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Description

Today we are starting something new. I’m very excited to present to you in its entirety, the apologetics conference held in Paducah, KY last June. We’ve got a great line up of speakers for you including Jerry Wierwille, myself, Kenny Willenburg, Dale Tuggy, Kegan Chandler, and John Truitt.

It was a wonderful time of meeting people and working together to figure out ways of reaching the millennial generation with the gospel. As it turned out, a great majority of the presentations focused on understanding the post-modern worldview. This was so helpful, because it’s nearly impossible to discuss important issues if both people are unaware of the fact that they are each coming from incompatible worldviews. Although, for many of us, our natural inclination is to show someone why their underlying assumptions are invalid, a better starting point for evangelism is to work within their post-modern outlook to show how attractive and awesome the gospel is.

In this first presentation, Jerry Wierwille covers a brief history of how major philosophers initiated a movement that led to sequestering away of faith as something personal and private.  Then he shares how to broach spiritual topics with secular people around us. His talk is relatively short, only 34 minutes long, but I also included the questions and comments, which went for another half hour.

—— Notes ——

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

John Locke (1632-1704)

David Hume (1711-1776)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Georg Hegel (1770-1831)

value/fact divide

humanism

  1. knowledge derived by empirically
  2.  humans are part of nature, the result of unguided evolution
  3. ethics derived from trial and error, treat others as having inherent worth and dignity
  4. life’s fulfillment found in wonders and joy of human existence
  5. humans find meaning in relationships; want a world free of cruelty; differences resolved cooperatively w/o violence
  6. working to better society maximizes happiness; support a just distribution of nature’s resources so as many as possible can enjoy a good life; human rights; civil liberties; civic duties to vote

private life (values)
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public life (facts)

you can have beliefs, but they are private