August 12, 2025 • 28 mins
On today’s Bible Answer Man broadcast (08/12/25), we present an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast. Hank’s guest is philosopher Paul Gould, author of A Good and True Story: Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe and Your Place in It. Hank and Paul discuss why Paul wrote A Good and True Story, if we live our lives according to a story, how evidence for God is everywhere but needs to be rightly interpreted, the non-religious stories that explain our existence: scientism, materialism, atheism, nihilism, and reductionism; the origins of the universe, and if the immensity of the universe should inspire belief in God.
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Episode Transcript
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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 Annigrap. We're
on the air because truth matters, life matters more. On
today's special edition of the Bible answer Man Broadcast, we
present a previously recorded episode of the Hank Unplugged Podcast.
(00:27):
Hank's guest is philosopher Paul Gould, author of a Good
and True Story Eleven Clues to Understanding our Universe and
your place in it. Well, here now is Hank Canagraph.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
And welcome to another edition of the Hank gun plug Podcast.
Today we have an opportunity to talk to doctor Paul Gould,
and he lives up to every billing we could possibly
give him. He's a philosopher, a scholar, a tear, a husband,
He's the father of four. He's a professor a philosophy
(01:05):
of religion. He's a founder and president of Two Tasks Institute.
He has a PhD in philosophy from Purdue University. And
I could say a whole lot more about his credentials,
but I'm going to leave it at that. To the
point of this podcast. He has written many books, but
I think a book that has really captured our attention
(01:28):
at the Christian Research Institute a book titled A Good
and True Story subtitled eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe
and Your Place in it. And by the way, doctor
Gould is a contributed to Christian Research Journal and we
have a deep and abiding appreciation for him on many accounts,
(01:49):
but this is one of those areas that he really
helps us get a hold of. He gives us a
way of understanding something that is oftentimes confused, using to people.
And this is the issue of origins. I've often said
throughout my ministry that how one views their origins ultimately
will determine how they live their life. If you think
(02:09):
you're a function of random chance that you arose from
the primordial slime, you're going to live your life by
a different standard than if you know that you're created
in the image of God and accountable to him. David
said that the heavens declare the glory of God, the
skies proclaim the work of his hands. Saint Paul said,
(02:29):
God's eternal power, his divine nature clearly seen through what
has been made. So there are a couple of stories
about origins, and we're going to discuss that today. But
first let me say welcome doctor Gould. Great to have
you on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Thank you, Hank. It's great to be back with you.
Looking forward to our conversation today.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, maybe I should ask you a basic question, a
good and true story. What prompted you to write this
particular book.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, that's actually a really good question because I can
kind of segue from some earlier work to this one.
In twenty nineteen, I wrote a book called Cultural Apologetics.
I know we've talked about it on this podcast. And
in that book, one of the sort of more hopeful
or prescriptive parts of the book, I argue that given
God's intentions for humans, that he loves us, that he
pursues us, that he cares for us, he wants us
(03:19):
to find, you know, faith, and be redeemed in Him.
Given this intention for humans, I had this prescriptive, sort
of more hopeful idea that God could redeem culture in
a way. And the language I use is that that
we would work with God in the Holy Spirit and
each other to re enchant the world. And in that
I argued that we number one awaken longing for the
(03:39):
things of God. And there's various things that I talk
about in that book there and then number two, returning
to reality, in other words, that we would begin to
see the world as it actually is. And there I
said two things. How do we return to reality? I said,
number one, as Christians, that we would see and delight
in God and all things in relation to God the
way Jesus does, so that we as Christians would learn
to see in a lot in the world the way
(04:00):
Jesus does. And number two, that we would learn to
invite others to see and delight in the world the
way Jesus does. And those two claims are two future
book projects, of which the one we're talking about today
is related to the second idea, how can we help
those who don't yet know Christ look at the world
in such a way that they see it, that they
interpret it correctly, and that it points to and is
(04:21):
evocative of the Divine So that's kind of the heart
behind it. If the twenty nineteen book was a book
about cultural apologetics written for Christians, this book, A Good
and True Story is a book what I would call
a book of cultural apologetics written to non believers.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So two things that you do in this book. One
is you give a sign posts two is you introduced
us to Lady Nature. So Lady Nature is a guide
in a theistic worldview, where sometimes we hear about Mother Nature,
who's a replacement for God in a pagan worldview.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, so one of the things that I wanted to do.
So there's actually a couple theses that are under informing
the way that I wrote this book, and one is
a thesis about reality itself, and then there's actually a
thesis about humans, and then I have a thesis about evidence.
