music

Bill, we've been talking about this Ivy League tour that you had an opportunity to go up on and speak to faculty at Ivy League colleges.

We left off, you were headed to Dartmouth, talk about that event.

That's right. From Yale, we drove up to the lovely little town of Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth College is located.

David Hague did not join me for this event, so I went solo at Dartmouth.

The Dartmouth College event was also somewhat different in that it had a representation from what one calls the town and gown.

That is, say, both business people and community leaders, as well as people who were professors at the university.

There were also some African students from Nigeria and Kenya who couldn't go home on break and so attended the event.

These students stayed for an hour afterwards in intense conversations about what was said.

I gave my talk on the historical atom, went great. And at my round table afterwards, I met a political science professor from Egypt, who knew of the Egyptian myths that I had mentioned in my talk, as well as Egyptian monotheism under the Pharaoh on Kanaten.

And so that was an extremely interesting point of connection.

Now, I found that at this event because some of the people there, of course, did not believe in the Bible, they had difficulty understanding that I approached the topic of the historical atom by inquiring as to what my Biblical commitments are as a Christian theologian.

As a Bible believing Christian, am I committed to the historicity of Adam and Eve.

So, for example, one English professor got up and he complained that I didn't consider the viewpoints of other religions.

What about Buddhism? What about Hinduism? Why am I so narrowly focused on Christianity? I wasn't inclusive enough.

He also said that he thought religion is just an idea in the mind and doesn't involve an objectively existing reality.

Well, that gave me the opportunity to explain some of the backstory for my talk, that it is extracted from a broader systematic theology, namely it's the part of that systematic theology that deals with theological anthropology.

But in this same work, I also deal with the doctrine of God and arguments for God's existence.

And so then I rattled off about six arguments for the existence of God as an objectively existing creator and designer of the universe who is the paradigm of absolute goodness.

And that unexpected burst of evidence for the existence of God I think had a real impact on the audience at the very end of the evening, someone asked me during the Q&A time, where do you find meaning in life personally?

And that gave me then a chance to share a word of testimony about my relationship with God through Jesus Christ as my creator, redeemer and lover so that it was a very dramatic close to the evening with that final note.

Is it safe to say, Bill, that this is probably the most liberal part of the country? I mean, even more so than California.

...