Episode 049: Why don’t more people believe?

Glenn,
Might you have any highly-recommended resources that attempt to address the problem of divine hiddenness ?

Patrick,

Thanks for the link ! I saw Paul Pardi on the list. Has he since changed his beliefs about Christianity ?

@Glenn:

You find yourself wanting to live a certain way, all of a sudden you start thinking, ‘Uh, maybe this Christian faith isn’t true. Maybe these arguments that people have been using against it, maybe they’re quite good! Wouldn’t that be convenient?’”

Yes, I’ve been saying this for years and years, but of course I’m hardly the only one to have noticed it. Jim Speigel has a whole book centred on the idea. What’s striking is that many outspoken atheists will very skillfully argue as though their intellectual doubt appeared first, but in my experience it almost always, virtually always, if you dialogue with them for long enough, eventually comes out that the real reason for their unbelief is either anger at God (e.g. “why did my mom die?”) or else an unrepented sin. It’s fairly easy to see this effect in one’s own life, even if one is a strong Christian – just fall into a sin of some kind and see how long it takes you to start wondering if those atheist arguments might have some value. Not that I’m actually advocating this as an experiment, mind; but the experience likely rings true for many readers.

I think all of this is a reason for the decline in religious faith in our era. The sexual revolution came first; then the apostasy.

Hi Glenn,

Great work as usual.

Is there any hope of a podcast on the devil, demons, angels, etc and how a Christian physicalist / annihilationist “deals” with these aspects of Scripture? It seems that you would be at odds with traditional interpretations of these topics which would make for an interesting podcast.

Thanks

Mike

While I agree that physicalism isn’t completely at odds with the Christian view of angels and demons, I think there may be some aspects for which dualism would give a better account. For example, the idea of demon possession seems to make more sense if we assume a dualist view where a body is normally under the control of a non-physical soul of the embodied person. The idea that some other non-physical person could gain control over certain aspects of that body would at least seem to fit more naturally within such a view, as opposed to a view where any kind of control of a physical body by a non-physical agent is totally alien to the normal course of events.

I guess I was thinking more along the lines of Haecceitas.

I definitely lean towards physicalism but never really decided where that left demons and the like. I think that you are correct in saying not everything is physical just because we are. However, the idea of demons interacting with purely physical beings just doesn’t sit right. I always thought of the devil and demons being more of a personification of sin…not necessarily beings themselves.

Also, if there is no hell then the devil is homeless. 🙂