More from the witty Mike Adams about our experience with the faculty at UNC Wilmington (I’m glad he has tenure– he doesn’t hold back at all. It’s like he’s from New Jersey!).
There have been a couple of posts on this blog that have spurred quite a good discussion (see below: Atheists Have No Basis for Morality, and “Expelled” is a Must See: Freedom is the Victim). While there have been some good points made back and forth, it seems like we are getting down in the weeds on a couple of issues and perhaps ignoring the bigger picture. So this post is an attempt to take a look at the bigger picture. Namely, what is the correct worldview? A worldview is an explanation for why things are the way they are.
Every effect has a cause and there are many effects about reality that cry out for an explanation. A worldview, for example, answers questions such as: Why does this majestic and vast universe exist? What caused these amazing beings we call life? Why are we conscious? Why is there good? Why is there evil? In fact, why is there anything at all? Any good worldview must be able to explain at least the following:
- The origin of the universe out of nothing
- The design of the universe
- The origin of the four natural forces
- The origin of the laws of logic and reason itself
- The origin of the laws of mathematics
- The origin of the law of causality
- The origin of objective morality & human rights
- The origin and design of life
- The origin and design of new life forms
- The origin of intelligence, personality, and information
Anyone trying to tell you that his worldview is right must provide an adequate cause for all of those realities—atheists must, Christians must, and so must everyone in between. It won’t do any good to have a possible explanation for one or two of them and ignore the rest.
For example, Darwinists (i.e. atheistic evolutionists) try to tell us they have a cause for number nine. But even if we overlook the flaws and gaps in their theory and grant them that point, so what? It seems to me that their worldview can’t be considered adequate until they can provide an adequate cause for the other nine realities on the list. In other words, even if new life forms can be explained by Darwinism, how do atheists explain everything else? How does a biological theory explain the origin and design of the universe, physics, morality, reason, intelligence, etc.?
Now some of you may respond, “So what’s your explanation? Did God do everything? Isn’t that God-of-the-Gaps?” I’ll address that in a future post (if you want to jump ahead, you can read it in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist). For now, forget my explanation. What I’d like to see, if you are a Darwinist, is your explanation. How does an atheist explain the other nine realities on the list? I know it’s a lot to discuss. Maybe take one at a time. I look forward to your insights. (Thanks especially to Christopher and JJ for participating.)
Click here to read more from columnist Mike Adams about the intolerance of the UNC Wilmington administration. If Dr. Adams has his way, I will be going back to UNCW to contribute to the university’s three year “celebration” of Darwin.
Monday night at UNC Wilmington, despite no cooperation from the school (see my last post), just over 200 people showed up for part 1 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. Several atheists asked questions– actually made statements– and struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview. They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral. One atheist said “not harming people” is the standard. But why is harming people wrong if there is no God? Another said, “happiness” is the basis for morality. (After I asked him, “Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?,” he said, “I need to think about this more,” and then sat down.) This says nothing about the intelligence of these people– there just is no good answer to the question. Without God there is no basis for objective morals. It’s just Mother Teresa’s opinion against Hitler’s.
The atheists’ responses to the cosmological and design arguments– the arguments that show us that the universe exploded into being out of nothing and did so with amazing design and precision– were “we don’t know how that happened.” This is simply an evasion of the evidence that clearly points to an eternal, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal and moral First Cause of the universe. Since nature itself was created, this Cause must be beyond nature or “supernatural.”
We got plenty of encouraging comments from the believers who attended. And there will be a lot more written about this event when popular columnist Mike Adams posts his next column later this week. Just to give you a preview: during the Q&A Mike, who was our host, asked all faculty members to stand up. Only one person other than himself did. Out of 400-500 professors at UNC Wilmington– a school where the faculty claims to be champions of “diversity”– only two show up to a talk about the most important subject anyone could discuss (God)? Adams will have a field day with this. Track his columns on Townhall.com here.
Mike Adams, popular Townhall.com columnist and my host for tonight’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist talk at UNC Wilmington, reveals the anti-Christian bias in that school’s administration here. They won’t even allow a post announcing the event on the the university’s “public” web bulletin board. So much for the people who are supposed to be champions of tolerance, free expression, and diversity.
This bias is one reason CrossExamined.org exists– most college campuses indoctrinate students into an anti-Christain viewpoint. That’s why someone from the outside (us) must come in to give evidence for Christianity, and even then it is difficult to get the most basic of cooperation from the administration. I’m not whining, just stating facts.
