Extinguishing the Gaslighting Bonanza by Aron Ra’s Unholy Trinity

 

Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Three well-known atheists named Aron Ra, Matt Dillahunty, and Seth Andrews visited Australia a few years back and dubbed themselves “the Unholy Trinity.” During their visit, Aron Ra presented the following arguments in support of his perspectives. Aron Ra is a well-known figure in the atheist community with aspirations to hold a seat in a Texas political office. Below and in italics, I have presented his arguments, followed by my responses.

Aron’s 11 Arguments and Christian Apologist’s Responses

1. Jewish people say we were created in God’s physical image – that of “an evolved ape.”

This statement is not terribly controversial. While I will not comment on Aron’s assertion that we have been created in the image of “an evolved ape,” I will comment that both Christians and Jews endorse Genesis 1:27, where it states “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

This passage is further highlighted in John 1:1, where it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:14 continues, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

2. Because the God of air was everywhere, ancient people determined that the gods are “omnipresent.”

The underlying theme in all of Aron’s assertions is that God is an invention of men, rather than the inventor of men. One of the most common atheist arguments against monotheism is one in which attention is directed to thousands of man-made gods in the world. The argument follows that unless Christians can prove the non-existence of all man-made gods, they cannot fairly support the existence of the one Christian God. Furthermore, they assert, that they are merely ignoring 1/3000 gods, so they should not be faulted as Christians are only 1 God away from sharing their atheist beliefs that 0/3000 are real.

Yet such assertions miss the point.  They equate to tossing 3,000 books that state humans do not dream onto the ground in front of a person who has dreams and demanding he both disprove the theories in those books while simultaneously proving with evidence the content of his own dreams.

As I have mentioned in several other blogs, unlike all non-Judeo-Christian faiths in the world, which were founded by the beliefs or prophecies of one man, Christianity was founded by the beliefs of at least thirty-three men, many of whom were martyred for their beliefs. With each additional author in the Bible comes additional inter-rater reliability and content validity.

Despite that, one must consider why all of the world’s mainstream religions have some distinctive commonalities. Why is the story of the ark and the great flood not distinctive to the Judeo-Christian faiths? Why do people of all religions appreciate justice and love, seeking light and shunning darkness and shadows? Why do all of the world’s mainstream religions advocate the Golden Rule?

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The Golden Rule

Christianity: In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Jesus. Matthew 7:12

Unitarianism: We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we’re a part.

Sikhism: I am a stranger to no one; and no one is a stranger to me. Indeed, I am a friend to all. Guru Granth Sahib, pp. 1299.

Taoism: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. Lao Tzu, T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien, 213-218.

Confucianism: One word which sums up the basis of all good conduct…loving-kindness. Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself. Confucius. Analects 15:23.

Buddhism: Trust not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Buddha. Udana-Varga 518.

Hinduism: This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. Mahabharata. 5:1517.

Islam: Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself. Muhammad. Hadith.

Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Hillel. Talmud, Shabbat 31a.

Jainism: One should treat all creatures in the world as one would like to be treated. Mahavira. Sutrakritanga.

Zoroastrianism: Do not do unto others whatever is injurious to yourself. Shayast-na-Shayast 13.29.

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My answer to those questions calls attention to the source of our creation who has likely had an influence on the belief systems in every faith, regardless of whether he was involved in the initiation of said faiths. It would be ethnocentric to believe that God restricts his love to the geographically fortunate. That said, I firmly believe that all faiths, all paths, and all doors eventually open at the feet of Jesus Christ.

As for Aron’s claims on how our beliefs in God’s omnipresence came about, early people determined that God must be omnipresent because omnipresence helps to explain much of what we know. Not only has God informed us of His omnipresence, anyone who deeply and thoughtfully conceives of our Divine Creator develops an understanding of His qualities of omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. In Christianity, omnipresence explains how God determines in advance whether we’ll be in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Revelation 1:8 states “I am the Alpha and Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Due to our bounded time, however, the omnipresence concept is difficult to understand, particularly for atheists who conflate an omnipresent God with an all-controlling God. This is the same for the concept of omniscience for atheists, who conflate an all-knowing God with an all-controlling God. For example, atheists often suggest that if there is an omniscient or omnipresent God, they must not have free will – since the Lord would have seen all of the decisions they made in their lives in advance, so they have no control to take any actions at this point as such actions may stand in contrast to God’s “plans.”

