August 14, 2025 • 28 mins
On today’s Bible Answer Man broadcast (08/14/25), we pick up where we ended on our previous broadcast and present more of an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast. Hank is talking with Dr. Paul Gould, associate professor of philosophy at Palm Beach Atlantic University and author of A Good and True Story: Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe and Your Place in It. Hank and Paul discuss what best explains morality, the new phenomenon of nice nihilism, enchanted naturalism, counterfeit happiness and the nature of true happiness, the problem of evil and the existence of God, if the logical problem of evil been solved, if free will is essential to what it means to be human, and how God can’t do everything.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. This
is the Bible answer Man Broadcast with Hank Cannigraph. We're
on the air because truth matters, Life matters.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
More.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
On today's special edition of The Bible answer Man, we
pick up where we ended on our previous broadcast and
present more of an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast.
Hank is talking with doctor Paul Gould, Associate Professor of
Philosophy at Palm Beach Atlantic University and author of A
Good and True Story Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe
(00:43):
and Your place in it. Let's now join Hank Cantigraph
and Paul Gould in their conversation.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
You know, the three or four options that I considered
in the book for what best explains our ground subjective
morality are the universe, nothing, or God. And I think
that if I or not a theist, if I didn't
think that theism offered the best explanation, I would probably
go with nothing. What explains subjective morality? Nothing does is
just a brute fact. But notice what that doesn't account
(01:11):
for one of these fundamental features of the moral life
that you just brought up, the fact that we feel
guilt when we do wrong, and that's an unshakable feeling.
What best explains that phenomena?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And they'll attempt to give like an evolutionary account of
that and things like that, But I don't think that
those work in the end, so I kind of explore.
I actually spent most of my time in that section
dealing with Weilinbergs because I think it's the strongest other
plausible explanation if you set aside the theistic one.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Meaning also points to the religious story. And as a
result of your book, I watched a movie, the twenty
nineteen film Joker. In fact, I watched it with one
of our staff members, and for some reason or the
film just didn't appeal to me, I didn't have any
interest in watching it. But as a result of you're
writing about it, I watched the film and I thought
(01:58):
that that was a troo brilliance your part to bring
up that film, because it really points to why so
many people, or how so many people could believe that
the universe that we live in has no meaning and
therefore anything goes in fact, you know, Alex Rosenberg says,
science tells us our longing for a true story of
(02:21):
the world is an illusion. There is no place for us.
There is no eye or self that longs either. There
are just the physical facts. The physical facts fix all
the facts.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, that's funny. I was just like it.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I didn't want to watch that movie at all, but
my son, my college son, was home and wanted to
watch it, and I'm so glad we did. Right, We
had a great conversation, and You're right, it just struck
me like this is about the question of, you know,
what is the nature of life and what is the
meaning of life, especially if there's no God? Right, And
one of the pressing questions that I think the Joker,
(02:56):
the twenty nineteen movie presses is this question, is it
just tragedy all the way down right? Is it nihilism?
Is there no meaning in the life? Or trying to
flip the script? Is it comedy all the way down right?
This is nice nihilism. Maybe Rosenberg likes to be a
nice nihilist, I think at times. Yeah, And so I'm
glad that I watched the movie too. I did not
want to watch it, but it did provoke some thoughts
(03:17):
and it gave I think it was a perfect setup
for the Foil of exploring. At this point in the book,
I've turned the corner. If we're looking at the origin debate,
I'm kind of going from phenomena to cause to explanation
for phenomena.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Here I'm switching it.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Now we're looking at the contour of the human heart,
and we're saying, what's the best fit with the things
that we find within the human heart? The longings as
I call in this chapter on meaning, I call it
the existential set, this set of six things that we
long for purpose, value, significance, intelligibility, identity, and transcendent. And
so now I'm looking at these things and saying, what
(03:50):
story out there fits in. Is it absurdism, right, kind
of like the Joker tragedy all the way down? That
doesn't satisfy the deep longings of the heart. Is it
nice nihil like Alex Rosenberg? You know, just let's have fun.
There's no meaning in life, but let's party. And if
you can't have fun, take prozac.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Right. That doesn't fit.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's I kind of catalog and argue that there is
a story, But I call it enchanted supernaturalism. That is
like lock and key, right, that does fit the deep
longings of the heart.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
You mentioned nice nihalism, and I was struck by some
of the examples that you give in your book. For example,
the Australian writer Wendy Seifertt. She says, I'm just a
chunk of meat, hurdling through space, hurdling through space on
a rock, pointless, feudal, meaningless, and then she says that
(04:39):
was one of the most comforting revelations of her life
because she'd discovered nice nihalism.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, kind of interesting. This is a new phenomena, right,
I think that old guard nihilist were that life is
tragedy all the way down. New guard I don't know
that it's more right. New guard nihilists are just like
this article that you quoted, there's no meaning to life.
Let's go party, you know, let's have fun, let's make
(05:08):
the most of it. And I guess you know, if
my choices were between no meaning of life and tragedy
all the way down in comedy, all the way down,
I'd take nice nihilism, right, of course. But the problem is,
as many have noted, there's this wonderful book by Amroslov
Volf on Human Flourishing where he makes his point and
I think it's super insightful that pleasure, which is nice nihilism,
(05:33):
just living our life for pleasure kind of hedonism. Pleasure
detached from meaning ultimately becomes vapid.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
It doesn't satisfy. It will never satisfy if it's detached
from meaning. And so while nice nihilism sounds really fun,
especially when we're in our twenties, it quickly becomes like
the joker in the movie Tragedy all the way down
at the end, right, And that's the problem with it.
