apologetics ⁽⁴¹⁾

Shapira, Itzhak. The Return of the Kosher Pig: The Divine Messiah In Jewish Thought. Clarksville, MD: Lederer Books, 2013. xii+318 Pages. ISBN 978-1-936716-45-6. The author of The Return of the Kosher Pig (hereafter, Kosher Pig), Itzhak Shapira, is a Messianic [Jesus-accepting] Rabbi “born and raised in a traditional Sephardic Jewish home in Israel” who says that “he found the Messiah [Jesus] within the Hebrew writings,” meaning not just the Hebrew Bible but…

Gilson, Tom, and Carson Weitnauer, editors. True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8254-4338-1. Abridged versions of this review may be found on Amazon and Goodreads. Associated with such high-profile names in Christian apologetics as the Christian Apologetics Alliance and Ratio Christi, True Reason originated as an e-book response to the New Atheists' 24 March 2012 Reason Rally and is now reissued (with modifications)…

About the Image: “The Wager” by David M. Hodges, created late 1990s, updated 2013. The version of this image I recovered recently from some old Zip disks dated to 11 September 1998. The late 1990s were the time when my skeptical agnosticism was consuming itself (as self-referentially incoherent thought systems always must if one refuses to stop analyzing and reflecting upon them; I once quipped during this time that, though Socrates had…

Re: abitwiser, “how the [expletive deleted] could Noah know with any” (posted 27 November 2013, accessed 28 November 2013), which rejects the Bible's flood narrative based on the belief that other persons than Noah should have been able to survive, since surely there must have been other people with boats. Although the remarks that follow are addressed to Craigslist (CL) user abitwiser (as “you”), I have posted them here rather than on…

I'm not sure how this happened with all the barbed wire, “No Trespassing” signs, and roaming attack dogs on the property, but Monday of this week a local Jehovah's Witness made it to my front door. (Actually, there were two, but I only interacted with one.) Since I would be leaving soon and still had tasks I needed to complete first, I couldn't manage a long conversation, so I let my visitor…

Earlier this week, an email from my local creation museum informed me that said museum had been refused membership in the area’s Museum Council. I’d spoken to employees and friends of the museum the day that some representatives of the Council had visited, so I knew those representatives had been favorably impressed and that museum employees and friends fully expected their Council application to be approved. Dour gloom-and-doomer that I am, my…

One seminary I attended, Bethel Seminary San Diego, hosted lectures this week by a C. S. Lewis scholar. Though I did not attend the lectures, notice of them did prompt in me some transitory interest in Lewis, or at least in one article strongly critical of him. Unlike many Christians I know (especially at Bethel, where I once heard a professor refer to Lewis as “our hero”), I have never been a…

In my recent review of Randy Guliuzza’s “Creation Apologetics” presentation, I at one point made reference to “medicine and engineering, two fields in which Guliuzza (you’ll recall) has credentialed expertise.” As I reflect on this statement, it occurs to me that some comment on the value of “credentialed expertise” might be in order. Elitists among us like to treat all persons recognized as experts as entitled to have all their arguments accepted…

Yesterday (Saturday 28 September 2013), the creation museum in my area held its yearly “Museum Day.” Though the event ran from 9 AM to 6 PM, with presentations by a range of speakers from Gary Parker to John Morris to Ray Comfort, I only managed to attend a single presentation: Randy Guliuzza's “Creation Apologetics.” Dr. Guliuzza is both a Medical Doctor (M.D.) and an Engineer (P.E.), and the title “Creation Apologetics” falls…

Note: Direct links to specific paragraphs may not work. Most of the anchors for these direct links were created by code I wrote for the Pious Eye site and had run when pages loaded. As my new site is static, dynamic coding from the old site has gone away. I apologize for any inconvenience. If and when time permits, I’ll manually fix some of these issues. — D.M.H. Swanson, Kevin. Apostate: The…

Petty, Scott. Science and God. Little Black Books. Kingsford, Australia: Matthias Media, 2011. Paperback. 108 pages. ISBN 978-1-921896-19-4. Rating on 5-star scale: 2 stars. Promoters identify Science and God as intended for Christian youth between the ages of 14 and 20. Its author, Scott Petty, is a youth minister in Sydney, which seems to support this identification. So, if you’re the parent or friend of a 14-20 year old, or if you’re…

Creation Conference 2013: Why Origins Matter, also promoted as an Answers in Genesis “Answers Conference” and an Institute for Creation Research event, Monday 28 January 2013 and Tuesday 29 January 2013, hosted by Southern California Seminary at Shadow Mountain Community Church, 6:30 PM to around 10:00 PM each evening. I attended most of this event, leaving during intermission on Tuesday. Here is what the schedule of presentations looked like: In addition to…