Episode 29 – Show Notes This month we welcomed well known British apologist Jonathan McLatchie to share the show with us. Jonathan is a stalwart of the Unbelievable show and can be found here: www. JonathanMcLatchie.com https://www.facebook.com/groups/apologeticacademy/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr6nvYFyoCk5DsRgYRrhC_g Jonathan has seen the importance of demonstrating the reliability of the gospels and has researched the use of ‘Undesigned Coincidences’ to do this. It is where incidental ...
Jun 05, 2020•1 hr 25 min
Episode 28 – Show Notes We start by trying to track Christian responses to the virus from before it was known about at all. Were there any prophecies? We include the reasons given which fell to the two extremes of The Devil and God in Punishment mode. Here are Andrew’s links: Ed noted how this matched this discussion on Unbelievable https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-2-views-on-suffering-Warfare-vs-Blueprint-Kurt-Jaros-Ken-Brownell We then sta...
May 05, 2020•1 hr 12 min
Text for DA Podcast Ep 28 Episode 28 – Title Suggestions Responses to Covid-19 Christian Responses to Covid-19 Christians in Pandemic Episode 28 – Show Notes We start by trying to track Christian responses to the virus from before it was known about at all. Were there any prophecies? We include the reasons given which fell to the two extremes of The Devil and God in Punishment mode. Here are Andrew’s links: Ed noted how this matched this discussion on Unbelievable https://www.premierchristianrad...
May 05, 2020•1 hr 12 min
Episode 27 – Show Notes It is great to welcome Jared Byas from The Bible for Normal People podcast. We greatly respect his work and find it immensely informative. We each go through our stories of facing the Bible for what it is, and they are quite similar. But Jared and us have ended up in different places. His faith seems as alive as when he held conservative views and yet we have now abandoned ours. We discuss why and the approaches to the Bible left for us. Jared’s book CAN be pre-ordered al...
Apr 04, 2020•1 hr 22 min
Episode 26– Show Notes We discussed how we got the Bible we have, with its 66 books .. or whatever number of books your Bible has. And then we turned again to our favourite Apologetics book for inspiration … this time on the Moral Argument. Heads up to John Humblestone from the Unbelievable Facebook discussion group for his list on reasons Christians give for morals being objective. Here is Frances’ link to an essay by Richard Swinburne, a Christian philosopher who rejects the argument from mora...
Mar 04, 2020•1 hr 14 min
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 th...
Feb 05, 2020•1 hr 27 min
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 cont...
Jan 04, 2020•1 hr 29 min
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...
Dec 07, 2019•1 hr 22 min
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...
Nov 05, 2019•1 hr 14 min
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...
Oct 06, 2019•1 hr 3 min
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...
Sep 03, 2019•1 hr 16 min
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 a...
Aug 04, 2019•1 hr
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...
Jul 02, 2019•1 hr 21 min
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 ...
Jun 02, 2019•1 hr 11 min
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....
May 04, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Episode 15 – Show Notes We enthusiastically mention the Unbelievable Discussion Group in London fairly often (see link at bottom of the notes). This episode we chat over the first 3 of 2019, which have each been corkers. January - Cambridge scientist & Christian Denis Alexander and his well known work on theistic evolution, such as the book “Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?” (the answer is ‘no’). We see if his theological work convinces us as much as we respect his science. Febru...
Apr 06, 2019•1 hr 15 min
Or give feedback and ask questions using : doubtsaloud@gmail.com Join the Facebook Group discussions: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023280847We spent the show chatting with Frances’ long standing friend Richard Morgan. He tells us his story of faith which has had more turns than anyone else we have met. He has been an atheist several times as well as Mormon, evangelical, full-on Catholic and cultural Catholic. We explore the way it has left him with a view of knowledge in metaphysics that has...
Mar 07, 2019•57 min
Episode 13 – Show Notes It was a great privilege to spend time talking with Climate Scientist and Campaigner, Katharine Hayhoe, who is an evangelical Christian based in Texas. (Though, to be fair, she is Canadian!) We asked Katharine questions related to each aspect of her work and outreach – as a Climate Scientist, a Campaigner and an evangelical in the Bible Belt. Here are some great links that arose from the discussion: On a possible positive feedback loop that could accelerate global warming...
Feb 03, 2019•1 hr
Episode 12 – Show Notes We kick off with another chapter in our “Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith..” book. Chapter 32 “Did Jesus Predict His Violent Death and Resurrection?”. It proved an interesting case study in using historical arguments for such issues, and ended up with the chapter’s author needing to cast doubt on one gospel version of Jesus praying at Gethsemane to show the likely authenticity of another (where he was aware of his impending death before he should know). Again we f...
