Category: Announcements

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Introducing Worldview 101: A Christian Worldview Training Camp for Teens

By Jim Spiegel

Worldview 101As a professor at a Christian college, I spend a lot of time training young people to think Christianly—building students’ knowledge of Christian doctrine and sharpening their critical thinking skills.  Many of my students received solid worldview training prior to college, but a disturbingly high number of others did not.  This makes me wonder:   How much better off would they be now in terms of their Christian faith and obedience if they had been better grounded in a Christian worldview?  And where would their faith be now if they had not attended a Christian college like the one where I teach?  I suppose the alarming statistics about the percentages of students who lose their faith in college might suggest an answer to the latter question.

In any case, whether a young person attends a Christian college or State U., I believe it is crucial that they are provided a solid foundation in Christian worldview prior to stepping foot on campus.  With this in mind, I am partnering with some colleagues in a new ministry devoted to just this task.  It is called Worldview 101 and is essentially a Christian worldview training camp for teens.  It will take the form of weekday and weekend camps that involve intensive training in biblical doctrine, Christian ethics, and apologetics.  All of the camps will be led by Christian philosophers who are highly skilled in teaching on the various aspects of Christian worldview.  One of the exciting distinctives of WV101 is that we come to you.  The instructors and camp coordinator go to your church, school, or off-site location and teach your youth in a place that is most convenient to you, thus eliminating the complicated logistics of arranging for travel, lodging, etc.

For more information about Worldview 101, look here.  We are now ready to start booking camps, which will begin this May.

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Taylor University: Central States Region Ethics Bowl Champions!

By Jim Spiegel

For the last ten years I have had the privilege and joy of coaching the Taylor University Ethics Bowl team.  Ethics Bowl is an intercollegiate debate competition focusing on moral issues.  Each Fall semester teams are given fifteen cases dealing a variety of ethical dilemmas, including issues in business ethics, bioethics, social ethics, and international politics.  Being located in Indiana, Taylor participates in the Central States regional competition, which was held last Saturday at Marian University in Indianapolis.  This year fifteen colleges participated.  Schools are allowed to enter a maximum of two teams, and five schools did so, including Taylor, which brought the total number of teams competing to twenty.

Among the issues debated were these:

  • Do developing nations have the moral right to use coal despite its negative environmental impact?
  • Should the NCAA allow women an extra year of athletic eligibility (so that female athletes will not be tempted to play sports while pregnant)?
  • Should the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution be changed by dropping the citizen-by-birth clause (to eliminate an incentive for illegal immigrants to cross the U.S. border to give birth to their babies)?

There are ten regional competitions across the country, and the top finishers in each region receive bids to the national Ethics Bowl tournament, which is held in the Spring.  In our region, the top four teams were to receive bids to nationals.  Our teams finished 1st and 4th overall, thus (doubly) clinching a bid to nationals (and actually allowing the 5th place team to qualify as well).

Both of our teams performed brilliantly.  My co-coach, Jeff Cramer, and I were thrilled for the students when the results were announced.  We beamed like proud parents.  Soon we will begin to prepare for nationals.  In fact, our line-up for the competition has already been established.  (Since each school may enter only one team at nationals, we had to select five students from among the ten students on our two teams who competed at the regional.)  We’re all excited to see the next round of cases, which will be announced in early January.

Taylor teams have made it to nationals 50% of the time over the past decade, and this is our second regional championship since 2003 (along with two 2nd place and a 3rd place finish).  However, we have never made it to the quarterfinals at nationals, and that is one of our goals this year.  Time, as they say, will tell.

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Bill Mallonee in Concert

By Jim Spiegel

If you live anywhere near central Indiana and want to hear some great live music tonight (at a ridiculously low price–just $5), check out Bill Mallonee who’ll be playing at New Life Presbyterian Church in Yorktown, Indiana at 7:00 p.m.  Rolling Stone magazine has hailed Mallonee, and Paste Magazine lists him at #65 among the greatest living songwriters.  Mallonee is incredibly prolific, having recorded more than two dozen albums over the last two decades.  And he’s still churning them out…

After the concert, Mallonee will stick around for a Q&A session about faith, art, and cultural relevancy.  This will be a unique opportunity to interact with a superb singer-songwriter.

