Undeceptions with John Dickson

You may not feel ready to experience heaven or hell quite yet but Undeceptions listeners certainly had a lot of questions about it! In this season’s Q&A episode, John Dickson attempts to answer at least some of the questions you’ve thrown at us this year. 

This episode is brought to you by Zondervan Academic’s How NOT to read the Bible by Dan Kimball 

LINKS

• What Dreams May Come trailer
• The Good Place, TV show: how points are scored in life
• The Rebel, by Albert Camus

QUESTIONS 

• Is the punishment of Hell proportional to our acts on Earth? 
• Are there levels of Heaven? 
• Why do we know so little about Heaven? 
• What are we to think of God who is always present, even in the face of evil and abuse? 
• Why is it considered Good News, if so many who don’t believe will end up in Hell? 
• Do we lose our free will in heaven? 
• Are demons real? 
• Should Christians eat meat? 
• Is there any benefit in reading the Apocrypha?
• Even if I believed in God, why would I believe in the Christian God? What makes Jesus so special as opposed to, say, Islam?
• Has the modern church tried to white-wash Jesus?
• Is the church trying too hard in its attempts to persuade same-sex attracted church people to live holy lives rather than relying on God and the power of the gospel?
• What should we do about the health, wealth and prosperity gospel? 

Extra questions John answered this season

Drew asks,

The highly regarded scholar David Bentley Hart’s somewhat recent translation of the New Testament translates the Greek work ‘aion’ [i-on] or ‘aionios’ [i-on-ios] to be the more temporal description of ‘of the Age’ rather than the traditional ‘eternal’.

This seemingly impacts the well-established Christian doctrines of heaven and hell. Is the claim of life eternal through Jesus now seriously up for debate?

Listen to John’s answer at undeceptions.com 

Follow up this question with some extra reading: 

• David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament 
• A review of Bentley Hart’s translation in The Atlantic.
• More about Universalism.
• How Universalism, ‘the Opiate of the Theologians,’ Went Mainstream, Christianity Today.

Steve asks, 

I just listened to the first podcast - Old Papers. I had always thought Paul wrote Hebrews, lately my various pastors have suggested that, no, Paul did not write Hebrews. Hearing that Hebrews was in these old papers of Paul’s writings made me think,  I wonder what the answer is?

Listen to John’s answer at undeceptions.com

Christianity has plenty to say about the future and what the end of the world might look like -- though some think it says a lot more than others.

Christians have, in fact, been accused of being obsessed with end times, so much so that they stop caring about the world they’re in right now. And sometimes that’s true. 

But apocalyptic Christians aren’t the only ones dwelling on all this. Plenty of us are more interested than ever - especially this year! - in how the world will end. The stories we tell ourselves in culture are becoming increasingly apocalyptic. 

Why is that? 

This episode is brought to you by our season sponsor Zondervan Academic, publishers of the Collected Essays of N.T. Wright.

LINKS

• Have a read through The Book of Revelation.
• Watch Australia’s Secretary for Home Affairs, Michael Pezzullo’s, full speech on ‘Securing Australia’ here. 
• Get to know our guest, Alissa Wilkinson from Vox
  • And read Alissa’s book How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, Politics and the End of the World
  • Pssst… here’s an except of the book, a chapter on ‘The Myth of the Secular Apocalypse
• Get to know our guest, Professor Richard Bauckham, one of greatest living theologians.
  • Professor Bauckham has written many, many books. But since our discussion revolved around the Book of Revelation, you should check out his book on that subject, The Theology of the Book of Revelation 
• Here’s the 2010 New York Times article Alissa mentions by Chuck Klosterman, My Zombie, Myself: Why modern life feels rather undead.
• For a more in-your-face example of how pop culture continues to use biblical imagery from The Book of Revelation, just watch the trailer for the 2016 blockbuster, X-Men.
  • The film’s director Bryan Singer told the LA Times that Apocalypse - an immensely powerful and ancient mutant - views himself not as a mutant but as a god. Singer says, quote “For all intents and purposes, he is potentially the God of the Old Testament. After being buried for 4,000 years, he awakens to a society that has become interconnected and developed hubris. Humans have created nuclear weapons and assumed godlike proportions in the buildings they build and the things they create. So he sets about to eradicate those things and build what he considers a cleaner, purer world.”
• Check out Alissa’s Syllabus for the End of the World - her list of stories that tell us how to live during -and after - a pandemic.
• Here’s the Al Jazeera tape of Harold Camping’s apocalypse prediction in 2011
• Here’s the Left Behind book series… but John reckons you should skip it. Read C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Series instead.
• More on the US National Evangelical Leaders survey of 2011, which found that 65 per cent of evangelical church leaders in the US identify with premillennial theology, which grounds this rapture idea.
• Watch REM’s Michael Stipe’s full Coronavirus message.
• More on the Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of 2020, “Doomscrolling”
• John quotes from the pseudepigraphal work (not in any biblical canon) Psalms of Solomon in this episode’s 5 Minute Jesus. Read more about them here.

