No, Dan Barker. Covid-19 Doesn’t Disprove God

Apologetics, Atheism, atheist, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Erik Manning, evil, God, If God, IsJesusAlive, Theology and Christian Apologetics, why Evil?
By Erik Manning Not one to let a good crisis go to waste, former minister and atheist activist Dan Barker tells us that the coronavirus proves that the Christian God doesn’t exist. Why? Because God promises to answer prayer. People have prayed for COVID-19 to stop. The virus continues to spread and people continue to die. Therefore Christianity must be false. Here’s Barker in his own words: The Christian god makes a crystal-clear pledge: “I will answer your prayers.” Jesus stated boldly: “All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”(Matthew 21:22) There is no ambiguity here. “All things” means “all things.” He even clarified: “Even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.” Jesus, who said “I and…
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Three Actions You Can Take to Address Emotional Doubt

Apologetics, christian, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Doubts, Jeremy Linn, Reasons, Theology and Christian Apologetics, TwinCitiesApologetics
By Jeremy Linn A few weeks ago, my ministry had a Livestream discussion on the topic of doubt. I thought it would be a great idea to pull in the principles that came from the discussion into a short, sharable source. To explain the principles we covered, I’m going to bring in my own struggle with doubt, and trace through the principles to see how they can help my own struggle with doubt. My doubt is the following: When I get close to death, I’m not sure if I will really be confident that God is real and that heaven exists. The first thing to filter this doubt through is the question – Does this doubt have a primarily intellectual nature or an emotional nature? Identifying the nature of the…
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Infinite Punishment for Finite Crimes?

Al Serrato, Apologetics, Bible, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Finite Crimes, Gospel, Hell, Punishment, Sin, Sinner, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Al Serrato Trying to explain how a good God created Hell can be a daunting task for the Christian apologist. In my last post, I considered the challenge that God could not be “good” if he created a place of “torture.” I tried to make the case that there is a difference between torture – which implies intentional infliction of punishment for the pleasure of doing so – and torment, which is the necessary byproduct of God’s legitimate act of separating Himself from those who have rejected Him, who died while still in rebellion against Him. A related challenge often encountered when discussing the doctrine of Hell is the seeming unfairness in endless punishment for what appears to be brief – in some cases, extremely brief – temporal actions.…
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Are You Good Without God?

ApologeticsGuy, Atheism, atheist, Bible, Christian Apologetics, evil, God, Good, Good person, Good without God, Mikel del Rosario, Stealing from God, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Mikel Del Rosario While I was driving from Sacramento to the Bay Area, I saw a huge billboard that read, “Are you good without God? Millions Are.” I also noticed a theistic tagger added the words, “Also Lost?” at the end of the message. At first, I wondered if the original question could mean something like, “Do you feel comfortable without a belief in God? Millions feel the same way.” Kind of like if you offer someone a drink, and they say, “No, thanks. I’m good.” But I don’t think that’s what the message is all about. Can’t People be Good Without God? So, then it got me thinking, “Can’t people be good without God?” I mean, couldn’t an atheist do some really good things without God? I guess…
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Why Studying Evolution Will Likely Challenge Your Kids’ Faith

Apologetics for Parents, Bible, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, Doubts, Evidence, Evolution, God, Kids, Natasha Crain, theology, truth
By Natasha Crain I saw the following post in a Christian Facebook group: My daughter is starting her second semester of college tomorrow. She got ahold of her syllabus and found the following quote from the professor. “Except to one whose reason is blinded by unquestioning adherence to fundamentalist doctrine of creation, the evidence of the fossil record, with that of anatomy, embryology, biochemistry and genetics, compels a single conclusion: evolution is a fact.” Any suggestions on how she should approach this? If this is his daughter’s first time hearing about evolution (or at least secular views of it), it’s going to be a tough semester. Any suggestions on how she should “approach this” are at least a couple of years late. I hear or see questions like this all…
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Why Most Doubts About God Are Emotional, Not Intellectual (Part II)

Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Christians, Doubts, Emotional Doubts, Evidence, Mike Taylor, MikePTaylor.net, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Mike Taylor How to Deal with Emotional Doubt Most of the time in our lives, it’s not the facts of the situations around us that are important; it’s how we process those facts. Similarly, the worst kind of a pain in our lives is not from what happens to us but how we download it or process it. For people dealing with emotional doubt, when something bad happens, they give themselves permission to let those events determine why they have problems. However, beliefs (i.e., the way we download information) are the things that stand between those events that happen to us and the consequences that come from them. Events alone rarely cause all the consequences we experience. Events plus negative or detrimental beliefs about those events often cause excessive…
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Why Most Doubts About God Are Emotional, Not Intellectual (Part I)

Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Doubts, Doubts about faith, Doubts about God, Emotional Doubts, Evidence, Mike Taylor, reasons to believe, Skeptics, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Mike Taylor If we’re honest, we would all admit that we have doubts about God to some degree or another. I mean, on some level, it almost feels like human nature to resist fully trusting anything. We doubt ourselves, we doubt other people, and more than anything, we doubt God. Doubt is normal. No matter who you are, you’re going to have doubts. Even biblical heroes such as Job, Abraham, David, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Thomas, and Paul had doubts about God. But for some reason, too many of us think that doubts should be avoided. I think we get the idea that doubt is bad from a misapplication of Scripture. In Matthew 21:21, Jesus said we should pray without doubt, and incredible things will happen. So doubt must…
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10 Ways to Get Your Kids More Interested in Their Faith

Apologetics for Parents, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, Kids faith, Kids in the Church, Natasha Crain, theology
By Natasha Crain A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak to four groups of parents during the Apologetics Canada conference (incidentally, if you live in the Long Branch, NJ, area, I’ll be speaking at the No Pat Answers conference on April 9). I ended up speaking with a lot of parents after these talks and heard some variant of one particular question repeatedly: “I’d love to have deeper conversations about faith with my kids, but how do I get them more interested in sitting down and having those discussions?” To answer that, I gave several of these parents a snippet of advice from my marketing background. Every day you probably see or hear some kind of advertisement for buying a new car. If you aren’t currently interested in…
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Seeking Shalom: A Case for The Way Things Ought to Be

Bob Perry, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Crooked Creatures, Evil in the world, God, God Existence, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics, True Horizon, World
By Bob Perry Sometimes defending God’s existence is easy. You don’t have to try to articulate some fancy philosophical or theological idea. And you don’t have to understand the intricacies of science. All you have to do is be a human being who observes the world in which we live. When you do that, there is no denying that something is drastically wrong. What we see around us is not the way things ought to be. Everybody from the most devoted religious believer to the most ardent atheist knows this. Our common human longing is for a world full of truth, justice, goodness, compassion, and charity. And while there are notable pockets of these things around us, they float in a sea of negativity and corruption. The fact that everyone realizes this is proof…
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William Lane Craig Lectures on The Evidence for The Resurrection of Jesus

Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Historical Evidence, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Resurrection, Skeptics, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics, william lane craig, Wintery Knight
By Wintery Knight Here is Dr. William Lane Craig giving a long-form argument for the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus and taking questions from the audience. The speaker’s introduction goes for 6 minutes, then Dr. Craig speaks for 35 minutes, then it’s a period of questions and answers with the audience. The total length is 93 minutes, so quite a long period of Q&A. The questions in the Q&A period are quite good. Introduction: Many people who are willing to accept God’s existence are not willing to accept the God of Christianity Christians need to be ready to show that Jesus rose from the dead as a historical event Private faith is fine for individuals, but when dealing with the public, you have to have evidence When making…
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