Tag Archive for: Debate

Debating Atheists Arrival Universe

Debating Atheists: Arrival of the Universe (Part 2/5)

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By Dan Grossenbach

In the previous post of this short blog series found here, I explained how four facts agreed upon by the majority of non-Christian experts can be used to build a strong case for Christianity. This is the approach I took when I debated Freethought Arizona spokesperson Dr. Gil Shapiro in November 2016. In this week’s post, I’ll cover the first one.

#1 The Arrival of the Universe

Either the universe is infinitely old or it started at a finite time ago at a certain point in time. There’s no third option unless we deny the existence of the universe altogether as some new age or eastern beliefs do. The cosmos has been the focus of study as long as man has existed and some mysteries remain yet unsolved. Nevertheless, that the universe had a beginning is something we can say with relative certainty.

  1. About 13.8 bya the universe came into existence where energy, matter, natural laws, time, and space arrived on the scene prior to which they were not there.ASU astrophysicist and religion critic Paul Davies says “the universe can’t have existed forever. We know there must be an absolute beginning a finite time ago.”[1]

Alexander Vilenkin, another skeptic of religion goes further arguing for a finite starting point even with the possibility of multiple universes when he said this in 2003:

“It is said that an argument is what convinces a reasonable man, but a proof even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape:  they must face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” The problem for Vilenkin and his non-Christian peers is what follows from a “beginning.”[2]

In defense of this idea, outspoken religion skeptic and Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krause said, “If you asked me what I would bet, I would bet that our universe had a beginning.”[3] To see why scientists like Davies, Krause, and other skeptics consider the beginning of the universe a problem, it’s important to see what follows from another fact we already know.

  1. In uniform and repeated human experience, everything that begins to exist has a cause

Sensing the pending consequences of these two facts, Dr. Krause tries to show how events can occur from “nothing.” The trouble is, he defines nothing as something. You can see Krause first properly defines “nothing” as the “absence of anything” but in the very next breath tells us his “nothing” of the pre-beginning initial conditions of the universe contained something, namely, lots of complex “stuff” and “particles” interacting with each other.[4] Dr. Krause is a brilliant man and must know better. For the stuff and particles he just listed by default entails space, time, energy, matter, and abstract objects like physical laws and logic which is all that’s needed to make up our entire physical universe. These things are not only not “nothing” (no-thing) but are the very things scientists tell us did NOT exist until they came into being at the beginning of the universe, a beginning Dr. Krause would put his money on. In fact, the universe itself is comprised of the same things he attributes to as “nothing.” So for Krause: nothing = universe.

If these first two points hold true, as nearly all experts agree, and the logic is sound, the following conclusion is inescapable.

  1. The universe had a cause.

This opens a whole other can of worms. Who or what is the cause? Well, we can infer a few things from this argument. The cause must be supernatural, uncaused, spaceless, immaterial, timeless, personal, powerful, rational, and independent. This list of attributes rules out nearly every world religion except monotheism.

Uncaused – Gen 1:1, Ps 102:25-27, Jn 1:3, 1 Cor 8:6, Col 1:16, Heb 1:2

Spaceless – 1 Kings 8:27, Isa 66:1-2, Acts 7:48

Immaterial – 1 Kings 8:27, Isa 66:1-2, Acts 7:48

Timeless – Ps 90:2, Job 36:26, Rev 1:8, Jn 8:58

Personal – Gen 17:1, Rev 19:6, Ps 33:9, Rom 4:17

Powerful – Gen 18:14, Jer 32:17, Job 42:1-2, Mt 19:26, Mk 14:26

Rational – 1 Cor 14:33, Isa 1:18, 2 Tim 2:13, Lk 10:27

Independent – Gen 1:1, Ps 102:25-27, Jn 1:3, 1 Cor 8:6, Col 1:16, Heb 1:2

We’re not able to show the God of Christianity on this first argument alone, but there’s no better candidate than theism to fit the bill. At the very least, the God of biblical Christianity matches this description without a single miss and is among a very short list of contenders. It’s important to note none of the rival atheistic theories fit these attributes for the universe’s initial cause. But before critiquing any rival options, I waited for Dr. Shapiro to present another cause that better explains the creation of the universe. He never did. And the options offered by the atheists mentioned here start off on false or unfounded assumptions. Atheists might not like the Christian explanation, but they seem to support the basis for it and fail to offer a better way. So the Biblical account of the arrival of the universe remains the best explanation available to us.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2xeVSkM

Endnotes:

[1] Paul Davies, “The Big Bang-and Before,” lecture at Thomas Aquinas College March 2002 quoted from ReasonableFaith.org.

