The Doubts Aloud Podcast! Join us as we allow doubts to be voiced regarding faith, religion and worldviews. Two of us have been Christians and none of us believe, so our current conclusion is that the doubts regarding Christianity are justified, but we are keen to question ourselves and hear Christian arguments and hear from Christian guests. Our background means that our conversation with Christianity will tend to dominate over other faiths. We are Frances Janusz, Andrew Whyte and Ed Atkins ...
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Episode 83 - Dickens and “A Christmas Carol
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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 o…
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Episode 82 - Yes Jesus Died and Design Arguments Part 1
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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 …
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Episode 81 - St Kilda, Isolation and Religion – Part 2 Religion poisons everything?
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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 h…
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Episode 80 - St Kilda, Isolation and Religion - Part 1 Utopia?mp3
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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 …
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Episode 79 - A deep dive into Daniel’s 70 Weeks prophecy
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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 …
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Episode 78 - The McGrewvianism Phenomenon – Part 2
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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 ex…
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Episode 77 - Doubts Aloud Book Club Tom Holland’s Dominion – Part 2
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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 se…
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DA - Episode 76 - The McGrewvianism Phenomenon with Josh & John – Part 1
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Show Notes Friends of the show John Nelson and Josh Parikh return as guests together. They introduce Josh’s new term to the world: McGrewvianism, which is the apologetic approach of partners Tim & Lydia McGrew. They are scholars in their own fields but do not use the methods of modern NT scholarship when arguing for the historical reliability of th…
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Episode 75 - Doubts Aloud Book Club: Tom Holland’s Dominion – Part 1
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Show Notes Tom Holland’s book ‘Dominion’ has caused quite a stir in Christian apologetics circles over the last few years and we’ve been reading it. We also attended a church leader’s evening where he was the speaker. So we thought we would start a “Doubts Aloud Book Club” with Dominion the first book covered.We introduce Tom, his current faith pos…
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Episode 74 - The age of the earth with Rev Michael Roberts
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Show Notes We are excited to have guest Rev Michael Roberts with us, he’s an Oxford geologist who subsequently became an Anglican vicar. He is extremely knowledgeable on the history of geology and the age of the earth in science, Christian academic thought, theology and the modern Young Earth movement. Did you know that Darwin was a geologist at th…
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Episode 73 Presuppositional Apologetics Part 2
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Show Notes his month we return to that different form of Apologetics - Presuppositional Apologetics. Please see Part 1 - Episode 70 - where we gave a more social and historical background to it. Here we look at the basic argument made: the Transcendental Argument for God, “TAG”. We set it out and discuss implications and objections to it. Links:The…
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Episode 72 - Evangelicals and Zionism – How Did we Get Here?
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Show Notes We deal with the current conflict in Israel and Gaza by looking at the influence of religion, in the minds of the Israeli leaders & the settlers taking land in the West Bank and also in the minds of the Evangelical Zionist backers in the UK and US. The UK evangelical influence is more of historical interest but the US is very current and…
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Episode 71 - The One with Us Obsessing over Luke’s Census
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Show Notes Merry Christmas one and all and what could be more festive than digging into the historical reliability of that Census? The one Luke uses to set up his nativity narrative. We make our case as to why this matters, after all, Luke is said to be a great historian by many. Then we get to it dealing with the 3 main historical issues with the …
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Episode 70 - The One on Presuppositional Apologetics
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Show Notes This month we (in our view) bravely jump into a completely different form of Apologetics - Presuppositional Apologetics. It can be a bid disorientating as in Andrew’s words it can be summarised as “God’s word says you are wrong so you have no case to make". Frances is more measured with her summary: “the only proof of the Christian posit…
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Episode 69- The One About Mormonism
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Show Notes In this episode Andrew shares his research on the origins of the Book of Mormon and the early roots of the Mormon church. This includes discussing the belief that gold plates were discoverd near New York in the early 19th century that gave the purported story of jews emigrating from the holy land to the americas in around 600 BC. Andrew …
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Episode 68 - That Curse Tablet and Biblical Archaeology
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Show Notes Andrew has been following a story about a ‘Curse Tablet’ found at an archaeological site in Israel which proponents claim should up-end Biblical Archaeology in such a way as to confirm the conservative evangelical view of the Torah – the first five books of the OT. We look into it and hear from both sides. This led on to Ed introducing t…
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Episode 67 - The One with Andrews Deconversion Story - PART 2
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This episodes is Part 2 of a 2 part show with just with Andrew on his own and and he recounts in detail his own de-conversion story.Av Doubts Aloud Podcast
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Episode 66 - The One with Andrews Deconversion Story - PART 1
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This episodes is Part 1 of a 2 part show with just with Andrew on his own and and he recounts in detail his own de-conversion story.Av Doubts Aloud Podcast
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Episode 65 - More Tumult in Christian Apologetics - with Josh Parikh
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Show Notes We continued our discussion with friend of ours Josh Parikh - a Christian Apologist who has always thought deeply about the issues and maintained intellectual integrity. There were two Old Testament case studies that Josh included in his talk “A Tumultuous Period in Apologetics?” to the Discussion Group in London, and we were keen not to…
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Episode 64 - Josh Parikh - A Crisis in Christian Apologetics? Part 1
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Show Notes Josh Parikh is an old friend of ours having contributed to our Discussion Groups over many years as a Christian Apologist who has always thought deeply about the issues and maintained intellectual integrity. He has been on a journey, especially having engaged with Biblical scholarship. This has overlapped with his time at Oxford Universi…
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Episode 63 - Homosexuality and the Bible part 2
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Show Notes For Part 2 of our discussion of same-sex relationships, sexual practice and the Bible, we start with background and origins for the OT Law (we covered its interpretation in Part 1). One scholar has identified an evolution in the laws in Leviticus from a more lenient view to the harsh one found in the final text. Frances has researched re…
