You see what the atheist has to say, he’s got to be able to prove that it is impossible or improbable for God to have a morally sufficient reason for permitting these facts of suffering, and that’s a burden of proof which is so
Heavy that no atheist has ever been able to sustain it. [Moderator] Explain that, because the question I was going to ask you is let’s talk about this subject of faith, which is where I was going, so you jumped right where I was headed. When they say
That, okay, explain that idea that you just entered into. [Craig] Take someone’s little daughter dying of leukemia, or getting run over by an automobile. We don’t see why that happened, and we wonder why wouldn’t a sovereign God intervene to stop it? And what the atheist has to say is that it’s either
Impossible or it’s highly improbable that God could have a morally justifying reason for allowing that to occur, but there’s no way given our finitude, our limits in space and time, for being able to make that kind of a claim with any justification. God’s morally sufficient reason for allowing your daughter’s
Death might not emerge until 300 years from now, maybe in another country. Every event that occurs sends a ripple effect through history so that the consequences of any event are simply incalculable and incomprehensible for finite, local persons. So the atheist is making a claim here which is just completely unsustainable;
There’s no way for him to show that it’s improbable or impossible that God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing this evil to occur, and therefore his argument really has no intellectual credibility. It’s a purely emotional argument. [Moderator] And it’s a compelling one, isn’t it?
[Craig] Emotionally compelling, but not intellectually compelling. [Moderator] Correct, and so when somebody says in that moment, in immense pain, I don’t care what good he can bring out of this, [yes] I reject him. And we hear that a lot, [sure] C.S. Lewis drifted towards saying that in his Grief Observed, and
God, when God hears us say those kind of things, okay, his response is one of understanding. Scripture says he too has been tempted in every way, even as we were. [yes] And so God doesn’t shut us off when we
Say that. [Craig] No no, no I think that’s absolutely right. Look at the Psalms, how the psalmist expresses anger toward God, and God where are you, why are you allowing this, why am I going through this? I think the lesson of
The Psalms is come to God with your hurt and your pain and your anger and don’t try to stifle it and suppress it. Let it out and he’ll listen to you. [Moderator] He’ll listen, and if you’ll let him, if you’ll listen to him, as Christopher Hitchens
Acknowledged he gives the only consistent logically constructed plausible answer that frankly even Hitchens acknowledged; you know what? Christianity alone solves this problem. [Craig] Yeah, I remember Bertrand Russell, the great atheist philosopher, once said that no one can sit at the bedside of a dying
Child and believe in God, but when Jan and I were in Paris we met a young minister who was trained and now worked in counseling dying children. And I thought to myself: counseling dying children, what would Russell have said to those children? What could he say? Too bad?
Tough luck? That’s all the naturalist has got to say. As you say it’s theism, it’s belief in God, that provides a hope and a reason for the suffering that its redeemed, whereas in atheism we’re locked in a world that is filled with gratuitous and unredeemed suffering, and there is no hope of escape.
The Interfaith Chapel is the center for religious and spiritual life on campus for students, faculty and staff. We have people who come here who believe a particular thing and are affiliated with particular religious tradition and we also have folks who come here for our activities who have no particular
Religious affiliation. We’ve been doing Interfaith on this campus in this chapel for forty years and when the chapel was first built Interfaith was Christian and Jewish and in that forty-plus years it’s now a much bigger tent than it was in the beginning. We have a sort of two-fold focus here. We’re
Supporting those who feel committed to a particular religious tradition but we also promote Interfaith engagement. We currently have 10 different religious groups that are affiliated with the chapel. We’ve got Muslim and Jewish and several Christian and Buddhist and Hindu and we have student groups that are
Affiliated with the chapel and a very active one in interfaith engagement, The Student Association for Interfaith cooperation and they’re the group that pretty much ties together all the other groups and gets them to do Interfaith programming together. So, tonight we’re hosting an event with Doctor Sevak
Whose a local Interfaith Religious Leaders so I’m greeting people as they come in and just try to gather people who are interested in Interfaith to hear from a local community leader and to
Connect with the campus. In the word Interfaith dialogue is a very new word, in fact. 1989 and I will give you some history. So when you hear this word, what it means to you. Understanding to learn from each other instead of trying to keep face that the other people they’re wrong. I love bringing people of different
Religious traditions and students of no tradition together to find the things they have in common and the things that they value together. University of Rochester Christian Fellowship has been around about twenty seven or twenty eight years at this point. I just like to sing and I love to seek God here. Every
