Women in Apologetics with Melissa Cain-Travis

Females are breaking barriers in the field of apologetics today like never before, which is why Hank has dubbed today’s guest Melissa Cain Travis and her female colleagues at Houston Baptist University as the five female superheroes of the neo-apologetics movement, a movement more concerned with winning the person rather than winning the argument. In her new book, Science and the Mind of the Maker, Melissa Cain Travis examines what the conversation between faith and science reveals about God, including what she calls "The Maker Thesis," which explains the origin, rationality, and intricacy of nature and the human mind's capacity to comprehend it. Are we in the golden age of apologetics? Listen to find out!

Topics discussed include: Hank lauds Melissa Cain Travis and her female colleagues (Nancy Pearcey, Holly Ordway, Mary Jo Sharp, and Kristen Davis) as the five female superheroes of the neo-apologetics movement and some of the most influential ambassadors in the church today (3:00); why mothers should teach their children in apologetics (5:00); is value or significance determined by size? (7:40); addressing the Einstein quote “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” (10:50); the importance of critically and earnestly examining our paradigms rather than limiting the size of our intellectual toolbox (13:30); the majestic three-part harmony between mathematics, the human mind, and the material world (18:15); the implicit racism of the Darwinian paradigm and the importance of having universal standards to determine intrinsic value and equality (19:45); the idea behind the “Maker Thesis” (27:00); Athanasius Contra Mundum, the great church fathers, and finding God’s fingerprints in the Bible as well as the book of nature (30:50); the relation between Cicero, Scrabble, and ideas of order (35:20); dispelling the myth that a greater understanding of nature diminishes theistic explanations for existence (37:45); reclaiming critical thinking, the virtue of inquisitiveness, and how to process information in an age of information overload (38:45); the irony behind the Stephen Hawking claim that philosophy is dead (44:00); why mothers need to have a basic understanding of apologetics in order to inoculate their children with an understanding of their faith (47:25); how to prioritize and find time to build your knowledge base and learn apologetics (51:10); the barriers that female apologists are breaking today (55:20); the false dichotomy of having to decide between having a career or having children (1:00:00); Are we in the golden age of apologetics? (1:02:05); neo-apologetics is a brand of apologetics that is more concerned with winning the person rather than winning the argument (1:04:45); how Melissa made Science and the Mind of the Maker different from other books on the topic of science and faith (1:08:00); the value of popular apologetics (1:13:20); the issue of the age of the Earth and why it’s important, yet not important enough for Christians to divide over (1:14:45); the importance of Melissa’s Young Defender Series, teaching children arguments for the existence of God (1:20:05).