On Easter Sunday, the congregation we were worshiping with sang some music which I wanted to highlight as an excellent example of a modern hymn. Please listen to the following hymn a time or two: possibly once just to enjoy it and a second time to pay special attention to the lyrics and structure. (more…)

I suppose I should first apologize for baiting you into reading this article with a catchy title. No, I don’t actually suspect the church is creating a huge number of atheists, as there simply aren’t that many of them (as vocal as they may be!). While their numbers are on the rise, they are statistically few. What I am going to argue the church is often creating, might be better called: apathetic unbelievers or quasi-believers who might retain some form of ‘spirituality.’ That, however, would have made for a long, boring title. But, I think that this is just as bad, maybe worse, than if these people were becoming atheists. (more…)

If you are within reasonable travel distance of the Vancouver, BC, Canada area (maybe even if you aren’t), you need to make it to this Christian apologetics conference. Save the dates of March 1st & 2nd, 2013 @ Northview Community Church in Abbotsford, B.C. The church is in dire need of people like you, who might have an interest in apologetics (case-making), to get trained-up as best you can and take that knowledge back to your local church (and, of course, our aim at TilledSoil.org is to assist you in that goal if you would like). (more…)

Metamorphosis is a video (available in DVD and Blu-ray formats) by Illustra Media about the amazing biological transformation process from caterpillar to butterfly. The main feature is a little over an hour long and there is a good amount of bonus material. The main feature is so packed with information, that this review is only going to scratch the surface. I am not a biologist, so my critique of the presented biological information will be limited. That said, I cannot imagine that being further educated in such a discipline would make the information presented any less astonishing. (more…)

A common challenge Christian apologists face concerns the atheist’s claim that God doesn’t exist. A more specific variety of this challenge was recently posed by a TilledSoil.org reader concerning an atheist’s use of Russell’s teapot analogy for the non-existence of God.

Here is an extract of Bertrand Russell giving the analogy:

“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion (more…)

It is a dark, cold April night in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The world’s largest luxury liner is on a voyage between the New York and England. Because it is thought to be ‘unsinkable’ (due to its watertight compartments) it is travailing at a speed in excess of 22 knots and is only carrying lifeboats for less than half its capacity of 3000 (as few as regulations would allow). It is a behemoth vessel, nearly as long as three football fields, end to end, weighing in at over 45,000 tons. Suddenly, terror sets in as the three giant props push it into an iceberg on the starboard side about 400 miles from Newfoundland. This fatal blow causes the ship to sink, killing the majority of the passengers and crew. (more…)

This evening, we will be participating in the Apologetics Canada Conference 2012. We are very excited about this event, what we will be learning, and the time we will be sharing with excellent speakers, friends, and apologetics colleagues. Since we will be running a promotion at the event, we wanted to write up an article to introduce new folks to our site. But, since this post will be a bit more personal than our About page, it might be nice for our current readers as well. (more…)

Photo: confusion by marfis75 (Flickr)

This past Saturday (Feb 25th), I got into a bit of a Twitter kerfuffle with Dr. James White (of aomin.org) over the Canadian ERC (Quebec) “Ethics and Religious Culture” Curriculum which has been causing a stir around the Internet recently. In this case, it is concerning Alberta, but seems related to the Quebec ERC debate (I could be in error here, as the article was a bit mixed). We exchanged a number of messages in the process, but I’m not sure we gained much clarity. (Note to self: Twitter is just horrible for this kind of thing.) I decided to give up on Twitter and post a blog on the topic. (more…)

Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job is a book written by scientist, pastor, and astronomer Hugh Ross.¹ While it is, in some sense, a commentary on Job, it is also a considerably different treatment than I have run across before. Most people who analyze Job immediately jump into the suffering Job experienced, God’s sovereignty, or something along those lines. While these would certainly be primary themes of Job (Ross acknowledges this (22) and spends some time on these topics), the point of this book is to ‘read between the lines’ a bit more to see what else we might discover; and discover, Ross does! (more…)