By Erik Manning
There’s a dizzying array of arguments for the existence of God. For a newbie looking to get into apologetics, it can be intimidating trying to figure out where to start. You have the cosmological argument, but it helps if you know something about cosmology, physics, and even math. There’s the argument from the origin of life, but now you’re talking about chemistry, DNA, information theory, and it can feel overwhelming. There’s the ontological argument, but that requires understanding modal logic and let’s be real here, has anyone in the history of the universe come to faith because of the ontological argument? Sorry, St. Anselm.
If you’re looking either for ammo to argue against naturalistic atheism or to give some reasons for someone to think God exists, I wholeheartedly recommend learning the moral argument. Why?
For one thing, it’s accessible. You don’t need a Ph.D. in philosophy, physics, or chemistry to understand the argument. Secondly, it’s more effective because it touches people at a personal level that scientific arguments do not.
Dr. William Lane Craig earned his doctorate in philosophy and spent decades developing a version of the cosmological argument. But after spending years of traveling, speaking, teaching and debating some of the smartest atheists on the planet, here’s what he has to say about the moral argument:
““In my experience, the moral argument is the most effective of all the arguments for the existence of God. I say this grudgingly because my favorite is the cosmological argument. But the cosmological and teleological (design) arguments don’t touch people where they live. The moral argument cannot be so easily brushed aside. For every day you get up you answer the question of whether there are objective moral values and duties by how you live. It’s unavoidable.”
-On Guard, Chapter 6
With a little thought, you know this is true. Just log on to Twitter or turn on cable news for a few seconds. We live in a culture where people are in a state of constant moral outrage. CS Lewis popularized the argument in his classic work Mere Christianity. (Warning: Massive understatement alert!) In regards to the power of the moral argument, Lewis says:
“We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds.
And this is a better bit of evidence than the other because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence, we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct—in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, and truthfulness.“
So what is the moral argument? You can cash it out in different ways, but I favor using it negatively in order to falsify atheism. If atheism isn’t true then obviously we should reject it and find a worldview that makes better sense of reality. Here’s the argument in logical form:
- If naturalistic atheism is true, there are no moral facts.
- There are moral facts.
- Therefore, naturalistic atheism is false.
An example of a moral fact would be that even if NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association…ew.) somehow hypnotized the world into thinking that pedophilia is morally acceptable, it would still be morally wrong. Morality isn’t a matter of personal preference. I’m going to bring some ‘hostile witnesses’ on the scene to help make my case.
CAN MORAL FACTS BE FACTS OF NATURE?
Some atheists have tried to say so, but I think unsuccessfully. Moral facts aren’t about the way things are, but the way things ought to or should be. But if the world isn’t here for a purpose, then there is no way things are intended to be. Natural facts are facts about the way things are, not the way things ought to be. Animals kill and forcibly mate with other animals, but we don’t call those things murder or rape. But if natural facts are the only types of facts on the table, then the same holds true of people. We can explain the pain and suffering on a scientific level, but we can’t explain why one ought not to inflict suffering and pain.
Here are three atheists who drive the point home that on atheism there can be no moral facts.
Michael Ruse
“The position of the modern evolutionist…is that humans have an awareness of morality…because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands and feet and teeth… Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” they think they are referring above and beyond themselves…Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival, and reproduction…and any deeper meaning is illusory.” – Atheist philosopher Michael Ruse.
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is.“ – Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins
And finally, here’s atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, when asked about the cruel and inhumane cultural practice of foot-binding that was practiced by the Chinese for centuries:
Interviewer: “And so your argument is to say we shouldn’t do foot-binding anymore because it’s not adaptive, or should we…?”
Rosenberg: “No. I don’t think that it is in a position to tell you what we ought and ought not to do: it is in a position to tell you why we’ve done it and what the consequences of continuing or failing to do it are, okay? But it can’t adjudicate ultimate questions of value, because those are expressions of people’s emotions and, dare I say, tastes.”
Earlier in the interview, Rosenberg says, “Is there a difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There’s not a moral difference between them.”
A matter of tastes?
BUT THERE ARE MORAL FACTS
So rather than giving up naturalism, these atheists bite the bullet and say that on their worldview there is no room for moral facts. But how plausible is that really? As you can imagine, many atheists disagree. Here are some more ‘hostile witnesses’ I’ll bring in to make the point:
“Whatever skeptical arguments may be brought against our belief that killing the innocent is morally wrong, we are more certain that the killing is morally wrong than that the argument is sound…Torturing an innocent child for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong. Full stop.” -Atheist philosopher Paul Cave.
“Some moral views are better than others, despite the sincerity of the individuals, cultures, and societies that endorse them. Some moral views are true, others false, and my thinking them so doesn’t make them so. My society’s endorsement of them doesn’t prove their truth. Individuals and whole societies can be seriously mistaken when it comes to morality. The best explanation of this is that there are moral standards not of our own making.” – Atheist philosopher Russ Shafer-Landau
Louise Antony
“Any argument for moral skepticism will be based upon premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves.” – Atheist philosopher Louise Antony
This makes sense. Any argument that allows for the possibility that there is no more moral virtue in adopting a child or torturing a child for fun is a lot less plausible than the existence of moral values and duties. Why should we doubt our moral sense any more than our physical senses?
The problem is for the naturalist is that from valueless, meaningless processes valueless, meaninglessness comes. Atheism just doesn’t seem to have the resources for the existence of moral facts. Christian philosopher Paul Copan writes:
“Intrinsically-valuable, thinking persons do not come from impersonal, non-conscious, unguided, valueless processes over time. A personal, self-aware, purposeful, good God provides the natural and necessary context for the existence of valuable, rights-bearing, morally-responsible human persons.”
And atheist philosopher JL Mackie agrees that if there are moral facts, their existence fits much better on theism than on atheism. He wrote “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all-powerful god to create them. If there are objective values, they make the existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them. Thus, we have a defensible argument from morality to the existence of a god.”
THE POWER OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT: HOW 3 FORMER ATHEISTS CHANGED THEIR MINDS
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and formerly led the Human Genome Project
Dr. Francis Collins
Dr. Collins was an atheist until he read Lewis. In his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, he writes:
“The argument that most caught my attention, and most rocked my ideas about science and spirit down to their foundation, was right there in the title of Book one: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” While in many ways the “Moral Law” that Lewis described was a universal feature of human existence, in other ways it was as if I was recognizing it for the first time.
To understand the Moral Law, it is useful to consider, as Lewis did, how it is invoked in hundreds of ways each day without the invoker stopping to point out the foundation of his argument. Disagreements are part of daily life. Some are mundane, as the wife criticizing her husband for not speaking more kindly to a friend, or a child complaining, “It’s not fair,” when different amounts of ice cream are doled out at a birthday party. Other arguments take on larger significance. In international affairs for instance, some argue that the United States has a moral obligation to spread democracy throughout the world, even if it requires military force, whereas others say that the aggressive, unilateral use of military and economic force threatens to squander moral authority.
In the area of medicine, furious debates currently surround the question of whether or not it is acceptable to carry out research on human embryonic stem cells. Some argue that such research violates the sanctity of human life; others posit that the potential to alleviate human suffering constitutes an ethical mandate to proceed.
