Answering Fools

There is something different about discussing religion and ideology in real life as opposed to online. In real life, people seem rather open to arguments and tend to ask thoughtful questions. On the Internet, that all changes. People seem extremely entrenched in their positions. There is a selection bias, as the only kinds of people who will engage in such "discussions" (a term I use loosely) are people who are looking to lecture, not those who are willing to discuss anything. The Internet also tends to be the shallow end of the intellectual pool. These two article should get you up to speed on this issue:

http://www.apologetics315.com/2013/08/apologetics-toolkit-advice-for.html
http://www.christianapologeticsalliance.com/2012/12/07/achilles-heel-internet-arguments/

(1) Online arguments are not a good training ground for someone who does not have experience. Stay away from them completely until you have studied deeply, and even then, don't just dive into every argument headlong.

This is the hardest piece of advice for most young people to accept, but it is one of the most important. I know how it feels to want to save the world, to stand up to the intellectual bully on Twitter or YouTube or some chat board. But if that is all you do, you will fritter away years in the intellectual shallow end; you'll be at best a playground hero, and sometimes, you'll get your nose bloodied and look like a fool. Take the long view instead. Begin training now for the serious battles, and when they come, in the mercy of God, you will be ready for them.

I can confirm this from personal experience. the people at professional conventions are much more educated and much more open to argumentation. On the Internet, you find a great deal more in the realm of invincible ignorance: i.e. people who are ignorant and immune to correction. There are also several common fallacies that I constantly see creep up.

Ad Hominem
Red Herring
Circular Reasoning
Straw Man

 Let's go through some examples of my Internet critics committing textbook fallacies. The first is from an anti-missionary forum, responding to a post I made about Matthew's statement: "And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene." My original post:
http://messianicdrew.blogspot.com/2010/10/consistency.html

Firstly, as Notz'rat is a Second Commonwealth settlement that didn’t even exist in the time of the Prophets, it is clearly impossible for any Prophet to have used the word “Nazarene” (a toponym relating to a native or inhabitant of Notz'rat). Indeed, the supposed “prophecy” quoted in Mattai 2:23 does not occur anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Many christian writers shrug this off and brush it aside by claiming it is a “lost prophecy”—but, if that is so, how did the author of “Mattai” know about it? We have ample evidence that the text of the Hebrew Scriptures we have today is unchanged since well before the 1st century CE, so that writer would have had the same text as we use today.

Others claim that Mattai 2:23 is an oblique reference to Y'shayahu 11:1,

וְיָצָ֥א חֹ֖טֶר מִגֶּ֣זַע יִשָׁ֑י
וְנֵ֖צֶר מִשָּֽׁרָשָׁ֥יו יִפְרֶה׃

“A stick will emerge from Yishai’s trunk,
and a nétzĕr [a poetic metaphor found only three other places, where it is variously translated as ‘a scion’, ‘a twig’, and ‘a sapling’] from his roots will sprout”

but this really doesn't work either because that Prophet’s words bear no resemblance to those “quoted” in Mattai 2:23.

My late Uncle R' Yoséf Barzillai therefore postulated a quite different answer to this question: he suggested that it is much more likely that the “quotation” in Mattai 2:23 was intended to refer to Shoftim 13:5....

כִּי֩ הִנָּ֨ךְ הָרָ֜ה וְיֹלַ֣דְתְּ בֵּ֗ן וּמוֹרָה֙ לֹא־יַֽעֲלֶ֣ה עַל־רֹאשׁ֔וֹ כִּֽי־נְזִ֧יר אֱלֹהִ֛ים יִֽהְיֶ֥ה הַנַּ֖עַר מִן־הַבָּ֑טֶן וְה֗וּא יָחֵ֛ל לְהוֹשִׁ֥יע אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מִיַּ֥ד פְּלִשְׁטִֽים׃

“....for see, you [will soon be] pregnant and are going to give birth to a son; no razor will ever come onto his hair [literally ‘head’] because the youth will be a Nazir to God from the womb—he is going to begin to rescue [literally ‘save’] Yisraél from the power of the P'lishtim!”

(Notice that verse’s reference to “saving”—irresistable to any christian writer!).

