Reports on Dr. William Lane Craig’s Journey Through New Zealand
Wellington, 11th June, 2008
Excellent meeting. The Central Baptist Church was reasonably full (about 150 people). The main topic of his talk was how without God, life, mankind and the entire universe lose their meaning, value and purpose. He illustrated this with the quotes of a number of atheist philosophers, noting that in practice these same atheists could not live on the basis of this lack of meaning, value and purpose but assumed values that their own beliefs provided no basis for. Craig noted some of the attempts to provide meaning to an atheistic universe and how they are either logically inconsistent or simply self delusional. Craig stressed that his point in the talk was primarily to show the crucial importance of the question of whether God exists or not rather than at this stage proving that the Biblical concept of God is correct, though he briefly alluded to some of the reasons for his belief in the question and answer session at the conclusion of his talk in which he also gave his testimony of how he came to faith in God.
Wellington, 14th June, 2008
Interview on Kim Hill’s morning radio program. The interview started well, but then went off on a tangent. Podcast available at Radio NZ’s website.
Palmerston North, 15th June, 2008
Three church services today. About 400 people each at the two morning services at Central Baptist Church. Excellent talks on the rise of theism within the discipline of philosophy since the “Death of God” in the 60s. Some cosmology and fine-tuning thrown in, along with powerful historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Apparently this was recorded so MP3s here in due course.
About 800-1,000 people, almost all young people, at the CCC service in the evening. Hymn sung to rock music (How Great Thou Art)!!! Talk on “Does Suffering Disprove the Existence of a Good and Powerful God?” 30 minutes of Q&A. Apparently this was recorded so MP3s may be available sometime, somewhere.
Auckland Debate
See: http://mandmandmandm.blogspot.com/2008/06/battle-of-bills-review-of-craig-cooke.html
Tauranga Meetings to come…
http://tauranga.thinkingmatters.co.nz/Announcements.aspx
Here is a fascinating article by William Lane Craig explaining why children should be killed if they were brought up in the wrong religion.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5767
Steven, where in the article does Craig say “children should be killed if they were brought up in the wrong religion”? Please provide a quote. Thanks.
Steven, I know little about molinism. however, if you really want to engage with the ideas, I can point you to others who do know about it.
[...] Craig’s work on the arguments for God’s existence, understanding God’s knowledge of the future, the historicity of the resurrection and other issues have had a significant impact within the academic world (a good overview of some of his articles can be found here). He is not only a distinguished philosopher, but a renown evangelical theologian and apologist. While some of us here may disagree with a few of his peripheral theological positions, he is a fine thinker and a servant of Christ who deserves enormous respect. And given that New Zealand, very rarely, sees Christian thinkers of his depth of scholarship and experience on our shores, it is indeed exciting to have him here (for reports from earlier events of Craig’s NZ tour: Christian News New Zealand has a page set aside here). [...]
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