Presupp Debate Strategies (With Sye Ten Bruggencate & Eli Ayala)

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Elias Ayala. And today

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I have a guest with me today. As always, I've been having guests throughout the past month

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I really appreciate the positive feedback that I've been receiving from folks really all over the world, which is very fascinating to me because I am encouraged that there are people from parts of the world that didn't even think about that are interested in presuppositional apologetics and are excited about what we're doing.

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So I'm very happy to have Saiten Bruggenkeit with us today, who is a buddy of mine.

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I call you my pocket apologist. When I have questions, I'll just reach in my pocket, you know, send you a message over Facebook and he's generous enough to kind of entertain my questions.

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So we have Saiten Bruggenkeit with us today. Now next week, we are gonna have

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Matt Slick who is another friend of mine and we're going to be covering the title of the episode that I got from Matt, so much heresy, so little time.

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And so we're just gonna kind of have a giant chunky episode where we talk about a bunch of different false views and how we might respond to them biblically.

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As you know, it is very important that we are so familiar with the truth that identifying error is as easy as, you know, eating a piece of cake.

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I don't know why I thought that that was a random analogy, but at any rate. So let me welcome

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Saiten Bruggenkeit with us. Give him a few moments to introduce himself. I'm sure those who follow this ministry and are interested in presuppositional apologetics, you'll know who he is.

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But for those of you who don't, why don't you say hi to everybody? Hey, everybody. You know, my friend

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Mark has had, he live streamed with me about a month ago and he actually lost viewers. So hopefully this won't hurt your channel, but yeah,

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I'm just a dude with a website as I like to introduce myself and my talks. And I tell people, I'm you out there.

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I've been trying to take this apologetic methodology and dumb it down to my level. I'm a factory worker by trade, blue collar worker.

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I just celebrated my 12th year of being full -time as an apologist, as a teacher of apologetics and an evangelist full -time, 12 years on May 18th.

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But yeah, my last job was as a stationary engineer. They call them in Canada. I'm a boiler operator by trade. And I love to defend my faith with my colleagues.

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And most of my life I was doing it wrong because I would get these arguments, which I thought, you know, I'd dumbed down to my level.

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My Christian friends love them. I would use them at work with my unbelieving colleagues and I'd get them shoved down my throat.

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I didn't know why at the time, but then I discovered that a lot of them are terrible arguments. And then I further discovered they wouldn't even talk about the

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God that I believed in. So by the grace of God, I was introduced to this apologetic and that was about 16, 17 years ago now.

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And I'm just as excited today as I was when I first learned of it. And I'm happy that you've had me on to discuss the topic.

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Yeah, well, it's definitely a pleasure to have you on. I know some people have told me in passing, oh, don't have that guy sigh on.

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You know, I really can care less if I lose subscribers. I think you're an excellent apologist.

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Of course, we probably would do certain things and phrase things differently in some regard, but I think you still have a lot to offer and that you have a good record with interacting with people and really showing the foolishness of the unbelieving perspective.

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So I very much appreciate that and continue to learn from your example.

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So very much appreciate that. Well, today, I thought we might cover an interesting topic and it is the issue of debate strategy.

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Now, this is not some top secret thing. If you're an unbeliever and you are watching this, like take notes.

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There's no secret here. We hope that the strategies of debate are not dishonest. If you're going to try and seek after truth and argue consistently from your position, hopefully we want to know how to think and how to do that in a way that is effective in communication.

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Of course, for the Christian, do it in a way that's honoring and faithful to God's word. So let me ask you first, how many debates more or less have you done?

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Like maybe formally, let's go with the formal route where you've actually been a one -on -one with someone.

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Why don't you tell us a little bit about that? You should have sent me these questions ahead of time so I could look it up. So I think I'm about, I think

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Dr. White's probably done what, 100 and something. So I'm probably about 100 behind. So I don't know.

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I think I've done formal debates, maybe eight or something like that. I'm not exactly sure. I did one in California, which was a three -on -three, which was a dog's breakfast, by the way.

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I mean, I think a lot of people were blessed by it, but three -on -three debates, they turn out to be messy. But, and then

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I did one two -on -two with my friend, Dustin Seegers. That was one of my first debates in North Carolina. All the rest

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I've done on my own. So I'm gonna guess eight. I don't know, something like that. People say that I love to debate, but I would be happy if I never did another debate in my life.

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I don't debate because I love it. I debate because people insult my God and I want to give a

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Christian response or I want to respond to them. And a lot of the inspiration for these debates is just watching how other people debate about God.

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They're not talking about the God that I believe in. So that's why I do it. And as you'll notice as well, Eli, since I know that you do debates, people don't line up to debate pre -suppositionalists.

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I mean, they end up having all sorts of insults towards you, but it's an argument that cannot be defeated. And one thing that I've really, has surprised me in debates is that, especially in my

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North Carolina debate, the apologetics have been out there for a while. My website had been out there for a while.

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And I thought, well, these two atheists are, from the college there in North Carolina, that they're gonna be prepared for this argument, that I'm gonna have to be really on my toes.

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And then we did this debate and it was exactly the same. It's exactly the same. You cannot defeat this argument.

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So yeah, I will do debates, but people are not lining up because they always turn out the same.

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Yeah, what I find too is the insults, they typically come because they're unable to answer the fundamental questions.

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And I think they get very annoyed that we repeat the fundamental questions that they can't answer. There was a debate that I saw,

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I don't remember who was debating, but someone, an atheist who was kind of the MC, he said, he was joking around, but he says, and if someone says, how do you know one more time,

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Saiten Bruggenke is gonna materialize on the stage. And that got a kind of a rise out of the crowd. That was with Matt Slick and Matt Delahunty, I believe.

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I believe so, yeah. But I think that's interesting in that the, how do you know, I mean, presuppositionalists get a bad rap because we ask that question, how do you know?

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But if it's such a silly question, why can't anyone tell us how they know? I mean, it seemed, you know, the whole brain in the vat type of thing.

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And how do you know we're a brain in the vat? It's like, well, that's silly. Well, if it's so silly, then respond to it. You know, I don't get it.

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But anyway. Videos, somebody said, you're arguing like a child. It was at a university. That clip is actually somewhere on YouTube.

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It says, you're arguing like a child. And I said, you know what's interesting about that? Two people at a university here cannot answer the argument of a child.

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That's a good point. The problem is they mock you so that you'll get off of it. Right. And like Bonson, he gives the analogy of an evidentialist, you know, is like going into debate with somebody in a room with no windows, no doors, and they have a gun with an unlimited supply of bullets.

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You can either learn how to dodge bullets or to take away the gun. Right. And we wanna learn, that's what this apologetic does, take away the gun.

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And a lot of people, they do not want to get involved in that kind of conversation. But the Christian, what they'll do a lot of times is that they will give up their authority and they'll start dodging bullets, even as presuppositionists.

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I say, look, we have the authority in this debate. If you wanna mock the argument, I'm not gonna get off it.

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I'm not gonna throw away my gun. I'm not gonna give my gun to you. I'm gonna stick to the truth of what we believe. And the reason they mock is because they don't like it and they don't want you to stick there, but I'm pretty tenacious in sticking to the truth of my worldview, not giving up my ultimate authority, like they want me to do because they sure won't give up theirs.

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Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that I greatly appreciate about you is that you are very consistent and you are relentlessly consistent.

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So it's at those moments where you're like, all right, maybe he'll give a little, nope, no, he won't. He's sticking with his guns. You're not gonna be the judge over the evidence.

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And he just goes, and I've actually heard atheists say they actually appreciate that about you.

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You're very consistent. And I think that's something that's important to take note of. Now you've got -

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One thing we're talking about here, first of all, I just wanna clarify, we're talking debate strategy. Yeah. Will I be like that with my friend at work?

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Right. Well, that could be how do you know, how do you know, how do you know? He might just be wanting to have a decent conversation and it will be way different.

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They know my worldview. I know their worldview. We're talking as friends. Right. But if somebody hires a building and has people come in, pay to attend, to mock

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God, to argue against the God that I believe in, I'm gonna stick to that. And the thing is, people want a cookie cutter approach to apologetics.

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You don't have that. Like Ray Comfort says, law to the proud, grace to the humble. It's the same thing with presuppositionalism.

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We deal with people on a, as they come, on a different basis.

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We don't, it's not a cookie cutter approach. So I might have, you know, someone to death, on the campus who is just being obstinate.

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But if somebody really wants to have a discussion about this, then I will lay out the foundation that say, in order to have this discussion, you're borrowing from my worldview, but what's your question?

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Yeah. And then I might say to them, but you know, I'm gonna answer your question, but you're gonna interpret this question according to your presuppositions.

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And then I might answer the question for them evidentially. And then they'll say, yeah, but this, I said, that's exactly what I said you were gonna do.

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You know, because your problem is not the evidences. It's not the arguments. Your problem is you hate God. Right. And I think it was very interesting.

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As I told you before we started, that I saw that episode with you on the thinking atheist. And I think one of the hosts, one of the things they said when you, you know, presented the apologetic, they said something to the effect like, isn't this just a parlor trick?

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And I was like, that's interesting. Well, if it's a parlor trick and you see right through it, answer the questions. Don't just call it a parlor trick.

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It might seem suspicious to you because you seem trapped, but maybe it's because it's not a trap. I mean, because it's not a trap, it's that you are actually trapped in not being able to answer the issues.

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Exactly. Now that one is actually one of my favorite talks. I was supposed to be on the magic sandwich show with Eric Hoven and the host of that show, he was testing a

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Skype connection with me on a Friday night. And our show was gonna be on Sunday that I was supposed to be on. And he said, I have to call into this

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Thinking Atheist, this radio call -in show. And he was gonna be a guest. I said, do you want me to call in? He goes, sure.

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So I called in and it turned out to be wonderful. I really enjoy it. Now, if you go to the

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Thinking Atheist YouTube channel, listen to the debate and then watch it on my channel, it's different. They edited some out because some of the debate,

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I think was embarrassing for them. And they took pieces out. So I took out some stuff as well, but like more ums and ahs.

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But if you listen to the two of them, I have a less edited version on my channel, but I don't think that it went well for them.

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And actually they posted it on their Thinking Atheist Facebook page as well. And people were mocking me, how poorly

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I did. I said, well, I'll be happy to come on again. They deleted the entire thread on Facebook. Wow, interesting.

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Okay, so you've done a bunch of debates formally, you've done a few. And then of course you probably have countless informal interactions with people.

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Let me ask you a question, very simple question. But I think people who are beginning in apologetics,

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I think this is an important question to address and perhaps give some biblical encouragement behind the answer to this question.

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When you debate, do you get nervous? And that's an important question because I think people's nervousness goes into a lot as to why people won't speak out as often as they probably should.

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Well, one thing as far as open air preaching, I mean, I wanna talk about that first. I had a pastor write me once he's writing a book on open air preaching, why don't more pastors do this?

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And I'll say, I'll give you the two reasons right now, pride and fear. I know those two reasons because I feel it before every time that I go out to open air preach.

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Now, as far as debating, this is something that I've done so much that I don't really get nervous. I used to get nervous early on, but like I say, every time, it's the same answer that they give you.

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So I really don't get nervous. But one thing that I do is I pray before the debate and even

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I pray before the show. Whenever I do shows like this, I try to be consistent with it. I pray, Lord, if you want me to look like a fool today for your glory, so be it.

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And I don't think it's happened yet. I hope it hasn't happened yet, but one day he might say, Sai, you're gonna debate this person.

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You're gonna go on this show today so you're gonna look like a fool. Now, will I be happy with that?

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Clearly, I would not be. But when you pray that before you have a debate or have an interaction, then it tends to quiet the nerves because then you know and you hope that you're gonna glorify

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God in the debate. As far as debate strategy, that's what I wanna focus on, glorifying God. If you listen to my, it's an audio debate with Eric Hernandez.

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And I remember it was a clear difference between the approach, between his approach and my approach. And the host asks, who is your audience for this debate?

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And Eric said his audience was himself. I mean, when he engages an unbeliever, his audience is himself. Now, he might wanna take that answer back when you heard my answer, but who's your audience when you engage a person?

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My audience, I have an audience of one, it's God. And I wanna glorify Him when

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I give a response. If people aren't happy with me, I can't help that. I just wanna glorify

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God when I debate. And that's my debate strategy. And clearly, I fail sometimes, but that's what

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I wanna do. Now, how would you encourage someone who gets nervous in debating and does not have the experience you have and doesn't share, or maybe he's not conscious of that perspective you just shared.

