Has Atheism Gone to Far with an Atheist

Now, Mr. Smalley, do you believe that abortion is moral? Oh boy. I'm glad I'm debating him instead of you.

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the

Bible. And as we say, we can answer every question that you have about God and the

Bible, no matter how hard it is, we here have an answer for you. And if you doubt that, just go to ApologeticsLive .com

and scroll down till you see the little StreamYard duck icon, click on that, join us.

Just remember one thing when you come up with a really hard question, I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

I didn't say the answer would be satisfying. I just said I can answer any question you have about God and the

Bible. Let me bring in my co -host, Mr. Drew. How are you, sir? I'm all right.

I'm very tired and I think I'm getting sick. I've got the little tickle in my throat and it's just, you know,

I feel it coming on. So I'm hoping it doesn't get too worse than this.

All right, get Zycam right away. And they don't sponsor the show. I had some and then

I have no clue what happened to it, but I need to find it again. Yeah, go get some and that works well.

If I tell my bride that you feel like you're getting sick, she's going to tell you a whole bunch of things to take. She'll be like, do this, do this.

But before we bring our guest on and we have for folks who are regular here.

Oh, Tom Shepard tells you that you should just wear a mask. Is that to cover his face,

Tom? Is that the reason why? That can't be why, because I'm way too pretty to cover this up.

So let's talk about delusion. You know, that was that was

Greg Bonson's doctoral dissertation. You know, we can talk about it.

But you know what? I should wear a mask. I think that would very much help like it's helped the past.

I don't know how many years. Yeah, it has helped people get sick.

Actually, I was talking to my wife, you know, that, you know, one thing it did help this. We weren't going to do it in the news section, but I'll just put

I will say this as I come into this. I said to my bride as we went for a walk earlier today that there's some people they're basically going through the neighborhood and, you know, trying to break into houses.

Well, they're wearing masks as they walk down the street. And years ago, that would have stood out and people would have been, hmm, something doesn't look right here.

And they would have been called out. Now, not so much. Right. So. So let's talk before we bring our guest in.

And for those who have been for a long time, we'll remember this guest. Bill Cluck is a gentleman who

I debated in Dallas. Oh, I think over a year ago now. I think it was last year ago,

November, maybe. He probably has a better memory than I don't remember. Or he'll look it up before he comes in and then he'll make it look like he just knows it off the top of his head.

But. But we did a debate together. It was his very first debate.

And we had kept in touch and we talked and we actually were discussing the topic.

We're looking at guys like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins and the movements that they've been doing more towards saying, hey, let's not go too far getting rid of Christianity altogether.

And and he was just mentioning, you know, that, you know, sometimes maybe atheists have gone too far. And I was like, that'd be a great topic to have a discussion on, especially with a guy who professes to be an atheist.

And so that is what we're going to get into tonight in a bit. But I did want to give an update.

I was out in Arizona. Drew, thank you for you and Chris doing a show in my absence.

I talked to Chris this week and said, hey, you know, there hasn't been anything on the Matter of Theology podcast for a while.

Why don't you just take the episodes that the two of you fill in for me? I just throw that on to the feed.

He was like, yeah, maybe we should do that. I told him that I told him that literally like two weeks ago.

I said, hey, take this episode, the one that we did on hermeneutics. And I said, rip it off of YouTube, put it on the web, on on the podcast.

You don't even have to rip it off of YouTube. I can give you the MP3. I mean, you could pull it right from the website.

Yeah, that too. You know, we could do that too. So we had a really good conference in Arizona.

We were in Vail, Arizona. And the conference, the theme of the conference was

Christian responsibility in an un -Christian world. And to me, it was it was really great because this is what

Striving Fraternity tries to do is to go into smaller churches. This was a church of,

I'm going to say, maybe 50 to 75 people. And we had about about that at the conference.

But to go in there, most of the people had never heard of any of the speakers before. Actually, some of the people thought that all the speakers knew each other for many years and were best friends.

But most of the speakers met each other for the very first time at the conference. I was the only one who knew all of the speakers.

And we we put this together to really encourage a local church and just to see how encouraged they were and fired up to go out and serve

Christ. Really, that is the goal of what Striving Fraternity does when we try and do these weekend seminars or conferences like this.

And so, you know, Pastor Jay there, Jay Miller of Vail Valley Baptist Church, you know, he was like every other pastor that we talked to and they're like, oh, we can't afford it.

No, we couldn't do it. We couldn't afford to bring in. They feel bad. And we try to say, hey, this is what we do.

We have monthly donors that help us, support us so that we can come into churches that can't afford to have a conference type experience in their church and do that.

And so I'm very grateful. I don't say it enough, but I am very grateful to all of those who donate and make that possible because this this church was just thrilled to have us out there now with the topics.

I mean, Pastor Jay and we'll probably I may drop those releases on my on my rap report podcast.

And so the the thing that we ended up doing was Pastor Jay did a topic on that.

We had to be watchmen on the wall. Aaron Brewster kind of brought down the house, at least the the first the first day.

Well, actually, the second day. Second topic, I should say, was was Dan Kraft. And if anyone saw the pictures online,

Dan Kraft is a seven foot apologist. Someone asked me why. Like, literally, if you saw that picture,

I should look for it and see if I could pull it up. But I had that picture and people asked why, you know, we call

I called him the seven foot apologist. And I'm like, because he's seven foot tall.

And you could see that in the pictures. Let me see if I could share this.

Let's see. Do to do to do. I mean, it was funny because one person said, you know, he really makes the rest of you look short.

And his response was because they are. So this is this is Dan. He looks a little bit taller than us.

There's a picture of of here's a picture of all of us with Dan. He's a tad bit taller than all of us.

That is why. Yeah, that's why he's the seven foot apologist. Not hard to figure out, folks.

But he he talked on apologetics is not what you think it is. So it was really good.

Got people thinking about what apologetics apologetics is and isn't. Then we had.

Oh, I forget who spoke next. I forget who started us off in the morning.

But I know that just before lunch. Oh, I know who is John Sampson, Pastor John Sampson.

John Sampson basically challenged us on what, you know, whether we're truly

Christians, what faith is, that people could be false converts.

He also addressed the issue of evangelism. It's Christian responsibility in a non -Christian world.

Well, we have a responsibility to evangelize. Aaron talked about our responsibility in our worship.

And, Drew, you know, Pastor Dominic Grimaldi from Street Talk Theology. He's part of the

Christian podcast community. He's one of a couple of times. Yeah. And so he he basically said that that that message ruined his lunch.

He had Aaron was telling us we have to consider everything we do should be for the glory of God.

And basically what ended up happening was you end up seeing that we that he always goes to lunch and he's trying to have he's trying to eat a tuna fish sandwich.

I think it was. And he's like, I can only take two bites. And was like, am I really doing this to glorify God? I think it was more his nerves because he was going to be speaking.

I then spoke on the issue of social justice. And I think

Dominic spoke just before me. I forget which the order. But Dominic, for folks that don't know, was he gave a little bit of his testimony of how he was went from organized crime to federal prison to becoming a pastor, how

God changed his life. And, you know, it was it was a good message in the the next day.

Aaron Brewster talked about basically our responsibility in other people's worship.

Then Dan Craft really brought down the entire conference and did what

I consider to be probably the best presentation

I have ever seen on the issue of abortion. And that's an issue there in Arizona with a bill that's up.

And that's really was the theme behind the whole conference. What got that with Pastor Jay thinking about it.

And so that was was very powerful. Kevin Hay, who, you know, of Dr.

Kevin Hay, we should say now. Oh, yeah, they did that. That class of Master Seminary finished their doctorates.

Yeah, that's right. So he is now graduated. So he talked about what it's what was like for Daniel's friends living in Babylon.

And because that's really what we're doing, we're we're living in a country like Babylon. And what is our responsibility?

That was great. And then I again had this message. I don't know what I said that if the messages were really good, then

I would have chosen. But if they were really depressing, then Pastor Jay assigned him, you know, just because I talk social justice.

But then the second one was preparing for persecution. So, yeah, that was that was another one of those ones like, oh, yeah, everyone's waiting for that message.

Not, you know, what's funny is last Friday I was sitting in our meeting.

So every Friday we have a sales meeting and it's the whole sales team and then the owner of the company.

And so I'm sitting in the meeting and I get a text from my mom and my mom goes, are you listening to Andrew right now?

I was like, no, I'm in a meeting. I'm trying to find out if I'm doing a good job at my job.

So I didn't know your mom listens. That's cool. Oh, yeah. So here's so whenever we start talking, me and my mom start talking about eschatology.

Here's what she says. She she'll go, you know what? When I get to a place where she doesn't have an answer, she'll go, maybe you should talk to Jim Osman about that or maybe you should talk to Andrew about that.

I love your mom already. And I should mention the intro because there's a specific reason why

I played that intro for some who know, not just because we have someone that professes to be an atheist coming into the show.

It wasn't for Bill's sake, though. There's a double meaning there with but that the intro was

David Smalley. And that was in Texas when a friend of mine,

Matt Slick, was doing two debates in two nights, David Smalley one night and Matt Bill Hunty the next night.

And that was we had because we got to know some of the guys because it was a lot of people came to both nights and we ended up talking with David and kind of his crew there before the debate.

So Matt and I and our group kind of got with their group and had some discussions. I think we even went to dinner.

I can't remember if he joined us for dinner or not, but he knew his whole argument was that Christianity is wrong because God is immoral and he's immoral because he allows for slavery.

And so when I when I came up and asked him that question about abortion, he already knew that I equate abortion and slavery because they're both an ownership issue and they are both an issue of of ownership rights.

And that is why he said he was much happier debating Matt than me, because I think what that was was conceding that had

Matt taken that same argument, I think like he would have had a really hard time after two hours of arguing that slavery is wrong to now say, well, slavery is

OK if it's abortion. And when I asked that question, what didn't pop up is there was three tables of atheists that all went, ooh, because they also were around when they heard our discussion.

OK, so by what standard is

God immoral? Right, right. How do you justify morality? Right. What's the standard of morality that you that you're using to measure whether or not

God is moral or immoral? Yeah, well, that may come up tonight.

And with that, why don't I bring in Mr. Bill Kluck? Bill, how are you, sir? Hey, pretty good.

Nice to see you again. Yeah, good to see you. Good to have you back. Always good to talk with you. I know off screen is your ministry partner,

James. James Walker, the famous James Walker here. We should bring him in because part of the part of introducing you.

I'm going to put up the link for your book club. Why don't

James, I'm going to I'm going to ask you, how did you tell the story? How did you meet Bill? And how did you guys start the book club?

And for the audio listeners, the book club is AtheistChristianBookClub .com

So AtheistChristianBookClub .com kind of tells you what they're about. But James, actually introduce yourself as well, because I may have to have you back because your background is quite interesting as well.

Well, I'm president of a ministry called Watchman Fellowship, an apologetics ministry, focusing mostly on interfaith evangelism.

So we mostly work with other religions. I'm a former Mormon and who became an evangelical

Christian. So that kind of is what got me really interested in this whole topic. But we deal in the area of Islam and Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientology, just other religions.

But I have an interest also in atheism. I was speaking at a church. I'm in Arlington, Texas, and I was speaking at a church, a real large church, about a 45 minute drive.

