Tag Archives: Christian

Podcasts

Frank Turek responds to Obama’s speech opposing Christian schools

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Frank Turek’s latest radio show podcast discusses Obama’s assertion that Christian schools are divisive.

Let’s start with a news story from the Daily Caller, and then we’ll review the podcast.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama suggested that religiously-affiliated and denominational schools are at the root of The Troubles, the ethnic, religious and nationalist conflict that seems to perpetually afflict Northern Ireland.

Obama made the chastising remarks in front of about 2,000 mostly young people at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall on Monday, the Scottish Catholic Observer reported.

“If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden — that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” Obama lectured.

[…]Monday’s statement is not the first time Obama has suggested that religion is a dangerous crutch.

In 2008, when he was running for president, Obama criticized unsophisticated Americans in “small towns in Pennsylvania” and the Midwest for their attachment to Christian religion and firearms.

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama famously declared, according to The Huffington Post.

I’m sure that he has no problem with Maddrassas and secular-leftist public schools, though.

Anyway, on to the podcast, and let’s see what Frank Turek makes of it.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

  • Obama’s point: he thinks that religious schools encourage division rather than cooperation
  • The point is NOT that he wants to shut down Christian education
  • His point is, though, that teaching religion in schools is a source of segregation and division
  • Obama toured Muslim countries, but he didn’t say a word about Muslim schools being divisive
  • In Ireland, the violence is not in accordance with Christianity
  • We should not judge a religion by actions that are inconsistent with that religion
  • George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
  • You can see how morality has degraded, for example in public schools, as society has become more secular
  • Our human rights and freedoms are in fact rooted in a Creator, and government should recognize that
  • Instead of being critical of religion, Obama should have emphasized the unity of Christian denominations like Thomas Jefferson
  • In order to be right with God, the essential thing is to believe that Jesus’ death is an atonement for human sinfulness
  • We should not lose sight of what we have in common with other denominations and how important those common points are
  • Augustine: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
  • The most important question for humans to ask “Does God Exist?”, because it determines whether there is meaning and purpose
  • The question cannot even be asked or debated in public (government-run) schools
  • Problem: how can our education system be sound if we do not and cannot investigate life’s most important question?
  • The answer to the question “Does God exist?” is assumed to be NO in our public / government-run school system
  • Why do parents who are forced to pay thousands of dollars for public schools go on and spend thousands more on private school?
  • It’s because everyone knows that it’s worth the money to send children to private schools, they learn more there
  • The President’s comment: denominational schools cause divisions, is itself divisive
  • Jesus himself says that Christianity will involve some appropriate divisiveness: e.g. – Matthew 10:34-38
  • See 1 Corinthians 5, Obama himself would be expelled from the church for claiming to be Christian while excusing sexual immorality

Then there is a period of people calling in and discussing the topic with Dr. Turek.

 

Polemics

Dennis Prager’s report from the recent conference on cosmic fine-tuning

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My favorite national radio show host Dennis Prager in the National Review. This is a MUST-READ. (H/T Chris S.)

Full text:

Last week, in Nice, France, I was privileged to participate along with 30 scholars, mostly scientists and mathematicians, in a conference on the question of whether the universe was designed, or at least fine-tuned, to make life, especially intelligent life. Participants — from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, and Columbia, among other American and European universities — included believers in God, agonistics, and atheists.

It was clear that the scientific consensus was that, at the very least, the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for the possibility of life. It appears that we live in a “Goldilocks universe,” in which both the arrangement of matter at the cosmic beginning and the values of various physical parameters — such as the speed of light, the strength of gravitational attraction, and the expansion rate of the universe — are just right for life. And unless one is frightened of the term, it also appears the universe is designed for biogenesis and human life.

Regarding fine-tuning, one could write a book just citing the arguments for it made by some of the most distinguished scientists in the world. Here is just a tiny sample, collated by physicist Gerald Schroeder, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he later taught physics.

Michael Turner, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab: “The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bullseye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.”

Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University: “The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly.

Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that the likelihood of the universe having usable energy (low entropy) at its creation is “one part out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123.” That is “a million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros.”

Steven Weinberg, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and an anti-religious agnostic, notes that “the existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places.”

Life of any kind. Not just life as we know it, but life of any conceivable kind.

So the fine-tuning is real. It’s mainstream science.

But then how do militant atheists like Weinberg respond to this scientific data?

Unless one is a closed-minded atheist (there are open-minded atheists), it is not valid on a purely scientific basis to deny that the universe is improbably fine-tuned to create life, let alone intelligent life.

Additionally, it is atheistic dogma, not science, to dismiss design as unscientific. The argument that science cannot suggest that intelligence comes from intelligence or design from an intelligent designer is simply a tautology. It is dogma masquerading as science.

