Question and Answer with J.P. Moreland: Tackling Your Toughest Questions!

thanks for joining us today i am here with a dear friend of mine someone i consider a mentor somebody if i was asked who has had some of the most influence on my life his name would be right up there near the top you're joining us so in some sense he needs no recognition but we're here today with dr jp moreland who's a professor emeritus at a bio university talbot school of theology has been recognized as one of the most influential philosophers today as a friend of mine but also a colleague now at biola which is one of my great privileges uh jp thanks for carving out time and for joining us well it's a joy it's always great to be with colleagues and uh we're so happy to have you on the faculty uh by the way um uh a professor emeritus is retired and i'm a distinguished professor but i don't want people to think that i've retired so unless you're trying to give me a message of some kind well i wasn't going to say it but now now i'm playing thanks for the gracious correction we want you around as long as we can have you thank you thank you well the good news we got a bunch of questions of people uh lining up here so here's how we're gonna do this i've had some people email me and text me and tick-tock me questions for you i've got about two or three maybe four to get us going and then we're just gonna go live and take the questions that are in the chat uh box right here on a range of issues you could ask jp on science on philosophy which is his expertise on historical jesus ethical issues and we will let him respond to it but i also want to give you a chance jp you've really poured your life into biola and talbot and really believe in the philosophy and apologetics program so i want to give you a chance as throughout this conversation really to weigh into that but let me let me jump in and ask you uh about three or four weeks ago i had a chance to interview you about evidence for the soul and one of the arguments you made is that while our body changes over time that's not sufficient to ground identity there must be something immaterial and namely the soul somebody responded said well wait a minute as i understand in the brain there are certain particles that actually don't change through one's life maybe they would be sufficient to ground personal identity over time your response well first of all that would mean that i'm the same thing as a group uh namely a group of cells but i know that i'm not a group i'm a single thing so i can't be a a cluster of those cells that remain the same uh because i'm a single thing i'm not a collection of things that that would be the first thing i'd say like a collection might be a a a pile of sand or a table that's got a whole bunch of parts to it the second thing i would say would be that if you took a table it didn't change any of its parts but you smashed it so that it one leg was sticking up in the air another one was down and the other two were laying out flat it wouldn't be a table any longer even though it would be made of the same parts because it wouldn't have the same structure so it take to have it the same table you have to have the same parts and the same structure now even if the cells do remain the same they're in motion they they do change relative to one another we know that from what's called neuroplasticity which is just the idea that you your brain structure isn't fixed it is like a plastic it's pliable and so our set the neurons in the brain and the various cells uh are constantly uh changing their structure and and wiring together with certain neurons and other neurons so you still have a flux maybe not of those parts but of the structure that they're in and that's enough for that they're not the same uh collected hole because the structure of that collected hole would change and then finally those cells are made up of billions of little subatomic particles neutrons electrons uh quarks whatever you what whatever's down there turtles uh and uh these things are constantly in motion they're moving sometimes they they're they they fly away in a return and so it's a bloomin buzzing confusion down there and so uh it's actually not the case that those cells remain the same even if they stay in there because they're really different because of the of the of the motion and the kind of replacement of some of the subatomic particles that's a great response even if there were some of the identical particles the arrangement and the construction itself changes which means it's not sufficient to ground identity over time in the way that a soul would be that's exactly that that's a great response let me ask you one more and we're kind of diving into these tough questions uh what a question i get often asked is do people who commit suicide lose their salvation so is committing suicide inconsistent with somebody being a follower of jesus and ultimately going to heaven yes i i'm one of those that believes in something called eternal security and that means that if you are genuinely regenerated and born again in the king in the kingdom then you can't lose your salvation just like a person who gets older can't be unborn in their family you cannot have a good relationship with the family you can lose rewards but you can't lose your salvation and so i i there's there's no doubt in my mind that suicide is a tragedy uh it is it is a it is a great sadness to god and it's actually a very selfish act though understandable because i certainly i understand life getting so painful that that one would rather just not feel the pain but it's still not the right thing to do and uh but yet it is covered by the by the by the grace of christ and the cross just like anything else we do and so uh suicide in no way uh is different than any other significant sin like murder or anything else that it it doesn't matter if it happened at the very last instant of your life on earth uh because you've already had all your sins forgiven past present and future so you might lose some rewards but we all lose rewards for various things we do but i'm convinced that those people continue to have eternal life which is a quality of life but it's also an ever-ending kind of life and that's what we have eternal life that's a great answer i can imagine be very comforting for people as well so let me follow up on this then i see a question from aidan peterson related to the soul and then those of you just chimed in put your questions