UPDATE: My play-by-play transcript of the Biola debate is here.
Over on Apologetics 315, I’ve found links to video and and audio from the recent debate panel from the Christian Book Expo in Dallas, TX. This is a useful preview for the upcoming debate on April 4, 2009 between Christopher Hitchens and William Lane Craig.
Below is a summary of the initial 4-minute speeches of all of the participants, in order of speaking:
Lee Strobel
1. There are good arguments for the existence of God:
creation out of nothing (the big bang)
cosmic fine-tuning
biological information (DNA, etc.)
consciousness (intentionality)
free will
historicity of the resurrection
2. Christianity makes a positive difference on people’s lives.
Christopher Hitchens
1. Christianity is not needed for personal morality or social cohesion.
2. Christian stories are not unique, they are paralleled in other religious. Therefore, they are not historical, but invented.
3. Christian leaders say and do things that are harmful, but also inconsistent with their stated beliefs.
William Lane Craig
1. There are good arguments for the existence of God:
the contingency argument
creation out of nothing
cosmic fine-tuning
the argument from objective moral values
the argument from objective moral duties
the ontological argument
historicity of the resurrection
religious experience (in the absence of any defeaters)
James Denison
1. It is not effective to argue against religion in general by citing the specific bad behaviors of certain religious people in a variety of religions.
Doug Wilson
1. Rational thought is not compatible with atheism, because atheism is committed to materialism. If human behavior are totally determined by chemical reactions, then it is not possible for humans to reason about the world.
Further study
To read more about these arguments, please see my index of arguments used in debates. To see an analysis of Hitchens’ case that he used in his recent debate with Frank Turek, click here.
Those of you who have been reading the blog know that the blog is split between Christian apologetics and policy analysis. Here’s a little list of the topics that I have touched on related to Christian apologetics, with topics yet to appear later in italics.
This is a follow-up to my previous post on Walter Bradley’s lecture about the scientific evidence for an Creator and Designer of the universe. Dr. Walter L. Bradley (C.V. here) is the Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor, and a great example of the integration of Christian faith and a stellar academic career.
Is there truth in religion?
Another one of Bradley’s lectures is on the question “Is There Objective Truth in Religion?“. In the lecture, he describes a book by Mortimer Adler, called “Truth in Religion”. In the book, Adler makes a distinction between two kinds of “truth”.
Trans-cultural truth – also known as objective truth. This is Adler’s term for the correspondence theory of truth. A claim is true if and only if it is made true by corresponding to the state of affairs in the mind-independent external world. It is irrelevant who makes the claim. The claim is either true or false for everyone, e.g. – “the ice cream is on the table”. Either it is, or it isn’t, for everyone.
Cultural truth – also known as subjective truth. This is Adler’s term for claims that are arbitrarily true for individual and groups of subjects. For example, your personal preference for a certain flavor of ice cream, or the cultural preference for a certain style of dress or cooking. The claim is true for the person or group, e.g. – “I/we prefer chocolate ice cream and wearing tuxedos”.
The question that Bradley addresses in the lecture is: are religious claims trans-cultural truth or cultural truth?
Why do people want to believe that religious truth claims are subjective?
People want to believe that religious truth claims are subjective because religious claims differ, and people lack the courage to tell some group of people that their beliefs about the world are wrong. By reducing religion to personal preference, no one is wrong, because everyone who believes in any religion, or no religion, is just expressing their own personal preferences.
But, if religious truth claims are trans-cultural claims, e.g. – the universe began to exist, then some religions are going to be wrong, because religions disagree about reality. It’s possible that no religion is right, or that one religion is right, but it is not possible that they are all right because there is only one reality shared by all people. Religions make contradictory claims about reality – so they can’t all be true.
Suppose religious claims are trans-cultural? How would you test those claims?
I credit E.J. Carnell with a test for truth that I still use today. It is the same test used by Adler and Bradley.
Logical consistency (the claim cannot violate the law of non-contradiction)
Empirical verification (the claim is verified against the external world)
Adler says that other trans-cultural truth claims, such as those from math and science, must all pass the test for logical consistency, as a minimum. And so with religion, if it is like math and science. Once a proposition passed the test of the law of non-contradiction, then you can proceed to step 2 and see if it is empirically verified.
Adler surveys all the major religions in his book, and concludes that only 3 of them – Judaism, Islam and Christianity – pass the test of the law of non-contradiction. He ends the book by recommending to seekers that they proceed to evaluate the historical claims of these 3 religions, in order to see which if any passes the empirical tests.
Conclusion
Bradley concludes with the claim of the resurrection of Jesus could be investigated using historical methods, in order to decide which of these 3 religions might be true, if any. He also mentions the stories of a few people who performed the investigation and changed their initial opinion of the resurrection in the face of the historical evidence.
WINTERY KNIGHT 