CMDS 2017 - Christian Aplogetics by Dr. Mark Chandra

(This presentation was literally standing room only.  Mark is a very entertaining speaker who made a very strong case for the study of apologetics ‘giving an answer’, not apologizing but intellectually making the case. These notes are just a synopsis but give a jist of the topic and some indication of the nature of CMDS presentations. )

Christian Apologetics

Mark Chandra

What are we apologizing for?

It actually comes from the greek word ‘ apologia’ - ‘to give an answer’

I’m from New Brunswick but my parents came from Ghayana

My father was an East Indian Hindu who came to Christ later in life

My mother was Chinese and I was brought up Anglican. My brother is an Anglican priest

I liked most the ‘spiritual meaty topics of preachings’ 

I didn’t get a lot growing up but in medical school turned on christian radio and heard this 

wonderful teaching like water to me…now I'm doing a phd in apologetics with the very people i listened to on the radio

i think we are in a unique position to meet young intellectuals in medical school

We would do them a disservice to not offer them something to meet where they are

I want to do a kind of apologetics for apologetics and why it’s 

I did some paediatrics training at Queen’s ….we had a small ward and called it the “hospital for six children.”

To be ignorant and simple and not be able to meet the enemy on their ground….good philosophy is needed if only to face bad philosophy and tell the truth.’ 

The weapons of this world are weapons that can tear down false arguments and principalities.

Luke wrote Acts

The apostles went into foreign land and learned the culture of that land and then taught from that.

Jesus did miracles.  Blind received their sight.  Dead came back to life. Jesus healed the paralytic.

Jesus argued with reason as well as acts.

Secularism has taken over the universities. I don’t know how this happened.

I was in Harvard and looked at the motto - Veritas — the full motto is “Truth for Christ and his Church.’

The great universities started as theological 

University - to find universal in the diversity

Theology was the Queen of Sciences

Theology would tell us God created a beautiful world with beautiful creatures.

Quoting John Patrick, used to say, “In all his years he’d never seen a cow appreciate the beauty of the dawn.”  

In churches we build gymnasiums - we believe we worship in the church and God gave us bodies to enjoy and we do this in a game of basketball

My wife and child were watching “Chariots’ - line  “God made me for a purpose for China and he also made me fast.”

If I had my way churches wouldn’t only build gyms but they’d build labs and libraries and astronomical centres

There is a power in CMDS as a 

The work we do is to have professional groups as Christians

My pastor brought up the Da Vinci code and how that book shook a lot of peoples faith to the core - that’s the power of media and hollywood

The bible has many genre’s

-history

-poetry

-wisdom

-census

by far the most common genre in the bible is history and narrative 

we are made to respond to stories and history

that’s the power of the arts and media

It has the power to bypass the intellect

Da Vinci code is written that way

You’re caught up in the story and the characters then later you have the ‘wonky theology’.

The enemy of your soul wants nothing more than 

A lie that you pick up in 10 seconds of a tv show can take hours to get rid of

Right now Secularism controls the media and university.

As doctors we have power in society

As doctors we are seen as paragons of rationality

It’s easy to dismiss just a christian but it’s hard to dismiss a doctor.

The secularists are shook up by Christian doctors.

Hume - would describe the present of ‘sophistry and illusion’

If you were to make a panel of expects with politicians, doctors, and a pastor - the pastor’s opinion would could the least - they are seen as occupying a sphere of knowledge that is not real knowledge

At my school where my kids go, a Christian school, we do this thing called ‘tough questions’.  

One question, “How can you believe in God with all the evil in the world?”

How do you believe in trinity when trinity isn’t in the bible

How can you believe in the bible when the bible is changing.

Having good judgement is not the same as being judgemental.

The more knowledgeable I am about something the less argumentative I am

That’s the way I am with medicine.

To our culture Christianity is offensive - we don’t have to add to it.  

‘blind leap of faith comes after a long ramp of reason.”

Chapter meetings of CMDS - praise and worship then watch a video 

I would like to see apologetics more at CMDS

Emotions only take me so far

Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, all they soul and all the mind and all thy strength 

• it was first in Deuteronomy
• Jesus added ‘mind’ 
• I believe it was that we have the hellenistic - which divided knowledge in heart and mind but the jewish was that knowledge was heart and mind, not separate
• apologetics allows me to love God with my mind as well,

Model of Bible study 

-apologetics should be part of this

1)It’s good for our faith

2) It’s an evangelical tool

The stakes are high here. Everyone argues back. Their whole world view is tied in this.

