{"id":18565,"date":"2011-07-20T00:07:02","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T05:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/?p=18565"},"modified":"2011-07-17T17:53:07","modified_gmt":"2011-07-17T22:53:07","slug":"josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh McDowell vs. Kevin Kelly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Josh McDowell<\/strong><\/a> says the internet is destroying the faith of young adults, but Kevin Kelly<\/strong><\/a>, of Wired magazine, sees things from the other angle: that human flourishing is connected to development in the technium.<\/p>\n

What say you? Do you see a problem with either information or access? What kind of \u201cproblem\u201d do you see on the Internet? What are some suggestions for sanctifying technology? Do you think technological developments make the hand of God visible?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has changed everything?\u201d asked [McDowell] the apologist from Campus Crusade for Christ International as he spoke on \u201cUnshakable Truth, Relevant Faith\u201d at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C., Friday evening. His answer was, the Internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have\u2026 whether you like it or not,\u201d said McDowell, who is author of two books on Christian apologetics,\u00a0More than a Carpenter<\/em> and\u00a0New Evidence that Demands Verdict<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Too much information, and too much access to our youth he says are problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow here is the problem,\u201d said McDowell, \u201cgoing all the way back, when Al Gore invented the Internet [he said jokingly], I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that\u2019s exactly what has happened. It\u2019s like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there\u2026 This abundance [of information] has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics].\u201d<\/p>\n

McDowell, who lives in southern\u00a0California<\/a> with his wife Dottie and four children, said atheists, agnostics and skeptics didn\u2019t have access to kids earlier. \u201cIf they wrote books, not many people read it. If they gave a talk, not many people went. They would normally get to kids maybe in the last couple of years of the university.\u201d But that has changed now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what to do?<\/p>\n

McDowell proposed three ways to deal with the problem. \u201cFirst, we have to model the truth. If you don\u2019t model what you teach your kids, forget it. If they don\u2019t see it, they won\u2019t believe it\u2026 Second, we have to build relationships.\u201d Just as truth without relationship leads to rejection, rules without relationship lead to rebellion, he said. \u201cKids don\u2019t respond to rules. They respond to rules in the context of a loving, intimate relationship.\u201d And third, he said, we have to use knowledge. \u201cYou better arm yourselves to answer your children\u2019s and grandchildren\u2019s questions\u2026no matter what the question is\u2026without being judgmental.\u201d Kids\u2019 greatest defense, he said, was the knowledge of truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But in CT, Kevin Kelly moves in the other direction, seeing the hand of God in the development of \u201ctechnium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid the din of warnings about modern technology\u2019s impact on the soul, Kevin Kelly sounds like the happy evangelist from Geekdom. \u201c[W]e can see more of God in a cell phone than in a tree frog,\u201d the\u00a0Wired\u00a0magazine cofounder claims in his most recent book,\u00a0What Technology Wants. A provocative title, to be sure, introducing a more provocative thesis: All human artifacts, from words to wheels to Wikipedia, together act like a living, breathing organism that reflects something of the Divine. \u201cTechnology has its roots in God\u2019s work through the universe,\u201d Kelly told CT associate editor Katelyn Beaty as she sat down with the San Francisco native at this year\u2019s\u00a0Q<\/a> conference, where Kelly was speaking. He believes that as participants in the\u00a0technium<\/em>\u2014Kelly\u2019s word for this tech-ecosystem\u2014\u201dwhen we try to increase the options in the world, we are part of something godly.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the same way we would say the beauty of nature reflects God, the technium reflects something of God\u2019s character. Not that the technium is without blemish, because anything we invent can be weaponized and made evil. But overall the technium has a positive force, a positive charge of good. And that good is primarily measured in terms of the possibilities and choices it presents us with. That\u2019s the metric I use to measure goodness.<\/p>\n

For instance, love is good. I define love as not just an emotion but an action that helps others achieve some possibility. By love we give people opportunities to express their unique set of God-given gifts. In a certain sense, if you had to objectively measure the love in someone\u2019s heart, what would that look like? I think it would look like increasing choices and possibilities for others\u2026.<\/p>\n

The fallibility of the human condition means that we tend to destroy as much as we create every year. We cannot even begin to be mostly good. But the good news is that by God\u2019s grace we can, and should, improve our lives a little tiny bit over time. That incremental crawl in the direction of good is all we can expect theologically, and it\u2019s the reason almost no one gives up the advancements of today. In what way would Christ\u2019s redemption be at work if we moved a little bit toward evil every year?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Josh McDowell says the internet is destroying the faith of young adults, but Kevin Kelly, of Wired magazine, sees things from the other angle: that human flourishing is connected to development in the technium. What say you? Do you see a problem with either information or access? What kind of \u201cproblem\u201d do you see on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nJosh McDowell vs. Kevin Kelly<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Josh McDowell says the internet is destroying the faith of young adults, but Kevin Kelly, of Wired magazine, sees things from the other angle: that human\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Josh McDowell vs. Kevin Kelly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Josh McDowell says the internet is destroying the faith of young adults, but Kevin Kelly, of Wired magazine, sees things from the other angle: that human\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-20T05:07:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-07-17T22:53:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/\",\"name\":\"Josh McDowell vs. Kevin Kelly\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-07-20T05:07:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-07-17T22:53:07+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"Josh McDowell says the internet is destroying the faith of young adults, but Kevin Kelly, of Wired magazine, sees things from the other angle: that human\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/07\/20\/josh-mcdowell-vs-kevin-kelly\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Josh McDowell vs. Kevin Kelly\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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