Do Atheists Steal from God?

Welcome Back to Revealed Apologetics and the Guest Introduction

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have a very, very special guest. Now, those of you who are used to listening to my channel, you know that we focused very heavily upon presuppositional apologetics, but my sinful deep dark pleasure is reading Frank Turek books when no one's looking.

I really have appreciated Dr. Turek's work, his ministry, his debates, and as you guys know, I do like to encourage, especially people from the reform perspective, the presuppositional perspective, to help you guys understand that there is a great many things that we could learn from our brothers and sisters who are doing work from their differing perspectives.

And so I'm very happy to have Dr. Turek here to give us some insights. We're gonna be talking about a book that he wrote, Stealing from God, and I purposely picked that book so that I could imagine in my mind, Dr. Turek is just as presuppositional as we'll get him, but we'll definitely be able to find a lot of common ground and a lot of common use with the sort of arguments that he uses in that book.

So without further ado, Dr. Turek, why don't you introduce yourself to the folks listening in? Well, thanks, Eli.

Yeah, great being with you. I guess we're predestined to be here together. That's right, amen. Yeah, we have a ministry called crossexamine .org that's cross-examined with a D on the end of it. And we do a lot of college events.

We go to colleges and present evidence that Christianity is true, churches, high schools as well. And if people really wanna get an idea of what we do, they go to crossexamine .org and also go to our crossexamine .org YouTube channel because there's about 800 Q &A videos there.

Most of them are short Q &A videos, anywhere from two to say seven minutes, questions that are asked at a college campus. So that'll give you an idea of what we do.

What I really appreciate about those videos is you cross-examine as a ministry. I've always looked at as a well-oiled apologetics machine. You guys know how to get yourselves out there on social media, and you guys make great use of the content that you have.

So for example, you'll have a debate with Q &A, and then you kind of share. I've seen all over YouTube, you share these kind of two-minute, three-minute, five-minute videos of issues that you've addressed.

And I think that's a very helpful way to get a lot of mileage out of what you're doing. So that's definitely been helpful and very useful, I'm sure. Yeah, because of this,.

People don't have a very long attention span. That's right. So it's gotta be short. So that's what we try and keep, you know, we take, we'll go to college campus and speak for three hours with Q &A, but then we'll break up the Q &A so people can take it in short, digestible chunks.

Yeah, yeah.

And then now, are you the founder of Cross-Examine? Did you start that ministry yourself with Yeah, yeah.

And you know, we have a board that helped me start it, but yeah, we started it back in the 06, I think, and we started going to colleges in 07, even though I had done some of that beforehand. And so our real mission is to go to colleges and high schools more than anything else, because 75 of kids who are brought up in the church walk away from the church once they leave the home.

And one of the major reasons they do this is intellectually they don't know why Christianity is true, because we've never told them why it's true. You know, we just say, go believe, and then they get to college, and you know, the atheist professors don't just say, believe, they try and give evidence for their worldview.

So that's what we're trying to do, give them evidence.

Apologetics and Devotional Life

All right, very good. Well, my first question is going to be a practical one for those we're gonna presuppose, we're gonna presuppose that people who are listening are already involved in apologetics.

And so I want you to quickly address the importance of having a balance between studying apologetics and having a healthy devotional life. Why don't you speak to that before we kind of get into some of the more intellectual arguments and points that you bring up in your book, Stealing from God.

Why don't we talk about the balance of studying, but also at the same time, upkeeping your relationship with God. Why don't you speak to that a little bit?

Sure, yeah, God is not just an equation that you figure out. You know, he's not just an argument. I mean, an argument points to God. You want to know God personally, so you need both. But sometimes in order to quell any doubts you have, you need arguments to help you understand the objections that you have are not valid and to keep you away from God.

It's been said before that a mind can't rejoice in what, or the heart can't rejoice in what the mind doubts. So if you have a lot of doubts, you need answers for those doubts. And also you ought to be able to show other people why Christianity is true.

And that's why Peter says, oh, you're ready to give an answer. That's why Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. And Paul says, we destroy arguments and take every thought captive to Christ.

In fact, Jesus actually gives the representative of John the Baptist an answer when the representative says, hey, John's in prison. He wants to know, are you really the guy or not? Jesus doesn't say, well, just go believe.

Jesus says, look at the signs. Look at the evidence. In other words, that I'm the Messiah. So Jesus actually gives evidence that he's the Messiah to quell John's doubts about him being the Messiah. So we have to have both.

