#130 Philip Goff - Why I'm a Heretical Christian

Within Reason

Alex J O'Connor

Religion, Morality, Ethics, Society & Culture, Cosmicskeptic, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Philip Goff is a British author, panpsychist philosopher, and professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. Specifically, how consciousness can be part of the scientific worldview.

Buy Philip's books here.

- Timestamps

0:00 - Why Philip Became Religious7:13 - Panpsychism and the Fine-Tuning Argument18:46 - Why God’s Power is Limited30:10 - The Problem of Suffering42:53 - Non-Western Religious Positions48:34 - What is the Role of Jesus in This?57:35 - “Why Aren’t You Just a Hindu?”01:02:23 - What is the Point in the Crucifixion?01:09:41 - The Beautiful Uncertainty of Religion

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Philip Goff, welcome back to the show.
0:02.6	Thanks a lot. Alex, it's been a while. It was one of your first ones, wasn't it, when we last
0:07.5	chattered? And God, you done good, you done good, the boy done good. That's right. You saw me
0:12.0	sort of lug in a literal suitcase filled with cables and tripods and microphones and just set up
0:18.6	in your office for a while. I had this horrible blue light in the background as well that I thought looked good at the time, just like this LED panel. I think we've stepped things up a little bit, but... Rings a bell. That's nothing to do with me. That's the wonderful team. We can just walk in into this beautiful, beautiful location now, and everything's ready to go. Some other things have changed since then.
0:38.6	You believe in God now?
0:41.7	Sort of.
0:44.9	Yeah, I mean, I have become religious.
0:46.3	I never thought I'd be religious.
0:47.9	It's kind of bizarre.
0:53.2	Although I haven't said that, I'm a pretty non-standard Christian.
1:13.5	You know, I don't believe in the virgin birth. don't believe in an all-powerful God, I think the Bible's wrong about loads of stuff, and I'm very uncertain as to whoever it's all true. So, a bit of a non-standard Christian, but yes, even then, it's all, I'm still processing what's going on, actually. Yeah, well, you're sort of a self-described heretical Christian, right? But I suppose the first step into theism of any kind is theism part, right?
1:19.5	There's usually, I think, the story is that somebody becomes kind of convinced that God exists in some form.
1:25.4	And then, you know, as C.S. Lewis described mere Christianity,
1:30.4	you're sort of in the corridor. And it's great to be in the corridor, but then you have to choose
1:34.0	a room. And for him, that was like what form of Christian you are, but for many people, it's what kind of
1:38.7	God are we talking about here. So before talking about meaning and purpose in your book, Why, which is the
1:47.6	most recent that's been published, you were most known for being a panpsychist philosopher.
1:52.2	I've spoken loads about panpsychism. I'm really excited by it. So I think it surprised a lot of
1:57.4	people that you would sort of then come out and say, you know, God and
2:01.5	religion, this is sort of something I'm really into now. So let's take that first step first.
2:08.3	Like, where does the, or is that how it happened for you? Was it just a sort of general
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Alex J O'Connor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Alex J O'Connor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.