Tag Archive for: Wintery Knight

Yale computer science professor David Gelernter expresses doubts about Darwinism

Yale computer science professor David Gelernter expresses doubts about Darwinism

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By Wintery Knight

How did life begin?

I had to learn about David Gelernter when I was doing my Masters in computer science. We studied his book “Mirror Worlds”. A few weeks ago, I blogged about his impressions of the difficulty in forming a simple protein by chance – something that naturalistic mechanisms would have to do in order to avoid intelligent agency as a cause in nature. He found it very unlikely. But there’s more!

Recently, my friend Terrell sent me a video featuring Peter Robinson (who hosts the splendid Uncommon Knowledge show out of Stanford University), and three interesting people. First, there was Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, who is one of my two favorite thinkers. I’ve blogged on his work about the origin of life and the Cambrian explosion here many times. Then, there was Dr. David Berlinski, a secular Jewish professor of mathematics, who has studied origins issues. And then Dr. David Gelernter, who teaches computer science at Yale University, and is a legend in computer science research.

Here’s the video: (H/T Terrell)

Here is an article by Jennifer Kabbany in The College Fix about the video.

She writes about his recent Claremont Review of Books article, as well as the interview above:

In May, the Claremont Review of Books published a column by Gelernter headlined “Giving Up Darwin.” In it, he explained how his readings and discussions of Darwinian evolution and its competing theories, namely intelligent design, have convinced him Darwin had it wrong.

In particular, he cited Stephen Meyer’s 2013 book Darwin’s Doubt as well as The Deniable Darwin by David Berlinski. The professor expanded on his views in an interview with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution that was published last week.

Gelernter stops short of fully embracing intelligent design, both in his essay and during his interview. He said in his interview he sees intelligence in Earth’s design, and has no quarrel with ID proponents, but notes the world a mess, its suffering far outweighs its goodness.

“My argument is with people who dismiss intelligent design without considering, it seems to me — it’s widely dismissed in my world of academia as some sort of theological put up job — it’s an absolutely serious scientific argument,” Gelernter said during his interview. “In fact it’s the first and most obvious and intuitive one that comes to mind. It’s got to be dealt with intellectually.”

I found this part the most interesting, since we are seeing so much intolerance from the secular left, whenever anyone disagrees with their dogma:

Gelernter said he likes many of his colleagues at Yale, that they are his friends, but when he looks at “their intellectual behavior, what they have published — and much more importantly what they tell their students — Darwinism has indeed passed beyond a scientific argument as far as they are concerned. You take your life in your hands to challenge it intellectually. They will destroy you if you challenge it.”

“Now, I haven’t been destroyed, I am not a biologist, and I don’t claim to be an authority on this topic,” Gelernter added, “but what I have seen in their behavior intellectually and at colleges across the West is nothing approaching free speech on this topic. It’s a bitter, fundamental, angry, outraged rejection [of intelligent design], which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion. I’ve seen that happen again and again.”

Gelernter acknowledges “I am attacking their religion and I don’t blame them for being all head up, it is a big issue for them.”

Dr. Gelernter cited three arguments in his article: the origin of life, and the Cambrian explosion, and genetic entropy. In the first two problems, there is a problem of huge amounts of biological information coming into being. We know that software engineers can write code like that, but there is no Darwinian mechanism for writing that much code and that short of a time period. The third problem shows that Darwinian mechanisms not only don’t produce functional code – they actually break it down.

I’ve covered both of the arguments before on this blog, but if you really want the details, you should pick up the books that convinced Dr. Gelernter: Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell” and “Darwin’s Doubt”. Each book tackles one of the arguments. For the third problem, a good book is Dr. Michael Behe’s “Darwin Devolves”. Even if you just read something about each book, then you’ll know about the arguments for intelligent causes being the best explanation for the history of life on this planet.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2ZF1Sll

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Are Mormon doctrines supported by philosophy, science and history

Are Mormon doctrines supported by philosophy, science and history?

By Wintery Knight

This post presents evidence against Mormonism/LDS in three main areas. The first is in the area of science. The second is in the area of philosophy. And the third is in the area of history.

The scientific evidence

First, let’s take a look at what the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, believes about the origin of the universe:

“The elements are eternal. That which had a begginning will surely have an end; take a ring, it is without begginning or end – cut it for a begginning place and at the same time you have an ending place.” (“Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” p. 205)

“Now, the word ‘create’ came from the word baurau which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos – chaotic matter, which is an element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time he had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beggining, and can have no end.”
(“Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” p. 395)

A Mormon scholar named Blake Ostler summarizes the Mormon view in a Mormon theological journal:

“In contrast to the self-sufficient and solitary absolute who creates ex nihilo (out of nothing), the Mormon God did not bring into being the ultimate constituents of the cosmos — neither its fundamental matter nor the space/time matrix which defines it. Hence, unlike the Necessary Being of classical theology who alone could not not exist and on which all else is contingent for existence, the personal God of Mormonism confronts uncreated realities which exist of metaphysical necessity. Such realities include inherently self-directing selves (intelligences), primordial elements (mass/energy), the natural laws which structure reality, and moral principles grounded in the intrinsic value of selves and the requirements for growth and happiness.” (Blake Ostler, “The Mormon Concept of God,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17 (Summer 1984):65-93)

So, Mormons believe in an eternally existing universe, such that matter was never created out of nothing, and will never be destroyed. But this is at odds with modern cosmology.

The Big Bang cosmology is the most widely accepted cosmology of the day. It denies the past eternality of the universe. This peer-reviewed paper in an astrophysics journal explains. (full text here)

Excerpt:

The standard Big Bang model thus describes a universe which is not eternal in the past, but which came into being a finite time ago. Moreover,–and this deserves underscoring–the origin it posits is an absolute origin ex nihilo. For not only all matter and energy but space and time themselves come into being at the initial cosmological singularity. As Barrow and Tipler emphasize, “At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo.”

[…] On such a model the universe originates ex nihilo in the sense that at the initial singularity it is true that There is no earlier space-time point or it is false that Something existed prior to the singularity.

Christian cosmology requires such a creation out of nothing, but this is clearly incompatible with what Mormons believe about the universe. The claims about the universe made by the two religions are in disagreement, and we can test empirically to see who is right, using science.

Philosophical problems

Always Have a Reason contrasts two concepts of God in Mormonism: Monarch theism and Polytheism. It turns out that Mormonism is actually a polytheistic religion, like Hinduism. In Mormonism, humans can become God and then be God of their own planet. So there are many Gods in Mormonism, not just one.

Excerpt:

[T]he notion that there is innumerable contingent “primal intelligences” is central to this Mormon concept of god (P+M, 201; Beckwith and Parrish, 101). That there is more than one god is attested in the Pearl of Great Price, particularly Abraham 4-5. This Mormon concept has the gods positioned to move “primal intelligences along the path to godhood” (Beckwith and Parrish, 114). Among these gods are other gods which were once humans, including God the Father. Brigham Young wrote, “our Father in Heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father, and again, He was begotten by a still more ancient Father, and so on…” (Brigham Young, The Seer, 132, quoted in Beckwith and Parrish, 106).

