All posts by Bill Pratt

Bible Interpretation

Should You Only Read a Bible Verse?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you do, don’t stop!  Read the rest of the chapter and even the book you found the verse in.

One of the biggest mistakes Christians make when reading the Bible is opening it up to a book and only reading one verse.  We all have favorite verses that we like to quote, but there is a danger.

The danger with only focusing on isolated verses is that the Bible wasn’t written that way and was never intended to be read that way.  The books of the Bible were originally written as complete works, and they did not contain verse or chapter numbers.  These were added hundreds of years later to help readers navigate the Bible more easily.

Verses and chapters are very helpful to Bible students, but they are also a curse.  They have taught Christians to atomize the Bible into thousands of isolated sentences.  Remember that a verse only makes sense in context with the surrounding paragraphs and the book it is found in.

Christian scholar Gary Habermas emphasizes reading verses in context.  He tells a story of a woman who was angry at God for allowing suffering in her life.  She continuously quoted James 5:15 as evidence that God had promised to heal believers of their suffering.

Here was his response.  Habermas asked the woman, “Did the same James that wrote James 5 also write James 1?”

Whatever verse 15 in chapter 5 means, it must be read in context with the rest of the book of James, which clearly says that Christians will suffer trials and that they should “consider it pure joy.”  This lady had fallen into the trap of reading a single verse and not reading the rest of the book the verse is found in.

Don’t make the same mistake.  If you find yourself quoting a Bible verse, that’s wonderful.  Just make sure that you have read the entire book the verse is in and make sure that your understanding of the verse is consistent with the context.

General Apologetics, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability, Religion, Skeptics

Are Religious People Unable to Get History Right?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In my frequent conversations with non-Christians, I hear the following kinds of statements: “I can’t believe what the Bible authors wrote because they were religiously motivated.”

The idea seems to be that if you are religious, you will not be able to tell the truth about historical events.  You will twist history to fit your agenda.

This may surprise some of you, but I can see where this viewpoint comes from.  I run into various religious groups who do monkey around with history and fail to get the facts right.  In fact, the very reason I could never be a Mormon is because Joseph Smith manufactured an entire history of the Americas that has absolutely no external evidence to support it.

But, just because some religious groups manufacture history does not mean that all religious groups manufacture history.  As I’ve written before on this blog, the writers of the Bible get their history right whenever archaeology can confirm it (see Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 7).

At the very least, a skeptic should acknowledge this truth about Christianity and not lump it in with religions who do not accurately portray history.  The Bible deserves the benefit of the doubt as it has proven itself many times to be historically accurate.

The well-known scholar N. T. Wright explains that the New Testament writers were clearly trying to record accurate history alongside their theological teachings.  It is only modern man who struggles with the juxtaposition of the two.  Watch this brief video clip below posted by The John Ankerberg Show.

Books of the Bible, Theology

Did Jesus Want Us to Think?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

According to Martin Lloyd-Jones, the answer is “yes.”  Below is a quote from Lloyd-Jones where he is commenting on Matt. 6:30, from the Sermon on the Mount.  He argues that Jesus’ words indicate that he expected his listeners to be actively using their minds to make logical deductions from the evidence around them.  The source of this quote is Tim Challies’ blog.

Faith according to our Lord’s teaching in this paragraph, is primarily thinking; and the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. …

We must spend more time in studying our Lord’s lessons in observation and deduction. The Bible is full of logic, and we must never think of faith as something purely mystical. We do not just sit down in an armchair and expect marvelous things to happen to us. That is not Christian faith. Christian faith is essentially thinking. Look at the birds, think about them, draw your deductions. Look at the grass, look at the lilies of the field, consider them. …

Faith, if you like, can be defined like this: It is a man insisting upon thinking when everything seems determined to bludgeon and knock him down in an intellectual sense. The trouble with the person of little faith is that, instead of controlling his own thought, his thought is being controlled by something else, and, as we put it, he goes round and round in circles. That is the essence of worry. … That is not thought; that is the absence of thought, a failure to think.