This constitutes a double deception, because not only (1) were those words addressed directly to Hatz'lelponi (Shimshon’s mother) and referred specifically and explicitly to her future son and nobody else, but, more importantly, (2) the word used in that verse is נָזִיר nazir (anyone who has adopted the ascetic “Nazirite” vow of abstinence specified in B'midbar 6:2-21)—which is completely unrelated to נֹצְרִי notz'ri (originally “a native or inhabitant of Notz'rat” but now used to mean “a christian”).

The two words aren’t even spelt the same way in Hebrew (the second letter of נָזִיר nazir is ז zayyin while the corresponding letter of נֹצְרִי notz'ri is צ tzaddi), although it’s easy to mislead readers who don’t know any Hebrew and make them think that the meaning of “Nazirite” is somehow connected to “Nazareth”; many christian “bible” translators even deliberately try to mislead their readers into making this mistake by writing the word “Nazirite” with a second a in place of the first i and spell it “Nazarite” to make it look more like “Nazareth”. Is there no limit to the depths christians will plumb in their efforts to fool others into accepting their disgusting, idolatrous, pagan beliefs?

 Aside from being loaded with personal (Ad Hominem) attacks, almost everything in the post is a Straw Man attack. The main Christian position on Matthew 2:23 is that it is an allusion to the Branch of Isaiah 11, which is a prophecy about the Messianic Age at the end of the world. Remember that Greek did not have quotation marks. Instead of understanding and addressing such an arugment, it begs the question by simply dismissing the idea that it can be a reference to Isaiah 11 out of hand. Everything else is an attack on a position that most apologists dealing with Jewish objections do not hold, and one that I certainly do not hold. It's quite a fallacy cocktail.

Secondly, there is an objection that there is no such thing as a midrashic fulfillment of a prophecy. That depends on what you mean by midrashic. Jewish interpreters believe that the Scriptures have layers of meaning beyond the literal or pashat interpretation.

For those reading this who do not know the terms pashat, drash and sod, these terms relate to the various levels the Jewish bible is read, PaRDeS:

* Pashat (פְּשָׁט) - the "plain" ("simple") meaning of a passage

* Remez (רֶמֶז) - "hints" implied in the text but not explicit

* Drash (דְּרַשׁ) - which is a deeper or even midrashic meaning -- often inferred from other scripture

* Sod (סוֹד) - "secret" ("mystery") meanings

Prophecies have these layers as well, which means that a given prophecy may have non-literal fulfillments in addition to a literal fulfillment. An example of a non-pashat fulfillment is the fulfillment of Isaiah. From the Jewish virtual library:

Maimonides believes that Isaiah's language is metaphorical (for example, only that enemies of the Jews, likened to the wolf, will no longer oppress them). A century later, Nachmanides rejected Maimonides's rationalism and asserted that Isaiah meant precisely what he said: that in the messianic age even wild animals will become domesticated and sweet ­tempered.

There are two other posts to which I would like to draw attention. It is a response to my post on Calvinism's Achilles Heel
http://messianicdrew.blogspot.com/2013/06/calvinisms-achilles-heel.html

The thrust of my argument is simply that Calvinism's doctrine of Irresistible Grace pretty much forces Calvinists to take the route of compatibilism, i.e. the doctrine that an action can be both causally determined and also a free act for which one bears moral accountability. My argument is that if God can compel a person to act in a certain way, and yet the person is still responsible for the choices for which they are compelled to make, then what about an act compelled by another human? Remember that the argument has nothing to do with whether God is uniquely justified in doing so. Divine responsibility is not in question here. The question is whether a human (let's call him Jack) can be considered responsible for an an act if the act is causally determined.

In your kleptomania drug example, (i) we are inclined to think that Jack would not have stolen the car had Jill not drugged him, (ii) I think we are less inclined to think Jack is not responsible and Jill has violated Jack's freedom if we change the moral value of the analogy, and (iii) we are inclined to think that Jill had no right to drug Jack. Neither of these necessarily holds in the case of God and Jack.

All three commit fallacies on some level. (i) commits a Red Herring fallacy, as it is not relevant what Jack would have done outside of being drugged.(ii) is question begging in one part, since the question "can we act in a way that is not determined by God?" is the very question my argument is addressing. The objection is also a red herring in another, since it proposes an Arminian alternative solution. (iii) is a red herring, as Jill's responsibility is not relevant to this argument.

The first objection is open to the counterexample of objective entrapment. Unlike subjective entrapment, the objective test for entrapment only tests whether the government's actions would have compelled an ordinary citizen to commit the offense. It does not matter, as far as the objective test is concerned, whether the subject would have committed the crime anyway. If the government compelled someone to commit a violation of the law, that person is considered not responsible even if he or she would have committed the crime anyway. To say otherwise is to confuse the subjective test with the objective test.