But the thesis about reality itself is that reality is
an ongoing story, right, and like any good story, it
has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that's
(05:20):
why you're right. The question of origins will figure prominently
in the book because of this idea that we are
part of a story. So that's the first thesis. The
second is a thesis about humans. And that's something that
philosophers and sociologists and literary critics and historians and theologians
have noted, is that humans they say that we are
narratival animals, that we're creatures that live our lives according
to a story. And so we basically come into the
(05:42):
world and we begin to immediately seek a story from
which we can understand our identity and our purpose and
our meaning. And so we're on this quest. And so
that's kind of the idea, is that we're on this
quest to discover the true story of the world. And
in writing in the book, one cool thing that I
found out when I was the great questions of origin, right,
the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the
(06:03):
origin of species, and the origin of humans, was that
in medieval travelogues they would often call on this personification
of Lady Nature basically, and Lady Nature would serve as
a guide in these medieval travelogues to help people, you know,
look and notice and correctly interpret the world around them.
And so, in wanting to engage our imaginations as we
(06:25):
embark on this quest, I thought that it would be
important to have guides, and so Lady Nature, given the
first four chapters around the origins of you know, the world,
the physical universe that we find ourselves in, she basically
is the guide that is helping us, is pointing saying
look at this, look at this, what best explains this?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That kind of thing, And then you're talking about sign
posts as well, or cairns that's right.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So yeah, good so. And actually that gets to the
third thesis. If there's a thesis about reality that undergrads
this that reality is a kind of story, there's a
thesis about human persons, and that's the idea that we
or on a quest to locate our lives within the
true story. The thesis about evidence is that it's widely available.
So you know, evidence is everywhere. I think that anything
(07:10):
and everything points to in some way, the divine, but
it needs to be rightly interpreted. Right So sometimes Stephen Evans,
for example, whos a philosopher at Baylor, says that the
evidence for God is widely available but easily resistible. And
what he means by the easily resistible part is that
it's everywhere, but it needs to be rightly interpreted. And
that's why we need the guides. And so what I
wanted to do was take eleven clues, eleven signposts that
(07:33):
I think powerfully point to the true story of the
world in a sort of special way, and I wanted
to help the reader sort of focus on each of those.
And then the metaphor, the central metaphor of the book
was that each of these clues or signs is kind
of like those cairns on a journey when you're kind
of hiking in the mountains where you need the cairns
(07:53):
to kind of guide you to the summit. And so
each of these rocks individually, I think is a sign
or a clue. But then as you stack them up together,
it helps us find our way, you know, to our destination,
which is to discover that true story of the world.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
These karens are going to be important for the rest
of our life, not just for a podcast, because when
the winds and the waves of doubt beat upon our
house of faith, you can go back to those karens.
You can go back to those sign posts and say
this is why I believe.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, yeah, they give us you know, the guardrails they
you know, I've once heard it.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
If the great theological virtues are faith, hope, and love.
You know, faith is that which gives us eyes to
see the path, but hope is that which sustains us
on the path when life gets hard, right, and so
we need faith hope, and then of course love is
the thing that we're destinying with and toward ultimately in God.
But you're right, like the walk of faith the walk
(08:54):
of life is hard, and we need we need help,
we need guides, we need clues, we need and thankfully
we need hope. And as it turns out, on the
Christian story, as you know, we read in First Peter
one three that hope is a living hope, right, It's
one that we can actually bank our lives on, and
that's a good thing in a world. You know, otherwise
there is no hope, and we're going to have angst,
(09:16):
in despair and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
So you say, there are two stories, and the one
story is taken just as seriously as the other story
in the book. It's not as though you say, well,
there's only one story, it's the Christian story. But you say,
there's the non religious story. So give us some of
the guide posts, as it were, by which people say,
(09:42):
I believe the non religious story, Scientism, materialism, reductionism, and
so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Good. So, you know, I thought it would be helpful
to kind of have a foil as we're kind of
exploring these these these pieces of evidence, these clues, these signs,
And one of the dominant foils, at least in the West,
is the conversation that's taking place between the religious and
the non religious, or the theistic and the atheistic world views.
And so in the beginning, I just kind of set
(10:11):
these out as are two generic stories. Right, You've got
the theistic version of the religious story, you know, which
has God is the central figure of personal being that's
worthy of worship. And then on the non religious view,
at least in the West, the way that it's typically
understood is it's a kind of story that begins with
matter or something like that. And then if you wanted
a narrow tival arc, it would be, you know that
(10:31):
we humans arrive in this world late and local, at
least on Earth as far as we know, and we're
kind of vulnerable selves, and so we immediately try to
buffer ourselves from the ravages of the world and the
ravages of each other through technology. And there's a whole
bunch of philosophical assumptions to both of these views.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Stay right there, we'll be back soon to rejoin Hank
Hatigraphs 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.
