Tag Archives: Bible

Commentary

Opening speeches from the Flannagan-Bradley debate on morality

17 Comments

Details of the debate.

Raymond Bradley and Matthew Flannagan will debate the topic “Is God the Source of Morality? Is it rational to ground right and wrong in commands issued by God?”

Bradley is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy with areas of specialty in Philosophical Logic, Metaphysics, Logical Atomism; he has previously debated William Lane Craig, Edward Blaiklock and many other Christian scholars and describes himself as an older generation “new atheist”.

Matthew FlannaganFlannagan is an Auckland based Philosopher and Theologian with areas of specialty in Philosophy of Religion, Ethics and Theology; he has previously debated Bill Cooke, Zoe During and, of course, writes for this blog.

Matt posted both opening speeches on the MandM blog.

Opening speech by Ray Bradley.

Excerpt:

I’m going to indict God on four categories of charges. Each category has scores, if not hundreds or thousands of instances. If God is guilty of even one of these instances, that alone would be grounds for his conviction. Drawing upon evidence provided by God himself in his so-called Holy Scriptures, I hold that he’s guilty of them all.

  • Crimes against Humanity
  • War Crimes
  • Licensing Moral Mayhem and Murder
  • Crimes of Torture

Matt went second and responded to this argument.

Opening speech by Matthew Flannagan.

Matt defends a divine command theory of morality and he has 3 responses to Ray:

  • The theist can deny that the Biblical record of what God did is infallible
  • God’s moral duties are for humans, they are not necessarily binding on God
  • Ray misinterprets the meaning and applicability of the Bible stories he cites

I recommend reading the two opening speeches now so you’re ready for when the full video comes out. Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 tells me that he has asked for the video and it should be posted soon. I will link to the video when it comes out.

Flannagan is awesome and you need to start to get familiar with him even though he is in New Zealand. He’s basically the William Lane Craig of New Zealand, and probably that whole area of the world. I don’t know any Australian scholars who are as capable as Matt. I must mention though that I do disagree with him on annihilationism, the view he articulates in this debate.

UPDATE: The audio has now been posted. (H/T Jason from Thinking Matters NZ)

Further study

And here is a blog post on Ray Bradley written by another New Zealander, theistic philosopher Glenn Peoples. Glenn’s post is short and to the point – he excerpts the main argument from a post by Bradley against the moral argument and shows why it has no force.

And you can read more about William Lane Craig’s debate with Ray Bradley on Hell, too.

Commentary

Is Bart Ehrman interested in encouraging critical thinking?

Leave a comment

From one of my favorite historians Darrell Bock. (H/T Lex Communis)

Basically, Ehrman in one of his widely-used books, gives a case against Mark being the author of the gospel of Mark, but he doesn’t take into account the criterion of embarrassment, which is one of the ways you can decide if historical claims are accurate. If a claim or tradition embarrasses the author of the tradition or claim, then it’s likely to be true. For example, the discovery of the empty tomb by women is very likely to be authentic, because the testimony of women was not highly regarded in that time and place. The church would not have invented female discoverers of the empty tomb – because it made their witness less effective.

Darrell Bock writes:

I am quite aware that many think the internal evidence is against such an authorship claim for Mark (and Ehrman does present those arguments). Those arguments can be addressed. So given a fair debate over the issues that lead one to think about who wrote a gospel, here is a point the claim Mark did not write the gospel has to deal with. What commends Mark as the author, if we are going to simply pick someone to enhance the reputation of a gospel when no one supposedly who knows the author is (which is what the alternative view claims is the situation)? What is Mark’s reputation? He failed to survive the first missionary journey and caused a split between Paul and Barnabas according to Acts. So how does randomly attaching his name to the book enhance that gospel’s credibility? Such a theory does not work here.

Mark’s reputation, such as it was, on its own does not enhance the credibility of the work. More than that, the tradition also consistently associated Peter with Mark, so why was this gospel not simply called the Gospel of Peter, if one is free to name any author the church could choose? Given a choice between Peter and Mark on the basis of reputation, Peter would be the obvious choice.

Something else must be at work, namely, a tradition careful about who it called an author, naming someone who in this case had an otherwise less than stellar resume. Arguments like the ones I just noted go completely ignored in his volume (and these are fair historical questions). So user beware that if you are being asked to use this text in a college class, some key points are not even being raised.

What I like about this is that I know Lex Communis is a Catholic blog, yet here he is citing Darrell Bock, an evangelical Christian! That’s good.