Another objection is called the Macbeth example. One can ask a question: "Who killed King Duncan?" In one sense, it was Macbeth. In another, it was Shakespeare, the author of the play. The Macbeth argument, though, ignores the suspension of disbelief ingrained in all fiction. In reality, nobody killed King Duncan, since there was no King Duncan as portrayed in the play Macbeth. When we, as the audience, assign responsibility to Macbeth, we are only doing it within a context where we pretend that the characters are real, the places are real, the events are real, and that the play was not fabricated by anyone.

For a more detailed examination, Alvin Plantinga argued in The Nature of Necessity that fictions do not literally have truth values. This is because we are not asserting propositions but exploring them. Because of this, questions like "what size are Macbeth's shoes" are malformed questions, and hence do not have answers.

The second argument asks us to suppose the Jack is a kleptomaniac. Suppose Jill slips an antidote for Jack's kleptomania into Jack's coffee without his knowledge or consent. Suppose from that drug, Jack becomes a good person. Is Jack praiseworthy? It seems so. The problem with this proposed counterexample is that it is irrelevant to my original argument.

Remember that the original question is: "Can a compelled action be a free action?" There is no compulsion regarding Jack's actions once he has been cured of his kleptomania. It seems that he is not responsible for his prior actions as a kleptomaniac. Once he is cured, he is free to steal or not to steal. He is not compelled to be a good person. He is free to decide for himself, and is therefore now responsible for his actions. This view is common in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Arminian theology, but not with Calvinist theology. Under Irresistible Grace, humans are compelled to repent and believe, and not merely free to repent and believe. That is why the second objection is a red herring.

The third objection argues that a human might be under a moral obligation not to compel people to bad actions, but God is under no obligation. That argument is irrelevant, and hence a red herring. This argument does not care about Jill's moral responsibilities. Jill could be under no moral obligations, as far as this argument is concerned. The only person whose moral obligations are in focus is Jack, and Jack alone.

The last article deals with my argument that presuppositionalism is guilty of circular argumentation, and hence begs the question. Advocates of presuppositionalism will state that circular arguments are not necessarily fallacious. That is fine if they want to believe them, so long as they can come up with some set of criteria to differentiate fallacious circular reasoning from non-fallacious circular reasoning. Without that set of criteria, and without showing how Frame, Bahnsen, and Van Til have met it, the argument that presuppositionalism is circular but not viciously circular is nothing more than a question-begging assertion.

Attempts to state that all knowledge is circular generally show the person's ignorance of Agrippa's trilemma. Specifically, it confuses circularity with being axiomatic

If we ask of any knowledge: "How do I know that it's true?", we may provide proof; yet that same question can be asked of the proof, and any subsequent proof. The Agrippa trilemma is that we have only three options when providing proof in this situation:

• The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other (i.e. we repeat ourselves at some point)
• The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum (i.e. we just keep giving proofs, presumably forever)
• The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts (i.e. we reach some bedrock assumption or certainty)

The first two methods of reasoning are fundamentally weak, and because the Greek skeptics advocated deep questioning of all accepted values they refused to accept proofs of the third sort. The trilemma, then, is the decision among the three equally unsatisfying options.

All systems of logic and mathematics are ultimately axiomatic, as any regressive or circular system would be worthless.

Worse, Presuppositionalists ignore the rules of formal debate, where both sides will work from commonly accepted beliefs and try to prove their respective sides. To beg the question is to ignore this rule, and instead ask that the very point at issue be conceded, which is illegitimate. Perhaps that is the most damning thing about presuppositionalism. It is basically to ignore the idea that one's worldview can be debated from commonly held beliefs which can function as bedrock. Without bedrock, rational dialogue is impossible. Since presuppositionalism denies this, it basically concedes that matters of faith can be debated rationally. Such a view is poison to all apologetics.

The Culture War: Part 2

Part 2 in a lecture series I delivered for a Baptist church.

