Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

QUICK TAKES . . .

- - Evangelicals are on the rise in France.   A surprise to many.

From a postwar population of about 50,000, French evangelicals are now estimated to number 450,000 to 500,000. According to the Evangelical Federation of France, the number of churches has risen from 800 in 1970 to more than 2200 today. . .  [more . .]

- - Churck Colson: "Atheists who become believers: the confounding attraction of the Christian worldview."

A strong empirical case can be made to show that Christianity is the only rational explanation of life. . .   the four basic questions that most people ask about life: Where did I come from? What's my purpose? Why is there sin and suffering? Is redemption possible? Then, on the other side of the matrix, we list the various philosophies and prominent world religions. By examining how each view answers the four questions, we can determine which worldviews conform to the way things really are. This is the correspondence theory of truth—a thoroughly rational test. Students quickly see that only Christianity teaches that humans are created in the image of God, thus protecting their dignity.  [more .  .]

- Daily Mail: Britain is the abortion capital of Europe.

It has overtaken France - which has a larger population - to become the abortion capital of the continent. The rising rate has been pushed up by abortions among teenage girls, which increased by nearly a third over the past decade.  [more . .]

DOUG GROOTHUIS SUMMARIZES PASCAL'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Doug Groothus, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary, and author of the valuable, Truth Decay (among other books), reviews various books at Amazon.Com.  If you value his opinion, as I do, you'll want to subscribe to the RSS.  

Here is Groothuis offering a 10-minute introduction to Pascal's Anthropological Argument.

SELECT POSTS FROM WINTERY KNIGHT BLOG

I have some catching up to do with what Wintery Knight has been up to.   Following is a selection.  All are worth "clicking through" to read:

-  How good are the arguments in the new book by Richard Dawkins?

-  Skincare company uses aborted fetal tissue in anti-aging cream

-  American Library Association silent as librairies ban books about ex-gays

- UK Woman gets police visit after writing letter protesting gay pride parade (Must read)

- Hindu/Christian debate on anti-conversion law in India

- New books of interest to Christian apologists

         Update:  One of the books listed is Dr. Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell about which Charles Colson has important things to say.  Dr. Douglas Groothuis, for his part, rhapsodizes:

The book is no less than magisterial, an adjective that curmudgeons such as myself seldom use. At every level--philosophical, scientific, historical and literary--it is a superb treatise.    Reading every word of its 508 pages of text (not counting end notes)--as I did--repays the reader greatly.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Atheist Christopher Hitchens offers this discovery as a result of his numerous debates with theists:

I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe.

Me:  That comes as no surprise to me.  I am glad that the Christians he has debated, and those in the audience,  have displayed manners.  Hitchens, of course, has much more to say.

Update 10/27/09 - Something of the flavor of the Hitchens - Doug Wilson debates can be found in this Huffingtron Post exchange.

HUGH HEWITT INTERVIEWS RICHARD DAWKINS

Some might find this transcript of Hugh Hewitt's hour interview with Dawkins interesting. To me, who knows something about the impressive manuscript evidence for the New Testament versus other classical documents, this segment proved especially interesting:

HH: On the person of Jesus Christ, did He exist?

RD: I suspect He probably did. I suspect there are lots of itinerant preachers, and one of them was probably called Yehoshua, or various other versions of Jesus’ name, but I don’t think that a miracle worker existed.

HH: How do you rate the evidence for Christ’s existence, manuscript evidence, eyewitness evidence, things like that?

RAVI ZACHARIAS ON CREATION, DESIGN, MORALITY AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

I arrived at this fine post at the Western Experience via Wintery Knight blog.  You'll want to listen and watch Zacharias' response to Jim Kennedy's questions.

In a comment on the above, Wintery Knight links to a William Craig-Arif Ahmed debate at Cambridge University on the subject "Does God Exist" and asks readers to compare opening speeches.

BEN WITHERINGTON EVALUATES DAN BROWN'S NEW BOOK "THE LOST SYMBOL"

Dan Brown is the author of the best-selling The Da Vinci Code (2003).  Concerning Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol, Ben Witherington writes,

Its Number One on Amazon, and has gone to the top of several best seller lists, and the reviews are pouring in for Dan Brown's latest blockbuster novel, sure to be made into a movie.  But even Mr. Brown's fans, reviewing the book on Amazon, are about equally divided as to whether this novel makes Mr. Brown a dude or a dud.

Witherington comments on the book's literary worth, its historical accuracy (or inaccuracy), and Brown's treatment of the Bible and orthodox Christianity.  On this, Witherington offers an important critique:

In his attempt to explain why the Bible has endured through the ages  Peter Solomon, Robert Langdon's mentor and a Mason says the following: "The reason...is that there exist powerful secrets hidden in the pages of this ancient book... a vast collection of untapped wisdom waiting to be unveiled." (p. 489) The hidden meanings in the Bible are the reasons why the finest minds have pondered this book for so long. 

