Truth Telling in Science - an audio lecture by Denis Alexander

Quotes and comments;
- you'll have to scroll down the page to find the lecture.
- in this lecture you'll hear (inadvertently) why christianity in England has virtually died. In it you'll hear a professed christian celebrate Darwinism. (The english are obsessed with Darwin; and seem to think evolution has to be true because Darwin was English :-) Although I'm sure he doesn't intend to do so, he makes it obvious why almost no one in Britain is a bible believing christian.

1. - you may not be able to believe this but Alexander says; "Darwin's idea brought a coherence to facts that beforehand had been incoherent.'' How can a christian utter such a bizarre statement? (Has he never heard of creation? of Linnaeus? ect. ) Apparently he doesn't see the biblical doctrine of creation as a unifying idea. (In fact it's darwinism that's introduced incoherence into the Humanities; with it's insistence man be treated as an animal.)
He then goes on to quote with approval the idea darwinism is the greatest unifying idea in history. Maybe he'll forgive me if I disagree. The biblical idea of creation was and is the greatest unifying idea there is. Nothing else comes even remotely close. Materialist evolution cannot in any way account (even if it were true) for human experience. In fact it makes a mockery of human experience. It cannot account for free will, truth, love, justice, morality, ethics, rationality, etc.
When one hears presentations like this one has no difficulty in understanding why christianity has collapsed in britain. The so called apologists for christianity are mainly 'Liberal' if not apostate. They fail to understand the implications of the doctrine of creation. They don't seem to understand that Darwinism is the death of biblical chrisianity. The masses who have deserted the churches understand; even if professors like Alexander do not.


2. Perhaps I'm being too hard on him; you'll have to decide for yourself. In the end I guess it all comes down to whether you think evolutionary theory is true, or whether you think it's a colossal hoax.

The Fallacy of Anthropological Reconstructions - a short piece by Arthur Custance

Comments;
- this piece is taken from his book Genesis and Early Man. Although it's somewhat outdated the book is well worth reading. Among other things, it shows why the reconstructions of so called ape men and stone age men are utterly worthless.
- I've included this short piece because I'm pretty sure I saw the lead illustration in one of my textbooks from schooldays. (This is the one where a whole family of 'ape men' is constructed out of the tooth of a wild pig :-)

Intelligent Design: Yesterday's Orthodoxy, Today's Heresy - audio lecture by William Dembski

Comments;
- you may have to scroll down the page a bit. This is one of five presentations available. (2003)
- my favorite talk was # 5. (The design revolution)

1. In lecture 5. Dembski quotes R. Lewontin (in a review of carl sagan's last book) as saying; "we must not let the divine foot in the door... our materialism must be absolute."
- This is ludicrous of course; as no one (no one) lives in absolute conformity with materialism... certainly not Prof. L.
For example; he's not being a materialist when he says "we must not..." or when he says,"our m. must be...'' Here he's making moral and ethical pleas; which make no sense in a world of matter. (Doesn't he see this?) ie. you don't say to a rock, "you must not move... you must stand firm...''
Surely he knows full well materialism cannot be applied to the most important aspects of our lives... yet he comes out publicly with nonsense like the above. (The great game Materialists play is to pretend we can divide the world up into the material and the human; but if M. were true this would be absurd.
The fact no one even pretends to apply Materialism to our human lives is all the evidence we need the theory is woefully inadequate. (Or should we be more concerned with rocks than with people?) When you cut through all the b.s. the M. is saying this; ''we can account for matter perfectly... but can't begin to account for human beings.''
It can only be an animus against theism that can explain why anyone can be content with such a bankrupt view of the world. Anyone 'neutral' person (if such existed) would see clearly that this failure is conclusive evidence the theory (M.) is wrong. Any theory that can't account for human experience must be rejected; even if only on psychological grounds. (ie. anyone who thinks so has to have a warped personality; even if it's culturally induced rather than an individual pathology.)
Materialism says plainly; people don't count... human experience doesn't count. This is inhuman at best; anti-human at worst. (Intellectual or philosophical pathology.) In Materialism we see the descent from science into scientism. We see the scientist so obsessed with the material world (objects) he loses sight of the human.

Truth and Myth: Unlocking the Lord of the Rings - audio lecture by Joseph Pearce

Comments;
- on the same page you'll find 3 additional audio resources.
1. "Creator, Creation and Creativity: Understanding Tolkien's and Lewis' Philosophy of Myth"
2. Forum with Joseph Pearce, Russell D. Moore, James Parker, and Jim Orrick—Part 1
3. Forum with Joseph Pearce, Russell D. Moore, James Parker, and Jim Orrick—Part 2

Dawkin's delusion; Peter williams dicusses 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins. This is an audio presentation (in four parts) from Culture Watch

Comments;
- you might have to scroll down the page a bit.
- in a recent issue of the english Spectator (a wretched magazine) somebody had listed the GD as their book of the year. People apparently don't understand that the very worldview Dawkins propounds makes it absurd for him to make moral pronouncements. If the bizarre scenario (of selfish genes) that he propounds were true morality and ethics (not to mention free will) would be ruled out. In terms of his own wview he has no basis for making any moral judgments of any kind. His moral pronouncements against christianity in fact rely on christianity to make any sense; as they can't be based on his brand of evolutionary theory. Only if there is objective, public truth can his arguments make any sense; but his wview rules these things out. He can't in any way argue consistently in terms of his own stated beliefs. If man is 'ordered' by selfish genes our lives are absurd, and rationality is lost.

