Dangerous Video Could Trigger Another Great Awakening If Too Many View

Posted on | February 23, 2013 | 36 Comments

by Smitty

This is lengthy, but worth your time, especially the first 38 minutes or so:

Positive arguments given by Dr. Craig include that God is the best explanation:

why anything at all exists,
for the origin of the universe,
the applicability of mathematics to the physical world,
for the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life,
intentional states of consciousness in the world,
of objective moral values and duties in the world,
of the historical facts concerning Jesus’ resurrection,
of God’s ability to be personally known and experienced.

The first six are rather wonky, the seventh is more historical, and the final point is crucial for the discussion to be more than abstract.

The atheist opponent, Dr. Rosenberg immediately tries to alter the terms of the debate. The debate is not about theism; the debate is about whether faith is nuts. Watch the whole thing when you have a chance. Dr. Rosenberg seems consumed with the Problem of Evil, especially in the case of the Holocaust. I guess if I was Dr. Craig, I would have pointed out that the last century’s Holocaust was by no means the first to occur to the Jews, as a reading of the Old Testament shows.

As for Dr. Rosenberg’s arithmetic argument, he seems to have happened upon a possible model for angelic beings, other than Lucifer & cohort.

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Comments

36 Responses to “Dangerous Video Could Trigger Another Great Awakening If Too Many View”

Mermaz
February 23rd, 2013 @ 7:53 am

RT @smitty_one_each: Dangerous Video Could Trigger Another Great Awakening If Too Many View http://t.co/ztSwTxJXfH #TCOT #TGDN
MikeRumbo66
February 23rd, 2013 @ 8:05 am

RT @smitty_one_each: Dangerous Video Could Trigger Another Great Awakening If Too Many View http://t.co/ztSwTxJXfH #TCOT #TGDN
Is Faith In God A Reasonable Belief? | The Rio Norte Line
February 23rd, 2013 @ 8:58 am

[…] Smitty’s commentary: […]
jetty
February 23rd, 2013 @ 10:21 am

The Christians would usually crush their opponents in evolution vs. creation debates in the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately the internet wasn’t around then to disseminate those exchanges.
Delaney Coffer
February 23rd, 2013 @ 10:27 am

I like how this jackass starts off by saying the debate shouldn’t be a debate.
higgins
February 23rd, 2013 @ 11:12 am

Yeah, he starts off by attacking Dr. Craig. Favored strategy of the Left. Remember what happened when anyone questioned the doctrine of global warming?
Quartermaster
February 23rd, 2013 @ 2:52 pm

Duane Gish, Ph.D would often have debates with prominent evolutionists. By the late 70s, no one would debate him. He owned everyone he ever debates and gave them enough rope to hang themselves.

Dawkins is very selective who he debates after he got humiliated some years ago by a no name creationist (and I can’t even recall his name now). He refused to debate Craig, with the Oxford Union thinking Dawkins would show up, but he never did. Craig then gave a lecture in which he destroyed the premises of the book under question.

Evolution has been on thin ice ever since the discipline of genetics came into its own. It had serious problems with Physics, but at least in its own larger discipline it was safe. Now, Evolution, as taught by credentialed morons like Dawkins, is being seen as problematic and untenable. Dawkins and his ilk scream louder because they are left with only one other option, and that an atheist can not deal with.

There’s coming another point in time they will not be able to deal with either, even though the evidence for its truth is before everyone, and that is the judgment in which they will face Christ Himself. They will kneel before the truth then, but it will be eternally too late.

Smitty, debates like this are what I’m talking about (see the earlier post about engaging the culture) when I talk about engaging the culture. The Church must be relentless in presenting the truth to a lost world. Close intellectual combat is one front in the battle.
smitty
February 23rd, 2013 @ 4:17 pm

The Church must be relentless in presenting the truth to a lost world. Close intellectual combat is one front in the battle.

Indeed, and it would be a sop to the foe to kick back and think that a purely intellectual approach could carry the day.

We’ve got to get out there and meet people. It may be time to learn Spanish.
K-Bob
February 23rd, 2013 @ 6:48 pm

It’s odd that academics engage in this debate at all, really.

Kant caused a lot of problems both for later philosophers and for the odd soul winner, but one thing he did was prove that you cannot reason your way to God.

He simultaneously proved that you cannot reason God out of existence.

