This Week in Review - 3/17/2017

Time for yet another roundup of highlights this week.

What Does The Shack Really Teach? “Lies We Believe About God” Tells Us from Tim Challies - An important read for any Christian tackling any debate that exists over The Shack. Tim Challies goes through William Paul Young's straight theological treatise Lies We Believe About God and presents excerpts and summaries of what Young truly believes, but might have kept vague in his fictional novel. Would you be surprised to learn Young isn't too fond of the topics of the crucifixion, sin, or God's absolute sovereignty?

Did Jesus Exist? All Scholars Agree He “Certainly” Existed from Reasons for Jesus - Do all scholars teach that Jesus never existed? Actually, that's far from the truth - even atheist or agnostic scholars widely believe he at the very least existed. This article provides relevant quotes to that very topic.

How Atheist Hate & Mockery Led a Richard Dawkins Fan, Richard Morgan, to Faith from James Bishop's Theological Rationalism - It wasn't a superficial reason like "Oh, these guys are mean, I'm going to stop being one." Rather, it was seeing how vitriolic they were towards all contrary thought, especially when a pastor joined the forum and started to present calm, reasonable, and kind answers to atheist objections, and only received more of the same. This article is a good read on that whole experience.

Darwin’s Problem: The Origin of Language from Reasons to Believe - A discussion on how language developed, and what makes a language to begin with. As the author points out, it's not just a bunch of grunts and barks.

Richard Dawkins’ Argument for Atheism in The God Delusion from Reasonable Faith - William Lane Craig responds to Richard Dawkins' six-part argument against the existence of God, and why it's philosophically unsound.

The Definition That Will Not Die! from Reasonable Faith - William Lane Craig and Kevin Harris discuss five common arguments in favor of atheism that even some atheists consider unsound. These include "You can't prove something doesn't exist," "Lack of belief isn't a belief," etc.

Answering the Galileo Myth from Stand to Reason - A small post dealing with the story of Galileo and the church, which is often cited to say that science and religion conflict with each other. I might add to this a post I shared quite a while ago, covering that same topic, and bringing up a few points rarely discussed in the Galileo story.

Basic Training: The Bible Is Sufficient from Michelle Lesley - A little guide on the sufficiency of scripture, especially in this day and age of the New Apostolic Reformation nonsense.

The Reliability of the Bible – 4 Quick Thoughts from Reasonable Theology - If you've read anything on manuscript evidence before, you'll probably already recognize these four "quick thoughts." Still, it pays to be reminded every now and then.

5 apologetics arguments Christians should avoid from Premier Christianity - Most of these are just silly claims (eg., the Blood Moons stuff), however, they're worth mentioning, just in case anyone takes any of these seriously.

And in the humor corner...

5 Reasons Why Christians Should Reject Santa Claus from A Clear Lens - Funny, short read. (It's not what you think.)

What was up with Galileo?

The following is from the Bad Catholic blog. The entire article is actually worth a read, but this section covers on the whole issue of the Roman church at the time attacking Galileo and censoring him, supposedly for his scientific views.

1. That this is the only event in 2000 years of Church history that atheists can point to in order to claim that the Church is opposed to Science seems to indicate that the Church is not in fact opposed to Science.

2. The Church did not say that Galileo was teaching heresy. They rightly pointed out that if the earth did orbit the sun then there would be a shift in the position of a star observed from the earth on one side of the sun, and then six months later from the other side. Galileo was not able with the best of his telescopes to discern this “stellar parallax.” (This was a valid scientific objection, and it was not answered until 1838, when Friedrich Bessel succeeded in determining the parallax of star 61 Cygni.)

The Church gave Galileo the following offer: Copernicanism might be considered a hypothesis, one even superior to the Ptolemaic system, until further proof could be adduced. He refused it. Everyone had to believe in Copernicanism, despite the lack of evidence, and despite Galileo’s obviously wrongheaded claim – that the planets orbit the sun in perfect circles. This still wasn’t a problem until he tried to make his argument on theological grounds. (An irony that atheists remain blissfully unaware of, that the man they lift up as a martyr for scientific discovery was actually a martyr for bad theology.)

3. When Galileo was brought to the Inquisition for his interpretation of Scripture it was by the testimony of a rather stupid priest, Caccini, whose claims were “a web of hearsay, innuendo, and deliberate falsehood,” historian Arthur Koestler writes. The Inquisition dropped all charges against him.

Following this up, the Consultor of the Holy Office and Master of Controversial Questions...Cardinal Robert Bellarmine told Galileo it was perfectly acceptable to maintain Copernicanism as a working hypothesis, and if there were “real proof” that the earth circles around the sun, “then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary…” Basically, until you have proof, stop trying to interpret Scripture. Galileo ignored this, continued campaigning, and was then brought to the Inquisition, and put under house-arrest, where he died a mass-going, daily-prayer Catholic. [source]