Introduction

            In last week's lecture, you learned about the history of the culture war. It started when the Deists, in reaction to the religious wars, sought to undermine belief in the Christian worldview. Due to the intellectual weakening brought about by the Great Awakening revivals, Americans were unprepared to face the challenges to the Christian worldview brought about by European secularists. Today, opposition to the Christian worldview is being fueled primarily by proponents of sexual liberation. Sexual liberation is a movement which seeks to separate sex, marriage, and reproduction into three distinct, independent decisions. Moral relativism is almost wholly sexual. No one defends nuclear war, oil spills, dumping pollutants into a reservoir, insider trading, or even smoking on the idea of moral relativism. But if it has to do with sexual liberation, it is justified, sanctified, and glorified in that name.

            This is why people spend so much time and money trying to undermine the Christian worldview.  Before there was Christianity in Europe, sexual ethics were very loose. I am not going to go into detailed descriptions, but let's just say that for all the stuff that the sexual liberation movement wants, pre-Christian Europe had that and more. Abortion and infanticide were also permitted, as they were a sort of backup birth control. The secularists in America and Europe want to turn the clock back to the pre-Christian days. The question is: can we stop them, and if so, how?

What We Can Do

            The first thing we need to recognize is that we have had more than enough resources to do this. We still do. Evangelicals are 20% of the American population, and give $10 billion last year to ECFA-accredited organizations. We have the numbers and we have the money.

            We also need to understand that activity is not the same as productivity, and that evangelism is not the same as culture shaping. Billy Graham noted this when he admitted that his crusades, despite winning enormous numbers of converts, did little to affect the state of American culture. This is because evangelism and culture shaping do different things. Asking whether we should do one or the other is like asking whether you should shower or brush your teeth. It’s not an either/or decision.

            Culture shaping is different because the way it is practiced is different. For example, being a good person is quite helpful for evangelism, but not generally for culture shaping. The Nazis in Germany, the Communists in the Soviet Union, even the advocates for transgenderism and same sex marriage in the United States are not known as nice or good people, and yet they have all wielded tremendous cultural influence. Culture shaping deals with the question: from what sources do we get our information about the world? The vast majority of the public get their information from the public schools, secular universities, news media, and entertainment television. We the Evangelicals will not begin to wield significant cultural influence until        we have substantial representation in all four of these fields.

Get Informed

            The next question people will ask is: How can I make any difference at all? Recognize that you are not special. All those children's books and TV shows and movies that say "if you keep dreaming you will one day become that astronaut or rock star or whatever" are lying to you. Of course, this also means that no one else is special, either. Dr. Craig did not become the world's leading debate apologist because there is anything special about him. People tend to think that individuals like him, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, and Stephen Hawking are uniquely talented and therefore it was inevitable that they would become successful. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Talent has little to do with their success. Dr. Craig simply put more time and more effort and more sacrifice into developing his skills than anyone else did. Nine hours per day of research for a couple of decades and you too could wield Dr. Craig’s level of influence. There are enough young people in this room to completely change the course of American history. The question is: how badly do you want to make a difference and what are you willing to give up to do it?

            Before you do anything, you need to get connected with a small group. This is a prerequisite to any sort of world-changing endeavor. The counter-cult apologist James White noted that every single apologetics disaster he has ever encountered was the result of someone trying to engage skeptics without first being a member of a local church and an accountability group. The reason is that you are very vulnerable to peer pressure, even when you do not realize it. When I studied under the rabbis at the kollel, they would sometimes bring up these arguments against Christianity. On Sunday, I would attend church and occasionally mention one of these arguments to my peers. Even as the words left my mouth that same argument which seemed so devastating when I heard it seemed so trivial and weak, I wondered why I had even brought it up. The environment in which I heard the objection made all the difference as to how plausible I found it.

            The first step is really simple. Get informed. Just subscribe to a blog like Wintery Knight, who is an apologist that analyzes the news. Read an article every few days, and then politely bring his talking points when you are having conversations about the topics he discusses.

            To get even more informed, Lee Strobel's books are a great introduction to apologetics topics. The best thing is that you don't even need to read the books. All of them are available on audiobook format. Even better, if you get a library card, you can borrow these audiobooks for free, listen to them when you're driving, and then return them. Strobel goes through all the popular-level objections, so simply by reading or listening to his books, you will have an answer to almost every objection you will encounter.

            To get more informed, get the audio lectures for Biola's Apologetics Certificate program. You don't need to take the tests. just get the lectures on CD, and there are a lot of them. The idea here is that the Certificate program gives a very broad introduction to all the major areas of apologetics. Complete the lectures, and according to Craig Hazen, you will know more about religion than 90% of the public.

