Tag Archives: Apologetics

Podcasts

The Antagonist Atheist debates pastor David Robertson on the New Atheism

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This is a must-hear podcast from Justin Brierley and the Unbelievable radio show. (H/T Dina)

Details:

Mike Lee aka “The Religious Antagonist” is a US atheist who makes YouTube videos mocking Christianity. His videos are popular but his approach earns him both praise and criticism from fellow atheists. David Robertson is Pastor of St Peter’s Free Church, Dundee and director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity. He often interacts with atheists online and has earned himself the title “the wee flea” for his provocative interactions on the Dawkins website. David and Mike debate whether Mike’s approach is a helpful one. David accuses Mike of emotional atheism and an incoherent view of Christianity. Mike says mocking Christianity is the best way of policing its power in the US.

The MP3 file is here.

Justin Brierley does a great job of moderating this one. If you like the debates with Lawrence Krauss and Peter Atkins, you will LOVE this debate. The debate is 60 minutes long and worth every minute. This debate is suitable for complete beginners to apologetics.

SUMMARY:

Atheist:
– hypocrisy caused him to become an atheist
– why he takes the “antagonistic” approach to atheistic evangelism
– the antagonistic approach is emotionally driven
– the antagonistic approach is not driven by science or evidence

Theist:
– should we be concerned that antagonism provokes violence?

Atheist:
– no the antagonist approach is valid

Moderator:
– what about the video where you ask the homeless man to deny God for $20?

Atheist:
– that’s to show how stupid Christians are that they don’t deny God for money

Theist:
– do you really think it is stupid to deny God for $20?

Atheist:
– it’s common sense for Christians to deny God for $20

Theist:
– so the common sense approach to life is to accept money to insult God?

Atheist:
– anyone who doesn’t take money to insult God is uneducated and ignorant

Theist:
– isn’t there someone who you would refuse to insult for $20

Atheist:
– i would do anything – ANYTHING – that is legal in order to get $20

Theist:
– holy snark

Moderator:
– do you think that your video makes atheism look good?
– do you think that maybe you were udnermining their humanity?

Atheist:
– I didn’t mean to appear smug by insulting poor peopel for not blaspheming God
– it’s stupid to put your relationship with God ahead of your own happiness
– wouldn’t you two insult God for $20?

Theist:
– I would not insult God for a million dollars
– there is more to life than money and the things that money can buy
– the earliest christians were willing to go to their deaths to stay faithful to god
– they refused to confess allegiance to the emperor of rome to save their own lives
– there is a crassness to modern society such that we value money over honor and self-respect

=== BREAK ===

Theist:
– yes there is hypocrisy on the Christian side
– is there any hypocrisy on the atheistic side?

Atheist:
– yes there is hypocrisy on the atheist side

Theist:
– if hypocrisy is ground for rejecting Christianity, then why not reject atheism

Atheist:
– well you can’t compare Christianity and atheism that way

Theist:
– why not? they are both worldviews

Atheist:
– Atheism is just a philosophy not a religion

Theist:
– are you antagonistic to all religions?

Atheist:
– only to religions that have power in the public square

Theist:
– so do you also oppose groups that

Athist:
– only groups that use power that attack human rights?

Theist:
– what are those?

Atheist:
– treat others as you would like to be treated
– we all have a human right not to be judged by others as unequal

Theist:
– well you mock others, would you like it if they mocked you

Atheist:
– yes mocking is a great weapon against preposterous ideas
– it’s good to laugh at others who you disagree with

Theist:
– what about laughing at other ethinic groups and races, is that OK?

Atheist:
– no that’s not OK

Theist:
– so it’s ok to mock Christians, but not ok to mock other religions or races

Atheist:
– it’s not ok to blacks, jews or gays because they are all born that way

Theist:
– why did you quote Jesus as the authority on human rights?

Atheist:
– I wish Christians would act more like Jesus

Theist:
– you mean the Jesus who preaches on Hell and the radical self-sacrifice on the sermon on the mount

Atheist:
– Jesus didn’t really say that mean stuff just the nice stuff

=== SKIPPING ===

Moderator:
– do you think that making fun of people is going to make people change their minds

Atheist:
– well you have to subsitute insults for arguments when you are in the minority
– i am acting heroically when I insult people and laugh at them – it’s a civil rights movement

Moderator:
– what about Martin Luther King? he was in the minority and didn’t insult people

Atheist:
– well I agree with his views on equality, but not the religious underpinings of those views

Theist:
– but his views on equality are grounded in hist Christian worldview

Atheist:
– atheism works best when it is kept at the emotional level
– atheism is better when you speak at the level of the average person, not at the PhD level

Theist:
– you say that atheism doesn’t claim to have the answers
– but people like Dawkins do claim to know how we got here

Atheist:
– well if tomorrow, Christianity were proved true, all atheists would convert
– but if tomorrow, the Big Bang theory were proved true, then Christians would not convert

Theist:
– the Big Bang theory supports the Christian version of origins not atheism
– atheists would absolutely not convert if they found out Christianity is true
– you admitted that atheism is largely driven by emotion
– atheists would not respond to overwhelming evidence if it appeared

Moderator:
– didn’t Christopher Hitchens say that even if he met God face to face he would reject him?
– atheists wouldn’t follow God even if they met him because he represents authority and they don’t want authority

Atheist:
– if God does exist, then I doubt he’s really worth worshiping
– God is the biggest jerk in the universe
– God’s job is to make us all have happy feelings no matter what we do and he’s failing at that
– God’s job is to make the world safe enough for us to ignore him and he’s failing at that
– Heaven is OK if it means being able to drink (alcohol) with your friends and hanging out with people you like
– Hell is OK if “the bad people” end up there

Moderator:
– but what if Heaven is populated by bad people who said yes to Jesus, would you still want to go then?

