Monday, September 9, 2013

I was on the Faith & Skepticism Podcast discussing Kalam!

This past weekend I was a guest on the Faith and Skepticism Podcast, and it was honestly awesome!  I was on there with ElijiahT who blogs over at Hashtag Apologetics. He turned out to be as cordial to interact with verbally as he is on Twitter.  I'd definitely class him and Jason (the F&S Podcast Theist Co-Host) as the type of apologist I can happily converse with on these kinds of topics.  They're strong in their positions, but are willing to recognize the validity of others opinions.  That always helps when you're going to go into a debate.  Nathan (the Atheist F&S Co-Host) was also a lot of fun to work with on this, and I recommend checking him out on Twitter.

I was on to debate/discuss the Kalam. I say debate since that's kind of the premise of the show, but in reality I think we had more of a discussion which I think was far more productive for all sides.  We were able to highlight most of the major issues with the Kalam and identified key points where the underlying assumptions of either side play a big role in whether or not someone will find the argument compelling.

I highly recommend checking out the Faith and Skepticism Podcast in general, but you should of course start with the episode featuring me!

Just in case you wanted some links, here's the total of my "Countering the Kalam" series, as well as a helpful video by YouTube Team Skydivephil on Loop Quantum Cosmology which helps answer arguments that reference the Borde, Guth, Vilenkin Theorem that gets brought up so often to try and support the Kalam.  Additionally, here's a great post detailing problems with William Lane Craig's arguments against actual infinites written up by ExApologist.

3 comments:

  1. Hello John.

    To my mind, in order to establish the Kalam to work, you have to prove there cannot be an infinite number of universes successing each other during in an infinite past, or at the very least that the Proposition is extremely implausible.

    No religious apologist has ever been able to do that, that's why I consider the Kalam to be an utter failure.

    It makes me almost vomit watching Evangelicals proudly using it time and time again.


    Lovely greetings from Europe.

    Lothars Sohn – Lothar’s son

    http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com

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  2. I have interviewed skydivephil over at ATP:
    http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2013/09/10/interview-with-skydivephil-creator-of-superb-videos/

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  3. Listened to most of it. Great stuff and thank for pointing me to the podcast!

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