I have found that I have been able to put a pebble in their shoe

I have helped the person who was listening in, they were not involved in the emotionality of the thing but they’ve listened.  I’m living proof that the holy spirit can work this way. I know Christianity can work on the heart but I came to Christ by my mind….my heart will quickly not believe what my mind thinks is not true

Maybe our special group is the group of people who is very culturally intellectual.

3) Apologetics is good at shifting culture

False ideas are always an impediment to the gospel

-if you think Christianity is just a delusion or irrational

-if you present Christianity to secular culture you shift it - I’ve seen John Patrick come to a campus and make Christianity for a while a ‘plausible thing’.  

• I’ve seen it give Christian intellectuals in the class ‘permission’.

It must be done with respect and gentleness.

The gospel saves us from the guilt and power of sin

We do it with respect and gentleness and an upright life.

William Lane Craig - “ON GUARD”

Apologetics Top

Mr Chandra , somebody asked me ‘how do you believe in god with all the evil in the world.

You believe is a god all powerful

You believe in a god that is good

How come there is evil.

When someone asks you this

they are saying there is a thing of evil

But they’re telling you there is good

And also good and evil are objective things, not just subjective

When Hitler murdered 6 million jews he thought he was doing ‘good’.

That’s subjective

But we believe there is an objective good and evil

In every day life we believe good and evil are objective things.

We believe right and wrong are objective.

A kid gave John Patrick saying right and wrong were subjective so John gave him an F on the paper.

to believe in good and evil we need some sort of moral law.

where does the moral law come from 

the force, god , or mother nature

That’s what they’re trying to disprove with the question….the person who asks these questions is assuming god to make any sense

always end with the heart stuff

Why did God questions are hard because I don’t know why god created the universe.

But think

God wanted to create a world where love was possible.

Real love requires freedom.

Forced love and autonomous

For real love to exist there must be possibility to freedom of choice

Always come back and bring some type of pastoral understanding

Q&A

Humble Apologetics 

John Stackhouse

Hamilton apologists - Deconstructing narratives - we can’t plant the seed of the gospel - unless we stir up the ground - he’s 

-secularists assume a meta- narrative - we all have narratives - it’s okay to be spiritual but not religious - secular society gets upset when we discus the big story - the meta narratives - secularists have a meta narrative that is never assumed but  they believe their narrative is objective proof.

eg Religions are all the same but at their core are the same but its actually different….the metanaratives of their faith are really different

• 4 questions
• origins - where do I come from
• condition - why am I as I am
• salvation - what do I have to do
• destiny- what happens when I die

Secularist

• origin - chance plus time equals us
• condition - lack of reality determinists
• salvation - don’t need to do anything, just is
• destiny - nothing

Secularism comes from Seculum - there’s nothing beyond this world

Charles Taylor - CBC podcasts - myth of the secular 

Jamie Smith - How not to be secular.

Canadian Apologetics Conference 

-

RAVI - podcast apologetics - Can I live without God.

Mere Christianity - CS Lewis

Case for Creator

Darwin’s Black Box

• darwin didn’t know about biochemistry - small examples of natural selection
• mousetrap example - 
• blood clotting cascade 

CMI - evolution doesn’t make rational sense

Darwin - on descent of man - the implications 

• if it could ever be shown that a complex organism could be built with each part not being for survival then my argument would be wrong - DARWIn
• Leahy as a microbiologist -
• new synthesis = darwin and genesis

CMDS 2017 - True Treasure, living gospel values in the medical community and culture at large, Pastor Dan MacDonald

Pastor Dan Macdonald: True Treasure , living gospel values in the medical community and culture at large

{I arrived late and missed the song that preceded this first plenary session of the day. I did however join near the end and heard the whole question and answer period, taking these brief notes to capture a sense of what the talk was on. I think this gives a taste of what goes on here.  I’ve been coming to Christian Medical and Dental Society Meetings for a number of years and as well as leading clinicians it’s not uncommon for pastors to be speakers.  Pastor Dan MacDonald was a lawyer before he went on to do a Masters of Divinity.  He is now senior pastor at Grace Toronto Church. He is an astute observer and outstanding speaker and obviously very spiritually blessed and devoted to his service.   (I had work to complete this morning then I walked from my hotel to this hotel , the long way, through Toronto of my childhood, a beautiful city, the financial and art districts. I lost track of time so enjoyed the walk and the beauty of this city.)}

How many of you are too busy?(All hands go up)How many of you are not busy?(5)
Your culture demands that doctor’s be busy.Our culture demands that a carpenter be busy.But demands a doctor be much more busy.
Referee for yourself.
When I looked at my own business and how I was building a practice,I saw that I was working more hours for more money and materialism was at the base of it.Ask about the spiritual principles
I know why I’m busy.I have an idol of respect and I want respect so do more work to get more respectI work in field of judges, lawyers, professionals all of who are busy
Ask yourself about your business? Is this what nurtures yourself spiritually as a Christian.

