kallin1985, I want you to know that you are not alone. I went through some struggles myself recently and have acquired quite a list of apologetics resources that I've personally benefited from. Many Christians experience doubts from time to time; for whatever reason instead of dealing with any I had as they came, I saved them up for one big colossal crisis that lasted for the better part of a year from about the last quarter of 2006 until about the middle of 2007. I've come through with my faith intact (strengthened, in fact), but it was not without a lot of pain and confusion. The experience, however, has probably changed my life permanently (for the better, because now my faith is vibrant and real now that I've thought about it enough to know what I'm committing to). But enough about me.
JC already mentioned Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig. Both of them are favorites of mine. Yes Craig can be rather intense sometimes, but that actually is the sort of stuff I relish (and exactly what I needed). Not all of his material is of the ultra-intellectual variety, though. I have a book of his in my library in which he puts the cookies on the bottom shelf; it is called "Hard Questions, Real Answers." I'm also really enjoying his "Defenders" podcast right now:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/Pag ... sting_main
It's a series of Sunday School lessons he gave at his home church on the basics of apologetics.
Ravi Zacharias is excellent, too, but his approach is more of a from-the-heart type. He blends the intellectual with the emotional for a rather compelling effect. One interesting thing he does is to take the ideas expressed by Existentialist philosophers and show what awful conclusions can result from the denial of God's existence. He always seems to be saying to unbelieving challengers: "Think about what you are saying!" (In fact I'm sure he has used that phrase on many occasions--I can hear his voice saying it in my head as I write this). He doesn't usually present arguments that are well oiled with mechanically scientific precision and obvious logical steps, but he does get you to think, and his method--though different from that of other apologists--is very effective. (I'm not saying that he isn't logical or precise; just that he goes beyond just having sound arguments and puts them where the rubber meets the road).
Another person who's material I enjoy is Alvin Plantinga. He is not an apologist
per se, but rather a professional philosopher who is a Christian theist. In fact he is well respected as one of the more well known philosophers in this day, even within secular circles. He has an excellent and compelling argument that pits evolution against atheism and asserts that the two are mutually exclusive. I suspect he is a theistic evolutionist, but that is really beside the point with that argument. Even if you are a strict YEC, the argument is still useful because it shows atheism to be internally inconsistent (IOW, you perhaps can assert the existence of God without special creation as theistic evolutionists do, but its much more difficult to assert atheism without evolution). His specialty in philosophy is in the area of Epistemology, which is very relevant to questions about the confidence you have in your belief system. Somewhere I have a reference to an audio interview with Dr. Plantinga on a podcast called "The SciPhi Show" in which he describes his Evolutionary argument. I'll try to dig up that reference. If Dr. Craig makes your brain hurt, however, Dr. Plantinga will make your head melt. It is extremely intense. He is a protestant himself (Dutch Reformed) and somewhat Calvinistic, although he teaches at a Catholic university (Notre Dame).
If you want something that is a much lighter fare, try JP Holding. His work is made public primarily through his web site
www.tektonics.org. He takes to task a lot of pop skeptics like those who try to assert that Jesus never existed, that Christianity is just regurgitated paganism, apostate ex-Christians-turned-atheists, etc. He was of enormous help to me during my own crisis. I established an email correspondence with him during that time and I owe him a debt of gratitude. He also has a really good book review section where he gives some pretty good opinions on books related to his field of study. His background is in library sciences.
Someone who I've also really enjoyed is Doug Groothuis (I think its pronounced "Grotier"). He teaches at Denver Seminary and specializes in philosophical apologetics. He has a really good lecture series in audio format on basic apologetics. I downloaded them some time ago from
www.apollos.ws. I went there just now to get the reference, but it appears you now have to have a logon at apollos.ws, which you didn't need before. I'll have to sign up over there at some point and get the link information--don't have time right now, though.
Speaking of Denver Seminary, another good product of that school is Craig Blomberg. He isn't exactly an apologist either, but an excellent New Testament scholar whose material can equip you to meet the challenges thrown at Christianity from an archaeological and textual angle. He did some work debunking The Da Vinci Code.
A couple more obscure ones that I really enjoy are: Joe Boot and Bruce Little. Joe Boot works with Ravi Zacharias' ministries. He isn't very prolific, but he wrote an excellent but short book called "Why I Still Believe." I highly recommend it. It's not difficult reading, and won't take long to read, but it had a powerful impact on me. Bruce Little is a pastor who himself went through a period of searching and came out stronger in the end and ended up studying philosophy of religion. He's done some work on the so-called "Problem of Evil" and wrote a book called "A Creation Order Theodicy: God and Gratuitous Evil." I've not read his book, but I've listened to several of his messages on audio format, and he's really good.
Last but not least, of course, there's our esteemed proprietor here, Steve Gregg. He's not, as I understand it, exactly an "apologist," but he is an excellent Bible teacher and his material tends to have an "apologetic" effect in that he shows the Bible to be a well-crafted, coherent, meaningful, cohesive work that bears witness to divine authorship. That certainly is good for something (and I would almost have to say that his material has done almost as much for me as the actual apologists listed above).
And then, of course there's the classics: C.S. Lewis (I don't think I have to tell you who he is), G. K. Chesterton, and Francis Schaefer. All three of them are very much worth the time to read. Chesterton's good for a few good chuckles, too, as he had a delightful sense of humor and wit.
I've got a lot more where that came from. I've collected over the last year and a half probably about close to 30GB of mp3 files of apologetics related material in audio format. (I fortunately have a portable mp3 player with a capacity of 120GB -- another 30GB of it is music). I don't have a lot of time to do as much reading as I'd like, so I end up doing a lot of listening while I do other things (driving, manual chores at home, etc.).
A few web resources that are very useful are:
www.tektonics.org
www.bethinking.org
www.reasonablefaith.org
www.leaderu.com
www.apollos.ws
www.veritas.org
Also, if you are at all inclined toward either Science Fiction or Philosophy, you'll enjoy this podcast:
www.thesciphishow.com . The proprietor, Jason Rennie, is a Christian, and the subject is where Science Fiction and Philosophy meet, and from a Christian perspective. Actually, I'm not really a big science fiction fan myself, but I did really enjoy some of his episodes where he managed to secure interviews with some big names in apologetics, philosophy, and science, from both points of view: both atheist and Christian. He has interviewed William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Peter Van Inwagen (also a well-known Christian philosopher), well-known scientists including Frank Tippler, Michael Behe (of Darwin's Black Box fame), PZ Meyers (an outspoken atheist scientist), etc., as well as a number of well known science fiction authors. Lately he seems to have stuck with mostly sci fi authors, so I've started to loose interest, but some of the episodes earlier in the archive are very interesting.
Well, I could keep going and going, but I've already taken more time and more screen space than I should have, so I'll stop.
). He's sort of an amateur web-based apologist, and his material is a little rough. He has a web site called "The Christian Think Tank" (