Credible Faith with Dr. Paul Daniel Larson - August 2015

Hello, Everyone!!!

Me at the Seattle Space Needle

I recently met with Dave McGrew, worship pastor of Grace Church, and read my talk to him on a positive historical argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. The plan was to preview the talk with Dave and then share it with a group of people who attend Grace church. Dave was impressed with the talk on the whole and thought that much of the content was great, though he rightly observed that some parts would be better addressed in a different talk. In addition to the talk that I shared with Dave, I had already started work for a talk on whether other theories can explain away the resurrection and a talk on scientific or philosophical objections to the resurrection. I will put much of that material into one of those other two talks. That will require some rework for the talk that I already had, but my hope is that the other two talks and the rework of the talk that I presented to Dave will be done by this time next month. At that point, the only two academically oriented resurrection talks left would be on the existence, life, and death of Jesus in non-Christian sources, and on the question whether the resurrection accounts of the four gospels conflict. In addition to those academic talks, I would like to have a couple messages that I could preach at churches, ones that would not be so academic nor so demanding mentally for listeners. I have continued (and will continue) with fundraising and will also be reaching out to pastors and campus ministers once I have the three first resurrection talks completed.

Joal, Toby, and Silas sit with Daddy Deke

On the family side, the situation is largely the same. We continue to blessed to have my brother Eric, Jill, and their boys here in the home. Recently, all except Silas were out on or in the lake, and eventually, Eric started picking up Joal or Toby, jumping off the dock, and then throwing Joal or Toby still further out into the water when Eric jumped off the dock or was already in the air. The boys loved it. They move into their home in October and/November.



Sincerely,
Paul
Paul

Tuesday, August 18, 2015


Rational Reflections (R<sup>2</sup>) Blog

Quote of the Month

Two quotes from the God and Evolution book that was edited by Jay Richards:

Modern science was born of the twin convictions that the universe was the rational product of a rational mind, and that this maker was not bound at every turn by the deductive syllogisms of an earlier age, meaning that the best way for a scientist to determine how the Creator did things is to turn to nature and carefully scrutinize it. (p. 116)

In Ayala's view, right-thinking Christians need to "acknowledge Darwin's revolution and accept natural selection as the process that accounts for the design of organisms, as well as for the dysfunctions, oddities, cruelties, and sadism that pervade the world of life. Attributing these to specific agency by the Creator amounts to blasphemy." Charging Christian opponents of Darwin's theory with blasphemy may seem unduly harsh. Ayala therefore attempts to soften this charge by granting that those who oppose evolution and support special creation "are surely well-meaning people who do not intend such blasphemy." Ayala's concession (and condescension) here is to the intellectual feebleness, as he sees it, of those who cling to the old naïve creationist outlook and have yet to wrap their minds around the stark truth of evolution. In any case he doesn't retract the charge of blasphemy: "This is how matters appear to a biologist concerned that God not be slandered with the imputation of incompetent design."

In turning the table on special creation, however, Ayala has in fact turned it 360 degrees. The table is back to where it was originally, and the problem he meant to shift to special creation confronts him still. Ayala worries that a God who creates by direct intervention must be held accountable for all the bad designs in the world. Ayala's proposed solution is therefore to have God set up a world in which evolution (by natural selection and random variation) brings about bad designs. But how does this address the underlying difficulty, which is that a creator God has set up the conditions under which bad designs emerge? In the one case, God acts directly; in the other, indirectly. But a Creator God, as the all-powerful source of all being, is as responsible in the one case as in the other.

We never accept such shifting of responsibility in any other important matter, so why here? What difference does it make if a mugger brutalizes someone with his own hands (that is, uses direct means) or employs a vicious dog on a leash (that is, uses indirect means) to do the same? The mugger is equally responsible in both cases. The same holds for a creator God who creates directly or indirectly by evolution. Creation entails responsibility. The buck always stops with the Creator. That's why so much of contemporary theology has a problem not just with God "intervening" in nature but also with the traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo, which makes God the source of nature. (pp. 95-96).





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