Here Socrates (in Platos Euthyphro) would cleverly ask, Is killing then wrong just because God forbids it, or does God forbid it because he judges it wrong? Craig cannot admit that in prohibiting killing, God (a being invented for this express purpose, atheists would say!) Kristof: Merry Christmas, Dr. Craig! The results of actions are objective facts, but our opinion of them remains a valuation, not a matter of being true or false. Copernicus proposed the heliocentric or solar system, with the sun at the centre and all the planets circling around it. This is that we all have to start our answer with some statement that itself will get no explanation, precisely because it is the starting point. I just hope it all works. However, Gods job is even more difficult than that, because quantum physics is indeterministic random events occur. Christians hold up compassion as a supreme virtue, whereas, from the scientific, naturalistic point of view, the view available to atheists, its actually a logical necessity. Around AD 950, however, Christianity experienced another surge forward. Today over 10% of the population is evangelical Christian, with the highest percentages being in Chile (17%), Honduras (18%), El Salvador (20%), and Guatemala (26%). This means that events do not follow a unique trajectory. The refusal of Richard Dawkins to debate William Lane Craig has attracted criticism from other atheists, one of whom has said it is "Apt to be interpreted as cowardice". Not only is your statement unreasonable, it is potentially damaging - especially when made so carelessly. The truth is that despite these setbacks, despite the de-Christianization taking place at the state level, the twentieth century was an era of incredible advance for the Christian faith around the world. A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong bring to the printed page two debates they held before live audiences, preserving all the wit, clarity, and immediacy of their public exchanges. They like to ask humanists Where do your morals come from? William Lane Craig Download PDF Summary A rigorous attempt to answer the problem of the fate of the unevangelized and the challenge of religious pluralism. 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(i) Does every event have to have an explanation? These new arguments have been ignored, Craig says, by the so-called new atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Dan Dennett, who just attack the bad historical record of religions and its sociological causes. It is very sad to see how far William Lane Craig has departed from both sound reason and the truth of Scripture about creation, in this case the creation of Adam and Eve, in this 5-min YouTube clip. This post and other resources are available on Dr. William Lane Craig's website: www.reasonablefaith.org. Islam dealt a blow to Christianity from which she has yet to recover. We see this same feminization though relational factors in network coverage of sports, traditionally a male bastion. The political collapse of the Soviet Union has permitted the open proclamation of the gospel in those lands, resulting in a massive turning to God. The faith spread into Scandinavia, Central Asia, Ethiopia, China, and continued to persist in India. But Im convinced that the best kept secret to drawing in men is apologetics. Who ordered that? Perhaps all the statistics Ive shared thus far can be best summed up by some remarkable figures released by Ralph Winter. D on't feel embarrassed if you've never heard of William Lane Craig. Evolution by natural selection scotched that argument. William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University. Craig assumes that these knobs could be twiddled independently of the rest of the laws of physics. In the four decades following World War II, wars and civil conflicts in the Third World claimed some 35 million lives, not to mention the countless others who perished in prisons or famines engineered by corrupt regimes, where, as in Ethiopia, the restraints of Christian government were thrown aside. William Lane Craig. It would need to be transparently free of doubt, which it clearly is not. Nothing even remotely like this expansion could be recorded of any other religion at any time in human history. He has taught at Catholic University of America, the University of South Florida, and Saint Louis University. If the God, as defined, contains these internal contradictions, it cant even be a candidate for existence in any possible world. One woman in the class told me, I dont understand a lot of what you say. In other words, we should be not merely spectators, but actors in this drama. it penetrated to practically every corner of the inhabited globe and became a moulding force in every great cultural area of mankind. This is materialism: that mind emerges as a product of matter, simply in accordance with its laws. As the colonial powers retreated, totalitarianism, civil war, and international war rushed in to fill the vacuum. I'm very well acquainted with Islamic Theology and unlike your claim. Thats why it has always been vehemently supported by authorities, the churches, the lawyers and so on. Why do you think that God in his providence has allowed you to be born in the U.S. and to be blessed with such material and spiritual abundance? However, according to the new multiverse theories, eg string theories, there are billions of other bubble universes parallel to this one, with different constants, in most of which life would not have evolved. they are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous. You