in here and we will go to a range of questions to to dr moral and so if somebody can't lose their salvation does that mean somebody who say apostasizes or who said they were once a believer never truly had salvation in your theology right that's a real tough one um i would say that if a person does that it is still possible that they genuinely became a believer and fell away uh but if a person does do that i would say two things first number one that means to me it's highly likely that the person never was born again in the first place because uh there are certain signs that are to take place and it may very well be and i would bet that it's highly likely they weren't saved on the other hand if they were still saved nobody would have any evidence for believing that because a person could say well i can remember praying the prayer to to trust christ all right and you probably sensed that you were sincere in doing that but this provides overriding counter evidence that you weren't sincere uh and so now you're having to pick the weight of my sense of my own sincerity when i prayed against the weight of me not just backsliding whatever that means but apostatizing and turning into an atheist who's hostile to the faith that is really big time stuff and uh so that would lead me to believe that even if i were still saved and usually it's probably not the case still i think i would have no grounds for thinking that i am and i i should be very very very concerned and cautious by a person where i is it fair to sum up and say in your position somebody can't lose their salvation by some egregious sin and if somebody falls away chances are they weren't in the faith but you're open to the logical possibility that somebody consciously chooses to walk away and reject the faith did that encapsulate you okay exactly right okay good let's go to aiden peterson here he says what implications does bci brain computer interface research have for the existence of the immaterial soul these are things in which your thoughts can perform actions through devices so i think he means you think a certain thing and it controls a hand or a foot what does that mean for the distance of the soul when it seems to be triggered physically well it has no implications at all because you have to remember uh it's one thing to ask what is a conscious state what is a feeling of pain or a thought it's another thing to ask what is it that triggers one or causes one to happen uh those are completely different questions so let's grant for the sake of argument that thoughts are not physical that they're immaterial make a case for that but let's grant it what causes a thought oh gee uh um seeing something um having a bad traumatic experience triggered a brain event could cause a thought if i get stuck with a pen that will cause a thought that i'm that this hurts i can cause a thought because i can freely sometimes redirect what i'm so all kinds of things can cause a thought and a thought can cause all kinds of things and so in the norm without these these devices my thoughts uh along with my will are correlated and tied to very specific um neurological uh pathways and i am able to raise my arm by by willing to do so uh and that's not willy-nilly i mean i don't will to raise my arm and my toe wiggles uh the point is that that the different states of consciousness my thoughts uh and my intention like i'm intending to to look at that or to think about that those cause body movements right specific ones uh now i don't know why a scientist could not because remember it probably does that by causing something to occur in the brain suppose i thought of something it was a brain event which would then run down a certain neural pathway to a muscle and cause it to move does that make sense to you okay so i don't know why i couldn't have a thought and a scientist would would be able to record what brain event took place and then asked me what was the thought that you had just then and and then tried and find a way to hook up that brain event with a a computer you saw that a word appears on the screen or something like that as opposed to my hand moving up or writing the letter a so um you still have the problem that in order to create those devices you have to come up with a list of correlations between thoughts and brain states and to get those uh the scientists can measure the brain states but they don't have they don't have any idea what the thought is unless they ask the person himself or herself because conscious states are not physical and they're privately accessible i alone have direct access to my own conscious states thank god and nobody else does and so i would just say it's it's no different than the way we move our bodies uh uh with a brain state being caused by a thought that then moves a body now but it's being connected over repeated correlation scientists are able to rewire it to a computer terminal let's say that's really helpful so the way we function now a thought shapes our actions just because we added another medium that's physical wouldn't change the beginning cause being thoughts that put behaviors and physical things into practice it doesn't change the nature of it and the distinction between thought and between a reaction physically and that's why these experiments don't really they don't really matter i mean in that sense so yeah oh particularly for those of you listening if you want to explore us a little bit more i had a chance to interview uh dr morland just a few weeks ago on the question of the existence of the soul and he really unpacks it there so scroll down videos and you'll find it one of the next questions comes from carmen friesen and it's about reconciling the old testament god with the new testament god the old testament god in this question was smite and destruction new testament god loves peace and mercy how would you respond to that well jesus was more vicious than the old testament god because he condemned people to hell and he actually talked more about hell than he did heaven now it's one thing to command the annihilation of a group of people like the canaanites who were so evil that they most likely deserved it it's another thing to send somebody to hell for eternity i don't know which do you think is is a heavier well so jesus who is an exact representation of the of we'll say the new testament god uh was pretty pretty harsh in certain ways and um by conversely the old testament god was merciful and loving and