The Pauline Papacy In Ephesus

Nearly 20 years ago, I wrote a list of 51 proofs of a Pauline papacy and Ephesian primacy. The reasoning Catholics use to argue for a Petrine papacy and Roman primacy can also be used to argue for similarly ridiculous conclusions about Paul and Ephesus. I didn't include any material on 1 Timothy 3:15 in my list, but in light of my recent post discussing the relationship between that passage and Ephesus, my list could have included that passage. Other material could be added as well, like some of Ignatius' comments in his letter to the Ephesians.

The Pillars Of Roman Catholicism

An easy way to remember some of the problems with Catholic ecclesiolgy is to think of how scripture uses the metaphor of a pillar in a couple of passages.

I recently discussed 1 Timothy 3:15, where the church (whatever concept of the church you think is in view there) is referred to as a pillar and support of the truth. As I mentioned, we normally think of a structure being supported by multiple pillars, not just one, which suggests that the church isn't the only pillar. F.J.A. Hort referred to the absurdity of "a building, standing in the air supported on a single column" (cited in William Mounce, Pastoral Epistles [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000], 223).

Another relevant passage that uses the pillar metaphor is Galatians 2:9. It's doubtful that people would have been grouping Peter with other apostles as pillars of the church and naming him second, after James, if he was thought of as a Pope. Remember, Catholics are the ones who place so much emphasis on the alleged significance of Peter's being a foundation of the church in Matthew 16, which is similar to the pillar concept in Galatians 2:9. It's highly unlikely that the early Christians believed that Peter was such a unique foundation of the church, the infallible ruler of all Christians, including the other apostles, yet perceived him as described in Galatians 2:9.

What To Make Of 1 Timothy 3:15 And Catholic Claims About It

Roman Catholics often cite 1 Timothy 3:15 in support of their view of their denomination. But:

- The context makes it more likely that Paul is referring to the local church than that he's referring to a worldwide denomination, like the Roman Catholic Church. He's writing to Timothy about the latter's work in Ephesus (1:3).

- What we read about the Ephesian church elsewhere, such as in Acts 20:17-38 and Revelation 2:1-7, suggests that there was no assurance that the Ephesian church would remain faithful, have an unbroken succession from the apostles in perpetuity, or any other such thing. In Acts 20, Paul expects wolves to come in among the Ephesian leadership and calls on them to remember the teaching they'd received from Jesus and Paul. He says nothing of an assurance that they'll maintain the faith or how they can look to the infallible church teachings of their day, in addition to remembering the teaching of the past. Even an apostolic church as prominent as Ephesus, one that had the principles of 1 Timothy 3:15 applied so directly to it, could also be addressed in the terms of Acts 20 and Revelation 2.

The Justification Of The Reformation

Reformation Day is coming up later this month. Here's a collection of resources addressing many topics relevant to the Reformation. Some links have been added to it since last year (a third post on sola scriptura; a post on prooftexts for Catholic Mariology; see the comments section of the thread on the papacy for a couple of links that were added there; a post on ecclesiology; a fourth post on development of doctrine; a third post on the assumption of Mary).

Enfield Miscellany (Part 4)

(For an explanation of what this series is about, see part 1 here. Parts 2 and 3 can be found here and here. I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes below. I'll use "MG" to designate a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to designate one from Playfair's. MG88B refers to tape 88B in Grosse's collection, GP70B refers to 70B in Playfair's, and so on.)

Unknown Precedent

One type of event to look for in paranormal cases is something that has precedent, but only in a context unknown to the people involved in the event. The precedent adds credibility to the claim that the event occurred, and the ignorance of the precedent on the part of those involved in the event undermines the notion that the event was faked based on that precedent. I noticed some incidents in the Enfield case that seem to meet those criteria.

Peggy Hodgson reported experiencing a sensation like a cat sitting on her feet and the bottom of her legs (GP5A, 4:44, especially 5:59). I've come across a similar report, but only briefly and in passing in a summary of a haunting case that occurred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell, Poltergeists [United States: White Crow Books, 2017], approximate Kindle location 3236). Gauld and Cornell refer to how a woman in the case reported "a feeling as if a cat were curling round her feet". In the Enfield case, on the tape cited above, Peggy refers to "a cat sitting on you…on your feet, [unintelligible] your legs". In all the books I've read on paranormal topics, articles I've read, podcasts I've listened to, etc., I don't recall anybody other than the woman cited by Gauld and Cornell and Peggy Hodgson reporting such an incident. And it seems extremely improbable that somebody like Peggy would have come across the obscure incident briefly mentioned by Gauld and Cornell or have been significantly influenced by somebody else who came across it.