RANDY ALCORN'S BOOK: "IF GOD IS GOOD . . . FAITH IN THE MIDST OF SUFFERING AND EVIL"

From Between Two Worlds:

Randy Alcorn's new big book on the problem of evil and suffering is now available: If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Multnomah).

You can read the table of contents and some excerpts at EPM's page, read an interview that Andy Naselli did with Randy here at Between Two Worlds, or read a review of the book by Tim Challies.

Me:  I've clicked through the links.  This book looks tremendous!  I'm reminded of his earlier blockbuster, Heaven, which I have on my shelf and need to get to soon.

SALMON RUSHDIE CLAIMS THE NEW TESTAMENT IS UNRELIABLE BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN (HE SAYS) 100 YEARS AFTER THE EVENTS IT DESCRIBES. IS HE RIGHT?

I was disheartened the other day as I began browsing in Ibn Warraq (ed) The Quest for the Historical Muhammad.  On page 15, Warraq embeds a quote from Salmon Rushdie:

"... Our records of Christianity date from about a hundred years after the events they represent.  It's a really long time.  The degree of authority one can give to the evangelists about the life of Christ is relatively small." 

My instant reaction:  "How sad for him to be so tragically misinformed!"  It struck me as similar to those Jews at the time of Christ who dismissed Jesus' Messianic credentials outright because they thought he had been born in Galilee, and they knew that the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem.  [John 7:40-44] Their misinformation represented a fundamental error of factual knowledge that could easily have been corrected.  (Jesus had  been born in Bethlehem!)

In the case of Salmon Rushdie, how I wish he (and others similarly mislead), knew some of the facts that can be found in Frank Turek and Norman L. Geisler's book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist and similar sources.

There is actually only a 15 to 40 year gap between the life of Christ and the writings about him.  Turek and Geisler headline one section of their book: "Some New Testament Books were Penned in the 40s and 50s A.D., with Sources from the 30s  (Only a Few Years After the Death of Jesus).  (p. 241) They write:

"There is no doubt from anyone--including the most liberal of scholars--that Paul wrote his first letter to the church at Corinth (which is in modern-day Greece) sometimes between 55 and 56.

Faith and Reason (Apologetics): More Resources

The following comes courtesy of Wintery Knight blog.  He spotlights a recent apologetics conference held at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church.  For a video and audio of the following lectures, click here.

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

Wintery Knight also includes the following new audio lectures and video from William Lane Craig:

Can We Be Good Without God? (National Faculty Leadership Conf. 2008)  Audio

Why Does Anything at All Exist? (National Faculty Leadership Conf. 2008)  Audio

Healthy Relationships (National Faculty Leadership Conf. 2008) Audio

Who Does Jesus Think He Was? (National Faculty Leadership Conf. 2008)  Audio

Why Does Anything at All Exist? (Wake Forest University)  Video

Response to Richard Dawkins book, The God Delusion (University of Florida) Audio

One Question: The top 3 questions Univ. of Florida students are asking God (University of Florida)
Audio

C.S. LEWIS ON OBJECTIVE VALUE

1. "The doctrine of objective value [is] the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. . . . Because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with  reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgement: in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be  reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform."  --The Abolition of Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 31-32.   (HT: Doug Groothuis)

Me: This is a great quote.  A bombshell, really.  So many people assume that their "feelings" tell them truths about the universe and about ethics.  Not so.  Anyone who absorbs the message and insights of "The Abolition of Man" will find themselves at revolutionary odds with the insanity of contemporary Western culture.

SUGGESTIONS ON PREPARING TO MEET ACADEMIC INTIMIDATION

After linking to one of my posts, Wintery Knight (whose blog should be read on a daily basis) went on to offer advice to prospective conservative and Christian students.   One would do well to click through to the links embedded in his post.  He wrote:

. . . young conservatives and Christians need to get used to staying calm while ideas that they don’t agree with are shouted in their faced in the typical vulgar, abusive manner that secular leftists seem to find so fetching these days. The best way to do that is to watch as many debates as possible in advance and get used to sitting still and disagreeing while someone else explains their point of view. . .

Other points of view are only annoying if you have lousy reasons for your own point of view. If you put the time in learning your arguments and evidence, and the best that could be argued against you from the other side, then there should be no problem. . .

We need to start making it common knowledge that atheism does not ground morality and that is a worldview that is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the last 100 years alone.  That point must be made over and over – that when someone claims to be an atheist it should be immediately put to them that meaningful morality is not rationally grounded by their worldview. Don’t let them make any moral judgments without challenging them on the foundations of morality.  . . .

LIST OF WILLIAM LANE CRAIG'S DEBATES ON CHRISTIANTY & ISLAM

Wintery Knight posts the following:

Debates on Christianity and Islam featuring William Lane Craig

Opponent	Debate Topic	Audio	Video
Jamal Badawi	The Concept Of God In Islam and Christianity	Audio	Video
Shabir Ally	Did Jesus Rise From The Dead?	Audio	Video
Shabir Ally	The Concept Of God In Islam and Christianity	Audio	Video
Shabir Ally	Who Is The Real Jesus?	Audio	Video

Wintery Knight credits ChristianJR4 who maintains a full list of Bill Craig debates here. Wintery Knight says he helped to sponsor the last 3 of those debates!