Nation. We are usually the most diverse ministry on campus as far as religious groups or Christian groups that are here but we cover every corner of the earth and it’s a wonderful time because we bring all that together, that melting pot, and I’d like to
Say that we have a little slice of heaven here on earth. So what we’re going to do for tonight is hold an informational session for Hijabi for a Day which is an event that’s a part of our annual Islam Awareness week and allows students opportunity to wear
A head scarf or supportment plan in support of and solidarity of women on campus who choose to wear the headscarf as a part of their faith. Hijab or covering self is one
Of the most obvious and most seen thing about Islam and Muslims. Islam Awareness Week is all about promoting tolerance, respect understanding and that applies beyond religion. That applies to everything, I hope that this is a lee-way for people
To approach each other, talk to each other and understand each other a little bit better Cru has a weekly meeting that meets once a week on Thursday nights. A typical weekly meeting starts with about 15 minutes of socializing then it goes
Into an activity, some kind of game, some kind of get to know you activity. Ohhhh! We want to be a community where students are really caring for one another. A place where we can be real honest and vulnerable about our lives and we want
To be a community where all that’s possible because we believe a relationship with God is possible through Jesus Christ and tonight at the Interfaith Chapel, we are holding a Interfaith Thanksgiving banquet with the guest speaker, Chris Stedman, from Yale University where he is the Executive Director of the Yale Humanist Community.
I am on the SAKE mailing list. I just really like their events and I really like all the, like, religious co-operation of learning about different religions, so yeah! We have the Roman Catholic Newman Community and the Protestant Chapel Community. Both of these communities have been here
On this campus for fifty years. They just hit their fifty year anniversaries last year. So the Catholic Newman Community is the largest single denomination on campus. We service about sixteen hundred Catholics on campus, thirty percent of the population and we sponsor over a hundred
And twenty programs each year that engage in spiritual to social to the academic and discovered faith and reason together. Many people see faith as opposed to reason, as if it’s an either or option and here on a Science campus we definitely take this stance that they’re very compatible. PCC is a multi-denominational
Group of kids from all different Protestant Christian backgrounds. Some of them from backgrounds that are not Protestant Christian who have all come together to worship and be a church on campus here. Also, like pretty much all faith groups, once you’ve captured the fact that we’re eating you capture the
Essential part of our group. Thank you God for giving us food. Thank you God for giving us friends. For the food we eat and the friends we meet, thank you God for giving us food. We do a lot of food in the Chapel. People can get free meals here several
Nights a week with one religious community or another. Food’s important here because obviously students like to eat and actually religious students often have religious restrictions on what they can eat so one thing they learn they start doing interfaith etiquette is learning about each other’s dietary
Restrictions and how to be hospitable to one another. All religious cultures have special foods and so often they will do things were there something special to a particular tradition that’s being served and others get to sample that and enjoy it too.
Having Diwali dinners, this is a yearly event we usually do around the fall time. It changes every year based on the calendar. We do this usually in Douglas Dining Hall and we’ve been preparing for this ever since the start of school.
Actually the light kind of symbolizes the victory of good over evil and that’s why we’re here today, not just food, vegetables or food, vegetables for everyone so we can celebrate the good over evil. Great people. Great food. It’s just a good time to celebrate a good event. Happy Hanukah . Happy Hanukah everybody. Now doughnuts and latkes against the wall. You can line up and enjoy some doughnuts, latkes on both sides. We’re going to eat latkes.
We’re going to have sufganiyan, which are doughnuts and we’re going to have fun. We got the lights, the Menorah, which is symbol of Freedom and we are going to have hundreds of students pause in the middle of finals and see what is important to celebrate the
Holiday of Hanukah together as a community. (Singing) I love bringing people of different religious traditions and students of no tradition together to find the things that they have in common and the things that they value together and engaging in conversation and discovering that they
Can make friends across lines of division that they didn’t think they could make friends. We’re so grateful to be part of that community to get to dialogue and and really work towards Interfaith Collaboration. God created us as we
Are so God didn’t want us to be one single nation so if he had willed, he would have done so but he did not. It’s important that people, regardless of faith and belief come together and you know
Take the time to learn about what the other person believes in and I think UofR’s great for starting that initiative and I’ve had a great experience working with people from the Interfaith Cooperation and hope
To do so again in the future. A production of the University of Rochester. Please visit us on-line and subscribe to our channel for more videos.
