Lawrence Krass attended DebateCon to debate Michael Jones of InspiringPhilosophy as to whether or not Christian Ethics or Secular Ethics were more beneficial to society. During some of the cross examination, Dr. Krauss put forward this anecdotal evidence for how Christianity/Theism can’t be all there is to Ethics, because he has polled crowds of people asking them “If you lost belief in God, would you go out and commit murder?” According to Dr. Krauss, everyone he asked said “of course not”. It seems good at first, but as Michael pointed out, it was really anecdotal evidence in the face of all the studies that Michael brought to bear. That being said, I wanted to critique Dr. Krauss’ whole premise, as it seems to me that one’s ethics and morals don’t exist in a vacuum, they have to be in response to something.               I was pondering Dr. Krauss’ q...

          To those of you who are still following me and came back to see this post, thank you for stopping in. It has been 2 years since I last posted anything to this page (little over actually since my animal suffering post was July 10, 2021). I fell off writing because my wife and I were going through one of our biggest challenges we have faced, the supposed impending death and miscarriage of our second child, Austin. I say supposed because God is good and Austin survived long odds to not only make it to term, but he is a happy almost 2 year old now. Our daughter Abby is also doing great, almost 4 now, and she loves her brother fiercely. This particular post won’t necessarily be focusing on an apologetics topic (I hope to tackle the origin and uses of different Bible translations soon), I want to do use this post to tell that story of Austin’s miraculous turn around in the womb, and reflect on what all God has shown me and grown me in during almost 4 ye...

In my journey through my  Youtube feed a week or so ago, I saw a video come up from Hemant Mehta, the “Friendly Atheist” entitled “The 8 Different Kinds of Biblical Marriage”. Usually when I see videos like this from atheist channels, I expect their take on anything “Biblical” to be anything but, or they cherry pick to suit their message. I see some of that here, but I also see what I see from certain Street Epidemiologists like Pine Creek, where Hemant is working from an angle of incredulity about what scripture is saying. He is reading a modern morality into an ancient frame of law, which can be dangerous, because we miss the point that much of the Levitical law is case law, meaning God didn’t really want certain actions to happen, but He felt we needed laws to fall back on in the case that the action did happen. I want to take the time to work through the 8 kinds of marriage that Hemant mentions, and look at them from a proper historical and biblical lens and see if they are rea...

              YouTube atheist Cosmic Skeptic uploaded a video entitled “Christianity’s Biggest Problem”. He definitely caught my attention for the title and because I recently gained some respect for Alex as he had a recent discussion with William Lane Craig and that discussion turned out very well. To spoil Alex’s cryptic surprise, he believes that Christianity’s biggest problem is the problem of animal suffering. In Alex’s view, he believes that because animals experience gratuitous suffering (resource depletion, death in wildfires, long drawn out deaths to predators) that it is evidence that God does not exist, and that Christianity is false. I admit that I hadn’t really considered this problem, so I have gone looking for resources, and I would like to present what I have found here as possible avenues in which we can answer this particular problem. The first line of response I am borrowing Sean Luke, a comember of CAA: Christian Apologetics Allia...

 Henry Harding Wofford of Ponder Texas went home to be with the Lord on February 22, 2021. Henry was born on June 3, 1942 to Henry Guy and Lela Mae Wofford. Henry is survived by his wife Janice his son Bill Wofford of Ponder his son and daughter-in-law John and Jennifer Wofford of Krugerville. His 4 grandchildren Joshua and wife Elizabeth of Summerville South Carolina. Jacob Wofford of Irvine California. Kaitlyn Wofford of College Station Texas and Joseph Wofford of Krugerville Texas and 1 great granddaughter Abigail Wofford of Summerville South Carolina. Also a brother Leon Brady of Snyder Texas. Plus many nieces and nephews.  Henry was a member of Prairie Grove Road Baptist Church in Valley View Texas.  Henry had many hobbies and interests from hunting to fishing and rode in many rodeos in his younger days. His favorite hobby was spoiling his grandchildren and making rocking horses and rocking chairs and many other toys.  

               When I first heard that Ravi Zacharias was accused of sexual assault after his passing, I thought about that report that he was supposedly being extorted by a couple. I didn’t think it was true, and found it interesting that these accusations came after his death, where Ravi could not defend himself. However, after seeing the report from RZIM, and the extensive details provided from a supposed expedited study by a third party, I am following the evidence and agreeing with their conclusion, that Ravi Zacharias is a man who engaged in sexual harassment and assault of women.               This being said, I had written a little on what we should do when high profile Christians mess up, like when John Crist admitted to having inappropriate relationships with female fans back in 2019. My same ideas apply here, that we should have a very tight watch on our leaders, and kee...

In the age of COVID, a new presidency, a shift of power in the United States Congress, there is much uncertainty, and from that comes much fear. Fear of loss of health, fear of the mobs, fear of loss of finances, fear of loss of freedoms. We (Elizabeth and I) have had to deal with fear as new parents in all of this, and we have been scared for Abigail as she has been getting over her first cold this past week. She had a fever of 103 the first night, and we were afraid of it going higher and taking her to the ER. She still isn’t completely over it, but God is good and she is much better than she was. As we look at our own lives and fears, keep in mind Scripture has much to say about fear and what we are to do with it. I haven’t had time to count it all out myself, but there is a popular devotional making its way around the internet that says that the phrase “fear not” appears 365 times in the Bible, so they made a devotional calendar out of it. We have all heard the saying about if Go...