William Lane Craig's website is here and his bio here.

LETTERS OF C.S. LEWIS TO A SPIRITUAL SEEKER (SHELDON VANAUKEN) - NOW ONLINE

1977 saw the publication of a book that rocked the evangelical world and beyond.  I am referring to Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy.  The book is still in print, as well it should be.  The current edition carries this descriptive blurb on the back cover:

This acclaimed story traces the idyllic marriage of Sheldon and Jean Vanauken, their search for faith, their friendship with C.S. Lewis, and the tragedy of untimely death and love lost.  It includes 18 letters by C.S. Lewis.

That's not bad, but better and more complete is this description (from the Amazon.com website):

A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken, is a heart-rending love story described by its author as "the spiritual autobiography of a love rather than of the lovers." Vanauken chronicles the birth of a powerful pagan love borne out of the relationship he shares with his wife, Davy, and describes the growth of their relationship and the dreams that they share. As a symbol of their love, they name their dream schooner the Grey Goose, "for the grey goose, if its mate is killed flies on alone and never takes another."

While studying at Oxford, Sheldon and Davy develop a friendship with C.S. Lewis, under whose influence and with much intellectual scrutiny they accept the Christian doctrine. As their devotion to God intensifies, Sheldon realizes that he is no longer Davy's primary love--God is. Within this discovery begins a brewing jealousy.

Shortly after, Davy acquires a fatal illness. After her death Sheldon embarks on an intense experience of grief, "to find the meaning of it, taste the whole of it ... to learn from sorrow whatever it had to teach." Through painstaking reveries, he comes to discover the meaning of "a mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love." He learns that her death "had these results: It brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealously of God. It saved her faith from assault. ...And it saved our love from perishing."

Replete with 18 letters from C.S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy addresses some of the universal questions that surround faith--the existence of God and the reasons behind tragedy. --Jacque Holthusen

The book had a powerful impact on me as it did on thousands of others.  I recently discovered that three of C.S. Lewis' letters to Vanauken have been placed in the public domain and are available on the internet.  They originally formed part of a small booklet, titled "Encounter with Light," which Vanauken published with C.S. Lewis' permission.  Much of that booklet was eventually  incorporated into Vanauken's larger work, A Severe Mercy.  The text of "Encounter with Light" is available here.   It chronicles in brief compass Vanauken's intellectual journey to belief in Christ, and offers the context of Vanauken's correspondence with Lewis.  The C.S. Lewis letters are reproduced below.

FAITH & EVOLUTION

I came across a new website (new to me at least) named Faith & Evolution which looks quite terrific.  Rather than clobber with polemics, it offers reasoned articles, videos, and resources (plus calm and detailed responses to antagonists) making it something of a "first stop" for anyone investigating and entering the current discussion on evolution and Intelligent Design. The site was developed by the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute.  

A lead article begins:

Francis Collins [author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006)] feels that intelligent design poses a serious problem to Christian belief because it rejects Darwinian evolution, which he feels is supported by overwhelming evidence. But the only evidence Collins cites for Darwin’s mechanism of variation and selection is microevolution—minor changes within existing species. And the principal evidence he cites for Darwin’s claim of common ancestry is DNA sequences that he says have no function—though genome researchers are discovering that many of them do have functions.

Collins’s defense of Darwinian theory turns out to be largely an argument from ignorance that  must retreat as we learn more about the genome—in effect, a Darwin of the gaps .    [more...]

** Blogger Wintery Knight put up a post today titled, "Does the new Ida fossil prove evolution? and wrote,

Whenever you have questions about evolution and culture, there is only one blog that you really need to read, and that’s Denyse O’Leary’s Post-Darwinist. She has written no less than THREE stories on the Ida fossil, so let’s take a look at see what she’s found.   [Read on . . .]

RECENT POSTS FROM DENVER SEMINARY PROFESSOR DOUGLAS GROOTHUIS (A.K.A. "THE CONSTRUCTIVE CURMUDGEON")

-- Groothuis, as many readers know, first achieved name recognition for being one of the first out of the gate evaluating the New Age movement.  He did so with sober, reliable, scholarly, yet readable treatments in such books as  Unmasking the New Age, Confronting the New Age and Jesus in an Age of Controversy, plus his little InterVarsity booklet, Are All Religions One?

A couple of days ago he posted the entirety of his article, "The New Age Jesus," which first appeared in Areopagus Journal (Nov-Dec 2004).   The article comes with footnotes, making it all the more useful.

-- On another post, Groothuis introduces Ian R. Colle (one of Groothuis' students) who published a positive, helpful, substantial (therefore worth reading!) review of  Paul A. Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. vii + 139 pages, $19.95 paper.   Colle's concludes his review:

Boghossian presents the constructivist/relativist views accurately and fairly and defeats the strongest formulation of their supporting arguments in a way that is easy to follow and understandable to the non-technical reader.  This short book should be required reading for all humanities professors and all who care about presenting sound arguments for a realist epistemology.   Read the entire review.