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They're kind of just like, yeah, but it gets, I get my nerves get kind of like, I get giddy and I don't know what to say.

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How would you encourage someone who's experiencing something like that? Well, I would encourage them by being prayed up.

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And one thing that I've noticed too, that the more debates that I do, the less philosophical

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I am. And what I've discovered is that I learned this apologetic from a lot of philosophers,

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PhD in philosophy. And I go out in the street and I start talking about the preconditions of intelligibility. Logic is universal, abstract, invariant, and people don't know what you're talking about.

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Will you win that argument? Absolutely. They don't know what you're talking about. And so I believe that just like evidences, these things are good to have in your back pocket.

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But even in debates, and when I go out there, I think that I don't wanna focus on these vain philosophies either.

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I go out with the impression that the debate is already won. When I go to the person,

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I wanna preach Christ to them. One of the biggest compliments that I get from a debate is when an atheist tries to insult me.

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I call it a complisult or an implement. He says, I just came here today. He didn't come to debate, he came to preach.

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Okay. I say, amen. So as far as nerves go, seek to glorify

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God, let Christ increase and you decrease and not be worried with the outcome because nerves a lot of times just comes down to pride.

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We all get it, but we're worried about how we're gonna look. And nowadays, everything is on the internet forever.

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And don't get me wrong. If you mess up, the atheist is gonna take a little clip out there and they're gonna put on YouTube and they're gonna exploit it.

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But you just have to not worry about your own appearances. You have to try and glorify Christ. And it's not bad to say,

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I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. That's not your problem. Problem if you die tonight, you're gonna stand before the

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God you know exists. Amen. All right. Now, when you're preparing for a debate, because you're not always intentionally preparing for informal discussion.

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Sometimes they just happen and you need to go with what you know and what you know about your own faith and how you can interact in the discussion with the other person and interact with what they believe.

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But when you're doing a formal debate, what is your preparation strategy? Obviously, you know that the

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Christian stands on a very strong foundation. You know that the argument is irrefutable. I know some atheists who even watch the book.

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Yeah, right. We would expect you to say that, right? But we understand that the argument is irrefutable.

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I personally have never heard a good response to the presuppositional argument in my own experience. But you obviously have to prepare.

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And so what is your preparation look like? And are there certain things you're trying?

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Is your mind laid out like a chess board where you're like, okay, well, this person is gonna say this.

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How do I answer this? What is that process? How does that process look like to you? Well, one thing that I've heard said about a good lawyer is a good lawyer is somebody who anticipates the response that you get to your question, no matter what they say.

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So what I tend to do is with a question that I ask, I prepare for answers no matter which way they answer the question.

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I try to be ready for something like that. But what I like to do when I prepare for a debate is find out everything about that person.

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So for instance, my Matt DeLaHunty debate, he's on a podcast on YouTube. I watched a lot of his videos and that was clear.

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I mean, I took a lot of clips. And what I like to do then is just show their inconsistency, show that they can't even be consistent with their own worldview and how it contradicts the

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Christian worldview. Now, a lot of times you'll debate people and there's not a lot of stuff out there. And the more that I do this, and I think what would be a good biblical apologetic is to know scripture and respond with scripture.

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But first and foremost, I like to find out what they believe and show it's contradictory. Because a lot of times like that Tom Jump, you debated him.

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He doesn't debate what he believes. He tries to trip you up. That's why one of the reasons he's contacted me again, I haven't responded to him yet.

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He wants to debate me. He never debates what he actually believes. He debates hypotheticals. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in his soul.

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So when I prepare, I wanna find out about the person. I want to love on them. And of course, sometimes

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I fail in doing that. And the more that I do this, the more loving I try to be. I wanna love on someone. If they're there just to try and trip me up for a debate, there's a lot of Christians who watch the debates are pointless.

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And to a large degree, I agree with them. So I go out there to exalt Christ so that a larger audience can hear the gospel and to love on the person in the hope that God saves them.

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Will that be the case? I don't know, but find out about them. And I had one fellow that I debated,

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I won't mention his name, but his parents were Christians and they contacted me and they were very happy that I was debating their son because they wanted him to be given truth.

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And so, yeah, just prepare by wanting to exalt Christ with them. And if they reject it, if they blow you off, if they mock you, doesn't matter.

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I mean, I give the example of the story quite a lot of times for people that watch my talks. But when you preach

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Christ and they reject it, you didn't miss, you didn't miss. Because they walk away and the one thing that they're going to think about, they might think you're crazy.

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They might think that, but you hope that that truth that you left them with, the one that they mocked and that they rebuffed, that's the truth that you hope that God is going to use to save them.

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Because if you just give a philosophical argument and they walk away from that, what are they thinking about when they put their head on their pillow?

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They're thinking about philosophy. I don't want to do that. I want to leave them with the thought that they're rejecting the God they know exists.

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I like to say to them, look, do you want to know how to be made right with God before you die? And what

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I say to people too, this is more on a one -on -one basis. Do you want to know how to be made right with God before you die?

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Or somebody debating the preconditions of intelligibility with them. They have tragedy in their life the next day. Who are they coming to?

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They're coming to the person who preached Christ to them. And I think a lot of debates, and what happens to if you get too heady, if you get too philosophical, a lot of time it's the winsomeness that people watch and that's what actually wins debates, not on the content.

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You go out and love people and be confident in what you believe. One of the things that I heard,

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I think it was Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens. For people who haven't watched that film, it's called

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Collision. And by my friend, Darren Doan, he was the director of that wonderful film. But Christopher Hitchens, he said something about Doug Wilson.

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He said, when I debate him, I know that he believes what he says. And that's what

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I find too when I see other people doing debates. I don't believe what they say. I don't believe in the

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God that they believe in. There's a quote from C .S. Lewis from one of his books.

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It was timeless at heart. I think the book is out of print now. I think you can get the quote other places. But he said something that was quite profound and I felt it as an evidentialist as well.

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He said the weakest he felt in his faith was when he just finished successfully defending it.

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And I felt exactly the same way as an evidentialist and I didn't know why. Because I wasn't talking about the

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God that I believed in. I was giving a good argument about a probability and I felt hollow afterwards.

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I've never felt that way as a presuppositionalist because I'm trying to preach Christ to them.

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Now, this is an example that I give. And it's kind of a harsh example, but this is the example that I gave when you're gonna debate or talk to an unbeliever.

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Somebody comes up to you and you're a married man, Eli. Oh yeah. Eli, I believe your wife's a prostitute.

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And you say, well, last night she was making dinner for me. So I don't think she was on the street last night. The night before that, she was at Bible study.

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So I don't think she was on the street that night. And the night before that, she was at her parents' house. So I don't think my wife's a prostitute.

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I don't think, would you say that? You'd say, buddy, that's my wife you're talking about. You better be very careful with the next words out of your mouth.

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And some atheist comes up to you and says, yeah, I don't believe that God is God. I believe that Allah is God. You say, well, let's book a hall in the hotel over there.

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And we'll debate the topic. Excuse me. You have just insulted the King of Kings, the

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Lord of Lords. Now I will have the discussion with you, but know that this is not good for you. If you die and you're unbelieved, this could be the worst day of your life.

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So I think that we need to approach debates with unbelievers differently. I say, what is more dangerous for that unbeliever?

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To call your wife a prostitute or to call your God a liar? And sadly for more

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Christians, it's more dangerous for that person to call your wife a prostitute. Why? Because we deny what scripture says, that they already know that God exists.

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Without excuse for their suppression, for their sin against him. And the question that I ask very often is when they want evidence for God, I say, what evidence will convince you of the

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God who says you already have enough? Right, right. Yeah. What will convince you of the

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God who says you already have enough? Yeah. I think it's very interesting too, that people will give evidence that their wife is, in that hypothetical, you give evidence instead of saying, well, wait a minute,

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I know my wife. I know a well -known Christian apologist whose name

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I won't mention, but has told me, he's on the more of the classical flavor.

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He says that he's more sure of his wife's existence than God's existence.

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And he's like, I'm sorry, I'm just being honest. But again, apart from all of the issues and conversations, you can go into that.

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I think it's interesting that we are not, we're not holding

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God at that foundational level in our argumentation. Like you often say that in church, everyone's a presuppositionalist, right?

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You know, right? And so the tears down the eye, and then when we go outside, we're arguing as though God is some kind of probability.

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There's a kind of a disconnect there. I film how to answer the fool, by the way, for those who aren't familiar with it, it's at the

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Dutch price on YouTube. The Dutch price? It's free, right? It's free.

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Now, one thing you said, well, actually, I forgot what you just said. What did you say just before that?

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Well, I had a friend who is more certain of his wife than God is. And the interesting thing about that is that they could not be certain at all of their wife's existence without the certainty of God.

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Right. So that's just a total misunderstanding of the certainty of their wife. You know, he says he's more certain of that, but really, he couldn't even be certain about his wife without being certain of God.

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Right, right. And of course, everyone is certain of God. That's why we're without excuse. Yeah. All right, well, you did say something that I think is very important, and it pertains to the topic of debate strategy.

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And it's not just debate strategy. I think it's strategy in communicating better, is a lot of people who engage in apologetics, presuppositional apologetics specifically, their access point is someone like Van Til or Bonson, mostly

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Bonson, or even yourself, but mostly Bonson. And Bonson's a philosopher.

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He did an excellent job taking the philosophical concepts and making them kind of easy to understand.

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But there is a disconnect when the apologist is studying from the philosophical and theological literature, and you learn to speak the language, right, of the philosophers, and then now you need to take this philosophical language and bring it down to the everyday person, okay?

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What are good ways that people can practice doing that?

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If I'm a seminary graduate, now, I am a seminary graduate, so there is sometimes that bridge that needs to be crossed.

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What is your advice for someone who has the philosophical language, but he's in a context in which he needs to communicate this to everyday people?

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How do people bridge that gap from the academy to the street, in your opinion? I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that the person they're talking to is going to hell without Christ, and they wanna make it a philosophical argument when philosophy is not the issue.

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I think a lot of evidentials are duped into believing that evidence is the issue. A lot of presuppositions are duped into believing philosophy is the issue.

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And so they'll argue philosophy with someone that scripture calls a fool. They'll argue with them for six hours about philosophy.

26:06

So as far as dumbing it down, I tell people one of the worst things that people tell me on Facebook, and they're trying to compliment me.

26:13

They say, I was talking to my unbelieving sister -in -law last night. I really wish Cy was here. I say, yeah,

26:19

I wish I was there to listen to you talk about the God that saved you. And so I think because we have learned this from philosophers that we think it's a philosophical argument, but it's not.

26:31

The philosophy, just like the evidence, is nice to have in your back pocket, but that's not the purpose. The purpose is out there to preach the gospel to them.

26:38

I say, I know why you've invited me to speak at this conference, because in John 10, 27, Jesus said, my sheep hear

26:44

Cy's really good argument. That's a nice - He said, my sheep hear my voice. Right.

26:49

In John chapter six, when the disciples were leaving Jesus, and Jesus said, are you gonna leave me too? And Peter said, no, to whom shall we go?

26:55

You have such a good argument. Yeah. You have the words of eternal life. So I think there is a place for apologetics, but the presuppositional method is to believe the

27:04

Bible. And that's what we say, the Bible is true. Do not deviate from it. And a lot of times, because the truth of our position is philosophical, we can account for all of these things that they can't account for.

27:15

But that might only take place with the university professor or the philosophy student. But because we can demolish people with those arguments, now we have a powerful weapon to wield.

27:25

We go out and do that. So, you know, I would be more concerned, more interested in learning what scripture says about the answer.

27:32

And that's how I wanna develop the apologetic, no matter what answer they give you, give them a biblical answer. So as far as dumbing it down, because here's one analogy that I came up with.

27:41

I say, let's say that you were having that discussion with somebody on the street and the apostle Peter was standing beside you. And you're talking to this guy, this guy's an unbeliever and Peter's standing beside you and you're talking to him and precondition of intelligibility.

27:54

Peter would say, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Now, is there a place for that? Sure, but I think

28:00

Peter would preach Christ to them. And one thing I say, if you could have anybody in history, you're gonna talk to a bunch of Mormons or a bunch of Muslims.