And one of my associates, Bob, came up and said, there's a guy who needs to meet you and he wants he's an atheist and he wants to do a meet an atheist

Sunday here. And so I went out real quickly and met with Bill and he thought

I was a pastor of the church. I was a guest speaker there. And he said, I said,

I can't help you with that, but I would like to talk to you sometime. And so he heard I was in Arlington. And so, hey, he said, our our

Metroplex atheist group meets in Arlington every week, every Wednesday. And it's at a place called

J. Gilligan's, a bar and grill. And I said, that's a half a block from my office. I'd walk there. I don't even have to drive there from my office.

And so he was kind enough to come out and meet me at my office and introduce me to some of the leadership there.

So for the next better part of a year, most of those meetings I went to and got to know

Randy Word, the president of that time, a Metroplex atheist and a lot of the gang. And we had great conversation.

We talked about everything from the problem of evil to the documentary hypothesis theory.

We talked about evidence that demands a verdict. We talked about everything kind of thing you can imagine.

We talked about the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers, everything you'd imagine.

And out of that meeting and getting to know people, we developed about a year later, the Atheist and Christian Book Club.

And we meet mostly by Zoom now that we met for the first couple of years, almost all in person.

And it was just a local event. And so what we do is we usually bring the author in and we alternate books.

We do a Christian book one month, atheist book the next month. And we've had some top notch, both

Christian and atheist authors. New York Times bestselling authors have been our guests before Bart Ehrman.

Dale Allison. Dale Allison. We've had Methodists such as David Fitzgerald, Robert Price.

Yes. And on the Christian side, we've had Gary Habermas and Frank Turek and just the who's who of Christian apologetics as well.

And so it has become a friendship. You know, we said it's a respectful conversation between believers and non -believers on important books from both perspectives.

We just had Godless Granny on, a very sharp lawyer, mind like a steel trap.

I mean, your guests are really going to enjoy her. I really encourage. She'll be on next week on this show.

That's what Bill's referring to. And that's where Bill and I started talking because I forget how, but somehow

I called you because she was coming on. I think I called you. He's kind of become the glue. He's an atheist, but I teach also at Arlington Baptist University and there's a new faculty member on there.

And I know him through the book club, but come to find out it was indirectly through Bill that he was able to get the job.

So Bill, I don't know how you get in all these Christian circles, but you've become kind of the glue. And I know you because I know

Bill. And so Bill knows you, so now I know you. So there we go. Yeah. And folks, for those who are

Christians, just keep praying for Bill as we do. He needs to come to Christ.

Let me just say, James has heard every argument against Christianity and God.

He's listened to the best atheist apologist on earth. And it's just like, remember that Muhammad Ali, George Foreman fight where Muhammad Ali said, is that all you got

George? And he goes, that's about it. Yeah. And it's just like with James. It's so you can listen to the other side.

You can listen to other apologetics. And still, James is example

A of maintain your, you can still maintain your faith and be a strong Christian.

Andrew, what I, my problem, I've got lots of problems. One of my problems is I run in Christian circles all the time.

And so, you know, it's just like my, at my office, everybody's Christian as far as I can tell.

And at Watchman Fellowship. And then on the weekend, I'm at church Christians. I go home.

My family's all Christian. And it can create like an echo chamber where you're not, you're not.

I got convicted because I realized I was teaching a course, I think at Criswell College on evangelism.

And I realized that I had gone probably months since I personally had had a conversation about the gospel with a nonbeliever.

And I started thinking, why are I doing this? When I started thinking, it's not that I'm not having gospel conversations.

I'm not having any conversations because I just run in those circles all the time. And so I need something that's going to get me out of my bubble.

And it's going to force me to read the best, best atheist books available.

Because I need to know these things, but what's the book club does this. I know no matter what

I'm doing all month long, I'm going to have a two hour session with some, a top atheist author and some very well -read friends of mine.

And I call them my friends who are atheists and the book club does that for me. I hope it makes me a better thinker.

You just raised on that. I bring up all the time for Christians. They should be evangelizing because it has a direct relationship to their sanctification.

The fact is, is that if you're in a bubble of people that all think like you, you're not challenged to sharpen your thinking.

You know, that's why I have drew here so that we can work on his eschatology. I speak in churches all over the country and in church, all my ideas sound brilliant.

But when I'm in the book club and I have, when I've got some top, some really good thinking atheist,

I realized that some of my, some of my ideas are stronger than others. yeah,

I've never, you know, I've never lost a debate in my head. I mean, I win them all in my head.

You know, when, so we were attending a church where my, right.

I am reformed Baptist 1689. And this is a old

Southern Pentecostal church that we were attending, but I knew a lot of the people there and I was burdened for a lot of the people there.

They weren't getting the gospel. They weren't getting good Bible teaching. So I started just going on Wednesday night, a

Bible study and where I had moments to speak in, I would make sure to elevate Christ so that they could see big

Christ. Because they weren't getting that. What, what you started to see was that all of these people had grown up in an area and in a church where everyone thought the same thing.

And then I'm coming along and I'm challenging them, but I'm not just challenging them.

I'm actually challenging them with scripture because they would say something. And I'd say, well, if we look at this text, it doesn't say that in the text.

Like, that's not what it means. Here's what the author means because he says this in verse one.

And then he, here's his pattern of thinking throughout the text. And they did not like that at all.

Not one bit. So, um, I was like, you know what? After about a year, uh,

I realized they're not going to, to listen to me. I'm, I'm not helping anything, even though I'm trying to give them

Christ and elevate Christ and give them the gospel. So I was like, okay, well, I guess we just need to go somewhere else.

um, we've been attending now another local church, but I know the pastor. Um, he's actually, he's followed our ministry for a while.

He's followed matter of theology, Justin Peters. Um, and so he's, his preaching, very, uh, sound, expositional, the gospel woven throughout every message.

And it's just, it's really good. And he's sort of technically family. Uh, we're kind of married into a family.

Um, so, you know, it's, it's really good. Whenever we get together, we get to have good edifying conversations and stuff.

So that's where we're going to be going. Um, cause, you try to make something a mission field, but then when everyone thinks the same thing all the time, the echo chamber that you're talking about, you're just not getting anywhere.

And then I went and like, this would be the only interaction with someone like Andrew or, uh,

Aaron, Jim, you know, whoever comes on the podcast that I would have of sound biblical doctrine.

And really I was ending up starving myself. And so I needed to be in a place where I could be ministered to as well.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Of course, every church needs an apologist, but yeah, but only one.

Yeah. It's always a church split, right? You know, I'm always up for, by the way.

Oh, great. Yeah. I always try. I love what you said. Every church needs an apologist, but just one,

Hey, I'm always, I'm always like someone else do it. Someone else. So, so Bill, let's for folks who don't remember you give a little bit of your background.

You know, you, you professed that you used to be a Christian converted to atheism. Uh, you know, let folks know about that.

And then also thanks to James, there's a little story that you don't may or may not believe in miracles, but saw one.

So that piqued my interest. So now I have to find out. Well, I used to go to colonial Baptist church in Cary, North Carolina.

And one of the members of the Sunday school class said, Bart Ehrman speaking at a Barnes and Noble. I went, who's

Bart Ehrman? So I went there and within 30 minutes, I went, I do not know anything about, you know, scholarship, you know, new test, submit scholarship and so forth.

And yeah, read all his books. And, uh, by the way, I did see a miracle.

I dated an aerobics teacher and she got in a wrestling match with a guy and broke her collarbone.

And, uh, the doctor, she goes, I'm going to be teaching aerobics tomorrow. And we laughed. And he goes, no, you got six weeks.

And then, then one day she, um, was totally healed. And, um,

I went to the doctor. I said, what do you think of that? He goes, she's a mighty healer. So, um, but anyway, you know, with atheism, you go, sometimes

I wake up and I go, how did I get here? It, was it a Christopher Hitchens book? Was it, you know, some bias

I, that I might've ran into. I really, I maybe didn't think this thing all the way through.

So, uh, one of the books that's had a profound impact on me that we've read in the books.

Club is the fortunate universe by Luke Barnes. Who's a, um, business out of Australia.

And the problem is it's very technical. Let me give you an example. You have four forces in nature of the electromagnetic sport force, gravitational and strong and weak nuclear force.

So you have the electromagnetic force that attracts electrons and protons and so forth.

But when you get inside the nucleus at very tight levels, you have this strong nuclear force that holds the protons and neutrons together.

So it's like, where did this come from? You know, I started, I'm starting to ask these questions and I'm going to be talking to Luke to get more of a precise definition.

So it just, there's so many things like the billions and galaxies with billions of stars.

And I've learned from Dan who works at on staff. He's kind of led me to this cosmology that when you have a star, you have the gravitational force pushing the star, trying to crush it.

But yet you have thermonuclear reactions in the midst of the star that are pushing out.

So it's this knife's edge thing that perfect balance, perfect balance there.

And it's not just a few thousand, a few million billions of stars. So, and not just for a split second, this, they will, they will be on that pinpoint knife edge balance for millions of years.

And like the resonance of carbon, you know, beryllium and helium, they just got that much time to, to become a carbon thing.

And if, if these things aren't right, if you're fine structure constant, which is one to the one 37, if that's 4 % off either way, you don't get carbon and thus you don't get light.

So he's brought up a lot of questions and I'm kind of having a little crisis of faith here.

So, um, I'm trying to figure it out and pray for me. Okay. Yeah. Actually.

And what I'm doing right now is I'm going to send you, um, Jason Lyles, latest argument, uh, article that is in the answers journal.

A little bit of a technical article, but it is an article where he has taken a look at, um, you know, some of the, the

James, the, uh, James Webb telescope data and sifted through that and, you know, shows, uh, that it gives evidence of, of a relatively younger, 6 ,000 years isn't a long time.

It's old, but just a lot younger than, you know, most people think. So I just sent that to your, to your,

I texted that to you, but it might be. He's our little resident cosmologists.

He says there's too many type three, uh, stars and so forth. So there's lots of problems. The other book that we had,

Stephen Meyer, are you familiar with him at the discovery Institute? He, uh, says things like the big bang

DNA. And these things just to get DNA off the ground is a big miracle.

I listened to the, um, uh, the debate between professor Dave and Dr.

Tor, James Tor. And I have to admit James Tor had some good arguments.

One of his things was the origin of life. You can have too many reactions where you get things that gunk things up.

And these chemists, a lot of times have to go pull off the shelf, pure chemicals. So you have problem after problem with the origin of life.

The corality, you have to have the myriad is the left handed. Things have to be 19 of 20 have to be amino acids, have to be left handed.

So it's one problem after another. And I have to admit, I think he, you know, he was a little passionate.

We and James were talking about, he was really over the top in the debate he had with professor

Dave, but I just thought he had good arguments. Yeah. And I can answer the question that you asked earlier, uh, of what actually holds it together.

It comes right from God's word in Colossians chapter one, uh, verse 17, but I'll back up to read verse 15.

So we get context speaking of Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation for by him, all things were created both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

He is before all things and in him, all things hold together.

So that's what holds everything together. It's Jesus Christ. So the scripture has the answer for you, uh, always has.

So let's, let's talk the, the, the topic that we, you and I were talking on the phone because it really was interesting.

It's on that. I, you keep up with a lot of what's going on in, uh, in different circles, especially the, those in the atheist circles.

Uh, and you and I were talking just this movement that was, you know, you have like a, you know,

Richard Dawkins who recently came out and was saying how, you know, basically he's looking at his culture as it is moving more

Muslim. And he's starting to realize that kind of between Muslim Islam and Christianity, uh,

Christianity is a lot more tolerant. You think so? Well, he, he was saying so.