Yet this suggestion ignores the fact that God is concurrently in our past, present and future. He both sees our lives and has seen our lives. He has seen our decisions today in advance and he has seen the decisions we will make tomorrow, next year, and in ten years. He already knows our actions of the future and he has already responded to the decisions we will make in twenty years. That is the concept of omnipresence and it does not inhibit our free will.

In his book Meditations (pp. 88), Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180 A.D.) explained his conception of our greater purpose and God’s omnipresence:

“The Mind of the universe is social. At all events, it has created the lower forms to serve the higher, and then linked the higher in a mutual dependence on each other. Observe how some are subjected, others are connected, each and all given their just due, and the more eminent among them are combined in mutual accord…Reflect that the story of your life is over, and our service is at an end; bethink you of all the fair sights you have seen, the pleasures and pains you have spurned, the many honors disdained, the many considerations shown to the inconsiderate. How comes it that souls of no proficiency nor learning are able to confound the adept and the sage? Ah, but what soul is truly both adept and sage? His alone, who has knowledge of the beginning and the end, and of that all-pervading Reason which orders the universe in its indeterminate cycles to the end of time.”

In summary, the gods did not “become omnipresent.” God is and always has been omnipresent and even without knowledge of the Bible, great people in our past have come to this conclusion, undoubtedly attributable to an innate knowledge of the holy within us.

3. Only the spirit of God moved over the surface of the waters in Genesis 1. “The spirit of God is the wind of God…Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind…Yahweh was the terrifying volcano God in the OT and the air God in the NT.”

Another underlying assertion in Aron’s overall message is that ancient people suffered from intellectual and philosophical deficiencies, so they assigned divine status to all sorts of natural elements, particularly those that gave them reason for pause, fear, or awe. He points to volcanoes, the wind, and dust storms as examples of natural events to which the ancients assigned supernatural causes.

Such assertions underscore Aron’s ethnocentrism, which is not uncommon among his peers who believe this generation has superior intellectual, scientific, and philosophical capabilities. Yes, we have achieved enormous technological and scientific advances in modern times, yet these should not be used to make the assumption that our predecessors were two bulbs short of a full circuit. In contrast, some of the most amazing minds in our history lived in ancient times.

Plato (428 – 348 B.C.) is an example. In his book Republic (pp. 78), Plato ponders God using by nature as a metaphor:

“And suppose further, that they are dragged up a steep and rugged ascent into the presence of the sun himself, will not their sight be darkened with the excess of light? Some time will pass before they get the habit of perceiving at all; and at first they will be able to perceive only shadows and reflections in the water; then they will recognize the moon and the stars, and will at length behold the sun in his own proper place as he is. Last of all they will conclude:–This is he who gives us the year and the seasons, and is the author of all that we see. How will they rejoice in passing from darkness to light!”

There is some truth to Aron’s assertion that God has used weather events to give glory to His divinity. As examples, He has used the four elements of astrology oftentimes in the Bible: wind, earth, water, and fire.

Genesis 8:1: “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided.”

Exodus 14:21: “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided.

Exodus 15:10: “You blew with your wind, the sea covered them; They sank like lead in the mighty waters.”

Psalm 19:10: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.”

Luke 3:16: “John answered them all, saying, ‘I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Hebrews 12:28-29: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

In summary, the fact that God has used the elements of the weather to express himself in no way diminishes his glory. It merely offers us a physical form we can recognize. To atheists, who often request physical evidence of God, God’s demonstrations in the past should garner their appreciation.

4. Judas died in a potter’s field. Sold out before or after Passover, depending on which Gospel. “Can’t fall headlong when head is tied to a tree.”

In my rebuttal to Aron’s video “Mythical Man,” I offered the following response to his comments about Judas:

Zechariah 11:12-13 “So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’’ – the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the LORD.”

