Christianity and the Bible in the Marketplace of Ideas

Introduction

First off, let's talk about what a "marketplace of ideas" is.  It is, as it sounds, a marketplace for ideas.  I know, stick with me here.  Basically, we each have in front of us any number of ideas.  Each person throughout life can pick and choose any of these ideas to live by.  Like any number of worldviews, each person can choose what ideas by which to live life.  Dr. William Lane Craig has said things like this before, something like, one of the main goals of apologetics is to make Christianity a powerful (or at least a viable) option in the marketplace of ideas.

Bible, Science, Repudiation

The inciting event here if you will is a lecture series I've been listening to lately.  The topic of the lecture series is the history of the English language, sounds enthralling, I know.  The lecturer, Dr. Michael Drout, talks about the biblical story of the Tower of Babel as myth.  Then he talks bad about Christian linguists from Medieval times because of their theories of Edenic language.  Basically, even though the topic of the lectures is linguistics he snuck in a way to cast doubt on the Bible and Christianity.  Apologetics is about combating this kind of thing.

Does this mean that we Christians ought to take the Bible as a scientific text?  Eh, I can't say that's a good idea.  I'm not going to get into a debate on biblical inerrancy here, but let's agree that we trust the Bible in all it says is true, is actually true.  This means that when the Bible lumps in bats and birds together Lev. 11:13, 19 and Deut. 14:11, 18, we ought to think bats are birds?  (This is a misunderstanding that can be cleared up fairly easily.)  The same is true with the Bible supposedly saying the earth is flat, Revelation 7:1 and Psalm 75:3, another easily answered.  I'm not trying to say that the Bible isn't scientifically trustworthy, I'm saying let's keep the Bible as the Bible not a science textbook.

Where do we go from here?

Well, this blog is one example!  J Warner Wallace's challenge that we need more one-dollar apologists is part of the inspiration for this blog.  We here at Chicken Fried Apologetics want to encourage you to be one-dollar apologists.  The more voices out there, particularly on the internet, the more we can contradict people like this professor (Drout) who insists on dismissing the Bible as mere myth and taking the bits and pieces out of context and abusing it.