I’ll let you know how the event goes later this week.
Now that the Center for Disease Control has revealed that 1 in 4 high school girls have a sexually transmitted disease, do you think it’s time to emphasize abstinence as the only 100% certain way to avoid the negative consequences of pre-marital sex? Of course, liberals will have a conniption over such a suggestion. But what is often forgotten by those who emphasize contraception as the answer is that the consequences of pre-marital sex are not merely physical. There are intense emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual consequences to having sex outside of marriage. There is no condom for the heart. Moreover, we should not be concerned only with avoiding the negatives of pre-marital sex, but the benefits of saving yourself for your husband or wife. (Some mistakenly think the Bible is silent on pre-maritial sex, but it’s covered by the word “fornication.” Click here for more on that.)
Unfortunately, many parents are reluctant to give the abstinence message. It’s not because they think their kids would be incapable or unwilling to comply, but because they themselves were not abstinent when they were teenagers. “How could I be such a hypocrite,” they think. Well, there’s a difference between being a hypocrite and being a teacher. Hypocrites tell you not to do something while they willingly do it themselves. Teachers, on the other hand, know that they’ve hurt themselves and others by their past sins and mistakes and want to teach you to take the better path.
I’m not suggesting that you reveal to your kids your own sexual history. I’m simply saying that you don’t need to be morally perfect to be a good parent or a teacher. We have no trouble teaching our kids not to steal despite the fact that every one of us has stolen something in our lives. It’s time we applied that same logic to the issue of sex. We can spare our kids a lot of pain, and protect them for their future, if we do.
The brilliant Thomas Sowell interjects some good judgment into what he calls “‘Non-judgmental’ Nonsense.” Click here.
The New Testament writers don’t just say that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead—they actually back up that testimony with dramatic action. First, virtually overnight they abandon many of their long-held sacred beliefs and practices. Among the 1,500-year-old-plus institutions they give up are the following:
-The animal sacrifice system– they replace it forever by the one perfect sacrifice of Christ.
-The binding supremacy of the Law of Moses– they say It’s powerless because of the sinless life of Christ.
-Strict monotheism– they now worship Jesus, the God-man, despite the fact that 1) their most cherished belief has been, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4); and 2) man-worship has always been considered blasphemy and punishable by death.
-The Sabbath– they no longer observe it even though they’ve always believed that breaking the Sabbath was punishable by death (Ex. 31:14).
-Belief in a conquering Messiah– Jesus is the opposite of a conquering Messiah. He’s a sacrificial lamb (at least on his first visit!).
And it’s not just the New Testament writers who do this– thousands of Jerusalem Jews, including Pharisee priests (Acts 6:7), convert to Christianity and join the New Testament writers in abandoning these treasured beliefs and practices. Even references from ancient non-biblical sources attest to this Jewish movement we now call Christianity.
J. P. Moreland helps us understand the magnitude of these devout Jews giving up their established institutions virtually overnight:
[The Jewish people] believed that these institutions were entrusted to them by God. They believed that to abandon these institutions would be to risk their souls being damned to hell after death. Now a rabbi named Jesus appears from a lower-class region. He teaches for three years, gathers a following of lower- and middle-class people, gets in trouble with the authorities, and gets crucified along with thirty thousand other Jewish men who are executed during this time period. But five weeks after he’s crucified, over ten thousand Jews are following him and claiming that he is the initiator of a new religion. And get this: they’re willing to give up or alter all five of the social institutions that they have been taught since childhood have such importance both sociologically and theologically. . . . Something very big was going on.
How do you explain these monumental shifts if the New Testament writers were making up a story? How do you explain them if the Resurrection did not occur?
Second, not only do these new believers abandon their long-held beliefs and practices, they also adopt some new radical ones. These include:
-Sunday, a work day, as the new day of worship
-Baptism as a new sign that one was a partaker of the new covenant (as circumcision was a sign of the old covenant)
-Communion as an act of remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice for their sins
Communion is especially inexplicable unless the Resurrection is true. Why would Jews make up a practice where they symbolically eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus?
Only an “impact event” like a Resurrection could explain such a swift and monumental shift in Jewish thinking and practice. What’s an impact event? An impact event is something that is so dramatic in your life that it changes you forever. It’s something that you can’t forget. For those of you are old enough, where were you November 22, 1963? It’s my earliest memory. Although I was only two years old, I can still see my Mother weeping uncontrollably in front of the TV– “The president has been shot!” For those a bit younger, where were you when the Challenger exploded? Where were you when the second plane hit the tower?
