Doubts Aloud Podcast

Show Notes We welcome Jon Cohen who leads us on his journey in life which has more recently led him to engage with Christians of all kinds on his successful YouTube live-stream show “Unconvinced”. Unlike many of us, he has no history as a Christian and so has a true outsider’s view of the faith.  A key step in his thinking has been exploring the implications of our beliefs not being our choices. I...

Show Notes We started with Episode 1 in Feb 2018, today we celebrate our 100th Episode with friend John Nelson, who is now the main host at Unbelievable?.  We discussed John’s PhD thesis book on what Jesus looked like, his work at Unbelievable?, his tour with Alex O’Connor and his blog “Behind the Gospels”.   We then dove into a specific issue on the background to the gospels – the transmission of...

Show Notes We start by dipping into the book with 50 arguments for God and a chapter “Jesus as God” which says that if we ditch 4th & 5thC debates and modern categories of Trinity, we see Jesus expressing his divinity in his own way.  It explains Jesus’ caged language on this as Jesus needing to avoid being stoned for blasphemy. We look at some of the key passages in the gospels, in particular...

Show Notes Ed has recently recorded an Unbelievable? Show with Dr Denis Alexander who is an evangelical Christian, a biologist and author of books like “Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?”.  Denis fully embraces evolution.  While these ideas are fresh, we took the time to think through how a deep thinking Christian reconciles evolution and faith as it informs theology on suffering, God’s...

The evangelical case for conditional Immortality  Recommended books. Edward Fudge   -  The Fire That Consumes Henry Constable  -   The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment Edward White -  Life in Christ  John Stott -  Essentials  Rethinking Hell - Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism

Episode 96 - The Kirk Cameron Controversy and the Case for Conditional Immortality Kirks original video that sparked the controversy  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RflbA8Vt_Y Kirk Camerons subsequent round table disscusion of the issue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds3UbUsIaQs

Text for DA Podcast Ep 95   Title Suggestions Virgin Births in Ancient Culture Virgin Births in Greek and Hebrew Culture   Show Notes We look for origins of the Virgin Birth doctrine in Christianity.  Principally we search the Greek and Hebrew cultures that are the context behind the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke’s gospels. What we don’t conclude is that the origin of the Virgin Birth was t...

Show Notes In episode 92 we explained the idea of Atheist Prayer and introduced a philosophy paper on it by Oxford prof Tim Mawson. This episode Tim is our guest.  We discuss the “Atheist Prayer Experiment”, which Tim’s paper inspired, and his contribution the Unbelievable? Shows on the Experiment.  The link to Divine Hiddenness is a strong theme. Appendium notes regarding the views of Richard Swi...

Show Notes We welcome Dr Lucas Wilson (also known as Luke), he’s an academic and has both studied and experienced the practice of Conversion Therapy.  The idea behind such therapy is that sexual orientation and/or gender identity is a mental disorder which can be fixed, usually by God, with the help of a programme, therapist, exorcist, boot camp, deliverer or some such. Luke has recently edited a...

Show Notes Yes, atheist prayer is a thing! We explain the idea and introduce a philosophy paper on it by Oxford prof Tim Mawson. The paper gave rise to the “Atheist Prayer Experiment” which Justin Brierley conducted and reported on via the Unbelievable? Show in 2012.  We discuss the setup and results of the Experiment. Tim Mawson himself has agreed to be our guest in November to give feedback on o...

Show Notes Andrew leads us through the development in the Hebrew scriptures regarding how other Gods/gods alongside Yahweh were understood.  Initially Yahweh was seen as Israel’s God within a Henotheist context, where Henotheism is the belief in or worship of one god while acknowledging the existence of other gods. A key idea was a Heavenly Council as seen in the opening of Job. Over time Yahweh b...

Show Notes Last episode we discussed apparently poor design within the Intelligent Design argument.  It led into assessing whether the Fall is a good explanation for poor design and hence natural suffering.  Here we discuss other explanations for a good and loving God making a world with natural suffering. In particular, we assess Sceptical Theism which we covered in episode 3. The idea is that th...

Show Notes In recent episodes we have discussed Design Arguments and Intelligent Design. Here we cover another chapter from the 50 Arguments for Faith book which explains the apparent suboptimal Design. It is interesting to see what reasons Intelligent Design proponents give.   One suggestion is: "We must also remember that the world we are observing is not the original creation. It is a corrupted...

