Apprentice Owl Apologetics

                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 ...

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 monoth...

                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 Chin...

                We live in an age where, at least in the United States and the developed world, we are told that if something is broken, or inconvenient for us to fix, to simply throw it away. If I have a television or a kitchen appliance that goes bad, I can go out and get a new one and toss out the broken. If this were the case only for material possessions, I probably would have talked myself out of writing this because all this is to me is sentimentalism, which is fine in its own right, because I am sentimental about many of my own possessions and I would not like to throw them away even if they are broken if they hold some sort of memory or meaning to me. No, unfortunately I cannot stop at bewailing the downfall of the mechanical skill of the common man that he or she cannot fix what has been broken. The last time I checked, the divorce rate in the United States was at 50 percent. That is absolutely i...

                This is the first review of anything in the media that I will give. This isn’t a response to something that I read about Billy Graham’s series, just my opinion of it. I will go ahead and say that yes, I am biased and this is a positive review. As a Christian, I am always enthused to hear that there is a film like this in the mass media, but I have also learned to go and see for myself to see if what is presented is wholesome, or if it is the false doctrine that was foretold that we as Christians would put up with. I stand before you through this blog and say that the message presented by Reverend Graham and the others in this series is real and simple. I would hope that you don’t just read this review and believe me, I hope that you would go and watch for yourself. To follow this hope, I will try my best to only give a cursory overview of the three episodes in this series, to try and encour...

                A lot of Christians are probably of the mind that every church and church member needs to be of one mind and have one goal in mind. I’m not entirely sure on this statement. While it would be nice if churches could stop bickering so maybe the media would have a little harder time trying to discredit us, but what if every person in the church was a preacher, or what if everyone in the church was playing music? I believe that unity is needed in the church in terms of theology, and diversity is needed in terms of the membership of the church.                 What do I mean by theology? What I am defining this as is the idea that the church members have similar ideas about the interpretation of scripture; especially the scriptures pertaining to the way to salvation. The reason we have so many denominations amongst Christian...