Apologetics Quotes

This rock has seen billions of years of living organisms and will see many more once we die and turn to dirt. Our life is but one tiny, brief, insignificant piece of this vast universe. So, why, the nihilist argues, do people really think that it is important to be a “good person”, get good grades, or get a good job? What difference could that possibly make to anything?Nihilism is an honest evaluation of what a universe without God would look like. Nietzsche was right about that. Where he went wrong was in thinking this was true of the actual universe.

I think we should stop treating ["God works in mysterious ways"] as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda that it is. A positive response might be, "Oh good! I love a mystery. Let's see if we can solve this one, too. Do you have any ideas?

A number of our scientists boast intelligence but lack wisdom. I find those to be the predictable ones.

It is not that men become too intelligent for God,' says the Apologist, 'but rather they become too arrogant for intelligence.

To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.

If I were a blind man and were told by you that you possess a faculty called sight, I should be unreasonable if I railed at you as a conceited enthusiast.

The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math.

The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level of stress, he most absolutely abhors.

It would behoove you to have your thesis finely tuned and the logical arguments utilized in support of it tightly woven into a credible, and creatively persuasive tapestry.

My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, holiness must be in his blood: but a corrupted formula. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the greatest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.

Hypocrisy versus authenticity among men is not always so black and white, and as is righteousness, humility is often self-proclaimed. The Church is most definitely supposed to be a hospital for the spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically sick, hurting, and broken individual, yet ironically, many of its critics are those who ran away and permanently denounced its members after they visited and felt that they were sneezed on.

It's fallacious reasoning for the atheist to hate all religion due to men who manipulate religion to fit their own agendas. They are counterparts, therefore, if Truth is true, partners in crime. To believers, the atheist and the religiously corrupt boil down to the same person, the self-righteous: one denies Truth to fit his own agenda; the other manipulates Truth to fit his own agenda.

If we require some kind of sign, or "proof," for our belief in God, then we believe, or place our tust, not in God but in the sign or proof.

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.

In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith.

When you take the time to look at the real relationship between faith and science, you find the two are not enemies; rather, they are friends. Granted, they are friends that do not always agree on everything. No friendship ever does. They have their points of tension. Every friendship has these as well. As friends, faith and science have a great deal of history together. They work hard to hold each other accountable and challenge one another to be better (I hope you have friends like that too).

Too many in the Church today are likes babies in the nursery,they put everything in their mouth.

On the whole the modern world has been conditioned to have a chip on its shoulder against devoutly religious people. I disagree with this in some instances - particularly in, believe it or not, matters of integrity. Deep down I often rather believe the man who honestly thinks - or better yet even, prefers - that he has an omnipotent Judge breathing down his neck, holding his every word and his every move accountable, than the man who much like his modern peers, and ironically enough, claims or wishes to bask in complete independence. As it appears actually, the former is more free of guilt than the latter.

The skeptic says that the believer has lost his own mind under God. On the contrary, it is the people who follow God who are most like his children, who willingly and consciously walk in his will; but those who oppose him oppose him vainly and at their own expense, and, figuratively, seem to be more like his tools. They don't diminish his glory, but instead he still manages to use them in ways of unconsciously carrying out his will.

For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith.

We often use the Bible as a source for personal validation and defense, a sidekick and a shield, but these will prove ineffective without first the other part. We must also allow ourselves to be wounded by it. We tend to forget its authority - that it is a double-edged sword. Our decrepit, depraved hearts must be completely ripped out in order to welcome that of God.

A god who gave us everything we wanted would be the most malevolent god of all. With an infantile curiosity, we insist on tasting the cockroach on the floor while our father is preparing a magnificent feast for us.

Those who live as though God sets the rules are not going by their own rules. That is the self-sacrifice, or selflessness, that peace more often than not requires. Those who insist on going by their own rules cannot make that sacrifice. They are the steady adherents of (global) conflict because they are forever fighting both themselves and others to do whatever they think that they want to do.