(11:10):
This creative 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 understanding our universe
(11:33):
and your place in it, call eight eight eight seven
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(12:03):
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(15:08):
hand catigraph and his guest professor Paul Gouhl, as they
continue their conversation.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
The theistic version of the religious story, you know, which
has God is the central figure, a personal being that's
worthy of worship. And then on the non religious view,
it's a kind of story that begins with matter or
something like that. And there's a whole bunch of philosophical
assumptions to both of these views and the five that
I just sort of unpacked briefly as we begin this
journey for the non religious view are pretty dominant, at
(15:36):
least in the West, in our culture, and those would
be Number One, a theory about knowledge. It's called scientism,
but it's just the idea in the weak form that
our best knowledge comes from the sciences. That's a pretty
dominant view out there. That often is thought to entail
Number two materialism or what I would better be called physicalism,
and that's the idea that all that exists are material things,
or all that exists is that which physics tells us exists.
(15:59):
Three that often is thought to entail atheism. We're sometimes
told that if sciences are best or only source of knowledge,
and that entails only what physics says, well, then somehow
that entails that God doesn't exist. So there's an atheistic
strand here. And then of course that would lead to
a theory about meaning that there is no meaning, so
that would be nihilism. And then there's also this impulse
(16:21):
within much of the sciences and much of the Academy
for reductionism, right, that you're nothing but as Actually Sean Carroll,
I think he puts it wonderfully in his book The
Big Picture, written from a non religious or naturalist or
atheistic perspective, he says, humans are nothing but organized mud, right,
And so you have the nothing buttery. We're just reduced
to the little parts, whatever the little parts happen to be.
(16:41):
And so that's one story. And then I put that
in contrast with a broadly theistic story. As we begin
this journey.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
How important is it to learn to ask the right
questions and maybe even ask them in the right sequence.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think it's
super important. You know. Aristytle said that if we want
and this is a really bad paraphrase, if we want
to be successful in life, we need to learn to
ask the right preliminary questions.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
So, if you think about it, everyone longs for happiness,
As Pascal says, even the person who hangs himself wants
to be happy. He just thinks that that's how he
will become happy. An Aristotle's point was, well, it all
depends on what happiness is, right, We've got to ask
these preliminary questions. Can we know it? Is it attainable?
What is it? And that's a skill in our largely
(17:30):
anti intellectual culture and our largely information driven, internet driven culture.
Now that we have you know, AI doing the thinking
for us, perhaps that art of asking good questions is
rapidly disappearing. And with that, though, our inability for wisdom
right and to live life the way that we ought.
So it's super important. Yeah, I'm glad you glad you
(17:51):
asked that.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, so let's get right into it and tackle each
one of these carts, each one of these sign posts,
each one of these these piles of rocks that we
can look back to when we're shaken in our faith.
I run into so many people. I was talking to
a young man just the other day and he said,
you know, science has shaken my faith once again. So
(18:14):
when that happens, you can go back to these signposts,
the first of which is the universe. Talk about the
universe and why there is something as opposed to there
being nothing at all.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, good, Yeah, I thought it would be you know,
for beginning with Lady Nature, we're looking at the four
great origin debates, right, because we're looking at the beginning
of the story. I thought it would be important not
only for everyone else, but because I find them super
interesting topics in their own right. Is to look at
the origin of the universe, life, species, and humans. And
when it comes to the universe itself, there's at least three, well,
(18:48):
there's at least four facts that immediately cry out more
that you you know, as we begin to learn about
certain features of the universe. Number one, that the universe
is contingent, and all that means is that it exists,
but it didn't have to exist. Right, in the same
way that I'm contingent. I exist, but maybe my parents,
if they never met or if they never had kids,
I would not have existed, Right, So I'm a contingent being.
(19:11):
As it turns out, the universe is a contingent thing.
It exists, but it didn't have to So that's a
fact that cries out for explanation. Number two, it's temporily finite.
You know, standard Big Bang cosmology tells us that the
universe began a finite time ago. Number three's and this
was actually mind boggling to me, was it's just immense right,
(19:34):
it's you know, on average, they think there's one hundred
billion galaxies with one hundred billion stars each. It's an
immense universe with an immense amount of matter and stars
and things like that. And then number four, it's finally
tuned for life. And these four facts again cry out
for explanation. And this is where you enter back into
the story of the two competing views, right, is are
(19:56):
these facts best explained by science or they have no explanation,
or is the theistic explanation the best explanation? And I
argue that these four facts are best explained given the
reality of a personal being, that is God.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I think in the context of the discussion, it's probably
worthwhile to bring out the column cosmological argument. And by
the way, I don't want people to get the impression
that when you read this book you're reading a manual.