[…] The logic of the Mormon polytheistic concept of God entails that there is an infinite number of gods. To see this, it must be noted that each god him/herself was helped on the path to godhood by another god. There is, therefore, an infinite regress of gods, each aided on his/her path to godhood by a previous god. There is no termination in this series. Now because this entails an actually infinite collection of gods, the Mormon polytheistic concept of deity must deal with all the paradoxes which come with actually existing infinities…

The idea of counting up to an actual infinite number of things by addition (it doesn’t matter what kind of thing it is) is problematic. See here.

More:

Finally, it seems polytheistic Mormonism has a difficulty at its heart–namely the infinite regress of deity.

[…] Each god relies upon a former god, which itself relies upon a former god, forever. Certainly, this is an incoherence at the core of this concept of deity, for it provides no explanation for the existence of the gods, nor does it explain the existence of the universe.

Now let’s see the historical evidence against Mormonism.

The historical evidence

J. Warner Wallace explains how the “Book of Abraham,” a part of the Mormon Scriptures, faces historical difficulties.

The Book of Abraham papyri are not as old as claimed:

Mormon prophets and teachers have always maintained that the papyri that was purchased by Joseph Smith was the actual papyri that was created and written by Abraham. In fact, early believers were told that the papyri were the writings of Abraham.

[…] There is little doubt that the earliest of leaders and witnesses believed and maintained that these papyri were, in fact, the very scrolls upon which Abraham and Joseph wrote. These papyri were considered to be the original scrolls until they were later recovered in 1966. After discovering the original papyri, scientists, linguists, archeologists and investigators (both Mormon and non-Mormon) examined them and came to agree that the papyri are far too young to have been written by Abraham. They are approximately 1500 to 2000 years too late, dating from anywhere between 500 B.C. (John A. Wilson, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1968, p. 70.) and 60 A.D. If they papyri had never been discovered, this truth would never have come to light. Today, however, we know the truth, and the truth contradicts the statements of the earliest Mormon leaders and witnesses.

The Book of Abraham papyri do not claim what Joseph Smith said:

In addition to this, the existing papyri simply don’t say anything that would place them in the era related to 2000BC in ancient Egypt. The content of the papyri would at least help verify the dating of the document, even if the content had been transcribed or copied from an earlier document. But the papyri simply tell us about an ancient burial ritual and prayers that are consistent with Egyptian culture in 500BC. Nothing in the papyri hints specifically or exclusively to a time in history in which Abraham would have lived.

So there is a clear difference hear between the Bible and Mormonism, when it comes to historical verification.

Further study

If you want a nice long PDF to print out and read at lunch (which is what I did with it), you can grab this PDF by Michael Licona, entitled “Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock.“

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/324GEPv

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Bible study_ Esther as an example of bravery and God’s providence

Bible study: Esther as an example of bravery and God’s providence

By Wintery Knight

I’ve been listening to this FREE two-volume series on the book of Esther featuring pastor Alistair Begg. A whole bunch of interesting things stuck out to me, so I’ll write about one of them today.

First, Esther is a Jewish woman whose father or mother died when she was young. She was adopted by Mordecai, another Jew. She was very beautiful, so she was picked to be part of the Persian King’s harem. In fact, she is so beautiful that the King chooses her to be the Queen.

Now there is an enemy of the Jews in the King’s court named Haman, and he manages to get the King to create an edict that says that all the Jews will be killed. Mordecai calls Esther to tell her that she has to stop the King from ordering this edict.

But Esther is out of favor with the King and hasn’t been asked to come in to visit him for some time. To go in and see the King without being summoned is a capital offense. Unless the King gives permission, she would be killed for intruding on the King. But in the end, she agrees to speak up and say something.

It all gets resolved in Esther, chapter 4.

Esther 4:1-17:

1 When Mordecai learned all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city and wailed loudly and bitterly.

2 He went as far as the king’s gate, for no one was to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth.

3 In each and every province where the command and decree of the king came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping and wailing; and many lay on sackcloth and ashes.

4 Then Esther’s maidens and her eunuchs came and told her, and the queen writhed in great anguish. And she sent garments to clothe Mordecai that he might remove his sackcloth from him, but he did not accept them.

5 Then Esther summoned Hathach from the king’s eunuchs, whom the king had appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was.

6 So Hathach went out to Mordecai to the city square in front of the king’s gate.

7 Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the exact amount of money that Haman had promised to pay to the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews.

8 He also gave him a copy of the text of the edict which had been issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show Esther and inform her, and to order her to go into the king to implore his favor and to plead with him for her people.

9 Hathach came back and related Mordecai’s words to Esther.

10 Then Esther spoke to Hathach and ordered him to reply to Mordecai:

11 “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that for any man or woman who comes to the king to the inner court who is not summoned, he has but one law, that he be put to death, unless the king holds out to him the golden scepter so that he may live. And I have not been summoned to come to the king for these thirty days.”

12 They related Esther’s words to Mordecai.

13 Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not imagine that you in the king’s palace can escape any more than all the Jews.

14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”

15 Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai,

16 “Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens also will fast in the same way. And thus I will go into the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.”

17 So Mordecai went away and did just as Esther had commanded him.

What Mordecai is saying here is that God is sovereign over the events that are taking place, and that even if Esther makes a free decision to not intercede to save her people, then God will do something else. Somehow, telling her that makes her agree to take the risk and go in to see the King. Even though it is illegal to go in to see the King, she is going to risk her life and do it. And the message there is that God made her beautiful, and placed her in the palace, for exactly this purpose. Her beauty has a purpose.

Before then, she may not have been the most morally pure Jew, nor the most faithful Jew, nor some great authority on theology or apologetics. She was probably keeping her faith pretty hidden. But in that one moment, she rises above being an orphan, above being a harem girl, and above being just a pretty face. God can use anyone – even a silly girl who spends all day in front of a mirror playing with cosmetics – to achieve his ends. She is not Daniel. But today she is getting the call, anyway. It’s on her.

What is the lesson here? God can use anybody. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be moral, study theology, and study apologetics, and keep your character clean so you have self-control. It means that any believer is just one step away from glory, no matter what they did in the past. That’s how God rolls.

Further study

If you are interested in the story of Esther, then you should listen to the entire series by Alistair Begg.

The point I am making in this post is in this lecture.

Esther is about two themes: 1) how should a believer in God live in a society where believers are a minority? And 2) even when things look really out of control, God is in control and is never more than one step away from saving his people.

