At this month's Fellowship Night, we have a special guest, Dr. Syed Barmaver. I will be interviewing him abotu Islam. He is an orthodox Sunni Muslim. Below is a link to biblicaltraining.org. They have a fantastic series on Islam (among other things). Biblicaltraining.org is an amazing resource. you can actually earn a degree through the resources the provide. I would encourage people to listen to some of this series. https://www.biblicaltraining.org/learn/institute/wm647-islam This is a link to a lecture series by Shaykh Yasir Qadhi. It's really, really good and i would encourage everyone to listen to this playlist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0n-nBm028M&list=PLZ5yPKz3FvW7HsrqOKs26C7PxM61JZEan

So I was randomly scrolling through my photos and came across an assignment from a World Missions class I taught while I was overseas. I realized that this could be a fun little activity to try to help understand Christianity and it's uniqueness by seeing the differences and the similarities of other major religions in comparison to it. (Good to sharpen those apologetical skills😏)

At the last Fellowship Night we learned about the moral argument for God as stated by William Lane Craig: 1. If no God, then no objective moral values and duties. 2. Objective moral values and duties exist. 3. Therefore, God exists. At the very end we started to critique the actual argument. We ran out of time, but I wanted to follow up with this idea because I think understanding the strengths and weaknesses of arguments is important. What I said at Fellowship Night is that evidential arguments have some flaws because they start with man, assume his reasoning is neutral and capable, and then ask him to evaluate evidence and make a judgment about God. My issue is not with evidence or logic. My issue is with pretending man can stand in neutrality, evaluate God, and then render a verdict. To me, concluding God seems backwards because, as Christians, we reason from God to man. In fact, many of the unbeliever objections to the moral argument we reviewed were overcome by reasoning from God as the necessary starting point. What I said at Fellowship night is that I would frame the argument this way: 1. If God exists, objective morality exists. 2. God exists. 3. Therefore, objective morality exists. People asked me what the difference is and I was having trouble stating it in a way that drew a strong contrast. In this video, I think Alex O'Connor does a masterful job of critiquing the moral argument (which I'm not even sure is his intention nor is this video about the moral argument). Alex says “that moral intuition that so powerfully tells people...certain things are right or wrong… that should lead you to Christianity. And then the first thing I see opening that book is something which contradicts the very moral intuition that I was supposed to use to get there in the first place.” When you put man as the judge over God, he doesn't relinquish that position easily. So let's imagine we are talking about the moral argument. We establish with the unbeliever that he can, indeed, reason his way to God. But as soon as he reasons improperly - which he will, according to Romans - we tell him to pump the brakes and question his moral authority. The problem is that we gave him that authority when we asked the unbeliever to evaluate the evidence and judge for himself.

I really enjoy the minimal facts of the resurrection coined by Dr. Gary Habermas. It's not a perfect argument by any means, but its simple and can be memorized without much trouble. And there's a range of about 4 to 12 different facts, so everyone can kind of customize their own presentation. I usually use: - Empty tomb (Habermas doesn't always include this one) - Conversion of Skepitc Paul - Conversion and martyrdom of Skeptic James (Jesus' brother) - The fact that historians agree that the disciples legitimately believed to have seen the risen Jesus Some say that the minimal facts alone are not enough, and I have no problem granting that. But its still helpful nonetheless!

Understanding critical thinking is so important to apologetics. What are some resources y'all have found to improve your critical thinking skills?