Movies and TV referenced in this episode

• Game of Thrones
• The Walking Dead
• Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, and the “very fine” movie.
• Wagner’s Ring Cycle
• The Hunger Games 

EXTRAS

Here’s John Dickson and Professor Bauckham’s discussion on ‘the Millennium’ in the Book of Revelation. Listen here. 

WIN! 

We’re giving away 20 copies of John's book, 666 And All That: The Truth about the End Times, which he co-wrote with Dr Greg Clarke. If you’d like to win a copy, you just need to be one of the first 20 new subscribers to the Undeceptions e-newsletter. So quick! Head to undeceptions.com, scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and subscribe now. We'll be in touch with the winners in the first week of January. 

Proselytise: to convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another.

Why are Christians such god-botherers? Is it possible to share your belief system with someone who doesn’t accept without being a jerk?

Many people today would have you believe that there is no context in which proselytising could be considered a good thing. 

This episode is supported by Zondervan's MasterLecture Series. 

LINKS

• Find out more about our guest, Dr Sam Chan 
• And check out his latest book, How to talk about Jesus (without being THAT guy) 
• And here's a rather extensive review of Sam’s book here.
• Sam's book Evangelism in a Skeptical World: How to Make the Unbelievable News About Jesus More Believable won Christianity Today's Book of the Year in evangelism and apologetics. 
  • PS -- How to Talk about Jesus (without being THAT guy) is the popular-level version of the more textbook-style Evangelism in a Skeptical World.
• ​​​​​​​Sam quoted Mark Sayers, co-host of the podcast This Cultural Moment.

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.

Transhumanism is the transformation of the human condition through sophisticated technologies that modify our physiology and intellect. 

This episode, we continue our conversation about Artificial Intelligence with Professor John Lennox, and Dr.s Vicky Lorrimar and Grenville Kent.

This episode is brought to you by series sponsor Zondervan Academic, publishers of How to talk about Jesus without being THAT guy by Sam Chan.

LINKS 

• Meet Professor John Lennox
• Get Professor Lennox’s book 2084: Artificial intelligence and the future of humanity
• Say hi to episode guests Dr Grenville Kent and Dr Vicky Lorrimar
• Watch this primer on ‘Transhumanism’ from BBC Ideas.
• Read The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil (Lennox called him one of the most insightful people on this topic last episode)
• Watch this Ted Talk on how close we are to be able to ‘upload our minds’
• This is the article on The Washington Post in which Elon Musk talks about AI as summoning the demon (as mentioned by Lennox)
• Here’s a useful explainer on Utilitarianism from University of Texas
• Read this profile on Peter Singer from 1999 in The Guardian: The most dangerous man in the world
  • Dig deeper into Peter Singer’s utilitarianism views, critiqued by John Lennox here.
• More on Naturalism.
• Read CS Lewis’ essay ‘On living in an atomic age’ in his book of essays ‘Present Concerns’
• Learn more about quantum mechanics in 60 seconds on BBC with Brian Cox
• Read 'The strange link between the human mind and quantum physics', BBC

Movie and Television referenced in this episode: 

• The Bourne Identity
• Altered Carbon
• Gattaca
• Westworld

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today

"I'm all for technology being used in a good sense. I often say to people, AI is like a knife, a very sharp knife. You can use it to operate with, or you can use it to kill people." -- Professor John Lennox 

Artificial Intelligence is the buzz phrase of the 21st century. 

For some, it’s a welcome step into a future that promises all manner of good. For others, AI is damaging at best and, at worst, a step towards our own destruction.

This episode, with the help of the great John Lennox, we ask the question: is Artificial Intelligence an under-estimated threat… or the saviour we’ve been waiting for?

