Postmodern Realities Podcast

The record-breaking Obi-Wan Kenobi is an overhyped snooze fest that barrels ahead when it should linger and lingers when it should barrel ahead. There are strokes of brilliance contained within what was clearly, at one point, the core storyline, even if some of those scenes we have already witnessed played out in other Star Wars media. Christians who happen to be Star Wars fans might find in the c...

For the past decade, proponents of theistic evolution have convinced many evangelicals that modern-day human genetic diversity has refuted a historical Adam and Eve. But recent analyses have shown these arguments to be wrong. An important lesson is that one should never rush to abandon important biblical doctrines based upon unclear evidence. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation wit...

Does the phenomenon of intersex justify “gender fluidity,” the rejection of fixed and God-given categories of gender identity and the decoupling of gender from biological sex? Supposedly, sex is “assigned” at birth based on sexual organs and chromosomes but need not define one’s gender identity. Why are people abandoning the biblical basis and norms of gender and sexuality? This Postmodern Realiti...

In a culture consumed by consumerism in the age of globalization, the Christian who seeks to make a case for his or her dependency on an old rugged cross and an empty tomb must compensate for the lack of “common ground” between the believer and the unbeliever. Because of the secularization of the culture and the dwindling of the Christian mind, there are now few epistemological topics on which the...

Sharing the gospel with those who are adopted—there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach because adoptions come in all shapes and sizes. There are domestic and international adoptions. There are adoptions through exclusive private agencies that sometimes can look like purchasing a designer baby, and there are adoptions where the children are highly challenging, requiring a lifetime of service and co...

The inventive and memorable tales in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories explain how the elephant got his trunk, the leopard his spots, and the camel his hump. Evolutionary naturalists tell their own "Just So" stories to explain why humans think and desire, behave and interact the way they do. But with one major difference. Evolutionists, who ground their cause/effect explanations in a Darwinian wor...

How often do those of us who are Christians stop to think about the place of imagination in reading the Bible? Among big ideas like exegesis and hermeneutics, where does imagination fit in? With most books, it’s unremarkable to say that we need imagination to read them well. But Christians sometimes get nervous about imagination and the Bible. Doesn’t using our imaginations mean we’re going to be...

On May 2, 2022, the website Poltico posted a story attributed to Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward sharing a leaked first draft of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) majority opinion on Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization addressing the constitutionality of a Mississippi law restricting abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy. The majority opinion draft, authored by Associat...

In 2019, two million people on Facebook said they were going to raid Area 51, a military base in Nevada, with the hopes of proving theories that extraterrestrials (ETs) and their spaceships were being stored there. In the end, only about 150 people showed up, and the “Storm Area 51” raid was a failure. But perhaps the most exciting recent occurrence regarding ETs and unidentified flying objects (U...

In the early 2000s, Oprah featured what became one of the most popular books of the last twenty years, one that transformed a culture eager to abandon the old mores of hard work and bygone Judeo-Christian scruples in favor of an easier, technologically shaped personal fulfillment. The book was called The Secret, and in it the author, Rhonda Byrne, claimed to have discovered mysterious — though emi...

Agelessness appeals in a culture which will do anything to disguise or deny the fact that we’re all, minute by minute, day by day, getting older. Agelessness appeals in a culture in which the elderly are often mocked and marginalized. And yet, as Christians, we must ask, is agelessness really God’s plan for us? To answer that question, we must recapture a biblical theology of aging. As we explore...

The New York Times recently published an opinion essay from Mary Zigler, Florida State University law professor and author of Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present, titled, “Anti-Abortion Groups Once Portrayed Women as Victims. That’s Changing.” Ziegler claims that opponents of legal abortion have gravitated away from offering legislation grounded in arguments framing women a...

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Cole Burgett about his online-exclusive article, “When the Hurlyburly’s Done: A Review of Everything Everywhere All at Once” **Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for Everything, Everywhere All at Once ** https://www.equip.org/article/when-the-hurlyburlys-done-a-review-of-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/ Locked art...

