Monthly Archives: March 2011

Mar 31

VIDEO: William Lane Craig vs Lawrence Krauss, 3/30/11, debating the “Evidence for God”

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Below are the videos from the live webcast of yesterday’s debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Lawrence Krauss:

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Opening Remarks

Part 3: First Rebuttals

Part 4: Second Rebuttals

Part 5: Concluding Remarks

Part 6: Q&A

I am downloading these video files directly to my hard drive. So if these get taken off YouTube (for reasons I don’t care to speculate on) I will still have them :) Please let me know if you have any trouble viewing these videos.

Download the mp3

Also, Brian Auten has posted the audio on his website:

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(Right click and hit “save target as…” or “save link as…”)

A screenshot from the Craig/Krauss debate

(Update: 3/31) Read Dr. Craig’s Comments the day after the debate

A Brief Post-Mortem, by Dr. William Lane Craig (Facebook)

More links

Wintery Knight: A point by point recap of the Craig/Krauss Debate

Torrent

You can download the files via bittorrent (click to find out how). For those of you familiar with BitTorrent, you can find the torrent file here.

or download it directly, here

Lawrence Krauss’ comments on the debate

Dealing with William Lane Craig

Mar 30

Book Reviews of Forged, by Bart Ehrman

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Forged, Book Cover

Humbly standing in the shadows cast by the publicity frenzy of Rob Bell’s Love Wins is Bart Ehrman’s new book, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why The Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. I wanted to point you in the direction of some reviews which I believe will benefit you if you are considering reading Ehrman’s Forged.

Nick Norelli:Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Ehrman has popped out another book on a well-worn scholarly issue at a “layperson’s level” with promises of a future “detailed scholarly monograph that deals with the matter at length.” (10) For now we’ll have to content ourselves with Ehrman’s distillation of modern (i.e., 19th century to present) historical-critical scholarship. The opening chapter introduces us to Ehrman’s major claims, i.e., pseudepigrapha is forgery; forgery is lying; forgery/lying was frowned upon in the ancient world; the Bible (especially the NT) is full of forgeries. We’re also equipped with some definitions (orthonymous = rightly named; homonymous = same named; anonymous = having no name; pseudonymous = falsely named), the most important being Ehrman’s definition of forgery, which is “a writing that claims to be written by someone (a known figure) who did not in fact write it.” (24)

James White: Reviews Forged (and Love Wins) on the Dividing Line

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Click images to read the 16 pages PDF!

Michael Licona: Review by Michael R. Licona, March 27, 2011 (PDF)

On March 22, the New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman published his latest iconoclastic book challenging the traditional Christian view. In Forged, Ehrman’s bottom line message is that literary forgeries were plentiful in antiquity, many of which were written by Christians and that approximately 70 percent of the New Testament writings were not written by those to whom they are attributed….

Why is the subject matter of this book important? For years, a significant number of biblical scholars have contended that the traditional authorship of a large portion of the New Testament literature is mistaken. This raises an important question: If, lets say, Peter was not at all involved in writing 2 Peter and the letter was not written until several decades after Peter’s death, should it be included in the New Testament canon and regarded as authoritative to the Christian?

I will try to add more reviews as they come to my RSS feed… To stay up to date follow @EyeApologetics on  Twitter. I will tweet when I update an article.

Mar 29

Mark Driscoll Preaches on Heaven & Hell

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Pastor Mark Driscoll preached this sermon in his series on Luke on March 27th. It is interesting that this text came up so close to the release of Rob Bell’s Book, Love Wins, which muddies the waters on these eternal issues.

The sermon page is available here: http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/luke/heaven-and-hell

Mark Driscoll preaching on Heaven and Hell in Luke 16:19-31

Mar 29

mp3: Debate between Jay Smith and Mohammed Bahmanpour

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I found this at winteryknight.wordpress.com

Details:

The Koran claims that Jesus did not die on the cross.

Mohammed Bahmanpour of the Islamic College in London defends the Koranic view that although “it was made to appear to them” that he died, in fact he was substituted by another.

Jay Smith is a Christian evangelist to Muslims in London and brings to bear Biblical and other historical witnesses to the crucifixion.  They debate the issue and whether the Koran or the New Testament is to be trusted as a revelation of God.

Includes listener interactions with the guests.

