Category Archives: 100 Questions

Article series that address questions / challenges Identified by Tom Gilson in the article “Are We Ready? More Than a Hundred Challenges Christians Have Never Faced Before” The questions (and answers as soon as they’re written)  are here: 100 Questions – Rational Faith

Q.43 No one has any idea who wrote the Gospels

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The Gospel according to...

The Gospel according to…

For the average Christian, the statement: “no one has any idea who wrote the Gospels” is nonsensical. In every Bible, printed at the top of each Gospel account, is the name of the author:

The Gospel according to Matthew
The Gospel according to Mark
The Gospel according to Luke
The Gospel according to John

Sometimes it’s listed in a simplified version with just the name:

Matthew
Mark
Luke
John

Before Bibles were printed, the name of the author was included with the handwritten documents, and the name of the authors were well established from the beginning of their widespread circulation.[1] So it is not true that “no one has any idea who wrote the Gospels.” What this doubter means is he doesn’t believe that the Gospels were written by the people traditionally accepted to be the authors. He rejects what the first Christians believed from the time of initial receipt of these texts even though this belief was later confirmed by the early church. The question of authorship does not even occur to most Christians who believe the entire Bible. Continue Reading

Q.23 Isn’t God so distant and different he’s unknowable to humans?

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Adam and Eve in the Garden with the LORD God

Adam and Eve in the Garden with the LORD God

On the one hand, this question—”Isn’t God so distant and different he’s unknowable to humans?”—is a reasonable question because, to many people, perhaps to most, God seems distant. On the other hand, it shows how far those same people, for whom God seems distant, have drifted from God’s heart and his original and ongoing intention, which is intimacy with each and every one of us.

When God promised a New Covenant to the House of Israel via the prophet Jeremiah which was meant to apply to all, he said the time is coming when everyone would know him: Continue Reading

Q.40 The Exodus – Does archaeology show it happened?

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The Split rock at Horeb - The Exodus

The Split rock at Horeb

After the resurrection, the Exodus and the miracles surrounding it are arguably the greatest miracles God performed. Indeed, before the incarnation of Jesus, God regularly identified himself as the God who brought the Israelites out of Egypt (Ex 20.2, 29.46, Ps 81.10, Jer 11.4, etc.) So this is a very important question. But like other questions in this series, it was given as a statement too long for the title. So let’s start with the original statement, point  out the implied questions, and take it from there. The original statement:

If the Exodus really happened we’d see more signs of it in archaeology. We don’t, so it’s not believable.

So let’s make explicit the implicit challenges and assumptions.
Continue Reading

Q.9 Why Do Christians believe guns are good? Guns kill!

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Remington 30.06

With last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk (X tribute | Archives: post video) still fresh on everyone’s mind, this seemed like a good time to address this question: “Why do Christians believe guns are good? Guns kill!” As usual, there is a fallacious assumption here, so let’s start with that. The assumption is of course that it is guns that kill, without recognizing that the gun is just the instrument of the person who is controlling it.

Saying that guns kill is like a student coming home from school and telling his parents, “My pencil failed my tests today.” Would any parent accept that? Would you accept that? Of course not. Pencils do not take tests by themselves. An agent is in control of the pencil, and the pencil is merely a tool by which the intention of the agent is manifested.  Continue Reading

Q.67 Why won’t you go along with Covid vaccinations like everyone else?

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Covid-19 vaccine - lethal?

As with most of these questions, there is an incorrect underlying assumption. Here, it’s that everyone is going along with the Covid-19 vaccines – with the exception of Christians. That is most certainly not the case. Actually, there is a further assumption that we should be doing what everyone else is doing. I’ll come back to that one.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020 in their Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) Situation Report – 51. The Covid vaccines were developed at “record speed” as ChatGPT puts it and were made available in December of 2020.[1] We now have the benefit of hindsight informed by the years of research and data collection on the effectiveness of, and issues with, the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines that have been collected in the intervening years. To answer the question—Why won’t you [Christians] go along with Covid vaccinations like everyone else?—I will supply both past and current concerns as well as the validation of those concerns that has been revealed by the research of multiple sources over the intervening years.

