WHO’S SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS? — What will shake the foundations of a young person’s faith more:
1. Believing that biological evolution is largely true and not contradictory to the Bible
2. or being told that biological evolution is unbiblical and a lie of the devil and then discovering that much of biological evolution is indeed true?
Old Earth Ministries has a review of Ray Comfort’s new video Evolution vs. God, which repeats a common theme of The GeoChristian:
Finally, the subtitle “shaking the foundations of faith” is tragically accurate. According to view presented in this video, to believe in any kind of Darwinian evolution is to reject the God of the Bible. As long as people believe this is true, people will reject the God of the Bible once they are exposed to the evidences supporting evolutionary theory. Thus, the video actually can “shake the foundations of faith” by inadvertently causing people to stray from the Gospel when they encounter perceived “contradictions” with science.
For a quick summary of the biblical teaching about evolution, go back to my What the Bible says directly about biological evolution. It won’t take you very long.
CERTAINTY AND CERTITUDE — On a scale of 1 to 10, how certain am I that God exists? That Jesus rose from the dead? That the Earth is billions of years old? How certain am I that atheism, Hinduism, or Mormonism are wrong? C. Michael Patton of the Parchment & Pen Blog offers some insights: Why I Lack Certainty About Christianity. Patton is not advocating some sort of wishy-washy, agnostic, we-cannot-really-know-anything philosophy. He is simply being honest in saying that our levels of certainty aren’t at the 100% level on most things, but that is OK. We can have strong convictions even if our level of certainty is less than God’s level of certainty.
NOT ALL ATHEISTS ARE FUNDAMENTALIST DAWKINSITES — Christianity Today has a brief article on The Six Types of Atheists.
1. The Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic: Sees his/herself as intellectually too advanced for religion and seeks to engage with other likeminded individuals through writings, YouTube videos and talks.
2. The Activist: Proactively works for issues connected to naturalist or humanist causes.
3. The Seeker-Agnostic: Considers the metaphysical a possibility but is comfortable with uncertainty as it concerns the interaction of science and the metaphysical.
4. The Anti-Theist: Believes religion to be evil, thus actively works against religion and religious influences.
5. The Non-Theist: Does not have much interest in religious concepts.
6. The Ritual Atheist/Agnostic: Does not have otherworldly beliefs but regularly attends a religious ceremony, finding that this meets some social or psychological need.
Just as Christians can have varying degrees of doubt about their beliefs, I have no doubt that atheists have varying degrees of doubt about their beliefs. At least those atheists who are at least slightly open-minded (most “free-thinkers” are anything but open-minded).
ONE WAY TICKET TO MARS — More than 100,000 want to go to Mars and not return, project says. My beautiful bride won’t want to go, so I don’t want to go either.
PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT — Christians in Egypt and Syria tend to side with the dictators. My understanding is that they consider it better to live under the tyranny of a dictator who lets you be a Christian than to live under the tyranny of Islamic radicals who would rather see the Christians dead or gone. See Coptic Christian churches, buildings targeted in Egypt for second straight day. Based on what happened in Turkey in the 1920s and Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s, the Islamists just might succeed in clearing the Middle East of Christians.
WOULD YOU LIKE SOME SPAM? — There have been 2,941 comments posted on The GeoChristian since its inception. My spam filter has removed an additional 97, 947 comments, most of which I have glanced at for the one-in-a-thousand that is a legitimate comment.
Grace and Peace
GeoChristian 
So disheartening to see how many grown adults in the 21 st century still don’t realize that god is a concept that exists only in our imagination. How much childhood indoctrination and brainwashing must still be going on to make people believe this nonsense. The bible is just an advertising brochure written by Christians to promote their theology. Almost nothing in it did really happen. All actions and statements attributed to Jesus are the product of an enormous line of Chinese telephone. Grow up and leave behind those ridiculous superstitions from the stone age already.
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Nebuchadnezzar,
There was a time in my life when I could have gone either way: atheism or Christianity. As an intelligent, well-educated person who had been exposed to many different viewpoints, I found it much more credible to believe that the reason for the cosmos (which would include everything beyond our universe) was something non-cosmos outside of itself than to believe that it had existed forever or that it created itself. Neither of the latter is consistent with what we know about matter, energy, or the laws that govern them.
Your comment expresses what I consider to be an unfortunate ignorance of the Bible and ancient history in general.
“Almost nothing in it did really happen” — This is a completely arbitrary judgment. Even non-Christian scholars who don’t believe that the Bible is “inspired” recognize that it contains much material that is historically reliable. The events recorded in Genesis 12-50 reflect in many ways the third and early second millennium BC and so even if they were edited at a later time (and I believe that editing was minor), they have very old historical roots. There are more recent events in the Old Testament that can be dated to the year or even an exact date. For example, we know that Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem on January 15, 588 BC, an event that is described not only in the Bible but in Babylonian records..
All actions and statements attributed to Jesus are the product of an enormous line of Chinese telephone. This is nonsense. For example, take Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Few dispute that it was written by Paul, and that it was written in the late 40s or maybe in the early 50s AD. Therefore, Galatians was written 15-20 years after the death (and resurrection!) of Jesus. Paul had access to those who knew Jesus, and even if he hadn’t, there were plenty of people around who would have corrected him if he had presented a false story about Jesus. No such refutations exist.
Or take the Gospel of Luke. It was clearly written before the Acts of the Apostles, which ends with Paul in prison, which implies that Acts (and Luke) was written before Paul was beheaded under Nero in AD 64. If Paul was already dead when Acts was written, it would seem awfully funny to end the book with him in prison in Rome. There is simply no time for your “Chinese telephone” game to occur.
I haven’t “proven” that the Bible is “inerrant” or anything like that, but hopefully you can see that it isn’t the fantasy book that someone has led you to believe it is. I would say that you have inadequate reasons to reject the Bible and Jesus Christ, whom the entire Bible points to.
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