In Matthew 27:3-8, Judas’ suicide is recounted. “When Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. ‘I have sinned,’ he said, ‘for I have betrayed innocent blood.’ ‘What is that to us?’ they replied. ‘That’s your responsibility.’ So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests picked up the coins and said, ‘It is against the law to put this money into the treasury, since it is blood money. So they decided to use the money to buy a potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.”

Acts 1:18 – 19 continues recounting the passage. “(With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is Field of Blood.)”

Biblical scholars note that Judas’ body likely decomposed after his death by hanging, which is why his body burst open when he fell onto the ground. Only a decomposed body would burst in such a way that one’s intestines would spill out. Furthermore, Judas symbolically “bought a field,” as the silver coins he returned to the chief priests ended up being used to purchase a potter’s field.

As for the comment that Judas could not have fallen “headlong” since he had hung himself, consider the possibility that the branch upon which he hung himself broke. It’s quite possible. Other possibilities exist, such as the possibility that someone cut the rope to free Judas from his position hanging and decomposing on the tree.

5. People have made prophecies that haven’t come true. Wikipedia says the world should have ended 79 times before 1901.

The inclusion of these assertions is irrelevant to Aron’s overall message, which is to discount the divinity of God. Over the centuries, many people have prophesied. Sometimes their prophecies came true, while other times they did not. The prophecies of men over recent centuries do not discount the prophecies of those influenced by God.

5. “Jesus failed to meet the requirements of the Jewish Messiah. He didn’t gather Jewish people from exile and return them to Jewish temple; He didn’t bring world peace; and He didn’t bring the whole world to worship one God.” He was supposed to do all of these things before He was called the Messiah. He was supposed to be an invulnerable warlord who couldn’t be killed.”

“How foolish you are, how slow you are to believe everything the prophets said!  Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and then to enter his glory?” And Jesus explained to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with the books of Moses and the writings of all the prophets…. They said to each other, “Wasn’t it like a fire burning in us when he talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:25-27; 24:32)

The Jews for Jesus provide a list of fulfilled prophecies that may interest Aron. I have highlighted several of their entries below. For a full list, please click on the reference that follows.

The Messiah would be:	Tanach Reference	Fulfillment
from the seed of a woman	Genesis 3:15	Romans 16:20; Galatians 4:4; Rev. 12:9; Rev. 12:7
a willing sacrifice	Genesis 12:3	Acts 3:24-26
a Passover lamb	Exodus 12: 1-51	John 1:29; 1:36; 19:33; 1 Corinth. 5:7-8; 1 Peter 1:19
the suffering servant	Isaiah 52-53	Matt 8:16-17; Mark 10:45; Luke 22:20; Acts 8:32-35
lifted up	Numbers 21:6-9	John 3:14-18
called God’s Son	Psalms 2:1-12	Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22; Acts 4:25-28
Resurrected	Psalms 16: 8-11	Acts 2:22-32; Acts 13:35-37
forsaken and pierced, but vindicated	Psalms 22:1-31	Matthew 27:39; 46; Mark 15:34; John 2:17
a righteous sufferer	Psalms 69	Acts 1:20; John 2:17; John 15:25; Romans 15:1-3
greater than David	Psalms 110:1-4	Matthew 22:42-45; Luke 20:41-44; Acts 2:34-36
the rejected cornerstone	Psalms 118: 22-24	Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10-11; Luke 20:17-18
Acclaimed	Psalms 118: 25-29	Luke 13:35; Mark 11:9-10; John 12:13; Matt. 21:9
born of a virgin	Isaiah 7:14	Matt 1:22-23; Luke 1:31-35
a wonderful counselor; Mighty God; everlasting Father and Prince of Peace	Isaiah 9:6-7	Luke 1:32-33; 79; Acts 10:36; John 14:27; John 6:51
perform signs of healing	Isaiah 35:5-6	Matt 3:1-3; Mark 1:1-3; Luke 1:76; John 1:22-23

Source: https://jewsforjesus.org/answers/top-40-most-helpful-messianic-prophecies/

6. Isaiah 9:6. Doesn’t matter that Jesus was never referred to as “Immanuel.” The story is in 730 BC. Isaiah said this maiden would have a child and once the child could choose honey over curds, the king of Judah would have known he was safe before the child could reach the age of reason. He wasn’t talking about Jesus. He was talking about an “unremarkable kid who lived and died centuries before Jesus.” In Matthew 1:23, an angel recited the line from Isaiah 7:14 as if that counts as a fulfilled prophecy. When the maiden turned out not to be pregnant, Isaiah got the maiden pregnant himself. And then he forgot to name the kid Immanuel. He named him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz… Isaiah “f’d up his own prophecy.”

