Nathan Zacharias and Margie Zacharias defend Ravi Zacharias

Check out the blog post at Defending Ravi

" My Mom recently sent an email to some friends and family that is being circulated. She’s since asked me to post it here to ensure it’s ongoing accuracy. Good am, Family. I love you all.  I wanted you all to know that I have spent the last week going through every paper and article in […]

Email From My Mom

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Buttress of Belief

The Bible does not encourage blind belief. It provides buttresses of belief varying according to context, some of which include:

1. A miraculous sign (e.g. Moses in Egypt; Isaiah..)
2. A covenant sign and oath (e.g. Abraham, Lord's Supper)
3. A surety or guarantee (e.g. Passover..)
4. A particular requested sign (e.g Gideon's fleece)
5. A particular factual sign (e.g. Elizabeth to Mary)
6. A prophetic word - dream (e.g. Joseph to the prisoners)
7. A prophetic word - knowledge (e.g. Jesus to Samaritan woman)
8. A prophetic word - foretelling (e.g. Jesus to Peter...)
9. A healing, providential, protective, deliverance miracle (e.g. Gospels)
10. An angelic sign (e.g. Resurrection)
11. A divine stroke (e.g. Uzziah's leprosy, Zachariah's muteness, Miriam's leprosy)
12. Prophetic fulfillment (Jewish and Gentile, including the Star of Magi)
13. etcc....

Since the nature of the belief is supernatural, the buttress usually is also supernatural. 

1. A written legal surety - The Bible (Word of God) 
2. A living personal surety - The Holy Spirit 
3. An authoritative signature - The Name of Jesus Christ (to make orders and requests in prayer and word of deliverance)
4. A testifying community - The Church

Items that must not be considered as buttresses of belief:

1. Personal feelings (which are fluctuating)
2. Zeitgeist or spirit of the age (which are more of a fad)
3. Probabilistic naturalist reasoning (whose final resort is chance and whose counterfactuals are not really factual)
4. Speculative philosophy (which is mere speculation that attempts to act as an hypothetical gap-filler)
5. etcc

Any of the non-buttresses will be able to try to explain away the true buttresses (A.1-13). The non-buttresses actually constitute unbelief. They are also explicitly skeptical if not absolutely irrational and are unreliable for any reasonable venture. 

PHOTO: (from dreamstime.com, google images) 

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Dialectics of Vaccination

(google images, reuters.com)

The African variant is said to have beaten Pfizer's vaccine according to an Israeli study.

Humans invent vaccine to beat the virus

The virus develops immunity to beat the vaccine... ad infinitum

Dialectical vaccinationism

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Zoom classes and alienation

(cartoon circulating on social media nowadays)

Zoom, webex, meet, ...... Pros and cons

Pros:

1. Safe inside

2. Time saver

3. Less paper

4. Less expensive than classroom

5. Travel money saver

6. Video recording, sharing...

7. Polls, annotations, etc

Cons:

1. Connection issues

2. More distractions (unless in quiet room and phones off)

3. Screen stress

4. Social alienation

5. Depersonalization (cams off, no response, lack of personal touch)

6. No non-verbal feedback for teacher (when cams off) - highly demotivating

7. Less engagement

8. More burden on teacher to engage class

9. Breakout rooms, not very successful unlike class group discussions

10. Virtualization of life and habit

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Resurrection poem

HAPPY RESURRECTION SUNDAY!

One act of justice

Cancelled our woes

One act of surrender

Defeated all foes

One act of power

Broke the grave

When Christ arose

On Resurrection Day!

It was no fiction,

The crucifixion.

No hallucination,

The resurrection.

They all saw Him die

So does history testify,

And timid apostles did the world defy

After they saw their Lord alive!

He died, He rose, He lives!

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On the Internal Witness of Scriptures

I think it is very erroneous to assume that the internal witness of Scripture is unreliable unless supported by external (or extra biblical) testimony. 

1. When witnesses to an account are two or more, the testimony already carries a level of reliability. The Pentateuch, Kings, Chronicles, Prophets, Gospels contain accounts by varying sources that can be cross-referenced to gain a fair historical picture.

2. Cases of sole testimony cannot be disregarded as totally unreliable as per the rule of truth-expression. To stipulate that one must not testify or witness unless his/her experience is shared by others is to impose a gag on truth-expression or the possibility of hearing truth. In fact, it is a sealing of self from the possible sole source of information. Sole testimony, however, is also open to challenge if there can be enough reasons for raising such a challenge. But, in the most central narratives in Scripture, the witness party includes several persons. Thus, as per #1, the combined testimony of all these witnesses demands a hearing.

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