Closer to Truth Podcasts

MEANING - Theologians have no tougher task than explaining evil, its enormity even more than its existence. Give the clergy their due: they've devised clever, even profound, rationale. But at the end of the long day, do these explanations, or rationalizations, really work?

MEANING - Whoever believes in the existence of God must explain the presence of evil. To theists, it's "the problem of evil," which they struggle to resolve. To atheists, it's "the argument from evil," which they wield like a sword. Moreover, if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, how could God not have created evil?

CONSCIOUSNESS - Death is the ultimate defeat. No matter our successes, we are all doomed to suffer the final failure. But some claim that death is not final. Can the defeat be defeated?

CONSCIOUSNESS - Do human beings have immortal souls? Science dismisses anything nonphysical, and even some theologians reject immortal souls. But if no immortal souls, what happens to eternal life?

CONSCIOUSNESS - I'd like to live forever. Wouldn't you? But what would "living forever" mean? Almost every religion offers life after death. What would immortality and eternal life be like?

CONSCIOUSNESS - Consciousness is the great mystery of inner awareness. Where does it exist? Humans, obviously. Animals? Which animals? Chimps, elephants, dolphins, dogs? Termites, snails, amoeba, bacteria? What about non-biological intelligences like super-supercomputers of the future?

MEANING - God is supposed to be all-powerful, all-knowing and all good. In addition, is God is supposed to be 'all-free'? What does it mean for God to be perfectly free? Can God do literally anything? Can God make choices or must God always do the 'best', whatever 'best' may mean for each action? Are there any limits on God's freedom?

MEANING - How to imagine the experience of eternal life? Would we sense ourselves? How would we feel? Whom would we know? What would we do? What would God do? Living forever seems so absurd, yet eternal life is the promise of almost every religion. But if we cannot even imagine what eternal life will be, how can we have hope in its reality?

CONSCIOUSNESS - Physically, humans and animals seem similar. Mentally, humans seem so superior. What's so special about human nature?

COSMOS - Some scientists claim that the universe did not have a beginning. Some theologians contend that the universe did not need a beginning.

COSMOS - What if nothing ever existed? Scientists claim that the universe came from nothing. But what's the nature of nothing? That's where the confusion lies.

CONSCIOUSNESS - Why do we spend so much of our lives not awake? What do sleeping and dreaming reveal about consciousness?

COSMOS - In the far, far future, what happens to planets, stars, galaxies, black holes? What’s the ‘Big Rip’ and the ‘Big Crunch’? And if 'multiple universes’ exist, if one universe ends, do others begin?

CONSCIOUSNESS - Some claim their scientific study of ESP overturns the worldview of science. Should we take these startling pronouncements seriously? If so, what would it mean for events in the physical world to defy all known physical laws? Either there is something misleading about those events or something beyond those physical laws.

CONSCIOUSNESS - If ESP is real--that's a big "If"--then our entire worldview would change. Existence would be somehow enlarged. But extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.