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Resurrection Contradictions 3: How Many Women Visited the Tomb on Sunday morning?

by Stuart H. Gray In this series, I’m exploring the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. Are the different reports consistent or not? This matters because contradictory accounts need not be taken seriously. Consistency between the accounts indicates the authors are recounting a real, highly unusual event. We should try to understand its implications. So far, I have…

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Do the Resurrection Accounts of Jesus Contradict?

by Stuart H. Gray Introduction I read through the Bible’s six accounts of Jesus’ resurrection recently with some friends. It took us about 20 minutes. What we found was fascinating. Clear similarities exist between the accounts. But there are also some major differences.  What are we to make of that? Here are some common reactions: 1 – There are differences between the accounts because Jesus’…

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Book Review: Non-Computable You

by Stuart H. Gray Robert J Marks is Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering at Baylor University. He’s a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He is also a Senior Fellow and Director of the Bradley Center at the Discovery Institute, and Editor-In-Chief of BIO-Complexity.[1] Overview In his book, Non-Computable You,[2] Marks…

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Book Review - Lucid Dying

by Stuart H. Gray Overview Dr Sam Parnia is an honorary research fellow at the University of Southampton, UK, and a fellow of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Centre, New York. He is the founder of the Human Consciousness Project, and he has now run two scientific studies called AWARE and AWARE-II. They both study brain physiology and human consciousness during…

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Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament

by Stuart Gray In this fascinating study, Jonathan Bernier has setup a scholarly framework for assessing the composition date of ancient texts. He has then applied this dating framework to both the New Testament books, and to a selection of early extra-canonical writings. He describes his approach as “inferential.”[1] He defines a research question, generates a hypothesis that may answer it, and…

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Is Satire Appropriate in Apologetics Part 2

by Drew Godwin This is part two of a blog series. Part 1 is here. In part 1 of this series, we explored examples where satire was used to good effect by people who spoke for God in the Bible. It is obvious to us what Elijah, Paul and even Jesus were doing – right? They wanted to make all of their opponents look totally stupid. They wanted to smash all of their arguments and prove that they were…

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Is Satire Appropriate in Apologetics Part 1

By Drew Godwin I remember being drawn to comedy at a young age. I loved to laugh and I loved to make people laugh. Whether it was making silly faces, learning to tell jokes or learning to laugh at myself – there was something so satisfying about bringing people’s attention to things that I thought were odd. I was always so curious about why things worked the way they worked and about making fun…

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Cool Milestone Achieved

By Stuart Gray I’ve been running this blog for 11 years. It presents my carefully researched arguments for the truth of the historic Christian faith. This week I reached quite a cool milestone – I published my 300th post. It’s wonderful to see how many thousands of people have visited the site over the years. I’m thankful for the opportunity to engage with them all. Including my merry and…

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Did the Author of Mark’s Gospel Know About Jesus’ Resurrection?

If Jesus of Nazareth really rose from the dead, why doesn’t the earliest written Gospel (Mark) have an account of the resurrection in it? Did the writer even know about the resurrection, or was it a later addition to the “story?” Dating Mark: NT scholar James Crossley has dated Mark’s authorship to the 40ADs. Bart Ehrman prefers 70AD. It seems important to point out that when attempting to…

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Book Review: Why We Cannot Trust the Gospels

Summary Keith Goode / Ken Thackery (KG) sets out to prove Christianity is based on a resurrection that never happened, and the Gospels record well-meaning but fictional details about a Gospel-Jesus who is a misleading representation of a Historical-Jesus. He thinks this secular narrative is much superior to the traditional orthodox Christian version of history. KG is not convinced by Jesus…

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Christian Apologists are Like Gardeners

I read a brilliant description of Christian Apologetics, and the role of the Christian apologist this week. In her book Apologetics and the Christian Imagination Holly Ordway describes the task of the apologist as that of a gardener.[1] The narrow way of life that Jesus spoke of, involving belief in Christ and assent to his Lordship in our life, can be blocked by rocks, brambles, and overgrowth…

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Review: The Exorcist: Believer

by Stuart Gray (Some spoilers) I am wondering whether David Gordon Green and Peter Sattler understood the subject matter before sitting down to write “The Exorcist: Believer.”  They clearly have a great understanding of the original William Friedkin movie. It’s referred to powerfully from their first to their final frame. They have story elements that resonate for those who remember the…

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Responding to Jehovah's Witness Anti-Trinitarian Theology

by Stuart Gray Introducing the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) Former evangelical Charles Taze Russell founded the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in 1880, and his successor Joseph Rutherford later adopted the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” for its members. Robert Bowman opines Russell’s anti-Trinitarian ideas originated from his Adventist influences in the 1870s.[1] JW Anti-Trinitarianism In Should…

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Responding to NDE Skeptics

Introduction The term Near Death Experience (NDE) was first proposed by Dr. Raymond Moody in Life After Life. It relates to an event occurring in three categories of people: first, people resuscitated after having been pronounced clinically dead, second those close to death, and third those describing what happened as they died.[1] These subjects often report similar experiences, containing some…

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Book Review: Is Christianity Compatible With Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences?

Are you interested in what happens to us after our body dies? If so, then this book is a great resource.  We’re going to bring many assumptions to this subject. Maybe we are involved with one of the world’s religions, or perhaps our background is completely secular. I think this book will be relevant for everyone, whichever worldview we are personally starting from.  We’re all coming with…

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Three Arguments for the Non-Locality of Consciousness

Consciousness is hard to understand. I’m conscious as I write this, and you are conscious as you read. But it is very hard for scientists to understand just what our “consciousness” amounts to. The resources in philosophy help. Some philosophers only allow an explanation of consciousness to be formed in materialistic and reductionist terms. For example, Daniel Dennett thinks that consciousness is…

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Buddhist Philosophical Difficulties

I’ve been reading about Vipassana Meditation this week.[1] This is a practical approach to finding peace and freedom from suffering in life. Given the fears many people carry around with them today (will I have enough to live on, will there be a war here, will my family be okay), I can see why a strategy for peace and freedom is attractive.  The Buddhism on which Vipassana is based is one of the…