We have to know that Jesus is the savior, but we also then have to trust in him. We just can't know it intellectually because even the demons know that God exists, but they don't trust in him. So there's a difference between belief that and belief in.

Everybody knows that there's a creator, but not everybody trusts in Jesus for their salvation.

Now, speaking to that then, obviously we want to make a distinction between knowing Jesus within the context of relationship and knowing Jesus within the context of apologetic content, intellectual content, argumentation, and things like that.

What does your private devotional life look like? How does an apologist who is a national speaker, you go to college campuses all over the country, engaging in these very rigorous intellectual debates, which things like cosmology comes up and astrophysics, things like that.

How do you balance all of that heavy lifting that requires background study and reading and things like that with your keeping up with your relationship with God? What does that look like for you?

Yeah, well, I actually think even when I'm just keeping up my relationship with God, first of all, I think it's all keeping up a relationship with God. It's not like you're bifurcated. When you're just doing devotional, that's when you're close to God and when you're studying, you're not.

No, I think they're both one in the same. Even devotional time, like right now I'm going through the gospel of Luke, even devotional time requires some study, right? You don't just read a passage sometimes and go, all right, I got that.

You might, but sometimes you gotta go, really, I wonder what that really means. Let me do a little bit more digging, right? So I'm normally going through a book of the Bible and sometimes I'll have a devotional.

I've gone through Tim Keller's devotional on Proverbs, which was very good. There's others, but I just really like reading, going through books at a time. That's what it means for me, but I'm not just reading.

Sometimes I'm stopping, I'm meditating, I'm thinking, what does this mean? Sometimes I gotta cross-reference it or look at a note or that kind of thing.

You read the Bible with a notebook, read the Bible with a computer next to you.

What does your note-taking look like? Yeah, well, right now I'm using the Apologetic Study Bible to read the passage and then also look at the notes. But sometimes, my favorite software is Logos Bible Software.

I don't know if you have that, Eli, but it's really good. You can cross-check everything there and it's so convenient. You come across something you want more information on, you right-click the thing and hit search or something and you can get a lot of information.

So I use Logos Bible Software a lot and it's on all my devices, on my computer, on my iPad, on my phone, so. Very good. But I like sometimes having the paper in front of me though, because I can write in the Bible and circle stuff and write a note, so I like that too.

And when I study, I have the really nice iPad. I use the iPad. But you know what? I mean, even with the pen and the notepad and everything, there's sometimes just nothing beats just having a piece of paper and a pencil.

That's right. The only thing I don't like about the paper and pencil is if you want to cross-reference, I'm just so lazy, right? I just want to hit the button and go right to that verse. No, I got to look it up.

Are you kidding me?

That's right. Sometimes you touch the paper and it'll send you to a link. What's up with that? That's right. All right, very good, very good. So again, I wanted to purposely ask that question before we get into some of the more detailed arguments and things like that, because I think it's very important for a Christian apologist to understand that when we're defending the Christian faith, we're doing so holistically.

We're not just engaging in argumentation for the sake of argumentation, isolated, independent of everything else in our Christian life. We want to also look at the task of apologetics as an aspect of our relationship with God.

It's not always sure, but there needs to be a balance. And so before we get into some of those details of the word balance, hopefully that will strike a chord with people listening. It's very, very important to be holistic in our Christianity and very balanced in how we engage in these issues.

So thank you very much for that. Now, I just want to make a quick little point here for those of you who want to send in questions, Dr. Kirk is going to be taking some live questions a little bit towards the tail end of this interview.

And so if you have any questions about something that perhaps you've read in Dr. Kirk's book or something you've listened to or heard in the debate, feel free to post them in the chat and I will share them with Dr. Kirk on the screen towards the end.

Also by way of quick announcement, on July 29th, I'll be having Greg Koekel on to talk about apologetic discussion strategies, how to talk What do you mean by that?

Well What do you mean. You're having Greg Koekel on? You know How did you come to that conclusion?

What led you to that conclusion? What led you to that conclusion? So we'll be having Koekel on to talk about those things. And of course, if you listen to Frank Turek's debates and his lectures, there seems to be a lot of cross-pollination there.

And I think it's excellent you use those tactics, if I can use the title of the book, very, very well, I think. And so there's much to be learned there, looking very much forward to having that discussion.

