Think for Christ

By Dr. Anthony AlberinoSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Christianity Philosophy

Think for Christ episodes

August 06, 2023 A.I. and the Mind Part 3: The Argument from Reason
In this episode we begin to consider the problem of rationality with a look at the Argument from Reason.
27 min
July 27, 2023 All That Is in God with Dr. James Dolezal
Dr. James Dolezal joins Anthony Alberino on Think for Christ to discuss his book, All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism.
1 hr 26 min
July 19, 2023 A.I. and the Mind Part 2: The Hard Problem of Consciousness
In the previous episode we looked at what I consider to be the best hope and strongest motivation for the belief that artificial intelligence could one day become actually intelligent. That is the philosophical view called physical reductionism. We saw that there is widespread belief among computer scientists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers of mind that the human mind is nothing more than a kind of biological computer. According to this view, mental states and processes are nothing over and above the physical states and processes of the brain. We also saw that, if this is true, then the idea of machine sentience is not only possible, but is already actual, since every person on the planet is already a kind of wholly material thinking machine. So that the idea of creating a machine that is as intelligent and even more intelligent than a human being is entirely possible in principle, even if not actually feasible given the current state of our technology. However, those who ground their belief in the possibility of a sentient AI on physical reductionism face a serious problem. It’s a problem that by extension confronts any effort to construct an intelligent machine from the ground up. This problem has it’s own name in the philosophy of mind. It’s called The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Join us in this episode of Think for Christ as we consider the nature of consciousness, a subject that takes into a discussion of qualia, intentionality, the knowledge argument, the zombie argument, the construction problem, the unity of conscious experience, the construction problem, the binding problem, and more.
35 min
July 10, 2023 A.I. and the Mind Part 1: Physical Reductionism
Why do so many people, including academics, believe that it is possible to make a fully intelligent AI? In this episode, Anthony Alberino explores the thinking behind the claim of AI sentience and examines a widely held view in the philosophy of mind regarding the nature of human intelligence that makes the notion of a fully intelligent AI plausible.
31 min
June 29, 2023 Can artificial intelligence ever really be intelligent? A conversation with Dr. J. T. Bridges.
The topic of artificial intelligence has become a critical one lately. There is a ton of chatter about AI right now; it has become one of the most pressing issues of our time. Unfortunately, in the midst of all this noise, I think the most important and profound question about AI is getting very little attention. That question is this: Is it possible for AI to become truly intelligent? This is the question we are asking today on Think for Christ. Now, it’s not as if this that this question isn’t being asked at all. It’s just not being asked seriously enough, and it’s not being asked to right people. Popular culture is looking to technology moguls, computer engineers, and cognitive scientists for the answer. But I submit that the question of whether an AI can ever truly be intelligent is not one that can be answered by scientists because it is not a scientific question. Before we can ever know whether AI is or can be intelligent like a human being, we first have to know the nature of human intelligence; but, of course, to ask about the nature of intelligence is ask a philosophical question, not a scientific one. Which is why I’ve invited philosopher Dr. J. T. Bridges to join me on this episode of Think for Christ to help us think through this critical philosophical question. You can find Dr. Bridges' YouTube channel, A Considerate Life, here: https://www.youtube.com/@jtbridges/videos
1 hr 16 min
June 21, 2023 What is Philosophy? The Handmaiden of Theology
There was a popular saying that was a kind of mantra in the Middle Ages that went like this: "Theology is the queen of the sciences and philosophy is its handmaiden." What does this mean? And how is philosophy related to Christian theology? In this episode Dr. Anthony Alberino recounts the failure of Greek philosophy to reconcile itself with Greek religion and the success of Christian theology to reconcile itself with Greek philosophy. The God revealed in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures brings together the philosophical notions of first cause and ultimate principle with the religious notion of a creator God providentially directing the affairs of men. Christian revelation at once provided philosophy with the insight it needed to move from the stagnate plane of the essential to the living and active plane of the existential. The interpenetration of Christianity with Greek philosophy at once lifted the latter to heights it could not reach on its own and enriched the former with an indispensable asset and tool that would become essential for the formulation and defense of the faith.
