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May 3, 2009 – Questions Christians are Asked

This week we wanted to start talking about the questions that non-Christians challenge us with about God, about the world, about the nature of man, and about life in general. These questions are difficult to respond to without the proper perspective on the truth. However, through providing examples, by thinking logically, and by clearly reasoning we can often show show flaws in their thinking.

One of the things that we’ve talked about is how for an unbeliever, final authority for “truth” is found in themselves — not a higher authority. I just read this article on CNN and wanted to quote a few excerpts that really help show this:

When a scientific principle is common knowledge even in grammar schools, you know it’s long since crossed the line from theory to established fact. That’s the case with dinosaur extinction. Some 65 million years ago — as we’ve all come to know — an asteroid struck the Earth, sending up a cloud that blocked the sun and cooled the planet…

Now, however, a new study in the Journal of the Geological Society throws all of that into question. The asteroid impact and the dinosaur extinction, argue the authors, may not have been simultaneous, but rather may have occurred 300,000 years apart.

The first sentence to me is revealing — truth becomes what you want it to be. The final authority is the individual and the individual’s empirical fact-finding attempts. It’s “true” until it’s superseded by some newer “truth”.

How might you respond to this sort of thinking?

Bring your questions (and your answers) next Sunday! We’d love to talk and explore some of these issues…

If anyone would like a copy of “The Reason for God” by Tim Keller, I’ll be bringing some extra copies next week. It’s an excellent read!