0:05

Uh Oh.

0:30

All right friends Greg Coeckel here. The

0:33

host of your show. I've got a guest here I want to tell

0:35

you about in just a moment and You

0:38

know when I wrote the story of reality how the

0:40

world began how it ends and everything important that happens

0:42

in between Whenever you write a book

0:44

you always List the acknowledgments

0:47

like here the people that you're thankful

0:50

For for helping you write it and the

0:52

editors and all the people that have been

0:54

significant in writing it But here's the way

0:56

I started out my acknowledgments for

0:58

this particular book I

1:01

wrote a host of people deserve credit For

1:04

any fruitfulness this work affords to its

1:06

readers Many will

1:08

note the influence of three authors remarkably

1:12

capable Christian thinkers who've

1:14

had a profound impact on my thinking as

1:17

a Christian and therefore on this Work

1:20

and on my life and then I list them

1:22

the first is C.S. Lewis The

1:25

second is Francis Schaeffer and the third

1:27

is my guest today a

1:29

man who has Gosh, he

1:31

has influenced me more as

1:34

a Christian thinker then Than

1:36

anyone else like I can even imagine in my

1:38

50 years now as

1:41

a follower of Jesus of Nazareth

1:43

He's the distinguished professor of philosophy

1:45

at Talbot School of Theology author

1:49

or contributor to more than 95 books 100

1:53

articles in journals Of

1:55

course, I'm talking about none other than JP

1:58

Worland Jay. It is what a treated

2:00

as to have you on board with me

2:02

today. Well Greg, I love you so much.

2:04

It's just always good to be with you and

2:06

work together. Well, I'm looking at

2:09

this little bio clip here about the

2:11

new book that you have that we're

2:13

going to be talking about. It says

2:15

that you were in 2022, was

2:18

selected by the Best Schools as

2:20

one of the 50 most influential

2:22

living philosophers in the

2:24

world. I hope you stay on that list

2:27

of living, influential

2:30

philosophers for a long time, but you and I

2:32

are starting to push the end of our program

2:35

here, aren't we, a little bit? Well,

2:37

I can tell I'm sliding for home, that's for

2:39

sure. You

2:42

know, we've

2:45

had a friendship for many, many, many years.

2:47

In fact, before we

2:49

started Stand to Reason 30 years

2:51

ago, you and I counseled together

2:53

about beginning the organization. You and

2:55

I counseled together about my thoughts

2:57

about getting married and who I

2:59

was going to marry. I mean,

3:01

that's how far back our relationship

3:03

goes. But I remember

3:06

a conversation that we had, this isn't related to the

3:08

book. We'll get to that in a moment, but we

3:11

actually had it with, I don't know if you recall this,

3:13

and about 12 years ago, maybe

3:16

2011 or 2012,

3:19

you and I and Frank

3:21

Beckwith and Craig Hazen and Bill Craig,

3:24

were in Turlock, California at

3:26

some kind of event. And we were all

3:28

having dinner there. We drove there

3:31

in a van, and we were enjoying

3:33

dinner and talking. And we were

3:35

reflecting on those people that were important

3:37

to us when we were kind of

3:40

all pups during the Jesus movement way

3:42

back when. And you were with Crusade

3:44

that time, and Bill Craig was with

3:47

Crusade at the time. And I

3:50

don't know where Hazen was or Beckwith, but

3:52

we were all fairly young Christians. And we

3:54

had learned from

3:56

some other people like Norm Gleiser and

3:58

Josh McDowell and John Montgomery

4:00

and Francis Schaeffer. There

4:03

weren't many people back then. And

4:05

I remember you, as we

4:08

were reflecting on the people that we owed

4:10

so much to, to help us to kind

4:12

of get into play, that

4:14

you were cheering us on.

4:17

And you were saying to our little band of brothers

4:19

there, look at brothers, we

4:21

only got another 10 or 15 more years. That's

4:24

it. Let's just finish

4:26

well. Let's just keep going

4:28

forward. And here

4:30

we are, almost

4:32

15 years later, and we're still

4:34

in play, aren't we, brother? Well,

4:37

we sure are. And I'll tell you, I

4:40

just want to finish well, and I want

4:42

to die well, and not embarrass

4:44

the Lord. So it's

4:46

kind of amazing, but we are still

4:48

going. And I guess it's because,

4:51

in my mind, there's no other game in town.

4:54

This is the big deal right here. Yeah,

4:56

that reminds me of Peter's comment there at

4:58

the end of John chapter six, when Jesus

5:00

had some pretty hard words for the audience,

5:02

the bread of life discourse. And

5:09

a lot of people left, and he asked the

5:11

disciples, okay, you're going

5:13

to go? And Peter's speaking for him, says,

5:16

where are we going to go? You have

5:18

the words. Doesn't mean it's easy, right?

5:21

Right. It doesn't mean it's going

5:24

to get easier, or

5:26

you have the words that give eternal life. That

5:30

conversation stood out for me. In fact, I

5:32

wrote a small piece about it for our

5:35

group called the Third Column, and

5:37

how the influence that those men had had

5:39

for us, in maybe I'd call it the

5:41

first column, and we were kind of the

5:43

second column, and then the

5:45

third column was all

5:48

the multitudes that we've been

5:50

able to reach. And

5:52

with your wonderful program, MA Phil

5:54

Program, I remember your goal

5:56

there, when I started in 1993, that... MAFL

6:00

program. It took me a long time to graduate.

6:02

You guys are so patient with me. 13

6:05

years, but your goal was to graduate 100 students from

6:07

your program that ended

6:13

up getting PhDs and began having a

6:15

powerful impact in the world. Whatever became

6:17

of that particular goal? Well,

6:20

we actually have now placed

6:24

about 230 in PhD

6:26

programs. There are like 80 to 85

6:28

tenure-track professors. There are people

6:35

like you and Stan

6:38

Wallace, who's the president of

6:40

Global Scholars, who are just

6:43

multiplying an impact beyond anything

6:46

that I could do. I

6:49

think when you multiply

6:51

yourself, it just

6:53

makes sense. God has blessed what

6:57

we've been doing. I think one of the reasons,

6:59

Greg, is that we are faithful

7:02

to the Scriptures and

7:04

we're solid historic inerrant

7:07

to Scripture. We

7:11

really haven't veered from

7:13

that original commitment and

7:15

vision. I do

7:18

a talk now that

7:20

used to be titled, I actually have the

7:22

sticker in my Bible

7:24

right here, the yellow sticker. I wrote it down.