This episode is brought to you by series sponsor Zondervan Academic, publishers of Telling a better story: how to talk about God in a skeptical age by Josh Chatraw.

LINKS 

• Meet Professor John Lennox
• Get Professor Lennox’s book 2084: Artificial intelligence and the future of humanity
• Read more about how China is using surveillance technology to keep tabs on its citizens in this article from The Atlantic: 'The Panopticon Is Already Here'
• Check out George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 
• Learn more about the Singularity with this article from Futurism: 'Singularity: Explain it to me like I’m 5 years old' 
• Why Elon Musk fears artificial intelligence, Vox 
• Lennox called Google’s Chief Futurist, Ray Kurzweil, “one of the great gurus in this field”. Read more about him here.
• Find out more about Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus 
• Watch the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, talk about the potential dangers of science and technology over the next 50 years
• Read more about science fiction author Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and why they’re a little out of date
• Say hi to episode guests Dr Grenville Kent and Dr Vicky Lorrimar
• Read a recent ABC opinion piece by Dr Lorrimar, What hope? Dreams of immortality in the time of a pandemic
• More on Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English.
• Here's some ancient ‘technology’ to find out more on (as mentioned in this episode's Five Minute Jesus)
  • Trojan Horse
  • The Roman battering ram
  • Stuff designed by Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius
• Read the whole story of the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis
• More on deus ex machina (not the Australian motorcycles)
• Read the Asilomar Ethical Principles
• Watch Rosalind Picard’s TedTalk about the smartwatch she has developed  that can detect seizures. 
  • Then, watch her story of how she became a Christian

All the movies referenced in this episode: 

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Star Wars ... all of them.
• Terminator (the original!)
• Bladerunner (1982)
• Interstellar 
• Wall-E
• Her
• Avengers: Age of Ultron

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.

How did the New Testament actually come together? Some have argued that is a “chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents” that has been revised and ‘improved’ over centuries.

Others have argued it is a deeply political document, created to quell rebellions and placate a growing and agitated movement. 

Millions of people put their trust in the New Testament. It’s time to get to the bottom of how it was created. 

This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academic, publishers of 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity by John Lennox. 

LINKS

• Producer Kaley is actually the one who likes Survivor. She thinks you should watch it, too. 
• Richard Dawkin’s quote about the Bible being a cobbled-together anthology was from The God Delusion. 
• If you really have to, you can read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown or watch the movie. 
  • But then listen to this 5-part series with John Dickson on Hope 103.2FM (Sydney Christian radio station), Why the Da Vinci Code is a very novel history​
• ​​​​​​Find out more about our guest Dr Chris Forbes, who has actually just retired from Macquarie University. 
• Find out more about Dr Michael Bird from Ridley College.
  • And check out Michael's latest book The New Testament in It's World (with N.T. Wright) 
• Watch John Dickson talk about the conversion of Constantine the Great from this clip from the Centre For Public Christianity’s documentary For the Love of God
• Learn more about Justin Martyr, the first Christian apologist. 
• What’s with the ending in the gospel of Mark? Check out this article from The Gospel Coalition, written by Elijah Hixson from Tyndale House in Cambridge: Was Mark 16:9-20 originally part of Mark’s Gospel?
• Get to know Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon
• More on the Muratorian Canon
• Here is John’s beloved copy of The Apostolic Fathers
• Read the New York Times report on the discovery of the Gospel of Judas, from 2006 
• Read more about the Gospel of Judas in this article by John Dickson in 2008 from The Centre for Public Christianity 
• For more on the Gnostic Gospels, get your hands on The Christ Files, a documentary with John Dickson. Here’s a preview.
• You can have a look for yourself at the beautiful Codex Sinaiticus at this link. You can scroll through the pages online -- so go check out the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas at the back! 
• Get to know Eusebius of Caesarea 
  • And read his Ecclesiastical History too.

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.

For years, people have argued that our minds’ natural default position is non-belief. Left to ourselves, we would never grow up thinking about God.

Religion is, therefore, an imposition on the susceptible minds of children. Some have suggested that teaching kids about God comes close to a form of brain washing.

Our guest for this episode, Justin Barrett, says that is actually getting harder to argue.

Research from the last 20 years indicates that thoughts about God aren’t by-products of American or Western culture. It’s not indoctrination. These thoughts are natural.

Believing that someone - not something - governs the world comes as easily to kids as curiosity, imagination and play. 

