Commentary, analysis and opinion.

Bill Nye’s Reasonable Man – The Central Worldview Clash of the Ham-Nye Debate

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Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes:

The debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham attracted a huge international audience and no shortage of controversy—even before it began. Bill Nye, whose main media presence is as “The Science Guy,” and Ken Ham, co-founder of Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum, squared off in a true debate over one of the most important questions that the human mind can contemplate. That is no small achievement.

I enjoyed a front row seat at the debate, which took place even as a major winter storm raged outside, dumping considerable amounts of snow and ice and causing what the local police announced as a “Class Two” weather emergency. Inside the Creation Museum there was quite enough heat, and the debate took place without a hitch. Thankfully, it also took place without acrimony.

The initial controversy about the debate centered in criticism of Bill Nye for even accepting the invitation. Many evolutionary scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, refuse to debate the issue, believing that any public debate offers legitimacy to those who deny evolution. Nye was criticized by many leading evolutionists, who argued publicly that nothing good could come of the debate.

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One Brave Christian Woman Contra Mundum

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Apologist and ethicist Bill Muehlenberg writes:

In my book, Heidi Mund is a Christian superstar, a champion, and a hero. We so desperately need more like her. Instead we have millions of gutless, spineless effeminate churchians who will never open their mouth about anything. Indeed, our churches are filled with craven cowards and spineless wonders.

So who is Heidi Mund? She is a small, frail, quiet German woman, but one who allows the Holy Ghost to empower her greatly, speaking out forcefully and fearlessly against syncretism, idolatry and the lies of the enemy. Her story has been captured in a video which has gone viral, and rightly so. You can see the 6-minute video here.

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Christians, Don’t Give Up on the Homosexuality Debate

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Jason Helopoulos, guest blogging for The Gospel Coalition writes:

Even before the Grammy Awards showcased Macklemore singing “Same Love” and Queen Latifah presiding over a “same sex couple’s wedding” ceremony, I had most of this blog written as the topic has been on my mind for quite some time.

I am not a Kuyperian or a Neo-Kuyperian, but there are certain watershed cultural issues for every generation of Christians; issues in which they cannot be silent. For our generation, abortion and homosexuality are key watershed issues. They are watershed issues, because abortion snatches away life and homosexuality reaches out and grabs hold of death.

The average Evangelical Christian continues to believe we should speak out against the acceptance of abortion in our culture. And the pro-abortion forces have been losing ground over the past five years. No doubt, much of that is due to the church’s resolve to stand against this agenda. However, it seems to me that in the past few years, Evangelical Christians in the United States have increasingly and passively grown in their acceptance of homosexuality. This should concern all of us.

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Yet More Sexual Insanity

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Apologist and ethicist Bill Muehlenberg writes:

One can argue that the past century has been one grand social experiment to see what life would be like if we kicked God and transcendent moral values out of the West. Well, the results are in, and it is not looking very good. When we ditch the one certain source of objective morality and absolute truth, mankind is simply left to its own devices.

We end up making things up as we go along, and everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Anything goes, and this is especially true in the area of sexuality. All boundaries are cast aside, and every kinky and bizarre thing imaginable is engaged in and sanctioned.

Everywhere we see the brave new world of unbridled sexuality. And despite what the sexual libertines say, we all suffer as a result – especially children. When we manage to foolishly convince ourselves that absolutely anything goes when it comes to sexuality, then there will always be plenty of losers.

So let me offer another handful of cases, beginning with this shocker from Italy:

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Reformed contemplative at Liberate 2014/One Way Love Conference

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By John Lanagan

“One of the ways I have found helpful in moving into the ‘other world’ is a technique called centering prayer (You might want to read M. Basil Pennington’s book on the subject, Centering Prayer. I don’t agree with the entire book, but…”)***

The above quote is from Approaching God: Accepting The Invitation To Stand In The Presence Of God, pg. 117, by Steve Brown, one of the scheduled headliners for the Liberate 2014/One Way Love Conference at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Feb. 20-23.

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Five Really Dumb Things the Activists Say

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Apologist and ethicist Bill Muehlenberg writes:

One could easily write an entire book on all the really moronic and senseless things the homosexual activists say when they “argue” with us. Of course one has to use the word “argue” quite loosely here, since what the militants engage in can hardly be described as arguments – more like sophomoric rants in fact.