We long for something that you know, gives us significance
(05:59):
and purpose and value, and none of that is around
on either version of nihilism.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Yeah. Related to this, contrast enchanted naturalism with unenchanted naturalism.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Okay, good, So Yeah, the four possible stories that I
review in that this chapter on meaning, are you know
asked this question is there a meaning landscape? And the
same way we could ask is there a moral landscape?
And nihilism. The two versions of nihilism that say there
is no meaning landscape are absurdism and nice nihilism. And
then there's a version of naturalism that says, no, there
(06:33):
is a meaning landscape. It's just subjective, right, it's just
found within culture and individual humans within culture. And so
you have Owen Flanagan who's also at Duke University philosopher.
He writes a book. So it's interesting. I mentioned Chalmers
who says that consciousness is the hard problem. The title
of Flannagan's book is the really hard problem subtitle finding
(06:54):
meaning in a materialistic world. That's the really hard problem.
And so what does and I really, I mean I
admire the effort here, right, is that he says we
can get a kind of meaning in life, even though
there's no meaning of life. We can get a meaning
in life and that's good enough. Right, So there's a
kind of subjective landscape, and that's what he's trying to
(07:16):
do in that chapter, and he grounds it in culture
and society and the twenty first century and things like that.
The thing that's kind of interesting about that though, or
the problem if you read the Meaning of Life literature.
Josh Seacrest is a wonderful philosopher who writes on this,
and he talks about the problem of the end and
on enchant in naturalism, we know the end of the story.
(07:38):
The end of the story is that the human species
at some point ceases to exist, because the universe will
at some point cease to exist. And the problem of
the end is that knowing the ending of the story
infects our enjoyment and meaning that we can find in it.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Now.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
It's just like if you're going on a date, this
is his example. If you went on a date with someone,
but you knew you would never marry that person, it's
going to kind of affect you view the date, right,
It's not something you're going to invest in. And that's
the problem of the end. And that's the problem with
enchanted naturalism. As we know, at the end, there is
no objective at the widest level possible. You know, there's
no meaning of life, and that affects the meaning in
(08:14):
life that we find today.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
So there is no such thing as enchanted naturalism. But
there is such a thing as enchanted supernaturalism.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
I think at the end of the day, that's the
only option, right that works. Number one, it has a
perfect fit with that existential set. Number two, you have
instances of enchanted supernaturalism, like Christianity that have.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Widely explored this.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I think of Pascal and his famous you know this
is paraphrasing, but the God shape void that we've been
created with that only God will satisfy. You've got the
wonderful chapter by C. S.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Lewis.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think it's this chapter in Heaven in the Problem
of Pain, but he talks about how the human soul
is like lock and key or hand in glove, you know,
meant to fit with God and the Christian story, and
so you have instant of enchanted supernaturalism that do help
us get a rich picture of not just meaning in life,
but the fact that there's this overall meaning of life
(09:09):
because God exists and God is the ground of it.
So that's yeah, that's kind of where I end on
that one hopeful chapter.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
One of the Karens one of the sign posts that
you have us take a deep look at as happiness,
and you point out that there are a lot of
counterfeits to happiness. So the relentless pursuit of pleasure, for example,
is a counterfeit. You say, in fact, if you relentlessly
pursue pleasure, you're going to end up enslaved. Right.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, I love there's this quote I don't have it
at the top of my fingers by David Foster Wallace,
who was a wonderful writer died tragically early suicide, but
he basically says about worship, that money, prestige, pleasure. You know,
he says that these things, if you make them your idol.
I'm switching the language. But if you make them the
thing that you think will satisfy they will you up
(10:00):
right that they just ultimately will create miserable people.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But on the other hand, in.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Culture, at least popularly, because we no longer ask preliminary
questions what is happiness, we just sort of imbibe this
idea because maybe part of the American dream that happiness
is fame or fortune, or pleasure or success. And so
I wanted to explore those and really give them their
due right, because we all want to be happy. That's
something that we begin with. Everyone longs for happiness. If
(10:29):
you ask any person what do you want most out
of life, their answers, I just.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Want to be happy.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Well, then we should at least consider what happiness amounts
to and if we can ever attain it. And so
in there I now we have at this point in
the story, I've invited other fellow guides. So along with
Lady Nature, Lady philosophy has joined us.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
At this point, stay right there.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
We'll be back soon to rejoin Hank Hatagraphs conversation with
doctor Paul Gould. In A Good and True Story, philosopher
Paul Gould leads readers on an aging journey through eleven
clues that suggests Christianity is not only true, but satisfies
our deepest longings as the greatest possible story. This creative
(11:11):
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(11:32):
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(15:08):
Catigraph and his guest professor Paul Gould, as they continue
their conversation.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
At this point in the story, I've invited other fellow guides.
