In this episode, we explore the nuances of religious epistemology, focusing on Internalism versus Externalism, and how these frameworks influence our understanding of how we know God. We discuss how Christian thinkers like Plantinga approach these issues, and how to evaluate who we can trust in the midst of complexity.

In this podcast we discuss:

• How do we understand the difference between Externalism and Internalism as it relates to epistemology?
• How do Internalists and Externalists address the idea of “normal”?
• The four properly basic beliefs and how we gain knowledge.
• Alvin Plantinga’s epistemological framework and philosophical contributions.
• The negative influence of logical positivism in scholarship, and how it shows up in broader culture.
• How can knowledgeable Christians support each other epistemically?
• How do we evaluate who to trust for correct information?

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Series Episode 1: How Do You Know? Are You Sure? Epistemology – Episode 52
• Series Episode 2: Who Wants to Live a Lie? Epistemology 2 – Episode 53 – Thinking Christianly
• Alvin Plantinga, Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for the Existence of God: The Plantinga Project
• Find more information on the work of Alvin Plantinga here.
• Randy Newman, Questioning Evangelism, Third Edition: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did
• Neal Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation
• JP Moreland, Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology
• Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Religious Epistemology

02:10 Defining Internalism and Externalism

04:04 The Significance of Properly Basic Beliefs (Not accurate/wrong place)

08:03 Plantinga’s Reconciliation of Faith and Reason (Not accurate/wrong place)

12:02 The Role of Evidence and Experience

16:01 The Authority of Experts and Community

20:00 The Fall and Its Impact on Knowledge

24:09 Logical Positivism and Its Critique

28:00 The Sociological Roots of Belief

32:07 Practical Implications for Christian Faith

In this episode, JP and Stan discuss the requirements and responsibilities of truth-seeking as rational beings created in God’s image.

In this podcast we discuss:

• What does our knowledge of reality have to do with our ability to live a meaningful life?
• Why is seeking truth considered a virtue?
• In what ways does Christianity uniquely elevate the role of reason?
• What is a “justified true belief” and how does that framework help us see beyond Scientism?
• How does understanding epistemology help us in evaluating the claims of Scripture?

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
• Stan W. Wallace, “Four Reasons Why The World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind“
• J.P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul
• Series Episode 1: How Do You Know? Are You Sure? Epistemology – Episode 52

What does it really mean to say that we “know” something? In this episode, we begin a series on epistemology, the study of knowledge and reasonable belief.

In this podcast we discuss:

• What is knowledge (including knowledge about God)? Can we have it? If so, how? Can we be sure?
• What kinds of knowledge exist and how do we access them?
• What is the difference between certainty and defeasibility? Must we have certainty to have knowledge?
• What is the role of skepticism and how should Christians respond?

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Roderick Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing
• J.P. Moreland and Garrett DeWeese, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions, Chapter 2
• J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Part II (Chapters 3 through 7)

In our first-ever question-and-response episode, Stan and JP engage with listener questions about postmodernism, panpsychism, and enchantment.

In this podcast we discuss:

• How can adopting a broader, more holistic sacramental theology help us to understand the nature of reality?
• What is panpsychism, and why does the “Combination Problem” make it implausible? How is it incompatible with the Christian worldview?
• Can we understand our world as “enchanted” without slipping into panpsychism?
• Are we culturally post-Postmodern?
• Why is this moment in the history of ideas such a crucial one for Christians to offer a better answer?

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Ask your question here: https://www.speakpipe.com/ThinkingChristianly
• Stan Wallace, Have We Lost Our Minds?
• Paul Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age
• John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate

In this episode, we discuss more ways the realism/nominalism debate is having a dramatic impact on all we think and do as we wrap up our series on this important topic.

In these episodes, we discuss:

• Our culture’s confusion over what art is due to implicit nominalism
• How nominalism undercuts our knowledge of chemistry, biology, and ethics
• Ways in which nominalistic thinking seeps into our language and reinforces our confusion
• Nominalism as the seedbed for critical theory and other destructive cultural ideas
• The necessity of realism to understand our growth in Christ
• How nominalism cuts the heart out of Christian theology (and is assumed in Islamic theology)
• Final comments on the stakes of the realist/nominalist debate