Um, I mean, I would think so. I mean, when it comes to like, look at the issue of LGBT, you know, we, we come to them with a book and Islam would come with a sword.

Right. I mean, we're going to come saying, we want you to repent and believe in Jesus. And the

Muslim is going to throw them off a building according to the Quran. Right. Oh, by the way, James has debated some of the top

Muslims. Uh, you had a debate with who was the Muslim scholar? Um, Khalil Meek.

I've debated him several times. Um, uh, we have interest in that as well.

And he's written a book on Islam. What was your book? Uh, what the Quran really says about Jesus.

Oh, interesting. I might have to go get a copy. I'm going to let it slip out now. Let you guys talk a little bit.

I'll be following along. Okay. All right. So, so you, and you were telling me some of this stuff with, you know,

I mean, there's guys like, um, Bill Maher who have come out and similar thing, you know, where we're seeing professing atheists who are, uh, starting to recognize that kind of what

I've, I've said here from the beginning, when we started this show, I mean, I said, you know, for a long time is the fact that atheism versus Islam, atheism is going to lose.

I mean, the Muslims are living for life beyond this world. And so they're willing to die for what they believe in, where, uh, you know, atheists are not going to do that.

Right. Because this, this world they have, they're not even going to drive across town.

Now, here's the problem. We, we have this Metroplex atheist group and I said, what are you guys up to now?

And they said, oh, we're, uh, trying to get prayer out of schools in, uh, the Fort Worth. And I went, what?

There's no problem with prayer in schools. And even if they do a little prayer, I went to military academy and that never really hurt me.

Or let's say at a city council meeting, you have a throwaway prayer of at last amendment. Who cares?

It just, I think this freedom from religion foundational has, has gone way overboard.

Yes. So, and that is the thing that intrigues me when I hear you say that, because you are a professing atheist, right?

Right. But if they want to put 10 commandments, I think, which is the trend now in school rooms,

I don't care. Uh, in a manger scene, you're kidding me. You know, I mean, it's a conflated thing with the shepherds coming from Luke and the magi from, and that could be a little good little discussion for atheists.

Uh, they could witness to Christians about the conflation of the two. I mean, just get a life, you know, why, why do you think that it is that the, you know, so many of these atheist groups, you know, we'll take the ones you brought up, right?

They want to get prayer out of school and, and it's, and the, the question I'll have is, is it all prayer or just Christian prayer, but then also they want to get the 10 commandments out, which again, it's, that's not necessarily just Christian.

I mean, there's, you know, so, you know, there's Christianity in its broadest sense, you know,

Catholics, Mormons, they would all hold to 10 commandments. Jewish people would, Muslims would.

why do you think that the groups are trying to remove things like, like this?

Why is that their, their issue? You think, uh, they should try to embrace

Christians. It just, yeah. Christians have lots of questions and YouTubers like apology are doing a wonderful job.

And your guest, godless granny is doing a fantastic job of, they're going to be talking about Moses, whether he existed or not.

So that's what they need to do is reach out to Christians instead of alienating Christians.

And one of the big problems with atheists is the community. They just cannot do community, right?

Like the one, I go to an Atheist book club and it's, it's 12 old guys, including myself and one, two girls,

Teresa, my girlfriend and this other girl. And it's just, you'll get a young person come and then they'll just leave.

So, and they have got to solve this community problem, but they just don't get it.

Why do you think they go too far though? Why do you think, like you're saying they don't get it, but what is pushing them and motivating them to do it?

Well, obviously they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. Have you not read Romans one? Oh, I like you saying that you brought it up before me even favorite sermon.

He's given a million sermons on that. So, well, the same thing. I mean, we have a really cool member,

Ken Daniels, who was a former missionary to Africa and has become a, a theist.

And there's not, I mean, he's never kissed anybody, but his wife, he gives money to charities, just a fantastic human being, really humble guy.

So, a lot of it is, I think with him kind of like myself, he just thought his way out of the faith.

He just, you know, who knows. And why atheists are like freedom from foundation are so gun ho.

To me, it's like if a coach wants to do a little prayer after a game, why would you want to go and cause a big trouble that it's not really impacting the culture that much?

I can see if he wouldn't let anybody on because they were an atheist. That's another thing, but still,

I mean, I just think they've gone too far. Yeah. Oh, I would agree, but, you know,

I think that a big part that I see is, and I want to see what your thoughts are.

I think that a lot of those, well, let's put it this way. Those about more than a decade ago, if I ran into on the streets, when

I was evangelizing someone that was like a hardcore atheist, the question

I always asked is what church did you grow up in? And I probably asked that to a thousand people and only once did an atheist not grow up in a church.

And when they asked that, the second thing I'd ask is what happened? And almost every time it was that either they were reacting to the way they were raised, there were too many rules or things like that, or they were like an illegalistic church or something happened in the church.

You know, one guy, it was his, his sister got, uh, was raped by a, um, by a deacon.

Deconversion. Correct. And, and so what I'm noticing now, and I almost wonder if some of the, like you're saying, the it's the older people that are in the atheist clubs.

You can't appeal to the younger. What I noticed now is that same thing happens.

If I go to like an LGBT type event, if, if I'm, if I go to like where they have a great pride parade, or I'm talking to someone who is a radical, you know, very hardcore

LGBT, I can do the same thing. Say, what church did you grow up in? And what happened?

And it's a similar thing. So I almost wonder if my thinking, this is my thought, but my thinking is like, is it that those who are growing up Christian, they're, they don't like the way they're raised and the strongest way they could show like their disapproval of their parent to their parents.

It was to go atheist, but now to go LGBT. Well, let me give you an example.

Godless granny was one of the things she heard. Aaron Rod, who really isn't an expert on the

Old Testament by any means, say Noah's flood wasn't historical. And I don't believe in Noah's flood.

But the thing is, if the church would have said, Hey, you're going to, here's the opposite view that it's a blended narrative.

The P and J writers blended the narrative. One has like a 40 day flood, another 150 came from the

Epic of Gilgamesh, where it was a seven day flood in a rectangular thing. I mean a cubic thing. So if they just, and talk about Bart Ehrman.

Oh God, there are Bart Ehrmans, there's a hundred thousand variants, but most of those are inconsequential and don't affect the test.

If they would get this out in the open and immunize the young people, you wouldn't see so many deconverses.

This deconversion thing, if you go on YouTube, this has just gotten to be the cool thing. Everybody, every little

YouTuber with a laptop can have a little show and talk about their deconversion, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the, one of the things that I actually mentioned in a

Wednesday night at this church, they brought up, they said, why are our young people going to college and then leaving the church?

And I spoke up and I said, it's because you are not preparing them to go to college because what happens, all they grew up hearing was,

I believe whatever's in this book. If the book says it, I believe it. And then they go to college, they get an

English class, they get a philosophy class, they get a science class, biology or physics. And that professor is just waiting for the student to say, that's not what the

Bible says. And then they unleashed the floodgates to try to disprove the

Bible. And the student has no response because they have not been prepared.

Well, give me an example in Lee Strobel's book, I think Case Christianity, a paragraph, the girl says,

I just got through reading misquoting Jesus. My faith's gone. It's shattered. It's like misquoting

Jesus. Are you kidding me? That is like one of the most innocuous. It's not a heavy hitting book by Bart Ehrman.

Right. Right. It's just, if they would have just talked to these things and had some open discussion with the young people, then when they heard it, they're not going to be blindsided.

That's the problem. The kid, it's like, whoa, where did that come from? The thing also with Bart Ehrman, here's what separates

Bart Ehrman from some of, we'll say some of the Christian writers that, that write on theology.

Bart Ehrman writes for the lay person or the, for the, the person who's getting out of high school, just going into college.

He writes for them and he's easy to understand. A lot of Christian theology writers, they write at a high level.

So sometimes you can't quite grasp it. So you've got to find the people who can, who can speak on the same level.

Right. I mean, just simplify it. Right. Andrew is one of those guys that can come in and just simplify. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good. Yeah. I mean, this is the reason that in the book, what do we believe that I wrote?

Chapter two is textual criticism, but at an easy to understand level, this is what

Bart does. Bart, I've always said when Bart is citing his work and, and being scholarly, a lot of it, you could trust it's when he's writing to the lay level and he takes, he does proof texting.

So I'll take one true fact over here and another true fact over here. And he puts them together and they don't always have the conclusion.

He gives is not only always the, I would say the right conclusion. He obviously would disagree with me, but the thing is, is that you're right.

True. We need people that can write a lay level. I do think that part of the issue, but on both sides, atheism and, and Christianity, both sides have a thing because it's human nature.

If you can write at a really high level, people go, Oh, that's so deep.

That's not actually a good thing because it means I had no idea what you're saying. By the way, we had

Bart Ehrman on the club. You can go to YouTube and it was one of our most successful events.

but people like Dale Allison, you know, who's written a 700 page book on the resurrection.

I mean, he just goes into Q and all these things in the, the lay people,

James, I just spoke at a church and we were talking about, I was saying, well, you know, Timothy wasn't written by Paul and so forth and they need to.

And then the minister goes like quoting Timothy, all scriptures. So he just came and just totally denied what

I said, but just get it out in the open that Scott, a lot of scholars believe there's seven authentic letters of Paul, but there's controversy.

And then now you've, do you see what I'm saying? Now you let the cat out of the bag. And when they hear, Oh yeah, I've heard of that seven letters,

Romans, Galatians and all, and that the pastorals are disputed, you know, so forth.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Cause I mean, you're like, you were just mentioning for folks who didn't pick up on it.

And, and, and this is the thing is one always try to explain to folks, right? You, you mentioned the, what you believe is different authors of the book of Genesis, right?

The P and J mostly in Genesis one and two, two separate accounts. So the idea there that people have the liberal scholars is that Genesis wasn't written by Moses.

Uh, they don't know who the authors are. There's a Jehovah author, an

Elohim author. There's the, the priestly author. There's the, the writer that tends to be more anthropomorphic gods walking through the garden, more interactive and so forth.

Yeah. And so the idea of it is to, to break that all up. Now, I heard that in seminary.

I was, it was explained to me when I heard someone that was trying to make that case from a

Christian perspective to, to Bill's point, I went, yeah, okay. I'm familiar with that.

And I know the reasons why it's not true, right? It's just like the Q argument. Q is this supposed source,

Bill, you were going to say something. Well, you have an argument. You're not blindsided.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know what Q is. If you don't know what Q is, you're just gonna, how am

I going to have respect for you when you don't know the most basic things? Correct. And well, it's, it's a thing where what happens is when people study this, they study these high lofty things and they come and think they're going to a lot of times.

And this is what to Drew's point when, when a church isn't preparing people with these questions, because the answer in Genesis did a study and realized it wasn't at college that the

Christians were walking away. It was actually much earlier. And I think a big reason is with YouTube.

Yeah. Cause they can just go Noah's flood, go to YouTube. Oh, there. Oh, I'm done. Yeah. By the way, James, he has a thing.

When he was in seminary, they studied Bultman and, uh, the J the bell housing hypothesis.

And what did you say? The thing was not to catch the disease, but yeah, we studied it also when

I was at, uh, Criswell college, but it was studying like a doctor would study cancer to treat it.

Not to catch it. Yeah. So, uh, but yeah. And the other thing about the modern scholarship and, and in the cutting edge, and I talked about this with the, with the infamous mythicist, uh, scholar,

Robert Price, uh, that, uh, that was the cutting edge of technology 50, 75 years ago.

