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...

Saddleback Church Apologetics Conference

Saddleback Church recently hosted an Apologetics Conference with a number of great apologists. Now their audio and video are available for listening and viewing online. But if you prefer MP3s or a podcast feed, you can download there right here:

• How Can I Know God Exists? - Dinesh D'Souza - MP3
• How Did the Universe Begin - William Lane Craig - MP3
• If God Exists, Why is there Evil? - Norman Geisler - MP3
• Has Science Made Belief in God Obsolete? - J.P. Moreland - MP3
• What Do the Gospels Really Say About Jesus? - Darrell Bock - MP3
• How Can I Defend My Faith Without Sounding Defensive? - Greg Koukl - MP3

This is a wonderful introduction to how faith and reason work together. If you have doubts about the Christian faith or know someone who does, this is an encouraging place to start seeking some answers to questions that matter. (H/T Apologetics 315 blog)

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.

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."

How Christianity Changed the World

In the last post, I was responding to a very common criticism of the new atheists. But as it was properly pointed out, this is not an argument for Christianity.

When it comes to the moral vision of the NT and the lasting impact of Christianity, a fascinating book is How Christianity Changed the World. From education to women's rights, Christianity, when it has been properly understood and applied, is a force for good in our world. And that flows from the good news of the Kingdom that Jesus offered.

Is Christianity Responsible for the Mass Murders of History?

If you were to sit through a Western Civilization 101 class today, it would not take long to get the impression that Christianity is responsible for the worst atrocities in history. Exhibits A, B, and C would be the Crusades, Inquisition, and witch trials. My point here is not to delve into the intricacies of history or justify what did or did not happen; though I would encourage people to go beyond the often unsubstantiated slogans and rhetoric to the facts of history themselves (it is one thing to take responsibility for what you did, it is quite another to struggle under the weight of what others wrongly perceive you to have done). Rather, I want to compare these events with Atheistic atrocities—which seem to get far less press.

If you were to only examine the big three Atheistic regimes of the 20th century—Mao in china, Stalin in Russia, and Hitler in Nazi Germany—then you would discover that they are responsible for more than 100 million deaths (and that does not even include others like Pol Pot’s mass killings in Cambodia). Dinesh D’Souza observes that:

"Religion-inspired killing simply cannot compete with the murders perpetrated by atheist regimes. I recognize that population levels were much lower in the past, and that it’s much easier to kill people today with sophisticated weapons than it was in pervious centuries to kill with swords and arrows. Even taking higher populations into account, atheist violence surpasses religious violence by staggering proportions. Here is a rough calculation. The world’s population rose from around 500 million in 1450 A.D. to 2.5 billion in 1950, a fivefold increase. Taken together, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch burnings killed approximately 200,000 people. Adjusting for the increase in population, that’s the equivalent of one million deaths today. Even so, these deaths caused by Christian rulers over a five-hundred-year period amount to only 1 percent of the deaths caused by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao in the space of a few decades."

D’Souza further adds that, “If Christianity has to answer for Torquemada [cf. Inquisition], atheism has to answer for Stalin. By the same token, if the ordinary Christian who has never burned anyone at the stake must bear some responsibility for what other self-styled Christians have done on behalf of religion, then atheists who think of themselves as the kinder, gentler type do not get to absolve themselves for the horrible suffering that their beliefs have caused in recent history.” All loss of life is tragic, and I am certainly not trying to “white-wash” the evils done in the name of Christianity, but the facts of history show that atheism, not Christianity, is responsible for the mass murders of history.

For more on interacting with the New Atheism, check out Dinesh D'Souza's book, What's So Great About Christianity

Is the God of the Old Testament a Moral Monster?

That is a question that gets raised by a lot of the New Athiests. And there is probably no more passionate defender of atheism than Richard Dawkins of Oxford University.

Here are his devotional thoughts on the God of the Old Testamet:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Hey...Richard...tell us how you really feel.

What can / should a Christian say in response to this?

First, Christians recognize that the God of the OT is the God of the NT--they are one and the same. So however we answer this, we can't right the OT off.

Second, We live in a fallen, broken world; God did not do this to us or intend this for us, humanity did this to ourselves by rejecting God. This is important because God used Israel (a deeply flawed people just like everyone else in the Ancient Near East) to be a force for good in the world...but Israel was not God's ideal community. He worked with fallen people in a very violent society to help show a better way and prepare the way for the messiah.

Now, none of these take away the bite of the passages that seem to advocate genocide in the OT. But they help us better appreciate the situation.

Dr. Paul Copan has written a thoughtful article engaging this issue called Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics

It is well worth a read. He also deals with issues like this in That's Just Your Interpretation

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.

Has Science Killed God?

Oxford professor John Lennox says no and gives a compelling case why. He refutes the arguments offered by the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins.

The book is God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? And it needs to be on your bookshelf. It is accessible and substantive--a difficult thing to do.

(About the Author) John Lennox is reader in mathematics in the University of Oxford and fellow in mathematics and the philosophy of science at Green College. He has lectured in many universities around the world, including Austria and the former Soviet Union. He is particularly interested in the interface of science, philosophy, and theology.

Memes to the rescue?

What's in a meme? It is a Neo-Darwinian concept that is supposed to explain some of the things we have been talking about in terms of survival and morality and God.

Oxford Prof. Alister McGrath gave a lecture on this, The Spell of the Meme (here is the PDF).

He also has a book length critique of Dawkins concept as well...

Dawkins' GOD: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life

(Review) "Wielding evolutionary arguments and carefully chosen metaphors like sharp swords, Richard Dawkins has emerged over three decades as this generation's most aggressive promoter of atheism. In his view, science, and science alone, provides the only rock worth standing on. In this remarkable book, Alister McGrath challenges Dawkins on the very ground he holds most sacred - rational argument - and McGrath disarms the master. It becomes readily apparent that Dawkins has aimed his attack at a naive version of faith that most serious believers would not recognize. After reading this carefully constructed and eloquently written book, Dawkins' choice of atheism emerges as the most irrational of the available choices about God's existence."--Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project

Does God Exist? Cont. (the Moral Argument)

Well, let's continue our discussion. In order to stay on task, here is the argument as it stands:

If God does not exist, objective moral values & duties do not exist.

Objective moral values & duties do exist.

Therefore, God exists.

An important clarification needs to be made here. Often, people misinterpret the argument to entail that people cannot live moral lives or 'be good' unless they believe in God. This of course if false and it isn't the argument here. The argument here concerns, what makes the best since of objective moral values and duties. What is a sufficient ground for them if they exist? So atheists can live moral lives. It remains to be seen however if atheism has the resources to provide ontological grounding for objective goods, duties and values which one would then have an obligation to exemplifying.

By way of review, premise 2 seems solid (at the very least more probable than its contradictory).

So what of premise 1 - that objective moral values and duties would not exist if God did not exist?

Let's ask the question this way. It seems to me that Atheism entails Naturalism. And Naturalism reduces all existence to physics and chemistry. Non-physical stuff like consciousness, minds, freedom of the will, moral obligations, and beauty seem out of place in such a worldview.

So moral values and obligations if they exist, on an atheistic view, would arise from only three sources (can you think of any others that would possibly be objective?).

1. social agreement (but does this confer ontological grounding to what we agree on?)
2. evolutionary emergence (but in what since are these objective instead of arbitrary?)
3. some sort of platonic heaven as abstract objects (but how do abstract objects, like numbers, confer obligations?) 
   

So the question then is, what is the more reasonable inference? That God grounds objective morality and duty in his very essence, being, and character or these three possibilities?

What do you think?

I will post more of my thoughts on these 3 options soon.

Making the Case for Objective Moral Values

William Lane Craig argues for objective moral values and this is a key premise in the moral argument for God's existence.

Does God Exist?

A good question to consider indeed. One argument for the existence of God that I find especially powerful is the so called "Moral Argument." Here it is.

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values & duties do not exist.


2. Objective moral values & duties do exist.


3. Therefore, God exists.

Now this is a good argument because 3 follows necessarily if premises 1 & 2 are true; thus producing a sound argument.

Premise 2 seems intuitively obvious to most people. Hitler was objectively wrong. Torturing babies for fun is objectively wrong. Human trafficking is objectively wrong. 'Objective' simply means that it is true regardless of whether anyone else thinks so or agrees etc. It is a fact of our world. Honestly if someone denies premise 2, they don't need an argument, they need to get help.

It seems to me the issue is premise 1. Is God necessary to objectively ground morality? We will explore that in another post.

Until then, listen to a debate on this issue - Is God Necessary for Morality?

To see the argument in book form, check out Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig.

At least 5 things science can't explain

In a debate between Peter Atkins (a Darwinist) and William Lane Craig (a Christian), there was an interesting exchange on the limit or limitlessness of science. Atkins says there weren't any. Craig pointed out the following 5 areas that science cannot give a scientific explanation of:

1. mathematics and logic (science can't prove them because science presupposes them),
2. metaphysical truths (such as, there are minds that exist other than my own),
3. ethical judgments (you can't prove by science that the Nazi's were evil, because morality is not subject to the scientific method),
4. aesthetic judgments (the beautiful, like the good, cannot be scientifically proven), and , ironically
5. science itself (the belief that the scientific method discovers truth can't be proven by the scientific method itself)

Science is helpful; but we should not expect it to answer everything and it certainly hasn't proven that God doesn't exist contrary to many claims being made. If you found this kind of insight helpful, you would benefit from I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

Does Science Have the Answer for Every Question?

Alex Rosenberg is a Philosopher of Science at Duke. He offers a helpful observation:

“If the direction in which science carries philosophy is a one-way street towards physicalism, determinism, atheism, and perhaps even nihilism, then the intellectual obligation of those who wrestle with philosophical questions would be unavoidable. We must understand the substantive claims of physical science…and we must understand the strengths and limitations of science as a source of answers to these questions.”

Science is important...so far as it goes. But it is not omni-sufficient to answer all of life's ultimate questions (not least of which the nagging issue of what science itself is and what counts as science and what does not).

Are people the problem or is religion?

Is religion inherently dangerous? Oxford theologian Alister McGrath would argue, and I think rightly, that people are the problem; not religion per se.

“All ideals—divine, transcendent, human, or invented—are capable of being abused. That’s just the way human nature is. And that happens to religion as well. Belief in God can be abused, and we need to be very clear, in the first place, that abuse happens, and in the second, that we need to confront and oppose this. But abuse of an ideal does not negate its validity.”

This observation is important because it removes simplistic statements about religion being the root of all evil and violence in the world today. The issues are far more complex because human beings, who posses freedom of the will, are involved.