Reasonable Doubts Podcast

Barack Obama has been president for barely a week, yet the religious right has already ramped up their rhetoric to hysterical levels. For this episode we examine their claim that Obama�s reversal of the "Global Gag Rule" on family planning funding represents an assault on human life. Also we look to the New Testament and ask whether Christianity is more compatible with capitalism or socialism for another installment of the Skeptic�s Sunday School. Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

According to the American Family Association's new documentary "Speechless: Silencing The Christians" Homosexual advocates are using sophisticated propaganda techniques to manipulate the public into accepting the homosexual lifestyle as normal and harmless. As a result Christians are now being stereotyped by the media as being intolerant bigots clearing the way for persecution at the hands of homosexual advocates who use hate speech laws to silence Christian's free speech rights and suppress their freedom of religion. For this episode the Doubtcasters set the record straight by exposing the exaggerated claims, cherry-picked evidence and anti-gay pseudoscience in the film speechless. Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

Having argued for determinism, the doubtcasters now turn to its implications. Is moral responsibility possible in a deterministic universe? Could justice and self-knowledge still be achieved if free will is just an illusion? Tom Clark, Director of the Center For Naturalism joins us on the show to explain how adopting a consistently naturalistic worldview would transform our view of society and ourselves. Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

Does every person possess a immaterial soul capable of making free choices or are we all just electrified meat--slaves to brute causality? For this episode, the doubtcasters draw upon arguments from philosophy and psychology to make the case for determinism. But if a naturalistic outlook rules out freedom of the will is morality still possible? Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

Nica Lalli Author of "Nothing: Something to Believe In" joins us in the studio to talk about art, the holidays and raising freethinking children. Also in this episode are holiday editions of the "props/s***list" and "stranger than fiction" segments.

Does the New Testament provide a clear and accurate portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth? If the gospels provide the testimony of four independent witnesses who overwhelmingly agree on the details, as apologists claim, then we would have reason to trust these accounts. But modern biblical scholarship paints a radically different picture of the gospels, their origins and historical accuracy. In this, the second of a two part series, the Doubtcasters consider and respond to recent counter-arguments offered by prominent Christian apologists. Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

Does the New Testament provide a clear and accurate portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth? If the gospels provide the testimony of four independent witnesses who overwhelmingly agree on the details, as apologists claim, then we would have reason to trust these accounts. But modern biblical scholarship paints a radically different picture of the gospels, their origins and historical accuracy. In this, the first of a two part series, the Doubtcasters draw upon the insights of biblical criticism to challenge the reliability of the gospel narratives. For part two of the series, the Doubtcasters will consider and respond to recent counter-arguments offered by prominent Christian apologists. Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

Embryonic stem-cell research, assisted dying, human enhancements and genetically modified foods. Is it possible to have a constructive moral and legal dialogue about such controversial bioethical issues without being derailed by religious and ideological dogmas? Ron Lindsay, author of Future Bioethics: Overcoming Taboos, Myths and Dogmas joins us on the show to explain how we could resolve these controversies without presupposing either a religious or non-religious worldview.Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

Zombies, demons, Satan, witches, ritual abuse, Mel Gibson and more...this episode's a nightmare.

Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.

By popular demand, the Doubtcasters present their critique of Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). This celebrated argument attempts to demonstrate that natural selection, if unguided by god, could not produce beings with reliable cognitive faculties capable of discerning the truth. But is EAAN all its cracked up to be? Also on this episode: The Doubtcasters consider William Lane Craig's rebuttal to Euthyphro's Dilemma, answer listener e-mails, and discuss Bill Maher's new movie Religulous. Reasonable Doubts: Your skeptical guide to religion offering news and commentary of interest to skeptics, atheists, humanists, apologists looking for a challenge and freethinkers of all persuasions.