Big Change at Come Reason - August Update

Come Reason Ministries has always had a bold online presence, ever since our founding. Since creating one of the first apologetics sites on the web in 1995, the ministry has sought to use technology as a tool to further God's kingdom. I'm excited to announce that we've just finished completely overhauling the www.comereason.org web site, making it more functional as well as more attractive. The site is cleaner and easier to read, both for mobile devices and computers. Pages have been renamed using natural English titles for friendlier indexing, and all articles are immediately accessible via the navigation bar.

Other improvements to the site include:

• Both the Apologetics-Notes blog and the podcast page have been integrated into the site.
• A completely redesigned Tools area for grabbing free apologetics downloads or purchasing resources.
• A Come Reason Videos page that gives you direct access to YouTube and other videos.
• Easier to use social media sharing tools to share your favorite articles with friends.
• An improved search engine that indexes ALL the Come Reason web properties to give you complete results.

The Web site receives over 300,000 visitors yearly form nearly every country on earth and it is my prayer that this new site will do an even better job at providing convincing Christianity to a lost world.

Soon, we will provide some additional features, such as the ability to purchase MP3s of apologetics teachings for immediate download, so keep checking back. Until then, check out the new site and its features. I'd love to hear your comments.

Free Seattle Apologetics Conference begins tomorrow!

I'm very excited to be a part of the Speaking the Truth in Love Conference being held this year at Kent Covenant Church in Kent, WA. The August 8th & 9th event has a stellar lineup of speakers, including Dr. Phil Fernandez, Abdu Murray, Dr. Rick Walston, Ron Wallace, Dr. Eric Odell-Hein and more.

I'm scheduled to speak three times during the conference. My topics are “Hidden Ways the Gospels Prove Reliable,” “How to Talk About Faith on Facebook,” and “Dealing with Bible Contradictions.” This event is also free for the public, and if you register early, you even get a free book! You can get all the information at http://www.speakingthetruthinloveconference.com/ I hope to see you there!

The Bible and Archaeology Class

On Monday, August 11 I will be holding my next apologetics class at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside. The topic is “The Bible and Archaeology “and we will examine the various archaeological finds supporting how the Bible is unique among sacred texts in that God moves within a historical backdrop. Do recent archaeological discoveries validate or discredit the Biblical accounts? Join us this month as we explore the relationship between the Bible and archaeology.

The class is free and open to anyone. It begins at 7:00 PM and childcare is provided. Click here for details.

Top Five Blog Posts for July

The Come Reason blog has continued to draw readers, with over 22,000 page views. Proving popular were several articles dismantling Mormon claims that corresponded to the Manti Apologetics Missions trips. Other topics looked at claims about Gandhi's “goodness” and how moral relativism forces atheists to make egregious claims. The five most popular posts are linked below:

1. When an atheist says it's OK to rape her sister
2. Are Mormons Christians, too?
3. We Don't Know What We Believe
4. Is Gandhi a better model for Christians?
5. Science and Religion Resources

This Month's Apologetics Resource:
Hidden Ways the Gospels Prove Reliable

This month, I'm excited to offer a new resource for your gift of any size. "Hidden Ways the Gospels Prove Reliable" takes a look at evidence that has recently come to light showing how the gospel accounts must have been written by first century eyewitnesses of the events they record. By studying the names used throughout the accounts, noting interlocking testimony, and finding undesigned coincidences, it becomes easy to see that the gospels are not fable, fiction, nor falsehood.

This gift is your for a secure donation of any size to help support the efforts of our ministry.

Would you consider making a gift to Come Reason today? Your tax deductible gift may be given securely online here, or you may send us a check at the address on the bottom of this email. However the Lord leads you, please know that I'm deeply grateful for your prayers and your friendship.

Blessings,


Lenny Esposito

What is the Uncaused Cause of the Universe?

Christianity has always been a faith that relies on reason and evidence for its beliefs. Paul models this in his challenge in 1 Corinthians 15, where he hangs all of Christianity on the fact of Jesus' resurrection from the dead "(if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile").1 After the apostles, we have the witness of early church fathers, such as Justin Martyr, through thinkers like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas who all contributed to not simply the church's mental development, but to the growth of reason the world over.

 One of the more famous defenses by Thomas Aquinas is his Five Ways argument for God's existence, one of which argues that God is the Uncaused Cause2. This particular argument is sometimes misunderstood as arguing that all events are caused by preceding events, like a chain of dominoes. So if you were to trace all events back in time, you'd eventually get to a first cause that starts the dominoes falling. That description is closer to another of Aquinas' Five Ways arguments, the Unmoved Mover. The Uncaused Cause isn't a time-dependent argument, but rather an explanation of contingency. Just as my life is contingent on me breathing air right now, not just in the past, so all effects can point to their current state of existence as contingent on something else.

