RC Talk - The Official Blogs of Ratio Christi Chapters

In the bible, the books of Acts and Luke were written by the same person (see the first few verses of each book). Both include very, very large amount of historical details that can be independently verified with secular sources outside the Bible. Below is a partial list.

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by Meridith Cheek
Ratio Christi alum

We have all had those moments that remind us just how big God is. Sometimes it happens while standing outside at dusk, engulfed in the beauty of a warm sunset. Sometimes, though, it happens when, through a series of perfectly coordinated events, we see very clearly God’s hand at work. In those moments we remember that although we have a part to play, the plan is not ours. The men and women who have been instrumental in Ratio Christi’s development have shared a similar feeling since the beginning. It is nothing short of the providence of God that has gently guided each of this young organization’s steps, enabling it to experience nearly 500% growth in the first nine months of independent operation. These leaders are faithfully playing their part and have been continually amazed at the vastness of God’s plan.

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Today many areas of our culture reject logic and reason. In the name of tolerance and pluralism many people have no trouble with maintaining that contradictory truth claims can be true. We also have a case where the philisophical underpinnings of our system are crumbling. Few people study the reasons why we believe what we do, so the historical beliefs are being lost, including religious and secular beliefs.

Even in philosophy, after some of the modern problems in epistemology, we have a widespread belief that there is no foundation for knowledge. It seems that clinical skepticism will rise (a term I use to distinguish it from popular skepticism, a la the popular skeptical magazines, which are only skeptical of certain things).

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From the Prologue of Book Three (Providence) of Contra Gentiles by Thomas Aquinas, written some 700 years ago, comes a message telling us why every good thing is from above.

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I attended my first meeting(s) of the Evangelical Philosophical Society in San Francisco and Berkeley this month. This is actually TWO tremendous events for apologists. First, there is the day time Annual Meeting of EPS held in conjunction with the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in San Francisco. The EPS track at the day time event had some of the best lectures and scholarly presentations that I have ever been to. Then there was the annual EPS Apologetics Conference held during the evenings in Berkeley. I must admit, I was a little confused about how this all worked before I went, but remember I am a pretty simple minded former politician.

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Thanks to EPS and Biola for providing a wonderful Apologetics Conference.  It was a true joy to be there, and we enjoyed meeting all the students who stopped by our table.  For those of you who signed up as being interested, you’ll be receiving an email from berkeley@ratiochristi.org soon.  If you weren’t able to sign up at the table, but are interested in helping us start up, feel free to send us an email.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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The Vertical Cosmological Argument has various forms and is rather conceptual, but can be described as:

    1. Everything in the universe is contingent (they could “not exist”).
    2. All contingent things need an ongoing cause to sustain them.
    3. Therefore the universe needs an ongoing cause to sustain it.

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All are welcome to the RC/WSU Open House, Thursday December 1, from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm in 103 Rands House (the Rands House first floor conference room), 5229 Cass.

  - Learn about the new Ratio Christi apologetics club at Wayne State.

  - Discuss the recent "God Debates" that were viewed in the Bernath Auditorium

  - "Meet the Apologist" and consider topics for upcoming discussion

  - Consider becoming involved in the leadership of RC/WSU.

Refreshments will be provided. See you at 3:30 on December 1!

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In the the book Who Really Cares — America’s Charity Divide Arthur C. Brooks has published the results of research done comparing beliefs with charitable giving. According to Brooks’ research, the following is true:

“The churchgoing woman will be 21 percentage points more likely to make a charitable gift during the year than the non-churchgoer, and she will be 26 points more likely to volunteer. Furthermore, she will tend to give $1,383 more per year to charity, and to volunteer on 6.4 more occasions.”

and Brooks continued,

“People who pray every day (whether or not they go to church) are 30 percentage points more likely to give money to charity than people who never pray (83 to 53 percent). And people who say they devote “a great deal of effort” to their spiritual lives are 42 points more likely to give than those devoting “no effort” (88 to 46 percent). Even a belief in beliefs themselves is associated with charity. People who say “beliefs don’t matter as long as you’re a good person” are dramatically less likely to give charitably (69 to 86 percent) and to volunteer (32 to 51 percent) than people who think that beliefs do matter.”