Why Refuse the Covid-19 mRNA Vaccines?

There were three primary concerns that Christians and others had concerning the mRNA Covid-19 Vaccines and a fourth concern that drove the already high suspicions even higher. Continue Reading

Q.38 God vs. the flying spaghetti monster. What’s the difference?

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Laughing at the Flying Spaghetti Monster

This questions is phrased with a very telling, tacit admission. “You can believe in your god. I can believe in a flying spaghetti monster. What’s the difference?” First of all, by the way the question is phrased, if I were a betting man, I’d be willing to wager two things:

1. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not your God.
2. You don’t really believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.

While I’m at it, let me make a third observation:

3. The followers of the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) think it cute to call themselves “pastafarians”[1]. They don’t treat the cult as a serious religion, nor do they take the FSM as a real anything except a real tool of satire and mocking, which is what this farcical, nonexistent monstrosity was created to be. Supposed adherents and followers feign belief and pretend both it and their make believe religion are real, but, as you can see, their very language gives them away. So let’s take these observations one by one to demonstrate that this questioner is just play-acting at believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
 Continue Reading

Q.37 Only morons would believe in an invisible magic sky-daddy like God.

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"The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." Psalm 14.1 Like fools, like morons

“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Psalm 14.1

The first thing I notice about the person asking this question is the extreme disrespect on display in the question: “Only morons would believe in an invisible magic sky-daddy like God.” Like the ignorance of those who crucified the Lord and did not know what they were doing (Luke 23.34), this person does not realize that in his reference to God, he is insulting and blaspheming the person with the power to send him into everlasting condemnation. (Luke 12.5) Continue Reading

Q.59 Christians, the Law and Privately held beliefs

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Supreme Court Building

Supreme Court Building

In this response to the 100 questions, the full objection here is, “Christians keep trying to use the law to impose their privately held beliefs on other people.”

Apparently this questioner believes it is only Christians who use the law to impose their privately held beliefs on other people. If this questioner truly believes that, then it shows a striking level of naievité and lack of awareness of how often the law is used to impose privately held beliefs on other people. So let me break it to the questioner gently:

Most, if not all laws that are imposed, are imposed by one group of people trying to use the law to impose their privately held beliefs on other people.

Continue Reading

Q.34 People with real courage will face up to the cold hard realities of a godless universe.

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Does consciousness arise out of a lifeless, mindless explosion of nothing?

Does consciousness arise out of a lifeless, mindless explosion of nothing?

It seems this questioner has been imbibing too deeply into the flawed philosophy of atheists such as Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, in his 2006 book “The God Delusion”, is often quoted as saying:

“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.”

This is clearly Dawkins’ way of restating his view that there is no God, because God’s universe is quite different from Dawkins’. God’s universe is of course created by God with superintelligent design, purpose, meaning, and no evil when created. God created it so he could show love to man, the pinnacle of his creation (Ps 8.5), and man could show love back to God. So Dawkins’ assertion about the meaninglessness and purposelessness of the universe can be falsified by demonstrating that his root assertion—that there is no God—is false. Continue Reading

Q41 Didn’t Constantine tell the bishops what to put in the Bible?

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Constantine's Vision - By this sign, you will conquer

Constantine’s Vision – “By this sign, you will conquer”

This question deals with the canon and history. Before we can answer the question concerning Constantine “the Great”, we must understand what the canon is and get a little background on what was happening in the time of Emperor Constantine. Let’s start with the canon.

The Canon of Scripture

As it is used today, the canon is the list of 66 books which are included in the Bible. Here is how the word “canon” and its usage came about:

“Etymologically, kanōn is a Semitic loan word that originally had the meaning “reed.” From this came the figurative sense of a “measuring rod” or “ruler” and from this the general idea of a “norm” or “standard.” Finally, the term could adopt the purely formal sense of a “list” or a “table.” [1]

The 66 books of the Bible—39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books—were not wantonly placed in the Bible by kings or bishops. Books were included in the canon because they were recognized to be from God using a process that contained a number of criteria.  As the McDowells put it: Continue Reading