Quote:Dr. Craig: By and large. Well, there were two groups of people. I very much wanted to do some evangelistic speaking in university contexts because I was told that in Brazil philosophy departments are dominated by French thought and Marxism, and they're very hostile to Christianity even though this is a Catholic country nominally. The philosophy departments are Marxist and French Continental philosophy. And Christian philosophy is just unheard of; [2] they have been untouched by the revolution in Christian philosophy that's gone on in the Anglophone realm over the last fifty years. So I was very anxious to have some input into university campus speaking. And I did two events of that nature that were the bookends of the tour, so to speak. We began with that in Sao Paulo and then we finished, as well, at another university in Sao Paulo with that.

(April 3, 2018 at 1:52 pm)Khemikal Wrote: I refused to disable my adblocker to read it, lol.  The man makes his nut by selling christianity to christians.  The cultural milieu of his target market is marxists this and french that or the other thing..so his website provides that product.

Quote:Dr. Craig: Yes it was. This is what they told us as well, and it's one of the challenges that Vida Nova faces. The Brazilian evangelical church is surging and growing but it is very emotional. It tends to be personality driven. You have these megachurch pastors who build this organization around themselves. And as you said, Kevin, it is disturbingly often syncretistic. They told us that very often evangelical Christianity is blended in with African spiritism. And they said many of these so-called evangelical churches really are not Christian at all. [1] They deny the deity of Christ; they deny the Trinity, of course; they're in to health and wealth preaching. So some of these groups can be extremely bizarre doctrinally and do strange things. For example, in Sao Paulo one of these megachurches is building the temple of Herod in Sao Paulo. They're rebuilding the second temple that was destroyed in Jerusalem in Sao Paulo. We drove by it and it's in the most squalid, ghetto area of Sao Paulo. Every building is just covered with graffiti, it's filthy, it's poor. And there in the midst of this slum is rising this enormous structure with these huge columns where they're building the temple.

Kevin Harris: Wow, in hopes, I guess, that Christ will return.

Dr. Craig: Well, I wondered that. I asked them, “Why are they doing this?” Was it to usher in the Messianic age? And they said they weren't sure if that was the motive. They said that they think that they'll actually hold church services in this. So they'll actually use the temple as a place to hold their meetings. But that kind of gives you a flavor of some of the edginess of the Brazilian Protestant church, which is growing at a great rate, but also experiencing tremendous attrition and backsliding as people fall out of this as well once the claims or promises of health and wealth don't pan out.

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Dr. Craig: Well, of course the overwhelming presupposition would be atheism. It would be that there is no God, there is no supernatural, so a naturalistic view. And it would also tend to be materialistic, as well; that the material universe or physical universe is all there is. And to a certain extent – now this would differ whether it was French or Marxist – whether it would be postmodern or not, whether it would reject traditional canons of logic and rationality, or whether it would hold to a kind of scientism. In either case it would be hostile to Christianity’s claim to have theological truth. In either case the notion that theology is a source of knowledge would be rejected.