Thinking to Believe

In the latest episode of the podcast, I began my conversation on theism. I examine the relationship between reason and belief in God, discuss two kinds of reasons, explain why scientific evidence is not the appropriate kind of evidence for God’s existence, and answer the question of whether or not we can prove God’s existence. I ended the episode by showing the best way to argue for God’s existence, and explored a tactical approach of making people want God to exist before we give them evidence that He exists.

You can listen to the episode at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1958918/13459789 or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you would prefer to read about it instead, here is the paper:

Reason and Belief in God

I’ve heard a number of pastors claim that Jesus talked about money more than any other topic, including heaven and hell. This always sounded fishy to me. I knew this claim had to be false, even prior to looking into the matter. It just didn’t pass the bologna test. Now that I have looked into the matter a bit more, my initial reservations have been vindicated.

If you do a quick search on the internet, you’ll read statistics like “11 of Jesus’ 39 parables are about money,” or “1 out of 7 verses containing Jesus’ words are about money,” or “more than 2300 verses in the Bible talk about money.” I can’t confirm the accuracy of all these claims, but let’s assume that they are roughly correct. It still doesn’t follow that Jesus talked about money more than any other topic.

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Jesus told His disciples that some of them would not “taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom” (Mt 16:28). This saying appears in the other Synoptics as well. Mark 9:1 describes it as “until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power,” while Luke 9:27 describes it as “until they see the kingdom of God.” Most focus on identifying the event that Jesus had in mind. I’ll come to that question shortly, but first I want to point out something I never noticed before: Jesus affirmed that at least some of His disciples would die. He said they would “taste death,” but that they would not taste death until they had some particular experience. This is important because many interpreters have claimed that Jesus promised His Second Coming would occur in the first century in His apostles’ lifetime. Here, however, Jesus testifies to the fact that at least some of His apostles would die.

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I’ve started a new podcast series on the topic, Does God Exist? The first couple of episodes will cover agnosticism and atheism, and then I’ll do an in-depth analysis of 5 or 6 of the most powerful arguments for the existence of God. You won’t want to miss it!

Episode 1 is already live. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1958918/13352213.