Theism – Perfectly Rational

William Lane Craig vs. Klems Kappel - Debate: Does God Exist?
In the debate between Craig vs. Kappel on the topic “Does God Exist” the question  “Why should we believe atheism is true?” comes up.
Kappel is unable to explain why anyone should believe in atheism while Craig provides 6 reasons right off the bat while theism is true.

In a debate held April 18, 2012 in Copenhagen, Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig debated atheist philosopher Klemens Kappel on the topic: “Does God Exist?” I couldn’t resist posting this clip  – for a number of reasons, namely:


A. Dr. Craig concludes Theism or “the God hypothesis” as he put it earlier – is “perfectly rational to hold to” – which is of course the theme of this site.

B. Dr. Craig Lists the explanatory power of Theism over atheism, Theism can explain things such as:

1. The existence of Moral Value
2. The existence of Consciousness
3 The Origin of the Universe
4 Why something exists rather than nothing
5 The Fine Tuning of the Universe
6 The historical facts about Jesus

(All good topics I should discuss one day.)

C. In challenging Dr. Kappel to prove atheism is true, Dr. Craig points out a number of ways one can logically or rationally establish an argument, namely by:

1. Philosophical Argument
2. Inference to the best explanation
3. Testimonial Evidence

When you watch, notice two things:

1) Kappel is unable to use any of these methods to prove the hypothesis atheism is true (indeed he claims both theism and atheism are un-provable – which Gives Dr. Craig an opportunity to show the explanatory power of Christianity as listed above.)

2) You’ll note I’ve had occasion to discuss item number 2 in a couple of posts1 since a number of those who claim Christians argue “illogically” seem to be unaware of this concept. Here is yet another confirmation that this is a standard logical concept accepted by atheists and theists alike.

 

Now without further ado, the video:

 

Duane Caldwell | posted 4-30-2014 | print format


1 The posts mentioning an inference to the best explanation are:The Poor Marksmenship of Evolutionists andReclaiming the Intellectual and Moral High Ground

Time to End the In House Debate

 

Among Christians there should be no questions or debates about the origins of life, the earth or the universe.


At the end of the Up  for Debate Episode titled “Should Christians Embrace the Big Bang? Host Julie Roys wrapped it up with the following two questions:

 – How important is this for Christians to deal with?
– Why do you think it’s important?

Dr. Danny Faulkner, Author,  Distinguished Professor Emeritus, retired and now on staff with Answers in Genesis and its Creation Museum responded:

“I believe it’s important because it’s a Foundation of scripture integrity. What does the Bible say, what does God say, what does it mean to us?

True, but Dr. Faulkner misses the elephant in the room. Dr. Hugh Ross, Astronomer and best-selling author responded:

“Well notice that the time of creation is not in any of the biblical creeds. What’s important is who creates and how he creates. And this is what’s exciting about big bang cosmology. It identifies the who as the God of the Bible, it identifies  his creation intervention just like the Bible says.  I don’t think we should get hung up on the when.”1

Dr. Ross’ answer not only misses the elephant in the room, but it is also very misleading.  Why do the biblical creeds not mention the time of creation? (More importantly the duration.) Because that is not one of the issues they were dealing with at the time. In the first few centuries after Christ’s resurrection, the church was besieged with Christological issues – docetism (Christ only seemed to have a body but was really just spiritual), gnosticism (a whole range of errors regarding God from which we get the phrase “children of a lesser god”; errors regarding Christ;  and the nature of good and evil), monophysitism (Christ had only one nature), and so on. So they were concerned with clearly and correctly defining who Christ was – that he was “very God from very God” (from the Nicene Creed) and “one person with two natures” (From the Definition of Chalcedon). The Nicene Creed was written in 325 AD; the definition of Chalcedon was written in 451. The issue of the length of creation didn’t come up until needed for evolution, and Darwin didn’t publish “Origin of Species” until 1859.  So of course the creeds don’t deal with that.

