Why must the Cause of the Universe be Personal?

Have you ever wondered how we can know that the cause of the universe is indeed personal and not simply some impersonal force or entity.

Watch the following 2 minute video as Dr William Lane Craig answers this question.

Is belief in God like a belief in Santa Claus?

Skeptics sometimes ask when they hear that a Christian believes in God, "Do you believe in Santa Claus too?" Is that a far enough criticism or have they made an error in logic?

Watch the following video where Dr. William Lane Craig responds to this objection.

Can you Trust the Bible?

Skeptics love throwing out the objection, "How can you trust a book written by men?" They conclude that Christians must have been indoctrinated into their belief as a child or have just taken a giant leap of faith into the dark by believing the Bible.

But as you'll see in this 2 minute video below, there are many good reasons for trusting the Bible as a book that is truth.

What is tolerance? William Lane Craig Explains

Many people object to Christians saying "Why can't you be tolerant of other people's viewpoints?" But what exactly does tolerance mean?

Find out in this 2 minute video by William Lane Craig.

"But Who Created God?"

It is likely that you have heard atheists say to Christians, "But who created God?" They ask this usually when the Christian has shown that the universe had a beginning, and so in the atheist's mind it's a little like, "If I can't have an eternal universe, then you can't have an eternal God." But does this question really present a problem for Christianity? In this video, Randall Niles explains the impossibility of infinite regression, showing there must be an uncaused God.

There are arguments that can be given which show that the uncaused cause of the universe must be personal, meaning that it must refer to God and not simply to a singularity. Check out the Kalam Cosmological argument article for more information.

Does God Exist? Post-Debate Footage

On the 28th July 2010, Operation 513 held a debate on the existence of God. It was between Ryan Hemelaar (from Operation 513) and Wayne Cunningham (a former Catholic, now an atheist).

Many have wondered what the outcome of the debate was last week. Here is what one person said:

The DVD of the debate can now be purchased for only $6 from the Operation 513 Web Store.

Were Believers the only Witnesses to the Resurrection?

Often atheists like to dismiss the testimony of the eye-witnesses of Jesus' resurrection by saying that the only people who saw Jesus alive were those who were already believers. But John Warwick Montgomery in this video shows why this is not the case, and why that objection in the first place is not logically valid.

Are Miracles Unscientific?

Are miracles inconsistent with science? The philosopher David Hume thought it was. Was he right? John Lennox in this video discusses why David Hume was incorrect about the impossibility of miracles and shows that miracles are not at all incompatible with the things we have learned from science.

Do Miracles Violate the Laws of Nature?

Have you ever heard the argument that since matter cannot be created nor destroyed, this universe must be eternal? Or since miracles go against the laws of nature, therefore miracles cannot occur? William Lane Craig, John Kennedy, Alvin Plantinga, and Doug Thrower in this video discuss whether miracles do actually violate the laws of nature.

Richard Dawkins admits Faith has Evidence

Richard Dawkins is well-known for saying that faith is irrational and not based on evidence. Here though, he comes unstuck, and admits that faith does have evidence.

Naturalism Requires Faith

Have you ever heard someone say that the physical world is all there is? That belief is called naturalism. But as William Lane Craig proves in this minute and a half video is that naturalism is not based on evidence, but on faith.

Atheists, How is the Existence of God and Evil Incompatible?

Many people mistakenly think that if evil exists, then therefore God cannot exist. But the question must be asked, "How are the two incompatible with each other?" Dr. William Lane Craig in this short two-minute video shows that the atheist is actually the one who has the burden of proof to shoulder, showing that the two cannot co-exist.

How to respond to "But who Created God?"

If you have talked with an atheist before about the existence of God, undoubtedly you have heard them respond with, "But who created God?" This is usually in the context of presenting the cosmological argument, explaining that all things that have beginnings have causes, the universe had a beginning and therefore must have had a cause. Atheists strangely think by saying, "What caused God?" they have found a defeater for this cosmological argument. But as Dr. William Lane Craig explains in the following one minute video, the question the atheist is asking there is completely irrelevant, and therefore not a defeater to the cosmological argument.

Does Science Prove Atheism?

Have you ever encountered an atheist who claimed that he doesn't believe in God because of 'science'? Dr. William Lane Craig in this 3 minute video objectively examines whether science actually does prove the non-existence of God, and comes to the conclusion that it is actually logically impossible for it to do so.

If Eveything Needed a Creator, Then Who Created God?

This is a very common objection that people bring up when discussing the Cosmological Argument. In this 1-minute video, Dr. William Lane Craig refutes the idea that God would did a creator for Himself.

"As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God"

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

By Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Source: Times Online

Is God a Delusion? Discussion

William Lane Craig vs Lewis Wolpert

In 2007, Professors William Lane Craig and Lewis Wolpert undertook to debate each other on the topic of the existence of God. Below is a series of 4 reasonably short videos of the pretty humorous discussion that took place after the debate, moderated by BBC's John Humphrys.

Was Jesus a Myth? Debate

Dr. James White vs Dan Barker

Dan Barker, from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, has written a number of works where he argues that Jesus never existed. In this debate, James White, from Alpha and Omega Ministries, challenged Mr Barker on his claims.

Amazingly, while James White was beginning his opening speech, Dan Barker objected to the quoting of his own book! Even though it was on sale that very day!

Why is Richard Dawkins so Popular?

In this four minute video, Dr. William Lane Craig responds to the question about why Richard Dawkins seems to be so popular among atheists.

Quote of the Day - The Limitations of Science

"What's life all about? This and others like it are questions that science cannot answer, and no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer." - Sir Peter Medawar (Nobel Prize for Medicine winner).

Reference: R. Stewart, The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath & Daniel Dennett in Dialogue (London: Fortune Press, 2008), 33.