The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 3

Aaron's description of the episode.

I (Aaron) have on Philosophy Professor Mark Boone to discuss William James and Augustine, faith, empiricism, and some other stuff.

Check out his work page for all the relevant articles.

Most importantly though check out his youtube channel.

And also check out ricochet.com. It's the best conservative discussion on the internet.

PS: I make a comment about Sam Harris being a practicing Buddhist, that is strictly speaking not true. I'm going to do either an article or an episode discussing what is about the statement soon.

Listen to the episode here.

To learn how to support our podcast, click here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 28

Aaron and I are back together, but this episode is definitely more somber and honest than the others.  We start out by giving our thoughts on the new scandal in the Catholic church.  We then move on to bearing our souls to our audience by talking about the pain in our lives and the things that have made things difficult for us.  I hope our honesty can help you get some perspective on your own troubles and help you realize that you are not alone in struggling with life.

Listen to the episode here.

To learn how to support our podcast, go here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 14

In this episode, I interview Dr. Chris Gadsden on religious epistemology and the rationality of theism and Christianity.  A lot of the things we talked about can be their own individual podcasts!

Listen to the episode here.

For more from Dr. Gadsden, check out his website, Ground Belief.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 7

Aaron, the 'A' of the 'AK', was not able to join us for his podcast, but in this episode I interview Dr. Neil Shenvi on the apparent conflict between Christianity and science.  We discuss whether or not secularism is rampant among scientists and the scientific "culture," the different conflicts between science and Christianity, and how a Christian can respond to those apparent conflicts.  Issues like evolution and the age of the earth are also brought up.

I'm still learning how to edit things, so the intro music still ends very suddenly, making it so that the transition from intro music to the actual discussion isn't very clean, but it's not a big problem and I'll learn.

Listen to the interview here on Anchor.

For more of Dr. Shenvi's materials, check out his website.

Apologist Recommendation: Timothy McGrew

In this series, I will recommend certain scholars and apologists to our readers and listeners.  These are people that I believe are worth listening to because they are informed and give good arguments and insights into the subjects that they study, which helps intellectually equip Christians so that they can grow in their own faith and their outreach towards non-Christians.  I am not claiming that these scholars and apologists have everything correct, but I think they are intellectual powerhouses that we can learn much from.

Timothy McGrew

Timothy McGrew is a philosophy professor at Western Michigan University.  His philosophical specialties are epistemology, probability theory, logic, and the history and philosophy of science.  When it comes to Christian apologetics, he frequently speaks and writes on the meaning of "faith" and the possibility and actuality of miracles.  Don't let his credentials as a philosopher fool you, however, he is also very competent when it comes to biblical studies.  Dr. McGrew has spent years researching the reliability of the Bible and he has shared his knowledge in numerous talks and debates over the years.  In the next section, I will provide resources on the various topics McGrew has been involved in over the years.

Miracles

Dr. McGrew has said a lot over the years on the possibility and actuality of miracles and the rationality in believing miracles.  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a fantastic source for learning philosophy, features Dr. McGrew's helpful article on miracles.  McGrew has given helpful talks on how to think about miracles and has participated in debates on the rationality of believing in miracles.  I also highly recommend this talk on the history of the discussion of miracles among philosophers over the centuries.  Many people make it seem like David Hume basically closed the issue of miracles, but Dr. McGrew shows that Hume has had his critics over the centuries.  Tim and his wife, Lydia, who is also a scholar, also have an article defending the resurrection of Jesus Christ in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (chapter 11).

Faith

Many people claim that faith is believing without evidence.  Being a philosopher who regularly thinks of evidence and rationality, Dr. McGrew has spent a lot of time showing that faith is not against the evidence.  In Tom Gilson's book, True Reason, Dr. McGrew and Dr. David Marshall respond to the charge that faith is unevidential belief by giving a historical perspective on how faith was understood and defined by thinkers in the church (chapter 11).  McGrew has also debated the atheist Peter Boghossian, who wrote a book arguing that faith is an unreliable way of knowing things because it doesn't rely on evidence.

The Reliability of the Bible

My favorite stuff from Dr. McGrew is his material on the reliability of the Bible.  He has spent a lot of time researching the subject and has helped to resurface an old argument for the Bible's reliability that, while good, has been forgotten for some time.  Dr. McGrew has an excellent series responding to alleged historical errors and contradictions in the Gospels.  He has debated the well-known biblical critic, Bart Ehrman, on the reliability of the Gospels.  The most interesting thing that Dr. McGrew has brought back into the apologetic discussion is the issue of Undesigned Coincidences.  An undesigned coincidence occurs when two or more people give completely different details about the same event, but despite the details being different, they fit together and explain each other like pieces of a puzzle, which gives a full picture of the event.  Undesigned coincidences are marks of reliability and truthfulness because they are subtle and unlikely to be made up or planned by the group of people giving the details, but despite this, the details still fit together well.  The kicker is that these undesigned coincidences are found all over the Bible.  Tim McGrew has spoken extensively on these things, but it is actually his wife, Lydia McGrew, who has put the most work into bringing this argument for biblical reliability back.  Lydia's book, Hidden in Plain View, explains undesigned coincidences and details a massive number of them in the Bible.  You can also find a number of her posts on various undesigned coincidences in the blog, What's Wrong With the World.

