Tag Archives: Dialogue

Podcasts

Two debates on Christianity and history featuring Richard Bauckham

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A leading New Testament scholar from Cambridge, Dr. Richard Bauckham, was recently on the radio program ‘Unbelievable?’ which is on the Premier Christian Radio network.

Debate 1: The reliability of the gospels

Bauckham was arguing that the Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts and therefore should be regarded as fundamentally trustworthy.

Joining him was New Testament historian Dr. James Crossley, discussing the implications of Bauckham’s work and whether the Gospel of John was written by the disciple John himself, as Bauckham claims.

It is well worth the listen.

Part 1 – (1 hr 20 mins)
Part 2 – (1 hr 20 mins)

This is a great debate between two great New Testament scholars.

Debate 2: The divinity of Jesus

The second debate concerns whether the belief in Jesus’ divinity was early and authentic, or whether it developed slowly over time. Richard is very thorough and works only with minimal facts that skeptical scholars will agree with. James Crossley is an excellent atheist and argues his side as well as any atheist I have ever heard in a debate on historical questions.

Here is the MP3 file. (Just over an hour)

Below there are speaker bios.

Richard Bauckham

You can find out more about Bauckham in this Christianity Today profile.

Summary:

The author of CT’s 2007 Book Award winner in biblical studies, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham proposes a new (or, rather, an ancient) paradigm through which to view the Gospels: as the eyewitness testimony of trustworthy insiders. Wheaton professor Gary Burge asked the St. Andrews scholar how his approach diverges from mainstream New Testament scholarship—and what it means for our understanding of Jesus.

I’m really excited by the respect he is getting in the academy. This is a completely NEW perspective on the gospels that is getting a lot of attention.

James Crossley

Crossley specializes in Mark, the earliest and most reliable gospel. Mark’s source for the Passion narrative of Jesus is dated to the 40s, about 10-20 years after the death of Jesus. Mark’s gospel is based on the eyewitness testimony of his companion Peter. So it is fun to hear them debate Mark in the first show. And they get into 1 Corinthians 15 as well, which is dated to 1-3 years after Jesus died.

Crossley debated against William Lane Craig before here and he debated against Michael Bird as well (part 1, part 2).

News

Are liberal lawyers and law professors in favor of open debate?

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Here’s a great post over at Stuart Schneiderman’s blog.

The topic of the post is a high-profile meeting  of lawyers and law professors at NYU Law School to discuss the recent Supreme Court decision that allow businesses to make political donations to candidates in the same way that trial lawyer organizations and teacher unions and abortion providers do. The meeting was supposed to be an open and honest debate on the issues. Was it?

Excerpt:

The most disturbing aspect of the meeting was that everyone took for granted that the the decision had been wrongly decided. There was no free trade in ideas about the correctness or incorrectness of the decision; only a discussion about how to overturn the decision.

In their modus operandi the assembled lawyers were ignoring the marketplace of ideas in favor of their own dogmatic beliefs. These defenders of the marketplace of ideas were constitutionally incapable of finding any merit whatever in an opposing viewpoint.

If you refuse to allow an idea (whether a policy or a belief) to be tested against reality, then the question becomes who has the strongest faith. True believers are willing to fight and die to prove that their strength is strongest, thus, most true.

[…]Why were the assembled liberal lawyers so lathered up about the Citizens United decision. Simply, because they believed, dogmatically and unthinkingly, that corporate money was fundamentally corrupt and corrupting. Corporations were sinners; they had acquired their money by less than idealist means; they had no right to try to influence the democratic political process.

Again, dogmatic belief leads to a fighting faith. Why? Perhaps they wanted to maintain their own monopoly control of correct opinion. The greatest enemy of free trade in ideas today is the monopoly on dogmatic belief that is maintained by the educational and media establishments.

Surely, opposing views are aired, through conservative talk radio and through Fox News. But these engines of the free market in ideas are often subject to attack. Those who prefer a more mercantilist, monopoly control over the marketplace in ideas, want to invoke the fairness doctrine to shut down much of conservative talk radio. They often try to discredit Fox News for trafficking in hate speech.

