Hello, readers! Starting this week, all our new posts will be found on the Stand to Reason Blog. Please join us over there to continue to hear from me, Brett, and Alan, and to take part in our challenges (view the Challenge Q&A category here). You’ll have the added bonus of all the regular STR posts, as well. It’s a win-win!
We’ll be closing the comments here in a couple days, so finish up your conversations, and then meet us over at STR. See you there!
Big news: We’re moving our challenges over to the Stand to Reason Blog, so follow us over there to see today’s challenge. And don’t forget to bookmark the STR Blog’s Challenge Q&A category to see all future Tuesday challenges!
Is the best possible world one in which only God exists? Do non-God objects pose a problem for the Christian view of God as a maximally great being? My response to this week’s challenge:
A tweet from the skeptics at the Reasonable Doubts podcast inspired today’s challenge:
What do you say? How do you answer this challenge? Leave your ideas in the comments below, and we’ll hear Brett’s answer later this week.
Alan answers the question of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God.
Since Brett and Alan are both out this week, we chose a challenge that Brett answered earlier this year for the STR Blog. Here’s his answer to this week’s challenge question:
Ready for this week’s challenge? Here’s a question we received:
Is Heaven a selfish desire? Christians are told throughout their teachings that they are to be selfless. Does this mean that to desire Heaven is selfish (and therefore wrong) since it’s a reward at the end of life?
Give us your answers for this one, and we’ll post a video from Brett on Thursday.
Here’s my response to the challenge that abortion wins souls for Christ.
Here’s an objection I’ve heard surprisingly often:
If you do believe that children are innocent in the eyes of God, wouldn’t it be reasonable to suggest that abortion doctors are winning more souls for Christ than Christian missionaries? Why not bomb a pre-school? That would surely win a lot of souls for Christ.
So what do you think? Is it reasonable to suggest that we should kill people into the Kingdom? I’ve heard people (utterly despicably) use this question to try to lessen opposition to abortion among Christians, saying that killing unborn babies is in the babies’ best interest. But I think this particular formulation of the question is being used as a “taking the roof off” tactic—that is, it’s trying to show that the Christian worldview is absurd and that we’re not living consistently within it. In this formulation, the asker is assuming we’d be opposed to missionary killing, but he’s challenging us to explain how we reconcile our actions and our beliefs.
To answer this challenge, you’ll need to think through some theology—what we know to be true about God, man, and the role God has given us. We’ll hear Alan’s answer on Thursday.
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