Doubts Aloud Podcast

Episode 12 – Show Notes We kick off with another chapter in our “Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith..” book. Chapter 32 “Did Jesus Predict His Violent Death and Resurrection?”. It proved an interesting case study in using historical arguments for such issues, and ended up with the chapter’s author needing to cast doubt on one gospel version of Jesus praying at Gethsemane to show the likely authenticity of another (where he was aware of his impending death before he should know). Again we felt this was another ‘dud’ argument from the 50 Arguments for Faith book. We turned to our list of better arguments and Properly Basic Beliefs (PBBs) came up. Alvin Plantinga is the most prominent advocate of this approach. He sets out what PBBs are and why he thinks belief in God should be one …. Due to the Sensus Divinitatus, that inner knowing or sense or voice of God. We set this out and then ran through some objections and how theists have responded. This overlaps with our Episode 8, when we discussed beli

This month we discuss Pragmatic Arguments and the History of Christianity. The latter is an area of expertise for our guest Steve Tomkins and he joined us right through the recording. Steve did a Phd on the subject and is now editor for the in-house magazine of a leading UK denomination. He is also a lot of fun. We kick off discussing Ed’s appearance on the ’Unbelievable?’ Show of 20-10-2018https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-A-tale-of-two-doubters-Austin-Fischer-Ed-Atkinson Ed got the feedback he was fishing for, and then we moved on to the reason his discussion partner on the show, Pastor Austin Fischer, employs to stay in the faith: it is useful for him. Here is the Dostoyevsky quote from Austin’s book “If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.” We widened the discussion into general Pragmatic Arguments. These replaced the ‘dud’ ar

Episode 10 – Show Notes It would be good to have listened to the last episode where we interview Chris Date on doctrines of hell. Here we put it into context using the question: which hypothesis better fits the observations of doctrinal development in the BibleA. this is normal development of ideas in human cultureB. a divine agent is choosing to reveal doctrines bit by bit, like learning maths at school This initially arose as we looked at the latest chapter in our 50 Arguments for Faith book, chap 30 “The Son of God”. The chapter correctly identifies Son of God as the Old Testament title for the anointed king of Israel and that initially Jesus was Son of God only in being messiah – ‘anointed one’ – and things developed from there, ending with Jesus viewed as God - a member of the Trinity. Frances mentioned a great resource:http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com This doctrinal development theme then spread to the question of hell and afterlife and the devil, which we covered in Andrew’s ‘Is tha

The main topic of the show is doctrinal development in the Bible, specifically on Hell. We quickly introduce the topic to leave maximum room to hear from our guest, Chris Date. Chris is a layman but now studying theology and he is a deep Christian thinker, in the same way that Andrew was a few years ago. Chris dived deep into the doctrine of hell as it really mattered, and matters now, to him as a believer. He has done his own research work on this and as a result became a key driver in a movement ReThinking Hell. We respect him greatly. We discuss doctrines of hell, how they arose and wider issues. http://rethinkinghell.com/http://fuller.academia.edu/ChristopherDateDoubts 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 at the monthly “Unbelievable Christian and Skeptic

After answering some feedback and chatting over Ed’s experience of a charismatic summer camp, we got down to the main topic of the show – religious experience. We discussed how believers typically believe based on this rather than rational arguments or observable evidence. … from Ed’s charismatic fellow-campers to top apologists and philosophers like William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga. This set us up to enjoy a wonderful interview with Stephen Law (of ‘Evil God Challenge’ fame) who wrote a paper on just this topic a couple of years ago. We hear the argument in the paper and discuss challenges to it. Stephen concludes that it is not rational to believe in hidden agents like God or gods based on religious experience. Over to you Alvin … This month’s links: Ed at the camp New Wine:https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Weekday/Inspirational-Breakfast/New-Wine-2018/Tell-me-why-you-believe-agnostic-asks-Christians-at-New-Wine Clips of WLC:https://youtu.be/Q78ahkiMtFk Stephen Law’s 2016 paper :https:/

Resurrection interview with Mathew Hartke

Episode 7 – Show Notes Like the rest of the sceptical world in 2018 we had to indulge in a brief chat about Jordan Peterson. We complete our ‘Summer of Atonement’ this month. Andrew gives us an overview of the theories Christians use to try to make sense of it. Frances also gives some thoughts on the full set of philosophical problems with the doctrine. Ed tries to tie it all together to see how it counts as evidence in the assessment of whether Christianity can be true. Can we leave it as ‘mystery’? Or see it as mere demonstration art without genuine substance? Doubts Aloud Links:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023280847835278/ 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 at the monthly “Unbelievable Christian and Skeptic Discussion Group” in central London, see:https://ww