Stealing from God and the Six CRIMES Arguments

But let's jump right into the nitty gritty, all right? Dr. Turek, here's what I think about your books. Now, I have to say this because, you know, everyone knows me as the presuppositional guy, okay? All right?

And so apparently You're presupposing a lot that everybody knows you. I am presupposing a lot,.

But when someone mentions the name Frank Turek or evidence around some presuppositionalists, they start breaking out in hives. Not that we're against evidence, so you guys should really consider how presuppositionalists use evidence.

But Frank Turek, coming from a more evidential, more classical approach, still very, very helpful and useful that I think presuppositionalists can really take an important cue from. So that being said, I have to say, and this is kind of a recommendation for Dr. Turek's work.

I do not own a book, a copy, of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist because every copy that I purchased, I've actually given to someone else who needed it. So I own it on Kindle. And I wish I had, I'm probably gonna order another physical copy, but as a presuppositionalist, I have still been able to understand the importance of digging into some of those specifics.

And I have been really urged to give it to people who really wanna dig deeper. So I very much appreciate the value of what you have to offer, even despite our methodological differences. So I highly recommend I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist and Stealing from God, which is where Dr. Turek is somewhat of a presuppositionalist, if I can poke a little fun there.

I think he does an excellent job in that book. So let's jump right in there. So in your book, you list six things that you argue atheists steal from God in order to make their case. Why don't you just quickly kind of list those six points in your book that you use?

If you remember, I have the list here, but perhaps you can share.

Well, yeah, it's an acronym crime, so it's easy to remember crimes. Causality, reason, information, morality, evil, and science. These are all things that atheists say point to atheism, or some of them they say point to atheism, when my point is none of these things would exist unless God existed.

And let me just give you one example, just to, we can't cover them all, but evil, for example, that's the E in crimes. People will say, well, there can't be any God because there's too much evil in the world.

And as soon as you ask them the question, let's say Greg Coco would ask, what do you mean by evil? Give me an example of what you mean by evil. They might say, well, murder is evil, rape is evil. No, no, timeout, timeout.

I don't want examples of evil. I want a definition of evil. What is the definition of evil? And they will have a very hard time coming up with a definition of evil without reference to good, because evil does not exist on its own.

It only exists as a privation or a lack in a good thing. For example, evil is like cancer. If you take all the cancer out of a good body, you got a better body. But if you take all the body out of the cancer, what do you got?

No body. It doesn't exist unless it can exist in a good host. Well, that's what evil is like. Evil cannot exist unless good exists, but good can exist in an objective way unless God exists, because what all men mean by God is the greatest possible being, the God of goodness, of justice, of righteousness.

Whoever that being is, that being is the standard of goodness, righteousness, and justice. And so if evil exists, good exists, but if good exists, God exists. So atheists are actually stealing from God when they claim there's too much evil in the world.

They're admitting God exists implicitly by even making that claim.

What I appreciate about that tactic, like what do you mean by evil? I think even I tend to think very much within the context of worldview. And so what I like about that question is not giving me examples of what you think are evil, but tell me what evil is from your worldview.

And I think that's a very powerful way to bring out that, well, wait a minute, given my worldview, how do I determine what's evil? So I do like that kind of an indirect internal critique where you force them to kind of define it within their own context.

And then pull the rug right out from them. And as you know, many of the atheists today, most of them, and the book is really written to the majority of atheists who are materialists. You know, there is no immaterial realm.

If we're just moist robots, if we're just molecular machines, because there is no immaterial realm, we're just driven completely by the laws of physics, then how can there be such a thing as good or evil?

Good and evil are moral terms about an immaterial reality. They're not terms about physical reality. They're not, you know, goodness isn't made of so much carbon and so much oxygen, or, you know, justice isn't a molecule, right?

I mean, these are immaterial realities that are grounded in an immaterial being that we would call God. All right, very good.

Real quick, kind of a tech issue. Someone is messaging me here. There's a lot of reverb when I'm speaking because I think you're not wearing headphones. I don't know if that affects.

I don't know if you have headphones. Actually, I do a lot of live streams on this and I never wear headphones and don't have reverb. Let me just turn the volume down. Go ahead, try it now. Say something.

All right. Hello.

Welcome. I can hear you just fine. Okay, all right. Well, I'll just try my best not to talk over you or whatever. I think it'll be fine. All right, so you started with evil. I think that's a really good place to start, but really you can start with any of these points, right?

Why don't we begin with causality? What is it about causality that you think atheists are borrowing that concept, but it doesn't make sense within their perspective? How doesn't causality make sense within an atheistic perspective?