            Let's say that is not enough for you. You don't want to be in the top 10 percent. You want to get in the upper 1 percent. No problem. Go to the website Apologetics 315, go to the Ultimate Audio page, and download the lectures by Phil Fernandes. There are a whole lot of them. Dr. Fernandes is an articulate speaker and can get you up to speed rapidly on all sorts of apologetics issues.

            A video series you might want to check out is from the group called The Fuel Project. They outline the culture war, going through the entire history. The first video series is called Know Your Enemy. The current series in the works is called Stay Free.

            For those who want to go off the deep end in being informed, there are plenty of graduate degrees available. Biola has a Master's degree in apologetics. It takes two years, and almost all of it can be done remotely. Students of the MA in apologetics only need to travel to Biola for two weeks the first summer and two weeks the next summer. Many apologists got their start with Biola's program. Mary Jo Sharp is a famous apologist and her formal apologetics education is Biola's MA program.

            And what we need ultimately is for more young Evangelicals to dedicate their lives toward winning this culture war. This means getting advanced degrees at secular universities and then teaching worldview-oriented subjects, such as philosophy, literature, history, economics, and sociology at secular universities. The ultimate achievement is if some Evangelical who is also a diehard creationist would get a doctorate from a secular university in evolutionary biology. The Darwinists are scared to death of something like this happening. In fact, their main line of argumentation against creationists is "you do not have a respectable degree in evolutionary biology, so you don't know what you are talking about." A creationist with an evolutionary biology degree would completely undercut that argument.

Get Involved

            Get involved. And let me tell you how simple this is. The Discovery Institute is one of the chief enemies of the sexual liberation movement. They are making inroads into mainstream science that no creationist group has done in recent history. Their entire budget is only about $4 million. If every Evangelical donated $20 to the Discovery Institute, they would have an influx of 1.2 BILLION dollars. That's not $20 a month, or $20 a year. That's $20 one time in your life.

            There are other ways of getting invovled. One way is to take a group through The Truth Project. The Truth Project is a production by Focus on the Family that deals with the big questions of life. According to the Barna Research Group, only 9 percent of professing Christians have what they call a "biblical" worldview. Because of this, today's believers live similarly to non-believers. The Truth Project helps us to see how a biblical worldview would address topics like the universe, the mind, evolution, art, law, truth, and ethics. If you can get your teens to go through it, the Truth Project will help them to understand the biblical worldview so that they can discern truth from error when going off to college.

            You can also get involved in pulpit freedom Sunday. In 1954, Lyndon Johnson proposed an amendment to the tax code to clamp down on the ability of pastors to influence our nation’s politics. The order says that churches are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for elective public office. The Alliance Defending Freedom has a once-a-year event where they challenge pastors to give sermons on political issues and even on candidates. If your church gets targeted by the IRS, the ADF will mobilize its army of lawyers to fight for your church free of charge.

            Another way that people persuade others is through political campaigning. You will notice in election years, candidates will plan out their campaign so that they can maximize their impact on the important battleground states. They know that more time and more visits and more speeches will result in more influence and more persuasion. But if this is good for candidates during election years, why do we not do this for issues during non-election years?

            Note as well that we are campaigning for issues, not for political parties and not for candidates. I cannot tell you how many Christians get sidetracked into campaigning for their pet candidate rather than trying to shape the national worldview. There is a saying that great minds discuss ideas. Ordinary minds discuss situations. Lesser minds discuss people. This means that most political campaigning is for lesser minds. We need to rise above this and become great minds. This is not some sterile ideal, but has real-world implications. Campaigns around issues can have an impact on many elections, both in the present and in the future. Campaigns around candidates affect one or two elections, and that’s about it. No matter how badly a campaign is able to blow away support for John McCain or John Kerry, or Howard Dean, the effects simply do not carry over to later elections. However, changing public opinion on the issues affects everyone’s campaign. Politicians do a good job of shifting with the political winds. This is why while many candidates may hate homeschooling, nobody at this time will push to outlaw homeschooling. Twenty years ago, very few political candidates would support same-sex marriage. Today, many Republican candidates are now supporting it. If public opinion shifts on an issue, both parties will accommodate it. That is why we support issues, rather than parties.

