Apprentice Owl Apologetics

                Blaise Pascal was a renowned scientist, and a profound Christian writer. He had many contributions to the scientific community, including the first digital calculator, a fundamental gas law, and had his name set to a unit of pressure. However, his contribution to the Christian community, in the form of what we call Pascal’s wager. Pascal’s wager says: If a person does not believe in God and God does not exist, then that person gains nothing. On the other hand, if a person does not believe in God and God actually  does  exist, that person stands to lose everything. The consequence for wagering incorrectly would involve an infinite loss (eternal exclusion from life with God, or hell). In terms of a cost-benefit analysis, the one who wagers against God has nothing to gain and everything to lose. Given these two options, Pascal logically asserts that the prudent person should wager on God. However, should this be a brute for...

                I’ve been mulling this one over for a while, and I think I can put it all onto paper now. I’ve been thinking specifically, about the testimony of the church as it relates to today’s issues. When I was younger, I had always heard the caricature of the church and Christians as uptight prudes who never smile because everything is sinful. While I think this one is easily dismissed if people will get to know Christians, it is the most recent description of church that troubles me. We are painted as hypocrites, we do not practice what we preach, which is one of the most common objections to Christianity. I just heard a video from the YouTube channel LutheranSatire that described the faith vs works dilemma that we see between Catholics and Protestants. What struck me is that we are justified before God by faith, but it is our works that show to other people that we are transformed Christians or not. If we are no different from the people...

                I’ve heard the argument, and I’ve indeed posted quotes about this, that people are Christians because they view it as a crutch philosophy. In a way, Christianity is a crutch, but not in the way critics and accusers, and even Christians with the wrong idea, think. We can do nothing apart from Christ (John 15:5), so our relationship with him is more of a wooden leg, rather than a crutch that we use only when we need help walking. We are called to lean on God, and not our own understanding. Christianity is here to answer some of the greatest philosophical questions of mankind, but as we are warned in Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ”. This would mean that we are not to be taken in by the appeal of ideas, but rather the person of Jesus. It is through the relationship wi...

                When we look at different religions, and the various evidences for them, I would argue that Christianity has the most robust case in terms of historical and philosophical evidence. Given this, there are plenty of people who look at the evidence for the person of Christ and the claims of the Bible, and some are not convinced, and some wholeheartedly believe and give their lives to Jesus. We can look at the stories of many prominent Christians and Atheists, from multiple fields of study, and see that it is not a case of training or intellect, as the New Atheists try to push on religious people. We can see multiple examples of prominent scientists, philosophers, politicians, and just everyday people that we know on either side of the aisle. We as humans are generally pretty intelligent when we want to be, and we all have our own opinions about God and eternity. So what gives? Why, when confronted with the overwhelming evidence that c...