Scientific materialists recognize that an intellectually satisfying worldview must account for the entirety of human experience. A previous article explored how various contemporary authors attempt to explain the quintessentially human intuition that our existence has meaning, purpose, and value, and argued that their efforts inevitably fail. In addition to providing a foundation for the indispens...

The purpose of this podcast and accompanying article is to understand the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. Eternal generation is not a philosophical speculation, nor a theological deduction, but an exegetically grounded doctrine. The church fathers appealed to several biblical texts in both the Old and New Testament in support of their conviction that the Son is eternally begotten of...

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a film that probably works best as a companion to the compelling 2000 documentary that inspired it. While watching that documentary is not a prerequisite to enjoy the film on its own terms, the movie will certainly appeal best to people who have a working knowledge of the hilarious and tragic hijinks that ensued in America in the 1970’s and 1980’s. What the documentary —...

​“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent,” the pastor paused for breath and stretched out his hands to the congregation, trying by the power of his will to disbar the sleep from their eyes, for it was only seven in the morning, and a miracle that any of them were there at the appointed time. His voice called across the empty pews, “by self-examination...

To say that director Matt Reeves’s approach to the Batman character is scaled back would be an understatement, but this doesn’t come at the expense of audience expectations. The whole affair plays out across its walloping three-hour runtime like an acoustic cover of some of Batman’s greatest hits. The clever gadgets are present, but they’re not gimmicks; they are practical, accessible tools that m...

Philosopher and Christian apologist William Lane Craig’s latest work, In Quest of the Historical Adam, is an impressive, bold interdisciplinary exploration into the historicity of Adam (and Eve). Analyzing key texts in the Old and New Testaments, Craig concludes that Scripture presents Adam as a historical person and progenitor of humanity who introduced moral evil into the] world through disobedi...

Boba Fett is a Star Wars icon. A brutal bounty hunter first seen in the original Star Wars films with limited lines and on-screen presence, Boba Fett has been the center of fan adoration and speculation since the very beginning of the franchise. But how did we get from the rough-and-tumble bounty hunter to whom Darth Vader instructs, “No disintegrations” to the Boba Fett who intends to “rule with...

By giving Jesus and his disciples clear and discernable personalities, The Chosen rises above the traditional (some would say “wooden”) Christian adaptations of the gospel story to offer viewers a thoroughly engrossing series. Of course, this means creative licenses are taken when fleshing out the gospel characters. But the most intriguing character to get a refined personality is, of course, Jesu...

In a recent New York Times editorial entitled The Anti-Abortion Movement Could Reduce Abortions if It Wanted To, lawyer and journalist Jill Filipovic makes the case that an unhealthy preoccupation with birth control at the expense of limiting abortions exposes some ugly truths about the pro-life movement. According to Filipovic, pro-lifers are more interested in controlling women’s bodies than the...

Revoice 2021 Together met in October 2021 in Dallas to encourage what they call “sexual minorities” within the church to obedience, to reach out evangelistically to LGBTQ people, and to minister to “sexual majority” Christians. The conference featured Eve Tushnet, Preston Sprinkle, Greg Johnson, Misty Irons, Greg Coles, and many other speakers, as well as panels on gender minorities, racial minori...

A brief podblast update on what’s upcoming on the Postmodern Realities Podcast and the Christian Research Journal. As mentioned in the podblast, although getting a print subscription is the best value to get access to online-exclusives, we have launched two new options of a monthly or annual online exclusive content subscription that includes viewing to online-exclusive articles and select recent...

In some ways, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) represents the zenith of the modern pop-culture superhero craze. While it’s certainly better than any film of this sort has any right to be, it’s also not as good as that Rotten Tomatoes score would lead you to believe. There is a certain logic that is absent from the core mechanics of how the “multiverse” is supposed to work. But what Spider-Man sacrif...