TESTIMONIALS

This is a group of people (about 50/50 christian/atheist) doing an online book reading club on a website called BodyBuilding.com... Guess what book they chose first? Time and Eternity by Dr. Craig. And note the ring leader of the topic is not a Christian, he is an Atheist who's a former Christian. You can read through all the comments - I bet it's hard to figure out whos Christian and who's Atheist in this discussion.

I'm a long time member of this message board, in fact i've posted a few times in that paticular thread and WLC has been a lightening rod in such a positive way amongst this crowd of people who discuss Religion and Politics (among other things) on a regular basis... Does WLC have his online haters? Yes, but that is mostly anonymous keyboard warriors, the thinking atheists find WLC fascinating in such a positive way that I'm so encouraged to see such a civil discussion like this. Trust me, they're not always civil, but Dr. Craig carries some real respect amongs my generation 20s-30s yo.

I'm not sure what I'm really trying to say other than I thought you might find this little nugget of information interesting, hopefully you can pass on the email to Dr. Craig for me. Maybe he knows the reason why all of a sudden, so many atheists want to read about Dr. Craigs thoughts are on time. Who would have known?

-Brenda

May God continue to bless you Bill and Jan, I would like to just say how thankful I am that God is using you, I have since "finding" your resources on the web, become so much bolder in my faith, suddenly I could step fearlessly into conversations with any atheist and feel that my faith had rock solid arguments upon which I could proclaim the Truth of God.

Of course Im not saying that I now have faith I never previously had, and have now only because of my discovery of sound arguments to belive, no what I mean to say is this, that now I can show the absolute rationality of my believing in God using the very tools and language that my atheist opponents think is their greatest weapon against me, its amazing to see their arguments collapse in light of the arguments Ive come to learn and use, Thank you Bill and Thank you Heavenly Father.

I want to share a little something that happened as the result of my new found ability to "take the rational,logical and philosophical inititive to the enemy", I happen to be a keen motorcyclist and on one of these biker forums I use theres a member whose signature under his avatar was "if you could reason with religious people, there would not be any religious people" well inevitibley after months of various subjects being discussed on the forum, the God subject came up he he ! Cutting a long story short it came down to just me and him posting and replying to each other in this "God thread" and all the time hundreds of members where watching it, well I sucessfully defended the Faith I have, defeating his many typical internet level objections and straw men arguments, It was with real joy and praise for God that when the very next day this guys signature about religious people not being reasonable changed! He had changed it to something about motorcycles! Praise God! Its was a small victory in the grand scheme I know but I took so much delight knowing that God is smarter than all of us and that all those other forum members who where following the thread would have seen what this guy saw, namely that there are very strong rational reasons to believe in God infact no strong rational reason to disbelieve.

God bless

-Duncan

I have been listening to your podcasts on the doctrine of revelation and I have to say that it has been so enlightening. Thank you for the effort and time you have put into thinking over this issue. The imprecatory psalms have always been an area of scripture that I have found disturbing and have found these psalms difficult to reconcile with other areas of scripture that command Christians to love their enemies. Thus, I found your conception of divine middle knowledge on the issue of the imprecatory psalms to be absolutely stunning. Very good work, thank you.

I heard that someday you may write or compile together the notes for your Defenders class into a theology text book. That would be so great, I really hope that you do that. My brother claims to be a Christian, but he is not orthodox in his faith. He disagrees with scripture at points. It is my suspicion though that if he had a good theology text book- one that would provide for him good reasons to be orthodox- then he might adopt orthodoxy (I suppose evangelical orthodoxy). I have three introductory level theology text books but all of them fall short, it seems to me, of what might make a positive impression on him to the end stated above. I have Millard Erickson's and Grenz's theology text books, but they are not in dialogue with philosophical theology and so they provide poor answers to vital questions to the faith (e.g. the problem of evil, the relation between faith and reason, postmodernism, the trinity, natural theology, etc.). I have McGrath's, but he too falls short of what I would like given that his approach in his text book is in no way apologetic in nature. I have some of Donald Bloesch's Christian Foundations series on central doctrines, but his approach is not apologetic in nature either.

So, I guess I'm saying that I would find it very helpful for my brother (really, for my whole unbelieving family) if you would undertake the task of writing a theology text book off of your Defenders podcast. Though, of course, you are busy. So, I hope you do it, and if you decide to then no rush. Thank you for your life and work!

-Weston

I want to say thank you to Dr. Craig and his staff for standing up for truth, and providing resources for Christians who desperately need them.

I have long considered myself a Christian, since the time I was still in elementary, but I never took my faith too seriously. I hardly ever studied, never engaged anyone in conversation, etc. I was like a soldier who was lost in the middle of a war and decided to sit down and relax instead. It was not until I decided to take philosophy classes at college that my poor lifestyle finally dawned on me. Professors and students hijacked theist scientists, revised history, and spouted of ideas to match their made up reality. I knew deep inside they were wrong and I could not do anything about it. I had never felt so ashamed in my life.

It was at that point that I decided to either abandon Christianity altogether, or if it was true, act like it was. I started studying many different topics, but one really stood out to me - the topic of truth and morality. Craig's research on the subject really made sense and it became clear that non-theistic ideologies simply had no answer. In debates, atheists would simply rant about how horrible God was, even though they could not give a reason as to why they believed in good or evil to begin with. In fact, nearly all their positions were hilariously illogical and hypocritical, relying mostly on emotions rather then logic. Christianity actually made sense. It was logical, historically accurate, and it gave life real meaning.

Dr. Craig's YouTube debates, articles, and Q&A's really do a great service for Christians. After sharing articles from the website and watching debates with one of my friends, I also noticed him start to share the gospel and stand up for truth on a daily basis!

-Ted

It hurts me every time I see one of God's lost children. I recently spoke to an abstract deist whose main objection to the Christian doctrine was that it did not permit her to refer to God as a female. This was literally the reason that she stopped being a Christian.

I spoke to a Richard Dawkins' poster child who abandoned belief in God because, she explained, the God solution is no solution, rather, it raises a greater burden, namely, 'who designed the designed?'.

I spoke to a Christian who converted to Islam. He explained, "Jesus is not God, and there is nothing historically that allows us to conclude that."

Certainly, these and many other objections are not intellectually sound. But they are held so firmly now that even after a patent debunking, they maintain their position for what appears to be emotional reasoning.

All I can think is that if I had a twenty minute conversation with them before they gained an emotional attachment to their position, that perhaps I would have been able to abolish their doubt before it ever expanded.

While some may never return to Christ, there are many others that we can reach out to and abolish their doubt before it ever begins to expand. I look at the kids in my church in their early twenties and I wonder how equipped they are to face the problem of pseudo-intellectual atheism.

I know that perhaps a twenty minute weekly lecture and some Reasonable Faith reading material would prepare them. But I just cannot persuade my pastor, or any pastor for that matter (I have spoken with four).

The issue of the atheism epidemic is completely foreign to them. I have no idea how to persuade them of the importance of Christian apologetics. As you write in On Guard, many are ignorant to even the term "Christian apologetics," to the point where they are replying "I will never apologize for my faith!"

How should I go about persuading these church leaders to adopt interest in Christian apologetics? I cannot believe that this issue must hit home before they realize the severity of it. I cannot believe that the pastor's child would have to abandon Christianity before he believes in the importance of Christian apologetics.

Please help me. This just feels futile. It is like trying to persuade the wind into altering its' path.

God Bless you, your family and your fantastic ministry.

-Richard