 | | 
 |
|
DR. CARLSON DEVISED 4 DYNAMIC TALKS USING HIS DIAMOND OF TRUTH DIAGRAM
. Dr. Carlson created what he has termed the "Diamond of Truth" (DOT) to serve as a mnemonic device & outline for his textbook, Why Christ?. See DOT diagram below. Using acronyms (similar to ICTHUS) w/in a baseball-diamond design, the DOT deftly addresses four pivotal ecumenical questions, viz., (1) whether a Creator is REAL, (2) whether the Bible's four Gospels are TRUE, (3) whether Jesus' Deity is a bona fide FACT, and (4) whether the Christian Kerygma (i.e., Gospel proclamation) brings LIFE, abundant & eternal. Carlson developed four robust seminars to answer these queries. CMI’s riveting-yet-pragmatic seminars propagate the BEST of 21st-century Christian apologetics, presenting undeniable historical evidence, e.g., such as the external corroboration of archaeology & secular historians re: the Gospels’ historical accuracy, incontrovertible scientific findings, e.g., such as nature’s epitomes of "irreducible complexity" (see SEMINAR SAMPLE) & compelling philosophical reasoning, e.g., such as the Kaläm cosmological argument, in order to deftly champion the cogency, piquancy & veracity of the core Christian worldview & combat competing worldviews.
THE BUTTERFLY: ONE OF CHRIST'S MOST MAJESTIC ENGINEERING MASTERPIECES THAT HELPS CREATION SCIENTISTS SAY "R.I.P." TO GRADUAL MACRO-EVOLUTION    
Is there enough revealed in Nature so that people are without excuse? --- Absolutely. Check out the facts above which reveal how a butterfly is a unequivocal example of intelligent design (ID), particularly when one ponders how (a) it completely dissolves its caterpillar body & organs inside its chrysalis, a feat gradualism cannot explain and how (b) it rearranges all cells to forge engineering built for 360° flight, a feat that is insanely complex. While airplanes harness forces of thrust & lift, butterflies use much more intricate methods, incl. wake capture, wing edge vortices, and "clap-and-fling" mechanisms, all of which combine to form an irreducibly complex (IC) flight system. In fact, all flight ability necessitates some type of IC-based apparatus. Yet, for macro-evolution to be true, flight would have had to originate from "mutated" IC structures by pure chance four independent times, namely, in insects, birds, bats & pterosaurs. But ID geneticists now understand that such a freak assemblage of IC-based systems is not even feasible ONE time given the nature of DNA mutations. Mutations in DNA, which happen once in every 10 million duplications of the DNA molecule, are always degradative in nature and thus never add new and utile information to existent DNA coding. One can probe this fact further by digesting CFLI's adjacent SEMINAR SAMPLE.
.In unpacking the four D.O.T. motifs below, CMI seminars debunk the most prominent 21st-century ideologies: (1) atheism - the assertion that nothing supernatural exists; (2) macro-evolution - the House-of-Cards theory that life came from nonliving matter, defying biogenesis, then gradually mutated into its current DNA-complexity & diversity; (3) agnosticism re: Christ - the decision to remain "neutral" about Jesus. Here, CMI contends that all must ultimately deny or believe, given Jesus’ divine claims, the facts of the resurrection, and the potentiality that only "faith" makes salvific grace operative. Re: the resurrection, here are four Seminar III facts that add to the amazing "Shroud" details delineated on CMI's Homepage: (1) The "vacancy" of Jesus' tomb was a historic fact not disputed by Jesus' enemies; (2) The radical life change in deniers (like Paul), as well as the rapid rise of the church in the very city where the crucifixion occurred, is inexplicable unless the resurrection was real; (3) Paul writes in 1 Cor. 15 that there were in fact 500+ eyewitnesses of the risen Lord; (4) And, apart from the resurrection option, no viable alternative exists for how Jesus' tomb became empty. .
WHO WERE THE EYEWITNESSES TO JESUS' RESURRECTION?  