Conclusion

            In conclusion, then, there are many things we can do in order to win back the culture. The most important thing you need to know is that everyone can make some level of difference. Everyone can do something to help us out. What’s really awesome is that because we have such large numbers, it takes very little effort for each Christian to pull his or her weight. Just donate a small amount to culture-shaping causes, read the basic apologetics books by Strobel, and be willing to engage unbelievers in polite conversation, and we can win this.

            We are already seeing the consequences of what will happen should we lose this culture war. In California, public school restrooms are now transgender. This means that any boy who declares himself to be of the female gender can use a woman’s restroom, and vice versa. Christians are already facing fines and even jail time for refusal to provide services to same sex weddings. Activists for the sexual liberation movement are trying to get traditional Christian views on sexuality to be declared as hate speech and therefore subject to legal censorship. The church will still exist. Evangelicalism in some form will still exist, except that it will fall to syncretism, which is where the church mixes Christian culture with the secular worldview. You can see this in people like Rob Bell, or even John Shelby Spong. If we lose this culture war, nearly all the churches will be culturally Christian but secularist in all the areas that affect politics, and any church that says otherwise will be viewed by the public the same way we view the Westboro Baptist Church.

            Of course, not everyone will pull his or her weight, so some of us will have to do a little more. Turn your driving time into learning time. In the next ten years, you will likely spend as much time in your car as someone spends earning a four year degree. Are you going to waste that time listening to music, the radio, sermons and the like? Or are you going to invest that time in increasing your knowledge?

            The outcome of the culture war has not yet been decided. It could go either way. The fate of American Christianity is in your hands. Don’t blame the darkness for being dark. Blame the light for not being light enough.

The Culture War: Part 1

A lecture I gave for a Baptist church on the culture war between Evangelical Christianity and the forces of secularism.

Introduction

            The United States culture today is far different than it was even a generation ago. Intellectualism is equated with unbelief. Look at the different brainiac educational programs: the Discovery Channel, the Big Think, Bill Nye, National Geographic, and the like. They are all extremely secular. When something like the Discovery Channel has something on Jesus or the Bible, it is usually something that does not support the Evangelical worldview.

            As our education goes, so do our ideologies. Darwinian biology is rampant, and infects every aspect of how Americans view life. One of the worst changes is in America’s sexual ethics. Because we are seen as evolved primates, sexual liberation is the norm. The idea of sex, marriage, and procreation being one indivisible whole is basically gone, and has been replaced with increasingly depraved pornography and the hook-up culture. No-fault divorce and the acceptance of fornication have led to record levels of children growing up in broken homes, which greatly increases their chances of becoming career criminals. Diseases are spread faster and faster, and the sex education programs in our schools are treating these diseases as a rite of passage. This is not just advanced by atheists, but also by deeply spiritual people, such as Oprah. Even Evangelicals, such as Rob Bell, are fully in line with this ethic of sexual liberation. It seems only a matter of time before same sex marriage becomes law and Evangelicals are punished for speaking out against it.

            But it doesn’t stop there, one only need to look at Europe to see what potentially awaits us. As theologically conservative Christians have continued to lose control of the main rudders of society (government, education, the news media), secularism has become increasingly aggressive in stamping out the remains of Evangelical Christianity. This is why Germany does not allow homeschooling. The supreme court of Germany stated that they prohibit homeschooling to prevent the rise of parallel religious or philosophically motivated societies. In plain English, they do not want to see anything like Christian Fundamentalism become in any way mainstream in Germany. Instead, they want to make sure that the government-run public schools ensure uniform indoctrination of the public. Sweden is even worse. Not only is homeschooling forbidden, but it is illegal for any school to teach against Darwinian biology. So if you live in Sweden, your children will be brainwashed with Darwinism whether you like it or not. And this will happen to us, too, if we lose this culture war.

            Potentially, it could get as bad for us as it was for Orthodox Judaism in the old Soviet Union. Orthodox Rabbinical Judaism had survived almost 2000 years of intense persecution by both the Church and the Muslim empire, yet neither had effectively wiped the religion out. The Bolshevik revolution came to Russia, and brought about the all-controlling State. The Communist party took over all areas of life, especially the educational institutions. Children were taught anti-religious propaganda in the schools. If the parents offered objections or counterarguments, and the kids repeated them in the schools, then the government would come to their door and send the family to the gulags to mine uranium for a few years. Repeat offenses would result in the kids getting repossessed. Within one generation, Orthodox Judaism was annihilated in the Soviet Union.

