Doubts Aloud Podcast

Episode 51 – Show NotesWe’re delighted to have a British District Judge as our guest. Not any District Judge but Graeme Smith who is a Christian and has written a book on the evidence for the resurrection, which he considers is excellent. We each enjoy a collegiate discussion with Graeme on various aspects of the book and how he concludes as he does. The book is “Was the Tomb Empty: A Lawyer Weighs The Evidence For The Resurrection” Feb. 2014 Here’s a purchase link:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Was-Tomb-Empty-Evidence-Resurrection/dp/0857215280 Doubts Aloud Links:Please leave us a review on iTunes and we will respond to any question asked there with the review. Or give feedback and ask questions using : doubtsaloud@gmail.com Join the Facebook Group discussions:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023280847835278/ Meet us all in person (after Covid19) at the monthly “Unbelievable Christian and Skeptic Discussion Group” in central London, see:https://www.meetup.com/Unbelievable-Christian-and-Skeptic-Discussion-G

Episode 50– Show NotesWe celebrate our 50th episode by getting down and muddy in the issue of divine practical advice. Christians celebrate it when ancient advice or OT Law tallies well with modern health advice, but they don’t see the massive misses that there are in the Bible. We spend most of the time diving deep into the example of hand washing with soap, which is simple, within the technology of Bible times and has a massive impact on child mortality rates. Can we expect a loving God to help by giving this advice, especially when He visits earth in the incarnation? Some of the references and links we mentioned:Leviticus 13 & 14 for boils and mould. Chapter 15 for “an unusual bodily discharge” where there is lots of references to washing things and the only reference (v11) to anything remotely like hand washing in the community connected to health or food or sanitation or anything useful. The Christian podcaster excited about God’s blessing in the Leviticus mould advice (we played this from 8min4

Text for DA Podcast Ep 49 Episode 49– Show NotesWe were delighted to welcome back friend-of-the-show Steve Tomkins to tell us all about the theological debates in late Tudor England which were conducted using, at one extreme, burnings at the stake and, at the other extreme, scurrilous publications akin to a 16thC Private Eye. Much of the material that Steve shared is in his recent book:The Journey to the Mayflower: God’s Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom (2020) If you want to know anything about Church history or really anything that matters, please see Steve’s other books:A Short History of Christianity (Lion Histories) 2005The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce's Circle Transformed Britain 2010William Wilberforce: A biography 2007David Livingstone: The Unexplored Story 2013My Ministry Manual by Rev.Gerald Ambulance 2003Jesus and His World - Paul and His World (Steve wrote the Paul part) 2019John Wesley: A Biography 2003 Doubts Aloud Links:Please leave us a review on iTunes and we will respond to any question

Episode 48– Show Notes This month we discuss Open Theism which is based on the idea that God doesn’t know the future choices that free agents will make. It is a relatively new idea within the history of Christianity and it has received increasing attention in recent years with thinkers such as Greg Boyd promoting it. The narratives in the Old Testament tend to indicate this view of God’s knowledge as God is a more human type of character when compared to the ‘omni’ God of classical Theism which follows from classical Greek philosophy such as Aristotle. We discuss the implications on issues such as prayer and changing God’s mind, prophecy which requires God to know the future and the Problem of Evil. We end with a quick discussion of how Islam and Judaism fit in with this. Links:We mentioned a few links and sources: Dr William Hasker being interviewed on Open Theismhttps://youtu.be/csGWj1pgrxE The Unbelievable Show episode on this from May 2016 with James White & John Sandershttps://www.premierchristia

Episode 47 – Show NotesIt is a delight to welcome back John Nelson to the show after his time with us back in Episode 3. We got to know John in the London Unbelievable Discussion Group when he was an undergraduate at Nottingham studying theology. He has since moved on to post doctoral research at Oxford University and now Edinburgh. He has tended to concentrate mostly on the gospels, a topic of enduring interest to us. We chat about research into the historical Jesus, the genre of the gospels and - partly due to the season . Doubts Aloud Links:Please leave us a review on iTunes and we will respond to any question asked there with the review. Or give feedback and ask questions using : doubtsaloud@gmail.com Join the Facebook Group discussions:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023280847835278/ Meet us all in person (after Covid19) at the monthly “Unbelievable Christian and Skeptic Discussion Group” in central London, see: https://www.meetup.com/Unbelievable-Christian-and-Skeptic-Discussion-Group-London