Christianity And Living Agent Psi

I've posted an Amazon review of Stephen Braude's recent book. The review repeats some of what I've said here, but also adds some comments on other subjects, such as the evidence Christianity provides for life after death.

How Replicable Should The Paranormal Be?

Critics of the paranormal often object that paranormal events should be documented in scientific experiments if such phenomena actually occur. It's also common to object to decreases in reported paranormal activity over time or from one region to another, as if we should expect more consistency if the paranormal actually exists.

There are a lot of problems with those objections (e.g., the documentation we already have from scientific experiments), and Stephen Braude discusses some of those problems in his recent book. What I'm quoting below isn't meant to be exhaustive. I doubt that Braude intended to cover all of the ground involved, and I'd include other factors from a Christian perspective:

As time went on, more and more people, both in and out of the field of psychical research, took seriously the possibility that physical mediums might in fact be PK agents and therefore the actual cause of phenomena attributed by others to surviving spirits. And even when the mediums and other spiritists resisted this belief, the fact remains that the belief was increasingly "in the air" and difficult to ignore as growing numbers of secular researchers began to investigate the phenomena for themselves. But this can only have had a chilling effect on the psychology of mediumship generally. Mediums knew that even some sympathetic investigators considered them to be causes of - and not simply vessels for - paranormal physical phenomena. So they now had a concern that quite possibly had never entered their minds before - namely, that they might have powers they couldn't control and that conceivably could do great harm.

It's not surprising, then, to find that Eusapia Palladino's impressive phenomena in the 1890s and first decade of the twentieth century were less impressive than those of Home twenty years earlier. And it's even less surprising to find that many of the mediumistic "superstars" in the next several decades of the twentieth century had increasingly less intimidating repertoires of phenomena. For example, by the time we come to Rudi Schneider in the 1920s and 30s, the most sensational phenomena tended merely to be medium-sized object movements. And more recently, alleged PK superstars such as Nina Kulagina and Felicia Parise produced even smaller-scale phenomena.

Moreover, it's interesting to note how PK superstars in the latter half of the twentieth century seemed to suffer greatly when producing their phenomena. Their spiritistic predecessors typically went into a trance or at least into a state of passive receptivity, and occasionally they were tired afterwards. But more modern PK stars have more thoroughly accepted their role as the originator of their physical manifestations, and they seem quite clearly to be making a conscious effort to achieve those results. But of course, since they acknowledge their own role in the production of the phenomena, it's not surprising that they should have to work hard (say) to make a cigarette or pill bottle move a millimeter or an inch. In fact, consider how convenient effortful PK is psychologically - that is, from the psychic's point of view. If PK subjects feel it's necessary to expend a great deal of energy to produce only a small effect, then (in a careless line of thought characteristic of much self deception) it can easily seem to them as if their life or health would be endangered by trying to produce a phenomenon worth worrying about….

So, practically speaking, investigators may simply have to acknowledge a law of diminishing returns in applying controls. Besides, it would hardly be surprising if at some point (given human psychology), continually tightening controls simply snuffs out the phenomena. And how readily that occurs will undoubtedly vary from one subject to the next, just as our inhibition-thresholds vary widely in many familiar life contexts. I believe that's one reason why laboratory phenomena are so modest compared with phenomena in natural settings, if the phenomena can be duplicated at all in the lab. As I've argued elsewhere, since we really are nowhere close to knowing what psi's natural history is (i.e. its function or purpose - if any - in real-life settings), for all we know it may be similar in crucial respects to familiar phenomena or abilities (e.g., sexual performance, athletic skills) that can only be evaluated in their natural contexts, not in the straitjacketed conditions required for formal experiments.