7:26

I got so frustrated with so

7:28

many Christians being confused about basic things

7:31

that are not confusing. It ought

7:34

not to be confusing. I just wrote down,

7:37

faithfulness is not

7:39

theologically complicated. It's

7:42

not that complicated theologically.

7:44

Now, with the encroaching world

7:48

and all the things that are happening and

7:50

the new isms and everything we're

7:52

facing now with the sexual issues and with the

7:54

critical theory and all of this, it's the things

7:56

that you've been aware of for a long time

7:58

in your profession as a professor. of

8:01

philosophy, and now it's now right

8:03

in the mainstream. It's everywhere and it's really

8:06

taken a toll on the church. Why

8:08

is it now that you

8:12

are closing, you know, a big segment of

8:14

your life with your magnum

8:16

opus, titled the Substance

8:18

of Consciousness, a comprehensive defense of contemporary

8:20

substance dualism, which for a lot of

8:22

people they're not sure what that means,

8:25

but I'll tell you simply, JP

8:28

is defending the existence of the soul. Okay,

8:32

why this book now? That's

8:35

a really good question, Greg. My

8:39

own view has been that Christians

8:43

are underrepresented and need

8:47

to influence and penetrate the

8:49

highest tiers of

8:51

the academy. Now I am fully

8:55

convinced that we all have different roles

8:57

in the body of Christ and there

9:00

are several layers of impact. So

9:02

that's why I've written a number of

9:04

popular books for

9:07

a general audience because I am deeply

9:09

committed to that. But I

9:11

also believe that we need to be having

9:15

some of us publish in

9:17

high-quality journals and

9:19

with high-quality academic presses like

9:21

Wiley Blackwell, in my

9:24

view Oxford and Cambridge and Wiley

9:26

Blackwell are the three best presses

9:29

in philosophy. Because I

9:31

want to get Christian

9:34

ideas that out

9:36

in the graduate courses at

9:39

secondary universities, I want secular

9:41

professors to be reading my

9:44

pushback and Brandon Rickleball,

9:46

who wrote it with me, our

9:49

pushback against the claims that we're

9:51

basically just our brains and

9:53

nervous systems or our bodies and the idea that

9:55

there's a soul is kind

9:57

of like the tooth fairy. And that's ridiculous.

10:00

And so we're pushing back, we're

10:02

wanting to get the book

10:04

reviewed in scholarly journals because

10:06

we want the academic

10:09

community who ends up becoming the

10:11

professors of our students

10:13

who go to college

10:16

to have to think carefully

10:18

about their outlandish claims because

10:20

there are, if

10:22

I may just put it this way,

10:24

there's a work with considerable gravitas that

10:28

argues against them. And if

10:30

they're going to keep reading

10:33

undergraduates like Shooting Fish in a

10:35

Barrel, they can't

10:37

do it and have any kind

10:39

of intellectual integrity unless they interact

10:41

with our book and other books

10:43

of the same type like by

10:45

Richard Swinburne. They have a duty

10:47

now to answer our arguments. And

10:50

so that's why I want,

10:53

plus it makes Christians I

10:55

think feel proud and confident

10:58

if they can see a Bill Craig who

11:01

is able to interact at

11:03

the highest level academically. And

11:06

that just elevates

11:08

the confidence of the community.

11:11

They say, well, that person

11:13

speaks for me and

11:16

that sort of thing. And I just felt like

11:18

that was a need. Well, you

11:20

worked with Bill on the philosophical foundations

11:22

of Christian worldview and one of the

11:25

places where you wrote quite a bit

11:27

about the soul and expanded the foundation

11:29

for a lot of people who are

11:31

geared towards that way of thinking about

11:33

Christianity. It's not for everybody, but

11:35

I think that particular

11:38

book, it fits what you

11:40

just described, Jay, that we

11:43

can look to our people and say, well, maybe

11:45

I don't know how to answer that, but we've

11:47

got people who've done the deep dive and that

11:49

are respectable people and that have

11:52

status and gravitas, to use your word,

11:54

in the field and

11:56

have provided an answer. And actually, this is one of

11:58

the reasons we started. I was motivated

12:01

to start Stand to Reason. It

12:03

was right when I was starting the MA

12:05

Phil program. I'd already

12:07

been exposed to your work. Actually, I took a

12:10

course from you over at Simon Greenleaf University with

12:12

my first MA. And

12:16

it was the realization that we

12:18

had the best thinkers historically for

12:20

a thousand years. If

12:23

you look at the history of

12:25

philosophy, all that multi-volume set, they

12:28

were almost all Christians from the time of the

12:30

ancients or from the time of Jesus. Yet

12:33

these ideas were not trickling down. We

12:37

weren't influencing the general

12:39

market, the public square,

12:41

the way we ought to. And that's what

12:44

I learned from you and other people who are

12:46

speaking up, as I think it

12:48

was Osginus said, we

12:50

weren't out-thought. We were

12:52

just not there when the thinking was being

12:54

done. Wow. Wow. I

12:58

think that you have raised

13:00

the bar among people

13:04

who minister to college students, people

13:06

who are very... They

13:09

read and they think

13:12

you have raised the bar as

13:14

to what Christian apologetics and Christian

13:16

philosophy means for hundreds

13:20

of thousands of people. And

13:22

I think that I just want to compliment you

13:24

on that because you

13:26

and your ministry is

13:28

known for excellence

13:31

of quality. Whenever

13:33

your ministry does something, they do it well

13:36

and they do it honestly. I mean, you take

13:38

questions and if you don't know the answer, you

13:40

say so. I do the same thing. But

13:43

I want to thank you for

13:47

what you've done in maintaining a

13:49

ministry of integrity and maintaining

13:51

a ministry that while it

13:53

reaches a mass audience, it

13:56

is integrous and it has worked

13:58

with excellence. Thank you. So

14:00

much for that. Well, you know, the old saying,

14:02

you stand on the shoulders of those who came

14:05

before, and I've been standing on your shoulders for

14:07

a long time. In fact, I think I've mentioned

14:09

this to you before. I

14:11

don't actually know where you end and I begin

14:13

sometimes when I'm talking about the J.P. Borland say

14:15

that, or did I make that up, or I

14:18

don't know. But I'm saying it

14:20

now, so I'm going to take credit for it, you

14:22

know? No, that's right. That kind of thing. But one

14:24

of the areas, of course, that you've had the deepest

14:26

influence on my own thinking, is

14:28

in the

14:30

academic environment that we came

14:32

to know each other in over at

14:34

Talbot and the magnificent M.A. Phil program

14:37

there. There's nothing like it. Other

14:39

schools do programs, you

14:41

know, M.A. philosophy, but it

14:44

was such a magnificent experience for me to

14:46

be under your tutelage and the others that

14:48

were part of that program. You've expanded that

14:50

program since then. So just anybody

14:53

thinking about an M.A. Phil, start

14:56

with Talbot and end with Talbot.

