To watch the whole video, see my playlist : Let’s Talk About Genesis : Ross vs Hovind < or click on picture (above)

To enjoy recent “Creation Research Evangelism” media : here
To enjoy recent “Reason to Believe” media : here

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Dear Readers,

While I am busy preparing the elementary lectures in Apologetics, I think this old lecture might be a good one to begin with.

Enjoy,

Apologetix

Information

William Lane Craig delivers the 2004 Templeton Foundation lecture at the University of Colorado, Boulder, laying out the case from contemporary cosmology for the beginning of the universe and its theological implications.

“Now, when I was just a little boy,
Standin to my daddys knee,
My poppa said, son, dont let the man get you”
( From: Born on the Bayou – Creedance Clear Water Revival )

“God’s Great Banana Skin” by Chris Rea…..

“Don’t you ever think no-ones better than you…
Keep your head down, don’t listen to what your ego will say…”

My subjects are Music, Art and Creative Writing and if I had to write a book about them, I would need to do my research. I am also a Theologian and could probably writer a good book about it. However, I am not a professional Biologist; though I do have a basic understanding of Biology, and if the trees and plants in The Company Gardens, behind St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town could talk, they would tell you a tale of how I instructed them in Matric Level Biology. (Which I did pass thanks to their patience lol)

Now Professor Dawkins is a professional Biologist and not a professional Theologian, or Philosopher, yet in his book ‘THE GOD DELUSION’ – he wrote a chapter about the various arguments for the existence of God and according to a professional who knows all about that; he did not do his homework and actually he had not even studied Professor Alvin Plantinga who is quite an authority. (and even I know that lol) Well let’s listen to Dr. William Laine Craig as he talks about this part of TGD….there is more, but I don’t want to spoil it for you…

Transcript ..

Yeah___rrr he does seem to think that although he himself admits that D.E. does’nt do anything to explain away the fine tuning. He thinks that that has to be yet be explained, that there really is no good explaination for that, and when I looked at his chapter in ‘The GOD delusion’ ; on the arguments for the existence of GOD, I was rather suprised Kevin by frankly how superficial, his handling of the arguments are. For example I think that he says nothing in response to the Lieten-Nietzschian argument from contingency: the argument that there needs to be and explanation to why something exists, rather than nothing. He has nothing about the Kalaam Cosmological Argument: the argument that there was a beginning of the Universe and therefore the Universe needs to have a transcendant cause. He talks about the design argument but he does’nt deal with the Fine Tuning, he only deals with the biological aspects of it, but has nothing to offer in terms of how you can explain the fine tuning of the Universe; of the Big Bang for intelligent life.
The Moral argument; here he’s just completely inconsistent, on the one hand if he grants the premise : that if GOD does not exist, there are no object morals and duties, he’s very clear that he thinks that morality is just basically a human illusion, but on the other hand, over and over again in the book makes moral judgements and affirms moral truths and therefore affirms the second premise in the Moral argument: that objective moral values exist. So he does’nt refute that argument, then finally the Ontological argument, oddly enough he spends the most time on that one. He he spends several pages on the Ontological argument, but if you look at it, all it is ridicule, he does’nt know anything about Alvin Plantinga’s defence of the Ontological Argument — he just mocks it and makes fun of it, and it’s very clear that he does’nt know the literature, that he’s not familiar with the argument.
So… I was very unimpressed. I mean quite honestly looking at his handeling of the arguments for the arguments for GOD’s existence.

Kevin:
I’m curious about the quote attributed to him (Prof. Dawkins) that is; ‘The study of Biology, the challenge there, is that you are examining systems that look as if they’re designed.’ and but…

Dr. William Laine Craig:
Right and he says, ‘that you need to constantly remind yourself that they’re not….

Kevin:
…why not say — because maybe they are ?

Dr. William Laine Craig:
Hahaha right

Kevin:
…I mean your Naturalism is’nt going to let you say I guess.
Dr Craig you’ve rebated the top Athiest thinkers in the world, on University Campus’ and at other events but what about a debate with Dawkins.

Dr. Craig:
Well, I’d welcome it, I would like to have a debate with Dawkins. In fact I recently had a UK (United Kingdom) debating and speaking tour that took me to quite a number of British Universities. It was set up by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in the UK and the board of directors chairman — Peter May — of InterVarsity wrote a very nice letter to Richard Dawkins at Oxford, in which he explained that William Laine Craig was coming to Great Britian on a university speaking and debating tour, that I was a Philosopher interested in Philosophy of Science and wanted to know if he would be interested in participating in debate with me on the existence of GOD. So it was’nt about Creation-Evolution, I was’nt presenting it as a religious person of theologian but as a Philosopher of Science — and the letter that Dawkins sent back to Peter May said, ‘I don’t know who William Laine Craig is if I were to debate a religious person he would have to be at least a Bishop, and while a debate with Craig might look good on Craig’s resume it would’nt look good on mine.’