I have a lot of Christian apologist friends who struggle to go to church and struggle to read the Bible. The links above will take you to some great preaching on one of the most interesting books of the Bible. Go there, grab the MP3s, and listen to them with no distractions.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2WV31HD

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Twitter suspends account of pro-life movie “Unplanned”, deletes 99% of their followers

Twitter suspends account of pro-life movie “Unplanned”, deletes 99% of their followers

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By Wintery Knight

Wow, big social media companies like Facebook, Google, Youtube, and Twitter are really ratcheting up their suppression of any accounts that challenge their allies in the Democrat Party. For example, on the weekend Twitter decided to suspend the account of the new pro-life movie “Unplanned.” And then they deleted 99,000 of their followers.

PJ Media reports:

The pro-life movie Unplanned surprised at the box office its opening weekend, taking 5th place with $6.1 million. That didn’t stop Twitter from attacking the film twice in one weekend, however.

The movie’s Twitter account was briefly suspended on Saturday, mere hours after its release on Friday. On Sunday, the account seems to have mysteriously lost 99,000 of its 100,000 followers.

There was a backlash against the suspension of the account. Twitter didn’t provide any rule that was violated, but they reinstated the account – with zero followers. People trying to re-follow the account were prevented from doing so, including the author of the PJ Media article:

I attempted to follow the page, but the same thing happened to me.

However, the movie performed so well at the box office that they are expanding the number of theaters next week to 1,700:

Despite the Twitter suspension and sudden mysterious loss of followers, Unplanned racked up more than $6.1 million at the box office, despite being predicted to take in only $2-3 million. Even more impressive, the film only played on 1,060 screens, earning an average of $5,770 per screen.

On Sunday, the film announced that its distributor, Pure Flix, will add an additional 600 screens for a count of 1,700 screens next week.

The movie also earned an A+ rating from CinemaScore, and it has a 93 percent positive rating on RottenTomatoes.

I’d make sure that you go see it as soon as possible. Remember what happend to the Gosnell movie, last time? The theaters pulled it very early, even though it was doing very well.

This isn’t the first time that Twitter has censored voices critical of their allies in the Democrat Party. Remember when they refused to allow a pro-life election ad from (now Senator) Marsha Blackburn? Or when they censored pro-life ads from the well-known pro-life Susan B. Anthony List group? Or when they said that death threats against conservative Dana Loesch were permissible? They also allowed threats of violence to be made against the pro-life Covington students. They also blocked pro-life ads from Live Action. Basically, they censor anything that makes their pro-abortion allies in the Democrat Party look bad.

I understand that companies make mistakes, but why are all the mistakes made by these big social media companies in favor of their allies in the Democrat Party? Is it because they don’t want their allies in the Democrat Party to lose elections?

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2IbAy8l

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Christopher Hitchens Debates William Lane Craig at Biola U Does God Exist

Christopher Hitchens Debates William Lane Craig at Biola U: Does God Exist?

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By Wintery Knight

Here is the video of the debate:

TOPIC: DOES GOD EXIST?

MY NOTES ON THE DEBATE: (WC = William Lane Craig, CH = Christopher Hitchens)

WC opening speech:

Introduction:

WC makes two contentions:

– there are no good arguments for atheism

– there are good arguments for theism

These topics are IRRELEVANT tonight:

– the social impact of Christianity

– the morality of Old Testament passages

– biblical inerrancy

– the debate is whether God (a creator and designer of the universe) exists

  1. cosmological argument

– an actually infinite number of past events is impossible

– number of past events must be finite

– therefore the universe has a beginning

– the beginning of the universe is confirmed by science – the universe began to exist from nothing

– space, time, matter, energy began at the big bang

– the creation of the universe requires a cause

– the cause is uncaused, timeless, spaceless, powerful

– the cause must be beyond space and time because it created space and time

– the cause is not physical because it created all matter and energy

– but there are only two kinds of non-physical cause: abstract objects or minds

– abstract objects don’t cause effects

– therefore must be mind

  1. teleological argument

– fine-tuned constants and ratios

– constants not determined by laws of nature

– also, there are arbitrary quantities

– constants and quantities are in a narrow range of life-permitting values

– an example: if the weak force were different by 1 in 10 to the 100, then no life

– there are 3 explanations: physical law or chance or design

– not due to law: because constants and quantities are independent of the laws

– not due to chance: the odds are too high for chance

– therefore, due to design

– the atheist response is the world ensemble (multiverse)

– but world ensemble has unobservable universes, no evidence that they exist

– and world ensemble contradicts scientific observations we have today

  1. moral argument

– objective moral values are values that exist regardless of what human’s think

– objective values are not personal preferences

– objective values are not evolved standards that cultures have depending on time and place

– objective moral values and duties exist

– objective moral values and duties require a moral lawgiver

  1. argument from resurrection miracle

– resurrection implies miracle

– miracle implies God

– 3 minimal facts pass the historical tests (early attestation, eyewitness testimony, multiple attestation, etc.)

– minimal fact 1: empty tomb

– minimal fact 2: appearances

– minimal fact 3: early belief in the resurrection

– Jewish theology prohibits a dying Messiah – Messiah is not supposed to die

– Jewish theology has a general resurrection of everybody, there is not supposed to be a resurrection of one person

– Jewish theology certainly does not predict a single resurrection of the Messiah after he dies

– therefore, the belief in the resurrection is unlikely to have been invented

– disciples were willing to die for that belief in the resurrection

– naturalistic explanations don’t work for the 3 minimal facts

  1. properly basic belief in God

– religious experience is properly basic

– it’s just like the belief in the external world, grounded in experience

– in the absence of defeaters, those experiences are valid

Conclusion: What CH must do:

– destroy all 5 of WC’s arguments

– erect his own case in its place

CH opening speech:

  1. evolution disproves biological design argument

– evolution disproves Paley’s argument for a watchmaker

  1. God wouldn’t have done it that way

– God wouldn’t have waited that long before the incarnation

– mass extinction and death before Jesus

– God wouldn’t have allowed humans to have almost gone extinct a while back in Africa

– why insist that this wasteful and incompetent history of life is for us, that’s a bad design

– the universe is so vast, why would God need so much space, that’s a bad design

– there is too much destruction in the universe, like exploding stars – that’s a bad design
– the heat death of the universe is a bad design

– too many of the other planets don’t support life, that’s a bad design

– the sun is going to become a red giant and incinerate us, that’s a bad design

  1. Hitchens’ burden of proof

– there is no good reason that supports the existence of God

– all arguments for God can be explained without God

– atheists can’t prove there is no God

– but they can prove there is no good argument for God

  1. Craig’s scientific arguments don’t go far enough, they only prove deism, not theism

– the scientific arguments don’t prove prayer works

– the scientific arguments don’t prove specific moral teachings of Christianity

  1. if the laws of physics are so great then miracles shouldn’t be allowed

– good laws and miracles seem to be in contradiction

  1. extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence

– none of Craig’s evidence was extraordinary

  1. science can change, so Craig can’t use the progress of science

– it’s too early for Craig to use the big bang and fine-tuning

– the big bang and fine-tuning evidences are too new

– they could be overturned by the progress of science

  1. Craig wrote in his book that the internal conviction of God’s existence should trump contradicting evidence

– but then he isn’t forming his view based on evidence

– he refuses to let evidence disprove his view

– but then how can atheists be to blame if they don’t believe

– so evidence is not really relevant to accepting theism

  1. the progress of science has disproved religion

– Christianity taught that earth was center of the universe

– but then cosmology disproved that

Response to the big bang and fine-tuning arguments:

– was there pre-existing material?

