Apologetics101

2009-01-03T12:56:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Apologetics101.

The Resurrection of Jesus
Some Historical Considerations
Gary Habermas

The full playlist

2008-10-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

Eleventh Hour Election

Part Two
Part Three

FatherCorapi' Channel

2008-10-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

The new atheists
He hits the nail right on the head with this one.

Check out DrOakley on YouTube

2008-10-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

British Aid worker shot for being a Christian

Gayle Williams, a British aid worker in Afghanistan was shot by the Taliban for trying to "preach Christianity"

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

"Pat Williams was told yesterday that her daughter Gayle, 34, had been gunned down by two men on a motorcycle as she walked to work in the capital.

The aid worker, who worked with disabled children, had recently moved from Kandahar in the south of the country because it was too dangerous.

Mrs Williams, who lives in London, said her daughter had always wanted to help others.

"Gayle was serving a people that she loved, and felt God called her to be there for such a time as this," she said. "We know her life was blessed and she was a blessing to those around her.

"No one could have asked for a more humble daughter with a more loving heart. She died doing what she felt the Lord had called her [to do] and she is definitely with him."

Miss Williams, who had dual British and South African nationality, also had a sister, Karen, who was told the bad news in Johannesburg.

The Taliban took responsibility for the shooting and said it was because Miss Williams was trying to "preach Christianity" in a conservative Islamic nation.

The Taliban took responsibility for the shooting and said it was because Miss Williams was trying to "preach Christianity" in a conservative Islamic nation.

The British registered charity she worked for, Serve Afghanistan, rejected this claim.

Chairman Mike Lyth said: "We are Christian - that is what gives us the motivation to go into a dangerous and difficult country to try to help - but she was not involved in proselytisation."

But the death of the aid worker prompted other charities to warn that the situation was becoming increasingly dangerous and that they would review their security arrangements following the murder.

Dominic O'Reilly, UK director of Afghanaid, said they would consider their security but continue to use female staff.

"We employ low-profile security and prefer not to use armed guards, but we do review arrangements on a daily basis," he said.

"We are a much softer target than the military. Unfortunately I don't think this will be the last casualty."

Matt Wilson, deputy programme director at War Child, said if the situation became worse, the charity would consider pulling out of the country.

He said: "We are monitoring the situation, and are reviewing whether they need to be in Kabul.

"If it became much worse, then we would look at pulling back to somewhere like Turkmenistan and continue our work."

But Christian Aid said it had no plans to pull out of Afghanistan.

"We work with local partners where the need is greatest, irrespective of race or religion," said a spokesman.

"This was apparently accepted by Taliban when they constituted the Afghan government and we were able to work inside the country."

The shooting is not the first time a Christian has been targeted in Afghanistan.

Last year, 23 South Korean aid workers from a church group were taken hostage in southern Afghanistan, with two being killed and the rest released.

Last year, 23 South Korean aid workers from a church group were taken hostage in southern Afghanistan, with two being killed and the rest released.

In 2001, eight international aid workers, including two Americans, were imprisoned and charged with preaching Christianity.

They were finally freed by Afghan mujahedeen fighters who attacked the Taliban after the American-led invasion."

Also see
www.serveafghanistan.org
www.skynews.com

2008-10-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Anyone for some G.K. Chesterton?

If you have an interest in the American author, Apologist and poet, check out the ChesterCast player below.

Alternatively, check out the website here.

The Chestercast is the work of TrentonZero

Powered by Podbean.com

2008-10-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

To those 'Delusional Christians' who raised the bar for us all.

2008-10-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

Abortion

"Open letter asks King of Spain not to sign decree allowing aborted babies to be ground up"

From catholicnewsagency.com

"Father Joan Manuel Serra, a priest of the Diocese of Sant Feliu de Llobregat, has asked King Juan Carlos of Spain not to sign a royal decree that would modify mortuary policies and would make it legal to use “baby crushing machines” that would be used on the remains of babies aborted up to the seventh month of pregnancy in abortion clinics.

In an open letter, Father Serra recalled that current policy “obliges abortion ‘clinics’ to consider the remains of an abortion as cadavers, when they are human remains ‘of a sufficient entity,’ that is, at eleven or twelve weeks of pregnancy, and transfer them to a cemetery for their posterior dignified incineration or burial.”

...it was discovered that blenders were being used to cover up illegal late-term abortions

However, after the scandal of the Ginemedex Clinic, where it was discovered that blenders were being used to cover up illegal late-term abortions, the government, “with the supposed support of the main opposition party,” has proposed changing the norms for mortuaries “so that the ‘remains’ of an abortion not be considered ‘human remains of sufficient entity’ until after the 28^th week of gestation,” that is, nearly the seventh month of pregnancy.

