Show Notes
Yes, atheist prayer is a thing! We explain the idea and introduce a philosophy paper on it by Oxford prof Tim Mawson. The paper gave rise to the “Atheist Prayer Experiment” which Justin Brierley conducted and reported on via the Unbelievable? Show in 2012.  We discuss the setup and results of the Experiment. Tim Mawson himself has agreed to be our guest in November to give feedback on our musings.
Links:
The paper “Praying to stop being an atheist” by Prof Tim Mawson:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k_TWLsLji4te169FZicpg_2vI9vsB330/view?usp=sharing
 
Unbelievable? Shows on the Experiment:
Classic Replay: Atheist prayer experiment results show – part 1. 29-9-2022
Classic Replay: Atheist prayer experiment results show – part 2. 4-10-2022
(Seach ‘Mawson’ in your Unbelievable? Feed)
 
The Facebook group on the Experiment, here is the setup page we mentioned and you can click on to group home page:
https://www.facebook.com/legacy/notes/227785844014301/
 
Key Bible passage on those outside the faith seeking God:
Acts 17:24-27
 
 
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Show Notes
Andrew leads us through the development in the Hebrew scriptures regarding how other Gods/gods alongside Yahweh were understood.  Initially Yahweh was seen as Israel’s God within a Henotheist context, where Henotheism is the belief in or worship of one god while acknowledging the existence of other gods. A key idea was a Heavenly Council as seen in the opening of Job. Over time Yahweh became seen as more and more powerful than the other gods and eventually monotheism became dominant by the time of the New Testament. There is of course debate on this in the scholarship, which we discuss.
 
Bible Study:
Psalm 82:1
Exodus 12:12
2 Chron 18:18-22
Job 1:6 & 2:1
Deuteronomy 32:8, 39 and 43
Isaiah 47:8-9  
 
Bible Scholars to look up: Mark Smith, Michael Heiser (the evangelical one), Dan McClellan, Thom Stark and Francesca Stavrakopoulou
 
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Show Notes

Last episode we discussed apparently poor design within the Intelligent Design argument.  It led into assessing whether the Fall is a good explanation for poor design and hence natural suffering.  Here we discuss other explanations for a good and loving God making a world with natural suffering. In particular, we assess Sceptical Theism which we covered in episode 3. The idea is that the explanation is beyond our understanding, which seems good but has problematic implications.  One implication is the issue of whether God is lying in His revelation is something else we’d expect to be beyond our understanding.  Finally, we cycle back to the Fall narrative in Genesis to see whether God is lying in his warning to Adam.

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Show Notes
In recent episodes we have discussed Design Arguments and Intelligent Design. Here we cover another chapter from the 50 Arguments for Faith book which explains the apparent suboptimal Design. It is interesting to see what reasons Intelligent Design proponents give.   One suggestion is: "We must also remember that the world we are observing is not the original creation. It is a corrupted version of The Creation." This leads us into discussing the Fall as an explanation for Natural Suffering, a widely held view in Christianity. The journey of discussion will be continued next episode.
 
Links:
The 50 Arguments for Faith book: “Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy and Science” by Mike Licona and William Dembski.  (It can be found on Amazon.)
 
The famous video clip with Stephen Fry talking about worms burrowing out of children’s eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo
 
Justin Brierley’s response video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klPr708VWDk
 
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Show Notes
We looked at Design Arguments in our Episodes 82 & 85 but avoided diving deep into Fine Tuning, waiting for our discussion with Phil. It was worth it! We covered questions such as what are the actual physical observations which we call Fine Tuning? What are the main explanations for the observations that cosmologists/physicists generally think most likely and how popular are they among the scientist? Phil’s survey results on that are fascinating.
Apologies for some technical difficulties with the podcast, Andrew was ill at the last minute, (he’s now recovering).
 
Links:
Don’t miss Phil’s book:
Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins Hardcover, by Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper. May 2025

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Big-Bang-Cosmic-Origins/dp/0226830470

 
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Show Notes

We welcome again our great friend John Nelson as our guest. John has started an excellent academic blog, “Behind the Gospels”, which we discuss at length. We cover individual issues that John has covered, especially whether Matthew the disciple was the author of Matthews Gospel. We couldn’t hold back from asking about some hot topics, such as whether ‘John’ knew the synoptic gospels or ‘Luke’ had read Josephus. The discussion also extended to wider issues like the cultural influences behind the Gospels, what we can say on the degree of factual material in them and the authority that traditions about Jesus’s words and deeds may have held in the period before the gospels were written.
 