(Dangerous Pursuits [San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books, 2020], 10-11, 69)

The Dark Side Of The Paranormal

I've often made the point that one of the issues that needs to be addressed more in discussions of the paranormal is the negative nature of much of what's involved. Stephen Braude makes some comments relevant to that subject in his new book:

In fact, over several decades of public lectures, I've had many opportunities to see how much distress I cause when I simply raise the issue [of the potential for using psychic powers for bad purposes] with my audiences. Significantly, that reaction has been especially intense at various New Age conventions where attendees focus exclusively on the potential benefits of psychic influence, apparently refusing to acknowledge the obvious point that no power can be used only for the good. I must confess, I've found it mischievously satisfying on those occasions to play the role of spokesperson for the Dark Side. With gratifying regularity, I've sent some in my audience home in tears….

I'm aware that many people accept the possibility of psychically influencing normal, everyday states of affairs, at least when the effects are salutary - for example, in the realm of healing or meditating for crime reduction. But of course, no force can be used exclusively for the good. So it's both interesting and revealing that few of those who propose beneficial applications of psi consider equally seriously the potential for pernicious uses of the same power.

(Dangerous Pursuits [San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books, 2020], 5, 149)

Stephen Braude's New Book

I recently finished reading his latest book, Dangerous Pursuits (San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books, 2020), which consists mostly of updated versions of material he'd previously published. The book is largely about mediumship, but there's also a lot of discussion of philosophical issues related to the paranormal. Some other topics are addressed as well. You can find out more about the issues the book covers on the Amazon page linked above.

There are a couple of chapters on his investigation of the Felix Experimental Group, centering around the mediumship of Kai Mügge. Though Mügge cheats at times (which is common among people with genuine abilities, as we see in academic contexts, sports, etc.), it does seem that he's producing some real paranormal phenomena as well. Some apparently authentic table levitations were caught on video. Braude discusses them and includes some photographs. A video of a particularly impressive levitation is supposed to be included in an upcoming film by Robert Narholz (tentatively titled Finding PK). Judging by the photos and Braude's account of the surrounding context, it seems that the levitation I just referred to is genuine. Go here to watch Braude discussing the subject in an interview, accompanied by a series of photos of the levitation mentioned above. (Watch the remainder of the interview for more photographs and video of levitations not associated with Mügge. For a discussion of other paranormal events caught on video and links to the relevant videos, see here.)

I found Braude's chapter on the mediumship of Carlos Mirabelli highly interesting. I didn't know much about Mirabelli before reading Braude's material. Mirabelli was reported to have "produced full-form materializations in bright daylight, and these were often recognized as deceased relatives, acquaintances, or well-known public figures by those attending the séance. Sitters would watch them form; attending physicians would carefully examine them for up to 30 minutes and report ordinary bodily functions; photographs of the figures would be taken (for example, Fig. 1); and then they would slowly dissolve or fade before everyone's eyes. Moreover, Mirabelli reportedly materialized animals as well." (99) Braude provides some of the relevant photographs, including one apparently showing a woman in the process of materializing. He reports an occasion when one of the medical personnel present touched one of the bodies that was in the process of dematerializing and found it to be "a spongy, flaccid mass of substance and that then he experienced some kind of a shock and fell to the ground" (105). You can read an online version of Braude's chapter on Mirabelli here.

Braude also has a chapter responding to criticisms of the mediumship of D.D. Home. If you don't know much about Home, Braude's chapter is a good introduction.

Much of Braude's material in the book is about issues related to the distinction between psi and super psi. One of the chapters discusses why it might be that disembodied individuals would perceive their surroundings as if having a body (an ability to perceive the physical environment, a range of vision similar to what an embodied person has, etc.). Even the chapter on jazz improvisation includes some comments on paranormal issues. Because of the variety of topics covered, most people interested in paranormal issues should find something worth reading.

What Would Your Relatives And Coworkers Think?

"For the people is our master and the great mob; a savage master and a severe tyrant: not so much as a command being needed in order to make us listen to him; it is enough that we just know what he wills, and without a command we submit: so great good will do we bear towards him. Again, God threatening and admonishing day by day is not heard; but the common people, full of disorder, made up of all manner of dregs, has no occasion for one word of command; enough for it only to signify with what it is well pleased, and in all things we obey immediately. 'But how,' says some one, 'is a man to flee from these masters?' By getting a mind greater than theirs; by looking into the nature of things; by condemning the voice of the multitude; before all, by training himself in things really disgraceful to fear not men, but the unsleeping Eye; and again, in all good things, to seek the crowns which come from Him." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On First Corinthians, 12:8-9)

Daniel The Prophet

I think Steve Hays wrote more about Daniel than any of the other prophets. You can find a collection of links to a lot of Steve's material on Daniel here. The page also links many of his other posts on issues related to prophecy. The collection is far from exhaustive, though. You can search our archives for more.