The Existence of God

I have not seen Dr. McGrew talk as much about the arguments for God's existence, but he does have some material on it that I think is worth looking into.  Here is a talk by him giving three arguments for God's existence and answering questions and criticisms from people.

I hope Dr. McGrew's materials are helpful to you all.

Does Hebrews 11:1 Teach that Faith is Belief Without Evidence or Reason?

This article was originally featured on ResistanceTV.

Faith, what is it?

In our modern context, many people think that “faith” means to believe that something is true without evidence or without adequate evidence.  This is something many skeptics will say in order to invalidate the legitimacy of faith.  In The God Delusion, Dawkins says

The dictionary supplied by Microsoft Word defines a delusion as ‘a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder’. The first part captures religious faith perfectly. (p. 28)

In A Manual for Creating Atheists, Peter Boghossian says

If one had sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a particular claim, then one wouldn’t believe the claim on the basis of faith.  “Faith” is the word one uses when one does not have enough evidence to justify holding a belief, but when one just goes ahead and believes it anyway. (pg. 9)

To be fair, a reason why many skeptics believe this is because many Christians also perpetuate this view of faith.  In Love Your God With All Your Mind, J.P. Moreland gives this account

A few years ago I conducted a series of evangelistic messages for a church in New York.  The series was in a high school gym, and both believers and unbelievers attended each night.  The first evening I gave arguments for the existence of God from science and philosophy.  Before closing in prayer, I entertained several questions from the audience.  One woman (who was a Christian) complained about my talk, charging that if I “proved” the existence of God, I would leave no room for faith.  I responded by saying that if she were right, then we should pray that currently available evidence for God would evaporate and be refuted so there would be even more room for faith! (p. 26, emphasis added)

Sadly Christians Believe Faith is Shallow

Unfortunately, many Christians do believe that faith is believing something without evidence, but many Christians, especially the ones in apologetic circles, will rightly point out that this is not what faith means.  Faith is compatible with evidence and reason.  Skeptics, however, will respond by citing Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (ESV)

This verse, according to the skeptic, shows that the Bible agrees with their definition of faith, not with the definition of the Christian apologist.  If the Bible itself says that faith is belief without evidence, then that means the Christian is incorrect to say that faith can and even should involve evidence.

The skeptic, however, grossly misuses this verse when she uses it to support her case.  Hebrews 11:1 does not say that faith is belief without evidence, what I will call “blind faith” from now on.  I will give two reasons why this verse does not mean what the skeptic says it means.  First, taking the verse by itself without context does not lead us to the conclusion that it is talking about blind faith.  Second, when we look at the textual context that the verse is in, it cannot be talking about blind faith.

When one reads this verse critically, it is not clear how it means or implies blind faith.  Which part of the sentence suggests blind faith?  Is it “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for” part?  Being assured of things that you hope for is not a necessarily unevidential thing.  Is it the “conviction of things not seen” part?  This is probably what makes the skeptic think that this verse is talking about blind faith, since it says “not seen,” but “not seen” does not mean “no evidence.”  For example, many philosophers and mathematicians believe that numbers actually exist as abstract objects.  They cannot see, hear, taste, or touch numbers, but they still believe they exist because they think there are very good reasons to believe that numbers exist.  Seeing is not the only form of evidence.  Also, astronomers know that there are many other planets in the galaxy revolving around other stars.  These astronomers do not see many of these planets, but they know they are out there because there is good evidence that those planets are there.  They can see the effects the planets and their gravity have on other heavenly bodies that can be seen, like stars.  In both of these cases and in many others, people believe something exist because they have good reasons to believe them, but the evidence does not involve actually seeing the things in question.  The fact that Hebrews 11:1 says “not seen” at the end does not necessarily or automatically mean “no evidence,” so simply citing this verse does not prove that the Bible has the same definition of faith as the skeptic is proclaiming.  This gives us reason to doubt the skeptic’s claim that this verse confirms their belief, but it does not give positive evidence that the verse does not affirm blind faith.  If we look at the context of chapter 11, however, verse 1 clearly does not affirm blind faith.  

If one continues through chapter 11 or Hebrews, one will come across what is called the “Hall of Faith,” where the author of Hebrews lists off a number of people in the past who exhibited great faith in God.  This list of people includes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Rahab, David, Gideon, and others.  The author of Hebrews would have believed that all of these people saw manifestations of God’s presence, examples of His power, and His faithfulness in keeping promises.  So, to the author of Hebrews, these people would have had a lot of evidence that God exists and is who He says He is.  If the author of Hebrews is teaching blind faith in verse one, he would not be using these people as examples of great faith.  Since he is using these people as examples of great faith, he must not be teaching that faith is blind in verse one.

Since blind faith does not fit into the context of chapter 11 and blind faith is not implied by the language of the verse, this means that the skeptic is wrong to use it as a response to Christians when they say faith is compatible with evidence.