Persecution?Is it wrong to pray for persecution to go away.No But that was not all.In the New Testament they fled persecution.They had fear in Jerusalem and fled and spread the gospel.
Cultural ShiftShift away from Judea  Christian beliefs.All the old traditional culture believes are being denounced.The new academics are being turned to instead of the judges, lawyers, bankers and now doctors.
Technology is changing the worldNew arguments of medicine will be whether someone’s 30% machine is true.
As Christians we need to get together in the medical world and decide how we may face this new culture in a godly way.
Pessimism - feeling nothing we do can make a difference?
You are going to have to navigate the doctor patient relationship.Your fiduciary relationship with patients is not our mission fieldYour colleagues may be
When you you obey God and practice civil disobedience?When the culture asks you to sin, you obey God.When your culture asks you to kill babies you obey GodWhen your culture asks you to murder, you obey God.
Civil Disobedience needs to be more than doctors, engage your pastors and Christiens.There is a community that is being discriminated against.In Alabama the whole community marched.The Gay community enlisted the larger community The Jews came together.
We as Christians have been very bad at this Because we’ve been living in the remnants of the Judea Christian cultureWe Have not realized we are in a post Christian environmentWe need to learn in a Post Christian community what the Jews learned, the Gays learned, the Blacks learned, that we need solidarity
Ask for the courage to bear up under persecution.
Get your church involved in advocacy.
WitnessHow do you prepare yourselfWell I ask , how did you prepare to be doctorsYou readStart with water cooler advocacy Read “Reason for God”You don’t need the high level Christian apologeticsYou need to have ‘water cooler answers’  really simple well thought out books
Moving from comfortable pew Christianity to activists.
We must learn the courage to speak boldly.
I say there is no room in Christianity for complacency.If you think so then REPENT.
We have false gods-sex, power, status,
God is sovereign. The more people who share their faith the more people come to God.It’s numerical.
You sow where you are. You will reap there.
The guys who want you to be a good Jewish doctor will talk to you. They won’t talk to meYou can influence them. You can talk to them. Introduce them to Jesus.
I was a lawyer, I influenced a court clerk I worked with as a young doctor.