So all of these debates are futile, however interesting they may be.

The truly strange aspect to me, as a long-time philosophy geek, is that people who demand we accept so many things on faith alone—such as crystal therapy; a “gay” gene; that you can tax your way to prosperity; and a host of other bizarre claims—remain adamant that faith in God is pure fantasy.
Jaynie59
February 23rd, 2013 @ 8:01 pm

One of my favorite movies is Hannah And Her Sisters. Yeah, Woody Allen is a degenerate lowlife but I love that movie. In it, Woody plays Mickey, his usual neurotic character. He’s a hypochondriac always imagining the worst. Mickey goes on a search for the meaning of life, including contemplating joining the Catholic Church.

This doesn’t sit well with his Jewish parents. There’s a very funny scene where Mickey is trying to explain to his parents, both of whom are off camera in different rooms of their apartment, why he’s even considering believing in Jesus Christ as the Savior. He goes back and forth between his distraught mother and disgusted father trying to explain his yearning for the meaning of life. You’d have to see it to get it. It’s very funny.

Mickey asks his father “How could God let the Holocaust happen? why were there Nazi’s?”

His father says, in a very weary, exasperated voice “How the hell do I know why there were Nazi’s? I don’t know how the can opener works.”
That pretty much sums up my view of religion. I don’t care. I’ll never care. And I have a really hard time understanding why so many people need it so much. What even makes someone think of such things? I’ll never understand it.
Quartermaster
February 23rd, 2013 @ 8:21 pm

That’s why I said “the Church.”

IN the 2nd century the basic regime we have in the church now came to be. It place “clergy” on a pedestal and reduced the non-clergy to “the laity.”

Such a regime was never meant to be. In Ephesians 4:11-13 we find,

” And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”

In other words, those first 5 (or 4 in some groups as they combine Pastors and Teachers into one office) are supposed to be the people who train the rest to do the work of the ministry. The Church has accepted an aberration as the normal scheme of things, expecting the fist 5 to be doing the work of the ministry rather than the rest of the church.

I see the problem up close. I teach, an am currently teaching a course in Inductive Bible study. I started with 5, and 2 dropped because they just didn’t want to do the work. This is three people out of a congregation of about 100. The rest simply are happy to be sitting in a pew getting spoon fed. Frankly, the modern Church consists of fat little spiritual babies.

In a nutshell, that’s why the church does not engage the culture. The culture is lazily reflected in them and as long as their life is going OK, all is well.
Quartermaster
February 23rd, 2013 @ 8:23 pm

That’s 100 adults. I’m not counting the kids. The youth Pastor is doing all he can to teach the kids the word and I have two grandkids under him and I do all I can to encourage him.
Quartermaster
February 23rd, 2013 @ 8:34 pm

IIRC, Kant was not the first to show you can’t reason your way to God, or reason him away, but he certainly was the first to voice it in that way, and as explicitly as he did. Kant basically showed what Paul had to say about ” philosophy and vain deceit” was on the button. Philosophy has been on a downward trajectory since Kant, not that it was all that great before him.

I don’t know why you think the left is weird in regard to the things you list in your final paragraph. Paul, once more, nailed it in Romans 1:18-32,

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

That passage pretty much explains what is wrong with American and European society today.
Andrew Patrick
February 23rd, 2013 @ 9:38 pm

The Problem with the Problem of Evil is that absent a transcendant signifier, Evil is just a word. Therefore, The Holocaust is just a thing that happened which affects my life only in vague indirect ways that I don’t even notice unless I’m trying to. Pretty soon everyone who experienced it firsthand will be dead, understanding of it will dwindle, and then, like the Colossus of Rhodes, it will become trivia of interest only to scholars. That’s of course before the planet’s magnetosphere blows off or the sun goes red giant, assuming anything resembling homo sapiens is still around then.