You powerfully use the power of story to communicate logical
truth propositions, and maybe should cash that out first.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean, given what I argue, apologetics
or cultural apologetics should be where we engage the reason
and the imagination, where we respect people as fully embodied
humans that make culture and our shape. By culture, you
know that we're creatures with emotions and imaginations and things
like that. I wanted to write a story that helped
people awaken into the good, goodness and truth and beauty
(20:55):
of the Christian story and to be at awe because
these features of the world that we're looking at the
eleven actually are they. As Plato would say with respect
to philosophy, philosophy begins in wonder. Well, I think it's
the same thing for the true story of the world.
As we look at these features of the world, they
ought to awaken in us a sense of wonder that
sets us on a journey of discovery. So, yeah, you're right.
I as a philosopher, as a trained philosopher teaches phlosophy,
(21:18):
I love syllogisms, but as a human being and trying
to love my neighbor, I want to help. I write
this not for my peers, right, my fellow philosophers, but
I write this as public facing kind of philosophy, and
so I write it with other epistemic values, including clarity
when some you know, I think there I share a
(21:39):
lot of my own personal journey and things like that.
So you're right, it's not strictly although it's all there.
I'm trying to communicate it in a special way.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, so the cosmological argument clone.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Right, So this is a wonderful argument that's super easy.
It actually is. You could do premises in a conclusion
everything that begins to exist as a cause. Premise too,
the universe began to exist, Therefore the universe has a cause.
And then as you look at the nature of the cause,
that cause basically starts to sound a lot like the
theistic god and the way that science. You mentioned, you know,
your friend that you're talking to that said somehow science
(22:12):
is making him think that God doesn't exist again, you know,
that is a kind of thought that's out there a
lot in culture. But if we think about you know,
the question is how does science actually function with respect
to the debates over ultimate reality? And the way that
I would say it is that the empirical evidence from
science serves as evidence in a philosophical premise that leads
(22:34):
to a theological conclusion. Right, So the empirical evidence, for example,
that the universe is finite tempoorly that it began is
evidence that we have from Big Bang cosmology, the expansion
of the universe because of red shift and the microwave
background radiation that we see all over the universe. These
are data points that function is evidence in support of
a premis premise too in the column argument that has
(22:56):
a theological conclusion, and so that's what's behind one. There's
actually three arguments that I'm presenting in that chapter, but
that's one of them related to the temporal finitude of
the universe.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
So you talk about the immensity of the universe you
just mentioned. Now they're saying the universe has trillions of galaxies,
each with billions of stars. The universe is maybe one
hundred billion light years in diameter. Multiply that by five
point nine trillion you have the number of miles. But
it's immense, it's incomprehensible. But how does that become a
(23:27):
signpost toward God?
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Well, yeah, good, So what's kind of interesting In one way,
the immensity, the sheared numbers, the sheareredmensities to me actually
awakens awe and wonder. And that's just autobiographical. When I
consider this, it's just mind boggling, and it causes me
to ask this question. And it's actually a question that
has been debated since at least Copernicus, but probably forever,
(23:50):
as we've been thinking is does the universe care about
humans at all?
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Is there any reason to think that I'm matter? And
so you have, like on the non religious story of
the Guiding Principles, is something called the principle of indifference,
and that actually, like you can see this in Richard
Dawkins and many who will just say the universe cares
nothing for humans, right, And I think the immensity of
the universe causes us to ask that question, does the
universe care for us? And so you have a number
(24:16):
of atheists that give these really kind of odd arguments
from smallness, and it goes something like this. They're actually
bad arguments, but they're like, the universe is really big
and humans are really small, Therefore the universe doesn't care
for us, right, you know, there's no point to the universe,
And of course you know that's not a good argument,
but there is this sense in the immensity of the
(24:37):
universe that we're trying to locate our place within this.
What does it mean to be humans in an immense universe?
And as far as we know, there is no other
life as far as we know right, Earth is the
only place where we already discovered that, and minds like
ours are really late and really local in that story,
and so that question just becomes front and center when
I consider the history and the scope of the universe.
(24:58):
I wanted to include that as well.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yes, sometimes you hear the argument that we're just a
speck on a spec in the middle of specklessness. The
immensity of the universe makes us meaningless, and you sort
of allude to that. But in reality, I think one
of the things I mean, this is not part of
the book, but something maybe even comment on. I oftentimes
(25:21):
think that if we only live for seventy eighty years,
being around for a short period of time in an
immense universe may point to our meaninglessness, but the fact
is we were created for eternity.
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 Hanagraft'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):
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From the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. This
is the Bible answer Man Broadcast with Hank Annigrap. We're
on the air because truth matters, life matters more. On
today's special edition of the Bible answer Man Broadcast, we
present a previously recorded episode of the Hank Unplugged Podcast.
