Postmodern Realities Podcast

In Choosing Down Syndrome Ethics and New Prenatal Testing Technologies, author Chris Kaposy, the associate professor of Bioethics in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University Newfoundland, argues that advancements in less invasive prenatal testing will increase the use of those tests and produce a greater number of occurrences of selective abortion in cases of Down syndrome diagnosis. As the...

Stories of ghosts and experiences of the paranormal have been a historical constant for as long as humans have wondered what happens after death. But as the entertainment industry has become increasingly desperate for our always divided attention, these stories have been hybridized with reality TV and promoted on channels not traditionally associated with the category of the paranormal. The Travel...

Flannery OConnor was a Roman Catholic novelist, essayist, and short story writer whose Complete Short Stories won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1972. Her fictional work explores existential questions of grace, morality, freedom, and transcendence in the lives of grotesque characters. Are humans free to determine the nature of reality or does reality both spiritual and material precede the...

Although masturbation solo sex is a nearly universal behavior, it is rarely discussed in the church. However, the increasing support in the media for solo sex as a healthy activity means the church must begin to address it. The moral legitimacy of this behavior has long been debated in Christian circles. To arrive at a biblical conclusion, we need to go beyond prohibitions to consider the positive...

There is little doubt that the New Testament makes several unique claims concerning Jesus. Some of these exclusive comments regard claims that Jesus Christ was deity, or that He is the sole path to salvation, or that He was raised from the dead. The claims and deeds of Jesus become even more distinct when compared with the founders of other religious traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianis...

There is little doubt that the New Testament makes several unique claims concerning Jesus. Some of these exclusive comments regard claims that Jesus Christ was deity, or that He is the sole path to salvation, or that He was raised from the dead. The claims and deeds of Jesus become even more distinct when compared with the founders of other religious traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianis...

Generation Z the 70 million kids born between 1999 and 2015 is another testament to our cultures alarming slide into secularism. This emerging generation is twice as likely as adults to be atheists, theyre twice as likely to identify as LGBT, theyre committed moral relativists, and only one in eleven can be considered an engaged Christian. Couple this with the fact that many sectors of American cu...

HBOs TV series Westworld is a remake and expansion of the 1973 film by writer Michael Crichton about an immersive theme park where guests can interact with artificially intelligent robots programmed to act out cowboy stories from the Old West. The film follows a similar pattern as Crichtons 1990 novel Jurassic Park, but instead of genetically engineered dinosaurs, Westworld features artificially i...

African American men might be one of the most unreached people groups existing today. In all of the Christian churchs efforts to be obedient to the Great Commission, sharing the gospel with an African American man within our spheres of influence needs to be an important part of our efforts to reach people for Christ. On this episode of the Postmodern Realities podcast, author Eric C. Redmond talks...

More than 100 years after his death, Mark Twain remains one of the most colorful and well beloved American authors. Even infrequent readers know of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn who have become iconic characters in the American imagination, and Twains public persona and incisive wit are the stuff of legend. Both prolific and profound, Twain managed to expose social ills and elicit a hearty dose...

To follow Jesus faithfully means we need to reorient our values and priorities radically. One radical value Jesus proclaimed was that single men and women had equal standing in His kingdom. Society, which up to that point was centered on marriage and family, was now to include those who were unmarried as valued and equal partners. The apostle Paul and church father John Calvin, counter to the thin...

What do we do with the Christian spokesperson whose message seems at best tangential to the gospel, and whose megaphone is the national media? How should an everyday, street level apologist handle the backlash the Christian community receives from the very public statements of those who seem to make headlines instead of making a clearly reasoned case for the faith? When it comes to high profile pr...

A recent trend, which gained traction with a piece released by Planned Parenthood a handful of years ago Moving Beyond ProLife vs. ProChoice Labels, Youre Not in Her Shoes, is attempting to do just that. There is a growing desire that the terms prochoice and prolife be abolished because they do not adequately express feelings about abortion. Most people just dont want to be labeled, proponents cla...

There is a growing wave of Christian leaders who are rejecting Christianity and becoming some of its most ardent critics, often supported by a plethora of new organizations arising to encourage such people to cut ties to their faith. This is a new challenge from a different breed of critics who are using their instant credibility and insiders knowledge of theology, the Bible, church history, even...

For more than one year, Neil deGrasse Tysons book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, has sat on the bestsellers list. Is it a book Christians should read? This episode gives listeners an overview of Tysons world view, an overview of the book, and explores what Tyson thinks of the Big Bang theory and the multiverse. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Guillermo...

The cable TV series The Story of God with Morgan Freeman will return for a third season in 2019 on the National Geographic Channel. Hosted by Freeman who famously played God in the 2003 movie Bruce Almighty, the show attempts to be a comparative religion course translated into edutainment. Like many such courses, it espouses the claim that all religions are equally valid in their truth claims. Fre...

We live in a climate dominated by information technology. Before the glow of our screens, we constantly are tempted to divide our attention between this reality and the digital virtual world. Of course, we cannot be both in the real world and in the digital world, so this leaves us feeling torn, conflicted, and distracted. Such a steady psychological struggle leads us to seek ways of escaping the...

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Dr. Kevin Schut. Kevin is Professor of Media and Communication and Associate Dean of the School of the Arts, Media and Culture at Trinity Western University, a Christian university in Canada. He teaches about media, culture, and technology from a faith based perspective. His research focuses on video games and how they interse...

Christians may find themselves approached on the street being asked to consider religious faith. Sounds like Christian street witnessing, right? Well, it may be youre face to face with an atheist and often a GoPro video recorder being engaged in whats come to be known as street epistemology. What is street epistemology? According to Peter Boghossian atheism advocate and Assistant Professor of Phil...

It seems that most popular new movies these days are sequels, prequels, reboots, or remakes. The reason Hollywood seems unoriginal is because, when it comes to films, we prefer nostalgia to novelty. Every human has a basic desire for how things are actually meant to be. Nevertheless, this ideal is perverted by sin to the extent that, more often than not, our desires themselves are wayward. The rea...

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat as the ubiquity of social media expands, we are drawn, whether unwittingly or not, into their orbit a relentless cycle demanding as much of our time, energy, and attention we choose to offer. For human beings who are created in the image of our triune creator and share His characteristic impulse toward relationship, social media provides an avenue for both kn...

It is important to understand the sources of our modern distaste for the teaching of the doctrine of hell, for these are part of the strongholds characteristic of our times. By critically exploring these sources, we can best instruct children in the essential biblical doctrine of hell and avoid an abuse of greater severity their being unaware of its reality. This Postmodern Realities episode is a...

Christians dont have a shining track record in addressing sex. It may have been presented in unhelpful and unbiblical teaching through poor teaching of the Bible or ignored altogether. Women in the church have struggled with the louder silence in regard to female sexuality. In a world spiraling into a sexual free for all, many Christian women are succumbing to the cultural insanity that says sex i...

We live by a fudge factor, seeing our value in our achievements as greater than they really are. God, however, sees us as we really are sinful, irrational beings willing to cheat and lie to ourselves, exaggerating our accomplishments to others. Despite our faults, God also views us as inherently valuable, based not on our flawed image but His perfect one. This Postmodern Realities episode is a con...

The increasing acceptance of polyamory by progressives and soon to be former evangelicals is a symptom of the state of the churchs witness to Gods normative pattern for sexuality after Obergefell the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same sex couples. Whether pressured or free to come to terms with their accusers in the wider culture, thes...