I was asked to respond to two posts by Scott Bignell. Here is the first post.

The first thing I would note is that the author, Scott Bignell, claims to have been “studying Judeo-Christian Origins” as a “passionate hobby”. Scott provides nothing on his background so the reader literally has no idea who he is. Is he bored and merely googles and copies what he writes (as he apparently does in this specific post?) Is he a professor with scholarly credentials? Highly doubtful. Is he an angry man who suffered some great trauma fueling his anger towards God and Christianity? Perhaps. Or is he like Bart Erhman, a once self-proclaimed evangelical who walked away from the faith? 1 Tim 4:1 comes to mind. I note that he refers to his own writings as “rants.” (Synonyms for “rants” are rages, blusters, seethes, and tirades.) There is a difference between someone who argues cognitively against the faith and one who simply rages against it.

The first thing to realize is that Christianity is not a “hobby”; one is either all in or not. There are no fence-sitters. As Jesus said (Luke 9:50; Mrk 9:40), anyone who is not with him, is against him. I have to wonder why Scott engages in this “hobby”? Where does his understanding of Judeo-Christian origins start? Is he familiar with the writings of Polycarp, Ignatius, Tertullian, Αristides, Athenagoras, Origen or Athanasius? Doubtful. How about Augustine, Anselm or Aquinas? Has he read them? Dubious. Has he read through the Bible? Probably not.

There is a world of difference between someone like Scott and honest seekers who may indeed start off angry with Christianity for different reasons, but are willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. People like Josh McDowell who was very angry with Christians decades ago and then spent significant time researching the historical basis for the faith in libraries in both the United States and Europe. The result? He was driven to the realization that Christianity is indeed a faith based on historical reality. The result was his classic book “Evidence That Demands A Verdict”, now in its third edition. Or Frank Morrison who set out to prove the Resurrection was a myth; once confronted with the evidence, his resulting book “Who Moved The Stone?”” reached the opposite conclusion. Or Anthony Flew, one of the twentieth century’s leading atheist philosophers—a man not reluctant to debate Christians publicly—but who renounced atheism in 2007 on the basis of the evidence for a Designer and a Creator. Antony Flew chronicled the reasons for his conversion to theism after 50 years of atheism in his bestselling book “There Is a God.” The reason he came to believe in “a divine Source” is that the “world picture” that has “emerged from science” is best understood in these terms. Flew made no leap of blind faith; he simply was a philosopher who wanted to “follow the argument where ever it leads.” The evidence led him to a Creator and Designer of the Universe. (I will briefly post on the Telelogical Argument [from design] tomorrow.)

In this first post, Scott offers no arguments per se on his own, but merely parrots many well-known atheists, heretics and apostates. The analogy would be an adherent of “flat earth” cosmography who merely repeats the assertions of the Flat Earth Society without considering any of the overwhelming evidence for a spherical Earth.

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There is another post by Scott that I was also asked to respond to wherein he does indeed offer an argument—but it is an argument that is non sequitur, meaning it does not follow. A simple non sequitur fallacy example would be: “All trees are tall, all tall things are yellow, therefore, all trees are green.” A non sequitur fallacy is an invalid argument. Without getting into details, his argument is invalid. Scott writes,

“Suggesting a supernatural explanation is the “best” explanation (for the Resurrection) might well be like saying that the next roll on a standard 6-sided dice will be a 7 because it is unlikely to land on 1, unlikely to land on 2, unlikely to land on 3, unlikely to land on 4, unlikely to land on 5, and it is unlikely to land on 6, and then objecting that any rebuttal is a result of a presupposition against the supernatural!”

His conclusion that “any rebuttal is a result of a presupposition against the supernatural” is a classic non sequitur fallacy. As I argued in my own 5-part series on the Resurrection, Occam’s Razor decrees that the simplest explanation with the fewest assumptions is the probable one.

Scott is furious for some reason with Christianity. The amount of time and effort that he apparently spends in “ranting” against Christianity makes little sense . . . unless something unfortunate happened to him that he equates with the faith. There are many false ideologies in the world (like the current transgender lunacy) that I detest, but I don’t devote endless rants against them. If asked, I will present my position and argue for it; but my time and effort is much better spent elsewhere. By his own admission, he seeks to “pick away at anything and everything related to Judeo-Christian Origins.” There is nothing to be gained by dialoguing with someone who is only interested in endlessly hurling molotov cocktails.

As William Lane Craig wisely and forcefully observes, while arguments and evidence may be used to support the believer’s faith, they are never properly the basis of that faith. It is the self-authenticating work of the Holy Spirit that supplies knowledge of Christianity’s truth. A person who knows that Christianity is true on the basis of the witness of the Spirit may also have a sound apologetic which reinforces or confirms for him the Spirit’s witness, but it does not serve as the basis of his belief.

Everyone claims to want to know the truth. But in reality . . . as Col Jessup yelled at the court martial in the movie A Few Good Men . . . many people can’t handle the truth. Such people figuratively move mountains to avoid confronting the truth. I think of the wife of an alcoholic who tragically denies her husband’s addiction when it is painfully obvious to everyone else. I pray the Holy Spirit softens Scott’s heart one day. Until then, meaningful dialog with him is futile.