14:58

You don't have to go any further as far

15:00

as I'm concerned. But the class that I

15:02

had the most fun in and that I

15:05

was able to translate into active

15:07

conversations with people on the air, because then

15:09

I was doing commercial radio at KBRT, and

15:11

of course you were the show a number

15:14

of times too, was my philosophy of mind

15:16

class, the whole class about the soul. I

15:20

wonder if you could kind of introduce our

15:22

discussion about this issue by talking

15:24

about the

15:27

significance of the discussion for Christians.

15:31

Well, there is a view

15:35

of the world that's in the drinking

15:37

water now in Western culture, and

15:39

people don't even know it's influenced

15:42

them. And it's philosophical

15:44

naturalism. Now postmodernism is

15:47

also having an impact,

15:49

but I think that the fundamental one

15:52

is a naturalist view of the world,

15:54

which says basically that the physical world

15:56

is all there is, was, or ever

15:58

will be. the

16:00

only or at least the

16:02

very best way of knowing

16:05

a reality is through the

16:07

hard sciences, physics, chemistry, geology,

16:09

neuroscience, and so on. And everything else

16:11

is sort of maybe your

16:13

opinion or what you'd like to be true,

16:15

but you can't really know that it's true.

16:18

And so Christians have

16:20

retreated. They've accepted

16:22

that. And the authority that

16:24

the doctor has is so much greater

16:26

than the authority the pastor has because

16:29

the doctor actually knows something. The

16:33

pastor understands

16:35

the rules of the

16:38

Kiwanis Club or the First Baptist Church,

16:40

but they're not

16:42

true for everybody and they're his

16:44

truth, that sort of thing. Well,

16:48

the problem is that a

16:50

naturalist worldview cannot withstand

16:53

scrutiny. It falls apart. And one

16:55

of the ways it falls apart

16:58

is it cannot explain

17:01

the nature of human persons.

17:04

You can't explain how consciousness

17:06

could arise from brute matter.

17:08

You can't explain what

17:13

unifies my consciousness upon my brain,

17:15

but I look at the world

17:17

and I have one unified

17:20

conscious perspective on the world.

17:23

And you can't explain a whole

17:26

host of things about us. And

17:29

so I wanted

17:31

to make the case

17:33

that the soul is not a

17:35

discarded and outdated notion, but

17:38

it is actually more reasonable than believing on

17:40

my brain or than

17:42

on my body or some

17:44

physical computer or some physical object

17:47

at some time. Now

17:49

I'll tell you a story and then I'll turn

17:51

it back over to you. A handful of years

17:53

ago I was in a Sunday school class at

17:55

the church I attend and

17:58

there were I would say 40 people in

18:00

the class. class. And this person was giving

18:02

a talk about how

18:04

the self grows and how

18:07

to form yourself. She

18:11

used the word soul. One

18:14

gentleman raised his hand. He was an older

18:16

gentleman, and he said, I've been a Christian

18:19

now for 30 years, and

18:22

I still have no idea whatever

18:25

as to what a soul is.

18:28

Can anybody in here tell me, what

18:31

is a soul? Now,

18:33

I can answer the question, but that's not

18:35

the point. The point is that how could

18:37

you be a believer for 30 years and

18:40

not have that down in a

18:43

way that's fairly clear

18:45

and understandable? And

18:49

so what that shows is that

18:52

we have turned what

18:54

we are over to the scientists, and

18:56

we don't spend much time thinking about

18:58

it in light of our Christian worldview.

19:02

Well, I remember you saying once

19:05

when they have these shootings at

19:07

schools, these terrible things that happen

19:09

that if they

19:11

want someone to bring comfort, they bring

19:13

the pastor. If they want someone to

19:15

help understand what went on, they bring

19:17

the psychiatrist. And this is the dichotomy

19:19

that you're talking about. That's right. Exactly

19:21

right. It did strike me, though, as

19:23

unusual when the person says, I don't

19:25

know anything about the soul, that

19:28

I understand what he means. Nobody's tutored

19:30

him in some of the specifics, but he probably

19:32

knows more about his soul than he knows about

19:34

anything else in his life because of... Oh, absolutely.

19:37

Absolutely. But he just doesn't know how to think

19:39

about it in those terms. And this is one

19:41

of the things that you helped me to do.

19:43

We're going to take a quick break here, JP,

19:45

and then when they come back, I want to

19:47

talk a little bit just

19:49

about the aspect of attending to the

19:51

soul. If we have a soul, then

19:54

what does that mean for our Soulless

19:57

Development? Okay. And Then later on, we'll get

19:59

into that. The more the arguments why

20:01

we think there is such a thing

20:03

and it's not just the so called

20:05

ghost in the machine. My guest here,

20:08

Jp Borland I'm one of my. Most

20:11

important mentors of my life. His

20:13

recent book, the Substance of Consciousness.

20:15

a comprehensive defense of contemporary substance.

20:17

Dualism will be that could just

20:19

a moment here and stand within.

20:21

Reason stay with us. A

20:24

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asks as hashtag str ask

22:05

All right. Talking now with C.P.

22:07

Moreland, the distinguished professor

22:10

from Talbot University, my

22:12

dear friend, one of my most

22:14

important mentors in my life, certainly in terms

22:17

of me as a thinking Christian. The

22:19

book, he's just recently come

22:21

out. When was this released, J.P.? It

22:25

was released in November of 2023. Okay.

22:28

So it's been out a few months.

