On Guard by William Lane Craig Just Released!

Renowned scholar William Lane Craig offers a readable, rich training manual for defending the Christian faith.

This concise guide is filled with illustrations, sidebars, and memorizable steps to help Christians stand their ground and defend their faith with reason and precision. In his engaging style, Dr. Craig offers four arguments for God’s existence, defends the historicity of Jesus’ personal claims and resurrection, addresses the problem of suffering, and shows why religious relativism doesn’t work. Along the way, he shares his story of following God’s call in his own life.

This one-stop, how-to-defend-your-faith manual will equip Christians to advance faith conversations deliberately, applying straightforward, cool-headed arguments. They will discover not just what they believe, but why they believe—and how being on guard with the truth has the power to change lives forever.

From the Back Cover

Do you worry that someone will ask you a question about your faith that you can’t answer?

Have you tried to learn how to defend your faith but gotten lost in confusing language and theology?

Do you struggle with times of spiritual doubt yourself?

This concise training manual by renowned scholar William Lane Craig is filled with illustrations, sidebars, and memorizable steps to help you stand your ground and defend your faith with reason and precision. In his engaging style, Dr. Craig offers four arguments for God’s existence, defends the historicity of Jesus’ personal claims and resurrection, addresses the problem of suffering, and shows why religious relativism doesn’t work. Along the way, he shares his own story of following God’s call.

This one-stop, how-to-defend-your-faith manual will equip you to advance faith conversations deliberately, applying straightforward, cool-headed arguments. You will discover not just what you believe, but why you believe—and how being on guard with the truth has the power to change lives forever.

Reasonable Faith Website

Great God Debates

"There is a great tradition of debates between atheists and believers in God. In the first half of the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton debated George Bernard Shaw on topics ranging from God to socialism. In a famous debate, philosophers Frederick Copleston and Bertrand Russell squared off on whether God's existence could be proved. Dinesh D'Souza seeks to revive this great tradition, and in recent months he has been debating several of the world's leading atheists. More debates are coming up. Here believers and non-believers alike can see case for and against God and Christianity presented by capable advocates on both sides. So watch, and enjoy, and make up your own mind."

View Debates...

John Lennox on the Design of the Universe

John Lennox is one of the most thoughtful defenders of Christianity today. Here he is on the Design of the Universe.



Visit his website for more...

Here is his latest book: God' Undertaker

William Lane Craig vs Daniel Dennett on Arguments for Existence of God

I came across this post (HT Winter Knight), to some auido of an entertaining and enlightening interchange between Dennett (atheist) and Craig (theist). Give it a listen....

Here are some of the observations made by Wintery Knight blog...

Dennett’s response to Craig’s paper

"Here is my snarky paraphrase of Dennett’s reponse: (I haven’t been snarky all day!)

Craig’s three arguments are bulletproof, the premises are plausible, and grounded by the best cutting edge science we know today.

I cannot find anything wrong with his arguments right now, but maybe later when i go home it will come to me what’s wrong with them.

But atheism is true even if all the evidence is against it today. I know it’s true by my blind faith.

The world is so mysterious, and all the science of today will be overturned tomorrow so that atheism will be rational again. I have blind faith that this new evidence will be discovered any minute.

Just because the cause of the beginning of time is eternal and the cause of the beginning of space is non-physical, the cause doesn’t have to be God.

“Maybe the cause of the universe is the idea of an apple, or the square root of 7″. (HE LITERALLY SAID THAT!)

The principle of triangulation might have brought the entire physical universe into being out of nothing.

I don’t understand anything about non-physical causation, even though I cannot even speak meaningful sentences unless I have a non-physical mind that is causing my body to emit the meaningful sentences in a non-determined manner.

Alexander Vilenkin is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.

Alan Guth is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.

This science stuff is so complicated to me – so Craig can’t be right about it even though he’s published about it and debated it all with the best atheists on the planet.

If God is outside of time, then this is just deism, not theism.

If deism is true, then I can still be an atheist, because a Creator and Designer of the universe is compatible with atheism.

I’m pretty sure that Craig doesn’t have any good arguments that can argue for Christianity – certainly not an argument for the resurrection of jesus that he’s defended against the most prominent historians on the planet."

Is Christianity or Atheism more rational?

Is Christianity or Atheism more rational? Here is an interesting interview with John Lennox (philosopher of Science and Mathematics at Oxford) regarding this question.

Does God Exist? Debate Now Available on DVD

The "Does God Exist" debate took place in front of a sold out crowd at Biola University on April 4, 2009. Over 4,200 people saw it live on-campus and and additional 11,000 viewed it from around the globe through a special webcast. Don't miss this debate between one of the finest Christian philosophers alive today, Dr. William Lane Craig, and Christopher Hitchens, who is one of the most outspoken atheists in a century.