[2] Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One p176, quoted from Common Sense Atheism blog post “Craig on Vilenkin on Cosmic Origins” by Luke Muehlhauser

[3] Lawrence Krause, debate with William Lane Craig in Brisbane, Australia on August 7, 2013 transcript here

[4] Lawrence Krause, debate with William Lane Craig, 2013, video here starting at around 17:00

 

 

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Debate Atheism Introduction

Debating Atheists: Introduction (part 1/5)

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By Dan Grossenbach

On November 27, 2016, I debated a local atheist leader, retired podiatrist Dr. Gil Shapiro, the spokesperson of Freethought Arizona (video here). I’ve blogged on general post-debate thoughts here but now will cover a series of five consecutive blog posts covering each of the four arguments that the atheist couldn’t answer. This is no credit to my debating skills or subject knowledge which are nothing special, but it does show how classic arguments for the Christian worldview can be powerful if we keep it simple. My hope is that this will serve as a good outline to keep in mind when you engage with skeptics in your own community, the water cooler, or the next family dinner table.

By far, the most difficult part of debate prep was planning my general approach. Knowing my opponent helped. In a story by the local paper leading up to the event, the AZ Daily Star quoted Dr. Shapiro saying, “There is the religious view and the secular point of view, and there will be some things we can’t move on our position, but there will be some things that we can.” In this spirit, I researched claims from renowned atheists and non-Christians and arrived at four aspects of reality we can all agree on even though we may come to different conclusions. They are:

1) the arrival of the universe from nothing

2) the arrival of biological information from dead matter,

3) the arrival of evil, and

4) the arrival of Jesus.

This was a community event between two amateurs so I had to stick to the basics. As a full time detective, I’m not a biblical scholar, scientist, or philosopher so I wasn’t going to get fancy. That’s why I proffered four facts that enjoy the vast consensus of scholars regardless of religious or non-religious bias. I was also intentional on my topic selection. After all, what could be more pressing for the Christian worldview than creation, sin (evil), and the resurrection? I framed the debate using only commonly accepted facts both Dr. Shapiro and I could, in principle, agree on, and provided an explanation that best fit the facts. If my logic was valid and the facts true, the conclusions I offered would remain standing as the most reasonable. At the end of each of the four separate arguments, I told the audience I would wait to see what my opponent would offer as a better explanation of these facts. In his rebuttals, he gave a lot of criticisms but never answered my challenges directly. Not only was my opponent silent in presenting an alternative explanation for any of these four facts, he didn’t offer any explanation at all.  So, if the challenges I presented demand an explanation, the Christian explanation won by default.

Christianity won because the evidence was better and the reasoning clearer than what my atheist friend offered. We all know that debates are won or lost by much more than the content. If I came across condescending or frustrated, all the evidence and logic in the world wouldn’t have helped me. Good manners and graciousness are critical. My goal was to be bold and nice at the same time. While his arguments were lacking, I owe thanks to Dr. Shapiro for keeping things cordial as well. He’s a gentleman.

A quick note about scholarly consensus is important. Few of us have the time or training to master all the arguments so it helps to stand on the shoulders of scholars who do. I’m not suggesting an appeal to authority or majority can replace sound reasoning. Surely, scholarly consensus alone isn’t an argument. It would be fallacious to appeal to the majority since the majority can be wrong and the number of noses is irrelevant to the truth of a proposition. What this shows is that each fact has been defended in published work and debated among experts on all sides of the issue. When scholars committed to a worldview contrary to Christianity concede these facts, they do so in spite of their desires because of the weight of evidence and because intellectual honesty compels them. That’s what we want it to do for our unbelieving friends as well. We just need to point this out.

To show how this works, I’ll release four short blog posts to unpack each of these facts over each of the next four weeks. When combined together, these four facts make a cumulative, or “minimal facts,” case we can use to show our skeptical friends to infer important conclusions that point us to God based on facts even atheists grant. Inspired by what Gary Habermas has done for the historical case for the resurrection, these facts can be extended into an overall case for Christianity. The compelling force of Habermas’ work is showing the mass concession by scholars from non-Christian, even hostile, worldviews on relevant facts surrounding the death of Jesus. It’s easy to point out Christian scholars in support of our views, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but citing a skeptic who is an authority on the topic blunts the bias objection from the start.

It’s not only skeptics who need to hear this. When I speak at various Christian groups, I’m constantly surprised by how many intelligent and faithful Christians don’t know how widely accepted these facts are either. Without the facts, they risk being forced into defending ideas already settled among the experts. To suggest that Jesus died by crucifixion, for example, might sound like a religious claim, not a historical one. Once we learn that the most skeptical scholars accept Jesus’ crucifixion, however, it should cause our skeptical friend to question her own reasons for denying it.

