Doubts Aloud Podcast

Episode 51 – Show Notes We’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 Weig...

Episode 50– Show Notes We 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 technolog...

Text for DA Podcast Ep 49 Episode 49– Show Notes We 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 Journ...

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...

Episode 47 – Show Notes It 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 e...

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 Ortho...

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 i...

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...

Episode 43 – Show Notes It 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 narrat...

Episode 42 – Show Notes After 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 deter...

Episode 41 – Show Notes It 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...

Episode 40 – Show Notes It 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?:...

Episode 39– Show Notes We 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...

Episode 38– Show Notes We 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 mo...

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 c...

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 A...

Episode 35 – Show Notes Andrew 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-BQro4...

Episode 34 – Show Notes We started with a quick update on our Atonement series from 2018 with a discussion arising from the recent Unbelievable Show https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Debating-Wrath-Sin-and-Penal-Substitution-William-Lane-Craig-and-Greg-Boyd We applaud WLC for giving it a go to explain Penal Substitution rationally, but Frances’...

Episode 33 – Show Notes We 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.youtu...

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/id1438270488 Robert also blogs on his website https://www.robertlwhite.net/ Robert is keen that we take the data...

Episode 31 – Show Notes We continue giving our Overview of Miracles ‘in the field’ as the claims really show up in the world. Then we use our latest chapter from the 50 Arguments for Faith book to launch discussion on Jesus’ miracles: “The Credibility of Jesus’s Miracles” (Chapter 28, see full book details at bottom) The links we mentioned along the way … Frances was on Unbelievable discussing Ken...

Episode 30 – Show Notes We start another summer mini-series, this summer on miracles, in response to a letter from Christian in Germany. This episode, we focus mostly on actual miracle stories as presented by people seeking to provide the most compelling cases. The video from Lee Strobel who had done 2 years of research:. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y57VUN2TO5M&feature=youtu.be&t=2077 The most...

Episode 29 – Show Notes This month we welcomed well known British apologist Jonathan McLatchie to share the show with us. Jonathan is a stalwart of the Unbelievable show and can be found here: www. JonathanMcLatchie.com https://www.facebook.com/groups/apologeticacademy/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr6nvYFyoCk5DsRgYRrhC_g Jonathan has seen the importance of demonstrating the reliability of the...

Episode 28 – Show Notes We start by trying to track Christian responses to the virus from before it was known about at all. Were there any prophecies? We include the reasons given which fell to the two extremes of The Devil and God in Punishment mode. Here are Andrew’s links: Ed noted how this matched this discussion on Unbelievable https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable...

Text for DA Podcast Ep 28 Episode 28 – Title Suggestions Responses to Covid-19 Christian Responses to Covid-19 Christians in Pandemic Episode 28 – Show Notes We start by trying to track Christian responses to the virus from before it was known about at all. Were there any prophecies? We include the reasons given which fell to the two extremes of The Devil and God in Punishment mode. Here are Andre...