Actually, the Lex Communis post says:

I originally like Bart Ehrman’s work.  I thought that his courses on the Teaching Company were very good.  However, as I’ve listened to Ehrman’s popular stuff, such as his debates and interviews, I’ve come to wonder how much I can trust Ehrman.  Simply put, Ehrman says stuff that he knows is either overstated or wrong.

It’s not just me who says this.  William Lane Craig points out that there is a “Good Bart” and a “Bad Bart.”  “Bad Bart” will make the claim in popular circles that there are more errors in the Bible than there are words, and will foster the impression that we really can’t know for sure what the original text said.  However, when called out on it, “Good Bart” will forthrightly admit that we actually do know what the original text said and that the “errors” can be corrected or aren’t all that significant.

I cataloged the actual “variants” of substance that Bart listed in a debate when Peter Williams challenged him on it, a while back. There were four variants, and none of them mattered. He’s made a whole career on marginal trivia because bashing Christianity pays big bucks. He’s not a scholar, he’s a propagandist.

This is why it is important to watch people like Bart Ehrman, Dan Brown and Michael Moore in formal academic debates. These people aren’t honest seekers of truth. And the only way to catch them in their misrepresentations and counterfactual assertions is to have someone there to challenge them.

Further study

The top 10 links to help you along with your learning.

  1. How every Christian can learn to explain the resurrection of Jesus to others
  2. The earliest source for the minimal facts about the resurrection
  3. The earliest sources for the empty tomb narrative
  4. Who were the first witnesses to the empty tomb?
  5. Did the divinity of Jesus emerge slowly after many years of embellishments?
  6. What about all those other books that the Church left out the Bible?
  7. Assessing Bart Ehrman’s case against the resurrection of Jesus
  8. William Lane Craig debates radical skeptics on the resurrection of Jesus
  9. Did Christianity copy from Buddhism, Mithraism or the myth of Osiris?
  10. Quick overview of N.T. Wright’s case for the resurrection

Debates are a fun way to learn

Three debates where you can see this play out:

Or you can listen to my favorite debate on the resurrection.

Extra stuff

A lecture on Bart Ehrman by William Lane Craig.

Podcasts

MUST-HEAR: A great debate on whether the Bible condones slavery

49 Comments

From Justin Brierley and the Unbelievable radio show, also known as the “If You Like” radio show.

Topic: “Does the Bible Condone Slavery?”

The MP3 file is here.

Details:

The Bible is often criticised for either supporting or not condemning the institution of slavery.  So how should we treat portions of Scripture in both the Old and New Testaments that relate to slavery?  Why does the Old Testament contain laws regarding the treatment of slaves? Does Paul condemn or affirm the institution?

Bob Price is a former US church minister whose doubts about the Bible led him to ultimately reject evangelical Christian faith.  He says that the Bible is a book that reflects the time it was written in.  Slavery was acceptable and the early Christians regrettably followed suit, and did not challenge the prevailing status quo.

David Instone-Brewer is a New Testament Scholar at Tyndale House, Cambridge.  He says that, in its cultural context, the Bible goes as far as it can towards an anti-slavery message and that Christians have been at the forefront of anti-slavery movements.

My previous post on this topic is here.

My thoughts

This debate is the greatest debate I have heard in months! This is that Robert M. Price guy who is an expert in the historical Jesus who hates evangelical Christianity and has 2 PhDs. He’s extremely radical. But in this debate he was totally awesome. He was so easy to listen to, and he made perfect sense. Everything he said was moderate and reasonable.

And the Christian guy that Justin lined up was solid and well-prepared. About two-thirds of the time, the Christian they get is some useless pastor with no training. But this time Justin got a great scholar – winsome and informed. He made our side look good.

Related goodness

I noticed that Brian Auten linked to this Tawapologetics review of Rodney Stark’s book on history and Christianity, and it includes a section on Christianity and the practice of slavery. In my home, we have all of Rodney Stark’s books on our bookshelf.

Here are the main points from the slavery part:

  • First, slavery has been an institution in human cultures since before the Egyptian pyramids, all around the world.
  • Second, while European nations did delve into widespread slavery, the Church was hardly complicit in the practice.
  • Third, how monotheism provided the moral framework to condemn and outlaw slavery.
  • Fourth, details on the formation of the anti-slavery movement and Christianity’s involvement in it.
  • Fifth, enlightened secularism had little impact on the abolitionist cause.

I knew some of that stuff already from reading about the history of slavery and the abolition movement in Thomas Sowell books. But if you don’t know about it, you should read the book review.