– who designed the designer?

WC first rebuttal:

Reiterates his 2 basic contentions

CH agrees that there is no good argument for atheism

– then all you’ve got is agnosticism

– because CH did not claim to know there is no God

– and he gave no arguments that there is no God

CH’s evolution argument

– irrelevant to Christianity

– Genesis 1 allows for evolution to have occurred

– Christianity is not committed to young earth creationism

– the origin of biological diversity is not central to Christianity

– St. Augustine in 300 AD said days can be long, special potencies unfold over time

– also, there are scientific reasons to doubt evolution

– cites barrow and Tipler, and they say:

– each of 10 steps in evolution is very improbable

– chances are so low; it would be a miracle if evolution occurred

CH’s argument that God is wasteful

– efficiency is only important to people with limited time or limited resources

– therefore God doesn’t need to be efficient

CH’s argument that God waits too long to send Jesus

– population was not that high before Jesus

– Jesus appears just before the exponential explosion of population

– conditions were stable – roman empire, peace, literacy, law, etc.

CH’s argument that Craig’s scientific arguments only prove deism, not theism

– deism a type of theism, so those scientific arguments work

– all that deism denies is a miraculous intervention

CH’s argument that Craig has a burden of proof

– theism doesn’t need to be proven with certainty

– must only prove a best explanation of the evidence

CH’s citation of Craig’s book saying that evidence should not overrule experience

– there is a difference between knowing and showing Christianity is true

– knowing is by religious experience which is a properly basic belief

– showing is done through evidence, and there the evidence does matter

CH’s rebuttal to the big bang

– there was no pre-existent material

– space and time and matter came into being at the big bang

– the cause must be non-physical and eternal

– cause of the universe outside of time means = cause of the universe did not begin to exist

– this is the state of science today

CH’s rebuttal to the fine-tuning

– CH says scientists are uncertain about the fine-tuning

– Craig cites Martin Rees, an atheist, astronomer royal, to substantiate the fine-tuning
– the fine-tuning is necessary for  minimal requirements for life of any kind

– the progress of science is not going to dethrone the fine-tuning

CH’s argument about heat death of the universe

– duration of design is irrelevant to whether something was designed

– cars are designed, yet they break down

– design need not be optimal to be designed

– CH is saying why create if we all eventually go extinct

– but life doesn’t end in the grave on Christianity

CH’s rebuttal to the moral argument

– CH says no objective moral values

– but CH uses them to argue against God and Christians

– but CH has no foundation for a standard that applies to God and Christians

CH’s rebuttal to the resurrection argument

– empty tomb and appearances are virtually certain

– these are minimal facts, well evidenced using standard historical criteria

– best explanation of these minimal facts is the resurrection

CH’s rebuttal to a religious experience

– prop basic belief is rational in the absence of defeaters

– so long as Craig has no psychological deficiency, experience is admissible

CH first rebuttal:

it’s not agnosticism

– if there are no good arguments for theism

– then there is no reason for belief in God

– that is atheism

– everything can be explained without God

God wouldn’t have done it that way

– homo sapiens is 100K years old

– for 98K years, they had no communication from God

– lots of people died in childbirth

– disease and volcanos are a mystery to them

– life expectancy is very low

– they die terrible deaths

– their teeth are badly designed

– their genitalia are badly designed

– why solve the problem of sin by allowing a man to be tortured to death

– that’s a stupid, cruel, bumbling plan

lots of people haven’t even heard of Jesus

– many of them die without knowing about him

– they cannot be held responsible if they do not know about Jesus

the early success of Christianity doesn’t prove Christianity is true

– because then it applies to Mormonism and Islam, they’re growing fast

objective morality

– belief in a supreme dictator doesn’t improve moral behavior

– I can do moral actions that you can do

– I can repeat moral positions that you can say

religious people are immoral

– genital mutilation

– suicide bombing

moral behavior doesn’t need God

– we need to act moral for social cohesion

– it evolved for our survival

– that’s why people act morally

– it’s degrading to humans, and servile, to require God for morality

free will

– I believe in free will

– I don’t know why, because I can’t ground free will on atheism

– a bossy God seems to reduce free will because then we are accountable to God

WC cross-examination of CH:

WC why call yourself an atheist when you have no reasons?

CH because absence of belief is atheism

WC but agnosticism, atheism, verificationism all don’t hold that belief, which one are you?

CH I think God does not exist

WC ok give me an argument for the claim you just made to know God does not exist

CH I have no argument, but I don’t believe in God because it depresses me to think he might be real

WC would you agree that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?

CH no I don’t agree

WC moral argument: it’s not epistemology it’s the ontology – have you got a foundation for moral values and duties?

CH I do not, it’s just evolution, an evolved standard based on social cohesion

CH cross-examination of WC:

CH you said that the historical reports of Jesus doing exorcisms are generally accepted – do you believe in devils?

WC I commit to nothing, what I am saying their historical consensus on the reports that Jesus did exorcisms

CH what about the devils going into the pigs, do you believe that?

WC yes I do, but the main point I’m making is that the historical reports show that Jesus acted with divine authority

CH do you believe in the virgin birth?

WC yes, but that’s not historically provable using the minimal facts methods, and I did not use the virgin birth in my arguments tonight, because it doesn’t pass the historical tests to be a minimal fact

CH do you believe that all the graves opened and dead people all came out?

WC not sure if the author intended that part as apocalyptic imagery or as literal, I have no opinion on it, have not studied it

CH do exorcisms prove son of God?

WC no, I am only saying that the historical reports show that Jesus exercised authority and put himself in the place of God

CH are any religions false? name one that’s false

WC Islam

CH so some religions are wicked right?

WC yes

CH if a baby were born in Saudi Arabia would it be better if it were an atheist or a Muslim?

WC I have no opinion on that

CH are any Christian denominations wrong?

