The Atheist Jew sent me this for all of you to “critique”. When one crazy evangelist dies, another just fills in his place. Ravi Zacharias says no atheist can defeat him in debate and he always wins the argument. That’s because no matter who really has the better argument, he declares himself the winner despite his lack of actual evidence, just like a typical fundie.
Who is Ravi Zacharias you might ask? Jeffrey J. Lowder writes: “Ravi Zacharias, the former Hindu-turned-Christian apologist, is President of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, an organization dedicated to “presenting the credibility of Christianity as the only reasonable option by which people should live.”
Ravi Zacharias says,
“It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one’s private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation’s moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? …. The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil.”
Well, we have a President who many evangelicals believe holds higher moral standards and look where that got us.
I am sure you will have a lot to say to dispute this video. It was very difficult for me to watch the whole thing without my blood boiling. Zacharias and others like him attempt to intellectualize absurd religious beliefs and are maddening the way they pompously proclaim victory while offering no evidence except his bullshit rhetoric. Apologists are the most annoying to debate because they are so “smug” in the way they try to woo us with their “intellect”.
2 comments:
I reviewed one of Zacharias's books here, where he made similar arguments.
I remarked that it isn't the conjunction of God and evil that skeptics believe to be incompatible. It is the supposed reality of evil and a God that has the properties of omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness. Theodicy is a major topic in theology, and Zacharias does not represent his side carefully.
In metaphysics Zacharias makes other interesting errors. He implicitly asserts that all propositions require an explanation. Kant historically was the master at this, asking "how is p possible" when 'p' was a substantive noun. David Stove, one of those rare people who was an empiricist, a conservative, and an atheist, examined how silly this procedure is by examining a modern Kantian, Robert Nozick.
Well, I would agree with his method in that you first have to establish that there is a first cause for the other arguments to work. If there is no first cause then there's no need for God to explain the design in the universe. It's entirely possible that there is a rational order that pervades the universe without a God. Also, morality can be explained simply by saying that we made it up or other possible explanations. The question for me is: Can we establish that there was a First Cause? Through a careful study of the issue I've come to the conclusion that I don't know. Moreover even if you could it still doesn't establish the God of the Bible as the First Cause. In fact Genesis chapter One is in direct contradiction with the fossil record.
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