Notice that in all these examples, each party attempts to appeal to an unstated higher standard. This standard is the Moral Law. It might also be called “the law of right behavior,” and its existence in each of these situations seems unquestioned. What is being debated is whether one action or another is a closer approximation to the demands of that law. Those accused of having fallen short, such as the husband who is insufficiently cordial to his wife’s friend, usually respond with a variety of excuses why they should be let off the hook. Virtually never does the respondent say, “To hell with your concept of right behavior.”
What we have here is very peculiar: the concept of right and wrong appears to be universal among all members of the human species (though its application may result in wildly different outcomes). It thus seems to be a phenomenon approaching that of a law, like the law of gravitation or of special relativity. Yet in this instance, it is a law that, if we are honest with ourselves, is broken with astounding regularity.”
Leah Libresco, graduate of Yale University, political scientist, statistician and popular blogger
Leah Libresco
Leah used to write about atheism on the Patheos network of blogs. She grew up as an atheist but began to doubt her doubts. In her last post on the atheist portal of Patheos, she wrote:
“I’ve heard some explanations that try to bake morality into the natural world by reaching for evolutionary psychology. They argue that moral dispositions are evolutionarily triumphant over selfishness, or they talk about group selection, or something else. Usually, these proposed solutions radically misunderstand a) evolution b) moral philosophy or c) both. I didn’t think the answer was there. My friend pressed me to stop beating up on other people’s explanations and offer one of my own.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got bupkis.”
“Your best guess.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“You must have some idea.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got nothing. I guess Morality just loves me or something.”
“…”
“Ok, ok, yes, I heard what I just said. Give me a second and let me decide if I believe it.”
It turns out I did.”
“I had one thing that I was most certain of, which is that morality is something we have a duty to, and it is external from us. And when push came to shove, that is the belief I wouldn’t let go of.”
Later in an interview with CNN, she said: “I’m really sure that morality is objective, human independent, and something we uncover like archaeologists, not something we build like architects. And I was having trouble explaining that in my own philosophy, and Christianity offered an explanation which I came to find compelling.”
Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, Western Sydney University, Senior Lecturer on History and Cambridge graduate
Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Irving-Stonebraker wrote an article titled ‘How Oxford and Peter Singer Drove Me From Atheism to Jesus’. Peter Singer is a famous bio-ethicist that is well-respected but has some pretty far-out views. He’s very big into animal rights and has said things like “The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.” Singer has advocated infanticide in certain circumstances, as well as bestiality. Yeah, I know. Only a philosopher could attempt to justify such insanity intellectually. Anyway, here’s Dr. Irving-Stonebraker:
“I grew up in Australia, in a loving, secular home, and arrived at Sydney University as a critic of “religion.” I didn’t need faith to ground my identity or my values. I knew from the age of eight that I wanted to study history at Cambridge and become a historian. My identity lay in academic achievement, and my secular humanism was based on self-evident truths…
After Cambridge, I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford. There, I attended three guest lectures by world-class philosopher and atheist public intellectual, Peter Singer. Singer recognized that philosophy faces a vexing problem in relation to the issue of human worth. The natural world yields no egalitarian picture of human capacities. What about the child whose disabilities or illness compromises her abilities to reason? Yet, without reference to some set of capacities as the basis of human worth, the intrinsic value of all human beings becomes an ungrounded assertion; a premise which needs to be agreed upon before any conversation can take place.
I remember leaving Singer’s lectures with a strange intellectual vertigo; I was committed to believing that universal human value was more than just a well-meaning conceit of liberalism. But I knew from my own research in the history of European empires and their encounters with indigenous cultures, that societies have always had different conceptions of human worth or lack thereof. The premise of human equality is not a self-evident truth: it is profoundly historically contingent. I began to realize that the implications of my atheism were incompatible with almost every value I held dear … One Sunday, shortly before my 28th birthday, I walked into a church for the first time as someone earnestly seeking God. Before long I found myself overwhelmed. At last, I was fully known and seen and, I realized, unconditionally loved – perhaps I had a sense of relief from no longer running from God. A friend gave me C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and one night, after a couple months of attending church, I knelt in my closet in my apartment and asked Jesus to save me, and to become the Lord of my life”
THE NATURALIST’S DILEMMA
I hope you can see by now that the moral argument is an argument that is pretty difficult to get away from. It forces the skeptic into a few different corners: They either have to:
a.) bite the bullet like Mackie, Ruse, Dawkins, and Rosenberg do and just accept the crazy and counter-intuitive notion that there just are no moral facts at all, no matter how obvious that seems to all of us. Or they can –
b.) accept there are somehow moral facts but have no way to really ground them. Why think valueless, meaningless processes produce beings with intrinsic moral value that have obligations to one another? On atheism, there just is no way things ought to be and morality is about what ought and ought not to be. You could stubbornly dig your heels in here anyway, or –
c.) make the move that Collins, Libresco and Irving-Stonebraker (and myriads of others) did and dump their worldview in exchange for one that can provide more robust resources for why human beings have worth and duties towards one another.
My hope is that you see that the moral argument is effective. Many times it has changed people’s minds. It speaks to people because we’re all moral creatures; we can’t help but make moral decisions and judgments every day. And possibly most importantly, the moral argument shows us that we’ve all fallen short of the moral law and that we need forgiveness. Christianity has plenty to say about redemption and God’s mercy.
For these reasons, if there was one argument for God that I’d recommend you really camp on until you master it, it’s this one.
Recommended Resources:
CS Lewis’ Moral Argument on the YouTube Channel CS Lewis Doodle
Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
God, Naturalism, and The Foundations for Morality, Paul Copan (free)
The Moral Poverty of Evolutionary Naturalism, Mark Linville (free)
A Simple Explanation of the Moral Argument, Glenn Peoples (free)
Erik Manning is a former atheist turned Christian after an experience with the Holy Spirit. He’s a freelance baseball writer and digital marketing specialist who is passionate about the intersection of evangelism and apologetics.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2QvLvni
Navigating a Post-Truth Culture
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We live in a post-truth culture, but how did we get here? In this episode, Dr. Ray Ciervo fills in for Frank and answer that and many other questions related to this extremely relevant topic. He shares some great insights on how to reach those who have bought into this whole idea, and how to turn a skeptic into a seeker.
If you want to send us a question for the show, please email us at Hello@CrossExamined.org.
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Three Signs of the Church’s Spiritual Disorientation
Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Bob Perry
It is a scary thing to be disoriented. At best, it means you’re headed in the wrong direction. But if you’re flying airplanes, it means you have no reference to the ground. You can’t navigate. You may not even know which way is up. In other words, being disoriented is not just an annoyance. It’s dangerous. But there is something even more dangerous than being disoriented — and that is not knowing you’re disoriented. I hate to say this, but I believe many people in the church are becoming spiritually disoriented. And many of them don’t even have a clue.
Let me explain what I mean.
Spatial Disorientation
On the evening of July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr. crashed his private airplane into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. I remember that night well because I was the First Officer on a Delta Boeing 767 descending into New York’s LaGuardia Airport at exactly the same time.
The visibility over the water that evening was horrible. The haze, humidity, and sun angle combined to turn the sky around us into a giant, yellow-gray blob. There was no horizon. No way to tell which was up. Between us, the Captain and I had nearly 40 years of combined flight experience. Even so, we were uncomfortable. New York air traffic control was allowing airplanes to use visual flight rules. But we insisted on using instrument procedures for our approach and landing.