28:06

Would you want an expert in those fields? Or how about the apostle Peter? Maybe you'd want him. Now, if you listen to the expert in Mormonism talk to a

28:14

Mormon, the expert in Islam talk to a Muslim, or the apostle Peter talk to them, and you listen to those conversations, you think, which one of those could

28:20

I do? The apostle Peter would not say, I gotta run to the library and get a philosophy book or I have to learn the

28:26

Hadiths before I talk to these people. Is there a place for that? Yes. Do I love listening to that? Yes, because I'm a

28:32

Christian. But I think for the average person watching this, it's not the apologist who's gonna be in the university, it's gonna be the person who's gonna talk to their brother or to their grandmother.

28:39

I had an email just recently. And so - If you're misinterpreted, that's not to say that you're discouraging being an expert in any of those fields.

28:48

You're not - I gotta learn from someone too, but the problem is a lot of those experts in those fields don't talk to people. Right. You know, that's the question.

28:55

People are critical of what I do in my debates. Sometimes I say, great, what should I have said? What did I say wrong?

29:01

What should I have said? You know what, do me a favor, send me a video of you doing it the right way. And a lot of times they're armchair quarterbacks.

29:07

Now, sure, sometimes it's a shot, sometimes it's tongue in cheek. I want to reach the lost. Who am I gonna learn from?

29:13

What YouTube video do I get to go to and watch people engaging unbelievers? So I need to learn too, but I actually don't even care what you call the apologetic methodology.

29:21

Yes, I'm a presuppositionist. Died in the wool, true and true. Don't care what you call it. I don't care what you call it.

29:27

I want to reach people for Christ. And so when I engage the person, if you have a better argument that uses evidences that does not call

29:35

God a liar, let me hear it. But the problem is they never get back to me. Yeah, I like what you said too, is presuppositionalism is really just believing the

29:45

Bible. I love the definition of apologetics. I think it was Scott Oliphant who defined apologetics as it's, apologetics is

29:53

Christian theology applied to unbelief. And I like that because it highlights the fact that presuppositionalism is not simply a methodology of defense, but it is a consistent application of a broader worldview that is grounded in the authority of scripture.

30:09

And it's so much, it's so edifying that when you study presuppositionalism, right, you're also immersed in scripture.

30:16

And I think that's the way studying apologetics or anything else should be, looking at things in light of scripture.

30:22

So I think that's very, very telling as opposed to just pulling out a weapon and saying, I'm doing apologetics.

30:28

It's just, no, I'm gonna apply biblical truth to this specific area. One thing that really helped me in that area is

30:35

I hear people on the street, when I'm out in the street with them, arguing just like me and it turned my stomach.

30:42

Is that how I sound? I remember this one guy, and it's actually on my audio section of my website, but he was talking to this unbeliever for like half an hour.

30:50

I don't think that part is recorded. And he was arguing presupposition. He was arguing philosophically with him and he was not doing very well.

30:57

The guy was, you know, pretty intelligent guy. And he finally called me over because he's a little bit frustrated, this Christian fellow did. And my first thing

31:03

I said to the guy, I said, so why do you hate God? Yeah, I don't hate God. I said, well, you do. Actually, the Bible says you do.

31:08

Totally different discussion. And I think, so what I've tried to do is cut out the middleman. Because I've learned all this philosophy, taken it to the street, have a great success with these conversations, but realizing that I'm just mired in the muck, just like the evidentialists were.

31:24

Are all of these things true? Yes, they are true. But I've tried to cut out the middleman, go out and preach

31:29

Christ to them. Now, when you get an objection, there's a story that, you know, it's one of my favorite stories. I've never shared this publicly, actually, but I was in England.

31:37

He lives on his personal story. I was in England and I'm a cessationist, by the way, but we had two different preaching groups and I went for lunch by myself in between where the two preaching groups were.

31:51

And I didn't know which group to go back to. And I prayed. I said, Lord, let me know which group

31:56

I should go to. Now, I don't believe in extra biblical revelation, but when I finished praying, I knew I had to go to that one group.

32:02

There was not a doubt in my mind. I knew I had to go there. And as I'm approaching that group, my friend Robert Gray said,

32:08

I was praying you'd come here. And I just thought it was so cool. And I believe that God still works in that fashion.

32:14

I'm a cessation. I don't think there's office holders of these gifts, but I do believe in the gifts. So he said,

32:19

I was praying you'd come here. He was talking to two philosophy students and having all kinds of trouble with the guys.

32:25

And so I talked to these guys for about 15 minutes and I philosophically deconstructed all of their arguments.

32:31

Then I handed them back to Robert and Robert preached the gospel to them. And afterwards, Robert said something to me quite profoundly.

32:37

He says, man, Cy, I wish that I could do what you do. I said, Robert, when they put their head on their pillow tonight, are they gonna be thinking about what

32:45

I said to them or what you said to them? And he had no doubt. He said, they'd be thinking about what

32:51

I said to them. I said, amen, you don't need to do what I do. Is it nice to have that in your back pocket? Sure, you don't need it.

32:57

Preach Christ to them and you won't miss. Yeah, very good. All right, so let's get into some of the more details of debate strategy.

33:07

Now, again, when we talk about strategy, it's common for unbelievers to accuse the presuppositionalist.

33:14

And perhaps you've heard this, to have a script. Oh, look, there's the presuppositional script.

33:22

Here's my question to you. Do you have a script? And if you do, what's the big deal of having a script?

33:27

It seems to me that everyone has some kind of a script. No, I don't have a script. I don't mean literally reading something.

33:35

You kind of have a spiel. If you have a spiel that has the details of the points you wanna get to, what's the problem with that?

33:42

I don't see, if anything, as a debate strategy, that it would be helpful to have a set thing that you typically say to get to a specific point.

33:52

How would you respond to this whole issue of, well, there goes the script again? I think that, of course, with any objection like that, it's not a real objection.

34:01

They wanna get you off of the truth of what you're saying. So they try and say, well, it's a script, so you start speaking differently.

34:08

But I'm sure, and it's not gonna happen. But if you were to talk to the person and say, you're just going back to your script, and if he's okay, let's pause for a little bit.

34:15

What is the script? What are you talking about? That I'm going back to my authority of Jesus Christ? That Jesus Christ is

34:21

King? God is Lord of all? If you call that a script, yeah, that's my ultimate authority. What's yours? Your ultimate authority is yourself.

34:28

Do you leave that when you talk to me? No, you don't. So if you wanna call that a script, that's fine. But the problem is they're not gonna have that discussion.

34:34

They go, oh, it's a script, because they cannot answer this question. Jesus said, I will give you words and wisdom that your adversaries will not be able to resist or contradict.

34:42

Don't be surprised when you have somebody who cannot resist or contradict your argument. He just ends up mocking you.

34:48

Yeah, and it's funny too that saying that someone is using a script is completely irrelevant as to the truth of the content of the script.

34:56

Right, right. Say every time the preceptor infamously says, oh, by what standard?

35:02

Well, but how do you know? Well, that's a script. Cool, it's a script, but how do you know? And by what standard? I mean, it doesn't change the fact that you still have to answer these foundational questions whether you like it or not.

35:14

Or they call you a Psy -clone. Yeah, oh yes, I have heard you have now become kind of a thing in terms of having little

35:22

Psy minions who duplicate what you're doing. Hey, if what you're doing is biblical, then awesome. My friend

35:28

Mason sent me, I don't know where he got a screenshot from, but somebody called an apologetic methodology Bruggencationalism.

35:34

There you go. By the way, that's only half, that's only part of my last name. My whole last name is 10 Bruggencate. A lot of people, they leave that off there.

35:42

I was speaking at a conference once and I said, I looked at your book table and you got some great books out there by Corey Boehm.

35:48

And they all yell out, it's 10 Boehm. I said, why do you leave it off of my name? Yeah, isn't it that 10

35:55

Bruggencate is kind of like Van Til? It's kind of like - That's right, it's a prefix or a rating.

36:02

I said that once before that it's actually a rating, 10. And then somebody said, yeah, out of a hundred. Okay, all right.

36:10

Okay, so when you're debating someone, you're in a discussion, what are the antenna moments?

36:18

In other words, when the unbeliever says something within the course of the discussion, there are these antennas that go up.

36:24

They're like, all right, I need to gravitate towards that and go into detail into what that person brought up.

36:31

What are the specific things you're looking for when you're in an interaction with an unbeliever? I'm looking for them to expose their foundation, the foundation that they cannot account for.

36:41

And that's the very idea of debate. When an unbeliever enters a debate, they presuppose truth.

36:47

They presuppose logic. They presuppose morality. They presuppose uniformity of nature. So what

36:52

I focus on is when they speak things which expose their foundation, which is anything really.

36:58

But the thing is sometimes they'll say, well, that's not. And if you listen, for those of you who are watching this who have never heard of this apologetic before, check out the

37:05

Bontenstein debate. That's what got most people involved in this apologetic. But it's Greg Bontenstein, Christian versus Gordon Stein.

37:11

They both long passed away. But you hear in his opening remarks,

37:17

Dr. Stein uses the word logic. And in the interaction, you hear Greg Bontenstein focus on that word.

37:23

You use the word logic. And he showed how he could not account for that according to his worldview. And it's a very powerful moment.

37:29

And that's what I try to do. Of course, now the apologetic is much more widespread so people know what you're gonna do and they might mock you for it.

37:35

But when they use words such as truth, sometimes it's just implied. It's implied by the fact that they're there. But when they use stuff like truth, logic, science, morality,

37:44

I don't give them to the unbeliever. I don't say, well, you can have them to argue against the Lord that I adore. I say, no,

37:50

Jesus Christ is the Lord of those things. You need to account for them before you can argue against them. And of course they can't.

37:56

So you're looking for the foundations. What are some other things you look for once you get the foundation? Or maybe the person is doing a good job at hiding the foundation.

38:04

Maybe they kind of are onto what you're trying to get at and they kind of do a skip to my Lou around the foundation because they kind of know, well,

38:11

I don't wanna get there. How do you get through to the person's foundation when they're intentionally trying to avoid getting to the foundation?

38:20

What are some strategies that you can use when you're interacting with someone like that? When a person is in a situation like that, and that's one of the things that you have said that I'm known for is

38:30

I do not leave that. I stick on that. Like Matt Delahunty, I had a debate with him.

38:36

He had said in one of the videos that I showed that he could be a brain in a vat. Denied that through the whole thing, but I kept bringing it up.

38:43

Did it make me sound repetitive? Sure. The people in the audience largely atheistic. You said he denied it or he said,

38:49

I could be a brain in a vat. Videos that I showed, he said, yeah, I could be a brain in a vat. And he denied that it was possible that he could be a brain in a vat throughout the video.

38:57

Okay. And so did I stick with that? Yes, he's made that claim and I'll stick with that. And I don't leave from that because that's what they want to do.

39:04

They want to get you off your script, you know? And so I don't depart. And the question is, especially with this apologetic too, you brought something and, you know,

39:12

I thought you were going, how do you get through to them? You can't. Right. You cannot get through to them. Now, if they're hiding it, just keep speaking truth.

39:19

Because what happens in a lot of cases, I've had atheists who have watched my debate with Matt Delahunty and they get it.

39:26

But, and that's why I do it too for the Christians who end up watching that. Because in the debate itself, the person that you're talking to, they're for a reason.

39:32

They want to try and save face as well. So I don't try and get through to them. You know, I speak the truth.

39:38

I expose the folly of the worldview. And if they don't see it, which they likely won't, because when will they see it? When God saves them.

39:44

But somebody watching might. And, you know, I've heard some wonderful reports of unbelievers and believers alike watching these debates.

39:51

And it looks like the point is totally lost. But that Matt Delahunty debate on YouTube alone, on the

39:57

Atheist Channel alone has almost a million views. I think 950 ,000 views. Plus, you know, we had it on our channel for a while.

40:03

I think I have it on the other channel as well. So, and I preach Christ there. Of course they don't like it, but I preach the gospel.

40:09

And these are people who will never darken the door of a church. So I stick, I don't allow, they're trying to avoid the point to get me off of the point.

40:21

Now, you have been criticized. I actually think you did well in your debate with Delahunty.

40:28

But of course there was a lot of criticism from some of the things you said. And I understand what a piece of additional why you said that.

40:35

But I think it's also a debate strategy that I think is important to highlight. And it's not just a debate strategy.

40:41

It's also you being consistent to your commitment that the unbeliever is not to be judged over God's word. Is during the

40:46

Q and A, someone was trying to bring up an apparent contradiction in the

40:53

Bible. And you infamously said, I don't do Bible studies with unbelievers.