29 min
June 11, 2023 What is Philosophy? The Love of Wisdom
As I said in the previous episode, many contemporary philosophers do not find the literal meaning of the term 'philosophy' (lit. the love of wisdom) to be very enlightening or helpful when understanding the nature of the subject. Most philosophy textbooks ignore this original meaning and instead define philosophy by more or less looking around and observing what philosophers are up to today. But to the mind of the classical philosopher, you can’t possibly pursue philosophy if you don’t understand what it means to pursue wisdom. So, to get at the nature of philosophy as it was originally intended, we have to go back to see how it was defined and explained by the guys who kicked off the philosophical project. And when it comes to defining and unpacking the meaning of philosophy for the classical period, there is no better source that the man who was unquestionably the greatest of the Greek philosophers, and in my opinion probably the greatest philosopher who has ever lived, Aristotle. In this episode, Dr. Anthony Alberino takes a look at the original meaning of philosophy as the love of wisdom as it was understood by Aristotle as well as by almost everybody in the first 2000 years of philosophical history.
37 min
May 23, 2023 What is Philosophy? Introduction to Philosophy
So, what is philosophy anyway? In this introductory episode we take a look at the nature of philosophy, its characteristics, and its various fields. We then consider a working definition of philosophy. Philosophy is generally divided into three broad fields. First there is Metaphysics, or the study of being; then epistemology, or the study of knowledge; finally there is value theory, or the study of value in general and ethics in particular. Logic is also sometimes classed as a philosophical field, but it's better to think of logic as a tool or instrument that philosophers us rather than as a field of study. The nature of philosophy is somewhat brought to light when we see the general fields of inquiry that philosophers concern themselves with. It can also be helpful to see philosophy at work insofar as it functions as second-order discipline. A second order question is a question about another question, a so-called first-order question. So, for example, a first-order question will have the structure “What is X?” whereas a second-order question will be structured as a question about the first-order question: “What is the meaning of the question, ‘What is X?’” Likewise, a second-order discipline is an inquiry that studies another discipline, a first-order discipline. First-order disciplines are subjects of study that concern themselves with some particular aspect or order of reality; these are familiar to us: mathematics, biology, psychology, history, etc. Second-order disciples, on the other hand, inquire into the nature of these first-order disciplines by examining their underlying assumptions, criticizing their methods, clarifying concepts that they deploy, and evaluating the truth claims made. Philosophy can be defined as the attempt to think rationally and critically about the most important questions.There are three elements to this definition and each one captures something essential to the nature of philosophy. First, philosophy is a rational enterprise. To be rational is to be guided by reason, to hold views that are based on reasons; that are supported by evidence and argument. Philosophers strive for clarity and precision in language and carefulness in reasoning. Philosophers don’t just make claims and hold opinions, they try to provide cogent and sound arguments to support their claims and opinions. Philosophy is also a critical enterprise. To be critical in this sense is to subject all claims to truth to rigorous analysis. Philosophers examine assumptions, clarify concepts, require justification, and test all claims against the light of reason, evidence, and arguments. Finally, philosophy deals with the most important questions in life. It’s hard to imagine more important questions than those that deal with the fundamental nature of reality, knowledge, and morality. Philosophy is also for everybody and it's something that everybody does. At various points in our lives, we all consider the most important questions of life, questions related to the nature of reality, to knowledge, to ethics and morality. Moreover, we all want to hold views that are rational and we all criticize views that we disagree with and scrutinize them in the light of reason. Philosophy is not a domain exclusive to scholars in ivory towers, it’s not something that only professionals can engage in. Now, the fact that we all do philosophy from time to time doesn’t mean that we all do it well. To be honest, most people in our intellectually shallow society are pretty crappy at thinking rationally and critically about the big questions in life. So, since philosophy is actually unavoidable for you in life, you may as well try to get better at it.