John Kennedy, Jr. had no business flying in weather conditions like that. He was not an experienced pilot. Sadly, the plane he was flying did have the instrumentation he needed to operate in those kinds of conditions. But Kennedy wasn’t trained to use it. An investigation of the accident revealed the cause. JFK, Jr. had “failed to maintain control of the airplane … as a result of spatial disorientation.”
Unable to Recover
Spatial disorientation occurs when a pilot loses his reference to the ground. With no visible horizon, his inner ear and eyes begin fighting with each other. They give him conflicting signals. He gets the sensation he’s turning when he is actually flying straight. What he sees and feels don’t match. Making the correction that feels right actually exacerbates his problem.
Experienced pilots know how to recognize the symptoms of spatial disorientation. When they do, they are trained to trust their flight instruments. A failure to do so can quickly become a matter of life and death.
Kennedy didn’t understand what was happening to him. Inexperienced pilots rarely do. By the time he realized something was wrong, it was too late. His lack of training doomed him. His attempts to correct the situation only made it worse. Within a matter of seconds, he was plunging toward the ocean in a “death spiral.”
It probably went something like this…
Three Signs of Disorientation
There are three elements of spatial disorientation to be aware of:
Spiritual Disorientation
I share this story for a very specific reason. I believe that many in the church have become “spiritually disoriented.” They are flying through this life in a way very similar to the way JFK, Jr. was flying over Long Island Sound.
I don’t say this to be provocative. I say it because I have evidence to back it up.
Media research pollster George Barna makes a living studying the beliefs and behaviors of the Christian community. He has published several findings about how evangelical Christians think and act very much like the world around them. He also looks at their actual beliefs and attitudes. The parallels between spatial and spiritual disorientation are fascinating to see…
They Can’t See the Ground
What grounds the Christian worldview? What is our reference point? I submit that it is no different than what grounds reality itself.
The truth.
This is a topic for another discussion that I will engage more completely later. For now, let me say that for thousands of years, thinking humans have seen truth as an objective feature of the world. It is something external to us. We don’t invent it. We discover it. For that reason, truth is as real as the ground we walk on. And truth is what should ground our thinking.
But today, we have come to believe that truth is up to us to decide for ourselves. As one example, George Barna discovered that:
Only 59% of Christians said that there are moral truths that are unchanging, that truth is not relative to the circumstances.
In other words, we have lost sight of what should ground our thinking. We have no firm reference to the truth.
They Think Everything Is Fine
No longer grounded in the truth, most Christians think and act just like the world around them. For example:
At the same time, this little nugget ought to jump out of Barna’s data and grabbed you by the throat:
92% of self-described evangelical Christians view themselves as being “deeply spiritual.”
We think and act pretty much like the world around us. But we overwhelmingly believe ourselves to be “deeply spiritual.” How is that possible?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that society has lured us into redefining what it means to be “spiritual” by dissecting our heads from our hearts. We have let the culture convince us that the heart is the most important thing about us. Feelings and emotions guide us. When those feelings and emotions are positive, we are on the right track. Those who have perfected this search are considered society’s most “spiritual” people.
Their “Corrections” Make Things Worse
Once feelings and emotions replace truth as the most important point of reference, we use them as our primary means of engaging the world. In our efforts to avoid making people feel bad, we dodge the truth. Feelings become more important than reality itself.
Grace abounds, but truth is dying in the streets.
As an example, imagine an anorexic girl who is nothing but skin and bones. When she looks in the mirror, she thinks she is overweight. She diets and purges. Her weight continues to decline.
Would it be loving and kind of us to tell her she’s looking great? Should we encourage her to continue down the path she has chosen? After all, telling her, she looks like death warmed over would certainly hurt her feelings.
Obviously not. We have a duty to tell her the truth, no matter how much it hurts her feelings. Playing along with her delusion would only make things worse. And it wouldn’t be loving. It would be dangerous.
One doesn’t have to think very hard to see the parallels going on in our culture with all forms of sin and rebellion. Yet we have prominent church leaders and spokesmen demanding that we do just that. But a church that avoids the truth by honoring feelings above truth is a church that has lost sight of the meaning of love.
Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is tell someone the truth.
Overcoming Spiritual Disorientation
The culture has infiltrated the church. As a result, the church is becoming more and more spiritually disoriented. Many prominent church leaders deny the core principles of our faith. They promote a disoriented Christianity that allows the culture to critique the church instead of leading a biblical critique of the culture. And too many in the church have accepted what they’re saying.
Bob Perry is a Christian apologetics writer, teacher, and speaker who blogs about Christianity and the culture at: truehorizon.org. He is a Contributing Writer for the Christian Research Journal, and has also been published in Touchstone, and Salvo. Bob is a professional aviator with 37 years of military and commercial flying experience. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering from the U. S. Naval Academy, and a M.A., Christian Apologetics from Biola University. He has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1985. They have five grown sons.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2JNObfQ
Is Apologetics “Anti-Faith”?
Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Robby Hall
Often, I see other Christians objecting to the use of apologetics altogether. They will usually say that faith doesn’t require evidence, or it’s not faith.
But is that the case? If we look at the word “faith” itself, we can get a clearer picture of what the Bible is actually talking about.
First, faith comes from the Latin “fides,” which means “good trust.” But the Greek word used in the New Testament is “pisteuo,” which means to have confidence in or to credit the thing believed in. The other greek word used for faith is “pistis,” which means “conviction of the truth of anything”[1].
So faith is trust, and trust is object centered. You put your trust in something. But does God require a blind trust or has He given evidence that we can put our trust in? As always, we must consult scripture.
First, Jesus says in John 10:24-26
“So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.”
And again in vs. 36-38, Jesus says
“do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
What about Thomas? Jesus told him blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed — but not seen what? The resurrected Jesus. But, what did Thomas see in the time he spent with Jesus? Healing of the sick, raising of the dead, casting out of demons, feeding of 4k and 5k, etc. Shouldn’t then, Thomas have believed when Jesus told the disciples ahead of time that he would suffer, die, and on the 3rd day rise again? Jesus gave evidence.
What about John the Baptist? In Matthew 11, we see the following:
“Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receives their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
The apostle Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians:
“7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.” Phil 1:7
There are many more passages in the NT that admonish us to offer a defense (apologia) for the Gospel we preach. But the one that gives us the direct command is 1 Peter 3:15:
“but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense(apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
In John 20, the apostle writes ” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Acts 1:3 tells us, “He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”
God has not left us without evidence of the truth. It becomes clear that we as Christians need to know what we believe, why we believe it, and how to articulate that truth.
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Romans 1:19-20
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2KePWBR
Every Christian Should Begin to Master the Moral Argument Today
Atheism, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Erik Manning
There’s a dizzying array of arguments for the existence of God. For a newbie looking to get into apologetics, it can be intimidating trying to figure out where to start. You have the cosmological argument, but it helps if you know something about cosmology, physics, and even math. There’s the argument from the origin of life, but now you’re talking about chemistry, DNA, information theory, and it can feel overwhelming. There’s the ontological argument, but that requires understanding modal logic and let’s be real here, has anyone in the history of the universe come to faith because of the ontological argument? Sorry, St. Anselm.
If you’re looking either for ammo to argue against naturalistic atheism or to give some reasons for someone to think God exists, I wholeheartedly recommend learning the moral argument. Why?
For one thing, it’s accessible. You don’t need a Ph.D. in philosophy, physics, or chemistry to understand the argument. Secondly, it’s more effective because it touches people at a personal level that scientific arguments do not.
