An apologetics reading plan for beginners

Would you like to have as much fun defending your faith as the Wintery Knight does?

Here is a post from Apologetics 315 that lists 10 basic apologetics books for brand new Christian apologists – and they are in a sensible order, too.

Here are my favorite 4:

2. The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel

This book is just as readable as The Case for Christ, but this one delves into the evidence for the Creator. Another thing that makes this good reading for the beginner is this: whatever areas you find particularly interesting can be pursued further by reading the sources interviewed in the book.

6. Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl

Information without application results in stagnation when it comes to apologetics. That’s why it’s time for a good dose of Tactics, which will train you not only to use apologetic content in everyday life, but it will also train you to be a better, more critical thinker. This is another “must read” book, and mastering its contents early in your apologetic studies will put feet to your faith.

7. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Mike Licona & Gary Habermas

The resurrection of Jesus is central to Christianity. This book equips you to understand and defend the resurrection from an historical perspective. Not only does the book have useful diagrams, summaries, and an accessible style, but it also comes with a CD-ROM with interactive software for teaching you the material. This is an essential book for the apologist.

8. Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists by Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow

Now it’s time to look at some of the most common objections that have come against Christianity since the rise of the new atheism. There’s no better book at dealing with these in a concise yet dense way, while providing additional reading suggestions and introducing some of the key apologists that deal with these questions. If you really want to master this material, consider taking part in the Read Along project for this book.

I’ve read 8 of them, and I have given 6 of them to my Dad (he’s just an ordinary Dad) and he really liked all 6. These are meant for all ages.

I have been giving away books like this to friends, and even to potential Mrs. Wintery Knights, for many years. And what I’ve found in that time is that Christians have a very different experience in their relationships with God when they are prepared to defend his existence and character in public. Instead of treating Christianity as a private set of beliefs which are mainly for feeling happy and getting along with family at holidays, they instead treat Christianity as true, and they have very interesting discussions with their friends about many topics related to Christianity. Instead of being frightened to speak up, they become bold and confident – that’s what happens when Christians study and prepare.

Jesus doesn’t want his followers to feel intimidated by non-Christians and non-Christian culture. He doesn’t want us hiding what we believe. When we take the time to read books like this, it becomes possible for us to get into conversations that turn our relationships with God through Christ into a public activity. Instead of just taking, taking, taking from God, now we are in a position to give back. If you ask any experienced apologist, they will tell you what it feels like to work through questions with a non-Christian. It is a way of feeling closer to God, and a way of being faithful in our two-way friendship with him. You do not want to miss out on that experience – it is an important part of being a Christian.

Click here for the full list and Brian’s mini-reviews.

Filed under: Mentoring, Apologetics, Basic, Basics, Beginner, Books, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Example, Introduction, Learn, Learning, Lesson, Plan, Practice, Quick Start, Quickstart, Relationship, Sample, Study, Tutorial

Law schools are not preparing law students to practice law

The New York Times explains why law school may not be worth the money.

Excerpt:

 The lesson today — the ins and outs of closing a deal — seems lifted from Corporate Lawyering 101.

“How do you get a merger done?” asks Scott B. Connolly, an attorney.

There is silence from three well-dressed people in their early 20s, sitting at a conference table in a downtown building here last month.

“What steps would you need to take to accomplish a merger?” Mr. Connolly prods.

After a pause, a participant gives it a shot: “You buy all the stock of one company. Is that what you need?”

“That’s a stock acquisition,” Mr. Connolly says. “The question is, when you close a merger, how does that deal get done?”

The answer — draft a certificate of merger and file it with the secretary of state — is part of a crash course in legal training. But the three people taking notes are not students. They are associates at a law firm called Drinker Biddle & Reath, hired to handle corporate transactions. And they have each spent three years and as much as $150,000 for a legal degree.

What they did not get, for all that time and money, was much practical training. Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, with classes that are often overstuffed with antiquated distinctions, like the variety of property law in post-feudal England. Professors are rewarded for chin-stroking scholarship, like law review articles with titles like “A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise of Postmodern Legal Theory.”

So, for decades, clients have essentially underwritten the training of new lawyers, paying as much as $300 an hour for the time of associates learning on the job. But the downturn in the economy, and long-running efforts to rethink legal fees, have prompted more and more of those clients to send a simple message to law firms: Teach new hires on your own dime.

“The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not capable of being counselors,” says Jeffrey W. Carr, the general counsel of FMC Technologies, a Houston company that makes oil drilling equipment. “They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.”

