The Lossness of Man

I recently saw a video in which a song about cooking was spliced/remixed with a popular rapper’s music video in what can only be described as “horrendously insane.” Watching this Nickelodeon video of “Cooking by the Book” by Lazy Town where at any given point, rapper Lil Jon yells out any and every kind of profanity just boggles the mind. Who can find this entertaining?!

A similar boggling event was described in Neil Postman’s book The Disappearance of Childhood in which he tells a story:

Vidal Sassoon is a famous hairdresser who, for a while, had his own television show-a mixture of beauty hints, diet information, celebrity adoration, and popular psychology. As he came to the end of one segment of one of his programs, the theme music came up and Sassoon just had time enough to say, ‘Don’t go away. We’ll be back with a marvelous new diet and, then, a quick look at incest!’

One commentator noted,

To think that intelligent people can believe there is not something wrong with a mind that can switch subjects between matters of such seriousness and such frivolity defies rationality.

Christmas Conspiracy

The story of Christ’s birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love.

So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists.

And when it’s all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?

This Christmas, instead of buying something you don’t need for either yourself or someone else, buy something that can make a difference. Below I’ve listed 5 organizations, some Christian and some secular. Check them out and see what you can afford. Do something meaningful this Christmas!

http://www.thirstrelief.org/
http://bread.org/
http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.183217/#
http://www.worldvision.org/
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/
http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

As a Christian, it is my social responsibility to take care of the needy people in this world. I have personally made a donation to one of these organizations as my present to Christ, on his [celebrated] birthday. I would encourage all Christians everywhere to do this as well.

As an apologist, I’ve encountered many people who say “non-Christians are not bad people.” This year, I make my call to you. Practice what you preach. If you’re an atheist or agnostic or person of another belief, I would encourage you to give to those in need. Whether or not your motives are pure, whether or not you want to give just to spite me and every other Christian out there, I would encourage to give anyways.

Borrowed Christianity

In recent years, one of the attacks made against Christianity is that it is actually a religion [clearly] borrowed from other religions and thus, somehow, it is fake/not relevant. Before I even address this main thought, let me point out the purple elephant in the room: this attack is committing an extreme logical issue called the genetic fallacy. [See a list of the main logical fallacies through this site link] Basically, this attack works by explaining away something by determining its origins. While this sounds quite lame, it’s made more erroneous when said origins are rather embarrassing (i.e., Christianity is just recycled pagan myths).

Since there are too many variations of this attack, I’m just going to address the most popular one, made mainly via the media. In 2007, the movie Zeitgeist was released, claiming that not only was Christianity mainly borrowed from Egyptian mythology, but that it can be linked to 9/11, the Federal Reserve, and in general, a lot of not-so-good stuff.

LOLs of Nature: Biogenesis

(Source)

The basic principles of the legal Systems in both England and the United States come directly from the Bible.  Here in the U.S. of A., many local and state governments have the 10 Commandments posted on public buildings. Courts in Great Britain, as well as our Supreme Court, preview the Commandments in significant places. In the building which houses the Supreme Court, you will actually see an etching of Moses holding the 10 (among others). [The oak doors of that courtroom also have the famous Laws on them.] Right above the Justices, you will see the 10 Commandments yet again (though some don’t like it). It was Supreme Court Justice John Jay who wrote:

Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.

But aside from the Legal and Justicial systems, there’s another Type of Law that I want to talk about, and this one is in regards to science….

Hanging By a Thread

There are many types of apologetics, but the one I like to focus on usually has a special perspective. I don’t like to assume my readers are Christian, but that they are, in fact, reading and at least attempting to keep an open mind. Because of this, I usually don’t like to post up anything exclusively Christian that has little or no apologetic value. Nevertheless….

I was listening to this speech by Christian Apologist Peter Kreeft in which he quotes this wonderful little illustration. To give some background, the speaker is talking about J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings volumes. In one such explanation about Gollum and Modor and pain, Kreeft makes this remark:

Religulous

Bill Maher, a somewhat well-known talk-show host and political commentator, decided to make a movie based on his view of American religion. The movie, as you probably have heard, is called “Religulous” [Trailer Link]. As you would’ve guessed, he is a pretty extreme atheist. He believes that religion is entirely hypocritical, and that it is the cause of many of society’s problems. Like many modern atheists, this movie is Maher’s way of inciting atheists to “come out of the closet” and to radically profess what they know to be true.

Even though Religulous might be expected to have extreme bias against religion, seeing as it’s the sole purpose of the movie to be anti-religion, I’d probably concede that his movie isn’t entirely wrong on one point: people don’t know why they believe what they believe. It is not hard for me to imagine that this country is full of people who have no real groundings in their beliefs.

Supernatural Survival: How Is the Bible Still Around Today?

How can the cohesive writings of over 40 people, written over a time-span of over 1500 years still be around today? I’m pretty sure  that the manuscripts did not have a survival kit (in a sardine can) to get themselves through the wilderness of the multitude of years from their writing ’till today.

Throughout history, we see many instances of Christian persecution.  Most would think that with the amount of people trying to remove Christianity and the Bible from this world that there would’ve been an attempt that actually worked!

The Conquest: Jericho & The Tumblin’ Walls

Before you think that this is just another blog post that rants against the Central Broadcasting System for canceling that TV show, Jericho, think again!

In all seriousness, I will be doing another historical study on another one of the Bible’s City-Events: Jericho and its destruction. However, before we begin, I want to examine why exactly this subject matter is worth your time and consideration:

“The Conquest provides another example of the search for connections between biblical and historical-archaeological material. This concerns an event for which there is a considerable amount of archaeological evidence, a great mount of detailed description of the biblical sources, and volumes of diverse opinions and hypotheses produced by modern scholars.”^[1]

Get out of my way, Science!

Is the theory of Intelligent Design a “Science er”? Evolutionists think so. Back in early 2007, Robert Naeye of Sky & Telescope Magazine commented that not only was ID synonymous with Creationism (which by definition is impossible^[1]), but that it is a hindrance to science. He writes:

Intelligent design basically says that whenever scientists can’t solve a particular mystery about the natural world, then we should invoke some kind of mystical being, the so-called intelligent designer, to answer the question (and let’s be honest, everyone knows we’re talking about god here, and preferably one in the Judeo-Christian tradition). If humans had been adopting that philosophy for the past few thousand years, we’d still be living as hunter-gatherers.^[2]

Now aside from blurting out stuff for which he has no evidence for, his main support for his theory is the argument from Vestigial Organs, specifically the appendix.

Origins of Pain

“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” -Yoda

As we saw in The Introduction, there’s an issue of Evil/Pain/Suffering in this world. But before we “point the finger at God,” we must first define what exactly we mean. Suffering is split into two types of evil:

-Physical evil-
Evil that we passively suffer. Examples: tornadoes,
hurricanes, pain of childbearing, unnatural death. [Does not appear to have a direct cause so we therefore we attribute it to God]

-Moral evil-
Evil that is directly caused by the actions of ourselves and others. Examples:  murder, rape, people who get our fast food orders wrong, people who sell iPod knockoffs from China. [Appears to have a direct cause, linked to a specific person or group of people]