So along with Lady Nature, Lady Philosophy has joined us
at this point, and she was actually with us all along,
but does interacting with Boethius, who in like you know,
fifth century, he wrote this book called The Consolation of
Philosophy where he's basically thrown in jail, he's awaiting his execution,
and he's basically out of mind.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
As he puts it.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
And so Lady Philosophy appears to him and says, you've
lost the path of reason, and he's questioning, was I happy?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right? I had all these things, now they're gone? What
is happiness?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And so Boethius, with Lady Philosophy as his guide personified wisdom,
they explore in that book these very questions that are
relevant to the twenty first century, way back in the
fifth century, and Boethius considers every one of those contemporary
versions you know, happiness as wealth, success, fame, pleasure, and
they find them with Lady Philosophy's help wanting, and then
(16:04):
of course they arrive on what the nature of true
happiness is. And for Boetheists, no surprise, it's something about
union with God. And so I kind of unpacked that
a little bit in this book, but that was the
foil there.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, you also say to be happy, it's necessary to
connect pleasure with meaning.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
So it's not like pleasure, fame, success, wealth are bad things.
It's just that they're not ultimate things, right. And as
it turns out on the Christian story, every one of
those are ingredients in our happiness. But they're ingredients, they're
not the thing itself. And even in the Christian story,
you know, I Love Again C. S. Lewis the weight
(16:41):
of glory. This essay that I wrote called the weight
of Glory part of the weight of glory that we
have as humans, glory in the sense of fame. There's
two senses for glory. One is excellence I kind of virtue,
kind of perfection.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
The other is fame.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, we have both senses of that. In the afterlife,
we become a gad in God's happiness. That's the weightiness
of the human person. And we also have a kind
of fame right in the face of God in the
afterlife and now, as well as believers, and so all
these things are important, and that's why they're important to discuss.
(17:15):
But they're just ingredients, not the thing itself.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Yeah, we're created for a distant land. Your chapter on pain,
I love this chapter. I so often think of Charles
Hadden's spurgeon when he said, were you ever in the
melting pot? Dear friends? I have been there in my
sermons with me. The result of melting is that you
arrive at a true valuation of things, and then you're
poured out a new and better fashion. So you can
almost hope for the melting pot. You can almost hope
(17:40):
for pain and suffering, because then you arrive at a
true valuation of things. So do pain and suffering give
us reason to think that God does not exist? Or
the inverse good?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
So we're certainly told that right in fact, you know
this tank. But the number one argument, when you like
look at the arguments for or against God's existence, the
number one argument on atheist On the atheist side is
the problem of evil. You know, either God cannot exist
or God probably doesn't exist given the amount, the distribution,
(18:13):
and the horrific nature of evil and suffering.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So it certainly is cashed out as.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
An argument against the existence of God. And of course
any book that is honestly trying to explore the true
story of the world has to deal with the problem
of pain, right, and suffering and evil, and so it's
super important to deal with that. And so yeah, so
as it turns out, I think that Christianity offers I
think the best explanation, or I should say, God's answer
(18:40):
to the problem of pain. I love Peter Crave what
a wondful book called Making Sense of Suffering, and he
basically ends this with, Hey, you know, we can go
through all the standards, arguments against and for you know,
arguments from evil, and we can rebut them as theists.
But then, you know, those are a bunch of propositions.
But the problem is an existential problem, and it's personal,
and so it demands an ex suistential and personal response.
(19:01):
And so Chraate says, God's answer to the problem of
pain and suffering is Christ on a cross. And that's
a personal answer, right, It's one better than mere theism,
and I think at the end of the day that's
exactly right. Christianity alone gives I think, the most satisfying
answer to this question, because you get the God of
Love who pursues his creation, his creatures who have run
(19:22):
from him, and takes on all pain and all suffering
on himself so that one day we can experience freedom
from that pain and suffering. There's a study done years ago,
like if you could ask God one question, what would
it be? I think Barna ran the study and the
number one question is why God do you allow pain
and suffering? And so one writer calls this question, why
God do you allow pain and suffering like a fish
(19:43):
hook that's, you know, tugging at the human heart.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And I think that.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
That's right, and so we have to take it seriously.
But at the end of the day, it just reveals
a God of love who makes provisions for falling creatures
that we could be made whole.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
The chapters is a brilliant chapter. And you quote perhaps
the for runner to Darwin in the fourth century, Epicurus,
and he said this, and I'd love for you to
cash this out a little bit. He said, is God
willing to prevent evil but not able, Well, then he's impotent.
Is he able but not willing, Well, then he's malevolent.
(20:22):
Is he both able and willing, Well, then whence then
is evil? So he lays this out in such a
way that the only answer to the question seems to be, well,
God is either the author of evil, he's impotent, he's malevolent.
(20:42):
But if there's evil, then there can't be a God,
certainly not a good God.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yes, you know, whatever I teach on this, this is
a great starting place for this in a philosophy class,
because what Epicurius is raising there is what's called the
logical problem of evil. And that's just simply the claim
that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the
existence of a holy, good, and wholly powerful God, right,
because if he was.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
All good, he would eliminate it.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
If he was all powerful, he could eliminate it.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
But we have it.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
So this is a logical problem. And anything, of course
that's a contradiction is necessarily false. And so if God
and evil are a logical contradiction and evil exists, well,
then of course God doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
It's called the logical problem of evil.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I'll just report that almost everyone working in this area
in philosophy and theology thinks that the logical problem of
evil has been solved. This is one of the few
cases where we actually see genuine progress in philosophy, or
at least it's one of the areas we can point
to and say, here's genuine progress. And how that story
usually goes is that Alvin Planiga, who's an important Christian philosopher,
(21:48):
solved the logical problem of evil in the nineteen seventies
with his really technical book on the Nature of Necessity.