[...]Consider, for instance, Contracts, a first-year staple. It is one of many that originated in the Langdell era and endures today. In it, students will typically encounter such classics as Hadley v. Baxendale, an 1854 dispute about financial damages caused by the late delivery of a crankshaft to a British miller.

Here is what students will rarely encounter in Contracts: actual contracts, the sort that lawyers need to draft and file. Likewise, Criminal Procedure class is normally filled with case studies about common law crimes — like murder and theft — but hardly mentions plea bargaining, even though a vast majority of criminal cases are resolved by that method.

[...]“We should be teaching what is really going on in the legal system,” says Edward L. Rubin, a professor and former dean at the Vanderbilt Law School, “not what was going on in the 1870s, when much of the legal curriculum was put in place.”

This is one of the reasons why I give the advice I do about studying STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Universities are politicized. They are run by people who want to push a secular leftist ideology. For such people, the more isolated you can be from feedback from the real world, the better. And that is why it is often (but not always) useless to study anything that isn’t STEM. If you’re going to the university at all, study STEM areas. That is, if your goal is to actually make money so you can support a family.

So you have two choices, in my view. Trade school/apprenticeship right out of high school. Or study STEM areas in university. That’s it.

A friend of mine who is a software engineer was thinking of doing an MBA a while back, and then decided on a Masters in securities and investing. I think that’s the right way to go. Stay as far away from anything that can be politicized as possible. Don’t give people who are embarked on perpetual adolescence any of your money (than they already get through taxpayer-funded research subsidies).

Filed under: Commentary, Application, Clinic, Clinical Law, College, Common Law, Curriculum, Degree, Education, Employment, Income, Job, Law, Law School, Legal, Practical, Practice, Salary, Stem, Student, University

Most doctors will restrict or close their practice if Obamacare is not repealed

From the NY Post.

Excerpt:

A recent survey finds that countless MDs will respond to ObamaCare by limiting which patients they’ll see.

The Physicians Foundation asked 2,400 doctors and American Medical Association members what they thought of the new law; a full 67 percent were against it.

More important, it asked how they’d cope with the new rules (which don’t fully kick in until 2014). Sixty percent said they feel compelled to “close or significantly restrict their practices to certain categories of patients.” And 59 percent said the “reform” would oblige them to spend less time with the patients they do have.

Of course, many doctors already limit how many patients they’ll take on who depend on government insurance (whose fees rarely cover an MD’s costs). But it’ll get worse under ObamaCare: In the survey, some 87 percent said they would significantly restrict Medicare patients and 93 percent said they’d significantly restrict Medicaid patients.

[...]All in all, the survey found that 74 percent of doctors will alter how they practice.

To stay in business under ObamaCare, doctors will have to adjust. Some will see fewer patients themselves and hire nurse practitioners to help carry the load; others will work part-time and supplement their income elsewhere. Many will join groups or become salaried employees of hospitals or clinics.

Was Obama telling the truth when he said that you could keep your doctor? No.

Related posts

• Massachusetts firms canceling health coverage due to rising costs
• More companies announce massive losses as a result of Obamacare
• The deadly consequences of rationing health care

Filed under: News, 3200, Doctors, Government-Run Health Care, H.R. 3200, HR3200, Nationalized Health Care, NHS, Nice, Obama, Obamacare, Poll, Practice, Private Practice, Public Option, Research, Shortage, Socialized Health Care, Socialized Medicine, Survey, Waiting List

Drew explains what the church needs to do to reverse its decline, and I disagree

UPDATE: Everyone go look at Rebekah’s cute summary of the debate that Drew and I are having. It’s filled with adorable pictures that will make you smile!

Drew, who operates his own blog and also blogs at Laura’s blog Pursuing Holiness, comments on his own experiences in the church.

He writes:

But whereas Wintery Knight emphasizes the lack of apologetics in churches, I think the real problem is an overall lack of substance. In many churches, both the sermons and the music lack substance. And you have a better chance of winning the lottery than of finding a Sunday School class with meaty, intellectual teaching.

One problem is that lots of churches have given into the “seeker-sensitive” movement. This movement constitutes a corroding influence in Christianity akin to John McCain’s and Lindsay Graham’s influence within the Republican Party. That is, the movement tries so hard to please potential converts that it forgets to please God, and thereby cripples Christian churches from the inside. (In the long run, this dumbing down actually results in fewer converts.) The church where I officially hold membership, for example, has largely given way to this movement – to the point that it recently abolished Sunday School for all high schoolers. Apparently, learning is not a priority anymore!