So as you discuss or debate with these activists, bear in mind they will almost invariably throw some real doozies your way. These remarks will have very little to do with logic and rationality. They will not be actual arguments or well-reasoned claims.

They will just be foolish attacks lacking in any merit. But this is just how the other side operates – time and time again. This is their standard modus operandi. Here then are five of these dopey claims you will likely hear over and over again in such discussions.

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Don’t Let Your Mind Go to Pot

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In this piece Pastor John Piper, founder and teacher of desiringGod.org, gives the reasons he believes Christians should avoid recreational marijuana use. He begins:

Marijuana is ordinarily used as a mood-altering, mind-altering drug. The aim is to create a kind of euphoria. The effects vary widely from person to person. All you have to do is Google, “What does Marijuana feel like?” People don’t smoke it to get unhappy. It produces a temporary state that is felt to be better than ordinary life. That’s why it’s called a “high” and not a low.

So the first comparison one might be inclined to make is with caffeine. Most people drink coffee because caffeine has a pleasant effect. But there is a difference. Marijuana temporarily impairs the reliable processing of surrounding reality. Caffeine ordinarily sharpens that processing.

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A cause for careful celebration? On Phillips, Craig and Dean, and Trinitarian Christianity

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Matt Privett, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Carthage, NC has written a follow-up piece to an article we posted on CRN last week. In part 2, Privett sheds new light on what he felt was a troubling the situation:

Late Sunday night I posted The elephant is in OUR room: Shaking hands with Sabellius in the Southern Baptist Convention. I’d venture to say it is by far my most widely read and disseminated post in almost fifteen years of blogging, which isn’t saying much, except to say that people read it and commented on it. A couple of others sites picked it up and/or linked to it.

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Dr. Michael Brown Defending Benny Hinn

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Apprising Ministries fills you in on the details as Brown appears to come to Hinn’s defense in a Twitter exchange today with pastor Steve Camp. We shouldn’t be surprised because you’ll also see a short clip of Brown in 2013 on the TV show of his longtime friend, NAR false prophet Rick Jojyner. View article →

The Elephant Is in Our Room: Shaking Hands with Sabellius in the Southern Baptist Convention

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Matt Privett, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Carthage, NC writes:

Is the doctrine of the Trinity something worth standing resolute on anymore in the Southern Baptist Convention?

The question, seemingly obvious among the people who turned back the liberal tide and fought for the inerrancy of Scripture 35 years ago, must be asked in the early days of 2014 when one looks at the schedule for the 2014 Empower Conference, an evangelism conference put on by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC)…

Let me just touch on a few of those names.

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Homosexual lobby on the attack again

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Cliff Kincaid, director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, writes:

Having suffered a major setback when Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” got his job back, the gay lobby is now going for a softer target – a pro-family activist in Ohio whose book Maybe He’s Not Gay undercuts their recruitment efforts among kids. Author Linda Harvey, who runs a pro-family ministry called Mission America, seems to have emerged as more of a target than Phil Robertson.

Robertson was suspended—then reinstated—from the show after making comments critical of homosexuality, some of them based on biology and the facts of life, and others on Bible passages.

The Maybe He’s Not Gay book “seeks to tell kids the truth about homosexual behavior,” Harvey says. It explains in a conversational tone why no one is born homosexual, the health risks associated with the lifestyle, and factors which may lead to same sex attractions.

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Evolution and the Secular Worldview – The Fury of the Elites on Display

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Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes:

The Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project recently released data indicating that the issue of evolution still divides Americans. According to the research, about 60 percent of Americans indicate a belief in evolution, while just over 30 percent reject evolution as an account of human origins. A closer look at the data reveals that almost half of those who say they believe in evolution also believe that a Supreme Being guided the process. In other words, far less than half of Americans believe in a purely naturalistic version of evolution, the mainstream theory as held by evolutionists.

As you might expect, religious beliefs play a huge role. The vast majority of those identified as evangelical Christians affirmed that “humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time,” while only 15 percent of “white mainline Protestants” joined in that affirmation.

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