And then he applied this kind of contemporary logic, contemporary
metaphysics to the problem of evil and showed how there's
no logical contradiction, and he offered what's called the free
will defense, and he just shows, given human freedom, it
is not possible that God could cause us to freely
(22:13):
only choose the good right. So there's no contradiction between
evil and God because God allows us to be the
certain kinds of creatures that are self determiners of our
actions and our character in our lives. And given that
he permits it, but we actualize it. And so that's
kind of a quick thumbnail sketch of one solution to
the logical problem. I go a little further than that,
but that is what most people begin with in arguing
(22:34):
that this has been solved.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, it raises a couple of issues. Can the Christian
worldview exist plausibly without the concept of free will?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Okay? Good? I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I'm just I'm pausing because I will youset half my
Christian brethren here. But yeah, I have a view that
no free will is part of what it means to
be human. And then I have a particular view of
free will that's some version of what's called incompatibilism, or
sometimes it's called libertarianism. The version I hold is a
version of source incompatibilism called virtue libertarianism. So there's a
(23:09):
whole long story there that I could give you, But
the basic idea is that we are creatures that can
shape our own lives, and that we have a kind
of power available to us such that we are self
determiners of our character, our actions in our very life story.
So we have real skin in the game. And I
think that without that, we don't have a story. Right,
(23:30):
We don't have a good story, certainly, right If we're
just you know, determined to act a certain way or
things like that, and so yeah, I do think that
free will is essential to what it means to be human.
And of course there's a lot of debate about this,
but some people would even root that in the fact
that we're created in the image of God. God is
an intellect and a will. Humans have an intellect and
(23:51):
a will. God is free in this, I think virtue
libertarian sense, and there's good reasons to think.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
That we are too. So there's a whole lot there
that can of worms.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
But that's my quick sorry to get you into hot water.
It's so good you make a statement, and I mean
this needsy explanation to this. But you say God can't
do everything. You know, we think God can do anything.
You say, no, he can't, and if you think about it,
you're absolutely dead right. But at first blush, it sounds wrong.
(24:22):
God can't do everything. He can't do anything that's possible, right.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I do a lot of speaking, like at summit ministries
to high school students in the summer, and they get
up in arms when I say this, you know, I
usually ask how many people think God can do anything?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Right?
Speaker 3 (24:36):
This is omnipotence. This is all powerful and pretty much
everybody raises their hand. But that's never in the history
of the Christian tradition, never been the definition of omnipotence.
It's always been something like God can do anything that's
logically consistent and doesn't go against.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
His holy good nature.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Right, So God can't create a square circle, God can't
create a bachelor, God can't cause free creatures to do
only the good and things like that. God can't do evil, Like,
there's tons of things that God can't do because he's
only good and he's perfectly rational, and so yeah, it
does sound at first not so great, but it actually
if God could do the logically impossible, well, then he
(25:18):
wouldn't be perfectly rational, and then he wouldn't be worthy
of our worship. So it cuts both ways, right, So
we need to be careful when we make our claims.
But yeah, the traditional view, and even in scripture, God
cannot lie, right, that's in Hebrews. Even in Scripture, there's
things that God cannot do. So it's okay to say
that because that's in fact what it means.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
We'll have to stop here for today's special edition of
the Bible answer Man Broadcast join us again next time
when we'll continue Hank Hanagraph's conversation with philosopher Paul Gould.
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From the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. This
is the Bible answer Man Broadcast with Hank Cannigraph. We're
on the air because truth matters, Life matters.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
More.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
On today's special edition of The Bible answer Man, we
pick up where we ended on our previous broadcast and
present more of an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast.
Hank is talking with doctor Paul Gould, Associate Professor of
Philosophy at Palm Beach Atlantic University and author of A
Good and True Story Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe
(00:43):
and Your place in it. Let's now join Hank Cantigraph
and Paul Gould in their conversation.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
You know, the three or four options that I considered
in the book for what best explains our ground subjective
morality are the universe, nothing, or God. And I think
that if I or not a theist, if I didn't
think that theism offered the best explanation, I would probably
go with nothing. What explains subjective morality? Nothing does is
just a brute fact. But notice what that doesn't account
(01:11):
for one of these fundamental features of the moral life
that you just brought up, the fact that we feel
guilt when we do wrong, and that's an unshakable feeling.
What best explains that phenomena?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And they'll attempt to give like an evolutionary account of
that and things like that, But I don't think that
those work in the end, so I kind of explore.