Dr. William Lane Craig earned his doctorate in philosophy and spent decades developing a version of the cosmological argument. But after spending years of traveling, speaking, teaching and debating some of the smartest atheists on the planet, here’s what he has to say about the moral argument:
““In my experience, the moral argument is the most effective of all the arguments for the existence of God. I say this grudgingly because my favorite is the cosmological argument. But the cosmological and teleological (design) arguments don’t touch people where they live. The moral argument cannot be so easily brushed aside. For every day you get up you answer the question of whether there are objective moral values and duties by how you live. It’s unavoidable.”
-On Guard, Chapter 6
With a little thought, you know this is true. Just log on to Twitter or turn on cable news for a few seconds. We live in a culture where people are in a state of constant moral outrage. CS Lewis popularized the argument in his classic work Mere Christianity. (Warning: Massive understatement alert!) In regards to the power of the moral argument, Lewis says:
“We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds.
And this is a better bit of evidence than the other because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence, we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct—in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, and truthfulness.“
So what is the moral argument? You can cash it out in different ways, but I favor using it negatively in order to falsify atheism. If atheism isn’t true then obviously we should reject it and find a worldview that makes better sense of reality. Here’s the argument in logical form:
An example of a moral fact would be that even if NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association…ew.) somehow hypnotized the world into thinking that pedophilia is morally acceptable, it would still be morally wrong. Morality isn’t a matter of personal preference. I’m going to bring some ‘hostile witnesses’ on the scene to help make my case.
CAN MORAL FACTS BE FACTS OF NATURE?
Some atheists have tried to say so, but I think unsuccessfully. Moral facts aren’t about the way things are, but the way things ought to or should be. But if the world isn’t here for a purpose, then there is no way things are intended to be. Natural facts are facts about the way things are, not the way things ought to be. Animals kill and forcibly mate with other animals, but we don’t call those things murder or rape. But if natural facts are the only types of facts on the table, then the same holds true of people. We can explain the pain and suffering on a scientific level, but we can’t explain why one ought not to inflict suffering and pain.
Here are three atheists who drive the point home that on atheism there can be no moral facts.
Michael Ruse
“The position of the modern evolutionist…is that humans have an awareness of morality…because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands and feet and teeth… Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” they think they are referring above and beyond themselves…Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival, and reproduction…and any deeper meaning is illusory.” – Atheist philosopher Michael Ruse.
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is.“ – Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins
And finally, here’s atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, when asked about the cruel and inhumane cultural practice of foot-binding that was practiced by the Chinese for centuries:
Interviewer: “And so your argument is to say we shouldn’t do foot-binding anymore because it’s not adaptive, or should we…?”
Rosenberg: “No. I don’t think that it is in a position to tell you what we ought and ought not to do: it is in a position to tell you why we’ve done it and what the consequences of continuing or failing to do it are, okay? But it can’t adjudicate ultimate questions of value, because those are expressions of people’s emotions and, dare I say, tastes.”
Earlier in the interview, Rosenberg says, “Is there a difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There’s not a moral difference between them.”
A matter of tastes?
BUT THERE ARE MORAL FACTS
So rather than giving up naturalism, these atheists bite the bullet and say that on their worldview there is no room for moral facts. But how plausible is that really? As you can imagine, many atheists disagree. Here are some more ‘hostile witnesses’ I’ll bring in to make the point:
“Whatever skeptical arguments may be brought against our belief that killing the innocent is morally wrong, we are more certain that the killing is morally wrong than that the argument is sound…Torturing an innocent child for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong. Full stop.” -Atheist philosopher Paul Cave.
“Some moral views are better than others, despite the sincerity of the individuals, cultures, and societies that endorse them. Some moral views are true, others false, and my thinking them so doesn’t make them so. My society’s endorsement of them doesn’t prove their truth. Individuals and whole societies can be seriously mistaken when it comes to morality. The best explanation of this is that there are moral standards not of our own making.” – Atheist philosopher Russ Shafer-Landau
Louise Antony
“Any argument for moral skepticism will be based upon premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves.” – Atheist philosopher Louise Antony
This makes sense. Any argument that allows for the possibility that there is no more moral virtue in adopting a child or torturing a child for fun is a lot less plausible than the existence of moral values and duties. Why should we doubt our moral sense any more than our physical senses?
The problem is for the naturalist is that from valueless, meaningless processes valueless, meaninglessness comes. Atheism just doesn’t seem to have the resources for the existence of moral facts. Christian philosopher Paul Copan writes:
“Intrinsically-valuable, thinking persons do not come from impersonal, non-conscious, unguided, valueless processes over time. A personal, self-aware, purposeful, good God provides the natural and necessary context for the existence of valuable, rights-bearing, morally-responsible human persons.”
And atheist philosopher JL Mackie agrees that if there are moral facts, their existence fits much better on theism than on atheism. He wrote “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all-powerful god to create them. If there are objective values, they make the existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them. Thus, we have a defensible argument from morality to the existence of a god.”
THE POWER OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT: HOW 3 FORMER ATHEISTS CHANGED THEIR MINDS
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and formerly led the Human Genome Project
Dr. Francis Collins
Dr. Collins was an atheist until he read Lewis. In his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, he writes:
“The argument that most caught my attention, and most rocked my ideas about science and spirit down to their foundation, was right there in the title of Book one: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” While in many ways the “Moral Law” that Lewis described was a universal feature of human existence, in other ways it was as if I was recognizing it for the first time.
To understand the Moral Law, it is useful to consider, as Lewis did, how it is invoked in hundreds of ways each day without the invoker stopping to point out the foundation of his argument. Disagreements are part of daily life. Some are mundane, as the wife criticizing her husband for not speaking more kindly to a friend, or a child complaining, “It’s not fair,” when different amounts of ice cream are doled out at a birthday party. Other arguments take on larger significance. In international affairs for instance, some argue that the United States has a moral obligation to spread democracy throughout the world, even if it requires military force, whereas others say that the aggressive, unilateral use of military and economic force threatens to squander moral authority.
In the area of medicine, furious debates currently surround the question of whether or not it is acceptable to carry out research on human embryonic stem cells. Some argue that such research violates the sanctity of human life; others posit that the potential to alleviate human suffering constitutes an ethical mandate to proceed.
Notice that in all these examples, each party attempts to appeal to an unstated higher standard. This standard is the Moral Law. It might also be called “the law of right behavior,” and its existence in each of these situations seems unquestioned. What is being debated is whether one action or another is a closer approximation to the demands of that law. Those accused of having fallen short, such as the husband who is insufficiently cordial to his wife’s friend, usually respond with a variety of excuses why they should be let off the hook. Virtually never does the respondent say, “To hell with your concept of right behavior.”
What we have here is very peculiar: the concept of right and wrong appears to be universal among all members of the human species (though its application may result in wildly different outcomes). It thus seems to be a phenomenon approaching that of a law, like the law of gravitation or of special relativity. Yet in this instance, it is a law that, if we are honest with ourselves, is broken with astounding regularity.”
Leah Libresco, graduate of Yale University, political scientist, statistician and popular blogger
Leah Libresco
Leah used to write about atheism on the Patheos network of blogs. She grew up as an atheist but began to doubt her doubts. In her last post on the atheist portal of Patheos, she wrote:
“I’ve heard some explanations that try to bake morality into the natural world by reaching for evolutionary psychology. They argue that moral dispositions are evolutionarily triumphant over selfishness, or they talk about group selection, or something else. Usually, these proposed solutions radically misunderstand a) evolution b) moral philosophy or c) both. I didn’t think the answer was there. My friend pressed me to stop beating up on other people’s explanations and offer one of my own.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got bupkis.”