.Re: the credence that the Bible is God's Word, Carlson explains why this tenet must be secondary to all the secular evidence for Jesus' Deity. Because rock-solid reasons exist -- from history, archaeology & science -- to substantiate that Christ was who he claimed to be, God-incarnate, one can, based on Christ's divine authority, embrace what he enunciated about the OT & NT. This is sound apologetics. When conducting apologetics talks (which are free), CMI asks simply that one love offering per seminar be collected, enabling attendees to lovingly support CMI's Agape-centric enterprises. ...
.
THE DIAMOND OF TRUTH
...
. CLARION CLAIMS ABOUT THE CREATOR . "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." -- Genesis 1:1 (ESV) . "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." -- Romans 1:20 (NIV) . "He [Christ] is the visible image of the invisible God. He is supreme over all creation, because in connection with him were created all things -- in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, lordships, rulers or authorities -- they have all been created through and for him. He existed before all things, and he holds everything together." -- Colossians 1:15-17 (CJB) .
. TWELVE "D.O.T." ACRONYMS . .
 |
|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | |
SEMINAR SAMPLE
Image of a Bacterial Flagellum
. “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” . -- Charles Darwin (1809-1882) Eruditely answering Darwin's challenge above, the discovery of "irreducible complexity" has, in the 21st century, for all intents and purposes, placed macro-evolution on the theory extinction list. In a nutshell, irreducible complexity (IC) is present whenever a complex life function (e.g., such as eyesight, blood clotting or flight ability) necessitates multiple and essential, yet totally interdependent & interactive, parts. Although each part of an IC system is individually useless, each becomes utile if allowed to work in synergy with other essential parts. For an arbitrary, evolutionary process to create an IC life function would therefore require every unguided genetic mutation to be indefinitely maintained for millennia until each could one day be combined by pure chance with other useless mutations, until enough mutations could perfectly align to synergize a brand new utile life function.
A bacterial flagellum (pictured above) is an illustrative paragon of irreducible complexity at work. In fact, its IC engineering appears to necessitate an intelligent provenance, despite the baseless demur of macro-evolutionists, since a minimum of 40 distinct flagellum parts (each useless individually) are simultaneously co-essential for the operation of the bio-machine. Yet to embrace what macro-evolution claims, one has to believe the impossible, namely, that each flagellum part gradually mutated over millions of years (with no real purpose in mind), and then waited around totally functionless for more aeons until each part could one day simultaneously converge, via fortuitous chance, into perfect symbiotic position and codependent alignment with all other 39 essential flagellum parts, ultimately to do what flagella do best, propel bacteria insanely fast, with its "propeller" making 300+ turns per second (the fastest in nature). What mind-blowing luck if, indeed, all 40 flagellum mutations, by random happenstance, perfectly came together and synergized one day. If even just one part was absent on this day of miracles, flagella never would have originated on Earth. Such a convergence of blind chance is inconceivably astronomical, with odds beating even the # of atoms existent in the entire Universe. So is this type of chance assemblage even possible? Not a chance. As a quintessential archetype of adroit, IC-based engineering, the flagellum exposes the absurdity of thinking that “Time+Chance+Mutation" could ever form this type of irreducibly-complex bio-machine. An unearthly intellect must have somehow forged the complete IC bio-motor simultaneously based on a pre-existing and extremely-well-engineered blueprint.
Today, we have figured out this blueprint is found in DNA, the microscopic language code of all life which is phenomenally efficient at storing data. In fact, the DNA molecules of information needed to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever lived on Earth could be held in teaspoon and there would be room left to hold all the data in every book ever written. Fascinatingly, 21st-century research into the mind-blowing irreducible complexity of DNA coding has shown that genetic diversification is only possible at the level of genus & species, not family, and even when species variety does occur (which has shown to always be the result of either re-shuffling of genes or degradative DNA mutations), the core biology & IC systems seen in all species always remains in tact. Put simply, although periphery changes can happen in species (e.g., Finches can grow bigger beaks), major IC systems never change. In fact, now we know these systems cannot change. Why? A theory that degrades (or re-shuffles) genes will NEVER make those same genes in the first place. Put another way, DNA changes over time can produce such markedly different creatures such as poodles & Great Danes, yet both will always remain dogs bearing all the general characteristics of the common ancestor of all dogs. Why can a dog never evolve into a more complex species -- like a flying dog? Because Darwinistic mutations only degrade already present DNA code; these mutations never add NEW data needed to develop future IC-type complexity. It is worth probing this DNA-related fact to thoroughly grasp all of its salient genetic ramifications. . 