How Secularism Began

            Dr. Craig notes the beginning of secularism in the western world in Reasonable Faith. During the Protestant Reformation, the struggle between Roman Catholics and the different denominations of Protestantism led to many bloody and terrible wars. It was in the wake of these wars that the worldview of Deism began to take hold. The Deists believed that no religion was correct, and believed that religion was the cause of such massive bloodshed. As a result, the Deists undertook their great project to undermine belief in the Christian faith.

            The first step in this master plan: Philosophy, which is the one discipline that affects all other academic disciplines. The Deists’ first task was to come up with arguments against divine revelation. The Deists noticed that as science advanced, the world looked more like a machine run by inviolable laws. Therefore, no one, not even God, can act in a way contrary to these laws, so miracles are not possible. Therefore, Christianity is false. Also, they argued that because all our knowledge is based on sense experience, then we cannot know about things outside the world of sense experience. So any talk about metaphysics or about God, is simply gibberish. It’s nonsense.

            The result of this change in Philosophy led to massive changes in theology and biblical studies. Theologians had to re-construct the field of theology to accommodate the belief that we cannot know anything about the supernatural. Hence, liberal theology was born. Liberal theology is not so much about God, as it is just a form of sociology. Biblical studies had to accommodate the view that miracles do not occur. The Bible became a book not about God’s attributes and miraculous intervention throughout history, but a set of good moral tales, like Aesop’s fables. The task of biblical scholars was to demythologize the Bible. In doing so, they hoped that they would be able to preserve Christianity in some form, even if this liberal Christianity had little to do with the Christianity as practiced by the early church.

How it Hit America

            This change in European academia took time to hit American shores. Because of the separation of church and state, American academics did not have the same incentive to undermine religion as their European counterparts did. So how did America become so secularized? The answer is: through anti-intellectualism in the church. Once upon a time, the pastor was the most learned person in the community. Most of the universities were founded by church leaders in order to teach theology. This changed after the success of the Great Awakening revivals. The revival movements themselves were successes. In fact, they were so successful, that they would eventually lead to the downfall of Evangelical Christianity in America. The emotion-based evangelism, and simple preaching based on personal stories gained so many converts so quickly, that the churches emphasized that at the expense of intellectual development. As a result, many people became converted, and yet had no real knowledge of doctrine. This led to the birth of many cults, including the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York’s famous “burned over district.”

            But the rise of the cults was not the only problem. After the Civil War, the rising secularism in Europe was finally exported to America. The Enlightenment view of philosophy attacked the arguments for the existence of God and the possibility of miracles. Enlightenment biblical scholarship led scholars, particularly German scholars, to distrust the Bible as a historically accurate source. Finally, Darwinian biology also came to America, calling into question our very purpose, as well as the reliability of Genesis. It also led to an enormous rise in atheism.

            Because the revivals had so greatly weakened the churches intellectually, they were simply no match for the intellectually rigorous secularism that was threatening their very worldview. Instead of retrenching themselves intellectually, and gearing up for a war of ideas with the secularists, Christians generally abandoned the mainstream intellectual realm and became suspicious of intellectual issues altogether. Christian Fundamentalism retreated from the mainstream universities and the mainline seminaries, letting the secularists conquer them almost uncontested. Christianity retreated into a little subculture with Christian universities, Christian music, and Christian movies and entertainment. By cutting itself off from the mainstream society, Christian Fundamentalism gave up its ability to influence the majority of the American population. The anti-Christian secularists slowly took over, and were able to work the mainstream culture against the worldview of Christian Fundamentalism.

            Worse, rapturist eschatology justified this move. The popular idea at the time was that the end of the world was coming soon, and so the Christian communities sought to protect themselves from the secular influence as they waited for either the rapture or the return of Christ. This is like Americans who are in a foreign country which is undergoing a violent revolution. As the revolutionaries capture location after location, the Americans continue to retreat until they lock themselves inside the walls of the embassy, hoping that the helicopters will arrive before the embassy is overrun. The problem is, those helicopters might not be coming for another thousand years or more. If we give up the culture war, and try to isolate ourselves until the rapture arrives, we might find American Evangelicalism exterminated long before the return of Christ.