Episode 6 – Show Notes Ed and Andrew report to Frances on their experiences of the Book of Mormon Show in London. We also chat about SkyDivePhil who presented on Animal Suffering at the London Unbelievable Discussion Group. We recommend seeing him debate recently in Texas. Here is a link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKQWrbeoA2E In last month’s show we mentioned an impressive poem by Glen Scrivener “Given” which he read at this year’s Unbelievable Conference. We play his reading and then discuss it. Here is a link to the poem as text:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ex8GvfVysyZW4qde6WT83anCr9qQYSgwipUGJCe4jXo/edit The “Is that in the Bible” slot (Genesis 8:20-22) introduces ideas of sacrificing animals to please or appease God. This leads to a historical take on the Atonement as the next instalment of our continuing discussion we’re calling a ‘Summer of Atonement’. How did the early Christians get to the idea that Jesus’ death could take away sins? The link between animal sacrifice and removal

Episode 5 – Show Notes Frances and Andrew report back on the great Unbelievable Conference and we then give the answer ‘no’ to “Is that in the Bible?”. The earliest gospel, Mark, does not have anything at all on the central Christian idea that Christ died to do something about sins. We then we get to grips with a chapter in our 50 Arguments for Faith book “Is Jesus the Only Way?” This addresses the idea of exclusive truth as well as the apparent unfairness for cultures not familiar with Jesus. We consider how Jesus could be the Way to God or salvation. This idea that he dealt with sin, called the Atonement, is central. The “Is that in the Bible” discussion highlighted some problems here and they became worse as Andrew introduced us to his YouTube channel on Christian Diversity and the episode on the doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.https://youtu.be/P6TnqGa9Z3g We have decided to dig a bit deeper and make this a ‘Summer of Atonement”. We should all feel a lot better when it is done! Frances t

Episode 4 – Show Notes Andrew uses his ‘Is That In The Bible?’ slot to introduce us to a topic he researched deeply when a Christian and is a part of his journey to doubt. The verse is Matthew 24:34 “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” It turns out not to be isolated. The prophecy of Jesus’ early return is found throughout the New Testament. So much so that a whole movement in the church believes that he must have returned, but the church fathers did not really notice. There is variety and nuance in these beliefs and Andrew helps us explore them. Then we move to our section “Reason and God” and we look at a less well known argument for God’s existence by Thomas Aquinas, using his ideas on Essence and Existence. We use this to explore how some, often Catholic, apologists need to us first to adopt medieval thinking to understand the argument they are making. A good peer reviewed article to pursue this further is on the Internet Encyclo

Episode 3 - Show NotesWe dive straight into an interview with our first guest –Andrew has a wonderful discussion with a Christian John Nelson who has studied at Nottingham University. John’s studies included a deep dive into Historical Jesus research and he puts the recent and current research approaches into context. Then we move to our section “Reason and God” and we respond to Chapter 6 of the Christian 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. The chapter is “Responding to the Argument from Evil: Three Approaches for the Theist”. The main point we address is the appeal to ignorance of what God would do to make ‘goods’ in the world. How do we know that God isn’t producing a greater good from the death of a child from illness? Cynics may call this ‘playing the mystery card’ but its more honourable name is ‘sceptical theism’. We mention the online 'Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy' o

Episode 2 – Show Notes We dive straight into our section “Is that in the Bible?” and this month look at Leviticus 27 v28-9– which introduces a scary Hebrew word ‘herem’ that is often translated ‘devoted to destruction’ and is frequently applied to human communities in the Old Testament. Is this human sacrifice? We spend the rest of the show unpicking the issue of God’s character in the Old Testament where He commands ‘herem’ destruction of cities and peoples. How can the Bible be accurate and God still good and loving? There is a spectrum of Christian responses here, and we attempt to engage with them all. In particular we discuss the two approaches used by the guests on the recent Unbelievable shows on the topic.https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Greg-Boyd-Paul-Copan-debate-Old-Testament-violence-and-Boyd-s-new-theology-in-Crucifixion-Of-The-Warrior-Godandhttps://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Boyd-Copan

Episode 1 – Resurrection on Trial & A Journey to Doubt After introducing ourselves we use Frances’ expertise as a prosecution lawyer to mull over the claim that conflicting witnesses to an event help show its veracity. This claim lies behind some Christian approaches to demonstrate that the resurrection of Jesus must have been an actual physical event in history. We read the trial of Jesus in Mark to guide us (Mark 14 v55-59) and discuss Matthew’s use of prophecy to guide his apparent description of Jesus riding on two donkeys together into Jerusalem (Matthew 21 v1-7). Andrew moves into the hot seat as we ask him about his journey in faith and doubt. Hear why he called himself “the apocalyptic child” and what influence that had on his whole life. What was behind his doubts? How did he address them? Here is the link for his Christian Diversity YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY7ZxvV5qbg&list=PLIyesuRCrlRFYCYs_XMDKhd_MAyeF8esHWe introduce a section “Is that in the Bible?” and