Format:

Mohammed:
- in Surah 4 (Quran), it says that Jesus didn’t die on a cross
- it only appeared to onlookers as though Jesus died on the cross
- muslims believe that the crucifixion really happened
- but Jesus wasn’t the one who died, it was actually Judas
- most Muslims think that Judas betrayed Jesus
- some Shiites believe that Judas died voluntarily in Jesus’ place
- the gospel of Judas seems to make Judas out to be a hero

Jay:
- the 4 gospels agree that Jesus died on a cross
- John is an eyewitness and it’s in his gospel
- Paul’s writings also echo the gospels (Romans and epistles)
- the gospel of Judas is a fourth century document
- it reflects gnostic theology, which denies that Jesus had a body
- even Surah 19 says that Jesus actually did die and rise after
- so Surah 4 and Surah 19 are internally contradictory

Mar 29

In the News (Mar. 29, 2011)

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Pro-Life Billboard in Chicago Uses Obama Image to Hit Abortion

“Every 21 minutes, our next possible leader is aborted”

Jordan battles to regain ‘priceless’ Christian relics

Possibly new (new meaning really old, yet undiscovered) Christian documents?

Audio files from the 2009 Calvin Conference (Free, of course)

Speakers include: Joseph Pipa Jr., Joel Beeke, Carl Trueman, Terry Johnson, Ian Hamilton, Timothy Terrell, David Hall, Paul Helm, James McGoldrick, George Knight III, and Mark Garcia

Mar 29

Reply to Peter Lumpkins: James White is an Adjunct Professor at GGBTS

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I came across a blog which makes a ridiculous claim which I want to refute in this blog post. Peter Lumpkins maintains that Dr. James White is not an adjunct professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. To enhance your viewing pleasure I offer you the following video.

In the video I refer to these documents:

These PDFs are currently available for anyone to download (even if you are not a student) at http://www.ggbts.edu/academics/downloads/

Screenshot of ggbts.edu's course syllabi page (3/28/2011)

Peter Lumpkins desires a website which is not controlled by Dr. White to corroborate his bio.

No website info I can find supports James White’s claim he teaches at GGBTS (i.e. website info over which James White has no control). Instead all indications point to the established fact he does not. It is entirely possible the website info at GGBTS is not up to date but barely probable–if probable at all–given the strong affirmation less than a year ago by GGBTS seminary officials that James White would receive no future contracts. If the web info is strangely incorrect, we will keep the public informed via an update here

In response to this I offered the course syllabi above. Golden Gate’s website is frequently NOT up to date. I speak from personal experience as a current MDiv student. I have emailed professors on multiple occasions requesting their course syllabus because it had not been posted in a timely manner on the link above. In every instance, without fail, the professor had submitted their syllabus to the school weeks or months beforehand and the reason it was not available on ggbts.edu was because the site had not been updated. From my experience I, therefore, offer the following (obvious) observation:

  • the professors do not have control over the content on ggbts.edu

This meets Mr. Lumpkins’ qualifications. But I proceed further. My twitter account also contains evidence that James White is an adjunct professor at GGBTS. Again, it is a website “over which James White has no control.” And since you are unable to go back and alter content after  you have posted it (like you can on wordpress, blogger, etc…) this ought to help support my main point:

Class with @DrOakley1689 is on! Textbooks are ordered, vacation days scheduled, fees are paid… THIS IS HAPPENING!! Tue Jan 05 22:02:21 +0000 2010

sitting in room 222 with @DrOakely1689 waiting for class to start… I’m ready to apologeticsize #NewWordAlert Wed Jan 13 16:55:38 +0000 2010

Just saw an Islamic alter call in my Apologetics class. It is one of the most disgusting and vile things I’ve seen in a while #falsereligion Thu Jan 14 23:21:36 +0000 2010

http://twitpic.com/y41qr – The Qur’an is not God’s word Fri Jan 15 00:20:06 +0000 2010

image of James White's Qur'an, from http://twitpic.com/y41qr (posted on 1/15/2010)

this class is SO AWESOME!!!! Fri Jan 15 18:48:45 +0000 2010

http://twitpic.com/y4jqk – My new James White book Fri Jan 15 02:19:07 +0000 2010

Purchased at the GGBTS bookstore, with intent to get a signature!

http://twitpic.com/y4jzd – He signed it!!!!!!! Fri Jan 15 02:20:35 +0000 2010

Signature from a man who, according to Peter Lumpkins, wasn't there!

http://twitpic.com/y98ov – Me and @DrOakley1689 Sat Jan 16 01:04:49 +0000 2010

Myself with Dr. White (1/15/2010)

Class is over :( it was awesome and very helpful and i look forward to continuing to grow as an apologist Sat Jan 16 01:30:06 +0000 2010

Ok, so to recap what we have so far. Peter Lumpkins want’s a website not under Dr. White’s control which says he is an adjunct professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. I offer two. First, the GGBTS website with 3 syllabi. Second, my twitter account’s tweets from January 2010. (Technically, I offer three websites, as twitpic.com is a different site than twitter.com). Dr. White has no control over either. I post tweets of my own free will and they were posted looooong before I got it in my mind to reply to Mr. Lumpkins’ absurd assertion.