Links:

www.BehindtheGospels.com
 
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Show Notes
We welcome a new guest Jim Paul, a Christian thinker from the UK L’Abri community. He introduces us to a view of Heaven which is in contrast to the familiar ethereal heaven in our culture.  The familiar view is centuries old with its fluffy clouds and plump babies with wings, but it is a corruption of the Bible’s view, which is more earthy and on reflection more attractive.  Jim has written a book on this, “What on Earth is Heaven?”, which we discuss at length.
 
Links:
Jim’s book “What on Earth is Heaven?”:
https://www.amazon.com/What-Earth-Heaven-James-Paul/dp/1789742218
 
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Design Arguments Part 2
 
Show Notes
In episode 82 we started our discussion on Design Arguments and got up to the start of the 19thC.  Later in that century the argument was turned on its head by Darwin and his Origin of Species. We discuss this and move on to modern creationism (a little) and Intelligent Design (a lot), selecting by our design – not at random - two more chapters from the 50 Arguments for Faith book which is heavy on Intelligent Design.
 
Links:
 
The 50 Arguments for Faith book: “Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy and Science” by Mike Licona and William Dembski.  (It can be found on Amazon.)
 
Frances mentioned this by a practising Jew who rejects the Intelligent Design concept of irreducible complexity:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3721655/
 
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Show Notes

We start from an informative update on the Flat Earth movement. Their model for the earth usually includes a wall of ice round the rim – Anarctica, that implies the 24 hour sunshine in the Anarctica summer is impossible and their claims often include that it does not occur.  So what happens when a group of prominent Flat Earth advocates are paid to visit Anarctica during its summer? That happened this month.
 
For the rest of the show we discuss another story doing the rounds. It is prompted by the Museum of the Bible putting on display a mosaic from Israel which was uncovered in 2005 and was discussed back then. It dates to around 230AD and includes the phrase “God Jesus Christ” in one of its inscriptions. We deal with the context both in terms of the developing doctrine of the Trinity and in terms of apologists jumping on the latest ‘thing’.  
Links:
 
A full video on the update on a Flat Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEc86p1vgLM
 
Short one:
https://youtube.com/shorts/HTSvI--ZVYg?si=jsEoFYmlLpHIzdXc
 
CBN (The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc) on the ‘Jesus Mosaic’:
https://youtu.be/C_fTfAsJ5Lc?si=KdeNMfBMspCUfHfh
 
Cameron’ Capturing Christianity video
https://youtu.be/zFPHoLFijUs?si=oKxGbVKKRK3REwnY
 
A qualified academic Professor Christopher Rollston is Sean McDowell’s guest here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw4lme5eLmA
 
And here is a blog by Prof Rollston of George Washington University
http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=1004
 
Past excitements:
Curse Tablet – our episode 68
 
First-century fragment of Mark
Wallace’s online announcement
https://danielbwallace.com/2012/03/22/first-century-fragment-of-marks-gospel-found/
His apology blog:
https://danielbwallace.com/2018/05/23/first-century-mark-fragment-update/
The Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_137
 
The mummy mask papyrus, Craig Evans:

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/21/living/gospel-mummy-mask/

https://www.northridgerochester.com/theology-1/mummy-mask-may-reveal-oldest-fragment-of-the-gospel-of-mark

Piece by Richard Carrier
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13935

Claims of it being a front for getting fragments without need for provenance
https://art-crime.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-gospel-truth-how-laundering-of.html
 
Searches for Noah's Ark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searches_for_Noah%27s_Ark
 
Egyptian Chariot Wheels in the Red Sea
https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2018/10/11/fake-news-in-biblical-archaeology/
 
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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 on what Dickens’ own beliefs were has relevance and it seems that he had a “works not faith” view of Christianity, especially with reference to A Christmas Carol (or in Ed’s words “a wishy washy Anglican”). We see a message similar to Jesus’ in Luke’s gospel in particular as well as the synoptics in general, which is in conflict with material in the rest of the NT.
 
Links:
The BBC documentary on assisted dying “Better Off Dead?” with actress Liz Carr
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001z8wc
 
A short academic resource on Dickens and Christianity
https://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/faq/religion.html
 
We recommend the wikipedia page on the novella
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol
 
And the Melvin Bragg BBC Radio 4 “In Our Time” episode on it
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012fl5
 
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