AK47 Season 2 Episode 39: Becoming An Apologist Without a Degree, with Richard Porter

 In the next episode of Kyle's apologetics series, he has Richard Porter on to talk about how you can learn apologetics without having to spend years of your life and thousands of dollars of your money getting an advanced degree.  We get to know how Richard became a Christian and got into apologetics, how to learn apologetics effectively, the usefulness of verbal and written debates on the truth of Christianity, Richard's views of Reformed Epistemology and Lydia McGrew's approach to arguing for biblical reliability, the importance of mentors and reading hard books, and more.

To listen to the episode, click here.  If you prefer listening on another platform, check out the links on the left side of this site.

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Other Episodes in the Series

1. Sam Harper (Philochristos)

2. Evan Minton (Cerebral Faith)

3. Cameron Bertuzzi (Capturing Christianity)

4. Clinton Wilcox (this one is on the topic of abortion specifically)

AK47 Season 2 Episode 38: A Commentary on Nacho Libre. . . But Not Really

 Aaron and Kyle get together to do their very first film commentary.  We watch Nacho Libre and talk about it. . . Though we mostly end up talking about politics, American history, ministry, and related topics.  After the movie is over, we continue talking about church involvement in the lives of its single congregants.  We encourage you to watch the movie with us during the course of the episode, but you don't have to in order to understand or benefit from our conversation!

To listen to the episode, click here.  If you prefer listening on a different platform, click the links on the left side of this site.

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AK47 Season 2 Episode 37: The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis and Idolatry

Aaron and Kyle talk about C.S. Lewis's influential sermon, The Weight of Glory, what its message is, and how it affected their lives.  They also talk about C.S. Lewis's other book, Till We Have Faces.  Eventually, they start talking about idolatry, what it is, and how to tell if you're idolizing something or not.  They then end off by talking about what's going on with their lives and COVID.

To listen to the episode, click here.  If you prefer to use other platforms like iTunes, Stitcher, or others, click one of the links on the left side of the site.

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AK47 Season 2 Episode 33: Thoughts on the Coronavirus

The members of the AK47 Podcast and The New Worlders teamed up for this episode.  We give our thoughts on the coronavirus, the reactions to it, whether or not its a natural evil, and more.  We read extensively from some articles to help drive the discussion.

To listen to the episode, click here.  If you want to listen to it on a different platform such as iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or others, click one of the links on the left side of the site.

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Sources Used for the Episode

We Were Wrong: So Sorry that We Ruined Your Life by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Novel Coronavirus, Ancient Economics by C.R. Wiley
Is the Coronavirus Evil? by Daniel Harrell

AK47 Season 2 Episode 26: A Pastor's Thoughts on Jordan Peterson

Paul Vanderklay, a pastor in Sacramento and avid Youtuber, comes on the show to talk about Jordan Peterson and the phenomenon surrounding him.  We talk about Peterson's effect on people, his approach to interpreting the Bible, and his views of God.

Listen to the episode here.  If you prefer another platform such as iTunes, Stitcher, or others, click one of the links on the left side of the page.

If you want to support the podcast, click here.

Links to Paul's Content

Paul Vanderklay's Youtube channel.

Follow Paul on Twitter.

The AK47 Podcast Season 2: Episode 7

I am starting a new series of interviews interviewing people who are Christian apologists, but not academics.  My purpose in these interviews is to encourage Christians who want to do apologetics, have apologetics ministries, or implement apologetics into their discussions with skeptics, but don't want to spend thousands of dollars of their money and years of their time on formal degrees in apologetics or other related fields.

In this episode, I interview Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity.  I ask him how he became a Christian, how he became interested in the intellectual side of the Christian faith, and why he decided to start a blog on the topic.  I ask him for advice on how to become a good apologist without a formal education, how to deal with anxiety about having discussions or debates with skeptics,  his more controversial theological opinions, and where we can read his stuff.  I also ask him how one can start an online apologetics ministry and the importance of having knowledge and skill in marketing when building a ministry based on apologetics.

