Here’s a quick overview of Michael Licona’s latest book on the resurrection, entitled “The Resurrection of Jesus“.
60 minutes of lecture, 20 minutes of Q&A.
Summary:
Dr. Licona’s background and education
The definition of history and philosophy of history
Postmodern approaches to history
Historical bedrock: facts that are historically demonstrable
Historical criterion 1: Explanatory scope
Historical criterion 2: Explanatory power
Historical criterion 3: Plausibility
Historical criterion 4: Ad Hoc / Speculation / non-evidenced assumptions
Inference to the best explanation
Investigating miracle claims: is it possible? How?
Objection of James D.G. Dunn
Objection of Bart Ehrman
New Testament sources: Gospels and Paul’s letters
The Gnostic gospels: are they good sources?
The minimal facts
The hallucination hypothesis
The best explanation
While watching this lecture, it struck what good preparation it was for understanding debates. This lecture is more about historical methods, but if you’re interested in Mike’s minimal facts case for the resurrection, here’s a video on that:
This is the case he uses in his debates with Richard Carrier, Dale Allison, Bart Ehrman, etc.
The largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activist group in the country is calling on the Department of Education to address what it calls a “disturbing trend” on college campuses.
Specifically, the Human Rights Campaign is calling for more transparency towards what it sees as a trend of schools citing religious reasons for not adhering to Title IX.
The Human Rights Campaign believes that in granting such exemptions, schools are given a “license to discriminate.”
Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs that receive federal funding. If schools are found in violation of the statute, their federal dollars could be at risk.
To address these concerns, the Human Rights Campaign wants the Department of Education to issue public reports stating which institutions request or receive religious exemptions, and to detail the scope of those exemptions.
Conservatives reacted to this news so:
Hunter Baker, a fellow for religious liberty at Union, told The Daily Signal that the erosion of religious liberty exemptions, would make it “illegal” for schools to operate in accordance to their religious beliefs.
“If we were unable to choose faculty members who both live out and have a traditional view of Christian sexual morality, then that really damages our ability to pursue our mission as an institution,” Baker said. “You’re making it illegal for us to insist on a Christian life and worldview.”
Baker said it would be a “major intrusion” on the school’s standards of conduct for its student body. Union University, a Baptist college in Jackson, Tenn., follows a traditional Christian view of marriage and sexuality, for example.
“Any kind of activity that would occur between two same-sex individuals would be unacceptable by our standards of conduct,” he said.
Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, calls the Human Right Campaign’s requests an attempt to “blacklist religiously-affiliated schools.”
You might remember that the Human Rights Campaign previously denounced the socially conservative Family Research Council as a “hate group” after they were attacked by a gay activist who was later convicted of domestic terrorism. The Human Rights Campaign was never charged with hate speech by the Obama administration.
Unfortunately, the Human Rights Campaign enjoys broad support from many American companies, as well as prominent Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It’s difficult for me to see how religious liberty can survive if we keep electing Democrats who want to give gay activists what they want: an end to religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
A fine article by Aaron, who writes at Apologetics Junkie.
Excerpt:
A self-defeating (or self-refuting) statement is one that fails to meet its own standard. In other words, it is a statement that cannot live up to its own criteria. Imagine if I were to say,
I cannot speak a word in English.
You intuitively see a problem here. I told you in English that I cannot speak a word in English. This statement is self-refuting. It does not meet its own standard or criteria. It self-destructs.
The important thing to remember with self-defeating statements is that they are necessarily false. In other words, there is no possible way for them to be true. This is because they violate a very fundamental law of logic, the law of non-contradiction. This law states that A and non-A cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. For example, it is not possible for God to exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense. This would violate the law of non-contradiction. So if I were to say, “God told me He doesn’t exist” you would see intuitively the obvious self-refuting nature of this statement.
Aaron goes on to explain how to deal with self-refuting statements in the article.
WINTERY KNIGHT 