Apprentice Owl Apologetics

                When I’m browsing around online, I always see a meme or two in my facebook feed that say that the burden of proof is on the theist to prove the existence of God and that atheism is the default position that we have from birth. Now are both of these tenants true? What I would like to do here is to posit that the burden of proof is in fact on both the theist and the atheist, because we both make positive statements on the existence or lack of existence of a God or gods.                 So first off, what is a definition of the burden of proof? A quick search yields the definition of “the obligation to prove one’s assertion”. So does the theist have a burden of proof by asserting God exists? Definitely. Does the atheist have a burden of proof by asserting that God or gods do not exist? Absolutely! Both the atheist and the theist is making a positive cla...

                Good morning. If you thought getting up to preach was intimidating. Try getting up to preach on Mother’s Day, with your mother present to listen to you. To all the mothers present today. Thank you so much for bringing us into this world and for raising us. What I would like to do today is to explore a famous passage in scripture that describes a godly woman and mother. Proverbs 31 is the last chapter of the book of proverbs, and speaks about a mother, woman, and wife of noble character. The first 9 verses of the chapter. “The saying of King Lemuel-and oracle his mother taught him: “O my son, O son of my womb, O son of my vows, do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel- not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights. Give beer to those who are perishing, win...

                Recently my bible study class has been running through a book called Culture Shock by Chip Ingram. We ran across a section talking about the church and the environment. It is actually shocking what we have done to the environment through our negligence, wastefulness, and dependence on fossil fuels. Global warming leading to increased temperatures, severe weather patterns, increased rate of animal extinction, among other tragedies. Massive piles of garbage floating in the oceans, with an island cumulatively larger than smaller countries floating in the Pacific! Strip mining and deforestation, leading to the destruction of habitats, and further feeding of the global warming problem. What leads to these problems? What are we as Christians supposed to do to slow, stop, and maybe even reverse these problems? I hope to write a quick blurb over what has led to this point, what the Bible says about what we should think/do about the e...

                This one is a midnight think piece, so no idea on length as I get into this. As you may have noticed, I have been posting to Facebook from David Wood (Acts17Apologetics) about the Top 10 Lies that the media has told about Islam. I do not intend to expand on that series here, but instead on a thought that I had while watching this. How should we judge religions, including our own? By their followers, or by the text?                 So the first video in the series talked about how only a certain fraction of Muslims identify with extremism. So what? There are multiple passages in the Quran that mandate the killing of non-Muslims that do not convert to Islam. There are also passages that command Muslims to lie and follow the crowd if they are in the minority. Though once they gain the majority, Muslims are called to spread Islam like wildfire, by any me...

                Have you ever been in a relationship (not necessarily a romantic one), where you questioned what you were worth to them? How about an explicitly abusive relationship, where you were demeaned verbally or emotionally; or even physically abused? These situations, and I’m sure an infinite amount of others, illustrate toxic relationships where someone has questioned their value as a party in that relationship or even as a person in general. In some cases people will turn to God and ask, why me? Why do you value me so little? I would like to explore what exactly each and every individual on this earth is worth to the all mighty creator of everything that is, was, or ever will be.                 So we have God, who I am assuming that anyone reading this will at minimum, accept Him as the creator of us as humans for the sake of this discussion. We have a pl...

                Ask me what gets brought up as an objection to Christianity or the existence of God in general, then I can probably give you a top ten pretty quick. The number 1 on that list of mine would include the problem of suffering and evil. Now this is a moral argument against God that goes like “If God is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, then he should be able to get rid of evil. Since evil exists, God is not one of these 3, if He exists at all.” Now that argument is used in longer and shorter forms, but I hope you have the idea in mind. What I would like to do this morning is explore this problem and show that the problem of evil, like every other supposed problem I come across, can actually point people to God instead of away from Him. I will not be so arrogant as to say I understand why evil happens and to what purpose, but I will say that my God knows what he is doing.         ...

                This one will be a bit personal for me, and I have no idea if I will show this to the world or if I will be writing it as a way of prayer. I guess if you are reading this then I was led to put it up for you to see. Recently Satan has been working in my life to discourage me and to force me to quit. He attacked me on multiple fronts in my life in an attempt to get me to quit what I am doing and go hide. For a while, I thought about doing just that. I was thinking that I am not good enough, not smart enough, not strong enough to do anything about these problems. Then God spoke to me through various people in my life and showed me what Satan was trying to do to me. I was reminded of the quote preacher’s like to use, “If you are facing challenges in your life, then it is because Satan is worried that you are doing good work”. What I want to do is to explore what it means to have joy and trust in God, even when everything isn’t su...