About the blog…
I’m recently back from preaching at a special Fathers’ Day service at Katanning. For those not familiar with Western Australia, it is a three hour drive south of Perth – and what a stunning drive it was today. The countryside was ablaze with colour. This is one of the best times of the year in WA. The blog has now been operational for two weeks, and lest you are interested, I thought I would give you a quick update on where it is at. So far 549 people have visited the site from 39 countries viewing pages 1205 times viewers are most frequently referred to the site by...
Read MoreThe Church: Hazard or Witness
Hear the word ‘church’ and are you more inclined to think, ‘Now that’s why I can’t believe’ or ‘yup, it sure is another of those niggling little signs that belief in God is warranted’? Given the bad press the church has experienced in recent decades, I imagine that many will select the first option. Some would boldly say that the church is hazardous and exposure to it is likely to leave you less inclined to believe in the existence of a good God. But I’d like to suggest that such thinking is blinkered and biased, and that deeper...
Read MoreThe Bible: Bloodthirsty Text or Solid Witness?
In this ‘Why Believe?’ series we’ve been engaged in a little exercise of cumulative case apologetics – not trying to demonstrate that everything that Christianity stands for is proved with one knockout blow, but cumulatively building a case for belief, one piece at a time. The role of the Bible in building or detracting from this case is important. While arguments for theism establish that belief in a god or gods is reasonable, at some point we have to give content to the character and nature of the god believed in. While a certain amount can be ascertained from...
Read MoreTheism, and all that…
When we ask the ‘why believe’ question we pretty soon come to the ‘but can I believe that God exists?’ question. To answer it, we have to explore whether theism is reasonable. Theism claims that there is a God who is the creator and ruler of the universe. It does not go much further than that. This God could be the one worshiped in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism (for theism does not insist that there can only be one God) and potentially a host of other faiths as well. A great deal of content is not attached to the belief, but it stands in stark contrast to...
Read MoreWhy believe? A sort of apologetics 101…
Why believe? Well, you already do. The question is really, what do you believe, and why? The first big question is the God one. Does God exist, and if so does it matter? Regardless of whether your answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the first part of the question, some faith is involved. Perhaps it is better to ask which takes the greater faith, to believe that God exists or does not exist. In the absence of definitive proof for either side, some faith is involved. At the cognitive level, it is about assessing the evidence – where does the weight of evidence point? Those...
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