"The Egyptian or Chaldaean prophets, and the other writers, should have been able accurately to tell, if at least they spoke by a divine and pure spirit, and spoke truth in all that was uttered by them; and they should have announced not only things past or present, but also those that were to come upon the world. And therefore it is proved that all others have been in error; and that we Christians alone have possessed the truth, in as much as we are taught by the Holy Spirit, who spoke in the holy prophets, and foretold all things. And, for the rest, would that in a kindly spirit you would investigate divine things - I mean the things that are spoken by the prophets - in order that, by comparing what is said by us with the utterances of the others, you may be able to discover the truth." (Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, 2:33-34)

"Let [Porphyry] explain the meaning of that rock which was hewn from the mountain without hands, and which grew to be a great mountain and filled the earth, and which smashed to pieces the fourfold image. And let him say who that Son of man is who is going to come with clouds and stand before the Ancient of Days and have bestowed upon him a kingdom which shall never come to an end, and who is going to be served by all nations, tribes, and language-groups. Porphyry ignores these things which are so very clear and maintains that the prophecy refers to the Jews, although we are well aware that they are to this very day in a state of bondage." (Jerome, Commentary On Daniel, Chapter Eleven, vv. 44-45)

The Perennial Jewish Corroboration Of Christianity

What's below are some comments from Augustine on Jewish corroboration of Christianity. Notice that he was writing about 1600 years ago and that his comments are applicable to every century of the church's history. We're sometimes told that people didn't have much evidence for Christianity during most of church history, as if people had little evidence for the religion between the earliest years of the history of the church and the modern era. Supposedly, recent developments in fields like archeology and historical scholarship have brought about a major change. Those who lived in the medieval era, for example, allegedly didn't have much evidence to go by. It's true that they had significantly less evidence than we have, but they had more than is often suggested. Augustine is addressing a significant line of evidence for Christianity that's existed throughout church history:

"Indeed, it is a great confirmation of our faith that such important testimony is borne by enemies. The believing Gentiles cannot suppose these testimonies to Christ to be recent forgeries; for they find them in books held sacred for so many ages by those who crucified Christ, and still regarded with the highest veneration by those who every day blaspheme Christ. If the prophecies of Christ were the production of the preachers of Christ, we might suspect their genuineness. But now the preacher expounds the text of the blasphemer. In this way the Most High God orders the blindness of the ungodly for the profit of the saint, in His righteous government bringing good out of evil, that those who by their own choice live wickedly may be, in His just judgment, made the instruments of His will. So, lest those that were to preach Christ to the world should be thought to have forged the prophecies which speak of Christ as to be born, to work miracles, to suffer unjustly, to die, to rise again, to ascend to heaven, to publish the gospel of eternal life among all nations, the unbelief of the Jews has been made of signal benefit to us; so that those who do not receive in their heart for their own good these truths, carry, in their hands for our benefit the writings in which these truths are contained. And the unbelief of the Jews increases rather than lessens the authority of the books, for this blindness is itself foretold. They testify to the truth by their not understanding it. By not understanding the books which predict that they would not understand, they prove these books to be true." (Reply To Faustus The Manichaean, 16:21)

Non-Christian Fulfillment And Corroboration Of Christian Prophecies

I've been discussing different approaches we can take toward arguing for Christianity from prophecy. I want to expand on an approach that was mentioned in the post just linked. We can focus on prophecies fulfilled or corroborated by non-Christians. For example:

- Jesus' Bethlehem birthplace (Micah 5:2). (Also see the closing paragraphs here.)
- His close association with Galilee (Isaiah 9:1-2).
- His close association with Nazareth in the region of Zebulun (Isaiah 9:1-2).
- The arrival during the time of the Roman empire of a kingdom of God that would gradually grow over time (Daniel 2:34-35).
- The initial Jewish rejection of Jesus (Isaiah 49:7, 53:1-8, Zechariah 12:10).
- The scourging by the Romans (Isaiah 50:6).
- The crucifixion by the Romans (Psalm 22, Daniel 9:26, Isaiah 53:4-9).
- The empty tomb (Isaiah 53:9-11).
- The resurrection appearance to James (Isaiah 53:10-11).
- The resurrection appearance to Saul of Tarsus (Isaiah 53:10-11).
- The Romans' destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (Daniel 9:26).
- Jesus' popularity among the Gentiles (Isaiah 9:1, 42:6, 49:6, Daniel 2:35).
- His popularity among Gentile rulers (Isaiah 49:7, 52:15).
- Ongoing Jewish rejection (Zechariah 12:10, Romans 11:25-32).
- The prominence of Jerusalem (Zechariah 12:2-3).

How To Argue For Prophecy Fulfillment

In a post last year, I outlined how I think we should address issues of prophecy fulfillment by starting with the common ground we have with skeptics. Begin with fulfillments that are accepted by both sides. You could also grant much of what critics say about a prophecy for the sake of argument, such as that the passage isn't Messianic in its original context, but argue that Jesus' alignment with the passage in a typological or secondary manner is evidentially significant. And much of Jesus' alignment with the relevant passages comes from facts widely accepted even among non-Christians. I cited Isaiah's Servant Songs as an example of a good place to start. What I want to do here is discuss another approach that can be taken within the same framework.

Instead of using passages, like the Servant Songs, organize your material around topics. That allows you to appeal to material from more than one passage or series of passages. It's also easier in some ways for people to understand and remember the material involved if you take a topical approach. Here are some examples of the topics that could be used:

The Errors Of People Finding Errors In Scripture

Often, some of the best material in a book is found in its notes. Martin Hengel has a great line in a note in a book he wrote about the gospel of Mark. He's addressing modern critics who are overly dismissive of the author of the gospel of Mark because of alleged errors he made on matters like geography and Jewish customs:

"As many and as few mistakes are made in the Gospels as in monographs on the New Testament." (Studies In The Gospel Of Mark [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003], n. 51 on p. 148)

In the same note, he gives an example of a fellow New Testament scholar, apparently, who made a geographical error similar to the ones that are supposed to be in Mark:

"When I visited my distinguished colleague A. Kuschke (to whom I had dedicated the above article on his seventieth birthday) in Kusterdingen, south-east of Tübingen, we were able to admire Pfrondorf to the north, beyond the Neckar. A colleague who had lived for many years in Tübingen asked me, 'Is that beyond Wankheim?' 'No,' I had to tell him, 'it's in the opposite direction.'"

The house my mother is currently living in is the one where I spent most of my childhood. I lived there for a double-digit number of years, and I frequently go back there to visit. I can't name some of the streets closest to the house. There are many aspects of the topography, names of certain neighbors, etc. that I wouldn't be able to provide if asked. But critics often expect Mark to have a much higher level of knowledge about regions of Israel, like Galilee, where we have no reason to think he ever lived. As Hengel comments elsewhere in his book, "His 'deficient knowledge' of the geography of Galilee, which contemporary exegetes like to criticize, in fact simply shows up the [latter's] historical incomprehension: without a map it would be difficult even for a man of antiquity like Mark to establish his bearings in a strange area a good seventy miles from his home city" (46).

Hengel wasn't a conservative, and he wasn't an inerrantist, but he often agreed with conservatives and inerrantists on significant issues. And what he says above about the gospels is also relevant to criticisms that are often brought against the church fathers and other ancient sources. The evidence supports the inerrancy of scripture, and the supposed errors in Mark are often not seen as errors even by people who aren't inerrantists. But the points Hengel makes above should be kept in mind. Since inerrantists often argue for inerrancy by appealing to the general trustworthiness of the relevant documents, without yet appealing to their inerrancy, Hengel's points are relevant accordingly even for those wanting to persuade people to accept the inerrancy of scripture.