(00:27):
Hank's guest is philosopher Paul Gould, author of a Good
and True Story Eleven Clues to Understanding our Universe and
your place in it. Well, here now is Hank Canagraph.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
And welcome to another edition of the Hank gun plug Podcast.
Today we have an opportunity to talk to doctor Paul Gould,
and he lives up to every billing we could possibly
give him. He's a philosopher, a scholar, a tear, a husband,
He's the father of four. He's a professor a philosophy
(01:05):
of religion. He's a founder and president of Two Tasks Institute.
He has a PhD in philosophy from Purdue University. And
I could say a whole lot more about his credentials,
but I'm going to leave it at that. To the
point of this podcast. He has written many books, but
I think a book that has really captured our attention
(01:28):
at the Christian Research Institute a book titled A Good
and True Story subtitled eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe
and Your Place in it. And by the way, doctor
Gould is a contributed to Christian Research Journal and we
have a deep and abiding appreciation for him on many accounts,
(01:49):
but this is one of those areas that he really
helps us get a hold of. He gives us a
way of understanding something that is oftentimes confused, using to people.
And this is the issue of origins. I've often said
throughout my ministry that how one views their origins ultimately
will determine how they live their life. If you think
(02:09):
you're a function of random chance that you arose from
the primordial slime, you're going to live your life by
a different standard than if you know that you're created
in the image of God and accountable to him. David
said that the heavens declare the glory of God, the
skies proclaim the work of his hands. Saint Paul said,
(02:29):
God's eternal power, his divine nature clearly seen through what
has been made. So there are a couple of stories
about origins, and we're going to discuss that today. But
first let me say welcome doctor Gould. Great to have
you on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Thank you, Hank. It's great to be back with you.
Looking forward to our conversation today.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, maybe I should ask you a basic question, a
good and true story. What prompted you to write this
particular book.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, that's actually a really good question because I can
kind of segue from some earlier work to this one.
In twenty nineteen, I wrote a book called Cultural Apologetics.
I know we've talked about it on this podcast. And
in that book, one of the sort of more hopeful
or prescriptive parts of the book, I argue that given
God's intentions for humans, that he loves us, that he
pursues us, that he cares for us, he wants us
(03:19):
to find, you know, faith, and be redeemed in Him.
Given this intention for humans, I had this prescriptive, sort
of more hopeful idea that God could redeem culture in
a way. And the language I use is that that
we would work with God in the Holy Spirit and
each other to re enchant the world. And in that
I argued that we number one awaken longing for the
(03:39):
things of God. And there's various things that I talk
about in that book there and then number two, returning
to reality, in other words, that we would begin to
see the world as it actually is. And there I
said two things. How do we return to reality? I said,
number one, as Christians, that we would see and delight
in God and all things in relation to God the
way Jesus does, so that we as Christians would learn
to see in a lot in the world the way
(04:00):
Jesus does. And number two, that we would learn to
invite others to see and delight in the world the
way Jesus does. And those two claims are two future
book projects, of which the one we're talking about today
is related to the second idea, how can we help
those who don't yet know Christ look at the world
in such a way that they see it, that they
interpret it correctly, and that it points to and is
(04:21):
evocative of the Divine So that's kind of the heart
behind it. If the twenty nineteen book was a book
about cultural apologetics written for Christians, this book, A Good
and True Story is a book what I would call
a book of cultural apologetics written to non believers.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So two things that you do in this book. One
is you give a sign posts two is you introduced
us to Lady Nature. So Lady Nature is a guide
in a theistic worldview, where sometimes we hear about Mother Nature,
who's a replacement for God in a pagan worldview.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, so one of the things that I wanted to do.
So there's actually a couple theses that are under informing
the way that I wrote this book, and one is
a thesis about reality itself, and then there's actually a
thesis about humans, and then I have a thesis about evidence.
But the thesis about reality itself is that reality is
an ongoing story, right, and like any good story, it
has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that's
(05:20):
why you're right. The question of origins will figure prominently
in the book because of this idea that we are
part of a story. So that's the first thesis. The
second is a thesis about humans. And that's something that
philosophers and sociologists and literary critics and historians and theologians
have noted, is that humans they say that we are
narratival animals, that we're creatures that live our lives according
to a story. And so we basically come into the
(05:42):
world and we begin to immediately seek a story from
which we can understand our identity and our purpose and
our meaning. And so we're on this quest. And so
that's kind of the idea, is that we're on this
quest to discover the true story of the world. And
in writing in the book, one cool thing that I
found out when I was the great questions of origin, right,
the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the
(06:03):
origin of species, and the origin of humans, was that
in medieval travelogues they would often call on this personification
of Lady Nature basically, and Lady Nature would serve as
a guide in these medieval travelogues to help people, you know,
look and notice and correctly interpret the world around them.