Many of the scholars I’ll cite are the same ones our skeptical friends are learning from. So if our friends are persuaded by atheist writings of Dawkins, Shermer, Hitchens, Krauss, Erhman, Carrier, and others, get ready to hear what they have to say now!

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2uYUC3P

 

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Dead Things Don’t Grow

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Author’s Note: The debate discussed in this blog post can be seen at the bottom article.

Many who hold the pro-choice position subscribe to a postmodern worldview. They are not arguing that we can kill the unborn because a woman’s right to choose trumps the right to life of the unborn. They are arguing that ambiguity on the question of when life begins supplies adequate justification for abortion on demand. The argument from ambiguity was central to former ACLU president Nadine Strossen’s presentation when I debated her recently on the campus of Oregon State University (OSU).

I was pleased that Nadine’s opening argument relied heavily on the claim that we cannot know when life begins. This played into the strategy I had chosen prior to the onset of the debate. Nadine did two other things I had hoped she would do in her opening statement: 1) Argue that Roe v. Wade was a moderate decision that balanced the competing interests of the individual and the state, and 2) argue that the Roe decision was necessary to stop the deaths of women who were dying as a result of unsafe abortions. In my own opening argument, which followed hers, I tried to establish two things:

1. There is clear consensus in the science of embryology that life begins at conception. Scientifically speaking, the unborn are distinct, living, whole human beings actively involved in the process of developing themselves from within from the very point of conception.

2. There is no difference between the adults we are today and the unborn humans we once were that would justify killing us at an earlier stage of development. In other words, there is no essential difference between a “human” and a “person.” Furthermore, any effort to justify abortion with philosophical distinctions among the living would invite systematic human inequality. At the end of the day, our society must choose between human equality and abortion. We simply cannot have both.

After we presented our opening statements, Nadine had an opportunity to offer a rebuttal. In that rebuttal, she challenged my claim that there was an absolute consensus among embryologists that life begins at conception. She quoted a source saying that the question could not be answered conclusively. This was a good tactic for Nadine to employ. She was obviously prepared. Fortunately, I had fully anticipated her move.

In my rebuttal, which followed hers, I drew on the work of Francis Beckwith. As Beckwith has previously written, Roe v. Wade concedes that the question of the parameters of a woman’s right to abortion is inextricably bound to the question of when life begins. Therefore, if someone is agnostic on the question of when life begins, they are also agnostic on the parameters of a woman’s right to choose. I began my rebuttal by establishing this crucial point.

Rather than conceding that there was a legitimate doubt about when life begins, I decided to reassert the point that the matter was settled. I did this by firing off numerous sources. Among them, I included former Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher and Princeton Philosopher Peter Singer. I wanted to establish the fact that many honest pro-choice advocates conceded the point. In fact, they have done so for decades.

Fortunately, OSU Socratic Club debates are structured in such a way as to allow opponents to have an informal half-hour exchange following the opening statements and rebuttals. During that exchange, Nadine came across as cordial and well informed. She also impressed me as sincerely interested in my views on a number of issues related to the debate topic. She was a worthy and articulate opponent.

One downside to Nadine’s choice of questions was that they sometimes gave the appearance of trying to divert the issue from the question of the status of the unborn. When Nadine interjected the phrase “potential life” into our discussion I tried to seize the moment to refocus the debate. I asked her whether by using the phrase “potential life” she meant to deny that the unborn were humans (in a biological sense) or persons (in a philosophical sense). Her answer was “both.”

Having established that the unborn have separate DNA and that there is cell division and metabolism from the point of conception, I replied with the following: “But, Nadine, dead things don’t grow.” In fact, I said it twice during the exchange.

That statement ended up being the takeaway line from the entire debate. In fact, nearly everyone who saw the debate and spoke to me afterwards quoted that one line. It was effective because Nadine and I were in danger of getting into a war of quoting texts no one has ever read. But “dead things don’t grow” was an unmistakable appeal to common sense that I believe solidified my central thesis and allowed the pro-life position to prevail in the overall exchange.

Therefore, I would like to conclude this column by thanking my friend Jay Watts for supplying me with that line, which I saw in a recent episode of “Life is Best” – a series hosted by my friend Scott Klusendorf. That series may be the best thing Scott has ever done for the pro-life movement – and that is really saying something.

My advice to pro-lifers debaters who wish to compete (and prevail!) in debates on hostile turf is twofold. First, read everything Francis Beckwith writes on the topic of abortion. Second, watch every video, speech, and debate featuring Scott Klusendorf speaking and teaching on the topic of abortion.

The best place to start is right here: http://www.lifeisbest.tv.