The Greatness Of The Gospel

How we view the gospel affects our relationship with God, our relationships with other people, our priorities, our objectives, the sense of urgency we have, and many other aspects of life. It should be a foundational motivating factor every day of our lives. It's important that we have a high view of the gospel and think about it often, deeply, and in a multifaceted way. Here are some examples of authors down through the centuries commenting on certain portions of the gospel:

Faith Alone
He Gives Himself
The Incarnation
Gethsemane
Put On Trial
The Cross
The Tomb
The Resurrection
The Defeat Of Satan
Imputed Righteousness
The Benefits Of The Gospel

"An idea has long possessed the public mind, that a religious man can scarcely be a wise man. It has been the custom to talk of infidels, atheists, and deists, as men of deep thought and comprehensive intellect; and to tremble for the Christian controversialist, as if he must surely fall by the hand of his enemy. But this is purely a mistake; for the gospel is the sum of wisdom; an epitome of knowledge; a treasure-house of truth; and a revelation of mysterious secrets. In it we see how justice and mercy may be married; here we behold inexorable law entirely satisfied, and sovereign love bearing away the sinner in triumph. Our meditation upon it enlarges the mind; and as it opens to our soul in successive flashes of glory, we stand astonished at the profound wisdom manifest in it. Ah, dear friends! if ye seek wisdom, ye shall see it displayed in all its greatness; not in the balancing of the clouds, nor the firmness of earth's foundations; not in the measured march of the armies of the sky, nor in the perpetual motions of the waves of the sea; not in vegetation with all its fairy forms of beauty; nor in the animal with its marvellous tissue of nerve, and vein, and sinew: nor even in man, that last and loftiest work of the Creator. But turn aside and see this great sight!—an incarnate God upon the cross; a substitute atoning for mortal guilt; a sacrifice satisfying the vengeance of Heaven, and delivering the rebellious sinner. Here is essential wisdom; enthroned, crowned, glorified. Admire, ye men of earth, if ye be not blind; and ye who glory in your learning bend your heads in reverence, and own that all your skill could not have devised a gospel at once so just to God, so safe to man." (Charles Spurgeon, The C.H. Spurgeon Collection [Albany, Oregon: AGES Software, 1998], The Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 1, pp. 113-14)

What Christians and atheists both get wrong about Intelligent Design

I recently had a conversation with a friend who brought up Intelligent Design (ID), and it reminded me of something I’ve mentioned several years ago. Given how much time has passed, I thought it was worth reiterating it now. And that is the strange fact that both atheists and Christians, especially Young Earth Creationists (YEC), both fall into the same error in thinking that ID requires the existence of God.  Atheists use this claim to argue that ID should not be taught in schools.  Christians tend to use ID as an apologetic to defend Creationism against Darwinism.

The problem is that when we see what ID claims, it’s nowhere near requiring a deity.  Put simply, ID states that the evidence we have for evolution does not make any sense if we hold to random processes causing it all.  Rather, the evidence that we see indicates that the way that organisms exist now makes sense only if they were designed to be specific ways.  That is, evolution only makes sense if it is teleological, not random.  (Teleological just means that it has an end or a goal in mind, something which Darwin specifically rejected.)

Now the temptation is that the intelligent designer of ID must be God, but that’s not actually what ID is saying.  ID is only saying that the evidence of what we see indicates that life on Earth has been designed by some form of intelligence.  Given that ID does not require a YEC view of time, this means that it is perfectly consistent with ID to limit the claims of ID strictly to something along the lines of, “The evolution of life on Earth over the past 4.5 billion years came about from an intelligent designer intending a specific outcome.”

Such a designer need not be any more intelligent than human beings already are.  In theory, if we wanted to do so, we could set up labs on Mars and grow some microscopic organisms, guiding their evolution in the lab by selecting certain breeds of organisms over others (the same as people already do for dogs and other animals), genetically modifying those that don’t have the required genetic sequences already in place to form new organisms, and we could release those organisms into the Martian wilderness.  We wouldn’t even really need a few billion years to tinker around with the life forms we’ve introduced there.  If we were to build up a sufficiently advanced life form that was able to be self-aware, and it surveyed its historical settings, looking at fossils left behind and so forth, our intelligent design of those life forms would look indistinguishable from how life forms came about on Earth, in this scenario.

Really, the only thing that is keeping humans from doing this right now is the fact that it takes a lot of time and money to get to Mars, and this isn’t something that very many people would want to spend those resources on.  But it’s easy to imagine an alien race very similar to human beings who might wish to tinker around on some planet.  They discover Earth and set up their labs on Earth, terraforming the planet and guiding the evolution of life until one day humans are on the planet.  Those aliens do not need to have any divine characteristics at all.  In fact, they could even by slightly stupider (on average) than human beings are, and still have a statistical chance of having enough smart aliens to pull off such a scenario.

