No one has issued a more forceful challenge to Christians to become intellectually engaged than did Charles Malik, former Lebanese ambassador to the United States, in his address at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois. Malik emphasized that as Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, that is to say, not only converting people spiritually, but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. Our churches are filled with people who are spiritually born again, but who still think like non-Christians. Mark his words well:
I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy.
Malik went on to say:
It will take a different spirit altogether to overcome this great danger of anti-intellectualism. For example, I say this different spirit, so far as philosophy alone—the most important domain for thought and intellect—is concerned, must see the tremendous value of spending an entire year doing nothing but poring intensely over the Republic or the Sophist of Plato, or two years over the Metaphysics or the Ethics of Aristotle, or three years over the City of God of Augustine. But if a start is made now on a crash program in this and other domains, it will take at least a century to catch up with the Harvards and Tübingens and the Sorbonnes—and by then where will these universities be?
What Malik clearly saw is the strategic position occupied by the university in shaping Western thought and culture. Indeed, the single most important institution shaping Western society is the university. It is at the university that our future political leaders, our journalists, our lawyers, our teachers, our scientists, our business executives, our artists, will be trained. It is at the university that they will formulate or, more likely, simply absorb the worldview that will shape their lives. And since these are the opinion-makers and leaders who shape our culture, the worldview that they imbibe at the university will be the one that shapes our culture.
And:
The great Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen warned on the eve of the Fundamentalist Controversy that if the Church loses the intellectual battle in one generation, then evangelism would become immeasurably more difficult in the next:
False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.
The root of the obstacle is to be found in the university, and it is there that it must be attacked. Unfortunately, Machen’s warning went unheeded, and biblical Christianity retreated into the intellectual closets of Fundamentalism, from which it has only recently begun to re-emerge. The war is not yet lost, and it is one which we must not lose: souls of men and women hang in the balance.
This lecture is an excellent opportunity for us all to ask ourselves: what are we doing to influence the university? Do you have a plan?
Many of the strongest people who are now opposed to Christianity raised in two-parent Christian homes, and went to church for a decade before going off to the university. I’m thinking especially of people like Tim Gill, in Colorado. At university (and even increasingly in high school) they turned away from Christianity. All their peers and the adults could not answer their questions. As adults, they were able to get money, power and influence. Many of them are using it against Christ and his kingdom – kicking away the ladder that they climbed to success on. Why is this? Unfortunately, many of us are not willing to do what works – pick up the Lee Strobel books and read them. Especially “The Case for a Creator”.
This debate took place on March 1, 2010 at Oregon State University.
In this debate, Victor Stenger does affirm his belief that the universe could be eternal in his second rebuttal (1:02:30), thus denying the standard Big Bang cosmology. He also denies the law of conservation of energy and asserts that something can come from nothing in his concluding speech (1:33:50). He also caused the audience to start laughing when he said that Jesus was not moral and supported slavery. There is almost no snark in this summary. Instead, I quoted Dr. Stenger verbatim in many places. I still think that it is very entertaining even without the snarky paraphrasing.
The debate includes 30 minutes of Q&A with the students.
There is no scientific evidence for God’s existence in the textbooks
There is no scientific evidence for God acting in the universe
God doesn’t talk to people and tell them things they couldn’t possibly know
The Bible says that the Earth is flat, etc.
