New Resources From Reasonable Faith

Transcript New Resources From Reasonable Faith

Kevin Harris: Welcome to the Reasonable Faith podcast with Dr. William Lane Craig. I'm Kevin Harris. Not only do we have some Reasonable Faith conferences coming up but some new projects and resources under way now. Bill?

Dr. Craig: It has been amazing to me, Kevin, the way volunteers have stepped forward to extend the ministry of Reasonable Faith in ways that we have never imagined. They've taken the initiative and I'm so appreciative for these volunteers. And, yes, we have a number of projects that are currently in the works that I am very excited about.

Kevin Harris: Talk about some of those. These involve DVDs, some workbooks.

Dr. Craig: Yes, one of the first was initiated by Bobby Conway, the so-called One-Minute Apologist. Bobby was on the trip to South Africa that Mike Licona and I took a couple of years ago where we debated with Spangenberg and Wolmarans in Pretoria. Bobby then also joined us on the trip to Israel this past May. While we were in Israel he approached me with the suggestion that if I would come over to Charlotte he would like to film at their own expense a DVD curriculum to accompany my book On Guard. Well, this seemed like too good an offer to pass up and this was something I wanted to develop. So in August I did go over to Charlotte, and Bobby's studio had built a beautiful set for the filming of this DVD that was color-coordinated with the cover of On Guard which is in navy blue and white. And so the backdrop of the set was a navy blue screen, and then the furniture on which Bobby and I sat were white leather couch and chair, and then in front of us was a sort of glowing illuminated table that had a rapier on it and a copy of the book On Guard. The rapier is symbolic of the fencing motif that On Guard exploits. And in the background was a kind of aluminum or silver superstructure that gave it a very modern sort of look. And the crew that he assembled were real professionals. They were very meticulous about the filming. They would ask for take after take until it was done exactly right. The whole thing was filmed in high definition to produce a superior quality DVD. And they let me put on some headphones and listen to the sound and, honestly, it was extraordinary—it was so resonate and so clear. I was just amazed.

Kevin Harris: So you're just teaching through On Guard?

Dr. Craig: No. What we did was we did it in an interview format. Bobby would interview me about the contents of each chapter. So people who are watching the DVD can hear us casually discussing, say, “Why there is anything at all?” or “Why is the universe fine-tuned for life?” or “Who did Jesus claim to be?” [1] And then they can read the chapter in the book and follow the leader's guide to discuss this in their group. So this has been developed, we've done the filming, and I just heard from them recently that it's going to be done very soon; the editing is almost complete. They will then send it out for production and the folks at Biola, which run our web store, have a beautiful box that they will put it in along with the On Guard book and the study guide to make sort of a complete package for an On Guard curriculum. [2] So I am extremely grateful to Bobby and his crew for their vision and their efforts to develop this tool. It's going to be ready by the time of the Southern Evangelical Seminary Apologetics Conference at the end of October, October 28-29. And so we'll debut this DVD product at that conference. So this is just one of the projects that we're involved in and that I am really, really excited about.

Kevin Harris: Now, the material for children, how did this come about?

Dr. Craig: Well, this is another volunteer effort, Kevin. On the trip to Israel, as well, was a young engineer named Joseph Tang. And Joseph is ethnically Chinese but he lives in Australia. And he told me that in Australia he teaches a class of eight to ten year old children. And he sent me a picture of the children—they're just these darling precious little kids, boys and girls. And he said “I've developed these worksheets that teach your material on an elementary level.” [3] And I said, “Really? Well, let me see them.” And so he sent me his whole curriculum and, Kevin, this is a complete apologetics curriculum starting with Christian epistemology and going up through Christian evidences for the atonement and the resurrection of Jesus.

And it's in a workbook format where it's fill in the blank. Now, the answers are not obvious. It's not the sort of thing where you guess what the answer is. Rather these serve as sort of structured notes, as it were, for the teacher in teaching his lesson. So you give the workbooks to the children and then the teacher teaches the lesson and tells the children how to fill out the workbook as they go through and they fill in the blanks. In this way they learn the material. And of course the teacher pauses for discussion and to give illustrations and so forth. So it is a workbook and then a teacher's answer book or handbook that will accompany the workbook. [4] Joseph has developed this; we're now in the final stages of formatting it, and once we've done that then we'll send it in and self-publish this so that this will be available for folks who want to teach it.

We're going to market it not just to children, Kevin, because it became clear to us, as we looked at this, this material is so deep, in a sense, it's so sophisticated, that this would be suitable for teens and even adults, if they can swallow their pride, [laughter] and do a kind of fill in the blank if you know what I mean. The material is good enough, really, for any age group but it's simple enough that a good teacher can communicate it to children.

Kevin Harris: You were surprised at how the children were grasping these concepts, weren't you?

Dr. Craig: Yes, at the end of the worksheets that Joseph sent to me, all completed and filled out in this childish handwriting of elementary school children, he would ask them at the end “How much of this lesson did you understand?” They could circle 50%, 80%, 90%; and these children were marking 80% for ontological argument for the existence of God, or 90%. Now, even if that's an exaggeration of their own abilities, if they fancy themselves to understand more than they do, still, Kevin, think of what this means. It means that this young child at least believes that he has an aqueduct grasp of a sound argument for the existence of God. And think of the kind of confidence that that's going to inspire in him as he goes into high school, eventually, and finally university. I think this is just tremendous material for these youngsters in preparing them for the challenges they'll inevitably meet as they grow up.