40:58

And they're like, well, I'm not doing a lot to ask the question. And you were just like, you know, you kind of stuck to your guns.

41:04

And it appeared, if someone's gonna look at that uncharitably, it appeared as though you were just sidestepping.

41:10

Like, uh -oh, this person doesn't wanna get into it because he knows it's a problem. I knew what you were doing because I understand the way debate works.

41:19

If you go off the rabbit trail of apparent contradictions, number one, you don't wanna make the unbeliever the judge.

41:24

I get that. Number two, the Bible's comprised of 66 books, 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 books in the

41:30

New Testament written over three different languages by 40 different authors. You could be there forever. And you know, you answer that objection and then 50 ,000 other ones come and you never get to the point.

41:39

They've thrown you off the focus of the debate, okay? Why don't you clarify for people why you said in the debate,

41:48

I don't do Bible studies with unbelievers. Explain to folks why that wasn't a sidestep. And that was a legitimate point given that context.

41:56

Well, first of all, in that particular debate, the atheists were running it and they were charging admission. Those people that went there, they were not there to hear the resolution to the mustard seed.

42:08

That's right. Try and trip me up. Now, I do not do Bible studies with atheists in that I do not hold them to judge whether it's true or not.

42:17

If I have an unbeliever, you know, when I used to work, when I was at a factory, if he says, can you explain this mustard seed thing to me?

42:25

I would gladly do that to him. But I say, look, I'll do this based on this presupposition that you're borrowing from my worldview to do it.

42:31

Now, if I were to say to somebody, and I might lay that out ahead of time, you have an issue with this because you believe it's a contradiction.

42:37

You know that I can't have contradiction in my worldview because God says don't lie and contradiction amount to lying.

42:45

But why can't you have contradiction? If we're just evolved pond scum, contradictions are meaningless.

42:50

You can't make sense of logic. But let me try and explain to you how I reconcile that. But one of the reasons that I didn't do it in that debate, and I think one of the questions that,

43:00

I mean, there was one who asked about Islam and I repeated it, but I think somebody asked about the mustard seed. One of the reasons that I didn't do it in that debate is let's say

43:07

I answered the question about the mustard seed if I know it. Sometimes I say, well, I got to look it up. Let me see how we reconcile that and I explain it to them.

43:15

But let's say I know the reconciliation of that. And I explained the reconciliation of the mustard seed that I was talking about kosher seeds and whatever it was.

43:22

And then I have some unbelieving person at home and Bonson uses the example of Sophie, the wash woman.

43:28

Let's say she's watching this debate and she sees me answer to this unbeliever about the smallest seed.

43:35

And she's thinking, I didn't know that. I can't talk to unbelievers. Because then she sees this guy up there answering all these intricate biblical questions.

43:45

I can't talk to that person because they might embarrass me within a question about the mustard seed and I didn't know it. So one of the things that I say, well, people watch a

43:53

William and Craig debate. They say, I could never do that. That guy's brilliant. Watch one of my debates. They say, I can do that.

43:58

He's an idiot. I say, praise God. I'm gonna stop you there. Because every time you say that,

44:04

I hear so many reactions by Christians completely misinterpret what you're saying.

44:10

Dr. Craig actually addressed that very point in a podcast that he did in response to your interaction with Eric Hernandez, okay?

44:17

You are not fault... And you could explain this, but this is my perception. You are not faulting Christians for doing the work and knowing those details.

44:26

And when you say you'd have to be brilliant to do that, you're not pushing down and discouraging brilliance.

44:33

What are you doing when you say something like that? That you have to be a genius to... Are you discouraging people from aiming to be a genius and to know more facts?

44:41

What are you getting at there? Actually, what I'm trying to do there is push down and discourage... No. But they're not far from what

44:51

I'm trying to do. The thing is, people say, I wanna get my PhD in nuclear chemistry. Are you saying that I shouldn't do that?

44:58

Absolutely not. These are gifts from God to study his creation. But when you use it to make the unbeliever, the judge over the evidence is over it, absolutely not.

45:07

So I'm not discouraging people from knowing the facts, but it's how you present them, how you frame them. And there's some instances where I would give facts.

45:16

Let's get back to the example of somebody calls your wife a prostitute. Now this person, of course, knows that your wife isn't, but let's say the example is that she saw him kiss, she saw your wife kiss another man at the bus station.

45:28

And you say, buddy, that was her brother. He was visiting from across the country and she was just dropping off again.

45:34

She's giving him a peck on the cheek. Now you might wanna explain that, but buddy, that's not the problem. So in certain contexts,

45:40

I will answer in a certain way and in certain contexts, I won't. Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, very good. When is it strategically useful in debate to give specific evidence, since it's a commonly understood within the presupposition framework that, well, we don't give evidence because giving evidence puts man, judge over the evidence, and we don't wanna do that.

46:01

And so the assumption is presupposition let's never talk about evidence. When do you think it is good as a point of strategy to actually present evidences within that context of the disagreement between the believer and unbeliever?

46:13

I think you have a debate as well on that very topic coming up, but I have a friend in Canada, Corey McKenna, and we've done a lot of work together on the apology.

46:22

We actually made some worldview tracks, but he is one of the best people that I've seen as laying out the argument ahead of time.

46:28

Okay. And so what he does is he says, look, you think that I don't know the answer to this question.

46:33

You think that I cannot present the evidence here. I will, but you are gonna interpret according to your presuppositions and your presuppositions cannot make sense in your worldview.

46:43

But let me explain how Christians answer this question. You give the answer to the question. What do they do? They do exactly what you said they were gonna do.

46:50

And then it's presented completely different. You say that we don't have the evidence. It's like, this is how I would share the Bible study.

46:56

And again, it depends on the context. Let's say they're talking about carbon dating or something like that. And you say, well, actually carbon dating only works on something thousands of years old.

47:05

So it cannot be accurate in what you're talking about. So actually I'm talking about a different isotope. I'm talking about radiometric isotopes.

47:11

And now you're in this deep discussion about evidences. So it depends on how you present it. I say, you can discuss anything if you want that person to be saved.

47:20

And that's one thing I say, when you have a discussion with that person, if it looks like you don't want them to be saved, you're probably making a mistake.

47:26

So I would say present evidences in a way that doesn't call God a liar. One thing that I make a distinction in my talks as well, there's a difference between sharing your faith and defending your faith.

47:38

And if I go for a walk at night and I look at the stars and I see the glory of God displayed in the heavens, well, I say to an unbeliever, man, couldn't you see the glory of God in the heavens last night?

47:48

And they say, well, you're nuts, man. Your Bible has a talking donkey in there. See, I was sharing my faith.

47:54

Now I'm not sharing my faith anymore. Now I'm defending my faith. And then I might present some evidences in a way that's, you know,

48:03

I say, look, according to your worldview, we are animals. We're talking animals. Talking animals is not crazy in your worldview.

48:10

But again, that's one thing. It's nice to have gotcha things in your back pocket. But the most important thing is to preach

48:16

Christ. There's a warning with this apologetic. Do this with gentleness and respect. I think a lot of people have been beaten down by bad apologetics their entire life.

48:25

Now they hear a biblical apologetic and they wanna return the favor. And you hear a lot of people, and I say,

48:31

I would rather people do it wrong. I would rather people be evidentialist than be jerk presuppositionalist. And there's a lot of them out there.

48:37

And I think that people can maybe even watch one of some of my old videos and see that as well. A lot of times they don't get the context of it because it's a three minute clip that ends up on YouTube.

48:44

They don't show me sharing the gospel with them afterwards and, you know, us hugging it out or something. But yeah, just preach

48:51

Christ and love on them. And I think that's important because a lot of people who do apologetics can tend to think of themselves as walking brains.

49:00

And that's it. It's all about the intellectual argumentation, but we're always dealing with people. We're creating the image of God.

49:06

And so there's always that personal element there that we cannot detach that fact from the interaction.

49:12

There is a common misconception, as you know, of the use of evidence within a presuppositional framework. And so I would recommend people this book here,

49:19

Vantill and the Use of Evidence by Tom Notaro. It's an old one. You might have difficulty finding it, but if you could find this little bad boy, excellent book.

49:28

And don't be fooled by the, it's not that thick, but Tom Notaro goes into some great detail as to how the

49:33

Christians should understand evidence and use it within a proper presuppositional framework. So people can -

49:40

I'm sure you've listened to a lot of Bonson as I have as well. And his lectures,

49:45

I think, are a little bit different than what he says about the use of evidence. I think when he talks about the use of evidence, he echoes

49:51

Vantill, he says that there is a place for evidence and I believe that there is a place. But when you listen to volumes of his lectures, you see he's not as gracious about evidence as he might appear to be otherwise.

50:03

And I don't think it's really to save face. I don't think he was the type to save face, but when you're more gracious on the evidence forefront, then you are invited to more places,

50:13

I believe. And so, yeah, there's a lot of conferences I won't be invited to because I'm basically the priest of Nazi.

50:21

Right. Somebody has to be an extreme and I'm an extreme on one end, but I'm an extreme on that end is because I don't see people sharing in a way that glorifies

50:29

Christ. Now, my friend, Paul Taylor, he runs a creation museum, the

50:34

Mount St. Helens Creation Museum up in Washington. And I would say that he argues evidences from a presuppositional standpoint better than anybody

50:42

I've ever seen. So I'd encourage you to look up Paul Taylor stuff. He would talk about a fossil, for instance.

50:49

Paul Taylor? And yeah, he wouldn't use the fossil to prove that God exists.

50:55

He says, this fossil proves that we're in big trouble. You need to get right with God before you die because he's flooded the world and he's gonna judge it again.

51:03

So he has a wonderful use of evidences in a presuppositional framework and he knows the evidences. I mean, you go up to his creation museum,

51:08

I've been there, I think twice now. And dear brother. This is good stuff.

51:16

Now, I didn't tell you this at the beginning and it's okay if you can turn this down right now, but I've been super busy.

51:22

So I've totally forgot. I usually tell everyone. Towards the end of the show, my guests usually answer questions from the live chat.

51:31

And we go through quite a bit. So this is kind of people's favorite part of the discussion, which we're not finished just yet, but I do go through and I put the questions up.

51:42

You'll see them on the screen and you can interact with people's questions there. And especially this will be not just on YouTube, but I do rip the audio and put it on the podcast as well,

51:51

Revealed Apologetics podcast. And so people find this part of the discussion very, very useful.

51:56

So if you're okay with that, towards the end, we'll plow through some of these questions.

52:02

And if not, you can say, oh, I'm a little tired right now. I don't wanna go through that. No, I don't mind at all.

52:08

Especially doing street work, you get anybody answering all kinds of questions. So probably something

52:13

I've heard before. One thing that I've gotta be very careful of is actually listening to the question because a lot of times you've heard the question so often, you cut the person off and you give them an answer.

52:21

And one thing I also have to be careful of too is that I get some very intelligent people that email me and I respond to all of them like the

52:28

Joe Blow. It might be a PhD of so -and -so. And of course it is the same answer, but there's a lot of people that have very intelligent questions.

52:37

A lot of them are just trying to trip you up, but yeah, I'm happy to field questions. I love your simple answers.

52:44

I was on your website not that long ago and there was a question, could God use imperfect persons to write a

52:51

Bible? And some of your answers are like long paragraphs and the answer to that one was, of course, he's

52:56

God and that was it. But there's a profundity there. I mean, just to ask that question, it seemed like, well, if you're talking about God, that's kind of a silly question, but -

53:05

Well, I do that as well on the street when people bring up miracles. Sometimes I'll bring up a miracle in the Bible that is a miracle, of course, but it's not the most incredible miracle.

53:14

I'll say, well, what about this one? What about this one? And I bring up even something that are even more amazing in scripture. I say, but God could do that, right?

53:21

Yeah, if he exists. I said, so your problem isn't with miracles. Your problem is with the God of miracles.

53:27

When you have a problem with the God of miracles, you can't have a problem with miracles. Right. And you can't make sense of your objection to them. And there are people out there who are trying to prove miracles to unbelievers.

53:36

They're miraculous. I mean, you don't have to prove them to unbelievers. David Hume, a famous atheistic philosopher, he denied miracles because they were miraculous.

53:46

We're gonna try and prove miracles to a person like that? No, I'm not gonna do it. So let me ask you a question that perhaps requires you to get a little vulnerable.

53:55

Okay, you're showing your soft side here. Well, this church had a lightning strike, I believe, yesterday and the air conditioning's off.

54:02

So if I'm sweating, that's probably the reason for it. Basically, who was your most difficult opponent and why?