How is the atheist stealing from God by assuming causality?

Well, you've probably heard atheists say this, there's no evidence for God. Well, of course, yeah. And when they say that, of course you could say something like, well, what do you mean by evidence or what evidence would convince you?

You could go down that route, but what I prefer sometimes now to say, Eli, is this. Why is there evidence for anything? Forget God for a second. Let's just talk about evidence for anything. Why is there evidence that if you put two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen together, you always get water?

Well, because there are natural laws out there and there's natural cause and effect, that every effect has a cause. And our minds can ascertain truths about the real world through our senses. Now, what best explains that?

No intelligence or intelligence? Why is the universe so orderly? Because there's an orderer behind it. That seems the best explanation. And explanation presupposes cause and effect, right? So when atheists are talking about evidence, they're presupposing they're living in a world where evidence should exist.

They're presupposing they're living in a world where reliable cause and effect exists and where natural laws are repetitive and consistent. And they're living in a world where three pound brains through senses can actually know things about things external to their skulls.

And they're living in a world whereby these things are consistent. And the sun came up today in the East and it's gonna come up tomorrow in the East. These seem to me to be better explained by a mind, by intelligence.

In fact, let's take reason for example. I can't say anything better than C .S. Lewis. I don't know if you can, but I can't, right? I wanna read something that C .S. Lewis said about reason that I think is just so brilliant.

And this is similar to the argument I'm making in the Stealing from God book when it comes to reason. Here's what he said, check this out. He said, suppose there were no intelligence behind the universe.

In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. Thought is merely the by-product of some atoms within my skull. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? But if I can't trust my own thinking to be true, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to atheism and therefore have no reason to be an atheist or anything else.

Unless I believe in God, I can't believe in thought. So I can never use thought to disbelieve in God, unquote. Now That's good. I wanna do that, very good. He is pointing out that if our brains aren't created by intelligence, why should we believe anything we think?

Especially if materialism is true and we're completely controlled by the laws of physics, we can't follow the evidence where it leads. We're not free will creatures. We're just moist robots. We're just molecular machines.

And that reason shouldn't exist in a world like that. Well, we're not in a world like that. We're in a world that was created.

And sustained by an orderer. So basically with regards to causality, for example, you're really asking in essence, what are the preconditions for the intelligibility of causality? What are the preconditions for something like objective moral values and truths?

What are the preconditions for what you just mentioned there, which I think you alluded to, which is intentionality, right? Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, it all flows from causality. In fact, let me say this, regardless of whether you're a classical priest, whatever you are, if the law of causality doesn't hold, we can't know anything for sure. That's right.

Yeah, right? If effects don't have causes, then how do I know that there's a God? I don't. How do we know God exists? We know God exists by his effects. There's a creation. That's the effect. We reason back to a cause of creator.

There's design in the universe. That's the effect. We reason back to a cause of designer. We have a moral law pressing on us. We reason back to a moral law giver. So we reason from effect to cause, and that's what scientists do.

They find an effect, and they try and figure out what caused it. You can't do science without cause and effect, quite obviously. So all these things make better sense on theism than they do on atheism.

Okay, very good. Now, we have causality, reason, information, and intentionality, morality, evil, and science. Why don't you talk a little bit about science? Now, I think that's going to touch on the issue of causality, but why don't we dig a little deeper?

What is it about the scientific method that when an atheist engages in the scientific method to do a science, he is, in essence, borrowing from God? Is there a little more than just the appeal to causality, although that's huge, of course?

How would you speak to that? Well, let's take the transcendental argument, for example, that there are these objective logical laws out there. Okay. The laws of logic. You can even say the laws of mathematics.

Why do they exist? And how can our minds ascertain the truth about these or use these laws to ascertain truths outside of our skulls? There are so many presuppositions that scientists need to do science.

The laws of logic are one. Laws of mathematics are another. Cause and effect are another. Realism. The fact that there's a real world out there and my mind can ascertain truths about the real world through our senses.

Uniformity. The idea that causes in the past were like those in the present. Like, how do you get at the past unless you can assume that causes in the past were like those in the present? You couldn't.

You're not observing it directly. You're looking at clues that are left behind. The laws of nature themselves. Where do they come from and why are they so consistent and precise? All of these philosophical principles you need to rely on to do science.

You can't prove them by science. You can't run some kind of scientific experiment to prove the laws of logic. You need the laws of logic to run the scientific experiment to begin with.

