Dr Paul Allen

According to a major  study  by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, “bisexual women die, on average, nearly 40 percent younger than heterosexual women, while lesbian women die 20 percent sooner.” These are tragic numbers that should concern all of us, regardless of our attitudes towards lesbianism and bisexuality. If you care about people, this is sad to hear. As reported in the  Daily Mail , “The researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, a cohort of over 100,000 female nurses born between 1945 and 1964 and surveyed since 1989.” So, while the study focuses on a particular segment of society, it relies on a tremendous amount of data and covers almost thirty years of death records. What was the cause of these alarmingly shortened life expectancies? According to lead author Dr. Sarah McKetta, a research fellow at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, “The difference in mortality is said to be due to the ‘toxic social forces’  LGBTQ  people...

The Need for Textual Criticism Sherlock Holmes said, “There is nothing like first-hand evidence.”1 Unfortunately, the original documents (technically called “autographs”) of the Old Testament books all perished due to time and natural causes. But they did not disappear before scribes copied them, and then later scribes copied those copies, and on and on. We, therefore, possess only copies of the originals. And what is more, our copies differ to varying degrees when compared to one another. Almost every ancient book is in this situation: the original is lost, and only different manuscript copies remain. However, through the discipline of textual criticism, we can have a high degree of certainty as to the content of the original Old Testament manuscripts. Avid English Bible readers have already encountered the differences in our manuscripts. Most have seen the solid line that appears after Mark 16:8 or John 7:52 with a note saying something like “This passage does not appear in (some of)...

Hundreds of archaeological findings are confirming the biblical record. Peter S Williams looks at some of the most interesting discoveries Imagine the excitement of brushing away the soil from some ancient stone or pottery shard and finding an inscription mentioning someone previously only known from scripture, and whose existence was questioned by Bible critics. Imagine what it would be like to unearth a building mentioned in the Gospels that Jesus and the disciples actually visited. Can you imagine discovering something which has been hidden for 2,000 years? These things really happen! The evidence of archaeology really can help us interpret certain biblical texts, as well as providing an independent way to check the Bible’s historical reliability. Many critics of Christianity continue to argue against the trustworthiness of the New Testament record but, in fact, every new archaeological find has been on the side of scripture, not the sceptics. What the late ...

The Bible reveals some things to us that are “hard to understand” ( 2 Peter   3:16 ). We recognize some of these things in our experience, but when we try to define or explain their essential nature or how they actually work, we find ourselves utterly perplexed. Take, for instance, the Trinity. Relating to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is, in many ways, much easier experienced than explained. A child can believe in, interact with, and trust the triune God , but the combined power of the greatest theological minds of the past two millennia have not been able to explain triune mechanics. We know it works, but we don’t know how. Or consider the coexistence of God’s universal, absolute sovereignty ( John 1:1 –3; Ephesians   1:11 ; Hebrews 1:3) and human personal accountability for our moral choices (Matthew  12:36 ; Romans 2:2; 2 Corinthians   5:10 ; Romans  9:14 –23). We know this reality by experience. We can all point to God’s sovereign intervention...

AUSTRALIAN researchers believe they may be on the brink of rewriting the history of the universe. A paper being published in a US physics journal suggests it may be possible to view "cracks" in the universe that would support the theory of "quantum graphity", considered to be the holy grail of physics. The team of researchers from the University of Melbourne and RMIT say that instead of thinking of the start of the universe as being a big bang, we should imagine it as a cooling of water into ice."Think of the early universe as being like a liquid," Melbourne University theoretical physics researcher James Quach said."Then as the universe cools, it ` crystalises '."The reason we use the water analogy is water is without form."In the beginning there wasn't even space, space did not exist because there was no form." Their research rests on a school of thought that has emerged recently to suggest space is made of indivisibl...

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia The Barna Group team spent much of the last five years exploring the lives of young people who drop out of church. The research provides many insights into the spiritual journeys of teens and young adults. The findings are revealed extensively in a new book called,  You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith . The research uncovered five myths and realities about today's young dropouts. Myth 1: Most people lose their faith when they leave high school . Reality: There has been considerable attention paid to the so-called loss of faith that happens between high school and early adulthood . Some have estimated this dropout in alarming terms, estimating that a large majority of young Christians will lose their faith. The reality is more nuanced. In general, there are three ...