The study of Scripture I find to be quite like mastering an instrument. No one is so good that they cannot get any better; no one knows so much that they can know no more. A professional can spot an amateur or a lack of practice or experience a mile away. His technicality, his spiritual ear is razor-sharp. He is familiar with the common mistakes, the counter-arguments; and insofar as this, he can clearly distinguish the difference between honest critics of the Faith and mere fools who criticize that which they know nothing.

There are 2 kinds of fighters: those who fight because they hate, and those who fight because they love.

We ask, ‘Why the need for God?’ Maybe the better question is ‘Why the need not to need Him?’ And could it be that that question in fact evidences our need for Him?

To Die is not as bad as not having lived

When you find that a theology has nothing more to offer than what the world already offers, then that theology as a theology is impractical, and therefore, useless.

You speak rather poorly of God when praising Him, or when wanting to praise Him, only during that which you perceive to be your highest of moments. That is many a reason behind unbelief altogether: the failed attempt to control God, to lower His standards to one's own level of understanding in doubt of His foresight and omniscience, His goodness and power. He wants to know if you are faithful enough to praise Him even when, to you, all seems lost.

You are the enemy and a vessel through which the cure flows - if Christ lives in you, then you are an embodiment of the very shot this hostile and crying world needs as it, in every waking moment, struggles belligerently to resist.

If Christ be a fraud, he was among the most peculiar yet brilliant of frauds in saying that only he was the way, the truth, and the life. This is the importance of grace - some people think that simply being nice and not harming others is morality; others think that following rules and tithing are morality. But without Christ, all moral beliefs ultimately boil down to the one sin which perpetually rails against the concept of grace: man's lawful, religious, and futile attempt at establishing his own righteousness.

Some words we use all the time are difficult to define when we actually have to think about them. We use the word “evil” all the time but when asked to define what we are talking about, it can be quite difficult. Think about evil as you would think of counterfeit currency. A counterfeit is the corruption of something real. You can have real currency without the existence of any counterfeits. You cannot, however, have counterfeits without the real thing existing first. Evil is dependent on the existence of goodness but goodness is not dependent on evil. Goodness was there first. It is an absolute. Evil must always be thought of in relationship with absolute goodness.

I pity the man who praises God only when things go his way.

When you mature in your relationship with God you realize how suffering and patience are like eating your spiritual vegetables.

Our poor world aspires simply to point out where Christians have gone wrong, and that is pretty much where it goes wrong. It is as though many of us, when of the world, are actually all the more judgmental: for we are stuck on a bad Christian while the Christian is pinned to a good Christ.

If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic.

Whence but from heaven, could men unskilled in arts,In several ages born, in several parts,Weave such agreeing truths? Or how, or why, Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie?

This belief, that science eradicates (the need for) God, is a myth many people believe today. The truth is that science, the study of the world and collection of our findings, has not and cannot disprove God. There is no scientific journal that has disproven God’s existence. This is because God cannot be put in a test tube and either verified or falsified. God is a spiritual being and is outside the reach of empirical scientific research. Christians cannot prove God the existence of God with absolute certainty, nor can atheists disprove his existence with any certainty. That does not mean that we cannot look at the evidence as to whether or not God exists.

It seems that rather than abandon their worldview, many young people are abandoning their lives altogether. I am disturbed to see the number of suicides and suicide attempts by those between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. Many of their suicide notes report they had lost meaning, purpose and a sense that life held any value.This is no longer just about philosophy. This is about the very real lives we are all trying to make sense of here on Earth.

The claim that science can disprove God’s existence is an honest ambition but it is a statement that is actually impossible to back up. This is because the task of proving something like science is unprovable by scientific methods. How do you prove an idea like “science”? What container do you use to measure it? What laws of science do you use to prove science? That’s the first reason why the worldview of scientism, the belief that science proves everything, fails to work out in real life. Science cannot prove everything because it cannot even prove itself.

Man's delight in the Lord is the absolute peak of human triumph. He praises God when full of joy, and when not, he praises God to become full of joy. For to know and to live as though God is worthy of all praise, in all one's circumstances, whether seemingly good or seemingly bad, is the primary definition of joy and the richest triumph for man under God.