17 min
May 14, 2023 Faith and Reason: The Light of Faith
It’s instructive to think about human reason as a kind of light. Light enables our eyes to have access to the world––it illuminates things so that they may be seen by us. Likewise, by the light of reason human beings are able to see/understand that which is intelligible in things.By means of physical light we are able to see physical things in reality (a tree, a dog, a human); by means of the light of reason we are able to see the intelligible natures of things in reality (treeness, dogness, and humanness); the mind has the fundamental and irreducible power to abstract the universal natures of things from particular instances. This is just to say that the human mind has been made to understand that which is intelligible in nature.By the way, this is what makes the human mind unique and utterly distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom; non-human animals lack the light of reason. The light of reason also makes the human mind irreplicable by any machine; no matter how sophisticated artificial intelligence becomes in mimicking certain kinds of human thought processes, it will never be able to attain the ability to reason.So, by the light of reason we come to know that which is intelligible in nature; now, as we’ve seen in an earlier episode in this series, by the same light we can also come to know some things about the source and creator of nature. Although we cannot see God directly by means of the light of reason, we can see him indirectly through his effects; we can reason from the creature to the creator, from the effect to the cause. Of course, what we can know about God through the light of reason is going to be limited.Yet, again as we’ve seen, there is another kind of light that is given to believers; it’s a light by which we can see more clearly the nature of the divine––we can call this the light of faith.
16 min
May 03, 2023 Faith and Reason: Reasonable Faith
Recently I was out of town and away from my local church and I was watching a sermon on tv being delivered by a local pastor from the city in which I was staying. This was a very popular pastor in the city and the head of a large church with several satellite campuses, so he was speaking to thousands of people. He made a statement in his sermon that I found to be deeply problematic. He said, “Those who come to God must be willing to take a step of faith that is, in part, unreasonable.” He had the word ‘unreasonable’ projected on the screen in all caps, bold, and underlined. He then said this, “If it were only always reasonable, what then would be the point of faith?” He was saying that you have a choice to make: is it going to be faith OR is it going to be reason? You are either going to be guided by reason or guided by faith. Apparently, it can’t be both. So, here we have an evangelical Christian pastor with significant influence over thousands of people implicitly perpetuating the idea that there exists a conflict between faith and reason: that faith is contrary to reason. If you’ve been following this series so far you will know that this is just an unfortunate, and sadly, all-too-common, confusion. As I have tried to show over the course of three episodes, faith properly understood, is not contrary to reason, faith is contrary to sight. The writer of Hebrews doesn’t say that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things that are unreasonable, but rather of things that are not seen. As I have tried to show, faith is a mode of knowing that relies on the testimony of another rather than on that which is “seen” through sensation or intellection. We exercise faith when believing something we cannot see either with the “eye” of sensation (by which we know beings in the world), or with the “eye” of the intellect (by which we understand first principles and what follows from them). It is critical for us to understand that believing something in the absence of sight is not the same as believing something in the absence of reason. It is always appropriate and rational to believe something in the absence of sight when that belief is based on the testimony of a trustworthy witness. It is never appropriate or rational to believe something in the absence of reason––we ought never to believe something that is unreasonable. Now, there are things that go beyond reason, things that are suprarational, things we cannot fully comprehend with our finite intellects. But, once again, believing something that is beyond reason is not the same as believe something that is unreasonable; believing something that is suprarational is not the same as believing something that is irrational. Many of the things that we believe as Christians are beyond the ability of our intellects to fully comprehend (our finite minds can never fully comprehend the infinite God); yet it is reasonable for us to believe things that we cannot fully comprehend for ourselves as long as we rely in the testimony of one who can comprehend them and who can therefore bear witness to them. So, when properly understood, there is no conflict between the notion of faith and the notion of reason, as such. The truth of the matter is that the relationship between Christian faith and reason is not one of conflict, but of harmony. In fact, despite what we hear all the time from well-meaning pastors, Christian faith is not, in any way, a blind, an illogical, or an irrational faith, rather, Christian faith is a an eminently reasonable faith.
16 min

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Think for Christ is a channel dedicated to the nurturing of the Christian mind. Join philosopher Anthony Alberino as he seeks to motivate deep thinking about God and his creation through an…