WC Calvinism is wrong about some things, but they are still Christians, I could be wrong about some things, I do the best I can, studying theology, so I’m not wrong

WC second rebuttal

Response to CH arguments:

no reasons for atheism

– no reasons to believe that God does not exist

– CH withholds belief in God

why wait so long before contacting humans with Jesus

– population matters, not time – Jesus waited until there was about to be a population explosion

– there is a natural revelation (Romans 1) for those who lived before Christ

what about those who never heard

– (Acts 17:22-31) God chooses the time and place of each person who is born to optimize their opportunity to know him based on how they will respond to evidence (this is called middle knowledge)

– those who haven’t heard will be judged based on general revelation

WC re-assess the state of his five arguments:

cosmological argument

– heat death of the universe won’t happen on Christianity

moral argument

– if no objective moral standard, can’t judge other cultures as wrong

– no transcendent objective standard to be able to judge slavery as wrong

name an action argument

– e.g. – tithing

– the greatest command – love the Lord your God your God with everything you’ve got

– atheists can’t do that, and that is the biggest commandment to follow

moral obligations

– there are no objective moral obligations for anyone on atheism

– on atheism, you feel obligated because of genetics and social pressure

– on atheism, we’re animals, and animals don’t have moral obligations

resurrection
– the belief in the resurrection of 1 man, the Messiah is totally unexpected on Judaism

– they would not have made this up, it was unexpected

religious experience

– experience is valid in the absence of defeaters

CH second rebuttal:

faith and reason

– Tertullian says faith is better when it’s against reason

it’s easy to start a rumor with faith-based people

– Mother Teresa: to be canonized she needs to have done a miracle

– so there was a faked miracle report

– but everybody believes the fake miracle report!

– this proves that religious rumors are easy to start

– the resurrection could have started as a similar rumor by people wanting to believe it

name an action

– tithing is a religious action, I don’t have to do that

moral argument

– I can be as moral as you can without God

– I can say that other cultures are wrong, there I just said it

– without God, people would still be good, so God isn’t needed

religious people did bad things in history

– this church did a bad thing here

– that church did a bad thing there

– therefore God doesn’t exist

religion is the outcome of man’s struggle with a natural phenomenon

– that is why there are so many religions

WC concluding speech

no arguments for atheism presented

What CH has said during the debate:

– God bad, Mother Teresa bad, religion bad

atheism is a worldview

– it claims to know the truth

– therefore it is exclusive of other views

what does theism explain

– theism explains a broad range of experiences

– origin of the universe, CH has dropped the point

– fine-tuning, CH has dropped the point

– moral, CH says that humans are no different from animals – but an evolved standard is illusory, there are no actual moral values and standards, it’s just a genetic predisposition to act in a certain way – that’s not prescriptive morality

– resurrection, CH has dropped the point

– experience, Craig tells his testimony and urges the audience to give it a shot

CH concluding speech

HITCHENS YIELDS HIS ENTIRE CONCLUDING SPEECH!

A question & answer Period followed the end of the formal debate

Further study

Check out my analysis of the 11 arguments Hitchens made in his opening speech in his debate with Frank Turek.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2NGJ7Jn

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What Criteria Do Historians Use to Get To The Minimal Facts About The Historical Jesus

What Criteria Do Historians Use to Get To The Minimal Facts About The Historical Jesus?

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By Wintery Knight

Have you ever heard Gary Habermas, Michael Licona or William Lane Craig defend the resurrection of Jesus in a debate by saying that the resurrection is the best explanation for the “minimal facts” about Jesus? The lists of minimal facts that they use are typically agreed to by their opponents during the debates. Minimal facts are the parts of the New Testament that meet a set of strict historical criteria. These are the facts that skeptical historians agree with, totally apart from any religious beliefs.

So what are the criteria that skeptical historians use to derive a list of minimal facts about Jesus?

Dr. Craig explains them in this article.

Excerpt:

The other way, more influential in contemporary New Testament scholarship, is to establish specific facts about Jesus without assuming the general reliability of the Gospels. The key here are the so-called “Criteria of Authenticity” which enable us to establish specific sayings or events in Jesus’ life as historical. Scholars involved in the quest of the historical Jesus have enunciated a number of these criteria for detecting historically authentic features of Jesus, such as dissimilarity to Christian teaching, multiple attestations, linguistic Semitisms, traces of Palestinian milieu, retention of embarrassing material, coherence with other authentic material, and so forth.

It is somewhat misleading to call these “criteria,” for they aim at stating sufficient, not necessary, conditions of historicity. This is easy to see: suppose a saying is multiply attested and dissimilar but not embarrassing. If embarrassment were a necessary condition of authenticity, then the saying would have to be deemed inauthentic, which is wrong-headed, since its multiple attestation and dissimilarity are sufficient for authenticity. Of course, the criteria are defeasible, meaning that they are not infallible guides to authenticity. They might be better called “Indications of Authenticity” or “Signs of Credibility.”

In point of fact, what the criteria really amount to are statements about the effect of certain types of evidence upon the probability of various sayings or events in Jesus’ life. For some saying or event S and evidence of a certain type E, the criteria would state that all things being equal, the probability of S given E is greater than the probability of S on our background knowledge alone. So, for example, all else being equal, the probability of some event or saying is greater given its multiple attestations than it would have been without it.

What are some of the factors that might serve the role of E in increasing the probability of some saying or event S? The following are some of the most important:

(1) Historical congruence: S fits in with known historical facts concerning the context in which S is said to have occurred.

(2) Independent, early attestation: S appears in multiple sources which are near to the time at which S is alleged to have occurred and which depend neither upon each other nor a common source.

(3) Embarrassment: S is awkward or counter-productive for the persons who serve as the source of information for S.

(4) Dissimilarity: S is unlike antecedent Jewish thought-forms and/or unlike subsequent Christian thought-forms.

(5) Semitisms: traces in the narrative of Aramaic or Hebrew linguistic forms.

(6) Coherence: S is consistent with already established facts about Jesus.

For a good discussion of these factors see Robert Stein, “The ‘Criteria’ for Authenticity,” in Gospel Perspectives I, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1980), pp. 225-63.

Notice that these “criteria” do not presuppose the general reliability of the Gospels. Rather they focus on a particular saying or event and give evidence for thinking that specific element of Jesus’ life to be historical, regardless of the general reliability of the document in which the particular saying or event is reported. These same “criteria” are thus applicable to reports of Jesus found in the apocryphal Gospels, or rabbinical writings, or even the Qur’an. Of course, if the Gospels can be shown to be generally reliable documents, so much the better! But the “criteria” do not depend on any such presupposition. They serve to help spot historical kernels even in the midst of historical chaff. Thus we need not concern ourselves with defending the Gospels’ every claim attributed to Jesus in the gospels; the question will be whether we can establish enough about Jesus to make faith in him reasonable.

And you can see Dr. Craig using these criteria to defend minimal facts in his debates. For example, in his debate with Ehrman, he alludes to the criteria when making his case for the empty tomb.

Here, he uses multiple attestations and the criteria of embarrassment:

Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following:

  1. The empty tomb is also multiply attested by independent, early sources.

Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles (2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4). Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb.

  1. The tomb was discovered empty by women.

In patriarchal Jewish society, the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb. The fact that it is women, rather than men, who are the discoverers of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb, and the Gospel writers faithfully record what, for them, was an awkward and embarrassing fact.

There are actually a few more reasons for believing in the empty tomb that he doesn’t go into in the debate, but you can find them in his written work. For example, in his essay on Gerd Ludemann’s “vision” hypothesis. That essay covers the reasons for all four of his minimal facts.