say, But Im not rich. Oh, no? This may happen in unexpected ways. I may find Verdis music tremendous but I dont claim that as a fact. No Muslim would concede that God is a Trinity of persons, as Christians believe, and, as you must know, the Quran condemns to hell those who claim that Jesus is Gods Son, as we Christians believe (V.70). Craig would nevertheless like to show that an infinitely old universe is logically impossible, so he often employs the antique Kalam argument. While Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the worlds three great monotheistic faiths, genetically related and so having much in common, what divides them is their account of Jesus. In fact, there is no limit to the number and type of mathematical structures. My interest in Islam thus awakened, I chose Islam as one of my two side areas of specialization on which I was examined for my doctorate in theology at the University of Munich. A s head of the ministry Reasonable Faith and a prolific writer on topics of philosophy and theology, William Lane Craig has spent decades staking out sophisticated positions on the toughest. podcasthttp://www.premierchristianradio.com/unbelievableThe Big Conversation Season 2:1. The problem of the churchs lack of appeal to men has been recognized by mens movements like Promise Keepers and books like John Eldredges Wild at Heart. Summary. I assumed that my nervous system would cause the language system in my brain to pass the appropriate electrical signals to my vocal chords so that I uttered the right words to order the drink. 0:00 / 2:42 William Lane Craig: Why I am a Christian and believe that science points to God Premier Unbelievable? Being also perfectly good, it did this just for us (and the Ebola virus?). Frankly, I dont think its possible to conjure into existence God-like beings by this sort of verbal trickery. I never suspected that apologetics would have this special effect on men. Get Dr. Craig's newsletter and keep up with RF news and events. This is not true of classic hymns like A Mighty Fortress or And Can It be? Talking with young men, I find that many of them are just turned off by these touchy-feely worship services and would rather not go. They are usually very far away from home and family, and any hospitality and kindness you can show them is a treasured gift to them. In Central Asia, the Mongols turned to Islam, and today this region constitutes the Moslem dominated nations in the former southern Soviet Union. When a man finally stood up and asked something, this was almost a cause of celebration and was noticed by everyone. I recently spoke with an international Christian journalist stationed in Beijing. Its estimated that between 15-25% of the worlds population lies beyond the present reach of the gospel. But one of the most amazing stories is China. (God can apparently create Heaven, a place without pain.) Rather I want you to ask yourself two questions: 1. In 2016, Craig was named by The Best Schools as one of the fifty most influential living philosophers. In the words of Patrick Johnstone, Mao Tse-tung unwittingly became the greatest evangelist in history! So, he says, (i) it must have an explanation for its existence that (ii) itself needs no explanation. Anselm claimed that its greater to exist than not to exist, so the greatest being must also have existence as one of its properties, alongside being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good. Thus the latest physics raises doubts about the Big Bang being the origin of the universe. As for Judaism, again I should say that the decisive consideration is Jesus claims to be the Jewish Messiah and his subsequent resurrection from the dead. Many students who have contact with Christian families become Christians during their stay in the U.S. To explain the retrograde motion of Mars, he set Mars on its own extra little circle, called an epicycle, rolling around its main circle. In professional sports have you noticed how in recent years television networks have engaged female reporters to go down on the field and interview baseball or football players, usually about how they felt about this or that? . Secularism has become the dominant force in the West, shaping its intellectual outlook, its culture, its social values. During the thirty years leading up to 1945, the percentage of Christians in the non-Western world approximately doubled. Handbooks on world mission published during the 1980s lamented the fact that 20% of the worlds population was classified as non-religious or atheistic, making atheism the second greatest religion after Christianity. Many of us should be giving 20% or 30% of our income to the Lords work. Given that, there seem to be two starting points, (a) complex and (b) simple: (a) Craigs complex (although hell claim its simple!) In Indonesia, following the bloody coup in 1965, Christianity experienced rapid and sustained growth in a predominantly Muslim society. This has to do with how we humans make our decisions. Thats why the experience of seeing the Downton Abbey panel was so intriguing to me. I hope youll aim to give 20% or 30% of your income to Gods work. . All across the face of this planet, like a great tide in its ebb and flow, the kingdom of light is pushing back the frontiers of darkness. Craig doesnt treat the question fairly because he starts by assuming that the universe exists and the problem is to find an explanation for it. We have heard many times that these students expect someone to tell them about Christianity, about Jesus. Introduction