22:31

The Substance of Consciousness, a comprehensive defense

22:33

of contemporary substance

22:35

dualism. Now, it's a mouthful, and the

22:37

book is meant to address

22:40

the highest levels of the academy on

22:42

issues that are being discussed at the highest levels

22:44

of the academy. We just talked about the importance

22:46

of that. Of course, J.P. has written a number

22:48

of other books that deals with

22:51

this issue, Body and Soul with Scott

22:53

Ray, Immortality with Gary

22:55

Habermas. Is Immortality still in play? Is that still

22:57

on? Yes, it is. It's with a stock. Okay,

23:01

great. I mentioned Philosophical Foundations for a Christian

23:03

Worldview. That's more of a textbook, but you

23:05

got to have it if you're going to

23:07

think carefully about a whole host of issues

23:09

as a Christian. It's in my library. All

23:11

of these are actually. Actually,

23:16

the most successful book on this issue of

23:18

people want a very popular treatment, it's just

23:20

simply called The Soul. I

23:23

presume that's one of your more recent

23:25

books, I think, on this issue. Is

23:27

that right? I imagine it's still

23:29

in print. I checked it out with Amazon.

23:31

Yes. So if somebody wants to… Okay, one of

23:33

the basics, this is where you can go. But

23:36

let me talk just pastorally a little bit,

23:38

not so much philosophically about this issue. One of

23:40

the things that was so beneficial to me

23:42

sitting in your class on

23:44

the philosophy of mind, which

23:46

is what we're talking about here, was

23:49

for me to come

23:52

to the realization that I

23:55

didn't have a soul, I was a soul. I was

23:58

an embodied soul. body

24:01

union and that

24:04

I needed to, if that

24:07

were true, then it became important to

24:10

me to attend to the

24:12

health of my soul. And

24:15

honest to goodness, Jay, this

24:17

sounds weird probably, but

24:20

that was when I first started thinking

24:22

about being a virtuous

24:25

person, about developing

24:27

my soul in the area of virtue.

24:30

Now it didn't mean I didn't

24:32

care about being good, but for

24:34

some reason that word that you

24:36

introduced to me, I knew it before, but

24:38

it was a way that you introduced in

24:40

our communication and the classes and stuff, the

24:42

idea to attending to our

24:44

souls to develop virtue.

24:47

Like Eudaimonia, the

24:50

good life in the best sense of the

24:52

word, the virtuous life, virtue

24:54

ethics is another way

24:56

of characterizing. First time I ever thought about

24:58

that, but it was because I realized

25:02

that I had this dimension

25:04

that needed to be taken

25:06

care of as much or even more

25:08

as my physical body

25:12

needed to be taken care of. Can you

25:14

talk about that concept a

25:16

little bit? The care of

25:18

the soul? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

25:20

You can't really fix something if you don't

25:23

know what it is. I mean, I can't

25:25

fix a car because I don't know what

25:28

it is inside, but somebody who really knows

25:30

what an engine is like has

25:32

the ability to repair it where

25:35

I don't. And the same is true

25:37

for personal spiritual growth. Growing

25:39

in Christ requires that I have some

25:42

understanding of what I am. Now,

25:46

the problem is that most people

25:48

who were

25:50

like I used to be and who were

25:52

like you were before that class

25:55

that struck you tended

25:58

to view the Christian life in of

26:02

pleasing God by being obedient in

26:07

terms of right and wrong and and

26:09

guilt and forgiveness

26:12

and that was the extent of our thinking.

26:14

Now that was all true and good. That's

26:16

not the problem. The problem

26:18

is it left out a whole other part

26:20

of what

26:22

we are before God and that's

26:24

the cultivation of our souls. And

26:27

when you start thinking about that, then

26:30

you start thinking about things

26:33

like virtues and

26:35

learning to flourish and

26:39

thrive as the

26:42

human person God made us to be

26:44

and there are ways to thrive and

26:46

ways not to thrive. And

26:49

so virtues are

26:51

our characteristics that are

26:55

things like kindness or

26:58

courage or

27:00

truthfulness and honesty.

27:04

Those are things that if

27:06

you cultivate those and those

27:08

will require you taking certain

27:10

practices on, but

27:13

if you do that then you

27:15

will become formed in dependence

27:18

on the Holy Spirit which means I

27:20

don't do this alone. I always ask

27:22

for His help to give me strength to go

27:24

further than I could on my own, but

27:27

you end up actually increasingly embodying

27:29

the fruit of the Spirit which

27:31

if you've looked at that list,

27:35

who in the world would not want that?

27:37

Who wouldn't want a dad to look like

27:39

that or one of your best friends to

27:41

be that way? And so when

27:44

you learn about the soul, I'll

27:46

just say very simply the soul

27:49

is an immaterial individual

27:51

thing that contains

27:54

consciousness and

27:56

animates the body. So it enlivens

27:58

the body if you take the soul of

28:00

the body, it's a corpse now, it's not a body.

28:05

It's a body that contains your consciousness and not

28:07

your brain, although they interact and affect one

28:10

another. So, cultivating

28:12

my beliefs

28:16

and what

28:18

I think about, how

28:20

I engage in self-talk when it's

28:22

negative and that's controlling my thoughts

28:25

that are in my soul,

28:28

my desires and learning to cultivate

28:30

some desires and trying to lay

28:33

aside others, all

28:35

of those are ways

28:37

of cultivating the strength

28:39

and godliness of

28:42

your soulish dimension. And the

28:44

result is that not only

28:46

do you thrive, but

28:49

you become the kind of person

28:51

that is so pleasing

28:53

to God and He loves

28:56

when we grow like that. And

28:59

so, that is the gist

29:01

of how the soul relates to what you're

29:04

talking about. Knowing we have a

29:06

soul raises the question, well, how do

29:08

you grow one? I mean, what do I do to

29:10

make this thing grow, you know? And

29:13

that's the right question. I

29:16

think often about this passage and in fact,

29:18

I read it the other night in 1

29:20

Timothy where Paul says, a

29:22

physical exercise profits

29:25

a little, all right? There's some profit. Godliness

29:28

is a means of great gain for

29:30

it holds a promise not just for

29:32

this life, but also for the life

29:34

to come. And

29:37

that verse reminds me of something that I attribute to

29:39

you. I'm not sure if you've said this a bunch

29:41

and you'll recognize it or you said it once and

29:43

it stood out for me. I'll claim it. Okay, you

29:45

can claim it. And what

29:48

you said was, and this was

29:50

a transformative concept for me, especially

29:52

as you walk this life

29:54

and face the challenges that God allows

29:57

you to face in this life. 50

30:00

years for me as a Christian have been a very challenging

30:03

50 years. Satisfactions, fulfillments,

30:05

but a lot of challenge,

30:08

lots of heartache, lots of difficulty. I'm

30:10

not trying to be model, and I think

30:12

this is true for every person who walks

30:15

this path, including you. You

30:17

bet. But what you said was

30:19

that this life is

30:22

a place where God makes

30:24

us fit to spend eternity

30:26

with him. Does that sound

30:28

familiar to you? Yes, it does. And

30:31

you see, people

30:33

wonder why there's a hell. And

30:37

there are a lot of reasons for that.