Meanwhile, the simplistic worship music of the modern era often tends to lack any real doctrinal substance. Or worse, sometimes the lyrics are so poorly thought-out that they actually promote false doctrines.

The reason I emphasize apologetics is because it addresses the question “is Christianity true?”. To me, even if you go into a church that emphasizes sound doctrine in the sermon and in the singing, it’s still doctrine. And doctrine that cannot be tested cannot be believed in. At least, that’s my view! So I don’t doctrine is the whole story, but it’s part of the story.

And as soon as young people who have been raised on doctrine alone go out in the real world and it may be as useful as apologetics when are tempted to jettison their beliefs in order to be happy. I think our beliefs needed to be grounded on evidence to help us to hold up under fire. Without an emphasis on truth, these sound doctrines are just our community’s preference claims, like flavors of ice cream! They are not regarded as true objectively unless they can be tested against the laws of logic and the external world.

When they get out into the real world and feel pressured to dump their beliefs to fit in or to be happy, they are not going to constrain their actions based on the preferences claims of a bunch of church people. If you teach them preference claims, then watch out when they leave you – they will develop new preferences in a new community. Like binge drinking and hook-up sex.

The only way that a person can constrain their behavior under fire is when they actually believe that they are rationally compelled to constrain their behavior. And rational compulsion is not under the control of your will. The only way to be rationally compelled is by taking time to study issues like the existence of God and the historicity of the resurrection. Then watch some debates. That’s how you determine what is true. And you will always act on what you really believe is true. NOT just what you have been taught is true, and not what you say is true when asked.

Drew continues:

But even mainstream churches that have resisted these movements often tend to suffer from non-intellectualism. For example, most pastors have gotten into the habit of preaching three-point sermons. I’m not going to declare myself the voice of God and suggest that three-point sermons are sinful, but they do create the opportunity for pastoral laziness. I think pastors frequently take advantage of this opportunity, and wind up presenting watered-down sermons filled with extrabiblical philosophy.

I know what Drew means here, but I wish that pastors did bring in professional philosophers to discuss issues such as:

• the problems of evil and suffering
• the problem of the unevangelized
• the problem of religious pluralism
• the problem of the justice of Hell
• the problem of hiddenness of God
• the problem of free will vs divine foreknowledge
• the problem of moral relativism
• the problem of consciousness, free will and rationality
• etc.

Not to mention the evidential arguments from science and history! And all should be capped by showing or hosting public debates to the entire church. Sound teaching alone is not sufficient to reverse the slide of the church into postmodern relativist universalist feminization. Without assessing whether these sound teachings are true, you are again just sharing your preferences in a community whose purpose is happiness, not truth.

I’ll bet Drew will oppose me here. Do your worst, Drew. You can’t beat me up any worse than Rich and Rebekah have already!

I have found is that although apologetics-oriented issues that challenge faith are popular in the culture in books by New Atheists, Bart Ehrman and even fictional authors like Dan Brown or William P. Young, the church is not interested in addressing them. And the reason is simple: we think church is about fulfilling our needs, not about truth. We would never be so dismissive of truth concerns in any other area of life that mattered.

While the entire culture is being confronted by popular challenges from apostates and atheists, we just keep quoting the Bible to our congregations so that they can be really really clear on our spiritual preferences. But as soon as they step out of the church, they will be facing actual arguments in their workplaces, and classrooms. And you know what they’ll do? They will go silent. And God is not served by that silence.

Either we are going to put public, effective evangelism using apologetics first, or we are going to put our personal feelings and self-esteem first. Either we are going to drip tears onto our apologetics textbooks because studying is hard work, or we are going to make excuses that allow us to continue business as usual at church. The dimension that is never raised in these discussions is that people don’t want to do the most effective thing to defend God’s honor. Getting preached at on Sunday with sound doctrine is easy. Singing songs is easy. But engaging your co-workers with science, philosophy and history is hard. Which one has the most impact on the non-Christian culture? I say it’s engagement.

Drew, I want you to watch this debate online, if you haven’t already:

• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 1/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 2/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 3/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 4/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 5/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 6/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 7/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 8/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 9/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 10/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 11/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 12/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 13/14
• Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Austin Dacey 14/14

This debate was held at Purdue University in front over 3000 university students. It is a close debate – this was no blow-out for Craig.