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• The first episode in this series: #45 – What Makes Things What They Are? The Realist/Nominalist Debate
• The second episode in the series: #46 – Good Reasons to Believe in Things We Can’t See: The Realism/Nominalism Debate
• The third episode in this series: #47: The Beliefs, Distinctions, and Cultural Impact of Nominalism: The Realism/Nominalism Debate,
• The fourth episode in this series: #48: God, Universals, and the Nature of Reality: The Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 4 (with special guest Paul Gould, Ph.D)
• The fifth episode in this series: #49: Application of the Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 5: The Hidden Battle Shaping Our Lives and Culture
• Madeline L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet – “Art is not a mirror, but an icon…”
• David Hull, The Metaphysics Of Evolution
• Hellen Pluckrose & James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody
• Jon Kelly, The Ontology of the Soul and Pauline Renewal of the Mind: How Holistic Dualism Accounts for the Restructuring of the Soul and Human Flourishing. Dissertation, University of St. Andrews

Recommended resources:

• P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

In this and the next podcast, we turn our conversation to points of application, discussing some of the ways the Realism/Nominalism debate is having a dramatic impact on all we think and do.

In these episodes we discuss:

• If beauty is really in the eye of the beholder
• Can there be justice for all if we are nominalists
• How these ideas shape the work of physicians and therapists
• The nominalistic assumption underlying Critical Theory
• Why people say “That’s true for you but not for me.”
• How we got to the point of believing there are more than two genders
• Nominalism and abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia
• If there is one correct interpretation of a passage of Scripture (or any other document, such as the Constitution)?
• How nominalism cuts the heart out of Christian theology (and is supposed in Islamic theology)
• What it means to discuss “family” without a realist understanding
• Some questions that help people understand the limits of their Nominalist views

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• The first episode in this series: #45 – What Makes Things What They Are? The Realist/Nominalist Debate, Part 1
• The second episode in the series: #46 – Good Reasons to Believe in Things We Can’t See: The Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 2
• The third episode in this series: #47: The Beliefs, Distinctions, and Cultural Impact of Nominalism: The Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 3
• The fourth episode in this series: #48: God, Universals, and the Nature of Reality: The Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 4 (with special guest Paul Gould, Ph.D) – Thinking Christianly
• J.P. Moreland, Finding Quiet: My Struggle of Overcoming Anxiety and the Practices that Brought Peace
• Thinking Christianly Podcast – #19: Finding Quiet When Experiencing Anxiety and Depression
• Pitirim Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (archive edition)

Recommended resources:

• J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

In this episode, we drill down further into how the Realist/Nominalist debate shapes our understanding of God with special guest and expert, Dr. Paul Gould.

In this podcast, we discuss:

• What is “Divine Conceptualism” and how does it relate to Moderate Realism?
• What are some of the intellectual resources we gain when we hold Platonist ideas about abstract objects and traditional theist understandings about God’s nature?
• How does distinguishing the two types of creation help us understand God’s creative activity?
• Where do distinctions about Platonic and Aristotelian thought help us sort through what we can know about reality?
• How does “Divine Exemplarism” help us make sense of difficult passages in Scripture?
• How can we make sense of the concept of “Divine Simplicity” without falling into incoherence?
• What is the concept of “Divine Aseity” and what requirements does it actually place on our ideas about God’s nature?

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• The first episode in this series: #45 – What Makes Things What They Are? The Realist/Nominalist Debate, Part 1
• The second episode in the series: #46 – Good Reasons to Believe in Things We Can’t See: The Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 2
• The third episode in this series: #47: The Beliefs, Distinctions, and Cultural Impact of Nominalism: The Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 3

Recommended resources:

• To find out more about Paul Gould and his work, please visit his website – Paul Gould
• J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, chapter on Properties
• Garrett J. DeWeese and J. P. Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions, chapter on Properties
• J. P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul

In this episode, we continue exploring realism and nominalism by taking a deeper look into Nominalist beliefs.

In this podcast, we discuss:

• What does a person mean when they say they are a nominalist?
• How is nominalism a contributing factor to current cultural beliefs?
• What are the major distinctions within nominalism?
• How do moderate and extreme nominalists understand properties? What are the challenges inherent in these ideas?
• Why would a person be inclined to hold nominalist views?
• How do we engage in this discussion with fellow Christians?

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Stan Wallace, “Three Reasons to Believe in Things You Can’t See,” (four-part series)
• The first episode in this series: #45 – What Makes Things What They Are? The Realist/Nominalist Debate, Part 1
• The second episode in the series: #46 – Good Reasons to Believe in Things We Can’t See: The Realism/Nominalism Debate, Part 2

Recommended resources:

• P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, chapter on Properties
• Garrett J. DeWeese and J. P. Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions, chapter on Properties
• JP Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul