Real Seekers

I was asked to appear on the Faith Unaltered Podcast with hosts David Russell and Tyler Fowler.  In this show, I present a simplified version of my argument for God from beauty and try establish that the "Theistic Dispositional Realism" hypothesis is the best explanation for 7 of the main aesthetic features of our world.

I recieved an email from a fan of the show named Omar Fakhoury and having spoken to him, I quickly realized he had a very interesting faith journey growing up as Muslim, then turning Atheist to then being a devoted Hindu for more than 10 years (studying under a guru in India) and then finally to being a general Theist with a keen interest in the truth of the claims of christianity.    Omar beleives that God exists and that God did indeed raise Jesus from the dead (finding the historical evidence and scientific evidence rleated to the Shroud of Turin convincing) and so we discuss some of the differences in the evidence between Hinduism and christianity.

In this TheoGeeks episode David Russell and I are joined by Tyler Fowler to continue are series on Egalitarianism vs. Complementarianism.  Part 2 deals with a general moral/ethical evaluation of these positions on women's roles before turing to look at women's role under ideal conditions (Pre-Fall) in Genesis 2 (what does being a "helper" imply?) and then we look at the Post-Fall conditions in Genesis 3:16 (what does God mean by telling Eve that the man shall rule over his wife as a result of the Fall?).

In this episode I interview John Loken from the Shroud Science Group.  John takes a Pro-Shroud position (though he prefers not to use that label for himself) in that he believes the Shroud is historically authentic and wrapped the dead body of Jesus.  However, as an Agnostic, he has doubts about the Resurrection of Jesus and thus, he thinks the Shroud images are not only explaianable using ordinary natural mechanisms, but further, the Shroud images were ultimately what gave rise to the apostle's belief in Jesus Resurrection in the early church!

Barrie Schwortz is Back! Again! In this episode, I'm joined by Barrie Schwortz, a world-renowned expert on the Shroud of Turin and the official STURP photographer back in 1978.  In this Part 2 show, Barrie presents to us what we know for sure about the Shroud from the STURP investigaiton and more specifically, he address what we know the Shroud images are NOT in that the images were not made by an artist using a traditional painting technique, powder-rubbing/dusting technique, scorching mechanism nor is it a medeival proto-Photograph.  

In refuting the Shroud skeptics with the science, I'm joined by the same 2 Pro-Shroud co-hosts form Part 1 (Daniel Lowry & Teddi Pappas) to probe Barrie further on these facts.

This the start of a new series, my Shroud Wars Panel Review Sessions series!  In this series I will be bringing on various Shroud experts to discuss the pros and cons of my Shroud Solo Lecture series.  In this first installment, I'm joined by Pro-Shroud expert Bob Rucker and Shroud skeptic Hugh Farey to discuss 3 major issues; i) The Irrelevancy of the Dating (Solo Show Part 1), ii) The 1988 carbon-14 dating (Solo Show Part 1) and finally, iii) The Hungarian Pray Manuscript/codex (Solo Show Part 2).   I think some good progress was made on the show on both sides :)

I'm joined by the famous apologist and medical expert Joseph W. Bergeron, a specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with decades of experience evaluating musculoskeletal injury, including medical legal analysis.  Dr. Bergeron’s practice experience provides unique insight on Jesus’s cause of death (and refutes the swoon theory conclusively) and further provides scrutiny of the Hallucination hypotheses seeking to explain away Jesus' Resurrection appearances.  Finally, he lends his medical expertise to authenticate the Shroud as having wrapped a real human corpse.

In this special episode, I'm a guest on Guy Powell's great Shroud podcast, "The Backstory on the Shroud of Turin", to discuss some of my more unique ideas related to studying the Shroud and its evidence for the truth of Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.  We first get into my notion of how to identify miracles in general using intelliegent design and Bill Dembski's "Specfied complexity" criteria in my "Minimal Relevant Features" appraoch to studying the Shroud of Turin.  We also discuss my rather unique and controversial notion that the dating of the Shroud as either medieval or first century is totally irrelevant to the question of whether or not the formation of the Shroud images constitutes miraculous proof (on a balance of probabilities) that Christianity is true and/or the religion that God wants us to follow to achieve our ultimate purpose in creation.

Finishing off my series on Faith & Reason and the question of what one ought to do when one thinks that the arguments both for and against the existence of God are unpersuasive; here we look at two philsophers William Clifford and William James.  Clifford argues that one morally ought to suspend judgement here and thus take the agnostic position whereas James argues tha when it comes to belief/disbelief in the existence ot one is able to choose either to remain agnostic or to believe in God (Atheism is not permitted here without arguments against God's existence).

Moving on with my historical survey of philosophers from the past, I first take a look at the original ontological argument as laid out by the 11th cenutry philsopher St. Anselm.  Then, I get into a series on Faith & Reason and the question of what one ought to do when one thinks that the arguments both for and against the existence of God are unpersuasive; here we look at the Atheist Michael Scriven who argues for a Presumption of Atheism and Blaise Pascal who argues one would be prudent to believe in Theism via his famous Pascal's Wager argument from expected utility.