Show Notes We looked at Design Arguments in our Episodes 82 & 85 but avoided diving deep into Fine Tuning, waiting for our discussion with Phil. It was worth it! We covered questions such as what are the actual physical observations which we call Fine Tuning? What are the main explanations for the observations that cosmologists/physicists generally think most likely and how popular are they am...

Show Notes We welcome again our great friend John Nelson as our guest. John has started an excellent academic blog, “Behind the Gospels”, which we discuss at length. We cover individual issues that John has covered, especially whether Matthew the disciple was the author of Matthews Gospel. We couldn’t hold back from asking about some hot topics, such as whether ‘John’ knew the synoptic gospels or...

Show Notes We welcome a new guest Jim Paul, a Christian thinker from the UK L’Abri community. He introduces us to a view of Heaven which is in contrast to the familiar ethereal heaven in our culture.  The familiar view is centuries old with its fluffy clouds and plump babies with wings, but it is a corruption of the Bible’s view, which is more earthy and on reflection more attractive.  Jim has wri...

Design Arguments Part 2   Show Notes In episode 82 we started our discussion on Design Arguments and got up to the start of the 19thC.  Later in that century the argument was turned on its head by Darwin and his Origin of Species. We discuss this and move on to modern creationism (a little) and Intelligent Design (a lot), selecting by our design – not at random - two more chapters from the 50 Argu...

Show Notes We start from an informative update on the Flat Earth movement. Their model for the earth usually includes a wall of ice round the rim – Anarctica, that implies the 24 hour sunshine in the Anarctica summer is impossible and their claims often include that it does not occur.  So what happens when a group of prominent Flat Earth advocates are paid to visit Anarctica during its summer? Tha...

Show Notes We start with the recent UK Parliament decision in favour of assisted dying and the religion and secular division that it brought out. Then we enjoy discussing Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at length.  There’s a debate among academics on whether it is a fully secular story, or if it is a Christian allegory.  We wade in.  The question on what Dickens’ own beliefs were has relevance...

Show Notes We start with the next chapter selected by the randomiser in our 50 Arguments for God book.  “Can We Be Certain That Jesus Died on a Cross? A Look at the Ancient Practice of Crucifixion” We agree that the answer is Yes, and enjoy ourselves on the way.  Then we move on to another random chapter which is on how our planet is ideal for doing astronomy – “Designed for Discovery”.  This lead...

Show Notes Ed continues relating the history of the remote isolated Scottish island of St Kilda and its amazing community.  We had finished Part 1 at about 1700 AD with a kind of Utopia and a gentle folksy religion.  Here we discuss its decline (our take) into a harsh, puritan, rule-bound and Calvinist kind of religion. And we ask how it could have happened and whether it’s a case of Hitchen’s “Re...

Show Notes Ed shares from his longstanding interest in the remote isolated Scottish island of St Kilda and its amazing community that survived for 1000s of years up to 1930.  In part 1 we cover its geography, community structure and social conditions, and then its religious history finishing around 1700 which was when outsiders began worrying about their souls.  How did a small isolated community...

Show Notes We covered the book of Daniel in episode 44 explaining it’s likely ‘forgery’ status and we briefly discussed his 70 Weeks prophecy in that episode.  Here Andrew leads us into a deep dive, plunging the murky waters.  Indeed, studying the prophecy has been called a ‘dismal swamp’. We discuss how all approaches, apologetic or scholarly, lead to difficulties making “Daniel’s” weird maths fi...

Show Notes In Part 1, friends of the show John Nelson and Josh Parikh returned as guests and discussed “McGrewvianism”, which is the apologetic approach of partners Tim & Lydia McGrew.  Their critiques of McGrewvianism centred largely in lack of engagement in the last 150 years of scholarship into the New Testament documents and they related this extensively to the McGrew’s use of ‘Undesigned...

Show Notes We return to our “Doubts Aloud Book Club” with a second episode on Tom Holland’s book ‘Dominion’ which has caused quite a stir in Christian apologetics circles over the last few years. We cover some of the critical responses, including ours. But most importantly we sought out responses from historians.   Tom makes a bold and interesting set of claims that we list, and then we assess the...