When Truth and Experience Clash featuring Dr. Paul Maxwell, PhD: Doubt, Part 4 | Episode 12

NOTES:

• Facts or feelings? -> Constancy or change?
• 2500 years ago: Pre-Socratic Movement
  • Before science and philosophy was distinguished - philosophy encompassed scientific things. Reality was addressed in a unitary (cohesive) sense.
  • Parmenides’ claim: “All is water.” Everything is in flux.
  • Pythagoras and Zeno: Unchanging qualities of the universe
    • Zeno: arrow illustration to disprove motion
  • The question they haven’t answered, we haven’t answered either: how do you give a single account of all things?
• Plato and Aristotle
  • Plato: emphasized forms
  • Aristotle: emphasized substance
  • “All of history is a footnote to Plato.” - Whitehead
• Stoicism - a manifestation of Pythagoras. Hedonists - competing school of thought. Facts vs. feelings.
• Hegel: the dialectic - the first idea - synthesis - isn’t right or wrong, the second - antithesis - isn’t either, but the third idea is usually the best. A fourth idea then enters and becomes the new antithesis.
  • No matter how many facts or how many feelings we have, we will never solve the tension.
• Giving and account of your faith doesn’t mean you have to disprove atheism.
• How can we tell with certainty that God is doing something?
• Not all “circular reasoning” is fallacious. The only answer to “How do we know the Bible is the word of God?” is “Because it says so.” Is that self-defeating? No.
• When you study good theology, you find that the answers are already there.
• You become a good apologist not by studying debate tactics, but by just talking about theology with other people.
• The four things you need to establish to find answers and understand doubt: God, the problem of God (mystery, paradox), the act itself of humans interfacing with divine mystery, and the human himself
  • God: He is simple, not composed of parts, and incomprehensible. Meaning, we can only know Him through analogy because there’s always more beyond our description of Him. Through revelation, we come to find the things we say of Him to be true, but we must understand that at the end of the day, what’s on the other side of the Being we’re describing, is far more vast and mysterious. While mystery is never a threat, it never provides consolation.
  • The problem of God/nature of mystery: can you distinguish between perceived paradox and true paradox? What are the rules of mystery?
• Faith according to Calvin: knowledge, assent, and trust
• Kierkegaard would refer to doubt as despair.

Find quotes and more at my website - I hit my character limit. :) emilyurban.com

RESOURCES:

• “Philosophy & The Mirror of Nature” by Richard Rorty
• “God In the Dark” by Os Guinness
• “The Trauma of Doctrine: New Calvinism, Religious Abuse, and the Experience of God” by Paul Maxwell: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1978704232/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabc_eUxXFb52ZCTBV
• Paul’s membership: https://paulmaxwell.co/register/
• Paul’s Instagram: @paulmaxwellco
• Paul’s Twitter: @paulcmaxwell