And therefore he (Dawkins) declined to engage and so I did’nt have the chance to debate with Dawkins.

Kevin:
Daniel Dennett is another author, he’s got a best selling book called “Breaking the Spell”

Dr Craig:
Yes.

Kevin:
– the implications thereof. What is his take ?

Dr. Craig:
Well..uh…again Dennett is an interesting character, I was just in a conference with him in New Orleans, a couple of months ago, on Atheism and Theism and he was debating Alistair McGrath on this topic and then several of us were invited to give comments uh on the whole debate; I was one of them, Keith Parsons was another and I decided I would look at Dennet’s response to the typical arguments for the existence of GOD, since he does’nt think there are any good reasons. And again Kevin, I was shocked, this man is an emminent Philosopher at Topsis University — this is not some popularizer, and yet if you looked at his responses to the typical answers for the existence of GOD, George Smith does a better job — ((you know a popularizer)) — than what Dennett did.
Uh..for example his response to the Kalaam Cosmological argument, which says that whatever begins to exist has a cause — the Universe exists therefore the Universe has a cause — He agrees with the first premise: that anything begins to exist must have a cause that brings it into being. He agrees with the second premise, he thinks the Universe began to exist, and that the BIG BANG gives good evidence of that. So he agrees with the conclusion: the Universe has a cause, but here’s his answer, ‘The Universe has a cause….the Universe caused itself’…the Universe brought itself into being. He says, ‘It’s the ultimate bootstrapping trick’ — The Universe brought itself into existence.
And I pointed out to him, ‘You know that in order for the Universe to bring itself into existence, it would have to exist before existed; otherwise it’s not self-caused — it would be uncaused ( it would come out of nothing ) So his view would be — the Universe had to exist before it existed, which is a self-contradiction. It’s logically incoherent — and yet this was his response to the Cosmological argument

Kevin:
I imagine he’ll find another one, after that conference

Dr. Craig:
I think so…you know it was funny because after I’d presented my response there was an applause from the audience and then he was invited to give and impromtu reaction, and then he walked up to the platform and he …just stood there…. looking out at the audience for a minute..uh rrrr — a moment in silence and then he says, “Tha__t was a viruoso performance!”

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Big Bang – The Bible Taught It First!

By Hugh Ross and John Rea

‘Most science textbooks that address cosmology credit Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson with the discovery that the universe arose from a hot big bang creation event. While it is true that they were the first (1965) to detect the radiation left over from the creation event, they were not the first scientists to recognize that the universe expanded from an extremely hot and compact state. In 1946 George Gamow calculated that nothing less than the universe expanding from a near infinitely hot condition could account for the present abundance of elements. In 1929 observations made by Edwin Hubble established that the velocities of galaxies result from a general expansion of the universe. Beginning in 1925 Abbé Georges Lemaître, who was both an astrophysicist and a Jesuit priest, was the first scientist to promote a big bang creation event.’

(…read all…)

Editors Note: The site Trumpet.com is fast becoming one of my favourite reads. It has concise, provable and easy to read articles which are interesting and timely in today’s world. The following article is spot on in its analysis of the universe and the sound rebuttal of atheists who think it all started by chance.

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wildwildweather.com

Science has proven that the universe did not always exist. It had a beginning.

What’s interesting is that scientists didn’t always believe that. Just a few generations ago, general consensus was that the universe had no beginning and no end—it just always was. Evolutionists found this convenient, as it contradicted the biblical creation account.

Evidence began to refute this idea in the 1920s. Data showed that distant objects are drifting away from our galaxy. Edwin Hubble, by measuring the wavelengths of light coming from other galaxies, determined that the universe is expanding in all directions. This discovery set the scientific world on fire. After all, if the universe is moving apart, then at one time it must have been compressed in a single location. It must have had a beginning.

The big bang theory was born

What is the theory? It has undergone significant refinement and revision over its near-80-year lifespan; today, cosmologists are developing and testing a few dozen variations of it. But in essence the idea is that, somewhere between 10 and 15 billion years ago, the entire universe came to exist suddenly, dramatically, in an infinitesimally brief moment. Theoretical physicist Brian Greene describes the “inflationary” big-bang model this way: “the size of the universe increased by a factor larger than a million trillion trillion in less than a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second” (The Fabric of the Cosmos).

Doesn’t sound very compatible with evolution, does it? It’s the extreme opposite of slow, gradual changes over billions of years. And it can’t be attributed to natural selection or other evolutionary processes that supposedly explain how advanced life came to exist without an intelligent author.

In fact, scientists first rejected the big-bang concept because it seemed too religious. Its echoes of “in the beginning” bothered them. (Their concern was no doubt heightened by the fact that the physicist who first advanced the theory, Georges Lemaître, was also a priest.) Somehow, though, atheists the world over eventually came to accept it as proof that the cosmos has no creator.