kind and so i think this has been overstated by people uh people have overstated the severity of the old testament god and the and the loving mercifulness of the new testament god when you find both in both and so the here's the final thing i would say when jesus began the sermon on the mount which if if you look carefully that is meant by matthew to be uh parallel to moses giving the law of moses because both of them go to egypt in their childhood they both come back out of egypt one delivers the the mosaic law the other delivers the sermon on the mount egypt goes uh israel goes down to egypt and comes out so there's a parallel being made here now jesus has an opportunity in the sermon on the mount to set the course for his kingdom and the way he's going to preach and teach the very first thing he does is to affirm everything that was taught in the old testament he said there won't be a daughter a tittle of the old testament that would be changed until it's all been fulfilled now a jot and a tittle is just a little squiggle it's not very big you can hardly see what he's meaning is every word of the old testament is god's very word and he embraced the god of the old testament and believed in the old testament and so if jesus accepted the god of the old testament but we're having trouble with that god the problem is probably on our side and our moral intuitions or maybe a misunderstanding of certain passages so i would say we go back to the drawing board and maybe re-examine us rather than trying to re uh shape what the old testament really means uh and then in 20 years that'll be out of date too you know that's a great word i especially love what you said about we see both in both testaments in the old testament we do see god's judgment unmistakably ezekiel 18 23 god said he's rather have us turn from our wickedness and repent our new testament we see god's love but we also see his justice that's a that's a great response now i have a question here from uh true counterphobia about sanctification but first jp i want to ask you there's a lot of things you could have done being a speaker being a writer you've been a pastor but you have committed your life at biola teaching philosophy and apologetics i'm curious why did you take that route in terms of impact and why have you stayed at biola for so long when you've had opportunities at more well-known secular universities well sean this gave being at biola for 30 years now has given me the opportunity to accomplish things in equipping and training people that i couldn't have done in any other ministry now i could have written and done things but but being at a university i'm able to team up with other scholars and other professors and and the the synergy is is just tremendous and and as a result i have been able to see a generation of uh younger brothers and sisters be mobilized and equipped in a way that i could not have done anywhere else now why biola well please understand i've never been a salesman and i'm just being straight biola is the only school in the country in my view that combines absolute academic excellence and rigor as is recognized increasingly by the secular community with a tender loving heart for the lord jesus a desire to fulfill the great commission and a hunger to disciple and form believers to be like jesus and i think those are both imp on an equal footing there so in your pro in the apologetics program of which i'm privileged to teach sometimes and in our program um we've been able to do that uh i there's nothing like these programs anywhere in the united states i i'm sad to say i mean i wish there would be 20 of them immediately you know pop up we need so many more but at least we have a place here where we can have students come and take classes online and other in other ways and they can get some real serious equipping and training that'll help them in their own faith and then help them to know how to share with others the fact that you've been at biola for so long has enabled you to influence so many generations rather than skipping around and i'm one of those you've influenced as you know so thanks thanks for let me jump to this question those are you throwing questions and i'm going to do my best to get as to as many as i can true counter phobia says why do we still sin what purpose does god have for the christian sinning i've tried to get answers to find the i've tried to get answers to find the only answer i get is sanctification and that's not satisfying well uh i'm not sure what the question is but i'll just take a stab at it if the question is why do we still sin it's because we're in a period of time where we have a a fallen nature uh we there is what's called the world which is organized uh and there is there are genuinely demons that exist that they're not make believe and so there is a we're subjected to our own weakness and we we we sin because we're fallen broken beings and uh so that's why we still sin now why would god uh set up a situation uh where that was that was possible i think the answer is that that god set up a world where he did not desire the fall to take place but he knew that it would but he didn't cause it adam had the power not to sin and adam and eve could have not fallen god knowing but not causing the fall was willing to do that because there was at least some good that could be redeemed that would make it worth it letting it happen and the best situation would have been if it if there had never been any fall but at least given free will which is a high value to god hell is is actually a monument to how much he prizes freedom of the will and autonomy it really is uh that i believe this life is a is a place where number one we actually get the chance to affect each other we really do and and that effect can be positive or negative and so i'm glad that we do but but that brings along with it the possibility that we do it negatively i think the other thing is that some goods are possible uh given that there is sin for example in a perfect world it would not be possible to to exhibit the value of showing compassion to someone in in deep need or exhibiting strong courage in the face of evil so there are some virtues that can only be cultivated in a world uh like this one and uh so that that is a positive thing that came out of it as well so i think that uh in the long run uh god will eventually us set up a situation when we're there's a new heaven a new earth or when we go to heaven sean where what