And since ID is limited solely to the evolution of life on Earth, the fact that the evolution of life on Earth makes more sense from a teleological perspective than from a random perspective does not even imply the existence of God for the rest of the universe, because the aliens who created us may have come about from completely different methods.  Our evolution appears guided.  Perhaps if we saw the evidence of this hypothetical race’s origins, a completely different theory might be proposed that would not require God.

That is why ID is neither proof of the existence of God, nor should it be disbarred from being taught in schools.  It is also why Christian theists need to have better arguments against atheism (and the good news is, we do!).  Sure, ID can disprove Darwinism, but that doesn’t prove God when someone even slightly less intelligent than we are could replicate the results we see on Earth.  So while ID isn’t bad by any means, especially since it does help show how ludicrous Darwinism is, Christians need to be very wary about relying on ID as an apologetic silver bullet against materialistic Darwinists.

More Evidence Of The Evangelical Lack Of Urgency

I discussed the subject of urgency in a recent thread. It wasn't just about Evangelicals, but the lack of urgency among Evangelicals in particular came up. I cited a lot of evidence relevant to issues of urgency, such as polling data, but that can be supplemented by other evidence that's not as extensive as something like a poll.

I've done a lot of work in apologetics over the years, so I have more familiarity with that field than others. I've often written about the negligence of Evangelicals in apologetic contexts (and theological contexts, moral contexts, etc.), including a lack of appropriate urgency. See here regarding same-sex marriage. And here regarding Christmas issues. Here regarding the paranormal. Those are just a few of many examples that could be cited.

Something that people often do in a context like this is cite the work of William Lane Craig, James White, Michael Brown, and other individuals who are doing a lot of good in apologetics and other fields, as if the work of such individuals suggests that Evangelicals in general are doing well. It does no such thing. Rather, Evangelicals are overly dependent on a tiny minority of individuals who are expected to carry an inordinately large burden.

What are you doing? What specific plans do you have in place to accomplish significant things, in apologetics and elsewhere? How often do you speak up? How often do you do little or nothing more than sit back and wait for other people to do the work?

"Strange were it that the physician, or the shoemaker, or the weaver, in short all artists, should be able each to contend correctly for his own art, but that one calling himself Christian should not be able to give a reason for his own faith; yet those things if overlooked bring only loss to men's property, these if neglected destroy our very souls. Yet such is our wretched disposition, that we give all our care to the former, and the things which are necessary, and which are the groundwork of our salvation, as though of little worth, we despise. That it is which prevents the heathen from quickly deriding his own error. For when they, though established in a lie, use every means to conceal the shamefulness of their opinions, while we, the servants of the truth, cannot even open our mouths, how can they help condemning the great weakness of our doctrine? how can they help suspecting our religion to be fraud and folly? how shall they not blaspheme Christ as a deceiver, and a cheat, who used the folly of the many to further his fraud? And we are to blame for this blasphemy, because we will not be wakeful in arguments for godliness, but deem these things superfluous, and care only for the things of earth." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 17:3-4)

Dying Well As A Christian

One of the many things to be grateful to God for in the life of Steve Hays is how well his life ended. I've written about how he was active in doing apologetics and other important work until the end and how well his life concluded in other ways. As his obituary said, "What he lived by, he died by."

A few years ago, I wrote about some similar themes in the life of T.S. Mooney. You can read those posts here and here.

All of us should periodically review our lives and ask how well we're preparing for death.

The Missing Urgency

Scripture says a lot about the urgency we should have in religious contexts. Our culture doesn't. Most likely, your closest relatives, friends, and acquaintances don't either.

They're too occupied with the "worries and riches and pleasures of this life" (Luke 8:14). The need for urgency is still there (Nehemiah 6:3, Psalm 39:4, 90:12, Hosea 5:15, Matthew 9:37-38, 24:42, Luke 12:20-21, John 4:35-38, 12:35, Romans 13:11-14, 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, 2 Corinthians 6:1-2, Ephesians 5:16, Colossians 4:5, Hebrews 10:25, James 4:13-15, Revelation 2:16, 3:11, etc.).

"You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed." (Matthew 25:26)