Can You Defend the Christian Worldview? Part 1

The Christian debaters I had the privilege of watching a couple weeks ago did! I blogged previously about Debate Summit 2010 at Grace Community Church in Washington Court House, Ohio. The first debate focused on the issue of morality and its foundations, and featured Dr. Ed Buckner (president, American Atheists) and Pastor Jay Lucas (author, Ask Them Why). Jay did an amazing job defending the Christian worldview and showing the problems with the atheist worldview.

One of the first things Pastor Lucas did was tell everyone that Dr. Buckner was actually a theist (someone who believes in the existence of God). Dr. Buckner seemed surprised, but as Jay pointed out, Romans 1:18–22 makes it clear that God has made Himself known through what He has created but men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Jay went on to say that Ed would bring out different events from the Bible and judge them as right or wrong to supposedly support Ed’s idea that the Bible should not be used as a foundation for morality. However, Jay warned us that Ed had no basis upon which to judge the Bible. According to the atheist worldview, there is no God, and thus no absolute authority. This leads to the conclusion that each person must decide for himself right and wrong. So even though Ed would judge the Bible, he had no objective foundation for judging it.

Ed did talk about several different biblical events (many taken out of context) and then said that morality has evolved over time. Jay pointed out that evolution does not provide an objective foundation for morality, and if it is evolving, morality can change over time. For example, murdering someone may not be acceptable in our society today, but who is to say that over time as we evolve this may not be acceptable in the future. Ed indicated that he hoped crimes like murder and robbery would never be viewed as acceptable. The problem for Ed is that he has no basis for stating that murder and robbery are always wrong. After all, in his worldview, morality is just the product of evolution—and if that is the morality (murder and robbery acceptable) that “evolves,” then there is no basis for saying it is wrong. The Christian worldview, however, provides a basis for saying murder and robbery is wrong no matter what age we are live in (Exodus 20:13,15).

I will write more about the debate on Thursday, so stay tuned. Tomorrow I leave for Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the True Woman 2010 Conference. I hope to see you there.