Tag Archives: Truth

Polemics

How can you prefer a moral standard from one religion vs another?

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Here’s a reply to my extremely mean recent post about atheism’s difficulties making moral behavior rational.

Llama wrote:

Why is Christian morality correct? Why not Islamic morality?

And I replied like this:

Great question. You can’t settle it by comparing moral specifics. You have to appeal to some sort of testable claim.

For example, you mentioned Islam. Islam thinks that Jesus never actually died on a cross (Surah 4:157). Are the Muslims correct in saying this? It’s a historical claim, so to history we must go.

There is no credentialed historian of any stripe (atheist, agnostic, Jewish, etc.) who doubts the crucifixion. In fact, prominent atheist scholar E. P. Sanders of Duke University puts it on his list of almost indisputable facts about the historical Jesus.

E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). Sanders lists eight “almost indisputable facts” which he takes as his starting point (p. 11):

1. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

2. Jesus was a Galilean who preached and healed.

3. Jesus called disciples and spoke of there being twelve.

4. Jesus confined his activity to Israel.

5. Jesus engaged in a controversy about the temple.

6. Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem by the Roman authorities.

7. After his death Jesus’ followers continued as an identifiable movement.

8. At least some Jews persecuted at least parts of the new movement . . . .

See now also E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993).

And prominent Jewish Professor of Religion Paula Fredriksen of Boston University says in this paper that “The single most solid fact we have about Jesus’ life is his death. Jesus was crucified. Thus Paul, the gospels, Josephus, Tacitus: the evidence does not get any better than this.”

Sanders and Fredriksen are probably two of the best scholars on the historical Jesus in the world, and they are NOT Christians – they have no axe to grind. So Islam is false as false can be. The Koran cannot contain any errors – Muslims claim it is inerrant and its moral authority is lost if any error is found. But we’ve found a BIG ONE.

Regarding Christianity, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christian morality should not be taken seriously either. Even Paul says that if the resurrection did not happen then Christianity, and Christian morality, is WORTHLESS. See 1 Corinthians 15:17-19. 1 Corinthians is one of the most early and reliable books in the New Testament. It is authored by Paul in 55 AD – and no scholars denies that. It’s genuine Paul. The creed in 1 Cor 15:3-7 is dated within 1 to 5 years of the Cross. By ATHEIST scholars like James Crossley.

My advice is to watch some DEBATES between Christian and non-Christian scholars on the topic of the resurrection. You’ll find some linked in this post.

Or just look here:

Debates are a fun way to learn

Three debates where you can see this play out:

Or you can listen to my favorite debate on the resurrection.

Not that I don’t think you have to be an inerrantist in order to be a Christian, so long as your claims of error are on solid historical ground. (I am an inerrantist – you don’t have to be to be a Christian – you just have to accept the classical creeds of Christendom)

Hope this helps. Come on – I typed all this in. At least listen to the William Lane Craig versus James Crossley debate. Please?

Every religion makes truth claims about the word, and you can choose a religion by testing those claims. Wouldn’t it be neat if Christians learned to argue for their worldview using facts supplied by non-Christian experts? That’s how I try to argue.

Videos

Frank Turek shows why every Christian should learn apologetics

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A series of 5 video clips delivered in a standard evangelical church.

About Frank Turek:

An eight-year veteran of the United States Navy, Frank served as a Naval Aviator in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf. He has a Doctorate in Apologetics, a Masters Degree in Public Administration, and has taught courses in Leadership and Management at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Frank and his wife Stephanie reside near Charlotte, North Carolina and are blessed with three incredible sons.

Wishing vs. knowing: which is Biblical?

Did the universe come into being out of nothing?

Is the universe designed?

Is there evidence for an intelligent cause of living systems?

Why should we trust the Bible?

I would say that the quickest way for us to stop the decline in church attendance is to embrace what you see Frank doing in these videos. We need a lot more naval aviators with PhDs speaking about WHY Christianity is true in the churches. We have enough emotivism, postmodernism, relativism, universalism, fideism, mysticism, anti-intellectualism and hedonism in the church – now let’s have some truth for a change. Let’s have some evidence. Let’s hear some alternative views. Let’s see some arguments. Let’s see some debates.

Frank’s web site is here.

Mentoring

Apologetics advocacy

Commentary

A feminist critique of common sense and reason

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Here is a funny anecdote from a writer in the secular leftist magazine Psychology Today.

Excerpt:

Several years ago, my wife and I had gone out for a celebratory dinner with one of my doctoral students and one of his female friends. The friend in question was a committed postmodernist and a staunch academic feminist. At one point during our dinner, I gently asked her whether she genuinely believed the postmodernist foundational tenet that there are no universal truths.

[…]I asked her whether it was a universal truth that within the human species it is only women who bear children. Surely this is an absolute fact no? After rolling her eyes in utter disgust and taking a few huffs and puffs, she replied that she was amazed at how sexist my example had been. At this point, my doctoral student, my wife, and I were truly baffled. The feminist explained that in the spiritual narrative of a particular group of Japanese people, it is the men who bear the children! Hence, by purposely restricting childbearing to the physical/biological realm, I was being sexist.

[…]I asked her whether it was indeed a universal truth that from any vantage point on Earth, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Surely, since time immemorial sailors have relied on this cosmological fact. Take a minute to think about how she might have retorted in this case. Here is a hint: she used the tools of deconstructionism to “tease apart” my latest universal. Deconstructionism argues that reality is a linguistic creation. Hence, there is no objective truth to speak of, as all information is constrained within subjective linguistic bounds. She proposed that I was putting labels on things, and she refused to play such games. She did not know what I meant by “East” or “West”. These were arbitrary labels. What did I mean by “sun”? That which I called the sun, she might refer to as “dancing hyena” (her actual words!), to which I wryly replied: OK, the dancing hyena rises in the East and sets in the West.

The article then explains where this postmodern view that “nothing is objectively real and nothing is objectively true” leads.

These anti-science movements coupled with cultural relativism, political correctness, and an ethos of self-guilt regarding all geopolitical realities will prove the demise of Western civilization. It is such babble that caused nearly all of the American news media to offer hallucinatory explanations regarding the recent Times Square incident including that the alleged terrorist did this because he had defaulted on his mortgage payment, and hence was facing great financial strain. Both the media and Obama officials are under a strict edict to avoid uttering the most obvious of geopolitical facts. These nonsensical pseudo-intellectual movements will spell the end of liberal democracies if they are not eradicated from public discourse.

There is something very strange about postmodern/relativist/politically correct types.