FOUR-MINUTE OVERVIEW OF 11 ARGUMENTS FOR CHRISTIANITY BY WILLIAM LANE CRAIG

Wintery Knight Blog has much outstanding material, especially on Christian apologetics.  I am indebted to that blog for the video of William Lane Craig's interaction with Christopher Hitchens mentioned in the title of this blog post.  The short video clip offers a well-done "taste" of the solid, persuasive material William Lane Craig brings to his dialogs.

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG'S REMARKABLE WIFE

Pretty fascinating story.  Craig is one of the most influential and effective Christian apologists in the world today.  Check out the credit he gives his wife, Jan.

His website is Reasonable Faith.   Herewith some links to a few of his debates:

“Does God Exist?” with Austin Dacey, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” with Bart Ehrman, and “Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?” with Paul Kurtz.

JUSTIN TAYLOR INTERVIEWS OS GUINNESS ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF FRANCIS SCHAEFFER'S DEATH

I respect Guinness, and I respect Schaeffer and this short interview transcript is enlightening.  Of Schaeffer, Guiness says:

I often say simply that I have never met anyone with such a passion for God, combined with a passion for people, combined with a passion for truth. That is an extremely rare combination, and Schaeffer embodied it. It is also why so many of his scholarly critics completely miss the heart of who he was, and why his son’s recent portrayal of his father is such a travesty and an outrage.

Further,

When almost no Evangelicals were thinking about culture and connecting unconnected dots, Schaeffer not only did it himself but blazed a trail for countless others to follow. Many who trumpet their disagreements with him today owe their very capacity to disagree to his influence a generation ago. A little man in stature, he was a giant in influence, and many who have gone further have done so only by standing on his shoulders. I for one owe far more to Francis Schaeffer than I can ever say, and I live daily in his debt.

Me:  I never personally made it to L'Abri, but Schaeffer and his books introduced me as a young man to Christian worldview thinking and to the wider world of literature, art, music and philosophy.  We may take issue with various points of Schaeffer's summaries and generalizations, but as Guinness says, we do so only because it was Schaeffer, or one of his intellectual descendants, who introduced and legitimized the wider world of scholarship to us in the first place.

DINESH D'SOUZA - "WHY WE NEED EARTHQUAKES"

- UPDATE:  Welcome readers from Wintery Knight Blog!  Thanks for the link!  To learn more about myself and this blog's viewpoint, click here.

-Drawing on the book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe  by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, D'Souza's explains:    

While natural disasters occasionally wreak havoc, our planet needs plate tectonics to produce the biodiversity that enables complex life to flourish on earth. Without plate tectonics, earth's land would be submerged to a depth of several thousand feet. Fish might survive in such an environment, but not humans.

Plate tectonics also help regulate the earth's climate, preventing the onset of scorching or freezing temperatures that would make mammalian life impossible. In sum, plate tectonics are a necessary prerequisite to human survival on the only planet known to sustain life.    [Read on for more . . .]

Note also:  David H. Rogstad, of "Reasons to Believe," offers yet another benefit for life from  earthquakes.  More articles here.

A.N. WILSON RETURNS TO CHRISTIAN FAITH FROM THE WILDERNESS

A.N. Wilson is an exceptionally talented writer.  Charles Colson has summarized his return to Christian faith (reprinted below).  Optimistically, I wonder if Wilson might one day turn into the sharp-witted, God-honoring, secular balloon-pricking Malcolm Muggeridge of our present generation.  Wouldn't that be extraordinary?  I am moved to wonder that on the strength of his article: "Why we should no longer be cowed by the chattering classes ruling Britain who sneer at Christianity."

Herewith Colson's article (But I must say parenthetically, that Wilson's book on C.S. Lewis -- which Colson praises overmuch -- has a whole lot of serious problems.  See Wayne Martindale's review here.)  But back to Colson's report:

SUMMIT MINISTRIES: CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL BOOT CAMP FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Chuck Colson, in a Breakpoint article, highlighted the need for Christian worldview training, and pointed to Summit Ministries as a great help to young people going off to college.  Here's a helpful interview with John Stonestreet, executive director of Summit Ministries, together with a podcast of a similar interview.  A Summit Ministries promotional video appears on a page with lots more information, including a wealth of resources and an invaluable links list.

PROF. BEN WITHERINGTON TAKES ISSUE WITH BART EHRMAN'S "JESUS INTERRUPTED"

Ben Witherington is a world class New Testament scholar, so when he reviews Bart Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know Them, one must give due weight to his critique.  Witherington offers his review in three segments (so far), here, here, and here.  Update: Ssgment four is here, and five here.  Segment six is here.

