After a 3-year hiatus, Andy and TJ are back with a new episode. They were recently contacted by Graham Marks, who had a lot of interesting things to say (and ask about) Christianity, apologetics, Andy's Manifesto, and lots of other things we've talked about over the years. After some back and forth over email and texting they decided just to have Graham on and talk about all of it in person.

Check out Graham's blog, Apollos Theology, and feel free to reach out to him. He's always up for a good discussion!

https://www.apollostheology.com/

In this episode, we're joined by Emily McCarty, a doctoral student at St. Louis University studying Philosophy of Religion with an emphasis on the problem of evil. Her advisor is Eleonore Stump, one of the most well-respected Christian philosophers in the world today. So... she knows her stuff!

Andy and TJ are joined once again by the inimitable Rachel Ferguson. Rachel threw down the gauntlet, suggesting that they read David Bentley Hart's book "Atheist Delusions", then have her on to discuss it. Challenge accepted!

In addition to the book, they discuss secular morality, the possibility of separating Christian ethics from Christian metaphysics, Aquinas' "Five Proofs" and the "uncaused Cause", and more.

Andy and TJ are joined by Josh Hedlund, who was in the CHS class of 2006 with Andy. Josh pushes back on some of Andy's original Manifesto claims, they discuss the role that religious ideologies play in motivating humanity to not rape and pillage, and how most people are pretty stupid (present company excluded obviously).

Andy and TJ are joined by their first repeat guest, Sam Tunnell. They discuss a secular basis for morality, Sam Harris's "The Moral Landscape," and other topics.

Other resources:

Andy's main argument is based around Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape."

You can also watch Sam Harris's TED Talk on The Moral Landscape.

Sam mentioned Rebecca McLaughlin's "Confronting Christianity" as having powerful arguments from the Christian perspective.

Andy mentioned a couple of YouTube channels that he likes,  Steven Woodford's "Rationality Rules" and Alex O'Connor's "CosmicSkeptic".

Sam mentioned the podcast "This Cultural Moment" as another good resource for Christians interested in the topic of morality and culture in general.

This is Part 2 of our conversation with Rachel Ferguson.  She's the Director of the Liberty & Ethics Center and the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University. She was also Andy's college Philosophy professor.

Unbeknownst to us before the night we recorded, our parents and Rachel's parents knew each other since the 1970's and were responsible for our dad "getting saved", so that was a very serendipitous connection.

In this part we talk about economics and politics, more so than we usually do on this podcast, including Rachel's forthcoming book, "Black Liberation Through the Marketplace".

During our talk Rachel referenced a near endless supply of books and other resources that are worth checking out, including...

- Rachel's own YouTube talk, "Jesus' Moral Revolution"

- This article and this article on the topic of hell

- Phil Vischer's video discussing the history of American Evangelicalism

- "Wandering in the Darkness" by Eleonore Stump

- "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard

- "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck

- "God Behaving Badly" by David Lamb

- The Bible Project

- "Love Your Enemies" by Arthur C. Brooks

- "A Time to Build" by Yuval Levin

- "Toxic Charity" by Robert Lupton

This is Part 1 of our conversation with Rachel Ferguson.  She's the Director of the Liberty & Ethics Center and the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University. She was also Andy's college Philosophy professor.

Unbeknownst to us before the night we recorded, our parents and Rachel's parents knew each other since the 1970's and were responsible for our dad "getting saved", so that was a very serendipitous connection.

In this part we talk about Rachel's story of growing up in the church, the history of the American Evangelical movement and it's differences from the American Evangelical church of today, Christian support of Trump and what that means for the church going forward, and her book (which will be released later this year... hopefully).

During our talk Rachel referenced a near endless supply of books and other resources that are worth checking out, including...

- Rachel's own YouTube talk, "Jesus' Moral Revolution"

- This article and this article on the topic of hell

- Phil Vischer's video discussing the history of American Evangelicalism

- "Wandering in the Darkness" by Eleonore Stump

- "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard

- "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck

- "God Behaving Badly" by David Lamb

- The Bible Project

- "Love Your Enemies" by Arthur C. Brooks

- "A Time to Build" by Yuval Levin

- "Toxic Charity" b

Andy and TJ are joined by Brian Farmer, brother of Andy's high school flame. He's an atheist who's never really had an extended conversation about his atheism with other people, so hopefully it was cathartic and not too traumatizing for him.

Extras...

- Brian talked about "The Thief in the Night", a film series from the 1970's about the Rapture. You can watch it on YouTube here.

- The documentary about the debates between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, called "Collision", can be found on Amazon here.

- Seth Andrews' "The Thinking Atheist" YouTube channel can be found here.

- The atheist woman interviewed on CNN after her home was destroyed by a tornado can be found here.

- Brian talked about the religious beliefs of prisoners incarcerated in the US federal system. An interesting article from FiveThirtyEight (from 2015) about that topic can be found here.

- Brian's speech before the Wentzville Board of Alderman concerning their "In God We Trust" sign can be found here.

- Also, his "secular invocation" can be found here.

Andy and TJ are joined by Dr. Alan Meyers.

Dr. Meyers is Professor Emeritus of religion at Lindenwood University as well as Parish Associate at Oak Hill Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. Andy and TJ both took classes with Dr. Meyers while at Lindenwood.

We talk about "biblical criticism" (or the "historical-critical method"), as well as the difficulty of squaring the findings of biblical scholarship with the fundamentalist perspective.

Biblical criticism is "the process of establishing the plain meaning of biblical texts and of assessing their historical accuracy...  and indicates the effort at using scientific criteria (historical and literary) and human reason to understand and explain as objectively as possible the meaning intended by the biblical writers." (Source)

It was a fantastic conversation, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Book Mentions:
1. "Jesus Interrupted" by Bart Ehrman
2. "Philosophy of Religion" by John Hick
3. "The Harper Collins Study Bible" (NRSV version)

Andy and TJ are joined by Sam Tunnell, who was in Andy's grade at Christian High School (class of '06). Andy and Sam were also in the same "Christian Ministry" undergraduate program at Lindenwood University. Sam is a pastor in St. Louis. He also co-hosts the podcast "Please Be Reasonable".

They discuss Alvin Plantinga's philosophy of "Properly Basic Beliefs", axiomatic assumptions, what it means to be a Baptist, John Hick's book "Philosophy of Religion", faith deconstruction, hell, and other things.

Extra stuff:

- You can get a quick introduction to Plantinga's philosophy of "Properly Basic Beliefs" here.

- You can buy John Hick's book, "Philosophy of Religion", here.

- Andy was a guest on Sam's podcast in 2017 (disclaimer: this was before Andy was on Lexapro AND before a sinus surgery that made Andy a bit less nasaly). You can listen to that episode here.