Tag Archives: Deism

Podcasts

Brian Auten interviews Jay Richards about Christian apologetics

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Recently, I picked up the audio book version of “The Privileged Planet”, which is a book by philosopher / economist Jay Richards and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. This book is different from books about the origin of the universe and cosmic fine-tuning. It talks about what it takes to make a habitable planet. And it talks about how the habitable places in the universe are also the best places to make scientific discoveries.

Christian scholar Jay Richards was interviewed by Brian Auten of Apologetics 315.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

  • What is intelligent design (ID)?
  • Is ID specifically Christian?
  • How does ID helpful to Christian apologetics?
  • What does ID prove?
  • Is it OK to use an argument that doesn’t prove Christianity specifically?
  • What is the difference between deism and theism?
  • Do ID arguments get you to deism or theism?
  • What is materialism, and how can you challenge it?
  • How do opponents of ID define ID?
  • What factors do you need to make a habitable planet?
  • Are habitable planets common or rare in the universe?
  • What is “The Privileged Planet” hypothesis?
  • Is there an overlap between habitability and suitability for making scientific discoveries?
  • What is the “Copernican Principle”?
  • Has the progress of science made Earth seem common and ordinary?
  • What is the most Earth-like planet that we’ve ever discovered?
  • How should ID proponents respond to the objection that creatures aren’t perfect?
  • Does having a big moon make a planet more or less habitable?
  • Does a planet’s distance to the Sun make that planet more or less habitable?
  • How do these two habitability factors affect the observability of solar eclipses?
  • What does co-relation between habitability and “discoverability” tell us about God?
  • How important is training in philosophy to Christian apologetics?
  • What one thing should a Christian apologist work on to be more effective?

If you’d like to learn more about his book “The Privileged Planet”, you can find out more here. I recently bought the audio book version of the book.

Podcasts

Brian Auten interviews Jay Richards about Christian apologetics

Leave a comment
Dr. Jay Richards
Dr. Jay Richards

Christian scholar Jay Richards was interviewed by Brian Auten of Apologetics 315.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

  • What is intelligent design (ID)?
  • Is ID specifically Christian?
  • How does ID helpful to Christian apologetics?
  • What does ID prove?
  • Is it OK to use an argument that doesn’t prove Christianity specifically?
  • What is the difference between deism and theism?
  • Do ID arguments get you to deism or theism?
  • What is materialism, and how can you challenge it?
  • How do opponents of ID define ID?
  • What factors do you need to make a habitable planet?
  • Are habitable planets common or rare in the universe?
  • What is “The Privileged Planet” hypothesis?
  • Is there an overlap between habitability and suitability for making scientific discoveries?
  • What is the “Copernican Principle”?
  • Has the progress of science made Earth seem common and ordinary?
  • What is the most Earth-like planet that we’ve ever discovered?
  • How should ID proponents respond to the objection that creatures aren’t perfect?
  • Does having a big moon make a planet more or less habitable?
  • Does a planet’s distance to the Sun make that planet more or less habitable?
  • How do these two habitability factors affect the observability of solar eclipses?
  • What does co-relation between habitability and “discoverability” tell us about God?
  • How important is training in philosophy to Christian apologetics?
  • What one thing should a Christian apologist work on to be more effective?

I’m hoping that Brian will do a follow-up interview with Jay on Jay’s new book on theistic evolution.

Here’s the description from Amazon.com:

What does it mean to say that God “used evolution” to create the world? Is Darwin’s theory of evolution compatible with belief in God? And even if Darwin’s theory could be reconciled with religious belief, do we need to do so? Is the theory well established scientifically? Is it true?

In the century and a half since Charles Darwin first proposed his theory of evolution, Christians, Jews, and other religious believers have grappled with how to make sense of it. Most have understood that Darwin’s theory has profound theological implications, but their responses have varied dramatically.

Some religious believers have rejected it outright; others, often called “theistic evolutionists,” have sought to reconcile Darwin’s theory with their religious beliefs, but often at the cost of clarity, orthodoxy, or both. Too few have carefully teased out the various scientific, philosophical, and theological claims at stake, and separated the chaff from the wheat. As a result, the whole subject of God and evolution has been an enigma wrapped in a shroud of fuzz and surrounded by blanket of fog.