“Your best guess.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“You must have some idea.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got nothing. I guess Morality just loves me or something.”
“…”
“Ok, ok, yes, I heard what I just said. Give me a second and let me decide if I believe it.”
It turns out I did.”
“I had one thing that I was most certain of, which is that morality is something we have a duty to, and it is external from us. And when push came to shove, that is the belief I wouldn’t let go of.”
Later in an interview with CNN, she said: “I’m really sure that morality is objective, human independent, and something we uncover like archaeologists, not something we build like architects. And I was having trouble explaining that in my own philosophy, and Christianity offered an explanation which I came to find compelling.”
Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, Western Sydney University, Senior Lecturer on History and Cambridge graduate
Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Irving-Stonebraker wrote an article titled ‘How Oxford and Peter Singer Drove Me From Atheism to Jesus’. Peter Singer is a famous bio-ethicist that is well-respected but has some pretty far-out views. He’s very big into animal rights and has said things like “The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.” Singer has advocated infanticide in certain circumstances, as well as bestiality. Yeah, I know. Only a philosopher could attempt to justify such insanity intellectually. Anyway, here’s Dr. Irving-Stonebraker:
“I grew up in Australia, in a loving, secular home, and arrived at Sydney University as a critic of “religion.” I didn’t need faith to ground my identity or my values. I knew from the age of eight that I wanted to study history at Cambridge and become a historian. My identity lay in academic achievement, and my secular humanism was based on self-evident truths…
After Cambridge, I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford. There, I attended three guest lectures by world-class philosopher and atheist public intellectual, Peter Singer. Singer recognized that philosophy faces a vexing problem in relation to the issue of human worth. The natural world yields no egalitarian picture of human capacities. What about the child whose disabilities or illness compromises her abilities to reason? Yet, without reference to some set of capacities as the basis of human worth, the intrinsic value of all human beings becomes an ungrounded assertion; a premise which needs to be agreed upon before any conversation can take place.
I remember leaving Singer’s lectures with a strange intellectual vertigo; I was committed to believing that universal human value was more than just a well-meaning conceit of liberalism. But I knew from my own research in the history of European empires and their encounters with indigenous cultures, that societies have always had different conceptions of human worth or lack thereof. The premise of human equality is not a self-evident truth: it is profoundly historically contingent. I began to realize that the implications of my atheism were incompatible with almost every value I held dear … One Sunday, shortly before my 28th birthday, I walked into a church for the first time as someone earnestly seeking God. Before long I found myself overwhelmed. At last, I was fully known and seen and, I realized, unconditionally loved – perhaps I had a sense of relief from no longer running from God. A friend gave me C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and one night, after a couple months of attending church, I knelt in my closet in my apartment and asked Jesus to save me, and to become the Lord of my life”
THE NATURALIST’S DILEMMA
I hope you can see by now that the moral argument is an argument that is pretty difficult to get away from. It forces the skeptic into a few different corners: They either have to:
a.) bite the bullet like Mackie, Ruse, Dawkins, and Rosenberg do and just accept the crazy and counter-intuitive notion that there just are no moral facts at all, no matter how obvious that seems to all of us. Or they can –
b.) accept there are somehow moral facts but have no way to really ground them. Why think valueless, meaningless processes produce beings with intrinsic moral value that have obligations to one another? On atheism, there just is no way things ought to be and morality is about what ought and ought not to be. You could stubbornly dig your heels in here anyway, or –
c.) make the move that Collins, Libresco and Irving-Stonebraker (and myriads of others) did and dump their worldview in exchange for one that can provide more robust resources for why human beings have worth and duties towards one another.
My hope is that you see that the moral argument is effective. Many times it has changed people’s minds. It speaks to people because we’re all moral creatures; we can’t help but make moral decisions and judgments every day. And possibly most importantly, the moral argument shows us that we’ve all fallen short of the moral law and that we need forgiveness. Christianity has plenty to say about redemption and God’s mercy.
For these reasons, if there was one argument for God that I’d recommend you really camp on until you master it, it’s this one.
Recommended Resources:
CS Lewis’ Moral Argument on the YouTube Channel CS Lewis Doodle
Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
God, Naturalism, and The Foundations for Morality, Paul Copan (free)
The Moral Poverty of Evolutionary Naturalism, Mark Linville (free)
A Simple Explanation of the Moral Argument, Glenn Peoples (free)
Erik Manning is a former atheist turned Christian after an experience with the Holy Spirit. He’s a freelance baseball writer and digital marketing specialist who is passionate about the intersection of evangelism and apologetics.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2QvLvni
The Equality Act isn’t About Equality
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What is the one topic today that pastors and Christians seem most scared to discuss? They are virtually silent, yet this topic threatens to make certain aspects of following Christ illegal in the United States. There is NOTHING “equal” about the “Equality Act!” It is LGBTQ+ supremacy over heterosexuality, and we don’t shy away from the truth here at CrossExamined.org. Frank interviews Stephen Black on this topic. Don’t miss it!
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Did Jesus Have a Wife? – A Simple Response to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Mikel Del Rosario
The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife
So your skeptical friend just heard about something called, “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” But unlike the fiction Dan Brown created in the Da Vinci Code, this wasn’t in a movie or a novel. She just caught another sensational segment on the evening news talking about how controversial this new find is, and now she’s wondering, “Did Jesus have a wife?”
But here’s the thing. This fragment really isn’t rocking anyone’s world. Especially in the academic community. In fact, Karen L. King, the Harvard Professor who actually presented this at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies said:
…this new discovery [highlight] does not prove that the historical Jesus was married. [/highlight] This gospel (is)…too late, historically speaking, to provide any evidence as to whether the historical Jesus was married or not
So this is all about later, Egyptian views about who Jesus was–not about the historical Jesus of the 1st century.
In this post, I’ll share a simple way to respond to this fragment because we’ve only got two real options here. But first, here’s what scholars are saying about the fragment itself.
Scholars are Skeptical
I got an e-mail about this from Dr. Dan Wallace as soon as this hit the nightly news. Later, he expanded on his initial thoughts on his blog, saying:
Does this fragment prove that Jesus was married? [highlight]The answer is an emphatic no [/highlight] … it says nothing about true history, about Jesus of Nazareth.
He says that if this thing wasn’t faked (May 2014 Update: Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Looks More and More Like a Fake), one possibility is that it’s a Gnostic source (basically a totally different religion) which meant something other than real marriage here (since they weren’t big into physical stuff being good). Another possibility is that it’s talking about the church as Jesus’ wife, kind of like John does in the book of Revelation. Other scholars like Dr. Darrell Bock and Dr. Gary Habermas agree, saying there just isn’t an awful lot of context here to even figure out what the author was trying to say.
How I Answer, “Did Jesus Have a Wife?”
So what can you say to a skeptical friend who asks you, “Did Jesus have a wife?” Seems like I’ve been hearing this question off and on for a while now. Sometimes, it comes in the form of a possibility: “Isn’t it possible that Jesus had a wife?” I usually agree, which sometimes surprises people and grabs their attention. I say, “Sure. Anything’s possible. But the question is, are there any good reasons to believe that the historical Jesus of Nazareth really had a wife?” If you want to be confident in conversations about this fragment, here’s what I suggest.
