Tas Walker in Palmy North 26 Sept

Tas Walker from Creation Ministries international is in Palmy North on Friday night.

Details: Friday 26 September, 7.30pm, public meeting, Central Baptist Church, 190 Church Street, Palmerston North.

More here.

Darwin and Evolution

Two lectures at Te Manawa. Details here.

See also the calendar on Thinking Matters.

Racism and Christianity

I have a friend who describes herself as a “disinterested agnostic”. For several years I have tried to understand where she is coming in terms of her worldview. She is quite reluctant to talk to me about these things, which is perhaps understandable. She has been known to make some rather strong assertions regarding morality — for example, female circumcision, treatment of women in Afghanistan, and “white-flight” from schools that apparently have too many Muslims and indigenous attendees.

Recently she wrote about the latter on her blog, to which I responded:

I don’t personally like racism, and certainly feel emotionally for those who suffer at the hands of others, simply because their appearance is different due to minute differences in genetic coding.

However, at an intellectual level, I find it much more difficult to reject racism as evil. Indeed, to believe racism is actually evil, I would have to believe first that evil actually exists.

But how do I get to this realization?

If you are thinking: “what a moron — of course evil exists”, then convince me as to how you arrived that that conclusion.

Stating “this is evil” or “that is evil” is only making assertions, and even racists are good at making assertions. For an assertion to carry any weight, it requires a foundation, lest it just be merely an empty assertion.

So what do you think? Does she have a case, or is she being inconsistent with her worldview? Is she making baseless assertions? Or am i just being too hard on her?

Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?

This is looking like a nice (and useful) interchange by the ID experts and those opposing them:

http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/does-intelligent-design-have-merit

Frank Turek comments on the Hitchens-Turek Debate

On Tuesday night, I debated atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God is not Great:  How Religion Poisons Everything, at Virginia Commonwealth University. The topic was, “Does God Exist?” 

Thanks be to God (and to you for your prayers) because I don’t think the debate could have gone much better. There were several atheists who approached me afterwards to say that I had won. 

One young lady actually apologized for being an atheist!  Her position was not well represented, and she said that the arguments for God were. 

Hitchens was his usual charming and witty self (I really like him and said as much), but he did not answer any of the eight arguments that I presented for the existence of God.  And as many in the audience acknowledged, he dodged nearly all of my questions.  

Here is the introduction of a long e-mail sent to me two hours after the debate by a VCU Philosophy professor who attended (this professor told me that he is completely “non-religious”):

Dear Dr. Turek, I wanted to say once again that I greatly enjoyed your talk and that, in my judgment, you clearly and unequivocally prevailed against Hitchens. Your two mind-body arguments were, I thought, very good, as were your modernizations of the cosmological argument and the teleological argument. I was also moved by your argument that, given how vanishingly close to zero are the chances of there being any sort of life, let alone intelligent life, it is more reasonable to infer that there is a God than it is to infer that there isn’t — the first an inference, but not the latter, being an ‘inference to the best explanation’, as philosophers of science would say.

Read the rest here.

North Island ‘Evidence For Design’ Tour with Dr Tas Walker

Friday 26 September, 7.30pm, public meeting, Central Baptist Church, 190 Church Street, Palmerston North.

Dr Tas Walker has been working for CMI–Australia since 1999 and is one of the conrtributing editors for the world-renowned Creation magazine which has subscribers in over 140 countries.

Tas is an engaging speaker, answering many questions such as, ‘Is the creation/evolution debate just a side issue?’ or ‘Doesn’t evolution remove the need for a designer?’ In his easy-to-understand illustrated presentations, Tas will show how you can be confident in the Bible, strengthen the faith of your family, and witness with enthusiasm to your neighbours and friends.

This is your chance to hear a scientist talk about:

• evidence for the accuracy of the Bible

• evidence for creation and against evolution

• evidence that geologic observations confirm the event of Noah’s Flood

A Hitch in Hitchens: Observations From the Turek-Hitchens Debate

Here are some observations from a Hitchens fan who was at the debate. Sounds like Turek won the debate, but Hitchens was not in great form (unwell perhaps?). Enjoy.

http://rudyhenkel.livejournal.com/2726.html

Anyone know where the MP3s are?

Help Us Get Lawmakers Expelled

Dear friends,

We’re excited to be able to tell you that on October 21^st Expelled: No Intelligence Allow, starring Ben Stein, will be released on DVD. In Expelled, Stein brilliantly exposed the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate science that challenges Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Rush Limbaugh called the movie “powerful” and “fabulous” and said Stein’s “interviews with some of the professors who espouse Darwinism are literally shocking.”

Read more

Debate between Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens at VCU

This should be really exciting for those who like a lively debate!

Frank is from this site: http://www.crossexamined.org/

Check it out. Frank is “in ya face!” and so is Christopher Hitchens — so this should be a fun debate. See a short video of Frank on his website above.

The Darwin Lectures

National Radio are running this series. Check out the MP3s here.

Apologetics Study Bible

Watch the video here.

• General Editor: Ted Cabal
• Associate Editors: Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen, Paul Copan, and J. P. Moreland
• Contributors: Charles Colson, John Frame, Norman L. Geisler, Al Mohler, Ravi Zacharias, and dozens more
• Broadman & Holman Publishing Group | 1999, 2007

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

Human beings are the only creatures who ask questions. Major questions.

• Can I know that God exists?
• Am I the product of a blind evolutionary process or was I created by God?
• How strong is the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection?
• Is the Bible reliable and true?
• Do I have a destiny beyond my life on earth?
• Can evil be reconciled with belief in God who is both all-powerful and all-loving?

Read more