Should Christians be Anti-Intellectual?

The current culture seems to view the Church as being about faith and not reason. These two concepts are touted as being contradictory, as if you can either have faith or reason, but clearly not both. Partly, this seems to be a result of the Church's retreat from the academy during the modern era.

Historically, this runs counter to the way Christianity has been understood. After all, most of the centers of education, universities, colleges, etc. are a direct result of Christian influence which targeted bringing knowledge and education to the masses. Without the Christian Church, it would be unlikely that we would be anywhere near where we are today from a scientific knowledge point of view.

How Can We Love Our Neighbor?

The Bible teaches that we are to love our neighbor. With all the parables and stories, as well as examples, of how we should go about loving our neighbor, it seems that how to actually love our neighbor is one of the most universally misunderstood concepts in Christianity.

The general understanding seems to be that as long as we are friendly and cordial to our neighbors on the off-chance that we happen to run into one of them between home and work, we have met this requirement admirably. And that's only for the "neighbors" we actually can identify and have had some sort of prior contact with. To complete strangers, we may not even be quite that nice.

Is "Faith" Just a Blind Leap in the Dark?

Many people use the term "faith" to describe belief in something for which there is no evidence, or perhaps insufficient evidence. Is that really what is meant by biblical faith? It seems that the correct idea of what faith entails is something closer to trust.

Some say that faith is a blind leap in the dark. Now, I will say something that may raise the hackles of some Christians (particularly fellow apologists out there) but I think that there is some truth to that statement. Faith is a sort of blind leap in the dark, but that I think that this illustration needs to be more thoroughly expounded upon because I think that everyone has faith in one thing or another at any given time and that in all these cases, they are making a blind leap in the dark.

Does God Exist? The Kalam Cosmological Argument

While the Kalam Cosmological Argument has been around for centuries, it is primarily through the work and efforts of Dr. William Lane Craig that it has become one of the most powerful arguments for the existence of God in recent years. The argument does not prove the Christian God of the Bible, but is often used in a cumulative case for the existence of God by starting with the idea of showing the existence of a First Cause.

This argument gives us a good deal of insight into the nature and attributes of this First Cause. Today, I will cover the basic syllogism of the argument, discuss the premises individually and finally talk about how this argument can give us information about what sort of First Cause the argument shows to exist.