The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 18

I interview Dr. Greg Ganssle on fittingness arguments for God's existence and God of the Gaps arguments.  We discuss what fittingness arguments are, what fittingness arguments there are for theism, what fittingness arguments there are for atheism, and Greg responds to the arguments for atheism.  We finish off by giving an analysis of "God of the Gaps" arguments and responding to the charge that arguments for theism are God of the Gaps arguments.

Listen to the audio here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 11

Aaron and I interview Clinton Wilcox on abortion.  What are the arguments for the pro-life position?  Why should we listen to a man's opinion?  Do abortion laws affect abortion rates?  Are pro-lifers just pro-birth?  Does a woman's bodily autonomy justify abortion in some cases?  Listen to find out.

Listen to the interview here.

For more from Clinton Wilcox, check out his blog, his Twitter, and check out the Life Training Institute for more pro-life apologetics.

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: Neil Shenvi

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.

Neil Shenvi

Neil Shenvi has his Ph.D in theoretical chemistry from UC-Berkeley and was a research scientist at Yale and Duke University before becoming a homeschooler for his kids.  When we look at most of the scientifically trained critics of Christianity like Dawkins, Krauss, Stenger, and others, Christians often rightly notice that their knowledge and credentials as scientists does not make them intellectual heavyweights when it comes to philosophy, ethics, religion, history, theology, or any other subject that connects to apologetics.  Scientists who are critics of Christianity often make very elementary blunders because they are simply not well educated or well read in philosophy, theology, biblical studies, or history.  Dr. Shenvi, however, is an exception when it comes to scientists.  Having read his articles and seen his extensive interactions on Facebook, I can say firsthand that this guy is well versed in philosophy, ethics, and biblical studies.  His intelligence, thoughtfulness, winsomeness, and his ability to engage in multiple subjects of inquiry make him a valuable resource to Christians.

His Website

His website is, of course, the best place to look at his content.  Neil Shenvi-Apologetics is where you can find his essays, book reviews, talks, notes, and more.

The Resurrection and the Bible

As I've stated, he is well read in subjects outside of science.  He has material on evidence for the resurrection of Jesus in multiple places.

Christianity and Science

Being a scientist, he is well qualified to talk about sciences connection with Christianity.  He has talks on quantum mechanics and miracles and science and religion that you can check out.

Social Justice

Lately, Dr. Shenvi has been putting most of his time into learning about critical theory and intersectionality and how they have become part of the modern social justice movement.  This is an important topic in cultural apologetics.  His conclusion is that critical theory is a worldview that, while getting some things right and having some usefulness, has significant incompatibilities with the Christian worldview.  These two articles are where you can get his introduction to the ideas of social justice and critical theory and their compatibility with Christianity.  You can find his reviews and analysis of the books, Race, Class, and Gender, and Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, as a good start, but he also has other book reviews on the subject to look at.  You can also check out his interview on the subject if you would rather listen.

This should get you started on his material.  My understanding is that he is also in the process of writing a book defending Christianity, but it is not out yet.  I think this guy should have more recognition for his contribution, so I hope this post contributes to that.

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.

Prayer Experiments Do Not Show That Prayer Is Not Efficacious

This article was originally featured on ResistanceTV.

The efficacy of prayer is an issue in Christianity that skeptics like to argue about and Christians themselves struggle with.  Does prayer actually have an affect on the outcomes or is it just a waste of time?  I am not going to answer every question here, but I am going to address a particular argument skeptics use to show that prayer is not efficacious.  Prayer experiments, according to many skeptics, show that prayer is not efficacious because prayer does not seem to positively affect the outcomes.  I will briefly explain what these prayer experiments are and why I think they do not cast doubt on the efficacy of prayer.

In these experiments, researchers choose different groups of people who have medical needs.  They have certain groups of people receive prayer and other groups of people receive no prayer.  According to a New York Times article on the prayer experiment funded by the Templeton Foundation in the early 2000’s

The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or might not receive prayers.

In these types of experiments, the group of people that does not receive the “treatment” in question is called the control group.  This group of people does not receive the treatment that is being studied, which is prayer in this case, and their results are compared to the results of the group or groups that do receive the treatment.  The expectation is that, if prayer “works,” then we should see the health of the people being prayed for do noticeably better than the health of the people who are not being prayed for.  However, prayer studies give mixed results.  In fact, in the experiment funded by Templeton, the group who knew that they were being prayed for did a little worse than the other groups.  This seems to show that prayer has no effect on the outcomes, so prayer is not efficacious.  The studies do not go as far as showing that God does not exist, but the results could still be troubling for Christians.

While these experiments are interesting, I do not think that they cast doubt on whether prayer “works” or not.  There are many reasons that people have given to doubt the experiments, but I will focus on two.  First, these experiments presuppose an incorrect view of prayer.  Second, there is an inherent flaw in its methodology.

Skeptics who use these studies to argue against prayer seem to think of prayer as a mechanical process where, if you put in the correct inputs, then you will get certain outputs.  If the Christian God exists, then we would expect Him to answer our prayers roughly as we expect them to be answered.  Since we often do not get the outputs that we expect there to be if there were a God answering the prayers, this means that prayer must not “work” for some reason.  This, however, is a flawed view of prayer because prayer is not a mechanistic process like I described above.  God, if He exists, is a free agent who can freely choose to say “yes,” “no,” “later,” or “yes, but not as you expect,” based on His wisdom and knowledge of the facts.  It is a standard Christian belief that God is not obliged to answer our prayers or constrained by our prayers.  This makes it doubtful that a controlled experiment can accurately tell us whether or not God is intervening.  

The next problem has to do with control groups.  In these types of experiments, one needs a control group to compare to the group that is receiving the treatment in question.  However, this article, talking about the Templeton study, points out a significant problem with prayer studies

The new study was rigorously designed to avoid problems like the ones that came up in the earlier studies. But experts said the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.

The problem that this quote shows is that it is basically impossible for there to be a control group for these experiments.  Researchers can choose a group of people who are not being prayed for by the groups of praying people that they have recruited, but the individuals in the “control group” are likely receiving prayer from an unknown number of family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers throughout the world.  This means that people who are being treated are being compared to people who are getting the same treatment.  If this is the case, then we should not be surprised if the “treated” group does not do noticeably better than the “control” group.

Both of these issues should make us doubt that these studies give good evidence against the efficacy of prayer.  Anyone who believes in the power of prayer should not feel threatened by research like this.