Moderate Moslems

Of course there are moderate moslems. There are Moslems saints and wise men. There are beautiful Moslems and happy Moslems and Moslems who sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of humans who are not Moslems.
I feel badly that I have had to be critical of the misinformation and disinformation of our politicians and media.  Their cupidity about Islamaphobia and political correctness surrounding terrorism forces everyone to ask, “why are they lying?”  To know they are lying follows asking “Is Islam the religion of peace?"
Islam is no more the religion of peace than Christianity is the religion of love.  It has long been said that the founders of all religions would not going the religions named for them if they were alive today.  Further what people say and what people do is one thing.  What there followers do is quite another.  Mohammed was a warrior and a killer.  He did at times preach peace.  By contrast Jesus was a healer and a teacher who did not kill and did preach love.  Buddha was an elite prince who renounced the world and became a monk who encouraged non violence. Abraham and the other founders of Judaism including Moses and David were patriarchs, kings and warriors.  Some were prophets. And all religions have martyrs. Hinduism is a polytheistic mystical religion begun in the times of warriors but carried forward by ascetic monks and sages.   Confucianism which some say is not a religion but more a philosophy was begun by a eurocrat working for a warlord.
History is made for the winners of wars.  We don’t hear much about the Quakers, a particularly non violent group of Christians any more than we hear much about the Sufis a usually non violent group of Muslims.
The fact is violence is the work of men and women who want power.  Having power they want to retain it and use religions of all stripes to maintain it.  They justify their violence and greed with religion. In the case of the atheist communists they don’t say a prophet told them but instead say their guru Marx or prophet Lenin told them to kill everyone who doesn’t agree with them.  Robespierre an anti-Christian deist was behind the French Revolution killing tens of thousands of his enemies.
Triangulation is a psychological defence in which one individual abdicates from responsibility of their actions one to another by attributing their behaviour to a third party. Today if an individual told me he had attacked me because his voices told him to, I’d consider him insane.  However, many a world leader has attributed violence to ‘voices’, “laws’, ‘committees’, “Gods”, ‘the people’, and today maybe Aliens, all as a means to confuse and control.  No one is certain whether or not it’s worse if a world leader actually believes his own shit or is just using this for the benefit of power acquisition and justification for treating others poorly.  A common ‘defence’ is the ‘greater good’ and for the future. Today all manner of shit is being said on behalf of the ‘future’ and for ‘the planet’.
In terms of logic and fallacy it’s always an ‘appeal to authority’.  There are also laws on earth for the rich and the poor.  The judges who would disagree would themselves be killed.  The winners write history.  The losers, lacking tanks and jets, create the best propaganda and makes the best promises.  They usually have maternal sexy babes with lose morals. The appeal for young men is a sort of mixed of sex and authority thing.  This is not to say that the rulers don’t have their share of “honey pots’ but the women of the ruling classes are more likely to say something like “give them cake’ rather than listen ad infinitum to their rambling intellectualism.
To the best of my understanding, Moslem countries are generally conservative.  It is worth remembering that secularism broadly speaking, the separation of ‘state’ and “religion” is condemned by Muslim intellectuals, and further in most Muslim majority states even where there is secularism there is a parallel court system of ‘sharia law’.
(Canada is definitely moving in this direction with their aboriginal or pagan court system parallel to the mainstream secular court system.  There are also some ‘sharia court systems’ in Canada but no Catholic, Christian, or Buddhist court system showing the fundamental break down of equality and freedom in Canada as just one example of devolution of western secularism. In Europe sharia courts are proliferating just as ‘gang’ justice proliferated in former communist countries after the fall. )
The most liberal of the older Moslem countries appears to be Turkey, Tunesia, and  Egypt.  It is worthwhile to note that these states, though Muslim majority, are under attack to Jihadists indicating how costly it is to be a ‘moderate’ Muslim or indeed a secularist Muslim in the world today.  The Jihadists are equally if not more hysterically enraged by their brother Muslim’s who refuse to accept their dictatorship.
(This is not surprising given that the French revolution killed tens of thousands of their own people while the various communist revolutions killed millions of their own people who disagreed with them.  Indeed “either you’re for us or a gin us’ is neither religious or secular but equally revolutionary as the standard revolutionary argument,  ‘if you don’t agree with me, I’ll kill you’.   ‘Ad hominem’ rhetoric or attack on the person in debate  causes  ‘forfeiture’ of the logical argument  because a long long time ago men realized they couldn’t have a decent game of golf without agreeing that anyone who starts hacking the competition with swords or axes might well live but he will never be respected as a golfer.”
When we think of Conservative or Liberal we general think of freedoms that the citizens have.  Iceland is often touted as a very ‘free’ country but it has to be remembered that comparison of countries is difficult without consideration of the countries make up.  Iceland is a white tribe whereas both Turkey and the US are nations of many different racial and political groups.  Mexico its a conglomerate of Indian groups plus the later European immigrants.
So ‘freedom for the people’ in general really took off in the 1800’s  with the American (1776)  and French  Revolution. The British Magna Carta (1215) before it had nothing to do with the peasants but rather challenged the divinity and authority of the king versus the barons.  This is like democracy itself which was developed by the ‘lords’ and ‘landowners’ of ancient Greece.  The Christian Suffragette movement extended the ‘vote’ to women like the American Civil War extended the ‘vote’ to blacks.  A key questions is always ‘who are the people’ and further ‘who can be the leader’.  In aboriginal society it was common for there to be ’slaves’ and for non tribe members to be considered ‘other than human’.  This is going on today in Canada where an immigrant Sihk is the defence minister of Canada but a US presidential candidate born in Canada is being questioned as whether or not he is an American.  Most nations in the world are highly restrictive, incredibly nationalistic, tribalistic and racist in this regard.   Some say that the Desert Spring of the Middleeast was the civil war and political uprising of the common people that was occurring 200 years later.
