Category Archives: News

News

William Lane Craig lectures on the moral argument at Georgia Tech

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Making sense of the meaning of atheism
Making sense of the meaning of atheism

This video has 3 parts, as well as questions and answers in individual clips.

For those who cannot watch the video, you can read this essay by Dr. Craig which covers exactly the same ground as the video. The essay is for Christians already familiar with basic apologetics.

Part 1 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Here’s a quick couple of quotes from the essay for those who cannot watch:

If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. After all, what is so special about human beings? They are just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Some action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo; but there is on the atheistic view nothing really wrong about committing incest. If, as Kurtz states, “The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion,”5 then the non-conformist who chooses to flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably.

The objective worthlessness of human beings on a naturalistic world view is underscored by two implications of that world view: materialism and determinism. Naturalists are typically materialists or physicalists, who regard man as a purely animal organism. But if man has no immaterial aspect to his being (call it soul or mind or what have you), then he is not qualitatively different from other animal species. For him to regard human morality as objective is to fall into the trap of specie-ism. On a materialistic anthropology there is no reason to think that human beings are objectively more valuable than rats. Secondly, if there is no mind distinct from the brain, then everything we think and do is determined by the input of our five senses and our genetic make-up. There is no personal agent who freely decides to do something. But without freedom, none of our choices is morally significant. They are like the jerks of a puppet’s limbs, controlled by the strings of sensory input and physical constitution. And what moral value does a puppet or its movements have?

[…]Moreover, if atheism is true, there is no moral accountability for one’s actions. Even if there were objective moral values and duties under naturalism, they are irrelevant because there is no moral accountability. If life ends at the grave, it makes no difference whether one lives as a Stalin or as a saint. As the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky rightly said: “If there is no immortality, then all things are permitted.”

If you want a much shorter, slicker version of this argument to share, Reasonable Faith has produced this nice 5-minute video that you can tweet or share on your Facebook page or whatever:

The moral argument is the easiest argument in the world to discuss with non-Christians, as everyone has to have an answer to questions like “what makes humans valuable?” and “why should I do the right thing when it goes against my self-interest?” and “will evildoers who escape justice in this life be punished when they die?” and “do humans have free will to make moral choices?” These are interesting questions, and people can just give their opinion and then think about it as they discuss it.

You can read a debate transcript where Dr. Craig puts his ideas to the test, against Dr. Richard Taylor. I found this debate very helpful for answering the question that everyone should be able to answer: “why should I be moral?”

News

Peter Williams lectures on the historical reliability of the gospels

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Bible study that hits the spot
Apologetics that hits the spot

This is a lecture I found from British historian Dr. Peter J. Williams.

Here’s the main lecture: (54 minutes)

And here’s the Q&A: (9 minutes)

About Peter Williams:

Peter J. Williams is the Warden (CEO) of Tyndale House and a member of the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. He received his MA, MPhil and PhD, in the study of ancient languages related to the Bible from Cambridge University. After his PhD, he was on staff in the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University (1997–1998), and thereafter taught Hebrew and Old Testament there as Affiliated Lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic and as Research Fellow in Old Testament at Tyndale House, Cambridge (1998–2003). From 2003 to 2007 he was on the faculty of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where he became a Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Deputy Head of the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy. In July 2007 he became the youngest Warden in the history of Tyndale House. He also retains his position as an honorary Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

Summary of the lecture:

  • What if the stories about Jesus are legendary?
  • were the gospels transmitted accurately?
  • were the gospels written in the same place as where the events happened?
  • do the gospel authors know the customs and locations where the events happened?
  • do the gospels use the right names for the time and place where the events took place?
  • do the gospels disambiguate people’s names depending on how common those names were?
  • how do the New Testament gospels compare to the later gnostic gospels?
  • how do the gospels refer to the main character? How non-Biblical sources refer to Jesus?
  • how does Jesus refer to himself in the gospels? do the later Christians refer to him that way?
  • how does Jesus teach? do later Christians teach the same way?
  • why didn’t Jesus say anything about early conflicts in the church (the Gentiles, church services)?
  • did the writers of the gospels know the places where the events took place?
  • how many places are named in the gospels? how about in the later gnostic gospels?
  • are the botanical details mentioned in the gospels accurate? how about the later gnostic gospels?

And here are the questions from the audience:

  • how what about the discrepancies in the resurrection narratives that Bart Ehrman is obsessed with?
  • what do you think of the new 2011 NIV translation (Peter is on the ESV translation committee)?
  • how did untrained, ordinary men produce complex, sophisticated documents like the gospels?
  • is oral tradition a strong enough bridge between the events and the writers who interviewed the eyewitnesses?
  • what does the name John mean?
  • why did the gospel writers wait so long before writing their gospels?
  • do you think that Matthew and Luke used a hypothetical source which historians call “Q”?
  • which gospel do critical historians trust the least and why?

