Life is more important than football. Most people play sports simply because they love the competition. I certainly do. For example, if you want to see me run, you basically have two options: either put a gun to my head, or a tennis racquet in my hand. Even when the outcome of the contest has been determined, true competitors never stop playing hard. Naturally, I'd prefer that you chose the tennis racquet over the gun. I will run to win a point, or if a very large animal is chasing me, but jogging and pleasure are mutually exclusive ideas, in my opinion. Of course, everybody knows that Georgia plays Alabama in Sanford Stadium this coming Saturday. But we can talk about that contest later, after the game has been played. Today we need to talk about what happened last Saturday, the tragic accident that occurred in the game against Southern University. The halftime show by Southern's renowned marching band was supposed to be the major highlight of the game. And the band was terrific. They put on an incredible show for the crowd in Sanford stadium. Heck, they were entertaining people on their way inside the stadium. And somebody forgot to tell Southern's football team they weren't supposed to play hard and make the game competitive. At the intermission the score was only 20-6, in favor of Georgia. The previously unstoppable Bulldog running game had only gained thirty-five yards prior to halftime. To their credit, Southern's players never stopped trying to execute their game plan, refusing to play the role of a "cupcake" opponent, even late in … [Read more...]
Atheists and miracles
Miracles are events that cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws -- suggesting that these inexplicable events may only happen because of divine intervention by a supernatural deity. Therefore, it never occurred to me that an atheist might believe in miracles. So when I watched an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which prominent atheist Dan Barker claimed that he had prayed in the name of Jesus Christ and as a result, a man was instantly healed of laryngitis, it frankly caught me by surprise. Even more interesting was my discovery that former pastor Jerry DeWitt's autobiography Hope After Faith contained multiple claims of divine intervention that ranged from the mundane ("magnetically" led to find an allegedly special triangle-shaped rock) to the truly spectacular (the spontaneous healing of a brain aneurysm allegedly caused by his prayers for a miracle in the name of the Christ.) Both Dan and Jerry asserted that remarkable phenomena occurred as a result of their fervent prayers -- in fact, they seemed to be bragging about it. Otherwise, why would they even mention that these alleged miracles took place, if these men didn't want us to believe something truly inexplicable had occurred because of something they had done? Yet when pressed to provide a rational explanation for such an incredible coincidence, if it was not an act of God, atheists can't explain what happened. Atheist scientist Jacalyn Duffin's involvement in the verification of an alleged miracle healing was just as impressive as Jerry DeWitt's aneurysm story because of the medical … [Read more...]
Benefit of the doubt
I realize that atheists aren't that much different than me...as documented in my very first book, Divine Evolution, I described how I very nearly became an atheist myself. In a chapter titled "Personal Experience", I talked about the time when I questioned whether the biblical Jesus was any more real than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Therefore, I can understand how many people become atheists -- especially after struggling with serious issues such as the problem of suffering and death. As my friend Frank Boccia wrote in his essay on rationalism in regard to his experiences during the Vietnam War, sometimes good people were killed and bad people survived. Hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis also claim hundreds or even thousands of innocent lives per year. Bad things happen to everybody, sooner or later. The harder truth to accept is that everyone's days are numbered. We might see the sun rise in the morning, but we also might not. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. We're all going to die, eventually. And I'm obviously not just saying this in an effort to cheer you up... Probably the biggest difference between the average atheist and me (aside from belief in God, of course) is that I will freely admit that I believe supernatural miracles have actually occurred, even though it logically seems to be a point beyond dispute. For example, the creation of this universe from nothing -- meaning the Big Bang anomaly -- was a supernatural miracle. So was the animation of lifeless matter. Yet some people infatuated with science think there are "natural" … [Read more...]
Lying for Jesus
If the ability to annoy atheists actually produced income, my personal wealth might rival that of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. I don't even have to try hard. Merely expressing my opinion does the trick just about every time. Annoying atheists seems to be a talent that comes quite naturally, about as difficult for me as breathing. Of course, it isn't my intention to anger people that I've more than likely never met face-to-face, but often it can't be helped. My only alternative would be to remain silent about what I believe to be truth and keep my opinions to myself. However, we independent authors are expected to promote our own books, aren't we? How else might readers discover my work? A nonfiction book with a title such as Counterargument for God shouldn't leave much to the reader's imagination about where I stand on the subject of theology any more than Christopher Hitchen's book God is Not Great, or The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Now I don't consider myself a Christian apologist (even though I freely admit that I am a Christian) because I rarely if ever use theology to argue against atheism -- I prefer using clear logic, scientific evidence, an understanding of statistics and probability, and good, old-fashioned common sense to illogical arguments and Bible thumping. The (shorter) second section of my book defends my Christian beliefs (and the Bible, to some degree) against the most popular attacks used by prominent atheists like Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and David Silverman of American Atheists. When I "attack" atheism … [Read more...]
Atheism and the near death experience
Those familiar with my work know that I'm fascinated by certain aspects of the near death experience. However, all NDEs are not created equal. Some reveal more valuable information that other NDEs. And some accounts are fraudulent, of course. No matter what information a specific account may contain, my atheist friends refuse to believe them -- they simply can't afford to believe any of them could be true, because the only thing that could possibly continue to exist after the death of these material bodies is an immortal soul. Instead, the atheist will vehemently protest that every NDE is nothing more than a pleasant hallucination produced by the human brain in order to ease the transition from life into death. According to them, the NDE is evolution's contribution to death to make the experience slightly less unpleasant. But this creates a problem for NDE claims where the person describes a totally miserable experience in hell -- what are we to make of those particular "anecdotes" of dreadful hallucinations? If NDEs are nothing but hallucinations, why would some be pleasant and others unpleasant? Perhaps it is possible not every NDE account is a hallucination, or a lie. In fact, there is a category of NDE phenomena that offers clear and confirmable evidence that the physical brain and spiritual mind can literally separate, called corroborated veridical NDE accounts. This phenomena suggests that the mind can actually learn accurate information apart from the physical brain -- information that can later be independently investigated and either … [Read more...]
