Responding to Tim Keller's "Making Sense of God" Talk

The other day one of my former pastors who I am still friends with posted the following video of Tim Keller giving a talk at Google to give an overview of his new book "Making Sense of God".  He specifically asked his non-believing friends if we'd like to have a discussion about it.

I obliged, but it ended up being a 1500 word response and I was pretty happy with it, so I've decided to post it here on my blog.

For reference, here's the video.  My response below the fold only covers the main talk, not the Q&A.

Countering the Moral Argument Part 2: Responding to William Lane Craig

Note: What follows is the script for my YouTube video on Countering the Moral Argument Pt 2.  Keep reading below for the transcript!

Once again I’m rather surprised to see that apologist William Lane Craig has deigned to respond to my videos again in his podcast.  What I am more surprised to see is how Craig could so blatantly either ignore my arguments entirely or misconstrue my objections when attempting his own response.  To be fair to Craig in some cases his misconception could be attributed to how I worded things, but in other cases he even states a position that I explicitly argued against in my video, without even mentioning the objections I made against that position. 

Since this is a counter-response, I’m including links in the description box to my original video and website where you can listen or read my arguments, as well as link to William Lane Craig’s website where you can download his podcast and give it a listen or re ad the transcript.

That said lets go through Craig’s responses to my objections to the moral argument.

An Atheistic Master Class Video on Counter Apologetics

Not too long ago I posted about cheering on Jeff Lowder in his debate with Christian apologist Frank Turek. The debate hasn't been made available yet, but Jeff had prepared so much material for the debate that he knew he couldn't fit it all in.  

Not wanting his work to go to waste, Jeff took the slides he created and then created a nearly two hour and thirty minute video going through all of the material refuting Frank Turek's book "Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case".  

Jeff hits at least twenty arguments in this video, and he hits them hard.  He also exposes quote mined texts used by apologists of biologists and atheist philosophers by showing where the quotes are being used in a misleading way (ie. James Rachels), or where the quotes aren’t relevant or are cherry picked (ie. Richard Dawkins).

While the material here is based on Turek's book, it's really a complete walk through of philosophically rigorous refutations to the kind of arguments you'll hear from just about any apologist. 

This video is an Atheistic Master Class in how to answer apologetics. If you want to learn how you should respond to arguments, then you need to watch this. 

The main problem is that this is an extremely comprehensive and rigorous video.  As such, I took the time to go through and provide an outline of what is covered and where it is in the video so that you can digest it in bite sized chunks if you wanted.

Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case - See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/10/01/the-victims-of-christian-apologetics/#sthash.9S5vtD69.dpuf

The first 10 Minutes are a run through Jeff’s "VICTIM" arguments showing that Value, Induction, Causality, Time, Information & Intentionality, Morality are assumed by Christian apologetics, not explained by it.

After that Jeff switches to answering the arguments put forward in Turek's book. Below is the argument being answered, the time stamp, and a link to that point in the video.

Responses to apologetic arguments

1. Causality/Kalam – 10:43 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=10m43s
2. Causality/Fine Tuning – 28:55 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=28m55s
3. Reason/Laws of Logic – 34:28 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=34m28s
4. Reason/Applicability of Math – 45:04 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=45m4s
5. Reason/Free Will – 54:37 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=54m37s
6. Information/Origin of Life – 1:02:19 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h2m19s
7. Information/Epigenetic Information (ie. argument against naturalistic evolution) – 1:20:58 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h20m58s
8. Information/Intentionality – 1:23:15 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h23m15s
9. Morality – 1:23:45 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXWTc6-toDo
10. Morality/Implications of Atheist Morality – 1:51:31 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h51m31s
11. Morality/Laws requiring Law Giver – 2:01:37 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h1m37s
12. Evil – 2:02:43 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h2m43s
13. Evil/Examples of Apologetics committing the Fallacy of Understated Evidence – 2:06:43 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h6m43s
14. Science/Science Presupposing God – 2:16:10 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h16m10s

Overall the video is fantastic. It has some audio level issues, but in terms of content it is completely spot on.  

Bravo Jeff!