Today’s interview is with Nabeel Qureshi, former Muslim and now Christian defender. He is director of Creed 2:6 ministries found at www.creed26.com. He talks about Creed2:6, his journey from Islam to Christianity, his interactions with the Muslim community and Muslim apologists, his response to critics of his conversion, the occurrence of visions and dreams from God to Muslims, the greatest challenges to sharing the Gospel with Muslims, the social consequences for leaving Islam, cultural vs. religious opposition, common errors to avoid, key factors to focus on, recommended resources on Islam, his personal message to those in Islam, and more. His full testimony is here. Video testimony here.
Brian Auten from Apologetics 315 tweeted this interview. It was uploaded by the always excellent BirdieUpon.
Dr. Craig did a GREAT job on that interview, sounding very clear and intelligent. The host was laughing with him.
And while you’re having fun with that, read this:
Here at the Unofficial W. L. Craig Public Relations Office LLC we have uncovered news which is very concerning to us. We uncovered information that Dr. Richard Dawkins likes to top pumpkin flavored ice cream with sautéed portobello mushroom, Top Ramen noodles, eggs, and grated pickles. Apparently, Dr. Dawkins thinks the obtaining of this state of affairs results in a good tasting ice cream. He has even defended his right to make and eat said ice cream concoction.
We find this a disgusting view to hold, and we are shocked, revolted, and horrified that a person who claims to be a descent human being would engage in such ice cream apologetics. We understand that Dr. Craig has claimed in many of his books that matters of taste are not objective matters of fact that obtain in the universe. We understand that Dr. Craig has claimed that in this universe there is no objective fact of the matter regarding whether Dr. Dawkins’s tastes in ice cream are any better or more correct than Dr. Craig’s—who happens to like, through God’s instantiation of certain circumstances, peanut butter and chocolate ice cream. However, this is quite beside the point. For we are completely abominated, bothered, disenchanted, displeased, disturbed, grossed out, insulted, irked, nauseated, offended, outraged, palled, piqued, put off, repulsed, revolted, shocked, sickened, unhinged and upset by Dr. Dawkins’s subjective tastes in ice cream. Dr. Craig doesn’t care if this has absolutely nothing to do with whether Dr. Dawkins’s argument that the design argument implies that God must have had a designer is a good argument or not. Dr. Craig doesn’t care that this has absolutely nothing to do with the soundness of the Kalam cosmological argument. Those concerns are petty when placed next to Dr. Dawkins’s disgusting tastes in ice cream. His statements on ice cream are so yucky as to nullify discussion about whether belief in God as such is a mind virus.
In light of these most heinous facts, we cannot, and will not, debate such a scurrilous individual as Dr. Richard Dawkins. We ask, would you shake hands with a man who could eat something like that? Would you share a platform with him (imagine if he passed gas)? Dr. Craig wouldn’t, and he won’t. Even if he were not engaged to be in London on the day in question, he would be proud to leave that chair in Oxford eloquently empty and head to the nearest ice cream shop.
And if any of Dr. Craig’s colleagues find themselves browbeaten or inveigled into a debate with this deplorable apologist for mushroom, noodle, egg, and pickle topped pumpkin ice cream, our advice to them would be to stand up, read aloud Dawkins’s recipe as quoted above (maybe even show the picture), then walk out and leave him talking not just to an empty chair but, one would hope, to a rapidly emptying hall as well, as we all make our way to Cold Stone Creamery for a proper ice cream.
I found it here on the Analytic Theology blog. So what was the point of that? The point of that is that Richard Dawkins is complaining at Dr. Craig for being evil and immoral, but he doesn’t have any way to make distinctions between good and evil in his own worldview.
Look at what Dawkins says:
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
(“God’s Utility Function,” Scientific American, November, 1995, p. 85)
So what was that whole “I’m not going to debate you because you’re evil and so is genocide” thing? It makes no sense. But he says it anyway, because that’s how atheists like Dawkins are. They don’t have any way to ground morality on their own view, and then they complain about God and Christians failing to act morally. It’s ridiculous.
U.S. companies’ hiring plans reflect the worst employment outlook since January 2010 as demand slows in the world’s largest economy, a private survey showed.
Fewer companies project payrolls to rise in the next six months compared with a July survey, while more plan to cut workers, the National Association for Business Economics said today in Washington. The share of firms planning to raise prices was the smallest in almost two years.
Businesses are concerned about the European debt crisis, with 30 percent of participants anticipating it will cause a decline in sales through early 2012, the survey showed. While companies said they expect the U.S. will keep expanding, they trimmed projections for the pace of growth and pared capital spending plans, helping explain why the recovery has failed to gain momentum.
“Expectations are muted,” Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, Virginia, who analyzed the results, said in a statement. The latest survey’s “respondents remain cautiously confident.”
Within the employment outlook, 29 percent of companies said they would increase hiring, down from 43 percent in July, while 59 percent reported they plan no change in staff, a 10-point jump.
[…]The dimming outlook for employment and investment stems from the slowdown in growth. Eighty-five percent of companies surveyed said that the economy may expand 2 percent or less in the period ending this quarter compared with the final three months of 2010. In the prior survey, just one of every five economists polled predicted growth would be that slow.
The debt crisis in Europe already is hurting U.S. firms and is likely to continue, according to a special question in the latest survey, conducted between Sept. 20 and Oct. 5. Twenty percent of participants reported developments in Europe have led to as much as a 10 percent drop in sales so far this year.
This is not a surprise. Aside from signing the three free trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, the Obama administration has done everything wrong with respect to stimulating economic growth – the necessary precursor for private sector job creation.
