Tag Archives: Facts

Gary Habermas and a Duke University professor discuss the resurrection

About the speakers:

Gary Habermas

Chair, Department of Philosophy, Liberty University
Distinguished Research Professor

Ph.D., History and Philosophy of Religion, Michigan State University (1976)
M.A., Philosophical Theology, University of Detroit (1973)
B.R.E., Christian Education, Bible, Social Sciences; William Tyndale College (1972)

Distinguished Research Professor; Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School; Chair, Department of Philosophy and Theology, Liberty University; current appointment: teaching in PhD program, Liberty University, 1981-Present.

Joel Marcus

Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Duke University

B.A., New York University
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D, Columbia University-Union Theological Seminary, New York

Joel Marcus teaches New Testament with an emphasis on the Gospels and the context of early Christianity in first-century Judaism. His publications include two monographs on Mark and a two-volume commentary on the same Gospel in the Anchor Bible series (Doubleday, 2000, 2009). His current research focuses on the parting of the ways between ancient Judaism and the Christianity of the first three centuries A.D.

This is MP3 audio of the discussion is in 3 parts.

Each part is 8 Mb. The last segment is Q&A with students.

Dr. Marcus is fairly moderate, definitely not an evangelical, so it makes for an interesting, but friendly, disagreement. Dr. Habermas is streaky. Sometimes he is hot and sometimes he is cold. This time, he is fairly hot.

Frank Turek lists ten alleged facts about same-sex marriage

The article is here on One News Now. (H/T Owen)

Excerpt:

When one judge overturned the will of more than seven million Californians last week in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, he listed 80 supposed “findings of fact” (FF) as evidence that Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Many of those 80 findings are not facts at all. They’re lies or distortions.

Here’s my favorite of the 10:

5. “Proposition 8 does not affect the First Amendment rights of those opposed to marriage for same-sex couples.” (FF 62) It’s too bad Judge Walker didn’t look to evidence from Massachusetts for this false fact. If he had he would have seen that court-imposed same-sex marriage has severely affected First Amendment rights. Same-sex marriage may not affect heterosexual marriage behavior quickly, but it certainly affects the free exercise of religion very quickly.

Parents in Massachusetts now have no right to know when their children are being taught about homosexuality in grades as low as kindergarten, neither can they opt their kids out (one parent was even jailed overnight for protesting this). Businesses are now forced to give benefits to same-sex couples regardless of any moral or religious objection the business owner may have. The government also ordered Catholic Charities to give children to homosexuals wanting to adopt. As a result, Catholic Charities closed their adoption agency rather than submit to an immoral order. Unfortunately, children are again the victims of the morality that comes with same-sex marriage.

“But you can’t legislate morality!” some say. Nonsense. Not only do all laws legislate morality, sometimes immorality is imposed by judges against the will of the people and in violation of religious rights. There is no neutral ground here. Either we will have freedom of religion and conscience, or we will be forced to adhere to the whims of judges who declare that their own distorted view of morality supersedes our rights — rights that our founders declared self-evident.

Think I’m overreacting? If this decision survives and nullifies all democratically decided laws in the 45 states that preserve natural marriage, religious rights violations in Massachusetts will go nationwide. In fact, it’s poised to happen already at the federal level. President Obama recently appointed gay activist Chai Feldblum to the EEOC. Speaking of the inevitable conflict between religious rights and so-called gay rights, Feldblum said, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”

Read the other nine here. Some of them I’ve mentioned before.

Related posts

Vote on who had the best opening speech in the Craig-Ahmed debate

This post is part of a series of posts on the subject of a debate that occurred at Cambridge University between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Arif Ahmed. The topic is “Does God Exist?”.

The full MP3 is here. (H/T Brian Auten of Apologetics 315)

Please listen to the first two speeches (at least) before voting.

UPDATE:

I closed the poll after 1 week.

Wiliam Lane Craig, by a landslide
68%
Wiliam Lane Craig, but it’s close
21%
Too close to call
11%
Arif Ahmed, but it’s close
0%
Arif Ahmed, by a landslide
0%

Please leave your comments about who you think about who is winning and why. Please keep comments SHORT – less than 300 words, please.

I am especially interested in hearing from young earth creationists and their response to Craig and Ahmed’s views on the big bang theory, and what it implies. (I am not a young earth creationist – I think the big bang is based on reliable science, including the red-shifting of light from distant galaxies, the light element abundance predictions and the cosmic background radiation predictions)

Note: I wrote an e-mail to Dr. Ahmed to follow up with him, and got a very gracious reply. He thought that the fine-tuning issue was the most interesting, and he did not change his mind about the intellectual viability of Craig’s worldview as a result of the debate. Anyway, try to be nice. Nicer than me, I mean!

I will not be available to approve comments on Thursday night from 6 PM to about 2 AM on Friday morning.

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