30:40

For example, the demands of justice and

30:43

the violation of God's holiness. But one

30:45

of the reasons that

30:47

there is a hell, and Dautless

30:49

Willard put it this way, is he said,

30:51

nobody will go to heaven. Everyone

30:57

will be in heaven who can stand it. And

31:01

what he meant was that some people don't

31:03

like God, and they don't want to be

31:06

around them,

31:08

and they don't like what he stands for. And

31:11

so those people are

31:14

day by day cultivating a path

31:16

where they're hardening their hearts and

31:18

becoming less and less like

31:21

God intended us to be. But those of

31:23

us who are seeking to grow, and we

31:26

all have a long way to go, and we

31:28

all know that it's three steps forward and two

31:30

back. But at

31:32

least our aim is to continue to make

31:34

progress while we have life. We

31:37

are becoming more and more suitable

31:39

for a place like the afterlife. Now,

31:41

I'm not suggesting that this earns it

31:44

for us. I'm just saying that we

31:47

become the kind of person that hungers

31:49

for even more of this, which

31:52

we'll have in the afterlife.

31:55

So it's reminiscent of

31:57

Lewis's approach. little

32:00

bit in the Great Divorce, as

32:02

I recall. It's just like the people who

32:05

are not fit for heaven aren't going to

32:08

enjoy heaven, kind of the same concept. I've

32:10

always characterized the soul in a kind of

32:12

simple way. What we do at Standard Reason

32:14

is we kind of rub shoulders with the

32:16

smart people like you and then

32:19

try to figure it out and find a

32:21

way to translate it. So I've always kind

32:23

of characterized the soul as the invisible self,

32:26

which is the repository, the

32:29

place where, the locus of

32:32

our essential identity and

32:35

our thoughts and our beliefs and our acts

32:38

of will and our intentions and

32:40

those basic activities. It's not

32:43

surprising, though,

32:46

that there'd be so much pushback regarding

32:49

the existence of the soul and therefore

32:51

the necessity of all of the

32:53

works that you've done on the soul on all

32:55

of the levels that you've addressed them. Because

32:58

I've often started my talk,

33:01

a talk on apologetics, by saying, you know, when

33:03

you think about it, there's a lot of ways

33:05

to prove that Christianity is false. And

33:08

of course, nobody expects me to say that. But

33:11

they say, wait, our story starts in the beginning, God. If

33:13

there's no God, there's no story. And

33:16

one of the things is the

33:18

existence of the soul. Because if

33:21

we're just meat all the way down,

33:23

then there's nothing to survive

33:26

the death of our body

33:28

and therefore the issues of heaven and hell are...

33:31

They don't even arise. They don't even arise.

33:34

Now, what do you make

33:36

of people like Nancy

33:38

Murphy, who over at Fuller is a

33:41

Christian physicalist who thinks we are meat

33:44

all the way down, as it were, but still

33:46

there's a place for us in

33:48

the resurrection. How does that work? Because

33:50

some people encounter that. Well,

33:54

I've actually debated some Christians

33:56

who hold this view, and

33:58

they believe... that science

34:01

has pretty much shown that

34:04

we're our brains and that we're

34:06

not souls. That is

34:09

completely false, by the way. That

34:11

is not true, but given that they

34:14

hold that, in my

34:16

opinion, they want

34:18

to be respected by their

34:21

academic peers rather

34:23

than by the Christian

34:26

community and the Scriptures.

34:29

So they end up concluding

34:31

that when you

34:33

die, you either

34:37

go out of existence and

34:40

then at the general

34:42

resurrection, when

34:44

Christ comes back in

34:47

the final way, we are recreated

34:50

ex nihilo out of

34:53

nothing. There's

34:55

a huge time gap between our

34:58

death and our coming

35:00

alive again as as bodies,

35:03

living bodies, but

35:05

it will seem to us as if

35:07

it was the next instant. So the thief in

35:10

the cross, Jesus isn't really saying, you're going to

35:12

be with me in paradise this day. He's saying

35:15

it will seem to you as if

35:18

the next instant you're going to be with

35:20

me in paradise. Now just as a side,

35:23

when you're dying on a cross, I don't think

35:26

you're going to be using figurative language. I think

35:28

he was telling them what

35:30

all the Pharisees believed and that

35:32

is that once you die, your

35:34

soul departs and it goes

35:37

to God or in

35:39

another place that was called

35:41

a shi'ol and

35:44

that you will eventually get a resurrected body. That's

35:47

what he was saying but I think that's

35:49

why this happens and there are other

35:52

people besides Murphy that think that well

35:55

maybe when you die, you just

35:58

immediately get a new body. Now

36:00

the problem with that is if

36:03

I'm my body right now and I get a

36:05

new one, how is that me? Right.

36:08

You know, I mean it seems to be

36:10

like a person has one

36:12

set of clothes and

36:14

they take them off and get a new set

36:17

of clothes and it's still me because I'm the

36:19

one that wears these clothes and now wears those.

36:21

But if I'm the clothes then

36:23

if there's a new pair of set

36:25

of clothes that ain't me brother, you

36:27

know, and so there are problems there.

36:30

Well, I just had another thought too

36:32

in the first characterization of the idea

36:34

that, you know,

36:37

even though there's a gap of time,

36:39

the phrase you use it seems to

36:41

us or it seems to you that

36:43

no time has passed. Even

36:45

the phrase presumes a continuity

36:48

of the self, right? Well,

36:50

yes. Like I go

36:52

to sleep and I wake up, it's

36:54

still me that's doing these things. But

36:56

on this view when the body dies,

36:59

the individual, the entire

37:01

individual ceases to exist.

37:04

Yes. Yes. So there's

37:06

no continuity that you could seem like

37:09

it used to be whatever. I

37:11

agree completely. I mean unless

37:13

it's just in the new individual

37:17

that's created ex nihilo, he

37:19

has a built-in conscious

37:21

awareness of a self that he never was.