The passages in Isaiah 7 and Isaiah 8 refer to two different people, as distinguished by the fact that God gave them two different names, Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14) and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (Isaiah 8:2), and the fact that Immanuel was to be conceived of a virgin, while Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz was conceived when Isaiah “made love to the prophetess.”

7. Nebuchadnezzar was supposed to wipe out Tyre. Ezekiel. God was supposed to sink the island into the deep to be lost forever – just a barren bit of rock. Some have argued that it may have taken many centuries, but it was fulfilled to the letter over time. Nebuchadnezzar failed. Ezekiel says the city would never be rebuilt. But it was. It was never lost or abandoned. The city wasn’t supposed to recover, but it did. The original island remains above water and the ruins have been found again and the site still is inhabited. Later chapters talk of people trading with Tyre. “I will make you a desolate city.” He said that Egypt would be barren and desolate. Supposed to happen during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.

In Ezekiel 26:3-6, the prophet states, “Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God: and it shall become a spoil to the nations. And her daughters which are in the fields shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the Lord.”

According to J. Kenrick, in his chapter on Phoenicia and article on Tyre in the Encyclopedia Americana 1929 (pp. 388), the shore town of Tyre was in existence in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. It was “abundantly supplied with all the implements of war” and was “capable of holding out against a numerous army.” Josephus (C. Apion, 1,20) states, “Moreover, we meet with a confirmation of what Berosus says in the archives of the Phoenicians, concerning this king Nebuchodonosor, that he conquered all Syria and Phoenicia; in which case Philostratus agrees with the others in that history in which he composed, where he mentions the siege of Tyre.” This doesn’t necessarily imply that the island was destroyed. Kenrick says this of the mainland town of Tyre, “That he (Nebuchadnezzar) took and destroyed Palae-Tyre cannot be doubted, as it remained a ruin to the time of Alexander, and no other event than the attack of Nebuchadnezzar can be alleged as the cause of its being in this state” (pp. 389).

Archaeologists have documented much evidence that has connected Nebuchadnezzar with Tyre and has documented Tyre’s dependence on Babylon (Dougherty, 1920; Olmstead, 1931). Josephus quoted the records of the Phoenicians when he said that “Nebuchodonosor besieged Tyre for 13 years in the days of Ithobal their king; after him reigned Baal ten years” (C. Apion 1,21).

Volney (1787, pp. 257), the French scholar who visited Tyre in 1783 – 1785, determined that “at the time when Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to it, Tyre was on the continent.” Thus, in all likelihood, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the mainland city as in the prophecy and the inhabitants likely fled to their citadel on the island.

“A little more than two centuries later (332), Alexander, in laying siege to proud Tyre, took the ruins of the town on the continent, and built a mole across the strait. He so obliter­ated any evidence of the mainland city that even the dust seems to have been carried away. This part of Tyre has never been rebuilt, and from the time of Nebuchadnezzar the preemi­nence of the Tyrian Empire was lost. From that time on she became, as the prophecy said, ^–a spoil to the nations” (Ezekiel 26:5). Built partly on the island and partly on the mole, she became willing to pay tribute to any nation” (Wood, 1941).

