Author Archives: Duane Caldwell

About Duane Caldwell

Duane has served in many different capacities including pastor, elder, project coordinator and flight instructor. He is an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ by the Evangelical Church Alliance and holds a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a Trinity International University school and a BS in Aeronautics from Parks College, St. Louis University.

Is the Bible the Word of God?

Posted on by

An agnostic sent a question about the word of God to Creation Ministries International. CMI retweeted it here, the full question is here and is answered by CMI rep Jonathan Sarfati. Sarfati approaches it on the basis of valid, internally consistent philosophical systems. But I want to take it in a different direction and answer it evidentially. That is, is there evidence that the Bible is the word of God? So in this article we’ll to take a look at the heart of the question and address the key issue which, as the agnostic puts it, is this:

I’m not denying that the bible is an excellent book, nor that it may be the word of God, but I will question one tenet:

That the Bible must be the word of God, because it says so.

Now, consider me heretic, but it strikes me that this is a ridiculous line of thought to take? If I were to say that my face was made of cucumber, and I’m four hundred years old, would that make it so simply because I said so?
I’m not entirely convinced that it would.

Continue Reading

This Christmas: Presents or Presence?

Posted on by

Nativity

A Christmas Meditation

Some theologians point out a paradoxical truth regarding the first Christmas: while we tend to think many were aware of what was happening that first Christmas and were there to see it, from gospel descriptions it seems not many people knew what was happening. So few celebrated or worshipped during that first Christmas. Think about it. Besides Mary and Joseph and the heavenly hosts who told the shepherds, who was aware that the King of kings was being born as a baby in Bethlehem that first Christmas? You have the shepherds, Anna and  Simeon (who don’t see him until his presentation at the temple Luke 2.21,27), and the wisemen. And you can argue that since by the time the Magi arrive the Messiah was no longer an infant (βρεφος brephos Luke 2.12 cf. Luke 1.41) but a young child (παιδιον paidion Matt 2.8), they probably weren’t there the first Christmas either. They came later. Continue Reading

Proxy Wars

Posted on by

Proxy War puppet master

“The Culture war that is a proxy war to the spiritual war.”

This is a recurring phrase in the below video of Seth Gruber giving a powerful pro-life message and explaining The White Rose Resistance. Gruber uses that recurring refrain (viewable, for example, at 26:42, 35:56, 1:05:11 among others) to describe how Satan’s strategy for deceiving people into killing babies has not changed over the millennia. And it got me to thinking of other proxy wars. Continue Reading

A Rational Faith vs An Illogical Atheist

Posted on by
Milan - Resurrection of Lazarus from San Giorgio church

Milan – “Resurrection of Lazarus” from the San Giorgio church

Most of the time I do not bother to respond to the online rantings of atheists. That’s because most are not worthy of a response since they tend to be one of the following:

  • Ad hominem attacks that have nothing to do with the question at hand
  • Fiat statements that are not only completely wrong, but have absolutely no backing evidence in science, reality or truth
  • Gross misstatements or misunderstandings of science whose corrections cannot be explained in a single tweet.

In my experience most atheists online are not seeking the truth. They merely want to pour the nonsense and trash of their worldview on everyone and expect everyone to swallow – hook, line and sinker – the lies they themselves have become accustomed to. Amusingly, they consider themselves bastions of reason and science but always seem to miss it when they themselves are spouting irrational, illogical nonsense. Continue Reading

Atheists – Deeper in Denial than Demons

Posted on by

Your continued mocking of God continuall confirms your choice of eternal condemnation

This article started with an observation from scripture that the title describes, but I’ll throw in a couple of other observations while we’re on the topic.

Observation 1: Atheists know who the true God is.