Aquinas rightly notes that to try and explain an effect (say the existence of the universe) by pointing to itself is impossible. This also applied to multiverse scenarios, since we must ask what causes the multiverse "engine" to produce multiple universes. Aquinas rightly says that such claims are simply not explanations. We must ground all effects in an ultimate cause, otherwise we have explained nothing.

Peter S. Williams has a great little video clip clearly explaining Aquinas' Uncaused Cause argument.  Check it out below:

References

1. See: Esposito, Lenny. "Why is the Resurrection so important?" Come Reason Ministries. Web.
http://apologetics-notes.comereason.org/2013/03/why-is-resurrection-so-important.html 10 March 2013.
2. Aquinas, Thomas. "Whether God exists?" Summa Theologica. (Benziger Bros. edition, 1947). Web.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q2_A3.html 5 Aug 2014.

Would Rape Be Moral If God Commanded It?

Last week, I recounted a time speaking with an atheist woman on the campus at UC Berkeley who said that rape would be OK if the person doing so truly believed he was right. It showed the folly of those who held to moral relativism. The post spurred a comment by Mark, who asked, "If the man had been commanded by God to perform the rape, would it then be a moral act?"

While Mark's question seems to offer a twist on the concept of grounding morality in God, the objection itself is not a new one. In fact, we know it's been around for at least 2,300 years because the Greek philosopher Plato set it forth in one of his dialogues, where the protagonist Socrates asks Euthyphro basically "Is God good because he follows some intrinsic goodness independent of Him, or is good whatever God declares to be good?"

Euthyphro's dilemma is famous because both options have disastrous consequences. If there's some independent concept of goodness, then even God is obligated to be good. But what or how does one then discover that concept? What grounds it? And how can God be God if He must obey laws like the rest of us? Doesn't this make God a little less omnipotent? But if we take the other option, that good is simply whatever God says is good, it makes good and bad pretty arbitrary. God could conceivably do what Mark asks (command that rape is now a good thing) and sins become virtues while virtues turn to sins. What kind of morality is that?

Splitting the Horns of Euthyphro's Dilemma

Christians have not been unaware of Euthyphro's dilemma. God's relationship with morality has been written about extensively by the likes of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and others. However, the solution to this dilemma is not as hard as one may think. The answer lies in the fact that there are more than the two choices that Plato laid out in his original dialogue. Christian theology teaches that God has certain intrinsic properties within Himself, such as love. Love cannot exist without a person to express it and when the Bible says "God is love" it communicates that it is a fundamental part of God's nature to love. Similarly, goodness is something that flows from the nature of God Himself. When we talk about doing what is right or wrong, we are comparing our actions to those that God would naturally approve or disapprove of us performing.

For an example of actions flow from nature, we can look to ourselves. Human beings are naturally linguistic creatures; we think in terms of language. If I asked you to plan your evening in your mind right now, you would invariably use words as you thought about your options. We don't think in only pictures but we use words and sentences, even if we aren't communicating our thoughts to someone else. Language is part of human nature and it simply flows from us. To try and violate this nature is pretty much impossible, because there is no other way to think about abstract ideas like morality.

As language flows from human nature, so goodness flows from God's nature, and it would be impossible for Him to violate His nature. Because of this, we see the question Mark asked becomes nonsensical. To ask if rape would be a moral act if God commanded it makes as much sense as to ask whether God could make a rock so big that He couldn't lift it. God simply would never command rape to be moral. We can therefore split the horns of Euthyphro's dilemma and provide a third option.

By grounding moral attributes in God's nature, we achieve two things: 1) moral attributes are objective, they don't change because God' nature doesn't change and 2) God isn't somehow obligated to follow an independent law, but He follows the law within Himself. Thus, objective moral values make sense and we can know that the good is just that.

Photo courtesy Emmanuel Huybrechts via the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.

Thinking Less About Stuff and More About God (video)

Is pragmatism replacing piety in the church today? There are six megathemes—shifts in the way Christians think and act—that show how much the world's ideas are corrupting the church today. In the third of our six-part series, Lenny notes that growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life. But by avoiding wrestling with ethical and theological questions, we are doomed to hold a very superficial view of both Christianity AND life. That is not only sin, it is a travesty of living.


 

Top Five Come Reason Apologetics Blog Posts for July

Facing off against atheists, Mormons, and those who would hold Gandhi in the same regard as Jesus are among our top five resources for July. Also is a collection of resources dealing with the science and religion controversy.  Here are the top five apologetics blog posts for July:

1. When an atheist says it's OK to rape her sister
2. Are Mormons Christians, too?
3. We Don't Know What We Believe
4. Is Gandhi a better model for Christians?
5. Science and Religion Resources