Listen to the episode here.

To learn how to support our podcast, click here.

Check out Capturing Christianity

Follow Cameron on Twitter.

Check out the Capturing Christianity Youtube channel.

Other Episodes in this Series

1. Sam Harper (Philochristos)

2. Evan Minton (Cerebral Faith)

3. Clinton Wilcox (specifically on the topic of abortion)

4. Richard Porter

The AK47 Podcast Season 2: Episode 5

I am starting a new series of interviews interviewing people who are Christian apologists, but not academics.  My purpose in these interviews is to encourage Christians who want to do apologetics, have apologetics ministries, or implement apologetics into their discussions with skeptics, but don't want to spend thousands of dollars of their money and years of their time on formal degrees in apologetics or other related fields.

In this episode, I interview Evan Minton of Cerebral Faith.  I ask him how he became a Christian, how he became interested in the intellectual side of the Christian faith, and why he decided to start a blog on the topic.  I ask him for advice on how to become a good apologist without a formal education, how to deal with anxiety about having discussions or debates with skeptics, his more controversial theological opinions, and where we can read his stuff.  We also talk about some of our nerdy hobbies like video games and anime, with an emphasis on Pokemon and Zelda.

Listen to the episode here.

To learn how to support our podcast, click here.

Read and listen to Evan's stuff on Cerebral Faith.

Follow the Cerebral Faith Twitter.

Other Episodes in this Series

1. Sam Harper (Philochristos)

2. Cameron Bertuzzi (Capturing Christianity)

3. Clinton Wilcox (specifically on the topic of abortion)

4. Richard Porter

The AK47 Podcast Season 2: Episode 4

I am starting a new series of interviews interviewing people who are Christian apologists, but not academics.  My purpose in these interviews is to encourage Christians who want to do apologetics, have apologetics ministries, or implement apologetics into their discussions with skeptics, but don't want to spend thousands of dollars of their money and years of their time on formal degrees in apologetics or other related fields.

In today's episode, I interview Sam Harper, who blogs at Philo Christos.  I ask him how he became a Christian, how he became interested in the intellectual side of the Christian faith, and why he decided to start a blog on the topic.  I ask him for advice on how to become a good apologist without a formal education, how to deal with anxiety about having discussions or debates with skeptics, his more controversial theological opinions, and where we can read his stuff.

(Note: We still seem to experience a slight audio problem.  When two people speak simultaneously or when noise happens on one end while another person is talking, it creates a sudden drop in quality for one of the parties.  The audio is still good and understandable, especially on Sam Harper's end, but if anyone knows how to solve this issue, let us know.)

Listen to the episode here.

To learn how to support our podcast, click here.

Read his blog, Philochristos.

Other Episodes in this Series

1. Evan Minton (Cerebral Faith)

2. Cameron Bertuzzi (Capturing Christianity)

3. Clinton Wilcox (specifically on the topic of abortion)

4. Richard Porter

The AK47 Podcast Season 2: Episode 2

Aaron and I risk our careers to talk about a very controversial figure, Milo Yiannopoulos.  We are giving commentary on the recent Eric Metaxas show that Milo appeared in.  We talk about the strange disconnect between Milo's beliefs about homosexuality and his lifestyle, how hosts interact with guests on interview shows, whether or not Milo is really conservative, and a host of other issues.

Listen to the episode here.

Metaxas' interview with Milo can be found here.

To learn how to support this podcast, click here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 42

Aaron gives his thoughts on the sudden and tragic death of Bre Payton, the former staff writer for The Federalist.