Not today. Uh, that scholarship has gone past that now. And so you're, when you're in the modern scholarship, you, you, everything has a shelf life and what, what is modern.

When I was in seminary or Bible college is not modern anymore. It's a moving target.

And so you, and, and uh, uh, Bill's patron saint,

Dale Ellis and said, look, listen 40 years. He said, I've been studying this and I knew more about the historical

Jesus 40 years ago than I do today. You know, I asked Dallas and I said, well, you know, you have a problem because you have death and disease before the fall.

And that creates a problem, because in Romans, it says the last

Adam and the first Adam. And if you have that, you've got a problem because that seems to be the natural order of things and why it impacts the atonement.

Here's the most brilliant scholar of our time, says, I haven't thought about that in decades. So another problem is you got these, like our friend,

Eric Coven, who just, young earth, young earth, age of the earth, Genesis, Genesis, and it's like, that's all they focus on, and they know very little about New Testament scholarship.

And then you've got someone like, this is what he does, he studies the Bible, but he doesn't know that much, maybe, about Genesis.

And I'm sure he does well. What you're onto, Bill, is there's probably, not just in biblical studies or theology, but in everything, there's maybe over -specialization.

And people are very, very on this, very, very narrow topic. So you ask somebody about a

New Testament scholar, about Colossians, and he's like, I'm just Gospels, man.

That's all I really know about. And so there's hyper -specialization. And so we try to be general, general practitioners in this.

I wanna know at least a little bit about all these topics. And that forces me, the book club forces me to do that.

Programs like what you do, it forces me to learn about these other things, at least a little bit.

But Bill, I think, kinda makes the mistake sometimes of over -relying on the expert.

They have the PhD, so I've gotta believe whatever they're telling me. But the truth of the matter is, we function,

I think, more like the jury. So when the prosecutor brings in a specialist and puts them on the witness stand, and then the defense attorney puts their specialist, we can't just throw up our hands and say, well,

I have no opinion because they're the specialist. No, we've got to listen to the specialist and we've got to adjudicate this.

We've got to arrive as a jury of the peers into who's telling us the most.

Absolutely, let me give you, we were taught, in one of our debates, we bring up the cosmological constant that Sean Carroll, who's an atheist, when he says that this is, we were way off in our calculations that there is a cosmological constant fine -tuned to 10 to the 120th.

So when he says that, and Luke Barnes, a Christian, says, yes, this cosmological constant where the dark energy is striving, expanding space and so forth, as opposed to the gravitation of the masses and the suns and so forth, when they both say it, the

Christian and atheist, then I can kind of take it to the bank. In one of our debates, James said, the gravitational constant fine -tuned to 10 to the 40th, all these things have to be, the mass of the electron and so forth, has to be just so.

He goes, what's it gonna take? How much do the numbers have to be to for you - 10 to the 40th was impressive, but apparently not enough.

So give me, what would be the number, if you talk to Luke Barnes, what number are you looking for that would say, oh,

I'm in. And I really didn't have an answer, so I just went at 10 to the 200th. I mean, there's only 10 - Well, you see, as an atheist, you just keep adding more to the number, right?

Just like we add more to the age of the earth, right? So, because the statistical impossibility is 10 to the 48th power, so we're, you know, 10 to the 120th.

We're beyond the chance of it happening by chance. Well, that's the thing.

Luke Barnes says it's the layman's dilemma, which is, you have someone that knows much more about this stuff than you do that I've gotta depend on.

And the thing is, you need to be expert on paleontology, genetics, and so forth that, and sometimes you just have to live with the tension.

For example, you have the Cambrian Explosion, where major phyla 540 million years ago just suddenly seem to appear, echinoderms and chordates like us.

But yet you have the endogenous retroviruses that we can trace these back to a common ancestors between us and chimps, where us and chimps have about 114 locations where this same retrovirus is.

So what can I do? I'm getting conflicting evidence, some implying a creator like the

Cambrian Explosion, some implying just common ancestry. It's very difficult.

Now, I just try to live with the tension. Well, Bill, what you do is, and I'll adapt a quote from Matt Slick.

He uses this about early church fathers, but where he would say, my church father can beat up your church father.

Well, my PhD can beat up your PhD. The authorities, back to what

James said, because of it being singly focused, can sometimes miss it. You bring up the

Cambrian Explosion. We can answer that with a global worldwide flood, right as God said.

So, I mean, the answers are there. Like, here's the thing. The Bible hasn't needed to change to answer what we find in science, but science keeps having to change to find out, to answer what we discover in science.

Yeah, you know, I'll hang on to you. Go ahead. Well, real quick, Hugh Ross says that, yeah, you do have to change the, he has to do exegetical gymnastics to make the

Bible fit. Correct. Because the science is his authority, not the

Bible. Right, yeah. So, it's funny you mentioned Hugh Ross because I love the debate that he did with Jason Lyle, where Jason Lyle just wiped the floor with him.

But, you know, in talking about Jason Lyle, he says, you know, Christian scientists and atheist scientists, we come to the same data.

We can do the same math. We have the same calculations. The difference is how do we interpret the data, right?

And Jason ultimately says, well, we have an ultimate answer because we have an ultimate standard in the scriptures.

We can go back to the scriptures and even the fossil records, right? It doesn't take millions of years to make a fossil.

You can do that over the weekend, right? You just have to have the right conditions in order to do it. You've got to have flood conditions as he teaches, you know.

So, they all come to the same, I just love that. They all come to the same data, do the same math, but it's the interpretation and how you approach that.

Well, and with scripture, Hugh Ross says, oh my gosh, yeah, I know the earth was created 500 million years ago after the sun.

I know the sun was created first, but Genesis says earth was created, then sun on day four.

So how am I going to solve this? Oh, well, it was translucent, the sky, and they just thought that it wasn't created.

And when it cleared up, then, ah, the sun appeared. Well, here's the -

Go ahead. Oh, sorry. Well, the thing with Hugh Ross and then people like William Lane Craig, right?

Andrew just said, the science is their authority. And so when they come to these discussions or debates with these atheists that have these scientific arguments, they try to appeal to their scientific position, but then try to make an argument for the

Bible. So they have to change what scripture says, those hermeneutical gymnastics you're just mentioning, in order to appease the scientific community, but also point them to say, yeah, but God exists.

God did that. You're absolutely right. Let me give an example. His latest book on Adam, William Lane Craig, says that Heidelberg Genskis' man was the original

Adam 750 ,000 years ago. Hugh Ross says, oh no, it's about 100 ,000 years ago.

Swami Das, the Genesis, says, oh no, we can go 6 ,000 years and have an original Adam and Eve.

So it's like, they're all PhDs and experts. Who am I gonna believe, guys? Well, the one who created them all,

God. If you think about it, I read Colossians to you, right?

Did I give an interpretation? No, but you understood clearly what it says because all I had to do is read it, right?

That's the thing is the Bible has answers. Does it have the answer to every scientific question?

No, because it's not a scientific book. But are there things that, and I know that within the atheists,

I think that a lot of it started out trying to, I really believe that what a lot of the movement for atheism in the modern age is really not so much for atheism but against Christianity.

And the reason I say that, Bill, is one of the things I get with atheists, all the people when

I'm on the streets evangelizing, someone tells me they're an atheist. My question, and I think

I even asked this of you over dinner, is, and it's anyone that tells me I'm an atheist

I say, what's your best argument for atheism? And the argument I get is

Christianity is wrong, right? It's not for atheism, it's against Christianity.

It's not against Islam, it's usually against Christianity. And so I really think that the modern atheist movement is really an anti -Christian movement.

It's a Christianity is wrong, we wanna believe it's wrong, we wanna try to prove it's wrong.

And that's why so much of it, like if you're familiar with the Reason Rallies, the

Reason Rallies, they had them in 2012, 2016, the first one, and both times it was an atheist rally where what they were trying to do was show that the atheists had a political, they were a political group.

It's kind of like they argue that evangelical Christianity is a political group and a political, has a big vote.

They wanted to show atheism has that as well. So they did a conference, they did it twice.

Of course, they blamed us for, they originally said there'd be 5 ,000 people the first year and it rained.

And they're like, oh, it's because it rained, we only had 1 ,000. God's judgment, right? Yeah, in 2016, what

I did was I asked a friend of mine, Ray Comfort, to come out and we really tried to make it a big thing to get a lot of people evangelizing.

So we had 1 ,000 Christians sign up to evangelize that came. And they were expecting 30 ,000 people, they said.

Well, there were 5 ,000 people. So we made up 20 % of the reason rally, the

Christians. And they said, oh, the Christians, they scared all the people off. Like, wait, atheists are scared of a bunch of Christians giving arguments.

Like, that's enough to scare them. But it was a thing where when I listened to the talks that they did,

I did not hear any talks that were saying this is why atheism is good.

What I heard is either atheism is bad, Republicans are bad. That was the whole thing.

Whichever Republican, you know, it was. Like Obala Harris's website, right? Well, Robert Price in our book club got in hot water, didn't he, with the, that was a little bit of a surprising thing.

I did not know about Bob Price. He's known now as being a mythicist, doesn't believe

Jesus even existed, but he is a Christian, got a Christian background, and was a Christian scholar who now is a mythicist.

But he was also part of the Jesus Seminar for decades. When voting on Jesus did or didn't say this, and the irony of here's a guy voting on which words

Jesus did say and which words he didn't say, while he didn't even believe there was a historical

Jesus, why do you have to even fly to the meeting? Can't you just put all black beads in and be done with it?

There was no Jesus, you know, but the interesting thing about him too, as Bill was talking about here, is he kind of breaks the mold of the liberal atheist in that he was kind of kicked out of the

Jesus Seminar because he's MAGA, he's a big fan of Donald Trump, and of all he gets right in their book on his atheism and mythicism, that one strike against him was enough for him to be canceled by his whole community.

Yeah, and if folks don't know what the Jesus Seminar was, and before I explain that,

I should just say for the audience, I brought Aaron in, and we'll let him tell us where he is this week, because he's always, a lot of times he likes to be in different locations when he's, sometimes different states when he's recording with us.

But the Jesus Seminar was, as James said, was a group of people that got together, liberal scholars, to decide what words, those red letter words, did

Jesus actually say. So they had a black bead, a pink bead, and a red bead. So red meant

Jesus said it, black meant he didn't say it, and pink was maybe he said it.

And so there was only one passage that was unanimously accepted that Jesus said, and that was with the woman at adultery, where he says, let him without sin cast the first stone.

The only problem is most scholars recognize that that probably wasn't actually in the Bible. So the only thing they have that they say, yes,

Jesus said this, is the thing that we recognize, it may have happened, but we don't think it was originally written, and the reason we believe that is, when you look at early manuscripts, we don't have it, that account, or we have it in different areas, so it's kind of jumps around.

So that's one of the things where we don't think it was in the original, it may have been a true story, doesn't change any of the

Christian doctrine, but - Now you mentioned the Q source, there is a paper out there from a guy who was a student of Dan Wallace.