 

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Conversaciones llenas de gracia y sazonadas con sal: consejos para el cristiano que debate

En su carta a los Colosenses, el Apóstol Pablo enseña a sus lectores a que “procuren que su conversación siempre sea agradable y de buen gusto, para que den a cada uno la respuesta debida” (Colosenses 4:6). He descubierto que este consejo es invaluable en el contexto del debate, una actividad en la que muchos de nosotros en la comunidad de la apologética  participamos.

En las oportunidades que se presentan para argumentar a favor del Cristianismo y su defensa, es muy importante demostrar una actitud de humildad y bondad. Muy a menudo, lamentablemente, he visto gente (creyentes y no creyentes) intentando desacreditar a las personas del otro lado de la discusión. Con respecto a los cristianos, creo firmemente que el propósito de debatir no es simplemente ganar un argumento. Permítanme decirlo una vez más: El propósito de debatir, para el creyente, no es simplemente ganar un argumento. Es posible que uno gane exitosamente el argumento, pero que al mismo tiempo pierda a la audiencia o al interlocutor. Hay almas en juego. Por lo tanto un mensaje de amor debe ser transmitido claramente a través de las palabras que hablamos –a través de nuestra conducta y forma de expresarnos, y a través de nuestra devoción por el mensaje de la cruz. Es tan fácil dejar que nuestra apologética cristiana se reduzca a nada más que una búsqueda intelectual o a una forma de aumentar nuestro ego. Pero como el apóstol Pablo escribió en 1 Corintios 13:2,

“Si tuviera el don de profecía, y entendiera todos los misterios, y tuviera todo el conocimiento, y si tuviera toda la fe, de tal manera que trasladara los montes, y no tengo amor, nada soy”. 

Tener un gran cúmulo de conocimiento no te hará, o a alguien más, ningún bien si no tienes amor. Cada oponente que enfrentas y cada persona que observa y vigila el debate, es un alma valiosa, desesperadamente necesitada de Cristo. Si las ves de esa manera, tu conducta durante y después del debate reflejara eso.

Si somos sinceros, a veces puede haber un elemento de superioridad entre intelectuales cristianos. Nos sentimos seguros porque somos los que sabemos la verdad, y nos enorgullecemos de contar con los mejores argumentos para apoyar nuestra posición. Pero hay que recordar que, si el Espíritu no hubiera abierto nuestros ojos e iluminado nuestra visión para que podamos percibir claramente el misterio de Cristo, estaríamos precisamente en el mismo lugar –perdidos, en la oscuridad, sin Dios, sin esperanza de salvación. Lo que es tan claro para nosotros, no es claro para aquellos cuyos corazones están cubiertos por un velo (2 Corintios 3:14). Lo único que te permite percibir y entender la Verdad es la gracia de Dios –nada más ni nada menos. Darte cuenta de esa realidad es, sin duda, una experiencia de humildad , y que nos debe servir para estimularnos para tratar a nuestros compañeros de diálogo no cristianos amablemente, con amor y humildad.

En última instancia, es el Espíritu de Dios –y no tus argumentos– el que convencerá a un hombre de su pecado y lo llevará al arrepentimiento. Sí, tus argumentos pueden convencer a él intelectualmente de que el cristianismo es verdadero –y Dios puede optar por utilizarlos como los medios para atraerlo hacia Sí mismo (Isaías 55:11). La Biblia nos muestra como Dios amorosamente nos provee de gracia la cual le permite a un hombre arrepentirse y someterse a Él, pues es evidente que el hombre está perpetuamente en rebelión contra Dios, siempre buscando excusas para no creer. Ahora, permíteme ser claro: esto no quiere en absoluto decir que no debemos manejar la información y los hechos con responsabilidad. De hecho, creo que nuestras presentaciones de la verdad siempre deben ser precisas y bien documentadas –y que en la comunidad de la apologética debemos controlarnos mutuamente en este sentido. Haciendo esto, honramos a Dios que es la Verdad misma.

Es muy importante que demostremos amor, bondad y humildad hacia las personas con las que nos involucramos en debates y argumentos –incluso si la actitud no es correspondida. Tu conducta es una parte más de tu apologética tanto como tus argumentos persuasivos. No es honrar a Dios presentar fríamente los argumentos sin ejemplificar amor y compasión por la preciada gente que a la que le estas hablando. Recuerda que es sólo por la gracia de Dios que has llegado a tener un conocimiento de la verdad sobre el evangelio. Por lo tanto, presenta una defensa de la fe que está dentro de ti, pero hazlo con delicadeza y respeto (1 Pedro 3:15).

 

Blog Original: http://bit.ly/2wtblQq

Traducido por José Giménez Chilavert

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