Get the Facts
Blow past the headlines and get the hard facts. There are a whole bunch of Web sites covering The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, but this short post on Talbot School of Theology’s The Good Book Blog will give you the skinny on this fragment (which despite its sensationalized name, really isn’t a gospel) that’s basically the size of a business card.
Dr. Darrell Bock was recently quoted by CNN as saying:
“It’s a small text with very little context…It’s a historical curiosity but doesn’t really tell us who Jesus was…[highlight]It’s one small speck of a text in a mountain of texts about Jesus. [/highlight]”
Indeed, even if this fragment turns out to be real, there are over 5,000 New Testament manuscripts and other ancient sources outside the Bible that talk about Jesus. None of these sources indicate that Jesus ever had a wife. And if you’re really interested in the historical Jesus, you know that the four traditional gospels–Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John–were recognized as the most accurate biographies of Jesus by A.D. 125. It’s really these ancient documents that give us the very best picture of Jesus’ life and his teachings.
How History Answers, “Did Jesus Have a Wife?”
So did Jesus have a wife? The best ancient, documentary evidence for the historical Jesus says “no.” As historian Dr. Mike Licona observes:
The most powerful evidence that Jesus was single comes from a deafening silence. In 1 Corinthians 9:5 Paul writes, “Do we [i.e., Paul and Barnabas] not have a right to take along a believing wife, as do the rest of the apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Peter?” It appears that all of Jesus’ disciples, all of his blood brothers, and even the lead apostle, Peter, were married. If Jesus had been married, …we certainly would expect for Paul to have mentioned it here, since it would have provided the ultimate example for his point.
A Simple Response You Can Use
So what can you say when someone asks you, “Did Jesus have a Wife?” after hearing something about this fragment? Let me share a simple response to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. You don’t have to be a historian or a scholar to say this. It’s easy to remember and something you can use today. Tell your skeptical friend that when it comes to this little fragment, we’ve only got two real options here:
As Christians, it’s important that we’re able to honestly look at something like this fragment without it messing with our faith. After all, if it’s fake, no one should care. If it’s a real 6th-century fragment, it could help us learn more about the kinds of things some Egyptian Gnostics were writing in Coptic hundreds of years after any of the actual eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life and teachings.
As for the question, “Was the historical Jesus married?” The historical evidence points to “no.”
Updates on the Fragment
2012
MSNBC: “One the most suspicious grammatical errors in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife appeared to be a direct copy of a typo in the PDF file version of the Interlinear translation (of the Gospel of Thomas)”
More: See how Dr. Mark Goodacre compares the fragment text to the PDF.
Still More: Read Leo Depuydt’s conclusion Harvard Theological Review. “The author of this analysis has not the slightest doubt that the document is a forgery, and not a very good one at that.”
2014
Boston Globe: King responds to the alleged grammatical error and forgery charge: “such a combination of bumbling and sophistication seems extremely unlikely.”
Huffington Post: “Scientists have concluded the fragment dates back to at least the sixth to ninth centuries, and possibly as far back as the fourth century.” Still, 6th to the 9th century is way too late to tell us anything about the historical Jesus. Furthermore, there is no external or internal evidence suggesting this goes back to the 2nd or 4th century. According to Dr. Bock, “It is a suggestion based on when these discussions commonly arose. That is all it is.”
[highlight] New! [/highlight] 05/01/2014 Wall Street Journal: How The ‘Jesus Wife’ Hoax Fell Apart. 05/02/2014 GLive Science: Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Looks More and More Like a Fake. Tyndale House quotes Askeland on the “smoking gun”:
The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife was one of several fragments which were announced by Karen King. There was also in this group of fragments a fragment of the Gospel of John in Coptic. Just recently, when I gazed upon Karen King’s Coptic John fragment, what I saw was immediately clear. [highlight] Not only were the writing tool, ink and hand exactly the same as those of the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife fragment, but also the method of composition was the same. As I looked at Karen King’s Gospel of John fragment, I finally saw that it was clearly copied (by the forger) from Herbert Thompson’s 1924 edition of Codex Qau. [/highlight] Indeed, the Gospel of John fragment had exactly the same line breaks as Codex Qau – a statistical improbability if it were genuine.
Scholars Discuss The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (2012)
Did Jesus have a wife? Sit in on a discussion I attended on responding to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and get the details from Dr. Richard Taylor and Dr. Darrell Bock at Dallas Theological Seminary. You’ll even get to recite some Coptic before the end of this video! How many people get a chance to do that? I rarely post full-length videos on my blog. But if you’re read this far, this one will definitely be worth your time.
Mikel Del Rosario, M.A., Th.M. helps Christians explain their faith with courage and compassion. He is a doctoral student in the New Testament department at Dallas Theological Seminary. Mikel teaches Christian Apologetics and World Religion at William Jessup University. He is the author of Accessible Apologetics and has published over 20 journal articles on apologetics and cultural engagement with his mentor, Dr. Darrell Bock. Mikel holds an M.A. in Christian Apologetics with highest honors from Biola University and a Master of Theology (Th.M.) from Dallas Theological Seminary where he serves as Cultural Engagement Manager at the Hendricks Center and a host of the Table Podcast. Visit his Web site at ApologeticsGuy.com.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2M8oWa2
How a Cold-Case Atheist Detective Became a Case-Making Christian
Atheism, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Terrell Clemmons
I think it may be true,” Jim Wallace said to his wife, Susie. He was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.
“What may be true?”
“Christianity.” Why did she need to ask? He’d been obsessed with the subject for several weeks now, talking her ears off on multiple occasions. It had all started at Saddleback Church during an otherwise normal Sunday morning service. A friend, a fellow police officer, had been inviting him for months, and he’d finally acquiesced. Susie liked the family to attend church, and although Jim had no use for religion, he loved his wife deeply and placed a very high priority on marriage and family. As for church, he didn’t get it, but he was fine going along for her sake.
Jim managed to ignore most of the sermon, but his ears did perk up when Pastor Rick Warren mentioned some wise principles Jesus taught that could be applied today. He’d described Jesus as “the smartest man who ever lived.” This guy Jesus might have some information I could use workwise, Jim thought. He’d always been open to learning from any ancient sage whose wisdom had stood the test of time. So the following week he dropped $6.00 on a Bible at B. Dalton bookstore and leafed straight to the New Testament Gospels. He wasn’t interested in anything but the red letters. What did Jesus say?
As Jim read, though, he was soon struck by something else. By this time in his career as a police officer and crime investigator, he had interviewed hundreds if not thousands of eyewitnesses and suspects and had read countless written testimonies. The Gospel accounts, he was surprised to note, bore a striking resemblance, not to the mythology or moralistic storytelling he’d always believed them to be, but to actual eyewitness accounts, something with which he was intimately familiar. His investigator’s curiosity was piqued.
Opening an Investigation
Since he’d shown a knack for interviewing early in his career, Jim had received special training in a variety of investigative techniques. One of them, a methodology called Forensic Statement Analysis (FSA), was especially designed to scrutinize eyewitness testimonies to detect deception and other manner of falsification. Wow, Jim thought, wouldn’t it be cool to try to apply this discipline I do at work to one of the Gospels?
