Dr. Stephen Meyer will debate Skeptic magazine editor and Darwin defender Michael Shermer in Beverly Hills on Monday November 30.
More info on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184759894536&ref=share
There is usually more heat then light generated in the evolution wars. However, this video is actually pretty good imo. Thanks to the Hoover Institution for making this available!
embedded by Embedded Video
A dvd by Dr John Blanchard
Based on the book of the same title – which is available for purchase online.
Part of a series of dvds by John Blanchard (same time & venue).
Sponsored by
Grace Reformed Baptist Church
Palmerston North
The following is cut and pasted (emphasis added) from Bill Craig’s latest newsletter. Lots of exciting stuff happening around the world. I am especially interested in On Guard which sounds like a must-have item!
Meanwhile, I continue work on a couple of book projects. Chad Meister and my book God Is Great, God Is Good, which is a wide-ranging response to the so-called New Atheism represented by the likes of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, is currently in press and should be out very soon with Inter-Varsity Press.
I’m also working with the editors and designers at David C. Cook on my On Guard, which will be a training manual for laymen in defending their faith. Because there are so many graphics in this book in the form of pictures, side bars, boxes, and so on, Cook is taking the unusual step of asking their designers to design every single page in the book to ensure an attractive and engaging appearance. So I’m very pleased at the efforts they’re putting into this book.
My scholarly research continued to advance this month. Prof. Ken Perzyck, who organized the conference I spoke at in New Zealand last year (see the July 2008 newsletter), directed me to an article by a Swedish philosopher who provided just the insight I needed to solve a problem I’ve been working on for some time now. I think it was a real breakthrough moment in my research, and I feel confident to move forward on it.
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.
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?
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.
http://crossexamined.org/calendar_event.asp?d_ID=121
Debate with Christopher Hitchens: Does God Exist?
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Virginia Commonwealth University
VCU: Commonwealth Ballroom in the Student Commons
Richmond, VA
It happened in Auckland…
http://mandmandmandm.blogspot.com/2008/06/battle-of-bills-review-of-craig-cooke.html
My small idea of getting Dr William Lane Craig to have a debate at Auckland University ended up being an event that far exceeded my expectations. Despite the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH) booking a larger lecture theatre at the last minute we still had to open up three additional lecture theatres with live video feeds and we still had people sitting on the floor! Question time had to be extended because of the interest. The range of people in attendance was excellent; hardened skeptics, evangelical Christians and everyone in between, young and old, high school students through to tertiary faculty.
And is about to happen in Palmy…
http://christiannews.co.nz/2008/debate-bill-craig-and-bill-cooke/
- Beretta (NZ)
- Bible Technology (NZ)
- Culture Watch (OZ)
- John Pickering (NZ)
- Matt Flannagan (NZ)
- Stand to Reason (US)
- Scott Mackay (NZ)
- Uncommon Descent (US)
Dr. JP Moreland Books
This is an excellent book :: the title says it all.
JP calls this book the Magnum Opus of his writings.
Lee Strobel Books
Intelligent Design Arts
Links
Check it out at: http://ultimatequestions.org/
Christian News has news that W.L.C. is coming to NZ in June. Check it out here.
This is huge news for those interested in apologetics as Craig is one of the best.
Apparently Richard Dawkins was asked if he would debate W.L.C. and replied: "It would look good on his C.V., but not on mine."
Probably what Dawkins really means is that: "Um, I know I will not be able to play fast and loose with this guy like I can with most others, so, um, what derogatory comment can I use to diffuse the question?"
It’s a shame that he turned it down. Craig debated Peter Atkins (MP3)from Oxford University a few years ago, and has done numerous other debates and written and co-written several books.
Check www.reasonablefaith.org for more details!
Still a Child Evangelist
A Survey of the Temper Tantrums of Hector Avalos
James Patrick Holding
…It will become clear, however, why I have chosen my title as I have. Avalos is, like Price and Ehrman, of the worst sort of “fundy atheist” — an atheist who has not abandoned the black and white mentality of the fundamentalist, and so continually errs in his assessments of evidence and arguments, or else feels that it is perfectly fine to manipulate the truth in service of what he thinks the greater good. I have also chosen the title and front-page illustration for a reason, in this vein. Avalos was once a child evangelist, and he remains one to this day: An evangelist, for atheism, with the same fervor and willingness to manipulate emotions and/or truth; and a child, in that his fundamentalist mindset, still retained, has prevented him from truly growing up, being honest, and thinking critically.
More: http://www.tektonics.org/af/avalos01.html
Are Christians delusional?
Read the latest edition of Apologetica for a response to Richard Dawkins attempt to answer intelligent design theorists regarding irreducible complexity.
Is Natural Selection sufficient to produce the obvious elements of design found in the universe? Brian Thomas doesn’t think so! He argues that the concept of irreducible complexity eliminates the possibility of a graduated development of biochemical “machines” that are essential to functioning cells.
To find out more read the new edition of Apologetica.