Extra: Stephen Colbert interviewed Ehrman about his new book.  Colbert, as one commentator said, "is at the top of his game" in this interview.  Witherington offers a comment:

WHO DESIGNED THE DESIGNER? DOUG GROOTHUIS RESPONDS TO RICHARD DAWKINS

Douglas Groothuis, aka "the Constructive Curmudgeon" and Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary writes:

My paper in "Think: Philosophy for Everyone" (a publication of The Royal Institute for Philosophy) is now on line (Spring, 2009 edition, pages 71-81). It is a secular journal, which encourages creative forms for doing philosophy that will reach past the purely academic world. That doesn't mean it is dumbed down. Some very prestigious contributors have been featured. For my paper, I designed a discussion between a Christian, an agnostic, and an atheist partial to Richard Dawkins. (In 2004, I published a paper in Think that featured a posthumous report from Pascal about the errors made in a Think paper criticizing his wager argument.) 

Some days later Groothuis posted  the following:

 John Loftus, host of Debunking Christianity and author of Why I Became an Atheist, kindly asked me if I wished to submit an essay to his blog. I chose a short and fairly popular piece first published at True U called, "Understanding the New Atheism: the Straw God." His fellow atheists have weighed in immediately with more posts that I have time to respond to. So, I encourage some of you apologists to read their responses and to respond in turn: politely and smartly.

DAVID HART'S BOOK: "ATHEIST DELUSIONS: THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION AND ITS FASHIONABLE ENEMIES"

R.R. Reno offers a review of David Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press).  Here's an excerpt from Reno's review:

“But,” as Hart writes in one of those sentences that makes the writer in me jealous, “atheism that consists in vacuous arguments afloat on oceans of historical ignorance, made turbulent by storms of strident self-righteousness, is as contemptible as any other form of dreary fundamentalism.”

So, yes, the modern era presents Christianity with deep and profound challenges, challenges we should engage, because they have the power to reform and deepen our faith. Hart points to David Hume and Edward Gibbon, and especially Friedrich Neitzsche. But it seems that our postmodern age has seen a definite drop in the quality of unbelief. “By comparison to these men,” writes Hart, referring to the serious atheists, “today’s gadflies seem far lazier, less insightful, less subtle, less refined, more emotional, more ethically complacent, and far more interested in facile simplifications of history than in sober and demanding investigations of what Christianity has been or is.”   [more . . .]    HT: Between Two Worlds

Me:  It looks like Hart's book reaches a new level of sophistication and depth and that he wields his verbal sword with notable dexterity.

WANTED: THINKING CHRISTIANS

That's the headline of a short article by Kenneth Samples in the Reasons to Believe Newsletter.  He writes (my bolding):

. . . The United Negro College Fund's provocative motto is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."  Christians could understand this as "A mind made in the image of an infinite, eternal, and personal God is all the more a terrible thing to waste.' 

According to Scripture, true wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are rooted in reverence for God and his revealed word (Job 28:28; Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7).  Intellectual virtues such as discernment, reflection, testing, analysis, and renewal of the mind are biblical mandates (Acts 17:11; Romans 12:2; I Corinthians 14:29; Colossians 2:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:21).  Therefore, Christians' overall devotion must include pursuing the life of the mind to the glory of God.  Using divinely given faculties to think clearly and carefully about the most important issues of life pleases our Creator.

ALVIN PLATINGA & DANIEL DENNETT SQUARE OFF AT AN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING

Update: Plantinga's lecture (mp3) here: Religion and Science: Where the Conflict Really Lies. 

(Original Post)- Here's a report of the encounter (Ht: Jonah Goldberg):

For those of you who do not know, on February 21st, the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association - the main professional body of American philosophers - hosted a kind of debate. I say "kind of debate" because one philosopher gave a paper, the other commented and the first philosopher replied and the floor opened for questions. But in fact the session was a debate.

The debate was between Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett. Plantinga is one of the founders of the Society of Christian Philosophers and one of the fathers of the current desecularization of philosophy. He is widely regarded - even by his critics - as one of the finest epistemologists of the last fifty years and one of the finest philosophers of religion since the Medieval period. Daniel Dennett is one of the New Atheists and is a well-known proponent of atheistic Darwinism and critic of religion. He is widely regarded - even by his critics - as one of the most important early philosophers of mind that opened the field to cognitive science and evolutionary biology. He has contributed enormously to the serious study of the mind and its relationship to the brain. Both philosophers are over sixty and perhaps at the height of their philosophical powers. They have also faced off before but, as far as I know, not in person.

A TREASURE TROVE OF MP3 LECTURES AVAILABLE AT THE MacLAURIN INSTITUTE

Edited 1/9/11  (Updated links)

Information on the MacLaurin Institute can be found here.  Located near the University of Minnesota, it's a place for the integration of Christian thought with the wider world of academia.

Of special interest to me is the 2002 series of lectures by Vishal Mangalwadi, the great Indian thinker whose understanding of the West and the world-wide spiritual crisis is so profound.  For more on Mangalwadi click here. 
Actually there are so many wonderful lectures on this site that it boggles the mind. 

The larger audio tape list (below) is from this link.

