Whole Reason

I recently lis­tened to apol­o­gist Peter S. Williams (blog) deliver this talk at the 2010 Euro­pean Lead­er­ship Forum on the topic: Argu­ments for The­ism, and finally under­stood the Onto­log­i­cal Argu­ment for God’s existence.

How­ever, it brought up a ques­tion in my mind, which I sub­mit­ted to William Lane Craig’s web­site. I’ll post the answer if I get one, but here’s the question:

If the Onto­log­i­cal Argu­ment assumes that God is the max­i­mum qual­ity of attrib­utes of good­ness and greatness:

1. Which cat­e­gory does ‘being’ or ‘exis­tence’ fall into? Good­ness or greatness?
2. If that is an attribute of great­ness, could we not then use this argu­ment to argue for the exis­tence of a max­i­mally great and max­i­mally evil (instead of good) being, then con­clude that that being must also exist?

Com­ments?

Jonny Lang: Turn Around

As I wrote pre­vi­ously, Lang wrote Leav­ing to Stay about leav­ing faith, but recently returned to faith and wrote this beau­ti­ful song as a tes­ti­mony — I think this duet is with his wife.

This last stu­dio CD, Turn Around, won the 2007 Grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album.

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Jonny Lang, who left his child­hood faith, returned to it a few years ago, and won a Grammy on the first CD that came out of that experience.

But before he returned to faith, he wrote and per­formed this song on Wan­der This World dur­ing his ‘lost’ period.  Amaz­ing song and lyrics.

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I was updat­ing my ID3 data on my mp3 col­lec­tion, and had a great time going through all of my old CCM (Con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Music) that I haven’t lis­tened to for almost 20 years.

I came upon Susan Ashton’s debut album, which was awe­some, espe­cially this song, which is writ­ten to athe­ists.  Enjoy the lyrics — it’s also beau­ti­fully arranged and sung.

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Here’s my list of resources for those inter­ested in the his­tory of reli­gion and sci­ence, both pro and anti-religious.

THEIST

For the Glory of God: How Monothe­ism Led to Refor­ma­tions, Sci­ence, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slav­ery by Rod­ney Stark

Stark argues that faith in God encour­aged Chris­tians to invent sci­ence. Hav­ing read other books mak­ing the same claim, I think Stark’s approach to this ques­tion is one of the best. Not only does he go over the devel­op­ment of tech­nol­ogy in the so-called “Dark Ages,” and show how the “Enlight­en­ment” pic­ture of Coper­ni­can era sci­ence is a myth, he stud­ies 52 key early sci­en­tists, and shows that more than 60 % were “devout,” while only 2 were skep­tics. The critic below who asks why Chris­tian­ity did not pro­duce sci­ence in Rus­sia did not read atten­tively: Stark argues that faith in God was a nec­es­sary, but not suf­fi­cient, cause of the rise of sci­ence. Other fac­tors were also involved. ~ From this excel­lent review

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Here’s the abbre­vi­ated list from a good arti­cle from the Amer­i­can enti­tled ID the Future.

1. When dif­fer­ent claims get bun­dled together.
2. When ad hominem attacks against dis­senters predominate.
3. When sci­en­tists are pres­sured to toe the party line.
4. When pub­lish­ing and peer review in the dis­ci­pline is cliquish.
5. When dis­sent­ing opin­ions are excluded from the rel­e­vant peer-reviewed lit­er­a­ture not because of weak evi­dence or bad argu­ments but as part of a strat­egy to mar­gin­al­ize dissent.
6. When the actual peer-reviewed lit­er­a­ture is misrepresented.
7. When con­sen­sus is declared hur­riedly or before it even exists.
8. When the sub­ject mat­ter seems, by its nature, to resist consensus.
10. When it is being used to jus­tify dra­matic polit­i­cal or eco­nomic policies.

You can lis­ten to the ser­mon below:

How to Mis­un­der­stand Scripture

Ser­mon out­line after the jump.

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I love the whole debate scene, and I have lis­tened to a lot of Chris­t­ian and non-Christian news pod­casts, and nar­rowed down my favorites to Guide: Favorite Pod­casts for Chris­tians. Now, I want to ven­ture out into the land of my ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents.  Here’s my list so far.  Most of these I got from the list at Pod­cast Alley.

Last Update:  03.01.10

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It’s not often I agree with New Athe­ism spokesman Richard Dawkins. How­ever in this BBC video clip, he details a prob­lem within Chris­tian­ity (despite it hav­ing the feel of a SNL Jack Handy spot). The ardent athe­ist explains his oppo­si­tion to the reli­gious iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of chil­dren (call­ing small chil­dren “Chris­t­ian child,” or “Mus­lim child,” not so sur­pris­ingly he left out “athe­ist child).

I some­what agree with Dawkins, despite his refusal to include his own phi­los­o­phy in his list. A faith must be adopted by an indi­vid­ual on their own. That would be why Bap­tists and other sim­i­lar groups of Chris­tians rejected infant baptism.

While Dawkins may pre­fer to speak of a blind watch­maker, I think this is more an instance of him being a blind squir­rel.

When I think of hor­ri­bly unper­sua­sive spokesper­sons for their views, I think of Pat Robert­son and Richard Dawkins. Both see the absolute worst in those with whom they dis­agree and feel the need to con­stantly speak their mind when no one wants to hear it. So why would I be sur­prised when Dawkins actu­ally defended Robertson’s Haiti idiocy? New York Times colum­nists Russ Douthat explores what he calls “the sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship” between new athe­ists and fundamentalists.