In this episode of the podcast, Adam discusses a chapter that he contributed to a recent book that is going to be published by Oxford University Press about the moral argument. Adam's chapter covers his Divine Love Theory and explains how it is very useful to incorporate the Trinity into the moral argument. Adam gives four reasons why he includes the Trinity when he argues for God based on morality.

In this episode, Adam interviews Clark Moghadam, a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who is studying biology and philosophy. Clark is helping out at Convincing Proof this summer and loves studying topics in the fields of theology, history, and philosophy.

You can watch a talk Clark gave earlier this year here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo7fq61nJzM

Is it true that we only believe in Christianity because we were raised in a Christian culture? This argument claims that if our religious beliefs are only relative to the arbitrary place in which we were born, then we can’t trust them to be true. However, this is a poor argument. To see why, we can ask this: Why limit this to just our religious beliefs? What about our political, moral, scientific, or philosophical beliefs? Are those simply fixed by where we were born? Should that cause us to discount them?

Ayn Rand was an influential thinker who lived during the 20th century, and many conservatives and libertarians have appreciated her ideas, particularly her championing of freedom of speech, capitalism, and individual rights. However, Ayn Rand was an outspoken atheist who did not like religion or Christianity. So how should we, as Christians, approach the ideas of Ayn Rand?

Have you ever seen claims like this floating around social media? “There have been thousands of religions, so how do you know yours is true?” “You don’t believe in thousands of gods; we just believe in one less.” Statements like this make faulty assumptions about how our religious beliefs work. Just because people have slightly different descriptions of the supreme being that doesn’t mean these ideas are all drastically different. In fact, they are mostly similar, and shows that the vast majority of people and cultures have concluded that there is, in fact, a supreme being – God.

Have you ever noticed how the moral argument for God is somewhat like the first-cause (or cosmological) argument for God? At the core of the first-cause argument is the idea that, if we notice a sequence of causes, then there must be either an infinite regress of causes or there was an ultimate first cause. However, the moral argument functions much in the same way. G. E. Moore introduced the idea of the “open question”: if we say that something is good, then the following question can always be asked: “What makes that thing good?” Any answer you give to that question can also have the same question asked of it: “Well, then that makes that thing good?” This causes an infinite regress unless, of course, there is one thing that is just ultimately good.

Are traditional methods of apologetics outdated? Does giving arguments for God or providing evidence that Jesus rose from the dead actually convince anyone? Should we instead only use apologetic methods that "work"? Some try to disparage traditional apologetic methods, claiming that they really don't convince anyone, and that other things like personal stories or emotional appeals are what really convince people to change their minds. But is simply making Christianity more “attractive” or “desirable” a better approach for apologetics?

Sometimes Christians are accused of trying to "legislate morality." What does that mean? Is it wrong to bring our moral values to the table when making legislation? This objection is often made with hot-button issues like abortion, but what about rape or murder? Is it "legislating morality" to outlaw those actions? We all have certain beliefs about reality, but are these beliefs moral beliefs? philosophical beliefs? religious beliefs? scientific beliefs? It can be hard to label or classify our beliefs, and thus oftentimes the objection against "legislating morality" is simply an appeal to rhetoric rather than substance.