If mere survival is the basis of our morality, then we are screwed. Because nothing survives.
Mr Black
February 23rd, 2013 @ 9:58 pm

I like religion as it gives weak minded people some support that is otherwise lacking in their lives, just as children invent imaginary friends to feel comforted. On the whole that’s a good thing, without this belief in imaginary friends or “gods” those people would probably be less productive and less happy in life. But once you cross the line from simple belief in imaginary friends to declaring that “X prooves he exists” you’ve pretty much announced you’re an imbecile and every word you say should be treated as suspect until proven otherwise. Not only is your “proof” guaranteed to be based on ignorance of the subject or just sheer delusion but it completely misunderstands the concept of proof itself.
PhillyCon
February 23rd, 2013 @ 10:28 pm

Hey, K-Bob:
OT … what is going on at RS? When did it turn into a religious blog bashing Catholics? I’m not even Catholic … but its turning me off big time.
K-Bob
February 23rd, 2013 @ 10:34 pm

A very solid reply.

I believe Kant was the first to frame it as an actual proof, even though several philosophers and apologists (and even more than a few mystics) suspected it was an immutable truth all along.

(As an aside, for anyone else who may be reading, one can reason with and about faith, as long as one accepts that one cannot reason their way TO faith.)

To your last point, the “strange aspect” is still there, even knowing the why, but thanks for the illumination.
FenelonSpoke
February 23rd, 2013 @ 10:44 pm

Ana maybe that’s it. Who knows-maybe it’s a genetic thing. You either have a belief in God or you don’t. I don’t really understand people (not you) who need to try to reason folks who believe in God out of it either.
FenelonSpoke
February 23rd, 2013 @ 10:54 pm

I like militant atheism. It gives people lacking in self confidence an excuse to feel superior to theists. On the whole that’s a good thing, because without this belief in their own superiority these people would probably be less productive and less happy in life. But once you cross the line from just feeling an inner belief in your own superority to getting in people’s faces about it, you’ve proved you’re a boorish imbecile and every word you say should be treated as suspect until proven otherwise.
Mr Black
February 23rd, 2013 @ 11:17 pm

I expect you think your reply was clever. How sad.
bobbymike34
February 24th, 2013 @ 4:23 am

Oh Mr. Black so clever, so smart yet do you even realize what your posts are telling the rest of us, now that is sad.
bobbymike34
February 24th, 2013 @ 4:48 am

Based on the score of the debate it was a good old “Testament” butt whooping by Dr. Craig.

Just on a tangential note why do atheists come off as such mean condesending jackasses? It is like they are some kind of lower case god that dare not be questioned, oh the vanity in their belief system
K-Bob
February 24th, 2013 @ 4:55 am

I think it’s just a few folks, and a few posts by a new co-blogger. Actually, with a the exception of a few strident remarks and a few minor insults, the debate there has been fairly tame, as these things go.

When people wanted to fire up the flames against Mormonism during the primary, we sat on that pretty hard. If this round gets too antagonistic, we’ll sit on that hard, too. However, you have to admit, the recent news about the Pope and a few other newsy tidbits kind of merits some criticism (and of course, some defense). After all, the problems the Catholic Church has been dealing with lately have likely prevented it from weighing in with any major impact during this worldwide crisis of jihadism, rising anti-semitism, and rising Marxism.
Jaynie59
February 24th, 2013 @ 9:43 am

Reason has nothing to do with it. Back when I was a raging liberal I used to have fun pitting evangelicals against Catholics on the message board I posted on. It was a lot of fun. It’s very easy to do, and conservatives don’t seem capable of understanding how much contempt they engender when they fight amongst themselves. They really don’t get it. From the outside, even non-political people, look at the infighting and it just causes a sense of…… contempt. Pity? Sometimes. I once got two evangelicals into a flame war over which one was the more Christian Christian. It was really pathetic. I actually felt bad because they were both people I “knew” on the boards. It was a movie board and I’d posted with both of them for a long time. I stopped after that.
But it wasn’t until I heard Mark Levin explain the true meaning of American Exceptionalism that I finally stopped being contemptuous of religion. Then I read Liberty and Tyranny and realized that Christianity is our only hope against the threat that is Islam. I’ll never believe, but I want to believe that those who do will save the rest of us from that fate. It’s not looking too good, though.
Andrew Patrick
February 24th, 2013 @ 10:08 am

Because only empirical proof is proof?

Just wondering.
Andrew Patrick
February 24th, 2013 @ 10:11 am

Removing comment I previously posted, on grounds of being needlessly antagonistic.

