Doubts Aloud Podcast

It is great to welcome Maarij and Farhan, Canadian Ahmadiyya Muslim Apologists, to the show. They share with us why their perspective on scripture. We aim for a non confrontational discussion to explore how they justify belief in their scriptures, how they interpret it and deal with various problems. In particular we use our critiques on Christian scriptures to understand how the Quran may be subject to the same ones.

Maarij and Farhan podcast “The Conviction Project” which we recommend for a thoughtful apologetic approach on Islam. They can be contacted via: [email protected]
Maarij and Farhan recommend reading the Quran here: https://www.alislam.org/quran/read/

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Episode 24 – Show Notes

It is great to welcome Hassan Radwan to the show. He shares with us his experiences of coming to faith as a Muslim and then living as a Muslim. Eventually his experience was losing it and he talks us through some of the issues that led to him now being an ex-Muslim. His experiences had may parallels with Andrew and Ed’s journeys through faith.

Here is Hassan’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0sIFZ0VnZ5ta9vxC9PyUA

Hassan has great answers on why he continued in debate and discussion on Islam, rather than just walking away completely. This was a topic Frances, Andrew & Ed had promised to include this month. They add their answers as well. Ed referred to this blog he wrote, which itself gives links to WK Clifford’s work:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2018/02/23/doubts-aloud-asking/

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Episode 23 – Show Notes

This is our first ever Christmas special. We do our best to be seasonal in the middle of a wet November General Election season.

First we mull over the changes that come over us all during Christmas, we call it communal madness like when football fever strikes us when the World Cup comes round. Is it good? What does it say about us all as humans?

Then we take the opportunity of a Christmas Special to have a look at the nativity stories in Luke and Matthew. Our line is not so much the details and contradictions, rather how they fit in the overall picture of narratives in the gospels and how the gospel authors derived their material. The implications end up being as much about the Easter narratives as the Christmas ones.

Links we mention
Bart Erhman & Peter Williams on Unbelievable?
https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Peter-J-Williams-and-Bart-Ehrman-Are-the-Gospels-historically-reliable

BBC one-off podcast series “The missing cryptoqueen”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07npk7p


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Episode 22 – Show Notes

We take two topics connected the beginning of the world, at least as presented early in the book of Genesis. Firstly for “Reason and God” we turn to an argument not covered in the 50 Arguments for Faith book but nevertheless well-liked by apologists: the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It will be familiar to many of our listeners so we discuss it in general and make a few personal observations on it rather than cover all the many problems its detractors identify. For example:

Frances discusses a possible conflict with a belief which is cherished by many theists: libertarian freewill,
Andrew enjoys comparing this pure philosophy to Genesis chapter 1, and
Ed hones in on definitions of the term Universe and how this, for him, undermines the whole enterprise.

Here are some links we mention:
Skydive Phil on Unbelievable on the beginning of the universe:
https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Has-the-Big-Bang-gone-bust-Phil-Harper-Jeff-Zweerink
That infinite number of events issue, as discussed on the ‘Atheology’ Podcast
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/realatheology/real-atheology/e/55767664
And the ‘Atheology’ Podcast more generally on Kalam:
https://player.fm/series/real-atheology/ra019-the-kalam-cosmological-argument

Our second topic, under “Christian Diversity”, is on Adam and Eve as actual historical figure. We note a surprising lack of diversity on this in Christian thought. We give a survey of the more moderate end of evangelical thinking as well as the Catholic and Orthodox denominations in a search for Christians rejecting this unscientific idea of one couple being the ‘parents’ of all mankind. Ed had thought it was the preserve of very conservative Christians such as Young Earth Creationists. However, we struggle to give examples of rejection of a historical Adam and Eve outside normal liberal believers. Some notable examples of adherence to traditional views are
NT Wright - from 2m50s into
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BP1PpDyDCw

That 1950 Catholic Encyclical, paragraph 37:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html?fbclid=IwAR001cF-lYxNRGLThICzRTvXyuDSbHx07hBW7gy2R1DudK7dtFf0Bgy938o
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences 22 October 1996 document backing up the 1950 Encyclical:
https://humanorigins.si.edu/sites/default/files/MESSAGE%20TO%20THE%20PONTIFICAL%20ACADEMY%20OF%20SCIENCES%20(Pope%20John%20Paul%20II).pdf?fbclid=IwAR2HC4chdX4WB2WqwuKNylV2-s5Bm4hhAJUjpud1g8wF1erif7ino9SU3AM

An Orthodox modern theologian discussing this Irenaeus (130-202 AD) while laying into Ken Ham

http://www.joeledmundanderson.com/irenaeus-of-lyon-and-the-early-churchs-teaching-of-adam-and-eve-part-1/

And Andrew gave us this from “Creation Magazine”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jRlRyrl80E

We should include our friend Denis Alexander and his more nuanced take in our list of links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbgMgOKF9u8

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Join the Facebook Group discussions:

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Meet us all in person at the monthly “Unbelievable Christian and Skeptic Discussion Group” in central London, see:

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Episode 21 – Show Notes

This is our third and last episode from our Summer of Slavery, after looking at slavery in the Old and then New Testaments in the first two episodes, here we got going on the impact of all this on Church History. That is one of Steve Tomkins’ areas of expertise, especially the Abolition movement in Britain and its colonies.

