Tag Archives: Christian Apologetics

Videos

The return of William Lane Craig videos to Youtube

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A while back, the channel that hosted many of Dr. Craig’s debates was shut down. But nothing to fear, it’s back up now, and being managed by Reasonable Faith.

The full list of 900 videos is here, and there is also a list of 97 playlists for longer videos. You can find even more videos on ChristianJR4’s Youtube channel.

One of the nice things about the channel’s new management is that they do not allow comments on Youtube. I think that is a wise decision, and I hope they stick with it. You won’t hear the same quality of argument at the lay-level of atheism that you hear at the lay-level of Christianity. Lay atheists typically don’t try to make formal arguments against God’s existence based on evidence, whereas more of the Christian rank and file have read basic stuff like Lee Strobel books and they sound pretty much like a William Lane Craig clone, if given the opportunity to debate. Unless you go to the level of a Peter Millican or a Walter Sinnott-Armstrong or a Paul Draper, you’re not going to hear anything compelling from most atheists.

Here’s a new lecture on the moral argument that I found, which I had not seen before.

Details:

Is morality objective? Or is it subjective and relative? Is there such things as moral absolutes? Dr. William Lane Craig answers these questions and argues that if objective morals exists, then God exists.

The lecture was given at the First Baptist Church of Colleyville, Texas in their “Faith and Reason” class. Churches seem to be getting more and more into this sort of thing these days, and that’s a good thing. If you just watch the first video, and see the church leader charge his flock to get ready to think carefully about apologetics, it’s a good thing. I feel encouraged by it, but it’s becoming more common for churches to take the intellectual approach, even as thinking is dying in the secular world.

The play list is here.

Here are the 5 parts:

Part 1 of 5:

Part 2 of 5:

Part 3 of 5:

Part 4 of 5:

Part 5 of 5:

The total time is one hour and 7 minutes, and there is Q&A at the end.

By the way, now may be a good time to mention that in the last year, the two leading atheistic web sites on the web, Common Sense Atheism (#1) and Debunking Christianity (#2) have both ceased operations, except as archives of past activity. My take on this? I think that atheism as a worldview is dying out because it is just too difficult for them to defend a worldview that is contradicted by cosmology and astrophysics. At the very least, the good scientific evidence we have from the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, the galactic habitability, the stellar habitability, the Cambrian era fossils, etc., show that there is at least a deistic God.

There are still fair-minded agnostics and open-minded atheists who haven’t heard anyone make the case for theism to them out there. And that’s something for Christians to address with their evangelistic efforts. But for atheist activists who know about the scientific evidence from William Lane Craig debates and elsewhere, atheism is no longer a viable worldview. I think it remains as a non-rational personal preference, but it’s not something you can really argue rationally with anyone who follows the progress of science. The only question to decide now is which version of monotheism is true: deism, Christianity, Judaism or Islam. Since Islam is extremely easy to disprove on historical grounds, there are only three live options: deism, Christianity and Judaism.

Commentary

Melanie Phillips: The real intolerance comes from secularism

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Here’s a great post by conservative British journalist Melanie Phillips. (I think she is Jewish, by the way)

Excerpt:

I have a rather different take on this great division of our age. My view is that while we may be in a post-biblical — and post-moral — age, we have not disposed of belief. Far from it. We have just changed what we believe in. Our society may have junked the Judaeo-Christian foundations of the West for secularism. But this has given rise to a set of other religions. Secular religions. Anti-religion religions.

These are also based on a set of dogmas. They proselytise. They involve faith. But unlike the Judaeo-Christian thinking they usurp, these secular anti-religions suspend truth and reason. What’s more, I would say that it was the Judaic foundations of the West which, far from denying reason, gave the world both reason and science in the first place.

God has been pronounced dead, and in his place have come man-made ideologies — in which people worship not a divine presence but an idea.

These ideas, which brook no dissent, give rise inescapably to intolerance and indeed to tyranny. Indeed, they are far more tyrannical in their effect than the God of the Hebrew Bible who gets such a bad press for being so authoritarian. In fact, he has a truly terrible time getting his way. His people are always complaining, refusing to do what he tells them, blaming him for everything and always, always arguing with him. But ideologies which represent the will of man bend everything to the governing idea, which cannot be gainsaid. There can be no argument with them.

Rather than being rational, I suggest these are irrational; not tolerant at all, but deeply illiberal; not open to other ideas, but as dogmatic as any medieval pope. Indeed, these atheistic ideologies are reminiscent not just of religion but of medieval persecutions, witch-hunts and inquisitions.

Let me illustrate all this with an anecdote. After a debate in which he took part some time ago, I pressed Richard Dawkins on his belief that the origin of all matter was most likely to have been an entirely spontaneous event — which meant he therefore surely believed that something could be created out of nothing. Since this ran counter to the scientific principle of verifiable evidence which he tells us should govern all our thinking, this itself seemed to be precisely the kind of irrationality which he scorns.

In reply, he acknowledged that I had a point but said that the alternative explanation — God — was more incredible. But then he remarked that he was not necessarily averse to the idea that life on Earth had been created by a governing intelligence — provided, however, that such an intelligence had arrived on Earth from another planet. Leaving aside the question of how that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself been created in the first place, I put it to him that he appeared to be saying that “little green men” provided a more plausible explanation for the origin of life on Earth than God. Strangely, he didn’t react to this well at all.

However, Dawkins is not the first scientist to have suggested this. It is a theory which was put forward by no less than Professor Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA.

A committed atheist, Francis Crick found it impossible to believe that DNA could have been the product of evolution. In 1973, Crick and the chemist Leslie Orgel published a paper in the journal Icarus suggesting that life may have arrived on Earth through “directed panspermia”. According to this theory, micro-organisms were supposed to have travelled in the head of an unmanned spaceship sent to Earth by a higher civilisation which had developed elsewhere some billions of years ago. The spaceship was unmanned so that its range would be as great as possible. Life started here when these organisms were dropped into the primitive ocean and began to multiply. Subsequently, Crick abandoned this theory and returned to the idea of the spontaneous origin of life from purely natural mechanisms.

How can someone so committed to reason be so irrational as to entertain such a fantasy?

What I found great about this article is that even though Melanie Phillips is a popular columnist, she actually deals with evidence when talking about God. So often on Christian blogs, you can read tons of posts that are really just inside baseball for Christians. It’s just pablum or lists of todos. The right way to talk about God is by talking about the evidence. Even Melanie Phillips sees that. Why don’t we?

I think we need to be very forthright when speaking with atheists and call them out for what they are. They are the people who hate astrophysics, and despise the Big Bang cosmology. They are the believers in the unobservable, untestable multiverse. They are the believers in the unobservable, untestable aliens who seed the Earth with life. They are the believers in the as-yet-undiscovered Cambrian precursor fossils. They believe that material processes can somehow produce creatures that have free will and consciousness. They are the ones who think that right and wrong are purely arbitrary – matters of opinion that are decided one way or the other in different times and places. They are the ones who believe that when you die, you are not accountable for anything you’ve done, and nothing that you’ve done has ultimate meaning. Let’s be up front about all of that, and hold them accountable for their anti-science, anti-morality, anti-human views. And let’s hold them accountable for running away from debates with their tails between their legs – like that coward Richard Dawkins did.

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 ==