Why can you remember where you were and what you were doing on September 11, 2001 but not September 11, 2007? Because an impact event changes everything. An impact event known as the resurrection of Jesus Christ changed everything for thousands of Jews two thousand years ago, and today it can still change you, me and the rest of the world. That’s why we still celebrate Easter.
(If you want more on this, get our book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Some of this post is adapted from Chapter 11.)
I just had the privilege of attending an advance screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein. The movie, which opens April 18, is a must-see for any American interested in freedom (that should be all of us!). Expelled uses the Berlin Wall as a metaphor for the wall that the academic and media establishments have erected to keep any intelligent explanation for origins out of the fortress of scientific respectability. Freedom is the victim of this wall: academic freedom and freedom of the press in particular.
The movie is not so much an investigation into the evidence for intelligent design as it is an expose into the suppression of anyone who says there’s evidence for intelligent design. Investigator Stein exposes the numerous instances of institutionalized bias against professors, scientists and journalists who dare to question Darwinian orthodoxy. Some who have questioned Darwin and merely mentioned that intelligent design may be a legitimate area of study have been summarily fired from their jobs and blacklisted in their career, hence the title Expelled. Why are the Darwinists doing this? What are they hiding? What are they afraid of?
If you follow the ID-Evolution controversy, you’ll recognize the players on both sides. Stein meets with ID proponents such as Bill Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Stephen Myer and Guillermo Gonzalez, as well as Darwinists Daniel Dennett, Eugenie Scott and even Richard Dawkins. In Stein’s disarming manner, he exposes the bias and vacuousness in the positions of the Darwinists, even getting Dawkins to admit at the end that he has no idea how the first life began but that intelligent aliens might be responsible. With that, Stein points out that Dawkins is actually a proponent of Intelligent Design (for Dawkins, ID is OK if it points to aliens, but not OK if it points to God).
But Expelled is not some dry documentary with a bunch of talking-head interviews strung together. Interlaced with vintage film clips (some quite funny) and a variety of music genres (the opening is a violin version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall), Expelled moves along at an entertaining pace. Yet, it takes quite a serious tone when Stein (who is Jewish) makes the connection between the ideas of Darwin and the ideas of Hitler. Ideas do have consequences, and the Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest led directly to Hitler’s quest to weed out undesirables in his plan to create the super race. Hitler even made the connection in his 1924 book Mein Kampf.
Several of the Darwinists interviewed expressed that they lost their faith in God because of Darwinism. Dawkins is famous for saying that Darwinism made him an “intellectually-fulfilled atheist.” However, as Stein points out, Darwin had nothing to say about the origin of life or the origin of the universe. Today, due to discoveries of the universe (it exploded into being out of nothing) and life (“simple” life is far more complex than anything Darwin suspected), those origin questions are even more difficult to answer for the Darwinists. There are a couple of spots where Stein lets the Darwinists hang themselves with their outlandish speculations of how life began. It’s so embarrassing that after watching Expelled, those thinking of leaving the faith because of Darwinism may want to reconsider.
My one criticism of the movie is that I wish it had just a bit more on the evidence for Intelligent Design. There is animation of the interior of a cell, but there is no explanation of what is actually going on. One key point that needs to be made is this: when we see something with the evidence of design (say Mount Rushmore), we don’t simply lack a natural explanation for it, we have positive, empirically-detectable evidence for an intelligent sculptor (see Chapters 5 and 6 of our book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist). However, due to time contraints, I understand why the movie could not go into much detail on the evidence. The main point of the movie is not scientific evidence but academic freedom.
There’s a lot more that could be said, but Expelled is better seen than said. This is exactly the kind of movie that Christians should support because it’s much more than entertainment. The movie communicates an important message without feeling preachy. You can take anyone to this– believer or not. If you’re like me, my wife and 15 year-old son, you will walk away feeling that there’s an injustice being done to us all. Freedom is being suppressed, and we need to speak up to restore the spirit of free inquiry that made this country great. Expelled is helping to break down “The Wall.” Will you help as well?
Planned Parenthood ripping off the state of California? That is the allegation by it’s former vice president of finance and administration. Read about all the details in the California Catholic Daily. To see how the drive-by media covers it, see the paltry article in the San Jose Mercury News.
Planned Parenthood was founded by racist Margaret Sanger who once said: “The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” How could an organization founded on such wholesome values stoop to theft?