Dr. Ross also states big bang cosmology identifies the who of creation as the God of the Bible. Really? Perhaps he should tell that to Continue Reading

A Resurrection Day Response

 The Holy Bible

I was asked by multiple atheists – what if some other religious book were true? Here is the response.

In the song “Nada One” Heart’s Nancy Wilson sings about an ephemeral,  nocturnal  love who has glowing, night creature eyes that frequents her dreams. This mysterious love seems to appear only in dreams where no one can see him. For even when wandering through streets, she describes this scene:

“Nobody seein’ where I’ve been
Nobody feels what I’ve done
Nada One”

With such descriptions, one questions the reality of his existence. Indeed she herself seems to harbor a doubt or two since she must  reminder herself “you are as real as I feel.” The one thing that’s not mysterious in this song,  is what she means by “nada one.”  Clearly “nada one” is a play on the  sound of the phrase “not a one,”  yet still, one must  wonder – since it is always  capitalized –  if she’s using it as a proper noun – speaking or referring to a being named “Nada One.” The Wilson sisters were purposefully ambiguous for artistic purposes. But as we’ll see God is purposefully clear and unambiguous to eliminate doubt and nurture faith.

I was reminded of this song as I awaited responses to a question I had posed.  Let me step back  and explain.  I saw the below tweet that informed people that last Thursday was “National Ask an Atheist Day.”

 

This seemed like  a perfect opportunity to re-query the unbelieving regarding a  question I had asked in a  Continue Reading

Atheists – too afraid to answer

 Fear, afraid
Some Atheists are too afraid to answer the difficult questions.

 There’s a very good article by Peter Saunders titled Twenty questions Atheists struggle to Answer: How Theism does better on the first six.  Before  presenting the first six issues which atheists struggle to answer (actually he’s being kind – he uses “struggle” as if they have an  answer when actually atheism has no reasonable answer to the first 6.),  he makes some preliminary comments.  The third comment  he makes  – actually a challenge –  is particularly apropos to a recent discussion I had.  Speaking to Atheists and agnostics,  Saunders says:

Third, I challenge atheists (and agnostics) reading this blog not to adopt the view, as a matter of faith, that the atheistic world view is some sort of neutral default position and that the burden of proof
lies solely with theists to prove their case. Let’s not have any of the usual allegations of ‘meaningless questions’, ‘God of
the gaps’, ‘appeals to authority’ or the mockery, ridicule and ‘face-palming’ that often accompanies any attempt by theists to
advance their case.

Of particular interest is the second sentence, a description of the toxic environment  often created by atheists in their so called “discussions” with Christians or theists – discussions which are for the atheist often  little more than opportunities to mock. To the list of the usual allegations I would add the allegation of “fallacious argument” a  claim atheists wield as a shield against anyone who doesn’t agree with them – apparently before even reading the argument because they use it even when it doesn’t apply.

Case in point, my last article – an article which ended with a hypothetical question along the lines of  Pascal’s wager: Continue Reading

A question of authority

What will it take for you to believe?
Charlton Heston as moses - "You are not worthy to recieve these commandments"
Charlton Heston as Moses – “You are not worthy to receive these commandments”

Twitter is of course home to many ongoing debates, one of which is the ongoing debate between atheists and theists; creationists and materialists – those who adhere to the standard non-supernatural theories of origins for the universe and  life. One such debate was brought to my attention with the following tweet:

 


Sandra does an admirable job of defending the creationist position. I was going to add some evidences – items such as the following in response to the objection “fossils are laid out in the rock layers, they are arranged in an evolutionary order…”

To the contrary:

“Many fossils and artifacts have been found ‘out of place’. That is, they are in strata that the evolutionist says represent a period of time when, for example, that organism did not live, or human artifacts could not have been made.”[1]

This directly contradicts the contention that all fossils are “arranged in evolutionary order”. In fact the situation is worse than that when one considers Continue Reading