VIEW BY PROGRAM CATEGORY
Student Apologetics Training Conference
View 4 audio files
Must the Sun Set on the West?
View 1 audio files

(Keep reading by clicking below)

Philip Yancey's Tribute to C.S. Lewis

I stumbled this evening on the following short article by Philip Yancey subtitled, "How C.S. Lewis has shaped my faith and writing."

I first encountered C. S. Lewis through his space trilogy. Though perhaps not his best work, it had an undermining effect on me. He made the supernatural so believable that I could not help wondering, What if it's really true? What if there is a God and an afterlife and what if supernatural forces really are operating behind the scenes on this planet and in my life?

I was attending college in the late 1960s, just a few years after Lewis's death. I ordered more of his books from second-hand bookshops in England because many had not yet made it across the Atlantic. I wrestled with them as with a debate opponent and reluctantly felt myself drawn, as Lewis himself had, kicking and screaming all the way into the kingdom of God. Since then Lewis has been a constant companion, a kind of shadow mentor who sits beside me, urging me to improve my writing style, my thinking, and my vision.   (more . . .)

EXCELLENT BLOG: "BETWEEN TWO WORLDS"

I have found Justin Taylor's blog, "Between Two Worlds," so valuable that I now read it daily.  Today he strongly recommends two books.  I looked up the comments on Amazon and have put the books on my "wish list."  Here is what Taylor wrote:

If you don't yet have following books on your bookshelf--Reinventing Jesus by Daniel B. Wallace, J. Ed Komoszewski, and James Sawyer, and Putting Jesus in His Place by Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski--I'd warmly recommend them. They are both exactly what the church needs--excellent material, written in clear, accessible English, on important subjects under attack.

He goes on to  recommend inviting Ed Komoszewski to do seminars at one's local church. He also lists mp3s available from the Christian Life Conference at Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis where Alistair Begg and Sinclair Ferguson recently spoke.  Taylor lists the talks available for download on his blog.

Francis Schaeffer Revisited

In the course of reviewing two new biographies of Francis Schaeffer [HT: Between Two Worlds], Douglas Groothuis says the following: [my emphases]

Let me mention two basic ideas that I (as a professional philosopher, unlike Schaeffer) find profound and helpful.

First, Schaeffer taught that worldviews need to be compared on the basis of objective criteria. That is, one does not simply presuppose one's worldview apart from rational testing. Every worldview-or basic perspective on life's deepest questions-needs to pass three individually necessary and jointly sufficient tests. First, it must be internally consistent. That is, its defining beliefs must cohere with one another. Second, a worldview needs to fit the facts of reality; it must be "true to what is," as Schaeffer put it. A worldview needs to match the external facts of history and science. (This shows that Schaeffer held to the correspondence view of truth, not the "coherency theory of truth," as Hankins claims [91].) Third, a worldview needs to be livable to be credible. This means that it must pass the existential test of fitting the facts of the internal world. For example, any worldview that denies the objective reality of evil (such as secular relativism or Eastern monism) cannot be lived out consistently, since we intuitively know that rape, murder, and racism are wrong. These three apologetic criteria can be nuanced and made much more sophisticated, but they form the backbone of any solid apologetic method. These truths are far from outdated!

Second, Schaeffer repeatedly emphasized that the God of Christianity was an "infinite and personal" being, and that humans were not machines or little gods, but made in the image of this infinite-personal God. In other words, for Christianity, personality is the deepest and most profound ontological category of reality-not impersonal time, space, law, chance, matter or some impersonal sense of deity held by Eastern religions. Schaeffer's apologetic capitalizes on this uniquely personal sense of reality held by Christianity. Persons, though fallen, have objective and eternal meaning on this scheme-as does community, since God himself is a Trinity: a relationship of divine persons coexisting in one Godhead from eternity.

MATTHEW PARRIS: "AS AN ATHEIST, I TRULY BELIEVE AFRICA NEEDS GOD"

What a stunning article!    (HT: Hot Air)    This is a "must-read," a great conversation starter.  After reading this article, it is hard for me to understand how Matthew Paris remains an atheist.  I'll give him credit for this: he is extraordinarily objective in his observations and perceptions. This may be one of the best pieces of Christian apologetics I have read in a long time.   Read it!

DESTROYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WEST

A friend sent me a link to the Bill Muehlenberg essay, "Destroying the Foundations of the West," which I am glad to be aware of .  (He cites sources on my shelf I have wanted to read more thoroughly, rather than only dip into!).  I poked around Muehlenberg's website, "CultureWatch," and found much of interest there.  He has written an astonishing number of essays, plus a great number of book reviews.  He is a Christian writer attuned to the cultural challenges facing the modern world.  American-born, his wife is Australian and they make their home in Melbourne, Australia.  A short bio can be found here.

CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW - AN INTERVIEW WITH RAVI ZACHARIAS

Julia Dunn of the Washington Times conducted a recent interview.  Zacharias is always worth reading, and this interview is no exception.  Dunn introduces the interview with these words:

Indian-born Ravi Zacharias, who grew up steeped in Hinduism, is one of the first Christian apologists to come out of the Third World. Headquartered in Atlanta, his expertise on comparative religions has earned him audiences from Capitol Hill to Harvard.