Episode 46– Show Notes We start with the Gospel of Thomas as it the next chapter in our 50 Arguments for God book. Why do people talk about it? What is it? What is its history? What do we learn from it? This all raises the issue of lost early Christian documents - the surviving ones are the ‘winning’ ones, those which scribes chose to copy and keep preserved. Thomas also raises the issues of Orthodoxy, Heresy and Diversity of Beliefs. We continue that discussion for the rest of the show. The towering figure here is German scholar Walter Bauer who changed the way academics think about this with his book published in the 1930s. “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity”. A great way for podcast fans to learn more on him and his legacy is episode 26 of the podcast “The NT Review” Walter Bauer covered the 2ndC AD and we move on to discuss the 1stC where we have even less material outside those preserved in the New Testament. We look at those documents, along with the Didache which most date in t

Episode 45– Show Notes We discuss the New Testament Book of Revelation using Andrew’s research and knowledge, as we did for Daniel last month. Things are more complex than for Daniel and we leave things a bit more open. The issues of when it was written and by whom are more straightforward perhaps, but what the author is trying to achieve with all the strange imagery and use of apocalyptic genre is not clear. We discuss that along with the massive use of the Old Testament in Revelation, the way the author invites us to expect near immediate fulfilment, the invitation in the text to do decoding, whether this is a crafted text or reporting of amazing dreams/visions and of course the violence - human suffering from God’s wrath - that is described. Links:We mentioned the Naked Bible podcast by an evangelical scholar, Dr Michael Heiser, which introduces the book of Revelation, it is episode 352.https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/podcast/naked-bible-352-introducing-the-old-testament-in-the-book-of-revelation/ Doubts

Episode 44– Show Notes We discuss the Old Testament Book of Daniel using Andrew’s research and knowledge. The main controversy surrounds whether it is written by Daniel himself as it purports to be (6thC BC) or someone claiming to be Daniel in the 2ndC BC. As it turns out this is only a controversy when conservative scholars are around. We discuss the reasons why the mainstream date Daniel at the juncture when the ‘prophecies’ suddenly turn from accurate to hopeless. The significance of this of course impacts on the use of Daniel by apologists, but the significance extends too to the use of it in the New Testament. Links:The quote from Richard Carrier:https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/18242 Doubts Aloud Links:Please leave us a review on iTunes and we will respond to any question asked there with the review. Or give feedback and ask questions using : doubtsaloud@gmail.com Join the Facebook Group discussions:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023280847835278/ Meet us all in person (after Covid19) at t

Episode 43 – Show NotesIt is a delight for us to have a long chat with Ed’s friend Krish Kandiah, a Christian author and leader in the UK on adoption, fostering, social action and welcoming the vulnerable to our shores. He has written a successful book ‘Paradoxology’ which covers a lot of ground that can cause doubts for believers and has been significant in our journeys. In particular the narratives seeming to describe genocide of Canaanites at the command of Yahweh. He sees this as a paradox between God’s love and justice and what we read, say in Joshua, as we do. Krish’s approach is to embrace the paradox and understand it within wider ones, such as the Trinity, rather than brush it away under the carpet.Here is the Amazon page for the book:https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=paradoxology+by+krish+kandiah Look out for other books by Krish including ‘Faitheism’ on good relations between Christians and atheists as we discuss the issues. As we discussed both care for the vulnerable and punishment in hell we dis

Episode 42 – Show NotesAfter promising this for a while, at last we tackle Mythicism which in our context is the idea that Jesus never existed as a historical human being. None of us subscribe to the idea but we find it an interesting idea and movement to learn from, both in what they use as evidence and what kind of person believes in Mythicism. It leads us to question what we can actually determine about Jesus of Nazareth that isn’t myth, either from Jewish or Greek/Roman stories and tropes. Some links:The discussion with Robyn Walsh on her new work about use of Roman tropes (or not) in the gospels, we had listened to it on the NT Pod:https://podacre.blogspot.com/2021/06/nt-pod-98-origins-of-early-christian.htmlThe book on use of material from the Old Testament such as Elijah and Elisha in the gospels:"Gospel Fictions" by Randel Helms 1988The BBC Radio 4 discussion on Agrippina the Younger“In Our Time” episode of 31 March 2016 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074yzwkDoubts Aloud Links:Please leave us a