And so, in wanting to engage our imaginations as we
(06:25):
embark on this quest, I thought that it would be
important to have guides, and so Lady Nature, given the
first four chapters around the origins of you know, the world,
the physical universe that we find ourselves in, she basically
is the guide that is helping us, is pointing saying
look at this, look at this, what best explains this?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That kind of thing, And then you're talking about sign
posts as well, or cairns that's right.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So yeah, good so. And actually that gets to the
third thesis. If there's a thesis about reality that undergrads
this that reality is a kind of story, there's a
thesis about human persons, and that's the idea that we
or on a quest to locate our lives within the
true story. The thesis about evidence is that it's widely available.
So you know, evidence is everywhere. I think that anything
(07:10):
and everything points to in some way, the divine, but
it needs to be rightly interpreted. Right So sometimes Stephen Evans,
for example, whos a philosopher at Baylor, says that the
evidence for God is widely available but easily resistible. And
what he means by the easily resistible part is that
it's everywhere, but it needs to be rightly interpreted. And
that's why we need the guides. And so what I
wanted to do was take eleven clues, eleven signposts that
(07:33):
I think powerfully point to the true story of the
world in a sort of special way, and I wanted
to help the reader sort of focus on each of those.
And then the metaphor, the central metaphor of the book
was that each of these clues or signs is kind
of like those cairns on a journey when you're kind
of hiking in the mountains where you need the cairns
(07:53):
to kind of guide you to the summit. And so
each of these rocks individually, I think is a sign
or a clue. But then as you stack them up together,
it helps us find our way, you know, to our destination,
which is to discover that true story of the world.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
These karens are going to be important for the rest
of our life, not just for a podcast, because when
the winds and the waves of doubt beat upon our
house of faith, you can go back to those karens.
You can go back to those sign posts and say
this is why I believe.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, yeah, they give us you know, the guardrails they
you know, I've once heard it.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
If the great theological virtues are faith, hope, and love.
You know, faith is that which gives us eyes to
see the path, but hope is that which sustains us
on the path when life gets hard, right, and so
we need faith hope, and then of course love is
the thing that we're destinying with and toward ultimately in God.
But you're right, like the walk of faith the walk
(08:54):
of life is hard, and we need we need help,
we need guides, we need clues, we need and thankfully
we need hope. And as it turns out, on the
Christian story, as you know, we read in First Peter
one three that hope is a living hope, right, It's
one that we can actually bank our lives on, and
that's a good thing in a world. You know, otherwise
there is no hope, and we're going to have angst,
(09:16):
in despair and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
So you say, there are two stories, and the one
story is taken just as seriously as the other story
in the book. It's not as though you say, well,
there's only one story, it's the Christian story. But you say,
there's the non religious story. So give us some of
the guide posts, as it were, by which people say,
(09:42):
I believe the non religious story, Scientism, materialism, reductionism, and
so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Good. So, you know, I thought it would be helpful
to kind of have a foil as we're kind of
exploring these these these pieces of evidence, these clues, these signs,
And one of the dominant foils, at least in the West,
is the conversation that's taking place between the religious and
the non religious, or the theistic and the atheistic world views.
And so in the beginning, I just kind of set
(10:11):
these out as are two generic stories. Right, You've got
the theistic version of the religious story, you know, which
has God is the central figure of personal being that's
worthy of worship. And then on the non religious view,
at least in the West, the way that it's typically
understood is it's a kind of story that begins with
matter or something like that. And then if you wanted
a narrow tival arc, it would be, you know that
(10:31):
we humans arrive in this world late and local, at
least on Earth as far as we know, and we're
kind of vulnerable selves, and so we immediately try to
buffer ourselves from the ravages of the world and the
ravages of each other through technology. And there's a whole
bunch of philosophical assumptions to both of these views.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Stay right there, we'll be back soon to rejoin Hank
Hatigraphs 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.
(11:10):
This creative 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 understanding our universe
(11:33):
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That's equip dot org. With the new atheists increasing their
(12:03):
mockery of Christianity and militant secularism ridiculing religious convictions of
all stripes, we clearly don't need zellous but misguided Christians
inviting further abuse by misreading and misrepresenting Biblical prophecies. Hank
Hanigraph's book Prophetic Stars in the Constellation of Biblical Prophecy
(12:23):
will enable you to understand, remember, and communicate Biblical prophecy. Moreover,
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(13:09):
decades as host of The Bible answer Man broadcast. With
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of the Bible, religions and cults, the resurrection and afterlife,
and many more issues vital to a better understanding of
(13:33):
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Check out the benefits of membership at equip dot org.