For macro-evolution to be true, there would have had to have been literally billions of past information-gaining mutations to produce, by chance, each of the millions of IC apparatuses found in the estimated 8.7 million species inhabiting Planet Earth. And yet all we see with DNA mutations, which happen once in every 10 million duplications of the DNA molecule, is the loss of information. In other words, Darwin devolves. Different combinations of DNA can be formed and reshuffled to produce variations within each species (which we observe in nature), but never do we see whole NEW DNA genes being created. Again, all mutations always cause a loss of meaningful information, never a gain. And it gets worse. DNA cannot function without at least 75 pre-existing proteins, and yet these same proteins are produced only by prior existent DNA. DNA thus definitely necessitates a super-genius engineer to explain its origin & intricacy. The more we learn about the biochemical complexity of DNA, the more we see that Darwinism is drawing its last breath in the 21st century. And if we push back to where there was supposedly no life at all, Darwinism turns into a religious ideology, for it cannot at all explain how non-living matter could have one day spontaneously generated into life, a scientific impossibility. The reality is that this never happened. The Law of Biogenesis states "life only comes from life." But atheistic macro-evolutionists must somehow accept by faith that this law was violated. That's A LOT of faith---faith in the absurd. To believe non-living goo one day miraculously turned into a DNA-coded cell which, over millions of years, by random chance, eventually evolved into EACH of the 8.7 million IC-laden diverse species present on Earth, incl. bats with sonar tech, pit vipers with infrared sensors & humans with personal attributes (like self-reflection, abstract reasoning, language ability & moral conscience), is based on pure fantasy, not reality.
Let us turn back to the bacterial flagellum. Could such a IC-characterized apparatus, forged by IC-structured DNA, ever have originated without a super-intelligent engineer? Absolutely not. In fact, whoever engineered the flagellum possesses vastly superior intelligence than human beings currently possess, since humans, with all our technological expertise, cannot even begin to manufacture an IC-based motor so intricately tiny which can travel so incredibly fast (500 mph to scale), not to mention one that can metabolize and reproduce. But the flagellum is just the tip of the iceberg, for scores of complex IC bio-designs exist in Earth's organisms, pointing humanity to only ONE cogent & credible conclusion: a supremely-intelligent Creator of all earthly life, incl. all IC bio-systems, must be real. . .
SEMINAR SPECIFICS
. Using his "DOT" diagram, Dr. Carlson has created four compelling seminars which scrutinize four, pivotal, all-or-nothing truth-claims, and which combine to create a condensed, college-level syllabus covering the best of 21st-century apologetics: _______________
CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
101
_______________________________
This dynamic, 90-minute, four-part, "CA101" course focuses on bolstering faith and equipping global Christians to effectively utilize 12 easy-to-memorize .
ACRONYMS
. to cogently & courteously dialogue about & champion four of the core, essential, ecumenical truth-claims of the Christian worldview, claims which address life's fundamental questions of origin, purpose and destiny, and which delineate into the following four assertions: ... 111 Sound reasons exist that an eternal, personal Creator God is REAL &, out of Agape love, forged humans in His image w/ self-awareness, reason, emotion, speech, creativity & conscience. . 121 God / human interaction is documented by demonstrably TRUE &.reliable sources - e.g., such as the 4 Gospel portraits, accounts of secular historians & relevant archaeological finds. .. 131 In point of FACT, God did incarnate in Jesus (the Christ) who, out of Agape love, freely bore all human sin on Calvary to secure redemption, then rose again to forever destroy death. .. 141 Out of the salvific grace & victory guaranteed by Christ, a "Good News" proclamation (Kerygma) emerges, that every human can possess abundant & everlasting LIFE thru faith. .
. 
Dr. Carlson Conducting a CMI Seminar in Bahrain .
. QUOTEWORTHY . "Faith fits all the facts." . - Dr. Carlson, Why Christ? | |
|
|
 |
 |
|