Episode 41 – Show NotesIt is a delight for us to have a long chat with our friend ‘SkydivePhil’ - Phil Halper. He’s best known for his YouTube channel and has twice been on Unbelievable discussing cosmology and also, for his first appearance, animal suffering. Phil is a vegetarian and sees how the issue of animal suffering is a much more powerful argument against theism than is generally realised. It is that subject that we were keen to discuss, especially because Phil and some of his contacts have just published an important paper on the topic. The paper is not so much philosophy/theology but focuses most on the science of animal pain and suffering, asking the question of the degree to which animals suffer as we do when they experience pain. The conclusions from this are vast, but we stick in this episode to how it informs arguments against theism based on what we now know of animal suffering. SkydivePhil’s Youtube channel is herehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtOgKmAM4MeFu-jd-HB3_cg The best link for

Episode 40 – Show NotesIt is a delight for us to have a long chat with our friend Justin Brierley, the founder and host of the Unbelievable Show (search “Unbelievable?” in your podcast App) where Christians and Atheists meet for respectful dialogue. The show is how the rest of us met each other. We discussed in particular chapter 3 of Justin’s Unbelievable? book, written in 2017:“Unbelievable?: Why after ten years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian”Eg: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unbelievable-after-talking-atheists-Christian/dp/0281077983Chapter 3 is on human worth, the Moral Argument and morality. In the discussion we mentioned Tom Holland’s book “Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind”:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dominion-Making-Western-Tom-Holland/dp/0349141207 Why not pick up on Justin’s offer to join in with the recording of his next BIG CONVERSATION with NT Wright and Douglas Murray on Thurs 13th May 2021:https://www.thebigconversation.show/mythmiraclesandidentity And don’t forget this year

Episode 39– Show NotesWe discuss the issue of some New Testament letters that have strong evidence to suggest that the author was not who they claimed to be. This practice was not uncommon in that period. We dig a bit deeper on the letter 2 Peter in particular. We took the opportunity to quickly discuss another chapter from our “50 Arguments for Faith” book: chapter 47 on the NT canon. What does it say on this issue? Links:The academic Bart Ehrman book is “Forgery and Counter-forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics“, 2013.Available:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgery-Counter-forgery-Literary-Christian-Polemics/dp/0199928037/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Forgery+and+counter+forgery&qid=1617536611&s=books&sr=1-1Doubts Aloud Links:The 50 Arguments for Faith book: “Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy and Science” by Mike Licona and William Dembski. (It can be found on Amazon.)Please leave us a review on iTunes and we will respond to

Episode 38– Show NotesWe try to be sensitive as we discuss the recent scandal of Ravi Zacharias’ behaviour as a leading Christian apologist and communicator. This was not just a preaching getting into a sex scandal. There were many victims of abuse by his behaviour and his organisations forceful cover up.We seek to cover the aspects and implications of interest to atheists and where we have a more personal take on the story, such as Ed’s involvement with Ravi’s ministry in the UK (RZIM in Oxford). Links:The reporthttps://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rzimmedia.rzim.org/assets/downloads/Report-of-Investigation.pdfThe Unbelievable Show on the scandal and implications:https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-The-Ravi-Zacharias-scandal-Dr-Diane-Langberg-Glen-Scrivener-and-Steve-Baughman-on-lessons-we-need-to-learnPremier Christianity coverage and reflectionhttps://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/5-helpful-reflections-on-the-Ravi-Zacharias-scandalThe statement Ed was

Episode 37– Show Notes We continue the discussion from the last episode which had launched from the chapter in our favourite Apologetics book - "How Darwinism Dumbs Us Down: Evolution and Postmodernism". This time we discuss the theists’ side of deriving confidence in our knowledge (quoting the book): “an absolute mind as the basis for trust in human cognition”, i.e. being in God’s hands when it comes to what we can know.So what does happen when theists face their own source for determining truths and knowledge, which boils down to a reliance on God not deceiving them. Are they Dumber?We discussed the philosophy of how we can know that an all powerful God isn’t deceiving us and then we couldn’t help ourselves and turned to the passages in the Bible (Old and New Testament) where God does actively deceive. (See 1 Kings 22, Ezekiel 20:25 onwards and 2 Thessalonians 2:11 for starters)Ed thought that it might still be OK to live under a good loving God who may well be deceiving so that he (Ed) would just think