Once again, that's equip dot org. Well, here again our
(15:08):
hand catigraph and his guest professor Paul Gouhl, as they
continue their conversation.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
The theistic version of the religious story, you know, which
has God is the central figure, a personal being that's
worthy of worship. And then on the non religious view,
it's a kind of story that begins with matter or
something like that. And there's a whole bunch of philosophical
assumptions to both of these views and the five that
I just sort of unpacked briefly as we begin this
journey for the non religious view are pretty dominant, at
(15:36):
least in the West, in our culture, and those would
be Number One, a theory about knowledge. It's called scientism,
but it's just the idea in the weak form that
our best knowledge comes from the sciences. That's a pretty
dominant view out there. That often is thought to entail
Number two materialism or what I would better be called physicalism,
and that's the idea that all that exists are material things,
or all that exists is that which physics tells us exists.
(15:59):
Three that often is thought to entail atheism. We're sometimes
told that if sciences are best or only source of knowledge,
and that entails only what physics says, well, then somehow
that entails that God doesn't exist. So there's an atheistic
strand here. And then of course that would lead to
a theory about meaning that there is no meaning, so
that would be nihilism. And then there's also this impulse
(16:21):
within much of the sciences and much of the Academy
for reductionism, right, that you're nothing but as Actually Sean Carroll,
I think he puts it wonderfully in his book The
Big Picture, written from a non religious or naturalist or
atheistic perspective, he says, humans are nothing but organized mud, right,
And so you have the nothing buttery. We're just reduced
to the little parts, whatever the little parts happen to be.
(16:41):
And so that's one story. And then I put that
in contrast with a broadly theistic story. As we begin
this journey.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
How important is it to learn to ask the right
questions and maybe even ask them in the right sequence.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think it's
super important. You know. Aristytle said that if we want
and this is a really bad paraphrase, if we want
to be successful in life, we need to learn to
ask the right preliminary questions.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
So, if you think about it, everyone longs for happiness,
As Pascal says, even the person who hangs himself wants
to be happy. He just thinks that that's how he
will become happy. An Aristotle's point was, well, it all
depends on what happiness is, right, We've got to ask
these preliminary questions. Can we know it? Is it attainable?
What is it? And that's a skill in our largely
(17:30):
anti intellectual culture and our largely information driven, internet driven culture.
Now that we have you know, AI doing the thinking
for us, perhaps that art of asking good questions is
rapidly disappearing. And with that, though, our inability for wisdom
right and to live life the way that we ought.
So it's super important. Yeah, I'm glad you glad you
(17:51):
asked that.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, so let's get right into it and tackle each
one of these carts, each one of these sign posts,
each one of these these piles of rocks that we
can look back to when we're shaken in our faith.
I run into so many people. I was talking to
a young man just the other day and he said,
you know, science has shaken my faith once again. So
(18:14):
when that happens, you can go back to these signposts,
the first of which is the universe. Talk about the
universe and why there is something as opposed to there
being nothing at all.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, good, Yeah, I thought it would be you know,
for beginning with Lady Nature, we're looking at the four
great origin debates, right, because we're looking at the beginning
of the story. I thought it would be important not
only for everyone else, but because I find them super
interesting topics in their own right. Is to look at
the origin of the universe, life, species, and humans. And
when it comes to the universe itself, there's at least three, well,
(18:48):
there's at least four facts that immediately cry out more
that you you know, as we begin to learn about
certain features of the universe. Number one, that the universe
is contingent, and all that means is that it exists,
but it didn't have to exist. Right, in the same
way that I'm contingent. I exist, but maybe my parents,
if they never met or if they never had kids,
I would not have existed, Right, So I'm a contingent being.
(19:11):
As it turns out, the universe is a contingent thing.
It exists, but it didn't have to So that's a
fact that cries out for explanation. Number two, it's temporily finite.
You know, standard Big Bang cosmology tells us that the
universe began a finite time ago. Number three's and this
was actually mind boggling to me, was it's just immense right,
(19:34):
it's you know, on average, they think there's one hundred
billion galaxies with one hundred billion stars each. It's an
immense universe with an immense amount of matter and stars
and things like that. And then number four, it's finally
tuned for life. And these four facts again cry out
for explanation. And this is where you enter back into
the story of the two competing views, right, is are
(19:56):
these facts best explained by science or they have no explanation,
or is the theistic explanation the best explanation? And I
argue that these four facts are best explained given the
reality of a personal being, that is God.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I think in the context of the discussion, it's probably
worthwhile to bring out the column cosmological argument. And by
the way, I don't want people to get the impression
that when you read this book you're reading a manual.
