Tag Archives: God

Mentoring

Robert P. Murphy explains why he is public about his faith

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I am always appreciative of Christian scholars who are can rise to the top of their professions without hiding their faith. One top economist is Robert P. Murphy, author of the best entry-level economics textbook out there, called “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism“. Rob also has a new book out called “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal“.

Recently, Rob posted about why he is public about his faith, especially given the discomfort felt by the many famous economists that he works with.

Excerpt:

I remember when I was an atheist, I was extremely uncomfortable one time when a guy’s wife asked me if I knew Jesus….

In contrast, what I do is make my views known on this blog (or in public forums if it is appropriate), and I have even restricted the Jesus talk to Sundays. I absolutely love it when a bunch of you regular readers say things like, “Jeez Bob, you’re a good economist and very logical on a lot of things, but you went off the deep end with this God stuff.” So that’s part of my point in doing it, is to show that I think the doctrines of Christianity make sense and are logical. I utterly reject the idea–which many simple Christian folk have advanced–that you shouldn’t think too much about Biblical matters, or that you shouldn’t use your reason when contemplating God.

This is exactly my view as well. I like to tell people what I believe and why as I get to know them, then leave it up to them to come back to me with questions.For me this serves two purposes: 1) That person will know that at least one smart person (me) still believes in Christianity and 2) That person will have a resource in case they decide to try to respond to God’s seeking after them.

Further study

For more about integrating your vocation and your faith, and being a public Christian where you work, check out these posts from my index of apologetics.

Mentoring

Apologetics advocacy

Podcasts

Debate: Must morality be grounded by God?

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“Unbelievable”, is a show broadcast every Saturday in the UK. Every week, they feature a debate between a Christian and a non-Christian. The debate this week was on the moral argument, which argues that meaningful morality, including free will, human rights, moral rules, moral obligations, and moral significance, must be grounded in God.

THIS IS A MUST-LISTEN.

The debate starts a bit into the podcast, after they review audience reactions to last week and preview the next week’s topic.

Here is the link to the podcast. (MP3 audio)

If you have trouble with that link, try here instead.

The atheist Paul Orton argues this:

  • no moral absolutes
  • morality is a set evolved conventions
  • the set varies by time and place

The Christian David Robertson argues this:

  • morality is meaningless unless there are moral absolutes
  • cultural relativism doesn’t rationally ground moral judgments
  • the Bible does not teach that slavery is good

One of the best parts of the debate is when David contrasts H.G. Wells, an atheistic socialist who embraced socialism and fascism as a natural extension of his atheism, and a Christian, William Wilberforce who spent over two decades of his life trying to free the slaves in the UK.

This debate can be seen as an illustration of the thesis that I advanced in my series of posts on atheism and morality, in which I argued that atheism does not ground the minimal requirements for rational morality.

Further resources

This page contains a link to an excellent lecture on the ontological foundations of rational morality, as well as a number of debates between Christians and atheists on whether morality is rationally grounded by the worldview of atheism. And you can find some other apologetics posts here, including an article on whether the the moral statements of atheists are even intelligible, on atheism.

The best book ever written on this topic is Greg Koukl and Francis J. Beckwith’s “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air“. You can see Greg deliver a lecture about relativism to an audience of students and faculty at UCLA (MP3 audio here). If you want to read something free on the web that explains the problems with moral relativism, which is the view of morality that is grounded by atheism, look here.

Podcasts

Richard Dawkins debates John Lennox: Does God Exist?

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Audio of the debate is hosted by my buddy Brian Auten who operates the Apologetics 315 blog.

You can download the full MP3 audio here.

I listened to this debate and thought that Dawkins did well against Lennox. It is a very short debate. This is not a rigorous academic debate, as neither participant argued in a formal manner. Dawkins came across as firm, but gracious, and he does a lot better than Hitchens did in his recent debate against Craig.

This debate is recommended for beginners to get a bird’s eye view of some of the issues before moving on to professional academic debates featuring analytical philosophers such as William Lane Craig, Walter Sinott-Armstrong, etc. They don’t really go into complicated details.

My favorite academic debate is this one featuring William Lane Craig vs Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on the problems of evil and suffering. Another great debate featuring Bill Craig and Austin Dacey is here (video) and their re-match is here (audio).

A huge list of other William Lance Craig debates is here, courtesy of ChristianJR4.