He wrote it to get into his doctoral program that was on why the pre -copay adultery, is originally from the

Q source. Yeah, and you know, I mentioned Q, so the

Q is the idea of, it comes from a German word, Quellum, and it is the idea that there's a source document, and a lot of people that bring up Q, and this goes to the argument,

Drew, that you made, is that we're not training Christians in church to answer atheist arguments, and that's where I think, you know,

James, Bill, the book club you do is good, because it gets that discussion going. So the thing that I see is,

I was on the boardwalk once, this was just after Barack Obama's DNC for his second re -election, so he had just spoken on like Thursday night, and I was on the boardwalk

Friday night, and so Barack Obama had spoken, and what happened was, I'm talking with one woman, and sharing the gospel with her, but this guy is coming in and interjecting, and I could tell from his interjections, he had studied

Bart Ehrman, he was just making the arguments that Bart Ehrman makes, and at one point, you know,

I just realized, he kept being a distraction from the conversation I was trying to have, so I figured I'd turn and, you know, deal with what he was saying, and he was arguing, well, you have to understand, there had to be a

Q, and he didn't realize I actually understood and have studied this, so I said, you mean

Coellum, and he just looked at me, I said, that's what Q stands for, that's what it's short for, so he like suddenly realized, uh -oh, and the thing is that a lot of times, people use these, and it sounds like really smart, but simple things answer, like his whole argument was, well, there had to have been an original source,

I said, why? He said, because where did Mark and Matthew and Luke get?

Or Matthew and Luke, they're common sources, Q, Mark, as opposed to Mark's source, the two -source hypothesis, and Matthew and Luke, like the

Lord's Prayer is similar, they're not in Mark, so they come, and sometimes they're exactly repeating, but here's the thing,

Mark Goodacre out of Duke does not believe in Q, and he's as good as it gets, and here's the thing, guys, is you have, you mentioned the

Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Cross believes that Jesus is best understood, as a cynic, not someone that's cynical, but lives off the lay of the land, and lives by his means, and so forth, and not apocalyptic, that apocalyptic words were put in later, so you have two of the top scholars,

John Dominic Cross and Bart Ehrman and Dal Allison, apocalyptic

Jesus or non -apocalyptic Jesus, they're the experts, I don't know where else to go. We'll see, but you don't have to go to the experts, because we cannot, look, what

I did with that gentleman was this, I asked him, after I said, did

Barack Obama speak last night, and he said yes, and I just, I don't remember the quotes now, but I gave some of the things he said,

I said, did the New York Times report that? Yes. Did the Washington Times report that? Did the

Boston Herald report it? You can go to any newspaper, and I said, well, what was the original source?

Did they all get it from the AP? And this, in not realizing the trap

I laid for him, he just, well, they were all there, they heard it, they were eyewitnesses, and I went, correct.

See, the fact is, is that, and in my book, I quote from the intro of, oh,

I forget the author now, but there's a New York Times bestseller that wrote a book, he was, he's

Arab, and he had written a book about, basically, kind of like what Bart Ehrman's books are, you know, basically saying that he walked away from Christianity because of the textual evidence, and yet, in his book, his whole book is based on the argument for Q, but in the intro of his book, he states, there is no hysterical evidence that Q existed.

You know why there's this - Is that President Oslon you're talking about? Yes. Yeah. So, here's the thing, is whether you believe in Q or not, there's earlier oral sources that contributed to the

Gospels, that's an evidence. You have, let's say you believe in M and L, Matthew's special source, those are two more, historical, multiply attested witnesses to Jesus.

You have Thomas, you have some, the letters of Paul, talk about the Last Supper.

He has sayings that Jesus said. So, you have, and Bart Ehrman has written a book,

Did Jesus Exist? He says he certainly existed. And we've had people like Robert Price and David, I've told

David Fitzgerald, look at Galatians 118, he meets his brother and his best disciple.

So, what more do you need? And there doesn't seem to be an agenda, he just goes, I went down and met with the pilgrims.

One of the things to me that was kind of surprising, if you study the whole mythicism, very popular on an internet level, not so much in scholarship, but you do have a few scholars out there, people,

Robert Price, Richard Carrier has a doctorate, but it's, they all hold to a historical

Paul. And I'm thinking, guys, you lose your whole argument when you do that, because it's just like trying to say the

Chronicles of Narnia, that's, you know, that's mythology, except the talking lion, now that part's real, but the rest of it, well, no, once you have a historical

Paul, now you've got all the connecting points. Paul talked with Peter, Paul talked with the brother of Jesus, James, he met with them and talked with them.

If a real historical person did that, you can't say that Jesus is a mythical person anymore.

Well, see, and Bill, the thing, like with where I see where atheism goes too far, is to sometimes throw out common sense for the high and lofty, because they, for example, what you said, well, there's these other

Gilgamesh or any of the other ones that you wanna believe was used to, you know, was used, the

Bible took it from there. Well, that's an assumption, right? Again, why would we have multiple accounts of a flood story or a creation story?

Because they ended up seeing, you know, the results of the flood and Noah passes that on.

And as you have people spread out in the Tower of Babel incident, what happens?

They all have the same story that came from Noah about what happened.

And so, yes, everyone had that same story because they ended up changing it, but it doesn't mean that the

Bible got it from there. That's the assumption you make, right? You're assuming that, well, this one was, we have, well, if it has written first, it has to be that the

Bible used it rather than the fact that what we know with common sense, you tell a story and you have people spread out, that story may change, but it doesn't mean that one got it from the other.

In fact, that would be a hard thing to do when they weren't in the same area. It wasn't like today where we have an internet and books can be, and thoughts can be spread quickly.

You didn't have information spreading that quickly. Well, you know, when I took a class in legends and genesis at University of North Carolina, I asked the professor, remember

I'm a fundamentalist now, and I said, what are the, you know, cause he would just ripped it apart with the, he said, no, enter the ark three different times.

It's not even internally consistent. So I said, what are the seven pairs of the

P and the two pairs of J, see a blended narrative. But anyway, I asked him, what are the, just tell me the chances that this story is historical.

And he looked, he was Catholic and he looked at me, he goes, Billy, you always have these unanswerable questions. He goes, like,

I'm an idiot. He goes, that would have to be zero. And so I'm like, I'm sorry, this is what

I learned in church. So anyway, but go ahead. I was going to say, talking about atheist overreach, when we had the, when we had

Robert Price, we had him twice in our book club. So he's the mythicist.

He wrote a book, he contributed to a book, a compilation that was done by John Loftus and kind of an anthology.

So there's a whole chapter. And when you read the book on its various versions of mythicism or explanations, if any one of the chapters is true, the other chapters would have to be false.

They all contradict each other, have totally different theories. But one of the chapters Robert Price presented was, had to be, right.

The theory is that Jesus was actually not a historical person, but was a mushroom.

It's called the Sacred Mushroom of the Cross. John Allegro, who was a Dead Sea Scroll scholar, started this religion, wrote a book,

The Sacred Mushroom of the Cross. And this mushroom is hallucinogenic. And so the theory goes that the first century

Christians were basically having hallucinogenic trips and they were taking the mushroom, but they wrote their text in code.

So when Jesus says, unless you eat of my body, you will not see the kingdom of God, what it obviously means, unless you eat the mushroom and have an altered state of consciousness, you're not going to know the real truth.

So, I mean, I don't know very many atheists who could would say that's plausibly, possibly an explanation for how we got the world's largest religion.

Do you believe that it's actually, cause I mean, you got the flying spaghetti monster and things like this.

Do you think that they're truly believing this or is it, you know, like I had a guy -

I was at the Metroplex Atheist and a girl named Courtney comes up to me and goes, oh, Jesus didn't exist.

Richard Carrier is peer reviewed. I went, I didn't mean anything that he's peer reviewed. He's obviously existed.

So anyway, now on the flip side, your guest next week, Godless Granny, was interviewing the

Calvinator, this Calvinist guy, one of the best YouTube things you've ever seen. And she goes, well, we got the autographs.

We got the originals. And she goes, no, we don't. And then she showed and see, there you go again.

Christians have got to be educated that we do not have the autographs. Doesn't mean that we don't have a pretty complete authoritative

New Testament cause we got 5 ,000 Greek copies, Coptic copies, whatever. We can pretty much tell what the originals were.

But when you go and say something like we have the autographs and Double G to her credit corrected him.

And to his credit, he goes, I was wrong. So, you know, do you see the vast need to educate the

Christians before they just go to a YouTube and, you know, that's the end of their faith. For the audience, this is coming from an atheist, a professing atheist, folks, right?

So this is why I like Bill, right? Bill and I get in a conversation. He loves

Justin Peter's ministry. And I'm like, it's like, he loves, he loves when we're...

There's a question we have in the questions we'll get to about Todd White, right? Bill loves that stuff.

I just called his university, Lifestyle University. I said, how much is the tuition?

$4 ,000 for a bunch of garbage. So, and this is what

I think, it is why I really question why Bill is still fighting God and not just repenting.

I said this when we debated. I said this at dinner. I say it here, I said it when you were on the show, but last time, like,

I don't know, Bill, what it is that's holding you, you know, because otherwise you seem like quite clear thinking.

You recognize the problems in your own belief system. But I think that the thing that we end up seeing within much of atheism is,

I believe, really not pro -atheism as much as it is anti -Christian. And I wanted to get back to that because I don't know we fully fleshed that out, but what are your thoughts,

Bill, from an atheist perspective with that comment?

Do you think that atheism - First of all, you gotta realize, atheists are pretty clueless.

You know, you keep mentioning Richard Dawkins is not, if you wanna read books on good scholarship, don't read

The God Delusion, that's just softballs. Read John Loftus's The Christian Delusion.

He's the guy you need to read. He's, you know, has the best arguments on divine hiddenness, problem of evil of a guy.

You know, we're gonna have - Graham Oppie. Graham Oppie, read those guys, not Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.

So, but the problem is when I'm at the Atheist Book Club, I'll mention these fine -tuning things, and I just realized these guys are just clueless.

Who knows how most of them became atheists? A lot of, it could have been a lot of emotional factors, or they just read one book or, you know, something crazy.

Who knows? You know? Yeah, so let me get in, wanna switch gears, actually.

And first off, I'll bring Aaron in just to say, at least say hello, tell us where he's at today.

Aaron. I am, actually, I'm at my house, but this is like the third place in my house that I've joined the show from.

Andrew's always complaining that the places where I joined from were all so dark and like brooding and gothic and whatever.

So I was like, you know, I'm gonna find a well -lit spot. So, I don't know what he wants to look at anyway.

I mean, there's nothing here worth looking at, but there you go, I'm well -lit. He's usually right about that. When you're usually on, it is dark, because all

I can see is this part of Aaron's face. Yeah, just the head, you know? Yeah, just that light that he's got.

Yeah, so this is from my dining room. This was painted by my beautiful wife for a gift for me, so I'm super thankful for that.

For those of you curious, it's well above my head. Hey, I wanna thank you guys for coming on here. What was that?

I was curious, yes. Oh, speaking of art, I'm an artist, and I went to a furniture store and I said, hey, what do you think of my

Rothko lookalike? His recently sold for 78 million, I'm just asking $100. And they look at it and go, yeah, we just don't like it.

And it's like, in my mind, I'm like, Mark Rothko's lookalike.

But the reality, in my deluded mind, I just, you know, said, okay, it's not working.

See, there again, you're - Good try, though. Yeah. You're sure, again, in your deluded mind, because if evolution was true -

Well, Andrew, we have to remember the noetic effects of sin. This just hadn't affected my emotions.

It's infected my intellect, my reasoning. I can't even reason right. And because of the evolutionary argument against naturalism, oh my gosh, my thoughts, the way

I process things is just a random mishap made for survival, not for finding the truth.

So yeah, I've got all sorts of biases and problems with my thinking. So just bear with me, okay?