our what our brother i believe i believe he's a guy our brother here would uh a situation where that will be no longer there but guess what it will be a situation where we have had a lifetime of wanting to go there or not wanting to go there and uh it wasn't forced upon us prematurely but rather it was this incubation period gave us a chance to really think this through and make it a an informed decision that that's a great response true counterphobia also follows up and says who has more books in the background and given that you have two doors i'm pretty sure i have you two to one on this one i i believe you i i've given a lot of mine away because i memorized them oh nice excellent i love it i actually would believe that okay here's a couple that are right up your alley and these are the very things we talked about in the apologetics and the philosophy program so it could be that a couple of these are our students or prospective students one says uh dr moreland what are the strongest scientific research pieces that support the veracity of near-death experiences oh my uh well uh there are anywhere from 200 to 300 million of these worldwide uh in the united states in the last uh several decades three four decades there have been 14 million of them in the us that's one out of every 25 people uh the same statistic in germany by the way and so these these are so widespread that you can't dismiss them out of hand now there are a whole host of reasons why it is beyond reasonable doubt that these are real but i'll give you the most important reason it's called evidential near-death experiences and these are cases where a person is clinically dead and they gain information while they were clinically dead that it was impossible for them to gain if they just had oxygen deprivation to the brain or or the brain underwent some sort of a shutdown and was revived because there are reports of people hearing conversations on other floors of the hospital one woman saw her brother and her daughter in the cafeteria of the hospital getting ready to come and see her and she had died they did not know that and to tell you the honest truth the daughter was wearing a dress that this woman did not like and she said to herself why in the world did she wear that dress she knows i don't like it and then the her her brother on the uncle of her daughter i kid you not was complaining that you know sarah would have to get sick and be close to dying today i had a golf game scheduled and he was so when they came in the room she confronted him about what he was the nurse heard this about what he was saying in the cafeteria and by the way she revived before they came in there and she told her what kind of dress her daughter was wearing and they're this is now verified i mean and i could go on and on one person they did a controlled study in in the netherlands one of the netherlands top cardiologist pim von lummel uh or it did did a study where they compared uh um resuscitation patients that did not report near-death experiences with a sample of those who did report near-death experiences when they had cardiac arrests and the people who did not report near-death experiences they were both asked to describe what procedures were done to them when they were out and they're all over the map they tend to describe things they've seen on scene on tv uh the other group by contrast was was incredibly accurate they didn't describe things that were done on tv because it's not done that way and there was one guy that was so accurate that he that pim von lemmel said they could use the taped interview of him to train new physicians about what to do with a cardiac arrest this is a documented study and i believe it may have been published in the journal the lancet but i'm not sure about that so there's a ton of evidence that that people coming to know things that they couldn't have known if this were just naturalistically explainable this is really the point that persuaded me is that it's not just somebody coming back with a story but having information that they could not have gained naturally in the physical brain dead or you know not heartbeating state that points towards an immature reality after death now that information has been verified by firefighters like in the medical staff nurses things like that yes go ahead i'm sorry oh no so very quickly give us one book that you would refer those to who want to read further and find the documented sources i i think i think that the most interesting book would be um imagine heaven by john burke i know john uh he researched this uh uh incredibly um i think uh a a pretty good read that is really emphasizes evidence and answering objections uh uh would be uh the book on evidence of the afterlife uh the guy's name escapes me he came to biola i talked to him evidence of your life yeah that's great people can google it now easily that's it that's a wonderful wonderful answer now you're looking for it it's okay someone will find it and throw it in the comment section by the way if you're enjoying this give us a thumbs up uh along the way we've got a lot more questions here for jeffrey who's his name jeffrey long jeffrey long okay excellent hey let me answer our question about that goes back to our uh um phobic uh friend or claustrophobic guy or whatever uh it's about why don't will we sin in heaven and um do you mind if i just try to give a word yeah please do my answer is that we will not sin in heaven will we be able to sin in heaven i think we will i think we will be able to sin in heaven well what would then then why uh won't we and how do i know that we won't well let's do the first question why won't we um i'm 72 years old and i got about five years of age my parents started letting me go out in the front yard and maybe play with my trucks and things like that so for from five until now 67 years i have had the opportunity every single day of my life to go out and find a hot teeming pile of dog poop that's fresh and steaming and and wet and just get on my hands and knees and chow down on it uh now i was free to do that but i never did it and i never will do it because it is utterly uninteresting to me it's actually disgusting when people are in heaven and they actually if you read some of these near-death experiences and see what it's like people are overwhelmed with the just just the beauty of goodness and they're drawn to it and sin is lit it would be like chowing down on dog poop i mean it's just so