I finished listening to Alistair Begg’s series on Esther, and I’m now on to his series on Ruth. Sermon #3 stood out to me, because it touches on the important issues of free will vs determinism as well as the two methods of seeking God’s will: mysticism vs wisdom.
The discussion centers around Ruth’s decision to go to the barley fields to work, in order to get something to eat.
When we’re facing a future devoid of prospects or possibilities, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and discouraged. Ruth could relate. She was a penniless widow in a foreign land seeking a way to provide for herself and her widowed mother-in-law. Her future was totally dependent upon someone showing her unmerited grace and favor. Instead of giving up, she gives us an example of humility, initiative and faith as she seeks work and sustenance.
As things in the world spin out of control, it’s important to remember that you must always have a plan and be working on that plan. Even when things look very bleak, you have to do something reasonable and practical, and then pray to God for “favor”. That God will do something unexpected that will make your reasonable action bear unexpected fruit.
If you want to listen to sermons #1 and sermon #2 in the series on Ruth, you can find the whole series here. So far, I have listened to 5. The first two were also very good, so if you listen to the first 3, you will definitely benefit. Each one is 35 to 40 minutes.
British Spitfire and German Messerschmitt Bf 109 locked in a dogfight
Here is audio of a very interesting exchange between William Lane Craig and leading atheist Daniel Dennett.
This audio records a part of the Greer-Heard debate in 2007, between prominent atheist Daniel Dennett and lame theistic evolutionist Alister McGrath. Craig was one of the respondents, and this was the best part of the event. It is a little bit advanced, but I have found that if you listen to things like this over and over with your friends and family, and then try to explain it to non-Christians, you’ll get it.
By the way, this is mostly original material from Craig, dated 2007, and he delivers the speech perfectly, so it’s entertaining to listen to.
Craig presents three arguments for a Creator and Designer of the universe:
the contingency argument
the kalam cosmological argument
the teleological argument
He also discusses Dennett’s published responses to these arguments, and that’s what I want to focus on, since most of you are already familiar with Craig’s philosophical arguments for the existence of God.
Dennett’s response to Craig’s paper
Here is my snarky paraphrase of Dennett’s reponse: (this is very snarky, because Dennett was just awful)
Craig’s three arguments are bulletproof, the premises are plausible, and grounded by the best cutting edge science we know today.
I cannot find anything wrong with his arguments right now, but maybe later when I go home it will come to me what’s wrong with them.
But atheism is true even if all the evidence is against it today. I know it’s true by my blind faith.
The world is so mysterious, and all the science of today will be overturned tomorrow so that atheism will be rational again. I have blind faith that this new evidence will be discovered any minute.
Just because the cause of the beginning of time is eternal and the cause of the beginning of space is non-physical, the cause doesn’t have to be God.
“Maybe the cause of the universe is the idea of an apple, or the square root of 7”. (HE LITERALLY SAID THAT!)
The principle of triangulation might have brought the entire physical universe into being out of nothing.
I don’t understand anything about non-physical causation, even though I cannot even speak meaningful sentences unless I have a non-physical mind that is causing my body to emit the meaningful sentences in a non-determined manner.
Alexander Vilenkin is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.
Alan Guth is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.
This science stuff is so complicated to me – so Craig can’t be right about it even though he’s published about it and debated it all with the best atheists on the planet.
If God is outside of time, then this is just deism, not theism. (This part is correct, but Craig believes that God enters into time at the moment of creation – so that it is not a deistic God)
If deism is true, then I can still be an atheist, because a Creator and Designer of the universe is compatible with atheism.
I’m pretty sure that Craig doesn’t have any good arguments that can argue for Christianity – certainly not an historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus based on minimal facts, that he’s defended against the most prominent historians on the planet in public debates and in prestigous books and research journals.
This is a very careful treatment of the arguments that Dr. Craig goes over briefly during his debates. Recommended.
British Spitfire and German Messerschmitt Me 109 locked in a dogfight
Evolution News reported on a 27-minute debate featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer – probably the best proponent of intelligent design there is.
Description:
We often say that Darwinists are reluctant to debate advocates of intelligent design, but here are two who deserve a tip of the hat. Keith Pannell is a chemist at the University of Texas at El Paso who hosts a program, Science Studio, on the NPR station there. He invited Stephen Meyer on to talk about the science of ID, pegged to the Dover anniversary.
Clearly Pannell is an ID critic so he gets kudos for being willing to have a civil and informative conversation. Perhaps feeling insecure about facing the author of Darwin’s Doubt by himself, Dr. Pannell invited a biologist colleague, Ricardo Bernal, to serve as “co-host.”
So it was two against one, but no worries. Meyer is, as always, superb, and the discussion sounds like it was an education for the two Texas scientists. Listen and enjoy.
What is intelligent design? (origin of life, fine-tuning)
What is creationism? (young Earth, different epistemology)
Who does Dr. Meyer think the intelligent designer is?
Finding the best explanation from multiple competing hypotheses
Critic: aren’t you arguing for a designer from ignorance, then?
The importance of naturalists acknowledging what they do and do not know about the origin of life
We do have experience with intelligent causation, whenever we sequence symbols to have meaning and purpose, e.g. – writing
Critic: information in DNA is not digital information, is it?
Information in the cell follows a 4-character alphabet
the sequences are composed of many parts / symbols
the sequences themselves are specified to have function
Critic: the complexity just emerges from change over time
the origin of the first life is immune to explanation of change over time, because there is no replication – this is the first replicator
Critic: but isn’t it just ignorance about the origin of life?
what we do is look at a number of competing hypothesis and what they are capable of, and see whether each cause is capable of generating the effects we observe in nature
Critic: where is the experimental verification of your theory?
well, in the appendices of Signature of the Cell, we predicted that the non-coding regions of DNA (junk DNA) would be found to have function, and that was later proven out
the Darwinists said that non-coding regions of the DNA was junk, but that’s not what has been proven experimentally
Critic: where was this prediction written up, who wrote it?
Critic: but we used the scientific method to disprove the Darwinian predictions, you don’t like the scientific method
intelligent design proponents love science, and the scientific method, and they do work in labs to confirm their hypotheses, (WK:for example, the probability of generating a protein by chance)
Critic: what about the Dover court case that you lost?
the Discovery Institute objected to actions taken by the Dover school board
Critic: what about the molecular machines, how are they related to intelligent design?
even in the simplest living organisms, there are tiny machines that are tightly integrated, and cannot be built up in a stepwise fashion
Critic: I’ve worked with the ATP-synthase and other molecular machines, but “you can kind of begin to tease how some of these molecular machines have come about” – pieces have multiple functions, and they are co-opted into larger systems
the problem with the co-option argument breaks down when you look at the specific details of different machines
for example – the type III secretory system cannot be an precursor to the bacterial flagellum, it is younger, not older than the bacterial flagellum
Critic: what would it take for your view to be falsified?
demonstrable undirected processes that are capable of creating functional information in DNA, or processes that can build up an irreducibly complex molecular machine within the time available with a decent probability
If you like this debate, check out Stephen C. Meyer’s two books: “Signature in the Cell” and “Darwin’s Doubt”. They are now out as audio books, too.
WINTERY KNIGHT 