He was in his element now. He started with the Gospel of Mark. For a full month, he meticulously picked it apart, hanging on every word, and in spite of deep skepticism going in, ultimately came to the conclusion that the Gospel writer Mark had penned the eyewitness account of the Apostle Peter, exactly what traditional Christianity has held all along. Pressing on, he subsequently reached the conclusion that the other three Gospels also gave every appearance of being exactly what they purported to be—authentic, eyewitness accounts written by men who genuinely believed what they were writing.
Personal Crossroads
This was a wholly unexpected development. At this juncture, Jim’s well-honed drive to uncover truth ran square up against his lifelong aversion to all things religious. The only son of a divorced, cultural Catholic mother and atheist father, Jim had been an avowed atheist all his life. And he was quite happy with it. Religion had always been just plain silly to him, and as a shrewd cop for whom skepticism was a skill that got you home at night, he had a very low threshold for silliness. Christianity might be a useful delusion for some, or an area of weakness for others, but nothing beyond that. Worse, despite his love and respect for Susie as a quiet believer, he’d badmouthed the few people he’d known in the department who were Christians. Now, as a follow-the-facts-wherever-they-lead investigator, he had to contend with the possibility that there might be something to this “garbage” after all.
By now, he was on much more than an intellectual exercise. The Scriptures he’d been examining contained certain claims that were supremely unsettling to a contented atheist. There were supernatural claims, claims about authority, claims about exactly who was God. And some of Jesus’ teachings, if you took them seriously, were devastatingly convicting. What do I do with the claims of Jesus related to his own divinity? And the claims of Jesus related to the nature of my heart?
As an atheist, he’d always felt like he was a good guy. He’d made his own rules for what was appropriate, and according to them, he was living a good life. He wasn’t hurting anybody. He was even devoting his life to stopping the bad guys who were. He didn’t believe in heaven, but if there was one, he was fairly confident he would make it in. But Jesus said differently. Who was right?
“I knew that I was standing on the edge of something profound,” he wrote in Cold Case Christianity.
I started reading the Gospels to learn what Jesus taught about living a good life and found that He taught much more about His identity as God and the nature of eternal life. I knew that it would be hard to accept one dimension of His teaching while rejecting the others. If I had good reason to believe that the Gospels were reliable eyewitness accounts, I was going to have to deal with the stuff I had always resisted as a skeptic. What about all the miracles that are wedged in there between the remarkable words of Jesus?… And why was it that I continued to resist the miraculous elements in the first place?
These were imposing questions, threatening to upheave everything he’d believed all his life.
Sometime during this Gospel investigation, a friend gave him a copy of Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis. After reading it, Jim, ever obsessive once onto the trail of something, went out and bought everything C. S. Lewis had written. One quote from God in the Dock resonated powerfully when he read it and never left him afterwards. “Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, is of infinite importance,” Lewis wrote. “The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” It made such perfect sense. The big-question issues of life, Jim thought, those are the ones I should be spending my time on. The most important thing he could do right now was to answer the question, Are these Gospels divine?
All his adult life, he’d instructed jurors to stay evidential in their examination of what happened. “Live and breathe what the evidence dictates to you,” was the inviolable rule. And just as jurors must make decisions based on the evidence, not personal predispositions, so, he knew, must he. And after a full investigation, he found that the evidence strongly suggested that the Gospels were, in fact, divine. And if they were, it followed that Jesus was right and he was wrong. He knew that to reject this truth any longer would be perilous. He accepted it as transcendent truth and began making life adjustments accordingly.
Case-Making Christianity
Jim became a Christian, not because he had any life problem he needed to fix—he was quite happy with his life—but because he became convinced that Christianity is true. “It’s not convenient for me. It’s not always comfortable, and it doesn’t always serve my purposes. There are times when my brokenness would like to take a shortcut, but I’m stuck with the fact that this is true,” he says. “And like any transcendent truth, you’re either going to measure yourself by it, or you’re going to reject it to your own peril.”
But don’t get the idea that he’s a reluctant convert. He immediately plunged with Wallace-esque drive into full-bore Christian case-making: he enrolled in seminary and seven years later completed a masters in theology. He also served part-time as a youth pastor, all the while still working full-time as a detective. Out of his passion to train believers, particularly young people, to become case-making Christians, he created PleaseConvinceMe.com [coldcasechristianity.com current site] as a place to post and discuss what he was discovering about the evidence supporting Christianity.
The website draws fire at times because Jim doesn’t limit himself to presenting Christian principles for a Christian readership. Quite to the contrary, he regularly puts forth objective truth claims about reality, making the case that Christianity is true, not just true for him and maybe true for you, but transcendently true for everyone at all times.
And he’s amassing formidable evidence to support the claim. Much of it is objective and rational—that’s what draws the fire. But there is also that which is subjective and personal, but no less real. Case in point: this formerly angry atheist who had been ever ready to tell any bothersome Christian why he didn’t accept all that “hooey” engages his detractors with remarkable patience, occasionally hearing echoes of his own younger voice. As a toughened cop and softened believer, he can now “take a punch and deliver a kiss. I no longer have a desire to respond with anger,” he explains. “Not because I’m more clever tactically, but because I think that God has done something in my own life. That God who I discovered was true evidentially, I’m also discovering in my own life is true evidentially. Because he’s changing me.” •
Christian Case-Making 101
Cold Case Christianity
Jim Wallace keeps a leather bag packed beside his bed. His callout bag holds the tools he’ll need if he’s called to a homicide scene during the night—a flashlight, digital recorder, notepad, etc. It also contains an investigative checklist representing years of distilled wisdom gleaned from partners, classes, training seminars, and his own years of experience. His new book, Cold Case Christianity, offers a metaphorical toolkit for both Christians and skeptics and invites them to retrace with him the steps he took when he applied his investigative tools to the Gospels years ago. The real-life detective stories he uses to illustrate the principles will be an added delight for TV crime-show fans. Cold Case Christianity will:
The historic truth claims of Christianity are under assault from all directions, but when pressed, they withstand the most scrupulous of investigative techniques. Jim Wallace is passionate about getting this information out, and about training Christians to become skilled case-makers for Christianity. “Most other theistic worldviews are deficient in the very areas where Christianity is strong,” he says. “We have great reasons to believe what we believe.”
—Terrell Clemmons
Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.
This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2VUTDDS
How Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline
Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Luke Nix
Introduction
One of the core necessities of science is the constancy of the laws that govern this universe. The fact that the laws of physics have the same since the beginning of the universe and will continue until the universe is destroyed allows scientists to not only observe and know what is happening in the moment of their observation, but it allows them to discover what has happened in the past and even make accurate predictions of the behavior of objects and conditions in the future. Some scientists even use the understanding that the laws of physics are constant to make predictions of what we will observe in the past (by observing distant celestial objects), then conduct multiple observations to test their theory. But where do they come up with the idea that the laws of physics are constant in the first place?
The Constancy of the Laws of Physics
We certainly cannot look inside this universe to establish it, for that would be to beg the question (assume what we are trying to conclude). Without something outside the universe that established the constancy of the laws of physics, such an assumption has no justification. So, on this view, since our first assumption has no justification, neither do any of the conclusions that follow it. At best, the constancy or variability of the laws of physics is unknowable. Since scientists foundationally base their claims about the past and the future upon something that is unknowable, then their claims about the past and the future can only reach the same level of knowledge: unknowable.
