Category Archives: Podcasts

Podcasts

Michael Behe and Stephen Barr debate intelligent design

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Michael Behe is Catholic and Stephen Barr seems to be a theistic evolutionist (naturalist). (H/T Evolution News via ECM)

The main page is here, and it has the video.

There is an MP3 file here, 71 minutes long.

Michael Behe goes first, then Stephen Barr.

Keep in mind that the dividing line in the debate on intelligent design vs. Darwinism is between open-minded scientists who think that there might be objective evidence that material cause-and-effect may not be able to account for specific kinds of complexity (specified complexity) in nature, and philosophers who believe that is never permissible to overturn the philosophical assumption of materialism, regardless of what the scientific evidence shows.

So the pro-ID side is like “let’s look at the evidence and see what naturalism can and can’t do” and the anti-ID side is “the presupposition of materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”. It’s ID scientists vs naturalist materialism pre-supposers. Reason vs faith. Inquiry vs dogmatism.

UPDATE:

Upcoming conference features pro-ID scholars and theistic evolutionists in Austin, Texas in October.

Podcasts

Frank Turek interviews Jay Richards on Christianity and capitalism

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Christian apologist Frank Turek, Ph.D interviews Jay Wesley Richards, Ph.D.

The MP3 file is here.

It’s a great interview, with lots of basic economics. Turek cites quotes from Richards’ book “Money, Greed and God” for Richards to respond to, and Richards provides lots of examples to make his points.

Here’s a quote of Frank, from the beginning of the podcast:

Money, Greed and God. How do those things go together, and why should we even be worried about them? And what does this have to do with apologetics? Well, in a few minutes, friends, you’re going to see that it has everything to do with apologetics. You know, you need money to do apologetics. You’re listening right now to a radio program that takes money to run. When you go buy an apologetics book, you need to pay for it. Somebody has gotten resources together – some of them immaterial resources, some of them material resources – they’ve put them together and they’ve marketed this piece to that you would buy it. That takes money. It takes money to preach the gospel across the world. It takes money to send missionaries overseas. It takes money to put on a TV program. It takes money to run an institute like the Discovery Institute. It takes money to run a seminary like Southern Evangelical Seminary or a ministry like CrossExamined.org. Money is essential to what we do. Well, you say “well, gee, you know, we’re Christians, we can’t really be concerned about money”. NONSENSE!

He’s right. And Christians need to be more careful about the economic environment that they work, save and invest in – because that’s where charity comes from.

Frank mentions that “Money, Greed and God” is now $10 on Amazon. Highly recommended, except for that awful chapter on usury. Skip that!

An easier book for total beginners is “The Virtues of Capitalism“. It’s also $10 on Amazon.com.

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Podcasts

Podcasts from William Dembski and Scott Klusendorf

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William Dembski interview

William Dembski gives advice to young Christians who want to study intelligent design. He talks about where they should go to school, how to keep their heads down and the threat from theistic evolutionists at Christian universities.

The MP3 file is here.

If I could do my life over, I would be Doug Axe. I wish I knew then what I know now about where the action is.

Scott Klusendorf on stem cell research

I found this MP3 on the Apologetics 315 Twitter feed.

He agrees that adult stem cell research is better, but he urges caution about arguing against abortion on that basis. He recommends arguing for the humanity of the unborn on the merits.

The MP3 file is here.

Klusendorf is so clever that he doesn’t even like to use the studies showing how abortion tends to harm many women psychologically. He always wants to stick with the question “What is the unborn?”.