Apologetics Archive

Recently many prominent—and self-appointed—spokesmen for science have argued that modern science has demonstrated that belief in God is no longer credible. A spate of bestselling books, led by Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, have popularized this idea. Dawkins and other New Atheists argue that science shows the existence of God to be a delusion, “a failed hypothesis” as one book suggests. Why? Because, according to them, there is no evidence for intelligent design. Instead, in their view, Charles Darwin explained away all evidences of design. Indeed, the modern version of Darwin’s theory, Neo-Darwinism, asserts that the wholly undirected processes of natural selection and random mutations are fully capable of producing the intricate structures in living systems. As Dawkins asserts, natural selection can mimic the powers of a designing intelligence without itself being guided or directed by an intelligent agent of any kind. Thus, living organisms may look designed, but in his view, t...

Charles Darwin thought that the universal human tendency to think in terms of moral rightness and wrongness, and our wide agreement on the immorality of acts like rape or genocide, could be explained by the evolution of the human species. Given the circumstances of survival and reproduction, he theorized, some behaviors are more adaptive than others; thus, any instinct that prompts adaptive behaviors is favored by natural selection. The flight instinct removes prey from the clutches of predators, increasing the chances that the pursued creature will live to reproduce. Social animals such as bees, wolves, and people come equipped with sets of social instincts that prompt cooperation with the hive, pack, or tribe. The success of the more cooperative group, whether it is competing with other tribes, hunting, or gathering, tends to promote the survival and reproduction of its individual members. To the extent that such cooperative and adaptive behavior is genetically fostered, he believed,...

This question has stoked controversy among conservative Christians in recent times, but it has proved to be of little interest to theistic evolutionists (those who accept evolution as God’s mechanism in creation) and those rejecting Genesis as God’s inerrant Word. The debate has been primarily between young- and old-earth creationists, who believe that God literally created the various kinds of living things (as opposed to the common descent of Darwinism). Both sides hold that humans have not descended from other species, and both reject the atheism and macroevolutionary theory of neo-Darwinism.  The two creationist camps, however, differ in interpreting the creation days of Genesis. If the days were consecutive 24-hour periods, and if the earth was created on the first day, then calculations based on biblical genealogies reveal that the earth was created only thousands of years ago. If the days were either of indeterminate length or nonconsecutive, then the Bible does not reveal w...

Whether it is a simple story or a complex history, a key element is time. It establishes cause and effect, act and consequence. The books of Kings are not exempt from the need to relate one event to another in time. The author traces the action of kings and rulers throughout time by recording the beginning, end, and duration of one reign after another. Modern readers naturally want to relate the chronology of the books of Kings to the dating systems we use today so we can relate the events narrated there to each other and to contemporaneous events in the lands surrounding ancient Israel and Judah in order to recover the original context of those events. The books of Kings synchronize the reigns of the northern and southern kingdoms of the divided monarchy as well as proving the number of years a king reigned. But there is a very significant problem. These numbers and the synchronomies appear to be in constant contradiction with one another. It appears difficult, if not impossible, to c...

The modern reader of the Bible—especially of the Old Testament—often finds its use of numbers strange. The ancient world did not use numbers for every aspect of life. Their technology did not require many places past the decimal point of precision, or even a decimal point at all. The Bible has been closely read and interpreted by many cultures through more than four millennia. So the modern reader reads these ancient texts through the lens of all this history of interpretation. How others in the past have interpreted the numbers of the Bible influences a reader’s understanding. How ought the numbers found in the Bible to be understood? They are to be understood in the same way that any other part of the text is understood: by how they are used and by keeping in mind both the textual context in which numbers occur and also the cultural context of how numbers were used by those ancient societies with which Israel lived and interacted. Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome used the decimal sys...

Is the Bible “history”? Did the ancient biblical authors write “history” as we moderns understand it? These questions are essential elements of the debate about the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible. In recent years, the usefulness of the Bible for writing the history of the ancient Near East has come under attack as it has not been since the nineteenth century. And this attack is rooted in the intellectual winds of our time. Since the 1970s, people have been questioning whether science or history can tell us anything more than the ideology, politics, and biases of the scientist or historian, either individually or collectively. It is part of the so-called “postmodern” debate about the nature of “knowledge.” Many postmodernists assert that the meaning of any particular biblical text (or any other literary text, for that matter) cannot be separated from the worldview and ideology of the reader. They deny that the original intention of the author can be recovered. In order to ev...

Some time ago I had the opportunity to speak to a man who had no belief whatsoever in the Scriptures as any sort of divine revelation from God. He was a writer who was articulate and well-educated. While he was well-read, he was completely ignorant of any evidences for the truthfulness of the Christian faith and the Scriptures which reveal it. He said the Bible was simply a book written by men, just like any other book. I said, “That’s very interesting. I would like to read some statements to you about someone and have you tell me, assuredly, without question, about whom I am reading.”  He agreed and I began to read:  “They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head” (Ps. 69:4).  “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed” (Ps. 2:2).  “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me” (Ps. 41:9). “Smite th...

Apologetics may be simply defined as the defense of the Christian faith. The simplicity of this definition, however, masks the complexity of the problem of defining apologetics. It turns out that a diversity of approaches has been taken in defining the meaning, scope, and purpose of apologetics.  The word apologetics derives from the Greek word apologia, which was originally used as a speech of defense. In ancient Athens it referred to a defense made in the courtroom as part of the normal judicial procedure. After the accusation, the defendant was allowed to refute the charges with a defense (apologia). The classic example of an apologia was Socrates’ defense against the charge of preaching strange gods, a defense retold by his most famous pupil, Plato, in a dialogue called The Apology.  The word apologia appears seventeen times in noun or verb form in the New Testament, and speaks of “defense” or “vindication” in every case. The idea of offering a reasoned defense of the fait...