I recently spoke at a major Canadian university on the existence of God. This is called libertarian free will. Theres a difference between a stereotype and a generalization. In this respect, it has moved on from religion. In one sense every Christian believes in intelligent design, since the God of the Bible is an intelligent Creator of the world who had certain ends in mind which He intended to realize. Then in 1953 the structure of DNA was elucidated and the mechanism of heredity was revealed. As we look back over the history of this remarkable movement, its instructive to see how it spread. We need to become world Christians in our outlook. Why stop at greatest? The crucifixion of Jesus is recognized even by the sceptical critics in the Jesus Seminar as--to quote Robert Funk--one indisputable fact (Jesus Seminar video). The handbook Operation World, published in 1986, for example, had this to say about the Soviet Union: Pray that the active efforts of atheist teachers, discriminatory laws, secret police and prisons to speed the demise of Christianity may not only fail, but that the church may emerge victorious. I do! Then Copernicus got fed up with the discrepancies between Mars observed position and its epicycle. A vervet monkey seeing a leopard (itself an act of intentionality) will emit a special shriek. Most women do respond better to relational appeals, whereas men tend to like the rational approach. The first period of advance spanned the first five centuries after Christ. What a privilege to be alive today! In a chart labeled The Diminishing Task, he plots the number of evangelical Christians per non-Christians in the world. He would have to override the randomness by guiding the evolution of every entity in the universe to be sure of producing us after 13.8 billion years. And if we are truly seeing more women in leadership roles at the church (I have to assume this is what you meant by feminizing), I believe this is not something to fear and resist. Its time for atheists, humanists etc to take the moral high ground from the religions. Jesus said, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Where you spend your money is like a barometer of your heart. Facts are objective in the sense that they are true even if no one believes them or knows about them. This is reminiscent of Fred Hoyles 1956 Conway Memorial Lecture when he expounded his steady state cosmology. Id invite you just to look at the resources I mentioned and judge for yourself. And the best is yet to come. Avoiding overly esoteric arguments, they directly address issues such as religious experience, the Bible . William Lane Craig: "and my view here is, that the way in which I know Christianity is true, is first and foremost on the basis on the witness of the Holy Spirit, in my heart, and that this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. Nature is not completely deterministic. On the contrary, our experience is of minds emerging from and dependent on, matter we have no experience of matter being called into existence by mind, so we have no reason to believe that that magical process is possible. No, of course not. Up to about the year 1900, in the era of whats called classical physics, the world was thought to be governed by strict laws, for example Newtons laws, which specified exactly how each atom would behave once the forces acting on it were known. Dr. Thats an increase of 6.7% annually, well over twice rate of population growth. William Lane Craig. Scientists and naturalists might have to remain content to accept that the universe may ultimately have no explanation. While Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the world's three great monotheistic faiths, genetically related and so having much in common, what divides them is their account of Jesus. This magic was evidence of Gods activity. No, of course not. Evangelical Christianity is growing more than 3 times as fast the worlds population. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig. Its certainly not part of natural theology and so should not have appeared in his article. By 1970, that percent had grown to 28%. Hes clearly grooming it to possess all the attributes he wants his god to have. Its the basis for blaming criminals for their misdeeds and punishing them. Part two of a four-part blog series "Lets Talk about Christian Character, Virtue Ethics and Sanctification". At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. He is mistaken to claim that God is any explanation for objective moral values, if such exist. is simply endorsing a value held by most societies throughout history. One of the first attempts to apply maths to the world was Ptolemys. It would be a welcome change, and has every opportunity to challenge how we think about each other - allowing us to love each other better and see each other more clearly. Roger Penrose \u0026 William Lane Craig: https://youtu.be/9wLtCqm72-YThe Big Conversation Season 1:Jordan Peterson \u0026 Susan Blackmore https://youtu.be/syP-OtdCIhoSteven Pinker \u0026 Nick Spencer https://youtu.be/Ssf5XN5o9q4Derren Brown \u0026 Rev Richard Coles https://youtu.be/IxMLwQToAKoJohn Lennox \u0026 Michael Ruse https://youtu.be/yrnXdzQRISMDaniel Dennett \u0026 Keith Ward https://youtu.be/mongL_2KMGgPeter Singer \u0026 Andy Bannister - https://youtu.be/JiM8ul3oRxE The Big Conversation is produced by Premier in partnership with the Templeton Religion TrustVideos, updates, exclusive contenthttps://www.thebigconversation.show/For weekly debates between Christians and sceptics subscribe to the Unbelievable? How will you spend the money that God has entrusted to you? 5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists. Kepler tried ellipses. William Lane Craig: "No Amount of Evidence or Reasoning Could Convince Me I'm Wrong" By John W. Loftus at 1/30/2012. Listen to more sparkling conversations every week via the Unbelievable? Reason no 3. As world Christians, let us therefore pray and give and work to that end. So dont be intimated. I want to say a special word to those of you who are students. What is natural theology? Here's my interview of William Lane Craig, professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Houston Baptist University. Did astronomers then give up on mathematics? 