Friday night awesome. (H/T Chris)
This guy is a former naval aviator, and it shows in the way he talks about his faith.
Tag Archives: Frank Turek
Frank Turek explains the kalam argument and some objections to it
His latest show focus on three of the better known scientific arguments for the existence of God. The argument from the origin of the universe, the argument from the cosmic fine-tuning, and the argument from biological information. He is especially focused on the first argument. He answers about a half-dozen objections raised by university students during his most recent speaking engagements on secular college campuses.
If you need a refresher on the kalam argument, read this first.
Topics:
Atheist dogma
– they pre-suppose natural causation and no evidence can overturn the assumption
– they rule out intelligent causes before they look at the evidence
– they rule out supernatural causes before they look at the evidence
– the assumption of naturalism is just a philosophical assumption
– the assumption is not subject to debate – they just believe it on faith
– the view that all truth must be detected with scientific methods is self-refuting
How atheists oppose the origin of the universe:
– that’s a god of the gaps argument
– you have to find an answer to problems that fits with my assumption of naturalism
– who made God?
– quantum mechanics shows that things can pop into being uncaused – maybe the universe did too
– given enough time, the universe will pop into being out of nothing
Responses:
– the cause of nature’s coming into existence cannot be inside of nature
– if nature has a beginning, then the cause of the beginning cannot be natural
– nature is the effect, the cause cannot be natural – it must be supernatural
– the only objection to the origin of the universe is the pre-supposition of naturalism
– but naturalism is not science – it’s a faith commitment to an unproven assumption
– only an agent with free will can cause an effect when/where there is no physical cause
– the inference to a supernatural cause is not based on ignorance, but on what we know
– the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe is the foundation of the argument
– the scientific evidence has gotten strong as more discoveries emerged
– regarding quantum mechanics, the particles do not come into being from nothing
– the virtual particles come into being from a vaccuum, which is not nothing
– to say that events occur without causes is to deny the scientific method itself
Frank Turek on the criterion of embarrassment
Here’s the video. (H/T Chris S.)
The criterion of embarrassment is just one of the historical criteria used to select the parts of a piece of ancient literature that is likely to be historical. Other things in the source may have happened, but we can’t know them as history. If significant parts of a text are historical, it is possible to accept it as historical until there are specific reasons to say that some part of it is NOT historical.
Here is William Lane Craig’s list of criteria for a saying or event to be historical:
- Historical congruence: S fits in with known historical facts concerning the context in which S is said to have occurred.
- Independent, early attestation: S appears in multiple sources which are near to the time at which S is alleged to have occurred and which depend neither upon each other nor a common source.
- Embarrassment: S is awkward or counter-productive for the persons who serve as the source of information for S.
- Dissimilarity: S is unlike antecedent Jewish thought-forms and/or unlike subsequent Christian thought-forms.
- Semitisms: traces in the narrative of Aramaic or Hebrew linguistic forms.
- Coherence: S is consistent with already established facts about Jesus.
The criteria is the same for liberals and conservatives although some weight one criteria more than others. E.g. – moderate liberal E.P. Sanders likes embarrassment and multiple attestation, liberals John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg like multiple attestation and early attestation, moderate Dale Allison likes embarrassment and dissimilarity, conservative N.T. Wright likes dissimilarity. Craig likes all of them and uses them all.
If you want to see these criteria used in a debate, watch this debate between William Lane Craig and James Crossley.
This is the best debate on the historical Jesus that I have ever seen.
If someone is asking you whether they should accept the Bible in all by making a faith commitment, then you tell them about the historical criteria, and you show them a debate. Show them a list of sayings or events that are considered to be indisputable. (That list is by the naturalist E. P. Sanders). And show them a fact that even William Lane Craig hesitates to defend. That way, you are not asking them to swallow a camel of inerrancy before they can read the Bible. Give them the criteria and show them how to use it. Talk about the dating of the sources. Be a scholar. Let them read the text as an interested skeptic.
WINTERY KNIGHT 