I am curious who has been making a “major impact” on the crisis of jihadism, anti-semitism, and marxism. They all seem to be winning the day at present.
Timothy
February 24th, 2013 @ 10:56 am

Interestingly, atheist Dr. Rosenberg’ starts his 20 minutes with an ad hominum attack, a logical fallacy. The he narrows the debate to the Abrhamic god, but not the God of the deist founding fathers; however, he doesn’t explain the difference. Third he redefines the word faith to fit his argument, which seems fair as Dr Craig used two definitions of faith that fit his arguement. I lost interest when Dr. Rosenberg’ went into quantum mechanics. Oops the derogatory :carbon chauvinism,” another ad hominum, has been uttered. Comparing both, theist Dr Craig made the most logical arguement.
FenelonSpoke
February 24th, 2013 @ 3:29 pm

How odd that you want to get Christians in a flame war. I’m glad you’ve stopped that. “Christianity” won’t save us. God will if God chooses to do so. If not, we’re already “saved”-those who profess faith in Christ. If we die we die to Christ. if we live we live to Christ, so whether we live or whether we die we belong to Christ. As to who dies first if Islam takes over-I don’t know. Anyone who isn’t Muslim is either going to have to convert or perhaps pay a fine, or die. I’m not going to be converting and I won’t be paying a fine. i know who I am and whose I am.

But yes, I agree that the infighting is a problem. If we all lifted up Jesus Christ and seriously regarded him as our one shepherd our witness would be better. I am beyond fighting with anyone who is a Christian. The Lord Jesus is all in all. That doesn’t mean that I can’t disagree with liberals who have different political views that I do, but since I have liberal Christian friends there’s no point in getting in pissing contests about who’s the better Christian. God is the judge.
Peace,
Teeing it up: A Round at the LINKs (Demagogue edition) | SENTRY JOURNAL
February 24th, 2013 @ 4:31 pm

[…] THE OTHER McCAIN: Dangerous Video Could Trigger Another Great Awakening If Too Many View […]
K-Bob
February 24th, 2013 @ 4:59 pm

Me too. That’s why major players need to stop standing on the sidelines.

Can there be any doubt that the Vatican is a major player?
Quartermaster
February 24th, 2013 @ 9:05 pm

Note that here wanting to get Christians in a flame was in the past tense. You haven’t seen anything until you get Calvinists to sic themselves on Arminians (Calvinism was a reformation novelty that was not invented in embryo until about AD 400 in Augustine’s extremism born of his Manicheeism). Some Calvinists are beginning to realize they have a serious theological problem, as well as one of the spirit, but their unthinking minions have as yet to discover that a lot of their scripture “support” doesn’t say what they think it says, and that their impiety buys them nothing from Christians as well as the world. It’s truly sad to see someone like Sproul and Mohler carry on like they do with Christians that hold a theology that predates theirs by 1500 years.
Mr Black
February 26th, 2013 @ 4:49 am

You’re assuming the one true god is yours and not in fact allah, who is bent on seeing your head removed from your shoulders by his followers. Muslims can “prove” allah exists just as well as christans can “prove” their god does.
Even the most trivial remarks about god are so filled with unprovable assumptions that such statements regarding his/her/its nature are meaningless gibberish. Thus serving to illustrate my point, that believing in gods is one thing, telling people you can prove it makes you an idiot.
Mt Black
February 26th, 2013 @ 5:06 am

Of course I realise, religion is an exclusive in-group where everyone agrees to acknowledge the same fairytales as a condition of acceptance and membership. As I won’t acknowledge your fairytales you all regard me as a blinded outsider, someone to be pitied or mocked. This is the standard religious response to any intruder and I have felt your “pity” hundreds of times over in my life.
bobbymike34
February 26th, 2013 @ 9:54 am

I think its self pity. Did you forget you were the first one to post disparaging comments calling believers weak minded with imaginary friends? But like you generalize about us you seem to fit your insider atheistic group to a T. Attack first then claim victimhood now that is a weak willed person.
Mr Black
February 27th, 2013 @ 4:57 am

There is no self-pity, you asked if I knew how religious people viewed me. That doesn’t mean that view is true or accurate. I am perfectly content without the need to have imaginary friends to “help” me.
bobbymike34
February 27th, 2013 @ 9:26 am

But again you failed to address that you voluntarily came onto a right of center web site and posted an attack on Christians and then complained about about how WE responded.
If I went to an atheist web site and posted something about them I think I would expect a response, no? I guess I would be man enough to take it, ya know, having my faith and strength in the Lord!