37:25

Well, that's misleading, isn't it?

37:27

God creates this in a

37:29

misleading way. I debated a

37:31

New Testament scholar named Middleton

37:33

at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

37:35

seven or eight years ago, I don't

37:37

remember, it's online, and he

37:39

was a New Testament scholar and a

37:41

Christian physicalist. And so the

37:44

debate went pretty well, honestly. But

37:46

I said, well, what do you do? So

37:48

what do you do with people that

37:51

die? What happens? And then he

37:53

said, well, they pop out of, they go out of

37:55

existence and then God recreates

37:57

them like you just said. the

38:00

general resurrection and I said, Well,

38:21

I have found in my pastoral

38:23

ministry that people who ask questions

38:25

like that are using

38:27

them as smoke screens. Because

38:30

they don't want, their real

38:32

issue is a deep spiritual

38:34

issue and it's just an

38:36

intellectual smokescreen. And I said,

38:38

with all due respect, sir,

38:40

we are at an academic

38:42

institution right now and

38:44

we are discussing this among academics.

38:46

The audience is filled with professors

38:48

and graduate students and I

38:50

happen to know out of 50 years

38:52

of working with university students that they

38:55

are, there are people that actually wonder

38:57

about this. And it's

38:59

our responsibility on pain

39:01

of derelict of our duty as

39:04

academics to answer their questions.

39:07

And I believe that what you're saying

39:09

here is abrogating your

39:11

responsibility to our honest people

39:13

who've got genuine questions. Well,

39:17

even that he would bring up the

39:20

kind of the parry that,

39:22

well, this is a spiritual

39:25

issue. Wait, a what? A

39:27

spiritual issue? I don't even know what that means

39:29

in the context of physicalism. I

39:32

don't either. See, because he's referring to

39:34

a realm that the

39:37

individual person doesn't seem to

39:39

participate in because

39:41

they're physical and that's it. Anyway,

39:43

so, yeah, thank you for clarifying some of that a

39:45

lot more we could talk about there. I wondered if

39:48

you could just give us, and there's a

39:50

host of rationales

39:53

that you give in all of your books and

39:55

then go in the deepest dive in the subject.

40:00

substance of consciousness, your most

40:02

recent, basically your magnum opus

40:05

on the soul and substance dualism. But can

40:07

you give us, what would be the most,

40:10

two of the most accessible

40:12

kind of ways

40:14

of arguing in favor

40:16

of the soul? Well,

40:19

the first one is that we

40:22

human persons cannot

40:24

be divided and

40:27

we cannot exist as a percentage of

40:29

ourselves. Now let me explain. If

40:32

you have a table, you could cut a

40:34

third of it off and burn

40:36

it and the table would exist as

40:38

two thirds of the original table. Or

40:42

you could split it down the middle. And

40:44

any material object, you could cut

40:46

it in half or you could

40:49

shave a portion off

40:51

until it got down to say 80% of the

40:53

original object. But

40:56

we're not like that. We're all

40:58

or nothing things. I'm either a person or I'm

41:00

not a person. There's

41:02

no sense to me being an 80%

41:04

person. And

41:07

somebody may lose their functioning. I

41:09

can guarantee you as approaching 76,

41:12

I've lost my ability to do a number of

41:14

things and I can't

41:16

remember certain things. But

41:18

it's still I. Because here, listen to

41:20

what I said. I have lost those

41:23

memories. It's still

41:25

I that's here but I don't have the

41:27

memories. Now

41:29

in operations, Greg, they have

41:31

taken out 55% or

41:35

more of the brain and there's

41:38

only 45% of the brain left. There

41:40

is a syndrome called Dandy

41:42

Walker's syndrome. People

41:45

ought to look it up. I've seen an x-ray

41:48

of a person who has this in their brain.

41:50

They have, are you ready? 50%

41:53

of a brain. There

41:56

is about a quarter of an inch

41:58

lining of brain tissue. that

42:01

goes inside their skull. And

42:03

the rest... Go ahead. I was

42:05

just gonna say you and I have met some

42:07

undergraduates like that too. Well I certainly have. But

42:11

that's a whole source of a completely

42:13

different book. But what's inside the skull

42:15

is 90% sac

42:17

of just fluid. Now

42:20

these people function, they get married,

42:22

they go to work, they function

42:24

80% or so like the rest

42:26

of us. And the

42:28

person who loses 55 percent of their

42:30

brain, they're not a 45% of a person anymore. So

42:36

we're not capable of existing

42:38

as a percentage but our brains and

42:40

bodies are. So we

42:43

must not be our brains and bodies.

42:45

And the best alternative is that I'm

42:47

a single spiritual self.

42:50

Here's the second one I'll give you. If

42:57

Hope Moreland's husband is

43:00

the same thing

43:02

as the person who's speaking on this podcast,

43:07

then we don't have two

43:09

people. We've got one person. And

43:11

whatever is true of Hope Moreland's

43:14

husband, 5'8", had better

43:16

be true of the person

43:18

speaking on this podcast. We're

43:20

identical. There's no 2.

43:23

I actually hope Moreland's husband is

43:26

the person who's speaking

43:28

here. Well what that means is

43:30

if there's anything true of

43:33

one of those things that's not true of the

43:35

other or even if there's something

43:37

true of one or excuse

43:40

me if there's something that could

43:42

possibly be true of one that

43:45

couldn't possibly be true of the other even

43:47

though they're not true right now. Say

43:49

for example I'm 5'7",

43:52

but I could have been 5'9".

