Dr. Todd Phillips Dr. Todd Phillips is a former megachurch pastor from Texas who now describes himself as an “agnostic atheist.” He claims that the cumulative weight of eight different reasons, encountered over a period of ten years, led him to deconstruct his faith. I was saddened to learn this, and I pray that he will be able to find his faith again. I have listened to his rationale, and I will provide several reasons why I believe his conclusions are incorrect. The first r

I once had a conversation with a coworker to which I had no real answer at the time. He told me that he did not believe in Christianity or God because his parents were “so-called Christians” and were hypocrites. All I could do at the time was listen and nod. As I learned more about Christianity and philosophy, I realized that my coworker’s claim committed the genetic fallacy[1]: it judged the truth of a belief by its source or association—in this case, the behavior of its fol

When I was in my twenties, I heard someone say, ‘I don’t believe in religion; I believe in science.’ I remember thinking the two were being treated as if they were opposites, when they are not. They are not even in the same category of things! But as the years went by, I would hear similar comments from time to time. By the mid-2000s, it seemed to be the norm, so much so that in 2006 Richard Dawkins wrote, “...one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us th

At the center of Christianity are the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Without the resurrection, Christianity would be just one of many religions. But did Jesus actually die as the Bible describes? Is Jesus a myth? Did the apostles lie to gain power or fame? Or was someone else crucified in His place? For instance, Muslims believe Jesus was not crucified and did not die on the cross; instead, God raised him to heaven and another person was crucified in His place.[1]

Jesus of Nazareth is the most written‑about and influential person in history. Secular New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman states, “There can be no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth has been the most influential person in the history of the world.” [1] Besides Ehrman’s endorsement, Jesus has been on the cover of Time magazine twenty‑one times.[2] Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, has said, “I call Jesus a bodhisattva, an enlightened being with great compassion.”

Do you remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Goldilocks, a curious girl, enters a house belonging to three bears while they are away and tries their porridge, chairs, and beds. She finds Papa and Mama Bear’s items too extreme, too hot, too hard, or too big. But Baby Bear’s porridge, chair, and bed are “just right.” The Earth’s position is “Just right” in many ways: it lies in the Goldilocks zone (aka the habitable zone). The observable universe spans roughly 9

I have spoken with many thoughtful people who often say, “People are generally good.” On its face, most people do treat others fairly well. But historical and global data tell a more complicated story. For instance, the Romans practiced brutal crucifixion from the 3rd century BCE to the 4th century CE; about six million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust; Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda (1971–1979) saw mass killings, ethnic expulsions, and public executi

To investigate Christianity, the best place to start is the Bible. The Bible is a collection of texts. Protestant Bibles contain 66 books—39 in the Old Testament (OT) and 27 in the New Testament (NT). Catholic and Orthodox traditions include additional books in the OT, and the Jewish Tanakh arranges and counts the books differently. The OT was mainly written in Hebrew, with a a few sections in Aramaic, and the entire NT was written in Koine Greek. How do we know that we have

Pope Francis’ remark in Singapore on September 13, 2024—“All religions are paths to reach God”—and his follow-up that “There is only one God, and religions are like languages—paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian,” sparked discussion about whether that view aligns more with New Age spirituality than with traditional Catholic doctrine. Many New Age perspectives hold that religions are diverse cultural expressions of one underlying spiritual rea

Neil deGrasse Tyson once stated that, “If your concept of a creator is someone who is all-powerful and all-good... and I look at disasters that afflict Earth and life on Earth—volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, disease, pestilence, umm, congenital birth defects—we look at this list of ways that life is made miserable on Earth by natural causes, and I just ask, ‘How do you deal with that?... If there is a God, God is either not all-powerful or not all-good.’” Dr.

Nowadays, discrimination, cutting in line at the store, or identifying someone by the wrong gender is enough to send some people into a righteous rage. These are all social taboos of the current times. The word taboo originates from the Tongan term "tabu," meaning "sacred" or "forbidden," and was popularized in the 18th century to refer to restricted behaviors. Taboos are now seen as social or cultural prohibitions within a particular group or society. While something like cu

Living in the world in the twenty-first century can be fascinating, yet confusing. There is an overwhelming amount of information available to us, making it difficult to navigate what is true and what is not. One of the CEOs of Google, Eric Schmidt, once said, “The internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” [1] I believe this to be true partly because the world contains many

The famous atheist Richard Dawkins once said, "The universe that 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." Dr. Dawkins is quite right if everything we see around us developed by natural phenomena and chance. Their worldview is grounded in ‘naturalism’, meaning that they believe everything can be understood through science and empirical evidence. Yes, most