Sign up to receive Apologetica by email: cca@apologeticscenter.org
Well – has science buried God? Of course not. John Lennox answers his own question decisively. No one who understands what science really is and is not could suppose that such interment was ever on the cards. No one who understands what religion really is, beneath its sometimes ugly face, could suppose that it would be good to bury it.
From article:
“He is taken seriously in this not because his arguments are sound but because he is an outstanding rhetorician. It is the art of bamboozlement.”
Source: http://books.guardian.co.uk…
Thanks to Richard Dawkins dot net for this material!
Description:
Dinesh D’Souza, Christian and best-selling author, faced off against Tufts professor, author, and atheist Daniel Dennett in a debate on the existence of god. The resolution for the debate was as follows: “God is a manmade invention.” Daniel Dennett argued the affirmative, and Dinesh D’Souza the negative.
Full debate – VIDEO QuickTime format (185 MB, 2:15:12)
Full debate – AUDIO only mp3 (60.9 MB, 2:15:12)
Part 1
Dear Professor Craig,
The cumulative case for the existence for God proceeds from some data (physical constants, sentient souls, testimonies for miracles, etc.) to the existence of God as the best explanation of these data. There are some important objections. 1. Such inference does not show why theism is a better explanation than, say, the hypothesis of the existence of a very powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster. 2. Neither it says why some evil being – some powerful, malevolent being, say, something like Satan – is not a better explanation than God; especially when the existing evil is included in the data. How would you counter? Thank you very much.
Answer here:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org…
Published by permission (http://www.tektonics.org/gk/harrisletter.html)
November 2, 2006
Dear Mr. Harris,
Greetings to you. I am writing to you because I am in possession of your latest work, Letter to a Christian Nation, and I have been asked to deliver a detailed response to it, which I intend to do over the next few days. Before I begin writing you letters in earnest, however, I thought I ought to let you know when the first time was I ever heard of you: I saw your appearance in Brian Flemming’s film, The God Who Wasn’t There.
Now if you know this, you will understand why, quite frankly, I consider you a non-starter as an ideological opponent, rather than any sort of informed, worthwhile threat. For you see, it is my policy as a defender of the Christian faith to ignore those who show little or no interest in presenting a fair, accurate, and above all informed critique of Christianity.
Ok, so this is a bit old now, but quite embarrassing for the atheist side. Check it out on the www.apollos.ws website.
Craig is like a machine gun, and Zindler was supposedly the best the atheists could find!
A friend writes:
Other than Ron Nash do you know of any other good resources on the problem of evil?
In reply:
Yes, there are lots of them. Greg Koukl at www.str.org is excellent on this; Ravi Zacharias (www.rzim.org) also has a nice piece from a Q & A session (quoted below).
The key point is learning to think about it presuppositionally. Most people struggle with this, at least initially, because they naturally think that objective morality just is. But this is 180 degrees wrong. If there is no God, there is no objective morality. Yet most people appeal to objective morality every day, which is really an acknowledgement that God exists
Following is Ravi’s piece: you should read it over and over until the force of the argument hits you like a tonne of bricks! It is a pretty simple argument, but devastatingly powerful.
Comments always welcome.
Cheers.
Some time ago I was speaking at a university in England, when a rather exasperated person in the audience made his attack upon God.
“There cannot possibly be a God,” he said, “with all the evil and suffering that exists in the world!”
I asked, “When you say there is such a thing as evil, are you not assuming that there is such a thing as good?”
“Of course,” he retorted.
“But when you assume there is such a thing as good, are you not also assuming that there is such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to distinguish between good and evil?”
“I suppose so,” came the hesitant and much softer reply.
“If, then, there is a moral law,” I said, “you must also posit a moral law giver. But that is who you are trying to disprove and not prove. If there is no transcendent moral law giver, there is no absolute moral law. If there is no moral law, there really is no good. If there is no good there is no evil. I am not sure what your question is!”
There was silence and then he said, “What, then, am I asking you?”
He was visibly jolted that at the heart of his question lay an assumption that contradicted his own conclusion.
You see friends, the skeptic not only has to give an answer to his or her own question, but also has to justify the question itself. And even as the laughter subsided I reminded him that his question was indeed reasonable, but that his question justified my assumption that this was a moral universe. For if God is not the author of life, neither good nor bad are meaningful terms.
This seems to constantly elude the critic who thinks that by raising the question of evil, a trap has been sprung to destroy theism. When in fact, the very raising of the question ensnares the skeptic who raised the question. A hidden assumption comes into the open. Moreover, as C. S. Lewis reminds us, the moment we acknowledge something as being “better”, we are committing ourselves to an objective point of reference.
The disorienting reality to those who raise the problem of evil is that the Christian can be consistent when he or she talks about the problem of evil, while the skeptic is hard-pressed to respond to the question of good in an amoral universe. In short, the problem of evil is not solved by doing away with the existence of God; the problem of evil and suffering must be resolved while keeping God in the picture.
© 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. All Rights Reserved.
