I see that Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 is posting a lot of Tim McGrew material on his channel. Timothy J. McGrew (University of Scranton BA Philosophy 1988; Vanderbilt University PhD Philosophy 1992) is a Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University.
Here are a couple of Dr. McGrew’s videos – with slides! – on alleged errors in the gospels.
Alleged errors in Mark and Matthew:
In this lecture, entitled Alleged Historical Errors in the Gospels, Dr. Timothy McGrew critiques seven of the strongest objections to the historical reliability of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. This is about 55 minutes of content followed by fifteen minutes of Q&A.
In this lecture, entitled Alleged Historical Errors in the Gospels, Dr. Timothy McGrew critiques the strongest objections to the historical reliability of the Gospels of Luke & John. This is about 55 minutes of content followed by thirty minutes of Q&A.
Dr. Timothy McGrew is Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. He specializes in theory of knowledge, logic, probability theory, and the history and philosophy of science, and he has published in numerous journals including Mind, The Monist, Analysis, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and Philosophia Christi. His most recent publications include the article on “Evidence” in The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (forthcoming), a co-authored anthology in The Philosophy of Science (Blackwell, 2009), and a paper (with Lydia McGrew) on the the argument from miracles in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Blackwell, 2009).
Always remember not to get bogged down in these low-level issues, though, until you have agreement from the skeptic about the higher order issues, e.g. – does God exist? etc. Scientific arguments first, historical and philosophical arguments second, Bible “errors” last of all.
In most areas of life, having more experience is good. Want to be great in your chosen field? Sustained experience is essential. Want to be great at a sport? There’s no substitute for practice. And anyone who runs a business can tell you that their best employees are those who have been in the job long enough to have learned how to handle the normal well and the unexpected with wisdom.
While more experience is often beneficial in life, the story looks different when it comes to some types of experience before marriage. For example, in our Before “I Do” report, we surveyed a national longitudinal sample of young adults about their love lives prior to marriage to examine factors associated with future marital quality. We found that having more sexual and cohabiting partners before marriage is associated with lower relationship quality once married. In particular, having only ever lived with or had sex with one’s spouse was associated with higher marital quality. Our findings are consistent with other studies showing that cohabiting with more partners before marriage is associated with greater likelihood of divorce1 and that a higher number of sexual partners before marriage is associated with lower marital quality and greater likelihood of divorce.2 As we noted, what happens in Vegas may not always stay in Vegas. But why?
There are many reasons why having more romantic partners before marriage may put one at higher risk of difficulties in marriage. One of the most important explanations comes under the heading of what some call selection effects. For many people, an elevated risk of difficulties in marriage was present before they had their first relationship experience. Background characteristics such as parental divorce, low education, and economic disadvantage are associated both with having more sexual and cohabiting partners and also with lower marital quality and/or divorce.3So it may not be that having more sexual or cohabiting partners causes further risk because a lot of risk was already in motion. Selection is a big part of how relationships unfold, but is it the whole story? We believe that, in addition to selection, behavior matters and has plausible connections to marital outcomes. We are going to explain four reasons why having more relationship experience before tying the knot might make it harder to succeed in marriage.
Here are the 4 reasons:
More Awareness of Alternatives
Changed Expectations: The Perfect Sexual Lover (in Your Mind)
More Experience Breaking It Off
Babies
I have to quote the one that I’ve personally encountered in my mentoring – number three: more experience breaking it off. I’ve seen this commitmentphobia in two women who had “wild” periods in their past who had broken up with cohabitating boyfriends.
It says:
Cohabitation has characteristics that seem paradoxical. Living with a partner makes it harder to break up than dating, all other things being equal, and often now comes at a time in relationship development where people have not really chosen each other for the future.8 And yet, cohabiting couples frequently break up, and they are more likely than any other time in history not to end up marrying.9
These days, cohabitation has become more a part of the dating scene than a lead-up to marriage. Let’s call the phenomenon cohabidating. In this context, some people are getting a lot of experience at leaving serious relationships (or surviving being left). Just as with our prior point, that does not sound bad in one way—at least insofar as people are breaking off relationships that had no future. But it’s also true that people tend to get good at things they have a lot of experience doing. People can get good at moving out and moving on.
How does that impact marriage? Some people probably so deeply learn that they can survive leaving a relationship when they are unhappy with it that they leave reasonably good marriages that would have given them and their children the best outcomes in life. They bail too quickly.
Obviously, many others leave very poor or even dangerous marriages only after a lot of agonizing and effort. We’re not suggesting divorce is ever easy or that it is not sometimes the best course. But in a day and age when people get so much experience moving out and moving on, we think many may learn to do so too rapidly, and to their detriment.
If you want to get good at relationships, experience may not be the answer. Reading good studies like this, and making decisions that line up with the research is much wiser. As always, never follow your heart. Always follow rational arguments and evidence, and keep connected to a good panel of advisors who have had long-term relationships success. That’s the best way to avoid disaster.