You powerfully use the power of story to communicate logical
truth propositions, and maybe should cash that out first.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean, given what I argue, apologetics
or cultural apologetics should be where we engage the reason
and the imagination, where we respect people as fully embodied
humans that make culture and our shape. By culture, you
know that we're creatures with emotions and imaginations and things
like that. I wanted to write a story that helped
people awaken into the good, goodness and truth and beauty
(20:55):
of the Christian story and to be at awe because
these features of the world that we're looking at the
eleven actually are they. As Plato would say with respect
to philosophy, philosophy begins in wonder. Well, I think it's
the same thing for the true story of the world.
As we look at these features of the world, they
ought to awaken in us a sense of wonder that
sets us on a journey of discovery. So, yeah, you're right.
I as a philosopher, as a trained philosopher teaches phlosophy,
(21:18):
I love syllogisms, but as a human being and trying
to love my neighbor, I want to help. I write
this not for my peers, right, my fellow philosophers, but
I write this as public facing kind of philosophy, and
so I write it with other epistemic values, including clarity
when some you know, I think there I share a
(21:39):
lot of my own personal journey and things like that.
So you're right, it's not strictly although it's all there.
I'm trying to communicate it in a special way.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, so the cosmological argument clone.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Right, So this is a wonderful argument that's super easy.
It actually is. You could do premises in a conclusion
everything that begins to exist as a cause. Premise too,
the universe began to exist, Therefore the universe has a cause.
And then as you look at the nature of the cause,
that cause basically starts to sound a lot like the
theistic god and the way that science. You mentioned, you know,
your friend that you're talking to that said somehow science
(22:12):
is making him think that God doesn't exist again, you know,
that is a kind of thought that's out there a
lot in culture. But if we think about you know,
the question is how does science actually function with respect
to the debates over ultimate reality? And the way that
I would say it is that the empirical evidence from
science serves as evidence in a philosophical premise that leads
(22:34):
to a theological conclusion. Right, So the empirical evidence, for example,
that the universe is finite tempoorly that it began is
evidence that we have from Big Bang cosmology, the expansion
of the universe because of red shift and the microwave
background radiation that we see all over the universe. These
are data points that function is evidence in support of
a premis premise too in the column argument that has
(22:56):
a theological conclusion, and so that's what's behind one. There's
actually three arguments that I'm presenting in that chapter, but
that's one of them related to the temporal finitude of
the universe.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
So you talk about the immensity of the universe you
just mentioned. Now they're saying the universe has trillions of galaxies,
each with billions of stars. The universe is maybe one
hundred billion light years in diameter. Multiply that by five
point nine trillion you have the number of miles. But
it's immense, it's incomprehensible. But how does that become a
(23:27):
signpost toward God?
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Well, yeah, good, So what's kind of interesting In one way,
the immensity, the sheared numbers, the sheareredmensities to me actually
awakens awe and wonder. And that's just autobiographical. When I
consider this, it's just mind boggling, and it causes me
to ask this question. And it's actually a question that
has been debated since at least Copernicus, but probably forever,
(23:50):
as we've been thinking is does the universe care about
humans at all?
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Is there any reason to think that I'm matter? And
so you have, like on the non religious story of
the Guiding Principles, is something called the principle of indifference,
and that actually, like you can see this in Richard
Dawkins and many who will just say the universe cares
nothing for humans, right, And I think the immensity of
the universe causes us to ask that question, does the
universe care for us? And so you have a number
(24:16):
of atheists that give these really kind of odd arguments
from smallness, and it goes something like this. They're actually
bad arguments, but they're like, the universe is really big
and humans are really small, Therefore the universe doesn't care
for us, right, you know, there's no point to the universe,
And of course you know that's not a good argument,
but there is this sense in the immensity of the
(24:37):
universe that we're trying to locate our place within this.
What does it mean to be humans in an immense universe?
And as far as we know, there is no other
life as far as we know right, Earth is the
only place where we already discovered that, and minds like
ours are really late and really local in that story,
and so that question just becomes front and center when
I consider the history and the scope of the universe.
(24:58):
I wanted to include that as well.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yes, sometimes you hear the argument that we're just a
speck on a spec in the middle of specklessness. The
immensity of the universe makes us meaningless, and you sort
of allude to that. But in reality, I think one
of the things I mean, this is not part of
the book, but something maybe even comment on. I oftentimes
(25:21):
think that if we only live for seventy eighty years,
being around for a short period of time in an
immense universe may point to our meaninglessness, but the fact
is we were created for eternity.
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 Hanagraft'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
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story Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe and Your Place
in It, by doctor Paul Gould. Call a resource consultant
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(26:43):
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Broadcast is funded by listeners like you. We're on the
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time events and published timetables counting down the end have
(27:07):
proven to be wrong one hundred percent of the time.
When doomsday predictions fail, there is double duty damage. Many
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a result of these failed predictions, and the public image
of Christianity is damaged, making Christians appear to be hopelessly
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