Several years ago, a blogger for The Secular Outpost name Keith Parsons wrote an article titled The Strongest Argument for Christianity. If you are unfamiliar with Keith Parsons, he is a very outspoken atheist who taught philosophy of religion for a number of years, and published several books on the subject. So unfriendly to Christianity is Parsons, that he reportedly had this to say about why he decided to stop teaching Philosophy of Religion (I say reportedly because the original post has been taken down and I can only find others quoting it):

I now regard “the case for theism” as a fraud and I can no longer take it seriously enough to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical position—no more than I could present intelligent design as a legitimate biological theory. BTW, in saying that I now consider the case for theism to be a fraud, I do not mean to charge that the people making that case are frauds who aim to fool us with claims they know to be empty. No, theistic philosophers and apologists are almost painfully earnest and honest; I don’t think there is a Bernie Madoff in the bunch. I just cannot take their arguments seriously any more, and if you cannot take something seriously, you should not try to devote serious academic attention to it. I’ve turned the philosophy of religion courses over to a colleague.

He still writes extensively on the subject at the Secular Outpost blog and other mediums, even if he does not teach. He has written much against the arguments for Christianity, focusing especially on the historicity of the resurrection and the Gospels. I give such a lengthy introduction to this man, because with such an obvious disdain for the Christian faith, we should all be very interested to hear what he considers to be the strongest argument in defense of that faith. In the post linked above, he tells us very frankly that he considers the "inherent rottenness of human beings" to be the key:

from apenotmonkey.com

Whether science and religion are compatible has been a debate for some time (probably ever since modern science got rolling).  Anyone who has written a book, been a part of a debate, or given lectures on the subject of science, religion, or philosophy has taken a stand on the issue.  There are many differing views.  Obviously, it's impossible to cover it all in one blog post.  This will serve only as a very cursory - and rather meandering - introduction.

A recent conversation with a friend initiated some reflection about the value of truth. It started with us sharing what we'd been reading as of late; I mentioned that I recently started The Book Thief and that it has reminded me of how much I love fiction.  This began a bit of a debate where we were trying to determine the value of reading, especially of reading non-fiction.  My friend expressed the opinion that while our culture (or at least the so-called intellectuals in this culture) places a high value on being "well-read," it really has no benefit over, for example, playing video games or watching television. It all has to do with how we choose to spend our time, he insisted. Some people choose to spend their free time reading, while others choose to spend their free time playing video games. But is this true? Is there no benefit to reading over and above watching Sherlock on TV, playing the newest Halo game, or  some other hobby?

 

While Part IV of this series covered the Exodus itself, this post will focus on the Sinai covenant.  This will be the last post in the series for a while, as I'd like to take a break and cover some other topics.

The importance of the covenant formed at Sinai is that it established a formal relationship between the people and their deity as divine liberator.  "...the deity had liberated them, and now constituted the group as his people; so their proper response was to obey his commands and laws in running their corporate and individual lives as his subjects."¹