The book of Ecclesiastes is a fascinating book both to Christians and non-Christians. Including (and especially to) atheists. The following are some resources on the book of Ecclesiastes from the Christian perspective. But before the links, here's a YouTube video of The Byrds singing their hit song based on Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes by Charles H. Welch (pdf or html)
(This work is instructive despite Welch's Hyper-Dispensationalism)
There are many sermons/lessons/lectures on the the book of Ecclesiastes at the SermonAudio website. Here's a sample of such sermons and series of sermons.
Zeitgeist Refuted Final Cut (Full Movie) http://youtu.be/N4jdfwn5gao ( I don't know how accurate or scholarly the above response to the Zeitgeist movie is)
I
[Richard Carrier] still find many of his [Robert Price's] claims
under-documented and his arguments often weaker than they need to be,
his methods are often a cipher, and he is bad at clarifying (e.g. he
will defend many different mutually-contradictory theories without
explaining what we are supposed to conclude from the fact that he does
that, such as whether he thinks they are all equally likely or whether
he thinks some are more likely than others but that all are more likely
than historicity, or if he even thinks they are more likely than
historicity rather than only just as likely or unlikely but likely
enough to be uncertain of historicity, etc.; and that’s not the only
confusion Price will lead you into, it’s just the one that I often
notice the most). He also never thoroughly defends a single coherent
theory of Christian origins, making him a moving target for critics
(contrast with Doherty, who does a generally good job at this, and is
the best mythicist to read, although he still stubbornly falls short of
dissertation quality argumentation and just complains when I say that
rather than trying to work out how to formulate and document arguments
in a way that would pass a fair peer review–such as learning to stop
crowding strong arguments with weak arguments, and instead drop the weak
arguments and just shore up the strong arguments).
I [Bart Ehrman] should
say that one of the things that struck me, quite forcefully, in the
aftermath of the publication of the book, was just how virulent,
mean-spirited, and militant some atheists can be. The hate-mail and
hate-response that I received for this book from the far left was
absolutely as vehement as the hate-mail and hate-response that I have
received for other books from the far right. It’s not easy being a
historian, wanting simply to know what happened in the past, when so
many have so many vested interests in having things their own way. Many
of the mythicists are simply fundamentalists of a different stripe. Or
so I’ve experienced!
Regarding Christ Mythicists, ATHEIST researcher Tim O'Neill said, "When you're talking about [Mythicists] people like [Earl] Doherty, [Richard] Carrier and I would argue [Robert M.] Price. And then some of the lesser lights. People like [Dave] Fitzgerald, and [Raphael] Lataster and so on... Many of these people...I get the impression, many of these people get a lot of psychological energy from being right and everyone else being wrong. Being contrarians. Richard Carrier does strike me as someone who has a lot invested in, "I'm smarter than everyone else. Everyone else is wrong about Mythicism. I'm right." And he's got about five or six other historical topics on which he is the only person in the world who seems to have gotten it right according to Richard Carrier. So it's interesting that that is a pattern there. Robert Price will endore pretty much any thesis that is contrary to the mainstream...........So there is an element of contrarianism to a lot of [Christ] Mythicism. "
I'm personally convinced that what people call sleep paralysis, hypnagogic states and hypnopompic trances are sometimes merely physical and other times have their ultimate source in demonic attacks. The same thing with the experience of alien abductions. When it comes to out of body experiences, I believe that sometimes they are hallucinations and other times real experiences of the soul "leaving the body" (either induced by demons, by some other non-malevolent cause or by death).
It is commonly believed by non-Christians that whatever the cause (or causes) of Old Hag Syndrome and the similar experience of "alien abductions" are, that those experiences are very difficult if not nearly impossible to be stopped. However, there are hundreds of cases where both types of experiences have been stopped by calling on the name of Jesus. This suggests that in many instances something spiritual is the source rather than something physical.
The following are some resources from a Christian perspective.
AlienResistance.org is a
Christian website that provides evidence and arguments for why the alien
abduction phenomenon is usually demonic. The website has articles,
videos and testimonies.
Both Steve Hays and the other bloggers at Triablogue have written much more on the topic of the occult and the paranormal. Click the Label links below to access more of them.
For a more thorough search go to http://www.google.com/advanced_search and type "triablogue.blogspot.com" in the "site or domain:" field. Make sure to leave out "http://www." and only type "triablogue.blogspot.com".
Then type in keywords like "occult", "paranormal" (etc.) in the "any of these words:" field.
or, 50 Reasons Why You Should Reject Muhammad's Prophethood
David Wood and Sam Shamoun are among the leading Christian apologists dealing with Islam. Here are links to some of their many informative videos. In the series below of why Muhammad is not a prophet they list some reasons which I believe they shouldn't use or should make sure to properly qualify because they can backfire on Christianity itself. In the future I'll update this blog to include some of those reasons which I think they either shouldn't use or should properly qualify. For the meantime, here is Sam Shamoun and David Wood on how they account for Violence in the Old Testament.
(clicking a link below will open a new browser tab)
[UPDATE: all 50 reasons collected in one video HERE]
David and Sam have many more videos on YouTube including many debates with Muslims on various topics. Here's the Acts17Apologetics YouTube channel link. There are many other channels by other YouTube broadcasters who host their videos and debates. Just do a YouTube search for more.
According to Christianity the world will never end in such a way that humanity will end up extinct. It teaches that Jesus Christ will one day return to judge the living and the dead and usher in the Kingdom of God. The finer details concerning the return of Jesus and the "end of the world" (as we know it) are disputed among Christians. It is an in-house debate. HERE'S A LINK to one Christian webpage that contains articles from various Christian viewpoints on this topic of eschatology. I recommend starting with the page All Millennial Views. Since the broadest disagreement among Christians on the "End Times" is the issue of the millennium.
While Christianity denies the possibility of human extinction, it doesn't deny the possibility of future worldwide disasters. They have happened in the past and they may happen again. The following are some links to resources on Doomsday Scenarios. Any of the scenarios might happen if God doesn't intervene on time or providentially prevent or minimize it (or them) according to His sovereign plan.
Here's a link to Wikipedia's article on Christian eschatological views.