ugly and boring and disgusting and that people won't even be the least bit interested in it we think oh my god you know it's still going to be no no no no from their perspective uh that's over with and nobody in their right mind would do that how do i know that that's true because the word says that heaven will be that way and i believe that god in his foreknowledge knew that would be the case and he's revealed it to us so i trust his revelation that there will not be sin but then i have an explanation for why given the disgusting nature of it when we see it from that perspective it is interesting that paul says we see through a glass darkly now but when we get to heaven we'll have clarity of even the smallest sins how terrible they are and our inner nature has changed there's no outer temptation so the capacity is there but we know it won't happen absolutely that's a great answer scott hudson has an excellent question here i'm doing my best to get to these friends he says what is your view on abstract objects and what are your thoughts on william lane craig's position on them as being useful fictions i do not think you can make sense out of reality if you don't believe in some abstract objects now an abstract object is uh some real entity that is not in space and time but is outside of space and time uh and um god would be abstract in that sense at least without the created world uh and so um i believe that truth is an abstract object i mean like what sense does it make to say you know how many inches long is truth or where is it located is it in brazil or somewhere else so um i think properties are abstract objects and i think that uh god's own attributes are things he found himself with he did not create those they're just he's kind of quote stuck with omnipotence and all those things in a sense now i think all the other uh abstract objects which are i limit the properties and and relations like larger than god creates them in the sense of sustaining them in existence he did not ever they did never came to be because they're outside space and time and coming to be it would be a temporal event so they do not come to be or perish but there is another way that god creates and that's by sustaining an existence and i believe that that sense is he sustains these other uh universals i you know i think bill uh i i just rather would not go there because he's a very very dear friend of mine right you know we have a difference on this thing and um i i i just think that uh you know we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on that particular topic and i know he would feel exactly the same and i think it's important for people to see that on some essentials christians cannot differ and call themselves followers of jesus of course but on these important issues we can differ and have charity uh with one another and so i think that's that's great um that kind of brings us to our next question from indy de la torre says false preachers are getting clever on how to devise people and it is hard to make a distinction what are the keys to distinguishing between a cult and true gospel teachings i the first thing you need to do is to get clear on the difference between a theological cult and a sociological cult now a sociological cult can have orthodox teaching such a cult is where there is a dominant leader and the community is extremely ingrown and they are they they kind of lose their own wills and are they do whatever the leader tells them and so there is a certain kind of social structure that's cultish that could happen in an orthodox people who believe the true gospel i hope it doesn't now um so uh the relationship between uh a sociological cult and the true gospel there really isn't much of one except we would hope that people who embrace the true gospel would know better than to get into that kind of behavior uh now if you're talking about a cult that is a theological cult which is the real problem that means that they hold view false views on things at the very core of the christian religion not marginal things that you know we can differ and still be in in the family but these are things and they will they will almost always zero in on two things the first is the deity of christ and and the trinity they will reject the deity of christ and the second means that they will reject the gospel of justification by faith through grace and they will always add works jesus died for us plus thus and so and so if that's usually uh the two key signs of how to spot a theological cult is the rejection of the deity of christ and a gospel of works that that's a really helpful distinction between the sociological practice of a church or group and theologically what they believe and both can be unhealthy if not practiced correctly that's a great great distinction uh here's one for you that i actually want to ask you myself keith wilson says is gender rooted in the soul is there such a thing as a person without a gender id a gender um it's a tough one and i'm maybe 60 40 on my answer so i'm not 90 10 uh i'm about 60 sure i'm right on this one uh so uh take it for what it's worth i do believe that gender is ultimately rooted in the soul because i take gender to be fundamentally an expression of a person's biology now gender is more than biology um but it is uh it was created to be a fuller way of living in the world consistent with your your biological sex uh and since i believe that the soul is what forms the body then uh if a female body is formed there are there must be a female soul to form that body what that would mean then would be that everyone um would have a gender in the sense of a a natural an expression of their biological sexuality that was the the natural one that they should express now that can be for a whole variety of reasons confused i don't think that confusion means that their gender really is different but they may feel a different gender okay you think that there are people born uh hemaphoridites and uh that seem to have organs of both uh sex and i'll be candid and say i really don't know quite what to do with those cases if i were a betting person i would probably bet on the fact that there is a leaning uh there is a more of a maleness or female lust so it's probably a male with some female features or a female with some male features but i i'm not an expert on that but that would be my guess that's a great response and i wanna i wanna highlight for those viewing that you've thought about this