This is from the blog of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Their journal is Philosophia Christi.
My paper ‘The Emperor’s Incoherent new Clothes – Pointing the Finger at Dawkins’ Atheism’ has just been published in the latest edition of Think (Number 24, Volume 9, Spring 2010). Think is a Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, edited by Stephen Law and published by Cambridge University Press. I argue that Richard Dawkins’ ‘new atheism’ proffers self-contradictory ideas about moral value, knowledge and responsibility.
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
Antony Flew’s book (with Roy Abraham Varghese) There is a God : how the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind is not in the Massey library, however it is available throught the BONUS+ system here:
http://bonus.newcastle.edu.au/search/i?9780061335297
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.
SCHOOL OF LANGUAGE STUDIES
SEMINAR SERIES 2009
Wednesday 22 July – 12noon-12.30pm
MB 3.25
Horace as Post-Modern
An admonitory tale for two eras
Colin Anderson
The worlds of 1st century BCE Europe and of the contemporary West are remarkably alike. Both dominated by one superpower, both constructed around a dominant cultural ideology developed over the previous 300 years – but both at a point where the prevailing social, political and religious structures underpinning this ideology – their “grand narratives” – are under severe challenge.
In the contemporary West, this is the Zeitgeist of the Post-Modern, which, with other expressions, is also mediated through its literature. The similar collapse of the ancient grand narratives can also be perceived through the literature of that time.
This talk examines one example of this “ancient Post-Modernism” in the Odes of Horace.
Check it out here.
Here are the details:
Here are 15 short sessions on critical thinking by Randall Ridenour from Oklahoma Baptist University. This is available as an iTunes podcast, but is not working right now. All the files can be found here however. These are m4b files, which, when played through Quicktime, have slides that go along with the lesson. It is recommended that you view and listen through your Quicktime player.
01 – Arguments
02 – Conditionals
03 – Perception
04 – Memory
05 – Sources
06 – Emotions
07 – Relevance
08 – Fallacies
09 – Probabilities
10 – Conditional Probabilities
11 – Samples
12 – Applications
13 – Heuristics
14 – Biases
15 – DissonanceEnjoy
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?
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.
Full videos of the debate are located here.
Thanks to our friends at Apologetics 315.
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!
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