54:12

People ask that question quite often, and I don't find any of them difficult. You're so humble now.

54:18

No, no, it's not a matter of, it's not pride because people watch my debates.

54:25

I answer the same for all of them. So there was a fellow on YouTube who professed to be a

54:33

Christian before, and he tried to use the presuppositional argument from an atheistic standpoint.

54:38

I'm not saying he was difficult, but he was much more obstinate. But people have emailed me after watching that one.

54:44

They're greatly encouraged by it. So yeah, I remember I was telling Eric Hoven, he wouldn't mind if I shared this with him, but of course his father,

54:53

Kent Hoven, a famous evidential debater, and he was away for a number of years.

55:00

So Eric would do these debates. And he found, an atheist actually tweeted my website to him and he went to the website and he loved it.

55:08

So he invited me down there and I did a lot of work with Eric. We did a bunch of videos that are also on my channel, but he was preparing for a debate once and I was

55:16

Skyping with him. And I was looking up this guy's credential that he was gonna debate.

55:22

And the guy was a PhD in something or other. And I mentioned this to Eric and he was taking notes about something else.

55:28

He didn't even look up into the camera when I said this guy was a PhD of whatever. I said,

55:33

Eric, do you realize that? I said, a year ago, if I had said that you're about to debate a PhD and so on, so I would have struck fear into your heart.

55:40

But now I mentioned that this guy's a PhD and it didn't even phase him. And that's the beauty of the apologetic.

55:47

When you engage anybody, you can speak the same way to all of them because you're just speaking the truth of scripture.

55:53

And what I found with the more intellectual person that you engage, they just try to hide their folly with bigger words.

56:00

But it's just as foolish as people see at the end of how to answer the fool as well. That fellow, he wanted to know my paradigmatic and syntagmatic proof of scripture.

56:08

You know, he didn't want to know that. He was just trying to throw me off because I was asking him what truth was. Well, the biggest word you can use is transcendental.

56:14

I can tell you the transcendental proof of scripture. But by the way, I think that's a good debate strategy as well is when someone is using language that you don't know or they ask you a question you don't know is to be okay with saying,

56:28

I don't know. Being honest of your ignorance is I think a very important debate strategy.

56:35

And also being humble enough to admit that you don't understand the words that are being used and you ask for simple definitions.

56:41

If your pride gets in the way and you refuse to do that, you're going to put your foot in your mouth and you're not going to honor

56:47

God. And you're going to actually, you know, you're actually going to make yourself look bad, which is something you don't want to do when you're debating for the wrong reasons.

56:54

Well, Bonson gives this great example. Of course, I've listened to a lot of Bonson lectures, but let's say you're on the street and a

56:59

German person comes up to you and starts speaking German to you. You don't know a word of German or you don't know many words of German.

57:05

You try to give him an answer. You go, I'm a Blaupunkt, Volkswagen, I'm Barfuggen. I mean, they're going to think you're an idiot.

57:12

But if you say, look, I'm sorry, I don't understand German. If you could try to explain this in my language, I'll try and give you an answer.

57:18

And people need to be humble enough to do that in English as well. When they, you know, and that's what I said to that fellow. I don't know what you're talking about, but that wasn't his issue.

57:26

You know, I think that's what we need to do is that a lot of times they'll just use big words to try and trip you up. It's not the issue.

57:32

Right, right. I like, there's a lecture that Bonson gave where he said, to be quite frank,

57:40

I'm not nervous when I debate because I've read the back of the book.

57:47

And I thought that was excellent. Of course, there's a context there to that lecture. And that's a very simplistic way of, you know, presenting the issues.

57:54

But I love how people like Van Til and people like Bonson with all of their intellectual prowess and their knowledge of philosophy.

58:03

And Bonson was an excellent debater, whether you, you know, someone likes him or not. He was a great debater. But when you get them in that context where they're just talking about, listen, it really boils down to what you said,

58:16

Cy, in the past, is reading your Bible and believing it and actually trusting God and the strength of his faith.

58:24

What that wonderful quote by John Calvin on his commentary in 1 Peter 3 15. I don't remember off the top of my head, but it said something to the effect of, what was that quote?

58:36

Now I'm trying to think about it. It was his commentary on 1 Peter 3 15, where he says that we think less honorably of divine wisdom and we're carried away by profane audacity.

58:48

And he's speaking with regards to the Christian, that we don't have trust in the divine wisdom. And so we run off to the philosophical constructs of man because we think by doing so we'll be more accepted.

58:58

But wait, yeah, vain and empty philosophy. That's right, that's right. And so I love the simplicity of just believe your

59:05

Bible. Now that's simple, but the Bible has a lot of content. And so when you actually employ those principles, it applies to all areas of life.

59:12

So there's a simplicity to it that Sophie the watch woman could follow, but there's a complexity and depth where the philosophers can engage.

59:19

And so I think that's the beauty of the approach. Before I forget too, my favorite thing of Bonson online when he exchanges like debates is his radio debate with a fellow named

59:29

George Smith. I don't know if you've listened to that one, but it's an hour long. I've listened to almost everything from Bonson. It's also on YouTube, but I would encourage people to look that one up.

59:36

And my favorite part is actually when an unbeliever calls in. Right. Because that is the only time that I've really heard him engage with an unbeliever that's basically on the street level.

59:46

And it's quite amazing how it goes, but I encourage people like, cause he's done debates that are very philosophical in nature.

59:54

And the one against, what was the fellow who was supposed to debate that? Michael Martin, I believe. And so he didn't show up and then he,

01:00:01

Bonson showed up anyways and he did a lecture. That one is so far over my head that I have to dumb down.

01:00:07

But if you listen to his engagement with the atheist George Smith, it's probably my favorite exchange that he's had with anybody and explains.

01:00:13

I just actually posted a quote of that today in the Presup group on Facebook. Yeah. That was a great discussion.

01:00:19

The one with Michael Martin, he did an entire course. I would think it was

01:00:24

Martin under the microscope where he goes into detail on Michael Martin's position, his criticisms of presuppositionalism.

01:00:32

And so there was just too much content there in his prep that to not use. So eventually he gave kind of a synopsis on that preparatory work and responded to him anyway.

01:00:44

In the Bonson -Stein debate, that's another thing is that you hear Bonson arguing Stein's position better than he could.

01:00:51

Right. Do you mean this? And he would bring up a bunch of objections that Stein didn't even think of because I mean, it was just such a lopsided debate that he was actually refuting objections that Stein didn't even bring up because he didn't have them.

01:01:01

Right. Now in defense of Gordon Stein, I'm gonna throw a bone to my atheist listeners. Gordon Stein was not an idiot, but I thought his critiques of even the traditional theistic proofs were atrocious.

01:01:15

So even if there was an evidentialist up there, I think they would have easily been able to respond to him, but just wanted to throw that out there.

01:01:22

So perhaps an atheist might say, well, he wasn't the best representation, but it doesn't matter on our end of the spectrum.

01:01:27

I mean, I don't think any better atheistic position could answer the same issues that came up.

01:01:33

So - Don't get me wrong. I think that most evidentialists out there, it's the famous ones, they win their debates. Me too, yeah.

01:01:39

But they win their debate for God I don't believe in. Right. You're really good at setting those up and then, let's, oh yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:48

Yeah. All right. I was gonna ask one last question and I forgot it.

01:01:54

So we're gonna move. What was the question? It was kind of a debate -ish sort.

01:02:00

Oh, here was the question. Thank you. How do you study? I think people would be interested. Okay, well, there's debates and we have to prep and stuff.

01:02:08

What is, and every time I ask someone this question, even people, I know you don't consider yourself someone who's brilliant.

01:02:14

You're, I'm a factory worker. Yeah, well, factory workers can be pretty smart too. But every time

01:02:20

I ask, I've had scholars on. I've spoken with the average person. I've spoken with scholars,

01:02:25

I've spoken with non -scholars and all of them say the same thing, even off the air, when I'm asking them, how do you study?

01:02:32

And I remember one scholar, he told me, I would not wish upon anyone to adopt the kind of studying that I do.

01:02:40

He's like, cause they hate the way they study and it's so overly complicated. And so people don't usually speak highly of their own study methods and wish they did it differently.

01:02:49

But going through that method is still helpful because it might resonate with someone who might find the way you study useful.

01:02:57

Whereas other people might say, well, I have my own method. I might stick with my own method. So how do you study?

01:03:02

Do you learn primarily through audio? Is it primarily through reading? Do you type out your notes? Do you make outlines?

01:03:08

What does that look like? So people can get an idea. I'm definitely more of a passive learner. So I, like most of the learning that I've done on apologetics has been through audio lectures.

01:03:17

If you go to Covenant Media Foundation, I mean, at the time when I bought them, they were two bucks a lecture. I think they're a buck and a half a piece now, but by bonds and I listened to audio lectures and what

01:03:25

I'll do, like I say, if the unbeliever has a lot of material out there, then I might listen to them. If not, then

01:03:31

I might find out, well, what position did they come from and listen to those people talking. And I will jot down notes about what

01:03:37

I disagree with, how they expose their presuppositions. And I'll just take notes along that line and then

01:03:43

I'll formulate my argument around that. But I've done enough of these debates now that I have a script, that I have a pretty good outline and I'll stick to that outline and just, yeah, look for familiar things that the person will say.

01:03:55

But like I say, I don't have a lot. I think I have a debate lineup in the Philippines while COVID kind of crushed that, but I'll be heading there a little bit later and they're gonna head up debates.

01:04:04

They're gonna set up a debate for that. So I'll find out what the person believes and I'll try and listen to what they say.

01:04:11

But here's the thing, brother, and I know I'm a broken record when it comes to stuff like this.

01:04:17

When I'm engaging people on the street, when I'm engaging people in debate, my primary thought at the end of the day is not

01:04:23

I should have studied this philosophy more. I should have studied this apologetic more. It's I need to read my

01:04:28

Bible more. And I know people don't like to hear that. It's not a popular thing.

01:04:35

But that's what the best street witness I ever heard was from a heretic. But the guy answered everything with scripture.

01:04:43

And the reason it was good is because it was powerful, the problems that he twisted scripture. And if there's a presuppositionalist out there who can answer every objection biblically from a reform standpoint with scripture,

01:04:53

I say, that's what I wanna do. And that's how I wanna focus as apologetic. I quit my job 12 years ago to write a book on apologetics.

01:05:01

Haven't written it yet. And I'm thankful that I didn't back then because it would have been very philosophical. Now I wanna give biblical objections from a presuppositionalist standpoint to whatever the person says.

01:05:12

So, and I think that that's important because I think a lot of people when they study apologetics and even presuppositional apologetics, we get so caught up with reading so many books about the

01:05:21

Bible that we don't read the Bible directly. And there's a danger we all run into that danger.

01:05:29

So primarily through your study, primarily is more audio than actually reading.

01:05:35

Right, yeah. I have all of Bonson and Van Til's books. I don't think I finished one of them. Usually I read a couple of chapters and I'm bored.

01:05:42

Yeah. And I chuck it, you know, and because you gotta get very far into a lot of them.

01:05:49

And a lot of times I don't read them because I start thinking like them. And I'm not saying it's wrong to think like them, but then it becomes very philosophical.

01:05:56

I mean, if you asked me the word epistemology 20 years ago, I wouldn't know what you're talking about. You read enough of those books and epistemology just flows off your tongue.

01:06:03

Can you use that in a conversation with somebody on the street? They don't know what you're talking about. Now you use that in a debate setting, you know, and you mention epistemology.

01:06:11

While it might be nice for the person you're talking to, but for the person watching you, they don't know what you're talking about. Right. I want this to be easy enough for everybody to understand so that they can say,

01:06:21

I want to do that. And this is what I say, when you watch a video of an expert talking to a Mormon or an expert talking to a

01:06:27

Muslim, you're saying, man, I can't wait for them, one of them to knock on my door. No, you're saying I can't wait for that expert to run into other

01:06:33

Mormons so I can watch another YouTube video. I want the person when they're finished watching me have an encounter, man,

01:06:39

I can't wait to talk to my sister. I can't wait to talk to that Mormon because now I can argue from the truth of scripture.

01:06:45

And if anything that I do gets people away from that, then I've made a mistake. And I want people to call me on that.

01:06:51

People sometimes say, Cy, how'd you get to the gospel from this apologetic? If you have to ask me that question, then

01:06:56

I believe I've sinned. Yeah. Because if you have to get to the gospel from your apologetic methodology, you're doing it wrong.

