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?

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.

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?

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.

William Lane Craig debates John Shook in Canada, 2008

Full videos of the debate are located here.

Thanks to our friends at Apologetics 315.

A Massive compilation of materials

www.apollos.ws

Bill Craig - Bill Cooke Debate

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/

Websites and Blogs

• 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

• Evolutionary Informatics

Check it out at: http://ultimatequestions.org/

William Lane Craig coming to New Zealand

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!

J.P. Moreland on "Kingdom Triangle" at NPC 2007

Oxford Scholar John Lennox on Atheism and Richard Dawkins

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…

Dinesh D’Souza Debates Daniel Dennett

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

Read more

God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster

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…

Greg Bahnsen - Defending the Christian Faith (part 1)

Letter to a Maladjusted Misotheist (Sam Harris)

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.

Read more

William Lane Craig/Frank Zindler Debate

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!

Lots of Greg Koukl Videos

Here they are: http://youtube.com/profile?user=STRvideos

RZIM: Ravi Zacharias Foundations Apologetics Course

The RZIM Foundations curriculum is here! Designed to introduce a comprehensive range of apologetic arguments and strategies, it features lectures by RZIM’s team of apologists including Ravi Zacharias, Michael Ramsden, Alister McGrath, Amy Orr Ewing, John Lennox, Stuart McAllister, and L.T. Jeyachandran. Students of this rigorous curriculum will become adept at recognizing the many worldviews influencing our culture and equipped to challenge the assumptions of these worldviews. With compelling topics such as The Existence of God, Establishing a Worldview, The Trustworthiness of the Scriptures, and God, Evil, and Suffering, each study is available individually allowing you to craft your own experience according to your needs and interests. Complete with an in-depth workbook, you will find the studies foster not only knowledge but also cultivate the skills to communicate that knowledge in a way that is winsome and effective. This is one of the inaugural volumes of what will eventually be a 12-part series.

Can we really know anything for certain? If so, then how? Stuart tackles what we mean by truth and how we go about evaluating truth claims.

http://shop3.gospelcom.net/epages/rzim.storefront/EN/Product/DVDAP02

Christmas present: Letter from a Christian Citizen: A response to Sam Harris

You can get this book at an introductory price or at the heavily discounted price of 5 for $25 making them inexpensive enough for you to share with sceptical friends and even the media. We are also including a FREE DVD with every book. This DVD is of a ‘hard hitting’ video clip showing the irrationality of the claims of Dawkins and Harris. Also included are PDFs of related CMI articles and some video clips featuring CMI scientist Dr Jonathan Sarfati.

Get Letter from a Christian Citizen and the DVD Imagine … there’s no God here.

I Liked the Old Atheists Better

William Dembski

Philosopher Antony Flew used to be the most prominent atheist in the English-speaking world. In the last decade, however, that has changed.

Unlike Flew, who has always been civil and insightful, a new breed of atheists, who are crass and unruly, has supplanted him, notably, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins. Also, Flew is no longer an atheist.

Flew’s newfound belief in God and his assessment of today’s neo-atheism are both described in his delightful new book (coauthored with Roy Varghese), There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

More here.

From Darwin to Hitler

New book by Discovery Institute
Fellow shows influence of
Darwinian principles on
Hitler’s Nazi regime

Discovery Institute is pleased to announce the publication of the provocative intellectual history, “From Darwin to Hitler, Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany” (Palgrave MacMillan), by Richard Weikart.

In this compelling and painstakingly researched work of intellectual history, Weikart convincingly makes the argument that Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles.

“Richard Weikart’s outstanding book shows in sober and convincing detail how Darwinist thinkers in Germany had developed an amoral attitude to human society,” says Dr. Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, and author of “The Coming of the Third Reich.” “This provided Hitler and the Nazis with a scientific justification for the policies they pursued once they came to power.”

More here.

Evolutionary Logic

Argument by assertion is unanswerable. If, for instance, some vague waffle about an evolutionary transition does not satisfy a recalcitrant student, the instructor simply says, “This point should be intuitively obvious. I’ve explained it as clearly as I can. If you still cannot see it, you will just have to think very carefully about it yourself, and then you will see how trivial and obvious it is.” The instructor at this point might also want to add, “What are you, a creationist?” or “Are you one of those Christian fundamentalists?” or “Where have you been brainwashed?” Arguments by demonization like this are particularly effective when one or a few students get unruly, but the majority sides with the instructor.

Source: here.

Darwin Day in America

Darwin Day in America tells the disturbing story of scientific expertise run amuck, exposing how an ideological interpretation of Darwinian biology and reductionist science have been used to degrade American culture over the past century through their impact on criminal justice, welfare, business, education, and bioethics.

At the dawn of the last century, leading scientists and politicians giddily predicted that science—especially Darwinian biology— would supply solutions to all the intractable problems of American society, from crime to poverty to sexual maladjustment.

How ’bout this quote:

All we are doing is catching up with Darwin. He showed in the nineteenth century that we are simply animals. Humans had imagined we were a separate part of Creation, that there was some magical line between Us and Them. Darwin’s theory undermined the foundations of that entire Western way of thinking about the place of our species in the universe.

Bioethicist Peter Singer, Princeton University

You can buy Singer’s so called ‘ethics’ books in our bookshops, today.

Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) on YouTube

This is a very interesting academic video lecture by an important figure in today’s world. You can watch it here.

Interestingly, at about 7:40 into the video, Sergey says: “…not all web pages are created equal: people are, …”

I wonder what his worldview is, such that he would make a comment like that. Does he have good reason to think that humans are special, such that we are all equal?

He also spoke a little of Human Rights groups re China, so I wonder likewise: Does Sergey have good reason to think that human rights are objective (given by God), or are these just vacuous, sentimental words, such as those claimed by those who in the other breath claim we are just animals?

www.salvomag.com

This is the work of www.salvomag.com, a Christian journal. These are pretty clever. Take a peek at he two pictures full size here:

http://www.salvomag.com/new/ads/geobbels.html

http://www.salvomag.com/new/ads/peti.html

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