CADRE Comments

The old saying is that it's not polite to discuss religion and politics. However, the problem isn't discussing these issues, it has become discussing these issues politely. Regardless of whether it is religion or politics being discussed, it often degrades into an exchange of insults using the coarsest language that the parties can dredge up to throw at each other. Discussions between Christians and atheists have turned every bit as ugly as the discussions between Republicans and Democrats. Certainly, since I began engaging in Christian apologetics the conversations have certainly become much more contentious and the volume level has risen sharply. In the area of religion, I personally put much of the blame for the negative turn on the New Atheists and their take-no-prisoners approach to attacking religion and religious belief. After all, it is hard to have a calm, lucid conversation with someone when their position (as advocated by people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Har...

Today, December 30, 2009, Hugh Hewitt will air a previously recorded debate between Michael Shermer , the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University, and Greg Koukl , Founder and President of Stand to Reason, author of Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air with Francis J. Beckwith, and Precious Unborn Human Persons, and adjunct professor in Christian apologetics at Biola University. If you tune in today, the debate can be heard here by clicking the "Listen Live" link . The debate will be broadcast from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm Eastern time and 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm Pacific time. (I know that those of you in the Central and Mountain times are smart enough to figure out what that translates to for your local time.) Greg has been dropping hints about som...

Back in late October, author David Marshall was kind enough to do a correspondence interview with us while he was on a research and speaking tour of Britain. One of his interview segments was on the topic of "The New Atheism" (in relation to a book he published last year on the topic). As it happens, during his trip he was invited to debate Barry Duke (editor of The Freethinker , the world's oldest continuous sceptical publication) on Premier Radio in London, moderated by host Justin Brierly. (Premier Radio is a popular Christian station in Britain.) David thought the interview went pretty well, and appreciated the civil and lively discussion. I haven't gotten around to listening to it myself--this is kind of a standing reminder to myself that I want to do so {g}--but interested readers can beat me to it, if you haven't done so already, by following this link and scrolling down to "The New Atheism". Be aware that the link is currently at the bottom of ...