There is no scientific evidence that God answers prayers
God doesn’t exist because people who believe in him are ignorant
Human life is not optimally designed and appears to be the result of a blind, ad hoc evolutionary process
The beginning of the universe is not ordered (low entropy) but random and chaotic
It’s theoretically possible that quantum tunneling explains the origin of the universe
The laws of physics are not objectively real, they are “our inventions”
Regarding the beginning of the universe, the explanation is that something came from nothing*
Nothing* isn’t really nothing, it is “the total chaos that we project existed just before the big bang”
If something has no structure, then “it is as much nothing as nothing can be”
Consciousness is explainable solely on the basis of material processes
There are well-informed, rational non-believers in the world and God would not allow that
Dr. Craig’s first rebuttal:
Stenger’s argument that there is no objective evidence for God’s existence:
First, it is not required that God rely only on objective evidence in order to draw people to himself (Alvin Plantinga)
Second, God is not required to provide evidence to everyone, only to the people who he knows would respond to him
Third, Craig gave lots of objective evidence, from science, history and philosophy
Stenger asks for certain evidence (answered prayers, prophecy, etc.), but Craig presented the evidence we have
Stenger’s argument that the balance of energy is zero so “nothing” exists:
if you have the same amount of assets and liabilities, it doesn’t mean that nothing exists – your assets and liabilities exist
Christopher Isham says that there needs to be a cause to create the positive and negative energy even if they balance
the quantum gravity model contradicts observations
the vacuum is not the same as nothing, it contains energy and matter
the BVG theorem proves that any universe that is expanding must have a beginning
Stenger’s argument that mental operations can be reduced to physical operations:
mental properties are not reducible to physical properties
epiphenomenalism: is incompatible with self-identity over time
epiphenomenalism: is incompatible with thoughts about other things
epiphenomenalism: is incompatible with free will
substance dualism (mind/body dualism) is a better explanation for our mental experience
God is a soul without a body
Dr. Stenger’s first rebuttal:
Craig’s cosmological argument:
Craig’s premise is “everything has a cause”, but quantum mechanics has causeless events
There are speculative theories about how something could have come into being uncaused out of nothing
“I don’t know of a single working cosmologist today who believes there was a singularity prior to the Big Bang”
“If there wasn’t a singularity then there’s no basis for arguing that time began at that point”
“There’s no reason from cosmology that we know of that the universe can’t be eternal”
“When I talk about an eternal universe, I mean a universe that has no beginning or end”
The Hartle-Hawking model doesn’t have a beginning
“There was no violation of energy conservation by having a universe coming from nothing”
“The universe could have come from a previous universe for example or even just from a region of chaos”
The paper by Vilenkin is counteracted by other papers (he doesn’t specify which ones)
Craig’s moral argument:
Dr. Craig is arguing from ignorance
But morality can be decided by humanity just like governments pass laws, and that’s objective
Dr. Craig has too little respect for the human intellect
I don’t need to tell me that slavery is wrong
The Bible supports slavery
Atheists can behave as good as theists
Morality just evolved naturally as an aid to survival
Craig’s resurrection argument:
No Roman historians wrote about the execution of Jesus but none of them did
The empty tomb is doubtful because it is only mentioned in the gospels, not by Paul
John Dominic Crossan says there was no empty tomb
Christianity only survived because the Roman empire thought that they were useful
Dr. Craig’s second rebuttal:
Craig’s cosmological argument:
There is no reason to prefer an indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics
Dr. Stenger himself wrote that deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics are possible
The vacuum in quantum mechanics is not nothing
The quantum vacuum he proposes cannot be eternal
The cosmological argument does not require a singularity
The Hartle-Hawking model is from 1983
Hawking says that there is a beginning of space and time after that model
The Hartle-Hawking model does still have a beginning of time – the model is not eternal
The BVG theorem that requires a beginning for expanding universes is widely accepted among cosmologists
Craig’s moral argument:
Stenger redefined objective to mean that most people agree with it – but that’s not what objective means
Objective means right and wrong whether anyone accepts it or not
Richard Dawkins himself says that on atheism there is “no evil and no good” – why is he wrong?
Even Dr. Stenger says that morality is the same as passing laws – it’s arbitrary and varies by time and place
But on his view, right and wrong are the same as deciding which side of the road to drive on
But somethings really are right and some things are really wrong
Craig’s resurrection argument:
Josephus is a Roman historian and he wrote about Jesus, for example
There were four biographies of Jesus are the best sources for his life
The scholars that Stenger mentioned are on the radical fringe
Dr. Stenger’s second rebuttal:
Knowledge and the burden of proof:
Dr. Craig has to bear the burden of proof, not me – because his claim is more “extravagant”
“I don’t have to prove that a God was not necessary to create the universe”
“I don’t have to prove that a God did not design the universe and life”
“I don’t have to prove that the universe did not have a beginning”
“I don’t have to prove that God did not provide us with our moral sense”
There are a lot of books written about how morality evolved naturally
“I don’t have to prove that the events surrounding the supposed resurrection of Jesus did not take place”
Bart Ehrman says that the gospels are generally unreliable (Note: Ehrman accepts all 3 of Craig’s minimal facts)
Just because people are willing to die for a cause, does not make their leader God, e.g. – the Emperor of Japan
Aesthetic concerns about the universe:
I don’t like dark matter and I wouldn’t have made the universe with dark matter
I don’t like the doctrine of penal substitution
I don’t like the doctrine of original sin
I don’t like the heat death of the universe
Dr. Craig’s conclusion:
The case for atheism:
Dr. Stenger had two arguments and he has to support his premises
Dr. Craig addressed his two arguments and each premise and Dr. Stenger never came back on it
The contingency argument:
Dr. Stenger has dropped the refutation of this argument
The cosmological argument:
The theoretical vacuum he proposes cannot be eternal
The moral argument:
He asserts that things are wrong, but there is no grounding for that to be objective on atheism
The resurrection of Jesus:
There are surveys of scholars on the empty tomb and 75% of them agree with it
Bart Ehrman agrees with all 3 of the minimal facts that Dr. Craig presented
Ehrman’s objection to the resurrection is not historical: he’s an atheist – he thinks miracles are impossible
Religious experience:
No response from Dr. Stenger
Dr. Stenger’s conclusion
The cosmological argument:
“I argued that we have very good physical reasons to understand how something can come from nothing”
“There is a natural tendency in the universe… to go from.. simpler thing to the more complicated thing”
The transition from a vapor to a liquid to ice shows how something could come from nothing
“It cannot be proven that the universe had a beginning”
The moral argument:
Objective morality, which is independent of what people think, could be developed based on what people think
“Jesus himself was not a tremendously moral person… he had no particular regard for the poor… he certainly supported slavery… he was for the subjugation of women” (audience laughter)
The resurrection argument:
Bart Ehrman says that the majority of the gospels are unreliable
Religious experience:
I don’t see any evidence that there is anything more to religious experience than just stuff in their heads
God’s purpose of the world should be to make people feel happy:
God could have made people feel happier
God could have made people not die
God could could have made the universe smaller: it’s too big
God could have made it possible for humans to live anywhere “even in space”
Here’s an article from the Miami Herald about a recent 15-minute speech by Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
Excerpt:
The U.S. senator from Florida had listened patiently to Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa speak favorably about his recent trip to Cuba, all the while omitting any real references to the oppression of the totalitarian government there.
To Rubio, like many Cuban exiles and their descendants, it was too much to bear.
“Let me tell you what the Cubans are really good at,” Rubio said Monday when he took to the Senate floor. “What they are really good at is repression … They have exported repression in real time, in our hemisphere, right now.”
[…]For 14 minutes and 16 seconds, Rubio gave the best oration of his political career, speaking largely off the top of his head and with only the barest of notes. Rubio sometimes dripped with sarcasm or simmered with indignation as he made the case to Congress that the United States needs to continue Cuba sanctions and punish Venezuela.
That’s what the speech was about.
Here are some of the details from the speech:
As an aide flipped through over-sized photos of Venezuelan protests, Rubio ticked off the struggles of living in the country, the horrors of its citizens dying and being jailed at the hands of its government.
“This gentleman here is the former mayor of a municipality in Caracas. His name is Leopoldo Lopez,” Rubio said. “And this is the National Guard of Venezuela pulling him into an armored truck last week. You know why? Because he’s protesting against the government.”
Then came the next photograph, a picture of a young woman being driven off on a motorcycle.
“This is Genesis Carmona,” Rubio said. “They shot her in the head. She died last week.”
Rubio continued: “Let me show you the next slide. Here’s a demonstrator detained by police. Look how they drag him through the streets. This is in Caracas, Venezuela.”
Rubio also took issue with a recent survey, cited by Harkin, that indicated a thaw in American and Floridian perceptions of relations with Cuba.
“He cited a poll, ‘More Americans want normal relations with Cuba.’ So do I — a democratic and free Cuba,” Rubio said.
“But you want us to reach out and develop friendly relationships with a serial violator of human rights, who supports what’s going on in Venezuela and every other atrocity on the planet? On issue after issue, they are always on the side of the tyrants. Look it up,” Rubio said. “And this is who we should be opening up to? Why don’t they change? Why doesn’t the Cuban government change? Why doesn’t the Venezuelan government change?”
Rubio said that, just as the United States has sanctions against North Korea and Syria — allies of Cuba — it should keep pressuring the governments in Havana and Caracas.
And he disagreed with the notion that the embargo hurts the Cuban people. Instead, he said, it’s the totalitarian-socialist government that’s to blame for problems in Cuba — As well as in “oil-rich” Venezuela.
“We don’t have an embargo against Venezuela,” he said. “They have a shortage of toilet paper and tooth paste. Why? Because they are incompetent. Because communism doesn’t work. They look more and more like Cuba economically and politically every single day.”
Rubio repeated that last line elsewhere in his speech:
“They look more and more like Cuba economically and politically every single day. What’s the first thing the Venezuelan government did when these broke out? They shut off access to Twitter and Facebook and the Internet. They ran CNN out of there. They closed down the only Colombian station. Years before, they had closed down all the independent media outlets that criticized the government.
“Where did they learn that from? From Cuba. And yet we have to listen to what a paradise Cuba is.”
I am not a fan of Marco Rubio anymore as a candidate for VP or President, nor am I a fan of Paul Ryan. Both have made mistakes that rule them out as conservatives. However, this speech should be seen by all, especially by Americans who do not appreciate how different like is in countries that are further along the socialist road to serfdom. But we’re getting there.
WINTERY KNIGHT 