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Scientists don’t always welcome new scientific theories, especially if those theories lend support to the existence of God. In fact, some scientists can be downright hostile, declaring the theories to be unscientific. One instance in which this seemed to be the case occurred in 1938. The German physicist, Carl F. von Weizsäcker, delivered a lecture in which he presented a relatively new idea. He proposed that the universe began to exist, which implied that it had been created by God. Listening to Weizsäcker deliver his lecture was a renowned physical chemist named Walther Nernst who became quite upset. He stated that “the view that there might be an age of the universe was not science.” Nernst added that “the infinite duration of time was a basic element of all scientific thought, and to deny this would mean to betray the very foundations of science.” Weizsäcker was quite surprised to hear this and responded that there was nothing unscientific about forming a hypothesis based on evidence. But Nernst would have none of it and responded that no scientific hypothesis could contradict “the very foundations of science.” Despite Nernst’s deep protestations, this new idea became known as the Big Bang theory and has become accepted by the vast majority of scientists. Learn More Short Blog: Rebuke of Inflated Claims Concerning Origin of Life Reference Carl F. von Weizsäcker, The Relevance of Science (London Collins, 1964), 151–153.

If God has a good reason for allowing evil to exist, should you expect to know what that reason is? There are four main responses to this question. First, some theists answer the question affirmatively and claim to know why God allows evil. Other people suggest possible reasons God might have but don’t claim to be certain of them. Third, there are those who don't have any idea why God allows evil but they still trust there is a good reason. And lastly, many atheists are certain that there is no good reason. The assumption that many atheists make is that if they cannot think of any good reason, then there must not be a good reason. But is that the most rational option? Should atheists expect to be able to think of every possible reason that God might have? Is it possible that they have not considered all the options? Is it even possible that God has a good reason which no one has ever considered? Perhaps atheists are too quick to jump to this conclusion. Pastor Tim Keller highlights this issue in a talk he gave at Google. He points out that when someone says he can't believe in God because of evil and suffering, he is indirectly claiming to have considered all the possible answers and found them wanting. When someone says, 'I can't believe in God because he allows such evil and suffering', what you actually are saying is this: 'Because I can't think of any good reason why God would allow evil and suffering, therefore there can't be any good reason'... See the only way to walk away from God is to assume there can't be a good reason. After appreciating this point, you may be interested in exploring possible reasons as to why God allows evil. If that's you, check out the second half of the video below. Learn More Short Blog: Irony Behind Rejecting God Because of Evil Video (below): Reconciling a Good God with the Reality of Evil - Woodside Bible Fellowship Reference Talks at Google, "Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical | Tim Keller | Talks at Google," October 19, 2016, YouTube video, 57:53, https://youtu.be/4uIvOniW8xA. Timestamp: 21:32 - 21:58

Mary Poplin was a New Age enthusiast. As a graduate student, she had tried transcendental meditation classes and experimented with marijuana and various psychedelic drugs. At the age of 41, she was a college professor teaching critical theory, radical feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. Then, in November 1992, she had a very vivid dream. I was in a line of people, so long I could see neither beginning nor end. We were dressed in gray robes, marching ahead very slowly. Suddenly we reached an area where a yellow light was emerging. As we approached it, I saw the scene of the Last Supper… When I got to Jesus and looked into his eyes, I grasped immediately that every cell in my body was filled with filth. Weeping, I fell at his feet. But when he reached over and touched my shoulders, I suddenly felt perfect peace! This dream was so powerful that it led her to begin reading the Bible. And one day, as she read it, she realized that evil existed and that it was in her. Not long after, she found herself at church. On the first Sunday in January 1993, I was sitting in a very small Methodist church where my mother had grown up, listening to the pastor invite the congregation to Communion. When the time came to go forward, I prayed to God, “If you are real, please come and get me.” Suddenly I felt the same peace I had known in the dream. God had reached into Mary’s soul and made her know how real he was. As a result, she decided to follow Jesus, which transformed her life. Learn More Short Blog: Jesus' Life Borrowed From Ancient Egyptian Mythology? Reference Mary Poplin, “As a New Age Enthusiast, I Fancied Myself a Free Spirit and a Good Person,” ChristianityToday.com, December 21, 2017, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-february/as-new-age-enthusiast-i-fancied-myself-free-spirit-and-good.html.