a ton uh deeply influential philosopher but you don't show certainty in some things that you believe you're willing to say i'm 60 40 and this is something i really believe i learned from you at biola when i first took that apologetics class you said we kind of rate our beliefs if you believe something you're 51 49 but you can grow when those convictions and beliefs over time how helpful is that for people who are doubting oh it's huge it's huge because people who doubt feel shame and and they shouldn't feel shame there's nothing there's no nothing wrong there's no sinfulness about doubting that's different than unbelief unbelief is an act of the will where you set yourself against believing doubt is where you hunt you desire to believe but you can't bring yourself because you have an unresolved problem of some kind if you could get a result you'd like that so that's the sign there and i think the doubt is just a part of growing um so for for me here's the important payoff of the idea that you brought up that beliefs come in degrees you can be 51 49 60 40 80 20. and that is this that that that believing something or even knowing it uh is consistent with having doubts unanswered questions and not being completely 100 certain because knowledge and belief neither one require us to be completely 100 certain about something and so i would say if a person's listening and has doubts god bless you uh uh you you join the family and uh listen to things like this and but i will tell you what i did when i was younger is i doggedly wrote them down on paper and i i committed to finding an answer that satisfied me and so listen to tapes and talks and read books now we watch shows like this and and and keep exploring and there is answers out there but you'll you'll have to search for them that's a great response you remember when i was at biola i think i was a sophomore and i had a pretty significant doubting period you told me do that you said write them down and one by one find answers to the few that trouble you the most and that was just wonderful advice i hope our viewers will will take uh into consideration next week we're actually having preston sprinkle on to come talk about the issue of transgender he has a new book coming out and he argues that when it comes to certain individuals who are intersex they have certain combinations of both genders inherent within them it's not a third gender and it's not non-gender there's a combination away that sometimes we just can't fully discern physically or spiritually that's just the reality but that doesn't take away from the reality that there are two biological sexes as a whole so those of you those of you watching that want to unpack this more we're gonna we're gonna do that next week um all right question from dave dice he says i have a friend who uses arguments for the soul in regard to reincarnation how would you respond to someone arguing for reincarnation well uh let's let's let's bring up two different kinds of reincarnation the first kind which is really the one that just about everybody holds to that holds to this is that i can come back as another species i could come back as an animal or or uh any other kind of species now if that's true what that means is that i am not essentially a human being a human person in fact i'm not essentially anything because if i could be a human or a dog or any living thing i don't have an essence or a nature of my own uh and if that's the case i'd like to know what kind of a thing is it that is capable of uh being reincarnated in a completely different natural kind and i'm still kind of waiting for an answer to that i it turns out that this thing is some sort of property-less uh kind of little monad or a little dot kind of metaphysical this or dot and uh i find that i i find myself to be essentially a human being uh there are a lot of attributes i could lose my my weight my skin color my height but if i if i became a pillar of salt or or a goldfish uh or an ice cube my wife would say you know that is not jp in a new form the old guy's out of here and he got replaced with something so that's the first kind the second kind is if a person holds the kind of more of a westernized where you get to come back as as you a human being but you lived in a previous era as a human um the the evidence for that is is what i think can be explained the burden of proof is on people to show that that's true because i mean i think initially it it seems just on the surface of it this is pretty implausible but you might say i'm willing to hear your case but but if you don't make the case my default position is i'm not going to buy this unless you you override my my doubt on it well evidence typically turns out to be things like like memories of certain things the problem is that we know through deja vu and other kinds of experiences that people can have memories of having done something before when they didn't and so it is very easy to explain these as false memories so you've got two hypotheses i really did live in the 1500s luther uh and uh you know served him for a couple of months uh or i have perhaps because of a whole host of psychological and neurological factors i have false memories of that that maybe play a role in my life that i don't know maybe helps me feel about myself i would opt for that explanation rather than the other one admitting that the other one is possibly true but i mean it's possible the world is five seconds old and we all have memories i mean i it doesn't make it even likely so that's my i don't think it's likely given those uh two explanations that that's great and really helpful you you'll probably recognize the name matt stover he says jp great to see you i'm still a christian largely thanks to conversations in your office 10 to 11 years ago oh my god matt you're the man dude i haven't gotten a box of chocolates yet mr stover well this is just a hint of how yeah send the chocolates how influential your your teaching is has been and i mentioned that because i want to encourage you because you're not professor emeritus distinguished professor we want you around as long as we can have you but also those viewing we really want to take this time to invite you to consider studying with us at biola either the masters of philosophy program with jp william lane craig or apologetics with me and both of these we have distance programs so if you ever thought of getting a master's and want to learn more and become a resource to