Now when I read this, I thought of William J. Federer’s work American Quotations (CD ROM version), which is an extremely lengthy (!) collection of quotations from throughout American history giving the positions of American leaders on religion, given in their own words without comment. Federer quotes the constitutions from most, if not all, of the 50 states, as they were founded. What was interesting to me was that the state constitutions, as originally written, included freedom of religion for everyone, but specifically rejected atheists from being on juries. I can only assume it was because they felt that people can believe in God any way they pleased, but didn’t want people deciding the fate of court cases in the current world when they don’t believe in a life after this one that includes a final judgment for one’s actions while here. If people don’t believe their maker will require of them an eternal price for their current actions, then those people were viewed as not having a motivation to be trusted on juries.

Of course, our society today views this as quaint and outmoded. Many years of shrill complaints from atheists and secularists have told us that they can be fair, even though they don’t believe in natural law, don’t believe in eternal judgment, and do believe in relativistic morals. After all these years of being told this, we’ve come to believe them. Unfortunately, Brooks’ research into charitable giving casts a large shadow on the ability of people to give a hoot about people in the here and now if they don’t believe they’ll see them again in the great by-and-by.

And my anecdotal experience proves this out. I have yet to see an “Atheist General Hospital” but I’ve seen plenty of hospitals named Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, St. Luke’s, St. Jude’s, and on and on. As far as I know, there are no Atheist Prison Fellowship organizations or Atheist Soup Kitchens, for all those are run by the Christians. I’ve never seen anything such as a Darwin Center for To Enhance the Reproduction of the Poor, Weak, and Infirm.

According to Brooks’ hard, cold, empirical data, people who believe that this life is all that matters tend to only focus on themselves in this life. This should be no surprise to us.

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I’m going to try an experiment. It’s not a very well-thought out experiment, so I’ll admit up front that if it blows up in my face, I’ll look a bit sheepish. But it won’t be the first time, so here goes.

Here’s the background: It strikes me that a common tactic of the atheists and skeptics is to throw out a criticism, then sit back and wait for the theists to respond, then they throw out another criticism. This makes a nice fun game, if you’re an atheist or skeptic. It turns us apologists into a duck in a shooting gallery: every time someone shoots, we change directions, and they have fun watching us respond. When we give a reasonable answer, we never hear, “sorry about that, I guess I was wrong.” No, all we hear is another criticism. Since most of the criticisms are just that…….criticisms, and not positive cases for atheism or skepticism, I’m going to issue this challenge. Since it’s my challenge, I can make the rules any way I want. (Hey, if you don’t like it, make up your own challange……we get them thrown at us all the time.) Here’s the rules:

1. Come up with a positive case for your view, be it atheism, skepticism or whatever. I want a positive proof for your view, not an opinion about mine.

2. You can’t use alleged errors in the Bible. Even if they were there (which they aren’t), there are plenty of negative criticisms of the Bible in the world. Again, I’m looking for positive proof for your view, not another weak statement like “You Christians can’t explain XYZ" or "The Bible is wrong because XXX."

3. You can’t use the moral character, intelligence, or crimes of theists. (those shouldn’t have anything to do with a positive proof for your view.)

4. I won’t accept any logical fallacies, such as ad hominem statements against the other side (that means no arguments that depend on name-calling, guilt by association, self-refuting arguments, etc.).

Now with those simple rules, I think I’ve taken away the favorite hobby-horses that most of you use to have fun shooting at us. This challenge is about presenting a logical or empirical proof for why atheism, skepticism, or naturalism should be believed. The burden of proof is on you.

But I warn you in advance: all the tools you guys have been using since Hume, Freud, and Feurbach will cut both ways.

(btw, an excellent and similar post by Greg Koukle can be found here. )

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