In conclusion, while Tyre’s name lives on, Phoenician Tyre has never regained its status as an empire and it has never regained its original mainland city location. The Phoenicians who originally occupied Tyre up until its destruction were decimated and replaced by Greeks. The prophecy of Ezekiel has been fulfilled. See this video by Pastor Mike Winger on Aron Ra’s Tyre assertions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUJrXnZSvT4

8. God only talks one on one, when you’re all alone. There are no witnesses. And he only talks to crazy people.

To label millions of Christians over the centuries who have indicated that God speaks to them through prayers or in other ways as crazy is a gross over-generalization, at best. I am in this group of so-called crazy people and I can assure readers that I am perfectly sane, living a normal life as a wife, mother of two boys, neighbor in a family-friendly community, and colleague and professor in a mid-size southeastern university in the United States.

Jesus called on us to go out into all the world and spread the Good News – and I take His calling very seriously. If we all did, we would achieve world peace, eternal joy, and heaven on earth.

9. Exodus 17:14 God would rather you not know who Amalek is, so he indicated that he “will blot out the memory of Amalek” under heaven. How does anyone know that name today? You can’t remove someone from history by citing their name in history.”

The Amalekites were a Biblical people who descended from Amalek, a grandson of Esau. The first reference to the Amalekites can be found in Genesis 14 and the last references are found in the Book of Esther and in the reign of King Hezekiah in the 8^th century, B.C. In Esther, the villain, Haman, is said to be a descendant of an Amalekite prince. Jewish tradition views the Amalekites as enemies of both God and Israel.

What I find extraordinary about these comments is the same person who denies the historical, extra-biblical, and archaeological support that we have for Jesus Christ and the New Testament (Aron) calls attention to the historicity of the Amalekites, a group of people whom no one outside of the Bible has recorded. In other words, we have no archaeological or historical records of the Amalekites outside of the Bible. Essentially, both they and their memories have been blotted out.

10. No morality to be found in this compilation of fables. Honor thy father and they mother. If the preacher’s daughter turns out to be a party girl, the Bible says you can set her on fire and put her to death…God tells Moses thou shall not kill and then tells him to kill every man and his brother…God has twice scrapped his divine plan and killed everybody – except for the one guy who’s righteous enough to save in God’s eyes.

Bible skeptics often pull passages out of context from the Old and New Testaments to assert that God lacks morals. What’s interesting is that most atheists are moral relativists, which means they believe that morals are constructions of the cultures in which people were raised. They do not advocate objective morality in which one believes that we can call upon objective standards of justice, equality, and equity to judge the appropriateness and ethics of various human actions and behaviors regardless of culture or era. The reason atheists do not adhere to objective morality is because they realize if such morality exists, a divine source is required as evolution can’t explain same.

That said, Aron has borrowed our Christian standards of justice to judge God’s actions. What Aron does not realize is because God is omniscient, He can see the potential benefits and drawbacks and destruction inherent in permitting the advancement of various populations on the planet. In 2 Chronicles 28, for example, King Ahaz demonstrated the prevalent values of those worshipping the Baals when he burned his own children in a fire as sacrifices. In response, the Lord delivered him into the hands of his enemies. Imagine if such child sacrifices were still prevalent today. The Lord, with his foresight and vision, recognizes when to permit populations to advance and when to hinder their advancement. If one considers ISIS or Boko Haram today, one might be able to draw similarities between them and the Assyrians, Chaldeans, or the Babylonians in Biblical times who are no longer in power, for good reason.

When Aron states that God has “twice scrapped his divine plan,” he is making the monumental presumptions that he is both privy to God’s divine plan and that God is not omniscient. Because God is omniscient, God has seen both the beginning and the ending of life on this planet. The reasons he has made modifications to the Old Testament with the New Covenant is because humans needed the sorts of laws issued in the Old Testament to thrive before Christ, while they need the laws and directives of the New Covenant to thrive in times after Christ’s resurrection. While human civilization has changed as it has advanced, God has neither changed nor have his plans for us changed.

11. Creationism. A 600 year old man built an ark with primitive tools. Can you imagine being on an ark with one window? “We need to be a lot less tolerant of people pushing this wrong-headed dogma… They don’t have the right to deceive and manipulate other people and that’s what they’re doing. Emotionally yoking credulous innocence for monetary gain.”

Pot meet kettle.