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Episode 62- Homosexuality and the Bible - Part 1
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Show Notes We do a tour of the Bible and its material on same-sex relationships and sexual practice. We find that the story of Sodom isn’t the place to start and the OT Law has issues with interpretation. Jesus didn’t directly teach on the subject and so we spend more time with the references to it by Paul, in a long passage in Romans 1 (v 18-32) a…
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Episode 61 – Show Notes Occam’s Razor shows us how simple explanations are superior to complex ones and so simplicity is a concept that might lead us to believe in God as this one simple concept – a supernatural personal agent – can explain all the complexities of the world. We try to assess this line of thinking, especially using the work of the O…
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Episode 60 - What on earth are the gospels? with John Nelson
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Episode 60– Show NotesJohn Nelson returned as our guest to start off 2023. He’s been monitoring the debate about what literary genre we should consider the gospels to be and what the implications would be if they are taken as biography in the Greek & Roman tradition. The question fits with his studies for his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in C…
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Episode 59 - History of Santa Claus with Paul Thompson and a Perfect Scam
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Episode 59– Show Notes We had a great time with our guest Paul Thompson of the Skepticule Podcast. Paul has done a lot of research on St Nicolas and his afterlife as Santa Claus which we enjoyed. He also researched scams as part of the UK sceptical community and gave us the benefits by leading us through The Perfect Scam. So all good fun and games …
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Episode 58 - Biblical Cosmology and the Rise of the Flat Earth Movement
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Episode 58– Show Notes Andrew is on a roll again, reporting his research into flat earth beliefs in the Bible. Actually, it is just a component in a whole cosmology of how the ‘heavens’, earth and under the earth fit together. Spoiler – no turtles. This eventually moves on to Ed getting excited over whether Jesus was a flat earther. We can’t help b…
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Episode 57 - God Intervening in Experiments and in Life?
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Episode 57– Show Notes We start with methodological naturalism and whether rejecting can be scientifically legitimate, as this is the next chapter in our 50 Arguments for God book. Chapter title: “The Scientific Status of Design Inferences”. We discuss the argument in the chapter for rejecting methodological naturalism when it comes to the ‘science…
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Episode 56 - SkyDive Phil on the Kalam Cosmological Argument
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Episode 56– Show Notes We’re delighted to welcome SkyDive Phil back on the show. Not on vegetarianism as we’d trailed (please be patient) but on his recent work on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The most prominent form of the argument, as defended by Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig, states the Kalam cosmological argument as…
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Episode 55 - Does God Have A Body?
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Episode 55 - Title Suggestions 1. God’s Body 2. Does God have a Body? 3. God really has a Body and we’re not joking 4. The one where God has a body Episode 55– Show Notes The idea we explore is that the Old Testament authors all thought that God had a body. For them He wasn’t an ethereal unembodied universal Being. We look at the evidence for this …
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Episode 54 - Replay - The one about the Resurrection
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Resurrection interview with Mathew HartkeAv Doubts Aloud Podcast
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Episode 53 - The Perfect Episode
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Episode 53– Show Notes We start with an argument from our series on 50 Arguments for God’s Existence. This time “The Argument from Degrees of Perfection” by Catholic philosopher Peter Freeft. The following link gives a summary. https://peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#4 We try our best to do the argument justice while dis…
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Episode 52 - Yes – the Episode on Atlantis
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Episode 52– Show Notes Andrew’s daughter, Jahannah, has a YouTube channel and she takes seriously the possibility of Atlantis being more than a myth. They held a debate together on her channel which Andrew needed to prepare for with a heap of research and reading. The parallels with research into ancient history of relevance to Hebrew and Christian…
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Episode 51 - Was the Tomb Empty? with Graeme Smith
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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 do…
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Episode 50 - Handwashing and Divine Practical Advice
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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 washin…
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Episode 49 - How Not to Debate Doctrine in Tudor England - Steve Tomkins
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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 …
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Episode 48 - Open Theism – What Does God Know?
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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 Testa…
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Episode 47 - The One with John Nelson
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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 …
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Episode 46 - Orthodoxy and Diversity
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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…
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Episode 45 - Revelation – What on earth is going on
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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 …
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Episode 44 - The Book of Daniel - Is it a pious fraud?
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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 …
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Episode 43 - Paradoxes with Krish Kandiah
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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 sig…
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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. …
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Episode 41 - Animal Suffering and Theology with Phil Halper
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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 …
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Episode 40 - The One With Justin Briefly
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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 Unb…
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Episode 39 - Are there forged writings in the New Testament ?
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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 F…
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Episode 38 - Reflections on the Ravi Zacharias Scandal
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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 implicati…
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Episode 37 - Dumb and Dumber. Part 2 - Dumber
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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 hum…
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Episode 36 -Dumb and Dumber. Part 1 - Dumb
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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 quickl…
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Episode 35 - A Season of Hell Part 2
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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 …
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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 e…
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