Monthly Archives: January 2013

General Apologetics

What Are Christians Obsessed With?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Is it abortion, or gay marriage, or euthanasia, or any of the other culture war battlefronts? Does the culture war consume our time and money?

David French took a look at Christian charities a couple years back to see who Christians give their money (thanks to Greg West for the link). French reviewed the donations given to well-known Christian culture war organizations, such as Alliance Defense Fund, the Family Research Council, National Right to Life, and Americans United for Life. According to tax records, “these organizations raise quite a bit of money—almost $60 million combined.”

French also noted, ironically, that the biggest culture warrior on the left, the ACLU, took in about $130 million by itself. It seems the left is quite concerned with winning the culture wars.

What French did next was look at the top three Christian anti-poverty charities: World Vision, Compassion International, and Samaritan’s Purse. According to the left, Christians are concerned more with babies in the womb than helping babies after they are born. We are against gay marriage, against abortion, against everything! We aren’t for anything positive.

Get ready for this. Guess how much money was donated to only the top three Christian anti-poverty charities? Here is French:

Their total annual gross receipts (again, according to most recently available Form 990s) exceed $2.1 billion. The smallest of the three organizations (Samaritan’s Purse) has larger gross receipts than every major “pro-family” culture war organization in the United States combined. World Vision, the largest, not only takes in more than $1 billion per year, it also has more than 1,400 employees and 43,000 volunteers.

What are we to make of this? It seems that Christians are something like twenty times more concerned with helping the poor of the world than fighting the culture wars. Anyone who says the opposite is simply ignorant. As French summarizes, “Historically, monetarily, and with our time and lives today, [we are] serving our fellow man.”

Existence of God, Science and God, Top Ten Posts of 2012

Does Science Disprove the Existence of God? #1 Post of 2012

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

As I’ve read comments on the blog over the years, I’ve often read a version of the following: “science disproves the existence of God.”  Even prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger say something similar.  Edgar Andrews, in his book Who Made God?, points out that this argument can be circular.

Andrews explains:

The assertion is based on the claim that science presents no evidence for the existence of supernatural forces or phenomena. It sounds plausible until you look a little more closely. The argument can be expressed as a syllogism as follows:

1. Science is the study of the physical universe.

2. Science produces no evidence for the existence of non-physical entities.

3. Therefore non-physical entities such as God do not exist.

Why is this a circular argument?  What is the fallacy?

Again the fallacy is clear.  In point (1) ‘science’ is defined as the study of the physical or material world.  This statement thereby excludes by definition any consideration by science of non-physical causes or events.  The proposition then argues from the silence of science concerning non-material realities that such realities do not exist.  By the same logic, if you define birds as ‘feathered creatures that fly’, there’s no such thing as an ostrich.  It’s fairly obvious in this example whose head is in the sand.  The correct conclusion, of course, is not that ostriches are mythical but that (on your restrictive definition of ‘bird’) they are not birds.  In the same way, to define science as the study of the material universe simply prohibits science from making statements about a non-material entity like God.  If the remit of science is deliberately restricted to the physical realm, the fact that science (so defined) tells us nothing about God has no bearing whatever on his existence or non-existence, as most scientists recognize.

Science can actually give us evidence of God’s existence, as Andrews argues throughout his book, and as I’ve argued elsewhere.  Science examines effects in the natural world that lead us back to God as the cause of those effects.