I actually spent most of my time in that section
dealing with Weilinbergs because I think it's the strongest other
plausible explanation if you set aside the theistic one.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Meaning also points to the religious story. And as a
result of your book, I watched a movie, the twenty
nineteen film Joker. In fact, I watched it with one
of our staff members, and for some reason or the
film just didn't appeal to me, I didn't have any
interest in watching it. But as a result of you're
writing about it, I watched the film and I thought
(01:58):
that that was a troo brilliance your part to bring
up that film, because it really points to why so
many people, or how so many people could believe that
the universe that we live in has no meaning and
therefore anything goes in fact, you know, Alex Rosenberg says,
science tells us our longing for a true story of
(02:21):
the world is an illusion. There is no place for us.
There is no eye or self that longs either. There
are just the physical facts. The physical facts fix all
the facts.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, that's funny. I was just like it.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I didn't want to watch that movie at all, but
my son, my college son, was home and wanted to
watch it, and I'm so glad we did. Right, We
had a great conversation, and You're right, it just struck
me like this is about the question of, you know,
what is the nature of life and what is the
meaning of life, especially if there's no God? Right, And
one of the pressing questions that I think the Joker,
(02:56):
the twenty nineteen movie presses is this question, is it
just tragedy all the way down right? Is it nihilism?
Is there no meaning in the life? Or trying to
flip the script? Is it comedy all the way down right?
This is nice nihilism. Maybe Rosenberg likes to be a
nice nihilist, I think at times. Yeah, And so I'm
glad that I watched the movie too. I did not
want to watch it, but it did provoke some thoughts
(03:17):
and it gave I think it was a perfect setup
for the Foil of exploring. At this point in the book,
I've turned the corner. If we're looking at the origin debate,
I'm kind of going from phenomena to cause to explanation
for phenomena.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Here I'm switching it.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Now we're looking at the contour of the human heart,
and we're saying, what's the best fit with the things
that we find within the human heart? The longings as
I call in this chapter on meaning, I call it
the existential set, this set of six things that we
long for purpose, value, significance, intelligibility, identity, and transcendent. And
so now I'm looking at these things and saying, what
(03:50):
story out there fits in. Is it absurdism, right, kind
of like the Joker tragedy all the way down? That
doesn't satisfy the deep longings of the heart. Is it
nice nihil like Alex Rosenberg? You know, just let's have fun.
There's no meaning in life, but let's party. And if
you can't have fun, take prozac.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Right. That doesn't fit.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's I kind of catalog and argue that there is
a story, But I call it enchanted supernaturalism. That is
like lock and key, right, that does fit the deep
longings of the heart.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
You mentioned nice nihalism, and I was struck by some
of the examples that you give in your book. For example,
the Australian writer Wendy Seifertt. She says, I'm just a
chunk of meat, hurdling through space, hurdling through space on
a rock, pointless, feudal, meaningless, and then she says that
(04:39):
was one of the most comforting revelations of her life
because she'd discovered nice nihalism.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, kind of interesting. This is a new phenomena, right,
I think that old guard nihilist were that life is
tragedy all the way down. New guard I don't know
that it's more right. New guard nihilists are just like
this article that you quoted, there's no meaning to life.
Let's go party, you know, let's have fun, let's make
(05:08):
the most of it. And I guess you know, if
my choices were between no meaning of life and tragedy
all the way down in comedy, all the way down,
I'd take nice nihilism, right, of course. But the problem is,
as many have noted, there's this wonderful book by Amroslov
Volf on Human Flourishing where he makes his point and
I think it's super insightful that pleasure, which is nice nihilism,
(05:33):
just living our life for pleasure kind of hedonism. Pleasure
detached from meaning ultimately becomes vapid.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
It doesn't satisfy. It will never satisfy if it's detached
from meaning. And so while nice nihilism sounds really fun,
especially when we're in our twenties, it quickly becomes like
the joker in the movie Tragedy all the way down
at the end, right, And that's the problem with it.
We long for something that you know, gives us significance
(05:59):
and purpose and value, and none of that is around
on either version of nihilism.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Yeah. Related to this, contrast enchanted naturalism with unenchanted naturalism.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Okay, good, So Yeah, the four possible stories that I
review in that this chapter on meaning, are you know
asked this question is there a meaning landscape? And the
same way we could ask is there a moral landscape?
And nihilism. The two versions of nihilism that say there
is no meaning landscape are absurdism and nice nihilism. And
then there's a version of naturalism that says, no, there
(06:33):
is a meaning landscape. It's just subjective, right, it's just
found within culture and individual humans within culture. And so
you have Owen Flanagan who's also at Duke University philosopher.
He writes a book. So it's interesting. I mentioned Chalmers
who says that consciousness is the hard problem. The title
of Flannagan's book is the really hard problem subtitle finding
(06:54):
meaning in a materialistic world. That's the really hard problem.
And so what does and I really, I mean I
admire the effort here, right, is that he says we
can get a kind of meaning in life, even though
there's no meaning of life. We can get a meaning
in life and that's good enough. Right, So there's a
kind of subjective landscape, and that's what he's trying to
(07:16):
do in that chapter, and he grounds it in culture
and society and the twenty first century and things like that.
The thing that's kind of interesting about that though, or
the problem if you read the Meaning of Life literature.
Josh Seacrest is a wonderful philosopher who writes on this,
and he talks about the problem of the end and
on enchant in naturalism, we know the end of the story.