Should medical professionals promote gender reassignment surgery when requested by individuals afflicted with gender identity disorder? As an increasing number of children and teens identify as the opposite sex, many are receiving medical treatment to alter their identity. A significant number of these minors later find themselves regretting their decision. Charlie Evans publicly expressed regret at her decision to become male and then found herself inundated with messages from others who also regretted their decisions. After hearing from hundreds of other young people, she decided to start a group called The Detransition Advocacy Network. Evans told Sky News that, I'm in communication with 19 and 20-year-olds who have had full gender reassignment surgery who wish they hadn't, and their dysphoria hasn't been relieved, they don't feel better for it. They don't know what their options are now. Learn More Short Blog: People “Born Gay”? - American Psychological Association Reference Sally Lockwood, “‘Hundreds’ of Young Trans People Seeking Help to Return to Original Sex,” Sky News, October 5, 2019, https://news.sky.com/story/hundreds-of-young-trans-people-seeking-help-to-return-to-original-sex-11827740.

Scientists have discovered that there are certain constants found in the laws of physics that need to be set very precisely in order for life to exist in our universe. The best explanation for these facts is that our universe was designed by God. However, a lot of atheists reject this conclusion by arguing that our universe is just one of a very large number of universes (perhaps an infinite number) and therefore the fine-tuning can be explained by chance. The problem with this is that it means some very "absurd" universes can exist out there. And if these universes can exist then it's possible one of those "absurd" universes is actually the one we are in but we just don't realize it. This quote from a Babylon Bee article is satire but it helps illustrate the point. [An atheist named] Hemsworth stated that in the past he had used the argument of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” in debates with Christians to point out the absurdity of their beliefs—but once he discovered the multiverse theory he realized that he, too, believes in a universe that is ruled, governed and possibly even redeemed by a flying monster made of sentient spaghetti. “I have to accept that every possible universe might exist without exception—except, of course, the one described in the Bible—even if that means I accept the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my lord and savior,” Hemsworth said. Learn More Short Blog: Atheist Made Uneasy by All the Intelligent Theists in the World Reference “Atheist Accepts Multiverse Theory Of Every Possible Universe Except Biblical One,” The Babylon Bee, February 9, 2017, https://babylonbee.com/news/atheist-accepts-multiverse-theory-every-possible-universe-except-biblical-one.

Do Christians pride themselves in believing absurdities? More specifically, did the Church Father Tertullian embrace Christianity because it was irrational? For a long time, critics of Christianity have claimed he said, “I believe [in Christianity] because it is absurd.” But Dr. Peter Harrison at the University of Queensland disagrees. He argues that Tertullian simply thought the resurrection account was too fantastic to have been made up. Dr. Harrison explains this in the following quote. Scholars of early Christianity have long known that Tertullian never wrote those words… It should not come as a complete surprise, then, that Tertullian did not advocate this principle. He did, however, make this observation, with specific reference to the death and resurrection of Christ: ‘it is entirely credible, because it is unfitting … it is certain, because it is impossible’... One likely explanation … is that, in his paradoxical juxtaposition of impossibility and certainty, Tertullian is drawing upon a principle set out in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Addressing himself to the credibility of highly improbable events, Aristotle observes: ‘We may argue that people could not have believed them, if they had not been true or nearly true. And that they are more likely to be true because they are incredible.’ His point seems to be that the apparent incredibility of a reported claim can actually provide a reason for believing it, since a witness seeking to perpetuate a false story would most likely have come up with something that at least seemed plausible. If this connection is on the right track, Tertullian, who almost certainly knew Aristotle’s Rhetoric, is not advocating belief without justification, but suggesting that we sometimes have good reasons to believe the highly improbable. If this connection is on the right track, Tertullian … is not advocating belief without justification, but suggesting that we sometimes have good reasons to believe the highly improbable. Learn More Short Blog: "So Many Christian Hypocrites" a Good Excuse? Reference Peter Harrison, “‘I Believe Because It Is Absurd’: Christianity’s First Meme,” Aeon, April 9, 2018, https://aeon.co/ideas/i-believe-because-it-is-absurd-christianitys-first-meme.