Jan 06, 2019•1 hr 11 min
This month we discuss Pragmatic Arguments and the History of Christianity. The latter is an area of expertise for our guest Steve Tomkins and he joined us right through the recording. Steve did a Phd on the subject and is now editor for the in-house magazine of a leading UK denomination. He is also a lot of fun. We kick off discussing Ed’s appearance on the ’Unbelievable?’ Show of 20-10-2018 https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-A-tale-of-two-dou...
Dec 03, 2018•1 hr 30 min
Episode 10 – Show Notes It would be good to have listened to the last episode where we interview Chris Date on doctrines of hell. Here we put it into context using the question: which hypothesis better fits the observations of doctrinal development in the Bible A. this is normal development of ideas in human culture B. a divine agent is choosing to reveal doctrines bit by bit, like learning maths at school This initially arose as we looked at the latest chapter in our 50 Arguments for Faith book...
Nov 05, 2018•1 hr 16 min
The main topic of the show is doctrinal development in the Bible, specifically on Hell. We quickly introduce the topic to leave maximum room to hear from our guest, Chris Date. Chris is a layman but now studying theology and he is a deep Christian thinker, in the same way that Andrew was a few years ago. Chris dived deep into the doctrine of hell as it really mattered, and matters now, to him as a believer. He has done his own research work on this and as a result became a key driver in a moveme...
Oct 04, 2018•1 hr 39 min
After answering some feedback and chatting over Ed’s experience of a charismatic summer camp, we got down to the main topic of the show – religious experience. We discussed how believers typically believe based on this rather than rational arguments or observable evidence. … from Ed’s charismatic fellow-campers to top apologists and philosophers like William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga. This set us up to enjoy a wonderful interview with Stephen Law (of ‘Evil God Challenge’ fame) who wrote a p...
Sep 04, 2018•1 hr 15 min
Resurrection interview with Mathew Hartke
Aug 21, 2018•1 hr 8 min
Episode 7 – Show Notes Like the rest of the sceptical world in 2018 we had to indulge in a brief chat about Jordan Peterson. We complete our ‘Summer of Atonement’ this month. Andrew gives us an overview of the theories Christians use to try to make sense of it. Frances also gives some thoughts on the full set of philosophical problems with the doctrine. Ed tries to tie it all together to see how it counts as evidence in the assessment of whether Christianity can be true. Can we leave it as ‘myst...
Aug 05, 2018•48 min
Episode 6 – Show Notes Ed and Andrew report to Frances on their experiences of the Book of Mormon Show in London. We also chat about SkyDivePhil who presented on Animal Suffering at the London Unbelievable Discussion Group. We recommend seeing him debate recently in Texas. Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKQWrbeoA2E In last month’s show we mentioned an impressive poem by Glen Scrivener “Given” which he read at this year’s Unbelievable Conference. We play his reading and then disc...
Jul 04, 2018•1 hr 8 min
Episode 5 – Show Notes Frances and Andrew report back on the great Unbelievable Conference and we then give the answer ‘no’ to “Is that in the Bible?”. The earliest gospel, Mark, does not have anything at all on the central Christian idea that Christ died to do something about sins. We then we get to grips with a chapter in our 50 Arguments for Faith book “Is Jesus the Only Way?” This addresses the idea of exclusive truth as well as the apparent unfairness for cultures not familiar with Jesus. W...
Jun 05, 2018•58 min
Episode 4 – Show Notes Andrew uses his ‘Is That In The Bible?’ slot to introduce us to a topic he researched deeply when a Christian and is a part of his journey to doubt. The verse is Matthew 24:34 “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” It turns out not to be isolated. The prophecy of Jesus’ early return is found throughout the New Testament. So much so that a whole movement in the church believes that he must have returned, but th...
May 05, 2018•59 min
Episode 3 - Show Notes We dive straight into an interview with our first guest –Andrew has a wonderful discussion with a Christian John Nelson who has studied at Nottingham University. John’s studies included a deep dive into Historical Jesus research and he puts the recent and current research approaches into context. Then we move to our section “Reason and God” and we respond to Chapter 6 of the Christian book “Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy and Sc...
Apr 04, 2018•1 hr 8 min
Episode 2 – Show Notes We dive straight into our section “Is that in the Bible?” and this month look at Leviticus 27 v28-9– which introduces a scary Hebrew word ‘herem’ that is often translated ‘devoted to destruction’ and is frequently applied to human communities in the Old Testament. Is this human sacrifice? We spend the rest of the show unpicking the issue of God’s character in the Old Testament where He commands ‘herem’ destruction of cities and peoples. How can the Bible be accurate and Go...
Mar 07, 2018•1 hr 5 min