Who taught Adam to speak? An essay by Arthur C. Custance

Comments;
- Arthur Custance was a creationist writer from a generation ago. All of his books and papers are online at Custance.org. He was a extremely knowledgeable scholar, and his writings are full of delightful details, quotes, and insight.

Christian and modern art. An audio lecture by Jerram Barrs

Comments;
- scroll down the page a bit for the lecture. It's one of two on art, and part of a series of 20 lectures on Francis Schaeffer.

On Worshipping the Creature Rather Than the Creator - By Dr. Greg Bahnsen

Comments;
- this article (of 40 pages) demonstrates the vital importance of the doctrine of creation. In my opinion few christians seem to have any solid understanding of what creation means to all areas of life, including the arts and sciences.

Borat: a cultural analysis. Apologetics.com Radio recently had a program dealing with the movie Borat. It's avaible to listen to or download here.

Comments;

1. As you may be aware this movie mocks various things in the U.S. and in the christian church. (Various hijinks going on in a Pentecostal church, etc.)
- as usual with mainstream media this movie leaves liberals alone and concentrates its venom on what we might call the 'less privileged' classes. (ie. Where are the exposes of wall st. bankers? of what goes on behind closed doors of courtrooms? government departments? etc.)
- Contrary to liberal mythology however, it's not just 'fundamentalists' and pentecostals who do strange stuff. Liberal christians do many things that are more absurd (and worse) than rolling in the aisles, but these are usually on the level of words and bureaucratic decisions.
- 'Death of god' theology was every bit as aberrant as the 'laughing outbreaks' of Toronto. (Can there be anything more comical than modernist theologians that don'tt believe god exists?)
- the real (or bigger) joke in the church is ordaining women; not faith healing. (One at least has some biblical warrant; while the other has none.)
- the real joke is 'baptizing' homosexuality, not speaking in tongues. Marrying homosexuals is more absurd than anything the pentecostals have done. This is the real pony show.
- the real joke is claiming communism is the real christianity; not encouraging people to engage in 'holy laughter.' One is relatively harmless, while the other is deadly.
- and of course the biggest joke of all is people who reject all of the orthodox doctrines of the church but insist on calling themselves christians.

2. I await the film maker's new effort; which apparently will be an expose of working class Israeli society. (Hopefully he'll follow that up with a movie about muslim life in London or Palestine.)

A Wider case for God - Peter Williams has made this book of his available free online at his website. Look in the book section; under free books.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'Kai Nielsen has argued that: "for somebody living in the twentieth century with a good philosophical and a good scientific education, who thinks carefully about the matter. . . it is irrational to believe in God."
- I can't see that a materialist has any sound basis for calling anything irrational. Materialism is the denial of mind and therefore of reason. It's therefore intellectual fraud for materialists to call belief in god irrational. Nothing could be either rational or irrational if materialism were true.

2. 'Christian Philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga... have argued that belief in God can be ‘basic’ in the same way that trust in the general reliability of our memory and other cognitive systems is ‘basic.’
- If it's forumuated correctly I believe this argument has merit; ie. "since man is made by god to live in god's world it is reasonable to assume that if a sane person believes x to be true, there is warrant to think it actually is true."
- Richard Dawkins? has mocked this idea with one of his ridiculous examples (he's the king of bad illustrations) something like; "If I believe in pink elephants, that means they exist." (He used a more absurd example.) He utterly fails to understand the argument. (what's new?) The argument stipulates a person believe x to be true. Dawkins doesn't believe his illustration is true. He's so used to lying he apparently gets confused when asked for a true belief :-)
- the argument comes in 2 version; the generic and the christian. (I don't think the generic version works.) Certainly Dawkins has no reason to believe that even his true beliefs are valid; ie. since he believes he's an automaton being manipulated by 'selfish' genes. Of course the question with dawkins is always; "is he really this clueless or is he only pretending to be." In any event, in an intellectual debate one has a right to take people at their word. There are certain risks in adopting the rhetorical strategy of pretended ignorance. Some people think he's faking it, while I think he truly is grossly ignorant of philosophy; unable to follow simple arguments. In fact I'd say that what Richard Dawkins knows about philosoophy you could write with a crayon on the back of Paley's watch.

Poet and Prophet: The Actuality of Dostoevsky for Our Time - audio lecture by Jurgen Spiess

Christianity in the science fiction of Cordwainer Smith: an article by James Jordan

Quotes and comments;
- although I found this article interesting, I would highly recommend reading some Cordwainer Smith before reading it. (I find that if you read what a story's (supposedly) about before you read it it's hard to get that view of the story out of your head. It's also more fun to read a story for yourself, before you find out what other people think about it.)

The role of belief in Modern Cosmology - John Byl

Reading Narnia with CS Lewis; audio lecture by Leland Ryken. You can find this lecture at Sermonaudio.com