Jesus & Captain Kirk
An argument for the reality of Jesus and the relevance of His message today.
I wasn’t raised a Christian - quite the opposite, actually. I was raised very much a pagan by a mother who read my fortune in tarot cards and introduced me to the Ouija board.
So when I started my journey of faith, I was coming at it with very fresh eyes and no prior knowledge of what to expect.
I took time out of my career in 2004 and entered seminary, graduating in 2008 with a Master’s degree in Theology. I developed a passion for apologetics since then, and started reading books covering both sides of the ‘God debate’ of the early 2000’s. I read, of course, Dawkins, Hitchens, Sam Harris and many others on the atheist side, but in the end found their arguments weak and unconvincing, and not nearly as strong as the argument for faith in Jesus Christ.
I started writing Jesus & Captain Kirk in 2019 after reading yet another book by an atheist purporting to ‘prove’ that there is no God and that Christianity is completely bogus.
The arguments made in this particular book that motivated me to write my book in response followed all the same tired old lines of attack that Dawkins and company generally follow:
Christians in the American south supported slavery, ergo - Christianity as a whole must be false.
Some Christian churches don’t let women be pastors, ergo - Christianity as a whole must be false.
Evolution has disproved God, since evolution can account for our existence without the need to believe in a god.
Science has generally disproved God and Christianity.
Christians are stupid, and we atheists can happily supply many examples of that, ergo - Christianity as a whole must be false.
The Bible is weird and outdated, and written a really long time ago… ergo, it can’t be the Word of God.
Bad things in the world are happening that I - the atheist - certainly wouldn’t let happen if I were God, so that proves there can’t be a god.
I spent three years writing Jesus and Captain Kirk as an answer, with two main purposes: I wanted to write a satisfying answer to the typical attacks atheists bring against the Christian faith. It seemed to me that if the Christian faith is right, then I ought to be able to formulate robust answers. I did in the end satisfy myself; whether my readers are satisfied only they can say, but it is my deep wish that my little book might be of some help to those asking real questions of the faith and are genuinely interested in finding out for themselves whether or not the claims of Christ are true.
My second purpose was to explore the relevance of the Bible. If the Bible is the Word of God, as Christians have claimed for 2,000 years, then it’s reasonable to expect that it would continue to speak to us today and continue to remain relevant now and into the future (hence the future looking aspect of its title).
Another major task I wanted to attempt (okay, right - that’s three purposes now, not two) was to show that there is no contradiction, ultimately, with science and belief in God. Atheists’ assertions that faith in God is incompatible with science and reason is really, at bottom, a very false dichotomy.
In my defense of Christianity, I hope to show - as I sincerely believe - that Christians can heed modern scientific knowledge and remain faithful to Scripture without turning their brains off, while joyfully pursuing the superior vision for social justice that the Gospel presents.
I believe that faith in God is, in fact, entirely rational on the grounds of science and reason. Furthermore, I make the case that Christianity presents a holistic worldview that is far superior to anything atheism can provide.
Many people have come to think of the Bible as backwards and irrelevant, but in Jesus and Captain Kirk I seek to show the opposite is true. Not only is the Bible extremely relevant, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ presents a social justice ethic far superior to modern Western society.
Jesus and Captain Kirk is now available on Kobo, Apple, Smashwords, Amazon, and a few others.