I really enjoyed watching this lecture. He’s getting some of this material from Richard Bauckham’s awesome book “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”, so if you aren’t familiar with it, you can get an idea of what’s in it. Peter Williams is a lot of fun to listen to – an excellent speaker.

And you can listen to the Peter Williams vs Bart Ehrman debate. That link contains a link to the audio of the debate as well as my snarky summary. It’s very snarky.

News

Gay rights activist Congresswoman admits to affair with younger campaign staffer

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Here she is speaking for the Human Rights Campaign, a massive gay rights group
Katie Hill speaking for the Human Rights Campaign, a major gay rights group

When I saw all these stories coming out about Hollywood elites and Democrat mega-donors exposed for sexual harassment, pedophilia, rape, etc., I really started to wonder whether there is anything more to the Democrat party than championing sexual perversion and inflicting the consequences of that onto children, born and unborn. Here’s the latest Democrat sex scandal in the news.

Here’s the Washington Examiner reporting:

California Democratic Rep. Katie Hill was still paying consulting fees to her campaign staffer and former lover Morgan Desjardins, 24, as recently as last month.

According to FEC Records, since April 2019, Hill’s campaign has paid a little over $14,000 in fundraising-related consulting fees to Desjardins, doling out around $2,500 most months. Additionally, between 2017 and 2018, she made around $50,000 as a senior campaign staffer.

Hill, who is facing a House Ethics Committee investigation over allegations she had an intimate relationship with her legislative director, Graham Kelly, found herself under scrutiny after a nude photo of her brushing Desjardin’s hair was posted on the RedState.

Hill, 32, has admitted her relationship with Desjardins during her successful campaign for a House seat based in northern Los Angeles County but disputed any inappropriate relationship between her and Kelly occurred.

The image was posted along with text messages sent between Hill, the congresswoman’s estranged husband Kenny Heslep, whom she is divorcing, and Desjardins. According to the texts posted at RedState, the trio had an intimate three-way relationship during Hill’s first campaign for office, but it soured quickly after she won her race and went to Washington, D.C.

Now, the problem with having sex with your subordinates is that there is a power dynamic, because you are paying them. It’s easy to see what Katie Hill did as sexual assault and even rape, because her employees may have felt that they had to do whatever she wanted, e.g. – threesomes, with her, or they would lose their jobs. This is why companies outlaw relationships between employees – they don’t want people to use power within the company to pressure subordinates into sexual activities. Yet Democrats do this all the time and the mainstream media is silent about it.

Remember, even the pious, moral Muslim Ilhan Omar is now divorcing her husband because she had an affair with someone she was paying with campaign funds:

Rep. Ilhan Omar has filed for divorce from the father of her three kids, claiming the marriage is “irretrievable” — amid allegations that she had an affair with DC-based political consultant Tim Mynett.

[…]In August, The Post was first to report that DC-based doctor Beth Mynett had filed for divorce from her husband, Tim Mynett, alleging that he was carrying on an affair with Omar.

All the while, Omar’s campaign fund was paying Tim Mynett’s firm for work, including for travel.

Are Democrats really obsessed with sexual deviancy? Well, consider Democrats like Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, Eric Schneiderman, Ed Murray, etc. It seems like they are always involved in sex scandals. And in fact you can even see wealthy Democrat mega-donors like Jeffrey Epstein and Terry Bean getting charged with having sex with underage people all the time. (Terry Bean is the co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights group in the nation). The Democrat politicians who take money from the sexual deviants then try to change America to make what their donors are doing seem normal and even praiseworthy. That’s why Hillary Clinton threatened the women who accused her husband of rape and sexual assault.

Sexual deviancy seems to be the main plank in the Democrat party platform, and all the rest of the rhetoric about “free this” and “free that” is just to buy the votes needed to make all sorts of adult selfishness and sexual exploitation of the weak legal, and even immune to dissent and disapproval. Which is why Democrats are always using the government to attack Christians who disapprove of adult selfishness and sexual exploitation of the weak.

Now I have a question for you. What is it that young Democrat women are hoping to achieve by supporting the party of sexual deviance? Do they think that this will lead them to a faithful man, a stable marriage, well-behaved children and a peaceful home? If so, then maybe we ought to be having talks with young women about what sort of worldview grounds self-sacrificial love, commitment, and objective moral obligations. It sure isn’t the secular leftist nihilistic worldview of the Democrat party. If they want a Mike Pence marriage, then why not tell them to get the worldview of Mike Pence? They certainly won’t get to a Mike Pence marriage with the worldview of Katie Hill.

If you want to read more about Katie Hill’s destructive relationships, check out this story from Red State, which has blurred photos and text messages.