An excerpt:

Q: How do you present the uniqueness of Christianity?

A: I am totally convinced the Christian faith is the most coherent worldview around. Everyone: pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist has to answer these questions: Where did I come from? What is life's meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die? Those are the fulcrum points of our existence. I deal with cultural issues whether they be in the Middle East, Far East, the Orient or the West. You broach questions in the context of their culture and then present Christian answers.   [More. . .]   (Note: I have made additions to this post since it was originally posted).

C. S. LEWIS - CHRISTIANITY COMPARED TO OTHER WORLD RELIGIONS

In several places C.S. Lewis offers thumbnail sketches of how he views Christianity vis-a-vis other world religions.  The following is taken from a talk he gave to Anglican clergy and youth workers, and published as "Christian Apologetics" in God in the Dock.

For my own part, I have sometimes told my audience that the only two things really worth considering are Christianity and Hinduism.  (Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies, Buddhism only the greatest of the Hindu heresies.  Real Paganism is dead.  All that was best in Judaism and Platonism survives in Christianity.)  There isn't really, for an adult mind, this infinite variety of religions to consider.  We may salva reverentia ["without outraging reverence] divide religions, as we do soups, into "thick" and "clear."  By Thick I mean those which 

"DID JESUS CHRIST REALLY RISE FROM THE DEAD?" - LEE STROBEL AT THE CRYSTAL CATHEDRAL

I happened to watch the Hour of Power on 11/16/08 and heard Lee Strobel preach a fine sermon on "A Skeptic's Surprise," which turned out to be a brilliant brief four-point argument for the historical factuality of Christ's resurrection from the dead.  The text of his sermon can be found here, and the video here.  Information on Strobel can be found here, and his own website is at www.leestrobel.com.

NOV 22, 2008 - THE 45th ANNIVERSARY (1963) OF THE DEATHS OF JFK, C.S. LEWIS & ALDOUS HUXLEY

John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley each represented a distinctive worldview (secular humanism, Christianity and Eastern pantheism, respectively).  It's remarkable that they all died on the very same day, Nov. 22, 1963.

Dr. Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, understands well the respective worldviews  each man held.  Kreeft wrote a fascinating and highly entertaining imaginative book about the three meeting and conversing after death.  It is titled Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley.  I read the book years ago and it has recently been re-issued. 

Now Peter  Kreeft talks about the book in a National Review Online podcast.

WILL THE REAL IRRATIONALISTS PLEASE STAND UP? -- Turns out to be the Atheists and Liberal Protestants, not Evangelicals

Jonah Goldberg links to a Mollie Ziegler Hemmingway Wall Street Journal essay, "Look Who's Irrational Now," and provides these excerpts:

"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

Keep reading. . .

OS GUINNESS LECTURES ON LINE

Douglas Groothuis over at the Constructive Curmudgeon posts:

Here is a large assortment of MP3 files of lectures and sermons by Dr. Os Guinness. There is no fluff in this man; he is articulate and prophetic. I have been learning from him through his books and lectures for over 30 years.

MICHAEL NOVAK EXPLAINS THE POINT OF HIS NEW BOOK "NO ONE SEES GOD"

Novak says the point of his new book, No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers, (to be published tomorrow) is the following:

There are three ways in which, in a twenty-first century context, we come to know the presence of God within us.

First, there is the memory of those in the Nazi and Communist interrogation cells, many of whom did not believe in God when they first went to prison — those who felt impelled not to agree to a lie, even if their bodies screamed under torture or under weariness or despair that they should just surrender and

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG & BART D. EHRMAN DEBATE: "IS THERE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS?"

This debate took place March 28, 2006 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

RENOWNED PHILOSOPHER ANTHONY FLEW ON "MY PILGRIMAGE FROM ATHEISM TO THEISM"

Flew is not yet a Christian, but he has become a "theist."  For most of his long life he has an international reputation as a a formidable and well-known atheist.  Read the interview here (downloadable PDF available here.)  The interview was published in 2004.

"IS CHRISTIANITY GOOD FOR THE WORLD? - A DEBATE BETWEEN CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS AND DOUGLAS WILSON"

This debate (which I've not yet read) took place during May 2007.  It is available here and also here.  I saw an advertisement in a magazine yesterday that indicated Canon Press will publish the interchange in book form  (same title), September 2, 2008.

VOX DAY - "THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST"

Joseph Farah interviewed Vox Day, author of The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Holy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. The book is available as a free ebook here.  Vox Day's blog can be accessed here. From the inside cover:

The Irrational Atheist is not a theological work nor is it a conventional religious defense of faith. It contains no arguments for the existence of God and the supernatural, nor is it concerned with evolution, creationism, the age of Earth, or intelligent design. This book contains no arguments from Scripture. In attacking the arguments, assertions, and conclusions of the New Atheists, Vox Day's only weapons are the secular tools of reason, logic and historically documented, independently verifiable fact. The Irrational Atheist is not a book about God, but about those who seek to replace Him....

