I know a lot of you recieve my posts in your readers and email, so I would like for you to visit the blog and let me know what you think about the new look. There is a poll on the right side of the page where you can voice your opinion or, as always, you are welcome to leave a comment and tell me exactly what you do/don't like about the new look.

Thanks in advance for your input--Mr. Hyde!

This book is excellent overall. It covers a wide range of issues that frequently arise in discussions among Christians, Atheists, and everyone in between. It begins discussing truth—particularly, is it knowable and objective or not? It moves forward into discussing the universe and how it came into existence. Some time is spent discussing evolution. Other important topics are covered as well, such as: the reliability of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and are the things we read about Jesus and the things he taught as recorded in the New Testament reliable and trustworthy.

Norman Geisler and Frank Turek do a good job of covering these issues with some depth in only 388 pages. The only critiques I would offer is that in some places they use some technical language (without explanation) that the average person reading wouldn’t understand without going and looking-up the meaning of the word(s). Other than that, this book really covers a good chunk of issues that Christians face and some questions that non-Christians ask. It is certainly worth reading.

We have now covered the two of the three points—the universe and evolution. Finding that the evidence was not able to falsify the existence of God, we now turn to the third line of falsification—the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is currently a subject of debate, and the debate has raged since the occurrence of the event around 2,000 years ago. This is important because of what is at stake. Jesus claimed to be God in the flesh, and therefore, his prediction of his death, burial, and resurrection is necessary to substantiate his claim to Deity.

The first subject of debate about the circumstances of the resurrection is whether or not he actually died on the cross. His death is a necessary prerequisite to the resurrection because if he did not die then he did not come back to life. It is prudent then to discuss the evidence that supports the actuality of Jesus’ death on the cross. Many, especially the Roman soldiers who conducted the crucifixion and were familiar with death, witnessed his death and concluded that he, in fact, died. His side was pierced to ensure that he was dead and Pilate double-checked to make sure he was dead after receiving Joseph’s request. Based upon this it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus in fact died physically and that he did not faint, pass out, or go into a comatose state.

The events after his death also ensure that he was dead. Upon receiving the body, Joseph, with the help of Nicodemus, wrapped it in about one hundred pounds of spices and linen cloth. After they completed this task, the tomb was officially sealed and placed under guard at the request of the Jewish authorities to ensure no one tampered with or stole the body. The stone would have required several men to remove it from the entrance and so rules out the possible accusation that the disciples stole the body because the commotion would have alerted the guards. Furthermore, the inability of the authorities to produce the body, which would have effectively ended the Christian movement, indicates that the tomb truly was empty; no one could dispute that fact.

The credibility of the New Testament documents is also raised as an objection to the events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus. The accounts of the New Testament documents, however, are substantiated by many extra-biblical sources. These sources include: Polycarp, Ignatius, Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Flavius Josephus, Suetonis, Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), Tertullian, Thallus (The Samaritan-born Historian), Phlegon (A First Century Historian), Letter of Mara Bar-Serapion, Justin Martyr, the Jewish Talmuds, Julius Africanus, Emperor Trajan, Hadrian, and Toledoth Jesu. All of these confirm the biblical account that Jesus lived, was crucified, died, and was buried. Not all confirm that he was raised to life, but all confirm the notion.

Yet this is not enough credible evidence to convince some of the resurrection of Christ. Even the credibility of the extra-biblical sources is called into question. The basis of this questioning is that historians of that time period were not concerned with getting the facts of historical events correct and often times skewed them to support their personal bias. This is not supported by what is known of the ancient historians. They often criticized one another for producing inaccurate accounts or accounts that could not be verified by witness testimony. It can reasonably be assumed that if the New Testament accounts of the events of Christ’s death were inaccurate that they would have incurred such criticism.

If Jesus’ resurrection is not sufficiently confirmed by the empty tomb, his post‑resurrection appearances supply this much-needed confirmation of the reality of his resurrection. There are twelve distinct recorded instances occurring over a forty-day time period in which Jesus collectively appeared to more than 500 people.

This collective evidence still causes problems for some atheists. This is demonstrated by Dawkins when he wrote, “Although Jesus probably existed, reputable biblical scholars do not in general regard the New Testament (and obviously not the Old Testament) as a reliable record of what actually happened in history, and I shall not consider the Bible further as evidence for any kind of deity.” This is following the absurd assertion that historical evidence is minimal that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status. The problem with the statement that Jesus never claimed to be God is directly opposed by Jesus and by his enemies. Both his enemies and his disciples understood him to be claiming deity. Likewise, no one ever produced Jesus body. Think about that for just a second. Don’t you know that the Jewish authorities would love to have produced Jesus body to prove that he was dead and, therefore, he was not “God” as he had claimed.

The current evidence supports the biblical account that Jesus was resurrected back to life. Jesus’ prediction about his death, burial, and resurrection was proved correct by the evidence. Therefore, this possible point of falsification also fails. In my next post I will summarize the evidence we have discussed and conclude this series.

Links to other posts in this series:

• Part 1: Three possibilities about God's existence
• Part 2: What is acceptable evidence?
• Part 3: Is the universe eternal?
• Part 4: Does the evidence support evolution?
• Part 6: Where does the evidence lead?