Read the Biola's News Report on this Debate. Click Here

Order a DVD.

What is the New Atheism?

I came across this clip by Tim Keller. It is a succinct summary of the New Atheism.







Check out Timothy Keller's response in Reason for God.

"Darwin of the Gaps" - Review of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins

Francis Collins book, the Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief has much that is valuable to add to the conversation about design and the evidence for God. But there are some areas of disagreement that some have raised against Collins understanding of Intelligent Design and Common Descent.

Jonathan Wells reviews Collins' work here.

Here is is summary. Click here to read the whole article.

SUMMARY
Francis Collins criticizes intelligent design (ID) on the grounds that it fails to suggest approaches for experimental verification, but then he cites experiments that he says prove it wrong. He also criticizes it for being a God of the gaps argument, but only after redefining ID as an argument from ignorance. Collins feels that ID poses a serious problem to Christian belief because it rejects Darwinian evolution, which he feels is supported by overwhelming evidence. But the only evidence Collins cites for Darwin’s mechanism of variation and selection is microevolution – minor changes within existing species. And the principal evidence he cites for Darwin’s claim of common ancestry is DNA sequences that he says have no function – though genome researchers are discovering that many of them do have functions. Collins’s defense of Darwinian theory turns out to be largely an argument from ignorance that must retreat as we learn more about the genome – in effect, a Darwin of the gaps.

Can Science Explain Everything?

Science rules in our culture. If you’re a scientist people have to listen to you, and if you are not—well, no one wants to be dismissed as “unscientific.” Scientific discovery is the crowning jewel of human progress. Our society’s position: science can tell us everything we need to know; or if it can’t right now, just give it some time and it will eventually solve all our problems. This understanding represents an inflated view of science. As useful as science is, its explanatory scope is not universal. Only a little reflection shows that there are other areas of knowledge in our world: philosophy, ethics, religion, literature, economics, poetry, art, and music (just to name a few).

Not only is the notion that science can speak to all of life clearly false, a common formulation of this view is also incoherent. To see this, examine the following statement by famous atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell: “whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.” Initially, this sounds very sophisticated and intelligent. The only problem is that if it is true, we couldn’t know it to be true. Why? Because the statement itself is not testable by the scientific method and is therefore, by its own standard, unable to be known. This fallacious view is called scientism.

What we need is a robust philosophy of science that recognizes the limits of the discipline. Now there may be implications in other disciplines--but science cannot and will not ever-in principle- be able to give us the elusive "Theory of Everything."

What is apologetics?

What is apologetics? I will let one of the most prominent apologists of our day—William Lane Craig—answer that question.

“Apologetics (from the Greek apologia: a defense) is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith. Apologetics is thus primarily a theoretical discipline, though it has a practical application. In addition to serving, like the rest of theology in general, as an expression of loving our God with all our minds, apologetics specifically serves to show to unbelievers the truth of the Christian faith, to confirm that faith to believers and to reveal and explore connections between Christian doctrine and other truths” - taken from his excellent book Reasonable Faith.

Peter wrote that we are to in our hearts "set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander (1 Peter 3:15-16).

This will include rebutting and refuting claims against Christianity as well as providing reasons for the plausibility of the Christian worldview.

Who Designed the Designer?

Here is one of the most common objections to Intelligent Design and that comes up in discussions surrounding the existence of God. Philosopher Jay Richards offers some good insight about how to think about this intriguing question.




For more on this, check out the Case for the Creator.

Chance or Design?

I came across this clip and was again reminded of how easy "design" is to recognize in everyday life; but then how ironic it is that design is a forbidden inference when we look at "really small" or "really big" stuff like the bacterial flagellum or the universe. Enjoy this clip...

Is there evidence from Cosmology that there is a Creator?

Check out Lee Strobel's Case for the Creator for more (book and DVD). Also, website.

Richard Dawkins believes in god????

Maybe. Yeah, I know, pretty interesting. You can read the whole article here (which is insightful). But the short of it is that at a recent debate, Dawkins - Mr. God Delusion himself - conceded that, wait for it, "A serious case could be made for a deistic God." Stop the presses!!

That would be similar in principle to the case that Anthony Flew makes in his recent conversion to deism, in There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. This is a fascinating read--even if you disagree with his conclusions.

Dawkins vs. Lennox - Science & The Question of God

On October 3rd of 2007 in Birmingham, Alabama, Professor Richard Dawkins and his Oxford University colleague Dr. John Lennox engaged in a lively debate over what is arguably the most critical question of our time: the existence of God. The debate centered on Dawkins' views as expressed in his best-seller, The God Delusion, and their validity over and against the Christian faith. Both presenters agreed to the format and topics of discussion.