But is it?

There appears to be much solid evidence that the basics of the theory are correct. Observation confirms that the universe was far hotter in the past and is cooling as it expands. The rapid initial cooling left faint background radiation that still fills the cosmos at a highly uniform temperature. The universe’s galaxies all appear to have been formed during the window of time that the big-bang model predicts. Photos show that the farther we look out into space (hence the further back in time, since light requires time to reach our telescopes), the more densely packed the galaxies are. These are just a few of many proofs that the universe had a definite beginning.

But then big-bang theorists hit a wall. Going backward in time from the universe’s current expansion, they say it must have been more and more compressed—that, in fact, at the start it must have existed within a single point. This “singularity” is supposed to have been an infinitely small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense something. Lemaître called it a “primeval atom.”

Now—if that is right, then where did this “cosmic seed” come from? Big-bang theorists can’t explain it.

Why did it suddenly expand? This too is a mystery to them.

Adding to the difficulty is the tendency in nature for things to decay—to move from order toward disorder. Greene says this natural law would suggest that the universe in its infancy began “in an extraordinarily special, highly ordered state of low entropy.” Extraordinarily special? Highly ordered? Well then, how did it start out in such a state? Once again, science is silent.

Astronomers recognize that the term “big bang” is misleading. According to the theory, the initial event wasn’t an explosion, but an orderly expansion—more like an inflating balloon. Dr. Hugh Ross explains, “The big bang is not a big ‘bang’ as most lay people would comprehend the term. This expression conjures up images of bomb blasts or exploding dynamite. Such a ‘bang’ would yield disorder and destruction. In truth, this ‘bang’ represents an immensely powerful yet carefully planned and controlled release of matter, energy, space and time within the strict confines of very carefully finely tuned physical constraints and laws which govern their behavior and interactions. The power and care this explosion reveals exceeds human potential for design by multiple orders of magnitude” (emphasis mine).

Cosmologists are intently studying the beginning of time. They are staring at the sudden appearance of energy and matter. They are recognizing unimaginable order and precision in the event. They can perceive physical laws controlling it. And these potent forces become more impressive the more they are scrutinized and the more we learn. They are so complex, so incomprehensibly powerful, so potentially catastrophic, that an infinitesimal variation in any one of a number of factors would have yielded a cataclysm rather than the stunning cosmos that exists today.

Astoundingly, however, there are few who, like Dr. Ross, will admit to seeing deliberate planning, fine-tuning, and design in it!

How can scientists blithely believe that this gorgeous, life-rich planet called Earth, which circles a beautiful, stable star called the sun, which is clustered together with several hundred billion other suns in a galaxy that is just one of trillions—all came from a primeval pinprick much, much smaller than an electron or even a quark—by random chance? How can they accept the idea that an infinitely small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense singularity which simply appeared and then exploded in a precise cosmic expansion to produce the entire universe—from the largest supernovas to the smallest subatomic particles, with all their physical properties perfectly governed by laws of physics and chemistry—came from nothing?

It takes more faith to believe that than it does to believe in an eternal, all-powerful God!

Never in human history has science treated the Creator with such contempt. Yet paradoxically, never has science discovered so much spectacular proof of His existence as in this past, most-godless century!

Open your eyes. The beautiful truth surrounds and envelops us. “The real big bang was a well-planned, deliberately executed act of creation!” the Plain Truth magazine wrote in June 1984. “How would you expect a superpowerful divine Being to bring forth an entire universe? With a small fizzle, a limp thud or a weak whimper? Of course not! The creation of the universe was accomplished with a glorious display of light, heat, matter and energy—a display that still reverberates throughout space ….”

The reality is that science is proving the Bible true. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. … For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. … Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; not one is missing” (Genesis 1:1; Psalm 33:9; Isaiah 40:26; New King James Version).

God “created the heavens, and stretched them out” (Isaiah 42:5). Scientists are discovering how. Pity so few of them realize it.

I’ve been seeing theme develop over the past couple of weeks.  One ministry on campus decided to do a series entitled, “The Seven Words you Can’t Say in Church.”  The first word was evolution.  Our church in DC, National Community Church is in the middle of a similar series, “The Elephant in the Church,” based on the aphorism “the elephant in the room.”  This week’s topic–”The Evolutionary Elephant.”  And this in the same week that we’ll be hosting a campus forum called “What Darwin Didn’t Know.”  

We’ve invited scientist, author and speaker, Dr Hugh Ross in to present new evidence on Darwinism (next February is Darwin’s 200th birthday) and look @ the science that points to the possibility of a creator.  If you’re in the AU area this Thursday around 8 pm, swing by the Kay Spiritual Life Center and check it out.  Seems like God wants us (or at least me) to learn something.