And now, many atheist scientists have inadvertently provided logical proof of this.

They have put forward the notion of a multiverse — the idea that there are many, perhaps an infinite number of, other universes. This idea renders meaningless the fine-tuning and, of course, the design arguments. After all, with an infinite number of universes, a universe with parameters friendly to intelligent life is more likely to arise somewhere by chance.

But there is not a shred of evidence of the existence of these other universes — nor could there be, since contact with another universe is impossible.

Therefore, only one conclusion can be drawn: The fact that atheists have resorted to the multiverse argument constitutes a tacit admission that they have lost the argument about design in this universe. The evidence in this universe for design — or, if you will, the fine-tuning that cannot be explained by chance or by “enough time” — is so compelling that the only way around it is to suggest that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes.

Honest atheists — scientists and lay people — must now acknowledge that science itself argues overwhelmingly for a Designing Intelligence.

This is the same cosmic fine-tuning argument that is used by William Lane Craig in all of his debates. Are you surprised to learn that the top scientists from across the ideological spectrum agree with the fine-tuning? There is a reason why William Lane Craig can stand up in academic debates and make these arguments with confidence. The Big Bang cosmology and the fine-tuning of the Big Bang are two pieces of evidences for God’s existence that are as solid as any piece of science can be. To deny that the universe came into being out of nothing requires a leap of faith. To deny the cosmic fine-tuning also requires a leap of faith.

The simple fact of the matter is that God, in his infinite wisdom, left us this evidence which we have now discovered so that anyone who denies his existence and intelligence is without excuse. If atheists were making the decision about whether to believe in God solely based on science, then they would have to agree that the existence of God is beyond a reasonable doubt. We now know that God exists and created the universe for life for certain. The only reason to persist in unbelief now is because of non-rational concerns, e.g. – the desire to escape from moral obligations, childhood trauma, weak or absent father, etc.

You can read about some of the specific evidence for the origin of the universe out of nothing in this post, and you can read about some of the specific evidence for fine-tuning in this post.

Polemics

How to respond to postmodernism, relativism, subjectivism, pluralism and skepticism

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Four articles from Paul Copan over at the UK site “BeThinking”. Each article responds to a different slogan that you might hear if you’re dealing with non-Christians on the street.

“That’s just your interpretation!”

Some of his possible responses:

  • Gently ask, ‘Do you mean that your interpretation should be preferred over mine? If so, I’d like to know why you have chosen your interpretation over mine. You must have a good reason.’
  • Remind your friend that you are willing to give reasons for your position and that you are not simply taking a particular viewpoint arbitrarily.
  • Try to discern if people toss out this slogan because they don’t like your interpretation. Remind them that there are many truths we have to accept even if we don’t like them.
  • ‘There are no facts, only interpretations’ is a statement that is presented as a fact. If it is just an interpretation, then there is no reason to take it seriously.

More responses are here.

“You Christians are intolerant!”

Some of his possible responses:

  • If you say that the Christian view is bad because it is exclusive, then you are also at that exact moment doing the very thing that you are saying is bad. You have to be exclusive to say that something is bad, since you exclude it from being good by calling it bad.
  • There is a difference, a clear difference between tolerance and truth. They are often confused. We should hold to what we believe with integrity but also support the rights of others to disagree with our viewpoint.
  • Sincerely believing something doesn’t make it true. You can be sincere, but sincerely wrong. If I get onto a plane and sincerely believe that it won’t crash then it does, then my sincerity is quite hopeless. It won’t change the facts. Our beliefs, regardless of how deeply they are held, have no effect on reality.

More responses are here.

“That’s true for you, but not for me!”

Some of his possible responses:

  • If my belief is only true for me, then why isn’t your belief only true for you? Aren’t you saying you want me to believe the same thing you do?
  • You say that no belief is true for everyone, but you want everyone to believe what you do.
  • You’re making universal claims that relativism is true and absolutism is false. You can’t in the same breath say, ‘Nothing is universally true’ and ‘My view is universally true.’ Relativism falsifies itself. It claims there is one position that is true – relativism!

More responses are here.

“If you were born in India, you’d be a Hindu!”

Some of his possible responses:

  • Just because there are many different religious answers and systems doesn’t automatically mean pluralism is correct.
  • If we are culturally conditioned regarding our religious beliefs, then why should the religious pluralist think his view is less arbitrary or conditioned than the exclusivist’s?
  • If the Christian needs to justify Christianity’s claims, the pluralist’s views need just as much substantiation.

More responses are here.

And a bonus: “How do you know you’re not wrong?“.

Being a Christian is fun because you get to think about things at the same deep level that you think about anything else in life. Christianity isn’t about rituals, community and feelings. It’s about truth.

In case you want to see this in action with yours truly, check this out.