Kevin Harris: It's such a tragedy that people think that children can't grasp these things and so they neglect them. I can say, personally, Bill, that I've taught my kids things when they were very young – four, five, six years old – some philosophical principles and things like that, and made it fun for them because I have them spot them, and things like that, that they use to this day.

Dr. Craig: Yes, that's the key. These lessons are not self-explanatory. Joseph in the teacher's notes says, “Read this chapter in On Guard or Reasonable Faith before you teach this lesson.” So if you're going to teach the children a lesson on “Why is there anything?” or “Why does anything exist?” you need to read the chapter in On Guard about this, because you can't teach the cosmological argument to someone else if you don't understand it yourself. So it became very clear to me these are not self-explanatory; these are teacher's aids. This is a workbook which is an aid for a teacher who is committed to first mastering this material himself and then in turn communicating it to his proteges.

Kevin Harris: Excellent. You can't say enough good about volunteers—can you?

Dr. Craig: Oh, amen. I am so grateful to these folks.

Kevin Harris: And, Bill, tell us about the man who was transcribing all the Defenders podcasts.

Dr. Craig: This astonished me, Kevin. As you know, our sister podcast to Reasonable Faith is called Defenders. [5] And this is my adult Sunday School class that takes about five years to complete. There are, I think, hundreds of lectures in this series.

Kevin Harris: It's the greatest Sunday School class in the world. [laughter]

Dr. Craig: Well, this fellow loves it. And he said as a result he decided to transcribe all of the classes. [6] And having decided to do that he said “I'm going to send them to you, and you can do with them what you want.” Well, I thought what a great tool if we made this available not only on the internet, but if we took all of the lectures when they're finally done and put them under one cover and publish them as a book. You would have a Sunday School class curriculum that would cover the complete body of Christian doctrine and apologetics, from Doctrine of Revelation to Doctrine of the Last Things. And so that's what we're intending to do. And as I've been going through these transcripts, Kevin, and polishing them and removing the inevitable infelicities of oral speech, I have just been amazed, frankly, at how good this material is. I think I've never seen a Sunday School class like this. This is really great material, and what makes it especially interesting is that this fellow has transcribed not just the lectures, but he transcribes all of the class discussion. So you have all of the questions with the answers to the people in the class asking the questions. And this is really interesting because you see how real people respond to this material. And some of them respond with questions that are very penetrating and incisive and you are impressed with the grasp this student has of the material. Other students obviously don't get it – they ask questions that are off base or out of left field – and you think, “Oh man, that guy! He's hopeless; he doesn't get it.” And you find yourself interacting with the questions yourself as you read them. And so this makes the material come alive. And he has also coded the material so that every five minutes he will give a time index for where it is in the podcast. So if you want to listen to it you can go and listen to this section, or if you're listening to it you can go read this section. So it is a beautiful marriage of the audio material with the written transcript. And so I am, again, very grateful to this volunteer for making this material available and really looking forward to finally getting it all transcribed, proofread, and put out in a book form.

Kevin Harris: And lo' and behold, something else for children.

Dr. Craig: Right, we do have another children's project in the works. This is a book that I wrote years ago, Kevin, when our children were young, and it's called What is God like? The Attributes of God For Children. It explains how God is all-powerful, God is all-knowing, God is everywhere, God is all-good, and so forth, in very childish, simple terms. Now, we tried to find a publisher for this material but what we didn't understand is that the market for children's books is just impossible to get into. Unless you're a Laura Bush or a celebrity who has a children's book it's almost impossible to get a publisher interested in it. And so this book has just kind of sat in the closet for years.

Well, recently, for some reason or other, I shared it with Chris Shannon who is our national director for local Reasonable Faith chapters, and Chris has a couple of small children himself. And he began to read these stories at night to his own children on the attributes of God. And he said, “Bill, they just went crazy for this.” He said, “What's happened now is now they want me to read to them every night out of this book about the attributes of God.” And I said, “Even though they've heard it already?” He says, “Yes, they want to hear it again.” And so he said, “The other night, we had a terrible row as we were putting the children to bed because we were just going to put them to bed without reading them anything,” and he said, “they began yelling out: 'Attributes of God! Attributes of God!' and demanding that they read this, [laughter] these stories to them.” And so Chris began to look around for publishers in the home school industry, and he put us in contact with a home school publisher who has since expressed interest in this material. Now, we don't have a contract, we're still just in that stage of inquiry. But I'm so hopeful that this may finally be the chance to actually get this material published, and I think it would be great with a homeschooling publisher because this would get it into the hands of many parents who are teaching their children at home. [7]

When I published On Guard I think some people thought, “Well, this is still too complicated, it's still too hard.” [8] But you see, Kevin, unless you respond to objections to your argument they won't be effective in dialogue with people on the internet and with YouTube because they don't listen to your argument and just roll over and play dead; they give responses. And so in On Guard I don't simply present the argument but I present the objections you will probably hear and how to respond to them. Unfortunately you can't just rest with simple stuff. You've got to have it thorough enough to be able to respond to the questions that will inevitably arise when you give your positive arguments.

Kevin Harris: Well, as you can hear, we're really busy here at Reasonable Faith. And keep an eye on ReasonableFaith.org so that you can take part in these projects and bring these resources into your life as they're made available. And you can check all that again at ReasonableFaith.org. We'll see you next time. [9]