episode 12, special guest Robin Collins on fine-tuning

This week we interviewed Prof. Robin Collins of Messiah College, probably the leading proponent today of the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God. He is the author of dozens of articles and chapters appearing in major publications, in the fields of philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. Below you can find some useful links pertaining to the episode and to Prof. Collins:

Robin Collins' home page
Robin Collins' fine-tuning resources page
debates between Robin Collins, Paul Draper and Quentin Smith
Doctor Collins is featured in several 'Closer to Truth' videos. Check them out!
You can stream the podcast from the top of the blog, or download it directly here. Enjoy!

episode 11, special guests Sye Ten Bruggencate and Pastor Dustin Segers

Download episode 11 right here! (Or stream it without downloading in the bar at the top of the main page.

Today we had a great conversation with presuppositional apologists Sye Ten Bruggencate and Dustin Segers. Mr. Ten Bruggencate is the webmaster at ProofThatGodExists.org and is currently a full-time apologist for the faith. Pastor Segers leads a congregation at Shepherd’s Fellowship of Greensboro, NC, and joins Mr. Ten Bruggencate in defending the faith in the tradition of presuppositionalist apologetics. (He also runs a blog here.)

Note: Special thanks to Sye for providing the recording for this episode!

episode 10, special guest Brian Knapp

In episode 10 we welcome special guest Brian Knapp, the founder of and a contributor to the website choosinghats.com, editor of the forthcoming apologetics journal In Antithesis, and co-author of the book The Portable Presuppositionalist. In this podcast we discuss what makes a good reason, and also the problem of induction, with a special focus on the presuppositionalist approach to finding a solution.

Download the podcast here.

Enjoy!

My turn to debate Chris Bolt

The debate is now available at

http://www.choosinghats.com/audio/ChrisMichaelDebate.mp3

Please let me know if you have any comments or questions!

Thanks,
Michael

2011 Jul 27, episode 9, special guest Michael Scattergood from thealitybites.com

Goodness Over God episode 09 is up and ready to go! You can download it here.

This episode features Michael Scattergood, a Christian cartoonist and blogger from the website thealitybites.com. Today we talk about the leprechaun analogy as it relates to negative atheism, as well as Mr. Scattergood's reasons for taking the First Cause to be a conscious being.

Enjoy!


The usual reminder: If you're a Christian (or other kind of theist) and you want to be a guest on the podcast, feel free to drop us a line at

goodnessovergod@gmail.com

indicating who you are and what topic(s) you would like to discuss. We would love to hear from you!

2011 Jun 29, podcast 8, free will, determinism, moral responsibility

Podcast 8 is up and ready to go; get it here! As the title suggests, we talk about free will, determinism and moral responsibility this week.

Just a reminder: If you're a Christian (or other kind of theist) and you want to be a guest on the podcast, feel free to drop us a line at

goodnessovergod@gmail.com

indicating what topic(s) you would like to discuss. We would love to hear from you!

New Podcast this weekend

Sorry it has been so long, yet again! There should be a new podcast this Saturday or Sunday though.

Michael

2011 Jun 04 episode - Other Minds and Plantinga's Rational Warrant

Episode 07 (2011 Jun 04) is up and ready to go! Get it here.

References for this episode include:

Plantinga's lecture

My thread on the ReasonableFaith.org forums (note: my name on that forum is "hatsoff")

Enjoy!

--Ben

Moving

I'm afraid there will be no new podcast this week; I'm moving to Pennsylvania, and Ben is busy as well. We will be back by next weekend though. Thanks for listening!

Podcast 6 is up, with guest Tyler, a Catholic student of theology and philosophy

Podcast 6 is up and ready to go. This is the first episode with our friend Tyler as a guest; I'm sure he will be back again in future podcasts. He's currently studying to be a Catholic theologian and philosopher, and he has a lot to say about god-belief and its place in our lives. In this particular podcast we focus on how to deal with miracles and claims of miracles. Get it here!

Podcast 5 is up, and we have had our first guest!

Thanks so much to Rachael for joining us! It was very nice of her to take the time to speak with us 'on the record'; especially given that she was outnumbered! I think she did an admirable job of articulating her position.