First off we needed to cover Frances’ last Myth, no.10: “Christianity Was the Source of the Idea That All People Shared a Common Humanity and This Was What Ultimately Led To the Abolition of Slavery”. What does Steve make of that?

We also had a forlorn attempt at covering things sequentially, starting with the early Fathers. See these links we used:

The early Fathers on punishing slaves

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1015-87582016000200014

Christian slave trade in the medieval Mediterranean

https://www.historytoday.com/justifying-slavery

Of course, the British slave trade was discussed with loads of input from Steve: its origin, early reactions, development and the debates around Abolition. Things were rather different in the more Bible-focussed Southern States. See this essay, a Southern defence of slavery:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xUI0n53tnl5oPKFQKlOG9HSbQcDM91K_/view?usp=sharing

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https://www.meetup.com/Unbelievable-Christian-and-Skeptic-Discussion-Group-London

Last time we covered the 5 myths that related to what the OT text says. Frances was keep that we should share this apologists’ talk on
Episode 20 – Show Notes

This is our second episode from our Summer of Slavery, we started by recapping on the list of 10 myths that Frances prepared regarding slavery in the Old Testament. Here is its link:

https://drive.google.com/open?idslavery (David Winger) –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlzSF0YjrIk

The recap is summarised by audio from a cartoon sketch we took from YouTube, here is that link

https://youtu.be/2MFmC6BD1B4

Then we quickly got our teeth into the presentation of slavery in the NT. There was both material emphasising the equality of all, in a more spiritual sense, and a comprehensive acceptance of the status quo on the institutions of slavery. We found that the letter to Philemon, which is just about the return of a runaway slave, summed up both these themes nicely.

We moved on to the apologetics responses to biblical material, relying largely on the remaining 5 of Frances’ Ten Myths. Here is a link from her discussion on laws in the state of Georgia

https://www.georgiaarchives.org/documents/Slave_Laws_of_Georgia_1755-1860.pdf

Next episode we will move on into Christian history and slavery, with our friend and expert Steve Tomkins.

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After a chat on this year’s London Unbelievable Conference we get going on our joyful summer season … on slavery.

Central to the first episode is a list of 10 myths that Frances prepared a few months ago regarding slavery in the Old Testament. We promised to share the list with its references, and here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SAnnRkcSRoYyfE4Y2Lr2oELY1NaCvgGS

Actually we only got through the 5 myths that related to what the OT text says. That in itself is a slight problem as there is a degree of different voices, as we would expect and do see in such texts.

Overriding all this is an important distinction that runs through much of this discussion. There were different rules for Hebrew slaves and foreign slaves in the OT Law.

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Episode 18 – Show Notes

We give Andrew space to set out some of his thoughts as he prepares to give a talk and lead a discussion on Christian Diversity at the London Unbelievable Christian and Skeptic Discussion Group. He explains the problems and provides his conclusion: A Failure to Communicate.

The slightly dodgy verse used in the ‘Is That in the Bible?’ is: 1 Cor 14:33 RSV “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace”.

We mentioned that Andrew was on the Show itself on this topic, back in 2015, on 11th July, with Nabeel Qureshi:

https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Can-Christianity-be-true-if-Christians-can-t-agree-on-doctrine-Andrew-Whyte-vs-Nabeel-Qureshi


Andrew’s Christian Diversity YouTube Channel is behind this as well:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC46_vlosspJ-yLFqEK9j8LQ

Next we picked up on the chapter on Eugenics in our 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 had done her own research and had additional information that fills out this fascinating episode in 20thC history, especially in the US. We struggled to see how it provided any evidence for God or even put Christianity in a particularly good light. It did give us the chance to discuss the naturalistic fallacy. And of course we went digging for hints of eugenics in the Bible. We would do that, wouldn’t we?

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Episode 17 – Show Notes

Austin Fischer joins us this month. He is a pastor in Texas … but he has thought deeply about troubling issues in his faith and does not dismiss his doubts with pat answers. We tap into his thinking and give him space to present ideas surrounding suffering. We cover

the ancient book of Job in the Old Testament,
trying to have hearts/emotions big enough to embrace the suffering out there and
the two theological narratives in the Bible on this: a broadly Calvinist approach and one seeing spiritual warfare behind tragic events.

We know of Austin as he was a co-guest with Ed on Unbelievable last year:
https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-A-tale-of-two-doubters-Austin-Fischer-Ed-Atkinson

He has written an excellent book on doubt, largely targeted at Christians:
“Faith in the Shadows: Finding Christ in the Midst of Doubt” 2018. Find it on Amazon etc

We launch the discussion on the theme of doubt because Andrew has just been on Unbelievable himself with the author of another Christian book on doubt:
https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-When-Faith-Fails-Dominic-Done-and-Andrew-Whyte-on-dealing-with-doubt

To contact Austin please use his church website:
https://www.thevista.tv/staff
He would be delighted to hear from you.

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Episode 16 – Show Notes

We thought that it’s time we had another dip into our 50 Arguments for Faith book (full details below). This time an interesting chapter on Naturalism. We had to discuss what Naturalism is, how it can be defined and whether we own it as a label. Then we could look at the critiques of Naturalism the book provided for us to consider.

The recent Unbelievable Show with our friend Chris Date (episode 9) seemed to cause a bit of a stir. It was on Calvinism and got us intrigued. Andrew gave us a bit of the history, doctrine, etc of Calvinism to put it in context and set us off.


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That book: “Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy and Science” by Mike Licona and William Dembski.