At this point, many scientists would object based upon observation of distant celestial objects. My response is to point out that a subtle fallacy is in place. While we think that we can observe the past by looking at distant celestial objects to observe how the laws of physics behaved back then, we are still stuck with merely a suspicion (thus the whole scientific enterprise that is dependent upon constancy is suspect). I ask that the objector recalls that in order to correlate the observation to any point in time, the speed of light (governed by the laws of physics) must be finite and constant– light does take time to travel, so we are seeing light as it was when it left the object not as it is now. To say that observing distant objects establishes the constancy of the laws of physics is to commit the fallacy of begging the question. The objector has sneaked his conclusion into his argument. This invalidates his conclusion that our observations establish the constancy of the laws of physics. But all is not lost, they do still have a suspicion that the laws have been constant into the past.
Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline
If this universe is all that there is, then there really is no possible way to justify the belief in the foundational idea that the laws of physics are constant. All further conclusions will remain as merely suspicions and will remain unknowable. However, if something exists outside the universe that does provide a foundation for the laws of physics, then we at least have something to reason toward constant laws of physics without begging the question. If God exists and created this universe, then He certainly would be the source for the laws of physics, but this alone does not tell us if they are constant or variable over time.
Christianity Provides The Foundation For Science As A Knowledge Discipline
Interestingly enough, though, God has revealed to us which option He selected, and it matches the observations that cause us to suspect one or the other. Let us examine Jeremiah 33:25-26:
In this passage, God compares His constancy to the laws that govern His creation. If these laws are not truly constant, then the comparison means, at best, nothing, and at worst, the exact opposite (that the laws are variable).
If scientists wish to claim that their conclusions are more than mere unknowable suspicions, then they have no choice but to be dependent upon God’s existing. And we’re not talking about some deistic god, for a deistic god does not reveal Himself to His creation (God is revealing His constancy, among other characteristics, in the passage above), nor are we talking about some generic theistic god. We are talking about the God of the Bible.
This God not only told us the truth of something that we only became suspicious may be true in recent centuries (the constancy of the laws of physics), but He came to earth, died, and resurrected from the dead (see this historical evidence in the post: “Did The Historical Jesus Rise From The Dead?“). In that resurrection, He confirmed His claims to be God, the Creator of the universe: the Source of the laws of physics.
Conclusion
Naturalism simply cannot justify the conclusion that the laws of physics are constant, and unless scientists are willing to ground this foundationally necessary concept in the God of the Bible outside the universe, none of their conclusions can be more than suspicions, and suspicions hardly counts as knowledge. In order for any conclusions that count as knowledge to come out of the scientific enterprise, God must exist to be the source of the constancy of the laws of physics. If naturalism is true, then science necessarily is not a knowledge discipline.
Luke Nix holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and works as a Desktop Support Manager for a local precious metal exchange company in Oklahoma.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2JxRMOV
The Education of Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Brian Chilton
Often, critical scholars make Jesus of Nazareth out to be a country bumpkin, one who was uneducated and unsophisticated. However, when one evaluates his life and teaching style, it appears that Jesus of Nazareth was a well-polished individual who spoke and taught with great authority and wisdom. The Jewish leaders marveled at Jesus, saying, “How is this man so learned, since he hasn’t been trained” (Jn. 7:14, CSB)? While this writer holds that Jesus was the divine Son of God, the human aspect of Jesus does not indicate that Jesus was an uneducated hillbilly, but rather one who had at least some formal education. The following are five reasons to believe that Jesus was a well-educated man.
When Jesus was called unlearned, it is most likely that the Jewish leaders noted that Jesus had not been trained in the approved schools in Judea. He had, however, been educated in Galilee. Each synagogue had its own bet-sefer, that is, a school of learning. While Jesus may not have received the training that a scribe would have received in Jerusalem, Jesus would most certainly been educated during his early years as was evidenced by Jesus’s reading, writing, and teaching skills. Many people ask, “What was Jesus doing in his early years?” I think the answer is quite simple. Jesus was memorizing and learning the Scriptures in preparation for his ministry, which was to come. If Jesus, the Son of God, needed to study the Scriptures, what does that say of our need to study them?
Sources
Blizzard, Roy B., and David Bivin. “Study Shows Jesus as Rabbi.” Bible Scholars.org (May 2013). Accessed on April 29, 2019. https://www.biblescholars.org/2013/05/study-shows-jesus-as-rabbi.html.
Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene Albert Nida. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains. New York: United Bible Societies, 1996.
Safrai, Shmuel. The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural, and Religious Life and Institutions. Volume 2. Boston: Brill, 1988.
Zuck, Roy B. Teaching as Jesus Taught. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1995.
Brian G. Chilton is the founder of BellatorChristi.com and is the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast. He received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); and received certification in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Brian is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University and is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Brian has been in the ministry for over 15 years and serves as the Senior Pastor of Westfield Baptist Church in northwestern, North Carolina.
Original Blog Source:http://bit.ly/2w51gbs
You Can’t Make Your Kid a Christian
Apologetics for ParentsBy Natasha Crain
I thrive on control.
I love projects that can be broken into goals, tasks, and success or failure criteria. Nothing motivates me more than the opportunity to strive toward the successful completion of something. I actually have spreadsheets that outline every hour of my life with a color code for the activity, so I can understand exactly where my time goes. I even have spreadsheets for my kids’ lives!
For a major “control freak” like me, having kids is a real wake-up call to the fact that there are some very important things in life that cannot be controlled via spreadsheet (gasp). I didn’t realize that, however, until a few months ago when I was trying to identify why I was always mad at my twins. Aside from the fact that they were being typical 3-year-olds, they were not behaving according to “my plan.” I had the mentality that perfect parenting could lead to perfect kids. I certainly never thought my parenting was perfect, but every time they misbehaved, I felt it was a direct indictment of the quality of my parenting, and that led to misplaced frustration… at them. When they were good, I attributed it to me, and when they were bad, I attributed it to me even more so.
The problem with this is that it effectively made my parenting all about me rather than about my kids. I realized that I needed to start having a teacher mentality rather than a boss mentality. The key distinction is that teachers are responsible for learning. Bosses are responsible for outcomes. When you think you are working toward an outcome, your focus is on controlling the process. When you think you are working toward learning, your heart lets go of the process to embrace that which will most impactfully grow the student.
How much more so this is true as applied to the development of our children’s faith!
If our motivation for investing in our children’s faith development is even subconsciously rooted in the belief that we 1) can control that outcome or 2) are responsible for that outcome, we will start controlling the process too tightly.
We can’t “make” our children Christians.
Only God can call our children. Not me. Not you.
Only our children can respond to that call. Not me. Not you.
That’s why we could invest 24 hours per day in spiritual activities for our kids, and they could be atheists the day they leave home. That’s why we could invest 0 hours per day in spiritual activities for our kids, and they could be rock-solid Christ-followers the day they leave home.
This shouldn’t be discouraging. It simply means we need to put our children in God’s hands and focus on the responsibility God has given us.
So what ARE Christian parents responsible for?
The three most specific passages in the Bible on parenting all speak to the role of teaching (not to outcomes).
“…bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4, emphasis mine)
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6, emphasis mine)
“You shall teach them (God’s commands) diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (Deuteronomy 6:7, emphasis mine)
Our hearts have to be precisely right for this calling of Christian parenting. Our time spent in faith development is not a purchase; it is an investment that may or may not pay off with the desired outcome. But God has called us as teachers. We need to let Him be the boss.
Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2Jr9cNe