your church really think about studying with us now matt asked what is the best resource you'd share contemporary account of miracles now what i would say matt is i'd say craig keener's two-volume academic set just called miracles is the most carefully attested uh quickly would you add any source to that jp yeah that's that's a that would be my first choice the second would be lisa mobile's book a case for miracles and a year from now i'll have a book coming out with zondervan that really is on this very subject that has a set of five different kinds of documented miracles that's going to be it's just going to be exciting but that's going to be out a while so well for having me on right now and giving you a plug we'll assume that you'll give us the first interview back here on this channel so thanks in advance for that um all right we got about 10 minutes left but here's a great question from corey webb he says dr morgan can you talk about your response to arguments about the hiddenness of god how do you answer those who say i would happily believe if god would just make himself more obvious um i would say number one well what's your problem because god is obvious to most people uh what happened to you so i would i would not accept that that claim and let it go unchallenged i would start by saying well what what what happened to you because overwhelmingly 99.9 of the people who've ever lived all over the world have looked at creation and so on and it's obvious to them that there's a god of some kind i admit to you that the precise shape of their views can be distorted by their culture uh but i believe that they start off being monotheistic in some sense and it's obvious i mean my my wife my parents it was obvious that god existed to them i think the second thing that i would say um is that if a person really needs more evidence that god will give it to him he can get it to them i was i was in a situation where i came to christ and i i i was kind of trained to doubt things because of what i majored in in college and i just needed help and your dad came to campus and gave a talk in the resurrection and it just blew me away and i started reading books that gave evidence and it strengthened me to where i don't have any of those doubts anymore uh and so if you if you need more evidence go ask ask god for it ask him then search for it and see if you can find it the other thing i would say would be that god does not coerce we all know that i love i to me love if it's forced it's not really love a person can love somebody only if they genuinely choose to do that not because somebody put a gun to their head now if god's going to woo us then he he can't overwhelm us on the one hand uh but he's got to make himself obvious to anybody who wants to know him so i think that god is quote not obvious to to a lot of people who really don't want the world to be a place where there is a cosmic authority wow that that's a powerful response for those of you watching who say you know i want more evidence jp's book scaling the secular city is really a classic book to get walks through evidence for the bible historical jesus the arguments for the existence of god that's a must read for any apologist or really any skeptic who wants to engage these ideas uh check out scaling the secular city jp here's one all the way from indonesia from uh banaya and i apologize if i mispronounce that he says i'm asking a personal question does god speak to you now like you had experiences that you had shared publicly many years ago warm regards and peace of christ from indonesia well thank you so much for your uh question and i will uh share there are several stories that are in the book about that but yet um god has spoken to me i have never heard his voice audibly uh but i know people who have heard the audible voice of god they actually heard a sound created but i have heard god's voice uh very specifically either through prophetic words or words of knowledge that were given to me by a credible person who knew nothing of the situation i was going through and they gave details that that could not have been known by anybody but god now you got to be wise about these things but when that happens then other than if it meets the need that's pretty clear yes i have had those and i've had times not recently when uh god spoke to me about there being so a demon-possessed woman who'd come to a church service that morning where i was speaking and she came to commit suicide later that day wow and he was up in a certain quadrant of the church and i was to cast a demon out of her and uh i i got up to preach about 750 people i said i believe there is someone in this section up here about 130 people there and some someone has come you're going to take your life later today you don't go to this church and the lord wants you to know that he still has a plan for you and that i want to cast a demon out of you and so i spoke in the name of jesus and cast the demon out and i found out two months later that that woman went to the senior pastor and said i was the guy he was talking about everything he said was true and i've been coming to this church ever since that happened and my life and changed and that was the time when god spoke to me before i was getting up to preach and i wanted went i was sent by the way uh sometimes god speaks in your 70 30 that it was god or 64. so you don't have to be certain it was god to have good reason to think it was god a lot of passages i believe a certain interpretation but i'm only 60 40 because there are other ones that look good but i just i think this one's better but i'm not 100 sure this is the right interpretation so just because there's sometimes when you're not sure it seems like we're back to the question of near-death experiences on those cases where you had information you could not have known otherwise it matched up so precisely that's when you're about as hundred percent confident as you could be yeah there's um i do notice in the chat room susan gaines if you're still watching seeing you just brings warmth uh to my heart uh your husband dennis had such a commitment to me personally playing basketball two decades ago at biola and uh thanks for joining us please give my love to daniel and i really really hope and trust that that you're doing well um jp we have time maybe one or two more i want to want to make sure we respect your time and there's a lot more questions so we'll have to have you back but uh colt