“Your majesty, we are reaching levels of inhumanity that are completely inadmissible and that are putting the very foundation of our society at risk,” Father Serra said. “If we do not protect the right to life of all,” even those who are weakest, we are laying “the foundations of a very violent society that will end up destroying itself.”

Father Serra told King Juan Carlos that if the current policy is kept in place, “of properly burying or incinerating the human remains of abortions during the first few weeks, at least we would be giving a humane message to society. This will make many people think again about the value of human life from the moment of conception.”

2008-09-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Father Corapi - "Death Wish" Part 1

"Death Wish" Part 2

2008-08-07T05:28:00.000-07:00

Former atheist Professor Antony Flew reviews The God Delusion.

"The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).

The fault of Dawkins as an academic (which he still was during the period in which he composed this book although he has since announced his intention to retire) was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form. Thus we find in his index five references to Einstein. They are to the mask of Einstein and Einstein on morality; on a personal God; on the purpose of life (the human situation and on how man is here for the sake of other men and above all for those on whose well-being our own happiness depends); and finally on Einstein’s religious views. But (I find it hard to write with restraint about this obscurantist refusal on the part of Dawkins) he makes no mention of Einstein’s most relevant report: namely, that the integrated complexity of the world of physics has led him to believe that there must be a Divine Intelligence behind it. (I myself think it obvious that if this argument is applicable to the world of physics then it must be hugely more powerful if it is applied to the immeasurably more complicated world of biology.)

"...Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot."

Of course many physicists with the highest of reputations do not agree with Einstein in this matter. But an academic attacking some ideological position which s/he believes to be mistaken must of course attack that position in its strongest form. This Dawkins does not do in the case of Einstein and his failure is the crucial index of his insincerity of academic purpose and therefore warrants me in charging him with having become, what he has probably believed to be an impossibility, a secularist bigot.

On page 82 of The God Delusion is a remarkable note. It reads ‘We might be seeing something similar today in the over-publicised tergiversation of the philosopher Antony Flew, who announced in his old age that he had been converted to belief in some sort of deity (triggering a frenzy of eager repetition all around the Internet).’

What is important about this passage is not what Dawkins is saying about Flew but what he is showing here about Dawkins. For if he had had any interest in the truth of the matter of which he was making so much he would surely have brought himself to write me a letter of enquiry. (When I received a torrent of enquiries after an account of my conversion to Deism had been published in the quarterly of the Royal Institute of Philosophy I managed – I believe – eventually to reply to every letter.)

"This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such but is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means."

This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such but is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise of The God Delusion

was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God but rather an attempt – an extremely successful one – to spread the author’s own convictions in this area.

A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index of The God Delusion notes six references to Deism it provides no definition of the word ‘deism’. This enables Dawkins in his references to Deism to suggest that Deists are a miscellany of believers in this and that. The truth, which Dawkins ought to have learned before this book went to the printers, is that Deists believe in the existence of a God but not the God of any revelation. In fact the first notable public appearance of the notion of Deism was in the American Revolution. The young man who drafted the Declaration of Independence and who later became President Jefferson was a Deist, as were several of the other founding fathers of that abidingly important institution, the United States.

In that monster footnote to what I am inclined to describe as a monster book – The God Delusion – Dawkins reproaches me for what he calls my ignominious decision to accept, in 2006, the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. The awarding Institution is Biola, The Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Dawkins does not say outright that his objection to my decision is that Biola is a specifically Christian institution. He obviously assumes (but refrains from actually saying) that this is incompatible with producing first class academic work in every department – not a thesis which would be acceptable in either my own university or Oxford or in Harvard.

In my time at Oxford, in the years immediately succeeding the second world war, Gilbert Ryle (then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in the University of Oxford) published a hugely influential book The Concept of Mind. This book revealed by implication, but only by implication, that minds are not entities of a sort which could coherently be said to survive the death of those whose minds they were.

Ryle felt responsible for the smooth pursuit of philosophical teaching and the publication of the findings of philosophical research in the university and knew that, at that time, there would have been uproar if he had published his own conclusion that the very idea of a second life after death was self-contradictory and incoherent. He was content for me to do this at a later time and in another place. I told him that if I were ever invited to give one of the Gifford Lecture series my subject would be The Logic of Mortality. When I was, I did and these Lectures were first published by Blackwell (Oxford) in 1987. They are still in print from Prometheus Books (Amherst, NY).

Finally, as to the suggestion that I have been used by Biola University. If the way I was welcomed by the students and the members of faculty whom I met on my short stay in Biola amounted to being used then I can only express my regret that at the age of 85 I cannot reasonably hope for another visit to this institution."

Professor Antony Flew is a former atheist turned Deist, his new book There is a God is available now.

2008-07-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

Some people have asked about the background image I use on YouTube, 'The God Who Was There' poster. It is of course a dig at a certain ''documentary''. I've uploaded the poster online so you can use it on your page, blog, site, myspace etc.... click here :D