Are there “holes” in the traditional Muslim understanding of how we got the Quran? One respected and conservative Sunni scholar thinks so. Dr. Yasir Qadhi is a Pakistani-American Muslim scholar who is widely respected in the Muslim community. In a 2020 interview with Muhammad Hijab, he described a crisis he had while completing graduate studies at Yale University. The crises had to do with the various ahruf and qira’at (i.e. versions) of the Quran. In the interview, Qadhi does not explain the issue further and he repeatedly states that the issue should not be discussed in public. The interview caused quite a controversy amongst Muslims such that Muhammad Hijab (the man interviewing Qadhi) decided to (almost immediately) delete this portion of the dialogue from the video on his YouTube channel. A few weeks later, in July 2020, Qadhi set the entire interview to "private" on his YouTube channel thereby preventing anyone from watching it in its entirety. The issue has caused so much controversy because it affects the oft-repeated claim that the Quran in existence today is exactly the same as the Quran that the "prophet" Muhammad gave to the first Muslims. Here are some quotes from that interview. And I would never bring it up in public… When you do a deep dive is when things get very, very awkward and difficult… This is not a joke brothers and sisters… Now for the first time I’m telling you here… these are very, very difficult issues and the most advanced of our scholars, they’re not quite fully certain how to solve all of the unanswered questions… These issues should only be discussed amongst people who know what qira’at are… and by the way this is now a well known open secret amongst many Muslim graduate students and academics around the world. Traditional understandings of ahruf and qira’at cannot answer some of these pressing questions that are now being poked by… academics outside of the faith tradition. You see, in a Muslim environment there is always some respect that we have for the Quran… When you go to academia they don’t have that red line. And they’re gonna just, you know the famous story of the emperor with no clothes, they’re gonna just point out, ‘no, that doesn’t make any sense’ or ‘that’s not true’ and ‘this and that.’ And they’ll bring issues which I’m not going to mention explicitly, that you know are true because they’re in your own books. They’re not inventing anything new… I don’t even want to be explicit… and it’s very clear… that the standard narrative has holes in it. That’s what I’m gonna say. The standard narrative does not answer some very pressing questions… This is no longer hidden news. More and more professors and academics are writing stuff and it’s being publicized on Twitter… And by and large our ulema [i.e. scholars] in the eastern world are not aware, by and large, of what’s going on in the western side of things. And they’re not answering those questions in a manner that it needs to be answered. This is something all of us, that are in academia, fully acknowledge. This issue of ahruf and qira’at has troubled the ummah [i.e. Muslim community] from the very beginning… You will not find one lecture of mine about this issue. It should never be brought up in public… This is not something you discuss amongst the masses… It’s not wise. These problems are now becoming mainstream. Learn More Short Blog: "Every Fifth Sentence or So [of the Quran] Simply Doesn’t Make Sense" External Video (below): This video features clips from the full interview Reference Yasir Qadhi’s full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dc1HJ8Uif4&app=desktop (See 1 hr 20 min to 1 hr 30 min for the quotes above.) Note: As of (approximately) July 2020, Dr. Qadhi has set this video to "private" so that it is no longer viewable. However, you can still watch much of the interview by searching YouTube for "yasir qadhi muhammad hijab preservation of quran" or similar words.

Did Noah’s flood really cover the whole earth? Young-earth creationists insist that it did and that the science supports it. Skeptics reject that as preposterous nonsense. Dr. Hugh Ross believes that the Bible is absolutely correct in recounting Noah’s flood but that it did not literally cover the whole earth. In his words, it was “universal” but not “global.” The idea behind Ross' argument is that the Bible uses phenomenological language. That is, when the Bible talks about the “sun rising” (e.g. Malachi 1:11) it’s speaking the same way we do today. When we say that the sun rises, we don’t literally mean that the earth is stationary and the sun is moving; but rather from our perspective, the sun is rising. And from our perspective, it’s absolutely true to say that the sun rises every morning. So when the Bible says that Noah’s flood covered the “earth,” it’s describing events from the perspective of the author. And at the time, the “earth” would amount to the whole known world which probably meant the Mesopotamian valley and possibly the area around it. Ross points to other examples in scripture to support this interpretation. In Genesis 41:57 we read, “[A]ll the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world.” Genesis 42:5–6 clarifies that the famine had spread throughout the whole of the Egyptian Empire and the land of Canaan. “The world” in this context refers to a major region of human civilization rather than to the entire globe. The writer of 1 Kings 10:24 declares that “The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart.” Again, the succeeding verses clarify what “the whole world” encompassed. Rulers came from as far away as Sheba (modern Ethiopia) and all the lands of Arabia, probably not from Antarctica or Greenland. Learn More Short Blog: Constants in Laws of Physics Point to God Reference Hugh Ross, “Exploring the Extent of the Flood: Part One,” Reasons to Believe (blog), January 1, 2009, https://reasons.org/explore/publications/nrtb-e-zine/read/nrtb-e-zine/2009/01/01/exploring-the-extent-of-the-flood-part-one.