01:07:02

I think proper apologetic is a proclamation of the gospel. Right, okay, very good. And I think it's a challenge to go,

01:07:09

I'll go a little easy on people because I struggle with this as well. If you're learning apologetics from a source that has philosophical terminology and you're going out and you're practicing using it, it can be a challenge bringing it down.

01:07:26

And there's nothing wrong with knowing that language, but always know that in the final analysis, when I take these profound truths, how do

01:07:32

I convey this simply? Because it's an issue of communication. I think people need to be very, very aware of that and not get bogged down in the pride of knowing bigger words than the other person.

01:07:42

And I think that's very, very important. Sometimes, I mean, I gotta admit, this is nice to have in your back pocket sometimes. I remember we were witnessing outside of Princeton University.

01:07:51

Two of my friends were familiar with the apologetic and they were talking to a philosophy student who denied logic.

01:07:56

And they were talking to this guy for about half an hour. And they saw me in the distance and they flagged me over. They said, Cy, this guy denies logic.

01:08:03

So I went up to him, I said, so you deny logic? He said, yeah, I deny logic. I said, then you don't. And he had a big smile on his face.

01:08:10

He stuck out his hand. He said, I like you. It was over immediately. I contradicted him. Right.

01:08:15

And he couldn't say, well, that's a, you deny logic, pal. You can have a problem with contradictions. So it's a nice, you know, but I say just to get away from the mental debris and get to the gospel.

01:08:24

Because your problem is not you deny logic. And the thing is, so somebody watching that say, well, I didn't know that snappy answer.

01:08:30

You don't have to. You know, you say, well, I'm sorry that you deny logic. That's why I find women a lot better at this than men.

01:08:37

I remember one of the first times that I was teaching this apologetic, I was talking about the preconditions of intelligibility. Logic is universal, abstract and invariant, all true.

01:08:44

You can't make sense of that without God. And the guys were taking notes, thinking, man, I can't wait to get to work tomorrow to crush my colleague, you know, and get him to account for logic in his worldview.

01:08:52

And the women were, and I talked to them after, I said, what's going on? I said, before I had to learn all these evidences, now

01:08:59

I have to learn the preconditions of intelligibility. Are you kidding me? And they were exactly right. And so the more that I do this, and if you want to maybe say

01:09:07

I'm not an apologist anymore, I'm fine with that too. Because I don't care what you call me. I just want to reach people for Christ.

01:09:13

Right. And get straight to the point. That's what I appreciate about you, man. All right, well, that was my last question. Now, there's one thing

01:09:19

I want to ask you and you can let me know after the show, but I would love to have you on a couple of times and then maybe, because here's my goal.

01:09:29

I'm promoting this apologetic. I think it's a biblical apologetic and I think it's useful for the body of Christ.

01:09:35

But I want to kind of move people away from the common caricatures of the position and show its strength, its flexibility and applicability.

01:09:42

And so as people look back on the past episodes, we cover things. I had Dr. Michael Kruger on. We covered presuppositionalism applied to evidence and specifically to issues of canon.

01:09:52

There are different ways we can apply this. I love to have you back on to perhaps do some role -playing and see how does a presuppositionalist use the presuppositional argument to the

01:10:04

Mormon, to the Jehovah's Witness, to the Muslim and kind of go through kind of a, maybe we can do a couple of episodes if it was something within your schedule where we can kind of unpack that for people.

01:10:13

Because I think a lot of people like this methodology, but their only exposure to it is what this looks like against an atheist.

01:10:20

Okay, so maybe - By the way, proofthatgodexists .org. If you go to my other worldview section, there is a section on other worldviews, but I think even

01:10:28

I've evolved from that a little bit too. So we can do episodes on other worldviews, but they'll be very short.

01:10:36

Well, maybe we can, you know, we can unpack some of those things and go into more detail. I think people would find that useful.

01:10:42

All right. Have you ever seen that video of Sweet Brown? It was a news clip. It goes, ain't nobody got time for that. In my talks,

01:10:49

I say, there's over 4 ,000 worldviews. If you have to learn all of them to talk to the unbeliever, and I play that clip, I say, I defer to philosopher

01:10:55

Sweet Brown. He goes, ain't nobody got time for that. So my response to the worldview will be pretty similar in the different worldviews.

01:11:03

And, you know, like, I'd be happy to do that. I, you know, you said this before we went on too, that you're gonna mention that you'd like me to have me on again.

01:11:11

I said, wait till the end of the show before you say that. So I'm glad that you're still sticking to that. No, you're, no. I definitely appreciate what you have to say.

01:11:18

And so I think people will enjoy it as well and find it beneficial. I do apologize though. This is the part of the show where you get the 50 ,000 questions.

01:11:29

And at any moment you say, I think I'm finished, just let me know. Otherwise - I think I'm finished. There we go.

01:11:35

Thank you so much, guys. That's it for this episode. That would be terrible. Anyway. Okay, so let's go through some of these.

01:11:42

Let's see here. Someone asked me a question here. Can you have Darth Dawkins on?

01:11:49

Maybe if I have a couple more cups of coffee and think about it. I'm just kidding. I know

01:11:55

Darth Dawkins. We have some private conversations sometimes. A very interesting guy. Maybe, maybe.

01:12:01

I think that'll be, if I did, that'd be an interesting discussion. All right.

01:12:07

Let's see here. I know Darth as well. We've had some private conversations too. Yeah. You know, contrary to popular opinion, in private conversation, he's a really nice guy.

01:12:15

Very humble. Privately. Privately, yes. Privately. Okay. So someone's saying here -

01:12:22

I get it too, you know, because people, they are critical of me. For instance, that California debate.

01:12:27

And sure, you know, I can use a different tone as well. But when three atheists get together to blaspheme my

01:12:34

God in the house of God, in a church, you know, it does get me riled up. But yes. And one thing, like I say too, if somebody enters a conversation or debate at any point, you don't, it does not look like you want the person to be saved.

01:12:45

You're probably doing it wrong. There is a place for rebuke, but I think, you know, we have to make

01:12:50

Christ sweet to them. We have to love them. And we have to make it appear as though we love them as well. Right. Very good.

01:12:56

This is not a question, but this is cool. Doug Pine Creek. He often listens into the show and I know you've had an interaction with him as well, which

01:13:03

I would encourage people to watch. I thought it was a good conversation. I really enjoyed it too. I really enjoyed it. What was that?

01:13:09

Apparently he's originally from Kanakistan too, like me. That's right. That's right. Oh, he says, hey, my two favorite precepts together.

01:13:15

Well, thank you very much, Doug. I really do appreciate that. We'll have to do it again sometime, Doug. Yeah. Awesome. Okay.

01:13:21

Daniel asks, Sai, at what point should someone start defending the faith publicly? Do you believe people should start public ministry from a point of education and how much?

01:13:32

I think that Christians should defend their faith publicly from the day they're saved. Now, if he means in formal debate, you know, here's the thing.

01:13:44

If you are going to exalt Christ, do it immediately. If you want to try and go toe -to -toe philosophically with somebody,

01:13:52

I'd say don't. I had this one fellow in particular, he was asking me to coach him and I did, but I said, don't debate this guy.

01:13:58

I said, he's not interested in what you have to say. He just wants to make you look like a fool in public. And I think he succeeded in that task.

01:14:07

If you go there with the intent of preaching Christ to them, do it immediately.

01:14:13

If you're going there to go toe -to -toe philosophically with them, I say, never do it. Because apologetics, you know, it's not something that, you know, we're commanded to do it in scripture.

01:14:23

We're commanded to give a defense of our faith. And, you know, anybody can do that and we're commanded to do it at any time.

01:14:28

So if you say, well, I can't do this yet because I haven't studied yet. Well, then you're disobeying the command of God. Yeah. Always be ready.

01:14:36

That's right. I think that's in the Bible somewhere. Yeah, somewhere. Here's a question by some person. Is it a good idea to say that Christianity is true because Jesus said,

01:14:44

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. Is it good to say

01:14:51

Christianity is true because of that? Yeah. Can you see the question on the screen there?

01:14:57

Yeah, I can see it. Just checking, okay. Yeah, well, the thing is I have no problem quoting scripture as the foundation for my worldview.

01:15:05

But I don't think that that verse in particular is talking about the truth of scripture.

01:15:14

You know, I think that there's a lot of verses that do, but if people want to ask me what truth is, I say what Jesus, and this is what

01:15:20

I do as well, more in my lectures. I'll discuss, I did this lecture in Louisiana recently, and I think the topic of the lecture was truth.

01:15:28

And I got into the idea, how is Jesus Christ the truth? Because 2 plus 2 is 4, it's not Jesus, but you can't make sense of 2 plus 2 equals 4 without Jesus.

01:15:37

So, yeah, he is the truth, and you cannot make sense of truth without him. But I would say that, yeah, we need a biblical foundation.

01:15:47

That's what actually my next video on how to answer Matt Walsh. I know the first one was over a year ago. But one thing that they don't like about it is the circularity of the

01:15:54

Christian worldview, using scripture to prove scripture. But I say, if you use anything else to prove scripture, then that becomes the authority.

01:16:00

So our scripture from, our proof of scripture must be internal. But what I also say to the unbeliever,

01:16:06

I say the proof that God's word is true is that if you deny your worldview is absurd. You can't make sense of your objection.

01:16:13

But yeah, I would encourage the person, sure, how do I know Christianity is true? Jesus makes me know, and this is what he says.

01:16:19

Yeah, and demonstrating the truth of the Christian worldview is not simply quoting scripture.

01:16:25

We quote scripture, and it's true, but I like what, I think there was a question on your website, how do you know the Bible's true or something like that?

01:16:32

You said that if, or how do you know the Bible's the word of God? I think the two -pronged answer you gave was, first, it claims to be the word of God, because that's an important aspect.

01:16:41

It doesn't make the claim, right? And demonstrates it by reducing the other position to absurdity.

01:16:48

So deny it, and you have to actually presuppose aspects of it that only make sense given its truth.

01:16:53

So there is not simply just the Bible says it, there is the demonstration of the reduction of the opposing worldview to absurdity, and the positive construction of the biblical position to actually explain that it does provide those foundations.

01:17:06

In a debate, I don't remember which one it was, with Bonson, where someone asked him about the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and he goes, well,

01:17:14

I agree with that, and here's my extraordinary evidence. Deny the Christian worldview, and you couldn't make sense out of anything.

01:17:21

Wow, extraordinary, that's what he said. And that claim, also an extraordinary claim, where's the evidence of that claim?

01:17:27

That's right, that's right. But one thing that Sean McDowell, and I have it in the film, so it's not like I'm outing him or anything, but I don't know if it's that clip,

01:17:33

I believe it is in the film, but he's teaching apologetics, and he says to the audience, what can you not use to prove the

01:17:40

Bible? And the whole audience yells out, the Bible. So I go to my talks, and I say,

01:17:45

I walk on stage, and I say, let's say I said to you, I was the strongest man in the world. I say, you might have suspected it already by looking at my physique, but of course

01:17:54

I get a whole bunch of laughs because I don't look like the strongest man. But what if I said to them, what can

01:17:59

I not use to prove that I'm the strongest man in the world? Your strength. Right. That would be absurd.

01:18:05

Right. We must use our strength. So we demonstrate the truth of the Bible by its internal consistency, by what it says.

01:18:13

And we don't say the Bible is true because the Bible is true, because that would be a vicious circle. We say the Bible is true because it claims to be good, and if you reject it, your world is absurd.

01:18:22

You can't even make sense of your objection to the Bible. You're boring from the God of the Bible to even object to it.

01:18:27

That's the God I believe in. Now, I think a lot of people who use that kind of approach in their apologetic methodology is, there's the assumption that circularity is fallacious, and they do not make the distinction between virtuous circularity and vicious circularity.

01:18:43

And even that terminology, some people think that virtuous circularity is just an invention by presuppositionalists to make our circle work.

01:18:51

And that's not true. It's even worse than that though, brother, because I would say to them, what's wrong with vicious circularity?

01:18:57

Right. Without God. That's right. So they'll say, well, we believe in a virtuous circle, and they'll mock that, and we grant them that vicious circularity that they can make sense of that without God.

01:19:07

I think that's a lot of times like that Tom Jump, he'll do stuff like that as well. He'll try and attack you, or when his very attack borrows from the

01:19:14

God that he knows exists. Yeah, all right, very good. Next question here. How do you apply presupp with loved ones, for example?