43:55

But this other object that

43:58

we're talking about, just

44:00

say it's a tree stump and it's

44:03

not even possible for it to be 5'9

44:05

as a stump. Well then

44:07

they can't be the same thing. So here's the point. I

44:12

am the kind of thing

44:14

that could

44:16

possibly exist after death

44:20

in an afterlife where my body's left

44:22

behind. I'm not saying that I

44:24

do, which I do believe

44:26

I do and I think there's evidence of

44:28

that. But I'm saying everybody would grant

44:31

that I possibly could. I

44:34

debated with Gary Habermas and

44:36

Peter Krieff, three atheists about

44:40

life after death and they were all

44:42

willing to allow the evidence to decide

44:44

the question and they didn't think there

44:46

was enough evidence. Well look, if

44:49

you heard that archaeologists had

44:51

discovered a cave

44:54

with square circles in Montana,

44:57

you wouldn't have to wait around and find

44:59

out, oh my gosh, I wonder what the

45:02

evidence is. You would know already that that's

45:04

not true because that's logically impossible. So

45:07

the fact that they were willing to

45:09

allow the evidence to decide it meant

45:11

that they agreed that

45:13

disembodied existence after death

45:15

was possible. They

45:17

didn't think it was actual. The

45:20

simple fact that I could

45:22

possibly exist without

45:25

a body is enough to show that I

45:27

cannot be my brain and body because

45:29

my brain and body could

45:32

not possibly exist disembodied. Now

45:35

the argument that doesn't show there's life

45:37

after death, it shows that I can't

45:39

be a material object of any kind

45:42

because I am possibly such that

45:44

I could, even if I don't, but

45:46

I could exist without that. That

45:49

means I must be a non-physical center

45:52

of consciousness or self or call it what

45:54

you want. So that's a powerful

45:56

argument. I remember getting a discussion with people

45:58

who would call me. at KBRT, I

46:00

was in the program going through this

46:02

material thinking about it, and they would

46:05

be arguing with me against the existence

46:07

of the soul, atheists, and they would

46:09

say, well, no, I said, what about

46:11

your thoughts? And they would say, well,

46:13

I can't

46:15

even remember exactly how the conversation went,

46:17

but what happened is I would ask

46:19

them about some obviously immaterial aspect of

46:22

their conscious experience, and I would ask

46:24

if it had physical

46:26

qualities. Did it extend in space? Did it

46:29

have weight? Did it respond to the laws of physics

46:32

and chemistry and stuff like that? And

46:34

they said, no, but – and they

46:36

said, well, then it can't be physical,

46:40

right? So whatever your thoughts are, they're not

46:42

physical because they don't have physical qualities. And

46:44

this is an application

46:46

of the concept that you're

46:48

describing about what's called the

46:50

law of identity, you know?

46:52

And it must be something

46:54

different because it has different

46:56

qualities. I often

46:59

will do this exercise, and I don't know, remind me

47:01

if I got this from you because I could be

47:03

happy to give you credit for it, but I invited

47:05

an audience to close their eyes, and all I'm trying

47:07

to do now is to shake them out of their

47:10

materialism, right? Close your eyes. Imagine your

47:12

mother doing a chore, maybe working at

47:15

a computer or doing dishes or –

47:17

I can't say doing

47:19

dishes anymore, can I? Leading

47:24

a chairman of the board or whatever you want to call it. Okay,

47:26

so what color is – what color blouse

47:28

is she wearing? That's

47:30

the question. And then I

47:32

ask everybody, open your eyes, now you tell me, and then they

47:34

give me all these colors. I said, okay, great. You

47:37

saw your mother with this color blouse,

47:39

right? Where was that?

47:42

Where was that what you saw? You

47:45

saw it well enough to be able to describe

47:47

the color and the circumstances. I'll tell you one

47:49

place it was and it wasn't in your brain

47:51

because if I cracked your brain open, your

47:54

mom wouldn't be sitting there doing dishes, right? So

47:56

it also shows that colors are not wavelengths of light

47:58

because there's no light in your eyes. brain, but you

48:01

still could see the colors. And what I suggest is

48:03

you can experience all

48:05

five of the senses. You can smell

48:07

a rose, you can feel fur, you

48:09

can hear Beethoven's fifth. See,

48:12

when I say that, I know people just heard

48:14

da-da-da-da, you know. But all of

48:16

those things, they're not as vivid as the

48:19

actual sensory experience, but we can

48:21

experience those things. In

48:23

our mind's eye, or

48:25

in our mind as it were,

48:28

and wherever that was, it wasn't

48:30

physical. It was happening in the

48:32

non-physical space that your own conscious

48:34

awareness occupies. People

48:36

don't know what to do with that. They think it's a trick,

48:38

but it's not a trick. It's not a trick. It's

48:40

not a trick. Did I get that from you? I don't

48:43

think so, but it's a good argument. I've heard the

48:45

argument. I love it. Yeah. But

48:47

years ago, we had a man

48:50

who may be one of the

48:52

top five experts in the world

48:54

on memory. He's a professor of

48:56

psychology at UC Santa Barbara,

48:58

and this guy's published. It makes

49:01

you sick when you look at his publications. Well,

49:03

he came a lecture on memory

49:05

to a group of about 20 of us

49:07

professors, and here's how

49:09

he started off. He said, I

49:12

have absolutely no idea what

49:14

it even means to say a memory's in your

49:16

brain. That's incoherent to me.

49:18

I've no, I didn't even know what it means.

49:21

It is. He says, memories are not in your

49:23

brain. You can measure around, and

49:25

you'll never find a memory in there, like you

49:27

just said. He said, memories are

49:29

in yourself. They're in

49:31

the ego, the eye. Now, the

49:34

brain can affect your ability to recall

49:36

them, but that just means

49:38

that there's a causal dependency of the

49:40

mind, on the soul, and the brain,

49:43

and so forth. But he said, your

49:45

memories are not in your brain. So,

49:47

you know, that

49:51

was just funny. We

49:54

just have a few more minutes here, like six more

49:56

minutes, and I want to ask some questions that I

49:58

get asked. Amy, now we're not these things

50:00

around too. Quickly,

50:02

do you think souls are gendered? I

50:07

think so, but I'm 60-40. And the

50:09

reason I do is I believe that

50:11

the soul is what creates

50:14

the body, forms the

50:16

body. And if the body is gendered,

50:18

then I would think the soul would

50:20

be gendered to form

50:22

a male body. To fit, to

50:24

correspond properly. To be suitable for

50:26

us. Right, right, be wrong,

50:28

but I'm 60-40. Are you a tradition or

50:31

a creationist with regard to the soul? I

50:34

am a traducian. I believe that God

50:36

created the original souls of each pair,

50:39

but then, like

50:41

it says in Genesis, He

50:44

delegated to animals the ability

50:46

to generate life after

50:48

their kind. I believe that we have that

50:50

same. But again, I'm not going to get

50:53

lost. No, well, I'm in the same way.