The last post in this series discussed the universe. Particularly, whether the universe is eternal or if it had a beginning. The evidence led to the conclusion that the universe did have a beginning. That left us with only two possible explanations as to what brought about that beginning: (1) It brought itself about and developed into what we see today, which is evolution or (2) it was created, which is intelligent design. It is to this point we turn in this post. Does the evidence support evolution or intelligent design?

Evolution is the theory that the origin of life and the progressive change of that life arrived through purely naturalistic means. The first and earliest requirement placed upon Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was by his colleagues. They deemed it necessary to provide empirical evidence to support the sequential pattern of nature proposed by Darwin. Even with all of the evolutionary work that has persisted since the nineteenth century, the hierarchal pattern of nature persists regardless of the infusion of the spirit of sequence and continuity. The argument has, therefore, come about that the hierarchal pattern of nature supports the evolutionary view. This simply is not the case. It is much easier to argue for organic evolution if nature presented itself in sequential patterns.

Another foundational evidence Darwin cited as support for his theory was homologous structures. Darwin defines this term in The Origin to avoid any confusion. The definition he gave is as follows: “The relationship between parts which results from their development from corresponding embryonic parts.” Genetic and embryological research has demonstrated that homologous structures arrive at the end result through different routes as discussed by Sir Gavin de Beer. This demonstrates that homologous structures are not what Darwin defined them to be. This deals a swift blow to the theory because the lack of homologous structures deems descent by modification unnecessary.

Darwin recognized one major area of weakness in his theory. This area of weakness was the fossil record. It could not be ignored that the lack of intermediate species in the fossil record was a flaw to evolution. However, Darwin and those that followed after him believed that the fossil record was not complete enough and that in the future it would bear out the evidence to support the theory. This is such an important area because it is the only physical evidence that will either lend support to the theory or provide evidence that it is indeed false.

A few considerations will reveal that the fossil record does not lend support to evolution currently or in the foreseeable future. First, looking at the total number of fossil species compared to the scarce number of morphological sequences (intermediates) contained therein reveals the lack of any convincing evidence of major transformations in the fossil record. Secondly, the fossil record is nearly complete. When one realizes that 261 of the 329 living terrestrial vertebrates occur as fossils, which yields 79.1% completeness of the fossil record, it becomes apparent that there is not a great disparity in the state of the fossil record. Furthermore, when birds are excluded from the above numbers, since they are poorly fossilized, the percentage rises to 87.8% completion of the fossil record. The argument that the fossil record is not complete enough to conclusively determine whether or not it supports evolution is merely wishful thinking.

Another area often used to support evolution’s claims is vestigial organs. This is the claim that there are organs in the human body that serve no function and can be removed without harm to the body. This argument fails at several points. To simply assume that the lack of harm from the removal of an organ indicates that it is useless neglects the possibility that other organs may compensate for the removal of that organ and that it simply is not feasible to measure any loss of function. Consider the kidneys. A person can have a kidney removed and not suffer serious loss, but they serve a function. In fact, one could actually argue that the loss of function of organs indicates devolving of life, which is the opposite of evolution.

Modern genetics research and the discovery of DNA pose another problem for evolution. Take this along with problems associated with abiogenesis (spontaneous generation), and evolution virtually becomes impossible to argue as a viable hypothesis. The prebiotic soup so often referred to as fact actually has no evidence to support it and in reality has much evidence opposing it. The conditions of earth’s early atmosphere did not consist of the correct elements to produce life and had several factors which led to a “catch 22” situation because if life did happen to arise spontaneously it would have almost immediately been destroyed. Furthermore, the laws of nature clearly define that life arises from life, not that living things arise from nonliving things going against the laws of nature and universal.

The DNA problem has actually caused one atheist to purport that “life in bacterial form may have been transmitted to this planet in a missile from some other part of space.” This does not solve the problem because it still begs the question: “Where did that life come from?” Evolution attempted to show how proteins, the building blocks of the cell and therefore life, arise from purely natural reactions. However, with the discovery of the role of DNA in producing those proteins in the cell, it is more necessary to determine the origin of the information contained in DNA than to determine the natural processes the DNA controls. This presents a conundrum to the evolutionists.

Evolutionists, in general, make the mistake of letting preconceived theories shape the evidence rather than letting the evidence shape the theory. In other words, they are like a fisherman who upon catching a large fish returned the fish to the pond. After watching this happen several times, an onlooker asked the man, “Why do you only keep the small fish and return the larger fish to the pond?” The man responded to the onlooker, “I only have an eight-inch frying pan, and so the larger ones won’t fit!” Simply put, the evidence that proponents of evolution cite does not support the conclusions that are drawn by the evolutionist, or the atheist for that matter.

The evidence does not necessarily prove intelligent design, but it does demonstrate that it better fits the evidence that we currently have about the beginning of the universe and the current state-of-affairs today. The only point left to discuss in this series is that of Jesus’ resurrection. The next post will tackle this topic.

Links to other posts in this series:

• Part 1: Three possibilities about God's existence
• Part 2: What is acceptable evidence?
• Part 3: Is the universe eternal?
• Part 5: What about the resurrection?
• Part 6: Where does the evidence lead?