Now I want you to leave me a comment telling me what would happen if every Christian who goes to church were to see this debate in their main Sunday sermon. What would happen if every Christian could defend their faith like William Lane Craig? Would God benefit from it? I don’t care how many people’s pride and self-esteem would be damaged by someone smarter than they are talking. Would God benefit from it?

What does Peter say in 1 Peter 3:15?

¹⁵But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…

With respect to God’s purposes in the world, our happiness is expendable.

Watching debates is not even about who wins and who loses. It’s about whether Christian claims can be defended using public evidence in the real world. And if we don’t have confidence that the churchgoers should be made aware of the arguments for and against Christianity, (because we are afraid they will lose their “faith”), then we should just drop Christianity entirely.

Christianity is a fighting faith. The purpose of it is not to make people have happy feelings and community so they, (and everyone they should be evangelizing), can be comfortable on their way to Hell. It’s either true or it isn’t. And if it isn’t then we shouldn’t waste another second on it. Period.

What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19?

¹²But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
¹³If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
¹⁴And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
¹⁵More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.
¹⁶For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.
¹⁷And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
¹⁸Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
¹⁹If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

Do the feminized churches believe that? THEY DO NOT BELIEVE THAT. No matter what they say, they do not really believe that at all. They may teach it as “sound doctrine”. But they do not believe that it matters whether the resurrection really happened. They don’t know or care to know if it really happened. And we know this by watching how little emphasis is put on the historical evidence for the resurrection in the church today.

Have you EVER in your entire life seen anyone speak from the pulpit about whether the evidence is good for the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead? Ever? Anyone reading this – have you ever heard the resurrection addressed using mainstream historical approaches? A talk that DID NOT assume the inerrancy of the Bible, and that could have been delivered in a university classroom or in the workplace?

What are we even doing in church if not teaching Christians how to confidently defend the belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus?

Am I asking too much?

Sorry to be so insistent and passionate, I hope you will take time before replying to be calm and realize that this is the passion talking, and maybe a little emotional distress, as well. I have been hurt by the church opposing me on this many, many, many times. And so have all my friends.

Please try to be charitable. I am not blaming you for this mess, but I don’t think sound doctrine alone is the answer.

Further study

• does the Bible teach that faith is opposed to logic and evidence?
• the six enemies of apologetic engagement
• why men flee the feminized church
• why won’t Christians defend their faith in public?

Filed under: News, Abandon, Anti-Intellectualism, Anti-Intellectualization, Apologetics, Apostasy, Belief, Bible, Blind Faith, Christian, Christianity, Defense, Drop Out, Emotion, Emotional, Empty, Faith, Feminism, Feminization, Flee, Ignorance, Intuition, Irrational, Laziness, Leave, Leaving, Male, Men, Misandry, Percent, Postmodernism, Practice, Prayer, Preaching, Quit, Rlativism, Seeker-Sensitive, Sound Doctrine, The Church, University, Watered-Down, What's wrong, Why, Young

What I’m reading and listening to these days

Guess what?

The Wintery Knight Blog got listed on a prestigious list of apologetics sites compiled by the Internet-King of apologetics, Brian Auten, who runs Apologetics 315. Go pay him a visit and bookmark his site!

By the way, if you are a regular reader, please take a moment to tell your friends about the blog! If you like the blog, chances are that your friends will like it, too! I don’t advertise, so you are my only hope of getting any new readers!

Well, in honor of Brian’s list, I thought that I would write a post explaining what resources I am working through right now!

Books

Right now, I am reading the following books:

• Lunches at work: Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse “Love and Economics:It Takes a Family to Raise a Village” (autographed!)
• Lunches not at work: Dr. Regina Hertzlinger “Who Killed Health Care?: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem – and the Consumer-Driven Cure“
• At home in bed: Theodore Dalrymple, M.D. “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass“

And I just received books from two of my favorite ID theorists:

• Dr. Stephen C. Meyer “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design“
• Dr. Jay W. Richards “Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem“

Lectures

I got Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse‘s 3-CD set “Smart Sex” in the mail, and I’ve been listening to that. It’s awesome! You can get it from the Ruth Institute. If you want a sample of her thinking, listen to this 29-minute clip about the effects of same-sex marriage on children.

I also like learning apologetics by listening so today, I ordered an apologetics lecture set from It’s a New Day. This is a perfect set for beginners, as the conference was held in a churches! So, if you go to church, this is for you! Try to make your church buy one! I would recommend burning a backup copy for the church library and saving the originals.

