Reasonable Faith Podcast

A listener is troubled by the impression that atheists and materialists have already answered every argument for Christianity, and wonders how belief in God is still possible. Dr. Craig responds by drawing a simple but important distinction, and reflects on why so many people feel overwhelmed by the volume of skeptical material online.

Dr. Craig answers more listener questions from around the world. If Christ paid for the sins of the lost, is hell a double punishment? Was Jesus really separated from the Father on the cross? Is God’s justice only retributive? Could downloading our consciousness offer a kind of digital immortality?

A listener asks Dr. Craig to imagine a possible world filled with free persons, love, moral agency, and a genuine relationship with God, but with none of the cancer, war, animal suffering, or death we see in our own. If a world like that is logically possible, what greater good could justify God choosing a world like ours instead? Dr. Craig takes up this possible-worlds objection and considers whether it really undercuts his view that God permits suffering for the sake of bringing people freely to know Him.

Dr. Craig answers listener questions from around the world. If Christ paid for every sin, why would anyone still face judgment? Could God have made the universe and simply moved on? What should we make of a skeptical historian who says the disciples must have seen something? Plus: when science and Scripture seem to collide, which gives way? Why did God allow Mark’s snake-handling passage into our Bibles? And will the wicked exist forever?

A listener writes that his faith is hanging in the balance. Wherever he looks, from natural theology to the resurrection, he thinks the scholarly consensus seems to be against Christianity, and online critics accuse Christian thinkers, Dr. Craig included, of intellectual dishonesty. Questions about James Tour and the origin of life have only deepened his doubts. Is Christianity a respected position in the academy? Would a naturalistic account of abiogenesis threaten the faith? And how can we tell legitimate theological development from ad hoc accommodation to science? Dr. Craig responds.