01:19:21

My wife who used to profess belief in Christianity no longer does. Particularly, how do you respond when they say they don't know that God exists?

01:19:30

It depends on the circumstance. Sometimes I'm quite tired at a university. For instance, I would say, the

01:19:36

Bible says you do. No, I don't know that God exists, sir. Well, the Bible says you do. Yeah, I really don't know that God exists.

01:19:42

Well, the Bible says you do. Sir, you are crazy. I do not know that God exists. You got nothing to worry about, pal.

01:19:47

Have a nice day. And they look at me like, you're not gonna try and prove that God exists?

01:19:53

I say, if you really don't know that God exists, you got nothing to worry about. Have a nice day. And as they're walking away, I say, but the

01:19:58

Bible says you do. Yeah. So in that situation, that's a very difficult situation.

01:20:03

That person lives under the same roof. And I have unbelieving friends as well. I say, look, I know that you know

01:20:09

God exists. You might be fooling other people. You might be fooling other Christians, but you're not fooling me. You're not fooling

01:20:14

God. I don't have to bring this up again, but if you wanna know how to be made right with that God that you know exists,

01:20:20

I'd be happy to talk with you about it. Other than that, I'm sorry, I'm not going to entertain your denial of the

01:20:26

God that you know exists. Somebody said, I think your wife is a prostitute. You wouldn't entertain that.

01:20:31

You'd say, look, you know she's not. And do you know who always ends up bringing up the conversation or the topic of God after you have that position with them?

01:20:40

They do. And I've done prison ministry, and it was, I think, one of the favorite things

01:20:45

I've done. No cameras, no microphones. Now, I've not done one -on -one death row ministry, but I would love to, because I would go to the person on death row.

01:20:53

Do you wanna know how to be made right with God before you die? No, I don't believe in him. You're a freak. Get out of my face. Sorry you feel that way, sir.

01:21:00

I'll pray for you. Next week, I go to the same guy. Do you wanna know how to be made right with God before you die?

01:21:05

No, get out of here, you're a freak. I told you last week, I'm not interested. I'm sorry you feel that way, sir. Have a nice day.

01:21:11

I pray for you. I keep doing that until he says, yeah, I wanna know. Because then you're not entertaining their unbelief.

01:21:18

You're not entertaining, you know, you're not entertaining the fact that they're calling God a liar. Bible says that you know that he exists.

01:21:25

Now, you might wanna entertain some of this stuff philosophically. This person lives under your roof. Look, I'm sorry. I love you.

01:21:31

My word of God, the word of God says that, you know, I cannot go against that. So that's what I believe.

01:21:37

And if you wanna talk about it, if you wanna know how to be made right with him, I'd be happy to talk with you about that. But now I'm gonna try and be

01:21:42

Christ to you. I'm gonna try and in my life to exemplify him. And that's a tough task, because when you mess up, that's the thing they're gonna point out.

01:21:51

But just love on them, be Christ to them, and they'll be the ones that bring it up. Trust me. Now, real briefly, if someone,

01:21:57

I could imagine someone who, that person who asked this question, how would you demonstrate that someone does know the

01:22:03

God that you're talking about? They say, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know that God exists. What is a quick, you know, piece of advice you can give to kind of show, well, actually, you do know the

01:22:13

God I'm talking about. And here's maybe a helpful way to bring that out. Well, again, I would read

01:22:18

Romans 1 to them, 18 to 22. They're suppressing the truth and unrighteous. Now, what I used to do is, and I do it on the tracks as well.

01:22:25

And I think, you know, it's more of a back pocket thing, but could you be wrong about everything you claim to know? Yes, I could.

01:22:33

Conversation's immediately over, it's over. And that's what the Bible says. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. You said you could be wrong about everything, it means you can't know anything.

01:22:40

And I explain why that's the case. I do that in the film. It means you can't know anything. Then they'll keep making knowledge claims against your worldview.

01:22:46

And you said you could be wrong about everything you claim to know. Now, here's the thing. If they say, no, I can know something for certain, then you expose how they can't without God.

01:22:54

Again, more of a philosophical route. And, you know, people at home are saying, I wish Cy was there when I talked to my unbelieving sister -in -law.

01:23:00

Don't need that. You don't need that. You know, just don't believe them. One thing

01:23:05

I would encourage you, and I stress this in my talks as well, don't go and call your wife a liar now.

01:23:11

Don't, when somebody says, oh, I don't believe in God. Oh, you're lying. Because the Bible doesn't call them liars. It says it's suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

01:23:18

Now they might very well be lying, but that's at a philosophical level, way above my pace when you're talking about first and second order beliefs, where they take the stronger belief and they suppress and they elevate their weaker beliefs.

01:23:30

And they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. So I would not call her a liar. I would just say exactly what the Bible says.

01:23:35

The Bible says you're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. And if you want to be, and I, you know, like I said, why are you upset with God?

01:23:43

Because we have to trust, you know, the same God that saved us. We have to trust that his word is true when it talks about them.

01:23:49

And if God ends up saving them, great. But if he doesn't, don't compromise with that person just because they don't believe you.

01:23:55

Right, right. Very good. Thank you. Next question. What advice would you both give on how to read the

01:24:02

Bible consistently? Church and Bible studies are great, but there's something to be valued in reading scripture alone. How do you stay consistent?

01:24:09

Why don't you give your answer there first? Well, this year I'm doing the Robert Murray McShane Bible reading plan and I've really enjoyed it.

01:24:18

So I would encourage you to get a good reading plan. I like that one. I'd like to do a consecutive one, a chronological one sometime as well.

01:24:26

I think that would be, you know, I'm going to look for one next year, but the pastor Jonathan Murdoch of this church here, he's done

01:24:32

I think 15 times now. So he's gone through the Bible 15 times. And the Robert Murray McShane one, I believe does the entire scriptures,

01:24:38

Psalms and Proverbs twice in a year and the New Testament twice in a year and the rest once. And I would encourage people to get a

01:24:45

Bible reading plan and maybe have other people that do the same plan so that you can discuss it.

01:24:51

That's the beautiful thing. I mean, go to Jonathan's porch some mornings and we talk about the reading that we've just had because we know we've read the same thing.

01:24:59

It'd be nice if people read in addition to that. But, you know, I thought this reading plan would be very weighty, but it's four chapters a day, usually four chapters, sometimes a little bit more.

01:25:09

It's not weighty. And yeah, I'd encourage people to get a reading plan. The Robert Murray McShane is one that I do and I would encourage people to check that one out.

01:25:16

I believe it's available on the Ligonier website. All right, very good. And I don't want to be a fortune cookie here, but those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

01:25:25

If you don't plan to give time to your studies of the scriptures, then you're not going to give time to study the scriptures.

01:25:33

You need to know your day enough that where you can poke that hole, that pocket of time and actually do it.

01:25:40

I have three kids. My son is, I have a nine month old, I have a three -year -old and I have a five -year -old.

01:25:48

Once they wake up, look at this. Once they wake up, my day is over.

01:25:56

Okay, now I always want to study and I get almost depressed and agitated that my family is all over this crazy.

01:26:05

And I just want to go into the corner and read a paragraph or something. You have to know throughout the whole day, where can

01:26:13

I take this time and sanctify it unto the Lord. And so this is what

01:26:19

I do. This is me, might not work for you. I wake up at 4 .40 in the morning.

01:26:24

Mm -hmm, why? Well, because there are no kids, you see. And now it's hard to roll out of bed, but once I have my cup of coffee,

01:26:32

I'm there, it's quiet, I can focus. Sometimes I'll even go out for a morning drive and listen to maybe a audio

01:26:38

Bible or a debate or something that I want to study or whatever. But you need to consistently find that time and make it sacred, make it your own, right?

01:26:48

When you understand the importance of that pocket of time, then you will understand the importance of consistently being there and meeting with Jesus by opening the

01:26:55

Bible and setting that time aside. So that's my advice to you there. Amen, I wanna share some of my pastor in Canada, Stephen Richardson said once that really convicted me because I used to do my

01:27:06

Bible reading before I went to bed. Okay. And I don't think he was addressing me in particular, but I don't know if it was in a sermon or when he mentioned it, but he said, can you imagine a soldier putting all his armor on before he went to sleep?

01:27:17

That don't make any sense. And I thought, that's basically what I'm doing, putting my armor on just before I go to sleep. We've got to put our armor on.

01:27:24

I encourage people to do that first thing in the morning. Now, one thing, and I've heard this objection before is that I read the

01:27:29

Bible and I forget everything immediately that I've just read. And sadly, that's the case with me quite often that I read a passage and almost immediately

01:27:37

I've forgotten what I've just read. And something that Paul Washer said was very encouraging to me.

01:27:42

He told a story about this old man who asked his grandson to go to the river and get a bucket of water.

01:27:49

And he gave him this dirty old coal bucket. And he said, can you get me a bucket of water? And this young boy went to the river with this coal bucket and he grabbed the bucket of water and he's bringing it back to his grandfather, but the bucket had holes in it.

01:28:01

So by the time he got back to his grandfather, it was empty. And he said, grandfather, the bucket is empty. And his grandfather said, yes, but look at it.

01:28:08

It's clean. So what I say is when I read scripture in the morning,

01:28:13

I'm washing the bucket. Yeah, very good. Even if it does leave me, I hope that I retain some of it, but if it leaves you, at least in that time you're washing the bucket.

01:28:22

And I find too that if I go to Facebook, if I go to something else before I read scripture, my day is different and I still do that.

01:28:29

And I should not do that. I should read scripture first. And this is gonna convict me to do that too. Yeah, and I think it's important too is consistency and repetition is important.

01:28:39

I used to quote movie lines like crazy. You watch a movie sometimes, the lines become the background music of your mind.

01:28:50

You need to be so consistently in the word of God that it becomes the background music of your mind. That when a situation confronts you externally, it's as simple as recalling lines to a song.

01:29:01

The scriptures are there. Even if you don't understand, meditate on the scripture and you're gonna be amazed as how

01:29:07

God brings these things to remembrance and even brings these things to your understanding. So in you first, and allow it to kind of be the background music of your mind and absorb the scripture, be that sponge so that when you feel the pressure, right?

01:29:24

By the problems you experience in your life, the objections you hear from unbelievers, once it presses, the water seeps out, let scripture seep out of your pores.

01:29:34

You need to be living in scripture, not merely visiting scripture every so often. So I have asked you to wanna teach, who want me to teach them this apologetic?

01:29:41

I say, you can do this better than I can in five minutes. Right. Read your Bible, believe what it says.

01:29:46

You went to seminary, you know your Bible better than I do. You can do this better than I can. And they doubt it. You know, they doubt that.

01:29:53

But I've been on the street talking with people. You say, well, if I bring up this objection, they're gonna talk about a talking donkey.

01:29:58

First of all, they don't. But when you answer with an objection from scripture and you tell them what the

01:30:03

Bible says about them, that's what closes mouths. And that's the role of apologetics. You can't change one person is to close their mouths lovingly and biblically.

01:30:11

And you tell them what the Bible says about them. And that's powerful. The power of God into salvation is the gospel.

01:30:17

Very good. How do you get into a conversation so that you end up talking about Christ? That might be a simple one.

01:30:24

Go for it. Start talking about Christ. Wait, wait, wait, the atheist says.

01:30:30

I'm not really into those tricks, you know? And of course,

01:30:36

I'm not good at that. I'm actually an introvert. I'm really shy when it comes to, I remember I was with my friend,

01:30:41

Chad Williams. We were on the promenade in Newport Beach. And he would go up to people.

01:30:47

He just started a conversation. I said, you know what? That's really easy for you because you're this good looking surfer, dude.

01:30:52

I said, I look like a Mormon. And just then a woman hand shoved two tracks for an adult establishment into my hand.

01:30:59

And he said, you're okay. You look like a sinner. But yeah, the thing is, cause

01:31:06

I'm, John Speed wrote a great book, against friendship evangelism. Because a lot of times people will make friends with their neighbors.

01:31:13

You know, they'll share tools and stuff like that. And then they'll share Christ with them. Oh, you have an agenda.

01:31:20

You've been nice to me because you want to dupe me into your world. You have an agenda of conversion.

01:31:25

I had somebody say that to me once because I did exactly that. I was kind to before I ever shared Christ with them. And then when you share

01:31:31

Christ with them, they think that all of that stuff would just lead up to that. But if you start, look, I'm a Christian. You know, I'm concerned for your soul.