Episode 36– Show Notes We started with the next random chapter from our favourite Apologetics book "How Darwinism Dumbs Us Down: Evolution and Postmodernism". The idea is that knowledge arrived at for survival purposes is not likely to include metaphysical truth, so evolution undercuts any confidence in concluding naturalism or atheism. This quickly morphed to the more well-known presentation by Alvin Plantinga, which he called the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). We discussed it at some length, including how evolution has indeed not endowed us with perfect brains, rather ones subject to plenty of flaws. This is the outcome of observation not philosophical speculation. So we are all Dumb. We hinted at where this will be going in the next episode: what happens when theists face their own source for determining truths and knowledge, which is a reliance on God not deceiving them. Are they Dumber?We didn’t mention specific references to our material beyond Wikipedia, there is a lot of furthe

Episode 35 – Show NotesAndrew continued the long story of hell, picking up with St Paul. The various twists and turns (and torments) were related up to today. We frequently mentioned Chris Date, he was our guest in episode 9. Then Ed talked through his material on the apologetics of defending hell, based on a paper he wrote with Josh Parikh, find it here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zq-BQro4qIaVMQNX6t4tMGRWIm5uVNc5/view?usp=sharing Finally we became festive and Frances provided some Seasonal debunking. First in her sights was a myth about the shepherds at the nativity, such as given here:https://www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2014/December-2014/Christmas-ScandalsHer source material was partly from ‘Facts and Trends’:https://factsandtrends.net/2015/12/17/christmas-urban-legends-shepherds-as-outcasts/And Frances mentioned the Jewish take on shepherdshttps://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1762017/jewish/People-of-the-Land.htm For good measure Frances then took on an atheist’s myth about Jes

Episode 34 – Show NotesWe started with a quick update on our Atonement series from 2018 with a discussion arising from the recent Unbelievable Showhttps://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Debating-Wrath-Sin-and-Penal-Substitution-William-Lane-Craig-and-Greg-BoydWe applaud WLC for giving it a go to explain Penal Substitution rationally, but Frances’ legal mind unpicked his arguments based on precedents in US/UK law: employer’s liability and legal fictions. The we got stuck into hell with Andrew giving his story of anguish, research and discovery on it as a Christian. This led into a discussion on the emotional aspects of holding a belief in traditional hell. Then we started the long story of hell and afterlife beliefs with the early Old Testament, where there seemed to be no belief in the afterlife, through to Jesus who did teach frequently on hell in Matthew, Mark & Luke, together with useful material in John’s gospel. Of relevance here is Bart Ehrman’s new

Episode 33 – Show NotesWe discuss how morality really is in human society and whether that fits better with an evolutionary outlook or typical theism. Theists usually appeal to morality as coming from God and expressing His moral nature. So what is morality like ‘in the field’? Some links we mentioned:That famous experiment with monkeys and fairness using grapes and cucumbers’.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCgAnd the video of a monkey trying to revive a fellow in the group at an Indian train station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVWPbd1UykYThe Netflix series “Orthodox” on escaping an ultra orthodox Jewish culture:https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81019069The Netflix show “The Good Place” which included the trolley problem, in season 2:https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80113701Doubts Aloud Links: Please leave us a review!Or give feedback and ask questions using : doubtsaloud@gmail.com Join the Facebook Group discussions:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023280847835278/Meet us all in person (aft

Episode 32 – Show Notes We complete our Summer of Miracles with our guest Robert L White the ‘common sense epistemologist’ and the kind of Christian apologist that we get along with. His podcast is ‘The Robert L. White Show’https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-robert-l-white-show/id1438270488Robert also blogs on his websitehttps://www.robertlwhite.net/ Robert is keen that we take the data seriously on miracles and he does have a case with the study done by Dr Candy Gunther Brown with healings from blindness and deafness in Mozambique and Brazil. It is presented in the book:‘Testing Prayer: Science and Healing’, April 2012 by Candy Gunther BrownThere is also a research paper:https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Study-of-the-Therapeutic-Effects-of-Proximal-Prayer-Brown-Mory/9c68aaab0d5902cef43d1fcc015eb59305f1dd1f?p2dfRobert mentioned and recommended this lecture by Dr. Brown herself giving an overview of her book and work:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRfLooh3ZOk Doubts Aloud Links: Please leave us