(07:38):
The end of the story is that the human species
at some point ceases to exist, because the universe will
at some point cease to exist. And the problem of
the end is that knowing the ending of the story
infects our enjoyment and meaning that we can find in it.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Now.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
It's just like if you're going on a date, this
is his example. If you went on a date with someone,
but you knew you would never marry that person, it's
going to kind of affect you view the date, right,
It's not something you're going to invest in. And that's
the problem of the end. And that's the problem with
enchanted naturalism. As we know, at the end, there is
no objective at the widest level possible. You know, there's
no meaning of life, and that affects the meaning in
(08:14):
life that we find today.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
So there is no such thing as enchanted naturalism. But
there is such a thing as enchanted supernaturalism.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
I think at the end of the day, that's the
only option, right that works. Number one, it has a
perfect fit with that existential set. Number two, you have
instances of enchanted supernaturalism, like Christianity that have.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Widely explored this.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I think of Pascal and his famous you know this
is paraphrasing, but the God shape void that we've been
created with that only God will satisfy. You've got the
wonderful chapter by C. S.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Lewis.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think it's this chapter in Heaven in the Problem
of Pain, but he talks about how the human soul
is like lock and key or hand in glove, you know,
meant to fit with God and the Christian story, and
so you have instant of enchanted supernaturalism that do help
us get a rich picture of not just meaning in life,
but the fact that there's this overall meaning of life
(09:09):
because God exists and God is the ground of it.
So that's yeah, that's kind of where I end on
that one hopeful chapter.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
One of the Karens one of the sign posts that
you have us take a deep look at as happiness,
and you point out that there are a lot of
counterfeits to happiness. So the relentless pursuit of pleasure, for example,
is a counterfeit. You say, in fact, if you relentlessly
pursue pleasure, you're going to end up enslaved. Right.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, I love there's this quote I don't have it
at the top of my fingers by David Foster Wallace,
who was a wonderful writer died tragically early suicide, but
he basically says about worship, that money, prestige, pleasure. You know,
he says that these things, if you make them your idol.
I'm switching the language. But if you make them the
thing that you think will satisfy they will you up
(10:00):
right that they just ultimately will create miserable people.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But on the other hand, in.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Culture, at least popularly, because we no longer ask preliminary
questions what is happiness, we just sort of imbibe this
idea because maybe part of the American dream that happiness
is fame or fortune, or pleasure or success. And so
I wanted to explore those and really give them their
due right, because we all want to be happy. That's
something that we begin with. Everyone longs for happiness. If
(10:29):
you ask any person what do you want most out
of life, their answers, I just.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Want to be happy.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Well, then we should at least consider what happiness amounts
to and if we can ever attain it. And so
in there I now we have at this point in
the story, I've invited other fellow guides. So along with
Lady Nature, Lady philosophy has joined us.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
At this point, stay right there.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
We'll be back soon to rejoin Hank Hatagraphs conversation with
doctor Paul Gould. In A Good and True Story, philosopher
Paul Gould leads readers on an aging journey through eleven
clues that suggests Christianity is not only true, but satisfies
our deepest longings as the greatest possible story. This creative
(11:11):
foray into the foundations of Christian truth explores the universe morality, meaning, happiness, pain, beauty,
and more for readers looking for a culturally informed presentation
and rationally sound defense of the faith. To receive your
copy of A Good and True Story Eleven Clues to
(11:32):
Understanding our Universe and your place in it, call eight
eight eight seven thousand CROI and make a gift to
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Speaker 2 (11:51):
That's equip dot org.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Anyone who's been paying attention knows there's a war going on,
not just on traditional morality, civility and decency, but even
more fundamentally on historic notions of truth. And the enemy
isn't just the onslaught of fake news, facilitated by a
post truth culture and turbocharged by growing legions of ideological spinductors.
(12:21):
Note the real enemies of truth range from postmodernist convictions
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(12:45):
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The Complete Bible answer Book Collector's Edition is the comprehensive
collection of the most often asked questions Hank Hannigraph has
(13:08):
received throughout his four decades as host of the Bible
answer Man broadcast. With more than half a million copies
already in print, this newly revised and expanded Collector's Edition
helped seekers and skeptics alike sort through the truth on
topics such as reliability of the Bible, religions, and cults,
the resurrection and afterlife, and many more issues vital to
(13:31):
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eight seven thousand CROI and make a gift to support
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Endless predictions about end time events and published timetables counting
down the end have proven to be wrong one hundred
percent of the time. When doomsday predictions fail, there is
(14:12):
double duty damage. Many theologically juvenile and scripturally superficial Christians
abandon the faith as a result of these failed predictions,
and the public image of Christianity is damaged, making Christians
appear to be hopelessly naive and easily duped. Biblical Bumpkins.
Hank Hannagraph's book Prophetic Stars in the Constellation of Biblical
(14:36):
Prophecy will equip you not only to interpret biblical prophecied correctly,
but to remember it as well. To receive your copy
of Prophetic Stars as our thank you for your gift
simply call eight eight eight seven thousand c R I
and make a gift to support CRI's life changing outreaches,
or visit equip dot Org. Well, here again are hand
(15:08):
Catigraph and his guest professor Paul Gould, as they continue
their conversation.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
At this point in the story, I've invited other fellow guides.
