Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians
“The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it or not,” said McDowell, who is author of two books on Christian apologetics, More than a Carpenter and New Evidence that Demands Verdict.
The belief or worldview, McDowell said, forms values, which in turn drive one’s behavior. The worldview “is where we are falling down the most anywhere in the world.” So what is the prevalent worldview in America today? “There is no truth apart from myself,” that’s what even many young “evangelical, fundamental, born-again Christians” believe, he said.
While 51 percent of evangelical Christians did not believe in absolute truth in an earlier survey, the percentage escalated to 62 in 1994. In 1999, it jumped to 78 percent. “You know what it is now?” asked McDowell. “One of the most staggering statistics in history of the church… 91 percent said there is no absolute truth apart from myself.”
ODL! They’re coming for our children! Anyway, I’m guessing by “absolute truth”, McDowell means the literal, inerrant truth of the Christian bible. I must admit that I can not figure out what he means, or what he thinks he means with the phrase “there is no [absolute] truth apart from myself”. I’ve never met anyone who says or believes that their self is the only truth.
“Now here is the problem,” said McDowell, “going all the way back, when Al Gore invented the Internet [he said jokingly], I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that’s exactly what has happened. It’s like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance [of information] has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics].”
So an increased wealth of information and knowledge is a bad thing? A level “playing field” of ideas, an equality of speech for all, is evil?
I suppose it’s no wonder certain politicians seek to cripple the internet in this country, if they see it as an easily accessible fountain of knowledge that threatens their religious supremacist stranglehold on this nation which may just unseat them from their obscene, privileged status.