50:56

And part of what it makes

50:59

me wonder is, just think of the

51:01

Bach family, for example, like Johann Sebastian

51:03

and all of his progeny. They were

51:05

all magnificent musicians. And

51:07

I don't, this is speculative,

51:10

obviously, but I don't

51:12

have any reason to believe that all of that musical

51:14

talent was in their genes. And

51:16

it may have been, I mean,

51:18

for lack of a better word, a kind of

51:21

soul DNA. I don't know. This is speculative, but

51:24

it does seem to, you know, a

51:26

chip off the old block kind of

51:28

mentality seems to work better with the

51:30

idea that parents produce the whole individual

51:32

body and soul, as it were. Amy

51:35

has been confronted with this

51:38

question a number of times, as she wanted me

51:40

to ask about, are

51:45

we in a simulation? Maybe

51:47

we're all in simulation. This is like,

51:50

what was that movie with Keynell Reeves,

51:52

you know, The Matrix.

51:55

Right. Okay. So, yeah, so

51:58

I don't know why people would think that. they are. And

52:00

I remember once you saying, and

52:04

lots of things are possible, but if we have

52:06

no reason to believe it's actual, then we

52:09

have no reason to believe it. What do

52:11

you think about the possibility? Somebody asked,

52:13

well, maybe we're just all part of

52:15

a simulation. Does this relate to the

52:17

mind-body problem? Yes, it does. The answer

52:19

is it's obviously that we're not. And

52:22

the first reason is, here's how

52:24

I do it. I say, what

52:26

is a simulation? And

52:30

I have people try to explain it

52:32

to me. And they end up saying

52:34

something like, it's kind of a

52:36

realm we live in, but it's not reality. Well,

52:39

then I'll say, oh, where did you

52:42

get that idea of reality?

52:44

What do you mean by reality?

52:47

And what I'm trying to show them is that

52:50

a simulation is a privation of

52:52

reality, like evil is a privation

52:55

of good. There could be good without

52:57

evil, but there can't be evil without good,

52:59

because evil is a lack of what ought

53:01

to be there. There could

53:03

be a reality without a simulation, but

53:05

you can't have a simulation without reality,

53:07

because its very nature as a simulation

53:10

means it is a privation of being

53:12

real. It's not real. And

53:14

so what I try to show is the

53:17

fact that you are calling this

53:19

a simulation means you're acknowledging that

53:22

there is a reality and it falls short

53:24

of it. Mm-hmm.

53:27

Good point. So here's

53:30

another one. And this has to do

53:32

with artificial intelligence in the soul, the

53:34

question of the soul. I guess

53:36

there's a lot of people now that AI

53:39

is just exploding in its significance and its

53:41

capabilities, and some of it's actually quite scary

53:43

to me. I

53:46

have pushback, and people have

53:49

said, what happens when a machine becomes conscious?

53:51

Will that be proof to you that human beings don't

53:53

have a soul? Now, I have a comeback to that,

53:55

but I'm curious what your response is. Well,

53:58

if a machine becomes conscious of a machine, then you can't have a soul. conscious

54:00

that would not prove I don't assault

54:05

because because there are no

54:07

ownerless states of consciousness I

54:09

mean you know nobody

54:12

says well wait a minute there's a

54:14

pain floating around the room but it

54:16

doesn't belong to anybody yeah or worse

54:18

there's a thought that just happened but

54:20

it wasn't anybody's mm-hmm pains always belong

54:22

to someone and so so mental states

54:24

are always belong to a self they

54:27

can't exist independently so if

54:30

the if a machine could become conscious their

54:32

conscious states would have to belong to a

54:34

self could belong to a scattered group of

54:36

physical parts yeah you know that's the same

54:38

answer that I gave so maybe I got

54:41

it from you way back when

54:43

but it would

54:45

it would this is exactly what people

54:48

already believe physicalist believe about human

54:50

beings that we are machines made

54:52

of meat that happened

54:54

to be conscious which they can't

54:56

make any sense out of I

54:59

even it's exactly right Daniel Dennett

55:01

says consciousness is an illusion which

55:04

which strikes me so because

55:07

an illusion what is an illusion isn't that

55:09

when your consciousness is being a piece to

55:11

you in an it falls fashion

55:14

you've got to be conscious to have

55:16

an illusion so what is the

55:19

the illusion of consciousness what is

55:21

having that illusion is kind of my

55:23

exactly that well that's that's

55:25

right so it's a radically

55:28

self-refuting there are so many things here well

55:30

we didn't even got about a minute to

55:32

go here we didn't even get to NDEs

55:34

near-death experiences and some

55:37

people make more of those things

55:39

that I think are legitimate given

55:41

the evidence but it strikes me

55:43

that bare minimum the preponderance of

55:45

an near-death experience is the particular

55:48

elements like remote viewing demonstrate

55:51

there's got to be an immaterial

55:54

self that can separate it be be distinguished

55:56

from the physical body is that a fair conclusion

55:58

from the I'd be with you I would I'd

56:00

be exactly what you just said. Because

56:03

some of these stories are in question,

56:05

but it just seemed like the longer we go, and your

56:08

book with Gary Habermas, Immortality, goes,

56:10

Gary's, that's his more specialty, and

56:12

he goes into more detail there.

56:14

But some of these things are

56:16

just, I remember you sitting at

56:18

ETS right next to Nancy

56:21

Murphy raising a question with

56:23

her about an NDE, and

56:25

she just, she completely just

56:27

waved you off because the

56:29

illustration was so completely powerful.

56:32

But the person who went down the hall, so to speak,

56:34

and saw the nurse drop the baby, and

56:36

injure the baby. That's

56:38

exactly right. And that's documented. It's in

56:40

the medical record. I mean, so this

56:42

is medically verified. Yeah. Yeah. So it

56:45

doesn't, it's hard to jump from there to the reality

56:47

of an afterlife, an

56:50

extended afterlife, but certainly that

56:52

the self can be separated

56:54

from the body. That's demonstrated

56:56

clearly by NDEs. Jay,

56:59

what a treat to be with you today. Thank

57:01

you for spending some time. I know

57:03

you've had a pretty complicated schedule in a lot of

57:05

ways recently. It's so sweet to be with

57:07

you today. Love you, my brother.

57:09

It's always a privilege. The book

57:12

is The Substance of Consciousness. Just one more

57:14

added to a whole series of books. If

57:16

you want the kind of the thumbnail sketch,

57:18

Get the Book to Soul, that will do

57:21

you well. It's available on amazon.com.

57:23

Greg Coeckel here for Stand to Reason. Go

57:25

out and give them heaven, my friends. Thank

57:52

you.