So along with Lady Nature, Lady Philosophy has joined us
at this point, and she was actually with us all along,
but does interacting with Boethius, who in like you know,
fifth century, he wrote this book called The Consolation of
Philosophy where he's basically thrown in jail, he's awaiting his execution,
and he's basically out of mind.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
As he puts it.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
And so Lady Philosophy appears to him and says, you've
lost the path of reason, and he's questioning, was I happy?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right? I had all these things, now they're gone? What
is happiness?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And so Boethius, with Lady Philosophy as his guide personified wisdom,
they explore in that book these very questions that are
relevant to the twenty first century, way back in the
fifth century, and Boethius considers every one of those contemporary
versions you know, happiness as wealth, success, fame, pleasure, and
they find them with Lady Philosophy's help wanting, and then
(16:04):
of course they arrive on what the nature of true
happiness is. And for Boetheists, no surprise, it's something about
union with God. And so I kind of unpacked that
a little bit in this book, but that was the
foil there.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, you also say to be happy, it's necessary to
connect pleasure with meaning.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
So it's not like pleasure, fame, success, wealth are bad things.
It's just that they're not ultimate things, right. And as
it turns out on the Christian story, every one of
those are ingredients in our happiness. But they're ingredients, they're
not the thing itself. And even in the Christian story,
you know, I Love Again C. S. Lewis the weight
(16:41):
of glory. This essay that I wrote called the weight
of Glory part of the weight of glory that we
have as humans, glory in the sense of fame. There's
two senses for glory. One is excellence I kind of virtue,
kind of perfection.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
The other is fame.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Well, we have both senses of that. In the afterlife,
we become a gad in God's happiness. That's the weightiness
of the human person. And we also have a kind
of fame right in the face of God in the
afterlife and now, as well as believers, and so all
these things are important, and that's why they're important to discuss.
(17:15):
But they're just ingredients, not the thing itself.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Yeah, we're created for a distant land. Your chapter on pain,
I love this chapter. I so often think of Charles
Hadden's spurgeon when he said, were you ever in the
melting pot? Dear friends? I have been there in my
sermons with me. The result of melting is that you
arrive at a true valuation of things, and then you're
poured out a new and better fashion. So you can
almost hope for the melting pot. You can almost hope
(17:40):
for pain and suffering, because then you arrive at a
true valuation of things. So do pain and suffering give
us reason to think that God does not exist? Or
the inverse good?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
So we're certainly told that right in fact, you know
this tank. But the number one argument, when you like
look at the arguments for or against God's existence, the
number one argument on atheist On the atheist side is
the problem of evil. You know, either God cannot exist
or God probably doesn't exist given the amount, the distribution,
(18:13):
and the horrific nature of evil and suffering.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So it certainly is cashed out as.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
An argument against the existence of God. And of course
any book that is honestly trying to explore the true
story of the world has to deal with the problem
of pain, right, and suffering and evil, and so it's
super important to deal with that. And so yeah, so
as it turns out, I think that Christianity offers I
think the best explanation, or I should say, God's answer
(18:40):
to the problem of pain. I love Peter Crave what
a wondful book called Making Sense of Suffering, and he
basically ends this with, Hey, you know, we can go
through all the standards, arguments against and for you know,
arguments from evil, and we can rebut them as theists.
But then, you know, those are a bunch of propositions.
But the problem is an existential problem, and it's personal,
and so it demands an ex suistential and personal response.
(19:01):
And so Chraate says, God's answer to the problem of
pain and suffering is Christ on a cross. And that's
a personal answer, right, It's one better than mere theism,
and I think at the end of the day that's
exactly right. Christianity alone gives I think, the most satisfying
answer to this question, because you get the God of
Love who pursues his creation, his creatures who have run
(19:22):
from him, and takes on all pain and all suffering
on himself so that one day we can experience freedom
from that pain and suffering. There's a study done years ago,
like if you could ask God one question, what would
it be? I think Barna ran the study and the
number one question is why God do you allow pain
and suffering? And so one writer calls this question, why
God do you allow pain and suffering like a fish
(19:43):
hook that's, you know, tugging at the human heart.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And I think that.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
That's right, and so we have to take it seriously.
But at the end of the day, it just reveals
a God of love who makes provisions for falling creatures
that we could be made whole.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
The chapters is a brilliant chapter. And you quote perhaps
the for runner to Darwin in the fourth century, Epicurus,
and he said this, and I'd love for you to
cash this out a little bit. He said, is God
willing to prevent evil but not able, Well, then he's impotent.
Is he able but not willing, Well, then he's malevolent.
(20:22):
Is he both able and willing, Well, then whence then
is evil? So he lays this out in such a
way that the only answer to the question seems to be, well,
God is either the author of evil, he's impotent, he's malevolent.
(20:42):
But if there's evil, then there can't be a God,
certainly not a good God.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yes, you know, whatever I teach on this, this is
a great starting place for this in a philosophy class,
because what Epicurius is raising there is what's called the
logical problem of evil. And that's just simply the claim
that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the
existence of a holy, good, and wholly powerful God, right,
because if he was.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
All good, he would eliminate it.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
If he was all powerful, he could eliminate it.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
But we have it.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
So this is a logical problem. And anything, of course
that's a contradiction is necessarily false. And so if God
and evil are a logical contradiction and evil exists, well,
then of course God doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
It's called the logical problem of evil.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I'll just report that almost everyone working in this area
in philosophy and theology thinks that the logical problem of
evil has been solved. This is one of the few
cases where we actually see genuine progress in philosophy, or
at least it's one of the areas we can point
to and say, here's genuine progress. And how that story
usually goes is that Alvin Planiga, who's an important Christian philosopher,
(21:48):
solved the logical problem of evil in the nineteen seventies
with his really technical book on the Nature of Necessity.