Right? But Dr. Turek, just asking the question, where did these things come from?

Doesn't prove you're God, right? Well, it might not prove a particular God but it certainly disproves atheism. Okay. It disproves the idea that there is no immaterial realm because the very claim there is no immaterial realm is an immaterial claim, right?

It's not made of molecules. When I say there is no immaterial realm, there's not this essence out there made of carbon and oxygen. Sure. It's a thought is immaterial. Right. And so you're using immaterial things to try and prove everything's material.

It's self-defeating.

Yeah, I think another useful point in that topic, I was listening to a lecture by J .P. Moreland when he was arguing for the existence of the soul and he appealed to Leibniz's law of the indiscernibility of identicals where he talks about what's true of X.

If what's true of X is true of Y, then X and Y are identical. Now, if there's something true of X that's not true of Y, then they're not identical. And he kind of goes into this issue of brain states versus mental states, that there's something true of our thoughts that aren't true of our brain.

And it kind of goes to show that there's that immaterial aspect we can point to, which fits very well with what you just said with regards to immaterial laws of logic, things like the possibility of intentionality.

I think these are very powerful tools that the apologists can use within the context of discussion when trying to demonstrate the reality of immateriality. I think that's very useful. Mm-hmm. All right, so we have causality, reason, information, intentionality, morality, evil, and science.

In your opinion, Dr. Turek, which is the most powerful of those six that you find is very, very effective when you're engaging with atheists one-on-one? So which comes up the most that you think, you know what, we should understand all of these points, but if science is too complicated, if intentionality is too complicated, maybe this one point, you know, the average person listening could hold onto this, kind of understand it the best they can.

And give them some bullets in their gun to Yeah, I think, you know, all the arguments for the existence of God, probably the most relevant to people today is morality, the moral argument, because, you know, they can ignore the beginning.

They might not even understand, know there's a beginning, design, you know, they may ignore that. It's really hard to ignore morality because you deal with it every day, right? And everything going on in our country right now is somehow morally infused, right?

Racism, what, is that immoral? Who said, you know, I mean, you said, what if Hitler comes along and says it isn't wrong or the KKK comes along and says, no, this is just fine. Who's gonna adjudicate between you and the KKK?

A standard beyond both of them, God's nature. So without God, everything's just a matter of human opinion. Well, are you just gonna say that racism is just a matter of human opinion? That rape is just a matter of human opinion?

That torturing babies for fun is just a matter of human opinion? No, because there's a standard beyond us and that's God's nature.

It's funny, it's interesting where we have a lot of this, these important social issues going on today. For example, oh, I think I lost you, Dr. Turk. I've never lost a guest before. We'll see if he can sign back on.

What I was going to say, and hopefully he can reconnect, otherwise this will be super awkward. But what I was going to say is, say when we're addressing, boom, there we go. I thought you got raptured for a second.

I don't know what happened, man.

That might've been it. You're still here? I'm actually coming from heaven right now, Eli. I gotta tell you, you better get busy. I totally thought you got raptured. I'm like, I know I can't be left behind, man.

I believe in the Lord. What I was saying, it was super funny because when you left, I was kind of like, this is awkward. But what I was saying is that with a lot of these social issues going on, I think it's very important to ask the question of which worldview can make sense out of our particular stances on various social issues.

I read someone say something to the effect with regards to the Black Lives Matter movement. If God doesn't exist, no lives matter. And I think it's important because people will take certain stances on these social issues, not recognizing the broader worldview implications as to whether or not their worldview can make sense out of some of these social issues that they're speaking out against.

So I think that's very important, especially with the point you just touched on.

With regards to morality. You know, there's one worldview that definitely won't work and that is Darwinism. You know, the title of The Origin of Species, which Richard Dawkins couldn't remember when he was put on the spot once, but it talks about the favored races because Darwin believed in racism, basically.

Now, to his credit, he was against slavery, but he thought races had different intelligent levels and that the supreme race was the Caucasian race. And that's why Hitler took Darwinism, took survival of the fittest, and he applied it to his political ideology.

And he said, look, if the weaker races don't wanna fight, they have no right to survive. He tried to create the super race by suggesting there were inferior races. Now, we all know that due to the scriptures and due to the truth of reality, that we're all made in the likeness and image of God, and there is no distinction.

There's only one race, the human race, but you won't get that from Darwinism. You won't get that from atheism. You won't get that from Islam. You won't get that from Hinduism either. Am I frozen now? Nope, you're good.