So, if you are going to talk about the resurrection with a skeptic, you don’t want to invoke the Bible as some sort of inerrant/inspired Holy Book.

Try this approach instead:

  1. Explain the criteria that historians use to get their lists of minimal facts
  2. Explain your list of minimal facts
  3. Defend your list of minimal facts using the criteria
  4. Cite skeptics who admit to each of your minimal facts, to show that they are widely accepted
  5. List some parts of the Bible that don’t pass the criteria (e.g. – guard at the tomb, Matthew earthquake)
  6. Explain why those parts don’t pass the criteria and explain that they are not part of your case
  7. Challenge your opponent to either deny some or all the facts or propose a naturalistic alternative that explains the facts better than the resurrection
  8. Don’t let your opponent attack any of your minimal facts by attacking other parts of the Bible (e.g. – the number of angels being one or two, etc.)

And remember that there is no good case for the resurrection that does not make heavy use of the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.

The best essay on the minimal facts criteria that I’ve read is the one by Robert H. Stein in “Contending with Christianity’s Critics“. It’s a good short essay that goes over all the historical criteria that are used to derive the short list of facts from which we infer the conclusion “God raised Jesus from the dead”. That whole book is really very, very good.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2Tfx7jC

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J. Warner Wallace_ Different Answers to The Question “Why Are You a Christian”

J. Warner Wallace: Different Answers to The Question “Why Are You a Christian?”

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By Wintery Knight

I sometimes think about the horrible experiences I had encountering “normal” Christians in American churches after having become a Christian on my own through reading the New Testament, reading apologetics, and watching William Lane Craig debates. I heard a lot of different reasons to be a Christian from the church Christians, and what struck me was 1) their reasons had nothing to do with objective truth, and 2) their reasons hadn’t prepared them to have serious conversations about Christianity with non-Christians.

Well, J. Warner Wallace recently posted an episode of his podcast about this, and I thought that this might be useful to people who (like me) were confused by what they found in the church.

LAPD homicide detective Jim Wallace examining an assault rifle

Here is the video:

And he has a blog post about it, where he explains all the responses to the question “why are you a Christian?” which he got from the church – none of which were like his answer for why he became a Christian.

Here are some answers that were not like his answer:

I Didn’t Become a Christian Because I Was Raised in the Church
I didn’t come from a Christian family. I wasn’t raised in the church or by people who attended church regularly. While students often tell me this is the reason they’re Christians, this wasn’t the case for me.

I Didn’t Become a Christian Because My Friends Were Christians
I also didn’t know any Christians. I was never invited to church by anyone as a child, and although I knew Christians in my college years, none of these folks ever invited me to church either. My friends were all happy atheists. I didn’t become a Christian to be part of a club.

I Didn’t Become a Christian Because I Wanted to Know God
I can honestly say I had no interest in God growing up, while in college, or while a young married man. I felt no “hole” in my life, had no yearning for the transcendent, no sense something was missing. I was happy and content. I didn’t become a Christian to fulfill some need.

I Didn’t Become a Christian Because I Wanted to Go to Heaven
I was also comfortable with my own mortality. Sure it would be nice if we could all live forever, but that’s just not the way it is. Live life to the fullest, enjoy your friends and family while you have them, and stop whining. I didn’t become a Christian because I was afraid of dying.

I Didn’t Become a Christian Because I Needed to Change My Life
My life prior to becoming a Christian was great. I had a meaningful and fulfilling career, a beautiful family, an incredible wife, and lots of friends. I wasn’t struggling and looking for a solution. I didn’t become a Christian to stop beating my wife or to sober up.

I’m sure that all my readers know that Wallace is a homicide detective and an evidentialist. He handles evidence and builds cases with evidence, and that’s how he approaches his worldview as well. So he didn’t answer any of those.

Wallace’s answer was different:

[…][A]lthough these reasons might motivate students to start their journey, I hope these aren’t the only reasons they’re still here. I’m not sure any of these motivations will suffice when push comes to shove, times get tough or students face the challenges of university life. In the end,truth matters more than anything else. I’m not looking for a useful delusion, a convenient social network, or an empty promise. I just want to know what’s true. I think the students I met in Montreal resonated with this approach to Christianity. They are already members of the Church, have friends in the group, understand the importance of a relationship with God and the promise of Heaven. Now they want to know if any of this stuff is true. It’s our job, as Christian Case Makers, to provide them with the answer.

I’m actually much harder on church Christians than he is because I found that the more fideistic the Churchian, the less you could count on them to act like authentic Christians. I have never met an evidential apologist who was soft on moral questions or tough theology, for example. To me, if you have an evidentialist approach to Christianity, then you have no problem with things like a bodily resurrection of Jesus, with exclusive salvation through faith alone in Christ alone, with a literal eternal separation from God called Hell, and so on.

What about people in other religions? Well, if evidence is your first concern, then it doesn’t bother you that someone of a different religion won’t be saved. For example, I like my Mormon friends, but I know that they’re wrong in their belief in an eternal universe. When I present evidence to them for the beginning of the universe, they just tell me that science isn’t as important to them as the burning in the bosom, their family, their community, etc. Well, if those things are more important to you than knowing the truth about God as he really is, then I’m fine with whatever God decides to do with you when you eventually get old, die and face judgment.

A truth-centered approach to life makes you indifferent to what people think of you. And that’s something that we could all use as Christians, especially those Christians who are more driven by feelings than by facts. A lot of people raised in the church drop out because they go somewhere (e.g., college) where they are made to feel bad for being different. That’s not a problem for evidentialists. We like to be right. We don’t care what people who are wrong think about us. Christians should all read 1 Corinthians 4:1-4, and accept the fact that being truth-centered isn’t going to make you popular.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

 

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

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My Conversation About Morality with an Atheist Millennial Man

My Conversation About Morality with an Atheist Millennial Man

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By Wintery Knight

wintery knight 2.png

A meme that was posted on the WK Facebook page, by the new meme admin

I spent some time talking to an atheist millennial recently. He considers himself a moral person, and he is very helpful to others. I asked him to define morality, and he said that morality was feeling good, and helping other people to feel good. I was trying to think of a way to punch a hole in his feelings-based utilitarianism. How could I show him that happy feelings are not a good basis for morality?

Now, you’re probably thinking that abortion is the most obvious example of something that is morally wrong – it’s just killing a baby because adults don’t want to take responsibility for their foolish pursuit of pleasure. But atheists typically don’t think of unborn children as people. They usually believe in naturalistic evolution, and they are committed to a view of reality where the universe is an accident, human beings are accidents, there are no objective human rights, and biological evolution progresses because the strong survive while the weak die. So you aren’t going to be able to generate a moral standard that includes compassion for weak unborn children on that scenario. If the rule is “let’s do what makes us happy,” and the unborn child can’t voice her opinion, then the selfish grown-ups win.