I'm curious here. So I knew that we were gonna have one guest. And by the way, I always come late to the party.

That's just, Aaron come lately. I knew that we were being joined by one atheist tonight.

This other gentleman, I don't know your name. What's your name? Yeah, so Bill is on the right that he pressed to be an atheist.

James is on the left. And he is a Christian former Mormon who the both of them do the

Atheist Christian Book Club and you can go atheistbookling, atheistchristianbookclub .com.

And see - I've actually heard of that podcast, I haven't heard. Well, what's just fantastic.

If I have a question on Mormons, hey, what's the best argument against Mormonism, James? Oh, 1832,

James, he predicted the temple would be built in Missouri, Independence, Missouri, 60 years later,

Pratt writes, I mean, he can give you the details. They say, hey, where's the temple gonna be built?

And he goes, wait, not all the generation. It was supposed to be in this generation. There's still people, 200 years later, it's total falsehood.

So it's just a joy to be able to ask James questions on hermeneutics, on a variety of topics, obviously

Mormonism and Daniel Ray on cosmology has just really changed my whole view on the cosmos and fine tuning and so forth.

Well, I think you clearly, the one thing everyone in the audience can tell, Bill, is that you do a lot of reading, okay?

But my challenge is to study the scriptures the way you study these other books, and maybe this issue you have with clarity would be made clear.

Well, keep in mind, Andrew, I really don't have a wife, so I have a lot of time on my hands. Well, I know you don't have a wife.

I'm unemployed too, so that helps.

I wanna ask Bill a question, because you maybe have heard this before. If you haven't, I found the first person asking you that let me know, but I highly doubt that I am.

Obviously nobody can see our own blind spots and nobody can know what they don't know.

So if this is a difficult question, impossible question, I completely respect that. But have you ever, I mean, you sound like a very, as Andrew said, a very well -read, very educated individual, far more educated than most atheists

I have met. So that to your credit. Have you ever wondered if there were a piece of information or an individual or an experience that you may encounter that would be the thing that would convince you that you were wrong?

Or can you not conceive at all of anything existing would prove to you that you're wrong?

Oh, absolutely, Fortunate Universe by Luke Barnes. That has just really put my faith in atheism into a tailspin because of his coherent, just remarkable arguments that it seems to be these fundamental constants and fine -tuning of the universe.

There just doesn't seem to be a good explanation. And I've listened to my fellow atheists and that multiverse thing, that's just so ad hoc.

And I know - That to me was one of the kind of surprising things. I think it's a default argument.

Multiverse goes this way. Okay, if it's a billion to one odds that all these cosmological constants, all these fine -tuned parameters have to be just exactly right, what are the odds?

It's a billion to one. Well, the answer is, but what if there's a billion universes? If there's a billion universes, then, okay, one of them, we just happen to be in the right one that had all these constants.

But the surprising thing to me is that the cosmologists, the atheist cosmologists seem to be reluctant to go to the multiverse.

They recognize it's not scientific. It's not observable. It's not repeatable. It's nothing that -

More scientific than anything else. There can be no evidence for it because we can't experience anything in another universe.

And so even one of our guest authors was New York Times bestseller, Krauss, Lawrence Krauss, who wrote

A Universe from Nothing. And he mentions the argument, but basically doesn't want to play that card because I think he recognizes it's not a scientific argument.

So what do you think about the recent developments in evolutionary theory that's sounding more and more creationistic in tone?

So for example, coming to the conclusion that all living human beings had to have a single progenitor, which of course

Christians have been saying since forever, obviously. And recently I watched a short video where a young lady, a very young little girl, asked some questions about the beginning of the universe.

And basically every answer he gave was a quasi -scientific version of the attributes of God, pre -existence and intelligence and so on and so forth.

He just refused to call it supernatural and God. He just made it sound like these things could have been all very scientific realities.

When you see these types of things, evolutionism, again, as more study and more science is being applied to it, they're realizing more and more that the picture that's being formed from this research is aligning more and more with the

Christian understanding of creationism than it is the historical understanding of evolution.

What does that do for you? Well, first of all, you have to have life originally and you have to have the polysaccharides, which isn't any easy thing to make a sugar.

You have polypeptides, you have the lipids. That cell membrane is a lot more complex.

All these things, Darwin had no clue. He just saw a big blob. He didn't have the electron microscope.

So to get life off the ground in signature of the cell by Stephen Meyer, he says there's gotta be five things that go right for, even

RNA to get off the ground. It just seems to be one problem after the other. And one of the things

Lee Cronin said that this origin of life thing is a scam. I mean, he's talking tongue in cheek, but boy, it just seems so problematic.

If you look at the TOR, Professor Dave debate, I've got to make a decision, even though I'm biased toward Professor Dave, I think

TOR has better arguments. You take our best scientists, give them an unlimited budget and come back a hundred years later and they can't produce life out of non -life.

Even if they could, all you would have done is you'd have proved an intelligent creation because assuming that those scientists are intelligent.

But to think that it randomly happened and just one of the factors that would have to happen is whatever life abiogenesis that came out of non -life would also have to have the essential characteristic of being able to reproduce.

So how many times do you have life starting miraculously out of non -life, but it was missing the reproduction part?

So it didn't last. It's a lot coming out of non -life that was already created or designed materials versus coming out of things.

Exactly, you don't have the part of this so -called big bang you have everything coming out of nothing. It's this one thing to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

We all know that's a trick, but to say that the entire universe came out of nothing. Lawrence Krauss, we had him as a guest.

By the time we had him, we brought him in in person. It was the, I think the 20th anniversary or 10th anniversary of his book, a universe from nothing, maybe the 10th anniversary.

And so this was looking back 10 years later when we brought him in to do the book club. And by then he had been pretty much taken apart by people pointing out that he equivocated.

So he talks about in the beginning of his book, how - Quantum fluctuations. Yeah, a universe from nothing, why it's such a deep philosophical question.

But then when he addresses it, he says that there were, you know, quantum fluctuation.

There was things popping in and out of existence, but this is not nothing.

It's very much something. So he, at the very end of the book club, he did make what

I consider to be a concession to us. He said, he said, guys, let me just say this to you. He said,

I'm paraphrasing, but he said, basically, at first there was nothing and then there was everything.

And I'm thinking, where have I read that before? In the beginning,

God created - Someone asked just, I was converted at 17 and you'll find this interesting,

Andrew. Put the quote up, what you're referring to before you refer to it. Rob said,

I think Bill is going to convert one day but unable to distinguish when he first believed.

Okay, well, I was converted at 17, went to Dorham, North Carolina at 30, met an aerobics teacher. So we hung out and I used to constantly quote the

Bible. And she goes, you can't say anything without backing it up with scripture and just talking about scripture.

I'd say, that's what I thought you did, you know? But she was an Episcopalian. So, you know, it was just like, you know, she could care less, but she's the one that got the miraculous healing.

Let me say this about Bill too. And I'm his friend, so he knows that I say it in love. But Bill, since I've known him for six years, seven years now maybe, there have been numerous times that I have sensed in our conversations, not so much in the book club, but private talks, we've had conversations.

I kind of just felt, Bill, like you were like this close to becoming a Christian. Eric Hogan and I said the same thing.

We were like - A couple of weeks later, I'm thinking, no, he's as far away as he's ever been, you know? So he's given me false hope, but I have gotten

Bill kindly to tell me that if he does come back to Christianity, I get to be the one to baptizing.

So I hope I have that opportunity. I am hoping to see that baptism. I will fly out to Dallas for it.

So, well, let me just mention a couple of things. We'll go to some questions that we had, but first it would be good to mention that fact that I know

Aaron always looks forward to this one part of the program where we talk about Squirrelly Joe's coffee because he loves his coffee.

Actually, by the way - I've got to say something right here. I brought the Squirrelly Joe's coffee home with me, right?

And I can't believe I didn't notice it, but I'm in front of - Home from the conference. Home from the conference.

The Squirrelly Joe's coffee has this, you know what color the squirrel is, Andrew? White. And it's not just white because of a design thing.

If you read the back, he actually has a relate, they talked about white squirrels, a prayer endangered white squirrels, which are native to Brevard, North Carolina.

And whether I like coffee or not, that right there totally sold me. I will forever buy and not drink that coffee because of that connection right there.

He's helping the endangered white squirrel. Yeah, so all of the speakers got a bag of Squirrelly Joe's coffee at the conference.

And we all, all the speakers, once I announced that Aaron doesn't drink coffee, we all thought we had dibs on his bag of coffee in which she just turned and said, but my wife drinks coffee.

And so he took - I was hoping somebody was gonna walk up and say, he who was without sin cast the first stone because they had the rocks in their hands.

And I was like very afraid what might happen to me. Yeah, so Squirrelly Joe's coffee does support this show.

They are a sponsor. And I just opened a new bag of compassion that I got at the conference.

It was the bag that I grabbed as soon as I started. I basically told everyone don't touch that one because we weren't supposed to take them until the end of the conference.

But once I started realizing all the bags started disappearing, I didn't want my bag of compassion because Bill -

He totally called dibs. Yeah, I need compassion. So I'm drinking compassion every morning. I love that he has names, kindness, he's got compassion, he has integrity.

The only name - My wife asked me to bring home respect. Yeah, you brought home some respect.

Bill, the only thing I have a problem with, and as you guys who just made some lattes before we started the live stream, but James, maybe you can appreciate this, but Squirrelly Joe names his decaf honesty.

I think there's a problem. It shouldn't be called hypocrisy. I can't complain too much.

I was a Mormon, so I'm not supposed to drink coffee, right? I don't even like coffee.

I just drink it to make the Mormons mad. That's not true. I really love it. Now, I really would like to try some of this

Squirrelly Joe's coffee. To do that, just go to strivingforeturning .org slash coffee, strivingforeternity .org

slash coffee. And on your first order, if you want to get yourself 20 % off, just use the promo code

SFE. That is how they know that we sent you there. So 20 % off the first order.

So if you're like me, that first order was a big one. For churches, you can get the five pound bags.

That's what we had at the conference. So everyone's enjoying some really good coffee there. And when you get done and you want to put your head down on a pillow, don't forget to get yourself a good

MyPillow at mypillow .com. Use the promo code SFE. Again, it stands for Striving for Eternity.

They sponsor the show. Aaron, I do have a picture. Maybe I should show that picture too.

Bill, I don't know if I should take this personal, but I was getting ready to get up and speak.

And just before I spoke, I walked over to where Aaron was, and I noticed that Aaron came to the conference with something.

Now, I fly, I travel with my pillow, and I use that when I'm at the hotel.

But I noticed that when I was getting ready to speak, this was Aaron with a pillow in the sanctuary before I spoke.

Hey man, I'm prepared. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. I was seriously wondering there, you know, was

Aaron prepared for my message? He had his MyPillow with him there at the conference for my message.

He claims it was for his back. I will say that it was comfortable.

I'm not gonna say what part of my body was comfortable touching it, but it was comfortable. So you can get yourself a good

MyPillow, striving for, go to mypillow .com, use the code SFE for Striving for Eternity and get the discounts there.

There's a lot of discounts that you get there. I think they're still running their $25 sale.

Much of their stuff is just $25. So good time to get that. If you've ever been thinking about it, now would be the time.

So let's jump to a couple of questions. I know, Drew, you grabbed a couple of these from early on.

Jesse had put this, asked this question, Bill. I think it's directed toward you. According to the atheist, by what standard has atheism gone too far?

