Introduction and Testimony

Hey, I'm Tommy. I'm 15 and I have two YouTube channels.
www.youtube.com/kabane52 (defending evolution)
www.youtube.com/kabanethechristian (defending Christianity)

At this point in time, I prefer my second channel as I have come to enjoy apologetics far more than evolution. Apologetics will be the primary focus of this blog. Let me give my testimony, which I have also given in two videos of mine.

My father is a deist. My mother is an evangelical Christian and has been so since I was two. My father didn't care if I was raised in evangelicalism. He disagrees with it, but does not find it harmful. So I went to Sunday School, was taught bible stories such as creation, the flood, David and Goliath, and the story of Jesus. I believed everything I was taught, including literal, six day creationism. I was baptized in third grade at my own will because I believed I was a true Christian who had a desire to follow God's Word.

This all continued until the summer before eighth grade. There was a church class titled "Science and the Bible". I decided that I was interested and I chose to attend. They told us that an old earth and evolution were compatible with the Bible and proceeded to lay out a few interpretations of Genesis (I currently like a variation of the Day-Age model) that resolved the problem of the age of the Earth. They also taught resolutions to the death before sin problem.

I became an evolutionist and read a lot on the topic. I would debate my three best friends on the issue (they are now three evolutionists as I am) and I defeated them every time. I then found YouTube. The first video on evolution that I watched was "Memo to Creationists" by chadagg. I was then directed to "Ken Miller on Intelligent Design". I found lots of great videos on YouTube on evolution.

And the people who defended evolution also often defended atheism. I found a video demanding evidence for God's existence and evidence for Christianity. I was shocked. I just realized, that for all the years I had believed Christianity, I had no real reason to. I then found videos on Mithraism and Christianity, claiming that Jesus never existed and was simply a syncretistic characted derived from pagan gods such as Mithra, Dionysus, Attis, and Adonis.

I was crushed. I held on desperately to Christianity for emotional reasons, and I often found myself near tears because of the stress my crisis of faith had been causing me. When Christmas that year came, we sang "O Come O Come Emmanuel". The words felt empty to me and I wasn't sure if Christianity was true anymore.

In January 2007, I decided to defend evolution with a YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/kabane52). Of course, this worsened my crisis of faith because I became quite popular with atheists who then tried to deconvert me, pressing the issues that had me already worried.

In February, I decided to read "The Case for Christ" to see the evidence that apologists presented. I was happy, because I found the case convincing and my crisis of faith went into recession. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of believing that by reading the Case for Christ, I could debate any atheist and win.

I didn't find much on the pagan copycat thesis in the book, so I decided to create my own solution to it, which I posted as a YouTube video entitled "Jesus Came From Osiris-Dionysus? A Defense of Scripture", which I posted on Easter sunday. It argued that the parallels were actually derived from messianic prophecy (a poor argument) I made a video entitled "Why I am A Christian", in which I summarized some of the evidence presented in "The Case for Christ"

I was then invited to the Rational Response Squad stickam (www.stickam.com) room to debate a few atheists. I did, and failed miserably. They presented the standard atheist responses to "The Case for Christ", which I did not know how to respond to. They presented the translation issue in Isaiah 7.14, telling me that the word translated virgin (almah) actually should be translated "young woman" and that the real word for virgin was betulah.

I was devastated. It seemed to me that the evidence which I clung to was false after all, and that I had been deceived. I then decided to examine all the evidence, and follow it to its conclusion. That took about two months (even though it wasn't ultra thorough) and I eventually did conclude that Christianity was true. The pagan copycat argument still plagued me.

I created a YouTube channel defending Christianity (www.youtube.com/kabanethechristian) and tried to refute the Jesus Myth theory. It wasn't a great refutation, but it did the job alright.
I have much better refutations now.

Over the summer, I continued to study the issue and found a website called www.tektonics.org. It was the best discovery I'd made. It had answers to EVERYTHING. The best was its answer to the copycat thesis. All along, I had forgotten to ask the most basic questions. Did the parallels really exist at all? What is the evidence for the parallels? I realized that there WAS no evidence for the parallels, and my biggest issue was resolved. I reread the Case for Christ, and read the Case for the Real Jesus (an excellent book). I went back to Stickam and found some atheists.

Using the case for the resurrection presented by Mike Licona in the Case for the Real Jesus, I defeated the atheists in multiple debates on the resurrection of Jesus. I was fully confident in the truth of Christianity. I read many articles on Tekton, and began creating more videos on my KabaneTheChristian account.

And since then, I have become (if I say so myself) a competent YouTube apologist, and have helped others in their crises of faith. This blog will be discussing the issues of apologetics and the evidence for Christianity, and I hope you enjoy it.