correa said i skipped his question at the beginning i'm sorry i missed it he says according to francis collins quote evolution and common descent is as established as gravity i says dr william lane craig has agonized over genesis versus science what are your thoughts on whether science and genesis can be reconciled together well i think that uh francis collins uh has has given up too much real estate without needing to do so and i believe that it's reasonable to go against the majority opinion of experts in a field if certain conditions are present number one i can explain why the overwhelming number of artists or biologists or whatever hold that view because of theological reasons or the way they're socialized into that field rather than rational reasons secondly if there's a small rebel group of highly trained skilled phds that are publishing in standard venues and are recognized as credentialed who hold the opposite view then i have good reason to go against the majority and i think that's where we stand uh with evolution uh you have to define it if you mean the blind watchmaker thesis i don't think there's any good evidence for it that these things all happen by purely natural processing i could go into that but but if you mean the thesis of common descent i think there's some evidence for that but i do think that there are other ways of explaining the patterns that we see by the by the employment of a common design plan for organisms that are facing similar environmental tasks why reinvent the wheel and this would explain uh what i think are called uh homologous organisms i believe is the word that that according to evolution evolved parallelly but have the same structures uh so it wasn't a borrowing thing but they both have structures that function kind of similarly for them so i think that even if uh i i think that we do not have to at this point accept the general theory of of evolution and add to it theistic evolution i think that there's plenty of evidence uh that will allow us to be reasonable and still hold out and so that's kind of where i'm at bill bill craig ends up believing in a literal adam and eve and uh he believes that the science is consistent with that though there is a problem with the dating of when adam and eve came about and i admit there are problems but look i'll close with this i don't know of a single theory in any discipline at the university that doesn't have a few anomalies or problems that count against it so what uh that means that we got to work on it uh now if uh if if if if we're taking on water over time then maybe we want to rethink but i believe things are getting better as time goes on not worse that's a great answer for those who are interested you have contributed to a massive volume called theistic evolution that looks biblically theologically or biblically scientifically and philosophically and offers a pretty powerful critique now there's responses to that online but those of you who want to know what jp thinks go pick up that book read it through read the responses the count responses and that's how you enter into the conversation and see what you think is most reasonable now there's a ton more questions uh susan uh slam rn i am so sorry i missed your question you faithfully tune in and i apologize but i really have to honor uh dr moreland's time um a couple quick things number one those of you interested in the evolution and uh theist evolution question i had dr swamanasan one of leading christians who embraces evolution and doug axe who also teaches us at biola one of the leading uh thinkers in the intelligent design movement four or six weeks ago and we unpacked this and it was a great conversation one of my favorites that we had that really brought a lot of clarity to both sides so if you scroll through the videos you'll find that and whichever side you're on i think you'll find it's a cordial conversation with substance but we also really make some progress and clarity uh between the different views jp last question why we have a lot of people who are clearly following apologetics here why should they think about studying with you and me at biola well it's always good for a mentor that's been down the road further so you could pick up health books and you could learn a lot about health on your own but if you had a physician or somebody guiding you in your reading and being able to handle questions as you read it's just a lot better uh to have a mentor that can under which you can study a live mentor and uh that that's why that's a great answer and i would say in my own life uh you've been that mentor along with people like william lane craig great coco my father and the older i get the more grateful i am for that advice so those of you watching i can tell you're asking questions about abstract objects evolution near-death experiences some of you have been a bile if not think about studying with us because this is exactly the kind of issues we unpack and explore our vision is we want to equip you to just minister to your church your community and the ministry that god has called you to so there's information below in the description also if you're like i'm not ready for a master's we have a certificate program which will send you specific lectures just basic assignments just to kind of keep you accountable so you can go to your church and say hey i have a certificate i've really studied this there's a discount code also below coming up we have some interviews with my father we did one on some of his untold stories of his life in a couple weeks he's coming back on and going to talk about the people who influenced him just to become the person that he is because one of the things he said in interviews everything we've learned is from other people so he's coming on next week we have a preston sprinkle coming on to talk about transgenderism so make sure you hit that subscribe button because there's some interviews and videos you will not want to miss thanks so much for joining us dr marlin so grateful for you for your ministry love calling you a colleague and uh thanks for spending your time with us this evening my privilege

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 5,828

Rating: 4.9280577 out of 5

Keywords: questions, apologetics, soul, God, bible, tough, answer, objection, christian, apologist, philosopher, Jesus, Bible, Q&A, Biola, Talbot

Id: 4l8Eyrj3xD8

Length: 63min 55sec (3835 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020