Evil, Pain, and Suffering, Free Will, Morality

Will You Give Up Your Free Will to Rid the World of Evil?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common objections to belief in God is the problem of evil.  One form of the problem of evil sounds like this: “I can’t believe in a God who allows children to be sexually molested.  If there was a God, He wouldn’t allow such things to occur.”

I can understand the objection, and it’s an objection that all Christians have struggled with one time or another.  However, there is a response to this challenge.

The sexual molester has free will and has chosen to exercise that free will to commit an act of evil against another person.  In fact, every human being has free will and makes choices every day to do good or evil.  God has given each of us this power of choice.

The objector wants God to take away the power of free choice from the molester to prevent him from doing evil.  Even though this crime is particularly heinous, the objector must surely want God to stop a variety of other acts of evil as well.  After all, why stop with child molestation when genocide, rape, and torture go on every day?

The only way for God to stop all of these crimes, these acts of evil, is to remove the power of free will from every person.  Some of you might say, “Wait a minute!  I don’t commit these horrible crimes.  Why do I have to lose my free will?”  You may not commit these kinds of crimes, but you commit acts of evil every day, most likely.  They are just more subtle.

Do you lie?  Do you steal?  Do you gossip about other people?  Are you committing adultery? If you don’t think that you ever do evil, just ask your spouse or a sibling.  I’m sure they can provide some examples to you.  The truth is that we all do bad things and that we are all capable of horrible crimes.

So, if God is going to rid the world of moral evil he is going to have to take away every person’s free will first.  Would you be willing to lose your power of free will to rid the world of evil?  If not, then you can hardly blame God for the evil in the world.  You must blame yourself.  After all, when given the chance to rid the world of evil, you declined!

If you would give up your free will, your ability to choose between good and evil, then I encourage you to become a Christian, because that’s exactly what Christians, in a sense, are doing.  Christians acknowledge that the world would be a much better place if we would follow the one man who consistently chose good for his entire human life, Jesus Christ.

When we submit to him, we are submitting our power of free choice to his direction and instruction.  We are saying to Jesus, “We want to do what you did.  We want to choose the way you chose, because you always chose good and never chose evil!”  Instead of every day demanding that our own choices be paramount, we strive to subject our free will to him, and he gives us the power to live as he did.

Our reward for submitting our free will to Jesus results in our spending eternity in heaven.  In heaven, our free will is perfected, as we will always and forever only choose the good.

Religion

The New York Times and Crucifixions

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Richard John Neuhaus, the editor of First Things magazine who passed away earlier this year, had a special way of finding humor in news reporting about religion.  I was reading one such commentary recently that caused me to laugh out loud – and for several minutes.  Not wanting to keep this humor to myself, please read below a short commentary of Neuhaus’ on the religion reporting of the New York Times in 1993:

St. Philip’s Catholic Church in San Francisco is apparently one of those places where “the action’s at.” Jane Gross of the New York Times reports on a recent family festival held there, and the point of the report is that, my goodness, there were all kinds of families present—“stepfamilies and foster families, multigenerational families and gay families . . . and other configurations that have yet to be named by social scientists or counted by statisticians.” Ms. Gross continues: “Even in this old-fashioned, godly haven, with crucifixions on the walls and children in neat uniforms, the families have changed indelibly but the values have not.” Crucifixions on the walls? It seems the action gets a little rough at St. Philip’s. The pastor, Father Michael Healy, draws the lesson to be learned: “There’s such a thing as family values, but who’s to say who’s living up to them?” Certainly not the pastor of St. Philip’s. (Crucifixions on the wall reminds us of a Detroit paper that reported some years ago on a Lutheran convention. “The procession was led by a young man carrying a 140-year-old crucifix.” But then, why should we expect journalists to know any more about religion than about other matters of consequence?)

“It seems the action gets a little rough at St. Philip’s.”  I love that line.

Creation

Why Do Scientists Believe the Universe is Almost 14 Billion Years Old? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from the first post on this topic, we will look at two more methods that physicists and astronomers use to determine the age of the universe.  Again, this information has been gathered from Hugh Ross’ A Matter of Days.

The third method physicists use to calculate the age of the universe is to measure the age of stars throughout the universe.  Stars are simple objects, composed of 100% gas, that burn through the process of nuclear fusion, which, according to Ross, is very well understood and experimentally verified.

Because the process of stellar burning is so well understood, the physicist or astronomer can determine the age of a star if he knows the mass, color, and brightness of the star (all characteristics that can be measured from earth).  From this data, the astronomer can know how long the star has been burning, which places a boundary on how old the universe must be (it can’t be any younger than the oldest star).

The fourth method physicists use to calculate the age of the universe is to measure the relative quantities of radioactive isotopes in the universe.  Radioactive isotopes are only produced by supernovae, which are supergiant stars in their last stage of burning.

It turns out that radioactive isotopes decay at rates (half-lives) that are well understood.  Uranium and thorium, for example, have half-lives of billions of years.  Since we still find uranium and thorium in the universe, we know that the universe cannot be so old that these isotopes had completely decayed out of existence.  That sets an upper limit of a few hundred billion years.

On the other hand, those isotopes with half-lives of millions of  years or less (e.g., plutonium, neptunium, technetium) cannot be found on the earth, so we know that at least a billion years have gone by for them to have disappeared.  Since astronomers know how much of these isotopes were produced by ancient supernovae, and they know the decay half-lives, by measuring the amounts of these isotopes in existence today, they can calculate how much time has passed since the first supernovae produced the first isotopes.  Obviously the universe must be older than this.

Summary and Conclusion

I hope you were able to follow, at least at a basic level, these four methods.  Ross claims that there are many other independent methods that have been used to calculate the age of the universe, but that these four are the most simple for lay people to understand.  What strikes me about these methods is that they rely on different and independent measurement techniques, but they all arrive at the same answer for the age of the universe – around 13.7 billion years.

It’s easy to attack one measurement technique as being inaccurate, but when four independent methods give you the same answer, you need to pay attention.  And remember, it’s actually more than 4 techniques.  The laws of physics used to date the universe are very well understood and experimentally verified to a great degree of precision.  To dismiss all of these independent measurements as erroneous betrays a lack of understanding of physics and mathematics.

If you find yourself still questioning these findings, ask yourself why.  The age of the universe does not at all undermine Scripture.  Whether the universe is 13.7 billion years old or 6,000 years old has no bearing on the truths taught in the Bible.  As Christians, we are to seek out the truth, no matter what it may be.  The true findings of science will never the contradict the Word of God, so engage with science and enjoy the discoveries that lie ahead of us.  We have nothing to fear!!

Creation

Why Do Scientists Believe the Universe is Almost 14 Billion Years Old? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some in the evangelical community dismiss the science that shows the universe is old (almost 14 billion years), and I think partly because they never considered the reasons why scientists make this claim.

I am not a physicist or an astronomer, but I am an electrical engineer, so I had to take physics classes in college and gain an understanding of physics in order to practice electrical engineering.  I am going to present some reasons the universe is old, but I cannot get into the details of it.  These reasons are taken from Hugh Ross’ book, A Matter of Days.  I am hoping that this post, and the next, will spur some of you to do more research on the topic.

The first method physicists use to calculate the age of the universe is to measure the expansion rate of the universe.  The universe is growing larger (like a balloon expanding by someone blowing into it), and if we can measure at what rate it is growing, we can calculate how long ago the universe came into existence.  We can mathematically reverse the expansion until the universe reverts back to a singularity, a point so small the human eye cannot detect it.  This is the beginning of the universe.

The way the expansion is calculated is by measuring the distance from other galaxies to us, and observing how fast these other galaxies are moving away from us.  If we know the distances and velocities of enough galaxies, we can calculate the expansion rate of the universe, and thus the age of the universe.

The second method physicists use to calculate the age of the universe is to measure the cosmic background radiation temperature.  When the universe came into existence, it generated a lot of heat!  Ever since that creation event, the universe has been cooling down as it ages.

When we measure the cosmic background radiation (“take the temperature” of the universe), the readings indicate that the temperatures all around us are about -455 deg F (only 2.725 deg C above absolute zero) and vary little – less than 1 part in 10,000.  Given the geometry of the universe and these temperature readings, physicists can calculate how long the universe has been cooling, and thus the age of the universe.

In the next post, we will look at two more methods for determining the age of the universe.  I hope you’ll stick around to learn about them.

Evolution

Ida Not the Missing Link?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A few months ago, the History Channel trumpeted the missing human link, Ida.  Ida is a 47 million year old fossil that was claimed to be a human ancestor.  At the time, I wrote a blog post shaming the scientific community for making sensationalistic claims like this.  The evidence from the fossil record cannot establish direct ancestral relationships over millions of years.

Here we are in October and already paleontologists are re-thinking Ida.  Check out this article at ABC News.

Bottom line: take the claims of “missing links” with a grain of salt.  Paleontologists need to stop allowing themselves to be used by the media and present new fossil discoveries with more humility.

Difficult Bible Passages, Textual Criticism

Is Mark 16:9-20 the Original Ending to the Gospel of Mark?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

We don’t know.  Scholars divide sharply on this issue, although it seems that the majority of New Testament scholars believe that verses 9-20 were not part of the original Gospel written by Mark.

Why?  Because the two oldest manuscripts containing Mark’s Gospel (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) do not contain these verses, church fathers Eusebius and Jerome both said that these verses were missing from Greek manuscripts they knew of, the style and vocabulary of verses 9-20 are decidedly different from the rest of Mark, and it would make sense for later writers to add to the Gospel because verse 8 seems like an abrupt ending.

On the other hand, most manuscripts from the fifth century on contain the verses and second century church fathers Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus quoted verse 19, thus supporting its early existence.

One popular compromise view is presented by John D. Grassmick in The Bible Knowledge Commentary:

A view which seems to account for the relevant evidence and to raise the least number of objections is that (a) Mark purposely ended his Gospel with verse 8 and (b) verses 9-20, though written or compiled by an anonymous Christian writer, are historically authentic and are part of the New Testament canon . . . .

In other words, the early church accepted the tradition represented in Mark 16:9-20 even though many understood that Mark did not write it himself.

Again, we do not have enough data to determine the answer with certainty, so dogmatism is unwarranted.  Whether or not you believe that verses 9-20 were part of the original Gospel, according to Timothy Paul Jones in Misquoting Truth,  should not affect “Christian faith or practice in any significant way” because the concepts found in these verses echo ideas found in other Old and New Testament passages (see Luke 10:19; Isaiah 11:8; Psalm 69:21, 29 for references to protection from snakes and poison).

Bible Interpretation, General Apologetics, Truth

Do We Each Get Our Own Interpretation of Scripture?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Darrell and I were talking today about people who claim that one interpretation of Scripture can be no better than another.  Or, put another way, we can’t know what the correct interpretation of Scripture is, so we shouldn’t debate it.  To each his own interpretation.

My sense is that people who say this in the midst of a discussion of a Bible passage feel trapped in an argument they can’t win, and this is their escape hatch.  If they relativize the Scriptures, making the meaning completely subjective, they get to keep their interpretation of Scripture and deflect anyone who disagrees with them.

This is the same tactic some people use when they are in a debate about a particular immoral behavior.  When they feel trapped, they say something like, “There is no objective morality any way.  Everyone decides for themselves what’s right and wrong.”  Again, if they relativize morality, then they no longer have to defend their position and they get out of an argument that they aren’t winning.

The real irony here is that the very people who relativize the interpretation of Scripture actually do believe that their view is objectively correct.  If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t have been debating in the first place.  They would have just agreed with everything their opponent said, because, after all,  everyone can have their own subjective interpretation of Scripture.

It seems to me that the best thing to do when someone plays the “relativism card” is to help them see that they really don’t believe what they are saying.  Remind them of some of the core beliefs that they have derived from Scripture and ask them if those beliefs are objectively true.

If they are honest, they will stand by their beliefs.  If they refuse to claim that their cherished beliefs about the Bible are objectively true, it’s probably time to move on, because they are more interested in saving face than having a conversation of substance.  Come back to them when they aren’t so defensive.