The Scopes Trial

            As Darwinism was sweeping through academia, many Christians became uneasy, and sought to keep it out of the public schools. However, there were also forces at work who were determined to force secularism on the American public, which is why the Scopes Monkey trial became the media fest that it was. The New York Civil Liberties Union wanted to force a confrontation with the creationists, so they asked for a volunteer to state that he taught evolution in an area where the law forbid doing so. The confrontation happened in the backwoods country of Tennessee, and the press turned the entire trial into a national sensation. On the side representing the creationists was William Jennings Bryan, a politician who had little training in biology, theology, biblical studies, or apologetics. On the evolution side was Clarence Darrow, who was perhaps New York’s top criminal attorney. In 100 murder cases, he had only one loss. Bryan’s real blunder was his eagerness to cross swords with Darrow. The result was a disaster. Bryan took the witness stand was absolutely demolished by Darrow. Ironically, this whole confrontation was expunged from the record, as it was irrelevant to the case. Still, the confrontation was a huge public relations victory for the secularists. Let this be a lesson to any pastor who wants to debate skeptics.

Before the Scopes trial, the strengths of Fundamentalism were in the northern and eastern section of the United States. Fundamentalism was looked upon as a conservative, businesslike, sophisticated, and urban coalition. After the Scopes trial, the image of Fundamentalism was one of ignorant, dangerous backwoods rednecks, people who must at all costs be prevented from gaining any level of political power.

The Aftermath

The aftermath of the Scopes trial was different than anyone would have expected. Fundamentalism grew quite rapidly after the trial, although this was despite the outcome, not because of it. Many bible colleges were founded, and the Fundamentalist movement gained a sizeable percentage of the American population. The problem was that Fundamentalism basically kept the adherents out of the public intellectual realm, where they could wield the most influence over the culture. The Fundamentalist movement gained large numbers, but in the areas of least cultural leverage. The effects endure to this day. Evangelical Christians compose about a fifth of the American population, and yet compose far less than a fifth of the scientific community, academics, members of the news media, and government leaders.

In the past, Fundamentalists have been able to hide themselves from atheist arguments by retreating into isolationism, living away from the liberal cities and homeschooling their children. But now, thanks to the Internet, there is no longer any place to hide. If the arguments from the unbelievers are superior to our own, then they will inevitably overcome us given enough time. We cannot run and hide for much longer.

The Light

There is hope. Dr. Craig himself is at the forefront of a movement in America that is undoing the effects of the Scopes trial. Organizations like Reasonable Faith, Biola University, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and the Discovery Institute are all working to turn the tide in this culture war, and there have been some enormous successes. The atheist philosopher Quentin Smith is scared to death over what he calls the desecularization of philosophy. While religious philosophy was dead in the first half of the 20^th century, the work of Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, and William Lane Craig finally overcame the objections of the Deists and now, the arguments for God are back on the table. The logical argument from evil, which states that God cannot co-exist with evil, which has plagued theism for over 2,000 years is now considered soundly refuted thanks to the work of one man: Alvin Plantinga. The pro-life movement is gaining tremendous momentum thanks to ultrasound. And now, ultrasound devices are becoming available on your smartphone. Thanks to the work of Liberty University, we are starting to see members of the Evangelical Right entering the news media and politics.

In The Case For a Creator, Lee Strobel talks about one of Dr. Craig’s encounters with a top Eastern European physicist, whose study of science had destroyed her belief in God. She said that now when she looks at the world, all she sees is darkness without and darkness within. After being given his dissertation on the Kalaam argument, and as she read it over a few days, she became more and more excited. She knew all the people he was quoting, and knew that he was quoting them accurately. Finally, when she returned his dissertation she announced “I now believe in God. Thank you for restoring my faith in him.” He asked the scientist if she would want to know God in a personal way. When she accepted, Dr. Craig then invited her to meet that night in a local restaurant. When they met, he had given the scientist a handwritten version of the Four Spiritual Laws tract that he and Jan had prepared earlier that day. They read through the booklet and got to the part that asks whether God is outside your life or on the throne of your life, she stopped reading because it was too personal. The next day, Dr. Craig saw that the scientist’s face was beaming with joy. She told him that she had gone into her home that night and prayed to accept Christ into her life. She took all the drugs that she had been abusing and flushed them down the toilet. Several months later, Dr. Craig met her at another convention, and she told Dr. Craig that the two most precious possessions that she had were her New Testament and four spiritual laws tract that Dr. Craig had given her.

The question is: is this going to last, or will it be a flash in the pan? I propose that we will determine the answer to that question. Next week, we will get to work on what we can do about this culture war. How is it being fought today, and how can we help? What can we do to win this fight?