Here are some interviews on a variety of topics of interest. (H/T Brian Auten of Apologetics 315)
Marvin O’lasky is the interviewer. There is an audience of students from the King’s College in New York, NY.
Story here at the Ruth Institute blog.
Excerpt:
Both the family and the Church stand in the way of socialism’s triumph, former US Senator Rick Santorum told Christians gathered for the 17th International Week of Prayer and Fasting last week. The pro-life champion warned attendees, however, that both institutions are under heavy attack from Obama-administration policies.
“We are under a great assault with this President and this Congress on the issue of life. We are under a great assault, maybe even greater assault, on the foundational issue of the family,” Santorum told those gathered for the October 11 dinner at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.
And more specifically:
Santorum argued that Obama’s reforms will transform health-care into “an account in the federal government” in which “accountants” or Congress will determine how much healthcare an individual gets “as part of our budgetary process.”
Once the health-care of individuals is totally dependent on the central government, the left has secured power, Santorum explained.
[…]The Netherlands, “the most liberal country in Europe” today, Santorum said, is the only country that “did not go along with the Nazi doctors in doing sterilizations and abortions” and suffered persecution for it.
“And yet, within two generations, as a result of socialized medicine and the government’s attempt to contain costs, doctors were turned into accountants,” said Santorum.
Now in the name of cutting costs, Dutch doctors counsel assisted suicide, deny care to premature-born babies under 25 weeks, and euthanize children born disabled.
“This is the custom and the practice in socialized medicine countries, who have limits on budgets. It is simply too expensive to do it any other way,” reiterated Santorum.
Social conservatives, repeat after me: SMALL GOVERNMENT IS GOOD. Do it yourself – don’t hand your money to a bunch of secular ideologues and then hope they will take care of you. They will use that money to take care of themselves.
It’s easy! Just watch the video of his debate with William Lane Craig, who responds to Atkins’ explanation.
So, just who is this Peter Atkins, and why is he a good spokesman for atheism?
Peter William Atkins (born August 10, 1940) is an English chemist and a fellow and professor of chemistry at Lincoln College of the University of Oxford. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including Physical Chemistry, 8th ed. (with Julio de Paula of Haverford College), Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Quantum Mechanics, 4th ed. Atkins is also the author of a number of science books for the general public, including Atkins’ Molecules and Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science.
[…]Atkins is a well-known atheist and supporter of many of Richard Dawkins’ ideas. He has written and spoken on issues of humanism, atheism, and what he sees as the incompatibility between science and religion. According to Atkins, whereas religion scorns the power of human comprehension, science respects it.
[…]He was the first Senior Member for the Oxford Secular Society and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of The Reason Project, a US-based charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The organisation is led by fellow atheist and author Sam Harris.
Peter Atkins thinks that nothing exists. He thinks he doesn’t exist. He thinks that you don’t exist.
If you watch the debate in full, he also argues that objective morality doesn’t exist, and that moral values and moral obligations are illusory. That’s right: atheists cannot even make rational statements about morality because there is no such thing as an objective moral standard. This is in addition to denying the science of the creation out of nothing.
You can watch the whole debate here, posted by ChristianJR4.
And now you know why atheists like Richard Dawkins run away from debates with Christians like Stephen C. Meyer and William Lane Craig. Because he’s an atheist, and it is very difficult to defend atheism, on the merits. Atheism’s appeal is entirely psychological, not rational.
Consider this quote from an honest, respectable atheist philosopher named Thomas Nagel:
“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)
People embrace atheism for entirely psychological reasons, not on the basis of arguments and evidence. If they had the arguments and evidence, then they wouldn’t run from debates like Richard Dawkins does.
WINTERY KNIGHT 