Special thanks to Zondervan Academic, our show sponsor, publishers of How NOT to read the Bible, by Dan Kimball.

LINKS

• Find out more about our guest Professor Justin L Barrett.
• Get Professor Barrett’s book, Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief
• More on Ludwig Feuerbach and his ideas on religion as “wish fulfillment’
• Watch more of comedy trio Just These Please here.
• Read more about Sigmund Freud’s views on religion in this New York Times Magazine piece called 'Defender of the Faith'.
• Professor Barrett is a big fan of Deborah Keleman’s work from Boston University. Find out more about Keleman, here.
  • And read this article from New Scientist about one of Keleman’s studies from 2009, 'Humans may be primed to believe in creation'.
  • And this article from American Pscyhological Association titled ‘A Reason to Believe’
  • Keleman’s findings about children in China who endorse teleological explanations of natural phenomena can be found in the May 2017 Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
• What in the world does ‘teleological’ mean? It’s an explanation by reference to some purpose, end, goal or function. So, a teleological explanation is an account of a given thing’s purpose. Check out this explanation on Britannica.
• Keleman, with other researchers, has only completed studies on whether non-religious adults have a tacit tendency to view nature as purposefully created by some being. They conducted research in Finland (a notoriously secular country) and the US and compared results. Read the report here.
• How the Borks Became: An Adventure in Evolution by Jonathan Emmett
• His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
• The Atlantic interviewed Philip Pullman about His Dark Materials, which has recently been made into an HBO series:

“Storytelling, for Pullman, is a way into our world—not out of it. He loves folktales and fairy tales for their clarity and everydayness; he loves William Blake; he loves what we might call the Luciferian or deity-defying side of John Milton. He even, in a cranky and rather beautiful way, loves Jesus. But he hates the bloody Church.

“You’ll pick this up quite quickly when you watch the first episode of HBO’s new dramatization of His Dark Materials. A body called the Magisterium holds a centuries-long dominion over the earthly realm. It spews doctrine; it crushes heresy; it circumscribes knowledge and inhibits discussion. Its priests are everywhere, like secret police. It’s also stealing children.”

• Here's a different take on His Dark Materials, from Christianity Today: 

"The church without a Savior is an empty shell, a vacuum that inevitably seeks power. And in His Dark Materials, the absence of Jesus is strikingly conspicuous even though he is never named. Pullman told Williams in 2004 that Jesus does not exist in the realm of his Magisterium, an acknowledgement that his church offers no redemption and is only an organization of human power. And in a world where the church controls the government, it is hardly a fantasy that the human authorities use religious manipulation to cement their control.

"The New Testament has a fair amount to say about structuring the church so that it supports the goal of pointing its people to Christ and it describes a church body with dispersed power. Without Christ at the head, the church is a slave to sin instead of proclaiming its purpose: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1)."

• John Dickson was on ABC’s Q&A program in 2013. Watch it here.
• Justin Barrett has written a research paper on Why Santa Claus is not a God. Check it out here.
• Read A.C Grayling’s attack on Professor Justin Barrett in The Guardian here (from 2008)
• And then read Professor Barrett’s response.
• Watch the Centre For Public Christianity’s interview with Olivera Petrovich

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.

In Episode 28 (Creation's Music) we spoke with Jeremy Begbie and Kirsty Beilharz about how music can point us to God. But what if it's music we just don't like? What about music that's genuinely bad. Or dissonant. What is the purpose of that type of music? Can music that's really hard to listen to still point us to the divine? 

Special thanks to Zondervan Academic, our show sponsor, publishers of How to Talk about Jesus (without being that guy) by Sam Chan.

LINKS: 

• Find out more about our guest Professor Dr Jeremy Begbie here.
• Find out more about our guest Professor Dr Kirsty Beilharz here.
• Seek out Jeremy Begbie's book Theology, Music and Time. 
• Get your hands on Kirsty Beilharz's book Music Remembers Me: Connection and Wellbeing in Dementia.
• Listen to 20th century composer Arnold Schoenberg's works on Spotify. Jeremy Begbie talks about Schoenberg and his creation of new methods of musical composition involving atonality. 
• Kirsty talks about 20th century composer Olivier Messiaen. This is a great article about his 'Turangalîla-Symphonie', from NPR: Finding God, Love And The Meaning Of Life In Messiaen's 'Turangalîla-Symphonie'
• Listen to more of Olivier Messiaen on Spotify, too.
• And another insightful article, this time from The Guardian on Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time', which he composed while in a Nazi concentration camp. 
• Check out this live recording of Handel's Messiah from early this year, by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, performed at the Sydney Opera House.
• And here's some more history about Handel's Messiah from the Smithsonian Magazine.
• Read more about Luther and Calvin's approach to music.
• Jeremy Begbie says Oscar Peterson can move him to tears. Let it move you. Listen on Spotify, here. Also, Brahms (here).
• Kirsty Beilharz went through the Life of Jesus course as she wrestled with Christianity. Check out that course, here. (Pssst... it's a John Dickson course!) 

