Posted by Anthony on April 6, 2009
Sometimes apologetics is about sifting out traditional accretions that in themselves are generally harmless but conspire to create a false picture. When Christianity comes to be evaluated, it is this false picture that is attacked, unmindful of the aforementioned accretions. This is sad, because virtually any Christian who has taken the time to familiarize himself with the actual facts of the faith is aware of what are accretions and what are not, but this doesn’t usually filter down.
As a case in point, consider the cherished traditional presentation of the birth of Jesus, what with the ‘three wise men’ coming to greet the newly born King of the Jews. Upon examination, however, we learn that we are never told that there are three, that they came a couple of years later, and rather than ‘wise’ men they are ‘magi.’ The traditional presentation is harmless in the sense of conveying a certain tone during Christmas time but can be harmful, like for example when the skeptics get out their long knives and begin their hunt for biblical contradictions. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on July 14, 2008
I was once asked to provide a concise, no more than 1,000 word essay, on why I believe Christianity to be true. I think the hint was that I can be a little too verbose. 
As I recall, this essay was well received, if only because it met the terms of the request. I just found it on my hard drive, sitting around and playing video games, and otherwise being unproductive. No sense in having that. It was originally posted on my forum. Feel free to use it yourself (with appropriate crediting, of course) and if you have questions, drop by the forum. Feel free to count the number of words.
Christianity in 1,000 words or less.
Any worldview that demands consideration needs to be consistent with the following elements:
1. It must be affirm the actuality of our existence, the reliability of our sensory perception, and reasonable interpretation of that perception.
2. It must affirm the existence of something eternal, as to believe that something can come from nothing strictly speaking undermines #1.
3. It must affirm the reality of our ability to make free choices, which again speaks to #1.
4. It must acknowledge and account for the observed fact that humans do bad things and consider the concept of ‘bad’ to be meaningful.
Christianity meets pre-requisite #1 and #3 by accepting that humans are created by God, and were declared ‘good.’
Christianity meets #2 by affirming that it is God that is the eternal thing, which consequently means the universe is contained within him, and yet is not him.
Though meeting #1-3 serves as important pre-requisites, it remains necessary still to demonstrate that Christianity is actual, and not merely consistent with a cogent epistemology.
#4 addresses a set of facts we observe, thus in Christianity’s addressing of those issues, this forms two areas of observational corroboration for Christianity’s worldview, rather than just being important propositions required for any cogent worldview.
Given the above, we can form some expectations we might have about how such a being might interact with his creation, and seek out evidence of the sort of revelation that can be reasonably expected within such a set of presumptions.
A system where the entity does have the desire to reveal itself to its creation must consist of order, patterns, and consistent physical laws. That way, the entity can satisfy a high epistemological threshold to verify that it is really this entity doing the communicating. I.e., for ‘miracles’ to exist, there have to be laws to be broken that we are unable, ever, to break.
That is the system we observe, and accounts of miracles exist, too. This is consistent with Christianity, and serves somewhat to provide empirical evidence for it in the sense of the physical laws being stable. Miracles could not be ‘empirical’ by definition, except insofar as they appear via the senses to those who observe them. Repeated ‘miracles’ would be indistinguishable from natural laws. Read the rest of the entry… »
