The Worldview Bulletin Newsletter

As a token of gratitude for your faithful support, I’m happy to offer you a free copy of my recently published book, Worldview Essentials: Christian Answers to Today’s Cultural Questions.

I recently had the privilege of reviewing the volume Debating God’s Existence: Believers and Skeptics in Friendly Conversation, edited by Andrew Drinkard. The centerpiece of the book is a debate between well-known atheist Dan Barker and Christian philosopher Adam Lloyd Johnson. In the debate, Johnson defends a form of mere theism—that is, the claim that God exists.

In forgetfulness, facts elude us, not because we don’t know them, but because we once knew them, and we cannot call them to mind now. Forgetting is not sheer ignorance (what you never ​knew) but lost knowledge somehow buried from memory. Forgetfulness can be maddening, embarrassing, and even dangerous. This becomes a particular malady when it affects the most significant thing of all—who we are in the universe. Consider what G. K. Chesterton wrote: Every man has forgotten who he is.

This legend is, in one sense, easy to refute. You simply produce the name of a Christian who came to faith through the influence of apologetics. The list of such is long and includes notables such as St. Augustine, C. S. Lewis, Lee Strobel, and Nabeel Qureshi. These thinkers, however different their paths, converted after their intellectual objections to Christianity were met and when they discerned that Christianity was true, reasonable, and imperative.

If we were to rewind back in time and see the voices that influenced me toward [my LSD] trip, psychedelic proponents of the mid- to late-twentieth century would stand out. I was deeply impacted by the lectures and writings of Terence McKenna, Alan Watts, Richard Alpert (also known as Ram Dass), and Timothy Leary. I loved Timothy Leary, so let’s take a closer look at him.

The Worldview Bulletin Podcast The Worldview Bulletin will inform, equip, and inspire you as you seek to understand and defend the Christian worldview. Learn from leading scholars sharing their expertise in philosophy, theology, biblical studies, and apologetics. The Worldview Bulletin will inform, equip, and inspire you as you seek to understand and defend the Christian worldview. Learn from leading scholars sharing their expertise in philosophy, theology, biblical studies, and apologetics.

Some try to dismiss or belittle my belief in God by claiming it’s just a matter of faith. While I agree my belief in God does involve faith, I don’t think it should be belittled for that reason because all my beliefs, as well as all of everyone else’s beliefs, involve faith to some degree.

Why Hope Feels So Difficult Today We live in a cultural moment that has learned to distrust hope. Optimism is often dismissed as naïve, joy is treated as denial, and realism is increasingly defined by cynicism. Stories that end in despair are praised as honest, while stories that end in redemption are accused of being sentimental. Beneath all of this is an unspoken assumption that suffering is the deepest truth of the world and that anything which challenges that assumption must be an illusion.

A few years ago, a prominent New Testament scholar writing for a popular audience explained why we need academic treatments of the gospels: The reason we need books like these is that the Gospels cannot simply be taken at face value as giving us historically reliable accounts of the things Jesus said and did.

I’m happy to announce the launch of The Worldview Bulletin’sYouTube channel! For the time being, the videos will be audio versions of select Worldview Bulletin articles. I hope the channel will accomplish at least two things—allow current readers to listen to articles in addition to reading them, and acquaint a new audience on YouTube with The Worldview Bulletin.