01:31:38

You know, I had a group that I was evangelizing with door to door in the town where I used to go to church in Canada.

01:31:45

And they'd go to the door and they'd say, we got pizza at the church. And I said, that's exactly what

01:31:51

I talk about in the film. I said, we got something a lot better than pizza. Cause you go to the church for pizza and you share the gospel with them.

01:31:57

They think it's a bait and switch. You brought me here. But if you say, look, we're from this town here and we're concerned for the citizens.

01:32:04

Where are they going to go when they die? And where do you think you're going to go, sir? And you have this conversation. If you want to finish this conversation, we have pizza at the church.

01:32:10

Now it's not a bait and switch. So I would encourage people to tell them what you believe immediately.

01:32:16

You might ask them that kind of question. And don't get me wrong. I'm just like the next person. I don't want people to think I'm a fool either. And don't like every first time

01:32:23

I did anything like this out in the open air. It was in North Carolina with my friend Dustin. It was a cold day and people were walking by without a coat on.

01:32:30

And I said, you really should have a coat on today. It's pretty cold. Do you think I could tell them they need Christ? I felt like an idiot because the guy the week before that was calling girls sluts for wearing mini skirts.

01:32:39

I didn't want them to think that was me. Pride and fear. So if you have to get to it, you're probably doing something wrong.

01:32:46

You have to get over the pride. And if people are waiting to get over the pride and fear to do that, you're never going to do it because it never goes away.

01:32:53

And don't invite them for the pizza. Have the pizza with you. So you can give them the gospel and the pizza simultaneously. Exactly, exactly.

01:32:59

Well, that's what we did. There we go. And the kids were like sponge. They loved it. And yeah, it changed their methodology.

01:33:05

Pine Creek answers the question to how do you start to get to a conversation about Christ? You know, here's our local atheist.

01:33:13

Start by asking someone, do you want to talk about Christ? It's not that hard. Thank you, Doug, for chiming in there.

01:33:20

I think that's very helpful. Okay. Someone says here, this is fun here.

01:33:27

Sai, you've said you want to write a book on precept for kids. And Eli, you teach kids. Could you co -author the book?

01:33:35

What do you think? The first book, I already know. Actually, I have an illustrator. She's going to illustrate it for me and I have to get the content to her.

01:33:43

But I already know the first book. Okay. My series is Apollo Junior.

01:33:49

Apollo Junior. In case somebody wants to steal it from me, I've already registered the domain name apollojunior .com.

01:33:56

So the first book, I already have an idea for and I want to get that out to Mai that she's going to do the illustration.

01:34:03

She's actually going to do Tony Miano's logo as well. Wonderful illustrator. She's going to do the book for me and I just have to get that to her because yeah, kids get it.

01:34:12

Right. Kids get the apologetic. It's the adults who have been duped by bad apologetics their entire lives that have had a beating out of them.

01:34:19

Kids understand, you know? So this, I want to get this right into the ground level so that, you know, I think it will resonate with kids.

01:34:25

Yeah. Well, maybe one day in the future, you can write the preface of a book that I wrote. Well, maybe when you see my first book, you'll have an idea for the second one and we can work on that one.

01:34:33

There we go. Sounds good. I'd be down. Doug has another question here. His question for Sai. Many Christians believe in annihilationism or universalism.

01:34:41

Would your passion for evangelism using the precept method lower if eternal conscious torment isn't true?

01:34:49

Well, that's just like saying would my passion for apologetics or evangelism lower if triangles weren't three -sided?

01:34:56

Hmm, okay. You know, because Doug is very good at stuff like that. He tries to give impossible hypotheticals.

01:35:03

Okay. You know, I believe that that's what the Bible says. The Bible says, so it's not possible for it to be false. Right. But I evangelize because I'm commanded to and because I love the person.

01:35:16

Yeah, I don't even entertain the thought of it possibly not being true.

01:35:21

I mean, it's a very easy thing to believe. I mean, I'm not saying that it's possible to be true, but annihilationism would be great if it was true.

01:35:29

I think for people that do believe those certain things that it must affect their evangelism.

01:35:37

So, sorry, Doug, that's not gonna be me, but I think it's a good point that people who do believe those things, you make a good point.

01:35:43

It should affect their evangelism. If eternal conscious torment is not true, what's the big deal? So they suffer for a little while and then they're gone.

01:35:50

Right. No. The thing is, it's not a hypothetical for me because I know this to be true, but you make a good point as far as people evangelize.

01:35:59

A lot of people are just online debating that topic rather than reaching the lost. Sure, yeah, I agree. Don't be discouraged.

01:36:06

Doug has a bunch of questions here, but I like to take them anyway because I think people can benefit from the answer.

01:36:12

It says, well, this is a statement here, kind of a rhetorical point, but why don't you address that? If Si were to ask me, why do you hate

01:36:17

God? I would enter his worldview and say, because God hasn't regenerated me. I would add someone to that.

01:36:25

He's right. Yeah, good, yeah. And I think I'm glad you said that because a lot of people wiggle and say, well, how would

01:36:32

I respond? Well, that's true. If God doesn't regenerate, you're gonna reject, so. Right, the thing is, he is accountable for his own sin.

01:36:39

Right. The analogy that I use is 100 people conspired to kill the governor's son, and they succeed and they murder him.

01:36:48

And the governor comes to the prison and pardons one person. And the person says, well, why didn't he pardon all the rest?

01:36:55

You know, he's not obligated to do that, but these people are going to die or to the death chamber because of the murder they committed.

01:37:02

Doug, if he dies unrepentant, is going to hell because of his sin. Right. You know, so it's a both and type of situation.

01:37:10

But yes, God has not regenerated him, and he cannot love God until God regenerates him. All right, very good.

01:37:16

Here's another one from Doug. One thing that why Doug appreciates myself and probably you as well is that we don't pull punches.

01:37:23

If he makes a valid point with our worldview, then yeah, I will agree to it. Of course, there's non -reformed people watching this whose skin is crawling right now because they believe that we believe in a wicked

01:37:31

God. I remember one of the passages in the church I went to was with a guy in seminary. He said, if God is the

01:37:37

God of Calvin, I hate him. Right. That's the type of objection people get because they do not understand the mercy of that God.

01:37:45

Right. That's why a lot of people reject this apologetic on the face of it because it's a reformed apologetic. Right. And they try to use it as non -reformed people and the wheels just fall off if God is not sovereign over everything.

01:37:54

Sure. It was actually, I was on Doug's show some years back and we got into this very topic of salvation and election and things like that.

01:38:02

And it was through that episode that Leighton Flowers listened to it and invited me onto his show and to talk about that very point.

01:38:13

And I have had some interactions with Doug. He's a nice guy. And I think he does appreciate the straightforward nature of this approach.

01:38:22

Obviously he disagrees, but I think he appreciates kind of just get to the point. Tell me how it is. I think

01:38:27

Doug is a nice guy, but I mean, I think he's very winsome, very intelligent, but I think he's also very sly.

01:38:37

Because when I watch him with other people on his show and he gets people to say exactly what he wants them to say and then he makes another video about them saying exactly what they want him to say.

01:38:47

I don't think he made a follow -up video on me yet, but yeah, I mean, I encourage people to watch that.

01:38:53

We had a good time together. And - I was actually listening to it today. So I'm halfway through it.

01:38:58

It was a great - If you read the comments, the atheists are furious with me. A lot of them are furious with Doug for having me on.

01:39:04

And there's a Christian who said, Si must've done well because everybody's mad at him. Very good.

01:39:11

I like to meet him in person sometime if I'm ever down in that area, in Arizona.

01:39:16

Yeah. Doug says here, if the Christian chose to submit their life to Christ, then isn't it their authority still themselves?

01:39:24

But I guess if you don't believe in the return of free will, then - See, that's Doug again.

01:39:30

Because this is the analogy that I give. I say to anybody, to any Christian, what makes you different from the lost?

01:39:36

What you did or what Jesus did? To a man, the person will say what Jesus did. And I'll say, is your salvation like you drowning in a lake?

01:39:44

And the rescue boat comes along and throws out a rope. And all I do is grab on. And I say, you know, if that boat wasn't there, if that rope wasn't there,

01:39:52

I'd still be dead. I'd still drown. I don't contribute to my salvation. All I'm doing is grabbing a rope. And that's what Doug is trying to say here.

01:39:58

But that's not our view of salvation because here's the problem with that. Let's say you're drowning in a lake beside your friend who's drowning in a lake.

01:40:05

And now the rescue boat comes out and throws out two ropes. You grab on and your friend doesn't.

01:40:11

What's the difference between you and your friend? What you did or what the rescuer did? The difference between you and your friend in that scenario is 100 % you and zero of the rescuer.

01:40:20

And you just told me that the difference between you and the lost is what Jesus did. That's why it's a bad scenario. We're not drowning in a lake.

01:40:26

We're dead at the bottom of the lake. And Jesus brings some to life so that we freely choose him.

01:40:32

So my choice is credited to Christ because he brought me from death to life. So I know that Doug likes to do stuff like that.

01:40:39

And he knows the answers I'm gonna give too. And that's why he's sly, he's slippery. Here's the last one from Doug.

01:40:45

His questions were clustered together so that's why there's a lot from him. So we'll move on to a couple of other ones and then we'll wrap it up, okay?

01:40:51

He says here, what the precept needs to be prepared for is to explain why one ought care to be consistent or account for things.

01:40:58

Do non -Christians score lower on logic tests? What do you think's the point he's trying to make there? Yeah, I think he, you know,

01:41:08

I'm not saying he's doing this intentionally, he might. But I think that a lot of Christians want to show the reason to be consistent outside of scripture.

01:41:16

But why do I not want to contradict the, you know, be contradictory? Because God says don't lie. You know, so all of these things

01:41:23

I want to do because God says be imitators of me. The laws of logic are reflections of the way God thinks. So that's why we have to be logical because God is logical.

01:41:32

Now, he might want us to account for that outside of scripture. And maybe he's trying to imply that, but no.

01:41:37

The reason I want to do those things is because that's a reflection of God and I'm creating his image and I'm supposed to be his imitator.

01:41:43

Ephesians five verse one. That's why we need to be logical. And outside of that, Doug can't tell us why he needs to be logical because we're just evolved pond scum in his worldview.

01:41:52

All right, all right, very good. Trying to scroll through here. I think a lot of it is just,

01:41:57

I can skip over. Skip over. He's just drumming up support for his channel. Yeah, it's all good.

01:42:03

Same, the support goes both ways. So that's how the world of YouTube works, right?

01:42:09

He's probably gonna cut this video up and disseminate it on his show. Just, you know, just don't take us out of context,

01:42:15

Doug. No, it's all good. Okay, now, since I last time I checked, there was a lot more.

01:42:21

So we can't go through all of these here. So I'm going to actually stop here. We went - Same show. Yeah, we went a one hour and 42 minutes.

01:42:28

Sometimes we go two hours. I've had great conversations with two hours. People are so generous with their time. I do appreciate it.

01:42:35

Are there any last things you'd like to say before we conclude? Well, I love you, brother.

01:42:40

And I appreciate when you call me because I believe that you're way smarter than I am. And when you call me with a pre -sub question,

01:42:46

I'm very, very humbling. But no, I don't deny that at all, brother. You know this apologetic much better than I do.

01:42:54

But when you come with a question to me and I answer in a way that satisfy you, I get a lot of pleasure from that.

01:43:00

So I appreciate that. And I encourage people, read your Bible, believe what it says, love the lost and go forth.

01:43:11

Very good. Well, I'm going to encourage people. If you have not already, please subscribe to the

01:43:17

Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel and the podcast as well. I know a lot of people gave a positive response, but I'm going to try to create an online course where we can teach this methodology.

01:43:28

We can do kind of something on Zoom and you guys can watch some videos and we can have kind of live discussion, Q &A and stuff like that.

01:43:34

So hopefully we'll get that started maybe sometime over the summer. I'll keep people posted for that. Maybe we can get some guest speakers to do a couple of classes.

01:43:44

That'd be great. But we'll see about that. All right, well, stay tuned for our next episode on Tuesday. I'll be having

01:43:50

Matt Slick from karm .org to talk about this issue of so much heresy, so little time.

01:43:57

It should be a blast. Well, that's all for today. Thank you so much, Cy, for being on the show. We appreciate you and we appreciate the work that you're doing for the kingdom.

01:44:05

And we're looking forward to having you back on at a future time. All right, well, that's it for today. Take care and God bless.