You're good. Okay, the only worldview you're gonna get that from is the Judeo-Christian worldview, made in the image of God. Yeah, very good.

So basically, stealing from God highlights these very aspects that are stolen from a theistic perspective, but used without giving glory to the God who is the foundation of them. So I highly recommend, guys, to pick up that book if you haven't read it already.

It's actually quite, what I've appreciated about your books is that you cover very difficult topics, but your books are very, very readable. I would have no problem when someone's just getting into apologetics, what book should I buy?

I would have no problem suggesting your books because they're intellectually deep, but they're explanatorily simple, if that makes sense.

They're written that way so I can understand it, Eli.

Yeah, by the way, you are my backup. When I listen to Dr. Craig and I'm like, at the end of, I'm like, what did he say? I'll have to go and pick up somewhere where you've addressed it much more simpler.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

I'm standing on Dr. Craig's shoulders. You know, if it wasn't for him, I couldn't do what I do. You know, there's so many people that come before us. The worst thing, Dr. Norman Geiser, the guy I wrote a couple of books with, you know, I wouldn't know half of what I know if it wasn't for him.

Robbie Zacharias, John Lennox, I'm having him on my podcast this weekend. You know, there are just guys out there who are way smarter than me. And I just learned from them and try and explain what they've already said.

I think the awesome thing as well is that God has blessed the church with brilliant minds where we can learn, even in the midst of disagreements. I think it's very annoying to me that people who are so married to a particular methodology or a theology that they can't see any value in people who've gone before them that believe differently on certain aspects.

Those differences are important, but for talking out loud, we need to be able to learn from one another and be able to communicate. So I think that's very important. All right, well, at the end of your book, Stealing from God, you cover four points or a four point case for Christianity.

Why don't you walk through that with us here? What are the four points? And let's unpack some of those points that I think are very useful for people to Sure, yeah.

Well, when we go to college campus, you got limited time and the book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist as you know, goes through 12 points. Nobody has time for that and nobody's gonna remember all 12.

So they're boiled down to four. Does truth exist? Does God exist? Are miracles possible? And is the New Testament reliable enough to tell us that Jesus rose from the dead? Because if truth exists, God exists, miracles are possible and Jesus rose from the dead.

Game over, Christianity is true. Everything falls like dominoes after that. So the truth question is a response to post-modernism. You know, people will say there's no truth and the easy thing you need to say back to them is, is that true, that there's no truth?

It's quite obviously self-defeating. And Eli, if I only had one skill to teach people, it would be to recognize self-defeating statements and arguments. In fact, we do a teaching down in Dallas every August called CIA Cross Exam Instructor Academy.

Our mutual friends from New York Apologetics have been there, Anthony and Nick and others. And I do a whole session on the most important thinking skill. The most important thinking skill is identifying self-defeating statements because they're everywhere.

You know, there is no truth, is that true? All truth is relative, is that a relative truth? There are no absolutes, are you absolutely sure? You ought not judge. Are you judging me for judging? You know, I mean, you can just go on and on.

These are self, or all truth comes from science. Is that a scientific truth? Can you prove that in the laboratory? No, that's a philosophical claim, right? You can't get off the ground in science without philosophy.

In fact, the title of the chapter in this book, Stealing from God on Science, is science doesn't say anything, scientists do, right? Because all data needs to be gathered, all data needs to be interpreted, and who does that?

Scientists, they do it up here, it's philosophy. So we deal with the question of truth first, and if truth exists, then it's possible that Christianity is true. If truth doesn't exist, it's not even possible that atheism is true, right?

Dr. Turek, I've heard some Christian apologists, I won't mention any names, but I did read someone post, he's a Christian apologist, he says, certainty is overrated. And I think he was trying to suggest that we really can't be certain.

There are certain things, ultimately we can't be certain about. I was thinking, that sounds, I mean, your voice in your podcast, the opening line, you know, is that true? I was like, are you certain of that in my mind?

Is that true? Are you certain of that, yeah.

Well, I mean, it is true that there are certain, I'm using the wrong word here, there are particular things that we can know with more certainty than other things. Okay. Obviously. But yeah, you have to exist to know you exist, right?

I'm certain I exist, right? Otherwise, I couldn't know anything else, right? I mean, there are some things that you're more certain of than others. Am I certain the laws of logic exist? Yeah, I'm using them.