A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.

If we all knew who God really was and what he really wanted for each and every one of us, we would all know that only a fool could really deny him.

If one man challenges a statement and another cannot prove it, it does not necessarily follow that the statement is false.

The Christian does not avoid sin to achieve salvation, but rather salvation brings him to a desire not to sin. The closer that one's spirit is synchronized with the holy knowledge of God, the more he comprehends how and why sin is destructive to himself and others in each and every circumstance. The dwindling desire for sin is a premature gift of Heaven - where there will be no sin, where all will, too, possess that full and complete wisdom; all will have perfect reasons not to sin. In this way, free will might still exist, but the shared wisdom of God will simply outwit all desires, impulses, and needs to sin.

God is not some lesser employee, as many try to make Him out to be: rather He is the ultimate Treasure. He works in a man; He works on a man; He works through a man; He works around a man. Know that He does far more than simply work for a man. And yet, even as He Himself needs no one else, everyone else is ever in need of Him.

The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.

It's neither judgment nor judgment according to the status quo that we have a problem with, but rather judgment according to God's Word that we have a problem with. We sharply dress ourselves, go out into the world, shape ourselves, our personalities according to the world's standards and preferences, allow ourselves to be made dull by the world and its desires in order to appear successful and happy and attractive in the eyes of the world. We love the world's judgment but we hate God's judgment. Absurdly enough, the one that really matters, the one out of the purest of loves rather than a mere contract in hopes of mutual gain, is the one which we so adamantly try to shut ourselves off from.

For a great many skeptics are put to waste. But this is meant in the sense that which they vainly focus their energy on ridiculing a certain tiny denomination of Biblical fundamentalism, a denomination seated just one chair away from unbelief; they, the skeptics, cannot believe because they are the most literal of fundamentalists: of those that which must interpret Scripture only by means of a sort of obsolete and dead script of intellectual incompetence. By all means, this is supposed to happen - Scripture states of itself that all thought and interpretation is folly without the Holy Spirit - but on the other hand, it seems, ironically, that if one thinks that the Bible is, in its true essence, an outdated text, he doesn't know much about the world around him nor those who live in it. Either that, or he doesn't know much about what it says in relation to the world around him nor to those who live in it. It's as though he, too, is dead to the world and it to him. He has no spirit: he can only possibly understand Scripture as deceased rather than the modern world's very living narrative.

The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we are wrapped up in our own little peeves that we begin to displace His benevolence with malevolence.

Extreme right-wingers are known for giving God a bad name; extreme left-wingers are known for giving God a weak name. He's not as simple as conservative versus liberal, old versus new. His wings are balanced. God is both and neither.

God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it.

I'm not a political Christian; for the most part I allow people even their vain, earthly rights. And I certainly don't see anti-Christians as bad or evil (as if they actually have the power to pose any kind of threat against God Almighty), but rather complete idiots I was commanded to love.

It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way.

Christianity, like genius, is one of the hardest concepts to forgive. We hear what we want to hear and accept what we want to accept, for the most part, simply because there is nothing more offensive than feeling like you have to re-evaluate your own train of thought and purpose in life. You have to die to an extent in your hunger for faith, for wisdom, and quite frankly, most people aren't ready to die.

Culturally, one of the best arguments we can make is, wait and see.

The Christian should never have to put others down in order to feel good about himself. Instead, he can simply check out the media's insistent portrayal of Christianity and feel grateful that he isn't as deceived as the masses who really swallow the garbage. Ignorance is ultimately how people put themselves down, and the mere Christian who knows what entails the mere Christian is ultimately free from such.

I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.

I believe The Bible is the infallible inspired inerrant Word of The Living God and scientifically accurate in every detail.

It has always been difficult for Jews to take Christians serious, mostly because Christians lack the fundamentals that religious Jews learn in their youth. It remains an embarrassing fact, that modern Jews can comprehend the New Testament better than modern Christians. There is no excuse for this. Christians have dropped the ball and should be anxious to remedy that neglect. Not only would they benefit themselves, but their community too.