As famous evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem has discussed, the Bible provides strong support for self-defense.
Grudem looked at the following questions, before turning to the secular data to confirm the Bible:
what about turning the other cheek? doesn’t that undermine self-defense?
what does Jesus say about the right to self-defense in the New Testament?
did Jesus’ disciples carry swords for protection during his ministry?
why did Jesus tell his disciples to sell their cloaks and buy swords?
what about Jesus stopping Peter from using force during Jesus’ arrest?
Dr. Grudem concludes that the Bible does teach that self-defense is moral.
Unfortunately, that view is not often not popular in the culture as a whole. There is a large portion of the society that does not want law-abiding citizens to be able to defend themselves from criminals. Not only that, but there seems to be a lot of suspicion about law enforcement, now. We even seem to be losing the ability to see criminals as responsible for what they do, and wanting to protect innocent people from criminals. There are two cultural trends behind this – 1) the push for compassion and non-judgment, and 2) the tendency to turn evildoers into victims.
So, sometimes when the teachings of the Bible, e.g. – self-defense, fall out of respect in a society, it makes sense to defend what the Bible teaches using ordinary evidence from respected secular sources. And that’s what I’ve done on this blog on so many issues where the secular culture disagrees with the Bible.
Regarding self-defense, I previously wrote about how the gun ban in Australia did not reduce suicide rates, because people who wanted to commit suicide simply found another way to commit suicide. On the broader issue of self-defense, I blogged about a recent study from Harvard University, and in that same post, I also linked books from Harvard University Press and Chicago University Press showing that banning guns raises rates of violent crime, and enacting concealed carry lowers rates of violent crime.
Today, though, I have another point about guns and suicide rates from the Daily Caller.
Excerpt:
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, which cover years 1981 through 2013—incidentally, a period in which Americans acquired an additional 195 million firearms—the firearm suicide rate (the number of suicides per 100,000 population) decreased five percent, while the non-firearm suicide rate increased 27 percent.
Although more law-abiding people got guns, the crime rates have been declining. We are now down to 1970s levels of violent crime. Part of that is due to tougher sentencing and more imprisonment of criminals, but part of that is due to more law-abiding citizens defending themselves from criminals. And if we want fewer prisons, a good way to achieve that cost-effectively would be to encourage more law-abiding people to own firearms, not less.
So, if the gun control crowd tries to make the case that more guns are causing more people to commit suicide, then we should be ready to answer with some data. Hope this data helps you to make your case.
I highly recommend watching the lecture, and looking at the slides. The quality of the video and the content is first class. There is some Q&A (9 minutes) at the end of the lecture.
Topics:
intelligent design is concerned with measuring the information-creating capabilities of natural forces like mutation and selection
Darwinists think that random mutations and natural selection can explain the origin and diversification of living systems
Darwinian mechanisms are capable of explaining small-scale adaptive changes within types of organisms
but there is skepticism, even among naturalists, that Darwinian mechanisms can explain the origin of animal designs
even if you concede that Darwinism can account for all of the basic animal body plans, there is still the problem of life’s origin
can Darwinian mechanisms explain the origin of the first life? Is there a good naturalistic hypothesis to explain it?
there are at least two places in the history of life where new information is needed: origin of life, and Cambrian explosion
overview of the structure of DNA and protein synthesis (he has helpful pictures and he uses the snap lock blocks, too)
the DNA molecule is composed of a sequence of bases that code for proteins, and the sequence is carefully selected to have biological function
meaningful sequences of things like computer code, English sentences, etc. require an adequate cause
it is very hard to arrive at a meaningful sequence of a non-trivial length by randomly picking symbols/letters
although any random sequence of letters is improbable, the vast majority of sequences are gibberish/non-compiling code
similarly, most random sequences of amino acids are lab-proven (Doug Axe’s work) to be non-functional gibberish
the research showing this was conducted at Cambridge University and published in the Journal of Molecular Biology
so, random mutation cannot explain the origin of the first living cell
however, even natural selection coupled with random mutation cannot explain the first living cell
there must already be replication in order for mutation and selection to work, so they can’t explain the first replicator
but the origin of life is the origin of the first replicator – there is no replication prior to the first replicator
the information in the first replicator cannot be explained by law, such as by chemical bonding affinities
the amino acids are attached like magnetic letters on a refrigerator
the magnetic force sticks the letters ON the fridge, but they don’t determine the specific sequence of the letters
if laws did determine the sequence of letters, then the sequences would be repetitive
the three materialist explanations – chance alone, chance and law, law alone – are not adequate to explain the effect
the best explanation is that an intelligent cause is responsible for the biological explanation in the first replicator
we know that intelligent causes can produce functional sequences of information, e.g. – English, Java code
the structure and design of DNA matches up nicely with the design patterns used by software engineers (like WK!)
There are some very good tips in this lecture so that you will be able to explain intelligent design to others in simple ways, using everyday household items and children’s toys to symbolize the amino acids, proteins, sugar phosphate backbones, etc.
Proteins are constructed from a sequence of amino acids:
A sequence of amino acids forming a protein
Proteins sticking onto the double helix structure of DNA:
Some proteins sticking onto the sugar phosphate backbone
I highly, highly recommend this lecture. You will be delighted and you will learn something.
Here is an article that gives a general overview of how intelligent design challenges. If you want to read something more detailed about the material that he is covering in the lecture above related to the origin of life, there is a pretty good article here.
There is a good breakdown of some of the slides with helpful flow charts here on Uncommon Descent.
So, this is just an advice post for doing apologetics.
Here are three situations I’ve run into while doing apologetics in the last month.