Instead, I decided to focus on fatherlessness. I asked him whether he thought that fatherlessness harmed children. Surprisingly, he said that it didn’t and that he had a relative who was doing a great job raising fatherless kids. I asked him if he had ever looked at the research on what father absence does to children. He hadn’t. Then I asked him if a system of sexual rules based on “me feeling good, and other people around me feeling good,” was likely to protect children. He went silent.

Well, that was the end of that conversation. And I think it was a nice window into how millennials – who are absolutely clueless about what research says about sex, dating, marriage, and parenting – think about relationships. They’re making decisions based on their feelings, then acting surprised when their “common sense” decisions based on happiness “in the moment” blow up in their faces, and destroy the lives of their children, including their unborn children.

Unfortunately, young people are having children outside of a marriage commitment more and more.

wintery knight 1

Out-of-wedlocks births rising as cohabitation replaces marriage

Far-left Bloomberg News reports:

Forty percent of all births in the U.S. now occur outside of wedlock, up from 10 percent in 1970, according to an annual report released on Wednesday by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the largest international provider of sexual and reproductive health services. That number is even higher in the European Union.

The EU has a higher rate of fatherless births because they have high taxes and big government to allow women to have children without having to commit to a husband:

The EU likely sees more births out of wedlock because many member countries have welfare systems that support gender-balanced child care, said Michael Hermann, UNFPA’s senior adviser on economics and demography, in an interview. Public health care systems, paid paternal leave, early education programs and tax incentives give unwed parents support beyond what a partner can provide.

More welfare and more government services make it easier for women to pursue relationships with men who aren’t interested in marriage. Hot bad boys who give them all the tingles. Big government makes those boring, predictable marriage-ready men dispensable. Big government also makes it much harder for a man who does marry to afford a stay-at-home mother for his kids, because he has to pay higher taxes for big government.

More:

The data show such births in the U.S. and EU are predominantly to unmarried couples living together rather than to single mothers, the report says.

[…] Jones also noted that the rise in births outside of marriage is closely correlated to delays in childbearing. “Women are claiming their ground professionally,” she said. “Delaying motherhood is a rational decision when you consider the impact it can have on your career, and that’s contributing to this trend.”

[….] The traditional progression of Western life “has been reversed,” said John Santelli, a professor in population, family health and pediatrics at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Cohabiting partners are having children before getting married. That’s a long-term trend across developing nations.”

Regardless of marital status, more couples are choosing not to have kids at all. The U.S. fertility rate hit a historic 30-year low last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hermann said the rise in births outside of wedlock has actually mitigated the decline in fertility, which “would be much steeper if women weren’t having children outside marriage.”

What’s interesting about this anti-marriage article is that they have nothing to say about the research showing that cohabitation – and also marriages that occur after a period of cohabitation – are inferior to no-cohabitation marriages. People who are serious about self-control, and who are serious about committing through thick and thin, tend to have longer lasting marriages. But we don’t prioritize chastity, fidelity and self-sacrificial commitment anymore, because that relationships that require self-denial make us unhappy.

The article concludes: “We can’t go back to the ’50s”. Right. Because if feelings-based “morality” is assumed, then any choice between adult happiness and children’s happiness will favor the adults. Today’s young people carefully AVOID any evidence that contradicts their new “happiness-morality.” They act surprised when their unstable relationships dissolve, leaving children separated from their fathers. Marriage requires that both partners have a system of morality that puts the commitment above happy feelings. People have to be accustomed to doing things that feel bad, just because they are good and moral things to do according to an objective standard of morality. The new atheist morality of happy feelings doesn’t develop the character needed for commitment.

If you ask an atheist millennial, they think they are doing a great job of being “moral.” They don’t see the messes they are making for children as something that they are causing themselves, with their own foolish feelings-based decision-making. They think they know everything about relationships through their feelings. They think that they are exempt from the patterns of cause and effect in the peer-reviewed research.

 

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

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Secular Leftists Demand Christian Student Senator Resign For Disagreeing With Them

Secular Leftists Demand Christian Student Senator Resign For Disagreeing With Them

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By Wintery Knight

I had to blog about this story about a tough girl at UC Berkeley who is taking a lot of heat for her Christian beliefs. It would have been easier for her to keep them private. But they forced her to vote, and she had to respect her conscience. Campus Reform posted an article about the facts of the case.

It says:

Isabella Chow is an elected student senator who represents the Associated Students of the University of California party Student Action. But after choosing to abstain from voting on a resolution to oppose the recent Title IX changes proposed by President Donald Trump, Chow’s own party disavowed her.

The proposed Title IX changes lack a legal definition of gender, effectively limiting “gender identity” to one’s physical sex, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The resolution before the Berkeley student government was a statement of opposition to these proposed changes, intended to display solidarity with members of the LGBT community, specifically “transgender, intersex, nonbinary and gender nonconforming students,” as reported by the independent student newspaper the Daily Californian.

That article was from November 9th, but The College Fix had some news in their article posted Monday:

Chow has faced intense backlash over her position, with numerous individuals slamming her on social media (one commenter on Facebook called Chow a “mental imbecile”) as well as in person. The response has been so hostile that Chow has made changes to how she gets around campus. “I don’t feel safe walking alone to class and take precautions not to walk alone at night,” Chow said.

Chow provided The Fix with multiple Internet postings openly accusing her of bigotry and hatred. One, from student senator Teddy Lake, said that Chow’s Christian beliefs “were not beliefs at all— they were hateful prejudices that deserve nothing less than the strongest condemnation.”

Several posts on the website Reddit were filled with angry comments. One commenter accused Chow of “sanctimonious holier-than-thou bullsh*t,” and another said: “She’s a horrible person.”

The editors of The Daily Californian published an editorial calling for Chow’s resignation, accusing her of “publicly dismissing the identities of individuals on campus” and “eras[ing] and dehuman[izing]” numerous Berkeley students.

“Chow used her powerful public platform to negate entire experiences and identities. UC Berkeley students cannot allow and accept leaders like Chow to make decisions on their behalf,” the editors wrote.

The campus’s Queer Alliance Resource Center, meanwhile, produced a statement in opposition to Chow.

“Her ‘love’ is no protection against the current oppression faced by trans, intersex, and non-binary individuals. Instead, her ‘love’ pads her condescending disapproval towards us and reminds us of our history of surviving so-called ‘love.’ Senator Chow’s ‘love’ is not of warmth and compassion but of judgement and disapproval. We cannot sit idly by while Chow sits on moral high ground casting moral judgements,” the statement reads.

The Center also produced a petition calling on Chow to resign.

[…]At a student senate meeting last week, numerous members of the Berkeley community publicly expressed their opinions, almost all of them explicitly critical of Chow.

“I condemn Isabella Chow’s words, not because they’re different from mine, but because they are dangerous, and inherently prejudiced. I encourage Senator Chow to reach a dialogue with queer-affirming Christian communities that LGBT existence is compatible with the love of God,” one student said.