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.

What is music and what is it about music that stirs the human soul?

Is it just a series of sound waves producing neurological responses … or could music be - as so many ancients believed - a signal from God?

Join us for this episode as we take a look at the enduring love affair between music and the human heart. 

Special thanks to Zondervan Academic, our show sponsor, publishers of Evangelical Theology by Michael F Bird.

LINKS: 

• Find out more about our guest Professor Dr Jeremy Begbie here.
• Find out more about our guest Professor Dr Kirsty Beilharz here.
• Check out this interview Professor Begbie did with Christianity Today in 2018, about Christian artists and their need for a firm grounding in Scripture.
• Read more about the conundrum of consciousness here.
• Seek out Jeremy Begbie's book Theology, Music and Time. 
• Want to start listening to St Matthew Passion but don't know where to start? Check out this helpful guide from NPR (America's National Public Radio). 
• Get your hands on Kirsty Beilharz's book Music Remembers Me: Connection and Wellbeing in Dementia. 
• Kirsty spoke to Eternity News in 2016 about dementia care and music. Read the article here.
• Do Mark Hadley a favour and read The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Centre For Public Christianity fellow Barney Zwartz wrote this piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, titled 'The power of music is a path to God'. 
• Read the story of AN Wilson's conversion back to Christianity in The New Statesman, where he says "The existence of langauge is one of the many phenomena - of which love and music are the two strongest - which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true." 
• From this episode's 5 Minute Jesus, read the Parable of the Prodigal Son. 

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.

Whether you’re a believer or doubter in Christianity, this episode is really more about whether you’re a ‘believer’ or ‘doubter’ in climate change … and the things that often lie behind such beliefs (hint: faith is just one factor!) 

But, if you listen to Katharine, climate change shouldn’t be about belief anymore. It’s real. It’s happening. The question now is, what can we do about it? 

Special thanks to Zondervan Academic, our show sponsor, publishers of How To Fight Racism by Jemar Tisby.

LINKS

• Meet Katharine Hayhoe over on her website. 
• Watch Katharine’s 2018 TedTalk (along with the 3.6 million other people!) 
• Check out Rolling Stone magazine’s conversation with Katharine
• And also ... the New York Times profile of Katharine
• Read the press release from the United Nations, announcing it has named Katharine Hayhoe a UN Champion of the Earth
• Here's the Pew Research from 2015 that found only a third of white evangelical protestants believed climate change was the result of human activity. 
• Read more on AOC’s talk with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates where she said millennials were frustrated with inaction on climate change and said “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how we are going to pay for it?” 
• Ever watched The Newsroom? You totally should. Here’s a link to the series. 
• Read the New York Times 2013 report when the world passed 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• Then, read this report from the 360 Environment 360 Magazine which explains in an easily understandable why such a carbon threshold matters. 
• Here’s the link to the full Sky News interview with environmentalist Michael Shellenberger, that we excerpted in this episode. 
• More on the Gospers Mountain fire in New South Wales
• While you're at it, here's more data from Australia’s 2019/20 bushfire season
• More on California’s devastating wildfire season in 2020. This report from October 25 suggests this week is expected to have the most perilous fire weather event for the season. 
• Then read this Washington Post interactive report on what is fueling the West Coast’s infernos. 
• Get Lynn White’s 1967 article in the Science Journal: The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis
• Read James Bhagwan’s opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald from 2019, titled A climate plea to Scott Morrison from a churchman of the Pacific’s sinking nations 
  • “I want to remind Scott Morrison that for the people of Tuvalu – and Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, and all the other Pacific Island Nations – nothing worries us more than climate change,” he writes.
• Read more about the island of Kiribati in the Pacific, and the immediate threat of rising sea levels. 
• Check out Skeptical Science website run by John Cook

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.