Here are directions and map to the church.  Come for some great music (and some excellent coffee, to be provided by Vecinos.

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EPS Apologetics Conference

By Jim Spiegel

The ninth annual EPS Apologetics Conference will be held November 18-20 at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia.   You can find out more about the conference here.

The keynote speakers include Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, and Gary Habermas.  Plantinga’s talk will address religion and science and will feature two interesting claims—that there is no conflict between evolutionary theory and classical Christian belief, while there is a conflict between evolutionary theory and naturalism.  He will go on to argue that since naturalism is a kind of religion, or quasi-religion, it turns out that there is a science-religion conflict.  Its just not a conflict between science and Christianity, as usually thought.  Wow.  Once again, Plantinga is as ironic as he is insightful.

Habermas’s talk will focus on the famous Shroud of Turin, which is once again making news headlines.  Habermas will consider the likelihood that the shroud is the actual burial cloth of Jesus and how, if at all, this might serve as further evidence for the resurrection.

In addition to these plenary talks, there will be many concurrent sessions, including my presentation on the morning of Saturday, November 20.  I will discuss the thesis of my book, The Making of an Atheist.

If you are interested in attending, you’ll be glad to know that the cost of the conference is very affordable—as little as $15 ($10 for EPS members) if you register by September 30.  I hope to see you there!

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Amy’s Article in The Other Journal

By Jim Spiegel

Check out Amy’s recently published article in The Other Journal.  Some readers of this blog will recall that the rudiments of this piece appeared as a W&F post.  In this revised and expanded version, her meditations on the “Silver Linings in Dark Financial Clouds” are that much more insightful.  Sure wish I could write like that.

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Pray for an Atheist — Interviews and Updates

By Jim Spiegel

The last few days have been very busy for me, as I was interviewed for eleven different radio programs about my book and the “Pray for an Atheist” campaign on Facebook.  You can listen to my interview with Chris Arnzen on the Iron Sharpens Iron program, which is broadcast in New York City.  (Click on the MP3 link for March 30.)

Also, Troy Anderson has written a fine story for To the Source about the PFA campaign, which you can check out here.

As for the Pray for an Atheist page, it’s busier than ever, with over 1500 fans and new posts every minute.  Please get in the action and commit to praying for an atheist (or several of them) daily.  (If you are an atheist, then why not pray to the God who “might” be there?  More on this approach in my next post.)

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The “Pray for an Atheist” Campaign

By Jim Spiegel

Several folks, including myself, have launched a Facebook page entitled Pray for an Atheist.  As you may know, April 1 has been celebrated in the past as “National Atheists Day,” and in the first week of April is held the American Atheists National Convention.  So we thought it would be a good idea to encourage Christians to commit to praying for atheists for the entire month of April.  If you would like to get involved, please become a “fan” of the page.

As you’ll see on the page, however, a number of atheists are strongly objecting to the idea that Christians are praying for them.  As one atheist put it, “if you’re going to pray for me and my ilk, that is quite disrespectful.”  And another said, “I personally find it offensive if anybody wants to pray for me.”  There have been many other expressions of disapproval, some profane and vulgar (which have been deleted).

I can’t help but think—as some people have pointed out—that all of this vitriol confirms the thesis of my book.  Atheists simply have no reason to object to our praying for them, especially since, given our worldview, it is an act of love.  After all, if God does exist, then it would be an enormous benefit to atheists if they come to believe this.  Moreover, as a Christian, it would be profoundly hypocritical of me to believe that prayer could be effectual in helping others to find redemption in Christ and yet not pray for unbelievers.

Therefore, I would ask atheists to respect my right to do what I want in the privacy of my own home, as I kneel in prayer on their behalf.

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Blog Tour for The Making of an Atheist

By Jim Spiegel

In the coming weeks, a number of bloggers will be posting reviews or interviews with me about my book, The Making of an Atheist.  Some of these have already begun to appear.  Joe Gorra interviews me at the EPS Blog, and Frank Turk has posted a very thoughtful review over at Evangel, the First Things blog.  Also, Chris Reese has posted a two-part interview and my responses to some readers’ questions at Cloud of Witnesses.  The entire schedule is below.  These are all superb blogs, most of which feature content related to apologetics and/or issues related to faith and culture.  I invite you to check them out.