Another attendee said to Chow: “Your Christian morals should not be in our student government or for any government; and if you cannot separate your religion from your job as a senator, please resign.”

Another accused Chow of “speaking words of hate, mashed under the name of love.”

Chow eventually approached The Daily Californian asking if the publication would run either a statement or an op-ed by her. The Daily refused to publish either.

She has sunk a ton of money into her education, and now she is at the mercy of far-left professors and TAs. For her sake, I hope that she is working toward a STEM degree. It will help her to find work going forward. This is definitely going to affect her whole life going forward – a lot of big companies aren’t going to hire someone like her who refuses to go along with the LGBT agenda. I hope she’s prepared for that.

Isabella Chow, a Christian woman, encircled by secular leftist fascists.

Resiliency

I was watching this video from Prager University on resiliency, and it was talking about several ways that a person can make themselves defensible against unexpected setbacks.

Watch:

I think it’s important for Christians to think carefully about what they will study and where they work. Having a good education and money makes it easier to deal with threats like the ones arrayed against Isabella. It allows you to find work more easily, to move if you have to, etc. It’s important to train your character by studying hard things, doing hard things and finishing what you start. Having a platform to tell your story is important. Having a network of accomplished friends helps, too.

If you marry, then marry someone with courage and strength, who will stand by you, and help you to persist. It’s a serious mistake to marry someone who doesn’t understand Christianity as a service, and who doesn’t have any strength to deploy in case of a crisis. If you’re being attacked, you want a stable partner who has strength in practical areas and informed convictions. Not someone who is drowning in sin, narcissism, student loan debt, peer pressure, drug addiction, reckless thrill-seeking, etc.

Some jobs and cities have a lot of anti-Christian progressives. It’s easier to avoid those if you have a good education, practical skills, and a good resume. Often, the influence you have is going to be determined by the decisions you make to make yourself resilient. My ambition has always been to have an influence without allowing the secular left to easily silence me. If they know where I work, and where I live, then they can put pressure on me to recant my views. Conversely, if I am careful about education, career, and finance, then I can put pressure on them to back off if they challenge me.

As we saw when fascists broke down the door at Tucker Carlson’s home, we are living in a time of secular leftist facism. And this fascism is defended even by the elites in the mainstream media.

Here’s a concept every Christian should know that people in information security speak about… being a “hard target”:

A hard-target is a person who, due to their actions and/or appropriate protective measures, is able to minimize existing risks and thus most likely represents an unattractive target. Originally, these two terms come from the military and relate to protected and unprotected targets.

The Christian life is a lot more strategic than churches teach us. We’re obsessed with compassion, feelings, and not being judged. Instead, we should be focused on having an influence and making ourselves into hard targets for the secular culture. We have a sanitized view of how sin corrupts non-Christians, allowing them to do unspeakable evils to Christians who merely disagree with them. We think that secular leftists will behave like moral people as if denying God’s existence makes no difference to a person’s ability to be moral. We think that nihilists will respect our basic human rights – human rights that they can’t even rationally ground in their worldview. And we think that God’s job is to protect us and make us feel good no matter how unprepared and reckless we are.

If you want to have an influence, then you need to make every decision wisely, in order to prepare for the day when your cover is blown behind enemy lines. Remember, with respect to God’s purposes in the world; your happiness is expendable.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2z7Zc4I

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Did Jesus Appeal To Evidence When Reaching Out To Skeptics

Did Jesus Appeal To Evidence When Reaching Out To Skeptics?

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By Wintery Knight

Investigation in progress.

From Eric Chabot of Ratio Christi – Ohio State University.

He lists eight ways that Jesus makes his case.

Here’s one of the ways:

Jesus Appealed to Evidence

Jesus knew He could not show up on the scene and not offer any evidence for His Messiahship. In his book On Jesus, Douglas Groothuis notes that Jesus appealed to evidence to confirm His claims. John the Baptist, who was languishing in prison after challenging Herod, sent messengers to ask Jesus the question: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matt. 11:3). This may seem an odd question from a man the Gospels present as the prophetic forerunner of Jesus and as the one who had proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah. Jesus, however, did not rebuke John’s question. He did not say, “You must have faith; suppress your doubts.” Instead, Jesus recounted the distinctive features of His ministry:

“Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” (Matt. 11:4-6; see also Luke 7:22).

Even in the Messiah Apocalypse, which is dated between 100 and 80 B.C.E mentions a similar theme as seen in Matt.11: 4-6: “He [God] frees the captives, makes the blind see, and makes the bent over stand straight…for he will heal the sick, revive the dead, and give good news to the humble and the poor he will satisfy, the abandoned he will lead, and the hungry he will make rich.”

Jesus’ works of healing and teaching are meant to serve as positive evidence of His messianic identity, because they fulfill the messianic predictions of the Hebrew Scriptures. What Jesus claimed is this:

If one does certain kinds of actions (the acts cited above), then one is the Messiah.

I am doing those kinds of actions.

Therefore, I am the Messiah.

And:

The Miracles of Jesus

In the Bible, miracles have a distinctive purpose: they are used for three reasons:
1. To glorify the nature of God (John 2:11; 11:40)
2. To accredit certain persons as the spokesmen for God (Acts 2:22; Heb. 2:3–4)
3.To provide evidence for belief in God (John 6:2, 14; 20:30–31). (3)

Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, told Jesus, “‘Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him’ ” (Jn. 3:1–2). In Acts, Peter told the crowd that Jesus had been “accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him” (Acts 2:22).

In Matthew 12:38-39, Jesus says, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.” In this Scripture, God confirmed the Messianic claim when Jesus said the sign that would confirm his Messiahship was to be the resurrection.

It is important to note that not all witnesses to a miracle believe. Jesus did not do His miracles for entertainment. They were done to evoke a response. So perhaps Paul Moser is right on target in what he calls “kardiatheology” – a theology that is aimed at one’s motivational heart (including one’s will) rather than just at one’s mind or one’s emotions. In other words, God is very interested in moral transformation.

We see Jesus’ frustration when His miracles did not bring the correct response from his audience. “Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him” (John 12:37). Jesus himself said of some, “They will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). One result, though not the purpose, of miracles is condemnation of the unbeliever (cf. John 12:31, 37). (4)

I am forever pointing this out to people. Jesus didn’t get people to follow him because he was nice. And he didn’t just talk to people who agreed with him. He even promised “a wicked generation” his resurrection as evidence for his claims. He called his resurrection “the sign of Jonah”, and it was meant for people who were looking for a “sign”. This is the way we should be – using whatever evidence we can dig up from science, history, law, and even the social sciences (when arguing moral issues).

Read the rest here. Surprise! Jesus loves to convince people, and not just by quoting the Bible to people who already accept the Bible, either. His goal was not to make people accept his claims because of their feelings, but because of the evidence, he offered them.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2PXLO94

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