Tag Archives: Apologetics

Videos

Paul Gould at the University of Toronto: Does Jesus answer life’s biggest questions?

1 Comment

(72 minutes)

A friend of mine sent me a link to this lecture, and he says the Q&A is dynamite.

Here’s the description:

What is the meaning of my life? What is my purpose? What happens after I die? How do I know what is true? How should I live? Why? What does Jesus have to do with my everyday life? Does he answer life’s biggest questions? If he does is there evidence for this?

On Feb 12, 2015 at the University of Toronto, Dr. Paul Gould gave a compelling case for why Jesus answers life’s biggest questions and he also answered a number of tough and interesting questions in the Question and Answer Period.

This lecture is part of a series called “God + Reason: A Christian Perspective” (http://www.bitly.com/godandreasonpt1).

In this series professors, thinkers, academics, or graduate students give reasons why they trust in God and address objections to trusting in God.

SPEAKER’S BIO:

Dr. Paul Gould is a philosopher, a scholar, a teacher, a husband, a father, and a follower of Jesus Christ. He believes that Jesus is humanity’s greatest need and our highest good. As C.S. Lewis, puts it:

“God wills our good, and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces.”

So, God wills our good–and our good is to love Him–and to love Him is to know Him. His passion in life is to present to the world Jesus–in all his brilliance and beauty.

He received his MA in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University and a PhD in Philosophy from Purdue University.

Dr. Paul Gould is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Christian Apologetics at Southwestern Theological Seminary.

He is married to Ethel and has four wonderful children.

EMCEE’S BIO:

Mark Sutherland received his BEng in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and is currently a masters student in Applied Science (Computer Engineering) at the University of Toronto.

My friend also noted that Dr. Gould has an article up on his web site on the same topic as the lecture that lays out all the questions he covered in the lecture.

It says:

Is there a God? Yes, and he loves and pursues you.

What is the nature of Reality? It is enchanted, a world of rich physical, aesthetic and moral beauty.

What is the purpose of the universe? For God to spread his joy and delight and love and you to find happiness in creaturely response.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

Why am I here? Because God created me.

Does prayer work? Yes, God is ever present and involved in your life, even when you don’t know it.

Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Yes, you are essentially a soul that has a body, you will live forever.

Is there free will? Yes, we are self-determiners of our action and our character.

What happens when we die? We enter into eternal life, either with God in heaven or without God in hell.

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is objective morality, the right is what God commands and the wrong is what God prohibits; the good is that which God has created, the bad that which sin has corrupted.

Why should I be moral? Because it is good in itself and for what it brings (as Plato puts it in the Republic).

Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? There is a moral law, not everything is permissible, nor is everything forbidden.

What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the one thing that can never hurt anyone, although it may cost dearly.

Does history have any meaning or purpose? Yes, there is meaning and purpose to everything.

Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Yes, and we’d be wise to listen to them.

Paul Gould is one of my favorite Christian scholars – he comes from a business background and has a real heart for evangelism. We also agree that the “top-down” approach to having an influence is the correct approach, and therefore we both see impacting young people when they are at the university as absolutely vital. There are a lot of things that are worthwhile for Christians to do, but the university is the place that creates the next generation of influential people. We have to make our stand there, whether we like it or not. Whether it feels good or not.

Videos

Robin Collins lectures on the fine-tuning argument at Pepperdine University

1 Comment

A lecture on the fine-tuning argument by an expert.

Details:

Dr. Robin Collins is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Messiah College. Collins is the foremost defender of what is known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. He has a background in both physics and philosophy and will be discussing how the specific physical constants and conditions in the universe are finely-tuned for intelligent life and how this “fine-tuning” gives us reason to believe in a Creator.

Here is the video:

Topics:

  • the constants and quantities set at the origin of the universe is fine-tuned for conscious, embodied intelligences like us
  • three kinds of fine-tuning: 1) laws of nature, 2) constants, 3) quantities
  • examples of 1): gravity, electromagnetism, strong force, quantization, Pauli exclusion principle
  • examples of 2): gravitational constant, cosmological constant,
  • examples of 3):  initial distribution of mass-energy
  • in addition to fine-tuning for life, there is also fine-tuning for discoverability
  • Naturalistic response to the evidence: the multiverse hypothesis
  • problems with the multiverse hypothesis
  • additional topics

I put the ones I am ready to speak on in bold. I recommend you learn those as well in order to illustrate the fine-tuning with evidence when you present it. The evidence is important because I’ve never found a single atheist who I discussed this with who could properly state the argument or understand the evidence. They talk about it without really understanding it, which is why we need to be ready to explain it to them.

News

Can prayer, Bible reading, church-singing and charismatic preaching stop Katy Perry’s apostasy?

10 Comments

I received an e-mail from a woman who was telling me to drop my list of 10 worldview questions and just look for a wife who reads the Bible and has feelings about Jesus.

She wrote:

My suggestion to you is to consider a top-down approach.  Just pray for God to send you your wife and pray that you recognize her immediately.  You don’t seem like you really want to remain single…and your children are missing out on having you as their dad.  Marriage is for children, remember?  I know several young ladies who know their Scripture and who love Jesus but who, I don’t think, would pass your test because, in my perception, they aren’t cerebral enough.

I get this e-mail a lot, especially from women who have married non-Christians or who are divorced. Now the whole point of the list of 10 questions is to detect women who are not going to help me to produce effective, influential Christian children. If I am going to spend north of $100,000 per child + tuition, then I expect to get some sort of return on that investment for God. That money doesn’t earn itself, and it needs to be well-spent serving God.

It’s my wife’s job to help me to do that. My goal in choosing a wife is to find a helper to make the relationship serve God. Otherwise, it’s better for God if I give that money that I worked very hard to earn directly to effective Christian scholars. I don’t have money to burn “playing house” with someone who is guided by her feelings. I can just give the money to Reasonable Faith or Discovery Institute instead.