Arguments pro and con can be found here.

MARY EBERSTADT - "THE LOSER LETTERS" (SCREWTAPE LETTERS FOR OUR MESSED UP TIMES)

Update 6/7/13 - I discovered today that all the links below have died.  The articles have been compiled and published as The Loser Letters published February 2010.  Mary Eberstadt has also written Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution (2012) and How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization (2013)  Last night I read her original 2007 essay published in Policy Review, "How the West Really Lost God."  Highly recommended!

** Original post:

This open letter to spokesmen of the New Atheism is a clever bit of Christian apologetics.  Supposedly written by a Christian convert to atheism, it turns out to be a witty and biting commentary on the sexual dystopia that atheistic secularism has produced.  More letters are said to follow.  (Edited 5/17/08)

Update 5/24/08 - Letter #2 - "Some Little Contradictions and How They Grew"

Update 5/30/08 - Letter #3 - "The Trouble With Good Works

Update 6/6/08 - Letter #4 - The Trouble with Dull Art

Update 6/13/08 - Letter #5- "About Those Totally Annoying Christian Convert Traitors"

Update 6/20/08  - Letter #6  -  "Query: Do Atheists Know Any Human Women, Human Children, or Human Families?

Update 6/29/08 - Letter #7 -  "The Unbelievably Annoying Problem of Christian Moral High Ground"

Updeate 7/11/08 - Letter #8 - From Baby Killers to Barnyard Mayhem: My Turn to Atheism, Part One

Update 7/24/08 - Letter #9 - My Turn to Atheism, Part Two. An Internet Café in Portland, the Little Debbie Tea Party, and You.

Update 7/25/08 - Letter #10 - Final letter - Onward, Anti-Christian Soldiers

http://www.amazon.com/Loser-Letters-ebook/dp/B003A2C3N2/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370641950&sr=1-4&keywords=Mary+Eberstadt

Dr. Ben Witherington on Deepak Chopra's Buddhist Jesus

Ben Witherington has a review of Chopra's new book, The Third Jesus.  (HT: smart christian) 

A commentator on Witherington's blog recommends an interesting critical view of Tibetan Buddhism from Victor and Victoria Trimondi, two former practitioners and supporters of the Dalai Lama.

Annotated Bibliography on Major Works of Historical Apologetics (1697-1893)

This list of books, all available online, is helpfully annotated, and thus all the more useful and instructive.   From the first paragraph:   (HT: Evangelical Outpost)

What follows is a highly selective bibliography in historical apologetics—the branch of apologetics dealing with the authenticity and credibility of the scriptures and particularly of the New Testament—from the late 17th century through the late 19th century. Although the progress of scholarship has raised new questions and provided additional lines of evidence, these older works are of more than merely historical interest. Most of the objections raised against Christianity today are variations on objections that go back hundreds of years, in some cases all the way back to Celsus and

DAVID BERLINSKI DEFENDS THE MOVIE "EXPELLED"

David Berlinski is a secular Jew who appears in Expelled (the movie questioning Darwinists who disgorge at the thought of Intelligent Design).  He has replied  to John Derbyshire, a National Review writer and committed Darwinist.  Berlinski's article exhibits exceptional writing talent, and skewers Derbyshire's  intemperate dismissal of a movie he refuses to see.  Berlinski is the author of The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.

Douglas Groothuis Reviews (Very Positively) J.P. Moreland's New Book "The Kingdom Triangle"

I have a high regard for both Groothuis and Moreland.  Moreland has moved into supplementing his apologetics with a complementary emphasis on the devotional life and third wave charismatic spirituality, thus his new book Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore the Spirit's Power .  Groothuis in his book review summarizes the deficiencies of naturalism and postmodernism, saying;

            In explaining the contemporary crisis, Moreland writes that we have moved from the “thick” world of the biblical worldview to the “thin” worlds of naturalism and postmodernism. A biblical worldview provides the knowledge of God, existential meaning, and authentic drama to all of life. We are creatures of a good and holy God, placed on earth to manifest the virtues of the Kingdom of God. We are immersed in and engaged with a life and death struggle with the forces of evil, yet God is our strength and hope. We are not groping in the dark, but have been given knowable truth in Scripture and elsewhere.

But both scientific naturalism and postmodernism—each in its own way—eviscerate the world of any objective meaning or genuine drama. Naturalism denies the reality of anything outside of what materialistic science can observe. The cosmos is reduced   

J.P. Moreland on Genesis and the Age of the Earth

Moreland here responds in a Q & A session to the objection that if one interprets Genesis to allow for long periods of time associated with the "six days," such a handling of Scripture would logically lead to reinterpreting and denying the virgin birth, the resurrection, and other Biblical doctrines.  Moreland's response helps allay such fears and concerns.  (Moreland's response is but a brief response to a particular question.  The debate is much broader and deeper, of course.)

Update: 4/20/08 - I see that Ken Ham, Carl Wieland, and Terry Mortenson of Answers in Genesis have jointly posted a lengthy response.