Apprentice Owl Apologetics

                 This post is a response to a classic meme that we have all probably seen. We have seen the posts from popular atheist and anti-Christian forums that post this meme that goes something like this “There have been thousands of gods throughout human civilization, but don’t worry, only yours is the real one.” At first glance, this statement may hold some water, but when we take a look closer, we see that they are throwing out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. The meme tries to discredit Christianity because there are so many false religions out there. Really what they should be asking is, “how can Christianity claim to be true when other religions claim they have the exclusive truth?” What I want to do is to take a look at these questions and show how we can know that not only Christianity is true, but how we can see how other worldviews fail under the same criteria.         ...

                   I wanted to do a short little essay on why I think the Bible is not a science textbook, and why I think that is ok. We have plenty of sciences being studied that do not stir up much controversy among the religious communities, but we do have this supposed showdown over scripture vs evolution. The Bible was written not to communicate the mechanisms behind the operation of life and the universe, but to talk about the divine inspiration of humanity, the nature of our fallen state as humans separated by God, the wonderful love and mercy that God has on us by sacrificing his only son to restore the God-human relationship, and the ultimate destiny of mankind should they choose the gift of salvation offered by Jesus or reject it.               Now, I do hold my doctorate in Chemistry, and I teach university courses in Chemistry and I advocate that science an...

               Another one of the more relevant objections to Christianity is the apparent sexism that we read into scripture, particularly the Old Testament. I have written a handful of previous posts discussing how Christianity is unique in the treatment of women, particularly how women are treated with respect in contrast with the ancient world around the tribes of Israel and the cultures in which Christianity was born. We see scripture filled with stories that prominently feature women and show that God will pour out his grace and love on all of his creations equally (Ruth and Naomi, Mary and Elizabeth, Rahab, the women leaders in the early church mentioned in Acts, I could go on but I want to get to the specifics of this post.) What I want to do is to take a look at the supposed scriptures that people reference in regard to women, typically in regards to sexual assault and marriage, though the women counting as half a testimony also comes t...

             From recent discussions with family, I have a few questions that I will be writing on to try and give answers to the questions that were brought up. One of the first questions that I had on my list was in regard to the multitude of Biblical translations from Hebrew/Greek into English. The question basically set up as follows, we have multiple translations, such as the KJV, NIV, NLT, etc. that have variations in how the scripture is read. Why should we bother with scripture because we have these imperfect copies? What I want to do here is talk about why we have different translations, and show how that even though we have variations in our English Bibles, that the core message of each scripture is not lost, and that many complaints against Biblical inerrancy are resolved if we use proper cultural understanding, supplemented with looking at the original Hebrew and Greek wording. Fair warning, I am no linguist, so I will be relying on my re...

               I am on summer vacation from teaching, and I was enjoying some time off, but I find myself reminiscing in this free time and realizing that apologetics has been a hobby of mine and a ministry that I feel called to for over 6 years now. I wanted to write a little opinion piece over some of the apologists that I started studying when I was younger, who I found more influential, and comment on some of the “newer” apologists that I have found on the way, When I say “newer” I mean that I stumbled across these apologists after I had started my own ministry, and even though I may quote them, they were not part of my original apologetics study. No disrespect to those on that list, I love all the people on this list and beyond.               For my first few apologists that I learned from, I have to mention Lee Strobel. His “Case for” series of books are awesome works to in...

               I have been following the apologetics community on social media, and I have seen that channels like Capturing Christianity have been having discussions on Intelligent Design, and some detractors have been bringing up the “puddle problem” objection to intelligent design. I’m sure there are plenty of people who will be writing responses to this themselves, but I wanted to add my own two cents to the problem.               The puddle problem is a response to the Teleological Fine Tuning Argument for the existence of God. It says that humans are merely products (puddles) of the natural forces of the universe around us (the hole we find ourselves in). It is presented as an alternative to the claim that the universe is fine tuned for life by an outside mind. I may be misrepresenting, but it seems to me like the puddle problem totally misrepresents the Teleological argume...

                 I really didn’t want to get political so soon after I said was taking a break from this topic, and I really didn’t want a high profile topic like abortion, but God has a sense of humor like this, and I feel I must put in my two cents. Maybe it’s because I have plenty of pro-choice friends on social media blasting their pride in abortions (or the fact that people should be able to choose to kill their fetus) and even so-called conservative pages condemning Alabama and Georgia in their new laws being passed (and Missouri for considering it). Some of these people fought past issues with fertility to have the children they have in their arms today, so the apparent hypocrisy that I see infuriates me as well as breaks my heart. I wanted to give my thoughts on abortion, look at scripture to see if God values the unborn, and what I think the United States government should be doing about it. I don’t want to bash anyone, but I did w...