Listen to the episode here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 39

Aaron's Description of the Episode

Brian Godawa came back (I know...we're just as baffled by our repeat guests as everyone else is, but bafflement and gratitude are not only not mutually exclusive but complementary) and we talk about eschatology, dispensationalism, the awesomeness of the Bible, but most importantly for present purposes his latest series of books! The Chronicles of the Apocalypse tells a tale of epic proportions concerning the destruction of the temple in AD 70, the monstrous Nero, the persecution of the fledgling Christ followers, and the true battles going on in the heavenly realms that effect our world to this day. Go buy these books as Christmas presents and maybe Godawa will return (or strike back) on our humble pod some day! But seriously go buy his stuff. He's a good dude who writes good stuff: amzn.to/2RBxmVz 

We're getting pretty desperate to find ways to meet our last 8 episodes so after this one the quality will be going down significantly (merry Christmas). Aaron may even do a couple episodes where he just reads old articles and does some commentary on them. This will be a sad attempt to straighten out some of the more complicated ideas for his alleged book project (cough, everybody needs dreams, cough).

Listen to the episode here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 38

Aaron's description of the new episode.

Aaron interviews bestselling author Brian Godawa and they discuss the weird stuff in the Bible. Brian has written several series of "Theological Novels" (Aaron, in his characteristically pretentious style describes them as "Didactic Christian Myth") which explore the more bizarre (but scholarly accurate) aspects of the Old Testament. We discuss the book of Enoch, Giants, Angels, Demons, and other aspects of what Dr. Michael Heiser calls the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh comes up at one point. Godawa's first series is entitled The Chronicles of the Nephilim. His latest series, The Chronicles of the Apocalypse, is a kind of antidote to the Left Behind craze by focusing on distinctly preterist eschatology which teaches that John's Apocalypse mostly concerns events in the later 1st century AD. But eschatology (one of Aaron's favorite subjects, yet one Kyle remains willfully and lazily ignorant of) will concern our next episode with Godawa. Kyle is absent from this episode and the next one. Aaron put him in a box to repent of his eschatological ignorance. He won't be allowed back until he's completed all of Jurgen Moltmann's books, and he has to read them in the original Klingon.

Check out Brian Godawa's stuff on Amazon and godawa.com

We mention Michael Heiser quite a bit. Check him out at drmsh.com

And for those of you who are counting down we only have about 30 days left to get out 9 episodes! 

Listen to the episode here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 21

I interview Dennis Bray, a Ph.D candidate in analytic theology at the University of St. Andrews, on the metaphysics of beauty.  Is beauty objective?  Why think it is?  How does the topic of beauty relate to the topic of goodness and morality?  What is God's connection to beauty and its objectivity?  What is an argument for God's existence from beauty?  All that and more here.

Listen to the episode here.

The AK47 Podcast Season 1: Episode 10

In this episode, I interview Basil Polivka on his journey to Eastern Orthodoxy, where Eastern Orthodoxy came from, and the beliefs and practices of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Listen to the episode here.

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.

Faulty Assumptions in Biblical Interpretation

This article was originally featured on ResistanceTV.

I’ve noticed that, when non-Christians point out certain apparent contradictions or alleged historical errors in the Bible, those contradictions or errors only appear that way because of some unwarranted assumptions they are making.  Here are a few.

And these you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten; they are detestable: the eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, the kite, the falcon of any kind, every raven of any kind, the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk of any kind, the little owl, the cormorant, the short-eared owl, the barn owl, the tawny owl, the carrion vulture, the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat. (Leviticus 11:13-19)

God says that a bat is a bird!  Apparently he’s too stupid to know the difference between a bird and a mammal.

The assumption a person is making when he points this out is that the ancient Hebrews had the same species categories that we do today.  There is no reason to think this.

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. (John 20:1)

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. (Matthew 28:1)

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. (Mark 16:1)

This seems to be a plain contradiction.  They clearly disagree with each other on how many women went to the tomb.  This is another reason to distrust the Biblical accounts.

The assumption a person is making when stating this challenge is that the Gospel writers were trying to give a complete account of every single detail of the event.  There is no reason to think this.  Different people emphasize different things or might leave information out that they do not think is important to the point of the story. I do this when I tell the same story multiple times.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matthew 2:16)

Herod had kids in an entire village killed, and yet no historical sources from the time even mention this event.  This means that the Gospel writer here likely made up the whole story.