When someone says that any claim about Jesus, Christianity, or religion in general, is just “your truth,” what they are trying to do is turn an objective claim about reality into a subjective claim. This is an indirect way of saying that something is false without actually giving any good reasons. It’s easy to see the problem with it when it’s used to respond to other objective claims. Imagine if you told an average American citizen that they were not (contrary to what they believed) the King of England. “Oh, that’s just true for you,” the person responds. Or suppose you told a powerful slave owner that treating his slaves cruelly was wrong. “That’s just true for you,” he insists. In both cases, the two persons would be implicitly rejecting the objective statements as false without actually giving any good reasons. If you’re looking for a good response, (politely) ask the person who says Christianity is “just your truth,” how they *know* it’s “just“your truth.” Or if you want to use their approach, ask them whether their claim that “Christianity is just true for you” is something that is “just true for them?” Learn more: https://www.worldviewsummit.org/post/is-christianity-just-true-for-you _____________________ Worldview Summit: Explore the ultimate questions of life from a Christian worldview. If you liked this post, check out the website: worldviewsummit.org Learn More Short Blog: “Everything Is Meaningless!” - Ravi Zacharias’ Response Video (below): Apologetics and Evangelism - 1ª Igreja Presbiteriana Independente Bauru

The God of the Bible says that it is very wrong when we fail to worship him. Hence he condemns idolatry (i.e. worshipping other gods) over and over again in the pages of the Bible. For example, through the prophet Ezekiel, God told the Israelites that, You will suffer the penalty for your lewdness and bear the consequences of your sins of idolatry. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.” But why does this matter to God so much? Why does God care whether people worship him? What many people fail to realize is that the seriousness of a sin is determined not just by the type of act done but also by who the act is done against. Consider the act of killing someone or something. If you killed a dangerous bacteria or virus, such as the Ebola virus, most people would not think you had done anything wrong. In fact, you’d probably be regarded as having done something good. If you killed an innocent dog or cow, you would not have done anything good, but it would probably not be bad. But if you killed an innocent human being (assuming there were no extenuating circumstances), almost everyone would agree that you had done a great wrong. What this shows is that how evil an act is, is determined not just by the type of act done but also who the act is done against. Now, if wronging a person (by killing them, stealing from them, etc.) is very serious because human beings have great value, how much more serious is it to wrong a being of infinite value and worth? It is unimaginably evil. That’s why it is so evil when people fail to give God the worship and glory that he is due. And since all of us have failed in this respect, all of us are in dire need of God's grace and mercy. Learn More Short Blog: Establishing Christian God vs. Mere Transcendent Being Video (below): God, Worship and the Meaning of it All - University of Guelph 2017 Reference Ezek. 23:49 (NIV).

Many people reject Christianity because they disagree with one or more of its moral teachings. They reason that, “If the Bible really was from God, it would not prohibit/condone _______.” What someone puts in this blank space will usually depend on the time and place they live in. Those who live in the 21st-century Western world will often cite something like restrictive sexual standards, abortion, gay marriage, etc. They will argue that Christianity is wrong on these matters and needs to “get on the right side of history.” But those who live in other times and places will disagree with other issues. In certain Middle-Eastern countries, many people argue that Christianity is too permissive on matters of sexuality and modesty. In other societies, Christianity’s stand against infanticide and child sacrifice (which was commonly practiced in the ancient world) made no sense. And in still other places, the Christian notion of forgiveness is preposterous. Almost every society has some issue on which Christian moral standards are regarded with disdain. And in each of these societies, the standards they hold to are “obviously” correct. Although it is understandable that people would use their moral intuitions and moral reasoning to evaluate the Christian worldview, these same people often fail to appreciate their own limitations. What are the chances that, of all the societies that have ever existed, one particular society is the only one to have gotten all of its moral standards perfectly correct? Isn’t that rather arrogant? Isn’t it much more likely that every society has something wrong? And if that's so, shouldn't that be factored in when evaluating Christian moral claims? Being aware of how our cultural conditioning can distort reality is an important step toward discovering truth. Learn More Short Blog: Four Factors Make Abortion Wrong - SLED Test

As the eldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, Mosab Yousef’s life was destined to be different. But no one could have predicted just how different it would turn out. His father, the Sheikh, was one of the founders of Hamas and a devout Muslim. He raised his son, Mosab Hassan Yousef, to follow in his footsteps and that was exactly the direction things were heading until his son took a fateful step. Beginning in 1997, Mosab started spying for Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and over the next ten years, he became one of their most valuable assets. During that time, he also met some Christians who introduced him to the teachings of another prominent leader of the Middle East. Mosab became impressed by the ideas of this ancient man, and especially by his radical instructions to “love your enemies.” Convinced that a commitment to forgiveness was the only hope for the turmoil in his land, Mosab’s heart began to be drawn in a different direction. Still, he was convinced that Islam was the true path. Eventually, though, his religious commitments were destroyed after listening to Father Zakaria Botros, an Egyptian Coptic Priest who regularly appears on Arabic satellite TV. Botros, who has a 60 million dollar bounty on his head thanks to al Qaeda, regularly points out the problems with the Quran and Islam in general. After watching Botros’ T.V. shows, Mosab decided to give his life to that ancient Middle Eastern leader and was baptized in 2005. Learn More Short Blog: Egyptian Coptic Priest Challenges Islam - Father Zakaria Botros External Book: Son of Hamas