First situation. I was talking with a lady who is an atheist. I had a copy of “God’s Crime Scene” in my hand, and she asked me about it. I told her that it was a book written by the guy who solved the homicide case that I asked her to watch on Dateline. She remembered – it was the two-hour special on the woman who was killed with a garrotte. She pointed at the book and said “what’s in it?” I said, it has 8 pieces of evidence that fit better with a theistic worldview than with an atheistic one, and some of them scientific. Her reply to me was – literally – “which denomination do you want me to join?”
Second situation. I was talking with a friend of mine who teaches in a Catholic school. She was telling that she got the opportunity to talk to her students about God, and found out that some of them were not even theists, and many of them had questions. So she asked them for questions and got a list. The list included many hard cases, like “what about the Bible and slavery” and “why do Christians oppose gay marriage?” and so on.
Third situation. Talking to a grad student about God’s existence. I’m laying out my scientific arguments for her, holding up the peer-reviewed papers for each discovery. I get to the Doug Axe paper on protein folding probabilities, and she holds up her hand. One question: “Am I going to Hell?”
So think about those three situations. In each case, the opponent is trying to reject Christianity by jumping way, way ahead to the very end of the process. When you do Christian apologetics, you do not take the bait and jump to the end of the process dealing with nitty gritty details until you have made your case for the core of the Christian worldview using your strongest evidence. Let me explain.
So, your strongest evidence as a Christian are the scientific arguments, along with the moral argument. Those would include (for starters) the following:
kalam cosmological argument
cosmic fine-tuning
galactic and stellar habitability
origin of life / DNA
molecular machines / irreducible complexity
the moral argument
The problem I am seeing today is that atheists are rejecting discussions about evidence because they think that all we are interested in is getting them to become Christians. Well, yes. I want you to become a Christian. But I know perfectly well what that entails – it entails a change of life priorities. Both of the women I spoke to are living with their boyfriends, and the kids in the Catholic school just want to have fun. None of them wants to believe in a God who will require self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice. Nobody wants God to be in that leader position in their lives. Christianity is 100% reversed from today’s me-first, fun-seeking, thrill-seeking, fear-of-missing-out travel spirit of the age.
So, how to answer all these late-game questions? The answer is simple. You don’t answer any late-game questions until the person you are talking with accounts for the widely-accepted data in your list. These are things that have got to be accepted before any discussion about minor issues like one angel vs two angels at the empty tomb can occur. When we discuss all the basic issues where the evidence is the strongest, then we can go on to discuss issues where the evidence is debatable, then finally, in the last bits before the end, we can discuss these other kinds of questions.
How to explain why this process must be followed to the person who asks specific questions about minor issues? Simple. You explain that your goal is not to get them to become a Christian right now. That you want to let them believe anything thing they want. That’s right. They can believe anything they want to believe. As long as what they believe is consistent with the evidence. And what I am going to do is give them the evidence, and then they can believe whatever they want – so long as it’s consistent with the evidence.
So, for example, I’m going to tell them 3 pieces of evidence for a cosmic beginning of the universe: the expanding universe (redshift), the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the light element abundances. That’s mainstream science that shows that the universe came into being out of nothing, a finite time in the past. And I will charge them not to believe in any religion that assumes that the universe has always been here. For example, Mormonism is ruled out, they believe in eternally existing matter. See how that works? Hey, Ms. Atheist. You can believe anything you want. As long as what you believe is consistent with the evidence.
I think this approach of not letting them rush you to the end at the beginning is important for two reasons. First, we can get our foot in the door to talk about things that are interesting to everyone, in a non-stressed environment. Everyone can talk about evidence comfortably. Second, we show that we hold our beliefs because we are simply letting evidence set boundaries for us on what we are allowed to believe. We can’t believe not-Christianity, because not-Christianity is not consistent with the evidence. And you start with the most well-supported evidence, and eliminate worldviews that are falsified by the most well-supported evidence. Atheism actually gets falsified pretty quickly, because of the scientific evidence.
So, that’s my advice. Had a friend of mine named William try this out about a week ago. It went down like this:
William to me:
This guy I know messaged me and bragged for a while about how easy he can dismantle Christianity. He said: “present the gospel to me as you understand it. I’ll simply ask questions to demonstrate it is not worth your belief.”
WK to William:
First of all, he isn’t allowed to just sit there and poke holes in your case, he has to present a positive case for atheism. Second, don’t discuss Christianity with him at all until you first discuss the evidence for theism – start with the good scientific evidence.
And William wrote this to his friend:
The way I’m wired is that I process all competing theories and go with the best one. By doing a comparative analysis of worldviews I find that Christian theology easily explains the most about the world I find myself living in.
I’m pretty sure that a God of some sort exists because of the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe and the fine tuning in physics. From there I find it quite intuitive that if a God went through the trouble of creating and tuning a universe for life that this God likely has some sort of interest in it and has revealed Himself to humanity in some way.
From there I can look at the major world religions and compare them to see which one explains the past and the present the best. Christianity easily comes out on top.
And then a few days later, I got this from William:
I finally got the agnostic to tell me what he thinks about origin and fine tuning. When I started pointing out that his views were unscientific, he blew a basket, called me dishonest and told me he didn’t want to discuss anything further.
And that’s where you want to be. Cut off all discussions where the challenger tries to jump to the end and get you to debate the very last steps of your case. Present the strongest evidence for your core claims, and get him to account for this evidence within his own worldview. Lead the discussion with public, testable evidence. All warfare depends on picking the terrain, weapons and tactics that allow you to match your strength against your opponent’s weakness.
WINTERY KNIGHT 