Intro to Apologetics Issues 5-7

5. Oh my gosh! The family tree thing! Even Dawkins makes this claim in The God Delusion! Could he have done any less research! What a... ahem. Keep it edifying. Right. Well, basically one genealogy is of Mary (Luke), one is of Joseph (Matthew). Simple. According to CMI, a clear pointer to the fact that the genealogy in Luke is Mary’s line is that the Greek text has a definite article before all the names except Joseph’s. Any Greek-speaker would have understood that Heli must have been the father of Joseph’s wife, because the lack of an article would mean that he would insert Joseph into the parenthesis (as was supposed) in Luke 3:23. So he would read it not as ‘Jesus … being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli’, but as ‘Jesus … being son (as was supposed of Joseph) of Heli’ (NB: the original Greek had no punctuation or even spaces between words). Indeed, the Jewish Talmud, no friend of Christianity, dating from the first few centuries AD, calls Mary the ‘daughter of Heli’, which could have come only from this understanding of what Luke meant.

6. Finally, one that requires a little thought. This is a tough one, and one often used by our critics, and the answers are intellectually satisfying, not emotionally satisfying. On one hand it is simple to say that God created all life and He has the right to take it whenever and however He wishes. Not one I’d recommend trying on a hardened atheist. My favourite is the one provided by anthropologists, who provide a couple of points for consideration. Firstly, the brutality of these societies. They were completely debased in all areas of life. For example, child prostitution in their temples. Children sold into sexual slavery. Rape, incest, multiple sexual partners...the list goes on. On the topic of child sacrifices, listen to this. One society had a statue of their god with his hands held together in front of his body. The statue was heated to glowing hot and the infant was placed in the red-hot hands and burned alive. I think these kinds of societies deserved to be judged, don’t you? Anyone care to stand up for them? Secondly, related to the debased sexual practices. In many of these societies, the people were so debauched that they not only committed incest, rape, paedophilia etc, but they also committed bestiality. Anthropologists claim that in these societies the spread of venereal diseases was so wide that even the cattle was infected. Gives us an idea why God told the Israelites to not even spare the cattle, doesn’t it? As an aside, if genocide committed in the name of God disqualifies theism, shouldn’t genocide committed in the name of atheism disqualify it? Read this article for a good case along these lines (might need to log in to see this...).

7. Ah, Darwin. Where should I start. Look, I’m not gonna get into the young earth/old earth thing here, but if you want critiques of Darwin, there are many to be found. Organisations like CMI, AIG, ICR, Creation Research Society, Creation Research, Stand to Reason...the list is endless. A great book is The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel – really good!

So, that’s it. Hope that’s given you something to think about!