1787 - 2023 Conway Hall Ethical Society. The very possibility of Gods existence implies that God exists. My observations about the peculiar attraction that Christian apologetics has for men involves several claims. Does every superlative quality refer to one of these hypothetical beings? (Downers Grove, Il. Reason no 2. No epicycles: just a different mathematical system. From ancient times till Darwin, the standard refrain used to be that life on earth was evidence of supernatural design. First is my observation that apologetics seems to have far more interest for men than for women. William Lane Craig Download PDF Summary A frank attempt to deal with the question of whether a homosexual lifestyle is immoral. This is the crisis that I believe will loom ever larger for religions in the next decades. He asks us to imagine God twiddling them, fine tuning them, calculating into the far future of each possible arrangement until he heard the sound he wanted. I think this is what people mean by acting on my own free will ie the ability to freely make a voluntary choice and then have the means to carry it out. Given that something has to pop into existence without further explanation, I find it easier to imagine the simple popping into existence rather than the complex. Even if you add in all the nominal Christians as well as targets for evangelism, that still means there are only about 9 unbelievers to be evangelized for every believer. We can and should be giving more. Whatever structure the physics of the world demanded, mathematicians could invent the appropriate mathematical system to describe it, drawing it down from an infinite Platonic realm containing all possible structures. Craig thus cannot rule out a universe without a beginning. By 1950 that number had shrunk to 21 non-Christians per evangelical Christian. When we contemplate these tragic and terrible statistics, the natural assumption is, I think, to suppose that with the close of the Great Century in 1914, we have entered once again upon one of those calamitous eras of retreat for the Christian movement in the world. If chance was involved in a persons behaviour, he couldnt be held responsible at all. Craig can therefore say its a personal being. For more on Christian theology, I suppose Id recommend Bruce Milnes Know the Truth, 3rd ed. In Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig offer a comprehensive introduction to philosophy from a Christian perspective. Fourth is my claim that apologetics is a key to making the church and Christian faith relevant to men once more. I dont want any randomness involved. But this means that to say God does not exist involves a logical contradiction. Craig thinks there are now good arguments for these old issues and hes also brought in some new arguments. 4 likes. Craig seems anxious to prove that the universe began to exist and that time had a beginning, because he believes that everything that begins has a cause. I dont know anything about the language system in my brain or how it connects to my vocal chords. To deter them from repeating the offence once released; To deter other people from committing offences; To punish the offender because they deserved it, ie retribution. time began, God sat up on his mighty Wurlitzer, twiddling all the knobs controlling the so-called constants of nature factors which figure in the important equations of physics. Befriend a foreign student. Shortly after assuming power in 1933, he told Hermann Rauschwig that he intended to stamp out Christianity root and branch. One is either a Christian or a German, he said, You cannot be both. Hitler found it expedient to use the state church until the Third Reich had attained supremacy; but then he planned to wipe it out just as he had annihilated the Jews. Physics since the beginning of the 20th century, with the advent of the quantum, has had to accept that there are causeless events in nature. Craig, having decided that the universe does have a cause, then says The cause of the universe has to be a logically necessary being, by which he means a being that had to exist, such that it involves a contradiction if it did not exist. For Lenin there was no Christian code of conduct; anything can be justified in the name of the State and the Party. This means that the detailed structure of the initial, primeval atom contained within it the infinite precision needed for this eventuality. Richard Dawkins recently revealed why he refused to debate Christian apologist William Lane Craig, a Talbot professor who has on multiple occasions invited the famous atheist to discuss the rationality of faith and existence of God with him. It could no longer be maintained that living matter was quite distinct from non-living matter we are made of the same stuff as the rest of the physical world.

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