apologetics ⁽⁴⁴⁾

In this third installment, I look further into some interconnected topics touched upon, or in some way related to, the themes established in the preceding series (post 1, post 2). Specifically, I cover materials under the following headings: In part of a prior post, I noted that A video I recently discovered from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion provides an excellent summary of why hormonal contraception taken by women (aka “birth-control pills”…

Back in August, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) posted a discussion to YouTube entitled These Scientific Papers Destroy Evolution. In the discussion, Dr. Mark Stengler asserted that three papers from secular scientific sources favor creation and work against evolution. He did not discuss any paper’s findings in detail, but the Institute has provided links to all three papers. In this post, I’ll examine one of the papers. Curious readers may first…

Retweeting and commenting on the last in a series of articles by the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CSC)’s Dr. Jonathan McLatchie, a molecular and cell biologist, got me briefly embroiled in some discussions with the disciples of a YouTube “science educator.” Though the “educator” himself contributed the first tweets, the way he conducts himself on Twitter can’t rightly be called “discussion.” The initial interactions with him…

Welcome to the latest edition of the series formerly known as “prompted letters,” which chronicles my off-site correspondence with all and sundry. As will be noted in the Pious Eye “About” page when I get around to updating it, all posts on this site are snapshots of my thinking at whatever point in time I wrote down the posted material. Since I’m always modifying and improving my thinking — or trying to…

As it happens, my Reddit post was “removed [by a Reddit moderator] as it violate[d] Reddit‘s content policy with respect to personal and identifying information.” Since I am philosophically opposed to anonymous Internet posting (If you’re not willing to identify yourself, nothing you post deserves to be read, respected, or considered—certain whistle-blowers and the like might be an exception to this rule), thus ends the short, happy life of my Reddit exploration.

Pious Eye (David M. Hodges) posted a comment to Reddit’s DebateReligion subreddit arguing that faith is not based on experience, evidence, or arguments, but that, rather, trust in the faculties that allow experience, evidence, and arguments depends on faith. To read it, follow this link.

Kinley, Jeff, with Raymond Damadian. Gifted Mind: The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story, Inventor of the MRI. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2015. Hard cover. Pp. 240. ISBN 978-0-89051-803-8. Certain aspects of Jeff Kinley and Raymond Damadian’s Gifted Mind: The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story, Inventor of the MRI suggest incomplete editing. I encountered, for example, dangling modifiers, odd punctuation choices, and subject-verb disagreements. (I almost included another indication of incomplete editing: the dominant…

Clarey, Tim, Ph.D. Dinosaurs: Marvels of God’s Design. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2015. Hardcover, 192 pages. ISBN 978-0-89051-904-2. Bible believers, who accept Scripture’s ultimate authority in all matters on which it speaks, are appropriately inclined to take all that Scripture says in its natural, straightforward sense (that is, in the sense that would be most natural and straightforward to its original recipients), and to let that sense, and all that it…

Köstenberger, Andreas J., and Richard D. Patterson. For the Love of God’s Word: An Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2015. Hard cover, 444 pages. ISBN 978-0-8254-4336-7. Late in For Love of God’s Word (hereafter, FLGW), a condensed and revised version of their Invitation to Biblical Interpretation, Köstenberger and Patterson (hereafter, K&P) state the following about the book’s purpose: “In essence, this entire book is designed to set forth a…

Montgomery, John Warwick. History, Law and Christianity. Corona, CA: NRP Books, 2014 (prior edition copyrights were 1964, 1991, and 2002). Paperback. 102+xv pages. ISBN 978-1-945500-01-5. While my philosophical and theological commitment are not Montgomery’s—I am an increasingly committed presuppositionalist; he is the quintessential evidentialist—I still found History, Law and Christianity worthwhile, if occasionally disagreeable, reading. Though its evidentialist stance—which is blatant, persistent, and uncompromising—would make me uncomfortable giving the book to non-Christians,…

Keathley, Kenneth D., and Mark F. Rooker. 40 Questions about Creation and Evolution. 40 Questions, series ed. Benjamin L. Merkle. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2014. Paperback, 430 pages. ISBN 978-0-8254-2941-5. In this book, a fairly comprehensive survey of debated questions related to creation and evolution, particularly as those questions are addressed by evangelicals, authors Keathley and Rooker (hereafter, K&R) survey and assess the various extant opinions in a manner that attempts, more…

Sullivan, Ann C. Permission to Doubt: One Woman’s Journey into a Thinking Faith. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2014. Paperback. 173 pages. ISBN 978-0-8254-4366-4. Ann Sullivan’s Permission to Doubt might best be described as a personal memoir, reflection, and self-help book that dabbles in apologetics and hermeneutics. Fairly effective on the personal sharing and reflection side, the book offers standard fare on the self-help side, is fairly superficial and cursory on the apologetics side,…