The purpose of this anthology of essays is to clear away the fog, the fuzz, and the enigma. Contributing authors to the volume include Jay Richards, co-author of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery; Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design; William Dembski, author of The Design Revolution; Jonathan Witt, co-author of A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature; Denyse O’Leary, author of By Design, or by Chance?; and David Klinghoffer, author of Shattered Tablets.

Those authors are some of my favorite people to read in the whole world. I think this group will be mostly fed up with theistic evolutionists, like I am, although they may not go as far as I do when I label theistic evolutionists “functional atheists” or “theistic atheists”.

Jay Richards is probably my favorite all-round Christian scholar, because he also writes a lot on policy and economics, and was interviewed on those topics by Frank Turek. He has a complete, well-rounded worldview.

Posts featuring Jay Richards

Interviews by Jay Richards

Related posts

Commentary

What should a Roman Catholic think about naturalism and evolution?

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Charles Pope on the Archdiocese of Washington web site. (H/T Joe Carter on First Things)

Excerpt:

It is common to experience a rather simplistic notion among Catholics that the Theory of Evolution can be reconciled easily with the Biblical accounts and with our faith. Many will say something like this: “I have no problem with God setting things up so that we started as one-celled organisms and slowly evolved into being human beings. God could do this and perhaps the Genesis account is just simplifying evolution and telling us the same thing as what Evolution does.”

There are elements of the truth in this sort of a statement. Surely God could have set things up to evolve and directed the process so that human beings evolved and then, at some time he gave us souls. God could have done that.

The problem with the statement above is less theological than scientific because there is a word in that sentence that is “obnoxious” to evolutionary theory: “God.” The fact is that most Catholics who speak like this over-simplify evolutionary theory and hold a version of it that most Evolutionary Theorists do not hold. They accept the Theory of Evolution uncritically.

Yeah, because what evolutionists mean by “evolution” is that GOD HAD NO DETECTABLE EFFECT ON THE PROCESS. They mean that THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION OCCURRED ENTIRELY WITHOUT DIVINE INTERVENTION. That’s what evolution means – fully materialistic, fully random, no intelligence needed, emergence of all the diversity of life we see.

Now what this means is that God is excluded as a cause by evolutionary theory. It would be fine if evolutionists (as natural scientists) were either silent on the question of God. Or, perhaps if they simply stated that things may be acted upon by an outside force or intelligence but that is beyond the scope of their discipline. But that is not what is being said by most proponents of evolutionary theory. They are saying that biodiversity results MERELY from natural selection and random (i.e. non intended or non-purposeful) genetic mutations. They are saying that observable effects of biodiversity are wholly caused by something natural, random and without any ultimate goal or plan.

But a Catholic cannot accept all of this. Even if a Catholic wants to accept that things have evolved in some way (whether through macro or microevolution) a Catholic cannot say that this process is simply random, chance, blind, or with no purpose. We believe that God alone created all things, and that he sustains all things. Neither do we confess some sort of “deist” God who merely started things off and then lets them take their own course. Rather, God sustains and carries out every detail.

Joe Carter adds:

In my experience, most people haven’t considered the issue of how the theological and scientific claims can be compatible. For instance, to be a “theistic evolutionist” in the sense that modern scient will accept, requires one to adhere to polygensism (the theory that Adam was not one historical man but, rather, a euphemism for “mankind”). That position, however, is not compatible with the teachings of the Bible, the Church, or of Jesus.

The dividing line between theists and non-theists is as follows: did God act in history in a way that his creative agency and intelligent agency is discernable to us using the objective methods of science? Atheists (and theistic evolutionists) say that God’s creative agency and intelligent (selection/sequencing) agency is neither necessary to explain what we observe in the universe, nor are the effects of agency detectable through science. Theists (and deists) say that God’s creative agency and intelligent agency is necessary in order to explain what we observe in the universe, and these effects of agency are detectable through science.

That is the dividing line. I don’t how I could be much clearer.