I really enjoyed the discussion, though I can easily imagine someone complaining that this episode didn't have too much to do with counter-apologetics. In fact, I think the nature of causality and the problem of induction are deeply relevant to theism generally, and that careful consideration of what we could be thinking and talking about when we consider cause and effect relationships lays bare the explanatory poverty of theism. I alluded to this in episode 5, but I'd like to try to more clearly make the case in the next podcast just featuring Ben and I.

Thanks!

We are on Itunes now!

Check us out!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/goodness-over-god/id434151118

Michael

Podcast 4, and we are finally on Itunes!

Podcast 4 is up. The content is good, but the audio has problems, I'm afraid.

Good news though, I BELIEVE we are on Itunes, subject to their approval! I'm sorry it took such a long time to get that done, but I really can only work on the podcast on the weekends. I hope to fix up a minor graphical problem on the webpage next week and to get to work on adding metadata and promoting it in other ways.

Also, I'm hoping we will have a logo soon; a professional artist has volunteered to help us with that. :)

Later,

Michael

Name Change, Podcast 3 is up, and a quick clarification on zombies.

Our name change seems to be complete. Check out our main website at https://sites.google.com/site/goodnessovergodcast/ We tried to re-do podcast 3, but our hearts just weren't in it. The original #3 is available, however.

A quick word about philosophical zombies: They are supposed to be absolutely physically identical to we conscious human beings, otherwise they would be of no use to the excellent philosopher David Chalmers, who invented them to make the case for property dualism. I took liberty with the term 'philosophical zombie' to make my point about what God might do. Automatons indistinguishable from conscious human beings by other conscious human beings are good enough for my purposes in this podcast, but I ought to have been careful not to distort an important and interesting thought experiment in philosophy of mind. Check out Chalmer's zombies here:

http://consc.net/zombies.html

Next week, if all goes well, we will have our first guest!

I've been working like a dog lately, and have had precious little time for anything, but I really am going to get us on Itunes soon! I sort of promise!

Michael

Name change, Itunes, and some comments on recent podcasts

Ben and I have decided to change the name of our podcast from "Truly Free" to "Goodness Over God". While we liked the name "Truly Free" it just wasn't clear from the name what the point of the podcast was.

I'm working on getting us on Itunes, but it isn't quite as simple as I thought. I need to figure out how to create an XML feed...

I think that podcast 2 was a great improvement over podcast 1. It required less editing, I stammered less in it, and it seemed to me to be a bit more clear. Others, including Ben, disagree in that assessment. We both agreed that podcast 3 was the best so far, which is kind of a shame, because we had some audio problems and are going to have to redo it. Oh well...

Anyway, I have high hopes for the future of this project; I'll let you non-existent blog readers know when we are on Itunes. Cheers!

Michael

Michael's take on Podcast 1 (Actually first posted on the 5th)

Michael's take on Podcast 1 (Actually first posted on the 5th)

I thought I'd start a blog for the discussion and clarification of the issues raised in our podcast. Since we have next to no audience at this point, I'm not going to have too much to say just yet. I would like to make a few self-critical comments though:

1) It really wasn't sensible for me to say that Plantinga is the most well respected Christian philosopher. It might be fair to say that he is one the most well respected vocally Christian non-Catholic Philosophers. I forgot about Michael Dummett and Alisdair MacInyre, who are both vocal Catholics and, it seems to me, are in a different league than Plantinga. I imagine there are other renowned living philosophers who are Christians as well. I'm just not aware of their Christianity.

Oh well, I'll be more careful when voicing my personal, subjective impressions of professional rank in the future.

2) Really sorry about all of my stammering. I won't allow that to happen in the future.

3) I regret having said that it wasn't helpful to speculate about motivations, only to immediately speculate about Plantinga's motivations. I don't want our podcast to take that tone.

That said, I'm struggling to balance the need to be civil and to not dehumanize those with whom I disagree, on the one hand, and to speak to the moral depravity and dishonesty which which I strongly believe is endemic to orthodox Christianity on the other. I know that many Christians are good people in most respects, but the unwillingness of so many to critically examine their beliefs is to their moral discredit. Even more to their discredit is their willingness to call a being who would torture other beings forever 'good'. There will be more on this in our next two podcasts.

Thanks for listening and reading!

Michael Long