Let’s take a look at two parents who aimed at nothing and hit it with their daughter. The two parents run a ministry that is based around passionate preaching, prayer and Bible verses.

Excerpt:

The Lord spoke to Arise International Conference host Mary Hudson to encourage women to reach their full destiny in Jesus Christ. He wants women to rise up as trailblazers, to think outside the box and be bold in Him, of course putting God first, your husband second and then your family!

Mary’s ministry of Arise! International holds annual women’s empowerment and leadership conferences in Hawaii, Belgium, Colombia, France, Switzerland, Denmark and the USA. The river of glory is rising and we must flow with it.

2012 promises to be a break-through year to Arise! in who you are in Christ. Lean on Him for direction, don’t look to man. Knowing the signs of the times and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit will be vital to being at the right place at the right time to reap the harvest of souls coming into the Kingdom.

Pray about being a part of Arise! this coming year. It just may be the meeting that propels you into the next level for your life. Remember, you are equipped with everything you need to fulfill your purpose. God’s assignments reveal your abilities and your capabilities, and He will provide both the potential and the provision to meet every assignment.

We call you blessed and highly favored!

I noticed that their “book store” offers nonsense books like this:

Keith Hudson “Looking and Seeing”:

Like this disciplined athlete, you need to learn how to look beyond your present situation and keep your eye on His Presence. God is ready to display His glory in your life as well in these last days, but it is going to take boldness for you to take the mask off and look at people and situations the way God sees them, not how man looks at them. What may stand in front of you may look too big for you to grasp; that what you see now is the way it’s always going to be. Or you look at the dream God has given you and think, “there is no way I can ever accomplish this with my resources at my age…” That is the moment you have to flip the switch from looking to seeing.

Mary Hudson “Smart Bombs”:

Smart Bombs is a book which will show you practically and with true life examples how to take God’s Word and let it explode strongholds in your life. When you read the Bible, He quickens particular passages or verses to your heart. You know it is God talking to you about your situation. Or when you receive a prophetic word, you sense in your heart this is speaking to you. But what do you do with these words when they bear witness with you? Let them fade away and disappear off of your memory? No, Smart Bombs shows you how to go on the offense with the anointed word of God, how to demolish strongholds and take back everything the enemy has stolen from you.

This easy read is a must for anyone who is looking for clarity on their destiny.

Keith Hudson “The Cry”:

The Cry will reignite you with new fire. Christians lose their passion when they let go of their zeal for God. We come into prayer meetings and we are so polished and perfected. But the Lord wants to hear the cry of your heart. The church has lost its cry: God is about to restore it. Why did the thirty people gathered for the Azusa Street revival have such a move of the spirit of God in their day? Because they had a cry in their hearts and in their prayers. The Cry will release a desperate longing in you for Gods intervention in your life. It goes way beyond your natural thinking into a spiritual hunger from your innermost being. When everything else has failed, a desperate cry touches the heart of God.

Now do you think that someone who reads books like that will produce the same kind of children as parents who read William Lane Craig, Stephen C. Meyer, Jay Richards, and Michael Licona? Of course not. Because the Hudson books are fluff and the books by real Christian scholars are not fluff.

Now let’s read an article from Christian Post about what sort of child the fluff approach produces. (H/T Mysterious Chris S.)

Excerpt:

Katy Perry, the 29-year-old singer and songwriter, is revealing that while she prays she no longer identifies with Christianity.

“I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell, or an old man sitting on a throne. I believe in a higher power bigger than me because that keeps me accountable,” she told Marie Claire magazine recently. “Accountability is rare to find, especially with people like myself, because nobody wants to tell you something you don’t want to hear.”

Perry, who took the Billboard charts by storm with her hit song “I Kissed a Girl” in 2008, told Marie Claire that she no longer considers herself a Christian despite being raised by Christian ministers.

“I’m not Buddhist, I’m not Hindu, I’m not Christian, but I still feel like I have a deep connection with God. I pray all the time – for self-control, for humility,” she told Marie Claire. “There’s a lot of gratitude in it. Just saying ‘thank you’ sometimes is better than asking for things.”

Despite her decision to perform music that may seem controversial to the Christian community, the chart-topping singer has never shied away from crediting the Christian church for giving her a start as a performer.

“The atmosphere I grew up in was 100 percent Christian,” Perry said her “Part of Me: 3D” movie which was released last year. “I started singing in the church, I never really had another plan.”

Their daughter is writing songs to promote homosexuality to young people. That’s their legacy. The legacy of spiritual gifts, God opening doors of mysticism and charismatic anti-intellectualism. That’s what they are going to present to God as their spiritual legacy. I noticed that Mary Hudson is now calling her daughter’s celebrity divorce after one year of marriage a “gift from God”. Her daughter married a heroin-addicted leftist non-Christian – but he was hawt. Tall, dark, handsome and a famous comedian, too.

The list of questions I use when courting helps me to avoid marrying a woman like Katy Perry’s mother. She could not answer any of my questions. None of them. And what’s more, she doesn’t want to answer them. She wants to live her whole life without learning how to answer them. She wants to stick with her Bible, her singing, her feelings, her passionate oratory and her crowds of gullible people. I will not marry a woman like that. It produces disaster and failure. It produces anti-Christian children.

In fact, you can’t succeed at anything worthwhile in life using the Keith and Mary Hudson approach to parenting. You can’t do a thing with that approach. Not writing software, not fixing cars, not making investments, not sending a rocket to the moon, not even evangelizing an apostate daughter. You do not want to be a Christian man who pumps 30 years of hard labor into a family that produces apostate children. If you are going to spend the money, then make sure you get the results.