Moderation has described the way countries deal with dissent.  Some countries behead dissenting individuals while others jail them.  Others have a wide variety of means for individuals to be critical of their own government.  I’d personally be jailed or beheaded, I believe, in any other country but Canada where Justin Trudeau is our Prime Minister.  I don’t doubt either that Mr. Justin Trudeau would wish as Mr. Harper his predecessor might wish that ‘beheading of dissidents’ was a Canadian ‘custom’ given the rude criticism our extraordinary leaders are subjected to.   Canada has freedom of speech like England and like American.  Few Muslem countries are moderate in this way.
But yes there are very moderate individual Muslims. I know some who are outrageously radical.  They are living in the west because they do not believe they would do well in the countries they have left.  They are ‘cultural’ escapees. They have come to Canada for the freedom they didn’t experience in the Moslem culture in their home.  They prefer the freedoms and moderation and liberties in Canadian culture and they surely do not want Sharia Law or for the culture they left to become dominant in Canada or the west.  They are in many ways like the Puritan Christians who left England because of religious persecution by the State Religion of those who questioned the authority of the church leadership and wanted a more democratic religious church.  The authoritarianism of the Catholic church with the Pope gave rise to the religious wars that begat Protestant Christianity with is nationalist churches as well as it’s presbyterian and congregationalist churches.  Today the fastest growing community Christian churches are in many ways the most democratic with ministers selected by the congregation and voted on rather than being appointed top down by the centralized church authority.    Most Muslims I know  came to get away from the authorities and restriction there and love their new home. Commonly immigrants cite ‘corruption’ in their former countries and a desire to make a ‘new start’ in the country they are going to.  This doesn’t mean that there is no corruption here but the corruption is different and consequently there is more ‘opportunity’ here.  Not uncommonly there is movement back and forth with regard to economic refugees and whole classes of individuals like the ‘gypsies’ who reject national boundaries all together to the great consternation of those most invested in national boundaries. Indeed the countless trade agreements these days is a direct consequence of the entrenching corruption associated directly with ‘boundaries’.
My Muslim friends here are more Canadian than I am in that regard to their appreciation of the freedoms we know in Canada. h.
I just regret that we all have had to look at the numbers and the risks that exist because our media so commonly is interested these days in selling war while some of our political leadership are most interested in selling to the lowest common denominator.
The result is lies.
There are a whole lot of radical muslems.  Wahhabism sect of the Sunni Muslem, preached as a central tenet of mainstream Saudi Arabia  are fundamentally anti freedom, anti western, anti secular, jihadist and commonly utterly disrespectful of other religions and cultures. The salafists are jihadist until proven otherwise.    The aim of these Muslems is world domination in the same way that Hitler and the Nazi’s were world domination or Stalin and the Communists.  To them Muslim is a religion of peace means quite simply when all the world is Muslim and "we are in charge” and “we have killed all who won’t convert”,  then we will have peace.
Most moderates believe in a balance of power.  Moderates respect respect  religious freedom. I love that I have Muslim neighbours, Buddhist neighbours, Hindu neighbours, Pagan neighbours, Jewish neightbours,  Christian neighbours and even atheist neighbours.  I like all the colours of the rainbow.  I love the diversity that we know in Canada.  I know there are those who want only to eat cereal for breakfast and insist everyone else eat cereal for breakfast like they do but I like choice.  I really am a big proponent of freedom and choice for individuals and communities.  I am a Canadian.  I like that I can joke with my moderate Muslim friends about ‘all roads leading to Rome’ but that Christians will have the better housing district and Muslims will have to live on the other side of the tracks.  They say they will have the virgins and I say I will have the music and maybe one virgin.  We don’t kill each other any more than I do with my female Buddhist friend who at the same time tells us men that she believes we will not get to heaven in the next life but rather will reincarnate as pigs.  To which my Hindu friend insists that he was a pig in a previous life and that’s where he learned his bad habits.  My Catholic friend loves bacon but doesn’t like this talk of pigs.  She rejects Jews and Moslems because she love her bacon.  And such a conversation among friends can occur in Canada among a group of deeply spiritual and religious individuals who are moderates.  I don’t know any fanatics.  I expect if I did I’d have to kill them before they killed me.  So as a Canadian I prefer peace because I can get on with science, loving, community and art rather than devoting myself to watching my back and killing the fanatics before they kill me.
I am a physician too.  Physicians commonly say ‘moderation in everything.’  So I like my moderate friends and am skeptical of my extremist friends.  I have no fanatic friends but I certainly have friends whose behaviours and thoughts are extreme by my personal rather conservative behaviour and thought. I am however most skeptical of those that lie especially politicians and the media. Lying people in power scare me.  Scaring people pushes them to  extremes.  I therefore wonder why some people in power who lie and deny legitimate concerns and threat are so anti moderation and in favour of war.  That concerns me. I’m less concerned about my moderate Muslim friends than I am about liars in general.   All my Muslim friends are equally concerned about radicals and extremists as I am.  None of my moderate Muslim academic doctor friends favour jihadists.  The moderate muslim psychiatrists I know think they’re psychopaths.  Why are our political leaders and their media not equally concerned?  That’s what concerns me? Indeed as my moderate muslim friends are against the fundamentalist and extremist muslims, those who don’t wish to integrate into Canadian society but rather wish to dominate and subjugate Canadian culture or isolate and plan jihad, then quite simply the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Hence the Jordan pilot,a muslim, and the Kurdish women brigade, muslims, are my friends.
My concern is whether my leadership or their propaganda media are my friends?  I thank them only so far as their own violence has helped me clarify who are really the enemies of peace and the enemies of Canada and western secularism.