In all seriousness, creationism presents dilemmas for Christians who interpret the Bible in varying ways. Some interpret Genesis in a way that suggests that the earth is around 6,000 years old. Ken Ham and the AIG group are among these sorts of Christians, known as “young earth creationists.” Others interpret Genesis as a metaphor, discounting the age of a young earth. Many Catholics fall into this group, endorsing an older earth and evolution.

Some believe the Bible is in error, while others believe in its inerrancy. I happen to be in the latter group. I firmly believe in the Bible’s inerrancy. Any time I’ve investigated and reconciled Biblical passages, as I did in a previous blog when I reconciled the four accounts of the empty tomb, I’ve discovered that the accounts of the Bible marry well together as pieces in a puzzle.

I believe that our interpretations of Genesis may be erroneous if we make assumptions that restrict Adam, Eve, and Noah by our natural limitations and force a literal understanding of their message. We do not need to ignore geological, archaeological, and historical data that suggest an older earth to be consistent with Biblical teachings. In other words, it is not the Word that is erroneous, but man’s interpretations of the Word that may be erroneous.

As Aron pointed out, young earth creationists are a thorn in his side. Selling a literal interpretation of the Bible and a 6,000 year old earth is likely to lead many Christians astray as they are forced to reconcile what they have learned in school with what is taught by young earth creationists. It does not need to be that way. The focus is and always has been on Jesus, regardless of the way we interpret Genesis. United as Christians we stand; divided we fall.

Final Thoughts

Another issue that I have seen presented is that of education. Many Christians seem to fear that education may lead believers astray. However, this is not the case!  Education is curvilinear: both at the low end of education and at the high end of education one finds God. I cited two great men of the past to exemplify this point: Plato and Marcus Aurelius. There are many more great people who have found purpose and passion in theism.

Christians do not need to fear “liberal” college professors, because with education comes knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is the key to understanding the greater force within us and to achieving harmony and unity with love and truth.

Liberal, moderate, and conservative college professors who are doing their jobs should be able to open the minds of students and force them to think critically and to evaluate their environments. The benefit of understanding the perspectives of all three is that one can better evaluate their positions to determine one’s own position. Thankfully, I have had many college professors who inspired me to seek advancement and to pursue lifelong learning. And I have changed my position on many things, many times. Yet I have never waivered in my position on our Divine Creator, though I once questioned his form.

Reading a variety of books once led me away from Christianity as I explored eastern faiths. Yet something was missing, whether the passion of the Christ, the purpose explained by Christianity, or the unsatisfying and untenable eastern belief in dualism, I am not so sure.  What I do know is that I have come back to Christianity with more passion than I’ve ever had. God has changed me in many ways, making me better each day, and I am very thankful for that. As my pastor said this morning, those who are most thankful of God are those who required the most forgiveness from God.

College professors I wish I had who are currently inspiring Christian Apologists or who have inspired Christian Apologists in the past include William Lane Craig, Sean McDowell, J. Warner Wallace, Gary Habermas, and J.P. Moreland. One college professor I wish I had had the opportunity to meet (but he died well before I was born on the same day as Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy) is C.S. Lewis. His influence has inspired the Christian movement as  we know it today.

In conclusion, the intention of this essay is to offer responses to Aron Ra’s Unholy Trinity video. Aron Ra is one in a legion of skeptics who have waged war on Christianity, hoping to reduce it to a mere memory.  Yet his mission is impossible.

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” – C.S. Lewis

Thank you for your time.

References:

Aurelius, M. (~161 A.D.; 1964). Meditations. Great Britain: Hazell Watson and Viney Limited.

Dougherty, R.P. (1920). Archives from Erech, 1(61): 15i. Yale University.

Olmstead, A.T. (1931). History of Palestine and Syria. pp. 535. Records of the past. N.S., Vol. IV. pp. 99. Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1^st edition.

Plato (~380 B.C.; 2002). Republic. IDPH.

Volney, C.F. (1787). Travels through Syria and Egypt in the years 1783, 1784 and 1785. London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson.

Wood, L.H. (1941). Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Tyre. Ministry International Journal for Pastors. Accessed at: https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1941/06/nebuchadnezzars-siege-of-tyre