Here’s a video where Greg Koukl and Deepak Chopra discuss the meaning of faith. Click the link to see the streaming video. (6:22 long)

Chopra seems to love saying what people want to hear rather than saying things that actually make sense. Is sin merely ignorance as Dr Chopra says? That seems ridiculous. Certainly if a person truly isn’t aware that what they are doing is immoral then we cannot blame them for what they are doing. But that is not what sin is. Sin is when people do things they know are wrong … and if we are honest with ourselves we know that we sin all the time.

On the topic of sin, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron encourage an evangelism style that confronts people with the Ten Commandments. They ask people if they’ve broken the Ten Commandments, and then when people inevitably admit that yes, of course they have, then therefore they are “sinners” in need of forgiveness. While true in a sense, a non-Christian could easily simply deny the Ten Commandments and their argument falls apart. After all if a person doesn’t believe the Bible is the word of God, why should they give credence to the Ten Commandments? However, IMHO it’s totally unnecessary to bring the Ten Commandments into the argument, and it works just as well without even mentioning them. Here’s why:

Regardless of whether a person is Christian or not, everyone has their own moral standards; aka their moral conscience, or moral rules. And whether a person accepts God’s moral rules or not, every person must admit that they have broken THEIR OWN moral rules.

The question then becomes: Who do you think has higher standards when it comes to morals … you or God? If you say God has higher standards, then we’re in a heap of trouble, because we’ve already admitted that even by our own standards we don’t measure up, so that means we fall WAY short of God’s own standards, whatever they may be. If someone were foolish enough to claim that we have higher standards than God, then they would be claiming that we have greater (more just, more accurate) moral standards than the God who is the source of all moral standards, which is absurd.

Greg makes a great comment near the end of the video regarding “guilt”, which is also made in an article on Greg’s website:

Folks, we don’t get rid of guilt through denial . We get rid of guilt through forgiveness. And that forgiveness can only come from the One whom we have offended. The One who gave the law in the first place. (Read Greg’s full article here.)

Further reading:

• I’m essentially a good person! What’s wrong with that? - Read one of my previous articles where I discuss what it means to be a “good person”.
• Why did Jesus have to die? - He paid the price for our sins so that we wouldn’t have to. The beautiful thing about grace is that it’s unfair: We don’t get what we deserve.

Do all religious paths lead to God? Greg Koukl says no, and I agree with him. Here he responds to the idea that all religions are basically the same and in a sense “all roads lead to Rome”:

Click to view the streaming video: »» (more…)

During the Richard Dawkins / Alister McGrath interview, Dawkins asks McGrath how a person goes from being a deist to being a Christian. (This exchange begins around the 24 minute mark.) Dawkins lists several things Christianity “adds on” to belief in God in general (including atonement, prayer, forgiveness, etc) which Dawkins says “seem to have no substantiating basis at all,” and then remarks that he is tempted to say that these things were grafted on “for no better reason than that’s the way that you happen to have been brought up”.

McGrath begins his reply by saying that the foundation for his belief is in the person of Jesus, and that for Christians their beliefs are not just abstract musings about “a god” but instead Jesus and His resurrection are key to “understand everything”. One of the main reasons that Christians believe in God, says McGrath, is Jesus. He notes that the ideas of sin, atonement, etc are not “added on” but rather are core beliefs that have explanatory power. He concludes by saying that “Christianity is not so much about explanation but about salvation”.

Here McGrath takes a different stance than I do. First, I would have made reference to Dawkins’ last point, that McGrath believes because it’s the way he was brought up. Dawkins is aware that McGrath was an atheist early in his life, so that comment does not apply to him. Nor does it apply to me, since I was brought up in an intentionally non-religious environment. Of course, even if McGrath DID believe just because it’s the way he was brought up, that says nothing about the truthfulness of those beliefs. (See: Genetic fallacy)

My journey from agnosticism to Christian faith went something like this:

1. Does God exist?
• Yes.
2. What would God be like? What attributes would this God have?
• One God … creative … omniscient … omnipotent … good …
3. Which, if any, of the gods of the world religions comply with these attributes?
• Some: Judaism, Islam, Christianity. (And Christian splinters like Mormonism.)
4. After investigating these faiths, which seems to be worthy of further investigation?
• Christianity, for what have become my “big three” reasons (among others): Historical reliability, the person of Jesus, and salvation by grace. (And by extension, greatest “explanatory power” as McGrath says.)
5. After studying Christianity in more depth, do I have good reason to think it is true?
• Yes.

Of course, as you can read in more detail in my personal story, even after I had come to that point of intellectual acceptance it took awhile for me to take the step of “faith”. This faith is not blind … see my post Faith & Evidence.

Again, like the miracles issue, I agree wholeheartedly with what Dr. McGrath is saying. However, I would have attempted to point out what makes Christianity uniquely different from other faiths and naming the reasons why belief in Jesus is warranted in the first place. These things are, I think, the “substantiating basis” that Dawkins is asking for. Christianity must be about both explanation and salvation.

I said I would post about “The Secret”, Rhonda Byrne’s ridiculous new-agey DVD/book that proposes the not so novel theory that “OUR THOUGHTS … CREATE … THINGS!” … however I’ve decided against wasting my time doing a meticulous refutation, in the hopes that the fad will die off soon. However, I did write an article for The Life recently about The Secret, titled What is “The Secret”?. I invite you to read it as a summary of my views on this subject.