Atheism has gone too far the second they denied God, the

God they know exists. There's that Romans one again. This should be an interesting conversation.

Well, according to the evolutionary argument against naturalism, we aren't competent enough to make a good informative decision on whether God exists.

So, and also - But if there is a God, then we are competent enough to make that point. Oh, that's a good point, yeah. And to me, there's so many things that impact this question.

Paleontology, genetics, obviously Hebrew and Greek, you should be familiar with that. So it's a very difficult question, but apologetics,

I have just enjoyed. I took a creation evolution class when I was at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

And just, I've learned so much about physics and radiometric dating, you know, and that was from reading the answers in Genesis of all things and all the creationist literature.

And that's why I believe that this should be taught in schools on like a

Saturday or on a YouTube, because that's where you really learn this stuff is when you have to debate it, when you have to make a case, more so than just learning rote stuff.

What about Jesse's question though, Bill? Do you think, of course, you know Romans 1 and you know what it says, but you haven't said that you agree with Romans 1.

Do you really think that somewhere deep in your heart, you really do know there's a God and you're suppressing that?

Or do you think that the jury's still out, legitimately out for you? Well, it could be, but I mean, we're gonna talk to Luke.

I mean, all I can do is defer to the expert and hopefully I am having a crisis of faith, but maybe he can get me out of it.

You know what I'm saying? I'm gonna try to get you out of it to Jesus. Well, he might go over, play his cards, who knows?

Well, yeah, I would recommend his book, Fortunate Universe, but the problem is it's so detailed and deep.

His challenge is to make this stuff understandable and simple, just like the

TOR professor Dave, they've got to realize we're lay people. We don't understand all this technical stuff.

Yeah, you notice he hasn't answered the question though. Yeah, I noticed that.

Well, all I can say is, Jesse, I tried. Where has atheism gone too far?

Yeah, if I can elaborate a little bit on Jesse's question, I think Rob here does so as well.

In talking about too far, where atheism has gone too far, the idea and the question is, by what standard is it too far, right?

Who makes the standard for atheism and whether or not it has gone too far?

So how do you measure that? We read a book, Stealing From God, by Frank Turk, who was nice enough to come to our club and very nice guy, really had a nice talk to him.

And what he says is true, that as atheists, we steal a lot of Christian morality when we make moral judgments.

So yeah, I'm aware of that, how in the world do

I make informed moral judgments, which a lot of times are wrong moral judgments.

On that topic, we had that debate that we did at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and you talked about the challenges as you leave a

Christian foundation that you have to recreate everything if you're gonna be consistent.

And so you've mentioned just, could you talk about how hard it is to develop a moral standard out of nothing?

Or just to make moral judgments, it's like you're just relying on your fallible bias, that view that's just been formed by the culture.

And so it's not a really - You just live with preferences, really. Yeah, yeah. And well, the thing with atheists are go to flourishing.

And yeah, we want people to flourish. And I don't think like with Islam, that five times prayer thing, and I go to a health club and the women just gotta have a hot tub a day, fully clothed.

I don't think that's flourishing. Now, the great thing about Christianity is you can go to one of these hip churches and do whatever you pretty much want, say a couple of prayers, go to a

Bible study. I would call that a flaw, not a feature. The thing is you don't have to put forth a lot of effort or time, which is great.

It doesn't interfere, just be cool and hip and you're cool, you're good to go, right? Okay, so Rob is asking you, why is flourishing morally good?

Well, obviously flourishing to us would be to get in the hot tub without a lot of clothes and to get -

You're looking for a foundation here, Bill. You're building, you're stacking -

Well, what I'm saying is flourishing to our Islam members is not getting vitamin

D because they have all their clothes, the women have all their clothes on, where us, we get vitamin

D because we can - Yeah, but why is it - So flourishing is very subjective and the homosexual thing, do we listen to Andy Stanley who says flourishing is embracing the homosexual lifestyle or do we listen to John MacArthur?

You hit it when you said the word subjective. And so what we're looking for, you're right, all that's subjective, so can you give us something objective?

Not really. I really appreciate the fact that you're honest enough to admit that.

That is very key and I really appreciate the honesty because I think too many atheists try to kind of gaslight us and try to build what really is a house of cards when they try to defend the objectivity of their moral standards.

So I really appreciate your honesty on that. Yeah, Bill, if I can for a moment, just say what

I think a lot of people in the comments are already thinking, right? You've already admitted that you see problems with the atheistic worldview that you're in.

You mentioned Frank Turek reading his book and a lot of Frank Turek's stuff in that book comes from Greg Bonson as well.

The idea of stealing from the Christian worldview in order to live in this world as an atheist, right?

You're having to take from Christians. You understand all of those things. And even you made a claim that you're not sure of what you know,

I can't know everything and how can I know what I know, right? But at the same time, you're making knowledge claims as well and so I think what everyone here is seeing is that yeah, there is a crisis there, but you understand a lot of scripture, a lot of what

Christians believe and you see the flaws in atheism and the illogicalness in atheism.

And so what we're seeing is that you are so close if you would just repent and come to Christ.

I mean, it's there, right? You understand. I mean, we can't say you don't understand.

You understand. Too easy, Bill, or too hard? Oh, no, it's, you know, someone just noted about total depravity.

I've hung around an atheist, Todd Hedgecock, who's a fellow professor at your college. I've known more about Calvinism than I ever wanted to know.

So, you know, I listened to Matt Slick and Leighton Flowers and it's like both of them have excellent arguments and, you know,

I'm just trying to, you know. Yes, Matt Slick has excellent arguments. They do. They both have, so let's be clear.

They both have excellent arguments, but only Matt is being consistent with scripture, which is what they're both saying is the verses, right?

Only Matt is interpreting properly. You know, and this goes back to something K .T. I have a question. Okay. Because this is just fitting with what

K .T. said. Arguments don't save, though. It has to be God. God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, right?

And so let me add on to her comment and ask this, is when, you know, there's gonna be someone that's gonna be healed and he's like, go to this river.

And he's like, what's wrong with the river by me? Right? And someone says to him, well, if he told you to go, like, is it that hard of a thing to do, right?

But what was he addressing? The pride issue that people have. So you don't believe, or let me ask it the way it was asked.

Do you believe your arguments are gonna save you? No, of course not. Okay. So you keep appealing to authorities instead of appealing to the ultimate authority, right?

God. True. You need to trump all the

PhDs. Let's go with what the Bible says, guys.

I mean, you know, go ahead, Aaron. Well, let me give you a verse.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, which seems to indicate man's working up, for it is

God who works within you, which seems to put the onus on God. So Matt and everybody, can we live with the tension and say,

I don't know how much God's part in this, and I don't know how much my part in this. Well, see, and that's a great verse because that verse is not talking about how we get saved, but what we do after we are saved, right?

So theologically, it's not talking regeneration, it's talking sanctification, right?

So there are works in sanctification, but there's not works in regeneration. We will never know.

This is a question I have. We've talked about this before. I don't think we were ever gonna know the answer to all the theological questions.

You know, there's 2000 people at my church, but I'm the only one in the whole building with all my theology correct.

That may have happened to you. Well, your thing, Watchman Fellowship, determines orthodoxy, exposes folks.

So help me here. We can know enough. We can't know all truth, but we can know enough truth to have our sins forgiven and have an eternal relationship with the

God who created all things. So don't wait till you know all truth. Just know that essential truth.

Good point. So Bill, many atheists I've encountered, just completely eschew the concept of faith.

They say that faith is an esoteric, solely religious idea that has no basis in their life.

They don't have faith, right? How do you interact with the concept of faith? That's where atheists go so wrong.

It's not a clueless, Kierkegaardian leap of faith.

It's like, remember Francis Schaeffer? You're on the mountain and underneath, it's like, I know this mountain.

There's someone underneath that says you're not just taking a blind leap. You have good evidence that this mountain is secure, that I know what

I'm talking about. So yeah, Christian faith has lots of good evidence for it. There was birthed in Jerusalem that you had radical transformations of the disciples.

It should have just ended there. They had checked out. So what even people like Gerd Ludeman and the great

Gail Ellis say, there was a terrific transformation, which we can't really explain in the disciples' faith.

And who could explain Paul's radical conversion or James the skeptic? So yeah, there's good evidence for Christianity.

Is it sufficient? That's the question. Well, so here's my follow -up for you though. So what, in what do you have your faith?

Myself, which is really problematic. Because obviously I'm in business and obviously

I did something wrong because I missed the internet. I missed everything, but actually led to huge successes.

One of my reoccurring themes is never underestimate total depravity.

Well, that probably didn't help. The reason I asked the question is this. I had the opportunity of talking with a group of PhD candidates who were getting their doctorates in psychiatry.

And we talked through what, I'm a biblical counselor, okay? And we talked through what a person needs in order to fundamentally be changed.

Like what does a counseling need when they come to you? And there's lots of talk about feelings and behaviors and so on and so forth.

And by God's grace, I was without, at the very end, without using biblical terminology, I was able to get them to the point where they saw that really the most fundamental thing that they needed in order to truly embrace real change was this idea of trust, which biblically speaking, faith, trust, and belief are all identical concepts.

And so it's what are you trusting, right? I think you acknowledge that. But I wanna go back and I wanna critique one of the things that you said about faith and evidence.

Because faith actually exists outside of having any evidence whatsoever.

It's knowledge and it's understanding that grows from evidence, but faith actually doesn't require evidence of any sort.

I think the apologetics cart has gotten in front of the apologetics horse and always pushing for evidence to port faith versus evidence just simply evidencing of what we already believed.

So with all of that said, what I think is interesting about your position is that you're so confident, tongue in cheek, and I appreciate your humility and I appreciate your jest, but tongue in cheek, willing to put your faith, your trust in your own ability to conceive of reality.

You've talked of yourself being a delusion. You've talked about yourself missing things. You're fundamentally putting your trust in you instead of making the decision to put your trust in the

God of the Bible as he's communicated himself. Now, obviously, if we were to say, which is more trustworthy, the

God of the Bible as he communicates himself or Bill? On paper, we have no problem saying the

God of the Bible. So the question is, you're so willing to trust yourself knowing how faulty you are, what would it take for you to choose to trust

God knowing how perfect his word is and how cohesive it is, how he's, as he's communicated himself, would technically be the most trustworthy person in the universe?

What would it take for you to go from trusting yourself to trusting him? You know, guys, this has been great and you guys have just been fantastic, but it's really getting uncomfortable here.

At least it's your birthday, right? I mean, I am being very, so I'd love to stay, guys, but your arguments are just getting too close to comfort.

I shared something with Bill in our debate that we did, our discussion, it really wasn't a debate per se, but a discussion at a local church here.

We had an hour long discussion about these kinds of things. I ended it with this. If I'm wrong and Bill is right,

I'll never know it. I'll die and I'm nothing, I have no thoughts and no memories, so I'll never know it.

But then the problem is if Bill is wrong and I'm right, he will always know it.

And it's almost like not fair, but I realized this, and this is why we have conversations like this.

We're gonna let Bill go. I think he took all he could take today. I want to say thank you, Bill, because he was kind of outnumbered.

I wasn't even gonna be in the show at all tonight. James and I go to conferences. We went to the

Orleans Seminary, and it was like every lunch, we would talk for two or three hours, and I forgot

I was an atheist. I mean, it was so fantastic, and these guys were just, and by the way,

James is taking me to New Mexico or all over the place, speaking to these churches, and they couldn't have been any nicer.