Here are the 32 lectures on CD in the set, grouped by topic:

Historical Jesus
Daniel B. Wallace – Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?
Paul Rhodes Eddy – The Criteria of Authenticity
Craig Evans – Fabricating Jesus
Lee Strobel – The Case For the Real Jesus
Ben Witherington, III – Knowing the History of Jesus
Gary Habermas – The Resurrection of Jesus: Knowable History

Postmodernism:
Sean McDowell – Truth or Tragedy
Brett Kunkle – Moral Truth: True for You, but Not for Me?
R. Scott Smith – The Emerging Church: The Promise and the Perils
James Stump – Deconstructing Postmodernism: Truth, Rationality, and the Gospel

Science:
Sean McDowell – The Case for a Creator
Steve Davis – The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God
James Sinclair – Science and the Cosmos: Prospects for the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments
John A. Bloom – Darwin & Design

Apologetics Advocacy:
Craig Hazen – To Everyone An Answer
Glenn Scorgie – Smash-mouth Apologetics vs. Grace-filled Persuasion

The New Atheism:
Chad Meister – Answering the New Atheism
William Lane Craig – The Dawkins Illusion

Philosophy of Religion:
J.P. Moreland – Argument from Consciousness
Michael Murray – Is Belief in God Hard-Wired in the Brain?
R. Douglas Geivett – Wrestling With the Problem of Suffering
Michael Rea – Why Doesn’t God Show Himself?
David P. Hunt – What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism
Charles Taliferro – The Coherence of Theism

Philosophical Theology:
Steve Porter – Did Jesus Have to Die? Defending the Christian Doctrine of Atonement
Paul Copan – The Incarnation of Christ in Philosophical Perspective
Garry DeWeese – Making Sense of the Trinity
Brett Kunkle – Is One Way the Only Way?
Paul Copan – Why I Believe in Hell: A Philosopher’s Reasoning

Cults and World Religions:
Kevin A. Lewis – Cults and Crimes: The Limits of the First Amendment
Josh Lingel – Standing Up To Islam

Questions and Answers:
Sean McDowell & Brett Kunkle – Ask Your Toughest Questions

The set was $159. Pretty soon Obama will be confiscating that money for elective abortions paid for by Obamacare, so I thought I’d better splurge now! If this sounds like a lot of money to spend on apologetics, you should pick up the book “Passionate Conviction”, which is based on an earlier conference. This is my favorite apologetics book to give to beginners! Or cut out cable for 3 months! I don’t even have a TV!

Lee Strobel – The Case For the Real JesusJ.P. Moreland – Argument from Consciousness

Paul Rhodes Eddy – The Criteria of Authenticity

Michael Murray – Is Belief in God Hard-Wired in the Brain?

R. Scott Smith – The Emerging Church: The Promise and the Perils

Sean McDowell – Truth or Tragedy

James Sinclair – Science and the Cosmos: Prospects for the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments

Ben Witherington, III – Knowing the History of Jesus

Craig Evans – Fabricating Jesus

Chad Meister – Answering the New Atheism

Steve Davis – The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Glenn Scorgie – Smash-mouth Apologetics vs. Grace-filled Persuasion

Brett Kunkle – Moral Truth: True for You, but Not for Me?

Craig Hazen – To Everyone An Answer

William Lane Craig – The Dawkins Illusion

Daniel B. Wallace – Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?

Sean McDowell – The Case for a Creator

Steve Porter – Did Jesus Have to Die? Defending the Christian Doctrine of Atonement

R. Douglas Geivett – Wrestling With the Problem of Suffering

Charles Taliferro – The Coherence of Theism

Paul Copan – The Incarnation of Christ in Philosophical Perspective

Garry DeWeese – Making Sense of the Trinity

Michael Rea – Why Doesn’t God Show Himself?

David P. Hunt – What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism

James Stump – Deconstructing Postmodernism: Truth, Rationality, and the Gospel

Brett Kunkle – Is One Way the

Gary Habermas – The Resurrection of Jesus: Knowable History

Sean McDowell & Brett Kunkle – Ask Your Toughest Questions

Kevin A. Lewis – Cults and Crimes: The Limits of the First Amendment

Paul Copan – Why I Believe in Hell: A Philosopher’s Reasoning
John A. Bloom – Darwin & Design
Josh Lingel – Standing Up To Islam

Filed under: Mentoring, Apologetics, Book, Learn, Learning, Lecture, Practice, Preparation, Prepare, Study