Though atheists deny God exists, they quite clearly know who he is and that he exists. How do I know that? Well, first scripture tells us that God has made his existence plain to all (Rom 1.19) so atheists deny him only by denying what’s obvious. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been characterized as “apostles of denial”[1] by former Watchtower member professor Edmund C. Gruss because of all the Christian doctrines they deny but, compared to atheists, the Witnesses are amateur deniers of the truth.
 Continue Reading

The Three Faces of Mitochondrial Eve

Posted on by

The Three Faces of Mitochondrial Eve

Eve White in the movie The Three Faces of Eve suffers from what is popularly known as multi-personality disorder. As the title suggests, she manifests three distinct personalities. There is a theory of human origins called “Mitochondrial Eve” that is similarly expressed with three separate concepts. As is usual in the origins debate, what one believes about mitochondrial Eve is dependent on your worldview. So what is one to make of these three understandings of mitochondrial Eve? Follow along as we shed light on the proper understanding of mitochondrial Eve. Continue Reading

Science Without Observation Is Deception

Posted on by

Deceptive Liar

As I’ve pointed out before atheist high priest Richard Dawkins has famously said,

“The Universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

Given that I’ve often wondered why atheists care what I say or what I write about? If I’m wrong, it’s not evil (there is no evil) and doesn’t matter (there’s no meaning or purpose). (But if I’m right, as Pascal has pointed out in his wager, and they continue in their atheistic ways, when their time comes, there will be literal hell to pay. Isaiah 66.24)

But for some reason, though their worldview should tell them what I say doesn’t matter, they like to comment on what I say. Much of what they say are easily ignored ad hominem attacks that only prove they can’t address what I write about with reason or science. So they resort to attacking me instead of even attempting to address the points I make.  But sometimes they make claims about science and faith that, as I’ve written about throughout this blog, are clearly and obviously wrong. And occasionally they’ll write something that is so obviously wrong it’s laugh-out-loud funny. Continue Reading

Y Chromosome Adam Confirms the Bible

Posted on by

Noah on the ark

On this Father’s Day I thought it would be appropriate to deal with a topic that highlights fathers, so for this article we’ll be looking at Y Chromosome Adam. (Sorry ladies, with the tragedy last month all eyes were focused there. But I’ll come back to a topic for moms either next article or next mother’s day).

Correcting the Record

“Y Chromosome Adam” actually originated as a concept out of secular genetics. According to the secularists:

“By analyzing DNA from people in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.”[1]

With secularists believing that modern humans appeared some 200,000 years ago, the time estimate was pushed back to that earlier period by some as indicated in this Wikipedia article. The older age is consistent with typical evolutionary timelines such as this one which show modern man emerging about 200,000 years ago.

But a closer examination of the human Y chromosome leads to startling, even alarming, conclusions for secularists but expected conclusions for those who support the Bible. Specifically, study of the human (male) Y chromosome confirms these two facts: Continue Reading

Don’t get your Morality from an Atheist

Posted on by

Don't Get your morality from an Atheist!

Worldviews have consequences. Particularly regarding morality. If you understand the concept of a “worldview” that is obvious. For those unfamiliar with the term, here’s a definition by “Purpose Driven Life” author Rick Warren who did a study series on it with the late Chuck Colson called “Wide Angle – Framing Your Worldview.” The concept of worldview is critical to the point made both in the meme above and repeated in this article, so if you’re not familiar with it, please take a look at the link.

Two Points in the Meme 

Take a look at the meme above, and note both the meme and particularly the tweet used to send it actually make two points.

The first point: There is nothing in the atheist worldview that says that murdering innocent children is wrong, or evil or should be avoided. In fact according to the atheist worldview there is no morality, so there is nothing that can be called “evil.”  All actions are equally valid or equally moral. Continue Reading

Don’t get your Theology from an Atheist

Posted on by

The Serpent questions the word of God

There are a lot of falsehoods, misinformation and outright lies on the internet. But there is also truth on the internet so you must be careful to discern the truth from the falsehoods, the fact from the fiction. In this post I want to highlight a good rule of thumb to consider when people start discussing theology or Christianity or religion with you. Here’s the advice: Don’t get your theology from an atheist.

This should be obvious, but to clarify, there’s a saying that has been going around online, at least on Twitter, that imparts a valuable piece of wisdom: “Only a fool would allow his enemies to educate his children.” Continue Reading