Tag Archives: William Dembski

Events

Tuesday night webcast explores why young people are leaving the church

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Details here on Frank Turek’s blog.

Why are 75% of youth leaving the church after high school?
What can you do about it?

Get answers January 19th from Dr. Frank Turek, co-author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” and founder of CrossExamined.org. Frank will be joined by Josh McDowell, Dr. William Lane Craig, Dr. Bill Dembski, Dr. Mike Adams and others who will equip you the critical information you need keep yourself and your family firmly grounded in the truth.

Tuesday, January 19, 6:30-10 p.m. CENTRAL time: Live on 200 radio stations (http://action.afa.net/Radio/) and simulcast here: http://action.afa.net/Webcast/WebcastPlayer.aspx?id=2147491014

And in a later post more details: (there is a trailer in this post, too)

This Tuesday, January 19th I’ll be hosting a live radio and internet simulcast event called Church Dropout: Overcoming the Youth Exodus. The producers at the American Family Association tell me that this program will draw an audience of over 200,000 to hear and see evidence for Christianity. The program is intended to help reverse the trend that 75% of Christian youth leave the church after high school.

And that post also has speaker biographies:

We’ll start the evening with the man who is currently the best debater on our side, Dr. William Lane Craig (http://www.ReasonableFaith.org). Bill does scores of college events every year, and he provides great resources on his website. You need to hear Bill’s evidence for the existence of God– irrefutable!

We’ll then turn to one of the founding fathers of the Intelligent Design movement– Dr. Bill Dembski (http://www.designinference.com). Bill has two PhD’s, but he’ll show us very simply how life points to an intelligent designer, and how most of the so-called “evidence” for macroevolution is based on materialistic and counter-factual philosophical assumptions.

My third expert guest will be Dr. Mike Adams, a Christian professor on a secular campus (Yes, there are a few!) and one of the most popular conservative columnists on www.Townhall.com. Mike gets students motivated to make a difference for Christ! He will give us advice on how to prepare yourself (or your child) for the radically anti-Christian environment found on many college campuses (he’ll make you laugh too!).

We’ll then cap the show with one of my all-time heroes of apologetics– his books helped bring me to faith– the one and only Josh McDowell (www.Josh.org). Josh will give us very helpful insights on the importance of relationships to a young person’s faith. Josh is not only the most popular apologist but also the most passionate!

Here’s a little bit about Frank Turek:

Frank Turek is the founder and president of CrossExamined.org and its primary presenter. Frank is a dynamic speaker and award-winning author or coauthor of three books: I Don’t have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, Correct, Not Politically Correct and Legislating Morality. He hosts a TV program each week called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist that is broadcast Monday nights at 8:30 pm Eastern on the NRB network, DirecTV Channel 378. CrossExamined with Frank Turek is a live call-in radio program that airs on 126 stations every Saturday morning at 11 am eastern time. Frank also writes a column for Townhall.com and has appeared on many TV and radio programs including: The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, Faith under Fire, Politically Incorrect, The Bible Answerman, and Focus on the Family. A former Aviator in the U.S. Navy, Frank has a Masters from George Washington University and a Doctorate in Apologetics from Southern Evangelical Seminary.

I am familiar with the work of all 5 of these guys. These are 5 of my favorite Christian in the whole world. If anyone can tell you directly why young people are leaving the church, it’s these guys. I hope you can tune in!

News

William Dembski debates Lewis Wolpert about intelligent design

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It’s the latest debate from Unbelievable, courtesy of Justin Brierley!

The MP3 file is here.

Details:

William (Bill) Dembski is an American mathematician, theologian and professor of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, TX. He debates the issue of ID with atheist Lewis Wolpert, Emeritus Professor of Biology at University College London.