And then he applied this kind of contemporary logic, contemporary
metaphysics to the problem of evil and showed how there's
no logical contradiction, and he offered what's called the free
will defense, and he just shows, given human freedom, it
is not possible that God could cause us to freely
(22:13):
only choose the good right. So there's no contradiction between
evil and God because God allows us to be the
certain kinds of creatures that are self determiners of our
actions and our character in our lives. And given that
he permits it, but we actualize it. And so that's
kind of a quick thumbnail sketch of one solution to
the logical problem. I go a little further than that,
but that is what most people begin with in arguing
(22:34):
that this has been solved.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, it raises a couple of issues. Can the Christian
worldview exist plausibly without the concept of free will?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Okay? Good? I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I'm just I'm pausing because I will youset half my
Christian brethren here. But yeah, I have a view that
no free will is part of what it means to
be human. And then I have a particular view of
free will that's some version of what's called incompatibilism, or
sometimes it's called libertarianism. The version I hold is a
version of source incompatibilism called virtue libertarianism. So there's a
(23:09):
whole long story there that I could give you, But
the basic idea is that we are creatures that can
shape our own lives, and that we have a kind
of power available to us such that we are self
determiners of our character, our actions in our very life story.
So we have real skin in the game. And I
think that without that, we don't have a story. Right,
(23:30):
We don't have a good story, certainly, right If we're
just you know, determined to act a certain way or
things like that, and so yeah, I do think that
free will is essential to what it means to be human.
And of course there's a lot of debate about this,
but some people would even root that in the fact
that we're created in the image of God. God is
an intellect and a will. Humans have an intellect and
(23:51):
a will. God is free in this, I think virtue
libertarian sense, and there's good reasons to think.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
That we are too. So there's a whole lot there
that can of worms.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
But that's my quick sorry to get you into hot water.
It's so good you make a statement, and I mean
this needsy explanation to this. But you say God can't
do everything. You know, we think God can do anything.
You say, no, he can't, and if you think about it,
you're absolutely dead right. But at first blush, it sounds wrong.
(24:22):
God can't do everything. He can't do anything that's possible, right.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I do a lot of speaking, like at summit ministries
to high school students in the summer, and they get
up in arms when I say this, you know, I
usually ask how many people think God can do anything?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Right?
Speaker 3 (24:36):
This is omnipotence. This is all powerful and pretty much
everybody raises their hand. But that's never in the history
of the Christian tradition, never been the definition of omnipotence.
It's always been something like God can do anything that's
logically consistent and doesn't go against.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
His holy good nature.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Right, So God can't create a square circle, God can't
create a bachelor, God can't cause free creatures to do
only the good and things like that. God can't do evil, Like,
there's tons of things that God can't do because he's
only good and he's perfectly rational, and so yeah, it
does sound at first not so great, but it actually
if God could do the logically impossible, well, then he
(25:18):
wouldn't be perfectly rational, and then he wouldn't be worthy
of our worship. So it cuts both ways, right, So
we need to be careful when we make our claims.
But yeah, the traditional view, and even in scripture, God
cannot lie, right, that's in Hebrews. Even in Scripture, there's
things that God cannot do. So it's okay to say
that because that's in fact what it means.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
We'll have to stop here for today's special edition of
the Bible answer Man Broadcast join us again next time
when we'll continue Hank Hanagraph's conversation with philosopher Paul Gould.
Our firm commitment here at the Christian Research Institute is
to defend the faith once for all, delivered to the Saints,
and equip believers to become true disciples of Jesus Christ.
(26:00):
An appreciation for your vital gift to help strengthen and
expand CRI's mind shaping, life changing outreaches, Hank would like
to send you a copy of a good and true
story Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe and Your Place
in It, by doctor Paul Gould. Call a resource consultant
(26:21):
at eight eight eight seven thousand CRII eight eight eight
seven thousand CRII, or visit our website equip dot org.
That's equip dot oorg. You can also write CRII at
Post Office box eighty five hundred, Charlotte, North Carolina, zip
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code two eight two seven one. Bible answer Man Broadcast
is funded by listeners like you. We're on the air
because truthmatters, life matters more. The number of wolves surrounding
the Christian flock is growing, and they relish nothing more
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than Docile's sheep utterly incapable of defending themselves from militant
secularists at home to militant Islamists abroad. The assaults on
biblical Christianity are growing dangerously, but Christian Research Institutes Support
Team members aren't in favor of feeding these wolves. Instead,
each day they're making possible an array of outreaches that
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defang these wolfpacks with solid arguments and evidence that have
stood the test of time. What's more, Support Team members
are equipping themselves with CRIIS Equipping Essentials, a handpicked collection
of the best apologetics tools around. Your selection of resources
are just our way of saying thanks. To learn more
(27:48):
about the benefits of membership, simply visit equip dot org.
Once again, that's equip dot org.
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