            With the advent (no Christmas pun intended) of the COVID vaccine, I have seen a huge uptick of Christians who are claiming some conspiracy theory of aborted fetus tissues being used in the production of the vaccine. I did some digging, and their claims are a little twisted. HEK293 and HeLa cells were used in the studies leading to the production of the vaccine. HEK293 cells were derived from the kidney tissue of an aborted fetus, and HeLa cells were derived from an African American cancer patient without her knowledge or consent. So yes, these cells were derived from aborted tissue and a human source in an unethical manner, but these cells have been immortalized, meaning that the cells can divide continuously. They cannot grow into a functioning human being, as the cells are already specialized into a certain type of cell. These cells being used does not mean that babies are constantly being killed when these cells are used. Does this histo...

            I have taken a little bit of time off, not really by choice, but due to a crazy semester back teaching in person and being a first round father while doing all of that. My wife and I have faced personal and professional challenges, and I believe that we have used them to grow as people, and to grow closer to God. This won’t be my usual fair of apologetics, but rather my thoughts and reflections on a year of a pandemic, a crazy election, a growing and learning daughter, and me getting close to the end of my 20’s. Lesson One: This has followed around our having to teach college classes over zoom. I need to really express my interest in Chemistry in my voice when all I really have to work with is my voice and a screen. My students rarely turned on their cameras, and my usual means of engagement had to change. This had me thinking back in the spring about being all things to all people (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). I work for a university that pri...

Who wrote the book of Hebrews? One topic of apologetics is defending the reliability of scripture, typically I write about the general reliability of scripture and that the Bible has not been corrupted over time because we have ancient copies (Dead Sea Scrolls), and that the Bible is indeed history (defending historicity of the resurrection, Jesus existed, events of Old Testament, etc.), but today we will take a look at a new topic for me, the authorship of specific books of the Bible. This is more of a Christian to Christian conversation in my view, but since churches split over differences like this, it is worth it to pursue so we have a fair treatment of both sides and can have an honest discussion and hopefully maintain unity in the church, even if we come to different conclusions about issues like this. Today we are looking at the book of Hebrews, a book that really doesn’t have authorship attributed to it today, but is traditionally thought of as being written by Paul. Ancien...

               With all the craziness going on the United States and the tearing down of statues and monuments, activist Shaun King has come out against “white depictions” of Jesus, stating that it is a form of white supremacy ( https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1275106946916499456?lang=en ). He has also unfortunately allegedly received multiple death threats over this tweet, which I do not condone in the slightest. What I want to do, is look at the content of his tweet, and see if there is any reason to think that depictions of Jesus as a white man are any form of white supremacy. Spoiler alert, Mr. King is grasping at straws here, as best as I can tell. We are going to look at artwork from around the world and show that Jesus, and sometimes Mary, are depicted as the ethnicity of the time/culture. I acknowledge that there are some denominations that are uncomfortable with visual depictions of Jesus and we could have avoided the problem altog...

               I have recently done a series on an intro to apologetics, and in that series I took a look at some of the objections to the resurrection, but not necessarily evidences for the resurrection itself. I had left that to the people who have laid out some awesome evidences for the resurrection, such as Dr. Gary Habermas, Lee Strobel, and others. Recently, I saw a YouTube story, those short little snippets, pop up in my feed from Godless Engineer. He had a ten second clip of himself railing against Christian apologists saying that we have very weak lines of evidence to support the resurrection and that we would be laughed at to use them anywhere else, and cited the principle of embarrassment of the gospel authors as an example. For those who haven’t heard of this, the principle of embarrassment has been used by apologists to demonstrate the validity of scriptures, because the gospel authors wrote themselves as bumbling fools in the face ...

               To continue our series in “Christian-ese”, the words that Christians throw around that non-Christians may not totally understand, we look at another couple of words that get tossed around a lot by Christians are “Justification” and “Sanctification”. Let’s take a brief look at these and see what they mean for our faith as Christians.               Justification can be viewed as a legal term first, then what it means for us as Christians. As I am a concealed weapons permit holder, I always have to think about justification, in case I ever have to use my weapon in defense of myself or others. Justification means that we are acting within the law and that whatever actions we take are legal. For example, if I have to draw my weapon, I need to make sure that I am somewhere that I am  supposed to be, that my life or someone else's life is in imminent danger, and that...

               Easter week is an appropriate time to talk and think about the next part of this series to decode “Christian-ese” for the non—Christians and seekers. Salvation is one of the first ideas that evangelists bring about when they are trying to, well, evangelize, but sometimes they don’t have the best grasp on how to communicate that, and they wind up just brow beating people with scriptures, telling them they are evil and condemned to Hell.               To start with salvation, it may be useful to explain why we need it in the first place. We as human beings have a moral covenant with God, in that we have His moral law written on our hearts (Romans 2:15) and are expected to follow that moral law. When we break that moral law, we commit sin, and the consequence of that sin is death (Romans 3:23, Genesis 3). It may sound harsh, but God is described as all good, all just,...

               I’ve prayed a bit about this, and I feel lead to do another series. This time, I am going to tackle a series meant specifically for non-Christians, and try to explain “Christian-ese” the language and concepts Christians may use all the time that non-Christians may not. They simply may not understand or think that we are trying to confuse them on purpose. To start, I want to tackle the holy book of Christians, the word of God, the Bible.               What is the Bible? Christians believe that the Bible is the word of God, spoken to the writers, that they wrote down. The Bible is compiled of these inspired works over the centuries that it took for God’s plan to be revealed to us through the arrival of Jesus and the founding of the early church. Christians believe that the Bible is a living, breathing document, that helps us to learn the heart of God. It is a road ...