For Bill Dembski see http://www.designinference.com/ or his blog http://www.uncommondescent.com/

For Lewis Wolpert’s Wikipedia profile see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Wolpert

Intro:

  • Bill Dembski’s religious background (Catholic-raised atheist/agnostic, later Protestant)
  • Dembski’s view of the interface between science and religion
  • Lewis Wolpert’s religious background (Jewish-raised atheist)
  • Wolpert’s view of whether God exists

First half:

  • Dembski explains the mathematical foundations for detecting design
  • Wolpert asks whether designs can emerge without intelligence
  • Dembski asks whether anything in biology could be like SETI signals
  • Wolpert says that it is impossible to recognize design in biology
  • Dembski asks whether the Darwinian hypothesis is falsifiable
  • Wolpert says that it is never warranted to rule out chance as an explanation
  • Dembski says that you can set limits on what chance can do within a certain time
  • Wolpert says that chance can do anything regardless of time, etc.
  • Dembski says, what about the work of Doug Axe published in the peer-reviewed JMB?
  • Wolpert says those calculations must be wrong!
  • Dembski says then you’re just a dogmatic reductionist
  • Wolpert agrees that he is a dogmatic reductionist

Second half:

  • Dembski explains why intelligent is not repackaged creationism
  • Dembski explains why intelligent design isn’t an argument from ignorance
  • Dembski talks about whether evolutionary mechanisms can create more information
  • Wolpert asks whether chemistry requires intelligent design too
  • Dembski says that there is a fine-tuning argument for cosmological constants too
  • Wolpert agrees that the origin of life is unexplained naturalistically
  • Wolpert asks if everything after the origin of life is explained
  • Dembski says that there are still problems like the Cambrian explosion
  • Wolpert asks Dembski if anything could falsify intelligent design
  • Dembski gives an example of something that could falsify intelligent design
  • Dembski asks whether naturalistic explanations of life are falsifiable
  • Wolpert asks whether intelligent design affects the way that people do science
  • Dembski asks whether it is possible that the resources of naturalism are adequate to explain life
  • Wolpert says that you can’t explain anything in nature as the result of intelligence
  • Dembski says that it happens all the time in other sciences like engineering
  • Wolpert says that he doesn’t want a Designer
  • Dembski says we should just follow the evidence and who cares what people on either side want

And then there are closing speeches.

I am not sure if I had anything to do with this, but I did send Justin Bill’s e-mail address recently. I’m pretty happy that Justin managed to get Bill and Lewis to debate on this topic. Justin says that Bill will be back next week! He’ll be discussing his new book “The End of Christianity” which is about the problem of evil.

Did you miss Lewis Wolpert’s last debate with the professor of nanotechnology?

UPDATE: Justin says that it was indeed my e-mail that helped him to contact Bill, and what’s more we should expect a show that features Stephen C. Meyer soon, too!

Commentary

MUST-READ: New peer-reviewed paper argues against chance-of-the-gaps

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Story from Evolution News. (H/T ECM)

The peer-reviewed paper is here:

Here’s the thesis:

The question for scientific methodology should not be, “Is this scenario possible?” The question should be, “Is this possibility a plausible scientific hypothesis?” One chance in 10200 is theoretically possible, but given maximum cosmic probabilistic resources, such a possibility is hardly plausible. With funding resources rapidly drying up, science needs a foundational principle by which to falsify a myriad of theoretical possibilities that are not worthy of serious scientific consideration and modeling.

Suppose that the odds of forming single protein composed of 100 amino acids are 1 in 10130. (I got the odds from this slide show presented by John C. Walton, a professor of chemistry at the University of St. Andrews). Let’s say you take all the atoms in the universe and react them at the highest possible rate for the whole history of the universe. How many tries would you get to create the protein?

Ωu = Universe = 1013 reactions/sec X 1017 secs X 1078 atoms = 10108

Soooo, you only get 10108 tries but the odds of getting even one protein are 1 in 10130 so it is unlikely that you would get even one protein by chance. Now an atheist may jump at this remote chance and say “but it’s possible!”, and cross their arms like they have a solid explanation of where DNA came from. But this is just insanity cloaked with scientific-sounding language. No one runs their life in a way that is so ignorant of what probabilities really mean.

To make the point clearer, you can just watch this video of an atheist pleading that just because the odds of fine-tuning are incredibly small, that this is no reason to ascribe the design to an intelligent agent.

It’s funny because it’s true!