Blog Name Blogger Posting Date
EPS Blog Joe Gorra February 10
Cloud of Witnesses Chris Reese February 14-15
Evangel Frank Turk February 17
Apologetics.com Rich Park February 22-24
Truthbomb Apologetics Chad Gross February 25-27
Triablogue Peter Pike March 1-3
Apologetics 315 Brian Auten March 4-6
Mike Austin’s blog Mike Austin March 8-10
The Seventh Sola Joel Griffith March 11-13
EPS Blog Steve Cowan March 15-17
TeamPyro Frank Turk TBD
Doug Geivett’s blog Doug Geivett March 22-24
Say Hello to my Little Friend Glenn Peoples March 25-27
PleaseConvinceMe.com Jim Wallace March 29-31
Just Thinking William Dicks April 1-3
Oversight of Souls Ray Van Neste April 5-7
Constructive Curmudgeon Doug Groothuis April 8-10
A-Team Blog Roger Overton April 12-14
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Faith, Film, and Philosophy

By Jim Spiegel

The other day I received some good news from one of my publishers, InterVarsity Press.  The book I co-edited with Doug Geivett last year, Faith, Film, and Philosophy, is going into a second printing.  This is gratifying because it means the book is selling at a decent clip.  The responses of our readers are more important than sales, of course, but it’s always nice to know that your book is not wasting your publisher’s efforts and expenses.  The folks at IVP, especially Andy LePeau and Gary Deddo, believed in this project from the outset, and Doug and I are indebted to them for getting behind our vision for the book.  It feels good to see that support rewarded.

In case you’re not familiar with Faith, Film, and Philosophy, the book features essays by fourteen philosophers (including Doug and myself), each which discusses a film (or two or more) from a Christian perspective.  The films discussed include dramas, comedies, documentaries, and horror films—classic and contemporary, domestic and foreign.  And the philosophical issues explored range across many of the major areas of philosophy, such as epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and philosophy of religion.  Contributors include James Sennett (on Citizen Kane), David Hunt (on The Matrix), Ron Tacelli (on horror films), Win Corduan (on Hong Kong films), and Dallas Willard (on American Beauty, Cider House Rules, and Pleasantville).

Doug has put together a website featuring more information about the book and other content related to film and philosophy:  http://www.faith-film-philosophy.com/.  When I complete work on my current project—a Philosophy introductory text—I’ll have more time to contribute content to that website, such as film reviews.  But Doug already has some interesting stuff posted.  I recommend checking out Doug’s blog as well.

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My Time at the ETS Conference

By Jim Spiegel

Its been a good couple of days at the annual Evangelical Theological Society conference here in Providence, Rhode Island.  This morning I presented my paper on the problem of evil—specifically, comparing the free will and soul-making theodicies—and it was received well by the 50-60 folks in attendance, several of whom asked some interesting and helpful questions about my thesis, which is that the two theodicies are properly seen as complimentary (because logically interdependent) approaches to the problem.  I have posted my paper on a separate page on this blog, which you will find on the right side bar.  I’d welcome any comments, pro or con, as I’ll be submitting it for publication soon.

In addition to attending many informative and stimulating (as well as a few ponderous and soporific) paper presentations on assorted issues, from apologetics to gender issues to the hiddenness of God, I’ve been perusing endless book exhibits, chatting on subjects profound and frivolous, getting lost in the labyrinthine convention center halls, and eating far too much food—including fresh, melt-in-your-mouth Atlantic salmon on two occasions.  (Amy’s going to be sick with envy when she reads this.  Sorry, honey!)  Yes, our brand of vegetarian diet—“ovo-pecto-lacto vegetarianism,” to be tiresomely precise—does allow for fish (that’s the “pecto” part).  It also allows for chocolate mousse, by the way.  And I’m paying for it now with some late-night indigestion (belch).  Oh, but it felt so good going down…

Goodnight.