They've just been fantastic to me. So, and you guys, too. Thanks for having me, and Andrew, I love you, and thanks for having me on.

Well, Bill, folks in the chat are saying they love you. So, you know. I love you, too.

So, some of the other questions that we ended up having that we'll just wrap up with is, well, there was a question as a two -parter, and it was a question

I was gonna save for, you know, Bill, I know, has some thoughts on Todd White, but he says, okay, peeps, here's a question

I pondered this morning watching a video about Todd White. I'd like some opinions.

Do you think it's possible that people like Todd White really believe what they're preaching?

Is it a misconception, or do you think that people like him are fully aware of their lies?

I can't come back for this one. I'm really curious of Bill's thoughts.

I just love Justin Peters, and here's the thing. Stephen Furyk, Elevate Church, in our own committee,

Robert Morris, who, what was so dangerous with him was his prosperity wasn't like, give me $1 ,000, and, you know, it was very subtle and very, so that's what really kills me.

I do not mind John MacArthur and you, Andrew, of course. I mean, you guys just, and James, of course, give it to me straight.

I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is this slippery, like, give an example.

Hillsong comes to Dallas, they're gone, and New York, and the guy,

I forgot his name, who was the leader there, is like, he commits adultery, and they go, okay, look, you know, we can go, you can go have shots of your shirt off with Justin Bieber and be cool with him.

That's cool, but we are gonna have to let you go for adultery. What does he do? He goes to another church,

Transformation Church, and they go, are you hip? Are you cool? Well, yeah, you're good with us.

You're on staff. The funny thing about Bill is he may not believe Christianity is true, but he wants it to be pure.

I do. It's just a little thing, and I love Justin Peters.

I love the work he does. Yeah, and Rob kind of quoted the verse that I was gonna give out of 1

Timothy, is they're deceiving and being deceived, and this question gets asked of Justin a lot, and that's the only answer we can give.

I think there are some who are truly deceived, and they think this is, because this is what they've been taught, that's all they know, and so they continue to propagate it, but there's others who clearly know.

I think back of ABC did a thing, oh, this is like 30 years ago, probably more, actually, where I think

Robert Tiltman was the guy. Robert Tiltman, yeah, and there was about three or four of the televangelists that they single -handedly took down.

Yeah, and because he had said in college, this is what he was gonna do. This is how to build it, so he was clearly a deceiver.

He clearly knew what he was doing with that. My philosophy on that is

I'm not God, so I can't know somebody's heart, I can't judge motives, only

God can do that. I can tell you a person's a false prophet by what they say. I can tell you if they are making merchandise of the

Bible or they're misinterpreting Scripture. What I can't tell you is what motivates them.

So even like a Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, it's possible he really did see something in the woods that day in the first vision.

He was involved in the occult. He could have been an angel of light or something. What I do know, he didn't talk to God.

And I can know that he is a false prophet because I can study his prophecies, but I can't assign motives to Joseph because only

God can do that. Yeah, and that's the thing that some of these people,

I mean, if you're deceived, and this is kind of what Aaron was saying earlier, like if you're deceived, you don't know it, right?

Nobody knows they're in a cult, right? Correct, I mean, if they're deceived, they're not gonna realize they're also deceiving, but there are those who are, they know what they're doing.

Now, who are those people? Well, that's where we just don't know. Well, personally, I think Todd White knows.

It's hard not to, because he said 15 years he's never sinned. He lives with himself, doesn't he?

But here's the thing, right? He does the leg lengthening trick, right? The parlor trick.

And he's so good at it, but he does that knowing it's a trick that he's not actually lengthening people's legs, right?

You know, there's the whole theory on psychics. There's closed -eyed and open -eyed psychics. You can do cold reading very skillfully without realizing that you are.

You know, there's a chart that you can learn when somebody says one thing, you know the opposite's gonna be true.

You can learn how to be a cold reader. I think some people do know exactly what they're doing and they're doing it on purpose.

But there's also, again, the Bible talks about deceived and being deceived.

I don't think it matters where we draw the line. Does it matter if they're purposely deceiving or they're deceived themselves?

If the blind lead the blind, they both fall in the ditch. The result is gonna be the same.

Now, there is, on YouTube, there is a mini documentary that I just discovered last night on Todd White, exposing him.

And actually, brother John Elvin, who comments on the show, he's in the documentary.

And then some other friends of mine, I found out, are in the documentary. I'm kind of upset that I wasn't asked to be in it, but that's okay, you know,

Doreen Virtue's in it. But yeah, it's very good. It's very telling about what

Todd teaches and then the things he said, things that are blatant lies that he's told that were all caught on camera, you know?

So everyone should check that out. Hold on, there's a comment about it.

The African sheep says that's on Daniel C channel. Yep, that's where I saw it. Okay, so to close up,

James, we talked about the Atheist Christian Book Club, which is atheistchristianbook .com.

But tell people how they can find out about you at the Watchman Fellowship. Our website is watchman .org,

and there's links to the book club there and other things that we do. We have a podcast, Apologetics Profile, and also

Good Heavens. Daniel Ray is the guy who puts most of that together for us.

So it's watchman .org. We take the name Watchman from Ezekiel's Watchman on the

Wall, and to warn people of dangers that affect their community and their families.

And so that's what we try to do. Most of our stuff is on cults and alternative faiths, world religions, controversial doctrines, practices, and spiritual leaders.

And again, I do have an interest in atheism, so we've done, especially in the last six or eight years, have done a lot more on that.

So Fatima is saying, great to meet you, James. Thank you, SFA. So it's Watchmen, singular?

M -A -N, Watchman. Okay, Watchman. Wanted to make sure for folks to get that. And then lastly, just to give as well, as Melissa says here, a shameless plug.

Shameless plug for our brother, Drew. His cologne is the bomb. My husband loves it. Go buy some, y 'all.

So, Drew, the problem is you don't have a website yet. So how can people get some with your new business you're working on?

So we do have a YouTube, or not YouTube. I did it again. I did it when you texted me. So folks, if you were watching him text during the show, it's because, see,

I was more stealthy in my texting, but he wasn't. And so I always said, hey, what's the link to your website?

He's like, I don't have one. I got a YouTube. I said, sure, what's that? He gives me a Facebook link. The whole time

I texted him on YouTube, I thought I said Facebook, but I've got, so we've got a

Facebook page that's set up where you can, I try to post, not overbearingly, but here and there, just to give people updates and stuff.

So we haven't fully launched yet. I've been putting out feelers. So some test samples, been sending those out.

Sent one to Melissa's husband. Sent some to several people. Kevin Hay, I sent one too, so.

That must have been why he smelled so good. Yeah, but not your co -hosts here. Well, here's the thing.

So I put it out to say - your guests would be the ones that would get the fresh fruit. Yeah, I mean, we send our guests either a

MyPillow or some coffee. So maybe you should send the guests some fragrance.

I can, if you give me your address, I can send you some samples, but the reason

I don't do that and I let people tell me that they want one is because my co -host last show,

Chris, he can't be around fragrance because his wife has a severe allergy. So I don't wanna just start sending people stuff and then they actually can't use it.

But the company is called Timeless Fragrances. And so we're starting with men's fragrances because I work for a fragrance company, a fragrance manufacturer, and I started learning all these things.

I go, oh, I could do that. Let's try to do that. So we developed some fragrances and I was like, man, these are really good.

Let's put these out and see what happens. And so just started making it, putting it out. And so I've got, right now

I've got four total fragrances, but I'm gonna try to put three out before the end of the year.

And then next year, I'm gonna start a women's line as well. We are also, I was talking to my wife about it, gonna try to do some room sprays as well.

So I've got a room spray base that's coming and I've got some nice fall scents that I like.

So I'm gonna try to put some of those out as well, can do samples with that. But I never thought

I would be this much into fragrance, but when you work in the industry and then you're around it all the time, you learn what goes into it, how to make it, candles and things like that, it becomes very fascinating.

And so I started the company. We're going to do a soft launch once we get our

Shopify and website connected to go live, where I can take pre -orders.

Then once I get, once people make pre -orders and I get some funds kind of rolling in,

I can get a lot more supplies to be able to ship out quickly. Then we're gonna do a full launch where you'll be able to purchase directly from the website.

And then eventually we're gonna do TikTok shop cause that's what's blowing everybody's company up is TikTok shop.

But I gotta have the supplies and everything cause once you do TikTok shop, you have guaranteed shipping dates.

And if you don't hit those shipping dates because you don't have supplies or whatever, they penalize you and they'll take your shop off and everything like that, fine you.

So yeah, we're gonna do, hopefully around October, we can do a launch where we're ready to go.

Good. So we'll keep everyone up to date there. Next week, as we mentioned, we will have

Godless Granny on here. And you guys had her at your book club.

And so for the atheistic Christian book club. That book club you're speaking about.

Yeah, well, we got, so someone sent me a video of hers where she was responding to latent flowers and was using it to say, this is proof that God doesn't exist.

And they wanted me to respond to it. And instead what I did was reach out to her and said, do you wanna come on and let's discuss it?

Because I think I can answer the issue of God's sovereignty and human responsibility, so.

Well, Andrew, what I like about that is what I learned late in life, you reach more people by talking with them than talking about them.

Yeah, and that's what we try to do here on this show. That's why it's open to anyone to come in, ask any questions, whether it's in chat or, which we prefer, come on in and join.

Just always go to apologitalive .com. That's how you join. There's a way to participate down below.

Just scroll down to the little stream yard icon So we will have her on, that'll be next week.

Then the end of the month, the 29th, I have a friend of mine,

John Harrison, who will be here. At least that's the plan.

And I may end up having, Drew, I may end up having, now that I realize it, you may have to run that one. Now, I think that's -

Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, what day? 29th. If not, we'll talk -

Of this month? Yeah. Okay, I should be good, because in two weeks in September, I'm traveling.

Well, September's gonna be good, yeah. So the plan is, and I really want to participate in this one, but I've been sent several videos of people that claim to be preachers, pastors, ones studying to be, that are condemning

Christian nationalism. So Chris Harris, John Harris of the Conversation of Matter podcast will be on.

I may end up being in D .C., so I may not be able to make it. All of September, though, we are gonna be talking counseling topics.

I should have been prepared and pulled those topics up, so let me do that quickly.

Hey, Drew, you gotta check your calendar, though, because in two weeks, it's still August. Three weeks, it's in September. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

So we're gonna deal with the topics in this order in September. We'll see if we get to all of them, but they're counseling topics.

We're gonna have Aaron, who will be late as usual, but one of our other speakers at Striving Fraternity, Anthony Russo.

He is one of the other podcasters at the Christian Podcast Community, Grace and Peace Radio. He is an

ACBC counselor as well, and he's one of our speakers. And then I'll have my pastor and his wife, who are both of them are

ACBC counselors. We're gonna deal with communication, anger, marriage, parenting, anxiety, depression, money, and sexual sins.

Something tells me we're not getting through that in all through September. You're not gonna get through like the first two.

Yeah. Well, we'll do one a show, one a week. We'll solve all of them.

Yeah. Easy peasy. So that's what we have coming up. The only one in question is the 29th.

Maybe we may end up having to move that because I really want it to be part of that discussion. So we'll see, but Drew, I'll send you the videos just in case.

So James, thanks for coming on. Thank Bill as well. Don't go anywhere, James, wait till we end the stream.

And for the rest of folks, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and we'll see you next time.