Well, I sometimes listen to the Hugh Hewitt show, and since foreign policy is his thing, I get to hear pretty much every foreign policy point of view there is. Imagine how surprised I am to find that practically everyone that Hugh has on as a guest is on Cruz’s foreign policy advisory panel.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz unveiled his national security team, which includes former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, former Missouri Sen. Jim Talent and former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy.
[…]Abrams, who served Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, praised the senator’s support for Israel, saying that “he has made it clear that he believes a strong Israel is America’s key ally and asset in the Middle East.
“He understands the power relationships in that region and he will put an end to the tensions of the Obama years that have weakened the U.S.-Israel alliance,” Abrams added. “He is very clearly the most pro-Israel candidate in the race today.”
Other members of Cruz’s team include:
Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Health and Human Serves and general counsel of the National Security Agency.
Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council.
Retired Army Lt. General William Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council.
Fred Fleitz, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst.
Randy Fort, who has served in senior intelligence positions in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations.
Frank Gaffney Jr., president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy.
Nile Gardiner, a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Katharine Gorka, president of the Council on Global Security.
Steven Groves, a senior research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Mary Habeck, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Kristofer Harrison, a co-founder of the China Beige Book who once served in the George W. Bush White House.
Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain.
Michael Ledeen, an author who serves at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Clare Lopez, a vice president at the Center for Security Policy.
Robert O’Brien, a partner at the Larson O’Brien LLP law firm in Los Angeles.
Michael Pillsbury, who was a Reagan campaign advisor in 1980.
Charles Stimson, the senior legal fellow and manager of National Security Law Program at the Heritage Foundation.
Daniel Vajdich, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Christian Whiton, a former State Department senior advisor in the Bush administration.
My favorite guys on that panel are Frank Gaffney, Andrew McCarthy, Nile Gardiner, William Boykin and Michael Ledeen. Gaffney is probably the most hawkish of all of them, so I was surprised that Cruz put him in there. I always thought that Cruz was more libertarian on foreign policy than I am. And maybe he is, but he put all my favorite hawkish guys on his panel anyway. I don’t know the specific people they listed from the Heritage Foundation, but it is my favorite think tank, so they have to be good. And I see someone named Mary Habeck from the American Enterprise Institute – my second favorite think tank. My favorite defense analyst from AEI is Mackenzie Eaglen, but they didn’t pick her, oh well.
This article from the radically leftist Bloomberg View notes that Cruz has a whole ton of moderate conservative voices on his foreign policy advisor panel to balance out the hawks that I like so much.
It says:
[…]Cruz’s team includes former officials who reject Gaffney’s broad view that any Muslim who believes in Sharia law by definition believes in a totalitarian and violent ideology at war with America.
“We’re at war with a coalition of radical Islamists and radical secularists. It’s not all one thing, nor is Islam all one thing,” Michael Ledeen, a former Reagan administration official and a Cruz campaign adviser, told me.
Jim Talent, a former Missouri Republican senator who was a key adviser to Romney in 2008 and 2012, is signed up for the Cruz team. So is Mary Habeck, a former staffer on George W. Bush’s national security council, who is an expert on jihadi organizations and has warned against demonizing the entire religion of Islam.
Another Cruz adviser, Elliott Abrams, helped craft Bush’s policy to empower moderate Muslims in the Middle East against radicals. He told me he feels much the same way as Habeck. “It’s now 15 years since 9/11, and I think it’s obvious that Muslim citizens in the U.S. and Muslim leaders abroad have an absolutely critical role to play in fighting jihadis and other Muslim extremists,” Abrams said. “This is partly a battle within Islam that they are going to have fight and win. Alienating these potential allies is the kind of foolish policy that the Obama administration has engaged in when it comes to Arab states that are our allies.”
Victoria Coates, who has been Cruz’s main adviser on national security since he came to the Senate, told me this tension on the policy team “is by design and not an accident.” She added: “Both Frank and Elliott are people I went out of my way to set up meetings with the Senator. He has met with both of them individually for years.”
[…]His new team of national security advisers, in this respect, has something for everyone.
I think this balanced approach matches Cruz’s approach in other areas. He isn’t looking for mediocre people who are loyal to him above all. He has hawkish people in his panel, but he also has respected moderates. I have heard Andrew McCarthy, Michael Ledeen and Jim Talent on Hugh Hewitt’s show many times. Victoria Coates is highly respected by everyone when it comes to foreign policy. The moderate people are the best at putting forward their view, just as Gaffney is the best at putting forward the hawkish view. Cruz’s approach will lead to good discussions, which will lead to smart policies. We certainly can do a lot better than the Obama administration’s “screw up then cover up” approach.
In contrast to Cruz, who does have good advisers on foreign policy, we are hearing this from Trump:
He says: “I’m speaking with myself, I have a very good brain”. That might for for Scrabble or balancing your check book, but we are talking about foreign policy and national security, here.
WINTERY KNIGHT 