As several of the commenters on the Times site pointed out, none of these great legal minds seem to have the least problem with the influence that labor unions exert on elections through their political advertising. At a time when the political power of labor unions has brought states, cities, and counties to the brink of bankruptcy… lawyers are about to go to war to stop corporations from spending money on political advertising.

This post highlights a change in my own views. I once wanted to be a lawyer, you see. And my judicial philosophy was one of idealism and judicial activism. But after reading Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” three times, I am now a strict constructionist, while respecting rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Legislating from the bench now seems to me to be the wrong point of view. Injustices need to be fixed by legislators elected by the people, not by an appointed oligarchy of out-of-touch judges. So don’t ever say that I don’t change my mind when confronted with the evidence! It happens all the time. Well, sometimes.

Videos

Videos of health care summit speeches by Ryan, Blackburn, Coburn and Alexander

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Obama met with Republicans to discuss his health care plans. The Republicans selected a team of experts including three of my favorite conservatives, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Coburn and Paul Ryan. How did they do against Obama? Did we win?

Marathon Pundit has the scoop.

Selected quotes from leftists CNN:

  • CNN’S DAVID GERGEN: “Intellectually, the Republicans had the best day they’ve had in years. The best day they have had in years.” (CNN’s “The Situation Room,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s DAVID GERGEN: “The folks in the White House just must be kicking themselves right now. They thought that coming out of Baltimore when the President went in and was mesmerizing and commanding in front of the House Republicans that he could do that again here today. That would revive health care and would change the public opinion about their health care bill and they can go on to victory. Just the opposite has happened.: (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s GLORIA BORGER: “The Republicans have been very effective today. They really did come to play. They were very smart.” (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s GLORIA BORGER: “They took on the substance of a very complex issue. … But they really stuck to the substance of this issue and tried to get to the heart of it and I think did a very good job.” (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)
  • CNN’s GLORIA BORGER: “They came in with a plan. They mapped it out.” (CNN’s “Live,” 2/25/10)

Video from CNN: (H/T Hot Air)

We won. By a landslide. And even the left-wing media admits it.

Now how did we win?

Lamar Alexander

Lamar Alexander makes the opening statement. He is fairly moderate, and has a history of stepping across the aisle to work with Democrats.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Marsha Blackburn

Marsha Blackburn makes Barack Obama admit that his refusal to allow people to buy plans out of state with no mandated coverages means that they will be paying too much for health care. Obama replies that he is happy with redistributing wealth from healthy young people to older people who ought to have saved their own money for their own health care expenses.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Paul Ryan (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Paul Ryan asks Obama how the implications of Obamacare on the federal budget. Why is Obama ignoring the analysis done by his own Congressional Budget office? Why does the government have to control health care? Why can’t people buy the health care that they choose with their own money?

Tom Coburn

Coburn talked about ways to reduce the cost of health care without having the government take it all over. I’ll post Tom Coburn’s full video when I find it.

Here’s the last 95% of the speech, just missing the first paragraph, really.

The full transcript is here.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin’s latest column evaluates the health care summit.

Excerpt:

When he wasn’t cutting off Republicans who stuck to budget specifics and cited legislative page numbers and language instead of treacly, sob-story anecdotes involving dentures and gall stones, President Obama was filibustering the talk-a-thon away by invoking his daughters, rambling on about auto insurance, and sniping at former GOP presidential rival John McCain. “We’re not campaigning anymore,” lectured the perpetual campaigner-in-chief.

After ostentatiously disputing the GOP’s claims that health care premiums would rise under his plan, Obama walked it back. Confronted with more GOP pushback on the failure of Demcare to control costs, Obama told GOP Rep. Paul Ryan that he’d rather not “get bogged down in numbers.” Not numbers that he couldn’t cook on the spot without staff consultation, anyway.

Obama and the Democrats labored mightily to create the illusion of almost-there bipartisanship by repeatedly telling disagreeing Republicans that “we don’t disagree” and “there’s not a lot of difference” between us. But the dogs weren’t riding the ponies in this show.

Obama must be so shocked to find that not everyone in the world is a racist/communist/terrorist/tax cheat. This is his first exposure to a different point of view. He’s in shock.