The assumption here is that 1) no extrabiblical writers wrote about it and 2) any historians at the time would have written about it.  As for (1), we still have very little  information on the first century.  We have very few writings from that time.  How do we know that no one wrote about it?  It is simply an argument from silence.

As for (2), why would anyone have written about it?  While the murder of children is a horrible event, Bethlehem was a small, backwater village and it’s not likely that there were more than a dozen children below the age of two.  This would not have been a huge event.  The fact that historians didn’t mention it isn’t shocking. The eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 was a very large event, but we only seem to have one written account on it from Pliny the Younger.

When people point out historical errors or contradictions in the Bible, try to see if there are any unwarranted assumptions they are making.  In some cases, the passages only appear mistaken or contradictory because of these assumptions.

Note: A good resource responding to alleged historical errors and contradictions in the Gospels and Acts can be found in this series of lectures by Timothy McGrew.

The Problem With Quick Appeals to Mystery

This article was originally featured on ResistanceTV.

How do Some People Respond to Deep Questions about God?

There are many questions that Christians have about the existence of God.  Some of these questions have to do with the coherence of the concept of God or other theological issues in Christianity.  How can God be three persons?  How does God’s sovereignty work with our free-will?  How is Jesus both God and man?  These questions, and many others, are often on a Christian’s mind and will inevitably be asked in church and Bible studies.  A common response to these questions is to appeal to the mystery of God.  God, being infinite, is beyond complete comprehension, so it is a mystery how these things work together.

Potential Problems with this Kind of Response

There is truth to this response.  God is not completely comprehensible by us because He is infinite.  We will never fully understand a being like God and we would be fooling ourselves to think that we can.  However, my concern is that Christians and pastors will use quick appeals to mystery as an easy way to dismiss a legitimate question about God and certain theological doctrines.  While acknowledging the mysteriousness of God has legitimacy, it leads to a few problems if it is used as a quick response to complex questions about God.  Here are the problems.

1. Quick appeals to mystery stop us from thinking deeply about God.  When you love something, you think about that thing as often as possible and seek to understand it more.  Quick appeals to mystery can cut that deep thinking short and it comes off as saying “No, don’t think that deeply.  That’s far enough.”  Thinking deeply about God is a worshipful and prayerful act, which is clearly shown in writings like Augustine’s Confessions or Anselm’s formulation of the ontological argument, so quick appeals to mystery can stop us from doing something that is worshipful and glorifying to God.
2. Quick appeals to mystery also invalidate people’s legitimate questions about God.  Those appeals can come off as saying “Don’t ask those questions.”  I think that if God and theology are important to people, then it is good for them to ask questions and we should help cultivate a desire to ask questions and seek to understand God better.  We do not want to discourage people from asking those questions.
3. Finally, quick appeals to mystery can make God look absurd.  If a pastor or small group leader continually uses quick appeals to mystery as a response to deep questions about God’s nature and his actions in the world, it will make it seem like there is no answer to those questions, which makes the concept of God look more and more incoherent and ridiculous.  If there is anything that the God of Christianity is not, it’s absurd, incoherent, and ridiculous.  People probably think that appealing to God’s mystery is a way of glorifying God because it acknowledges His infinite nature.  This is not wrong, but using appeals to mystery as a lazy response to legitimate questions can actually have the opposite effect and make it look like there is no answers to these questions because the concept of God, in actuality, doesn’t make sense.

Do the Hard Work

Again, I am not saying that God is not significantly mysterious to us.  He is infinite and we are limited beings who can hardly even comprehend our own world.  I also understand that I have not answered every question one may have about this topic.  When is an appeal to mystery “quick?”  How do we know when we are relying too much on human reason to understand God perfectly?  These are good questions and I do not have answers.  My problem is when appeals to mystery lead to laziness and discourage deep thinking about God.  If you are in a position of leadership in the church or have the opportunity to talk about your faith with non-believers, take the questions about God seriously and be willing to do the deep thinking that we ought to do about our Lord.