Atheist:
– that’s one of the things that is wrong with God, that he forgives people who do bad things
– it makes no sense that people who accept God and repent after doing really bad things should go to Heaven
– it makes no sense that people like Christopher Hitchens who spit on God and his moral law should go to Hell

Theist:
–  how can you talk about concepts of justice and goodness as if they are real, on atheism?
– on your view, you have no standing to make judgments about good, evil and justice
– on atheism, good and evil are just arbitrary constructs that vary by place and time between various groups of people
– do you think that objective morality exists – that there are things that are right and wrong?

Atheist:
– i don’t believe  in objective morality, I believe in social construct morality that we define

Theist:
– how can you say that anything is right or wrong if those concepts are arbitrary

Atheist:
– well some things in the Bible are wrong like X and Y

Theist:
– the Bible doesn’t actually say X or say Y
– but you can’t even judge that the Bible is wrong on anything unless you admit there is a real right and wrong
– even Richard Dawkins says that on atheist there “no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference”
– when you make judgments as an atheist, you are saying that your opinions are the standard  that everyone else is accountable to
– that is extraordinarily arrogant

== And so on ==

 

 

Mentoring

Marriage advice from Christian philosopher William Lane Craig

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Here is a question of the week from Dr. Craig on “Marriage Advice”!

Here’s the question:

Dear Dr. Craig,

Marriage is in the foreseeable future, and I would like to ask you for any advice before it happens. Can we avoid any mistakes? Would it be helpful to meet with a pastor for premarital counseling? Are there any helpful tips you could give from a Christian perspective or from your own experience?

Thank you in advance!

Zareen

Here are the main pieces of advice Dr. Craig gives:

  1. Resolve that there will be no divorce
  2. Delay having children
  3. Confront problems honestly
  4. Seek marital counseling
  5. Take steps to build intimacy in your relationship

And here’s the controversial one (#2):

2. Delay having children. The first years of marriage are difficult enough on their own without introducing the complication of children. Once children come, the wife’s attention is necessarily diverted, and huge stresses come upon you both. Spend the first several years of marriage getting to know each other, working through your issues, having fun together, and enjoying that intimate love relationship between just the two of you. Jan and I waited ten years before having our first child Charity, which allowed me the finish graduate school, get our feet on the ground financially, establish some roots, and enjoy and build our love relationship until we were really ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. The qualifier here is that if the wife desperately wants children now, then the husband should accede to her wish to become a mother, rather than withhold that from her. Her verdict should be decisive. But if you both can agree to wait, things will probably be much easier.

I wonder if the married readers agree with him about the “waiting at least a year after marriage bafore having children”?

News

How to respond to an atheist who complains about slavery in the Bible

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I often hear atheists going on and on about how the Bible has this evil and that evil. Their favorite one seems to be slavery. Here are three things I say to atheists when they push this objection.

The Bible and slavery

First, you should explain to them what the Bible actually says about slavery. And then tell them about the person responsible for stopping slavery in the UK: a devout evangelical named William Wilberforce.

Here’s an article that works.

Excerpt:

We should compare Hebrew debt-servanthood (many translations render this “slavery”) more fairly to apprentice-like positions to pay off debts — much like the indentured servitude during America’s founding when people worked for approximately 7 years to pay off the debt for their passage to the New World. Then they became free.

In most cases, servanthood was more like a live-inemployee, temporarily embedded within the employer’s household. Even today, teams trade sports players to another team that has an owner, and these players belong to a franchise. This language hardly suggests slavery, but rather a formal contractual agreement to be fulfilled — like in the Old Testament.3

Second, inform them that moral values are not rationally grounded on atheism. In an accidental universe, there is no way we ought to be. There is no design for humans that we have to comply with. There are no objective human rights, like the right to liberty (that would block slavery) or the right to life (that would block  abortion). Although you may find that most atheists act nicely, the ones who really understand what atheism means and live it out consistently are not so nice.

Atheism and moral judgments

Second, inform them that moral values are not rationally grounded on atheism. In an accidental universe, there is no way we ought to be. There is no design for humans that we have to comply with. There are no objective human rights, like the right to liberty (that would block slavery) or the right to life (that would block  abortion). Although you may find that most atheists act nicely, the ones who really understand what atheism means and live it out consistently are not so nice.

Dawkins has previously written this:

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)

When people like Dawkins talk about morality, you have to understand that they are pretending. To them, morality is just about personal preferences and cultural conventions. They just think that questions of right and wrong are arbitrary. Things that are wrong in one time and place are right in another. Every view is as right as any other, depending on the time and place. That’s atheist morality.

What’s worse than slavery? Abortion!

Third, you should ask the atheist what he has done to oppose abortion. Abortion is worse than slavery, so if they are sincere in thinking that slavery is wrong, then they ought to think that abortion is wrong even more. So ask them what they’ve done to oppose the practice of abortion. That will tell you how sincere they are about slavery.

Here’s Richard Dawkins explaining what he’s done to stop abortion:

That’s right. The head atheist supports killing born children.